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State of the City Address, March 13, 2007

MAYOR KWAME M. KILPATRICK
State of the City Address
March 13, 2007
Max M. Fisher Music Center
7 p.m.

President Cockrel, President Pro Tem Conyers, Members of City Council, Distinguished Guests, Citizens of Detroit.Good evening. I am here tonight to report to you on the State of our City. Tonight I will discuss with you the very substantial progress we are making in positioning ourselves to create the Next Detroit. And I will tell you what we’re doing in the coming year to grow this city and also what we’re doing to get our citizens what they need to have a better quality of life here in Detroit. Tonight, the state of our city is summed up by two words: growth and challenge. I want to pause for a moment to acknowledge the loss during the past year of one of this region’s outstanding leaders and a good friend of Detroit, Dearborn Mayor Michael Guido. When Mayor Guido took office in 1986 he quickly developed a strong working relationship and a personal friendship with Coleman Young that began to heal the historic racial tension between our two cities. When I became Mayor, he reached out to me in the same spirit of cooperation and friendship. His untimely passing has left a void in southeast Michigan. We need more leaders like him if we are to move forward together. We are honored to have with us tonight his wife, Kari, and his son, Mikey. I would ask all of you to join me in letting them know, and the people of Dearborn know how much we respected and loved her husband and his father, Mike Guido. I also want to express my gratitude tonight to the veterans in our community. I visited our VA hospital three weeks ago and I saw veterans who had served in World War II, who had served in Korea and Vietnam and the newest veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. We owe these veterans a debt of gratitude for all they have done for our neighborhoods, for our communities, for our city, our state and our country. In the midst of the debate over whether the war was justified, no one can question your valor, your commitment or your service. On behalf of the people of Detroit, “We thank you.” I don’t have to tell anyone here tonight that we are having some hard times in Michigan. The University of Michigan Economic Outlook for 2007 said, “Michigan is being battered by one of the most tenacious economic storms ever confronted by its citizenry.” We are experiencing, it said, “the longest stretch of job loss in the state since the Great Depression…”This is not a time for the faint-hearted. Even some of our longest-existing institutions are faced with, and sometimes yield to, the temptation to bail out on us.But real Detroiters know this City is a tough city that will not only survive but prosper. They see the progress we are making to grow Detroit. And they are not only staying but making their own commitment to our future. Our first challenge if we are to grow this city has been to get our finances in order. Just two years ago we faced a potential deficit of $300 million. It seemed like every article about our financial condition in our beloved Detroit Free Press and Detroit News talked about Detroit going into receivership or bankruptcy. That did not happen because we took unprecedented steps to save our city. Yes, we closed police stations. We closed fire stations. We laid off police officers. We initiated a trash fee. We reduced our city work force by more than 25 percent. We reduced our contract spending by 25 percent. Every appointee and nonunion employee of the city took a 10 percent pay cut and cost adjustments to their health care plan. We transferred operations of the Detroit Zoo, the Detroit Historical Museum, and Eastern Market to nonprofit organizations.The cuts reduced our potential budget deficit by half, from $300 million to $150 million. Then we went to our labor unions and said, “We need you to take a 10 percent pay cut. We need you to accept the first adjustments in 23 years in deductibles and co-pays for health insurance, for prescriptions, for office visits and for ER visits.” Tonight, we’ve done that. With the very dedicated efforts of both our civilian employee unions and our city negotiators, we have made those adjustments. Just recently, we also were able to win similar adjustments from our uniformed employees through an Act 312 arbitration ruling. The result is not just a one-time savings but permanent savings that will be a continuing part of our budget next year and the year after that and for years to come. I want to thank all of the men and women of our city unions and our retirees for recognizing the situation we face, coming together with us and accepting those changes. I want to thank our entire labor relations team, led by Labor Relations Director Barbara Wise Johnson; attorney Val Colbert of our Law Department and my Chief of Staff Christine Beatty for their tireless efforts to make these changes a reality. These changes saved us an additional $54 million on an annual basis and further reduced our budget problem from $150 million to $96 million. Because of the savings we have achieved, our current 2006-2007 budget is balanced. For the first time what we spend is lining up with what we take in. The remaining deficit of about $96 million is carried over from previous years and we will deal with that this year.Now, we are in a position where this mayor and this Council, working together, can change the budget conversation in Detroit forever. The budget I will present to Council on April 12 will not only cure this $96 million carryover, but it will put us in a position where we can be out of a deficit conversation in the city of Detroit once and for all. I want thank our budget director, Pam Scales, for the excellent work she and her staff have done to help get us to this point. I also want to acknowledge tonight the key role that City Council has played in helping make all of these changes. And I want to thank each member of Council for the constructive relationship we have developed as we work on these very difficult issues. I particularly want to acknowledge the smooth budget process that we were able to work through last year. It wasn’t a rubber-stamping of the budget. It was far from that. It was a deliberative, constructive process, complete with negotiations and debate that produced constructive agreements on how we are going to deliver basic services to our citizens. Council made some very tough decisions along the way. I believe the people of Detroit were well served by the process and I want to publicly thank Council for their actions. We still have some unfinished business on our current budget. There are certain things that we committed to together in this budget that we still have yet to do. For instance, we said we would get $30 million in property sales. We must get it done. Over the next five weeks, I will avail my staff to you whenever you have questions you need answered about these proposed sales. Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams, COO Charlie Beckham and Kandia Milton will be available to talk to you and answer any questions you have about these property sales. This moment in history has the potential to be a pivotal moment for Detroit. For the first time in my memory, there is real optimism about the future of our city. There are signs of growth and recovery throughout Detroit. These signs of growth are being recognized not only here, but around the country. During Super Bowl week this year there were actually stories in newspapers around the country and the world saying, “They did it better in Detroit last year.”We still have fundamental problems that require our urgent attention. But as we work on those problems, we need to keep in mind the progress we are making on a number of fronts. Let me remind you of a few of them.On the east side, the new residential neighborhood called Jefferson Village is taking shape. It covers 88 acres between East Jefferson, St. Jean, Freud and Marquette. This development, which sat dormant for three years before we took office, is the most successful project Crosswinds Development, which does business all over the State of Michigan, has anywhere, with more than 300 new single-family homes. Our Detroit Brownfield Development Authority completed 21 projects in the city last year, most of them in neighborhoods. The authority, one of the most successful of its kind in the nation, is very instrumental in almost every project we are doing – including the resurgence of the mid-town and cultural center area.On the east riverfront, we will break ground this year on two developments being built by Dave Bing and Dwight Belyue that will create nearly 600 new housing units along with retail and restaurants. I first talked to you about our efforts to bring life back to the Book Cadillac Hotel in my 2003 State of the City address. It took a while to get it done. A lot of people thought we were wasting our time on this Detroit landmark. They said we had as much chance of redeveloping that old hotel as the Tigers had of making it to the World Series. They were right.When the Book Cadillac Hotel renovation is completed in 2008, it will house a four star Westin hotel with 455 rooms. It will have 67 condos on its upper floors. All but four of those condos already have been sold, with two of them going for more than $1 million. Imagine that – people paying over a million dollars to own a condo in downtown Detroit. On top of that, another development team has bought the air rights on top of the parking deck being built next to the Book. They are going to build 80 upscale condominiums on top of that garage. The whole concept of buying air rights is common in cities like New York and Chicago. But it had never been heard of here in Detroit until now. Later this year, two of our casinos will open new 400-room hotels, reflecting a total investment of more than $1 billion. MGM Grand already has started the process to hire and train local employees to fill more than 1,000 new jobs that will be created in their new facility. Theirs is the largest construction project now underway in the entire state of Michigan. In many other ways, large and small, we are making significant improvements to our city. Most of them do not generate big headlines, but each makes a big difference. For example, in the past year:
We opened the first new rec centers in Detroit in 20 years when we opened the Pattonand Hellmann recreation centers and finished the Jayne-Lasky Family Fun Center.
We are making $14 million in improvements to the Northwest Activity Center that will make it a full community center.
We have established a single point of entry into the health care system for senior citizens in Detroit to help them determine the best long-term care plan for themselves.
We installed new, computerized fare boxes in our DDOT buses and have improved service and schedules.
Our Health Department has made a tremendous turn around after being at a point two years ago when we are talking about closing it. That turnaround includes improving our immunization program to where we are number one in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
We identified 26 neighborhoods that are receiving their first property tax cut this year as the initial Neighborhood Enterprise Zone neighborhoods. Twenty more neighborhoods will be added to that category this year.
We installed 39,000 new streetlights.
We resurfaced 88 miles of streets.
We received a $1.1 million grant from the CDC to fight lead poisoning. We are working with Prosecutor Kym Worthy to prosecute landlords who knowingly put families in homes with lead issues.
We renegotiated leases with three downtown buildings that house city agencies and secured savings of more than $11 million over the next four years.
We put in place new regulations governing the landlord eviction process so that landlords can no longer set trash on the front lawn of our neighborhoods and dirty up our streets.
And we’ve done so much more.
So you see, we've accomplished a lot in the past year.But tonight I want to talk to you about where we go next. My administration has been looking around the country for successful strategies that have been employed both in the private and public sector to stimulate growth. We’re developing strategies that will move us beyond just meeting our budget every year to a situation where we can have surplus dollars to be used for demolition, to lower taxes, to build houses, to stimulate real retail in our neighborhoods, to stimulate increases in property values. Over the next few weeks I will be discussing these strategies for stimulating our economy with the community, with Council, with editorial boards and other leaders in this community. I do want to say tonight that our long-term strategy does not raise any taxes in the city of Detroit. Nor does it ask for any new taxes for our citizens in the City of Detroit. In fact, our long term strategy will reduce both property taxes and income taxes. That, in turn, will raise property values. We have the data that shows that property values will go up as a direct result of decreasing property taxes and income taxes. We are developing a long-term economic stimulus plan, which will include a long-term bond initiative. After I present my budget on April 12, I will be finalizing this plan and unveiling it to our entire community. We also will provide strong support for public safety as well as aggressive funding for business attraction, work force training and job growth in the city of Detroit. These are the priorities of our economic stimulus plan – radically reducing crime, strengthening our work force development and training programs and fully implementing neighborhood improvement efforts through our Next Detroit Neighborhood Initiative. The crime issue in the city of Detroit has consistently and constantly undermined any notion of recovery and revitalization or renaissance in this city for more than 40 years. No matter what we do – host the Super Bowl … host the All-Star Game … lead the region in new housing … sell million dollar condos downtown … build more housing than ever … open three new neighborhood recreation centers … fix streets … fix parks … host the Grand Prix on Belle Isle – the crime issue constantly undermines any notion of recovery all the time. The problem of crime is not unique to Detroit. FBI statistics show that violent crime is on the rise throughout America after a decade of decline. Cincinnati recorded its deadliest year ever in 2005. Oakland, California had the highest number of homicides in more than a decade. San Diego had a 33 percent increase in homicides while Miami had a 43 percent increase and Orlando a 123 percent increase.But the fact that other cities are having their own problems brings no comfort to us in Detroit. We have to develop new strategies to bring down crime totals in Detroit.One of the most difficult decisions I had to make to balance our budget was the decision to lay off police officers. I am pleased to report to you tonight that all of our laid off police officers have been called back and are already serving our citizens. We also have a class of new officers in the police training academy. And I’m not stopping there.Tonight I am especially pleased to announce that over the next 12 months we will hire 200 new police officers for the Detroit Police Department. But bringing crime under control requires much more than increasing police staffing levels. Fortunately, I believe the command team we have assembled under the leadership of Chief Ella Bully Cummings is the best in the nation. I have told the chief that I want her to take back our streets. I want the police to help the adults in this community restore order. In too many of our neighborhoods, it seems that the kids have taken over the streets. It’s like if I had a situation in my own household where Jelani and Jalil woke up one day and said, “Dad, we’re taking over this house today.” Let me tell you – that would be a bad day for Jelani and Jalil. I have told the chief to make it a bad day for those who are disrupting the peace of our community. Under Chief Cummings’ guidance the department is making revolutionary improvements to their operations. One of the most dynamic changes is the creation of rapid response units that are being piloted in two of our districts and will soon be rolled out citywide. They are assigned strictly to respond to priority 911 calls. Their job is to receive the police run and immediately respond to the location. Under this plan, these units are strategically located to assure that any call can be responded to quickly. These are high visibility, directed patrols that will significantly improve our ability to respond quickly to emergencies. The chief also is assigning all administrative staffs to be deployed regularly to augment patrol forces in what we classify as hot spot areas, such as gas stations, party stores, night clubs, bars and all-night restaurants. The chief will be going out on these patrols as well. The assistant chief will be going out. All commanders, all the deputy chiefs are going on patrol. So we’ll have greater visibility, greater accountability and greater oversight. For those of you in the community who work with the Police Department day in and day out, thank you. One of the department’s most successful tools for ridding our city of violent criminals is a strong community-involvement initiative called the Most Violent Persons. The department has, through assistance from the community, arrested 97 criminals on this list in the past two years.The department has instituted internal, city-wide crime briefings on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to closely monitor crime trends throughout the city. These briefings bring together officers from the districts, homicide, narcotics, the gang squad, sex crimes, the child abuse unit and others to assure that the department adjusts immediately to changing dynamics.We also are deploying our Special Response Team, also known as our SWAT team, in special enforcement actions, putting them on patrol anywhere in the city where these daily reviews reveal high narcotics trafficking or a high incidence of robberies and shootings. Traffic enforcement also will be engaged in visible patrols and they will also patrol adjacent neighborhoods. The chief and her command staff also are going to conduct one-on-one meetings with citizens mirrored after my one-on-one meetings with the community. The first one is scheduled for April 7th. These meetings will be held on a quarterly basis with the deputy chief and two commanders working on a Saturday with their staff from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Anyone in the community that has a police concern can come in and have a one-on-one private conversation with a member of the command staff in that district. We are continuing to reconnect our Police Department to the citizens of the City of Detroit.
I want to take a minute to thank the men and women of the Detroit Police Department. They give their blood, sweat, tears and sometimes even their lives serving us. On behalf of all Detroiters, we thank God for you. But the new officers and new tactics by themselves are not the only answer to our crime problem. One mistake we make in our community when we discuss crime is to immediately discuss police and police only. We must look at the nature of the crime we experience and develop strategies out of what we learn. And we must have a very candid conversation within this community about what we are doing to ourselves.When you break down crime statistics, year in and year out, most of our crime is narcotics related. About 70 percent of our homicides are narcotics related. If you are involved in narcotics, if you are involved in drug trafficking or if you are in the presence of where drugs are sold, then you are much more likely to be the victim of violent crime.
The truth is a small group of people in the City of Detroit are responsible for a large bulk of the crime. The police recently did a profile of 20 people they had arrested and determined that they were involved in 149 crimes that we know about. And we know that as a general rule of thumb in law enforcement, they have probably committed three times that many. So these 20 people probably committed well over 400 crimes in the City of Detroit.Now, Detroit, I want to have a very serious and frank discussion with you about our children and crime.Two weeks ago we were shocked when an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old were murdered in a house on the west side of Detroit. They were executed. We are losing too many of our children.Those kids were middle school students. And with a Stronger more engaged Community, they may have still been with us tonight. But they are gone.I hope parents tonight are watching this with their children. We as parents need to talk to our children about this situation. We need to know what our children are doing, who their friends are. We need to tell them when they get involved with drugs, if they are just around drugs, if they are involved in gangs, they not only can get hurt, they can get killed. We need to help them understand that the so-called glamorous life that they see in some of these videos is not reality. We need to tell them that when you get involved in drugs and sitting in a drug house, there’s no champagne, there’s no pretty girls, no nice clothes. There’s no bling bling. You can get killed. My Beloved Community, I truly understand the history of African American people in this country. But we have come to a point in our community where this is no conspiracy by Outsiders doing this to us. This is us killing us. This is mostly African Americans killing African Americans. This is some family member of mine or yours killing some family member of yours or mine. And we, as a community, have to stop it now. Nobody’s coming to save us. We have to stand up for ourselves and stand up now.The Ashanti have a saying: “The ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people.” The same can be said of a city.We have to work to repair the homes of our city. We must, as a community, step up and take this head on, together, because disorganized love cannot fight, nor ever defeat, organized crime. No longer can we just say the police alone have this responsibility. Pastors in our communities, Stand Up! We need Churches without walls, in order to engage the neighborhoods around you. Other leaders in our communities, fathers and mothers in our communities, family members and neighbors in our communities, have to step up to this responsibility. It’s not just the Mayor’s problem. I fully accept my responsibility in it. But I can’t do this on my own. I need, and we need an aroused, engaged and mobilized community. Men of Detroit. I am talking to you not just as Mayor, but as a father, a husband and a fellow Detroiter. As men of Detroit, we must step up together and take a leadership role in saving our city. The great singer Marian Anderson, in her 1956 autobiography, wrote “There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for the other fellow to make the first move—and he, in turn, waits for you. The minute a person whose word means a great deal dares to take the open-hearted and courageous way, many others follow.”Men of Detroit, the time is now for us to take the openhearted and courageous way. It’s time for you to make the first move. It’s time for all of us to lead. One of the most effective deterrents to crime is the availability of jobs. People who have opportunities and hope for the future are far less willing to risk their personal future by engaging in criminal activity. We must put Detroiters back to work. This is not an unsolvable problem. That is why our Workforce Development Department is so critical to the future of this city. This administration inherited an Employment and Training Department that had not changed in 20 years and was under federal and state investigation. We met those problems head-on, met with the FBI, met with the state investigators, and we cured those issues. Now, under the direction of Sharon McPhail and Department Director Cynthia Bell, we are transforming the Workforce Development Department. We are developing programs that will help Detroiters in areas ranging from resume preparation to developing employable skills to finding potential jobs with growth opportunities. The department will develop programs that are personalized to each individual. For those ready to work, job development specialists will find them jobs that have potential for growth opportunities. For those who want or need more training, we are creating career centers in the high growth job areas---health care, information technology, construction and hospitality and retail and putting those job centers where jobs are available. The central focus of the career center is a coaching model. We’ll be assessing individuals. We’ll be giving them occupational testing and guiding them through a process that will put them on a path to a real career. Additional centers are in the planning stages for such specialty areas as transportation and forestry. We want to help every Detroiter who wants to prepare themselves for a career, and not just a job. The only thing this process requires of each participant is a personal commitment to be ready to learn and to prepare themselves to work. That means going to class. That means developing the skills that will make you employable. That means developing good work habits. And, yes, it means being able to pass a drug test. All these changes will be fully implemented by the end of the year.
As we work to prepare people for work, we also are going to aggressively market our city to the rest of the world. Detroit Renaissance has stepped forward with seed money to create a business attraction office that will go out and actively market Detroit to the rest of the world. The Kresge Foundation immediately stepped forward to match the Renaissance grant. Others are preparing to follow suit. This office will allow us to get out and very aggressively call on businesses not just nationally, but around the world, to tell them about Detroit. I want to thank Doug Rothwell of Detroit Renaissance and Rip Rapson of the Kresge Foundation for their leadership in making this new office a reality.A city is only as strong as its neighborhoods. That is why I have launched my Next Detroit Neighborhood Initiative (NDNI). The Next Detroit Neighborhood Initiative, which will be lead by Anika Goss-Foster, is a five-year strategy focusing on the rejuvenation of Detroit neighborhoods. It will concentrate on improving such basic quality of life issues as cleanliness, safety and beautification through growth and development strategies. It is the biggest neighborhood initiative that Detroit has ever seen. We have started out by targeting our resources to six neighborhoods because we cannot do all 139 square miles of this city at once. The six neighborhoods are all across this city. They include two stable neighborhoods we will work to reinforce and keep strong … two neighborhoods that are still strong but need some revitalization … and two struggling neighborhoods we need to redevelop. As we have begun this process we have found that people in each neighborhood are really excited because they’re actually part of the process. The truth is that they must be involved for this to work. Just as a city is only as strong as its neighborhoods, our neighborhoods are only as strong as the people who live there and who are willing to get actively involved. When I was growing up, if there was trash on our street, my mother never told us to call Coleman Young’s office to get it cleaned up. She sent us out to clean it up. That’s the attitude of ownership and personal responsibility we need in all of our neighborhoods.Each of the six neighborhoods in our initiative is developing its own individual work plan, with plans due to be submitted to my office March 30th. We’ll roll out the final plan for each neighborhood the first week in May and begin work immediately. Critical support is coming from philanthropic and nongovernmental agencies who have teamed up to fund part of the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to support the initiative. The Skillman Foundation … the Detroit Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) … the Knight Foundation … the Kresge Foundation … the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan … and Governor Jennifer Granholm’s Cities of Promise initiative all are involved in making this initiative a success.One of the fundamental needs of our neighborhoods is the need for retail establishments. For too long, Detroiters have had to drive to the suburbs to do most of their shopping. We have begun working with the Brookings Institution Social Compact to identify untapped and undercounted purchasing power in Detroit’s neighborhoods. We know Detroiters can shop with the best of them. And we deserve to have the best retail right here in our neighborhoods. The Social Compact has developed a very innovative way to identify unrecognized economic resources in a community. They count things like utility bills and credit card receipts – things that the Census does not count but which give a much more accurate picture of purchasing power – to show that there is a lot more economic clout in urban communities than is often recognized. The Social Compact has worked in more than 100 different cities around this nation -- cities such as Washington, Baltimore, Oakland and Chicago -- to identify these unrecognized economic resources. And they have been very successful in convincing retailers who once said “no” to a community to actually change their decision and locate in that community. They will work with us over the three years to identify the true economic resources to be found in Detroit, starting with the six neighborhoods in the Next Detroit Neighborhood Initiative.This administration has other initiatives underway to meet our future needs on issues like rapid transit to alleviate traffic congestion and attract millions of dollars of new investment into our city. We’re also prepared to work with the Governor on initiatives she announced in her State of the State Message. For instance, she said MSHDA is preparing to tear down 5,000 blighted homes in cities around the state. Governor, we have some abandoned homes here in Detroit and we’re planning to get our fair share of those funds. The Governor said she wants to create five new high schools for nursing. We have two sites here in Detroit ready to go. We’re going to challenge the Governor, in a very friendly and very supportive way, to focus on Detroit. Because there is no State recovery without Detroit being the focal point of that recovery. For years the notion has been that Detroit was dragging down the rest of the State. The enlightened people in this Country and State know different. We’ve come to a point in history where, if Michigan is to Prosper, it’s really Detroit’s responsibility to put the State on its back and carry us both to Prosperity. We need support to be able to do that. Let me be clear, there can never be a meaningful, effective or operational plan for the recovery of our State if Detroit is not at the Core of that plan. The History of the Economy of Our State reinforces this fact.So we look forward to partnering with the governor this year. Lastly tonight, I want to discuss an issue that people keep raising with me as I go around this city – the issue of education. Education in the city of Detroit cannot continue to be looked at as the Detroit Public Schools only. Our children attend charter schools. Our children attend private schools. Our children attend parochial schools. Our children attend inner ring suburban schools. There is even an emerging home school base growing in our city. So many times when we start to talk about education in this city the focus immediately goes to who’s running the Detroit Public School System. That should not be our first, or second, or third consideration. We need to be smarter about education in Detroit. If we get smarter about education then we can start to understand where the problems are. And then we can find solutions to those problems. And we can start to lift up those places that are doing well in our city and make those places a viable option for parents and children.A couple of years ago I spoke at Northwestern High School’s graduation. Their graduating class had earned literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships. It reminded me that there are thousands of good kids in our school system, thousands of good kids who just want to learn. We have dynamic schools with dynamic children who are there to learn. Each year we send kids to universities throughout this state as well as to Stanford, to Yale, to Harvard, to Howard and, yes, to the Florida A&M University. Too often, it’s the adults who get in the way of our children learning. Adults get in the way of excellence for our schools. Adults get bogged down in arguments that put our children in peril. Adults get bogged down in personalities at the bargaining table. Adults spend too much time worrying about their own pork chop rather than our children. Adults constantly shift teachers around, sometimes in the middle of the year, destroying the morale of the good schools and damaging those schools. Adults refuse to consider new approaches to education, clinging to a model that is over 100 years old. The children of our community have to wonder at times whether the adults in this community are truly looking out for their best interests. The people of this community decided in 2004 they don’t want me in charge of education. I support the people’s decision. I support our elected school board and want them to make good decisions for our children. The board has chosen a new superintendent. It’s time for us to stop the dissension and fighting with one another. It’s time for us to move on and give her our full support. I open my arms to Dr. Connie Calloway and welcome her to the City of Detroit. She is with us here tonight. Let’s show her a real Detroit welcome and some Real Detroit Love.It’s time for us to walk together, focused on our children, doing all we can to provide them the best education possible.But the children of this community are my responsibility as well.That’s why I want to make sure that our children are safe going to and from school. And I want to make sure they are safe while they are in school. I want to do that because they deserve and need a safe environment where they can learn. Because public safety ­is my responsibility.As a result, I’ve asked the chief to approach the school system to get an agreement that would deploy the Gang Squad to the schools to provide security. As soon as the agreement is signed between the school system and the City of Detroit, I will deploy Gang Squad. I will let this community know when that agreement is signed. We also are going to increase our focus on helping the school system enforce truancy laws. There is a direct nexus between being out of school and committing crimes. If 13 and 14 and 15 year-olds are out of school for days on end not learning, nothing good can come of that.I have outlined for you tonight an overview of the tremendous progress we are making as a city … the major obstacles that are standing in our way as we move forward … and what we are doing to overcome these obstacles.As I close tonight, let me be clear that I understand that many of our people are having hard times. I want you to know that we are working to assure that there are opportunities for those who are ready to put in the effort needed to take advantage of those opportunities. My Detroit family, thank you for the trust you have put in me. I will continue to have the discipline, courage and devotion that befit this time in our city’s history.As your mayor I pledge that I will continue to seek every available resource for our city. You can expect that of me and everyone in my administration that works for you. But if we are to return to the Detroit that you remember, then we all must work together to reclaim our city and our swagger and our sense of pride. Reclaim your family. Reclaim your church. Reclaim your neighborhood. Reclaim your school. And we will have, once again, the city that God intended for us to have. Detroit, it’s up to us.None of us can do it alone. Together, we can grow this city.Together, we can take back our streets.Together, we can rebuild our communities and our neighborhoods.
Together, we can put Detroiters back to work.
Together, with God’s help, we will realize our full potential as one of the world’s great cities.
Together, we can.
That’s My Detroit! That’s Your Detroit! That’s Our Detroit!

Health, Wealth and Prosperity...checking?

Man Tries to Cash $50K Check From God
March 1,2007 6:14 AM (ET)

HOBART, Ind. (AP) - Kevin Russell found out it's not easy trying to cash a check from God. The 21-year-old man was arrested Monday after he tried to cash a check for $50,000 at the Chase Bank in Hobart that was signed "King Savior, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Servant," Hobart police Detective Jeff White said.
Russell was charged with one count attempted check fraud and one count intimidation, both felonies, and one count resisting law enforcement, a misdemeanor. He could face prison time.
Police were called to the bank after Russell tried to cash the check, which was written on an invalid Bank One check with no imprint, White said. Russell had several other checks with him that were signed the same way but made out in different dollar amounts, including one for $100,000.
Russell struggled with police as they tried to detain him, White said, and then threatened police as they transported him to the Hobart Police Department.
"I've heard about God giving out eternal life, but this is the first time I've heard of him giving out cash," White said.
No court date has been set for Russell. He was being held Wednesday at the Lake County Jail on a $1,000 bond.

Proposed Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights

[Sign the Petition]

All American air carriers shall abide by the following standards to ensure the safety, security and comfort of their passengers:

• Establish procedures to respond to all passenger complaints within 24 hours and with appropriate resolution within 2 weeks.
  


• Notify passengers within ten minutes of a delay of known diversions, delays and cancellations via airport overhead announcement, on aircraft announcement, and posting on airport television monitors.
  


• Establish procedures for returning passengers to terminal gate when delays occur so that no plane sits on the tarmac for longer than three hours without connecting to a gate.
  


• Provide for the essential needs of passengers during air- or ground-based delays of longer than 3 hours, including food, water, sanitary facilities, and access to medical attention.
  


• Provide for the needs of disabled, elderly and special needs passengers by establishing procedures for assisting with the moving and retrieving of baggage, and the moving of passengers from one area of airport to another at all times by airline personnel.
  


• Publish and update monthly on the company’s public web site a list of chronically delayed flights, meaning those flight delayed thirty minutes or more, at least forty percent of the time, during a single month.
  


• Compensate “bumped” passengers or passengers delayed due to flight cancellations or postponements of over 12 hours by refund of 150% of ticket price.
  


• The formal implementation of a Passenger Review Committee, made up of non-airline executives and employees but rather passengers and consumers – that would have the formal ability to review and investigate complaints.
  


• Make lowest fare information, schedules and itineraries, cancellation policies and frequent flyer program requirements available in an easily accessed location and updated in real-time.
  


• Ensure that baggage is handled without delay or injury; if baggage is lost or misplaced, the airline shall notify customer of baggage status within 12 hours and provide compensation equal to current market value of baggage and its contents.
  


• Require that these rights apply equally to all airline code-share partners including international partners.

[Sign Petition]

http://www.strandedpassengers.blogspot.com/

http://www.petitiononline.com/airline/petition.html

School Closings and $1.3 Million in Travel expense?!

As Detroit students did without, district spent $1.3 million on trips
"I can't get hand sanitizer for my kids. ... That is a disgrace." Heather Miller, a math teacher at DPS Marquette Elementary

February 9, 2007
BY JENNIFER DIXON and CHASTITY PRATT
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

During the same period, district officials rang up another $240,000 for catering. The tab included $100,000 to an unlicensed Eastpointe business based in the home of a Detroit elementary school principal.

Beyond that, records show the district spent $700,000 on travel to conferences and other events across the country, from San Diego to Miami to Reno, Nev. The district curtailed out-of-town spending last month after the Free Press began scrutinizing expenses.

In all, Detroit Public Schools spent more than $1.3 million for travel, hotels, workshops and catered meals while the district faced the nation's worst school financial crisis, shuttered schools and lost students by the thousands.

District officials said federal, state and local grants paid for nearly all travel and hotel costs.

Government education officials, however, said much of the grant money could have helped students more directly, as in hiring more teachers to reduce class sizes or by purchasing special-education equipment. The district can hire a starting teacher for about $70,000 a year in pay and benefits.

DPS officials acknowledge they had discretion in how to spend the money. But district spokesman Lekan Oguntoyinbo insisted the district kept a close eye on expenses and spent the money to improve student achievement.

"We're not doing anything here that is unethical, illegal or a disservice to the taxpayers," he said.

"We're spending these funds judiciously."

Not wrong, but excessive?

Critics said they have no quarrel with teachers, administrators and board members' need to get professional training, some of which is not always available locally or online. The spending was a sliver of the district's $1.3-billion budget. Even so, the critics said, it seemed excessive in a financial crisis.

Tom Watkins, former state superintendent, said justifying travel by citing a grant is a "game that people use -- 'The grant made me do it.' "

Watkins said he couldn't imagine that a private foundation or educational agency would refuse to let a district spend its grant money on necessities like teachers and equipment instead of a trip or a catered luncheon.

"It's a matter of priorities," Watkins said.

Even some DPS board members questioned the wisdom and volume of the spending. The district lost $100 million in state funding this year because of declining enrollment and is proposing to close 52 school buildings.

"We just have to do a better job all the way around, being more efficient in spending dollars," board member Tyrone Winfrey said. "We have to make sure we take the children into account first."

Board President Jimmy Womack said that regardless of whether grants were used, the spending must be wise.

"What was the money for? Could it have been used in a better way?" Womack asked.

Since early January, the Free Press sought records related to the Detroit area hotel expenses, catering and travel. But the district released few records and said the documents could not be located without extensive, costly searches.

The Free Press did obtain a list of budgeted payments to vendors from Nov. 1, 2005, to Nov. 1, 2006, through the DPS procurement department. It outlined $1.3 million for hotels, catering companies and local restaurants, travel agencies and tour companies. But the list did not detail the nature of all the events, how many officials attended or who spent what.

The total also did not include money spent by district employees who made their own travel arrangements and were later reimbursed. Nor did it include out-of-town restaurant tabs and other incidentals, suggesting the true travel costs were much higher.

In all, hundreds of thousands of dollars in spending remain unexplained.

Among last year's travels, the district sent people to the Hotel del Coronado near San Diego, the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco, the Hilton at Walt Disney World in Florida and the Doral Golf Resort and Spa in Miami.

[Rest of the Story...]

The Real Simpsons found!!

What if Homer and his comical family were real?*

[Click for video]

Religion is 'married' to Politics!? No Way!

There seems to be much handwringing in the media about whether religion and politics seem too cozy. This constant accusation is leveled every election cycle against Evangelicals who flex their rightful political muscles in national and state elections. This, obnoxious griping, usually begets the same old tired gossip.

[whisper] "shhh... did you hear?"

no...what?

[exclamation] "Religion and Politics are married!!"

*gasp*

The conversation about whether politics is married to religious faith is a good one if it were true. It appears that this dull accusation is presumed factual, yet painfully devoid of a supporting cast of evidence. So instead of doing the work for the accuser, let’s engage this accusation from a different angle.

For discussion sake, let’s say, that ‘if’ the religious & political canoodling gripe is true, and that ‘if’ is a real big ‘if’ because...

[cue Entertainment Tonight intro music]
Yes, that's right, Ladies and Gentlemen, you heard it here first, the exclusive celebrity announcement that Politics and Religion have as in the past are only ‘seeing each other as friends’ at this time.

This is due to the fact that Politics has been married and divorced more than anyone can count and mostly *that Politics has shown himself to be quite the dapper fellow with the ladies.

[*replace with 'because the chicks really dig him and they want him badly']

Religion in America has always had the hardest time making him commit to even protecting her, let alone any kind of long term relationship!

"Gurrl, Puhlease!!"

Her head has helped her certainly where her heart hasn’t, and it has helped to know the stakes and her competition as well. Politics seems to have many admirers and all of them have desired to wed him, but he has proven too shrewd for all the girlz. Because, boys will be boys, and Politics wants to have his cake and eat it too. ...and guess what ! ...that’s exactly what all of his lovers let him do. He doesn’t have to wed anybody, but he gets to bed them all, *he’s got it made!

[*insert 'he's a playa!']

All of his lovers make him the best pastries imagined, with so many strings attached, yet it rarely satiates him for long. He, being the biggest, most cunning and noncommittal of them all, enjoys every little dainty, and soon cuts every string and moves on to the highest bidder.

Religion in America has known of his flirty and promiscuous ways for a while now. Her great-great-great-grandmother Religion in Rome bedded Politics some fifteen hundred years ago when a nice looking chap named Constantine thought she was kinda cute. Of course, the most hurtful of all, was when she was run off as a little girl by Politics and her very own jealous mother, Religion in England and Europe who made her life miserable.

Resolved, she made it her unyielding commitment to never fall in love with him or ever get in bed with him. She has also known that Politics’ lovers are more wealthier and much prettier and even worse, willing to go much more further than her. So what does a single girl like Religion in America do if she needs her garbage picked up and keep bad guys from stealing her income and security? Well, she made the best decision a girl can make, she decided that she could be a good platonic ‘friend’ of Politics, and keep him at arms length, always willing to forgive him but never missing a moment to yell in his insolent and prurient face.

I know what you are thinking. What could be the advantage of not being on Politics’ booty-call speed-dial?

Well, you see, this girl knows a secret, her own value! She has something many of his competing lovers don’t always have together...and that is all of her voting power and even more powerful, her intestinal and moral fortitude.

So when good-old-boy Politics, calls her up for the ‘once-every-term’ night on the town and later asks for more of her usual amount of votes, she asks him and thinks about what he has done for her lately. She’ll check up on Israel and see how her friend has been treated lately. Sometimes even after all this, she’ll decide its better to sit at home till next term. But other times she’ll send in a good amount of her votes, because he will impress her with grandiose speeches or symbolic gestures...and then she’ll say to herself, "Gurl, Politics has been friendly lately, and he has been listening better this last term, and I think he might do something next term."

She knows, that it has been in her interest to pay attention to him, because his many lovers will get him to do a great deal that affect her. Rarely, will she ever vote all her votes, that is usually saved for when she’s really angry with her duplicitous neighbors, Secular Atheism, Promiscuous Media and Covert Socialism, among others in America.

She’s learned a great deal from her tumultuous ‘friendship’ with Politics, but the best lesson has certainly been to keep your friends close and your enemies closest.

Jaison J. Raju

together forever? or...forever stuck?

Archaelogical Discovery!

These two individuals, a man and a woman died together in an embrace.

Click here

sometimes nice guys finish first...

"Dungy said after Sunday's game that he is most proud that he and Smith are good Christians, that they have shown you can do it "the Lord's way" and succeed in the NFL. I often wince when athletes and coaches thank God after a victory, but note that Dungy did not attribute the win to his religion. He merely said, in his own way, that he was proud of reaching the pinnacle of his profession without compromising his ideals. " Michael Rosenberg

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/6443470