디트로이트시는 철강과 자동차의 도시인데요 거기에 쓰레기회수가 중단되고 경찰의 순찰 빈도를 20%수준으로 감소시킨다는 보도가 나와서 의아한 느낌으로 읽게되는데요 내용이 심각합니다. 중요한 것은 그곳 시장과 공무원은 인정하지않으려 하지만 시당국이 파산지경이고 시에서 발행한 각종채권이 상환불능상태가 불보듯뻔하게 되자 금융시장도 심각한 동요상태라고 합니다. 어떤 상태인지 살펴봅니다.
디트로이트의 학교가 파산한 것도 당연한데요, 그곳 고교생들이 단지 25%만이 졸업을 하고 있습니다.
그곳 시에서는 도로 보수, 경찰순찰, 도시 가로등,청소회수율 같은 것을 최저로 줄여서 버텨보겠다고 하지만 헛된일이라고 합니다. 현재 시의 20% 부분이 도시 갱단과 노숙자들의 전유물이 됬습니다. 이런 현상은 시의 행정이나 공권력이 미치지못하기에 발생한 문제이기도 하지만 심각한 인구감소와 빈 건물과 빈 주택 때문에 시의 구획을 줄일수밖에 없는 상황 때문에 발생하기도 한 것입니다.
미국영화중에 뱃트맨 batman 시리즈는 그를 영웅시하기 위해 비참한 현실을 부각시키곤했는데요 마치 디트로이트의 황량한 현실이 그 영화보다 훨씬 느낌을 강하게 줍니다. 미국의 중요 도시가 이렇게 변해가다니 이를 보는 눈이 의심스러울 정도입니다.
Detroit Is Halting Garbage Pickup, Police Patrols In 20% Of City: Expect Bankruptcy In 2011
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/detroit-garbage-pickup-bankruptcy-2010-12#ixzz182irnD1V
Detroit has been bankrupt for years. It simply refuses to admit it. Detroit's schools are bankrupt as well. A mere 25% of students graduate from high school.
Yet, in spite of hints and threats from mayors and budget commissions, and in spite of common sense talk of bankruptcy, Detroit has not pulled the bankruptcy trigger.
In a futile attempt to stave off the inevitable one last time, Mayor Bing's latest plan is to cutoff city services including road repairs, police patrols, street lights, and garbage collection in 20% of Detroit.
Bing to Cede 20% of Detroit to Gangs and Homeless
City officials suggest this will not shrink the size of the city. Perhaps it won't shrink Detroit on Google Maps. However, Bing's plan would effectively surrender 20% of the city to gangs and the homeless.
Would you want to live in one of the gang war-zones that his plan would create? Would you want to live in a bordering neighborhood or in a bordering city?
Regardless of your answer, Bing's plan cannot and will not work and I believe Detroit will, sometime in 2011, file for bankruptcy. If so, expect massive turmoil in municipal bonds.
Less Than a Full-Service City
The Wall Street Journal discusses Bing's plan in Less Than a Full-Service City
More than 20% of Detroit's 139 square miles could go without key municipal services under a new plan being developed for the city, with as few as seven neighborhoods seen as meriting the city's full resources.
Those details, outlined by Detroit planning officials this week, offer the clearest picture yet of how Mayor Dave Bing intends to execute what has become his signature program: reconfiguring Detroit to reflect its declining population and fiscal health. Yet the blueprint still leaves large legal and financial questions unresolved.
Mr. Bing's staff wants to concentrate Detroit's remaining population—expected to be less than 900,000 after this year's Census count—and limited local, state and federal dollars in the most viable swaths of the city, while other sectors could go without such services as garbage pickup, police patrols, road repair and street lights.
Karla Henderson, a city planning official leading the mayor's campaign, said in an interview Thursday that her staff had deemed just seven to nine sections of Detroit worthy of receiving the city's full resources. She declined to identify the areas, but said the final plan could include a greater number.
"What we have found is that even some of our stronger neighborhoods are at a tipping point with vacancy," Ms. Henderson said. "Vacancy adds to blight and blight is a disease that takes over the whole neighborhood. So the sooner we can get those homes occupied, the better for the city."
Officials bristle when their efforts are described as downsizing, saying their aim is to repurpose portions of the city, not redraw its borders. "We will not be shrinking the city," Ms. Henderson said. "We are 139 [square] miles and we'll stay that way."
Repurpose or Abandon?
Of course the Mayor's office did not say they would abandon sections of the city to gangs. But how the hell can repurposing as described above possibly mean anything else?
What's next? Barbed wire? Oh wait a minute, Detroit already has tried that. Razor-wire too. Here's a picture of Detroit's clearly abandoned repurposed Michigan Central Train Depot.
Image: AP
Image courtesy of the Journal and the AP.
Detroit's Tax Collection Process
The Detroit Free Press points out Detroit botched Packard plant tax collection
The City of Detroit has failed for nearly four years to send property tax bills to the owner of the Packard plant, costing the city badly needed cash.
At 3.5 million square feet, the plant is by far the largest derelict property in Detroit.
It wasn't until the Free Press began making inquiries last week that the city's assessor's office returned the property to the tax rolls -- with an assessed value of nearly $1.6 million. The change came nearly four years after a Michigan Supreme Court decision prompted the city to surrender the century-old plant to Bioresource, a company whose last listed corporate representative is a convicted drug dealer.
Last week, less than 18 hours after a reporter questioned why the property was listed as city-owned, the assessor's office changed its status to "taxable." The property's assessed value ballooned from almost nothing to nearly $1.6 million.
Robin Boyle, professor of urban planning at Wayne State University, said the error underscores "just how challenged the city is in dealing with the fundamental task of title, control, oversight and follow-through" with property throughout the city.
"To me, that is a fundamental problem that leaves Detroit in a consistently weakened position. It can't even do the basics," Boyle said. "This is a huge piece of real estate, and yet, there's still confusion."
Although only one tenant remains on the property, the plant is not entirely neglected. Scrappers prowl it for metal. Graffiti artists decorate its walls. Someone perched TV sets atop pillars standing at least 15 feet tall.
And it can all be yours for $13 million.
David Wax, senior associate with Burger Easton & Co. in Farmington Hills, has listed the property for sale for a couple of years. He said there was a good deal of interest before the world economic crisis and before steel prices collapsed, making the Packard plant less attractive to buy and then demolish for its metal.
"For 13 years it's been vandalized, raped, burned, stripped of anything of value," Wax said. And on any given day, he said, you can hear "people with hammers and cutting torches cutting steel out of the building."
Packard Closeup Images
The Business Insider has fantastic set of images of the beautiful $13 million Packard property. Here are a couple of those images.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/detroit-garbage-pickup-bankruptcy-2010-12#ixzz182j0etnx
출처: 피터김의 체험 나누기 / peterkim