air and health

Emergency Sustainability Manager?

With all the talk throughout Michigan of fiscal insolvency and the problems of cities, EFMs are on everyone’s tongues. The honest truth is that how we have built our cities, regions, and the financial structures to support them have not fared the tests of time. Many older, core cities are saddled with huge legacy costs in form of infrastructure, buildings, and pension obligations, in addition to a municipal workforce sized for a time when the city’s population was much larger.  These costs continue in the face of an eroding tax base due to people and their tax dollars leaving these cities.

Currently, there are 5 financial managers in place in the state of Michigan: City of Benton Harbor, City of Pontiac, City of Flint, Detroit Public Schools, Highland Park Public Schools. All of these cities and school districts are predominately African American so regardless of the presence of intent, the overall impression is that a predominantly white state government is taking away the voting rights of predominantly poor, minority people across the state. Of course, we know that many of the politicians who are voting these policies in are not residents of these cities. That itself creates a warped incentive structure.

Just looking at the fiscal status of these districts and school districts, while perhaps necessary for the short term, is short sighted and myopic. There were numerous state, federal, and local policies that lead to the flight of people and capital from center cities across the state. Is it right, therefore, to saddle only the residents of central cities with the results of these policies?

We need to resolve the fiscal imbalances that these cities are faced with. However, if we only focus on cutting services, recreation centers, and other things that seek to provide a minimum quality of life to residents in these cities, we will create a downward spiral that will accelerate the decline of our beloved central cities.

The short story is that all our past policy failures are coming back to bite us in the rear.  So, you may ask, WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?
I propose… the Emergency Sustainability Manager (ESM)

An ESM would take a more holistic, long term approach at solving the problems that urban core cities are facing by engaging in the following activities:

• Prioritizing functional regional transit so that not having a car does not condemn one to unemployment.
• Bringing and creating businesses in the urban core that can employ both existing residents as well as attracting professionals to the city.
• Incentivizing businesses to invest in the urban core through tax incentives or other means.
• Conducting a comprehensive program to reduce the $$ spent on energy in commercial and residential structures, thus providing jobs for thousands of residents, and keeping energy dollars in our state
• Empowering residents to take control of safety in their neighborhoods by creating local organizations and strategies to confront criminal activities in their neighborhood.
• Provide free educational opportunities for low income residents of central cities to improve themselves and be able to move up the occupational ladder.
• Creating or transforming neighborhoods with walkable or transit access to green space, healthy food, and educational and economic opportunities.
• Correcting the fiscal imbalances that a city faces.

There are many more things that an ESM could engage in to create long term solutions for the fiscal crisis that many cities find themselves in.  However, appointing an ESM would require a realization by the State that the problems that center cities face are not entirely of their own making, rather we ALL had a part in their creation.

Emergency Sustainability Manager…I think this is something that people can get behind.