City Manager Marty Colburn introduced the day’s speaker, Tony Minghine from the Michigan Municipal League. Even as a Political Science major in college I have to admit I’m guessing our student of the week Theodore took home a deeper understanding of the machinations of municipalities issues that I was able. So with hopefully no dis-respect to our speaker, I will do my best to encapsulate the chilly facts.
Priorities of the governing system toward balancing the state budget has divested focus on communities. Growth in available revenue to municipalities has been decreasing to the point that Michigan is 50th in the country, and in the same position in regard to government jobs provided at a local level. The drop in the taxable value of 2005 cannot rebound quickly enough to recover, with 8 billion dollars lost in revenue sharing for municipalities.
What needs to be done is a multi-tiered approach involving greater legal authority with more investment tools to be able to approach problem-solving in a completely different way, thus getting away from the “cut only strategy”. The Hedley Act requires reformation, fixing property tax to fluctuate up and down with the economy. The State needs to be compelled to address unfunded mandates, changing the math itself behind the system. Don’t build and abandon infrastructure. We need people coming back to the State, and to invest in our communities again.
