Detroit’s ballot calls for major decisions

DETROIT — After a nearly yearlong election spree spurred by ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s resignation, city residents have reached the grand election finale. Tuesday’s municipal election will be the fourth election day voters will have faced in the span of 10 months.

Low turnout due to voter fatigue and voter apathy plagued the special election and the regular Aug. 4 primary, with just 17 percent of voters casting a ballot.

In this election, there are some important choices to make, not just on who will serve on city council and in the mayor’s office, but also about who will be in charge of revising the city charter, whether Detroit Public Schools should adopt a $500.5 million bond proposal, and whether city council members should be elected by district.

In addition to voting for candidates, voters will also consider one millage renewal and three ballot measures, two of which are highly controversial in Detroit communities.

Mayoral Race

Incumbent Mayor Dave Bing, who won the primary by a landslide, is pitted against accountant Tom Barrow. Bing has refused to debate Barrow in this election and has not been hesitant to propose unpopular pay cuts or institute layoffs for city workers just weeks prior to the election. Although these moves have prompted many local unions to back Barrow, nearly everyone still expects Bing to win.

In recent interviews, the two candidates addressed the city’s financial situation. Each had their unique take on the situation.

Bing: “One thing’s for sure: I’m a realist. I have said on several occasions, I have been very forthright that the city is broke.”

Barrow: “This town is nowhere near receivership. This town is nowhere near bankruptcy … that’s just a union negotiation ploy.”

Barrow frequently calls Bing a “Republican,” which is a dirty word to many in a city where elections are non-partisan because nearly every politician who is elected in the city is a Democrat.

Bing has questioned Barrow’s intelligence and claimed that the third-time mayoral candidate does not know what he’s talking about.

But the real issues that separate Bing and Barrow concern regionalism and privatization. Barrow has an “us against them” outlook when it comes to regional leaders such as Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson. Barrow is vehemently against the deal to transfer Detroit’s Cobo convention center to a regional authority and thinks Detroiters need to “take the city back” from those who he thinks are taking advantage of Detroit’s vulnerable finances by buying up city-owned assets.

Bing within three month in office brokered a deal with neighboring county executives and the state to create an regional authority run by a board that would control operations of the home of the North American International Auto Show and pay for a $200 million expansion of the facility in return. Bing has been open to other regional support and to selling assets to reverse the growing $300 million budget deficit.

While Barrow’s vision for eliminating the city’s debt is in some ways different than Bing’s, in many ways they are similar. Barrow has not promised that he wouldn’t make the same cuts to union and non-union city workers if elected but he said he would do so as a “last resort.”

Barrow is against hiring outside companies to do city work while Bing is pushing to privatize collections, payroll and energy services. Barrow said he would freeze all non-emergency private contracts once elected and look at ways to use city resources to create revenue.

City Council

This year, Detroit City Council candidates have enjoyed more time in the spotlight than mayoral candidates have. That is, in part, due to the fact that the mayoral election is not expected to be a close race and that former city council members, namely convicted felon Monica Conyers, stirred public efforts to elect new council leaders. The only incumbent in the running who did not survive the primary was former Motown sensation Martha Reeves. But there are other incumbents who are not polling well for the election. Council members JoAnn Watson and Alberta Tinsley-Talabi are lagging in popularity according to some polls.

Journalist Charles Pugh, City Council President Kenneth Cockrel Jr, and former police chief Gary Brown have consistently been the top three candidates in polls even before the primary. A recent poll put Pugh and Cockrel neck and neck for the top spot on council.

Also since the primary, leading candidate Charles Pugh made headlines when news broke that his downtown condominium was going into foreclosure due to nonpayment on a $400,000 mortgage. The controversy lost Pugh an endorsement from the Detroit Free Press and may tighten his chances of becoming city council president.

One of the main responsibilities council members have is to create the annual budget. Most candidates support eliminating city departments in order to curb the $300 deficit facing the city, and nearly all 18 candidates support regional transit — a merger between the city’s Department of Transportation and the suburban SMART bus line.

Those in the running come from a wide range of professional backgrounds from attorneys to school teachers. Click on the links to learn about each individual candidate:

John Bennet, Police officer
Gary Brown, former police Chief, whistle blower in Kilpatrick scandal
Kenneth Cockrel Jr., current city council president, former interim mayor
David Cross, Attorney
Jai-Lee Dearing, restauranteur
Shelly I. Foy, teacher, former police administrator
Fred Elliot Hall, business owner
Lisa Howes, businesswoman, accountant
Saunteel Jenkins, nonprofit leader
Raphael B. Johnson, motivational speaker
Brenda Jones, incumbent councilwoman
Kwame Kenyatta, incumbent councilman
Mohamed Okdie, activist
Charles Pugh, broadcast journalist
Andre L. Spivey, Pastor
James Tate, former police spokesperson
Alberta Tinsley-Talabi, incumbent councilwoman
JoAnn Watson, incumbent councilwoman

Charter Revision Commission race:

Selecting who serves on the City Charter Revision Commission may be one of the most important decisions of the election. Of the 18 candidates running, the top nine vote getters will serve on a board that will rewrite the city charter. Charter revision commissioners have the power to make any changes to the charter they see fit before presenting their revisions to the public for a vote.

Some of the hot button issues that have surfaced repeatedly at candidate forums are whether the charter should mandate council members be elected by district, whether to give punitive powers to the city’s ethics board and whether to eliminate the mayor-strong system to empower individual council members should a “council by districts” format be enacted.

All but one charter revision candidate supports electing council members by district, attorney Rose Mary Robinson will not support a charter by districts format.

The candidates in the running for Charter Revision commission, like City council candidates, come from diverse professional backgrounds.
Cara Blount, Professor, former police administrator
Ken Coleman, Journalist
Warren Crockett, business owner, union activist
Reggie Reg Davis, broadcast journalist
John Eddings, former Detroit Human Resources director,
Patty Fedewa, attorney, activist
Jenice Mitchell-Ford, attorney
Ken Harris, businessman
Freman Hendrix, former deputy mayor and mayoral candidate
Elena Herrada, professor
Teola P. Hunter, former State Rep.
John Johnson, attorney
Jonathan Kinloch, music producer, activist
Sarah D. Lile, attorney, professor
Tonya Meyers-Phillips, businesswoman, attorney
Olumba-John Olumba, attorney
Jeffery Robinson, Detroit school administrator
Rose Mary Robinson, attorney

Ballot Proposals

There are two highly controversial issues Detroiters will consider.

Proposal D: One is the city council by districts issue, a measure that election lawyers fought to get on the ballot when legal questions arose just as the ballot was to go to print.

But the measure prevailed, and now voters can decide how they would like their city council to be elected. The measure asks voters if they favor electing city council members to represent separate parts of the city that would be divided into districts. It calls for seven members to be elected to districts and two members to serve at large.

Critics of the measure say that Detroit need not divide power at a time when the city is already largely divided on so many other issues. They argue that districts will only encourage pay-to-play deals and will not solve the major problems facing the city. “Why have one council member when you can have nine?” Charter Revision Commission candidate Robinson, asked at community forum in September.

But those who support the measure say it will make city council candidates more accountable to citizens. If council members are in a small district they can respond better to issues unique to that area of the city. Also, come election time, candidates will only campaign in the district they plan to run in so that voters can get to know their council candidates better. “I support council by distrcits for accountability and representation. In an at-large system no one council person is responsible or accountable to the electorate,” Charter Revision Commission candidate and attorney Tonya Meyers-Phillips said in an interview.

Proposal S: The second controversial proposal is Proposal S — a measure that seeks to tap $500.5 billion in stimulus bonds to reconstruct 18 Detroit Public School buildings.

Half of the money — $246 million — is be a loan that the district would have to repay by 2038.

The schools’ emergency financial manager Robert Bobb and Mayor Dave Bing support the proposal, while Detroit Board of Education members say it is wasteful and will keep taxes high.

Bobb, who proposed the measure, says school facilities are in dire need of renovations and some buildings need to be rebuilt altogether. He argues that the stimulus bond’s won’t be available for long and that the district has no other way to pay for the needed construction.

But some question Bobb’s stance, noting that at a time when schools are closing, building new schools should not be at the top of the agenda.

Bobb has held multiple information forums and worked to promote the proposal to help offset the controversy. Bobb and school board members presented the pros and cons of the proposal at a town hall meeting last month.

Board of Education

The race has gotten so little attention this election cycle that the Metro Times called it “The Forgotten Election” in a recent article. Of the eight candidates in the running at-large four are incumbents. The four top vote getters will serve at-large on the school district’s board of education.

The challengers:
Debora Davis, non-profit leader
Carol Banks, Detroit policy analyst
Willie E. Burton (no website or videos available)
Lemar Lemmons, State Rep.

City Clerk race:

This year the race for city clerk is one with a predicatble. After the primary put incumbent Janice Winfrey ahead of her challenger Joyce Moore by more than 82 percent, there has not been much publicly around the city clerks race.

For details on each individual candidate and his or her visions for the city, visit Publius.org for a comprehensive voter guide.