http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/michigan/local-michigan-966993.mp3
The voters sent an important message yesterday, to themselves and their communities, and indirectly to the politicians in Lansing. It’s a message the governor and legislature need to hear.
Specifically, the people said that they are willing to pay more for services important to them. They aren’t necessarily happy with the way things are going or with the people running things. In West Michigan area, they tossed out a boatload of school board members.
Yet the same voters renewed a number of millage proposals, often by wide margins. Sometimes they even voted to increase their taxes, when they were convinced services were necessary.
Grand Rapids narrowly voted to increase a rapid transit millage. Hudsonville voted millions to upgrade the school system.
This trend was especially strong in Southeast Michigan. Struggling, older blue-collar suburbs like Ferndale and Hazel Park have been hard hit by declining property values and a steep drop in state revenue sharing.
Yesterday, they asked their hard-pressed citizens for new money to keep up services.
These aren’t people who have a lot of money, and many no longer have jobs. But they said yes. In tiny Clawson, the people voted more money for their library, a year after the voters in the neighboring and more affluent city of Troy voted to close theirs.
By far, the biggest story was in Southfield, a city of office towers and mostly well-maintained split-level and ranch homes north of Detroit. Seventy percent of its seventy thousand residents are African-American -- mostly middle-class families.
City leaders laid it on the line. They needed a five mill property tax increase, mostly for police and fire services, and they needed it now. Otherwise, they would have to lay off half the city’s police and firemen. Residents knew what that could mean.
They voted the additional taxes by a margin of five to one. Now, these results do not mean that the voters are in a wildly spending mood. They seemed discerning. In Flint, they voted money to keep policemen on the job, but turned down a request for new funds to reopen it the city jail. In blue-collar Garden City, home of iconic rocker Mitch Ryder, officials asked for a twelve-mill increase. Voters said that was too much. They also were reluctant to combine services, such as police and fire. They said no to that in cities as different as Jackson and Harper Woods.
Most experts think that sharing services is something that the economy is going to make more and more essential. But clearly, this is an idea on which a lot of people aren’t yet sold.
The biggest exception was in Lansing, where voters narrowly turned down a measure to allow a property tax increase, mainly to keep up police and fire protection. Now, there will be massive layoffs, and Michigan‘s capital city will also lack any money to fix the streets.
We need to be cautious about reading too much into a collection of scattered local elections. But it does seem voters will pay for things important to them, if they understand what they are getting, and trust their officials to spend their money wisely.
There may be several lessons there for those we elect to spend billions of our dollars on behalf of the state.
