DETROIT - MAY 11: Former Detroit Pistons' star Dave Bing addresses the media after being sworn in as the 62nd mayor of the City of Detroit at the city?s Department of Elections office May 11, 2009 in Detroit, Michigan. Bing, a long-time Detroit area businessman, defeated incumbant Ken Cockrel Jr. in a special run-off election to become Detroit's third mayor in eight months. Bing will finish out the second term of convicted ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick which ends at the end of 2009, and then another mayoral election will be held. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images) Detroit Mayor Dave Bing (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images-File)

DETROIT (CBS Detroit) Managing expectations is his day-to-day position against people who believe the mayor can solve all of Detroit’s problems is the hardest thing he deals with every day.

That’s according to an interview Detroit Mayor Dave Bing did with CNN where he talked about the community’s deep problems and how he plans to solve them.

“We are in an environment, I think, of entitlement, we’ve got a lot of people who are city workers, who for years and years, 20, 30 years, think they are entitled to a job and all that comes with it,” Bing said.

He added: “Nobody wants to go backwards, but in order for us to move this city forward we’re going to have to take a step or two backwards — and then, I think, all of us have to participate in the pain that’ s upon us right now.”

But the real bombshell may be Bing’s sense of the hardest jobs in the country.

“(My job is) to make the hard decision so this city would have a future, but it’s probably the second most difficult job in this country behind the president,” he said.

As part of managing expectations, he said people have to realize “Detroit’s not going to be what it was,” adding, “We’ve got to look at it differently.”

He thinks the downtown will be strong in the future, as will Midtown and the riverfront. But parts of the city will have to disappear from the need for services.

Bing said he wants to convince people in largely abandoned neighborhoods to move to more populated areas so there’s density and a sense of a tight-knit community again, saying, “So we can bring people and families together like it used to be.”



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