Detroit Free Press Editorial Board

Because Detroit’s mayoral contest seems so lopsided, it's easy to assess it as a competition between what Mayor Mike Duggan has been able to do in his first term, and what promise there might be for improvement in his second.

That’s unfortunate.

State Sen. Coleman Young II has one of Detroit’s most formidable political pedigrees. And his message — that Detroit’s recovery is uneven, and too often exacerbates gaps between the rich and poor — resonates with many longtime residents.

But his loose grasp of the issues, his careless and often unsubstantiated allegations against his opponent, and his frequent lapses into man-child daffiness have fatally diminished his candidacy. Detroit’s progress — uneven and tentative as it is — would be threatened by his leadership, and no one would benefit from that.

MIKE DUGGAN has earned another four years as the city’s chief executive, and this newspaper’s endorsement.

But let’s talk about what that next four years ought to look like, and imagine how the undeniable progress made in downtown and Midtown can be spread more equitably across the city’s 140 square miles.

Duggan already has a start on that, but there are too many Detroiters who are not feeling it yet, or seeing it in their neighborhoods.

At its zenith, Michigan's largest city thrived on solid, far-flung neighborhoods that offered stability and opportunity for residents across income levels.

Duggan has begun to speak in those terms more frequently, and to act more substantively to expand opportunity and prosperity.

But he needs to hit the gas. And he especially needs to push the corporate beneficiaries of growth and rebirth in downtown, to play a bigger role in bringing progress to the rest of the city.

Detroit is on the verge of greatness, again, but it can’t get there by leaving its residents behind.

Voter Guide:Learn about the candidates in the Nov. 7 Detroit election

Fixing the basics

Duggan’s early first term was focused, properly, on service delivery and rebuilding the infrastructure of government that provides those services.

So the lights came back on, largely through the efforts of the independent authority, created under former Mayor Dave Bing, but executed with heavy input from Duggan's office.

Garbage collection got better, and was privatized in a way that both preserved jobs for Detroiters and lowered costs.

The city’s troubled public transportation department, DDOT, has a slew of new buses and controls to assure that vehicles are better maintained and service is more punctual.

Police and fire response times — once a source of national shame — are now more reasonable, literally saving lives.

Duggan’s administration has also made significant back-of-the-house improvements in attracting talent and streamlining administrative procedures.

One of Duggan's most important hires was Beth Niblock, the city’s chief technology officer, who came to Detroit from a high-profile role as a government technology innovator in Louisville, Ky. In a city where crucial tax records were until recently kept on paper, and whose ancient computer system made pipe dreams of efficiency and accountability, Niblock has made a steady, substantive contribution to effective governance.

Increasing the city’s use of technology, and focusing it on service delivery, is huge for Detroit.

Similarly, Duggan’s hiring of Maurice Cox, a renowned architect and planner who has worked in New York and New Orleans, has injected important new thinking into the city’s neighborhood revitalization efforts.

Niblock and Cox are not the only accomplished professionals Duggan has recruited to help resurrect the spirit of efficient and reliable governance in Detroit. The salaries paid to some Duggan appointees have drawn criticism in some circles. But high-caliber talent is often high-priced, and the long-term payoffs for their efforts will be immeasurable.

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Cautious progress

Duggan’s greatest challenge, though, has been to get beyond the structural reworks of city government and make a difference in the hardest-hit parts of Detroit.

Go to ZIP codes like 48204 or 48205, which include large parts of the center west and center east parts of the city, and it’s hard to see how things are getting better — other than the lights being on.

Forty percent of Detroiters still live in poverty. Tens of thousands of abandoned houses blight too many neighborhoods, and opportunity is still too scarce.

The city has had thousands of water shutoffs in the past four years — an unmistakable marker of poverty and desperation.

Any applause for Detroit’s comeback or Duggan’s leadership must be tempered by that continuing despair.

Extending opportunity across disparate neighborhoods has to be Duggan’s primary focus in his second term.

That will mean taking on the most deeply blighted areas, in addition to stabilizing neighborhoods teetering on the brink. And that can't just mean knocking down houses.

It will mean more aggressively confronting the forces that keep Detroiters poor, and hold them back from opportunity.

Tax foreclosure is not exclusively a city issue. The mayor does not have a lot of leverage to change the way that process unfolds. But the fact that thousands of properties fall into delinquency each year, and ultimately go to a reckless tax auction, is likely the single largest driver of Detroit's blight.

This year, as foreclosures of occupied homes waned, Duggan seemed satisfied that efforts to get delinquent taxpayers into payment plans have been sufficient. But about 2,000 occupied homes remained on the list, meaning nearly that many families were seeing their households threatened.

If Duggan were to attract 2,000 new families to Detroit, his administration would trumpet that news as proof of his success. So shouldn’t he be more distressed that 2,000 families faced uncertain housing futures this year?

Duggan should be pressing state lawmakers in Lansing for alternatives to tax foreclosure and the auctions that send thousands of properties into near-permanent limbo. He must focus on preserving families’ housing security all across Detroit.

The land bank he created to deal with abandoned properties in Detroit has been effective at helping to revitalize some parts of the city, but it has not had the same effect in the most desperate neighborhoods, where families are barely hanging on.

That must change in a second term.

So, too, must the management of the Detroit Land Bank Authority. Duggan pledged to tear down 40,000 blighted homes, and the land bank has been key to that work, clearing thousands of irreparably blighted homes from neighborhoods. But land bank operations have drawn critiques from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality for the way demolition contractors mishandled asbestos. It has paid fines to the Michigan State Housing Development Authority for making improper payments to vendors. The land bank has been criticized for holding pre-bid meetings with contractors before bids were open to the public. And the land bank is also the subject of an ongoing federal investigation; a federal agency has subpoenaed land bank records, and a federal grand jury has issued subpoenas for records believed to be related to the demolitions program.

Duggan insists that his office is not a target of the federal investigation, and says the land bank's flaws stem from urgency to get the job done. Regardless, Detroiters deserve not just more transparency for how their tax dollars are spent, but confidence in their mayor's accountability.

Develop opportunity

Duggan must also double down on the city’s innovative workforce development program, which has reached 18,000 Detroiters so far but has yet to move the needle much in terms of employment, a key driver of the city’s economic health.

And he should continue to push the city’s big developers to be sure they are including Detroiters in the projects that are creating jobs and generating new economic activity.

The participation rates for Detroiters in the Little Caesars Arena project were disgraceful, and far short of the levels its developers agreed to. That means Detroiters were not only left out of that project (one in which they have chipped in hundreds of millions in tax dollars), but also denied work experience that could lead to future employment. That’s the kind of opportunity Detroit cannot afford to squander.

Duggan has also been too eager to accept a state tax structure that provides massive subsidies for developers, but too few dividends for taxpayers footing the bills.

In a second term, he should push in Detroit and Lansing for more concrete connections between the flashy projects that are making downtown gleam again and the ladder of opportunity that needs to be rebuilt in neighborhoods.

A real rebirth

Any fair assessment of Duggan’s first term has to judge it a qualified success — development and city services are both dramatically improved, but progress is still not reaching enough people, and in too many cases, isn’t on a trajectory to do so.

The mayor seems poised to beat Coleman Young II on Nov. 7, but the real question is whether he can beat his own performance in the first four years, and make the rebirth real, and significant, for more of the city’s citizens.

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that the land bank has been subpoenaed by the office of the federal special inspector general examining the use of Troubled Asset Relief Program funds by the demolitions program, not by a federal grand jury. Land bank spokesman Craig Fahle says neither the authority nor any of its employees have received a federal grand jury subpoena.