By Marlon A. Walker

Detroit Free Press

Kevyn Orr tells Oakland County business leaders that regional cooperation is key to Detroit%27s future

Orr%2C who has been in Detroit since March 2013%2C says he plans to resign %22in the next week or two%22

He worked from a three-step plan of shedding debt%2C improving services and leaving the city sustainable

Kevyn Orr said this morning he plans to resign as Detroit's emergency manager "in the next week or two."

Orr told a group of Oakland County business leaders that he hopes he has put the City of Detroit in position from which it can continue to prosper after decades of bad management.

"Somebody asked me, 'How do you define success in Detroit?,' " he said to about 200 people at the Troy Marriott for the county's annual meeting of area business leaders. "I said, 'Getting out without getting indicted,' " he said, the crowd responding with laughter.

Orr was announced as the city's financial manager in March 2013, just as former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was being convicted in federal court of corruption while in office. It was delicate water to tread, he said. But the planning had begun years before, as Gov. Rick Snyder was taking office.

"He decided he was going to take on one of the most long-standing, troublesome issues in his state for the benefit of his residents by starting a review of Detroit," Orr said of the city's financial situation. "We've been doing this for over three years. It's time to bring it to a close."

With Snyder's permission and under Orr's direction, the city filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection on July 18, 2013, claiming debts and projected long-term obligations of $18 billion.

Orr summarized some of what has become public over the last two years, including the fact that the city had lost some 225,000 residents between 2000 and 2010, and legacy costs — payment to long-term creditors and retirees — that were 40% of the city's billion-dollar general fund budget, and rising.

"You would not have been able to run the city," he said. "The numbers were nonsustainable."

He also recalled calls with the chief mediator, U.S. District Chief Judge Gerald Rosen, as negotiations persisted, and how the two had ended three calls contentiously one evening.

"Anybody who says this was not robust," he said, pausing, "I wish I could've recorded some of those phone calls."

He said the goal was to shed debt, improve city services and leave the city in a sustainable fashion that would allow it to move out of the bankruptcy. Key for that continued success would be regional cooperation. He praised Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, who kicked off the meeting, for coming to the table with leaders from Detroit, as well as Wayne and Macomb counties, to form what is now the Great Lakes Water Authority.

"Now it's time for southeast Michigan to come together," he said. "With that, you all prosper."

Contact Marlon A. Walker: 313-223-4531 or mwalker@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @marlonawalker.