MACKINAC ISLAND – Mayor Mike Duggan will go to voters in March 2020 and ask them to approve a $200 million bond issue that will be used to take down the city's remaining blighted homes.

“There are a lot of neighborhoods that are coming back well and they deserve to be celebrated,” Duggan said Thursday during the Mackinac Policy Conference. “But I have an obligation to every one of the city’s neighborhoods.”

The bond issue would go before voters during the presidential primary election and would be used to demolish 4,000 houses a year. “By 2024, we won’t have a single abandoned house in Detroit,” Duggan said.

It would not include a tax hike for city residents, rather the bond issue would be paid back through existing city revenues.

So far, the city has demolished 18,000 blighted homes, mostly paid for with federal Hardest Hit Funds. That money will be exhausted by early next year, said Detroit Chief Financial Officer Dave Massaron, and the additional $200 million bond issue would help pay for getting rid of the remaining 18,000 blighted properties.

The proposal will have to go before the Detroit City Council before it can make it to the ballot, probably in September, Duggan said, adding that he has had preliminary discussions with council members.

More:Wayne County's auction program is supposed to keep people in homes. It's not.

More:Study shows what happens after blight is removed from Detroit neighborhoods

The city's demolition program is managed by the Detroit Land Bank Authority and the Detroit Building Authority under a structure Duggan put in place after he was elected in 2014. The new program would move to the city's responsibility if the bond is approved.

More than $250 million from the federal Hardest Hit Fund has been allocated to Detroit for its demolition program since Duggan began an aggressive effort to tackle blight across the city. Detroit has the largest demolition program of its kind in the nation.

The city is now demolishing about 100 homes every week, Massaron said.

The mayor's remarks came just moments after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a bill that will make significant changes to the state’s no-fault auto insurance system, which is an issue that Duggan has pushed for over the years to provide relief for Detroit drivers, many of whom pay the highest auto insurance rates in the nation.

“I’ve been working on this, literally, since my first day on the job in 2014. It’s been a huge priority,” Duggan said, noting that the new law will make it easier for him to market the city. “If you look at the high-rise apartments in Detroit, the Riverfront Towers and 1300 Lafayette, two thirds of those people are claiming to live outside the city. We know we have 98% occupied, and only a third of the people are registered in the city and paying taxes in the city.”

With blighted houses gone and auto insurance rates lower, Duggan expects the city will become much more attractive to both business investment and new residents moving into the city.

“Millennials are moving to urban areas. The want the density and they don’t want to drive,” Duggan said. “We can compete for millennials if we provide the services.”

He’ll also use the city’s high unemployment rate — 8.8% compared with the statewide rate of 4% — to his advantage by pitching companies on the available workforce in the city.

Duggan credited that available workforce as one of the reasons FCA decided to build in Detroit rather than on vacant land in the suburbs.

“That was the whole reason they did the deal. Detroit Works is going to become America's big employment agency. And the reason we went to FCA , over a lot of other cities that had 600 acres of vacant land, was we said we have a workforce here willing to work hard and get trained, we will go out and recruit for you,” Duggan said.

The city will do initial screenings of employees and if applicants don’t pass some tests, the city will start education programs using retired teachers to help prepare workers for the jobs.

“FCA is obligated to interview and hire from our list before they consider anybody from outside the community,” he said. “Enrollment in those programs doesn't start till the middle of June. So what we have done is on the Detroitatwork.com website, you can go in and give us your phone number and we will text you when the application process is open.”

Contact Kathleen Gray: 313-223-4430, kgray99@freepress.com or on Twitter @michpoligal. Staff writer Joe Guillen contributed to this report.