Telegram - Serving Metropolitan Detroit Since 1944

Detroit businessman and Citizens for Detroit's Future/Citizen Detroit President, Tom Barrow released the group's position on Proposal ‘N’

This controversial proposal will appear only on the city of Detroit ballot and is an initiative to authorize the city’s mayor to borrow $250,000,000 advertised to demolish abandoned homes, eliminate "blight".

It is at best puzzling why a city, reeling from bankruptcy which led to its selling all of its valuable assets to private investors and which now suffers from a 68% decline in its essential general fund casino tax revenue, would seek to again borrow money and create a whole new debt. In fact, the bankruptcy’s resultant broken promises to pensioners has led to indescribable hardships for those former city employees. It strikes us that borrowing money now, knowing that it cannot readily or easily be paid back, is at baffling. We are equally as off-putt as to how a the city, recently controlled by an Emergency Financial Manager and still under the watchful eye of a Financial Review Board and simultaneously facing a devastating decline in its general fund revenue due to COVID-19 pandemic high unemployment, could believe that borrowing could make any sense.

While we assuredly cannot see the logic and expect to see a flurry of talking faces of color urging the city to again borrow money, we nonetheless join a host of Detroiters who simply do not trust this mayor. Like many of the city's residents, we also watched the televised interview where the mayor appeared to be rigging demolition bids in favor of a few large majority owned mega-corporate donors to the loss of minority owned businesses. That viewing has led to an FBI corruption investigation.

It is for these and a host of additional reasons that Citizens for Detroit's Future and Citizen Detroit urges city voters to reject this ill-conceived and ill-timed proposal and

VOTE "NO" ON PROPOSAL N.