Trinidad Turse, assistant branch librarian for children's services at the Livonia Public Library, reads a book in "The Magic School Bus" series to 6-year-old Samantha Lu of Livonia. Budget cuts prompted the library to reduce hours.Budget pains infect towns
Turse explains the type of fish in a tank to Erik Maahs, 4, as his mother, Leslie, watches during their visit to the library. Such amenities would be considered a luxury at many area libraries, which could lose funding.Metro Detroit cities and townships are reducing their services to balance their budgets. Among those already enacted, or under consideration, in a sampling of communities:
• Detroit: Proposed: End 24-hour bus service, lay off nearly 700 workers, cut the pay of those who remain.
• Mount Clemens: Proposed: Raise taxes. Enacted: Closed recreation department, cut city workforce from 145 to 125.
• Plymouth: Enacted: Cut one-fourth of its 60 city jobs, including eight of 14 in the department that picks up garbage, repairs streets and maintains parks.
• Warren: Enacted: Cut about 100 open positions, laid off about 40 firefighters, grounded a police helicopter, closed a library and shuttered a pool.
• Pontiac: Enacted: Renegotiated city phone and utility rates, trimmed its payroll, cut travel and training expenses and rebid photo copier services.
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Cuts force cities to scale back leisure programs
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New taxes. Fewer police officers. The specter of receivership.
The measures are anathema to citizen and politician alike, but they're looming over a growing number of communities in southeast Michigan.
It's not just long-harried Detroit and Hamtramck discovering that their old budget solutions don't go far enough and more draconian moves are needed.
With the state's economic malaise entering its fifth year, the financial pain is coming to the suburbs, places like Mount Clemens, Pontiac, River Rouge and even wealthy Plymouth, city officials say.
Residents in those towns could see volunteer fire departments, shorter library hours, millages for specific services, delayed road repairs, less frequent leaf and garbage pickup, fewer paramedics and, when they call City Hall to complain, voice mail.
"It's starting to fray at the fringes, like recreation," said Carl Battishill, 52, a teacher from Plymouth. "But it's happening everywhere, not just here."
On the other side of Metro Detroit, struggling Mount Clemens will ask its residents to approve a local income tax in May.
The city, which could be broke by fall, already has closed its recreation department and lopped off 20 of 145 city workers, leading to longer waits for municipal services.
Some Mount Clemens residents said an income tax could drive away businesses that the city needs to be economically healthy. It also could hamper the resale of homes, which would hurt Jeff Jantz, who restores and sells houses.
"It would make people not want to move here," said Jantz, 26. "We need to make it easier for people to bring their business into the city."
But Commissioner David Herrington said the city has no options.
"It's pretty much the only tool in our tool bag," he said about a tax hike. "We're in the position where we have to turn over every stone. It's not a good situation."
Herrington said his town is skirting bankruptcy and that he wouldn't be surprised to see five or six other communities stumble into receivership, in which the state assumes control of city finances. Such a move could cause property values to plummet.
Employee benefits rise
Detroit's fiscal crisis might be the most visible one in southeast Michigan, but neighboring suburbs also have watched expenses skyrocket as their incomes have dropped.
All are facing rising health and pension costs, they said. All are dealing with less state revenue sharing, which has been cut 27 percent, or $429 million, in the last three years.
"They're being pinched on both sides," said Eric Lupher, director of local affairs for the Citizens Research Council, a public policy think tank based in Livonia.
City attempts to make up the budget shortfalls are being hamstrung by state-imposed limits on local property taxes.
One of the state measures even prevents communities with growing property values from benefiting more fully from their good fortune. The Headlee Amendment requires communities to lower their millage rates if their property tax revenues grow faster than inflation.
"The Michigan model is broke," said Paul Sincock, Plymouth city manager. "Its plan is for all government to go broke, whether it's this year or next or five years from now. Every community will go broke."
State won't cut more aid
Sincock has long been critical of the state for cutting revenue sharing.
But Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who lived in nearby Northville before she moved into the governor's residence in Lansing, is trying to be more neighborly to municipalities.
In proposing her budget earlier this month, she called for the cutting of several state programs but not revenue sharing. It's the first time since 2000 that the sales taxes received by communities won't be chopped.
Maxine Berman, director of special projects for Granholm, said the governor is assembling a task force to study municipal spending. The task force, requested by local communities, will search for new income sources for them and more ways they could save money by combining services with each other, Berman said.
"We'll talk about things like the potential for collaboration that could help them save money," she said.
Not everyone favors such partnerships, saying they could lead a loss of control or identity of an agency run by a single city.
Wealthier cities feel pinch
Plymouth is one of the new wave of suburbs facing severe choices in paring the city budget. The city, which has a median household income of $52,000 compared to $41,000 for Wayne County as a whole, has struggled in the past. But not to this level.
Its budget projections show that the city deficit could grow to $1.2 million by 2008. Its budget is $6.3 million.
The town of 9,000 has cut one-fourth of its 60 city jobs, including eight of the 14 positions in municipal services, which include garbage pickup, street repair and park maintenance. Potholes are taking longer to be filled and parks are looking shaggier.
Plymouth reduced leaf pickup, cut drug benefits for city workers, shares police dispatch and fire services with Plymouth Township, and hasn't made significant improvements to city buildings, equipment or furniture in three years.
Plymouth asked its residents to set aside the Headlee Amendment in 2003, but they overwhelmingly rejected the move by a 3-1 margin.
The city is considering additional layoffs as it prepares its budget for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.
Also on the table are more partnerships to share services with other communities and possible votes on millage rates for specific services, such as recreation.
"A lot of communities in southeast Michigan are exploring different alternatives," said Summer Minnick, manager of finance and tax policy for the Michigan Municipal League, which represents and lobbies for communities. "All of them have significant challenges."
Services cut; taxes sought
The old ways of balancing their budgets no longer work, cities said. They don't go far enough.
The newest financial solutions are more likely to engage politically powerful unions and the residents themselves.
More and more towns are looking to make cuts in their fire and police departments, or get rid of them entirely, replacing them with a volunteer department or with the sheriff's department. Even Livonia, which is better off than some suburbs, has cut municipal services, including library hours.
Municipalities also are engaging the wrath of city workers by asking them to surrender some of the benefits they've already won, such as health costs totally paid by their employer -- a benefit that's fast disappearing in private industry as well.
Already on a tender political limb, the Mount Clemens commission is edging out further by asking its voters to tax themselves.
In Michigan, 22 municipalities, including Detroit, Pontiac, Hamtramck and Highland Park, have local income taxes.
Lou Schimmel, who was appointed emergency financial manager of Hamtramck after the city went into receivership in 2000, knows a little about making tough budget decisions.
He also had helped mend the finances of another broke and broken city, Ecorse. The city went into receivership in 1986.
Mount Clemens officials recently sought his advice about solving their financial problems. The city, which has a $12.8 million budget, is taking in $125,000 less than it spends every month. By that rate, it will have a $1.5 million deficit by the end of the year.
Schimmel said it's going to be politically dicey, but cities need to get tougher in their bargaining with unions. Job benefits, especially, need to be scale back, he said.
"Sometime we'll have to deal with the real problem," he said. "It's getting so serious that there's no one-time fixes out there. It's forced the hand of some people to do something other than throw money at the problem."
If something isn't done, he said, more cities will be following the example set by Ecorse and Hamtramck.
"Detroit is leading the way," he said, "and the others aren't far away."
You can reach Francis X. Donnelly at (313) 223-4186 or fdonnelly@detnews.com.
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