Since the 1994-95 budget year, $1.3 million in tax dollars have been spent on the Manoogian Mansion, city documents show.Mayor's mansion drains city
Cash-strapped Detroit has paid at least $280K for Manoogian upgrades, events under Kilpatrick.
Related report
Manoogian Mansion awaits mayor's family
The money pit?
Maintaining Kwame Kilpatrick in the Manoogian Mansion has cost Detroit taxpayers at least $280,000 since he moved into the mayor's official residence in December 2002. Is it time for Detroit to give up the Manoogian?
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Maintaining Kwame Kilpatrick in the Manoogian Mansion has cost Detroit taxpayers at least $280,000 since he moved into the mayor's official residence in December 2002.
That money has gone for holiday decorations, parties, building improvements, cleaning services, regular upkeep and, in one instance, a bill of more than $400 for takeout food from Opus One, one of the city's premier restaurants, according to records obtained by The Detroit News.
Kwame Kilpatrick Carlita Kilpatrick Few major cities provide housing for their mayors, and some Detroit residents question whether the financially ailing city can afford the steep costs of maintaining a mansion originally built in 1928 for one of the city's wealthy industrial barons. Since the 1994-95 budget year, $1.3 million in taxes has been spent on the facility, according to city documents.
Records of recent expenditures for the residence were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The city has been unable to provide receipts, contracts and purchase orders that would detail the expenses.
Some of those include:
• Last Christmas, the city paid $4,900 for decorations, including $2,800 in ornaments, $300 in trees, a $200 wreath and a $1,000 setup and delivery fee.
• The city paid $4,600 for a custom fountain from Deborah Silver & Co., a Sylvan Township landscape designer.
• More than $1,000 a month has been spent since Kilpatrick took office to hire individuals and a private service to clean the mansion.
• The riverside home has a pool, boat house and cabana. Because of the swimming pool and a sprinkler system, summer water bills top $600 a month.
• In one instance, $432 was paid for takeout from Opus To Go, the take-out service run by Opus One.
• The city paid Big Dog Moving Co. $4,830 to move the mayor and his family into the residence.
Detroit now is cutting services, laying off hundreds of employees and asking unions for wage and benefit cuts to get rid of a $300 million budget deficit.
Detroit City Council President Maryann Mahaffey said she was surprised to learn how much taxpayers have paid to maintain the Manoogian.
"It's not that you have housing, but what upsets me is the standard of living at the mansion," Mahaffey said. "That's not right."
She said she is concerned, too, that while the city is being forced to fire workers to save money, the Manoogian Mansion is using private contractors, such as the cleaning firm T & -- Services Inc. of Detroit, to do jobs city employees could do.
That is one reason the council has delayed voting on a $15,500 contract with Torre & Bruglio of Pontiac to provide landscaping and horticultural services there from April 1, 2005, through March 31, 2006.
"We're laying off city workers. These are the types of jobs they could do," said Mahaffey, who added that when Coleman A. Young lived in the house, Recreation Department employees took care of the grounds and housekeeping.
But members of the mayor's staff said the Manoogian Mansion, which was donated to the city in 1966 by Masco Corp. founder Alex Manoogian and his wife, is much more than the first family's living quarters.
"It's not a regular house. ... It's really a symbol of Detroit," said Ceeon Quiett, the mayor's spokeswoman. "We got calls telling us that the flag looks tattered. ... You have to fix that."
In May, the city paid $65.75 for U.S. flags and $36.70 for state flags from the J.C. Goss Co. of Detroit. In February, $200 was spent on nylon flags.
But some think the mayor should live in a regular house or at least live more frugally.
Joseph Hines, 71, a west sider, waited for a bus on Jefferson a few blocks from the Manoogian to go home from a doctor's appointment the other day.
"I know cutbacks are making me wait longer for my bus," said Hines, a retired handyman. "Maybe if he lived in his own house, we'd have more money for buses. I always watch my budget. I could never hire a cleaning woman."
In other large cities, most mayors live in their own homes.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lives in Gracie Mansion, which is owned by the city. But Chicago Mayor Richard Daley lives in his own home, as do Philadelphia Mayor John Street and Dallas Mayor Laura Miller.
Kilpatrick, like his predecessors, also has used privately raised money from the nonprofit Manoogian Society that supports the mansion. It has paid for upkeep and other items for which the society doesn't believe taxpayers should be responsible.
When previous Mayor Dennis Archer took office in 1992, private donors paid for more than $200,000 in renovations. And the Kilpatricks had to wait until December 2002 to move in because $225,000 in work was needed to repair leaky roofs, electrical work riddled with code violations, rotting windows and other problems.
Recently, private donations were sought to pay for needed renovations at the governor's residence in Lansing.
"I hired a home inspector because I don't know anything about these things," said Andrea Carroll, a Detroit official who works for the first lady and helps run the mansion.
She said she was given a lengthy list of code violations that had to be repaired before the Kilpatricks could live there.
Even now, more work has to be done, but the mayor has decided to delay some projects, such as the $90,000 to replace the windows.
"He said we can just cover them with plastic," said Carroll, who noted some of the windows are so worn that during winter, ice builds up on the inside of them.
Kilpatrick also has declined one perk that could come with the job: a cook.
Trish Peoples, an executive assistant in the mayor's office who approves expenditures for the Manoogian, said Archer and Young both had cooks.
She said the cooks cost about $20,000 a year. Young also had a housekeeper, which the Kilpatricks don't, and instead have contracted out for cleaning services.
Since December 2002, when the Kilpatricks moved into the house, taxpayers have spent $40,586 cleaning the mansion.
In 2003, the total was $16,650, or $1,387 a month; in 2004 that tally was $13,274, or $1,106 a month. So through May 2005, they have spent a total of $10,650, or $2,130 a month.
Part of the cost is that there are round-the-clock executive protection officers housed in the building to protect the mayor and his family, Peoples said. But much of that cost comes from about 15 functions a year not related to the mayor living there, she said, such as weddings.
For a $500 fee, anyone can get married and hold the reception on the mansion grounds, as long as it doesn't conflict with the mayor's schedule. Carroll said none are scheduled this year. Last year, two weddings took place there.
The city will not allow the mansion to be used for fund-raisers, Peoples said.
Quiett said a $432.80 invoice from Opus To Go from March 17, 2003, was improperly billed to the mayor's residence account. Although it appeared as an expenditure at the Manoogian, the mayor actually was meeting with about 20 representatives from the Detroit Regional Chamber in his office in the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, she said.
In March, Kilpatrick was already warning Detroit residents and workers that hard decisions would be necessary to guide the city through lean financial times.
But in December, his wife had spent $4,899, which included $1,000 for labor and delivery, on mansion Christmas decorations from Terry's Enchanted Garden on Livernois.
"When (Carlita Kilpatrick) approached me about new decorations, I told her they better be good," Peoples said. "When they were up, I drove over (to the Manoogian) to see if we got our money's worth, and they were gorgeous."
Before those purchases, Peoples described the mansion's holiday appearance as "skimpy," especially when compared to the elaborate displays of other homes in the upscale Berry Historic District neighborhood off Jefferson.
The city budget process requires expenditures to be considered as much as 18 months in advance; as a result, the money for the decorations was earmarked when Detroit wasn't struggling as much as it is now, she said.
Then there are the water bills. The News only received information about water and sewerage bills from March 2002 through May 2003. The Kilpatricks began living in the house in December 2002.
The total for the 17-month period was $4,328, or $254 a month.
Peoples said the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department charges the Manoogian the higher commercial rate versus the lower residential rate, and the city is billed monthly.
The highest bill was $736, with two others for more than $600.
Why so much? It wasn't for the pool, Peoples said, but to run the lawn sprinklers.
"This is the Manoogian Mansion. You don't want brown grass," she said.
You can reach David Josar at (313) 222-2073 or djosar@detnews.com.
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