Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Check out Detroit's proposed parking meter rates

The City of Birmingham is widely believed to be the most prosperous in Southeast Michigan.

The fee for parking at a meter in Birmingham ranges from fifty cents to $1 per hour. Birmingham also has parking structures, where the first two hours are free before 5 p.m.

The City of Detroit is not the most prosperous in Southeast Michigan.

But that isn’t stopping Detroit’s parking department from proposing an ordinance that would increase the hourly parking rate downtown from $1 to $2 per hour. The department also wants to raise the parking meter rate from $1 to $1.50 per hour for the Midtown and Eastern Market areas. The rate in the neighborhoods would remain $1 an hour.

Hiking parking rates is wrong.

These neighborhoods are finally feeling something of a resurrection. Mayor Duggan wants new business in downtown Detroit and Midtown.

A day in Detroit is expensive as it stands. Increasing the parking rate is premature. It would be best to wait until Detroit businesses have a little bit of a clientele before charging them the most expensive parking rates in the region.

If Detroit’s parking department had a little sense, it would look at cities like Clawson in Oakland County and Plymouth in Wayne County. Both cities have something in common.

Their downtowns are prospering for several reasons, the way Detroit would like to. One of the reasons is that it doesn’t cost anything to park curbside in either city.

That attracts people to come to their cities. I know this sounds simplistic, but apparently this idea hasn’t crossed the minds of the people running Detroit’s parking department.

You can’t generate revenue if people don’t play along and pay the increased rates.

Tickets for parking at Detroit meters that have run out of money are $45 or $10 if you pay the ticket within 48 hours. Isn’t that enough for the time being?

What’s really confusing here is that Detroit’s City Council hasn’t voted on the parking meter increase as of today.

Yet that isn’t stopping the parking department from installing new meters and pay stations. According to The Detroit Free Press, the new meter and pay station installations should be complete by the end of the month.

Isn’t that doing things backward? Who’s paying for the new meters that haven’t yet been voted on?

These are the types of backward decisions that got Detroit into financial trouble in the first place.


The council should consider making meter parking free in Detroit. Detroit should offer a moratorium on parking meter fees until business has picked up in the city. If Clawson and Plymouth offer free parking as an incentive to come to their cities, Detroit should consider it, too. 

Monday, July 13, 2015

Man tries to kill dog; governor kills film industry


Two issues have come up in the past week that need to be kept on the surface rather than allowed to sink: the man who shot his dog in the head with a crossbow, and Gov. Snyder signing a bill killing the film industry in Michigan.

Christopher Scott, 28 of Goodland Township, shot his dog in the head with a bolt from a crossbow. He was in Lapeer District Court July 8, charged with felony animal cruelty, which carries a 4-year prison sentence.

Scott’s attorney, Denis McCarthy, tried to get Visiting Judge John Conover to dismiss the case. The judge did not rule on McCarthy’s motion, which means the pretrial exam will be continued, in this case to July 23.

Scott previously admitted shooting the dog in the head. He said the dog, Gemma, had killed another dog, a pug. Scott also is on record as saying he had five children in the home and was concerned about their safety.

He didn’t have to shoot Gemma. There were alternatives.

Scott could have turned Gemma in to Lapeer County Animal Control. That’s where Gemma is right now, recovering from her wound. The staff has said that Gemma is a good dog and if you didn’t know her history, you’d never know what happened.

I’ve covered court in the past. Often, when a judge does not rule on a motion, that kills the motion. I’m hoping that’s true in this case. Scott’s action cannot be allowed to stand. He was wrong and if his case is dismissed, all sorts of people will forget about humane methods of euthanizing their pets and follow Scott’s example.

Christina Hall of The Detroit Free Press has been doing an excellent job of covering this case.

Now on to Gov. Snyder, who signed legislation Friday, July 10 snuffing out tax incentives for Hollywood to make pictures in Michigan.

Good PR is something that cannot be bought. Having actors, directors and producers walking around Hollywood talking up Michigan was a good thing. It put Michigan on the map as an up-and-coming, forward-thinking state.

It all started in August 2007, when then-Governor Jennifer Granholm decided Michigan’s movie-making incentive program was too weak, so she changed things. She offered much higher tax breaks to movie houses if they would film in Michigan, to the tune of almost 50 cents on the dollar.

Did it work? Within two months, 24 movies had signed up to film in Michigan, up from two movies the year before.

And for a few years, Michigan became known as the go-to state for Hollywood. HERE is a list of films made in Michigan, including those prior to 2007.

Gov. Snyder’s short-sightedness in killing this industry robs Michigan of a chance to shine nationally and internationally. Michigan doesn’t have many chances like that.









Thursday, July 2, 2015

Detroit, da -- its neighborhoods, nyet


I'd like to move back to my hometown, Detroit, but there are no neighborhoods left. And what has replaced them scares me to death.

In one weekend in Detroit (June 20-21), 27 people were shot. Three died.

That seems like an overwhelming amount. Then five more people were shot at a block party June 28.

According to the Detroit Police Department, there have been 139 homicides and 475 non-fatal shootings in the city so far this year. The local, and now and then the national, television reporters dip into this every night.

I timed it the other night on Channel 4, WDIV, the local NBC affiliate. It took two anchors the first 14 minutes of the newscast just to list the shootings that had transpired since they were last on the air the night before.

Citizens who were present at the shootings are not cooperating with the police investigation thus far.

And still fresh in my mind is the story of Steven Utash, even though it happened last year. Utash, 54 at the time, was a tree trimmer working for the city of Detroit. He was driving his pickup down a street in the Morang and Balfour area when an 11-year-old boy jumped out in front of him.

Utash stopped and got out of the pickup to see if he’d hit the boy.

Immediately, according to CBS, Utash was jumped by 10-12 men and beaten to smithereens. It took him four months to recover from the shellacking he got.

Tell me again why I want to move back.

Making a destination-oriented beeline for downtown Detroit is what most of my friends and I do. We’re in love with the idea of a big city, so we go to the only one available to us, like moths circling a flame.

Much has been done to attract us. Nice restaurants and a few stores have popped up in downtown proper. There are some areas of Detroit that seem to have been dubbed neutral zones, such as Comerica Park, Campus Martius, the DIA and the area surrounding it, The Fox Theatre area, the River Walk, Eastern Market and Midtown.

And Corktown. Can’t forget that.

That’s about it.

Have you driven the rest of Detroit’s neighborhoods recently? I have.

Houses are boarded up. Lots of houses, just off Woodward, midway between McNichols and Jefferson. Those that aren’t boarded up have grates over most of the windows and doors. Graffiti is everywhere. Garbage is everywhere.

No one is anywhere. I didn’t see a soul on my tour.

A friend of mine was telling me that about a month ago he drove through our old neighborhood, which is bordered by McNichols on the south, Curtis on the north, Evergreen on the west and I guess I’d have to say the Southfield Freeway on the east, though that’s a bit of a stretch.

He said our old homes were in ruins.

So, Mayor Duggan, Detroit’s neighborhoods are not quite yet a selling point for the city. Until things change, we’ll support the city from a distance. That’s the best we can do.