[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> and here's what coleman young said in nineteen eighty-one.
i make no apologies for tax abatements.
the one hundred and sixteen companies that have received abatements have invested nearly five hundred million dollars and all money in detroit and even greater importance, i believe are the three thousand new jobs were brought to that right forty years ago.
coleman young are understood that when you have a good parent company of good paying jobs with benefits every city and state wants and this is hand to hand combat to get these companies in detroit so that our residents can get them and nothing has changed today.
>> the thing i found interesting about this speech was how hard again worked to sell this idea that tax abatements for big billion dollar projects are necessary and, you know, and going back and invoking covid young, quoting coleman young and noting that coleman young did these these tax abatements back in the seventies and eighties.
i mean, he seemed to be really concerned about community pushback, too, to the tax abatements that this in particular, the district detroit developers are going to get.
>> yeah, i mean, there are a lot of questions about and my big question that no one seems to drive us will be able to address is.
but when we were sold, you know, the first round of tax breaks for kind of the modern me that all of downtown detroit, if you think about the stadiums are late nineties, early two thousand, one of the lines that they use was this would make the market more rational and more investor friendly so that we would over time need less of this in order to attract people to develop things.
but here we are.
twenty-three years later and the oranges and stephen ross have asked for by my calculations in raw numbers, the largest subsidy that would ever given anyone and it equals half the development costs.
things seem to be getting worse on that front.
not better.
and so one of the questions is, is this just something that developers and got used to and have decided they want as part of these projects or is it really something that that we need the mayor saying we have to have these things because of high taxes?
i guess i'm not sold and more.
that's the case.
>> well, i i i do believe that detroit is not yet market rate for investors.
i don't know if it'll ever be market rate for investors, but i also believe that as long as these these break season, basements are available, people are going to go from.
i mean, it's become part of the business plan and you see it in every level.
look mean this.
this state of michigan pay a seven hundred thousand dollars per job for that ford battery development out marshall.
so i mean, it's becoming the way business is done today.
now the mayor makes a point that it's not a sub city.
it's not a tax break.
we're not giving them anything because if they didn't build this, we wouldn't get any dollars in taxes off of it.
so we're just getting less dollars in taxes than we might expect.
i don't know.
that's an argument that that washes, but he clearly was concern about getting community by this.
>> yeah, but you know that i also feel like some of that language years deceptive.
this idea that we have moved from subsidies to have a question i back and coleman was was mayor when working assumption right checks to be cool to do this kind of things that will do that anymore.
it is a tax of a bit.
but the idea that there's no cost associated with that, it's not it's not right.
it does give us less tax revenue over time that tax revenue would be used to help support the services needed for the added development.
think about all the things downtown that requires city services and are not doing their share of paying for them.
also, the people who use those services are not doing their fair share of think what they don't live in the city.
you don't pay any taxes.
there are no fees.
there are no or lack size taxes there that are not the things that other cities around the country use to make these things worthwhile for the citizens.
and we do need to start thinking about how we get there in detroit.
>> there's a piece that intrigue me.
i'm steve was what he's doing with this big trying to biden bucks.
he has that the arpa money and the covid money and the community partnerships.
he's trying to build for things like, you know, fighting crime and and building job skills and i'm getting affordable housing.
but the crime one is particularly in training.
you had intrigue, you know, engaging community groups to bid on certain areas.
got ten million dollar pooley up here.
you get a grant for seven hundred, fifty thousand dollars, big neighborhood and see if you can do things to address the root cause of violence and this community.
it works and it will be brilliant.
and you know, there is reason the hope that might work nothing.
yeah, yeah, you know, it's been tried in other places to make sure result.
but i mean, this is a program that's going to take after take a lot of accountability and a lot of oversight when you start doing that kind of money out there and saying, hey, come up with an idea for fighting violence.
yeah, i mean that.
>> the metrics are the key here, right?
how do you decide that what somebody or group is doing is making some someplace safer?
you know, what was how do we define safer?
how do we limit the the the the the threat of a vigil and is a when when you do this kind of thing, not the people.
that's what people so good he is.
but it's a possibility damaging these kind of things and deciding when they work is going to be the hardest part of it at that.
and you're right.
if they can pull that off and get some things that actually have success, it will be it will be great.
but but you do worry about that approach and and how we make sure, but it's and at the actual safety.
>> another priority on the mayor's agenda is making improvements to the city's transportation system for
