A significant number of Dearborn firefighters attend the July 22 special city council meeting, out of concern over funding for city services.
By SUE SUCHYTA
Times-Herald Newspapers
DEARBORN – The City Council approved the placement of a temporary millage charter amendment on the Nov. 2 ballot, to allow the city to avoid reductions in programs and services.
The proposal was approved at a special July 22 council meeting, with Council members Robert Abraham, David Bazzy, Erin Byrnes, Leslie Herrick and Brian O’Donnell, and City Council President Susan Dabaja, voting yes, and with City Councilman
Michael Sareini casting the lone dissenting vote.
The proposed charter amendment, if approved by Dearborn voters, would allow the city to levy up to 2.75 mills for three years, without which the council stated that programs and service levels would be diminished.
The meeting was heavily attended by firefighters concerned about budget cuts.
Currently, the City Charter limits operating mills to 15, while 20 mills are allowed by state law.
Since 2011, voters have approved raising the charter limit to the amount allowable by state law. If the amendment passes, the city’s upper limit will be 17.75 mills, not 20 mills.
If voters approve the measure, the charter will allow the levy of up to 2.75 mills for three years, beginning July 1, 2022, and ending June 30, 2025, which is up to $2.75 per $1,000 in taxable value, or $167 for the average Dearborn homeowner.
The city attorney has submitted the ballot proposal to the governor and attorney general for approval, and the city attorney is authorized to make any wording changes requested by them.
The council discussed the proposal, asked questions of city administrators, and listened to comments from the public during a meeting which lasted 3 hours and 20 minutes.
Sareini said he contends that residents believe that the council has done its due diligence and has determined what could be cut from the city budget.
“If the rest of the city departments ran as the city recreation department, we would probably have a multi-million-dollar surplus,” he said. “They have the highest cost-recovery in the state of Michigan, 70 cents on every dollar they recover, a tremendous job.
“The residents of the city of Dearborn have moved away. The census is completed, 5,000 people have left, and we have not recovered them.”
Sareini said the state population grew by 2 percent, while Dearborn lost 4.5 percent, and said the current city budget is not sustainable.
Herrick said that while the council wants to give relief to all residents, they have to take a lot of factors into consideration.
“What makes it a valuable place for us to live here is the environment, the parks, the cleanliness of the streets, the first responders,” she said. “The thing that is most important to everybody is that we have quality response from our police and our fire department.
“When it comes to funding all the other things that make this a vibrant city to live in, whether people are coming, or going somewhere else to seek those things, we have to take those things into consideration.”
Herrick said that only 33.6 percent of each dollar the city collects in taxes go to city services, with 7 percent going to the federally mandated Combined Sewer Overflow debt millage, and 59.4 percent going to Wayne County, the public schools and other public agencies, over which the city has no authority.
She said non-discretionary funds, obligations which the city must pay every year, are one-third of the 33.6 percent which goes to city services, and include pension obligations and other post-employment benefits.
Herrick said the Headlee Amendment, which is a state law, allows property values to become uncapped when sold, and allow taxes to go up for a new owner. She said changing the way the state law impacts city tax revenue needs to be addressed in the future.
“I have been listening to the administration, my colleagues and all of you, and I do not want to tie the hands of the incoming administration, and I want to ensure that we don’t have any ambulances out of service in the next six months, and in the next three years, and I want to make sure that we continue and we improve on the services that we are providing to our residents, and we cannot do that without having a strong budget to work with,” she said.
Byrnes said the current millage expires June 30, 2022, and it would carry the city through June 2025 if it were renewed.
“We all know that Dearborn is on the precipice of a tremendous amount of change,” she said. “We have a new administration coming in, in the next year, and I am not looking to tie the hands of the next administration.”
Byrnes said that, while she has lived in other cities, Dearborn is where her heart has always been.
She said the city needs to continue to support a strong downtown, police and fire, recreation department and library system.
“We cannot have a thriving city without a strong library system, without recreation,” Byrnes said. “People need things to do, they need places to go, and in this age of misinformation that we tragically find ourselves living in, the libraries are that space where people can go to get support, to get help with research, to find accurate information. It’s more than just checking out books, though that is a valuable resource as well.
“So, if we want to have a thriving city now and into the future, we have to think about how to keep our residents who are here, who are a really important part of our community, how to attract new people, and how to invest in our vital resources – police, fire, recreation, libraries and we have to look at the big picture.”