Jailhouse Crock: Unfinished prison costs Detroit area taxpayers $1.2M per month

Four years after breaking ground and with construction costs totaling $151 million, the Wayne County Jail sits empty in downtown Detroit. The empty structure is costing taxpayers upwards of $1.2 million in upkeep per month. (AP)

A prison in downtown Detroit that was deemed too expensive to complete is now a construction site frozen in time that still costs cash-strapped local taxpayers more than $1 million a month.

It was supposed to be a state-of-art lockup in the heart of the Motor City, but four years after breaking ground, with construction costs totaling $150 million and no end in sight, the city pulled the plug on the project four years ago.

Now, the Wayne County Jail sits empty among the ruins of a bankrupt city, costing taxpayers upwards of $1.2 million in debt service and monthly upkeep costs for electricity, security, sump pumps - and even off-site storage for pre-fabricated jail cells that will never be used.

“The Wayne County Jail was a mess since it was created,” Rose Bogaert, head of the Wayne County Taxpayers Association and chair of the Michigan Taxpayer Alliance, told FoxNews.com. “At this point, the only thing we should do is cut our losses. If someone is willing to purchase it, we should sell it.

“Everyone knows that these projects never stay within budget, and this one was in a bad location to begin with," she added. "It never made sense. There needs to be more thought put into these projects before they start building.”

County officials have yet to make a decision as to what to do with the facility. But while they dither, the monthly meter is running. According to figures compiled by the Detroit Free Press some of the monthly costs include:

• Security: $10,849
• Sump pump maintenance: $12,852-
• Warehouse space to store pre-cast jail cells: $15,000
• Electricity: $4,000
• Debt service: $1.1 million

Despite the hefty costs of the jail, and the county teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans does not appear to be any closer to making a decision on the building site.

Via: Fox News

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Urban decay to be replaced with farmland in Detroit

Bankrupt and hemorrhaging population, the city of Detroit is banking on greener pastures to lead its rebirth.

A private company is snapping up 150 acres on the Motor City's East End -- property where more than 1,000 homes once formed a gritty neighborhood -- and turning it into what is being billed as the world's largest urban farm. Hantz Woodlands plans to start by planting trees, but hopes to raise crops and even livestock in the future, right in the midst of the once-proud city.

“We are interested with moving into different types of agriculture,” Mike Score, president of Hantz, told FoxNews.com.

“Your eyes would have a hard time absorbing the blight.”

- Mike Score, Hantz Woodlands

Hantz needed approval from Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to buy up the 1,500 parcels for approximately $450,000, or $300 per parcel. Many of the parcels held dilapidated and abandoned homes and buildings and were condemned by the city. Others were rubble-strewn or weed-choked lots. The company intends to spend $3 million to clean out the areas.

“Your eyes would have a hard time absorbing the blight,” Score said. “A third of every neighborhood in Detroit has been devalued by blight on public property.

Via: Fox News

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Unions ask Obama for Detroit bailout

Union leaders are calling on Congress and President Obama to provide a federal bailout to the city of Detroit.

The executive council of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, called for an “immediate infusion of federal assistance for Detroit” to be matched by Michigan, which they say has not done enough to keep the city from going through bankruptcy.

“Bankruptcy must not be used as a tool to impoverish city of Detroit workers or retirees. City workers have already made severe concessions to keep the city afloat,” the executive council said in a statement. “They are not to blame for Detroit’s financial problems, yet they have been making sacrifices all along the way to help the city out.”

The executive council, which consists of more than 50 leaders from various organized labor groups, are angry about pensions for retired workers facing suspension if Detroit goes through Chapter 6 bankruptcy.

“It appears that Governor [Rick] Snyder and [Emergency Financial Manager] Kevyn Orr are pushing Detroit into bankruptcy to gut the modest benefits received by Detroit’s retired public service employees,” the AFL-CIO’s statement reads.

Snyder appointed the emergency financial manager in March to try and help the Motor City sort out its finances. 

Via: The Hill

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FORMER OBAMA CAR CZAR: BAIL OUT DETROIT

President Obama’s former car czar, Steven Rattner, now says that federal taxpayers should bail out the entire city of Detroit. In a Friday op-ed for the New York Times, Rattner writes, “neither the state nor the federal government has evinced any inclination to provide meaningful financial assistance. That’s a mistake. No one likes bailouts or the prospect of rewarding Detroit’s historic fiscal mismanagement. But apart from voting in elections, the 700,000 remaining residents of the Motor City are no more responsible for Detroit’s problems than were the victims of Hurricane Sandy for theirs, and eventually Congress decided to help them.”

Except, of course, that the citizens of Detroit have voted repeatedly for the same politicians who got them into this mess over and over. But Rattner continues, “America is just as much about aiding those less fortunate as it is about personal responsibility. Government does this in so many ways; why shouldn’t it help Detroit rebuild itself?”

The big problem with this proposal is that it puts the burden on federal taxpayers for bad local decisionmaking. But that doesn’t bother Rattner: “Given the depth of Detroit’s hole, no one should doubt that one of the important principles of the auto rescue — shared sacrifice by creditors, workers and other stakeholders — should be maintained.”

The only problem is that the sacrifice is consistently made by taxpayers, not by those who make policy or benefit from it.

Via: Breitbart

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