Steve Mensing, Editor
♦Steve Mensing: Sharon, glad you could drop by and discuss your hometown Detroit, Michigan which recently declared bankruptcy. I’m certain many of our readers would want to know how a once great, thriving industrial hub and metropolitan area fell from the skies. I recall visiting the Motor City back in the very early 70′s and it was bustling with the arts, the automotive industry, and manufacturing. It was one of the great urban areas in the United States. It was right up there with Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadephia, New York, and Washington, DC.
I knew Detroit had major challenges over the years, challenges much like those of the smaller City of Salisbury. Growing poverty, crime, and unemployment. Detroit’s auto industry melted down. I read about scandals and major political corruption. A few months ago, I saw that Detroit missed a 39.7 million dollar debt payment, and major credit agencies downgraded them. That caught my attention in a hurry – those are usually signals a city is about to belly up. Stockton, California, went down that way.
Could you tell our readers about yourself and your former hometown Detroit?
Sharon Mendez: Steve, before I do, I wanted to ask you how you came by the name of the “Rowan Free Press”. You do know it sounds eerily like the my former hometown’s newspaper “The Detroit Free Press”. Kind of prophetic if you did.
Steve Mensing: About a week before we launched our digital news source here in Salisbury, a good friend and I were batting some potential names around. He suggested the name the Salisbury Free Press and likened it to the “Detroit Free Press”. Both of us saw instant parallels between Detroit and Salisbury. Of course, we went with the Rowan Free Press because we encompass the whole county. Both Detroit and Salisbury are crime ridden – major per capita violent and property crime cities. Both have major unemployment and poverty – although Detroit is off the map in poverty. Salisbury is about 22.4 % poverty. Cities start keeling over at about 20% poverty. Both Detroit and Salisbury have very poor performing public schools. City services are breaking down in a major way here, outside of the historic district. Detroit has long since been wiped out by urban flight – much of it taking place after the famous Detroit riots of the late sixties. Salisbury’s urban flight has been slower, until recent years when joblessness hit the region. The only obstacle to urban flight here is that people can’t unload their houses. That’s slowed the erosion somewhat. People are stuck here by a poor housing market.
Sharon Mendez: I see for sale signs all over Salisbury. The same ones month after month. Vacancies downtown. It’s depressing.
Steve Mensing: What was it like growing up in Detroit?
Sharon Mendez: I was born in Pontiac, a suburb of Detroit. Pontiac was where GM manufactured the Pontiac automobiles. Detroit influenced just about everything in Michigan and was viewed as the “brain” of our economy, intellectual life, and arts. As a kid, I recall the J.L. Hudson Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit. My parents bundled my brother and I up because it was cold out there with very cold winds coming off the Detroit River and Lake Erie. The tall buildings created a wind tunnel. Dad usually had us standing by the Vernor’s Ginger Ale Plant. Streets were filled with thousands of cheering families. Holidays meant going to Detroit to shop. After all, it was the “place” to go shopping. It was second to NYC back then. Streets and homes were elaborately decorated with Christmas lights and holiday decorations. To me, it was a wonderland. My mother and grandmother especially liked going to the J.L Hudson’s downtown store. According to my mom and grandma, it had all the newest fashion trends, but I remember the escalators, festive lights and displays.
Summer was spent by the water. The biggest summer event was the Detroit River Speed boat racing. It was an international event. The noise, fast moving boats and the awesome “rooster tails” of water. As I neared adulthood, I realized the beauty of Detroit. Detroit had real history. It was first settled by the French. It is a treasure trove of renaissance European architecture, museums and world famous restaurants. And we had great music – Motown. The Temptations played at our high school prom.
I can’t separate Detroit from cars and ingenuity. Family conversations always seemed to be centered on baseball and the new car designs expected to be previewed at the annual auto show. The city and surrounding communities were fast paced and thriving. Engineers and manufacturing drove the economy. Foreign investors, foreign manufacturers, and economists frequently visited Detroit, seeking ideas and business opportunities. It was the world leader in automation and industrial engineering. College and universities catered to the high demand for engineers.
At one time, Detroit was the industrial capital of the world. It brought everything together. From about the mid 50′s through the mid 70′s, life was great – even after the 1967 riots. Those brought several underlying problems within the black communities and the city to the forefront. An earnest effort was made by those who desired to truly correct and improve issues affecting their communities. It seemed to have a good measure of success. Jobs were plentiful. New businesses were popping up all over. Entrepreneurial fever was everywhere. Few regulations existed to stifle business growth. Taxes were low.
Steve Mensing: City’s change. Industries change. On the bright side, Pittsburg fell on hard times after the steel industry disappeared. Luckily, they had leadership that rejuvenated them into a major business hub. Small cities sometimes lack the talented leadership pool to turn the corner. It’s really sad when poor leadership and bottom feeders take the helm.
When did you start to notice Detroit start its decline? What were the initial signs?
Sharon Mendez: Jobs were plentiful, and the future looked bright. But internally, there was a storm brewing with it exploding in 1967. Many say that the political differences between Michigan’s Republican governor and Democratic president fueled the length of the riots. In reality, the brewing unrest with the black communities stemmed from them being displaced due to the growing city land needs in order to build for future commercial endeavors. City leadership devised a way to revitalize the downtown area with costly renovations which they felt would save the city, but it was at the cost of losing a precious population of people. They laid out plans to build a new, ultra modern business center, appropriately named the Renaissance Center next to the river. Surely with the new look, people would come because that’s what they wanted. The city tried to represent to outsiders that it was a leader. Unfortunately, taxes continued to go up to cover the costs of their plan, forcing an even greater exodus of families out of the city to safer communities and lower taxes. Externally, the importing of foreign cars started to take hold. Imports were smaller, cheaper and more fuel efficient.
Rising fuel prices continued to impact the working families’ budgets. For many, going out to eat and for entertainment was no longer affordable. The Detroit Free Press and Detroit News seemed to continually have front page articles about unions demanding more than the businesses could afford. All the while, thousands continued leaving the city for the lower costs of housing in suburbs and to avoid the growing city crime.
Steve Mensing: Sounds familiar.
Sharon Mendez: Property taxes kept increasing to cover the lost revenue generated from residents and businesses leaving. Unable to sell their vacant homes, many were vandalized – depreciating homes and communities. Tension continued to increase within the black communities, especially those being forced to leave their homes under the great “Renaissance Plan”. Law enforcement staffs was reduced to continue their cost-cutting efforts. Those dollars were redirected to pay salaries and vital city operations (robbing Peter to pay Paul), while crime continued to increase. It was a vicious downward decline. Several auto manufacturers and supporting businesses and industries moved out of the area, often to other states offering tax incentives and non-union workers. Declining domestic auto sales and increased federal regulations prevented auto makers from being able compete with lower cost imports. They were unable to negotiate reasonable terms with the auto unions, even after expressing their need to be more competitive. But unions refused to give. Not only did the auto plants have to downsize, but the so did the supporting businesses. First to go were employees with the least seniority, then the less specialized employees. Layoffs hit the black population first and hardest. Then, adding salt to their wounds, the federal government – in all their wisdom – kept assaulting the auto industry with ever increasing rules and regulations to meet this law or that law. Were all these regulations necessary? I’m not sure, but it did add costs to an auto industry that was competing with Asia.
Lack of revenue caused the decline of quality educational programs and staff. They were unable to retain or attract qualified teachers. It just had nothing to offer prospects.
Broken Detroit museum kiosk.
Steve Mensing: Looking back, how do you feel about what happened?
Sharon Mendez: What’s happened to Detroit brings great sadness. It was a part of my childhood. I remember a lively, beautiful city. Later, when it began its slide, I tried to convince others it was going downhill. Nobody listened much. Denial runs deep. People don’t want to believe their city’s caving in. They call the bearers of reality “pot stirrers”. Remember, too, that Detroit’s mayor was Coleman Young, a black man. Business owners were afraid to speak up during his administration for fear of being branded racists. At that time, we couldn’t say or imply anything at all negative. The automotive unions supported his every whim.
Steve Mensing: I recall the national news spoke about the corruption during his administration. Detroit started a tumble in the late 60′s after the riots.
Detroit parking lot: $3 per day
Sharon Mendez: If readers could see earlier photographs of Detroit and later what it’s become. Quite a transformation. Here in Salisbury if you travel outside the historic district you see badlands and urban blight.
Steve Mensing: I arrived here in 2008 and noticed a large disparity between the historic district, the downtown, the country club areas and the surrounding areas of the city. The areas outside the historic district, downtown, and country club often lack sidewalks and full city services. Since the city’s financial core took a major hit from Fibrant, city services appear non-existent in some areas. Potholes, street lights that don’t work, grass and weeds growing tall. Neglect.
Sharon Mendez: You drive out of downtown and the drop-off is dramatic. Favored groups are benefiting, that’s for sure. Here in Salisbury, a very small in-group controls the city – and they are benefiting. The city leadership appears short-sighted. What that fiber optic network gamble did to Salisbury overnight is shocking. Over the last three years, since Fibrant appeared and few bought it, the city became understaffed overnight and services diminished dramatically. I don’t know what city leadership was thinking.
Steve Mensing: Before Fibrant arrived, the city was already well-covered by Time Warner Cable, AT&T (U-verse), DirecTV, DISH, and a pile of VOIP phone companies. Fibrant was on a kamikaze mission from the start. They did their soft rollout with prices much higher than the privates. Fibrant still kept their contract when most of the privates dropped their contracts. It was during a poor economy, too, when money was tight. Fibrant had numerous outages without backup. Fibrant went nowhere fast. The city spent all of its certificate of participation money (33 million) before June 2011. It was a disaster. They started gulping money out of the city’s reserve funds and from the SKU (sewer and water) funds of surrounding municipalities. Salisbury was too small of a city to absorb those kinds of losses.
Sharon Mendez: The city government seems to be in this needy rush again. Now they want this economic non developer: a school central office. Having been involved in manufacturing and banking, I find this kind of economic development being proposed here alarming. There’s a very amateurish group calling the shots in Salisbury. You couldn’t get away with this in a much larger city. You seldom ever see very large city’s involving themselves municipal telecoms. They let the privates do that. The privates are wisely guided by a profit motive. And no large city would be building downtown School Central Offices for the purposes of “economic development”. That’s desperation. They did their share of build-it-and-they-will-come projects in Detroit, but nothing as foolhardy as an over-priced fiber optic network to lure business or a downtown school central office to spur economic development. New investment looks at Salisbury’s high violent crime stats, its subpar education, its poverty and many other negative aspects. People would raise a stink about this school central office as an economic development tool, even in Detroit. The newspapers would sound the alarm. Not here in Salisbury. The “newspaper” cheers this on.
Steve Mensing: It’s embarrassing. Salisbury, because its small and doesn’t have a talented pool of leaders, is prone to becoming Music-Manned when they are desperate economically. Hopefully, the Local Government Commission will come in and pat city hall on its head and advise them that specific state statutes are on the books to protect them.
Sharon Mendez: Its so very sad to learn about a once great city going bankrupt. Perhaps it will make Detroit more prudent.
Steve Mensing: Keep in mind all those burned out cities during World II returned. Cities do recover. Sometimes it takes a major crisis to spark changes.
The featured image is by Bob Jagendorf. The inserted street photo is by Don Harder. The image of the broken movie of Detroit’s future is by Jason Paris.
