At Second Ebenezer Church on Detroit’s east side, Mayor Mike Duggan spoke to an invitation-only crowd for his third state of the city address.

Interrupted multiple times by protestors, Duggan delivered a nearly hour-long speech that touched on a variety of topics. The Mayor loves his data and statistics. Here are some from last night, according to the Mayor:

  1. In the last two years 61,000 lights for the Public Lighting authority, on track to finish a year ahead of schedule
  2. Ambulance response time cut in half, approaching national response time average of 8 minutes. As part of that, there is cross-training going on of firefighters as medical first responders.
  3. Buses are running on schedule for the first time in 20 years, says the mayor. He says he will be extending 24 hour service more this year.
  4. An interesting statistic that we’d like to check out the reason why this is happening – the DDOT bus system is taking 100,000 more passengers per week than last year
  5. 3,300 sidelots were sold under their program that allows resident property owners to buy the plot of land adjacent to them inexpensively
  6. The budget was balanced for the second year in a row, expects to be for a third in 2017
  7. There’s a monster $491 million pension gap coming in 2024
  8. Project Greenlight, partnering with local businesses to connect to the Detroit Police Department with HD cameras, is growing. 34 more stations are ready to go, four more per week with goal of hundreds
  9. Demolition is still big – Detroit knocked down four times houses as the entire state of Ohio last year
  10. When it comes to rehabbing houses, through city programs they have had 600 families move in – another 500 are being occupied thanks to work with partner organizations – and another 1000 people signed an agreement and started fixing up their homes after the city started pursuing them to fix their blight violations
  11. As part of a new $2 billion Federal program to copy Detroit’s demo plan across the country, the demolition zone eligible for federal funds will be expanding. They’re hoping to take down 5000 in 2016, and 6000 in 2017.
  12. There are 2000 housing units under construction, and 20% of all new units have an affordable component
Share this post