With the current Detroit mayor Mike Duggan saying that he's not running next year for a new term, the field is filling up with people interested in possibly going for the city's top job.
Currently, there are a number of people who have started "exploratory committees," meaning they're looking at officially running and gauging interest and support.
So what we're doing is starting that important conversation, with the goal of talking to as many could-be and full candidates as we can. First up, Councilman Fred Durhal III.
You can watch the conversation above on YouTube, or listen in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
We also have a full, automated transcript below for accessibility purposes.
That said, I strongly encourage you to listen or watch the conversation, if you can.
If you have feedback or want to get in touch - let us know - dailydetroit@gmail.com - as we feel like this is an ongoing conversation around one of Michigan's most important jobs. And I thank Councilman Durhal for taking the time to answer questions on the podcast.
Podcast conversation transcript
Jer: Joining me at the Daily Detroit studio at Techtown is none other than Council Member Fred Durhal III. He serves the 7th District, on the city's west side.
Fred Durhal III: Absolutely. We border the edge of Redford, edge of Dearborn, and part of Northwest Detroit.
Jer: Okay. And you are here for a number of reasons. Obviously, we talk about Detroit all the time on Daily Detroit. But, you've also formed an exploratory committee to run for mayor as well.
Fred Durhal III: I have. And first, let me thank you for having us, on the show. And yes, we have recently announced that we have formed our exploratory committee, for mayor, in the 2025 election. So a very exciting time for us as we engage with residents across the city.
Jer: Yeah. So, why are you going to do this? Running for mayor sounds like a pain. And I say that with the most love possible. As somebody who's seen a number of mayors, a number of whatever. Why are you thinking about going for that job?
Fred Durhal III: So, first, of all, I've been in public service pretty much all my life now. I've had the pleasure to serve the residents here, in the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan, close to a decade now. And as we look at our city, we are at a great, great pinnacle, but we still got a long way to go, and a lot of that is going to involve bringing folks together. And I think we have a track record of doing that, not only here in the city of Detroit from my time on council, but within the state legislature. So I know it sounds crazy to do, but I also feel when you're called to serve, you have to serve.
So as you see Detroit right now, it's undeniable that there's been an amount of progress and change in the last few years. But what are some areas where you're thinking, hey, there are some things that I can add to the table.
So, as we look at Detroit's growth, which has been tremendous, I gotta give a great shout out to Mayor Duggan, who I think has been just an instrumental part - him and his administration. You know, they've played an amazing role to revitalize Detroit.
There still are a couple issues that exist. We have built Downtown, which is amazing, and we must continue to grow Downtown. I don't ever want the message to think, or folks to think that we should not because we gotta have a tax base. We've got to generate income. But I think we can also push that out a little bit further, even to our neighborhoods. Our neighborhoods are really at a point where we're starting to see them revitalize.
There's been a lot of demolition - a lot of the abandonment has gone. But the question becomes is what are the walkable neighborhoods, or where are the walkable neighborhoods in the city of Detroit? And so a couple things that I would do different, obviously, would be able to revitalize our commercial corridors. Some which at one in the city's history were very vibrant, had a lot of small business owners.
We're sitting right here now in Techtown, which is an incubator for small business. We've got to continue that growth and push that out there. One of the biggest issues to the city of Detroit is poverty. And it is no secret that a key component to eliminating poverty is having the ability to build generational wealth. So we've got to sponsor and push forward a plan that creates more entrepreneurs, more small business owners, but also we've got to look at housing.
And that is one of the biggest issues here in the city of Detroit - housing stability. And so we have a lot of renters here. I've been a great part of helping and create affordable housing here in the city of Detroit. We just celebrated $1 billion of affordable housing last year.
I just passed an ordinance, the pilot fast track ordinance, which will allow for smaller developers to be and incentivize smaller developers to build more affordable housing, but yet we haven't really connected that to the path to home ownership.
That's what repopulates the neighborhoods. And so those are a few things that I would like to do and obviously continue to improve city services, make sure that they are efficient, make sure that they are timely, and something that residents can be proud of.
You mentioned about home ownership. One of the challenges that Detroit has faced has been a lot of flight of the middle class and the black middle class. Helping change that narrative. Not just the narrative, but on the ground facts. What are some of the things that you're thinking about that could help? I mean, obviously we're talking about in numbers, the black middle class, but the middle class in general to say, "Okay, I'm gonna have kids, and I'm gonna choose to stay. If I decide to have kids, I'm gonna choose to stay in Detroit." Or "I can see myself investing in building here for people who, you know, maybe they're not the wealthiest, you know, but they, they want to grow, they want to stay in the city, but they feel right now that it's difficult to, from a cost perspective or a service perspective."
Yeah. And what I would tell you is I think you're hitting the nail right on the head. And you'll hear us talk a little bit more about this in the campaign. There's what we call a missing middle here in the city of Detroit, meaning that, you know, I don't ... I make too much to qualify for some of the subsidies and programs that exist, but I still don't make enough to feel like I'm getting by, right?
And it is difficult to be able to afford my mortgage or be able to afford my rent, frankly. If you rent. And what that is going to take is creating that environment, for those middle class families, that are conducive to thrive. And what that means is examining how we look at our tax structure and having tough conversations in Lansing, which I am accustomed to serving as a former state representative of, how we can get more for our residents, whether that's statutory revenue sharing or whether that is other programs that we expand.
Regardless to what those income levels are ... to make sure that those folks who are, quote unquote, in the missing middle, still have the opportunity to get access, to those programs. And another deeper conversation, when you talk about attracting folks here, and staying in neighborhoods, folks move to neighborhoods that are safe, that have good schools.
So, we've got to continue to increase on public safety to make sure that our neighborhoods are safe. We've seen some of the lowest homicide rates that we've had in over 30 years. But, we've also got to have those tough conversations about schools. And that doesn't mean that we want to take over the schools because they have their own governing body, but the conversations have to become stronger with that governing body ... has to become stronger with the superintendent and policymakers in Lansing to be able to help fix our educational system here.
Having worked in Lansing, you know how important it is to work with people that sometimes you don't agree with. You served in the minority for, I believe, your entire terms.
Yes.
How important would it be to you as mayor to build bridges with Lansing, but also maintain and build bridges with the rest of the region? Because economically we're all tied together, whether it's Detroiters going to jobs in the suburbs, people coming down, entertainment, vice versa. It's all regardless of what people think. Like, the fact is that it's all connected, and Detroit is the beating heart of this region. So how important is it to you and what are some of the things that you're thinking about as far as building these connections?
Well, I would say it's extremely important. And yes, I served both of my terms in the Michigan legislature in the minority. I had a lot more hair then. I can tell you.
Did Lansing take it all?
Lansing took it all.
And you know, shout out to those Republican colleagues during those times who claimed the follicles that we left on the House floor.
But what I would say is we still found a way to deliver for Detroit through that time. Being able to bring record amounts of revenue sharing back home, even though we were in the minority, my two terms, close to $790 million in revenue sharing came here.
We didn't receive any cuts. We also were able to fund vital programs like DAPCEP, Flip the Script, Goodwill Industries. That helped residents.
But that took a lot working across those aisles, fostering relationships and saying, hey, where do we have common ground?
Yes, I am a Democrat. You know, I used to say to old ad is, I was born a Democrat, I'd die a Democrat unless something tragic happened to me. But we found a way to commonality in saying, hey, we've got to deliver down here.
And I think whoever is the next mayor that is going to be, their number one job is coalition building, not just in Lansing. Not just in a way, that crosses the bipartisan line, but regional as well.
And one of the biggest issues that we face is connecting our communities. We've seen now here in the city of Detroit one of the biggest projects that we have coming is the Joe Louis Greenway, which is designed to connect communities in the city of Detroit. And hopefully ultimately connect us throughout Wayne County.
But as we talk about connecting communities, transportation, is one of our big issues. Regional transit really is important. When we travel to other municipalities or huge major cities, what we see is they have great transportation, and they have regional transit.
If you spent any time in D.C. or the DMV area, you can see that you can travel to Virginia, Virginia, you can travel to D.C. You can travel to Maryland, in a way that's timely, that's efficient, and that supports their region, frankly. And I think we've got to embrace those ideas.
I'm a big supporter of the automotive industry. I'm a big supporter of our unions. But in order to even to retain talent and attract talent here in the city of Detroit, we've got to expand.
Now I personally look at transportation and transit as something that is a hand up and not a handout. You have a large amount of Detroiters who actually do not have regular access to a car. People don't realize that in the Motor City. And you also, I mean from a regional transit perspective, you have a number of people who are geographically landlocked because they can't get to places. So what are some of the things you think about as far as transportation? Because there are some challenges right now, and it's been the admission of people in charge that like ... this is a really difficult thing to get their arms around. Whether it's regional transit or even fixing the business that you can as mayor in the city of Detroit with things like DDOT and the challenges there.
Yeah, so I think, you know, we obviously have to examine home first, and examine the transportation system that we already have that's in place.
We've got to work to fix its broken infrastructure that exists. Have those conversations on how we approve services, how we put more buses on the road, how we put more shelters on the road.
And how we improve the overall experience for riders is definitely going to be important.
But we've also, as we fix that, we have to look towards the future. Transportation just doesn't involve buses, but maybe rails. We see the M1 Rail that runs down Woodward, and it goes three miles there. And three miles back.
But wouldn't it be great if we could expand that throughout the city as well as through some of our commercial corridors and connect everyone Downtown?
As everyone has always stated that Detroit is like a wagon wheel when you look at some of the major streets that connect these communities and connect these neighborhoods. And maybe we don't do regional transit or, transit or rail, per se, through every thorough way.
But maybe some main throwaways to be able to connect those folks, to our city and so they can move around and get connected to jobs.
But that's going to involve talking to, folks on the federal level and getting funding and an investment from the state as well as the county, all coming together and say we want to build this infrastructure so our state, our county and our city can become more competitive.
A lot of people are looking for proof that it works, right? And sometimes it's easier to make the case for more money when you have an example of something that people feel like they can resonate with or they feel like that makes an impact for them.
Let's talk about economic development a little bit. There tends to be tension sometimes between neighborhoods in downtown or the haves and the have nots and the people who have been here a long time and there's a lot of new money coming in.
How do you, how do you balance that in the big seat?
I think you gotta create a healthy balance.
First of all, you know, I have been very supportive, of development here in the city of Detroit.
One reason is personal. I remember being a young, a young fellow running around the city of Detroit, born and raised here, went to school here, grew up here, and going Downtown and saying, "Wow, why can't this be like Chicago? Or wow, why can't this be like D.C. or Los Angeles?" And I remember having those thoughts. And as I became older and became a policymaker, I said, well, how can we bring those type of thoughts, into fruition? How can we make it a, reality?
And you have to be supportive of development, and some of that is going to involve incentivizing developers to come here.
One of the biggest challenges at the time when Detroit wasn't in its resurgence, was convincing folks to come here. And there were a lot of folks who stuck and stayed here who were developers.
But we attracted a lot of other developers that came here and incentivized them. Hey, and let them know Detroit is the place to build, right? And it gets a bad rap.
We've kind of got to eliminate that us versus them type of thought or the Downtown versus the neighborhoods type of thought because what development really does is help spark and spawn employment, which is still a huge issue here, in the city of Detroit.
And so as I look at development, I want to create more jobs. I want to create a tax base where we can generate more income tax revenue from these jobs that we can put back into the neighborhoods to continue to stabilize them and continue to make it safe.
But creating that healthy balance is making some tough decisions. Are the development projects that we support, going to ultimately pay dividend to what we really want to see here, in the city?
And you have to ask those tough questions, but you also have to take a chance. And I'll give you an example.
Columbus, one of the fastest growing cities in the nation. Columbus, by the way, Ohio, if you're listening, it is my personal belief nothing good comes from Ohio, I love Michigan.
But when you see Columbus though, right, they're growing exponentially because they have come together and said that we are going to invest in this city.
So when you see these jobs of the future, like an intel, right? The state of Ohio gave over $2 billion in incentives for Intel to come here. So they invested in Columbus as well as, you know, not only from the state, but their county and said, we want intel to come here because we want those jobs and we want our folks to get the jobs.
I've been to Columbus a number of times, and I think one of the things that they do well is the ladder up where it's, we're going to take one thing and then we're going to build the next thing. So, you know, they do have the advantage of having Ohio State, like, within this, like right there, as opposed to the University of Michigan, which is making more strides in Detroit, no doubt, but it's still in Ann Arbor. It's still 45 minutes away or whatever.
But there are a lot of things that they do where it comes to walkability. And the thing is that people, forget about that is they actually have an income tax.
They have a variety of these things that we, some people will say are the boogeyman are the things that get that get in the way.
And I feel like we need a mix of incentives, but also making sure that the playing field is even and works well. Because one of the challenges I sometimes hear from smaller developers, to be real, is sometimes it's not just about the money, but it's about the time that it takes to get something done.
Because time is money. So those are kinds of efficiencies of like how can we get the processes moving faster, how can we get the checks moving faster? Those are some of the concerns that I hear.
And so what I would tell you is I'm glad you even posed that question, because I recently sponsored a piece of legislation that passed city council unanimously 8 to 0. And it was called the PILOT Fast Track ordinance, and PILOT is an acronym for payment in lieu of taxes.
And this ordinance was put forth, and by the way, I used to work for the Michigan State Housing Development Authority for a couple years before I came to Detroit City Council.
But the Michigan legislature back in the end of 2022, passed a public act that gave cities the ability to expand. The pilot was just traditionally for low income housing tax credit and you can be able to provide affordable housing developments throughout the city by getting LIHTC. And some of the issues were for smaller developers, for minority developers is that they don't traditionally have the money to come in and have these projects where they build.
Their projects are still areas that are struggling like our commercial corridors that don't have a lot of walkability.
And a huge part of getting LIHTC is having walkable neighborhoods. And so what we did was expand this to give them an incentive and give them a leg up as well as smaller developers and minority developers to be able to tap in and get an incentive to build and make their projects more feasible while locking them into 15 years of affordability and compliance per incentive.
And so you've got to have four type of thinking ideas, to be able to create that type of environment. And that's what we're talking about, creating the environment where even smaller developers can thrive.
Not all, but a lot of the issues with Detroit would be improved if let's say the household income matched the rest of the region into the 60s and 70s instead of the 30s that it is right now. How do you envision opening as many doors as possible for people to lift up?
Of course, you know, bringing more people to the city, growing the city. We've got a lot of room. I mean we used to be 1.8 million people. But that can't be the only answer. It's gotta be about lifting up. So what are some of your ideas about lifting up so that comeback is as equitable as possible and people have as many opportunities to walk through those doors.
So first, I believe it's about building a pipeline. You can attract the jobs here; you can attract major corporations here all you want, but they will argue that they will not hire folks who don't have the skills. And the city of Detroit has started that and done a pretty good job. Whether that's skills for life, whether even at an earlier age, grow Detroit's young talent, or I think there's.
I think there's the Detroit Promise Program that doesn't get enough press.
The Detroit Promise Program. Jumpstart. Like you. You know, there are many programs that feed and work to help feed in the pipeline, but we've got to do a better job at expanding those programs. But we've also got to be very pointed. We've got to work better with unions and skilled trades. Everybody's not going to go to college. We know that.
But we've got to be able to work with them and grow that pipeline. So maybe folks become pipe fitters. Maybe they become plumbers. Maybe they become operating engineers. If we put them on the path to be able to do that, we've got to be a little bit more intentional about doing that here, in our city.
But another thing is, again, we've got to connect to our schools. It's something that folks don't want to talk about, all the time, because it's not necessarily the most politically viable thing to do, particularly if you're running for mayor or if you sit on the city council. Right. Because you don't make those decisions regarding education. We've got to connect our government to our educational system and grow that pipeline from the bottom up. And then when we also go and talk to corporations that come here. We've got to have those discussions that are fruitful and say, "You want to build here. We want you to really hire Detroiters."
I think we talk about that now, and I think we do a good job of. trying to get as much as we can. But I like to see and, like to be, should I say, more intentional, about doing that when we go into those rooms and saying, "You know, if we're going to create a development here, there is a community benefits ordinance that says, you know, 50% of Detroiters have to be employed."
But I mean, what does that mean, if again, those folks and what they're saying, based off of the criteria of their jobs, that those folks cannot. Maybe we come, and we talk to them. Okay, well, we know this is what the issue is.
We have had the ability to create categories of folks' skills. So can you commit to this many jobs being all Detroiters who may not fall in that other skill category but in this category. And so those are some of the type of discussions I believe that the next mayor has to have and continue.
Yeah, there are a lot of challenges to wrestle with. I want to end on something more fun. Okay, where do you go? Like if I say to you lunch and dinner, where do you send people? Somebody who, you know, whether they're new to the city, somebody you know, maybe, maybe you want to shout out the west side where you're from.
I feel like I'm always outnumbered on this podcast as an East Sider. But where do you go? Where do you want to show some love in the city that you just like. This is good.
Oh man, you're getting ready to kill me. Because I know tons of business owners around the city.
Well, see, you're in the exploratory state, so it's not official.
But you know what I would say is there are so many places here in the city of Detroit, right? there are new restaurants popping up like every week. It feels like we hear something new. Some I didn't know exists.
But as a proponent of small business, I tell folks to go to small businesses or restaurants in their corridors. One of my favorites, is close to the North End, right off of John R. Cafe Noir, and it's owned by two amazing small business owners, African American business owners, who live in the adjacent community.
And I think that is the type of story of success that we want to see duplicated around the city of Detroit. So when I talk about building commercial corridors here and creating a, main street in every neighborhood and creating those walkable neighborhoods, I think the residents are going to play a big part in that. But any of your local restaurants, yes, go out and support them.
In District seven, we have In Harmony Cafe which I hold a lot of coffee hours at and talk to residents. but there are also staples like Starters Restaurant, which have amazing food, one of the original locations in District 7, and just so many other pop ups that you are starting to see.
So I encourage all residents to support your local businesses. Local small businesses frequent them, cause that's how we keep those commercial corridors in our city alive.
Listeners don't get mad at him because I sprung this, all these on him. I didn't give him any of these questions ahead of time.
Yeah, yeah, he, you know, he put me on the spot right there. But I eat at a lot of. I eat a lot of. At a lot of the restaurants around the city. I consider myself kind of a foodie. My wife, who I neglected to mention, is a vegetarian, and my kids are kind of like me. They're kind of like foodies. but, we try a little bit of everything, at least once, to be able to say that we supported those businesses and see if we really like it.
I think that's part of the fun about being in Detroit. Right? Going out and seeing things that you haven't done before. Fred Durl Hall III, Council District 7 and exploratory committee for mayor. You might be running for mayor one day.
Thank you so much. Thank you for your time on Daily Detroit. I really appreciate you stepping, into the living room, if you will.
Thank you. And I appreciate you having us, to talk about our possible candidacy. And we'll, be making a, decision, early January and look forward to possibly coming back and having another conversation with you for sure.
And if people want to follow you and know more, what can they do?
Fred Durhal III: We're on Instagram right now. we are on Facebook. On Instagram, it's FredDurhal3 … You can search for Detroit City Council member Fred Durhal on Facebook.
And we are also on Twitter as well, with the same handle, FredDurhal3.
