After such a harrowing year as 2020, with the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and President Trump and the Republican Party’s attempt to erase the votes of Detroit citizens to steal the presidential election, Detroit can hopefully look to a more normal and productive 2021, even though a mayoral and City council election will punctuate it.
Early in December, incumbent Mayor Mike Duggan announced his intention to run for reelection for a third consecutive term. His announcement came on the heels of successful turnout the vote effort in Detroit, which proved to be decisive in flipping Michigan back into the Democratic win column for President-elect Joe Biden.
Political observers say with a much friendlier administration in the White House and two U.S. senators with considerable clout in the Senate, the City can leverage those relationships to its advantage.
“President-elect Biden and Mayor Duggan are close,” said Tim Kiska, a communications and pollster professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. “I get the sense that Biden understands Detroit and understands Michigan and the importance of this state. It gave him a big victory by way of 150,000 votes.”
“And then you have Sen. Debbie Stabenow as the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee, Sen. Gary Peters now secure after his reelection, as the ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee, Debbie Dingell rising in influence in the House, coupled with former Governor Granholm as the incoming Secretary of Energy, and I can see us getting things done for this city and state,” he said.
That critical victory for the state and city and the successful passage of several long-overdue criminal justice reform measures along with local initiatives will have a more direct impact on Detroiters in 2021, noted Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones.
For example, in October, Michigan became the third state to adopt the Clean Slate legislation and the first to include felonies within its eligibility and to refrain from disqualifying otherwise eligible individuals who have unpaid legal debt. “This is a historic day in Michigan. These bipartisan bills are a game-changer for people who are seeking opportunities for employment, housing, and more, and they will help ensure a clean slate for hundreds of thousands of Michiganders,” Gov. Whitmer said during the signing ceremony.
The bills will provide an opportunity for Michigan and Detroit in particular, to grow its workforce in 2021 by expanding access to job training and education for many individuals in the community who previously were denied jobs and access to loans and grants for education because of criminal records. This will be especially beneficial to Black males in the state caught up in the mass incarceration and prison industrial complex. For years, they faced roadblocks in obtaining good-paying and secure jobs even after serving their time due to these prohibitions.
And after years of perks and abatements to incentivize large corporate investments in downtown redevelopment, the passage of Proposal N, a $250 million bond sale to renovate or demolish 16,000 vacant homes in neighborhoods and grow Detroit-based demolition and rehab companies. In 2021, the City has committed to – but not guaranteed – to prioritize Detroit businesses for contracts, ensuring Detroiters receive primary selection or all demolition related jobs, salvageable homes assessed and saved, and other local neighborhood development priorities.
Another significant economic development for 2021 will be implementing the Medical Marijuana Facilities and Adult-Use Marijuana Establishments ordinance, which authorizes the Buildings, Safety Engineering, and Environmental Department (BSEED) to issue business licenses for co-location, and adult-use marijuana establishments provide more opportunities for local business development.
Under the new ordinance, Detroit Legacy applicants will get a minimum of 50% of all newly created recreational marijuana business licenses for retailers, growers, processors, microbusinesses, designated consumption, and marijuana event organizers issued in Detroit. There will be a six-week exclusive early licensing period for Detroit Legacy applicants. Detroit Legacy will be able to purchase city-owned land at 25% of fair market value. The City will work with philanthropy and private lenders to develop sources of funding and expertise to back Detroit-owned marijuana business start-ups.
This new law is expected to generate new neighborhood businesses across the City and substantially increase the local tax base in the future.
And, of course, hanging over everything else in 2021 like a thunder cloud will be Detroit’s continued response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones, who herself tested positive for the disease and has recovered, noted that Michigan had received the vaccine, and she wants the City’s first responders, medical professionals, seniors, and those most vulnerable to receive the vaccine first to ensure their health and safety.
“Unfortunately, I personally have known people who lost their lives to this dreaded disease. I have honored little ones, like 5-year old Skylar, to dear friends like Benny Napoleon,” she said. “COVID-19 pays no attention to age or social status, so I tell everyone it is serious and they must practice social distancing, wear their masks, and use hand sanitizer. I definitely will take the vaccine when it becomes available to me.”
Until then, she said she anticipates City Council will continue to meet virtually into 2021, as the state’s amended Open Meetings Act allows. Once all protocols are in place to ensure a safe environment, the Council will resume meeting in person.
But Dr. Stacy Scott, a national public health expert and founder of the Global Infant Safe Sleep Center in Toledo who has done extensive work with Black families in Detroit, said given the devastating impact COVID-19 had on Detroit, that it is critically important for the next mayor to make compliance with new COVID-19 vaccination protocols a top priority too.
“Black families have been destroyed by Covid-19,” she said. “We see family members dying within weeks and days of one another. So, the lines are no longer blurred about how the impact of racism has taken its toll on people of color,” she said.
Local leaders like the mayor of Detroit, whoever it might be, must look at the social determinants of poor health outcomes to see why we have such vast disparities in outcomes between African Americans and others, she said.
“This is carnage of more than 300,000 dead Americans in less than one year from a new disease that other advance countries have managed to effectively handle is far more than a public health issue,” she said. “It is also about policy and politics from the White House to City Hall.”
“People of color often live in highly populated areas that lack public transit, are food desserts, and do not allow one to easily social distance as a result of deliberate policy decisions often made on a local level,” Scott said.
So in the coming months, the people of Detroit must hold its leadership accountable for getting them out on the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic just like they did with the over-taxation of their housing, she said.
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