Detroit City Council candidate James Edward Tate was born in the city of Detroit. He attended Wayne State University and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications while serving as an intern with WXYZ’s Channel 7 Action News.Later he was appointed to the position of second deputy chief within the Detroit Police Department where he ran the Office of Public Information and worked as the liaison between the police department, the media, and the citizens of Detroit.
As a native Detroiter he iscognizant of the city’s problems and eager to address them.“
There are always things that you can do,” he said when asked about the epidemic of vacant homes in Detroit.
“Number one, be an extreme advocate of the community and make sure the city agencies and departments are responsible and held accountable. There is a vacant house right next to me, and my neighbors and I made it our duty to maintain it. I cut the grass and trimmed the hedges because if I didn’t it would bring down (the neighbhorhood). That’s on a personal level, but on a government level someone owns these vacant properties and government needs to hold them accountable for the condition and the upkeep of these properties.”
Tate believes that his track record of community service is what makes him an ideal candidate for City Council and is an indication of his commitment to the city as well as his competence to work toward its improvement.
“Very few of the candidates have my type of experience,” said Tate “I was born and raised in the city and I have an intimate knowledge of what goes on in city government. When I was deputy chief of the Police Department, I was very rarely in my office. I was out in the neighborhoods. The Police Department can be very territorial and I was able to navigate many different personalities and different agendas and you have to do the same thing on City Council because it is a body of nine and to achieve anything positive you have to know how to navigate, and I know how to do that.”