Detroit Today: Why Highland Park wants to enter bankruptcy
The city owes about $20 million to the Great Lakes Water Authority — more than double what it brings in from property taxes.
In a recent 3-2 resolution, Highland Park’s city council voted to request the small city of 8900 residents enter Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy. Decades of neglect, population loss and evaporating tax revenue have left the city with few options, if any, to stay solvent.
It needs to pay off a roughly $20 million water and sewerage bill — an amount that is much more than the $9.6 million Highland Park collects each year in property taxes. And with nearly half the city’s residents living in poverty, there is little wiggle room to raise rates.
“From the start, we had a few emergency managers that took us down in the wrong directions under the previous governor.” — Khursheed Ash-Shafii, Highland Park City Council
Listen: The limited options for Highland Park to deal with its debt problem.
Guest
Khursheed Ash-Shafii is a member of Highland Park’s city council. He voted “yes” on the city requesting state permission to declare bankruptcy.
Ash-Shafii says the issue of Highland Park’s debt has been around for a long time without anyone properly dealing with it.
“From the start,” says Ash-Shafii, “we had a few emergency managers that took us down in the wrong directions under the previous governor.”
Trusted, accurate, up-to-date.
WDET strives to make our journalism accessible to everyone. As a public media institution, we maintain our journalistic integrity through independent support from readers like you. If you value WDET as your source of news, music and conversation, please make a gift today.
