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Tag: Detroit

  • High-end Modern Mexican eatery spices up Cass Corridor

    High-end Modern Mexican eatery spices up Cass Corridor

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    A long-abandoned building in the Cass Corridor is now a high-end Modern Mexican eatery serving the traditional flavors of Mexico City and Oaxaca.

    Vecino, which means “neighbor” in Spanish, opened on April 19 and is unlike anything in metro Detroit.

    Using organic, heirloom corn from Mexico, Vecino makes tortillas, quesadillas, tostadas, sope, and tlayuda through a centuries-old process known as nixtamalization. The result is soft, warm, tender, and flavorful dough.

    The menu focuses on seasonal, Michigan ingredients, sourced from local farmers, with the spices and flavors of Mexico. It features bone-in ribeye steak, red snapper, chicken, and vegetables cooked in the kitchen’s wood-fire hearth. Guests also can share carefully prepared plates that include seafood options, mesquite beets, duck confit, and fresh fruit.

    click to enlarge

    Steve Neavling

    The bone-in ribeye is cooked in a wood-fire hearth at Vecino.

    The bar features an eclectic collection of agave-based spirits, including small-batch and artisanal tequilas, wine from Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries, and plenty of non-alcoholic options.

    The kitchen is led by executive chef Ricardo Mojica, a Michigan native who previously worked at Sava’s in Ann Arbor and was the youngest head chef in the history of the nationwide chain P.F. Chang’s when he was 19.

    He’s joined by head chef Stephanie Duran, a Culinary Institute of America alum who hails from Texas and cooked at several renowned restaurants in Mexico City and Chicago.

    click to enlarge The heart of the kitchen at Vecino is an open-fire hearth. - Steve Neavling

    Steve Neavling

    The heart of the kitchen at Vecino is an open-fire hearth.

    Co-owners Adriana Jimenez and her husband Lukasz Wietrzynski dreamed up the restaurant in 2019, but the COVID-19 pandemic put their plans on hold. They had grown bored with their jobs — Wietrzynski was an attorney and Jimenez worked at Industrial Automation — and wanted to do something new and exciting while they’re still young.

    Jimenez, a Mexico City native, grew up around restaurants. Her parents owned two Mexican eateries in Waterford and Highland.

    “My parents would pick us up from school and we’d go straight to the restaurant, do our homework there and fall asleep there and wake up at home,” Jimenez tells Metro Times. “It was pretty tough on us, but if my parents didn’t have the restaurants, they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do well in life.”

    When the couple was searching for a location for their restaurant, they were enamored with their current spot — a corner building on Third and Alexandrine that was built in 1926 and once served as a grocery store and later a pharmacy. The building was missing windows and a roof, but they could see the potential.

    “We fell in love with the building,” Jimenez says. “We wanted a corner building. We picked the most difficult building, but we were in love with it.”

    They teamed up with Detroit-based designer Colin Tury, who also has a stake in the restaurant.

    Inspired by the ambience of restaurants in Mexico City, the minimalist interior is warm and inviting, with earthy tones, terracotta, ceramic tiles, and hand-blown glass light fixtures hanging from the high, angled ceiling. They used local companies, including Donut Shop for the bar stools and custom hooks, and GANAS Manufacturing for the custom millwork and fixtures.

    The restaurant seats 66 people and includes a bar with space for an additional 16 people.

    click to enlarge The interior at Vecino is warm and inviting. - Steve Neavling

    Steve Neavling

    The interior at Vecino is warm and inviting.

    Vecino is the fifth fine-dining restaurant to open in a section of the Cass Corridor that had long been vacant and blighted. The others are Selden Standard, SheWolf, Mad Nice, and Vigilante Kitchen and Bar, which is being reimagined.

    On a recent weekend, a several-hundred-thousand-dollar McLaren was parked outside Vecino.

    “Never thought I’d see that here,” a man said as he walked by.

    click to enlarge A McClaren parked outside Cass Corridor’s newest restaurant, Vicino. - Steve Neavling

    Steve Neavling

    A McClaren parked outside Cass Corridor’s newest restaurant, Vicino.

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    Steve Neavling

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  • Detroit’s only Black-run grocery co-op opens, welcomes throngs of shoppers

    Detroit’s only Black-run grocery co-op opens, welcomes throngs of shoppers

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    Detroit People’s Food Co-Op, a Black-run, full-scale grocery store, has arrived on Woodward Avenue in Detroit’s North End.

    The store opened its doors for the first time Wednesday, welcoming hundreds of eager shoppers in just the first hour.

    The idea behind the ambitious undertaking, which took years of preparation, was to expand food access to a predominantly Black city that has notoriously lacked quality grocery options. And since the store is a co-op, anyone can own a piece of it by becoming a member.

    As of Wednesday afternoon, there were more than 2,740 members.

    “This is not something you’re invited to. It’s literally yours,” says Lanay Gilbert-Williams, president of the co-op’s board of directors. “There is no rich person in the shadows. People can’t imagine such a heaven where all types of people have come together to do a thing and take ownership of a thing. It belongs to the entire community.”

    The store’s shelves and fridges are stocked full of fresh, locally grown produce, herbs, spices, condiments, meat, dairy products, vegan options, bakery items, canned and packaged goods, snacks, beverages, and health and wellness products — virtually anything you’d find in a grocery chain like Kroger or Meijer. There were also prepared foods, a variety of samples, a deli, and a coffee bar.

    click to enlarge

    Steve Neavling

    The co-op works with four Black-owned farms to get its produce.

    The co-op, spearheaded by the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network, features fruit and vegetables from four Black-owned farms, and many of the products are made in Michigan.

    Levi Johnson Jr., a beaming, local entrepreneur with dreadlocks cascading out of his colorful, brimmed hat, was handing out samples of his barbecue sauce, called Mr. Levi’s MyTFine Soul Sauce, which comes in three flavors — mild, spicy, and “Habanero XS.”

    “If my face ain’t on the bottle, no soul is inside,” Johnson tells Metro Times.

    Johnson sells his products in more than 62 Meijers and 32 other metro Detroit grocers, but this one is special, he says.

    click to enlarge Levi Johnson Jr., owner of Mr. Levi’s MyTFine Soul Sauce - Steve Neavling

    Steve Neavling

    Levi Johnson Jr., owner of Mr. Levi’s MyTFine Soul Sauce

    “It’s revolutionary,” Johnson says of the co-op. “The time has come, not just for the Blacks, but for the people.”

    Until recently, Detroit had been without a Black-owned grocery store for about a decade. Nearly 70% of Detroiters are considered “food insecure,” meaning they lack reliable access to food, according to a 2022 report from the Detroit Food Policy Council.

    If all goes as planned, the grocery store is just the beginning of building self-reliance and justice in Detroit, a city that has long battled with racial and economic inequality. Co-op members are empowered to vote in board elections, share future profits, and be elected to committees, which could be tasked with fighting for affordable housing or disability rights.

    “This is just the first day,” Gilbert-Williams says. “We’re all a family. We’re breaking bread together. Food brings everybody together. We have not had a Black-led, community-owned grocery store in Detroit. What is that going to look like? It’s going to be interesting.”

    Although members have to be at least 21 years old, the co-op is aiming to get young people involved to experience what Black leadership and cooperation look like.

    click to enlarge The co-op features a deli and fresh coffee. - Steve Neavling

    Steve Neavling

    The co-op features a deli and fresh coffee.

    “The young people are going to take this over from us,” Gilbert -Williams, a mother of six children between the ages of seven and 28, says. “These young people are bold, and they’re fearless. They are loving, and they will not tolerate all this madness and division that has been going on for centuries. Let’s bring them on board now.”

    Memberships cost $200 for a lifetime, which can be paid in a lump sum or spread out over 10 monthly installments.

    The co-op is located at 8324 Woodward Ave.

    @metrotimes

    📍Detroit People’s Co-Op 8324 Woodward Ave., Detroit

    ♬ Popular Demand – Instrumental – Black Milk

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    Steve Neavling

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  • The case for raising animals in Detroit

    The case for raising animals in Detroit

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    Detroit Farm and Cider was transforming an entire block in the Dexter-Linwood neighborhood into something the city had never seen before. It would be the only cider mill within city limits and, reportedly, the first Black-owned mill in the country. The farm hosted children’s equestrian programs, farming workshops, and farm-to-table brunches at its four-acre property.

    Everything seemed to be going well until Detroit Animal Control confiscated owner Leandra King’s horses after one escaped in 2021. Three years later King is facing criminal charges for keeping livestock like horses, goats, and chickens, which are illegal in the city.

    Animal husbandry could soon become legal, however, with a proposed urban livestock ordinance underway. Since 2013, urban agriculture advocates have been working with the City Planning Department to draft the ordinance, which would allow Detroiters to keep chickens, bees, and ducks, and it’s closer than ever to becoming a reality. The ordinance has received mixed reception with the urban farmers behind it, some residents worrying about smells, and some beekeepers wanting bees left out.

    City planner Kimani Jeffrey says he’s hoping to present the City Planning Committee with the final draft for a recommendation in early May. If the ordinance gets the committee’s recommendation, it will go to Detroit City Council, which will then host a public hearing and vote on whether to pass it.

    It may be too late for Detroit Farm and Cider, however, and it’s unclear whether the ordinance would help the farm anyway. King’s trial was supposed to take place in April but has been postponed until September. She says the case will effectively shut down Detroit Farm and Cider.

    “I’ll go to court [and] I’ll lose, because I’m guilty of having the animals, and that will go on my record,” she tells Metro Times over the phone. “Within the next couple of months, when the livestock ordinance becomes legal, other people will be able to have their animals and If I get convicted, I won’t qualify to be able to rezone as a business.”

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    se7enfifteen

    King feels like her farm is being targeted, as others have received permits.

    The ordinance would require farmers to get a $50 license to raise livestock or be subject to a fine. It allows for a maximum of eight birds (including chickens and ducks only) and two honeybee hives. Residents could have four ducks and four chickens, or any combination as long as they don’t exceed eight. It does not cover goats or horses.

    City Council President Pro Tem James Tate’s office held a series of community engagement meetings in the summer of 2023 and winter of 2024 for resident feedback along with a public hearing before the City Planning Commission on February 22. The commission asked Jeffrey and urban agriculture organizer Renee Wallace of non-profit FoodPLUS to do more engagement with residents before voting on the ordinance.

    City officials say they have ticketed Detroit Farm and Cider for raising illegal animals multiple times.

    “City of Detroit ordinances prohibit the keeping of farm animals and the law cannot be ignored simply because the person violating it is well intentioned,” Corporation Counsel for the City of Detroit Conrad Mallett tells Metro Times via email. “In the past, the City has had to remove horses, goats, and other animals from the property. The owner has been reminded on multiple occasions since then that it is illegal to keep these animals and she has been ticketed, yet she persists. Unfortunately, we have no choice but to ask the court to compel her to follow the law.”

    While the proposed ordinance only allows for chickens, ducks, and bees as an “accessory use,” the draft does appear to include special exceptions for “principle use” for “a non-profit entity organized for educational purposes” or a “4-H program that is officially sanctioned and recognized by Michigan State University Extension.”

    “Accessory” use means raising livestock is not the main function of the property — think of someone with a chicken coop in their backyard or an urban farm with beehives — whereas “principle use” implies the opposite.

    Detroit Farm and Cider does provide educational programming and is 4-H certified, which seems to suggest the ordinance could provide a legal pathway. Michigan 4-H programs are those that offer hands-on youth development activities which can include things like farming and working with textiles.

    Wallace explains that residents applying for a livestock license would have to select one of three categories: backyard garden, urban farm, or educational operation.

    “If you’re doing an educational operation, you have more options for other animals,” Wallace says. “If you look at 4-H clubs, they have horses, sometimes they have pigs. They train young people and show people how to care for them. They would put forth their proposal to the city… If you’ve picked that option, you’ve likely already gotten 4-H certification and then you are bringing that to the city. You may be developing a program or it’s an existing program… That would allow people to have a variety of farm animals in their program, that does not limit it to chicken, bees, and ducks.”

    A public hearing would have to be held, with review by several city departments, to approve the educational operation’s proposal.

    In addition to being 4-H certified, Detroit Farm and Cider is Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program (MAEAP) verified, which means it upholds standards to mitigate agricultural pollution from the property. MAEAP recognizes landowners for being “environmentally sound” in areas like livestock, cropping, and farmsteading. King says she is also certified through the Right-to-Farm Program via the Michigan Department of Agriculture.

    “I submitted a soil test, a manure management plan to show that my manure is being stored ethically, and I had to go through all of these processes,” she says. “My livestock are licensed and tagged. I had to go through very scrupulous training.”

    King feels like her farm is being targeted, as other groups like Detroit Horse Power and Pingree Farms have received permits to raise livestock in the city. Similar to Detroit Farm and Cider, Detroit Horse Power hosts equestrian programming for youth. Pingree Farms, located off Seven Mile Road and I-75, is 4-H certified to teach middle school students animal husbandry with rabbits, goats, sheep, chickens, turkeys, miniature cows, pigs, and ponies, according to its website.

    King was first charged with “possessing a wild animal without a permit” in 2021 and received a letter of support and temporary permit from Detroit City Council in 2023 that she thought would help her case. The charges were dismissed without prejudice in September of 2023 for lack of evidence but were refiled a month later.

    King was in the process of working with the Building Safety, Engineering & Environmental Department (BSEED) to get Detroit Farm and Cider rezoned as a business when the case against her was reopened. The farm is in a residential neighborhood.

    “I was able to go as far as having special land use. I can grow food, I just can’t sell anything here without my business license,” she explains. “I thought it was going to be resolved. In the spirit of trying to work with them… I thought that if I got rezoned, and got MAEAP approved, and certified through the Right-to-Farm program, I would be good to go. But for some reason, they are still coming after me criminally.”

    Director of BSEED David Bell says via email, “We had attempted for some time to work with the owner of this property to help her business get properly licensed after she had illegally established it in an area that is zoned only for residential use. However, we have ceased those efforts to help her until such time she comes into compliance with the law.”

    Mallet adds, “We are a City of roughly 650,000 people. The people who live across the street from the non-licensed property have rights. They have the right to enjoy their homes free from animal smells and noise. Continual violation of our ordinances ultimately will create a consequence where fines and jail time is a possibility. We are protecting all of our citizens and we are disregarding no one’s rights.”

    King is adamant that she will not stop keeping animals and facilitating children’s programming, even if the city shuts Detroit Farm and Cider down.

    “I know that this isn’t right. It’s not fair,” she says. “If I’m doing everything within my power to appease you as a small business owner, and I’m asking what more you need me to do, and then I do it, and finally your way to shut me down is to criminally prosecute me when you’ve made these exceptions for other businesses, something’s wrong about that.”

    click to enlarge City officials say they have ticketed Detroit Farm and Cider for raising illegal animals multiple times. - se7enfifteen

    se7enfifteen

    City officials say they have ticketed Detroit Farm and Cider for raising illegal animals multiple times.

    More about the proposed ordinance

    Smells and noise from animals are often cited as reasons that some residents oppose legalizing livestock in the city.

    Bridge Detroit reported a group of residents from the 48217 zip code, considered Detroit’s most polluted, strongly opposed the ordinance at the February 22 hearing.

    “I do not approve (of) this ordinance. My parents bought the house that I still live in… it was residential property, not farming property,” Bridge Detroit reported 48217 resident Patricia Gaston as saying. “If the house next door to me decides that they want chickens and all kinds of farm animals I’m going to get all that smell in my yard. I don’t want that.”

    To mitigate some of those concerns, the proposed ordinance requires that chickens and ducks be in an enclosure or shelter that is thirty feet away from any neighboring dwelling, and five feet from both the side and rear property line. The bird enclosures are only allowed behind a house, or whatever main structure is on the property, and must be less than 200 square feet.

    Beehives must be 25 feet away from the property line or include a flyaway barrier of six feet high installed above.

    At a community meeting where residents expressed concerns about animal keeping, a farmer brought a couple of chickens in a cage to prove they didn’t make much noise.

    The proposed ordinance specifies animal husbandry as “the keeping of certain urban farm animals and domestic honeybees for personal consumption or utilization of agricultural products, such as eggs, meat, or honey.”

    “These are not pets. We’re not talking about your pet chicken. This is food. This is food system work,” Wallace says. “We took a very deliberate and intentional design approach centering three things: the welfare of the animals, how do you center the animal keepers, and how do you center the neighbors?”

    This ordinance has been a long time coming. Wallace began working on it in 2011 alongside Kathryn Lynch Underwood, a former senior planner with the City of Detroit City Planning Commission who spearheaded the project. It started with getting an urban agriculture ordinance on the books, which allowed for urban farms and gardens. That ordinance was passed in 2013 and initially included animal husbandry in addition to produce, but Wallace says the animals were removed because they thought it was more likely to pass without them. At the time, animals like goats, turkeys, and rabbits were listed, but they were removed due to community feedback.

    “What we found in talking to [the] community was that not many people were raising rabbits,” she says. “Goats are food and provide a lot of different things like milk and cheese… But people said very strongly, no, we do not want to see goats. So it came down to chickens, ducks, and bees.”

    The first public hearing for an animal husbandry ordinance in Detroit was in 2016 and things stalled after that. Underwood retired in 2022 but the work continued and Jeffrey took up the charge within the City Planning Department.

    “We still worked on the ordinance after that but a lot of things affected that,” Wallace says about why it’s taken so long. “Drop a pandemic in there. Drop a bankruptcy in there when the city has a lot of other things to look at. Elections, leadership changes…. There’s been an elongated timeline for a lot of reasons.”

    While the general consensus among Detroit’s urban farmers is positive, Detroit Hives wants bees removed from the ordinance. Detroit Hives co-founder Timothy Paule tells Metro Times that the ordinance puts too many restrictions on beekeeping, and will hinder its operations.

    Detroit Hives was founded in 2016 and has hives in over 29 locations including a mixture of vacant lots, urban gardens, and educational institutions in neighborhoods like Brightmoor, Jefferson Chalmers, Osbourne, and more.

    Under the proposed ordinance, Detroit Hives would need a separate license for each location.

    “Who is pushing for this ordinance as it relates to beekeeping?” Paule says. “After attending several community input sessions, there have been numerous comments as it relates to chickens and ducks. Many residents are against it. However, there have been no complaints as it relates to honeybees… Keeping chickens and ducks is illegal. Those people that’s been keeping chickens and ducks have received numerous complaints and [have] been ticketed. Keeping bees is not illegal in the city of Detroit. ”

    Beekeeping is somewhat of a legal gray area in Detroit. It is legal in the State of Michigan, with certain regulations, but the City of Detroit doesn’t have any laws or ordinances that mention beekeeping.

    “BSEED’s interpretation is that beekeeping is illegal, and they’re the ones doing the enforcing,” Jeffrey says. “The reason I think there is a gray area is because bees are not mentioned in the current regulations.”

    The ordinance also doesn’t allow animal keeping on vacant lots, so Detroit Hives would need to have several special land use hearings to get permission to operate on these spaces. Animal keepers also have to register with animal control and be subject to inspection.

    “To me, that looks like there’s more policing in areas that are predominantly beekeepers of color,” Paule says. “We’ve been doing this for over eight years focused on vacant lots. You have a vacancy. It’s not like we’re putting these hives in densely populated communities. It seems like the ideal place to keep them.”

    Special land use hearings through BSEED typically cost $1,000 but Jeffrey says the city is considering lowering the cost for farmers. Typically the $1,000 fee is for commercial building projects.

    Even if the cost is lowered, Paule worries that the process will take too long, rendering many of their spaces illegal in the meantime. He notes that it once took four years for Detroit Hives to legally acquire a home next to one of their hives through the city.

    “We had the resources, the funding. I don’t know what it was, but it took four years,” he says. “We don’t want that to be an issue with the ordinance where it takes that long to get the proper license for us to keep bees.”

    Breaking down Detroit’s proposed urban livestock ordinance

    • Chickens, ducks, and bees are allowed with a $50 license (fee may change)
    • Residential properties, schools, educational institutions, restaurants, and civic buildings are allowed up to eight birds (including any combination of chickens or ducks) and two bee hives
    • Urban farms and gardens are allowed up to 12 chickens and ducks and four bee hives
    • Chickens and ducks must be in a shelter with less than 200 square feet in floor area, thirty feet away from any neighboring dwelling, and five feet from both the side and rear property line
    • Beehives must be 25 feet away from the property line or include a flyaway barrier of six feet high
    • Bird enclosures and bee hives must be in the rear of the property behind the lot’s main structure (a house’s backyard, for example)
    • Raising livestock is only allowed as an “accessory use” to a pre-existing property and cannot be the primary use of the land
    • To establish a primary use project, a special land use hearing must be held, which may cost $1,000
    • Goats, horses, rabbits, turkeys, and other animals are not allowed
    • Exceptions may be permitted for education-oriented non-profits or 4-H programs with city approval

    If beekeepers don’t want bees included in the ordinance, Jeffrey says he’s willing to remove them. However, he notes that in meetings with local beekeepers, the response has been overwhelmingly positive and Detroit Hives is one of few outliers.

    Jeffrey says including bees in the ordinance is a way to protect beekeepers, the same way the urban agriculture ordinance protects farmers and gardeners from having their farms destroyed if they follow the rules.

    “My approach is that you want city code to expressly say you have a right to do something because if it doesn’t, at any time it can be challenged,” he says. “If it’s expressly stated, you’re in a much safer space… Our recommendation would be to move forward and review any tweaks to the language. This has been a 10-plus-year journey so I would hate to see us get close to the end and they ask for it be removed and I don’t know when another train is going to leave the station.”

    To the naysayers, Wallace stresses that many people are already keeping chickens and ducks in their backyard. Passing the ordinance is just a way to make sure it is being done properly, for both the neighbors and the animals’ sake.

    “No one wants to deal with chickens walking down the street,” she says. “And not everybody knows how to take care of animals… I don’t care what kind of space you got, [if] you can’t take care of them, well, you don’t need to have them. This will eliminate some of the bad actors running around… Right now there are people paying the price because it’s illegal and they’re gonna continue to pay that price unnecessarily. Let’s allow people to do it well. If you don’t do it well, you don’t get [the] permits.”

    She adds, “Pray in 2024, we’re gonna have an ordinance, and a good one.”

    Photos from Detroit Farm and Cider

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    Randiah Camille Green

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  • Michigan lawmakers want to shut up obnoxious cars with modified exhausts

    Michigan lawmakers want to shut up obnoxious cars with modified exhausts

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    Vroom, vroom!

    The thundering, ear-splitting sound of an illegally modified car can be unnerving and obnoxious, unless you’re into that kind of thing.

    Soon, state lawmakers are going to debate the merits of a bill that would crackdown on noisy, illegally modified car mufflers and exhausts. Under the bill introduced Thursday by Rep. Natalie Price, D-Berkley, police would have the authority to stop vehicles for excessive noise and impose stiffer fines and penalties.

    Not only can drivers be penalized, but those who modify an exhaust system to make it louder can also face fines.

    The bill enables law enforcement to impound or tow vehicles driven by repeat offenders.

    The bill offers “grace” for first-time offenders, vehicles that need to be repaired, and drivers who can demonstrate compliance with the Motor Vehicle Act.

    The driving force behind the bill is the nearly incessant rumbling of cars with modified exhausts on Woodward Avenue, which has been a cruising destination for auto enthusiasts for decades.

    “Day and night, Woodward is often used as a racetrack by drivers who have modified their vehicle’s exhaust systems with boosters that amplify their noise and often sound like gunshots,” Price said in a statement Monday. “The effect is deafening noise and a seriously eroded quality of life for residents and businesses in the surrounding neighborhoods. We need to clamp down on this purposefully disruptive behavior with a targeted approach.”

    Noise from exhaust systems raises quality-of-life issues and may have negative impacts on people’s health. The sound pollution can increase stress and trouble sleeping, which can exacerbate cardiovascular disease, mental health disorders, type 2 diabetes, and memory, attention, and concentration issues. Noise pollution is particularly problematic for vulnerable populations, such as children, seniors, veterans suffering from PTSD, and those undergoing at-home healing. Pets also are stressed out by loud noises.

    “My neighbor came over earlier tonight and was truly concerned it was gunshots not cars backfiring,” resident Alyssa Marsack said. “My dog has been scared several times just today and ran inside as she tried to enjoy her backyard. My neighbor with a young child has been kept up until 2 a.m. due to the noise on a weekday. I have had to close my windows and use the AC when I don’t want to just to keep the noise level down so I can sleep.”

    The current penalty for driving a car with a modified exhaust is $100. Under the proposed bill, first-time offenders face a $500 fine, and repeat offenders could be fined up to $1,000. A third offense could lead to a misdemeanor criminal charge. 

    “Existing law limits what we can do about it, and unfortunately, the current $100-per-offense civil infractions do not seem to deter this behavior,” Birmingham Police Chief Scott Grewer said. “With higher penalties for those intentionally seeking to disturb the peace, this bill will hopefully disincentivize vehicle modification and offer us more tools to deal with those who continue doing so.”

    Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak, said living along Woodward has become “a nightmare” for some residents.

    “While cruising on Woodward is a treasured tradition, the ear-splitting noise from new aftermarket exhausts on cars and bikes which run as loud as possible every day from the first warm day of the year until the first frost and late into each evening has made living along this historic corridor a nightmare for many residents,” McMorrow said. “Noise pollution at this volume is proven to have highly negative impacts on health — noise which disrupts sleep, wakes babies, shakes houses and even sounds like gunfire. Due to gaps in our current laws and because Woodward Avenue is a state highway, our local law enforcement departments have been unable to enact and enforce reasonable noise ordinances in the best interest of their residents.”

    The bill has been referred to the House Committee on Transportation, where it will be debated at a future date.

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    Steve Neavling

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  • Detroit sets all-time NFL draft record with 275,000 fans in attendance for Round 1

    Detroit sets all-time NFL draft record with 275,000 fans in attendance for Round 1

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    DETROIT — 275,000 fans packed the area around Campus Martius Park in downtown Detroit for night one of the 2024 NFL Draft. The Atlanta Voice was there for the record-breaking moment and more.

    By 6:30 PM, the crowd rivaled the scene in Nashville from 2019. More than 200,000 people crowded Broadway for the NFL Draft on night one. It was the last draft held before the COVID-19 pandemic.

    “I heard there’s close to 150,000 (people) already outside, waiting to get in,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said.

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    Itoro N. Umontuen

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  • Judge Dana Hathaway pushes back against efforts to remove her from ballot

    Judge Dana Hathaway pushes back against efforts to remove her from ballot

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    Wayne County Circuit Court

    Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Dana Hathaway.

    Wayne County Circuit Judge Dana Hathaway is firing back at an activist’s attempts to remove her from the ballot, saying she followed the directions given to her by the Michigan Bureau of Elections.

    Highland Park activist Robert Davis, who is known for disqualifying candidates from the ballot, is contesting Hathaway’s bid to run for reelection to the Wayne County Circuit Court. In a complaint filed with the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office on Wednesday, Davis argues Hathaway must be removed from the ballot because her affidavit of identity “contains a false statement.”

    Candidates are required to identify every county in which they ran for office. On Hathaway’s affidavit, which she submitted on March 5, the judge wrote “state” instead of the counties in which she previously ran.

    In an email to Metro Times, Hathaway says the Michigan Bureau of Elections notified her on Feb. 5 that it “is fine” to list “state” instead of the counties in which she ran.

    “An error on this line will not disqualify or cause issues for a candidate,” state officials wrote to Hathaway.

    This is proof, Hathaway says, that she did nothing wrong.

    “There was no mistake,” Hathaway said. “As you may be aware, Mr. Davis likes to create non-issues to harass candidates. … The Bureau of Election has made it clear he has no basis to challenge.”

    She added in a follow-up email on Friday morning, “This is much ado about nothing.”

    But Hathaway’s contention that Davis likes to “create non-issues” is misleading. Davis has successfully forced numerous candidates for judge, mayor, and city council off of ballots for failing to properly fill out affidavits of identities.

    In an interview with Davis on Friday, he says the Michigan Bureau of Elections does not have the final say on whether a candidate can be removed from a ballot.

    He plans to soon file a lawsuit with the Michigan Court of Claims, which he points out has the authority to remove candidates from the ballot, even if the Michigan Bureau of Elections contends a candidate is still eligible. In a lawsuit filed by Davis, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled in April 2023 that the statute, not state officials, determines the eligibility of a candidate. And the statute, Davis says, clearly states that a candidate cannot make mistakes or omissions on the affidavit of identity.

    “The statute is very clear, and the case law is very clear: If you omit mandatory information, then you cannot be certified to appear on the ballot,” Davis says. “It’s quite sad when you have a judge that is ignorant of the law.”

    Davis adds that the Bureau of Elections is “overstepping their legal authority in their effort to appease and accommodate judges.”

    Davis says the courts, not state election officials, will have the final decision.

    “Ultimately it’s going to be determined by the courts,” Davis says. I gave (state election officials) a courtesy to submit a challenge to give them an opportunity to try to address it. Now that I know they are going to defend their stupidity, this is going straight to the courts.”

    State election officials didn’t return requests for comment.

    Hathaway is part of a family with strong ties to the judicial system in Michigan. At least six Hathaways are current or retired Wayne County Circuit Court judges.

    Her husband Nicholas J. Bobak Hathaway, and another relative, Bridget Hathaway, also serve on the Wayne County Circuit Court. Her husband changed his last name to Hathaway when he ran for the position in 2020.

    Her father is Richard Hathaway, a retired Wayne County Circuit judge, one-time Wayne County treasurer, and a chief assistant Wayne County prosecutor. Her mother is Diane Hathaway, a former Michigan Supreme Court justice who was sentenced to a year in federal prison in 2013 after pleading guilty to bank fraud.

    Hathaway was hospitalized on March 20 for unknown reasons. At 1:18 p.m., her husband, who was downtown at the time, called 911 and told the operator his wife was on the upper floor of their home in Grosse Pointe Park.

    “I’m very scared,” according to audio of the redacted call obtained by Metro Times.

    Hathaway was at Ascension St. John in Detroit for several days.

    She did not respond to questions from Metro Times about her hospital stay.

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    Steve Neavling

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  • Meet Tracie McMillan, the Detroit journalist measuring the cash value of racism

    Meet Tracie McMillan, the Detroit journalist measuring the cash value of racism

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    Racism is often analyzed as a system of oppression that disadvantages people of color across various areas of life. Award-winning investigative reporter Tracie McMillan offers a fresh perspective, instead examining the benefits that white individuals, including herself, receive as a result of racism.

    In the author’s first book, The American Way of Eating, McMillan focused heavily on white resentment and the food industry. Now, in The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America, the author merges journalism with memoir to measure the cash benefit – and the cost – of racism for white Americans.

    The book, released on April 23, begins with McMillan’s own family and personal history of abuse, illness, and poverty, much of which took place in Michigan. Later, the author interlaces her story with profiles of four other middle-class white subjects, spanning generations and different areas of the country. The final chapter of the book discusses gentrification in Detroit specifically, highlighting McMillan’s own experience of purchasing an affordable home in the city, courtesy of the “bonus of racism” for white people.

    The author describes “the white bonus” as an estimate of the money a white person gets or saves because of white supremacy, through “family” and “social” bonuses. For McMillan herself, she estimates that value to be $371,934. Yet, she emphasizes throughout the book that these privileges are not without cost, impacting not only Black Americans but white individuals too.

    McMillan’s nationwide tour to promote The White Bonus will include local events in Detroit, Ann Arbor, Oak Park, and Flint from May 7-11.

    Metro Times spoke with McMillan, who splits her time between Detroit and Brooklyn, New York, about the book’s concept and connection to Michigan.

    The conversation was lightly edited for length and clarity.

    How did the idea for the concept of “the white bonus” evolve from your initial inspiration to write this book to what it is now?

    “I knew that I wanted to figure out how to write about whiteness and class in a way that served racial justice. The idea for this book really started in my head in 2016, when I saw both Trump’s rise and there was this book, Hillbilly Elegy that people were really excited about and I just felt like Hillbilly Elegy ain’t it, like this is not actually helpful. That book, in my opinion, largely blamed poor people for being poor. I don’t like when that happens to people who aren’t white. I don’t like when that happens to people who are white. For me, as a journalist, I care a lot about poverty, so I wanted to figure out some way to talk about that. Being a Midwestern, sort of lower-middle-class person in New York media, and at the time food circles, most of the people around me had a lot more financial backing than I did. What that meant was that in New York, it often felt like a conversation about white privilege. You would say, ‘Oh, well, you know, white kids, their parents pay for their university.’ And it’s like, ‘Well, that doesn’t really apply to me.’ That doesn’t apply to a lot of white people, but it doesn’t mean that race isn’t working somewhere. So for me, I wanted to figure out how to talk about white advantage for people who aren’t rich, because usually we just sort of mix the two in. The idea specifically for measuring it, that took a couple of years of writing a lot of stuff that I didn’t keep, but trying to figure out what I was thinking about. White privilege as a concept is so slippery, and it’s really easy to just start arguing about, does it exist, which kind of privilege, and I just felt like if you could put a measure on it, we could have a more productive conversation. At least then the conversation is not about does it exist, the conversation is about how big is it. You’ve already assumed that it exists, and that just felt more honest, to go about it that way.”

    How would you say that writing and reporting The White Bonus prompted you to confront your race in a new way, uniquely to your first book, The American Way of Eating?

    “When I worked on The American Way of Eating, I had decided to write that book in a way where I would take my race and gender really seriously. That felt like an honest way to tell that story. I had gone and worked undercover at a few jobs in the food system; two of those jobs, I was the only white person in either workplace and the only white woman in either workplace … In both of those places, I got treated differently because of my race. Usually, I was treated better. Gender was a mixed bag. In some instances, I was treated with more kindness. Then I write about how at Applebee’s I get sexually assaulted, a co-worker drugs my drink and I get assaulted. That’s also about gender. So for me, it was just really important to reflect those things in my writing and it was the first time that I had sort of time and headspace to really think about how being white and how being a woman was shaping my life. One of the great privileges of being able to write professionally is in some ways I get paid to think about stuff so I can explain it better. So, there’s no way I could have written The White Bonus if I hadn’t spent the first book trying to figure out and get a handle on how my race was shaping my life.”

    You’re a professional journalist, but this book is a mix of journalism and memoir. What was it like for you to merge research with such personal stories?

    “I wanted to bring in memoir because I couldn’t tell an honest story without it and that’s true on a number of levels. I think it is true in a really practical way because the book is about my financial opportunities and involves tracking what kind of support I’ve gotten from my family. I went through a period during college and for a little while after where I did not talk to my father and stepmother. I did not get any money from them. The reason I did not talk to them is because my experience was that my father was physically abusive, and then everybody was sort of pretending like it wasn’t happening. If I didn’t write about the abuse, I couldn’t explain why I was poor.”

    click to enlarge

    Sarah Rice

    Tracie McMillan splits her time between Detroit and Brooklyn, New York.

    “There’s also a deeper reason that gets pulled out later on in the book that, in the [2010s]… all these sort of big public stories about racism, and then the appearance of a forum where you don’t have to get past a gatekeeper to say your piece. So, I’m starting to read more and more and I’m realizing, Black people’s understanding of racism is very different from the one that I was raised with. I’ve seen all this stuff happen and when I’m listening to and reading Black writers talk about what it’s like to experience racism, I’m constantly hearing an echo of the things that I endured, sort of, in an abusive family. It’s not the same thing, it’s a completely different scale and scope and heft, but a lot of racial subjugation are the same things that people use to subjugate kids or partners or people that they’re abusing them in some way. For me, I just felt like that was such a powerful insight about my country, that the thing that gave me empathy for people of color talking about what it was like to live here was abuse. So I felt like I needed to write about it that way as well.”

    You talk in the book about living in rural Michigan growing up and then later living in Detroit. How would you say that living in Michigan specifically and writing this book about that helped expand your understanding of class?

    “Being from the rural Midwest, I’ve been working since I was 14, that is normal where I grew up. It is not normal for students at NYU. I think just because of the nature of my life, and also because in New York, I’ve written for and been part of fairly elite circles and publications. When I was in college, I worked for a very wealthy family, and I had a really unique opportunity to go up and down the class ladder even in a day. I was working through AmeriCorps at a public high school in New York City, so 7 a.m., start of classes, I’m there with Dominican immigrants, Black New Yorkers, and Chinese immigrant kids, helping them learn to read and navigate high school. Then, I would walk a couple miles uptown to where NYU was and I’d be in classes with people who are the children of movie producers and doctors and have much more financial access — and by the way, very, relatively diverse. NYU had a really diverse student body but most of the kids came from money. I was a scholarship kid, so it was very different for me. Then, in the evenings, I would go work as a nanny-slash-tutor for this family that had a house in Connecticut, the kids had been to seven of the continents already and they were 11 and 14, famous people would come over for dinner, and so most Americans don’t get to go up and down that much. Maybe you sort of get mobility and go up, but particularly because I chose a career as an independent writer, which I’m able to do because I have cheap housing, because I chose that career, some years I have money, some years I don’t. I just go up and down all the time, and that’s really different from how most Americans live, which I think gives me insight that’s really helpful in the kind of work that I do.”

    In the final chapter of the book, you talk about Detroit’s gentrification and how “the white bonus” has allowed you to buy property in the city. What would you say you learned specifically about the city of Detroit and the race and class in the city through your research for this book?

    “Before I wrote the book, I had a loose understanding that ‘Oh, racism, probably, hasn’t been great for the city,’ in a general sense. But the magic of investigative reporting is that you take those big ideas and you nail them down with facts. The way that the ‘white bonus’ is working for me in Detroit isn’t so much the family bonus, the actual money given to you that you wouldn’t have if you weren’t white, but the ‘white bonus’ here is more the bonus of racism. Racism put the city in super sale, all that predatory lending, it blew up the city’s housing market. The reason that we had so much housing that was so cheap was because of that predatory lending crisis and the cascade of first bank foreclosures and then tax foreclosures. All of that can really clearly be traced back to racism, particularly racism in money. Some of the banks involved… they intentionally targeted Black borrowers and even Black homeowners and convinced them to pull equity out of their homes. That is why the housing in Detroit went on super sale. I did try calling the family that owned my house before it went into foreclosure and they did not want to talk to me about this, understandably. There’s a lot of stigma around mortgages and stuff like that, but I just think, the timing of it, the house that I own went into foreclosure just as the bank foreclosure stuff was getting going. The value of the house was like the median value of houses that went into foreclosure. I just think that it’s highly unlikely I would be able to be a homeowner, particularly as a lower-income writer, if it hadn’t been cheap, and that means I benefited from racism, even though I didn’t do anything to sort of make that happen.”

    In the book, you critique mainstream journalists, including yourself, for centering white people, even though the book’s primary subjects are all white. Why did you feel that this focus was uniquely important?

    “I don’t think white America ever talks about this. White America never talks about whiteness as an advantage and I think it’s really damaging to our country. I think it’s really damaging to our democracy and our economy to be dishonest about the way that government policy has given more opportunity to white people. We usually talk about racism as this thing that takes away from Black people, it denies Black people opportunities, like you don’t get given a mortgage. That’s one way to look at it. But it is also true that for a mortgage, you get given it or you don’t get given it, but the active thing is the giving. If you didn’t get a mortgage, nothing is happening. If you get a mortgage, something is happening. So, things like [Federal Housing Administration] loans, white people got mortgages so they could become property owners, but we don’t talk about it that way. We don’t talk about it as a choice of government and so it obscures what’s actually happening, which is that the racial wealth gap is largely due to policies that let white families build more wealth than Black families. It’s not only because white families worked harder, made smart decisions, though often they had to do that. It’s that the government gave them the opportunity and made the conditions for stuff to move forward and then we get to white people as voters try to say, ‘We don’t want to spend money and give handouts to people of color because we didn’t have anything,’ except that we did. When we don’t talk about white advantage, it hides it and it strengthens racism and makes it almost impossible to actually start dismantling it. One thing I think about a lot is that there’s all these stories about white people all the time, and the one story we never talk about is that government made it sort of financially beneficial to be white. We never talk about that. That’s a hidden story.”

    Why do you feel that Detroiters should read your book?

    “Some of the history around racism in Oakland County is just bananas to me. I grew up in Oakland County. I did not know how much of a racist reputation Oakland County had. I did not know that Ferndale was the first northern school district to be sued by the federal government for operating a segregated district. I did not know right that in 197o or ’71, the Ku Klux Klan blew up 10 school buses to try and prolong segregation there. I mean, these are my people. I had no idea about any of this. So I think, particularly for white readers in Detroit, because the previous generations are hiding that stuff from us, I think it’s important to understand. If you’re a white person in Detroit, you can understand some of why Black people might not be super trusting or excited about talking to you and that that history is there. I was raised to be like, ‘I’m colorblind,’ and I should never talk about race. That also makes it really hard for me to be friends with anyone who’s not white because they’re like, ‘What are you doing? You don’t understand reality.’ I want to be able to talk to my neighbors and have them feel like I see them as my equal. That’s important. So for me, just being a good neighbor in Detroit means having some understanding of how racism in the region has worked. The depth of the racism in Oakland County really blew my mind. I did not know that history and it was really humbling and upsetting to learn it.”

    click to enlarge The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America is out now. - Courtesy photo

    Courtesy photo

    The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America is out now.

    What do you feel or hope that both white and non-white readers can differently learn from reading The White Bonus?

    “I think for white readers, to examine how we think about race and racism and how it impacts our lives. I think, for me, doing this project made me personally much more dedicated to doing work in my communities to try and end racism and mitigate sort of its worst effects. I belong to my tenant organization in Brooklyn, and I’m one of 48 tenants. I’m the only white tenant and the co-chair of the tenant organization and I just sort of resolved that I would put in more work. Understanding so much of how my financial stability has depended on me being white encouraged me to help my neighbors out when I can, and it’s also just on a day-to-day level. The management tends to be more receptive to me than to my other neighbors when we’re making complaints about the building, so there’s a way that I can use the sort of racism that benefits me and hears me more easily than other folks to help people. It’s important to focus on ‘the white bonus,’ but I also write about its costs, about racism’s costs. I think that’s actually one of the more powerful things about doing this measurement process is that once you measure what white people are getting, it frees you up to be honest about what racism costs all of us, including a lot of white people, and you can’t really get there if you can’t admit that it’s a bonus first. So I think for white people, it’s to start thinking about ‘Is this really worth it? Do you get enough because of racism? Do you think staying silent about racism is worth all the things that costs you?’ We don’t have public health care in this country largely because of racism. Higher education and student debt has gotten way worse because of the racism of white voters who wanted to take their taxes out of the system because they were worried about public programs going to Black and brown folks. As the college population gets less white, support for state funding for universities goes down. White Americans keep co-signing on these really punitive programs, making people prove that they deserve help because they think it’s not gonna come for us, but that’s not how it works.”

    “For people who aren’t white, I don’t know that any of the broad argument of the book is surprising to anybody. Most people of color are aware that white people have gotten more help than they and their families have. My hope is that it’s like receipts, it’s sort of like, ‘Here’s a compendium, giving you really clear and specific examples of how that is happening.’ I think for both white people and people who aren’t white, if we only focus on the bonus part, which we have to be honest about if we’re not also honest about the cost, I don’t think we’ll get anywhere helpful. Certainly, Black and brown people pay the deepest cost for racism, but a lot of white people need the things that racism ruins. I think that there’s sort of an opportunity to start building a country where we can all work together as equals and live up to the ideals that were told this country holds dear because we don’t, generally speaking, do a very good job of treating everyone like their equal, but if we can start being honest about how racism works, I think there’s an opportunity there to really build.”

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    Layla McMurtrie

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  • Bizarre mistake could force Judge Dana Hathaway from ballot

    Bizarre mistake could force Judge Dana Hathaway from ballot

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    Wayne County Circuit Court

    Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Dana Hathaway.

    Highland Park activist Robert Davis, who has a history of knocking political candidates off of ballots, is challenging the candidacy of Wayne County Circuit Judge Dana Hathaway.

    Davis alleged in a complaint filed Wednesday that Hathaway, who is running for reelection, should be removed from the ballot because her affidavit of identity “contains a false statement.”

    On candidates’ affidavits, they are required to identify every county in which they ran for office. On Hathaway’s affidavit, which she submitted on March 5, the judge inexplicably wrote “state” instead of the counties in which she previously ran.

    She should have written “Wayne County” and “Oakland County,” Davis points out in his complaint to election officials, including Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

    “It’s very clear that her affidavit of identity doesn’t comply with the statute because she failed to list the counties that she previously ran in as a candidate,” Davis tells Metro Times.

    While the mistake may seem minor, the law clearly states that a candidate is not qualified to appear on the ballot if there are any false statements.

    Davis has gotten numerous other candidates removed from the ballot for similar mistakes and false statements.

    Asked whether state law allows Hathaway to fix the false statement, Davis says, “There’s not a chance.”

    Hathaway is part of a family with strong ties to the judicial system in Michigan. At least six Hathaways are current or retired Wayne County Circuit Court judges.

    Her husband Nicholas J. Bobak Hathaway, and another relative, Bridget Hathaway, also serve on the Wayne County Circuit Court. Her husband changed his last name to Hathaway when he ran for the position in 2020.

    Her father is Richard Hathaway, a retired Wayne County Circuit judge, one-time Wayne County treasurer, and a chief assistant Wayne County prosecutor. Her mother is Diane Hathaway, a former Michigan Supreme Court justice who was sentenced to a year in federal prison in 2013 after pleading guilty to bank fraud.

    Davis isn’t done trying to remove other judges from the 2024 ballot.

    “There are going to be other incumbent judges who are going to be adversely impacted as well,” Davis says, adding that he will file complaints against them in the near future.

    The deadline for an incumbent to file for candidacy or fix any false statements was the end of March.

    “It was mandatory for Hathaway’s affidavit of identity to provide the counties she previously ran in as a candidate,” Davis wrote, citing state law.

    Metro Times couldn’t reach Hathaway for comment.

    Hathaway was hospitalized on March 20 for unknown reasons. At 1:18 p.m., her husband, who was downtown at the time, called 911 and told the operator his wife was on the upper floor of their home in Grosse Pointe Park.

    “I’m very scared,” according to audio of the redacted call obtained by Metro Times.

    Hathaway was at Ascension St. John in Detroit for several days.

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    Steve Neavling

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  • 2 children killed, several people hurt when suspected drunk driver crashes into Michigan birthday party, officials say

    2 children killed, several people hurt when suspected drunk driver crashes into Michigan birthday party, officials say

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    4/20: Saturday Morning

    01:22:18

    A young brother and sister died and 15 people were injured, several seriously, when vehicle driven by a suspected drunken driver crashed into a birthday party Saturday at a boat club, a Michigan sheriff said.

    Monroe County Sheriff Troy Goodnough said an 8-year-old girl and her 5-year-old brother died in the crash when a 66-year-old woman crashed 25 feet into the building at about 3 p.m. at the Swan Creek Boat Club in Berlin Township, about 30 miles south of Detroit.

    He did not identify the woman driving the vehicle but said she was taken into custody suspected of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated causing death.

    He said she was cooperating with authorities.

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  • Lawsuit alleges Detroit police commissioners ‘sabotaged’ efforts to resolve backlog of citizen complaints

    Lawsuit alleges Detroit police commissioners ‘sabotaged’ efforts to resolve backlog of citizen complaints

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    click to enlarge

    Steve Neavling

    Melanie White, the former executive manager for the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners, filed a lawsuit against the city of Detroit.

    A former top executive with the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners claims in a lawsuit that she was discriminated against because of her gender and that “a clique” of commissioners “sabotaged” her attempts to resolve a backlog of hundreds of citizen complaints against cops.

    The lawsuit filed in Wayne County Circuit Court on Wednesday alleges Melanie White was unlawfully fired from her job as executive manager after she was tasked with eliminating a “massive citizen complaint backlog.”

    The suit, which names the city of Detroit and former Board of Police Commissioners Chairman Bryan Ferguson, claims she was subjected to “a campaign of vitriol, verbal bullying, harassment, character assassination, unequal treatment and violations.”

    According to the lawsuit, Ferguson and other commissioners sabotaged her efforts to close the backlog “to justify her suspension and later termination.”

    Ferguson later resigned in July 2023 after he was arrested for allegedly getting a blow job from a sex worker in his truck on the city’s northwest side.

    Despite reporting the sabotage to Mayor Mike Duggan, he did nothing to address a work stoppage by employees who disliked White, the lawsuit states.

    White’s attorney Carl Edwards says Ferguson was clearly biased against women and treated White unfairly because of her gender.

    “It’s tragic,” White’s attorney Carl Edwards tells Metro Times. “A woman with 20 years of experience with a sterling record of work performance lost her job because of a man who is a serial sex harasser who favors men over women. It’s an awful case.”

    White also helped several women coworkers file gender discrimination complaints because they were paid “substantially” less than their male counterparts.

    At that point, White had a target on her back, Edwards says.

    White took a mental health leave of absence from January to March 2023 “because of severe bullying, harassment, hatred, retaliation and discrimination” by Ferguson, the lawsuit states. During her absence, Ferguson ordered her belongings to be removed from her office and sent to a storage room, according to the lawsuit.

    Several days after she returned to work, White says Ferguson suspended her and escorted her from her workplace with the help of a “fully armed” cop.

    Less than a week later, a top city attorney notified Ferguson that the suspension was improper and violated board policies and procedures. The attorney ordered Ferguson to reinstate White, but he refused, the suit alleges.

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, citizen complaints began to pile up because of a significant reduction in staff.

    Under pressure from the public, Duggan held a meeting in January 2022 with White, police Chief James White, and several commissioners to eliminate the backlog, which had “skyrocketed,” the suit states. Duggan’s staff developed a software to monitor the progress of the work.

    In another meeting with the mayor in October 2022, White complained that some police commissioners and staff members were obstructing progress on the backlog. Since the software allowed city officials to monitor the work, Duggan’s administration should have been able to identify the saboteurs, according to the suit.

    “They didn’t have to rely on anything Melanie White said,” Edwards says. “They had direct eyes on it. That’s what makes this case so egregious. The program was being sabotaged, and they took no action. To me, it’s baffling.”

    To demonstrate that White was a good employee, the lawsuit points out that the board’s three previous chairs described her as “excellent” and “outstanding.” In October 2022, Chief White called her “an amazing professional.”

    But when Ferguson became chairman in July 2022, White’s “job performance was consistently and unfairly criticized,” the suit states.

    Duggan’s office declined to comment. Metro Times couldn’t reach Ferguson for comment.

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    Steve Neavling

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  • Michigan communities are raking in benefits of legalized weed

    Michigan communities are raking in benefits of legalized weed

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    As cannabis sales continue to hit new highs in Michigan, communities that embraced legal weed are reaping the rewards with an influx of jobs, tax revenue, community benefits, and renovated buildings.

    The cannabis industry has seen tremendous growth since the state’s first adult-use dispensaries opened in December 2019, with sales hitting unprecedented levels year after year.

    In 2023, licensed dispensaries rang up a record $3.06 billion in sales, a 25% increase over 2022.

    The surge in demand for legal weed has not only transformed the landscape of the state’s economy but also revitalized communities that have allowed recreational cannabis businesses to open.

    One of the most significant impacts is the cascade of tax revenue from cannabis sales. With a 10% excise tax on recreational cannabis sales, hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to local governments, schools, and roads since 2020.

    The state recently sent more than $87 million to 269 municipalities and counties as part of their share of excise taxes in 2023. That includes 99 cities, 69 townships, and 71 counties.

    The communities and counties each receive more than $59,000 annually for every licensed cannabis dispensary and microbusiness located within their jurisdictions.

    For cities that have embraced the industry, the revenue turned into a windfall.

    The city of Detroit, which is bouncing back from bankruptcy, leads the state with the most adult-use dispensaries at 33. The state sent the city a $1.95 million check for excise taxes last month.

    The predominantly Black city is taking a progressive and unique approach in how it spends the funds. While some cities are using the money to supplement their general fund budget, Detroit is planning to finance initiatives aimed at addressing “the negative impact resulting from disproportionate enforcement on Detroiters during the years cannabis was illegal,” says Kim James, director of the city’s Office of Marijuana Ventures.

    Abundant studies have shown that marijuana prohibition has overwhelmingly targeted Black communities with stiff jail sentences and excessive fines. One of the most detrimental impacts of marijuana convictions is the loss of employment opportunities.

    The city is focusing on using the money for business development opportunities for marginalized groups, entrepreneurial programs for young people, and housing development for people affected by prohibition.

    In Hazel Park, which received more than $590,000 for 10 dispensaries last month, city officials say the influx in revenue prevented a cut in services. As recreational marijuana sales were becoming legal, the city’s pension bill was rapidly rising, like those in other communities. The city used the excise tax revenue to help meet its pension obligations.

    “If we weren’t able to offset some of those increased costs from cannabis monies, we would have had to make cuts in services or pass those costs on to taxpayers,” Hazel Park city manager Edward Klobucher tells Metro Times. “It’s a huge benefit. It absolutely preserved services.”

    With 26 dispensaries, Ann Arbor received $1.54 million in excise tax revenues last month. Lansing got $1.42 million with 24 dispensaries, and Grand Rapids received $1.36 million in 23 dispensaries.

    In addition to new tax revenues, cities also have reached agreements with cannabis businesses to provide community benefits — a perk that no other industry provides.

    click to enlarge

    Courtesy of JARS Cannabis

    JARS Cannabis recently opened a new dispensary in Hazel Park.

    In Detroit, the city launched the “Good Neighborhood Plan,” a benefits initiative that all adult-use licensees are required to take part in. The plan focuses on ensuring that cannabis businesses are supporting Detroiters by doing things like ensuring that at least 50% of their full-time staff is Detroit residents or have a prior controlled substances record, purchasing and displaying a Detroit-based resident-owned brand, donating to a Detroit-headquartered nonprofit organization, or helping fund the Homegrown Social Equity Fund, which is aimed at initiatives for people from communities that have been disproportionately impacted by marijuana prohibition.

    So far, the city has raised more than $250,000 for the Homegrown Social Equity Fund to provide business grants to social equity cannabis entrepreneurs.

    “Detroit has made sure that ownership of recreational dispensaries is diverse, but support for the social equity businesses is a continuing priority because the competition is intense, so we are invested in making sure these businesses can thrive,” James tells Metro Times.

    In Hazel Park, a city that is becoming increasingly popular among young professionals and families, dispensaries donate time and money for a variety of projects. One of the most popular is the Hazel Park Promise Zone, which provides college scholarships to all students who attend the city’s public school district. Cannabis businesses have become a major donor to this initiative.

    “There is no reason for someone who goes to Hazel Park schools not to go to college when they are done with high school,” Klobucher says.

    Dispensaries are also a major funding source for the Hazel Park Junior Vikings, a program that enhances recreational opportunities for students.

    When a young girl was recently sick with cancer, cannabis businesses came through with “significant donations,” Klobucher says.

    “They have been some of the best partners around,” Klobucher says of the cannabis businesses. “We hope to continue with their level of success. It’s good for the city of Hazel Park.”

    In addition to providing new tax revenue and community benefit agreements, cannabis businesses are also occupying previously abandoned buildings, contributing to the elimination of blight.

    “Once in a while we hear criticism in the community that the last thing we need is another dispensary,” Klobucher says. “When those dispensaries come in, they invariably occupy a vacant, often blighted building, or an underused building, and they have definitely helped to improve the appearance of the city.”

    Dispensaries, growers, and processing plants are also providing a lot of good-paying jobs.

    click to enlarge Dispensaries, growers, and processing plants are providing a lot of good-paying jobs. - Courtesy of JARS Cannabis

    Courtesy of JARS Cannabis

    Dispensaries, growers, and processing plants are providing a lot of good-paying jobs.

    STIIIZY, a popular cannabis brand with dispensaries in Ferndale, Kalamazoo, and Battle Creek, made headlines when it hired about 200 laid-off Burger King workers last year after a franchise owner closed 26 restaurants, mostly in metro Detroit. The workers started at $16 to $17 an hour at STIIIZY’s manufacturing facility in Orion Township, where the company makes a popular line of vape pods, infused blunts, and pre-rolls.

    Those wages are typical at cannabis businesses.

    “At STIIIZY, we mean it when we say we give to grow,” Daysi Garcia, social equity and impact specialist for STIIIZY, tells Metro Times. “That’s why, in 2023, STIIIZY partnered with five different Michigan nonprofits that serve communities disproportionately impacted by prohibition and enforcement. To date, we have committed $5,000 thus far, and these investments have extended to Kalamazoo and over eight counties in south Michigan.”

    This month, STIIIZY hosted two virtual hiring events and interviewed more than 75 candidates on a single day.

    The company, like many other cannabis businesses in Michigan, also donates money and food to communities. In November 2022, STIIIZY partnered with Forgotten Harvest, a nonprofit that donates and grows food for lower-income people in metro Detroit, and served more than 200 families through a pop-up-style pantry.

    In April 2023, the company teamed up with the South Michigan Food Bank to assemble, box, and sort pantry items that were distributed across eight counties.

    In the summer of 2023, STIIIZY joined Sisters in Business and Black Wall Street Kalamazoo, two groups focused on business opportunities for people of color, to provide two $5,000 grants for people to attend the Black Entrepreneurship Training Academy (BETA), a five-month program to help Black entrepreneurs.

    Puff Cannabis, which has 10 dispensaries in Michigan, focuses on giveaways. At each location, the Madison Heights-based company distributes about 250 turkeys for Thanksgiving.

    For Christmas, Puff Cannabis has an annual giveaway called “Jackets for Joints.” Every person who brought in a new children’s coat for people in need received a five-pack jar of infused Jeeter prerolls, which is valued at $50. Some of the stores each gave away as many as 300 coats, says Nick Hannawa, a partner and chief legal counsel for Puff Cannabis.

    “It makes a huge impact,” Hannawa tells Metro Times.

    Puff Cannabis also donates to numerous veteran organizations and gives money to each city where they have a dispensary to “use for whatever they deem necessary,” Hannawa says.

    In the summer of 2022, the cannabis company donated money to resurface basketball courts at Grant Park in Utica.

    In addition to its giveaways, Puff Cannabis is helping communities by renovating ramshackle buildings to use for its dispensaries. Some of the renovations cost up to $300,000, Hannawa says.

    “We’re taking buildings that are in bad shape, fixing them up, and making them brand new,” Hannawa says. “That makes a huge impact in a city because you are raising taxes and fixing up the buildings.”

    Hannawa says residents and municipalities that were scared of legalized marijuana are starting to come around because of the benefits that dispensaries are bringing to other communities.

    “I think it’s changing people’s minds,” Hannawa says. “People understand we are not bringing all this crime and craziness. It’s not ‘reefer madness.’ People are welcoming it. City councils are saying we would rather have a dispensary that is giving back to the community and renovating buildings. They are seeing the benefits.”

    The Greenhouse of Walled Lake, the first adult-use dispensary in Oakland County, is credited with helping transform the small community where it’s located.

    “Thanks to Greenhouse of Walled Lake and the two other dispensaries in our city, we are able to supplement both our police and fire departments,” Walled Lake city manager Dennis Whitt says. “The dramatic improvements in downtown Walled Lake are benefiting the residents and businesses, in addition to very cool recreational activities, which improve Walled Lake families’ quality of life in our wonderful community.”

    In addition to donating to veterans and Aim High School, an alternative school for students with special needs, The Greenhouse of Walled Lake has also been responsible for revitalizing the area around its dispensary. The owner, Jerry Millen, helped renovate the nearby Banks-Dolbeer-Bradley-Foster farmhouse, an 1833 landmark in Walled Lake that served as a depot on the Underground Railroad to help enslaved people reach freedom.

    For three consecutive summers, The Greenhouse of Walled Lake hosted its Summer Kickoff Park, which features Oakland County’s largest fireworks display, barbecue, animal adoptions, and other entertainment. This summer, Millen plans to include a concert.

    Millen also set up a tent to help a local Girl Scouts troop sell cookies outside the dispensary.

    In May 2023, The Greenhouse of Walled Lake hosted a free event with rapper-turned-country singer Jelly Roll, which drew about 5,000 people.

    Without a place to buy good coffee in town, Millen also built a coffee shop with freshly made doughnuts using a vintage-style French LeMont truck.

    “I’m trying to bring businesses back to Walled Lake,” Millen tells Metro Times.

    At Christmas time, The Greenhouse spent between $30,000 and $40,000 on gifts for children in need. Millen even dressed up as Santa.

    Walled Lake officials were so impressed with Millen’s civic pride that they appointed him to serve on the community’s Downtown Development Authority.

    “Now that we’ve been successful, it’s been great to give back,” Millen says. “Making a kid smile or helping a father out, it means a lot. It’s the coolest feeling when you can go out and help.”

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  • Now that it’s lit up, people seem to like Detroit’s new I-94 sign

    Now that it’s lit up, people seem to like Detroit’s new I-94 sign

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    Maybe that new Detroit sign along I-94 isn’t so bad after all.

    A week after the city was hammered with criticism on social media for spending more than $269,000 on the big, blocky letters, many people warmed up to the sign once it was illuminated Monday night.

    The city installed the “Hollywood-”style sign last week ahead of the NFL Draft in Detroit planned for April 25-27.

    At first, the sign was mocked for falling short of expectations, especially considering its hefty price tag.

    But that criticism — and there was a lot of it — gave way to admiration when the chunky, eight-foot-tall letters lit up along I-94 eastbound between Central Street and Cecil Avenue.

    “See it’s cute yall,” one woman exclaimed on Instagram after a video of the illuminated sign was posted.

    “That looks way better,” another user posted with a fire emoji.

    One person added, “I know they was like wait until they see this bitch light up.”

    “Perfect example for Detroit — people talk about you and don’t fuck with you until you shining,” one post read.

    Another wrote, “It’s actually nice, yall horrible people.”

    The city is adding landscaping to the sign this week.

    “Once the landscaping is done its gonna be dope,” one person wrote.

    The city spent an additional $135,900 on five smaller “Welcome to Detroit” signs that will be erected on M-39 at Eight Mile Road, M-39 at Ford Road, I-75 at Eight Mile Road, I-96 at Telegraph Road, and I-94 at Moross Road.

    The signs were built by the Fairmont Sign Company, which for 50 years has been a Detroit-based, family-owned business.

    Mayor Mike Duggan blamed the criticism on confusion caused by an unofficial image shared on social media that was likely created by AI and depicted an enormous sign towering over the freeway. That image was never intended to be a rendering of the actual sign, but it sure seems to have raised expectations.

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  • Wayne County treasurer rejects moratorium on foreclosures despite troubling study

    Wayne County treasurer rejects moratorium on foreclosures despite troubling study

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    Lee DeVito

    Detroit City Council is calling on Wayne County to halt owner-occupied house foreclosures this year.

    Wayne County Treasurer Eric Sabree is defying demands to impose a moratorium on owner-occupied home foreclosures after a study suggested the city is illegally overtaxing houses worth less than $35,000.

    In a statement to Metro Times on Thursday, Sabree said he will not pause foreclosures amid calls from the Detroit City Council and activists to do so.

    “This year, the number of foreclosed properties is notably lower compared to previous years,” Sabree said. “This decline can be attributed to homeowners being given time to catch up over the past 4 years, alongside increased availability of assistance programs and community outreach in the Wayne County Treasurer’s Office.”

    Last month, Detroit City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling on the treasurer to stop owner-occupied foreclosures on houses valued at less than $30,000 because illegally overassessed property values would likely force many lower-income residents out of their homes.

    According to a study by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, the city of Detroit is cheating lower-income residents by illegally and disproportionately overtaxing homes worth less than $35,000. By contrast, owners of the highest value homes in Detroit are far less likely to be overtaxed.

    The study found that Detroit overassessed the value of 72% of the homes worth less than $34,700. A vast majority of the homes worth more than $35,000 were not overassessed, according to the study.

    Activists for the Coalition for Property Tax Justice, a group that advocates for homeowners in Detroit, championed the call for a moratorium, saying the city “systematically overassessed” the lowest value homes.

    Bernadette Atuahene, a property law scholar who has studied Detroit’s property tax foreclosure crisis, said Sabree’s failure to impose a moratorium will unfairly cost residents their homes.

    “Treasurer Sabree is ignoring the demands of the City Council to cruelly foreclose on the homes of Detroiters who may be in foreclosure due to illegally inflated property taxes,” Atuahene told Metro Times in a statement. “The power of the County to take someone’s home is an enormous responsibility and should be wielded with extreme caution. However, Treasurer Sabree has chosen to recklessly foreclose on hundreds of homes valued under $34,700 — a decision that is morally, economically, and legally irresponsible.”

    The coalition has been behind a separate push to compensate an untold number of Detroit homeowners who were overtaxed for their homes more than a decade ago. Between 2010 and 2016, the city of Detroit overtaxed homeowners by at least $600 million.

    The Michigan Constitution prohibits property from being assessed at more than 50% of its market value. Between 2010 and 2016, the city assessed properties at as much as 85% of their market value.

    In his statement, Sabree said his office supports removing some homes from the list of foreclosures, but not because of the study.

    “Some homeowners who face extreme financial hardships may be offered an opportunity to apply for City of Detroit exemption and property tax assistance and may be considered for foreclosure removal — we are requesting this through the courts,” he said.

    The city council also called on Mayor Mike Duggan’s administration to reduce property taxes for low-value homes because of the study’s findings. But the city’s assessor, Alvin Horhn, called the University of Chicago study “utter nonsense” and “politically driven.”

    Metro Times couldn’t reach council President Mary Sheffield for comment.

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  • Right-wing fraudsters fined $1.25M for racist robocall scheme in Michigan, other states

    Right-wing fraudsters fined $1.25M for racist robocall scheme in Michigan, other states

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    Screengrab/36th District Court

    Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were arraigned in 36th District Court in Detroit.

    Two notorious right-wing fraudsters behind an election misinformation campaign in Michigan and other states agreed to pay up to $1.25 million on Tuesday as part of a lawsuit settlement.

    New York Attorney General Letitia James reached the agreement with Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, who were charged with multiple felony counts in Michigan in 2020 for making robocalls with bogus claims to discourage Black voter turnout in the Detroit area.

    James, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation (NCBCP), and several others sued the conservative activists in May 2021 after James’s office found that Wohl and Burkman orchestrated a voter suppression campaign to spread election misinformation targeting Black voters.

    A federal judge ruled in James’s favor in March 2023, saying the fraudsters “set into motion a full-scale voter suppression operation during the summer of 2020 to discourage eligible voters from voting by targeting mail-in voting in the 2020 Election.”

    On Tuesday, James’s office reached the $1.25 million settlement.

    “The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, and it belongs to everyone,” James said in a settlement. “We will not allow anyone to threaten that right. Wohl and Burkman orchestrated a depraved and disinformation-ridden campaign to intimidate Black voters in an attempt to sway the election in favor of their preferred candidate. Now they will pay up to $1.25 million.”

    Jacob and Wohl also agreed to refrain from election-related mass communications that are intimidating, threatening, or include false information over the next eight years.

    In the Michigan criminal case, a judge ordered Jacob and Wohl to call back the victims and admit the messages were illegal. Wohl and Burkman have argued their actions are protected by the First Amendment. The case made its way to the Michigan Supreme Court, which has not yet made a decision.

    To churn out the robocalls, Wohl and Jacobs sought a Black voice actress to make the recording, which they called their “Black robo.” The call falsely claimed that personal information used on mail-in ballots could lead to arrests for outstanding arrest warrants or be used to collect unpaid credit card debts. The calls also falsely warned that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could use the information to track people for mandatory vaccines.

    An estimated 85,000 robocalls with false information were made in Michigan, Ohio and New York.

    In the civil case, a judge ruled that Jacob and Wohl violated the Voting Rights Act, Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, and the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

    “These men engaged in a conspiracy to suppress Black votes in the 2020 general election,” NCBCP President and CEO Melanie Campbell said in a statement. “They used intimidation and scare tactics, attempting to spread harmful disinformation about voting in an effort to silence Black voices. Their conduct cannot and will not be tolerated. This settlement serves as a marker for those who seek to engage in such efforts. There will be consequences for their actions. They will pay for the harm they cause to our democracy.”

    Civil rights attorneys said they hope the lawsuit settlement sends a message that voter suppression won’t be tolerated.

    “This groundbreaking settlement should send an emphatic message to anyone who aims to prevent Black people from exercising their right to vote,” said Damon T. Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which represented NCBCP. “Voter suppression and voter intimidation are illegal, immoral, and anti-democratic. Regardless of whether the perpetrators are government actors or private citizens, your actions will have consequences, and you will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. At a time when orchestrated voter intimidation and disinformation campaigns are on the rise, we must all remain vigilant in working to ensure that access to the ballot is fair, easy, and accessible.”

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  • Disability justice groups demand more resources in Detroit’s budget

    Disability justice groups demand more resources in Detroit’s budget

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    Two influential disability justice groups have joined forces to launch a campaign calling for “substantial increases” in funding for people with disabilities in Detroit.

    The objective of Fund Disabled Detroiters is to persuade Mayor Mike Duggan’s administration and Detroit City Council to devote more resources for people with disabilities.

    Detroit Disability Power and Warrior on Wheels are leading the campaign, which runs through April.

    A disproportionate number of Detroiters live with disabilities. According to the 2020 American Community Survey, more than 128,000 Detroiters — or one out of five residents — have at least one disability. By contrast, roughly one out of seven Michigan residents live with disabilities.

    “Disability is not a niche issue; it’s a universal concern that can affect anyone at any time,” Lawrence Franklin III, lead organizer with Warriors on Wheels, said in a statement Monday. “By prioritizing disability funding, we’re investing in a Detroit where everyone thrives.”

    The campaign is running now because the Detroit City Council is beginning to explore Duggan’s annual budget proposal, which goes into effect on July 1.

    In previous years, Detroit Disability Power led a campaign to increase the budget of the Office of Disability Affairs to $1.4 million annually. This year’s campaign is different because it’s taking a more comprehensive approach, calling for increases across multiple departments.

    Among the key demands are:

    • Adding $3 million to the Department of Election to increase physical accessibility and federal compliance at polling locations. Only 16% of the polling locations in metro Detroit are fully accessible, according to the campaign.

    • $7.8 million for the Detroit Department of Transportation to improve paratransit and fixed-route accessibility for buses.

    • $25 million to the Department of Public Works to repair sidewalks and ensure greater mobility for people using wheelchairs and other mobility devices.

    The full list of requests is available online.

    “This campaign underscores the importance of recognizing that funding for disability extends beyond the Office of Disability Affairs,” NaJaRee Nixon, lead organizer from Detroit Disability Power, said. “It’s about fostering inclusivity and dismantling ableism in every direction our tax dollars flow.”

    People with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty or unable to afford essentials, such as housing, child care, food, transportation, and health care, according to a report from the Michigan Association of United Ways and research hub United for ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed).

    As part of the campaign, activists are encouraging residents to participate in a letter-writing initiative to urge the council and mayor to support the budget recommendations.

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  • Emmy-nominated actress Diarra Kilpatrick on new series

    Emmy-nominated actress Diarra Kilpatrick on new series

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    Emmy-nominated actress Diarra Kilpatrick on new series “Diarra from Detroit” – CBS News


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    Emmy-nominated actress Diarra Kilpatrick discusses her new series, “Diarra from Detroit,” which she created, executive produced and starred in on BET+

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  • Detroit City Council takes action after study suggests lowest valued homes were overtaxed

    Detroit City Council takes action after study suggests lowest valued homes were overtaxed

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    Steve Neavling

    The Spirit of Detroit statute outside of city hall.

    The Detroit City Council is calling for a reduction in property taxes for low-valued homes and a moratorium on owner-occupied foreclosures after a study suggested the city is illegally overtaxing houses worth less than $35,000.

    The council unanimously passed the resolutions on Tuesday, a day after housing activists held a news conference about the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy study.

    “While we have undoubtedly had some key victories in our attempt to restore dignity to impacted homeowners and provide restitution, none of it has been done without a fight and a willingness to stay vigilant,” council President Mary Shefield said. “The most egregious part of the systemic overassessment of properties in Detroit has been the issue of regressivity, which is when low-value homes are assessed at a higher percentage of their true market value than are high-value homes. While we recognize the assessor’s job is difficult, the stakes are too high to sit idly by while the city’s lowest-valued homes are consistently overassessed.”

    It’s unlikely that Mayor Mike Duggan’s administration is going to lower assessments because Detroit Assessor Alvin Horhn called the study “utter nonsense” and “politically driven.”

    Horhn said the methods used by the University of Chicago “violate Michigan tax law and the practices that every assessor in Michigan is legally required to follow.”

    It isn’t yet clear whether Wayne County Treasurer Eric Sabree plans to consider reducing assessments for homes valued at less than $35,000. Metro Times is awaiting a response from him.

    Activists for the Coalition for Property Tax Justice, a group that advocates for homeowners in Detroit, called on the council to address the assessments.

    Bernadette Atuahene, a property law scholar who has studied Detroit’s property tax foreclosure crisis, called the council’s resolutions “an amazing milestone in our fight for property tax justice.”

    “The City Council finally acknowledged the continued over assessments and unanimously demanded that the Duggan administration and the County Treasurer take action to correct the ongoing property tax injustice,” Atuahene said in a statement. “Now Treasurer Sabree and the Duggan administration must follow these resolutions with action.”

    The group has been behind a separate push to compensate an untold number of Detroit homeowners who were overtaxed for their homes more than a decade ago. Between 2010 and 2016, the city of Detroit overtaxed homeowners by at least $600 million.

    The Michigan Constitution prohibits property from being assessed at more than 50% of its market value. Between 2010 and 2016, the city assessed properties at as much as 85% of their market value.

    The latest study suggests that homes valued at less than $35,000 are disproportionately overassessed. By contrast, the highest valued homes in the city are the least likely to be overassessed, according to the study.

    Activists are worried about another wave of foreclosures based on inflated property taxes on the lower valued houses, which tend to be owned by people struggling financially.

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  • Lawsuit seeks to save trees, protect residents at contaminated AB Ford Park in Detroit

    Lawsuit seeks to save trees, protect residents at contaminated AB Ford Park in Detroit

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    Three Detroit residents filed a lawsuit against the city this week in hopes of halting a controversial plan to remove more than 250 trees from AB Ford Park and cover the contaminated park in two feet of new soil.

    The lawsuit, filed in Wayne County Circuit Court on Monday, alleges the city violated the Michigan Environmental Protect Act and is endangering residents by exposing them to toxic pollutants.

    The residents — Terry Swafford, Brenda Gail Watson, and Emma Miller — are seeking “protection of the air, water, and other natural resources and the public trust in these resources from pollution, impairment, or destruction,” according to a lawsuit filed by their lawyer Lisa Walinske of the Detroit East Community Law Center.

    Walinske tells Metro Times that she plans to file an emergency preliminary injunction later this week to stop the work until the city pulls the proper permits and provides sufficient evidence through scientific tests that its proposed solution won’t endanger residents.

    In late February, the city announced that it was closing the waterfront park in the Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood to begin removing the trees, some of which are more than 100 years old and are used by bald eagles and other wildlife.

    The city insists the trees won’t survive after crews cover the 32-acre park in two feet of fresh soil.

    The plan comes nearly two years after environmental testing uncovered excessive levels of arsenic, mercury, lead, barium, cadmium, copper, zinc, volatile organic compounds, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the soil.

    Despite this, the city kept a large portion of the park open to the public without revealing the findings. The test results weren’t disclosed until after Metro Times raised questions about why the city hadn’t been more transparent about the findings.

    Despite increasing concerns about the park, the Detroit City Council unanimously approved the renovation plan on Tuesday.

    The lawsuit also alleges the city’s plan will increase pollution in the neighborhood because an average of 20 to 30 heavy trucks will trudge through nearby streets every day from March to September to cover the park in new soil.

    In addition, the lawsuit claims the city’s plan will destroy habitat, cause soil erosion, and increase the risks of floods because the additional soil will raise the level of the river’s edge, blocking stormwater runoff.

    The city “is not taking sufficient remediation steps to ensure that the soil contamination does not harm the visitors to the park, does not harm the adjoining waterway and does not have a negative environmental effect on the Park’s ecosystem,” the lawsuit states.

    In effect, the city’s plan to cover the contaminated soil in even more dirt will “encapsulate toxic pollutants” at the edge of the Detroit River without remediating the contamination, the lawsuit alleges. Since the park is in a designated floodplain, excessive rain could cause the toxic pollutants to spread.

    The lawsuit also raises concerns about a large mound of “toxic soil” at the park’s entrance that is across the streets from homes. The dirt was dumped there during previous renovations, and the contamination is spreading “with each passing breeze.”

    After the remediation, the city plans to include walkways, a playground, basketball court, fitness and picnic areas, tennis and pickleball courts, a fishing node, beach, and waterfront plaza.

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  • Detroit illegally inflated taxes on lowest value homes, study suggests

    Detroit illegally inflated taxes on lowest value homes, study suggests

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    Detroit activists are calling for action after a recent study suggested the city is cheating lower-income residents by illegally and disproportionately overtaxing homes worth less than $35,000.

    By contrast, owners of the highest value homes in Detroit are far less likely to be overtaxed, according to the study by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.

    The study found that Detroit overassessed the value of 72% of the homes worth less than $34,700. A vast majority of the homes worth more than $35,000 were not overassessed, according to the study.

    “We find evidence of systematic regressivity: high-priced homes are more likely to be underassessed and low-priced properties are more likely to be overassessed,” the study states.

    In a statement to Metro Times, Detroit Assessor Alvin Horhn dismissed the claims in the study as “utter nonsense” and “politically driven,” saying that “any claim that homes today are systemically overassessed is just false.”

    Horhn said the methods used by the University of Chicago “violate Michigan tax law and the practices that every assessor in Michigan is legally required to follow.”

    On Monday, activists for the Coalition for Property Tax Justice, a group that advocates for homeowners in Detroit, called on the Detroit City Council to address the overassessments by sending the findings to the Board of Review for inspection.

    The council approved a new property tax ordinance, supported by the coalition, in November 2023 that allows council members to send the data to the Board of Review. In the past, that process had to be initiated by individual homeowners.

    The council will consider the proposal Tuesday, and dozens of residents are expected to speak in support of the measure.

    Activists are also urging Mayor Mike Duggan’s administration to reduce assessments by 30% for all houses valued below $35,000.

    Calling the latest findings “shocking,” Bernadette Atuahene, a property law scholar who has studied Detroit’s property tax foreclosure crisis, pledged to help residents end the overassessments.

    “We now have evidence that the lower value homes continue to be systemically overassessed, and we are here to put a stop to it,” Atuahene said at a news conference on Monday afternoon.

    She added, “We have tens of thousands of homes that are still being overassessed. We need systemic change.”

    Atuahene was among numerous activists who previously called on the city to correct inflated property value assessments that began more than a decade ago. Between 2010 and 2016, the city of Detroit overtaxed homeowners by at least $600 million.

    The Michigan Constitution prohibits property from being assessed at more than 50% of its market value. Between 2010 and 2016, the city assessed properties at as much as 85% of their market value.

    During the same period, roughly one quarter of the homes in Detroit were foreclosed due to delinquent property taxes, a rate not seen since the Great Depression.

    Activists are worried about another wave of foreclosures based on inflated property taxes on the lower value houses, which tend to be owned by people struggling financially. To stem the tide, activists are calling on Wayne County Treasurer Eric Sabree to halt foreclosures of owner-occupied homes.

    “It’s wrong for the county to foreclose on homes that the city has been illegally overtaxing,” AJ Braverman, chief of staff for the Coalition for Property Tax Justice, said.

    Horhn countered that the city has fixed its assessments and stands by them.

    “We spent millions modernizing the process and our new assessments have been reviewed and approved by the State Tax Commission,” Horhn said. “The Assessor’s office has added staff, new technology and has a robust property tax exemption program for low-income residents. The problems of a decade ago have been resolved. For any individual property owner who feels their proposed assessment may be incorrect, we encourage them to file an appeal.”

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  • Two Detroit cops used excessive force when they killed a Black man in 2018, jury finds

    Two Detroit cops used excessive force when they killed a Black man in 2018, jury finds

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    A jury has awarded $1.5 million to the family of a Black Detroit man killed by two cops on the city’s west side in October 2018.

    The jury on Tuesday found that Detroit cops Tyler Nagy and Raul Martinez used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment when they fatally shot Lamont Johnson on the 14000 block of Tireman.

    Johnson’s family sued the officers and police department in October 2020, alleging gross negligence, wrongful death, and violations of Johnson’s civil and constitutional rights. Some of those claims were later dismissed.

    During the trial, the department’s own police procedures expert said he reviewed video of the shooting and did not see Johnson reach for a gun because the film was too dark.

    Police were called to the area at 9 p.m. on Oct. 28, 2018, on a report that Johnson was intoxicated and armed with a handgun. On a dark street, officers found Johnson standing next to his bike, shined a flashlight in his eyes and shouted, “Hands!”

    Less than three seconds later, both officers opened fire on Johnson, who had a handgun in his waistband.

    Mark E. Boegehold, an attorney for Johnson’s family, argued that Johnson didn’t have time to reach for the gun.

    “We alleged that a reasonable police officer would not have shot him because we didn’t see any movement from Lamont, and there wasn’t enough time for him to reach for a gun – 2.5 seconds is not enough time,” Boegehold tells Metro Times. “What they think they saw was not what happened. That’s what we presented to the jury.”

    The officers weren’t accused of intentionally executing Johnson.

    The cops said they believed Johnson was reaching for the handgun in his waistband and thought their lives were in danger, so they fired.

    The officers are still on the force, and the shooting prompted the Detroit Police Officers Association union to award them “District Officers of the Year,” claiming Johnson “removed his .32-caliber pistol from his waistband and started to raise it.”

    Nagy was promoted to sergeant in December 2022, and the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners unanimously approved the promotion.

    In a statement to Metro Times, DPD defended the officers.

    “A comprehensive internal investigation into officers’ actions revealed no policy violations,” DPD said. “Accordingly, the officers continue to work for the DPD. While the Department respects the jurors’ work in this matter, we ultimately disagree with their findings. It is our understanding that the City of Detroit will be appealing this decision.”

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