Morris Goodman, a Dearborn attorney, past president of the Dearborn Democratic Club, a longtime political activist and observer and regular reader of Deepsaidwhat.com, attended this week’s meeting at city hall to discuss the future of six of the city’s small neighborhood pools.  He sent this column to us on the matter of the city’s budget.

In his column below, Goodman writes that he thinks there might be some interest in trying to get Dearbornites to make voluntary contributions equal to their reductions in property taxes to specific projects in Dearborn (pools being one of them) if tax deductions could be obtained. It is an interesting idea and one Goodman says he has shared with our elected officials.

His column begins below:

No, this is not a column about Dr. Suess, but the problems Dearborn faces because of the sharp decline in our city’s property values could be a scary fairy tale.

Morris Goodman

As everyone knows throughout the State of Michigan, local tax assessors, especially Dearborn’s, have verified that property assessments have gone down, with the result that property tax revenues will decrease. Mayor John B. O’Reilly has cautioned that there is up to a $20 million shortfall in the city’s budget for 2011-2012.

Clearly, there are many, many people in Dearborn whose reduced economic condition makes a decrease in property taxes very welcome. Presumably, however, there are also many, many Dearbornites whose incomes and wealth (excluding their home’s value) have not only, not gone down, but in fact increased. Presumably thousands of Dearborn residents are either Ford workers, retirees, or just shareholders. Ford’s profitability and stock value have both soared. A Ford share’s value was about $1.50 a share in March 2009 and is now in excess of $12.50 a share, an over 800% jump. Moreover, Ford workers are about to get profit sharing checks.

For those who are doing OK financially, it might be more important to them that Dearborn’s historically wonderful services – both municipal and educational – be maintained rather than they pocket the difference between what they previously paid in property taxes and the smaller amount now. If these people could be convinced that if they contribute this property tax “windfall” to a specific fund that certain services they prize will be maintained maybe they will do so.

(more…)