DETROIT (WWJ) - Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan says the city has been on the rise in recent years and things are just getting started.
Delivering his sixth State of the City address Tuesday night at East English Village Academy on the city's east side, Duggan began his speech with a list of accomplishments the city made in 2018: A balanced budget and a credit rating upgrade.
The formerly vacant Michigan Central Station is under restoration by Ford. Mortgages doubled in the city, seeing homeownership starting to rise. Property values are up for the first time in nearly two decades.
"And maybe the greatest accomplishment, in the minimum three-year statute, we are out from state oversight and the City of Detroit's elected officials are now back in control of the city government," Duggan said.
Despite the good news, Duggan did note the work needed to fight the city's high poverty rate, which he says still leads the nation for highest among large cities.
Duggan said he's going to ask for $10 million more for the Detroit Police Department and will expand the Project Greenlight high-tech camera program into neighborhood police precincts.
Duggan praised companies like Ford and Fiat-Chrysler -- which is considering building a new plant in Detroit that would reportedly not displace any residents.
"We know you can do what Toyota did and go out to the farmland in Washtenaw County next to the University of Michigan," Duggan said. "But we said why don't you come here?"
The city's ability to lure corporations to set up shop in Detroit is key in developing Detroit's workforce and getting the city's youth to stay home down the road.
"We want our young people who are coming up through our schools, not to go to Atlanta or Chicago or LA, to stay home. So we've landed Microsoft and Google and LinkedIn," Duggan said. "We've gone to bring the banks back into the city. We brought back Ally and Fifth Third and now Chemical Bank's building a new 25-story, 500-employee headquarters in the city of Detroit."
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