Discussion for article #224271
“Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” - Mitt Romney
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“We really don’t want to shut off anyone’s water, but it’s really our duty to go after those who don’t pay, because if they don’t pay then our other customers pay for them,” DWSD spokeswoman Curtrise Garner said, as quoted by Al Jazeera. “That’s not fair to our other customers.”
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“We really don’t want to let people get sick, but it’s really our duty to go after those who don’t pay for their healthcare, because if they don’t pay then our other customers pay for them,” Healthcare spokeswoman Curtrise Garner said, as quoted by Al Jazeera. “That’s not fair to our other customers.”
Same logic.
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People take note, what’s happening in Detroit now it’s the legacy left behind by impossible demands made by Unions in decades past. It’s happening now in Detroit as it has happened countless times in every place of this world where socialism has run amok.
Socialism = society cancer!
what kind of gov’t allows its people to go without water. I tell ya, I would not be surprised if people start rising up against gov’t in detroit
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cracker box economics. if you knew anything about the time value of money, you would understand the pension game and how politicians and corporate chieftains raided retirement funds and replaced those funds with i.o.u.'s (kind of like social security). however corporations and states cannot make money so they are left with breaking contracts with individuals. you being the anti socialist should understand the value of a contract, however I doubt that you can comprehend economics past the bumper sticker on the back of your car
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It is also informative to hear descriptions of the actual situations of homeowners. Many are cases where individuals or families are renting or bought a house in which the former owner had unpaid bills. Detroit is passing that on to new residents (who are trying to establish themselves, revitalize neighborhoods, etc) sometimes in amounts of $1,000 or more. In addition to the large issue of pension raiding which you described, the newly appointed “emergency managers” are continuing the pattern of economic abuse at the expense of basic human rights and services.
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Sorry, but all they had to do was appeal to the DOJ. Going to the UN is B.S.
Take note: This is what happens when you let corporate raiders drain retirement accounts and foist those previously agreed upon promises back onto the taxpayers.
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I expect that if I didn’t pay my water bill, the city would shut my water off. Why is this so novel?
@Libs. What’s happening in Detroit was decades in the making and says a lot more about Capitalism than it does about unions and “Socialism”.
What exactly is socialist about a union asking for a good wage that would allow a worker to own his own home, send his kids to college and retire on a decent pension? That use to be called the American Dream. But to people like you it’s a socialist pipe dream.
A lot a what happened to Detroit is the result of bad management trying to keep Wall Street happy. For example, it wasn’t the UAW telling GM to keep putting shitty ignition switches in cars. It was a management decision to save a few pennies in order to keep the stock prices up.
The Grosse Pointes, Bloomfield Hills, the areas where the over paid auto executives live, are still doing fine. They don’t have to live with the consequences of their bad decisions.
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I think the more appropriate question is: Why are nearly half of the DWSD’s accounts delinquent? The Detroit Free Press article said that the average monthly water bill is $75; that seems a bit high to me, so I’m wondering if something has happened in Detroit that has significantly increased the water rates over a short period of time.
The DFP article also says that the total delinquency comes to some $118 million; that is for 150,086 delinquent accounts, which comes to an average of $782.45 for each delinquent customer. That’s a little over 10 months delinquent – how is it that they let the delinquencies get that out of hand before trying to collect them? Also, to start a payment plan, you have to come up with somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of the outstanding balance, which on average here would be between about $260 and $375. That could be an impossible amount of money for someone who can barely make ends meet. Has there been any effort to try to implement more affordable payment plans for low income residents?
I suspect there is more to this than either this TPM post or the DFP article is saying. And aha! Yes, it appears that is indeed the case – Al Jazeera is somewhat more informative. It appears that the basic problem is that with the city becoming increasingly de-populated, there are fewer and fewer customers of the utility among whom to divide the costs of an aging and now too-large infrastructure, and they have increased the per-customer charges to compensate for it. And that likely means charging more to the people who can least afford it – the ones who are still in the city because they cannot afford to move out of it.
The groups accuse DWSD of charging unaffordable rates to Detroit citizens, and placing the burden of the city’s fleeing tax base on its poorest residents. They say DWSD is trying to rid itself of low-income customers in a bid to make the utility more attractive for a private takeover. DWSD denies the charge. But the city has acknowledged that at least a partial privatization of DWSD is being considered as Detroit attempts to shed some of its $18 billion in debt. DWSD accounts for $5 billion of that sum.
And I was right to think that $75/month was high:
At the same time that the utility has financially faltered, it has raised rates significantly. According to activists, the rate for residential customers has doubled in the last 10 years. The average bill is now $75 a month, according to the Free Press, much higher than the nation’s average rate of about $40.
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Were there liens on those properties for the unpaid bills? If there weren’t, I don’t see how they can stick the new owners with paying them. (But then, IANAL.)
I get what you are saying and don’t have an answer to your question. Thanks for the in-depth explanations above. I saw an interview yesterday which cited some of that information and made me realize that there is more to this story than “Well, of course utilities get shut off if you don’t pay the bill.”
Think progress has some good reporting on this story
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/06/20/3451488/detroit-water-shutoffs-complaint/
Well, it’s at least silly, futile ineffectual symbolmongering. I hate that.
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Did you come up with all those words your self, or did mommy and daddy help you compose sentences and turn your temper tantrum in to a paragraph of talking points?
Get back to you coloring book boy and leave the discussion to us adults.
It did get them noted by a respectable national/international media source, however. And a previous poster, SLBinVA, notes that Al Jazeera out-reported the usual MSM.