Highland Park, or, you think Detroit is bad . . .

Highland Park, or, you think Detroit is bad . . . May 29, 2015

Funny, earlier today I speculated that devolving Detroit — that is, letting certain parts of Detroit self-govern and attract residents via a separate identity — could be a better solution to its depopulation woes than urban farms.  Then, while eating lunch, I checked the headlines:  “Snyder hints he wants to avoid dissolving Highland Park.”

Gov. Rick Snyder signaled Friday he wants to avoid an unprecedented action of dissolving the city of Highland Park through bankruptcy to erase a $25.6 million water bill debt that has stalled negotiations over a Metro Detroit regional water authority.

Snyder told reporters he didn’t want to speculate on whether bankruptcy or dissolution is needed for relieve Highland Park of its debt to the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department for years of not collecting water bills from residents.

Now exactly what happens if the city, which is completely surrounded by Detroit, is dissolved, is not clear –does the city get incorporated into Detroit, become unincorporated land governed in the same way as any rural unincorporated area (which county sheriffs, etc.), or something else?  But this is new to me — I had understood prior reporting on bankruptcies of cities, including Detroit’s, as keeping the city as an incorporated entity, not disappearing entirely.

(And the school system? Well, that no longer exists, as a public school district, strictly speaking, either.)


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