Mayor Mike Duggan says funding to address city issues should not be partisan

Mayors gathered Monday through the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Chicago touting the growth of their cities, including Detroit's Mike Duggan, praising the city's dropping crime rates and population spike.

After Mayor Andrew Ginther, mayor of Columbus, Ohio, who is president of the organization, cited the need for affordable housing in cities and urged the next wave of federal leaders to pass a comprehensive housing legislation plan, he introduced Duggan. He called Duggan as an "outstanding mayor" who "somebody told me he might make a really good governor."

Duggan's unscripted quip: "Thank you, Andy, for kicking off my campaign a little bit earlier."

Duggan has not announced whether he plans to seek another term as Detroit's mayor, nor would he comment on how the next leader should tackle the city's progress and population growth.

"I'm going to talk about that after the November election. Right now, I'm totally focused on the presidential (election)," Duggan told the Free Press later in the afternoon.

Ginther touted the U.S. Conference of Mayors as "one of the last factions of bipartisanship in America." The meeting in Chicago coincided with the Democratic National Convention, which brought many Democratic mayors to the city in any case.

"We are more polarized, divided and partisan than ever before. But as a good friend and mentor once said, 'There are three kinds of folks in America: Republicans, Democrats and mayors.' Because mayors don't have the luxury of blaming or debating over the ideology and partisanship. Our job is to get things done for the American people. The truth is, American cities are stronger today than ever before," Ginther said, citing lower crime and increased wages.

'Nothing about lead pipes that's partisan'

Duggan agreed with Ginther, praising federal funding as a resource to address the replacement of lead service lines across city neighborhoods.

"We're replacing 8,000 lead pipes a year with copper pipes to make sure our families are safe. There's nothing about lead pipes that's partisan. We just need to make these neighborhoods safe," Duggan said.

He also pointed to a drop in crime and homicide rates last year, noting that Detroit recorded its fewest homicides since the 1960s, praising the city's community violence intervention programs as solutions to disrupt conflicts within neighborhoods before they escalate.

"Crimefighting shouldn't be partisan, right? All of us should be behind having safer communities," Duggan said.

The mayor flaunted Detroit's affordable housing development, noting the city developed $1 billion in affordable housing the last five years. But he suggested the city needs more funding to accommodate the increased population — a reminder of Duggan's long fight with the Census Bureau seeking to prove that more residents live in the city than the feds claim. Detroit's population grew by nearly 2,000 residents last year, according to the Census Bureau.

Duggan touts lack of homeless encampments in city

"But Detroit has now experienced something we haven't seen in a long time, and that's population growth, and it means we desperately need another billion dollars in the next five years, and that shouldn't be partisan, either," Duggan said, adding additional money would continue housing development.

"You do not see encampments in Detroit as you see in most major cities, largely because the mayor and city council have been completely united on our commitment to build affordable housing. You can't get any help from the city if you're not setting aside 20% of affordable housing in every project. And of course, we built many that are 100%, but the population is growing and property values are growing, and people are going to get priced out unless we build another billion dollars over the next five years, and I'm committed to do that," Duggan told the Free Press.

Duggan said he plans to roll out a plan in September that would dramatically ease the process for developers seeking to build affordable housing, which has been a challenge among cities, several mayors said at Monday's media announcement.

Ginther in the Monday press conference said members of the organization will travel to "key cities" in the fall to discuss national solutions to address affordable housing. Those cities include Detroit, Philadelphia and Phoenix.

Us versus them politics

Duggan has garnered national attention over the years beyond his relationship with the president , serving on panels and discussing ways to pump federal funding into cities. More recently, the San Francisco Standard released an opinion piece on how cities can follow Detroit's lead under Duggan's watch. A group of tech executives invited him out, he said, and heard him speak at another conference where he shared his secret to unifying cities.

"I said, 'Your key is to get your city leaders with your business leaders and your philanthropy on one page, and stop fighting with each other.' It's more important that you're unified in any particular strategy. And when I talked about how we built that, and how we got rid of the 'us versus them' politics, they wanted me to come out," Duggan said. "San Francisco is a spectacular city ... and they have a lot of business CEOs who love that city as much as Detroit CEOs love Detroit."

But elected officials need courage to ward off divisive politics, he added.

"If you were to go back to 2013, everybody who was elected, still in office in 2013 in Detroit when the city went into bankruptcy, and half the streetlights were out and the ambulances didn't show up for an hour, the only way you got elected was by telling the public somebody else was to blame. And blaming somebody else had been risen to an artform in Detroit. I ran a campaign and they all thought I wasn't going to win. I wasn't trying to blame anybody," Duggan said. "I think there's a lot of interest in how I've gone 11 years without vetoing a City Council resolution. I've had a good city council to work with. We sat down and worked things out together, and Detroit is benefiting enormously from that."

Duggan added at the media announcement that "every single person" standing in the room with him works with Republicans and Democrats in their state legislatures and nobody in their communities wants excuses about whether they could address their community's issues.

Dana Afana is the Detroit city hall reporter for the Free Press. Contact: dafana@freepress.com. Follow her: @DanaAfana .

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mayor Mike Duggan says funding to address city issues should not be partisan