The middle act of the end begins in Michigan…
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We can make it until March 1 — maybe,” Mr. Cooper said of Hamtramck’s ability to pay its bills. Beyond that? The political leaders of this old working-class city almost surrounded by Detroit are pleading with the state to let them declare bankruptcy, a desperate move the state is not even willing to admit as an option under the current circumstances.
“The state is concerned that if they say yes to one, if that door is opened, they’ll have 30 more cities right behind us,” Mr. Cooper said, as flurries fell outside his City Hall window. “But anything else is just a stop gap. We’re going to continue to pursue bankruptcy until the door is shut, locked, barricaded, bolted”…
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Mr. Cooper said that an entry-level police officer costs the city about $75,000 a year in salary and benefits, and yet repeated efforts to renegotiate contracts have failed…
The police and firefighters question whether the city’s bankruptcy talk is really just a scare tactic for negotiation. Earlier discussions with city officials, they say, have urged them to accept pay cuts, layoffs, increased worker payments to pensions and even a suggestion that officers might pay for part of their own bulletproof vests — all this while the city has opted not to increase taxes.
“Nobody likes the police until you need them,” said Jon Bondra, the incoming president of Hamtramck’s police union…(Coldwarrior made a comment her but deleted it.)…
Hamtramck, all 2.1 square miles of it, is a gritty city, a proud one and a place “that can do more with less than anywhere on earth,” in the view of Greg Kowalski, 60, who has lived here since childhood. Immigrants have arrived in waves over time, leaving layers like sedimentary rock — from Germany, Poland, Bosnia, Albania, Bangladesh, Yemen and more. Along Joseph Campau Street on a recent morning, a woman in a burqa strolled past Stan’s Grocery, which boasts about its Polish pierogi and kielbasa. (Coldwarrior: I happen to know that the city has been over run and the idea of a bunch of perogie shops and Polish butchers is long gone. Its mostly halal now as the Eastern European descendents have moved out.)
Hamtramck — once a community of more than 50,000 people but now fewer than half of that — grew up around an enormous auto factory that John and Horace Dodge built here a century ago. It remains a city woven together by union history, a fact that makes the turmoil filtering out from City Hall all the more pronounced.
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Keep it up, government unions…keep it up and eventually you will be out of a job…or is that the plan? If there are no police, then there is a vacuum for other forces to take over…Are the muslim members, who make up half of city council playing hardball to disband the police so that there can be a defacto Sharia Law put in place of law and order? The call to prayer is already heard all over Hamtramck five times daily.
Interestingly, when I Binged Hamtramck + Muslim I got this.
Which came first, Hamtramckistan or the economic collapse? Hamtramck is also, interestingly, an islamic sanctuary city where muslims are NEVER asked about their immigration status…I wonder who they vote for? While I don’t like to link to Debbie Schlussel’s stories, I have no choice here as the article describing Hamtramck’s islamic sactuary city status has been memory holed by the Detroit Free Press.
Tags: bankruptcy, Hamtramck, Islamic Invaders
