Mayor Dave Bing
The laid-back former Mayor Dave Bing has been pretty quiet about city affairs since leaving office in 2013.
But Bing apparently can't sit silently anymore and approaches the Detroit Free Press to defend his record on demolishing blighted homes, something he says the Mike Duggan administration has distorted by understating the number of homes he razed. He says he razed 9,000 during his administration.
He also disputed claims by the Duggan administration that his administration didn’t tear down houses to the same environmental standards as Duggan, and he raised concerns about the escalating costs of demolishing a home under the Duggan administration, the Free Press reports.
Matt Helms and Joe Guillen write:
Bing told the Free Press that his biggest concern about the rising costs of Detroit's demolitions is that fewer of the tens of thousands of blighted homes in Detroit will be torn down if prices don't come back down to levels he was able to achieve as mayor. Under Bing, demolitions generally cost between $8,500 and $10,500, while the prices have skyrocketed in some cases to $16,000-$20,000 under the Duggan administration's brisk pace of blight removal.
Fox 2's Charlies LeDuff has reported on the escalating costs. The Duggan administration has defended the costs, saying it's more expensive to knock down houses quickly, citing overtime costs and escalating costs for trucking materials. The city says it has razed 7,000 blighted homes since Duggan took office in 2014.
The Freep story goes on to say:
In his toughest remarks, Bing labeled as “B.S.” Duggan’s claims that the Bing administration was required to do far less removal of asbestos from homes before demolishing them, and that his administration’s demolitions were done scattershot. He said the city clustered demolitions in six areas of the city where officials believed removing blight would have the most impact on stabilizing neighborhoods, and that the city had to remove asbestos and meet other U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards just as Duggan's administration does.
Brian Farkas of the Detroit building authority tells the paper that the state's Department of Environmental Quality has toughened standards for asbestos removal in the last year and a half, making them far tougher than those the Bing administration faced.
The Freep goes on to report:
Representatives for Duggan defended the mayor’s count of demolitions in the Bing era, saying it was based on the number of permits issued for tear-downs during Bing's tenure: 5,702. If that number is spread out over the four years Bing was in office, it puts the number of demolitions closer to 25 a week.
But Bing said there were no demolitions done in 2009, and he said the city on its own demolished 7,055 homes in 2010-2013. Factoring in private demolitions and those done in conjunction with the Michigan Land Bank, Bing said nearly 9,000 homes were torn down in 2010-2013 — at a rate of nearly 60 a week. That’s more than double the 25 a week Duggan has repeatedly said Bing’s administration managed.
The ex-mayor's remarks draw social media pushback, including these comments:
► Asking Bing about Duggan running the city is like asking Hoke about how Harbaugh is running the Wolverines. -- Mike Chase
► Look Bing, you didn't do squat for my neighborhood when you sat in the Young Building collecting that pay. You never answered any letter, you avoided any answers in the few forums you held. Go away. Your 15 minutes expired long ago. Mike has issues, yes. But since he's been in office my street lights are on after many years of being out, potholes are getting filled, and we now have reliable trash service and recycling. -- Andrew Bridge, Detroit
► Bing sounds bitter because Duggan is actually cleaning up Detroit and bringing Detroit back, which is a task that nobody thought could be done. Perhaps he should have done more when he had the chance. -- Kelly Kasper
► Mayor Bankruptcy? You came, you saw and you destroyed Detroit. Let the name of Dave Bing be stricken from every book and tablet. Stricken from every pylon and obelisk of Detroit. Let the name of Dave Bing be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of Detroiters, for all time. -- Jonathan Kinloch, Detroit
► Prior administrations weren't doing enough on the abatement end of the demolitions -- not just of homes, but commercial property as well. -- Adam Clark, Detroit
► Are costs rising because they may be following the rules now? -- Robert Ladd, Belleville
► This is incredible. Bing did virtually nothing noteworthy during this three years as Mayor, and then comes out of the wordwork to criticize Duggan, who has been very impactful. I thought Bing was at least a decent person, but this comes across as petty and beneath him. -- Michael Allie, Novi
