Topic: Detroit struggles to keep lights on

[Pandora]

Detroit —Like many swaths of the city, Keith Wicks' historic Indian Village neighborhood has remained largely dark at night after vandals destroyed transformers in nearly every streetlight pole that powers them.

On a recent rainy day, Wicks, 64, a retired GM engineer who has lived in Detroit for decades, watched as city Public Lighting workers put new transformers at the top of the aging wooden poles. Just days later, those streetlights were out — again.

"We've still got a ways to go," Wicks said with a laugh.

The growing lack of public lighting has become a troubling problem for cash-starved Detroit, where entire stretches of neighborhoods and thoroughfares — such as portions of the Southfield Freeway — are feeling the effects.

"This city…it's dark without streetlights," said Wicks, who lives on Iroquois. "You look down Iroquois at night now, it's black. It's very dangerous."

The war to keep the lights on in Detroit is a serious one. Thieves, antiquated equipment and a lack of funding have made it impossible for city officials to catch up to the problem.

City officials estimate 15-20 percent of the 88,000 lights in the Motor City are not working, and they acknowledge that figure could be as high as 50 percent in some neighborhoods. Providing lighting to the city costs $10.7 million annually.

And often when they are fixed, they break down weeks and months later — or thieves steal the high-grade cable for its copper materials.

"It doesn't make me happy when I go into a neighborhood at night," said Chris Brown, the city's chief operation officer, who oversees the Public Lighting department. "We've got an obligation to get it done. In the next couple of years we will see a strong improvement of the lighting of those more dense areas, and that's where we're focused on, and that's what we've got to get done."

Mayor Dave Bing and his administration are considering privatizing the lighting department. DTE, which already provides electricity to the majority of the city's streetlights, has been weighing a possible takeover.

Plans are in the works for the city to prioritize fixing or replacing lights over the next two years in more densely populated areas as part of its Detroit Works program, which focuses on improving services to specific areas of the shrinking city.

"The question is, does the city have resources to really do it, and the answer to that is probably no," Brown said. "And so the issue is, what are your options?"

Although there might be some areas of the city that might not be lit "because nobody lives there," the goal is to fix the lights where Detroiters live, Brown said.

What I perceive as the tone of this article is resigned decline.  It's ... depressing.

Thieves are stealing the street lights for the copper, the authorities and the people see it and feeeeel the eventual futility of fighting them.  It's not sad, it's not pitiful, it's infuriating.

Link

[Sectionhand]

" Darkest Africa "

[Libertas]

“We’re sh*t and we know we are.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0c73f10e-f8aa-11e0-ad8f-00144feab49a.html#axzz1b8EBd51m

[BMG]

I do believe there's a direct correlation between the 'troubles in Detroit' and the fact that those idiot voters have been voting for democrats for decades. Democrats ARE INDEED economic terrorists. Look at California...look at Illinois...look at Detroit!

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to comprehend that the democrat way is bad on so many levels, but particularly bad economically. The sad thing is they proclaim, 'Vote for us and we'll make your life better!' but as can plainly be seen simply by looking at the track record of Detroit where democrats have been in charge for some 40 or 50 years...after all their promises the city is NOT better off. In fact, it's way WORSE off! Detroit is populated by a huge percentage of minorities. Does this open their eyes to the fact that democrats are all about racism? Does this finally open their eyes to the fact that democrats are actively seeking to widen the chasm between the various ethnicities? It doesn't appear as though they have opened their eyes yet as they continue to vote for democrats and in turn, for their own ruin.

So what then will it take? Will the democrats actually have to openly embrace the eugenics philosophy of Margaret Sanger? Will they have to gleefully carry on with a genocidal campaign to exterminate some +/-1,700 black Americans per day in the United States? Would such atrocities open the eyes of minorities to the 'final solution' of the democrat party concerning them?

I guess not because the democrat party already does all of that stuff - right out in the open. The minorities of America are slowly being frog-marched to the gas chambers of the democrat party and they seem to be merrily going right along with it.

[charlesoakwood]

“We’re sh*t and we know we are.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0c73f10e-f8aa-11e0-ad8f-00144feab49a.html#axzz1b8EBd51m

I saw that article last night and declined to read it.  He can KMA.

[Libertas]

“We’re sh*t and we know we are.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0c73f10e-f8aa-11e0-ad8f-00144feab49a.html#axzz1b8EBd51m

I saw that article last night and declined to read it.  He can KMA.

Kinda tells me the quitter gene is a hell of a lot stronger in GB...and yeah, resignation to a fate not of my choosing is not in my DNA, he can KMA too, and my enemies better not be surprised by my assertive resistance!

 

[ToddF]

Jimmy Carter--->Barack Husein Obama ummm ummm ummmm

Liberal--->Progressive

Economic Malaise---> Managed decline

A lot has progressed in society over the past 30 years, but the smell of s**t stays the same.

[charlesoakwood]

and you don't need to analyze it to know what's in it.

[Pandora]

It's not just the lights.  I've seen pictures of schools and libraries abandoned with everything -- furniture/desks/file cabinets/BOOKS -- just left behind; other buildings, a theater for one, that were once grand monuments to beautiful utility fallen decrepit and rotting; scenes of decaying human structures that remind one of films depicting the long ago end of civilization.  It's damn sad and depressing, knowing that decades ago, men erected and constructed what they were then confident would pass on to their posterity only to have their value discarded and declared worthless.

Symbolic of what's happened all over the country and to our culture.

[trapeze]

Steven Crowder on Detroit's decline from almost two years ago reposted here if you missed it the first go round.

Obviously there is nothing which has changed for the better. Fifty years of 100% Democrat control of local government and the inevitable result...

Detroit in RUINS! (Crowder goes Ghetto)

Crowder doing the job that the MFM is incapable of doing.