What happens in 2025?
The DPL system is mostly funded through a 10-year, 3.9-mill property tax, which was last approved by voters in 2014, as Proposal L. It was revisited in 2004, at which time it was increased.
That millage expires in 2025.
If for some reason the millage isn't renewed again by voters in August 2024, the DPL system could be forced to shut down in 2025. Surely, Detroit voters wouldn't let that happen, would they?
Because Mayor Duggan and the corporations he represents (such as DTE, Blue Cross, and Dan Gilbert's Rocket empire) didn't like a lot of the ideas that grassroots Detroiters put into Proposal P, they fought against it in the media. DTE and Blue Cross even spent tens of thousands of dollars to run negative advertisements scaring the voters away from Proposal P, and several church leaders and politicians in Duggan's circle spoke out against it. Mayor Duggan defunded the Charter Revision Commission so that they couldn't print or distribute informational materials to educate the public as they were required to do. Even Governor Gretchen Whitmer helped obstruct Prop P from getting on the ballot (Blue Cross is her family's company) at the last minute by claiming it had legal issues. And when they weren't making up lies about it, Prop P's enemies were downplaying the fact that there was even an election coming up, in order to keep turnout low. Sadly, these underhanded tactics worked, and Prop P failed to pass.
What was in Prop P that made it so scary? Stronger measures for police accountability, more transparency for city hall, legal improvements to housing rights, transit rights, immigrant rights, civil rights, and labor rights, a water affordability plan, provisions for public internet access, a strengthened ordinance for getting community benefits concessions from developers, and support for a way to repay citizens who were overtaxed by the city's $600M over-assessment scandal, to name a few. All of the ideas were proposed by regular Detroiters.
We already know that Mayor Duggan and Councilman Benson are openly against the current structure of the DPL, so it is not a big stretch to imagine that they might try similar tactics again to hurt the library and keep it from functioning properly.
Why would anyone want to cut off the library from its main source of funding? Because a bankrupt library is easier to take over, and then they can reshape it into whatever they want. This could include privatizing the library's administration, which would resemble what happens when hospitals are privatized: instead of the primary focus being on helping people, that concern becomes secondary to turning a financial profit. Or it also could entail selling off certain "outdated" branch library buildings to private developers, who could then make huge profits from the historic buildings (which are always situated on prime land in historic neighborhoods) by converting them into luxury condos or high-end businesses. The sky is the limit once a public asset is privatized. In a March 2023 BridgeDetroit article, Councilman Benson already hinted at an agenda that would give away "aging" libraries to nonprofits, and rely on philanthropic foundation money to run them:
Benson said DPL should also consider offloading aging library facilities in favor of building new “state of the art” libraries across the city. “I want us to start looking at the future and utilize other means to operate the branches, rather than the library’s fund balance,” Benson said during the hearing.[...]He suggested reopening the Skillman Branch could help encourage philanthropic support from downtown organizations.
Then there's the fact that according to state law, if a library millage was created or renewed after 2017, it will be exempt from tax capture. The last thing the corporate looters want is for the gravy train to come to a stop, so they will do anything they can to be able to keep taking from the library. It's likely they already have a think-tank working on that.
Maybe I'm wrong and this is all just a scary premonition. But judging by the scorched-earth gentrification and privatization that has been transforming the city's landscape and its government since the days of "The Bankruptcy," and judging by the fact that they already launched a brazen broad-daylight effort to stop us citizens from updating our own damned City Charter of all things, I'd say it's it's not farfetched at all.
