TAKE ACTION

Contact your state legislators and tell them to abolish tax captures on Detroit libraries, and to oppose city takeover of the Detroit library system. Write to the local media outlets demanding they cover this issue. Talk to whoever will listen. You can also write to City Council, but the laws governing the Detroit Public Library are at the state level, so that is where we should focus our effort.

You don't have to be a Detroit resident to have a voice on this issue, since the library by its very nature is for everyone. We must also speak for Highland Park residents, who have been deprived of a library for decades by an emergency manager and must rely on the DPL. 


Contact your State Rep

Contact your State Senator

Contact City Council
At Large Members:
councilmemberwaters@detroitmi.gov - (313) 628-2363
Coleman.Young@detroitmi.gov - (313) 224-4248
District 1:
councilmembertate@detroitmi.gov - (313) 224-1027
District 2:
CouncilmemberCalloway@detroitmi.gov - (313) 224-4535
District 3:
bensons@detroitmi.gov - (313) 224-1198
District 4:
CMLatisha.Johnson@detroitmi.gov - (313) 224-4841
District 5:
CouncilMemberSheffield@detroitmi.gov - (313) 224-4505
District 6:
CouncilmemberGabriela@detroitmi.gov - (313) 24-2450 
District 7:
councilmemberdurhall@detroitmi.gov / Fred.Durhal@detroitmi.gov - (313) 224-2151

Click to find your district

City Council switchboard: (313) 224-3443
Submit a Public Comment to a City Council Meeting: CCPublicComment@detroitmi.gov

Contact the Inspector General's Office
Here you can make an online complaint about waste, abuse, fraud, and corruption in City government:

Contact the DPL Commissioners
https://detroitpubliclibrary.org/about/commission
President Edythe Friley: 
efriley@detroitpubliclibrary.org
Secretary Franklin Jackson: 
fjackson@detroitpubliclibrary.org
Ida Short: 
ishort@detroitpubliclibrary.org
Jean-Vierre Adams: 
jadams@detroitpubliclibrary.org
Greg Hicks: 
ghicks@detroitpubliclibrary.org
Ex-Officio Angelique Peterson-Mayberry: 
angelique.peterson-mayberry@detroitk12.org / (313) 873-4146

DPSCD School Board
info@outliermedia.org
tips@metrotimes.com
Editor in Chief: ldevito@metrotimes.com
Charlie Leduff: leduff10@gmail.com
metro@detroitnews.com
newstips@detnews.com
city@freepress.com
letters@freepress.com
fox2newsdesk@foxtv.com
news@wdiv.com 
news@wxyz.com
https://wdet.org/contact / jvaughn@wdet.org

Contact the Save The DPL Coalition
FriendsOfTheBowenLibrary@protonmail.com

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Welcome to the Save the Detroit Public Library Coalition

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The Detroit Public Library is currently facing extraordinary threats to its future, ranging from a political takeover of its governing structure, to unjust looting of its finances.  The Detroit Public Library has been losing  $3-4 Million  of their operational budget every year since 2016 because it is being siphoned off by the Downtown Development Authority (DDA), which is appointed and chaired by Mayor Duggan, using “tax captures.” That money is being redistributed to rich private developers like the Ilitch family and Dan Gilbert, with no restrictions on its use. Detroit is the only city in the State of Michigan where this is done to the libraries by force; every other library in Michigan is exempt from tax capture under state law. Furthermore, other DDAs in Michigan typically capture less than 5% from the budget of any millage-funded institution, but Detroit’s DDA has been capturing above 12% of the DPL’s budget in recent years, and they are projected to climb even higher in 2023
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Here is a brief timeline of events related to the fight for the Detroit Public Library, in reverse chronological order, so that the latest news is at the top. September 5, 2023 As a member organization of the  Detroiters For Tax Justice , we unveiled shocking new data on the effects of tax captures before City Council and members of the press. Using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, we retrieved reports from the DEGC on how much money they have taken from each millage on our tax bill, for the years 2014-2022. We then compiled all of that data into a spreadsheet, and we also combined it with tallies of what that stolen money could have paid for had it not been tax captured.  For instance, the DEGC tax captured $23.5M from the Detroit Public Library millage since 2014; that money could have paid to restore and reopen both the Monteith and  Conely Branches, brought the Bowen Branch up to ADA compliance, ran the "Laptop-To-Go" program for nine years, paid the salaries
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Lies they tell about the Library

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Here is a list of misinformation that has been coming out of city officials regarding the nature of the Detroit Public Library and its current status. The reason I'm choosing to call these lies and not misconceptions or errors is because normally when a public official says something inaccurate as a result of being misinformed, they retract their statement once they have the correct information. The difference here is that there has been no detectable effort on the part of these officials to our knowledge to correct their false statements. Don't fall for this stuff! LIE #1: "The DPL is financially unsustainable, or failing." This one comes from Councilman Scott Benson. On April 26th and May 12th of 2022, Benson made arguments before the rest of City Council that governance of the DPL should be taken over by the city because it is "no longer sustainable," and stands "at a precipice" where it could "go dark in the next ten years." This is c
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