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NBER the national educational radio network presents special of the week. This is the third of the southern half hour radio documentary programs on Metropolitan Government prepared for broadcast by the capital cities broadcast station in Detroit WJR. The producer and narrator is Oscar for Annette WJR news. The title for this series is there a better way. This is the sound of the John C. lodge expressway in Detroit. At 5 o'clock in the afternoon thousands of cars are heading out of the city. This is a multimillion dollar roadway. Some say it's a subsidy for suburbia. And it is one of thousands in the country. Is there a better. Room. Is there a better way. The series of WJR News special reports on
local government program number one dealt with regional think the growing awareness of the urban problem is regional in nature and not confined to the core city the second in the series talked about urbanization people clustering together for ease and variety of contact. This report talks about the fight from the city the so-called flight from the cities is basically a result of modern transportation. The speaker is the executive director of the International City Managers Association and they couldn't live any further from downtown Chicago than the car could conveniently. Get. In a reasonable period of time and then came. On the streetcar and. His father and her family moved further and further from downtown Chicago. This is back in the. Towards the end of the last century. And so
there's something that has suddenly hit the urban scene that it begins to flatten out and sprawl. It has been dramatized of course an accelerated because of the automobile. But even before the automobile we could see it in the study of cities in relation to rail transportation commuter rail transportation. And you look at the pattern of growth and you'll see these fingers reaching out where there is urban type development in proximity to the communal railroads. What happened when this when the automobile became within everybody's economic reach is that these spaces in between the fingers were filled in and it became a much bigger blob on the map and it could move much why there as a road or approach. How long it takes to get downtown that's what sets the limits to an urban area rather than political boundaries. Improved means of transportation
continue to make bigger that blob on the map. People generally agree it would be less costly and more efficient for cities to grow vertically instead of horizontally. Oh sure. Former city manager of about 20 years and when I think about the element of fish and sea I could certainly establish beyond any doubt that it's more efficient to have a high density population terms sewer lines water lines streets and so on. But. Thank goodness as Americans we have. Not been controlled by concepts of fish and sea. We have. On the contrary been. Growing in lines that are often very inefficient. Because of the lines of growth which most satisfy our personal needs. And desire for comfort. And as we become
more economically affluent. We can afford to be a little wasteful I don't think Americans have ever hesitated to do that when there is some. Benefit that they consider more important than saving a few dollars. Instead of trying to reverse the trend our technological brains are devising speedier means of transportation New York's Bridge Authority plans twenty one thousand dollars per car to bring more cars into a city already half paralyzed by too many cars that nobody plans to park. San Francisco's Bay Area plans a billion dollar transit system that is sure to force rebuilding of everything near each station but nobody plans what to rebuild. How did things get this way. Well American cities towns and suburbs used to follow a fairly natural pattern of growth as the build up area expanded political and economic interdependence was recognized and there was an extension consolidation an amalgamation. But in the 1920s this trend slowed down just of the
time when the automobile was making it easier to live outside the city. In fact land development came so fast the city couldn't keep up. New neighborhoods and subdivisions elected to remain separate from the core city either continuing under a township form of government or incorporating as villages or cities. Satellite units started to ring our cities often competing with one another and with the mother city poor the big industrial taxpayer. Many could see that this fragmentation was harmful and some attempts were made over the years to change the rules of annexation University of Michigan political science professor Arthur Brummagem says despite efforts in the state legislature a little change has been affected. We have to remember that Michigan has a very old system of annexation and take home over 15000 population. They cannot force any an exaggeration. The only way they can get an annexation is if people in an area seek an
examination and file a petition and have a vote held on water or not they want to annex to the study. People in the area seeking an examination can vote yes or they can vote no. For instance when I was on the city council here in an arbor we handle a little area on the south side of the study and they voted by very slender margin of something like 34 to 32 that they didn't want to be annexed to the city of Ann Arbor. Well later there was an argument about the vote and circuit court ruled that the vote should have been 32 to 31. And so they were annexed. It is it is a law of sovereign self-determination on the part of the area that wants an examination they can say yes or they can say no. This is part of the self-determination I was talking about. Now we've had in the legislature for five years attempts to bring the process of an
examination under some kind of feasibility review by a state boundary commission and we have no legislation on that subject yet we're still under the same moral principles that we've had for many decades. So far as an exemption is concerned the recent Boundary Commission legislation applies only to new municipal corporation and it applies only to consolidations which is very remote. So that instead of getting the House bill dealt with an exaggeration as well as incorporation all we have in the Senate bill which deals only with incorporation and contamination. So that is an exaggeration is concerned where we're right where we started from decades ago. A new boundary commission might make some difference. You see it's quite a game and exaggeration and cooperation because up until the present time some people in an area got out a petition for an
examination. Other groups could get out a petition to incorporate their area and we had what we used to call a race to the county courthouse to see what he had be annexed or what he would incorporate. Well I think the state boundary commission is going to slow up that process. The race to the courthouse it's not going to have anything to say however about an exaggeration You'll still go on in the same way and talk of incorporation usually starts with the need for services. The basic requirements for water sewers roads police and fire protection. The township form of government is limited in what it can provide its essential tax collecting agency for schools in the county and then forming a separate unit of government is appealing because of the local control of taxation for these services the basic doctrine of Home Rule. Well this is a sticky situation about. About Home Rule. Once you have I wound up people over a period of many
decades now. It's about six decades to voluntarily incorporate themselves as a community. You're not going to be able to escape from certain fundamental American political ideas not what are those. Well I think basically it comes down to two or three of them. We have the authority to create a government. And having created that government we have the power to run it. And a lot of this business of the power to run it was to make certain that a rural state legislature wouldn't intervene and write special charters or reparation acts about individual cities so that it was a protective doctrine. And beyond that was what you might call a service phenomenon that many of these satellite corporations weren't too interested in politics in the in the old sense they wanted certain services and and if they
got them by a nonpartisan system and by a city manager and and however they got them that's what they wanted. No partisan politics no elected chief executive but a city manager form of government in a sense a functional form of government to provide the vital services. The trouble comes when many new communities discover their tax base is too small to provide these vital services. Some other agency has to step in. Some turn to special districts others turn to the county government in Michigan the county was not structured to provide these services some special state legislation was required. Oakland County is a good example. The southern part of the county adjacent to Detroit experience rapid growth following World War 2. The chairman of Oakland County's Board of auditors Daniel T Murphy explains. It was evident that there was a great need and ultimate demand for a source
not surface water source but sanitary sewers. It was also pretty evident that there wasn't any of those Missa palaces it was solvent enough at that time to put in their own sewer system. Reasons being is that if you put in your own sewer system it means the building of a plant sewage has to be processed and then has to be taken and moved away after it's processed and this kind of operation costs millions of dollars and no one local unit of government solves Oakland County at that time was in a position to do this. It then became pretty evident to Oakland County that some larger agency of government had to step in and in the early 50s this was done. And as you may recall it took a bit of legislation in Lansing before the county was permitted to move into the what we now call the Department of Public Works. Now we see something like the completion of this cycle with the aid of an
agency representing several smaller communities the offspring turned again to the Mother City city of Detroit one county worked out of contract contracts worked out. They then build the evergreen in a Farmington interceptors which were two large sanitary sewer interceptors and. And. Expediency and the result with which this was done speaks for itself the city of Southfield and its expansion. Farmington and its expansion West Bloomfield Bloomfield townships with now sanitary sewers going through all of that area and the subdivisions being put in with the sewer lines already and is indicative of what I what this kind of cooperative effort brings about. Mr Murphy says this contractor will arrangement has many advantages not only the new communities have turned to it. Ten years ago if somebody had said to the city a particular edict in Detroit waters it would have somebody would said Woody you're crazy but it's necessary. Water is in short demand it's becoming more polluted and it takes a
tremendous plant to come up with with enough water to supply communities. There again it's a contractual relationship between local units of government to supply water from an area like the city of Detroit. It benefits the city of Detroit because it helps them in. Build new plants maintain their plants. The more water they sell of the better facilities they're going to have to just to produce water and sell it. And it is a contract relationship like this between units of government. It's beneficial to both units it doesn't is not a run one way street. It just doesn't go to the city of Detroit which some people may think it benefits the city of Pontiac or the city of Pontiac and its councillor commission would get into the program they can see the benefits of the contract you will see can get complicated. For example Oakland County acted as the agent for the sale of water from Detroit to Pontiac and now Oakland County itself has a contract to purchase water from Pontiac. Is there a better way. There is obvious
interdependence but separate political units and too many talk of amalgamation remains the ultimate evil. In a recent lecture at the University of Michigan MIT political scientist Alan Altshuler talked about the opposition to a regional form of government. Nearly all government officials. Who have a rather obvious political leadership role are opposed to governmental reform for the obvious reason that it threatens them. Government officials never like to have. Their constituency changed. That's why legislative reapportionment was so difficult for so long it took the Supreme Court two to bring it about an even in the particular states it typically has required threats on the part of the courts to redistrict on their own. If the legislatures did not redistricting in effect when one talks about governmental reorganization one is talking about the same kind of reapportionment problem. It's quite reasonable that the public officials who are currently in office should oppose such reorganization. Then
there's the fact that the Suburban and neighborhood newspapers on the whole have a stake in the status quo. It's the parochialism of the neighborhoods and the suburbs which tends to support these newspapers or at least this is the way the newspapers themselves have tended to perceive it. Most generally of course. The affluent jurisdictions have a stake in the status quo. And of course what they want in particular is to control three public functions. Zoning. Tax rates and schools. And if they can manipulate. These three functions in accord with their desires on the whole. The proclaimed benefits of comprehensive regional planning seem pretty pallid to them by comparison. Professor Altschuler explained that the opposition to Metropolitan Government also comes from the inner city. On the whole the Negro press and the politicians in the central cities have been vigorous
opponents of metropolitan government and most recently Black Power militants as well again for obvious reasons. They go politicians have a possibility of some of our of our cities of taking over the cities of having the highest positions in the cities become open to them within the next couple of years and even in the last within the last year we've seen a number of Negro mayors elected. The Negro press tends to be allied to fairly parochial interests of the negro ghettos and again the interest is in strengthening the ghettos within the cities rather than making them a small proportion of a much larger jurisdiction. And of course the Black Power militants see this and I think correctly so in very recent in the recent period as attractive to the whites at the present moment. Only because it promises a way of preventing negroes from taking over the central cities. A couple of years ago very few white politicians
were interested in metropolitan government even at the national level. It's a very recent phenomenon that metropolitan government is again having a bit of a pull the lowest sub gross of local and the primary argument which is used in favor of it today and at least private discussions is not economy efficiency vigorous leadership and so on but rather this is a way to maintain the cities as we have known. There is yet another aspect of the opposition to the reorganization of local government. There is a general suspiciousness on the part of the electorate of the unknown. Most voters are not terribly dissatisfied. With urban life. As it exists at present. On the whole they have experienced a fairly rapidly improving quality of life during their lives. For all that we talk about the urban crisis. I am not saying there is not an urban crisis. There is an urban crisis and there are numbers of people particularly in the racial ghettos who are particularly dissatisfied and ready to resort to
violence but the vast majority of the white voters in our cities and even a good many of the negroes who have come from the rural south within the past generation have experienced what even they can see is a is an improving situation. Those who move from the central cities to the suburbs for example in the post-war period and that's a great number. Of people. So I realize there are problems. But these problems are not necessarily serious enough so that we should change the whole style of government and bring about things that we don't know. The devil you know is better that we don't. If you have great problems you can always ask the national government to take care of them I set up a special district to take care of them why change the whole governmental system. There has been pressure applied over the past few years for some change in local government at least for the development of some central coordinating agency for urban areas. The executive director of the International City Managers Association Mark worked with the Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD in Washington here's how he
explains it. I spent a year with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and was closely associated with this effort to stimulate regional planning. The pressure was in the form of an inducement if you want to say in the form of a carrot. Through which the federal government offered financial assistance they would pay two thirds of the cost of preparing regional planes and also two thirds of the operating expense of setting up these councils of government. So it was an inducement. And as it did. Help. Cities and counties to come together because somebody was standing there willing to pick up part of the cost. They were willing to come together then and. And start seeing if they could work out some feasible plans. The other element of the federal
effort was that they finally said that unless there is a regional plan that. They would not give certain kinds of grants. The pressure for some coordination at the local level comes also from elected representatives in Washington not just from agencies. There's been a clear trend and where I think we must remember that this is a part of our United States Congress. The United States Congress is often much taken a stronger position on this than the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Which says we won't give away the federal money in these cities unless the cities are working together and not just wasting money and building a big pipe in one city and when it could have been done better if the two cities that combined the pressure from Washington has been felt by local officials. And there is the suspicion that eventually Washington could impose some
metropolitan form of government since it holds the purse strings where so many urban projects. There has been movement at the local level to head that off. So far the Council of Governments or cog appears to be the thing. It's a voluntary association of local governments board of auditors Jerman for Oakland County. Dan Murphy again I I don't like to be a fellow who is known as Carrie. You know my butt. If we are able to solve our problems not solve them but get together and discuss them to the ultimate end that we solve them through sitting down across the table like bargaining people in an organization
of volunteer voluntary organizations such as cars and counties cities villages and schools all sit down and discuss their problems so that we can maintain autonomy on the local level. If we're not able to do this the only alternative is that you are going to have metropolitan government. A special report in this series will be devoted to the pros and cons of councils of government and particularly the southeast Michigan Council of Governments. There are those such as Detroit superintendent of schools Dr. Norman Brock learned who do not differentiate between the problems of the central city and suburbia. When I consider the question of metropolitan ASSIM originalists and I look upon it not merely as a city problem but I look at it as a regional problem. I
believe that the suburban or metropolitan area cannot survive or prosper if the central city is allowed to carry a rate or to decay and vice versa. If the central city should prosper and suburban our metropolitan area would not we would suffer in the central city. So I look upon the issue as a joint concern. Secondly I believe that the democratic values of our nation can only be nurtured and expanded through interrelationships that are developed between suburbia and Central City. The racial overtones and undertones are ever present in discussions of urban problems because of the split between suburbia and the central
city is essentially a split along economic and racial lines. If you look at the state of Michigan there are approximately one and a half million white children in school who are pupils. There are 250000 Negro students in the entire state. Of those 250000 about 160000 reside in the city of Detroit alone. Now if there is to be an understanding along democratic values between races in our community between the poor and the wealthy I'm not only looking upon it from a racial point of view. This kind of joint planning has to take place and I think it is for the interest of both and not for the advantage of one.
The depth of feeling on the subject becomes clear when the Detroit superintendent of schools says the basic goals of American education are at stake. Basically I think education has three goals in this country. One is obviously academic achievement excellence. Secondly we want of children that they mature as wholesome human beings. And thirdly American education has always said that we want to educate children for social responsibility to live in a society where people are recognized not on their race or religion or economic but on their human values and human dignity. We cannot do this by reading text books of them. We have to lead this. If we don't do it now I think we're going to create for our youngsters enormous problems for the future. And therefore I would like to
see the school boards of the rich. Initiate particularly this suburban school boards I think they need to lead in this rather than the central city although it's much to our interest as it is to their kids and said down and let's examine our various programs and let's say this one here is a program where cooperatively we could do better. Now. The flight from the city it was the third in a series of WJR NEWS SPECIAL REPORTs seeking answers to the question is there a better way programs yet to come will deal with growing federalism regional government. The southeast Michigan Council of Governments and metropolitan government. This is Oscar Frenette WJR news. NPR's special of the week thanks the capital city is broadcast station in Detroit WJR for the recordings of these documentaries. This was part
three of seven parts on Metropolitan Government. Is there a better way. This is an E.R. of the national educational radio network.
Series
Special of the week
Episode
Issue 9-1969
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-r785p15m
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Date
1969-02-07
Topics
Public Affairs
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:28:40
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University of Maryland
Identifier: 69-SPWK-411 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:28:27
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Citations
Chicago: “Special of the week; Issue 9-1969,” 1969-02-07, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-r785p15m.
MLA: “Special of the week; Issue 9-1969.” 1969-02-07. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-r785p15m>.
APA: Special of the week; Issue 9-1969. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-r785p15m