PHOTO/EBAN MORALES
HIGHLAND PARK, MI — Why would a community embrace the hiring of an Emergency Manager in expectation of them being their savior? (Emergency managers are governor appointed officials who replace elected officials; their job is to sell off a city’s public assets to corporations.) People need to be aware and unite to take back all that has been stripped from us. People need to start believing what some still know . . . that the State of Michigan is not our friend and the Emergency Manager law has never brought restoration, only the bleeding and demise of communities that are most vulnerable
Yet, the city of Highland Park, Michigan’s school board decided to embrace the emergency manager and offered Kevin Smith, former emergency manager of the Highland Park Schools, a job as an operations manager. The contract is nearly $250,000 for a single K-8 school district of roughly 350 students, already being run by a failing for-profit charter. The school board decided that Kevin Smith, as Emergency Manager, did such a good job decimating an entire school district, which included the leveling of the high school, the selling of the administration building, several other school buildings and even the bus yard and all other assets, leaving students displaced, that he deserved a job.
This is the equivalent of placing the fox in charge of the chicken coop.
The school board also allowed Kevin Smith to write his own contract with a 33% raise on the backs of a still crippled district with roughly $15 million of debt. The school district office is now a space rented in a strip mall at $2,600 a month plus utilities. The district must provide the Emergency Manager with staffing and outside contractors to perform duties that he has no knowledge of—like education. This is an expense that starts to push nearly a half a million dollars a year for a single school with roughly 350 students that aren’t receiving quality education.
Despite public opposition, the board was determined to hire the Emergency Manager Kevin Smith who ill advised the board to do what was not legally possible. Yet they ultimately did it without even having the contract reviewed by an outside attorney. They hired him, then sent the contract out for review. Open Meeting Act laws were broken and collusion occurred. The school board president, acting outside of her authority, chose the attorney for review and negotiated the contract with the board secretary independent of the board for the purpose of assuring and protecting the Emergency Manager’s new job.
The mayor of Highland Park who runs an entire city only makes $65,000 a year so why is no one concerned about these questionable decisions and bizarre actions? Why do Black and Brown communities in Michigan continue to be looted and milked dry till there is nothing left and usually with prior atate involvement and Emergency Managers?
