In his seventh State of the City address Tuesday night, Detroit's mayor says he'll talk about new employment and assuring that Detroiters own at least half of the city's licensed recreational marijuana businesses.
He previews those topics in a Detroit News interview. The speech will be televised at 7 p.m. from Flex-N-Gate, an auto supplier off Van Dyke Avenue and I-94 on the east side.
Mayor Mike Duggan: "How do you manage a Detroit that's growing?"
(Photo: WDIV screenshot)
The weed dispensary plan flows from work with Councilman James Tate, who'll introduce an ordinance regulating licenses.
"Our position is going to be that we will approve recreational marijuana being sold in Detroit only under an ordinance where half of the businesses are owned by Detroiters," Duggan [said]. ...
"If we sit by and do nothing, we're going to wake up in three years and 90% of the wealth created by this industry will flow outside the city."
Detroit's council has delayed the start of recreational sales until at least March 31. They began Dec. 1 in other communuties under a 2018 state ballot proposal.
The second-term mayor also will focus tonight on expanded employment opportunities, he tells Christine Ferretti of The News.
"We are seeing empty buildings and vacant fields converted to thousands and thousands of jobs and [will] talk about how Detroiters get those jobs. ...
"We're talking about, for really the first time since the 1940s, how do you manage a Detroit that's growing, and how do you make sure that it's Detroiters that benefit from the growth?"
In addition, his annual speech will touch on neighborhood improvements and police force recruiting, he says in an interview with Simon Shaykhet of WXYZ:
"We've taken down 21,000 abandoned houses," Duggan said. "And 9,000 vacant houses, we've actually renovated and moved families in."
