Dan Gilmartin Discusses SaveMICity, MML Work in New Magazine Article
Dan Gilmartin talks about the SaveMICity initiative and other Michigan Municipal League work in serving communities throughout the state in the most recent edition of The ‘Ville magazine.
Gilmartin, CEO and Executive Director of the League, is the focus of the two-page article in the magazine that focuses on the Northville area – Gilmartin’s hometown. The article also includes information about former long-time Northville Mayor Chris Johnson being selected as the League’s new general counsel. Johnson was hired by the League last summer to replace long-time general counsel William Mathewson, who retired.
In the piece, Gilmartin discusses the role of the League in serving communities from Ironwood to Monore and every place between.
“The League works throughout Michigan to improve quality – downtown development consulting, neighborhood and housing issues, placemaking, elected officials training, state and federal advocacy, legal defense,” Gilmartin said in the article. “You name it we do it.”
He also discusses the SaveMICity work and how the League and it’s partners are aiming to amend the state system for funding municipal government services. For more than a decade, the state government has been balancing its own budget on the backs of local governments by redirecting more than $8 billion in municipal funding to its own coffers. Locally, Gilmartin said, since 2002 the City of Northville has been shorted more than $2 million and Northville Township has lost over $5.5 million, “forcing local leaders to cut important services or ask voters for higher taxes.”
“The system is broke and it needs to be fixed, so the League and its partners formed the SaveMICity campaign to drive the creation of a new municipal finance system that puts the money where it is needed – local roads and public safety – without raising taxes,” Gilmartin said.
Read the full article here.