I was talking with someone yesterday about this being a model for Detroit and in some ways, the whole state.

In Michigan we have the very difficult challenge of providing a level of services that were developed at a time when our economy was a lot bigger. As a school board member, I can see the equivalent of urban blight creeping across our public services as we continue to try and do the same job without the same money.

I would love to see a big block of stimulus money go to “downsizing grants.” With $50,000,000 you could do 1,000 grants of $50,000 to nonprofits, governmental agencies and businesses to take a fresh look at all kinds of vital things that we do and figure out how to do them with the resources and users that we have now instead of what we had when we thought them up.