Justice
Should Cities Ditch Their Mayoral Mansions?
This outdated tradition may cause new mayors more headaches than its worth.
Detroit's Manoogian Mansion poses a particularly awkward conundrum, as mayoral manses go. The 4,000 square-foot home on the Detroit River has the typical trappings of an official residence: the multiple dining rooms, the sweeping driveway, the neatly manicured grounds. But this isn't just any mayoral mansion – it's a city-owned estate (requiring more than $100,000 in annual upkeep) in a city infamously short on cash.
To make matters worse, Detroit cannot sell it. When the property was gifted to the city in the 1960s, the deed included a prohibition against unloading it. So what's a newly elected mayor in Detroit in 2014 to do? Or, as Bill McGraw put it for Deadline Detroit: