Detroit thread. Post Kwame, Monica, and $1 houses here.

[Savonarola]

Detroit Historic Flooding: Major Interstates May Be Closed For Days After Historic Rainfall Event; Two Dead

Two women died and thousands of motorists were caught on flooded freeways and streets Monday as Detroit and its suburbs were inundated with record-shattering rainfall during the afternoon rush. Parts of at least five major freeways remained closed at noon Tuesday, some 16 hours after the deluge ended, and officials said some roads may not reopen for days.

Police said a 100-year-old woman was found dead in her flooded basement Tuesday in the suburb of Warren, just north of Detroit, according to WDIV-TV.

The woman's daughter was concerned about her welfare and went to the home to check on her, said Warren Mayor James Fouts.

Fouts said the woman appears to have drowned. A cause of death was not immediately available, and Fouts did not release the woman's name.

On Monday, a 30-year-old Sterling Heights woman died when she went into cardiac arrest after her car became trapped in three and a half feet of floodwaters near the intersection of Van Dyke Road and Old 13 Mile Road, the Detroit Free Press reports.

Bystanders pulled her from her vehicle after seeing her suffer seizures and took her to a nearby business where she was picked up and taken to a hospital by firefighters. She had no vital signs at the scene and was pronounced dead at the hospital.

At least one other person was injured when their car was swept away by rising waters.

More showers and thunderstorms moved through southeastern Michigan Tuesday afternoon, bringing about a quarter of an inch of additional rainfall.

More than 1,000 cars were abandoned across the Detroit area overnight after dozens of high water rescues and evacuations for higher ground. Others opted to spend the night in their vehicles, trapped by floodwaters that submerged countless roads across the area.

Portions of the Ford Freeway (Interstate 94), the Chrysler Freeway (Interstate 75), Interstate 696, the Southfield Freeway, and the Lodge Freeway closed Monday evening and remained closed as of midday Tuesday as water was slow to recede from many below-grade sections, especially at underpasses.

Michigan State Police advised motorists to avoid all non-essential travel on metro Detroit freeways, according to the Detroit Free Press.

By Tuesday evening, some stretches of freeway appeared to be drying out while others remained flooded. Parts of I-75, I-696 and the Lodge Freeway were still closed.

Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) spokesperson Diane Cross told the Detroit Free Press that the pump infrastructure used to keep water off roads was "overwhelmed" from the deluge, which caused water to pool up on freeways in metro Detroit.

Cross told Crain's Business Detroit that valuable copper pipes had been stolen from several pumping stations, compromising their ability to remove water from the freeway system. MDOT did not discover the theft until now, Cross said.

The freeway closures may last for days, according to the Crain's Business Detroit report, as engineers inspect affected roads for safety.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said the state has "taken a dramatic series of actions," to clear roads and respond to flooding damage in the area. That included activating the State Emergency Operations Center to coordinate a joint state/local response to the flooding.

But MDOT said there is no estimate of when I-75 at I-696 in the northern suburbs would reopen, and recommended avoiding I-696 near and east of I-75 through Warren until further notice because as Lt. Michael Shaw told CBS Detroit, there was still "about 12 feet of water that's in the interchange."

Each flooded area needs to be cleaned and inspected before reopening, according to MDOT. That includes removing the hundreds of abandoned cars along the roadways. Warren, Michigan, mayor Jim Fouts told WWJ-TV that there were more than 1,000 cars left abandoned on the flooded roads in Warren alone.

"We've got a lot going on. It's not just the water on the roads. We can't clean up the roads, we've got to get the cars off the roads," MDOT Spokesperson Diane Cross told the Detroit Free Press.

Michigan State Police announced that they had sent dive teams to search cars for bodies at the bottom of inundated freeways, the Associated Press reports. Lt. Michael Shaw said that the divers were used as a precautionary measure and that no one had been reported missing in the deluge.

Large Area Affected by Flooding

A swath taking in the western and northern sides of Detroit proper and the adjacent western and northern suburbs appeared to be hardest hit. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of photos and videos posted to social media of flooded neighborhood streets and major thoroughfares.

Basements flooded in thousands of homes in metro Detroit, according to the Free Press.

Photos of flooded basements surfaced on social media from all over metro Detroit, including Detroit itself and the suburbs of Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Highland Park, Hamtramck, Oak Park, Ferndale, Berkley and Rosedale. Basement flooding was also reported in Huntington Woods, according to the National Weather Service.

About 17,000 DTE Energy customers remained without electricity Tuesday afternoon, according to the utility's Facebook page. The company's website showed a concentrated cluster of outages in the suburb of Dearborn.

In Royal Oak, the Detroit Zoo was closed Tuesday after heavy rains and flooding damaged facilities and equipment, including the Arctic Ring of Life exhibit that houses polar bears, seals and arctic foxes.

"All animals are secure and there are no concerns with animal welfare at this time," the zoo said in a statement.

Automobile production slowed Tuesday as flooding affected several facilities.

Four Chrysler plants - including one in Detroit and three in the suburbs of Warren and Sterling Heights - were flooded Monday.

The company halted operations at its Sterling Heights Assembly Plant at 9 p.m. Monday night and released employees again Tuesday morning. Chrysler said road closings caused by flooding have slowed deliveries and caused high absenteeism.

Three other Chrysler plants were running Tuesday morning, but at a slow rate. Chrysler expected to resume normal production at all four plants later Tuesday.

General Motors closed its Tech Center in Warren on Tuesday because of flood damage. The company told the 19,000 engineers, designers and others who work at the 330-acre campus to stay home while facilities are cleaned.

Historic Rainfall

"I've lived in this area 40 years, and can't ever recall all the major expressways closing for flooding like happened in today's storms," said Jeff Masters, director of meteorology for The Weather Channel's sister company, Weather Underground.

This observation was backed up by Detroit native WDIV-TV Local 4 meteorologist Paul Gross.

"I have lived my entire life and worked my entire career here, and I have never seen as widespread a flooding event. I also remember some individual intense thunderstorms that flooded one freeway. But I don't ever remember every freeway being flooded out."

Some of the heaviest rain came in the 6 p.m. hour, when 1.24 inches of rain fell at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in just 24 minutes, part of a record-breaking 4.57 inches of total rainfall for the day. It is the second-heaviest calendar-day rainfall on record in the Motor City, behind only a 4.74-inch deluge on July 31, 1925.

In Oakland County, a spotter reported 6.25 inches of rain over just 12 hours in Southfield.

Despite measuring its snowiest winter on record earlier this year, breaking a 133-year-old record, Detroit's precipitation total for 2014 to date was near normal before Monday's storm.

Most of the highways in Detroit run below grade; that's why the flooding is so bad.  (Well that and Detroit's ever industrious thieves.)

[Razgovory]

Well, looks the water problem is solved.

[Ed Anger]

I have a frothing hatred of copper thieves.

[CountDeMoney]

I have a frothing hatred of copper thieves.

Followed by the "we didn't know it was stolen" salvage and scrap shops.  Pieces of shit.

[DGuller]

Well, looks the water problem is solved.

.

[Caliga]

She has the "Innsmouth Look" Graves' Disease.

[Savonarola]

And people think there's no money in being a librarian:

Prosecutors: 'Megalomaniac' former Detroit library exec deserves 15 years

Timothy Cromer (David Coates / The Detroit News)

Detroit — Former Detroit Public Library executive Timothy Cromer is a "megalomaniac" and "conman" whose $1.5 million kickback scheme should earn him a 15-year prison sentence, argued the U.S. Attorney's Office in a filing Monday.

The cash-strapped system had to layoff staffers and close buildings in part because of losses tied to Cromer, whose colleagues likened his intimidation tactics to the "Gestapo" and nicknamed him "Slippery Tim," according to investigators and library officials.

Cromer, the library's former chief administrative and technology officer, secured nearly $5 million in fraudulent contracts for two IT companies, which in turn paid him $1.5 million in kickbacks, investigators allege.

The library work could have been completed for less than $150,000, technology experts would later tell officials.

"It takes someone of particularly low character to see an institution as rich with history and essential to the community as the DPL only as an opportunity for self-enrichment," U.S. Assistant Attorney Elizabeth Stafford wrote. "It took a megalomaniac like Cromer."

"... Cromer's corruption was uncommonly egregious, both in terms of the level of deceit and the amount of public money that he converted into a personal slush fund."

Cromer of West Bloomfield Township was a library executive from 2006 to 2013, when he lost his $145,323 a year job following an FBI raid of the system's main branch and his home. He pleaded guilty in April to bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery. He is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 16.

The government alleges Cromer helped co-defendant James Henley create a business in 2007, Core —Consulting & Professional Services Inc. — and urged him to bid on a library network infrastructure contract despite the fact "Henley knew nothing about that field." The two met because their sons played basketball together, according to the filing.

Henley would only learn after the contract was approved that Cromer worked at the library, according to the filing.

Cromer also helped Ricardo Hearn, the owner of Cubemation, get a contract for Web design, after he agreed to pay Cromer a kickback of 33 percent of the profit, officials said.

"The consequence for the DPL is that it received very limited value for the millions of dollars it paid to Core and Cubemation," the filing said.

Monday's filing by the U.S. Attorney's Office also alleges Cromer manipulated other top library officials,including the woman who helped hire him, former executive director Nancy Skowronski. Skowronski retired in 2009.

"Cromer used his power within the DPL to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, and acted as if he owned the DPL," according to the filing. "He was described as a 'Gestapo,' threatening employees to toe the line, and boasting about his ownership of firearms and ability to use them."

And investigators said Cromer lied about graduating from high school and college.

Cromer told library officials at one point that he graduated with a bachelor's from Wayne State University in 1992. The truth was he didn't graduate until last year, after he was fired. And his job application said he graduated from Cass Technical High School in 1984. Instead he dropped out of Cooley High after his sophomore year and didn't earn his GED until 1990, according to the filing.

"Cromer used his ill-gotten proceeds to finance an extravagant lifestyle, including a nice home, multiple fancy cars, watches and guns," according to the filing.

In April, Cromer's attorney, Ben Gonek, said his client was "prepared to pay restitution to the library system and wants to "accept responsibility for his actions, put this behind him and move on with his life."

Cromer had been under scrutiny and criticism for years, in part because he oversaw contracts and major projects for the library whose costs soared. He was the subject of several Detroit News articles in 2011 and 2012 exposing questionable contracts and accusations of nepotism.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140818/METRO01/308180079#ixzz3AmBzk01D

When the librarian tells you to shush in Detroit; you'd better.   

[Malthus]

Detroit: even the librarians are on the take. 

[Yes I know, an executive, not a librarian. But still.]

[The Brain]

Conman the Destroyer.

[CountDeMoney]

That's fucked up, man.  Mayor's office? You expect that.  Cops? No doubt.  Sanitation? Duh.  But corruption at the level of millions at the public motherfucking library?  That's a whole new level of fucked-upedness.
What the fuck's next to come out of that town, selling shelter animals to the local med school?   Pimping out matchmaking services at day care centers? 

Just nuke it.  Move the Lions to Kalamazoo, and nuke it all.

[garbon]

I just got an email from Virgin Atlantic that included this about new routes:

A new daily service from London Heathrow to Detroit offering new connections across North and Central USA such as Cincinnati, New Orleans, Memphis and Indianapolis*

[KRonn]

"Cromer used his power within the DPL to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, and acted as if he owned the DPL," according to the filing. "He was described as a 'Gestapo,' threatening employees to toe the line, and boasting about his ownership of firearms and ability to use them." 

This is almost comically despicable, given that it's coming from a city's library department. I wonder what kind of shakedowns this guy did to people with overdue library books? 

[DontSayBanana]

"Cromer used his power within the DPL to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, and acted as if he owned the DPL," according to the filing. "He was described as a 'Gestapo,' threatening employees to toe the line, and boasting about his ownership of firearms and ability to use them." 

This is almost comically despicable, given that it's coming from a city's library department. I wonder what kind of shakedowns this guy did to people with overdue library books? 

[KRonn]

Lol...   

Good find!

[Savonarola]

One of the last two hold outs in the bankruptcy deal has been appeased:

Holdout creditor Syncora to get millions in Detroit bankruptcy deal

The city reached a last-minute settlement with its fiercest holdout creditor late Tuesday to give the firm millions, control of a city parking garage and a 20-year lease extension of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel — a deal that could speed the end of Detroit's bankruptcy.

Bond insurer Syncora Guarantee Inc. has agreed to a deal that will pay it roughly 26 cents on the dollar, according to two sources familiar with negotiations. The city also agreed to extend the tunnel lease with a Syncora-controlled firm for 20 years. The city also will give New York-based Syncora millions in return for the firm's pledge to help counter bond insurer FinancialGuaranty Insurance Co., which is fighting Detroit's debt-cutting plan.

The tentative deal could end a dispute that predates Detroit's bankruptcy filing in July 2013. Since then, Syncora has gained a reputation as the city's fiercest adversary, fighting attempts to fix broken streetlights and leveling a "blistering" personal attack on federal mediators that drew a rebuke from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes.

With the exception of Detroit's eligibility for bankruptcy, Syncora has battled the city at nearly every corner, challenging its "grand bargain" with pensioners and relentlessly pursuing Detroit's storied art collection.

The deal was reached hours after the city agreed with county leaders to spin off the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. The Syncora deal, reached days after The News exclusively reported about last-minute negotiations involving cash, the tunnel and real estate, must be approved by Rhodes.

"We expect an announcement from mediators Wednesday morning," city spokesman Bill Nowling told The News Tuesday night.

Syncora late Tuesday called for a 48-hour halt in Detroit's bankruptcy trial, saying it has "reached an agreement in principle" with the city and needed to finalize some details.

In a court filing, Syncora attorney Ryan Blaine Bennett said the bond insurer needs time to "address certain conditions and logistics."

Syncora asked Rhodes to delay further proceedings until 8:30 a.m. Friday.

"We also note for the court that if this agreement is finalized within this time period as we expect, it will profoundly alter the course of the proceeding and the litigation plans of the remaining parties," Bennett wrote to the judge.

At least one large hurdle remains. Bond insurer FGIC, with claims of more than $1.1 billion in pension bonds it insured, walked out of closed-door negotiations two weeks ago and has a claim three times the size of Syncora's.

A spokesman for FGIC declined to comment Tuesday night.

The Syncora deal raises questions about what money is left for FGIC.

"Your asset list is shrinking," Bloomfield Hills bankruptcy lawyer Douglas Bernstein said. "What's left to offer to them in a settlement? Maybe it's not as rich."

And even if Detroit settles with FGIC, the judge must conclude the city's plan is fair and feasible, Bernstein said.

"No matter what, that's the focus," he said. "They are still going to have to prove to (Rhodes) that the city can do this."

Syncora's deal also would require other creditors to sign off, potentially leaving less money for certain bondholders to recover from Detroit. Banking giants UBS AG and Bank of America would have to drop their pursuit of a nearly $200 million insurance claim against Syncora over a troubled pension debt deal, which one source described as a "significant loose end."

A two-day delay in the trial, said Syncora attorney James Sprayregen, is needed "so that we can work through certain contingencies contained in the deal, including obtaining full resolution with Bank of America, UBS and other stakeholders."

Two sources close to the negotiations told The News the deal has several elements:

■ The city agreed to extend a lease of its half of the Detroit-Windsor tunnel for 20 years. The current lease ends in 2020, but the new lease would run through 2040.

Syncora already has a financial interest in the tunnel linking the United States and Canada, increasing the value of a long-term lease extension.

Ownership of the company that operates the U.S. side of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel was transferred from an investment company to Syncora in September in exchange for $334 million in swap liability.

Earlier this year, UBS and Bank of America agreed to take 29 cents on the dollar for a $290 million claim against Detroit for bad interest rate bets the city made with the two banks in 2005 on a troubled $1.4 billion pension debt deal. Syncora insured the banks' interest rate swap with Detroit, leaving the company on the hook for the banks' losses.

The proposed deal would require Syncora to drop all of its pending appeals at the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, including its attempt to block Detroit from access to crucial monthly casino tax revenue that the two banks held as collateral. Additional mediation between Syncora, the banks and other creditors is expected this week.

American Roads, the parent company of Detroit Windsor Tunnel LLC, which operates the Detroit half of the one-mile tunnel under a lease, makes annual rental payments to the city of about $1 million.

Under the deal, the city would enter into a redevelopment agreement with American Roads and convey vacant land around the tunnel to Syncora's subsidiary, a source familiar with the deal told The News.

Detroit pursued selling its half of the tunnel for $75 million during former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's tenure, but the deal fell apart.

The city of Windsor owns the Canadian side.

■ Detroit will let Syncora share in $120 million of "B notes" — new bonds the city is issuing to creditors to be paid over time — included in the city's bankruptcy plan. Syncora will receive a $23 million piece of the deal.

■ Detroit will give Syncora the chance to operate a city-owned parking garage underneath Grand Circus Park. The lease deal is for 30 years. The garage near Ford Field and Comerica Park has 800 spaces and is Detroit's third-largest municipal garage and an entertainment district that includes Fox Theatre. Syncora has to make $13 million in capital improvements in the garage. Once it does, it will receive the parking revenue — except for 25 percent that would go to Detroit.

■ Syncora also gets a $6.25 million coupon that can be used to bid on any available city property — namely the Joe Louis Arena site, once the Red Wings move out after construction of a planned arena north of the Fox and Comerica Park.

The $6.25 million coupon can be used to top rival bidders for Detroit property, perhaps including the former Ford Auditorium site along the Detroit River.

■ Detroit will issue $21.3 million in parking revenue bonds and give the cash to Syncora, under terms of the deal.

■ Syncora also gets $5 million in cash from Detroit to help settle claims with firms involved in an infamous $1.4 billion pension deal.

Syncora's new allowed claim is $201.5 million, down from about $400 million. In all, Syncora boosted its recovery from 6 cents on the dollar to roughly 26 cents on the dollar, sources said. In comparison, Detroit's debt-cutting plan gives the city's pensioners about 46 cents on the dollar for their $3.1 billion claim. UBS and Bank of America are getting $85 million, or 29 cents on the dollar, for their interest rate swap claim against the city.



From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140909/METRO01/309090137#ixzz3Cw2gq2Ju

It seems like a reasonable deal; at least in that it gives Syncora a large interest in the city's recovery.  As the article notes, FGIC is owed much more by the city of Detroit and still opposes the deal.