Mary Sheffield took office on 1 January, the first woman elected mayor of Detroit, after beating Solomon Kinloch in the non-partisan election of 4 November. She was not a newcomer to the building: she joined the City Council in 2013 at twenty-six and was its president when she ran.
Eight months in, it is worth separating the things that have happened from the things that have been announced. Both matter. They are not the same.
Done
A wage floor for city staff. From 1 July, every full-time city employee is on a minimum salary of $44,616. That is a change with a date on it and a payroll behind it.
Rx Kids Detroit. A cash-aid program for expectant and new mothers, funded in the first budget.
Both came through the budget the council backed in April, so they carry the only kind of authority that matters at this stage: money attached.
Proposed
A property tax cut of 30 to 60 per cent. The argument is that Detroit's rates suppress both the tax base and the population, and that cutting them grows each. It is a large idea and it is not law. Anything you read that describes Detroit as having cut its property taxes is ahead of the record.
The survey underneath the budget
Before the budget there was a consultation, and its scale is the genuinely unusual part: more than 8,000 residents, across all 39 Detroit ZIP codes, in five languages.
They named six priorities — neighborhoods, safety, transportation and infrastructure, open government, pay and workforce, and things for young people to do outside school.
Read that list against the two items in the "done" column and the shape of the first year is legible enough. The wage floor answers pay. Rx Kids answers a slice of neighborhoods and youth. Transportation, infrastructure and open government have had a first State of the City address on 31 March and not much else that has landed.
Why the distinction is the whole story
A first-year administration is mostly proposals, and that is normal. The failure mode is a city where a proposal gets reported once, remembered as a decision, and never checked again.
So: the wage floor is real. Rx Kids is funded. The tax cut is an argument. When that changes, it will change here.