The City Council is backing a November millage proposal to benefit two of Detroit’s cultural institutions.
Council members on Tuesday approved a resolution initiated by Council Member Scott Benson supporting the “Yes to Our Story” Campaign. The campaign, unveiled in August, seeks voter support for a joint operating millage for the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History and the Detroit Historical Society.
The resolution encouraging Detroit residents to participate in the Nov. 3 election and support the cultural institutions comes as absentee ballots have gone out across the state.
The ballot proposal seeks a 10-year, 0.2-mill levy in Wayne and Oakland counties. The tax would amount to $30 per year for the owner of a home with an average value of $300,000.
Benson said the dual county millage will help to create a sustained revenue stream like the Detroit Institute of Arts and Detroit library have. A proposal to support the Michigan Science Center, he said, “can be worked on in the future.”
Council Member Denzel McCampbell said ahead of the vote that there’s an effort to erase the history of certain types of people in the country.
The museums, he said, “are institutions that stand as combatting that effort and they solidify our history.”
In July, the Oakland County Board of Commissioners and the Wayne County Commission created a joint public authority called the Southeast Michigan Public Historical Museum Authority to put the millage on the ballot without approval from the Michigan Legislature.
The Michigan House of Representatives previously approved legislation allowing the Historical Society and Wright Museum to establish operating millage rates. House Bill 4177, or the History Museum Authorities Act, would have allowed counties to establish historical museum authorities to provide funding support for historical museums owned by the city of Detroit. The bill also passed the state Senate, but was stuck in limbo after a clerical error kept it from reaching the governor’s desk. Efforts to sign the bill into law ended in July when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed it and eight other long-stalled bills.
The Historical Society and Wright Museum have struggled for years to keep up with basic operating costs and have advocated since 2019 for a joint millage.
The council resolution approved Tuesday notes “these institutions tell the story of the African American experience,” and “share the unique charge of preserving the record of the people, places and events that shaped Metro Detroit.”
The Wright Museum is the second-largest African American museum in the country and the Detroit Historical Society, founded in 1921, operates the Detroit Historical Museum and the Dossin Great Lakes Museum at Belle Isle and is among the region’s oldest cultural institutions. Together, they host and maintain more than 300,000 publicly owned artifacts.
If the millage is approved, residents of both counties would receive free admission to the Wright Museum and the Detroit Historical Museum and the Dossin Museum.. Currently, free admission is reserved for small children and museum members.
The millage is also expected to cover free transportation for students and seniors, new curriculum and training for teachers. The collections of the museums would also be permanently protected.
Council Member Renata Miller said it’s hard to afford museum memberships. But support of the millage would mean a small contribution once a month and would allow Detroit families to visit as often as they want.
“This is why I believe that residents should support this millage and make our history more accessible to the people whose stories we tell,” she said. “We owe it to the next generation to preserve those stories and make sure that they are heard.”
