Word: hamtramckers
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Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale were among those invited who forgot to R.S.V.P., but nobody seemed to miss them. Pete Swider, from Hamtramck, Mich., vowed to eliminate crime by issuing federal credit cards to all 18-to 21-year-olds. Wearing a blue velour jogging suit and a gold feather headdress, Chief Rufus Thunderberg, a self-proclaimed Indian leader from Connecticut, worried about an imminent energy crisis. His solution: emergency methane production. Instead of distributing surplus cheese to the hungry, the Administration, according to Thunderberg, should provide baked beans. William Allen Camps warned that an enemy power has been tampering...
...course, not so simply put. When the GM plant is completed in 1983, it will employ 6,000 workers in a city where unemployment is at 18%. It will also contribute an initial $8.1 million a year in tax revenues to Detroit and the enclosed city of Hamtramck, where only 15 months ago the huge Chrysler assembly plant known as Dodge Main was closed. The GM factory will also offer new hope to a decaying city that has hemorrhaged hundreds of thousands of jobs over the past decade and currently faces a record budget deficit of more than $135 million...
When Chrysler announced that the plant gates would close, the future of Hamtramck itself was thrown into question. Already burdened by a shrinking, aging population, the city suddenly faced the loss of $2.3 million in annual tax revenues-almost half the general fund budget. The municipal payroll has been slashed from around 500 to 200, leaving just 43 policemen and 40 firemen. "They used to take up a whole block on Joseph Campau marching in parades," recalls Mayor Kozeran...
...Washington consultant has been hired to find a future for both Dodge Main and Hamtramck. A symposium of academics and government officials gathered there last summer to exchange ideas. Some suggested turning the plant into a bus factory. Others thought solar panels would correct the energy losses. Still others said to forget about the plant and transform Hamtramck into a free trade zone or a tourist attraction, like a Polish-theme park. "What Hamtramck does," said one participant, Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin, "will be an example for the rest of the nation." Added University of Pittsburgh Historian Samuel Hays...
Early in January, Chrysler, the U.S.'s ailing No. 3 carmaker, closed its aging, inefficient Dodge assembly plant in Hamtramck, Mich. Two weeks later, Uniroyal, the No. 4 rubber company, announced plans to shutter one of its oldest tiremaking factories, a 74-year-old mausoleum just south of Hamtramck on Detroit's Jefferson Avenue. The timing of the closings was coincidental, but it did serve as a stark reminder of how quickly a slump in the car industry can affect its many suppliers...