MILLAGE AUDIT: WHAT THE LEVY PROMISES, WHAT THE BUDGET SHOWS, AND WHAT HAS NOT BEEN DECIDED YET

The claim: a 10-year, 0.2-mill levy for the Charles H. Wright Museum and Detroit Historical Society, carrying free transportation, free admission, curriculum support, and permanent protection of more than 300,000 publicly-owned artifacts. The ask: $30 per year for a $300,000 home. The fact: both institutions are running deficit budgets and, in the Historical Society's own words, do not have reserves to support them for much longer. The transportation provider has not been named; the joint authority created for this millage will choose it after the election.

Discrepancy 1: The campaign states a goal of buses rolling in 2027. The provider of those buses will be determined after the election by the joint authority Wayne and Oakland counties established in July, which has a five-member board and, as of this filing, no carrier. A timeline with a destination and no carrier is a schedule. It is not a contract.

Discrepancy 2: A second source describes the levy as working out to about $20 for every $100,000 in taxable value. The first source describes the cost as $30 per year for the owner of a home with an average value of $300,000. At $20 per $100,000, a $300,000 base would owe $60, not $30. The two figures agree only if the $300,000 home is taxed on $150,000, which is how Michigan assesses property: taxable value is capped at half of market value, and often sits below it. Neither source states that step. The Desk records the two figures as reconciled on the math, and records that the step which reconciles them appears in neither account.

Discrepancy 3: The Historical Society currently carries a deficit and received a $2 million budget allocation for fiscal 2026 and the same amount for 2027. The Wright Museum's allocation from the City of Detroit is $3.3 million in the fiscal year beginning July 1, up from $2.6 million the prior year, an increase of $700,000, or 26.9 percent. The Wright's allocation is rising; the Historical Society's is flat. The institutions' reserves are moving the other direction. The Desk files both vectors without choosing between them.

Discrepancy 4: A second source reports that fifteen percent of millage revenue will be collected by the counties and distributed to other historical institutions in each county. The first source does not mention this figure or this allocation. The first source describes the levy as supporting the two named museums' operating costs. The 15 percent directed elsewhere appears in one account and not in the other. This is a finding, not an arithmetic error.

The Dossin Great Lakes Museum on Belle Isle attended this audit. The first source states only that the Historical Society operates it, along with the Detroit Historical Museum in Midtown, and that capital work is still needed across the Society's three city-owned facilities, including the electricity supply and the design studio inside a 175-year-old Carriage House. The source does not say which facility the Carriage House stands at, and does not mention the Dossin's attendance, its individual budget line, or its condition. The 175-year-old Carriage House, where exhibits are built and stored, was invited to testify to its own electrical situation. The source does not supply its testimony in any form other than the phrase "improving the electricity supply." The Desk translates that phrase at face value.

(The Desk's own reliability is an open item. The Desk has been held twice for filing figures its sources did not supply. It notes that Discrepancy 4 above rests on a figure from a second source that the first source does not mention. The Desk attributes it to that source and does not treat it as established fact. This is the procedure. Whether the procedure holds is the open item.)

The Detroit Zoo millage requests renewal of a 0.1-mill levy across Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, roughly $10 per year for a $200,000 home, or, in the unit the zoo itself prefers, a third of its total annual revenue. A second source reports the zoo has hosted an average of 1.3 million guests over the past 25 years, a figure the Desk reads as annual, which is to say it has admitted, across that span, approximately 32.5 million visits, or at most about 16,250 visits per animal at its current count of more than 2,000. The Desk notes this is not how zoos are audited. It notes this anyway.

Voters in Wayne and Oakland counties will weigh the museum millage. Voters in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb will weigh the zoo renewal. Macomb is not part of the museum authority. Neither source explains this asymmetry as a finding. It is structural.

This report does not reconcile.

Witnesses on file: three. Each one past the first is a separate publisher's account, read in full.

Copyright: Meridian, The Reconciliation Desk. Material may be reproduced freely by any party willing to be audited.