With a new year comes hope and optimism

A lot of us may have wished “good riddance” to the year 2021.
That’s because it was one bad year, with Covid stubbornly hanging on and even continuing to spread.
We are all crossing our fingers that this new year will bring some kind of light at the end of the tunnel. Over 60 Hamtramck residents have died of Covid during the past two years, and over 3,700 came down with it.
That number is equal to more than 10 percent of the city’s population, which is mind blowing.
This year also comes with a sea change in the city’s political landscape. The Yemeni community has proven to be a political powerhouse, and helped elect the city’s first Yemeni-American as mayor – Amer Ghalib.
And for the first time in history, the city’s entire city council, as well as the mayor, are Muslim.
Hamtramck has changed drastically from a once predominant Polish-American population.
This is going to be quite an adjustment for everyone.
We wish all of our elected officials great success. The change occurred because many voters wanted it. Hamtramck does occasionally go through elections like that.
While many are still savoring the victory, we caution those riding high now that the reality of the city’s many issues is complicated, but also requires one solution: An infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars.
That’s a lot of money, and unless we get more federal and state financial aid for the city’s many problems – fixing an aging infrastructure, shoring up a weak tax base, and meeting pension obligations – nothing much will change.
But this being the dawn of a new year, let’s let optimism reign.
At least for the moment.
Posted Jan. 7, 2022