DETROIT (WXYZ) — Detroit business owners, residents and community leaders gathered for a roundtable discussion reacting to Mayor Mike Duggan’s final State of the City address at The Congregation coffee shop on the city’s west side Tuesday.

7 News Detroit hosted the community conversation with people of diverse backgrounds.

We asked the leaders what they were hoping the mayor would touch on in his final address and then watched his speech together.

Imani Foster is a member of 482 Forward and fights for education justice across the city. She was hoping the mayor would discuss the issues students face inside schools including low literacy levels and higher education opportunities.

Watch coverage of Mike Duggan’s speech below:

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan delivers his final State of the City address

“I think every child at base level needs to be able to read and comprehend,” she said before the mayor took the stage.

Spencer Ellis is the lead pastor at Citadel of Praise in the Brightmoor neighborhood. He says he’s seen improvement in the neighborhood he lives and works in and hopes to see that progress continue.

“I’ve been in that area for almost 20 years and when we first got there, it was abandoned property after abandoned home after abandoned property,” Ellis said.

Watch Mike Duggan’s full speech below:

FULL SPEECH: Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan gives final State of the City

Imhotep Blue is the vice president Detroit 300, a grassroots organization that helps communities by policing targeted neighborhoods, providing support to those who have experienced violent and nonviolent crime. He says mitigating crime and focusing on the city’s youth is top of the priority list to him.

“You have to understand the different dynamics of the different people that come from different areas,” he said.

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Delly is the sister of Rayshawn Bryant, who was an innocent bystander shot and killed at a Detroit Lions tailgate at Eastern Market last September. For her, community safety is most important and she hopes what happened to her brother doesn’t happen to anyone else.

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“I want to feel comfortable in large environments like concerts and festivals within the city and know there’s not a potential that I’ll have to run or hide or that someone I love is gonna be taken away,” Delly said.

Motor City Match recipient and owner of the clothing store Coup D’etat, Angela Wisniewski-Cobbina, says she’s proud of the progress the city has made in the downtown area but hopes some of those successes can be transferred to surrounding neighborhoods.

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“We need to spread some of that love right into the other pockets who aren’t seeing as much,” she said.

The members of our roundtable listened intently to the mayor’s address, taking notes and comparing what he said to what they’re seeing in their own backyards.

In the end, they say they feel hopeful for the city and its future.

“It is an exciting time in the city of Detroit. What I was especially impressed with was the crime rate,” Ellis said.

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However, others were hoping to hear less about development strictly in the downtown area and more about the neighborhoods.

“I think that I did have a little bit of tension and frustration with how much of the focus was on so much of the development happening downtown and leaving the neighborhoods last in his speech,” Foster said. “A nice, pretty city… People stay because they can be rooted in a place.”

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These residents and community leaders say they hope the next mayor can continue pushing the city along and make their city a place everyone can continue to be proud of.

“We want to stay in Detroit, we want to continue to live in Detroit, we just want to see the next mayor that comes after Mayor Duggan take the baton and run with it,” Ellis said.

Officials are investigating a death at the old Milwaukee Mall location at West Fond du Lac and North avenues.

The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office says it responded to the location for a death but was unable to release more information Tuesday night.

The site was once Milwaukee’s first Sears store in the 1920s and this intersection was part of a booming retail center on the north side. Sears would close the store in 1981 and soon the Fondy Mall opened there for less than a year. The location was then marketed as Milwaukee Mall, but it was more of a indoor flea market that eventually closed over a decade ago.

In recent years, developer Kalan Haywood Sr. has been pursing plans to create a mix of uses, including a craft brewery, events venue, art gallery, office space and housing on a 7-acre site. He borrowed $3.79 million from the City of Milwaukee for a stalled hotel project and received more time to repay the loan. The deadline was this month, according to prior media coverage.

The Milwaukee Police Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for information Tuesday night about the death investigation.

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.

Minneapolis school board members Tuesday night began detailing difficult cuts they expect to make to close a $75 million budget gap for next school year — including cutting more than 100 positions tied to special education.

District leaders had previously signaled school nutrition and special education would be affected by cuts. Some layoff notices had already been sent. As they met Tuesday night, the board’s finance committee said the total number of position cuts coming hadn’t been finalized.

Protesters at the meeting pushed back on talk of reductions, at one point standing and chanting “Who’s schools? Our schools!” They called on board members to sign a pledge not to touch student-facing special education positions.

Daniel Degnan, a parent with a son in a special education program, told board members his son had attended a Minneapolis school with an underfunded special education program in the past and the difference was drastic.

“I’m not worried about if my son will regress, but by how much,” said Degnan, adding that his son is flourishing now with the help of speech device and proper support. “These cuts would not be simple restructuring of staff and resources at Dowling Elementary. It would be a complete and utter denial of education for our most vulnerable.”

Board members said they were focused on cutting positions that weren’t student-facing and were trying to minimize direct effects on classrooms. They said cuts to math and literacy staff were minimized. They said no programs aimed at helping students of color were eliminated.

Among the money-saving proposals, board member said plans include:

Collin Beachy, chair of the school board, praised the staff for its work providing the board detailed budget data and options.

“I’ve been saying to you guys for months now about how much hard work I know that you’re all doing and how painful and stressful it can be,” Beachy said. “You know, we’ve asked for transparency and I think that we’ve gotten it on steroids here.”

Now the state’s fourth-largest district, Minneapolis has struggled for years with budget deficits driven largely by shrinking enrollment. Last year as the district faced an even larger budget gap of $110 million, it drew from its reserves, cut jobs and left nearly 5 percent of its open staff positions unfilled to make ends meet. Some of the cuts included positions in finance, human resources and cleaning staff.

Officials in recent months have also been examining the district’s building use for possible savings. They’ve estimated Minneapolis Public Schools is operating now at 65 percent of the enrollment the buildings could ideally support, though district leaders haven’t said whether they plan to close buildings and they did not speak to the issue Tuesday night.

The full board is expected to approve a final budget in June.

A recent survey by the Association of Metropolitan School Districts shows all but a few Twin Cities area districts are dealing with deficits, many in the millions of dollars. 

Added together, districts expect to see a shortfall of $280 million. That would slip to $264 million if Gov. Tim Walz’s budget proposal is approved. Those numbers are slightly better than the more than $300 million in expected shortfalls districts reported last year.