Mayor Duggan's 2016 State of the City Address highlights

DETROIT – Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan delivered his 2016 State of the City Address Tuesday night.

He gave the address at the Second Ebenezer Church. 

The focus of the speech was the revitalization of Detroit, the problems facing DPS and a looming pension fund deficit.

"We finished the last year with a balanced budget for the first time since 2002," Duggan said.

He said that over 600 vacant homes were auctioned off to families and that the neighborhoods are making progress, but nothing matters if blighted homes can't be demolished.

Duggun discussed the installation of thousands of streetlights and improved ambulance and police response times.

Project GreenLight was hailed as a success in creating safer neighborhoods.

Duggan spoke to the issues DPS is facing and what needs to happen to educate the children of Detroit.

He also said there is a $491 million deficit in the pension fund starting in 2024.

"We are going to keep our pension fund solvent," Duggan said. "We are going to keep our promises to our retirees. It's been broken once and we're going to make darn sure it never gets broken again."

Duggan said the problem can be managed if it's dealt with early on, before it becomes a crisis.

"Preliminarily it looks to be this, it looks like the EM and the consultants used the wrong assumptions. In particular, they used outdated mortality tables. They assumed people were not going to live as long to make the numbers look more favorable."

He said that the city would not ask anyone for a bailout and would begin putting additional monies into the fund as part of the 2016 budget.