The makeup of much of the Detroit School Board, City Council, the Mayor’s Office and some of those elected to the State Legislature from the city are proof positive that Detroiters are scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to quality elected officials.

This is painfully reinforced by the tendency of voters to repeatedly elect candidates with little integrity or judgment about what constitutes good public service. Clearly, Detroit is in need of a better mix of educated, sophisticated voters to reconfigure and revitalize the social, political and economic environment.

By any measure, the School Board is a disaster. Parents have heightened frustration with its members’ lack of flexibility and responsiveness. Its meetings are contentious – infighting is more the norm than the exception. Angry, estranged parents feel politically weak, unable to defend the interests of their children or see the benefits of the public school system. They flee the city in droves.

A down and dirty confrontation with new Supt. Connie Calloway seems to be gathering steam. My assesment is that the board misjudged the strength of character of the first- year CEO. Because she came from a small school district, the board felt Calloway could be controlled and manipulated. After discovering that she is no pushover, and steadfastly inclined to publicly reveal the board’s horrific foibles and deplorable past practices, she has been rendered persona non-grata.

Even if parents allow the board to successfully chart Calloway’s demise, students will continue to be held hostage in dysfunctional schools and an expensive bureaucratic fiefdom whose basic mission is to perpetuate itself. That’s proven by history. In short, the board is not only its own worst enemy, it is detrimental to quality education.

The Detroit City Council is another train wreck. Political corruption and the misuse of official power and government resources for private enrichment is not just a casual phenomenon for this legislative body. Allegations of bribery, patronage, nepotism, and the use of public office for personal gain are common.

Complacent and insulated, many on the council spend too much time focusing on issues of personal interest, getting reelected and taking care of their friends. The power of incumbency gives them an unfair advantage to amass large campaign war chests capable of warding off potential challengers and continuing these ethical lapses. Barring some apocalyptic event, or death, the worst of these politicians are immune to defeat. More members of the council die in office than lose a reelection bid.

This political entrenchment breeds arrogance, stifles new ideas and spawns officeholders accountable to no one but themselves. Seniority generates high-pitched, empty rhetoric, but is no guarantee of effectiveness. Neglected and unrepresented neighborhoods are unable to assign responsibility for their mounting problems and declining services or obtain solutions to them.

Then there is Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Despite some of his accomplishments in the city, the current issues facing his administration have stifled Detroit on a local, regional and national level. And it has left serious doubts among many about Kilpatrick’s effectiveness to continue to run the city.

Powerless Detroiters find it easy to be cynical and regard politics as the arena where self-interest prevails. Although voters have at their disposal the most effective weapon against incompatible elected officials — the inherent power of the vote to terminate the careers of these political bloodsuckers — they manage to survive. Frustrations are not transformed into recall petition signatures or votes for change.

Outrage and dissatisfaction is at a fever pitch every day but election day. Less than half of registered Detroiters typically turn out in city elections. But that is not unusual in cities where most of the talent and wealth now reside in the suburbs.

The remaining occupants keep voting in notoriously imperial, corrupt government officials because they don’t see that the costs of the malfeasance and sleaze are destructive. They don’t understand that when discretionary favors are dispensed and controlled through networks established by shady operators in exchange for votes, it raises the cost of doing business.

Uncertainty erodes business confidence and the small businessman or businesswoman becomes less viable – denied access to the government. Those businesses with political connections become shielded from competition as the economic marketplace is subverted and efficiency hampered by illicit payoffs. A distorted political hierarchy fails to generate great wealth and income or deliver essential services. Abandoned retail stores, boarded-up restaurants and houses and scarce jobs become part of the equation at the expense of residents.

The middle class, capable of managing, planning and advising, disappears. When they move, they take the skills, education and connections that make successful communities work. They leave a pool of powerless poor people who are at a disadvantage in having their basic needs met. Since only a minority of Detroiters still value good government, they have no means to address or reverse the city’s fortunes. That requires a broader base of young, educated new residents, the likes of which abandoned the city years ago.

I can already hear the chorus of some Detroiters bemoaning the prospect of a major influx of White residents into the city who might again seize political control. It will be convenient for them to make a villain out of any attempt to gentrify the political process. Some critics, of course, fear a future in which their exclusive advocacy for the chronic poor is rendered irrelevant by what might become a rising tide of more educated, committed residents contributing to uplifting economic growth.

But think for a moment: Why would any intelligent outside force want to take over a city with a racially divided people, decaying infrastructure, dwindling services, a disappearing tax base, a shrinking population and a budget immersed in permanent red ink?

There is no debate that much of the self-sustaining, enterprising spirit that launched Detroit’s growth 50 years ago is gone. Most suburbanites think of Detroit as a financial and moral wasteland rife with accelerating crime, genocidal violence and disturbing family malfunction.

Yet the only way this city will survive is if there is a re-population with a new class of virtuous, ethical people. Only when we transition to a more politically appropriate realignment and expand our demographic bases of power can we dream of a new status quo. Without a major dose of gentrification, we simply do not have much of a future.

The governance structure we have chosen is in large part a reflection of who we are. For too long, we have empowered the wrong people to make decisions that affect our lives and our futures to the point there are not many reasons for new entrants to want to make Detroit their home. This must change.

Like it or not, the people we have placed in office are no more and no less than we deserve. With a new vision and the addition of new, reform-minded residents, we can do better.