John Fund takes on Detroit's rejection of the
Belle Isle deal.
Some council members seemed to be living in an alternate reality in
which Belle Isle wasn’t in dire need of help. Council president Charles
Pugh said he would be happy to have the state “beautify Belle Isle, but
not the state as the one running it.” His council colleague, JoAnn
Watson, said she was holding out hope for a federal or state bailout of
the city’s finances. Council member Kenneth Cockrel Jr. insisted that
“there are far more pressing issues than this that we ought to be
dealing with.” But the council has consistently rejected sensible
proposals to contract out its bus system and garbage collection or to
sell its electric system to an investor-owned utility.
Henry Payne, a writer for the Detroit News, says the tenor
of the council meeting depressed him. “It was a throwback to old
conspiracy theories that have long prevented progress in Detroit,” he
told me. “Several speakers raved on about the Belle Isle deal being a
suburban plot to take over Detroit.”
With Coleman Young invoked in the Council's rejection of any consideration (just consideration!) of the deal, Detroit is beyond being a parody of itself. What next?
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