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Old Posted Mar 8, 2013, 3:22 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: New York
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Quote:
Originally Posted by miketoronto View Post
I think people are being too sympathetic to the City of Detroit. Have any of you ever seen video of Detroit City Council meetings? If you take a look at them you will see that a lot of the troubles Detroit faces are due in large part to an incompetent city government.
Yes suburbanization, business flight, etc have had a huge negative impact on Detroit. But Detroit City Council and their fight against working with the region, etc have also been a huge huge part of the decline of Detroit.

And it is time they are called out to task about their inability to run a big city.

Detroit also needs a huge dose of regionalism where the city and suburbs have to work together whether they like it or not. It can't be done under Michigan law, but if it was possible, the State should just amalgamate Detroit and its suburbs and regionalize all major services and schools.
I'm not going to get into finger pointing about what has caused Detroit to get to where it's at today... But it's well beyond the fault of the Detroit City Council. So much attention is given to the city council by the media because it is a circus, but in reality the amount of media attention they are given relative to the actual power they have is way out of proportion.

ETA: An example of this is how during the Kwame Kilpatrick reign of terror the city council didn't even have the power to remove him from office. They could only request the governor to do it, but the governor is not legally obligated to oblige the request.
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