Why don't fellow members of the Detroit City Council or friends of Monica Conyers and JoAnn Watson tell them to 'stifle it' or just plain 'shut up'.
Their comments are further damaging the image of Detroit, the Council and themselves providing further reasons to look beyond Detroit to the suburbs for leadership and intelligent city government.
Monica in a Detroit News article again tries to comment on the Cobo Hall deal and justinvites ridicule and shows her ignorance. JoAnn Watson blames the media for her ignorance and serious lack of common sense and discretion.
Detroiters will benefit from the Cobo Hall deal, as it stands - now, and even if tweaked by Mayor Bing - they will get to keep their jobs at restaurants, bars, casinos and other businesses that cater to Cobo conventioneers and visitors. Detroit will get to keep or increase the tax revenue that Cobo generates, if it remains viable and improved.
Detroit will enhance its tarnished image and reputation if a renovated and improved Cobo Hall attracts more conventions and visitors and positive comments spread, throughout the country.
Requesting set asides and special job quotas only makes Detroit look desperate and needy. A city that has to have special consideration because it has poor schools, and an uneducated work force. Rather than residents who are educated and ready to compete for any job that Cobo can create or needs. Black residents should be ashamed that Conyers and other council members thinks so little of them and their abilities, while professing to be their champions.
A succession of Detroit Mayors and Council members have allowed Cobo Hall to fall into severe disrepair - a city building engineer told me - it should closed and condemned. They have failed year after year to make necessary repairs and improvements needed to make Cobo a viable convention center. They have failed to control union contracts and costs associated with attracting and keeping convention business. How many businesses and companies have bit their tongues and used Cobo for a convention - because of loyalty to Detroit and a willingness to help it survive.
Cobo Hall is a disgrace - a negative factor in moving Detroit forward, take a walking tour for yourself, look at the ceilings (protect your eyes during rain storms), go downstairs into the basement, look at the loading docks - and you will see that any attempt to renovate Cobo would be a chore a major undertaking - and a blessing to the City of Detroit.
Detroit can only benefit...and Detroit residents need leadership to embrace the opportunity to make Cobo Hall - a great convention center.
And JoAnn Watson - OMG, blasphemy - using a prayer session in front of her home - to invoke God - to try and fool Detroit residents into believing that God is on her side - despite her totally unbelievable story about her home assessment and failure to pay her fair share of property taxes. A council woman that is that ignorant and deceitful must resign - but won't - so Detroit residents must rise up and tell her too. Watson tries to blame the media for her serious lack of common sense and discretion - fellow council member should tell to pay up and 'shut up'.
