Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Leasing Belle Isle Park to the State Of Michigan

For Readers That Don't Know About Belle Isle Park
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Isle_Park

I’ve tried my best since I started the garden and the collective to stay out of politics. Today January 29, 2013 I have changed my mind.  After the Detroit City Councils inability to make a decision on the State of Michigan leasing Belle Isle Park, I have decided to voice my opinion.

I think this decision is a no brainer!!! We as a city cannot afford the up keep of this precious jewel. Not at this point and we haven’t been able to for years. The band aid maintenance that the City Administration says costs tax payers $8 million a year can be diverted to other things (Public Safety For Instance and I’ll get to that later). Some of the citizens and our leaders have this spirit of entitlement that doesn’t make sense to me. Our city has been declining for decades, 3 to 5 depending on who you talk to. From causes like white flight, redlining, etc. Or whatever other excuse you’d like to use but the one constant is electing folks that have ulterior motives into office to make decisions that don’t make PEOPLE SENSE!!!!!!! Common sense should tell us that we need parks but if another entity can fund the upkeep of our major park we should do it!!! Here’s the tie in to the public safety issue mentioned above. I read an article yesterday in the Detroit News “Detroit Police Pass Up Tech Upgrade “

This system could have saved officers a lot of time.

 Daddow cited a CLEMIS efficiency study, submitted to the Department of Justice in 2010, that found its services saved enough man-hours to equal 2,400 officers among the 100 departments in the consortium, which have 5,500 sworn officers.

"Applying the same benefits to Detroit and its 2,700 officers would result in an effective improvement of 1,178 redeployed officers," Daddow said.


Now saving $8 mill a year from the up keep of Belle Isle, could have paid for the system and still added more cops and fire fighters and EMS.
I REST MY CASE!!!!!!!!!!

1 comment:

tejl said...

Thank you for this common-sense approach to Belle Isle! Of course I understand why Detroiters are territorial over the property, but I truly hope they realize soon that the City could use all the financial help it can get, and that this is a LEASE proposition, not a sale.