The Tunnel Deal Is Dead; Long Live The Tunnel Deal

Where is Howie Mandel when we need him!

I just cannot be bothered with this Tunnel deal farce right now.

If Cliff Sutts who is involved in this deal up to his eyebrows can say this about what Detroit Council is doing:

• "I have no idea what it means," said Clifford Sutts of Thursday's events.
  
  I really don't know what their intention is..."
  
  "The deal we have got on the table requires them to create this authority," said Sutts.
  
  "I don't know if they have an alternative plan."

what can you expect from a poor Blogger!

Don't be too sorry for Mr. Sutts though, his work is not done yet. He will probably be told what this all means. According to the Detroit News,

• "The mayor said his staff has meetings planned with Windsor on Friday."

And he will still have some work to do:

• "Sutts said he still needed to get more information from Detroit before characterizing where the two parties go from here."
  
  "I really don't know," Sutts said. "It's going to be something where we find out what the facts are and talk to the people in Detroit."

Why is our Voice of Council, our Mayor so silent, so invisible. He should be able to tell us what Windsor's position is shouldn't he? Why doesn't he already? Instead, Councillor Marra has to be put on the spot and tell the world:

• "But one of the members of Windsor's tunnel commission, Windsor Councillor Bill Marra said that Windsor won't resume negotiations unless Detroit puts the tunnel in the authority.
  
  "They need to proceed with this next step so we can proceed with negotiations," Marra said. "It would demonstrate their commitment."

In passing, he can not have [expletive deleted] obscenitites shouted at him by any of his colleagues since he was speaking as a Tunnel Commissioner, not as a Councillor so he is OK!

Sheila Cockrel claimed the deal is "dead" yet the Detroit Mayor, he just ignored what went on at Council:

• "we don’t believe the council could rescind the vote. Their rules don’t allow it. It appears also the charter doesn’t allow it. So we’re going to continue to move forward. We’re asking the law department to look at that, so all of you will know that that vote probably was a nebulous vote...
  
  And, so we can’t really allow for this thing to die today. We’re going to keep moving,"

So now we may have weeks of debate that will stall everything off while their legal department decides whether or not the vote is "nebulous" or not. Perhaps the time required to do some big bond deals.

However, just watch out for this. Ken Cockrel Jr. was part of the six - two minority. He voted against rescinding the adoption of the articles of incorporation for the tunnel authority. He had voted previously to support creating an authority that would take over ownership and operations of the Tunnel. He also said to hedge his bets and to play all sides

• "Reeves, council President Ken Cockrel Jr. and Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel -- who all voted yes Tuesday on the tunnel deal -- said they were not necessarily going to vote yes on the final sale."

I want you to remember what was said before by the Detroit Council President Cockrel:

• "President Cockrel in Detroit said recently
  
  "I'm willing to see what they come up with. I've always liked the idea of a joint management agreement, but the idea has to make sense for both cities."

Don't forget also that Cockrel Jr. may also run for Mayor and was a guest at one of Eddie's State of the City speeches.

It wouldn't surprise me if Eddie tried to do an end run around Kwame and started working with Cockrel Jr. to do a Tunnel deal.

The only thing that I would remind the President is that Eddie also probably thought that Hendrix would now be Mayor of Detroit!