Who Is Posturing

You tell me who is posturing on the Tunnel and who is not. I do not know.

However, when I do a Municipal Freedom of Information Application on the Windsor legal bills at the appropriate time I am sure that we will learn the answer!

• DETROIT FREE PRESS, July 11, 2008
  
  Detroit City Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel raised the possible uncertainty at today’s meeting of the council’s Budget, Finance and Audit Committee, prompting Detroit Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams, who has been a key negotiator for Detroit in the deal, to tell the council committee that he remains confident the deal will get done and said Sutts’ comments in the paper are meaningless. In fact, he said attorney William Phillips, who has represented Detroit in the negotiations, spoke with Sutts as recently as Thursday night, and Sutts asked for Phillips to provide him Detroit documents on the deal.
  
  Adams said Francis told Kilpatrick as recently as last week that the deal was on and he was excited about the Detroit council finally taking a first step toward a sale.
  
  “It’s our understanding that we are still proceeding and continuing our negotiations with Windsor,” Adams told the council.
  
  Adams said he saw Sutts’ comments as “posturing,” possibly because of the heat that Sutts and Francis have taken on the Windsor side of the river over the $1.2- million (Canadian) Windsor has paid Sutts for his work on the deal.
  
  
• DETROIT NEWS July 11, 2008
  
  Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams assured members at today's morning Detroit City Council meeting that Detroit has received no official notice that Windsor wants to pull out of the agreement. And he said Kilpatrick spoke with Francis last week and he was "excited" about the city council's vote last week to start the sale process.
  
  "Mayor Francis said the deal was a go," Adams said, of that conversation.
  
  But Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel was skeptical, saying she wanted something in writing from Francis saying Windsor is interested.
  
  "There is ... more uncertainty thrown into the situation, which is tenuous at best," Cockrel said.
  
  
• WINDSOR STAR, July 11. 2008
  
  City council will step back from negotiating a tunnel deal until scandals involving Detroit's council and its mayor subside and Detroit can clearly say what it wants.
  
  "The distractions of Detroit's council have left the situation so uncertain. Windsor's council does not want to proceed and incur further (legal) expense unless Detroit clarifies its position," lawyer Cliff Sutts, lead negotiator for Windsor, said after a two-hour special council meeting on Thursday.
  
  "We could proceed with negotiations, reach completed documents and (Detroit's council) could reject it for reasons totally unrelated to the documents themselves...
  
  "We need both parties on the U.S. side to have a common goal and that doesn't appear to exist in Detroit," Sutts said. "They have to resolve their differences. You can't make two separate deals over the same tunnel."