Originally Posted by
corktownyuppie
All of our mindsets need to change, as well as our concept of "ownership". What good is it that Detroit owned Cobo Hall when it was collapsing piece of dogsh** that no one wanted to pay to use anymore? We could point to it and say, "YEAH. We OWN this."
What benefit do we as Detroiters get for owning the Detroit Tunnel? It's not like Detroit residents use it for free, right?
What benefit do we get for owning Chandler Park? Rouge Park? Belle Isle Park? Sure, we get to use them for free. But so do suburbanites. And yet we pick up the tab for all the maintenance, right?
What benefit do we get for owning art? As long as it's sitting in the DIA, and I get to see it, what the hell difference does it make?
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We NEED to stop arguing about ownership. It's stupid. We NEED to start arguing about what benefits city residents.
- If in a hypothetical situation, the Water Department was owned by a tri-county entity, would it matter as long as Detroiters paid the same water rates?
- What good is owning an enterprise asset when we can't spin the profits from it into our general fund? Wouldn't leasing it to a 3rd party allow us to benefit from it?
- Who cares who owns Belle Isle? What matters is what will benefit Detroit residents the most, right? If a private operator charged a fee to get on the island, but that fee went to pay for more cops in the neighborhood, is there any resident who wouldn't make that trade?
Ownership is a red herring. Let's start talking about:
- the problems we're facing
- the priority of those problems
- the resources we have at hand
- and the most efficient way of deploying those resources to solve those problems.
Phukk all the other BS that's getting everyone all up in arms.