Not sure what it would take, but do you think the City Charter should be amended to require people running for City Council to have some qualifications?

Like perhaps business experience? [[Hopefully successful business experience).

We've had insane people, council presidents that couldn't balance a checkbook or make a mortgage payment on a small townhouse with two media jobs. People who were illiterate etc.


Anyway,... yesterday I get a newsletter from the council person in my district and it mentions the 7.5% hike in water rates that had failed and later passed. This doesn't sound like much as the actual "water rate" component of a water / sewer / storm-drain bill is less than 1/3 of the total,... which means the total bill would only go up about 2% - 2.5%.

So I called to confirm and the assistant thought it was on the whole bill. Then I spoke to the council person directly and he/she had no idea. I mean it's either a blanket surcharge on the entire bill,... or a rate increase on one or more components of the bill.

This had been voted on multiple times, yet my council person apparently had no idea what he/she was voting for.

The City of Detroit is a multi- BILLION dollar a year enterprise,.. yet we have people like this making the hard decisions.

Simply being unemployed, or having sung a song 50 years ago, or being a relative of a congressman, or being illiterate, or a gay pedophile does not necessarily make one qualified to run a multi-billion dollar a year enterprise. [[well, in my opinion anyway).

Possible qualifications;

!. Be literate to at least a 12th grade level [[They need to be able to read and understand contracts that may be dozens of pages long,.. hundreds perhaps).

2. Must have successfully operated a business with at least 5 employees. [[If you can't make payroll or balance a checkbook,.. you have no place handling billions of dollars of other people's money).

3. Can either live in or own a business in Detroit. [[No need to exclude the people that can help the most,...and business owners are not only the most qualified,.. but they generally have A LOT more invested in Detroit than the average resident.)

4. ?

5. ?

What does everyone else think?