With Gov. Rick Snyder saying he's pulling the state's offer to lease Belle Isle -- citing the Detroit City Council's continued delay of a vote on the issue -- opponents of the deal are celebrating the collapsed negotiations as a win for local control of city assets.
But while these folks praise the council's inaction, and their counterparts on the issue grumble about the council's incompetence in failing to take the offer, all I can wonder about is what comes next for what was once -- and still should be -- one of the most beautiful parks in the nation.
Clearly, the council's refusal to take action on the offer was driven by the usual deep and abiding distrust that many Detroiters expressed about the state, its Republican-run legislature and Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.
Mind you, I think that, in the wake of Snyder's right-to-work sneak attack and his utter disregard for the vote on PA 4, distrust for the governor is well-earned and well-placed. He's an extremist who hides behind moderate rhetoric. Hard to trust anything about someone like that, even if it does only concern hiking trails, band shells and boat slips.
But I'm also frightened by the prospect that distrust, along with skepticism and negativity and fear, are all that much of Detroit's leadership really has to bring to any discussions about the city's future.
Charles Pugh, the president of the city council, explained yesterday that he was reluctant to take the state's offer because he thought there could, maybe, be other funding options for Belle Isle, other paths to make the park both beautiful and profitable.
The problem is that, not only could he not cite anything specific, but in explaining his reservations, he also admitted that nobody ever even bothered to think hard about Belle Isle til Gov. Snyder made his offer: "We have never really sat down and had a brainstorming session about all the possibilities for Belle Isle."
I'm sorry, but that's both distressing and depressing to hear.
For far too long, Detroiters have accepted a reactionary posture from leadership, one that doesn't compel them to take any substantive action on many key issues until some "outsider" comes poking around. You can't be content to let Belle Isle decay and then only scream about it being a "jewel" when someone else wants to fix it up.
Nothing wrong with Detroit running its parks. But with local control comes local responsibility. And it is the height of both irresponsibility and hypocrisy to invoke local control when you have continually abrogated the obligations of ownership.
I've heard many of the complaints about the state's offer, that it didn't offer specific guarantees about what the state would do, that Detroit wouldn't reap any revenue from the plan, that it would be cost prohibitive to the poorest Detroiters.
But it's not enough to say the state's plan was insufficient. If Belle Isle is the "jewel" everyone claims it is, why weren't there concrete, sensible alternative plans on the table just waiting to counter whatever Snyder threw down? Why, during the debate over the state's offer, did the countervailing ideas from the council seem borne of about as much forethought as it takes to write your name in pee in the snow?
It should never have taken the prospect of a 100-year or 30-year state lease to prod adult conversation about the value and role of Belle Isle. The mayor's office and council should have gotten serious years ago about not just the Rock, but recreation in Detroit as a whole, same as they need to be more serious now about public safety, transportation and land management.
It's not enough to talk simply about plugging holes or addressing today's crisis. Detroit leadership fails not just because it can't react sensibly to short-term problems, but because it lacks any serious long-term vision.
In the end, then, the city winds up looking silly, defensive and bereft of quality ideas. And the jewels everyone claims to care so much about keep right on tarnishing.
