The Detroit City Council got an earful Thursday as council members discussed the proposal to turn Belle Isle into a state park for as long as 90 years.
Council members opposed to the deal accused Mayor Dave Bing and others of selling out residents and refusing to look at alternative proposals that would keep the park under city control, Matt Helms reports in the Free Press.
Council members JoAnn Watson and Kwame Kenyatta urged colleagues to reject the deal and then left the council table, along with Councilwoman Brenda Jones, just before a group of state and city officials gave a presentation on how the lease would work.
Councilman Kwame Kenyatta accused the Belle Isle Conservancy, a nonprofit group that raises funds for the island and has been supportive of the lease, of helping mastermind what he and Councilwoman JoAnn Watson argued is a takeover of a major city jewel under the guise of trying to pare down Detroit's deficit.
Watson called the conservancy a bunch of "folks who think they have a right to run a city they don't live in just because they're rich" and railed against "this let 'em eat cake attitude."
