Still another brilliant idea

I don't know how I come up with this stuff.
I see in the Monroe Snooze that the jail doesn't have any space left.
I understand the city still is short of money.
Maybe the city should turn the United Furniture building into a low-security detention facility to take the overflow from the jail. Homeland Security grants could pay for most of the remodeling. If not, city money spent on remodeling probably could be repaid over a few years based on prisoner lodging fees.
Not only would it make use of an empty building, it would bring people downtown to use the new parking spaces on E. First St. and take away the stigma people have when they visit their relatives at the jail. If they go to the United Furniture building, people would think they're just going to the Dorsch library.
It's another win-win situation.

Testing, testing, testing ...

None of this may be true, but this is the latest buzz.
A former city council woman we won't identify by name, but who has been known around town as Jean Guyor, is suing the city because she clumsily tripped on the steps at the Main Street office and twisted something.
This might sound like a petty thoughtless lawsuit, but it really is public spirited.
Story is if Jean wins, the proceeds will be plowed into the historical society to remake the leftowners of the union camp plant into a River Raisin battlefield interpretitive museum.
This all amounts to a big test.
It's a test of civic-mindedness on the part of a past civil servant.
It's a test of county judges to see if they can dance out of the way of this one.
It's a test of city code enforcement to see if some nasty old nonconforming steps somehow escaped their eyes.
What's neat about this is that no matter who wins, we all win.

O say did you see that?

I'm as patriotic as the next guy, but I don't get my shorts in a knot about people who use the American flag as some sort of protest or demonstration. That's what makes this country better than most. You can be ridiculed or criticized by fellow citizens if you burn the flag or wear it as a bandanna or do other weird things with it, but it's not against the law. In some other country, you'd be put in jail or worse if you somehow desecrated a national symbol.
But that's all a flag is, really. It's a national symbol. It doesn't necessarily reflect the strength or durability of a nation or even the character of its people.
I certainly don't agree with movements to make desecration of the flag a crime. In fact, using the flag to express dissent is fine with me. In one way, it can help illustrate the depth of feeling someone has about an issue. It's like saying this activity is so unAmerican, I'm going to abuse an American symbol to display the level of my disgust with it.
BUT .. I have a bigger problem with pure hypocrisy -- such as businesses or organizations that fly the flag just because they think it will increase their business.
I suppose that's their business. But the motivation becomes pretty transparent when a business flys a flag in tatters. That's been the case for a while now with the giant flag that flys at the $3 Car Wash on Telegraph Rd. near Quatros. If you haven't seen it lately, check it out.
It is shredded and there even are pieces of it missing. It probably resembles the battle-torn flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner.
Some veterans group ought to storm the place, take down the flag and destroy it, then leave them a nice note saying the next target will be the car wash itself. Or maybe the city should crack down on them under the sign ordinance or something. Really, coming into town it looks like something you'd see after a firefight in Baghdad.

That's why I pay that fat tax bill

It's the time of year when the county's unimproved roads are starting to turn to mush. It's a little early because of the warm weather and rain, but the thaw is enough to turn some of those roads into quicksand. Did you see where the road commission actually is shutting down some roads.
Us city folk don't have to worry about that. Most everywhere in the city is paved in some manner.
It puts things in perspective. We can gripe about our taxes, but at least we can leave the house and drive down the road so we can make money to pay them. Some of our fellow Monroe Countyians get stuck in front of their homes and can't go anywhere.
It also puts into perspective how much "infrastructure" improvement we might really need. How bad would our crumbling streets and curbs have to get before we couldn't travel down them anymore? That might be something for the new mayor and council to consider before they go overboard on spending to preserve an infrastructure that's still seems to be doing the job even after years of neglect.
Why should infrastructure and capital improvements get priority at a time when city finances are thin when they weren't big priorities in years when finances were fat?
My garage needs siding, but I made less money last year than the year before. Should I buy new siding anyway?
Not this year.

My best guess

Sorry, no inside info here, but it seems to me there was more smoke than fire on this "City sells out ACH workers" story.
Obviously there were some conversations held about the future of that property. My guess is that Ford already had decided that the plant would be closed and someone in the city -- I wouldn't point any fingers because it could have been anyone or any number of people -- said how about just giving the city the property.
Why in the hell would the city want the property?
For any number of reasons, including as the site for a new industrial facility, as part of the River Raisin battlefield project, as part of the wildlife refuge -- reasons of all kind. They probably wanted to get their claws into it before Homrich got his into it.
My guess is there was no evil intent on the city's part. It was just a how can we make the best of a bad situation thing.
If they played anything wrong, it probably was that they didn't take a stronger posture with Ford. They together with the union might have leveraged something.
My guess is the union would have done all kinds of things to keep that plant open mainly because the work force over the years usually made some kind of concessions when jobs were threatened.
Bottom line is the union wasn't right and the city wasn't right in this.
The real question will be what really will happen to the property? Would anyone connected with the city lay claim to it after this controversy?