Detroit/Windsor Tunnel Postponed

Detroit (WWJ)  -- WWJ's Florence Walton reports that the scandal swarming over Detroit city government may have temporarily killed a proposed financing deal with the city of Windsor.  Windsor city council is temporarily backing away from further negotiations to secure 75-million-dollars from the province of Ontario for Detroit in the Detroit/Windsor tunnel sale -- citing the scandals and the acrimony between Detroit city council and Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

The chief negotiator on the tunnel deal for Windsor, attorney Cliff Sutts, says they're not backing out on talks just postponing them.

“Windsor City Council has decided that I am to postpone negotiations with Detroit until there’s a unified voice from Detroit to speak with or negotiate with,” said Sutts.

He says the distractions of Detroit's council have left the situation so uncertain, saying Windsor's council does not want to incur further legal expense unless Detroit clarifies its position.

“The mayor's office, the administration and council seem to be on different tracks,” said Sutts. “All we're asking is for Detroit to speak with one voice – and we're getting two different signals from Detroit – one from the Mayor's office and one from council.”

Former Detroit Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams said it’s a misunderstanding between the international boarders.

“I think part of the difficulty is they don’t really understand our system of politics,” said Adams. “I think we have a lot more rough system of politics than they have over there.”

Windsor's city council is shelving negotiations involving the city of Detroit selling its half of the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel.

“We could proceed with negotiations and produce documents, and the council could reject the documents completely unrelated to the negations,” said Shelia Cockril.

A deal could still be negotiated, but it might be rejected by city council for any reason --because they feel there is a lack of trust between the two forms of government in the city of Detroit. The money from the deal was supposed to be used to close a gap and prevent layoffs of hundreds of Detroit city workers.