This city is a train wreck
By Garrett Quinn

Detroit Free Press
June 27?, 2001
Appeared in Letter to the Editor 

 

Dear Editor,

While visiting my Grandparents in Northville my Grandfather and I went to the Tigers game. On the way to there I could not believe what I saw. I�ve heard Detroit was bad. Now, what I saw was far beyond my expectations. Your city is in deplorable condition and in terrible disarray. I saw poor roads, a plethora of abandoned buildings, trash strewn vacant lots, rampant graffiti, liquor stores on every block, billboards encouraging already poor people to gamble, a joke for a transit system, broken glass and garbage everywhere. My Grandfather later informed me that the Conference of US Mayors was currently taking place in Detroit. This dumbfounded me. Why would Mayor Archer want to show off this massive train wreck of a city to anyone, let alone to his fellow mayors. The citizens of Detroit should hope he gets some advice from his fellow mayors on how to run a city. They should hope he tells his successor too. The elected officials of Detroit are in no position to give their own advice on running a city. That is unless of course you want to drive a city into the ground. That is something the elected officials of Detroit have written the book on. How citizens of a city could elected their leaders who allow their city to get beyone a point of disrepair is beyond me.

Sincerely,
Garrett Quinn
Boston, MA