City council doesn’t inspire confidence in street renaming

Round and round the discussion goes and where it ends, it appears no one knows.
That’s the curious route the city council has taken, or at least a certain portion of the council, when it comes to creating a policy on naming streets in honor of someone.
The council has attempted to tackle the issue three times, but the matter keeps getting pulled back for more fine-tuning. The original policy proposed was pretty strict on how honorific street names can be bestowed.
That apparently offended Councilmember Mohammed Hassan, who came back with a policy that would have greatly eased those restrictions and opened it up for international figures.
When it appeared a majority of the council was going to balk at this, he pulled it back yet again so the council can further discuss it less formally in a work session.
Whatever.
We can’t emphasize enough that renaming city streets in honor of people should be pretty hard to do and very limited.
Hassan is part of one of three competing political factions trying to rename Caniff in honor of a Bangladesh president who has a really lousy record when it comes to promoting democratic principles.
In fact, the guy sounds more like a petty tyrant, and was so unpopular that he was ousted by a military coup and then subsequently shot.
This is hardly someone to honor in light of the fact that his own people ended up opposing him.
Hamtramck has not often granted honorific street names, and for good reason. It takes a very special person to be worthy of this, and it should be done so sparingly.
Let’s make sure the process of honoring someone will be few and far between. In the meantime, the council’s handling of this doesn’t inspire reassurance that it is ready to resume local control once the emergency manager leaves in December.