(WXYZ) — In tonight's 7 UpFront segment we're looking back at the tenure of Detroit City Council member Brenda Jones who is leaving the body when her term ends at the end of the year.
Councilmember Jones is joining us to talk all about it.
You can see the full interview in the video player above.
"I think of three words when I think of the experience, three words come to my mind: fulfilling, fantastic, and frustrating at times," Jones says. "Serving Detroit for 16 years, and I received the name as the Citizens' Voice because everyone knows I love the citizens in the city of Detroit so gave me the name of the Citizens' Voice, it has been awesome, been elected twice by my peers, restoring council's professionalism. One of the things people would tell me all of the time is they would get their popcorn to watch council prior to me running for council and it was so important to me to restore a civility to city council so no one was getting popcorn to watch city council, that was so important to me. And then just sponsoring legislation that would help the citizens of the City of Detroit, the people, also, who just work and play in the City of Detroit. Sponsoring legislation has just been very fulfilling to me. And just restoring the balance. All so often people would just say to me 'Your boss, the mayor' and I would have to explain to them there's three branches of government, the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the judicial branch and they are all co-equal branches of government, my bosses are the citizens how pay the taxes. So restoring the balance between the three branches has been something very rewarding, very experiencing, very fulfilling and so my 16 years I can say has been fulfilling, frustrating at times, but fantastic."
