Category: Analysis
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Commentary: “We all have to do better” when it comes to Flint and Genesee County government
By Paul Rozycki Last Monday, the new members of the Flint City Council were sworn in at City Hall, with much ceremony and celebration. Family, friends, and supporters attended and congratulated the new council members on their election victories, and their new positions. Later that evening the new council was expected to meet and choose…
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“Both the city and the county messed up” on “invalid” Flint council swearing-in, according to County Clerk Gleason
By Tom Travis “We all have to do better. Both the city and the county messed up,” County Clerk John Gleason told East Village Magazine (EVM) in a phone interview Wednesday afternoon after declaring Monday’s swearing-in of the new Flint City Council “invalid.” “The board of commissioners appointed someone that should not have been appointed…
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E. Pierson Road and Dort Highway neighborhoods site of this week’s mobile COVID and Flu vaccination unit: free lunch, shots offered Thursday and Saturday
By Tom Travis A mobile COVID-19 and Flu vaccination unit will be in the neighborhoods surrounding E. Pierson Road and Dort Highway from noon to 3 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11 and Saturday, Nov. 13. A new community collaboration is bringing COVID vaccines, water, meals and other resources to Flint neighborhoods again this week, with free lunch, COVID-19…
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Majority female Flint City Council sworn in; first meeting cancelled as County Clerk declares ceremony “invalid”
By Tom Travis For the first time in Flint’s history, the city council is majority female. Of the six female councilpersons four are serving for the first time: Ladel Lewis (Ward 2) Judy Priestley (Ward 4), Tonya Burns (Ward 6) and Allie Herkenroder (Ward 7) joining re-elected Councilpersons Jerri Winfrey-Carter (Ward 5) and Eva Worthing…
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Incumbents Galloway, Fields, and Griggs defeated; Flint City Council to have six new members
By Paul Rozycki Flint voters turned out in low numbers but made some big changes as they elected their new city council, defeating three incumbents, and electing three new members in wards where incumbents were not running again. The turnout for Genesee County was just under 13 percent of the registered voters, but the turnout…
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Education Beat: Flint School Board fiscal scrutiny of Williams legal services and Lambert public relations firm intensifies
By Harold C. Ford “It’s going to get ugly … I’m ready for the fight … This man here [former Flint school board attorney Kendall Williams] making a million dollars. Unbelievable.” –Joyce Ellis-McNeal, Oct. 13, 2021, Flint school board meeting Fees charged to Flint Community Schools (FCS) by The Williams Firm, for legal services, and…
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Commission aims to give residents a voice – no more gerrymandering as voting districts are redrawn
By Tom Travis Residents stood up and spoke up Tuesday at a public hearing at The Dort Federal Event Center on Lapeer Road with their thoughts and comments about redistricting in Michigan. Standing at a podium, residents addressed the new 13-member Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (ICRC), who sat at tables on an elevated stage looking down…
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Village Life: Memories burned into Washington School’s demise: “This one hurts the most”
By Gary Fisher She was nearly half a century old by the time I showed up. Creaky wooden windows, stifling forced heat, so thick you could taste it, zero air conditioning, lead paint everywhere, and asbestos-covered pipes. The ancient bathrooms with the old radiators (an especially egregious artifice when some miscreant relieved himself on it),…
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Tendaji Talk: “The Deep Sting of Slavery”
By Harold C. Ford “It’s really not enough to say, ‘Those were horrible days and let them pass.’ Uncovering this buried history … could also help ease the kind of intergenerational trauma that silence can mask, trauma that can seep through entire communities.” –Margaret Burnham, Northeastern University professor, from “Healing Requires Truth” by Samantha Michaels,…
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Education Beat: Flint School Board votes unanimously to talk with Mott Foundation CEO Ridgway White about abandoned Central-Whittier campus
By Harold C. Ford On Wednesday, Oct .20, near the end of another long meeting (four hours and 22 minutes), the Flint Board of Education (FBOE) voted 6-0 to invite C. S. Mott Foundation CEO Ridgway White to visit and talk about the future of the long-abandoned Flint Central High School-Whittier Middle School campus. Votes…
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