Category: Features
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Iconic Saginaw Street brick replacement underway; $5 million project to continue through 2024
By Elizabeth Ireland-Curtis The iconic bricks on Saginaw Street, along with the Weather Ball are part of Flint’s identity and history. The bricks on Saginaw are being replaced in a two-year project that began Monday, April 10. Mayor Sheldon Neeley presented plans for the historic restoration at a press conference that same day. A website,…
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Education Beat: Turmoil at the top continues at Flint Community Schools
By Harold C. Ford Editor’s note – This article has been updated naming the former FCS employee who received the $61,000 retirement payout. The tumult that has plagued the leadership team(s) at Flint Community Schools (FCS) in recent years was fully on display in and around the April 12 Committee of the Whole (COW) meeting…
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Village Life: Flint’s “coney culture” fed us, brought us together, inspired art, music, literature, poetry — and even some brawls, presenters declare
By Jan Worth-Nelson One thing was clear as a sell-out crowd lined up for their food Saturday in a big meeting room at — where else — Koegel Meats, the origin and home of the legendary frankfurter. The coney is more than a hot dog. The “Salute to Flint’s Coney Culture” sponsored by the Genesee…
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City council announces budget hearings for April and May; new CFO joins hearing
By Tom Travis The city council has announced a series of four hearings on the city’s 2023-2024 budget between April 12 and May 15. The hearings will allow city council and members of the public an opportunity to hear from department heads on their budgets and to ask questions. City Clerk Davina Donohue explained to…
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City Council Beat: “I’ve never seen it this bad” City’s sewer system supervisor on raw sewage back ups
By Tom Travis Despite shouting, near physical fights, repeated racial slurs, and loss of quorum that have continued to characterize a dysfunctional Flint City Council, the elected body still managed to conduct some of the people’s business. Those actions included acceptance of $21 million in grants — for an upgraded pump station, for St. John’s…
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Remembering Viola Liuzzo, murdered 58 years ago in the cause of voting rights: a personal reflection
By Harold C. Ford Viola, Viola you laid your young life down, From Selma to heaven, 3 Ks took you out, Colorblind angel battled bigotry, Viola, Viola lives on in history. –“Color Blind Angel,” Robin Rodgers, 2008 [Author’s note: I was moved to write this personal reflection when my son Justin Ford gifted me a…
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The East Village Magazine – April 2023
The latest edition of The East Village Magazine is available for download and viewing here:
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Village Life: A comfy leather couch, a wide bay window and spilling my guts
By Tom Travis Twice a month I drive 20 minutes to sit on a long leather couch, long enough for about five people. From that couch I look out a big bay window and I spill my guts. Or, as my therapist says, to get “psychoanalyzed.” I tend to be very private and have found…
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Education Beat: Glimpses of possible paths forward for Flint’s public schools include “6 Month Focus” and images of new high school campus
By Harold C. Ford Amid the din of Flint’s newly-assembled school panel searching for productive equilibrium, two glimpses of possible paths forward have recently emerged: Prior to its March 15 meeting ending in considerable chaos, the Flint Board of Education (FBOE) unanimously adopted a document titled “Superintendents Proposed 6 Month Focus.” The five-page document, amended…
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Yard waste collection begins in Flint April 3
Yard waste collection begins April 3 in Flint Yard waste collection begins Monday, April 3 for Flint residents. Yard waste is picked up weekly on residents’ normal trash collection days through Dec, 1, 2023. A separate truck collects yard waste on the same day as residents’ regularly scheduled trash day. How yard waste should be…
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