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Decisions required for Flint stimulus money

Friday, July 17, 2009

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Cathy Shafran
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FLINT (WJRT) -- (07/17/09)--Millions of dollars in federal stimulus money is headed to Flint and Genesee County to knock down abandoned homes.

With all the money targeted for demolitions, the head of the county's land bank says now is the time to determine how to spend it.

The city and the county both learned this week they'll each be getting about $1.2 million in federal stimulus money for demolition.

That $2.4 million will take care of about 300 of the 5,000 abandoned homes in the community.

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That money, combined with another potential $15 million that the county has applied for, has the head of the land bank pushing harder than ever for the community to come up with a master plan on how to spend it.

"As the federal money comes in, we need to make sure we're making the best use of that money and not just throwing it at the wall and tearing down houses here and there or creating community gardens where it makes sense at the moment," said the Genesee County Land Bank's Dan Kildee.

Kildee says he has thrown out the term "shrinking cities" to wake up people to the fact that Flint is now nearly half the population it was 30 or 40 years ago.

He says with federal demolition dollars coming in, the community needs to make decisions on how to design this already shrunk city.

"The real question is now that we know what the real population is, can we keep what we have by making this place better?" Kildee said. "Part of that includes demolition."

What what to replace those demolished homes with can only be answered by someone in the city coming up with a master plan, Kildee says.

And that someone, he says, should probably start with people inside neighborhoods stepping out on porches and looking around.

Kildee says he hopes the real discussion will begin as soon as there's a new permanent mayor in place in Flint.