I lived in Flint Township in the mid 1980s working for EDS (contractor) at Buick City, and returned to Grand Blanc, on the South side of Flint in the mid 1990s, to retire at age 40. I frequently spent time in Flint, although less after I stopped doing work inside the city. EDS moved us to an office building outside the city limits to avoid the Flint City Income tax. Nowhere in Roger & Me did Michael Moore discuss the inept city government sucking the life out of GM and its employees.
25 years later, Buick City is nothing more than a fence guarding concrete slabs growing over with weeds. Former Rep Dale Kildee proposed bulldozing large sections of the city and letting it return to nature. His nephew Dan Kildee runs a land trust taking title to all the abandoned and stripped houses.
So what would it take to turn Flint around? Not Eric Mays…
Maybe there is something in the water. (the North Side of Flint was where the economy was dominated by prostitution and drugs).
Unfortunately, each day Charlotte is inching closer to becoming Flint. If they try fleece Bank of America to solve the city’s “affordable housing crisis”, and BofA were to leave the city, the collapse could happen very quickly. Too big to leave? Boeing moved its HQ from Seattle to Chicago and quickly Transformed a liberal paradise into a city of outdoor defecation and heroin junkies.
The problem with Flint is embodied in a single snippet from the DC article:
“In November 2017, Mays was sentenced to a week of community service for pawning his city-issued laptop nine times. As part of the plea deal, his sentencing was delayed until after the election, which he won with nearly 70 percent of the vote.”
i.e. It’s endemic to that area of MI.
When I was living in Flint Township, the voters of Flint decided to vote for Mayor based on skin color, not ability. Even to my somewhat naive street smarts, it was obvious prostitution and drug dealing was going on in the middle of the day, just North of downtown on Detroit street (now MLK Jr Ave)
When the TV station up in Saginaw asked the new black police chief what he intended to about the growing crime problem, his response was that drugs was at the root of the crime, and there was nothing he could do. He said that until the city got more federal money to fight drugs, his hands were tied. That’s when I knew Flint was done.
The Democrats have not changed their playbook in 100 years. from 1915 to 1960, they flooded the northern cities with poor people, mostly blacks, from the south by offering very generous welfare benefits.
Today, they are doing the same but from Central America.
History shows that most people never change their political party affiliation and that most people start with the same political party affiliation of their parents. Of course, there are exceptions.
Flooding the United States with high school dropouts who don’t speak English is likely to result in a multi-generational one-party rule for the United States as exists in much of Latin America…. and as it exists and has existed in the major cities in the US since “The Great Migration” of 1915-1960.
The race of the dependents did change, but not that they are poor and needy. It takes poor and needy to fuel big government socialism, fascism and big government power and corruption for those that aspire to loot the country as the Clintons have.
Just when you think it can’t get any worse
https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/03/flint-water-contract-rescind/
So if I follow the math, we have spent $647 million to restore safe water to less than a hundred thousand residents, or over $6,000 per person. It may not be unreasonable to just bulldoze the entire city.
>Just when you think it can’t get any worse
Send the city Democrat government a proposal for a solar-powered electric trolly (aka “Lite Rail) and see what happens. 😉
Back in the day, Flint actually had a serious streetcar system. Roger & Me had some footage.
https://www.chicagorailfan.com/fntmapt.html
Stewart Avenue was a street that ran through where the Buick plant was eventually built. Once the city was in the business of making cars, the streetcar system faded away.
More fun in Flint
https://www.abc12.com/content/news/City-councilman-plans-to-stay-vocal-following-arrest-568548211.html
The guy is certainly a source of entertainment. He's outspoken and playing hardball because if he loses his position, he'll probably be out on the street.