Park millage renewal will help sustain Flint’s acres of green spaces, playlots, trails
By Megan Ockert Support for a park system of 70 facilities, one of Flint’s design achievements going back to the 1920s, is the object of a Nov. 8 city-wide vote. Next Tuesday Flint’s Park and Recreation millage is up for renewal after 10 years. As a .50 millage renewal, for a home valued at $50,000, the tax would be $25 per year. There is no increase or decrease. City of Flint planning staff state that, if passed, the renewal...
Shigella outbreak subsiding, but answering the “why” continues
By Jan Worth-Nelson Incidence of the latest health threat to hit Flint and Genesee County, the diarrhea-causing bacterium shigella, appears to have subsided, at least for now, representatives from the Centers for Disease Control told the Flint Water Recovery Group under the dome at City Hall last week. Jevon D. McFadden, a CDC physician headquartered in Lansing, told the group that as of Oct. 19 no new cases of shigellosis, the...
Community Read aims to foster dialogue on lives of African-American youth, community response
By Jan Worth-Nelson A “Community Read” series focused on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ bestselling book Between the World and Me is underway in Flint, with the second of nine discussions scheduled for 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10 at Flint Central Church of the Nazarene, 1261 W Bristol Rd. Coates’ book, written as a letter to his 15-year-old son, confronts from its first page the sorrow and dangers faced by young black men in an America Coates...
Two bottles instead of one: home water testing enters new phase, MDEQ rep explains
By Jan Worth-Nelson This article was updated at 1 p.m. Monday Oct. 3. A year after Flint residents first started testing their water, making Flint into what experts now describe as “the most monitored city in America,” residents are being asked not just to continue but to change their home testing process from one bottle to two. George Krisztian, Flint action plan coordinator and laboratory director for the Michigan...
Book Review: NOBODY: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond
By Robert R. Thomas In the January 2016 issue of EVM, I wrote a book review of Demolition Means Progress (2015) by Andrew Highsmith, a definitive account of the reality of Flint’s last 80 years. The book arrived in my life at a time when I desperately needed to understand the Flint I had returned to in 2005. Eleven years later life in Flint has come to a new bend in the river where I needed to reflect and review. Where had we come...