Tagged: Flint

Flint’s emergency manager is giving back some responsibilities to the city’s mayor and city council.  

One of the first things Michael Brown did after the governor appointed him was to eliminate the pay and benefits for Mayor Dayne Walling and the entire Flint city council. He also canceled future city council meetings. 

This week, Brown reinstated 60 percent of the mayor’s salary, as well as his full benefits. Mayor Walling will also get some of his powers restored, including his role in economic development, master planning, intergovernmental affairs, and community engagement. Walling is also a member of an advisory panel for the emergency manager. 

In a written statement, Walling says "Manager Brown has followed through on his commitment to make this a collaborative process that involves elected leadership and engages residents." 

The emergency manager also is letting each member of the city council collect seven thousand dollars a year in pay, or about half of their former annual pay, but with no benefits.  

The Flint city council will have a little less to do than the mayor. The emergency manager will only permit the council members to attend public meetings in their respective wards, as directed by him. The Flint city council will meet once a month, but only to address items on the emergency manager’s agenda.  

The emergency manger was appointed to fix Flint’s ‘financial emergency’ that has the city mired in debt.

People stealing metal, computers and other equipment have done more than a million dollars worth of damage to Flint school buildings in the past 18 months. 

Linda Thompson is the Flint Community Schools superintendent. She says the problem goes well beyond kids with spray paint.   

Thompson says in one case a school building was ransacked as part a sophisticated scheme.   

"These are not kids doing this," Thompson insists, "You can look at the fact that electricity was disconnected….we’re talking about people who are not amateurs about doing this either."  

Thompson is worried vandals might take advantage of the upcoming Christmas break to do more damage to Flint schools.    

She’s urging people to report any suspicious activity around Flint schools to the police.  

Thompson says Flint is not alone. Many urban school districts have seen a big increase in vandalism during the past few years. 

2010 was a record year for Flint. The city recorded 66 homicides.

But preliminary data from the FBI released today show a drop in crime rates.

More from Kristin Longley of the Flint Journal:

For the first six months of 2011, the city reported 909 instances of violent crime — a 19 percent decrease from the 1,123 instances reported by the same time last year.

There were 22 homicides, compared to 27 last year; 41 forcible rapes, compared to 51 last year; and 229 robberies, compared to 274 last year, according to the data.

Any decrease in crime is welcome news in a city that was recently dubbed "the Most Dangerous City in America."