FLINT, Mich. — Flint City Council voted to proceed with an ordinance amendment at their next special affairs meeting that could potentially allow residents to have more of a say about what benefits their community should receive from developers.
If approved, the Community Benefits Agreement will go into effect within 30 days of adoption.
Supporters of the amendment say it will give residents an opportunity to speak directly to the needs of their community.
“What we do with this is we give the people the first opportunity to sit down with developers to say, ‘this is what we want to see,’” Flint City Council Vice President Candice Mushatt said during a Feb. 5, 2025, Legislative Committee meeting. “This is what we consider a proportionate thing. So that [residents] are not looking at being pigeonholed into some kind of giveaway or pigeonholed into some kinda park clean up or some stuff that they are already doing.”
Mushatt pointed to her support for the Ashley Capital, the company that developed the property formerly known as the Buick City site. Later she discovered that some residents felt left out of the conversation.
“They’ve been pretty good community partners but finding out that they didn’t have a benefit in place or finding out the benefit was work that they do was kinda negotiated with people but kinda not,” Mushatt said. The Buick City area had been left vacant for more than a decade after General Motors shut the site down completely around 2010.
The amendment reads:
An amended ordinance to amend the Flint City Code of Ordinances by amending Chapter 25, Community Development, by the addition of Article I, Community Benefits Agreements. [NOTE: This ordinance to become effective 30 days after adoption.]. [NOTE: Ordinance amended to add Developer definition information, Tier Project estimations and public hearing details, agreement specifications, and community engagement processes.]
For sole no-voter Flint City Councilman Dennis Pfiefer the language is too vague.
“I’m just not going to support this, Pfieffer said. “I am for community benefits but this does not lay down baselines… to me this just [won’t] move us forward at all…it leaves too much ambiguity to how the community benefits are going to be negotiated.” Pfiefer said he would like to see a dollar baseline and protections to prevent favoritism.
Mushatt said the issue would be handled by the Citywide Advisory Council, which will work with a subcommittee to ensure that the process wouldn’t be tainted by politics and favoritism. She added that setting a baseline price night would impact potential benefits that the community could pursue from developers.
“The purpose of this ordinance is to make sure that we are placing the power back into the hands of the people when we talk about developments that come into this city,” Mushatt said.
The council voted 6-1 to move it to their Monday, Feb. 10, 2025, Special Affairs meeting. Flint City Councilwoman Tonya Burns was absent from the vote.