Flint City Council approves over $4 million in ARPA funds for home repair

Flint, MI — Flint City Council approved the use of over $4 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds toward home repairs at its Aug. 28, 2023 meeting.

Councilmembers also passed a series of ordinance amendments to allow for pedal pubs in the city, as well as a variety of contracts and appointments, despite two members being absent and Councilman Eric Mays’ ongoing suspension.

Here’s what happened at council’s Aug. 28 meeting:

ARPA funds for home repair

There were five ARPA-related resolutions on the council’s Aug. 28 agenda. These included:

• $200,000 in ARPA funds to Court Street Village for roof repairs.
• $225,000 in ARPA funds to Court Street Village for painting.
• $850,000 in ARPA funds to the Genesee County Community Action Resource Department (GCCARD) for home repairs.
• $1,550,000 in ARPA funds to Metro Community Development for home repairs.
• $1,550,000 in ARPA funds to Habitat for Humanity for home repairs.

At last week’s finance committee meeting, Norma Sain, the executive director of Court Street Village, said that the nonprofit currently has 42 applicants who qualify for home repairs.

She said half of those requests were for roof repairs and half were for painting projects.

The council voted to approve $200,000 for Court Street’s roof repairs, but it ultimately voted to send the $250,000 for Court Street’s painting asks back to its next finance committee.

Pfeiffer made the latter motion, citing other home repair needs in the city.

“I can’t support houses getting new paint when we have such a discrepancy on houses needing fundamental repairs,” he said.

Council otherwise approved the home repair resolutions for GCCARD, Metro Community Development and Habitat for Humanity, bringing the total amount of approved ARPA expenses between the four resolutions to $4,150,000.

However, during public comment, Flint residents Dora Mayfield and Claire McClinton had asked council to allocate more.

“This is probably the fourth time we’ve come here and asked you to pass a $16 million ARPA allotment for home repair and rehabilitation,” McClinton said. “We want our voices heard like Ashley Capital was heard. And when you ask us, ‘where are we gonna get the money from?,’ that’s an insult. The same place you got the $3.2 million ARPA dollars to give Ashley Capital, that’s where you get it from.”

Ashley Capital is a development group behind the redevelopment of Flint’s former Buick City site, currently Flint’s largest brownfield site.

During council’s discussion, Councilwoman Candice Mushatt asked Flint’s Chief Resilience Officer Shelly Sparks-Green how much of the city’s overall ARPA money was left unallocated.

Sparks-Green said that after council passed all of the resolutions on its Aug. 28 agenda and its upcoming committee agendas, there would be $32 million.

Councilwoman Judy Priestley then shared an email she said she’d received on July 10, 2023, which stated that there was $50,896,514.53 available in ARPA funds as of that date.

Regardless of the remaining funding available, she said, $5 million in ARPA funding was certainly approved for home repair in the city’s originally approved ARPA budget.

“We have $5 million in homeowner repair, hopefully moving more money into that category, but that was our start,” she said.

Flint Beat reached out to the city’s communications team to clarify how much of the budget-promised ARPA home repair funding is left to be allocated, but did not receive a response by press time.

Every approved ARPA-related item on Monday was passed with five votes, which included Priestley, Pfeiffer, Mushatt, and Councilmembers Quincy Murphy and Eva Worthing.

Council Vice President Ladel Lewis and Councilwoman Jerri Winfrey-Carter were absent from the meeting, and Councilwoman Tonya Burns abstained from all votes on ARPA funds, citing a pending lawsuit she’s a part of regarding the legality of the city’s ARPA Community Advisory Committee.

Though Councilman Eric Mays was present at the meeting, he sat in the audience and was unable to participate officially due to an ongoing suspension from July. He will be allowed to return starting Sept. 1, 2023.

Aside from passing the ARPA home repair funding resolutions, the council also voted to amend all of those resolutions’ language to remove text that said they would amend the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 budget.

Pfeiffer, who made the amendment motions, said he did so because council shouldn’t have to amend the FY 2024 budget since previously allocated ARPA money did not show up on that budget or the city’s audit documents.

Everything else

Aside from ARPA funds for home repairs, council also voted on a variety of other resolutions, appointments and ordinance amendments during its meeting on Aug. 28.

Here’s what else the council voted on:

• Council approved the appointment of Kurt Neiswender to the Building Code Board of Appeals to fill the remainder of a three-year term ending March 1, 2026.
• Council approved a biennial master fee schedule, which approves water and wastewater rates and service charges.
• Council approved a change order that costs $12,000 annually for Fiscal Years 2024 and 2025 for Water Service Center electrical supplies, for a grand total of $356,000.
• Council approved a $50,118.20 contract with Michigan Fence Company for fencing around the Flint Police Department employee and department parking lots.
• Council approved the Justice Assistance Grant agreement between the City of Flint, Flint Township and the Department of Justice for $93,064.
• Council approved an easement for electrical facilities between the City of Flint and Consumers Energy Company, so that Verizon Wireless can build a wireless tower on Beecher Road.
• Council approved an amendment to the Genesee County Solid Waste Management Plan. The amendment “sets forth goals, objectives, and strategies to establish materials management best practices and enhance local waste diversion programs,” according to documents provided with the resolution.
• Council approved a $40,000 change order with Trio Paint for the City Council Chambers renovations.
• Council approved a series of amendments to a city ordinance to make way for pedal pub operations in the city. These amendments included one that allows public alcohol consumption when on a commercial quadricycle; one that allows possession of alcohol in a passenger compartment of a motor vehicle when the passenger is traveling on a commercial quadricycle; and one that defines terms such as “controlled substance,” “commercial quadricycle” and “alcoholic liquor.”
• Council approved the appointment of Chelesia Brown to the Flint Housing Commission to fill the remainder of a term ending August 31, 2025.
• Council approved $326,027.90 in ARPA funds to account for the loss of Community Development Block Grant match funding in the 2018 Lead Based Paint and Hazard Control grant for lead abatement of houses in Flint.
• Council voted to send a resolution to its next finance committee meeting that would approve $1 million in ARPA funds for Flint Rx Kids, a program that would give monthly allowances of $500 to new mothers for the first 12 months of their babies’ lives.
• Council voted to drop a resolution that would have appointed Doug Matthews to the Ethics and Accountability Board until June 26, 2026. The resolution was dropped because Matthews expressed interest in applying for the ombudsperson position during the public speaking portion of council’s Special Affairs Committee meeting.