Here’s what happened at the Feb. 12 Flint City Council meeting

Flint, MI — After nearly five hours, Flint City Council approved several appointments, American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding proposals, and many other resolutions.

Here’s what happened at city council’s Feb. 12 meeting:

Appointments

During the meeting, council was presented with three appointments and three reappointments which Council President Ladel Lewis, Vice President Candice Mushatt, and Councilmembers Judy Priestley, Jerri Winfrey-Carter, Tonya Burns and Dennis Pfeiffer all voted in favor of. Councilmembers Quincy Murphy and Eva Worthing were absent. Councilman Eric Mays is currently on a 90-day suspension.

Through its consent agenda, the council voted 6-0 to:

• Appoint Tracey Fountain to the Flint Housing Commission to fill the remainder of the term ending on Aug. 31, 2028.
• Appoint Nadia Rodriguez to the 7^th ward seat on Flint Planning Commission to fill the remainder of a three-year term ending on March 31, 2025.
• Appoint Jon Kingen to the Zoning Board of Appeals for the remainder of a three-year term starting immediately and expiring Aug. 31, 2024.
• Reappoint Carol-Anne Blower to the 4^th ward seat of the Flint Planning Commission to serve a three-year term beginning on April 1, 2024 and ending on March 31, 2027.
• Reappoint Mona Monroe-Younis to the 9^th ward seat of the Flint Planning Commission to serve a three-year term beginning on April 1, 2024 and ending on March 31, 2027.
• Reappoint Jerry David Kea to the Zoning Board of Appeals to fill the remainder of a three-year term starting immediately and expiring Aug. 31, 2026.

During the special affairs committee meeting before the council meeting, members voted against sending an appointment for Flint Pastor Christopher Martin to council after a recording of his homophobic remarks was played.

Mayor Sheldon Neeley nominated Martin, senior pastor of Cathedral Faith Church, to serve a five-year term on the 15-member Hurley Board of Hospital Managers.

Burns said she was concerned about the appointment and wouldn’t be appointing “anyone who is homophobic.”

“I have a problem with that,” Burns began. “Number one, that’s none of our business, people’s sexuality. Number two, that hospital serves everybody. It shouldn’t matter if you’re gay … that board has a responsibility to make sure that they are nonpartial and nonbiased.”

She played his comments during the meeting on a recording from her phone, on which Martin is heard speaking to his congregation about another pastor.

“Some of these preachers you all are listening to are gay,” Martin says in the recording. “They just fired one from a church around here the other day. I said they never should have hired him. He’s gay. They should have voted him out. He’s been gay, he was gay when they hired him, he was gay when you all fired him.”

Martin continued in the recording to say that a pastor should be “married to a woman,” and that there “ought to be a first lady somewhere” rather than a first gentleman, and that there cannot be “perversion over the people.”

Additionally, council members also expressed concern about Martin using his church address instead of his home address in his application. Flint’s charter requires at least three-quarters of the board to be made up of city residents.

Councilmembers voted against sending Martin’s appointment to council 0-7, with Priestley absent for the vote.

American Rescue Plan Act Funding

The council also approved six ARPA spending items through its consent agenda.

Those approvals included:

• $25,000 to Mott Community College for a Clark Commons Garden and Park project, which will serve residents of the Clark Commons and Smith Village neighborhoods. The resolution language notes the goal of the project is to develop a community garden and create a small park.
• $50,000 to the Neighborhood Engagement Hub (Carriage Town Neighborhood Association) for blight removal. The resolution language states the funds would be used to remove three open foundations left behind from structure fires and two half burned out structures.
• $252, 080 to the Lead-Based Paint Hazard Control Match funds. According to resolution language, a funding match is needed due to the loss of Community Development Block Grant match funding in the second 2021 Lead-Based Paint and Hazard Control grant meant for lead abatement of houses within the city. Originally, CDBG was written into the grant award as the match partner, but the city was not awarded those matching funds. This ARPA funding will fill that gap.
• $275,000 to the Disability Network to sustain services and provide resources.
• Another $1 million to the Disability Network to provide home repairs for senior and disabled residents. According to the resolution language, $15,000 will be spent per household to make repairs for residents aged 55 years and older who are considered disabled and cannot return to work.
• $650,000 to Salvation Army to provide support for establishing a 50-bed medical respite program at Hurley’s Dutcher Center.

Everything Else

In addition to approving ARPA funding and appointments, the council also approved 14 more items through its consent agenda.

For those item, council voted 6-0 to:

• Amend the fiscal year 2024 budget to appropriate an additional $257,655 to the Flint Police Department equipment account.
• Enter into a contract with Hubbell, Roth & Clark to provide preliminary and conceptual design of the Flint Police and Fire Department training complex in an amount not to exceed $524,155 for FY24.
• Enter into a contract with Avalon Technologies, Inc. to update the SAN component/aging software storage systems in an amount not to exceed $143,486 for FY24.
• Enter into a contract with Play Environmental Design in the amount of $315,826 for the purpose of constructing a new playground in the Choice Neighborhoods area.
• Enter a change order to a purchase order with Siemens Mobility, Inc. for additional repair parts and supplies in an amount not to exceed $50,000. According to the council’s agenda, the total of that contract is now $250,000.
• Authorize the purchase order to DLZ for Cedar Street Pump Station and reservoir rehabilitation professional construction engineering services in an amount not to exceed $835,700.
• Enter into a contract with the Greater Flint Health Coalition in an amount not to exceed $150,000 over the third 12-month grant period, Sept. 30, 2023 — Sept. 29, 2024.
• Authorized the purchase order with Duperon Corporation for the purchase of water pollution control barscreen repair parts and services, not to exceed the amount of $103,934.80.
• Amend the FY24 budget to provide $50,000 in funding to purchase early detection cancer kits, funding which was made available through the Biden Cancer Moonshot program.
• Reprogram and reallocate $1,050,080.53 in unspent CDBG (Communities Development Block Grant) funds to Communities First, Inc. for a housing development and the City of Flint Blight Department for code enforcement.
• Increase pay for election workers. According to the agenda, pay for chairpersons and laptop specialists will increase from $225 to $275, pay for election inspectors will increase from $200 to $225, and early voting workers will receive $120 per day for nine days of early voting.
• Increase pay for Board of Review workers from $11.88/hour to $15/hour.
• Adopt a resolution to support the Priority Waste Company “doing all things necessary to explore the financial impacts of” honoring Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday and allowing all employees contracted with the City of Flint to have the day off.
• Adopt a resolution resolving that the month of February is recognized as Black History Month in the City of Flint.

Councilmembers separated multiple items from the consent agenda, including an approval for a Brownfield plan project for Carriage Town neighborhood, but council lost quorum before it was able to vote on those items.