Tuesday, August 4, 2009

A New Mayor

Dayne Walling declares victory in the Flint mayor's race and Brenda Clack concedes.



9 comments:

  1. Interesting. Ray Lord, quoted in the story, is my uncle. Tiny planet.

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  2. During the campaign, both Walling and Clack took negative stances during the campaign about the "Right-Sizing Flint" concept.

    This of course would consist of fixing up abandoned, tax-reverted houses; voluntarily swapping them for the current houses of city residents who live on mostly-abandoned streets; and then for those blocks that are now fully abandoned, tearing down all the houses, legally vacating the street, and removing it.

    The point of this, of course, would be to decrease the number of abandoned houses and densify the city's housing distribution, so that residents would have neighbors, property values would be better protected, and city services could be provided at less cost per resident.

    By comparison, when Detroit Mayor Dave Bing was asked this morning in a WWJ-news-radio interview about a similar initiative for his city, he said "Oh, yes, no question about it, we'll be taking that sort of action."

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  3. Maybe the Flint turnaround started today? One can hope.

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  4. I now feel anxious about any posting on this site from an "anonymous." Is the preceding "anonymous' comment from "sentient being A" (I'm quoting Bill Maher here) or "lizard person A"? From now on, in my view, Anonymous needs to clarify which one he or she is. I feel like I need to wash with a pint of Purell after reading those posts. Well, I guess we can tell the difference pretty quickly, can't we? Still...

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  5. I think we'll just have to go by context from here on out to differentiate between the various anonymous comments.

    By the way, does everyone know you can pick any name you want by clicking on the "Name/URL" option in the comment section?

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  6. I hate reading a post I've sent up and discovering that, due to interruption or brain fade or whatever, I've made a clunky grammatical error.

    Comment sections need "I'm a dummy--I need to edit my post" buttons.

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  7. Oh, I so agree JWilly. That is why I always use the Anonymous option. Then my blunders will go unkown.

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  8. BTW, JWilly, I wouldn't worry about your comment. It came off pretty articulate.

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  9. I wish Mike Brown had run for mayor.

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.