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terrybankert
F L I N T O I D
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What can we do to make Flint better?
FLINT CITIZEN- By: Terry Bankert 12/19/05
I was at the sports arena yesterday. The event was the University of Michigan Flint Winter graduation. I did no know that they offered doctorate in physical therapy from the Flint campus.
How wonderful to watch the joy of the parents. 300-400 students were involved. How many of these new leaders will stay in our area? What a loss when they leave. How many books will be written, companies founded , patents applied for from this group
A couple of older people received their degree, One 74 got his B.A., another at 54 , an attorney, got his masters, there were several more over 50.
Here we were in the year 2005 participating in a medieval ceremony, a rite of passage.
A passage to where? That’s an individual choice. But the ability to make this passage was available to young. old. rich and poor from one of the best University’s in the world. How lucky we are to have UM-Flint.
I though that I would like to poll those receiving their degrees in 10 years to see where they have gone.
The Flint area has a lot to offer and good people. What can we do to make it better and keep our new graduates in the area?
To UM Flint thank you for the opportunities and the great hood.
The Flint Citizen is a publication of Attorney Terry R. Bankert (Family Law ) of Flint Michigan USA. http://enewsblog.com/terrybankert/
attorneybankert@yahoo.com
Terry R. Bankert P.C., 1000 Beach St., Flint MI 48503 810.235.1970 fax 234-5080 |
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Mon Dec 19, 2005 5:41 am |
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Ted Jankowski
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What can we do to make Flint better?
I've been thinking on this since you asked the question. I have quite a few ideas. However, none of them will work until Flint becomes a safe place to live. With crime on the rise and jobs on their way out. It is a tuff question. I just the other day called Kildee's office about this problem. I believe we need some type of a "High Crime Bill" passed in the federal government. We need, along with many other high crime cities, funds to fight crime. We need larger jails, and more officers. There should be a way for communities that are well above the national average to be able to receive funding from the Federal government to help fight crime. It has put a huge strain on this city. Too many of our local tax dollars go to law enforcement. And what is going there now is not enough. Once we can turn the crime around. Businesses will open in the city. Just look at the eastside. How many times has the "Quix-Stop" been robbed on Delaware or across from Kessel. Gilroy's no longer lets you roam the aisles because of the shop lifting. In order to have a business on the eastside you cannot have any windows. Look at the drug stores, the restaurants. Big Al’s, and chicken affair have been vandalized and robbed many times. If we want people to stay here in Flint. We need to make it a safe place to live. I had also thought of contacting my State representative Ms. Clickty Clack don’t give a crap Clack. I believe the state should be helping with this crime situation more also. But, writing her is a mute point.
So, personally, I believe that once we take care of our crime probelm and quit ignoring it as the Williamson administration seems to have done. We won't need to do anything to get people to stay in the area. They will want to because it is a just plain a nice place to live. [/code] |
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Tue Dec 20, 2005 8:15 am |
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Adam Ford
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I think crime and lack of jobs go hand in hand. Desperate people with no money and no hope do desperate things like rob stores. I do think we need more police. With $10 from each resident of the city of Flint we should be able to add about 20-30 police. In addition Flint needs to go back over its history a little bit. For one, it wasn't the unions that brought GM jobs to Flint. It was entrepreneurs like Billie Durant that brought jobs to Flint. Flint could have tried to stay in the Carriage business but instead it moved to the cutting edge automobile business. If Flint wants to stay in the automobile business and not continue to lose jobs then perhaps it should try and team up with an automobile company that is on the cutting edge and not losing market share. Personally I feel Flint should focus on the Internet which is hard to do when there are not enough public computers to go around and the few that are are too restricted. Perhaps with internet technology you wouldn't need $200,000 to be able to run an ombudsman office. The other advantage Flint has is it's low cost of living. It's probably about as cheap to live in Flint as it is to live in Bangalore India or Shanghei or Beijing.
I think you would also need a cleaned up parks system, good marketing as opposed to no marketing and a Mott foundation that brings jobs to downtown Flint instead of blocking jobs with its closed up ghetto buildings that help to keep people scared to come downtown. (the crack heads don't help either)
Who knows maybe this city could also use a Republican mayor that can win in a democratic town. You ever hear of Charles Stewart Mott? He was a republican mayor and led GM for a while. Look what he did for Flint. Now compare that to what the Democrats have done for Flint for the past 20 or 30 years. Fortunately for the democrats everyone knows they are the party that cares about the poor black people. They have done an excellent job of solidifying their base over the last 20 or 30 years in Flint.
Adam Ford
webmaster@mysearchisover.com
http://mysearchisover.com
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Tue Dec 20, 2005 8:08 pm |
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Ted Jankowski
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Adam,
While crime and high unemployment seem to go hand in hand. Not having a job doesn't make you a criminal. I've been broke before for periods of 6 to 8 months. Between jobs, and after getting out of the USMC. I've lived without power in the house because I just didn't have the money to pay the bill. But, I don't remember ever once getting a gun and robbing a liquor store, or breaking into a neighbors house or car to steal their stereo. I've hitch hiked between states before. Not once did I ever think of robbing someone. Look at some of the reasons given in stories of late about the crime. The lady had an argument with her boyfriend so she shot him. The kids were fighting over who was going to sleep on the couch, so one beat the other to death with a base ball bat. Two teenage drop outs tried to rob the quick stop on Delaware, then the Kessel, then the store on Lewis. When they got there the employee shot one of them to death. They were committing Armed Robbery. Not one of those crimes had anything to do with whether they had a job or not.
Now I do agree that it was entrepreneurs like Durant and Mott that created jobs and created flint. Yes we do need to bring in people like this. marketing Flint, would be a great idea if had really had something to offer. Being the 4th most dangerous city to live in, and 2nd highest violent crime rat; are not good marketing tools. You need something to market. Such as highly educated work force, low unemployment, low school drop out rates.
Knowing that flint has poor city services, ineffective police force, highest crime rates. None of these are marketing tools. Fix them and I'll be with you 100% on marketing Flint. We would then have something to market.
On your last statement. There may be some truth to that. This city purposely segregated people of color. They tore down peoples houses to build 475 and then put everybody on one race in the projects. Moved them to planned neighborhoods. This reminds me of the PBS special that reported on Public housing. When, public housing was first conceived. It was available to anyone who wanted to live in the city, close to work. Then later they decided that you couldn’t make “too much money” to live there. So people like Doctors, Lawyers, nurses, and factory workers, etc. that were living in those projects had to move out. The amount the government wanted for them to live there wasn’t worth them staying. They could live outside the city for less then the government said they could make to live there and then commute. Then, there were the race riots, now race became a factor as to the priority of getting into public housing. While the intention was to provide low income housing to low income people. It turned out to be herding of peoples, into government controlled lifestyles. We have two and three generations of people who the only thing they know how to do effectively is fill out government forms for assistance. (work the system). |
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Wed Dec 21, 2005 9:04 am |
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Terry Bankert
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Flint Community summit on public safety and business development, what do you think?
FLINT CITIZEN- By: Terry Bankert 12/21/05
I asked "What can we do to make Flint better?" In my blog/flinttalk this week and received several responses.
Response set #1
Ted and Adam raised these issues in summary. 12/21/2005
1. SAFETY:-Flint becomes a safe place to live. With crime on the rise and jobs on their way out. It is a guff question. If we want people to stay here in Flint. We need to make it a safe place to live. I had also thought of contacting my State representative .... I believe the state should be helping with this crime situation more also. ... I believe that once we take care of our crime problem.... We won't need to do anything to get people to stay in the area. They will want to because it is a just plain a nice place to live.
RESPONSE by Terry Bankert: We cannot separate the quality of life in Flint from our real crime rate.[ people afraid to send their kids to school or walk to the corner store.] People historically moved to cities to prosper not subsist and be safe not to have their lives or their kids lives threatned.. To some Flint only offers a threat to their SAFETY and they choose to leave. Many young families leave because their children are not safe in the schools, many elderly leave because they no longer feel safe in their homes of 20 years. Our first issues is public SAFETY, public SAFETY and then public SAFETY.
2. NEED FOR SPECIAL LEGISLATION...I believe we need some type of a "High Crime Bill" passed in the federal government. We need, along with many other high crime cities, funds to fight crime. There should be a way for communities that are well above the national average to be able to receive funding from the Federal government to help fight crime.
RESPONSE by Terry Bankert: We should be the national poster child for testing new ideas and funding initiative. If it works in Flint it will work any where else. We should challenge the best and brightest to rise to the Flint challenge. We have University of Michigan -Flint, Kettering, Mott, Baker filled with PHD’s Lets ask each college to send their best to a community roundtable to create a city plan to make Flint safe. Then lets fund this initiative.
3. BIGGER JAIL MORE POLICE We need larger jails, and more officers. think crime and lack of jobs go hand in hand. Desperate people with no money and no hope do desperate things like rob stores. I do think we need more police. With $10 from each resident of the city of Flint we should be able to add about 20-30 police.
RESPONSE by Terry Bankert: Bigger jails will always be filled. The criminal justice system makes adjustments because of the jail space. We will fill it up with drunks and child support cases not violent criminals. We do need more police, we need to pay them well, train them and turn them lose with the warning that they must not use excessive force but the rule of law.
4. BUSINESS SAFETY INITIATIVE: Once we can turn the crime around. Businesses will open in the city. Just look at the eastside. How many times has the "Quix-Stop" been robbed on Delaware or across from Kessel. Gilroy's no longer lets you roam the aisles because of the shop lifting. In order to have a business on the eastside you cannot have any windows. Look at the drug stores, the restaurants. Big Al’s, and chicken affair have been vandalized and robbed many times.
RESPONSE by Terry Bankert: The working families have a symbiotic relationship with the small neighborhood business. We have let Wal Mart type stores rape this country, driving the small business from our communities because they cannot match the price point of the conglomerates. I am for a special unit of the Flint police department assigned exclusively to protecting the small business owner who chooses to do business in our tough neighborhoods.
5.BUSINESS SUPPORT INITIATIVES: In addition Flint needs to go back over its history a little bit. For one, it wasn't the unions that brought GM jobs to Flint. It was entrepreneurs like Billie Durant that brought jobs to Flint. Flint could have tried to stay in the Carriage business but instead it moved to the cutting edge automobile business. If Flint wants to stay in the automobile business and not continue to lose jobs then perhaps it should try and team up with an automobile company that is on the cutting edge and not losing market share.
RESPONSE by Terry Bankert: We have University of Michigan -Flint, Kettering, Mott, Baker filled with PHD’s Lets ask each college to send their best to a community roundtable to create a city plan to get and keep business in Flint. Then lets fund this initiative.
6. INVEST IN NEW TECHNOLOGY: I feel Flint should focus on the Internet which is hard to do when there are not enough public computers to go around and the few that are too restricted. Perhaps with internet technology you wouldn't need $200,000 to be able to run an ombudsman office.
RESPONSE by Terry Bankert: We have University of Michigan -Flint, Kettering, Mott, Baker filled with PHD’s Lets ask each college to send their best to a community roundtable to create a city plan to get and keep new technology in Flint. Then lets fund this initiative.
7. MARKET THAT FLINT IS A LOW COST PLACE TO LIVE FLINT has is it's low cost of living. It's probably about as cheap to live in Flint as it is to live in Bangalore India or Shanghei or Beijing.
8.CLEAN UP PARKS:I think you would also need a cleaned up parks system, good marketing as opposed to no marketing and ... bring jobs to downtown Flint instead of blocking jobs with its closed up ghetto buildings that help to keep people scared to come downtown.
RESPONSE by Terry Bankert: Where else can a young family get our price per square foot.
9.CHANGE OUR CULTURE OF VIOLENCE: While crime and high unemployment seem to go hand in hand. Not having a job doesn't make you a criminal. I've been broke before for periods of 6 to 8 months. Between jobs, and after getting out of the USMC. I've lived without power in the house because I just didn't have the money to pay the bill. But, I don't remember ever once getting a gun and robbing a liquor store, or breaking into a neighbors house or car to steal their stereo. I've hitch hiked between states before. Not once did I ever think of robbing someone. Look at some of the reasons given in stories of late about the crime. The lady had an argument with her boyfriend so she shot him. The kids were fighting over who was going to sleep on the couch, so one beat the other to death with a base ball bat. Two teenage drop outs tried to rob the quick stop on Delaware, then the Kessel, then the store on Lewis. When they got there the employee shot one of them to death. They were committing Armed Robbery. Not one of those crimes had anything to do with whether they had a job or not.
RESPONSE by Terry Bankert: We have University of Michigan -Flint, Kettering, Mott, Baker filled with PHD’s Lets ask each college to send their best to a community roundtable to create a city plan to break our culture of violence in Flint. Then lets fund this initiative
10.PUBLIC EDUCATION: Now I do agree that it was entrepreneurs like Durant and Mott that created jobs and created flint. Yes we do need to bring in people like this. marketing Flint, would be a great idea if had really had something to offer. Being the 4th most dangerous city to live in, and 2nd highest violent crime rat; are not good marketing tools. You need something to market. Such as highly educated work force, low unemployment, low school drop out rates.
RESPONSE by Terry Bankert: We have University of Michigan -Flint, Kettering, Mott, Baker filled with PHD’s Lets ask each college to send their best to a community roundtable to create a city plan to increase our quality of education in Flint. Then lets fund this initiative
11.IMPROVE CITY SERVICES: Knowing that flint has poor city services, ineffective police force, highest crime rates. None of these are marketing tools. Fix them and I'll be with you 100% on marketing Flint. We would then have something to market.
RESPONSE by Terry Bankert: We have University of Michigan -Flint, Kettering, Mott, Baker filled with PHD’s Lets ask each college to send their best to a community roundtable to create a city plan to measure and improve our city services in Flint. Then lets fund this initiative
15.. PROMOTE DESEGREGATION: This city purposely segregated people of color. They tore down peoples houses to build 475 and then put everybody on one race in the projects. Moved them to planned neighborhoods. This reminds me of the PBS special that reported on Public housing. When, public housing was first conceived. It was available to anyone who wanted to live in the city, close to work. Then later they decided that you couldn’t make "too much money" to live there. So people like Doctors, Lawyers, nurses, and factory workers, etc. that were living in those projects had to move out. The amount the government wanted for them to live there wasn’t worth them staying. They could live outside the city for less then the government said they could make to live there and then commute. Then, there were the race riots, now race became a factor as to the priority of getting into public housing. While the intention was to provide low income housing to low income people. It turned out to be herding of peoples, into government controlled lifestyles. We have two and three generations of people who the only thing they know how to do effectively is fill out government forms for assistance. (work the system).
RESPONSE by Terry Bankert: We have some the largest African American churches in the state of Michigan I would ask the churches to begin this discussion. Flint is a majority African American the touchy questions should start from this community. But in the end segregation cuts both ways and whites are being treated harshly in the hood and our schools.
We must invite every person and group with a desire to make Flint better into a process of discussion , A community summit perhaps, and policy and program development and funding.
What do you think? If a community summit was convened on these issues would you attend? What would you say? Who should call the meeting? Where should it be? When should it be? How should people be invited?
The Flint Citizen is a publication of Attorney Terry R. Bankert (Family Law ) of Flint Michigan USA. http://enewsblog.com/terrybankert/
attorneybankert@yahoo.com
Terry R. Bankert P.C., 1000 Beach St., Flint MI 48503 810.235.1970 fax 234-5080 |
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Thu Dec 22, 2005 5:32 am |
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Ted Jankowski
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quote:
What do you think? If a community summit was convened on these issues would you attend? What would you say? Who should call the meeting? Where should it be? When should it be? How should people be invited?
I'm always willing to attend any meetings of this sort. As long as the meeting is held when I'm not at work. I went to the first meeting of Brenda Clack's forum on Violence. I was one of about five white people in attendance. There were more white people at the meeting working for her, than came from the community. I do not feel intimidated or even out of place being so far out numbered in a meeting. I don't view, crime and violence as a black white issue. However, after sitting through speech after speech talking about violence and the black community, I began to feel I wasn't in the right place. I thought the meeting was about crime and violence in the Flint community not exclusively black. The other observation I made was how, so many people in attendance were there attempting to figure out ways to get grant funds for programs they want to implement, after school football, block clubs, etc. I thought we were there to discuss violence and how to change attitudes and lower violent crime. I haven't gone to any of the rest of her meetings. Personally, I've written her at least 5 or 6 times and have never received a response back. So anything she does, I already don’t have very high expectations. Years of being ignored and no follow up from her have convinced me I’m wasting my time even bothering her.
Now, you know the city council and the mayor have already put together a committee of PHD's and leaders to work on this problem in Flint. Not one person on that committee I believe is an average Joe. Someone who has a first hand idea of where the crime is coming from. I'm not too thrilled with the idea of high level college grad's living outside the city, in half million and million dollar homes, who while full of book smarts have never had to experience, the topic they are trying to solve the problem for. What can a person that has never lived in a neighborhood filled with crime know about the causes or even how to resolve the problem. This is how we get people that think wasting money of social programs to make people more dependant on the state. I really don't believe the problems in the city of Flint are that difficult. It's pretty simple. Crime is the number one problem. And it doesn't require a rocket scientist to figure out when it takes police an hour to respond violent crime and ten minutes to respond to a dog barking; what the problem is or even what it will take to fix it.
All this said, I do not believe that community summit is a bad idea. I think it is a great idea. The problem I have, is whether it will accomplish anything. Get the people together and the city leaders and vent. Won't accomplish anything. But, if we could do something like this, and then have our leaders accountable to getting the job done. That would be great. We already have a Mayor who should be accountable for the police dept. He should have appointed by now a Police Chief. We should already have plans in place to attack the crime in Flint. If we do it sure doesn't show. I have seen more police presence on the eastside of late. However, as Rapunzall has pointed out. There is a millage renewal on the February ballet. So in December we finally get some police presence on the East side. Where have they been hiding the last ten years?
Sure I would go to a community summit. But, I would be very skeptical as to it actually accomplishing anything. Based on, our current administration’s actions, attitude of the people in this city, and other forums and state officials that have sponsored racism, in meetings and yielded no results. I’d even be willing to help organize something like this. But, only if we can reasonably assume, that something will happen once the summit has been completed. |
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Thu Dec 22, 2005 9:00 am |
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Ted Jankowski
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| Terry, do you ever stop in at the White Horse? Wouldnt mind meeting you sometime. |
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Thu Dec 22, 2005 9:02 am |
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Ted Jankowski
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| I noticed not many people in these forums really seem to want to discuss these issues. It's like talking to my neighbor before the last election. I asked "are you going to vote" he says "nope it isn't going to change anything anyway, they are all crooks" Most people just don't care. They love to .. and complain about the problems. Then refuse to do the very least they can to initiate change. To me the at the very least people should do is write their officials and vote. I’ve been doing that for years. Granted I rarely see any changes because of what I personally write. But I do see here of late, that many things I’ve written about now have officials discussing it. (Insurance rates, crime rates) Which tells me it does work. Because, I know I’m not the only one. |
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Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:52 am |
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