[ad_1]
FLINT, Mich. (WJRT) – The town of Flint has partnered with Crime Stoppers to deliver a cash reward to anyone who catches an illegal dumper.
But a neighborhood club in Flint says there’s a steadily growing landfill site in the Sarvis Park neighborhood and it’s the city’s fault.
The neighbors cleaned up on April 24 and left a pile of garbage that they picked up that day. Two months later, it’s still there and a lot more waste has been added, which the block club accuses the city of not having kept its word.
You also can’t hold citizens accountable when you leave the scourge in the community, said Ladel Lewis, Sarvis Park Ward President and Flint City Council candidate.
He organized the April cleanup. Michigan State Police, Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley, community members and the City’s Scourge Team were in attendance.
Without the equipment to deal with that pile in April, she said the Blight Team promised to return a few days later with a front loader to fill the dumpster and get rid of it.
Well unfortunately they didn’t come back, Lewis said. And as a result, other people decided to join in the fun and also throw out some illegal garbage.
She pointed out that their perspective from the park they worked so hard to follow remains an unofficial dumping ground.
It is not that difficult. You don’t have to import a special machine from China, Mexico. You have everything you need to fix this problem, Lewis said. So, as residents of the Town of Flint of the Neighborhood Association, we demand that the Town of Flint come here and fix what it started. We deserve better.
Flint Blight’s team leader Mario Thomas said the mess near Sarvis Park is no longer April. He said the city crews came to clean up this land the day after the community cleanup day.
We did what we had to do. However, within 24 to 48 hours it was destroyed, Thomas said. It’s a hot spot. We have a lot of different hot spots around the town of Flint. Unfortunately, this is one of the hot spots.
He said the crew had actually been in the neighborhood once a month since the April cleanup. Thomas said the biggest problem is people treating this city like a garbage can.
The city plans to add six more people to its scourge team, doubling the workforce. Look for those jobs that will be posted this weekend on the city’s website.
The Genesee County Land Bank owns the Clio Road property, where the mess is continually being emptied. The executive director said he connected with the neighborhood group after learning of the mess from ABC12 News and plans to get rid of it next week.
We were going to contact the city directly to make sure the dumpsters were on site, said Land Bank executive director Michael Freeman. We were going to bring our heavy equipment, so that we could clean up with stuff that was already put in there. And ideally, we remove this dumpster from the site as soon as it is full.
He said the land bank needed help from communities to alert them to any problems with 15,000 properties in Genesee County. Complaints can be filed on the land banks website and Freeman said they will be answered within 24 hours.
The government cannot solve all the problems. This will not be resolved overnight, he said. But when government works with neighbors and with communities, we can certainly have an impact.
Once the mess is resolved, Freeman wants to find a long-term solution that changes the role of lots in the neighborhood.
We need to block this so people know it’s not OK, he said. We deserve better, and once we start to be proud of our neighborhood, others will too. Much like the broken window theory, when people see garbage and garbage, they add to it. We want to show them that this is not it and that it is not OK.
Freeman reached out to Lewis to let him know about his hopes of restricting homeownership. The land bank has tested a new plan to put cement blocks at certain property entrances.
We can also install signage there to prohibit intrusions. So we were working on that right now, and I think that would be a good place to test it, Freeman said. So I think I might give it a try.
Copyright 2021 WJRT. All rights reserved.
[ad_2]
picture credit