Recently, the Ford Fund and Macomb County Habitat for Humanity announced they were looking for a City to work with on a potential container home project in Macomb county. The Ford Fund is providing $100,000 in grant assistance. The City Council showed support for the project at their December 17, 2019, meeting (see motion language below), our Economic Development Manager Kim Homan produced and submitted an application on December 30, 2019, and City Council set a public hearing with the Planning Commission to potentially modify the appropriate ordinances to build the container homes:

While most roads in Eastpointe are in good (or fair) condition, some are in poor condition. We need to explore all options to fix these roads in poor condition. I have posted about roads before. Also, I have created a Google Map with what I have perceived as the changes since 2017, only including the roads that were PASER ratings of 2 or 3 in 2017. The map is intended to be a rough reference going into a discussion about fixing the roads in poor condition in Eastpointe. It is not meant to be perfect, as I am not a civil engineer or DPW employee. The City's professional employees and contractors would eventually review the roads (and most likely in the spring/summer when there is no snow hindering observation) and make a professional opinion, if City Council takes steps in that direction. At our last City Council meeting, we passed a motion asking our Finance Director Randy Blum to come up with different options on fixing this problem. It is expected that at our next Council meeting, which includes goal setting, that we will be provided these options.

Last night I introduced proposed changes to the City of Eastpointe ethics policy. Eastpointe’s ethics policy needs to be updated to further define what its elected officials are and are not allowed to do. The adoption of a stronger ethics policy will show our residents that we take our role seriously and that we want to avoid any possible conflicts of interest.

I'd love to hear your thoughts as we go forward in this process.

Fox 2 News reached out to me about our water system, so I replied. Rob Baker, not yet sworn in as a Council member, and I made our way to City Hall to make sure that the City was able to discuss what was happening. The other Council members could not make it on such short notice.

A pregnant mother had lab results showing it was possible her child had an elevated level of lead in their blood. This is the tragic situation that happened system-wide in Flint. I hoped that the test was a false positive for the woman, but wanted to ensure the rest of the City that this was not what happened in Flint. If she did in fact have elevated levels of lead, it would be due to her service line, and not due to a system-wide issue. This is a much easier issue to address, as replacing the service line would effectively resolve the issue going forward. There are 1,313 lead lines throughout the City that will be replaced over the next twenty years. We will continue to treat our water, through GLWA, so that these lead lines do not need to be immediately removed. Treating the water prevents the lead from leaching into the water. The water was not treated in Flint, creating a system-wide issue. That has never happened with the GLWA system. The water in Eastpointe is safe to drink.