Corktown Town Hall

The Corktown Town Hall earlier this week was well attended and I think we made good progress. Meeting notes will be posted here as they trickle in.

Starting off is the group that discussed the notion of development agencies and the prospect of restarting a GCDC type organization.

Fiscal Agency, Development Breakout Session.
o Full-time position almost a necessity.
o 33 individual lots, sold to neighbors. Rest are held up in back taxes. Would fetch no more than $250-500 in quick claim taxes.
o Needs to be more transparency to avoid a situation like the GCDC again, and the way the liquidation of the assets happened.
o What was the GCDC purpose? Larger neighborhood-based programs exist, the GCDC was a conduit for those larger projects. Controlled locally, but has fiscal capacity to take on large grants.
o Allows communication about economic development. Won’t just happen without the conversation.
o Corktown hasn’t asked for or received money. How do we get to a place where the mechanisms and protections are in place to even do that?
o Has to be investment. People have to be willing to take the burden of building.
o Internet for Koller in the community, give access to everyone here at affordable prices. Foundational thing for communication.
§ Detroit Digital Justice Coalition.
§ Bandwidth in Detroit is 10x more expensive than any other city.
§ Entrepreneurs will not want to come here if we don’t fix the problem.
o More public discussions for a new development agency. More transparency. More communication with the community.
o Board was previously appointed by previous board members. How to make sure that’s not the case? Maybe have an elected board. But elected boards are not protected against tampering.
§ Blend, some appointed, some elected, different term lengths or time people can serve? Number of terms people can serve?
o Grandmont-Rosedale is a good model.
o How to get all the people in the community to share their voices? In Arkansas, used park cleanup and programming for kids to get more people out there to share their voices, and from there go and build together.
o Murphy’s playlot for Halloween. Did everyone hear about it? 60 kids showed up.
o Community Center. Our current gathering places are bars.
o Get everyone at the meetings to commit two hours of their time to refurbishing a building for future meetings like this. Someone can move in.
o Representing the neighborhood. And not just a good steward of money, but advancing the interests of everyone in the neighborhood.
o Doesn’t just have to be some small eight-member board. Could be a huge board with lots of committees with different members.
o Good next step is to isolate essential values--transparency, responsibility to all residents both much discussed at this meeting--to recruit additional members
o Want to show people something to get them involved.
o From Jen Wallisch: North Corktown vs South Corktown is an important issue that needs specific attention.
o How to handle conversation between Citizen District Council and Community Development Corporations.
o Use big sheet of paper to write down everyone’s comments in the future.
o Presentation Summary:
o Lot of discussion, avoid the mistakes of the GCDC. Those mistakes being a lack of transparency with the community about what was going on, communication and feedback from the community.
o Grandmont-Rosedale mentioned as a good model for transparency and openness to the community.
o Significant time spent on how to get people from the community involved and to share their voice in the development process. Gregg mentioned that a program in Arkansas used a park cleanup and programs for youths to bring community together, and from there use that to get them involved and committed to a project.
o Another point was that any organization can’t just be a good steward of money, but that its actions have to advance the interests of EVERYONE in the neighborhood.
o Roundabout, but it started with Corktown has not asked for nor received money in a long time and we need to have the mechanism to do that, and do it in an inclusive way that represents the community and communicates with the community.