KALAMAZOO, MI (WKZO AM/FM) — Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist made a stop in Kalamazoo Monday afternoon as part of a tour to learn more about issues affecting urban communities.
As part of the tour, entitled “Thriving Cities,” Kalamazoo was one of many stops to understand the unique issues that affect urban cities in Michigan. The “Round Table Discussion” was meant to collect honest thoughts and opinions about how the government should address issues in each area.
“Every community has specific things going on that are important,” Gilchrist said during the presentation. “We wanted to come and meet people where they are, people who are doing the real work on the ground to improve quality of life in cities, and hear from you about how you want to see city life improve.”
Citizens were invited to participate in a survey before the meeting to weigh in on what issues are important to them.
As a means of guiding the conversation, citizens were asked in the survey to weigh in on the following topics:
- Affordable and Available Housing
- Generation Economic Opportunity
- Environmental Quality and Justice
- Kids in Cities
- Mobility and Transit
The most important issue as voted on by those who participated in the survey was Affordable and Available Housing, which took 39% of the vote.
“This is the emerging consensus amongst the people who responded to the survey about what was the most pressing thing here in Kalamazoo,” Gilchrist said. “How can we create the conditions that don’t put barriers between people and their potential? If we can remove those barriers, who knows what people in this city and in cities all across the State, what they can create? What they can invent? Who they can partner with? What they can imagine? Increasing quality of life in cities is about enabling that potential, and about making that potential more real, more available, and more accessible to more people in more communities in Michigan. That’s what we’re trying to solve.”
Various community members and public officials made an appearance during the meeting to discuss the issues at hand in an open-conversation format.
“We have a homelessness crisis in Kalamazoo that is just spiraling out of control,” Nathan Dannison of the First Congregational Church said. “We’ve had a 20% jump since last year, that’s in the span of 12 months. We have thousands of homeless people in the city, but the frustrating thing is that we have so many resources here in Kalamazoo to deal with it, so we need some help from the State in order to marshal these resources, provide the oversight necessary to make sure that they’re getting to people who need them.”
After listening to citizen input, Gilchrist and his team invited citizens to email any further thoughts, ideas and suggestions for further consideration.
The end goal for this tour is to figure out which issues are most prominent for the communities visited and then introduce new legislation to address them.
“We’re trying to identify all of those things and all of those opportunities in cities across the State so that we as a collective, everyone participating in this process…can put forward an agenda for creating thriving cities in the State of Michigan,” Gilchrist said. “That’s what we’re working toward, so you are a part of that process.”
Citizens wishing to weigh in on community issues are invited to send an email to MIEOG-THRIVINGCITIES@michigan.gov.
