Flint’s schools are burning and officials can’t agree on how to stop it

Blighted, vacant schools like Zimmerman are being targeted as arsons spike in Flint, an MLive-The Flint Journal investigation shows. Simultaneously, a power struggle has emerged over the future of more than two dozen vacant buildings, as well as acres of real estate owned by the district.

City officials contend the district failed to secure the glut of empty buildings closed due to steep declines in enrollment. The district, meanwhile, says it can’t afford to tear down the structures, while also acknowledging they’ve failed to maintain them.

After more than 70 fires at deserted schools in seven years, the city is applying pressure to clean them up or knock them down through several different channels, including 14 condemnation notices, and 11 more violation notices that could lead to forced demolitions of school district properties.

The violation notices have been mailed to the school district since March 1, putting it on notice that the condemned buildings are illegal to occupy until repairs are made. The demolition and emergency demolition notices advise the district that the cost of repairing 11 buildings exceeds the value of the structures and that in some cases there is imminent danger of collapse.

A city spokeswoman said that although the notices have been mailed to the Flint Board of Education, official tickets have yet to be written.

Billing records also show that the city is carrying out a years-old threat to charge the district for responding to its fires with invoices adding up to more than $47,000 this year alone, which doesn’t include four fires in May.

(Video by Jake May | MLive.com with footage provided by Travis Ricketts)

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