Michigan's Flint Township Seeking Name Change After Mistakenly Connected to Water Crisis
Residents and business owners of Michigan's Flint Township have expressed an interest in changing its name in response to the negative impact of sharing their name with the city of Flint.
Starting in 2014, the city of Flint's water supply was contaminated with lead, poisoning residents. The contamination and its aftereffects caused many people to leave the city.
Despite Flint Township not being related to the city, and having its own water source, many people assume the two places are connected. Kevin Stiff, owner of The Dive Shop in Flint Township, told the Associated Press the confusion has cost the township business.
"I probably had close to eight or 10 people that did not want to take classes because they were going to get in our pool that had 'the city of Flint water,'" said Stiff of his scuba equipment and diving training business.
According to the AP, about 352 of the state's townships share a name with at least one other township.
Until recently, townships in Michigan didn't have the authority to change their names. However, Governor Gretchen Whitmer recently signed a law to allow it with two-thirds approval from the township's governance board and majority approval from the residents.
"If you share a same name, and say you have a toxic spill or something terrible happens in your community and you're trying to attract economic development, that could be a deterrent," State Rep. David Martin said to the AP.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
It's more than economic, township officials say. When the city of Flint held a recall election in 2017 of then-Mayor Karen Weaver, over 100 people called the township clerk to complain that there weren't enough polling places even though the vote was only for city residents, said Jerry Preston, who heads a committee to consider a name change.
The Civil War was a driving factor in many of Michigan's duplicate township names, said Catherine Mullhaupt, an attorney with the Michigan Townships Association.
Of the 11 townships that share a name with five townships or more, six of them are believed to be connected to people from the Civil War era. The state has 11 Grant townships, nine Sherman townships and eight Lincoln townships, according to the association.
When Union Army veterans returned from the war, many who served under Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union Army to victory, wanted to honor him, said Steven Ramold, an Eastern Michigan University professor. The state likely allowed the duplications because it was less confusing at the time for rural townships with limited connections to have the same names.
"Veterans in different parts of the state, perhaps unaware that a Grant, Sherman, or other name had already been used, organized their own township with the name they preferred," Ramold said. "When Grant became president, I imagine the desire to have one's locality named for him became even more desirable."
Flint Township for decades has looked at over 100 names, with Carman Hills, in honor of one of the town's settling families, being a front-runner.
Stiff said he hopes that the name will get changed to something that distinguishes the community.
"There's a lot of people in outlying areas, Detroit and Brighton and Lansing that go, 'I don't want to go to Flint.' And that's not good," Stiff said. "I tell them all the time we're not Flint."
