FLINT, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Faced with a looming budget deficit, the city of Flint says its budget can no longer support the costs of picking up garbage and lighting its streets and neighborhoods.

So it’s considering taxing its residents for street lights and garbage pickup. The plan is to start those taxes on July 1, according to a resolution put out by the city’s Finance Committee this week.

Proposed new taxes.

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All property owners in a special lighting district would have a fee of $72.18 per parcel added to their July 2025 tax bill to pay for street lights. The city’s budget has $3.78 million set aside for street lighting that would be raised by tax against 40,056 parcels.

“The cost of operating, maintaining, and improving street lighting will be spread equally to all parcels in the City, since all property owners benefit from a well-lit city,” the city stated in a memo.

There would be a $202.56 tax charged to residential and multi-family dwellings up to four units for solid waste collection.

Commercial and industrial property would not be charged as they don’t receive waste collection services from the city. The city said the tax would collect $7.1 million with an estimated 33,820 parcels subject to the user charge.

The bottom line.

Flint is projecting deficits over the next two years. The city revealed the overspending in budget documents it released this week. It projects a deficit of $13.4 million in 2025-2026 and $8.2 million in 2026-27.

In August 2023, the city of Flint received $170 million from the Protecting MI Pension Grant Program from the state of Michigan. That money was dedicated to the pension system which is underfunded. The City of Flint was awarded $94.7 million from the American Rescue Plan Act and that money must be spent by Dec. 31, 2026.

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The city of Flint’s median household income was $36,194 from 2019-2023 with 34.4% of its residents living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census.