Outliner Media’s Patrick Dunn published a piece today on a report calling for the strengthening of Detroit’s community benefits ordinance. The article can be accessed here.

“Two of the report’s recommendations relate to strengthening community members’ voices on neighborhood advisory councils (NACs), the nine-member bodies that negotiate with developers during the community benefits process.

The report calls for increasing the number of NAC members selected by neighborhood residents to five — up from two.

“We really need to make sure that we have more folks who can speak to their lived experience, bring their family and actual community into the room, and not just assume that two people can speak for a whole neighborhood,” said Liz Jacob, a staff attorney at the Detroit-based Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice.”