MUNDY TWP., — The 2024 election may have a major impact on jobs and investments slated for Mundy Township near the Bishop International Airport in Genesee county. Mundy Township residents elected a new Supervisor who ran on a platform of rejecting $55 billion in investments that would lead to 2,000 permanent jobs, a thriving high-tech zone and indirect investments such as restaurants, gas stations and other businesses that would support the influx of new workers.
Republican Jennifer Stainton ran against the jobs and the megasite based on her belief – without any evidence – that the site would “introduce pollutants” to the area. “There is a lot going on in Mundy Township, I am against the proposed megasite battery plant and semiconductor plant. I would oppose anything that would introduce pollutants into our backyards,” Stainton said to the Davison Index prior to the election.
Stainton also alluded to the fact that, even though she doesn’t own the land, that the view of the empty land from her property is more important to her than creating jobs and opportunities for others. “The land and the beauty that I can see with all the wildlife that takes refuge in the woods behind the house is priceless to me,” Stainton added.
Meanwhile, the Whitmer administration has pushed to position Michigan as a leader in Chip manufacturing as the world moves away from the gas powered vehicles and slowly but evermore surely towards electric vehicles. Tyler Rossmaessler, executive director of the Flint & Genesee Economic Alliance has supported the proposed megasite that would return the Flint area to the forefront of U.S. manufacturing for the first time since GM moved many manufacturing jobs from the area nearly 50 years ago. “As we’re looking to diversify our reliance on foreign entities for these important supply chains that go into our phones and our cars and our guided missiles and drones in our everyday life, we have to have sites like this where we can produce those incredibly important products,” Rossmaessler told Bridge Magazine.
The question remains for residents of Mundy Twp. and Michigan: Do we want to continue to lose ground and fade into obscurity or do we want to do the hard work of competing for jobs and investments and winning the 21st century?
If Jennifer Stainton gets her way, it seems Michigan and Mundy Twp. will prefer the slow fade into obscurity as the global marketplace passes us by.
