Priorities

Midland is a great place to live, but there are challenges ahead. Let's elect candidates with a new perspective, who will listen to the citizens of Midland County and work for everyone's benefit. Don't just choose a candidate based on their political party, take closer look. Here are some of my campaign priorities, but I want to hear from you, too.
What are your priorities?

Smart Growth

Midland County has kept our population steady in a time when the counties around us are losing population, but “holding steady” isn’t enough to guarantee a good future for our communities.

I’d love for my grown children to feel like Midland is the place where they want to raise their families, too. To do that, we need continued smart, sustainable growth for both the city and the county. We need to find new ways to work with surrounding counties in the Great Lakes Bay Region because we can’t succeed if Bay, Saginaw, Isabella, and Gladwin counties aren’t succeeding, too.

It’s not just about making Midland the “cool place” to live; it's about supporting the physical and mental health of our residents, promoting affordable housing and improving childcare availability for working parents, and making Midland attractive to a young, diverse workforce.

Fair Representation with a New Perspective

I don’t think the current county commissioners have done a bad job; in fact, the board as a whole done a pretty good job in many areas, particularly in responding to the dam collapse emergency of 2020. Midland County also has a fantastic, award-winning county administrator in Bridgette Gransden, who works well with the commission and the county employees to make sure the county government is well run.

Being a county commissioner is less about political party and more about being willing to work with the other commissioners and the county employees to make sure our local government is run effectively and efficiently. County commissioners need to be willing to listen to and advocate for their constituents. The incumbent in district 5 has been in office for 12 years. It’s time for a new perspective for Midland County, from someone who will be open and accessible. I look forward to representing you!

Dam Safety & Flood Prevention

Like many of the other residents of district 5, our home was impacted by flooding in both 2017 and 2020. I don't ever again want to go through the experience of seeing 5 feet of water in my basement, knowing the work of cleanup and recovery that follows a flood. The 2020 flood, as we all know, was caused by the failure of the Sanford and Edenville dams. Midland County has been working with the Four Lakes Task Force to rebuild the dams and restore the lakes. It's complex process and it will take time to do correctly.

Naturally the people who own homes on those lakes or who enjoy the lakes for fishing and boating would like the lakes restored as quickly as possible. Those of us who live downstream want to make sure we avoid future flooding.

The Midland Business Alliance has set up the Advisory Committee on Infrastructure, which is looking at how to prevent the floods Midland has experienced that are unrelated to the dam failures. The committee is working with local, state and federal partners to address longstanding flood issues in our region. As the dams are rebuilt, we must make sure that our infrastructure is more resilient in heavy rain events. District 5 has been particularly impacted by flooding, most recently in 2017 and 2020.

I’m glad to see that we have a partnership working on innovative ways to prevent or alleviate flooding in this district. I'd like to see more citizen participation in the process moving forward. In particular, we need to make sure residents of district 5 are kept in the loop,
For more information, visit the MBA website http://mbami.org/floodstudy/