By: Mike Koury | Royal Oak Review | Published November 17, 2023
CLAWSON — The officials elected Nov. 7 in Clawson shared their thoughts on the charter amendment that voters also approved.
In the mayoral election, incumbent Paula Millan was reelected over challenger Andrea Hodges. Millan received 1,767 votes to Hodges’ 990 votes. Millan said she was happy to get another term as mayor.
“I’m just very grateful that the residents of Clawson found confidence in me and then I get to continue … the momentum that we have with our administration and work towards addressing issues that are important to our residents,” she said.
For the City Council, residents elected one new member and one familiar face.
Susan Moffitt and Matt Binkowski were elected to seats on the council, receiving 1,381 and 1,182 votes, respectively. They ran against three other candidates: Scott Tinlin, Nathan Hara and Louis J. Samson. They received 1,117, 839 and 481 votes, respectively. Tinlin and Samson were the incumbents in the race.
Binkowski hasn’t served on a council before, but he was excited to get the voters’ approval this year.
“I’m happy and honored that they put their faith in me to help move Clawson forward, and I’m really looking forward to getting on with the job,” he said.
Moffitt previously served on the City Council from 2017 to 2021. She stated that she left the council because she felt things had gotten “really toxic” and she needed to step away, but she felt it facilitated her ability to speak out against things that were happening as just a citizen.
Moffitt said she decided to run again because she wanted residents to have more of a choice in the election, as not many people filed to run when she decided to throw her hat in the ring.
“It’s humbling and I am incredibly grateful for the confidence and support from the community,” she said. “It was awesome and I’m really excited to get back at it and get to work.”
Clawson residents also voted to approve a new city charter, with 1,592 voters choosing yes and 1,143 voting no. This is the first time that the city’s charter will be altered since 1940.
The new charter will feature a large number of changes, including deleted items that are now governed by state law and no longer need to be in the charter; clarification of responsibilities and roles of the city officials, the appointment of members to the council and the elimination of the need to resign from office to run for different elected positions; the increase of the number of members on the City Council from five to seven; and increasing the mayor’s term from two years to four years. These changes will start with the 2025 elections.
Binkowski said he was a “complete” supporter of the charter changers.
“I think it’s all positive changes,” he said. “You know, expanding the council, getting more people involved and also being able to break out into some committees and clarifying a lot of things that have, I guess, bedeviled the city — when we would lose one council member they would, you know, things would almost come to a standstill.”
Moffitt, on the other hand, was against the amendments, as there were many changes that concerned her, such as the change from a two-year mayoral term to four years and the expansion of council seats
“There’s just a lot of problems with it. The community supported it. We’ll have to figure out how to implement it,” she said.
“I get other communities do (a four-year term for mayor), but I think that there was always wisdom in having them cycled through, the mayor term being two years now and always cycle through with a new set of council people so they were always part of the incoming group of people serving. So time will tell how that susses out,” she said.
Millan said it’ll be interesting how the changes work out.
“The only thing that’s really impactful for me is representation on the council and that’s not going to take place for a couple of years (in 2025),” she said. “So we have a couple of years to build on that. I’m looking forward to the residents being educated on what actually will transpire with the charter changes.”