Elected officials share priorities, goals for 2024

OAKLAND COUNTY — The new year has come, and several elected officials have given their thoughts on what the priorities should be in their respective cities in 2024.

The elected officials are from Ferndale, Huntington Woods and Pleasant Ridge.

Ferndale Council member Laura Mikulski said she believes that the city’s No. 1 priority is to continue the work started by its finance review committee, a committee led by residents to help solve issues with the city’s aging infrastructure.

“We have a lot of capital needs that have been deferred over time that we need to invest in, as well as the fact that we have our Headlee override expiring, and when that does, that could potentially leave us with about $3 to $4 million less in our general fund,” she said.

Committee meetings are expected to continue in February, Mikulski said.

Mikulski also said that the city received feedback from residents who said that there is a need for better communication, and she also said the community needs to have a conversation about a future community center.

“Not having a community center, it’s been very challenging and it is something that is going to be part and parcel of the finance taskforce committee recommendations, because we know that we want it, we are going to have to begin some community engagement so that we can start moving forward with the process of creating a community center for our residents, but a lot of it is going to hinge on the hard work that has been put in by that financial task force,” she said.

In Huntington Woods, Mayor Pro Tem Joe Rozell stated that there are two projects the city is focusing on. One is a project on which it will be partnering with Berkley and Royal Oak to add a pedestrian crossing at 11 Mile and Scotia roads so kids have a safer path to school.

“The other big thing that we’re doing is we’ve hired a consultant to come in to look at all the city parks as part of our capital improvement project to sort of inventory everything and start developing priorities,” he said. “We really want to improve both active and passive recreation in the cities. We want to invest more in our parks, both landscaping, playscapes, that type of thing.”

Pleasant Ridge Mayor Bret Scott said a big topic for the city is its budget. The city will be having more discussions about the budget for next year in February.

In general, Scott said, Pleasant Ridge should be focused on getting its arts commission underway and finishing its section of the Woodward Avenue streetscape project.

“I think the project has gone well,” he said. “It’s unfortunately gone slower than we wanted it to, and we’ve now hit weather issues that have stopped us from completing it until next spring, but it’s as we had designed it alongside MDOT. And so that’s a good thing. I fully expect that there will be things that we adjust over time as people use it more, as people begin to use the bike lanes in the warmer weather, and those things normally occur in road projects. We find things that we had expected and we make adjustments.”

The top priority for Berkley, City Council member Dennis Hennen said, is asking for an operating millage increase in November.

“The Headlee constitutional amendment slowly erodes away every city’s tax revenue,” he said. “So we’re going to have to replace that revenue or else we’re going to have to continue to cut services every year to make up for the shortfall.”