Novi, Troy defy L. Brooks Patterson, urge vote on regional transit tax

Elected officials in two of Oakland County’s largest cities voted this week to buck L. Brooks Patterson on an issue near and dear to the county executive's heart, saying the public should be allowed to vote on a proposed regional transportation tax this year.

City councils in Troy and Novi narrowly passed resolutions asking that county leaders support getting a regional transportation plan before voters in November. The measure could be on the ballot in Wayne, Washtenaw, Oakland and Macomb counties, although both Patterson and Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel have opposed it.

A regional transportation tax vote in the four counties failed in 2016. Officials said the 2016 measure narrowly failed in Troy, the county’s largest city, and in Novi, a city that has opted out of participating in the suburban bus system for more than two decades.

Dan Lijana, spokesman for Connect Southeast Michigan, a coalition pushing for the passage of the regional transportation plan this year, said the council resolutions show that “transit has more support in Oakland County.

“It’s pretty obvious when the county leadership said he speaks for all of Oakland County and not wanting to see this on the ballot, that there are many other community leaders in Oakland County who feel he is not speaking for them and they want people to know that,” Lijana said.

“I think as you see more communities, more leaders, more businesses stepping out and saying how important this is in Oakland and Macomb (counties), it certainly is advancing the argument to the point that we’ll see it on the ballot in November,” he added.

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The city councils' resolutions came on the heels of the annual Mackinac Policy Conference, where a coalition of 220 business leaders praised a new regional transit plan put forth by Wayne County Executive Warren Evans to put a 1.5-mill proposal for the Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan, an umbrella organization that will coordinate public transportation services in metro Detroit, on the ballot in November. The millage would be for 20 years.

Patterson and Hackel strongly oppose the proposed tax and said the area has a regional transportation system in the form of the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART). Patterson has said the Regional Transit Authority created by the Legislature should be abandoned and called it a “glorified SMART." But a majority of city council members in both Novi and Troy say they believe the revamped transportation plan should be placed before voters.

Patterson was unavailable for comment Wednesday, but his spokesman, Bill Mullan, said that he was shocked by the recent council resolutions.

“It’s shocking that elected officials in Novi and Troy blatantly voted against the will of their voters who said ‘No’ to the RTA just 19 months ago,” Mullan said. “Plus, if the Novi City Council is truly serious about transit, then why didn’t they vote on a resolution to place a question on the fall ballot for the city to opt in to the Oakland County Transportation Authority millage to support SMART and in return receive SMART services?"

The regional transit plan ballot language has to be finalized by the middle of August to go on the November ballot, Lijana said.

It needs to be approved by seven of nine members of the RTA board, which is comprised of representatives of all four counties and Detroit. The counties each have two members while Detroit has one, and at least one vote is needed from each county for the measure to move forward.

Patterson and Hackel, who appointed their counties’ representatives, oppose the plan while officials in the other counties and Detroit support it.

Novi Councilwoman Gwen Markham said during the council meeting that Novi has changed from when it voted to become an opt-out community in 1995. The city had just 30,000 people then, she said, and now has more than 60,000 residents. She said the council added money to this year’s budget for local transit operations because of increasing needs.

Markham pointed out a recent video in which Novi was “in the spotlight and not in a good way.” Evans was featured in a video showing what it would take to get to a job at Best Buy in Novi from Detroit. He took two buses and walked 2 miles, often in grass or shoulders of the road, because there where no sidewalks, in a trip that took about two and a half hours.

Markham said she has received more than a dozen letters from people and personal contacts from five local business leaders about the regional transit topic, adding “there’s interest in the community.” She acknowledged the topic is a “political hot potato” and said while Patterson’s position is that opt-out communities in the county don’t want transit, “frankly, I don’t agree.”

Neither does Oakland County Commissioner David Woodward, a Democrat who represents Royal Oak and Berkley. He plans to introduce a similar resolution approved by the Novi and Troy city councils to the county Board of Commissioners next week and is hoping for bipartisan support.

"My hope is there is majority support on the county board to ask our regional leaders to put the question before voters," he said. "Brooks no longer speaks for all of Oakland County when it comes to transit and frankly, he's holding this region back."

But Mullan said absent amendments to the RTA statute "there will be no vote from Oakland County to place any RTA question on the ballot."

Contact Christina Hall: chall99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter: @challreporter.