There is much for Dave Coulter to learn about his new job. The 59-year-old Ferndale Democrat was appointed Oakland County executive and sworn in last week.

Coulter says he wants to build upon what L. Brooks Patterson created over the past 27 years, but he also wants some things to change. Patterson died in early August from pancreatic cancer.

Coulter's philosophy? If it's not broke, don't fix it.

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That's the way he’ll approach the job, one that pays over $200,000 to lead the county forward.

The Oakland Press sat down with Coulter on his third full day on the job. We talked about budgets, priorities, his fears and challenges, his leadership style, regionalism, transit, what county government services need more investment and improvement, and feedback he's received from residents, businesses, and county employees.

Dave Coulter appoints chief deputy county executive Oakland County Executive Dave Coulter has made his first hire.

Oakland Press: What are your top priorities as Oakland County executive?

Coulter: It's getting the leadership team settled. I don't want to say “in place” because many of them are already here. I want to meet them and get myself up to speed on who they are and what they do. We have a few vacancies. We had a few retirements in the deputy executive position this week. When you look at vacancies, we also have some important appointments to make on boards such as the regional transportation authority, the Great Lakes Water Authority, and SMART. Filling out the team and the appointments are a priority because we can't do the work unless the right people are in place. If the right, talented people are already there, great. If there's a vacancy, my philosophy is not to use these as political patronage appointments but to find the best and smartest people that I can while always looking at whether it reflects the diversity of our county. I want to try to create a diverse team that looks like Oakland County with the smartest people I can.

I don't begrudge them retiring. These are folks that have worked many decades for the county and worked very hard. They had their work even harder while Brooks was having his health challenges. They really stepped up. Those were personal decisions to retire and I don't begrudge them. I've had good conversations with some of them. I met with Gerald Poisson twice already and with Laurie Van Pelt. They've been really helpful about just sharing their knowledge and their expertise and lending me their help. I'm grateful for that. It’s time for some of them to finally take some time for themselves.

The other priority is the budget. We have to pass it by the end of September. When I say we, it’s the board of commissioners. Brooks had presented a budget to the commissioners over the summer. They’ve had it. They’re looking at it and in the midst of budget hearings. My guess is they may want to tweak that, but that's not unusual, that happens every year anyway. When I was a county commissioner I was on the finance committee. The county executive would give us his recommended budget and then we would have finance hearings. We as Democrats would try to get things into the budget that were priorities for us. We would negotiate that with the administration. Some things got in and some things didn't and that's going on now. (As far as budget tweaks), ... To be honest, because I’m so new and we’re so deep into the budget process, I'm really relying on the county board and the leadership there. They have priorities and I need to better understand them. I'm not coming in with budgetary priorities. I’ll be much more robust into that process next year. This year I'm going to rely on the budget that Brooks presented and the priorities of the commissioners.

I want to hear from Republicans too. I said this when I got sworn in. Neither party has a monopoly on good ideas, so I want to understand what priorities the Republican commissioners have as well. I hope that Dave Woodward is talking to them and getting that from them. If he's not, they can tell me. I want it to be a budget that reflects all of our shared hopes and values, knowing that it won't include everything that everybody wants.

I’ve already have a good working relationship with Mike Gingell. I've talked to him since my appointment and I plan to continue that. I know him personally and I think he's a good man. We worked together well on the board.

OP: What will be your greatest challenges as county executive?

Coulter: There's a lot of uncertainty among the employees. There’s anxiety and even a level of grief that I’ve detected. Brooks was a legend to a lot of people. He was a father figure as well as a beloved boss. The employees have gone through a lot and I need them to be at their best because we pride ourselves on having an outstanding county government structure and staff. I need the good people that we already have to continue to do great work. To the extent that some of that uncertainty might get in the way of that, I want to try to be a reassuring figure to them that I believe in them. I believe in what they've done and now I want to help reassure them and challenge them to continue to do great stuff on behalf of the residents of Oakland County. I take that seriously and I see that as an obstacle. If I didn't do that well, people would just sort of freeze and not put forth new ideas. They wouldn't feel encouraged or empowered to offer new suggestions, I want to hear from them and how they can do their job as well as they can. That's a challenge.

I am always worried in general, because of the day and age we live in, with cybersecurity and hacking and those sort of things. A big part of our success as a county has been what Phil Bertolini and the information technology people have put in place. From the national level on down, we’ve seen that election systems are privy to being hacked. Ferndale had older systems than the county does, but it's critical that we keep the bad guys out of our information technology systems. That's something that Hilarie Chambers and I have been really focused on. We've asked department directors how secure do you think your systems are. That's a real danger that we all face. And that's a fear. To say I’m confident in our elections systems might be overstating it. We have good systems in place. Phil Bertolini and his team have done everything that I think they can, but it changes daily. It’s just something we have to be on top of. Every week, you have to be looking for the newest virus and the newest opportunity for someone to cause harm. That’s just something we’re just going to have to stand up on.

OP: In what ways will you build upon what Brooks created? In what ways will you differ?

Coulter: I really respect a lot about Oakland County government. What always comes up first, and for good reason, is the financial and budgeting management practices. The very first thing I did when I became mayor of Ferndale was asking our council to direct our finance director to create a multi-year budget. The city started at two years, now it’s at three years. I believe in that and I learned it here as a county commissioner. It’s not a magic tool or wand, but it helps you to see potential financial challenges sooner so there’s not a crisis. As a result of that, twice in my nine years as mayor, the city improved our bond ratings. The importance of that is not just so you can say that you have it. There's a very practical reason for wanting a good bond rating. When governments go up for bonds, they can save money. In Ferndale, it turned out to be a really helpful thing because last year the city went to the bond market for the first time in a while to build a mixed-use parking structure. We saved a lot of money because we were able to increase our credit rating. The county’s AAA bond rating is important to me and I don't want to mess with it. You have to pass a budget that the credit rating analysts will think is credible and realistic. I'm committed to that. So that's certainly one of the things that I would continue.

Brooks was well also known for his economic development efforts. I come from that camp as well. I wanted Ferndale to be known as the easiest and friendliest city to open and expand a business. A lot of people looked at me and thought that was an interesting thing for a Democrat to be talking about. But I know the importance of creating jobs and the tax revenues that it brings. It’s important for the health of a community. When I became mayor in Ferndale, the city’s industrial section of town, which is fairly sizeable, was 25 percent vacant. I stole another idea from Brooks, which was the business roundtable. I created what we called the mayor's business council. It’s not so much aimed at restaurants and shops downtown, but to those larger manufacturing and commercial businesses that had felt somewhat neglected in the past. I brought them together on a quarterly basis and we talked about the issues that were important to them along with their interactions with the city. I would bring along the city manager, fire chief, police chief, and the economic development director so these business owners could see them and have their contact information. It goes a long way. As a result, there are no vacancies in that industrial section or as we call it, the innovation district. The city has a variety of different kinds of businesses there. We got really lucky and strategic about attracting different kinds of businesses. As we looked more broadly, we began to fill that space up. Creating jobs and tax revenues, while also attracting businesses, is a focus of mine.

I don't want to say that this is going to be different than the previous administration, but one of the things I want to make sure we're doing is not just looking for the big apple, the big prize. Getting Google to come here and create 2,000 jobs is great, but I also want to make sure that we're doing things to encourage entrepreneurs and small businesses. Are we doing enough for them? I'm just asking a question, I don't have an answer. Are we doing enough to make sure we're nurturing entrepreneurs to start a business and to grow a small business. I feel like these processes are already here, including the county’s One Stop Shop program. My general philosophy is if it's not broke, don't fix it.

I come from a different political philosophy than the previous administration, it's not any secret. When I was on the board, there were some things that I advocated for that I'll still advocate for. I was a big champion on the board of changing the philosophy of the parks department and I think it has changed since then. The old philosophy was building large parks with a lot of acreage and a lots of wilderness because that was disappearing. That’s fine, but when you live in the southern end of the county, that is more developed without large plots of land to acquire, that sort of excludes you. I pushed to expand our vision of what parks meant in Oakland County so that they included big parks and small parks. I was very proud. It took a lot of years and a lot of negotiation, but while I was commissioner we eventually got Catalpa Oaks, which is formerly a soccer field in Southfield. That became possible because we asked county administration to change their vision of what parks meant in Oakland County. So there's going to be things like that where I'm just going to have a different perspective.

OP: What kind of leader are you? What can residents expect to see that might be different than what they have experienced for over two decades?

Coulter: I consider my leadership style very much collaborative and I know that's kind of a buzzword that gets used a lot, but it means I want all voices at the table. I want to hear from everybody. I seldom find that either party has a monopoly on good ideas. I appreciate bringing people to the table, smarter than me. It can help me understand the issue from both perspectives. I've often said that if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. I want good people around me to give me their best advice. I'm not afraid of people challenging me. At the end of the day, I'll be responsible for making some of those decisions, but it's about bringing everyone to the table. I'm a little different than Brooks' style at least internally here to Oakland County. When I was the commissioner, we were a fairly small Democratic minority when I started and we didn't always feel heard. We had some ideas that we wanted to share. I think some of Patterson’s political nature was, if you can keep your Republicans on board and in line then you don't have to worry about working with those snobby Democrats. It worked for him. Who am I to disagree with his strategy? My style is much more about wanting the Republicans to know that I want to hear from them. I want to know what they are after and I want to know what they’re looking for. I may or may not be able to agree with it, but I want to know. I want them to know that I value their dialogue. I think that's just a little bit of a different philosophy, perhaps than Brooks used to employ.

OP: Do you believe a regional transit system can benefit Oakland County? Should a proposal be placed on the 2020 ballot?

Coulter: I believe that Metro Detroit is, maybe, the only major metropolitan region in the country that doesn't have some kind of comprehensive mass transit system. It desperately needs one. And that includes Oakland County. I think from a quality of life perspective, it's important. I think for an employer to be able to attract and retain talent to the region, it's important. From an economic development perspective, it's important. Our businesses are calling for it and the major businesses in Oakland County have been asking for it for years. It's absolutely necessary. Now with a project like that, the devil is in the details. Apparently, what the voters said in 2016 was you didn't get the details right. There was something about that plan that caused it to fail. I need to better understand for myself what that was because I don't want to put another plan forth until I feel confident and understand where we failed last time. How can we eliminate that.

Another issue is the taxing footprint and which communities pay for it. There are two schools of thought. One says, the footprint has to be as large as possible and it has to be what was put on (the ballot) before. Another school of thought says if you shrink the footprint you shrink the revenue being generated. What does that do to the system? I don't have an answer for you today. That's going to be an issue that I want to get right.

This is ultimately not my decision, at the end of the day. I'll probably have some say on whether it goes on the ballot or not, but the plan itself is ultimately going to be up to the voters. So my responsibility is to put something before the voters that I feel confident about and one that supports the region and benefits Oakland County. Maybe communities in the northern part of the county should be taxed differently. I’m open to looking at it. I don't know. I'm going into this with an open mind, but I also want to say I'm going into this with a certain anxiousness. I ran on better mass transit and public transit, when I ran in 2002 as a county commission. We've been talking about this. I've been talking about it for 17 years. The region's been talking about it for decades. It’s time to get this right. People thought that they had it right in 2016 and the voters said, not quite. There are a lot of people that think this should be on the ballot in 2020. I tend to think that's a realistic timeframe. Given my anxiousness to do this, I will also say that if we can't get the right plan, then waiting a year would be better than putting forth a bad plan that's going to fail again. My fear is that if it fails again, it could be another four years before it’s put on the ballot so it's important to get it right. I have the best interests of our residents in mind. That’s what I was appointed to do. … The electorate of the residents of Oakland County are going to have to be my number one priority, but understanding the regional system is a benefit to Oakland County. It’s just a matter of trying to weigh that benefit versus the costs, it's kind of simple in that regard.

Something Brooks did very well was the annual economic outlook in conjunction with economists from the University of Michigan. My intent is to continue that. It aligns with my philosophy of getting all the information that you can and part of how you build the multi-year budget is to have economists tell you what’s going to happen. You can start to bake in some of those metrics into your budgeting. That's how you do it. So, I think that's been a part of our success here and I don't plan on changing that.

OP: How important is regional cooperation to Oakland County’s success? What is your relationship with Warren Evans, Mark Hackel and Mike Duggan?

Coulter: Very important. Going back to what I said about my style being collaborative, I want to hear from them. I want to hear what they think the region needs. And, I want to work with them, where it's in the best interests of the region and Oakland County. And so it's very important to me that we have a good cordial relationship. I have started those conversations already and I look forward to working with them. I have a good working relationship with each of them. It’s probably best with Mark Hackel, just by circumstance. I know Mark pretty well. The other two less, but it will be fine. I don’t need social relationships. I get that we all have jobs that we are doing, but I want really good constructive, professional relationships with those guys and we'll get there. There’s a real or perceived perception that there hasn't been enough regional cooperation and that sometimes Oakland County has been the cause of that. I think some of it's reality and some it's perception that Oakland County has no seat at the table. But I'd very much like to try to address that while I'm county executive. I would hope that by the end of next year, people feel like we were an honest broker at the table.”

OP: Do you believe the Detroit Regional Partnership can benefit Oakland County?

Coulter: Yeah. They've reached out to me. We're going to have a meeting and they're going to pitch me on the benefits of that partnership. I don't have an opinion yet. My inclination is that if it's a regional business consortium that's doing good things in the region we probably should have a seat there. But I want to talk to them. I haven’t yet. I’m open to sitting on their board.

OP: Are there county services that need more investment? That can be improved?

Coulter: I'm not going to be the guy that comes in here and pretends to know everything right away. Some of my biases may turn out to be wrong when I actually look under the hood more closely and see what's going on. For the past seven years, I've been the director of external affairs at the Children's Foundation. I have taken a keen interest in health as it relates to children and families and mothers in particular. We have a wonderful health department and I just want to make sure that we're not just providing the statutorily required services of a health department, which I'm sure we're doing well. I want to explore and understand if we are doing all we can do to address gaps in health funding, access to care, issues such as infant mortality, and such. My gut tells me that there may be opportunities in the health area to be more robust. But I don't have specifics for you today. That's going to be an area that I want to look at.

I want to make sure within economic development that we're doing enough for our small businesses, entrepreneurs, women and minority-owned businesses. I want to look at those as well. But, again, those aren't criticisms. Those are just going to be particular areas of interest for me based on the experiences that I bring to this position.

OP: You’ve only just taken over so everything is new. What feedback are you hearing from stakeholders, residents, businesses, and county employees?

Coulter: You know, they've been so overwhelmingly positive and I'm humbled by the support that I've gotten. Maybe only the positive people reach out to you at first. Maybe I'll hear from others soon enough, but I have been enormously grateful for the reception that I've gotten so far. My phones and emails have blown up from residents to business owners to people who have an interest in policy to just people wishing me luck and telling me that they're rooting for me and praying for me. And that's what I keep asking people to do. So, it hasn't so much been specific things that they're asking me to do. People know me, so they say, ‘Be yourself. Do what you did in Ferndale.’

If you want to know what kind of leader I'm going to be, just look at what we did in Ferndale for nine years. That's kind of who I am, that's kind of what I believe. It’s important to have a strong economic base coupled with a welcoming inclusive community. In order to really truly be economically successful everyone needs to feel included and valued in that, and should have access to those opportunities. So, we did things like a welcoming city policy so people of all immigrant statuses feel welcomed and safe. I know the county adopted one as well, recently. We did, of course, the nondiscrimination for LGBTQ people in Ferndale. We implemented community policing to bring the police and law enforcement services closer to the people. We did all of those things to make sure that people felt valued and included in that community. I think that's important to me in Oakland County. It's one thing to lure a business here, but we also have to lure people that want to be here, that feel welcome to be here. And that's important to me. I want to continue it. The county board recently adopted a welcoming county resolution and I loved it. I’m very supportive of that. I want to look at all of our policies to make sure that they embody that kind of philosophy.