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1. Define servant leadership and explain why it may be advantageous for a mayor to adopt such a leadership philosophy?

Servant leadership means leading by serving others first. In Mount Clemens, the mayor earns only $3,500 per year and invests countless hours serving residents — that’s true public service. The role demands a deep commitment to listening, empowering others, and making decisions that benefit the entire community, not politics or personal gain.

2. Per a C & G Newspaper article from August 2025, Mount Clemens is taking 8% ownership in a $20.7 million apartment development called Manchester Mount Clemens using state grant funds. What is the city willing to invest for local small businesses? Grants? Relief funds?

The state allocation given to Manchester Mount Clemens is an example of the City of Mount Clemens using modern day economic development tools to bring opportunity to the city. 

This partnership is a perfect example of our commitment to find alternate funding sources to bring support to our small businesses. Mount Clemens Downtown Development Authority supported Chaos Salon in the Match on Main program through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. With that grant, Chaos Salon secured $25,000 to build out their new location on South Main Street. 

Through the Downtown Development Authority and county programs, we have offered direct marketing of the downtown area including events that bring foot traffic to the walkable streets of downtown. 

3.  Parking is an issue impacting business negatively, including loss of revenue. What can the city do to alleviate this burden? 

We recognize parking is a concern for downtown businesses. The city completed a parking study in the fall of 2025. 

Many of the recommendations from the study to better optimize the parking opportunities and do our diligence to make the parking fund sustainable. One way the city helped the downtown businesses was extending the free parking hours. Visitors and residents can now take advantage of free parking after 3 p.m. weekdays and all day on weekends. Our mobile downtown website www.downtownmountclemens.org helps users of the downtown find parking easily.

4.  What measurable actions and plans would you have to support business retention and growth in Mount Clemens and what are your plans to have more minority owned businesses in the city? 

We’re committed to helping local businesses stay, grow, and thrive in Mount Clemens. Since becoming mayor, the occupancy rate of downtown has gone from 70% vacant to 70% occupied. This rate includes many new diverse businesses and business owners. We are proud to host many minority and women owned businesses as part of our downtown community. 

I have single handled reached out to minority owned businesses in other communities and invited them to Mount Clemens. We are currently working with a very well-known deli in a neighboring city to move their operation to Mount Clemens. This type of direct recruitment has been very effective. That being said, we also have a website called www.thinkMTC.com that provides information on all of our available properties. 

This site was built in cooperation with the Macomb County Planning and Economic Development team that helps us update and maintain all of the current information. We can also monitor the analytics of the site to measure its effectiveness. We continue to look for new ways to educate, attract and retain businesses to Mount Clemens.

5. What are the plans for the land that the water plant currently sits on?

Once the city connects to the Great Lakes Water Authority, the current plant will be decommissioned in accordance with EGLE. After the decommissioning it is the intent of the commission to sell the waterfront (located on Jefferson Road in Harrison Township) 9 acre parcel. The proceeds of the sale will go to the Mount Clemens Water and Sewer Fund to help offset the cost of the 37-million-dollar connection project. 

1. Would you support a ballot proposal to revise and amend the city's charter, which has not been amended since 1952?

I am not specifically opposed to it, but I'd want to hear more about what aspects folks want to change and why. If there are things we can improve without investing all the time and resources a Charter Amendment would need, then maybe we should go that route instead 

2. How would you determine the block grant allocations? 

Based on our long-term plans, any specific criteria tied to the block grant dollars, and any opportunities for cost saving by combining projects.

3. Erik mentioned that there are schools in the city that are successful. Which schools and what can you do in your role to make sure that the success is spread to other schools?

The 2 examples I'm most familiar with are Mount Clemens School District has increased enrollment and graduation rates consistently over the last several years while also adding extra circulars and specialty classes. Mount Clemens Montessori Academy has consistently done well and was recently voted as best educational institution in the County. As for how to spread the success, it's not something I've given much thought to, but I think it starts with communication. Each school will have their unique strengths, and if we can leverage those it could help.

4. Other than price, were there other reasons (health, better processes, etc.) that went into the decision to connect to the Great Lakes Water Authority? 

Based on what I saw some other considerations were the age of the existing facilities and the difficulty in maintaining it and getting parts. Additionally, there was the State, through EGLE basically saying they wouldn't approve needed permits for our own new plant based on the amount of debt compared to the number of residents. Still, it seemed to mostly come down to price.