I previously served 3 terms as a County Commissioner and then gave up my seat in 2014 to run for our state legislature. Despite incredible support from those of you here, I finished third in a 7 way race. The person who followed me in my commission seat chose not to run in 2020 and asked me if I would consider coming back. I won that and again 2 years later.

Michigan's Primary election was Tuesday the 6th. Four of our 5 seats were incumbent Republicans and solid members. The 5th seat was a first termer who discovered that there is lots more to the job than 2 meetings a month and chose not to run again. All 5 seats were contested.

I won my primary 61% to 39% for my challenger. As I have no General Election opponent, the Primary was effectively the election for the seat. My 3 fellow commissioners all won re-election as well with one race only by a margin of 50 votes. The open seat was won by what I consider the more desirable person to sit in it.

Terms are now 4 years, which will mean I am 70 at the end of the new one. We have several large projects coming up, building a new public safety radio system on 800MHz which voters approved as well and relocating our District Court to a new building as we sold the one it is currently located in.

Thanks to the forum members who provided encouragement as well as financial support. It was a tough and often ugly campaign and I am glad to have it behind me.

To any of you fellow forum members serving in local elected office, you are to be congratulated as it is a very challenging time to be an elected official at any level.

Congrats.

Congratulations, Brad. And thank you for your service to your community!

Congrats!
A thankless duty.

Congrats!

WOO HOO! Way to go.

Congratulations! Good luck in the job!

Yessiree, Brad!
I’ll be sure to give all my Michigan speeding tickets to you, next time I come up.

Congratulations Brad, I'm glad you were successful.

Much respect for your years in local government, a hugely important job too often overlooked by many more focused on national elections. Bravo!

Congratulations Brad.

Congrats, that great news!

quote:

We have several large projects coming up, building a new public safety radio system on 800MHz which voters approved

Good luck with that one. We finally finished our transition to 800 (actually 700) this past year, and it was a long and painful process. We had allegations of nepotism, agencies that wouldn't agree on a strategy, and several years of horrible radio performance while we struggled with an under-designed 800mhz system that was integrated with a legacy VHF system because some people just couldn't be convinced to let it go. It was awful, and created a really dangerous situation when we couldn't reliably communicate with dispatch and each other. We had poor coverage, constantly got busy signals, went digital, low modulation, constant reliability issues caused by the VHF patch, etc. The dual-band portables also ate batteries so fast you could only get through about 8 hours with one...and we work 12s (and often longer). They were also more expensive than single-band 800mhz units.

We're finally on a new, very robust, native 700 system that is working very well. They spent the money to add towers so coverage is great (still a few holes in certain spots, but it's still better than the old VHF coverage we had), reliability and bandwidth is much better than the previous 800 system, and they forced everyone onto it and ditched the VHF patch that was causing most of the problems. It's been good, and people are starting to trust their radios again.

My advice: find the right vendor (the one with solid experience that provides the best product, not one with "connections"), extensively research their previous installs and talk to the guys on the road not just the "radio people", to make sure they know what they're doing. Also make sure everyone is prepared to make the transition before you do it (don't try to patch in a legacy VHF system to eke a few agencies along!) and be willing to pay what it takes to do it right before you start. It'll be safer for everyone and be much easier on the administrative and political side as well.

Glad to hear it! Congrats, Brad!

Congratulations Brad!

Congrats brad, I was shocked how much our little community CC's got paid annually So it can't be all bad.

Congratulations

Hip Hip!!.....

Congratulations Brad! Your community is lucky to have you in such a capacity!

And our community is proud to have you, Brad, thanks for all you've done.

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
Congrats brad, I was shocked how much our little community CC's got paid annually So it can't be all bad.

YMMV but here it is not a lucrative position. We do not have a county administrator (only 3 of Michigan's 83 counties can make that claim) so the 5 of us do much of work that would be performed by one. We also have no administrative assistant, no office help. We receive $7,800 per year in salary. I an paid an additional $1,200 a year as vice chair of our board. We also receive a per diem of $35 per half day/$70 per full day for meetings. That amounts to an average of about $245 per month. We do receive county benefits and may participate in the county insurance plan (of which by state statute must contribute 20% of the cost. That adds up to about a $74 per week paycheck. I have 7 units of government in my district for which I attend all their meetings every month (there is no millage or per diem given for these). I spend between 20 and 30 hours per week on commission business. I don't know how that compares to what your commissioners receive but it is far from extravagant in our county. Additionally, our commission meetings and many of our committee assignments are during the work day so it means time away from your primary employment to attend.


Thanks everyone. I appreciate the opportunity to serve.