Rochester Hills Candidates Sound Off on Parks Amendment

"What do you believe is the proper use of city-owned parks and green space, and will you support the proposed amendment to the City Charter to protect parks?"

At a recent candidate forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters, candidates for were asked to respond to this question.

Here are excerpts of their answers. .

City Council at-large candidates:

• : "I believe that parks should be used for recreation, and that's why in my campaign literature I have proposed that the under-utilized park space in Rochester Hills be looked at to facilitate a dog park in Rochester Hills. A dog park could be utilized on park property. There's nothing that people are more passionate about than their pets. I think we could get a swell of citizen support to make a dog park in one of our parks that aren't utilized. It would also generate revenue for the city. A dog park in one of those parks would be a real asset to our community."
• : "I have a long history of protecting the parks. I think they are vital. One thing I learned from this community is the importance of parks; people like having the woods in their back yard. About 10 years ago the city looked at putting a retention basin on Riverbend Park and I was opposed then. The voters voted to raise taxes to purchase park property for recreation; the city's stance on that was once that was paid off they could do what they wanted with the property. If a developer wants to come into the community and use our parks, they will have to explain it to us and give us a good business case."
• : "I think the parks amendment is bad economic policy and bad public policy. The charter commission was charged with writing a comprehensive, guiding document that takes all contingencies into play. The parks amendment not only adds another step of requiring a vote, it will add time for any opportunity to creatively use parks for added revenues in the future. Our property values are down one-third ... it's estimated it will take 10 to 20 years to get that value back. We're gonna need to be creatively using every piece of property and asset we have to maintain our core components of public safety and infrastructure."
• : "This came out of the water storage discussion, and I think viable locations in terms of the water reservoir discussion became a hot topic and that got this in motion. I did support the language that will be presented to voters. I did provide my signature to place it on the ballot. There remains concerns about how we keep the character of the community for years to come. The Green Space Millage has served to protect these areas. Certainly there is discussion about what we do with undeveloped parks; right now we don't have the money to develop some of the parks as usable parks, but they still have a viable role in the community."

District 2 City Council candidates:

• : "I do support the parks amendment. When I talk with residents, that's one of our distinguishing characteristics — our parks and green space. That's why I'm on the Green Space Advisory Board. I'm also a little leery when propose charter amendments, because I know what people can do with language. I worked with Gary Uhl (the proponent of the amendment) to close some loopholes, to ensure that green space was actually protected and that there were no unintended consequences through the amendment."
• : "When you look at green space and parks, it is one of the things that differentiates our community from other communities.  I think parks have to do with our way of life, our quality of life and it's important to the residents. I'm sorry, but if it's a little bit slower in the process (for a vote of the residents to approve a park use), so be it. I don't think every piece of property in the city needs to be developed. I think it hurts the character of our community and will end up lowering our property values more. I would never vote to spend money to develop parks further and take away essential services. However, there are a lot of creative ways to get money for parks. There are grants. There are a lot of ways we can go after money without going to our residents and asking them to pay for it."

This is part of an ongoing series of snapshots of candidates' opinions on city issues leading up to Election Day on Nov. 8. The forum may be watched in its entirety on the Rochester Hills website.

For more Rochester Hills election news, see our election page on Rochester Patch.