Hannah Mackay, The Detroit News
Oakland County Executive Dave Coulter delivered his sixth State of the County address Wednesday evening, highlighting the county’s investments in local businesses, health care, transit and housing.
The future of is bright and the county is better off today than it was 10 years ago, Coulter said.
He lauded the county’s response to the economic and social upheaval in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Oakland County’s investment in programs and initiatives that prioritize things like mental health, education, financial relief and entrepreneurship serve as examples of ways county government can move beyond what people expect, he said.
“We’ve stretched beyond the normal role of county government because that is what the times demanded of us,” Coulter said, speaking to a crowd of several hundred at the Berman Center for the Performing Arts in West Bloomfield Township.
Coulter, a Democrat, was reelected to a second term as County Executive in November. Democrats also maintain control of the County Board of Commissioners.
“It is possible for a local government to stretch itself, to do things it might not do in other normal times, to help its residents,” Coulter said after the address. “We can have change without chaos, that just because we’re going through another period in our history of disruption and transformation, it doesn’t have to be destructive.”
Countywide initiatives
Coulter gave updates for several initiatives started during his first term. The Project Diamond initiative, for example, was started in 2020 to distribute 3D printers to more than 300 manufacturers.
“Now, the ripple effect of Project Diamond has been pretty astounding,” Coulter said. “With our partners at Automation Alley, who is represented here tonight by CEO Tom Kelly, we opened the Digital Transformation Center at Geofabrica in Auburn Hills in June to provide training to companies hoping to join this 3D printing network. And, so far, 148 Oakland County firms have done just that.”
The program has also expanded to Macomb and Wayne counties and will soon be statewide, with 126 companies from across Michigan lined up for training, Coulter said.
The Oakland Thrive nonprofit, which provides small businesses with coaching and workshops, has helped over 15,000 startups since its inception in 2022, Coulter said. The nonprofit now has 75 contracted business owners and experts who provide mentorship with things like building a social media presence and financial planning.
Another program, Oakland Connects offers help with housing to food insecurity when a resident seeks help from the county with a health issue. Coulter highlighted the county’s Integrated Care Clinic in Pontiac, which opened last year and provides physical and mental health care in addition to referrals for other county services. It has served over 1,600 patients.
“Oakland Thrive and Oakland Connects both make sure that public service is just that – service to the public. Because if you can’t find it or don’t know who to call, it’s really not much of a service,” Coulter said.
The county is on the way to achieving the Oakland80 initiative’s goal: 80% of the workforce with a post-secondary degree or credential by 2030, Coulter said. The initiative was started three years ago, with 61% of the population with a post-secondary degree or credential.
In 2023, Coulter announced a plan to move hundreds of county employees to downtown Pontiac and said demolition and renovations for the project would begin this year. The plan remains a source of partisan division on the Board of Commissioners, said Commissioner Michael Spisz, a Republican. They have yet to see a full business plan and true cost, he added.
Transit, housing, health care investments
Oakland County’s government has been working in a bipartisan way to protect tax dollars and serve residents and businesses, he said. He highlighted the county’s AAA bond rating, which allows for investments into county-wide priorities like transit and parks.
“When we get our annual report in the fall, I’m confident that we’ll have surpassed the 70% mark,” Coulter said. “At the start of this school year, we placed 12 Oakland80 coaches into high schools across the county to help students take their first steps toward a career. They’re assisting with college and financial aid applications, leading campus tours and even helping students get preregistered for classes and apprenticeships.”
Spisz of Oxford Township and the minority caucus chair, agreed the county is heading in the right direction, but said he’d like to see the executive’s office consider a tax reduction.
“You’re still putting a huge tax burden on all the residents of Oakland County, that needs to be considered,” Spisz said. “If we can reduce costs, we should try to reduce costs. I’m not saying we go on the level of the federal government, but we need to be cognizant of what our true costs are and find ways to reduce them and help our residents stay in their houses.”
Oakland voters approved a countywide transportation millage in 2022 and since then the county has created “on-demand service in every part,” as well as regular fixed-route service to cities like Novi and Rochester Hills, Coulter said.
“Ridership in West Oakland County has increased 60%, the new local service in Novi has seen a 76% increase in ridership,” Coulter said. “SMART and local transit providers have added more than 400 new drivers since the millage passed, and our Veterans Ride Free program has provided more than 7,000 rides in less than a year for our military veterans and their caregivers.”
Coulter also addressed gun violence in the county and its effect on young people, as well as mental health care.
In 2021, a then-14-year-old student at Oxford High School took the lives of four classmates: Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; and Justin Shilling, 17, and wounded seven others in Michigan’s deadliest mass shooting. Last June, a gunman shot and injured nine people, including two children, on a hot summer afternoon at a Rochester Hills splash pad.
“We have stretched and stepped up to take care of the mental health of all our residents. I’m proud that one of the single largest investments we made with federal ARPA dollars has been in the area of mental health,” Coulter said.
The investments include co-responder programs for law enforcement, where crisis response units respond to substance abuse and mental health crisis calls, Coulter said. One co-responder program in Troy gets between six to 15 calls every day, Coulter said.
“Since the program started, countless people have gotten treatment options, rather than jail, and the overdose death rate dropped by 31% last year,” Coulter said.
The crowd held a moment of silence to honor Oakland County Sheriff’s Deputy Bradley Reckling, a nine-year veteran of the force who was fatally shot last June while pursuing a stolen vehicle,.
Coulter also highlighted his administration’s push for affordable housing. The county invested in a Housing Trust Fund and Land Bank, he said.
“In just one year, we’ve provided the gap financing and incentive funding for nine housing projects across the county, which will create 649 new affordable, accessible housing units,” Coulter said.
Spisz said he has concerns about the sustainability of the county’s affordable housing plans and how affordable units will stay affordable.
“What about people that have houses already and are getting priced out of them because their taxes are going up so high? That’s a concern which was not talked about,” Spisz said.
Two new housing projects are in Rochester Hills, Coulter said. Walton Oaks and Auburn Oaks will provide housing for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
County partnerships
Several county investments put people over politics, Coulter said.
One example is the county’s $2 million investment to help reduce medical debt, Coulter said. Through a partnership with Undue Medical Debt, an organization that buys medical debt from local health care systems, 14,000 residents have been relieved of $9 million in medical debt.
Through another partnership with Savi, a technology startup that helps people find programs to reduce their student loan debt, the county has helped around 900 residents reduce their debt by $42,000 each, on average, Coulter said.
More than 200 families in the last year have enrolled in the county’s Nurse Family Partnership program, which assigns public health nurses to first-time families to coach parents and connect them with doctors and other resources, Coulter said.
“The program helps reduce early preterm deliveries and cases of pregnancy induced hypertension in moms. And it’s been found to significantly decrease emergency room visits for parents and their babies,” Coulter said.
The programs are not part of a zero-sum game, Coulter said.
“One person’s gain is not balanced out by another person’s loss. That is how I feel about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” Coulter said. “I’m proud of the county’s effort to create a welcoming county, a diverse workforce and to address the historic biases and stereotypes in all that we do.”