Managers and Mayors

The event we had all been working so hard for has finally come to a finish. And it went very well! We had almost 80 people show up (much higher than our goal of 50) from various locations and had some great conversations going about transportation!

We had the director of MDOT, RTA committee finance chair Roy Rose, and Paul Tait of SEMCOG. They all provided fantastic insight and started the conversation within the group of people.

The event for me started off by manning the registration table with my fellow intern and it was very nice to get acquainted with the different people that were attending.

We weren’t really able to get into the event because we had to take care of the registration table but were able to hear a lot of the discussions. Although, I am not familiar with transportation myself…it was very interesting to hear as much as I could to understand the background and also the direction in which southeast michigan wanted to head. There were some exciting talks about rapid transit, bike lanes, etc! Toward the end, there was some heated debate about highway expansion but generally the crowd seemed to be after the same kind of goals. 

Going to a policy forum was very interesting to witness, many local leaders like to state the main goals they are trying to achieve so it is nice to see unity at that level. It’s just trying to categorize which is more important and the direction to take each step is where there can be enough dispute that the idea never gets out there. All in all, I was quite impressed with the intelligent discussions that were occurring. 

I will definitely miss going to meetings and forums such as these but will try to get myself better acquainted with mayors’ public meetings in the future to continue discussions such as these! Getting involved is the key to making a difference in your community.