Small Business

I believe small businesses are the backbone of Oakland County’s economy and will be the foundation of our future growth. The economic conditions of this past decade have made it a greater challenge for entrepreneurs to succeed. That is why my staff at the Oakland County Business Center offer three core services to ensure Oakland County businesses have every advantage to compete.

First, they coach and counsel local businesspeople – from developing marketing strategies to refining business plans – at no charge. A typical year for my staff is to participate in more than 1,400 counseling sessions totaling more than 2,400 hours.
My staff also educates new and seasoned business owners. They hold business workshops that cover a range of topics from pre-business research, how to start your business, how to write your business plan, the fundamentals of marketing to how to prepare for a lender, just to name a few. In 2010, my staff held 75 business workshops attracting nearly 1,200 attendees. Attendance at our business workshops has increased 151% since 2007.

Finally, my staff refers businesspeople to our One Stop Shop, Business Finance Corporation, Oakland County Microloan program, Market Research, and Workforce Development Division, among others. In addition, my staff connects local entrepreneurs with external service providers such as lenders, business attorneys and other related advisory services.

In addition to these core services, my staff at the Oakland County Business Center offers a variety of business planning tools on its website, such as SBA format monthly cash flow projection templates, marketing and business plan formats. I am confident in the future we are fostering for Oakland County’s small businesses.

Innovation

Most of the challenges we see in today’s economy can be resolved by one simple thing: an employment opportunity, a job. And I can assure you we’re out there everyday promoting economic development in Oakland County. We are attracting innovative businesses and jobs through our technology corridor known as Automation Alley.

My Emerging Sectors program continues to identify and support businesses in high growth sectors such as alternative energy and life sciences. An outgrowth of the Emerging Sectors initiative is Medical Main Street, a program that is working to brand Oakland County as a destination for the medical and life sciences.

Quality of Life

All of my initiatives are wrapped up in one goal – making Oakland County the best place to live, work, play and raise a family. That is why a great quality of life for residents is among my priorities.

One of my premier events is The Brooksie Way Half Marathon & 5k Race. Named after my late son who died in a tragic snowmobile accident, The Brooksie Way in a few short years has grown to be among the most popular running events in Michigan. Each year, the proceeds from the race fund Brooksie Way Minigrants which award up to $2,000 to organizations in Oakland County that promote healthy lifestyles.

Count Your Steps encourages active, healthy living among school age children. When I read an article in 2004 that our children will be the first generation not to live longer than their parents, I decided to do something about it. I designed the program to get kids up off the couch and active. One month each Spring, thousands of third- and fourth-graders at elementary schools around Oakland County receive pedometers to compete against each other to see who will walk the most steps. Since its inception, Oakland County kids have walked more than 15 billion steps or more than 300 times around the Earth. In 2010, I extended the program to county employees.

I also have founded family-friendly events that not only bring together tens of thousands of people, but raise money for charity. Arts, Beats & Eats, Oakland County’s annual Labor Day festival in downtown Royal Oak, is rated among the top 20 festivals in the nation. Not only is it attended by hundreds of thousands of people, it raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for numerous charities. Quake on the Lake in Waterford and White Lake townships is another great summertime Oakland County event raising money for charity. Among the premier hydroplane races in the United States, every year the proceeds from the race supports The Rainbow Connection, an organization I founded three decades ago that grants wishes to seriously or terminally ill children.

I also was behind the creation of the Woodward Dream Cruise, a classic car cruising event that draws a million spectators for a family-oriented weekend of nostalgia every August. Each year in January, Oakland County families enjoy my wintertime Fire & Ice Festival in Rochester. Rounding out my litany of quality of life events is the Oakland Edge Hockey Tournament, held each year at Onyx Arena in Rochester, where 30 teams of adults compete for the top prize.

Jobs

I am working hard for you to bring good paying, high-quality, sustainable jobs to OaklandCounty. I founded a consortium of high technology companies, academic institutions and government agencies called Automation Alley which competes directly with Silicon Valley, Boston’s Route 128 and North Carolina’s Research Triangle. Today, Automation Alley is the largest economic development organization in Michigan with more than 1,000 companies across eight counties and the City of Detroit.

In 2003, I read a newspaper headline in 2003 that said “200,000 jobs leave Michigan.” I went to my then-Director of Economic Development & Community Affairs and asked him to do some research with his outstanding team and try to divine what would be the top 10 sectors of future economic development, outside of the automotive sector. That research lead to the launch of my Emerging Sectors job creation and retention strategy. Since its inception in 2004, it has created nearly 25,000 jobs and retained 10,000. In 2011, Emerging Sectors is forecast to reach the $2 billion investment milestone.

In 2008, I asked Anderson Economic Group in Lansing to evaluate OaklandCounty’s burgeoning life sciences and health care industry, Emerging Sectors’ largest and fastest growing. Anderson told me there are more than 93,000 people already working in health care and life sciences in OaklandCounty, with 45,000 jobs to be added in the years to come. Building on this strength and to promote OaklandCounty as a destination for high quality medical care and research, I created Medical Main Street. In its third year, Medical Main Street is more than doubling the investment of its first two years.

The growth of Medical Main Street is expected to skyrocket this year with the addition of a new medical school. The Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine will begin instructing its first class of 50 future doctors out of 3,300 applicants. OaklandUniversity is single-handedly reversing the brain drain with its well-qualified medical students. The school of medicine is expected to have more than a $3 billion impact on our region by being a draw for cutting edge life science research. One such effort was recently announced by O-U and BeaumontHospitals. The future seems full of potential.

Going Green

My green initiatives are saving you, the Oakland County taxpayer, millions of dollars and bringing millions in investment to Oakland County.  In July, 2011, Oakland County International Airport (OCIA) will open the nation’s first green general aviation airport terminal. The terminal will utilize solar, wind and geothermal energy; LED lighting; top of the line insulation technologies on the roof, walls, doors and windows; and will feature a living wall – a vertical arrangement of plants that form a wall, watered by rain from the roof, which not only is aesthetically pleasing but will remove pollutants from the air.

Executives and employees from nearly every Fortune 500 company land at OCIA each year. The terminal will welcome these job providers and decision makers with the message that Oakland County embraces innovation and leading edge technologies.  OCIA’s new terminal will be the county’s first LEED certified building. It was built without using any money from the county’s general fund. User fees and federal grants paid for its construction.

Alternative energy is the second fastest growing area in my Emerging Sectors program. A total of $345 million has been invested since 2004 creating more than 3,000 jobs and retaining more than 800. With the proximity of so many high-tech alternative energy companies, Oakland County will play a significant role in the new Southeast Michigan Advanced Energy Efficiency Center for Excellence – also known as Cleantech – an alternative energy business incubator launching this year in Troy. Cleantech will bring business, educational and government entities under one roof to promote research, development, commercialization and manufacturing of advanced energy efficiency products and technologies.

Meanwhile, I have adopted energy efficiency policies and devices on the county’s government campus which have saved Oakland County taxpayers more than $4 million since 2005. Inspired by the significant savings, I launched my OakGreen Challenge in 2010, encouraging and providing resources for Oakland County businesses, local governments and residents to reduce their energy consumption 10% by the end of 2012. Because Oakland County had already reached that goal, I raised the bar for my Facilities Management team to reduce energy consumption on the government campus 15% by 2015.

My Facilities Management team formed a Green Team, responsible for identifying and implementing energy saving procedures and devices in county buildings. The National Association of Counties recognized the Green Team in 2010 with an award of excellence. The Green Team conducted an energy audit on the government campus. Using a federal grant, my Green Team will energy efficiency retrofit many county buildings, saving Oakland County taxpayers an additional $400,000-$500,000 a year on utility costs.

In addition, we are partnering with Lawrence Technological University to determine the return on investment of the installation of geothermal energy on the county’s west government campus to save taxpayers more money on utility costs. Among the Green Team’s other achievements include an Energy Star rating for the county’s Executive Office Building where I work.

Finally, my Green Infrastructure Vision for Oakland County was among three programs from around the nation recognized with a first-of-its-kind award at the National Green Infrastructure Conference in 2011. My vision is a collage of local open space efforts among its 61 communities, intended to guide and coordinate local and multijurisdictional preservation efforts. The process takes a broad-based ecosystem approach to planning for the protection and stewardship of sustainable biological diversity. The vision also provides a roadmap into the future and creates opportunities to connect to the land through trails, parks, open space and waterways.

Tough Decisions

There’s still a lot of work to be done. As the economy begins its slow but steady recovery, it could be as late as 2025 before local governments return to the revenue levels they saw in 2007.

My prudent fiscal management of the county, use of technology, economic diversification strategies, and quality of life initiatives have positioned OaklandCounty to be among the strongest in the nation.

If you take a look at OaklandCounty’s dashboard, you will find that much of what is being talked about in Lansing as needed reform on the local level has been a part of OaklandCounty government’s agenda for years.

We’re already taking a look at budget year 2014 and beyond. We have spotted some concerns ahead. But because of my three-year, line-item budget, we will solve these issues now so that further into the future when we reach those tough spots, they will be mere bumps in the road.

My Budget Task Force tells me they don’t expect the housing market to reach bottom until 2013. Meanwhile, some families continue to face the prospect of losing their homes. My housing counselors in OaklandCounty’s Community and Home Improvement Division are showing a great deal of success at keeping families in their homes. Of the people that reach out for help when facing foreclosure, OaklandCounty has kept 70% of them in their homes.

As the auto companies begin to show signs that they are global competitors once again, I am continuing to diversify OaklandCounty’s economy through my Emerging Sectors, Medical Main Street and Automation Alley job creation and retention strategies. We also are helping local small businesses get the advice and funding they need in order to remain viable. It all points toward a future where in perhaps a couple decades from now, OaklandCounty will be recession resistant. That is my goal.

The next step in my job diversification strategy is to harness the growth in our burgeoning Emerging Sector of alternative energy. This year, my Economic Development and Community Affairs Department will commission a study to give us detailed information on what’s going on in our second-fastest growing Emerging Sector next to health and life sciences. With this study, we will know how to take alternative energy to the next level in Oakland County.

Balanced Budget

We in Oakland County have much to be proud of. I know of no other governmental unit in Michigan, or the country for that matter, that prepares a three-year detailed line item budget and addresses budget amendments for all three years continually all year round. While tough decisions have been and will continue to have to be made, because we are planning ahead we are able to make those decisions in a manner that will ensure long-term financial sustainability for the services that we provide to our citizens.

Health Care and Retirement

When I took over as Oakland County Executive in 1992, Oakland County was funding an expensive pension plan for its employees. Taxpayers paid into a retirement fund throughout a county employee’s career, and continued to pay into that fund after the worker retired. In 1994 we abandoned the old Defined Benefit Retirement Plan and switched the county over to a Defined Contribution Plan which works like a private sector 401(k). When the employee retires, there are no further costs to taxpayers. We also changed the way we fund retiree healthcare. In 2006, we discontinued the traditional taxpayer-funded retiree health plan. Since then, all new hires who come to Oakland County receive a “Health Savings Account” that is co-funded by the county and the employee throughout their careers. When they retire, they take their Health Savings Account with them and supplement their healthcare choices in retirement. Going forward there will be no legacy costs to Oakland County for those employees for any healthcare expense.