Mayoral contenders face off
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Monday night signified the end of a busy campaign for Pontiac mayoral candidates Leon B. Jukowski and Sandy-Michael McDonald. Both candidates took to the podium at Pontiac City Hall and fielded questions from citizens.
McDonald and Jukowski, both of whom are graduates of the Pontiac Public School system, captured 1,063 and 1,445 votes respectively to take the top two spots in Pontiac’s primary election.
Current mayor Clarence Phillips placed third with 456 votes. Only the top two vote-getters received bids to run for the Nov. 3 general election.
Candidate backgrounds
McDonald believes that he differs from the city’s previous administration because he has a greater understanding of municipal government.
”One has to understand that there is not only an executive branch, but also a legislative branch of government,” McDonald said. “You (as a mayor) can have all these great ideas, but if you do not work with the council then nothing will get done.”
Jukowski, who has spent years working at different positions within the city government, agrees that whoever is elected mayor needs to work more with the council. The ex-trial lawyer believes, however, that nothing he or McDonald promises right now carries any weight if the city’s finances are not fixed.
“The finance department has not been properly ran for years,” Jukowski said. “Without proper finances, anything we talk about right now is meaningless.”
Jukowski believes that his experience as an attorney, businessman and municipal government employee makes him the right person for the job.
“I have a history of being a trial attorney,” Jukowski said. “I am more capable of looking at a situation and making the right decision, business wise, without anything else weighing me down politically.\”
McDonald, currently the Downtown Development Authority Executive Director, said he also has an understanding of business and municipal government because of the variety of positions he has held in his career. McDonald spent years working in Washington, D.C. and held both lower level and managerial positions. McDonald believes that he was successful in both positions due to his understanding of the obligations of the each side.
“As an employee I knew that my manager being successful depended on me being successful,” McDonald said. “As a manager, it was not about being too hard or too soft with employees, but it was about being honest with them.\”
Finances
On March 23, Gov. Jennifer Granholm placed Fred Leeb in charge of Pontiac’s financial crisis. The city has had financial problems for some time and Leeb was appointed as emergency financial manager after the state declared that the city had a budget deficit of over $7 million.
Both candidates agree that the first order of business for the new mayor will be to meet with Leeb and work on getting the city to a stable enough condition financially so that Leeb is no longer needed.
The two candidates also agree that the solution for the sale of the Pontiac Silverdome does not lie in a no-limit auction.
Leeb, who holds the authority to make all decisions regarding the Silverdome, has put it up for auction under the private auction company Williams and Williams.
Bids will continue to be made until Nov. 12, when the dome will go to the highest bidder.
“One thing that we have that other cities that were in financial crisis did not have is assets,” McDonald said. “I believe that I can get Mr. Leeb home in two years, but not if we are simply auctioning our greatest asset to the highest bidder.”
Jukowski added that he believed that although the Silverdome is costing Pontiac taxpayers nearly $1 million a year to keep up, the real estate market is not ripe for sale.
“The city seems to have a history of putting emotion into decisions that should simply be considered math questions,” Jukowski said. “Deflating the dome would save the taxpayers the money they spend to keep it inflated and the money could be used elsewhere.”
McDonald and Jukowski also agree that if the Silverdome is put up for auction, the best interest of the city would be served in selling the property based on its tax value.
”No private investor is going to pay $20 million for this property in this market,” McDonald said. “But if we could get $400,000 every year for the property then an investor would be willing to pay and the city would receive a long-term stream of revenue.”
The candidates would treat Pontiac’s other assets in much the same way. Jukowski believes the concept is simple.
“If we own it and run it, then we have to pay for it,” Jukowski said. “If we sell it to someone, then they have to pay to run it.”
McDonald believes that Pontiac has more than enough assets to create a steady revenue stream.
“We have the cemetery, the golf-course and the waste-water treatment facility,” McDonald said. “These are assets that cannot be moved out of the city and if we sell them to an outside party then we have created an extra source of income every year for the city.”
Public safety
Many citizens have expressed concern to the two candidates about public safety throughout the campaign. Pontiac’s police force has been cut by about 50 percent in the last five years. The city now employs around 70 full-time officers.
McDonald believes that simply reshuffling the city’s finances will create more room for additional police. He thinks that having more police on the street is one of the “low-hanging pieces of fruit” that he can get accomplished right away.
“I believe that simply by re-organizing what we do and how we do things (financially), we can put eight to 10 more bodies on the street right away,” McDonald said. “I also do not believe that we (Pontiac) need to have 115 full-time firefighters.”
Jukowski said although public safety is a concern that he will address, the focus is out of scope with public safety.
“The main concern of city government is to serve the people, not to provide jobs,” he said.
Jukowski also added that in his opinion the police force was about half of where it needs to be for a city the size of Pontiac.
Education
Education is the last major issue on the agenda of both candidates, as graduates of the Pontiac school system.
“Right now, we have residents buying houses in the city because they are cheap, but as soon as they have kids then there is a five-year countdown until they move out of the city in search of better schools,” McDonald said.
Jukowski said that he believed Pontiac cannot become a successful city without a successful education system. The candidate relayed the importance of Pontiac becoming a state-ordained promise zone.
The Michigan Promise Zone Act provides tuition assistance to individuals in these promise zones who wish to go to college, but cannot because of financial constraints.
The election
No matter the outcome on Nov. 3, McDonald hopes more citizens will turn out for this election than they did for the primaries. In a city of more than 60,000 residents, only 3,500 turned out to vote.
McDonald believes that he is the right man to run the city he grew up in because of his passion for the city and his business experience.
“You not only need a mayor who knows business, but you need a mayor who sets himself aside and puts the city first,” McDonald said in his closing statement. “I believe in the city and I still believe that Pontiac’s better days are ahead.”
In his closing statement, Jukowski maintained his business outlook because, in his mind, finances are first on the agenda of whoever is elected into office.
“If the community is not properly managed, we can’t do anything for you,” said the one-time deputy mayor. “Vote in the best interest of your city.”
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