This story originally appeared in the Oct. 10 edition of the Three Rivers Commercial-News.
By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
THREE RIVERS — Growing up in Kalamazoo, Angel Johnston said she enjoyed coming to Three Rivers on vacation during her early years, with Scidmore Park being one of her favorite places to stop.
After moving to the area in her 30s, where she now lives in the First District, she said some of the things she enjoys about the city are the “creature comforts” that the area affords.
“I love to have Aldi right down the street, and I love that there are plenty of things to do, but I also really love that there’s a lot of natural space and our rivers. That’s what makes me so happy here,” Johnston said.
As one of two challengers to incumbent mayor Tom Lowry in the Nov. 4 mayoral election in Three Rivers, Johnston said she wants to preserve those enjoyable things and share her pride in the city, while also using her background in public administration to make city government more accessible for residents.
“I think it’s very important that we get people to participate and that everybody here feels like they have a voice and that their voice matters, and that’s going to bring us a lot of hometown pride,” Johnston said. “And that’s the heart of what I want to do for our community is make everybody proud to live in Three Rivers and feel like they belong.”
Johnston said she has had a lot of people asking her to run for mayor for “as far back as I can remember,” even before she earned a master’s degree in public administration from Western Michigan University. She said she has a background in organizing campaigns for politicians and different causes, and said she has studied “how government should work” and how to talk to others.
“I know how to talk to a lot of different people and unify folks and help people see what they have in common rather than what they have different. And here in Three Rivers, we all have so much in common,” Johnston said. “We all love taking our kids to the park. We all want clean water. We all want safe streets. And if I can help everybody refocus on that and bring all their talents and strengths together, I think we’re just going to make Three Rivers an even better place to live, work, play, and thrive.”
Johnston said one of the things she wants to do as mayor is making it easier for residents to participate in city government, advocating for more social media notice by the city around meetings, broadcasting meetings online, and creating “Mayor’s Minute” newsletters surrounding city actions on the city’s website. She also said she wants to bring a “big, smiling, happy face” to City Hall, claiming that residents are “afraid to go to City Hall” to speak their mind.
“I hear this all the time when I’m knocking doors. They think that their opinions don’t matter. They don’t want to get yelled at. They don’t want to get themselves on the naughty list, and people are really afraid to bring themselves to City Hall, and they don’t think that their opinions matter,” Johnston said. “What I can bring to city hall is a big, smiling, happy face that’s even there to accept criticism because we have a lot of things that we need to work on and sunlight is the best disinfectant. Once we get a lot more citizen participation, I think we’ll be in much better shape.”
She also stated she hopes to make the city budget more transparent and easier to understand for residents and easier to access.
“My specialty is to dig into things like a city budget, but I can explain those things in layman’s terms and make everybody understand where our money is currently going and that will help give them an understanding that will then give them a voice to help raise their voices to help us determine what to do with our money from now on,” Johnston said.
One of the biggest parts of her campaign platform has to do with the ongoing lead pipe issue in Three Rivers. She expressed her disappointment at water bills – she said her bimonthly water bill for her and her dog averages $140 – and claimed the city isn’t doing enough to replace lead pipes and “fix this water.”
“I think it’s time to stop taking no for an answer. I think it’s time that our city does every single possible thing that’s out there to fix this water,” Johnston said, advocating for applying for more grants to cover lead line replacement costs. “I was reading an article that was published last fall, and there was something about, we don’t have a wellhead plan. Why the heck do we not have a wellhead plan? These are things that need to be done and they need to stay updated so that when we’re up for a grant, we’re not losing points because we don’t have our ducks in a row. … I think it’s time for us to put our priorities in line and realize that water is number one.”
Another way she said she hopes the city can address the issue if elected is “reallocations” in the city budget. While she didn’t specifically say what reallocations she wants to make when it comes to funding lead pipe replacement, she mentioned that when it comes to public safety, some of the “reallocations” in those departments she hopes to accomplish have to do with what she claimed were the differences in recent raises for firefighters and police officers compared with city administrators, namely City Manager Joe Bippus.
“How can we give somebody who sits behind a desk a 5 percent raise, and give our fire captain, who broke his neck for our community, a 0.7 percent raise,” Johnston said. “Those are the kind of budget reallocations I want to talk about.”
When it comes to public safety, Johnston said she wants to increase the budget to the police and fire departments if elected and “empower our officers.”
“I hear over and over and over that our officers don’t feel supported, and that the decisions that they make out in this world where they’re the ones in danger are not supported by people higher up from them. And I’ve heard that for over a decade. I hear that from former police officers who have reached out to me, that they left because there was no support,” Johnston said. “We have to back our cops. We have to make sure that our fire department has every single piece of equipment they need.”
Affordable housing is another area of Johnston’s platform she wants to address if elected. She said if elected, she’ll advocate for the city taking better care of abandoned houses that are around the city.
“They’re all over the place, and that degrades our neighborhoods and it takes away people’s pride in a neighborhood when they live next to an abandoned house or that’s what they see from their porch,” Johnston said. “We need to take care of these houses first. Maybe we can convince the owners to fix them up, maybe we can convince owners to sell them, maybe there’s a plan, but we have to look at it. And as far as I can tell, nothing’s being done.”
She said she hopes to work with City Attorney TJ Reed to figure out what the city legally can do to entice vacant houses to be fixed up or sold, and “see what our options are.”
Finally, Johnston advocated for bringing certain city services in-house, most notably inspections and hiring a full-time city inspector and ending the city’s contract with SafeBuilt. She mentioned the issues she’s personally had with city inspections through SafeBuilt when it came to electrical and roof work on her house, and accused SafeBuilt of “rubber stamping.”
“That’s how I feel, and that’s my experience, and that’s something I hear all the time,” Johnston said. “I’ve talked to different contractors who don’t even want to work in the city or in places that safe built is. Why should we farm out something that we can do here at home? Why don’t we have our guy or maybe share with another municipality or two so that we have one or two people who are super qualified and who answer to us, not to some company?”
Johnston mentioned she has a plan when it comes to moving inspections in-house, but declined to share specifics of the plan, saying she’s consulting with “contractor friends” to figure out the specifics of the plan and make “solid recommendations.”
Overall, Johnston said her governing philosophy is to “let the people lead.”
“Gather the people and gather the opinions, even if that’s criticism. I don’t think I’m going to walk in there and be free of criticism, but I will take it because you can learn from criticism. If everything is roses and daisies, you don’t learn very much. But when somebody comes in and says, hey, I don’t like that you did X, Y, and Z, I’m going to take that into my heart and I’m going to sleep on that, and I’m going to give that a lot of thought and figure out what could I have done better. And also, I’m going to answer people back, you know, maybe not that day in the meeting at the moment, but if somebody comes before us, I’m not just going to ignore them,” Johnston said. “I will never let somebody leave City Hall and just be forgotten about.”
If elected, Johnston said she looks forward to working with city staff, including Bippus, who she said she’s known “for a long time,” and is looking forward to “having a professional relationship with him again.”
Johnston said her experience and education is the main reason why she thinks people should vote for her as the new mayor of Three Rivers.
“I have the right education and the right passion and I’m ready to be everybody’s friend,” Johnston said.
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.
