Democrat Dave Coulter, mayor of Ferndale, named Oakland County executive

[mwilbert]

His approach, uncongenial as I found it, was for a long time a good fit for the people of Oakland County. But times change, and I suspect that it's been a while since he could have been elected if he hadn't been an incumbent.

A lot of what needs to changed is just atmospherics, and a lot of that is just Patterson's style and history. What policies need to be changed really depend on what your vision of the world is like. Patterson's approach to keeping Oakland County financially viable was encouraging endless sprawl, because given the way Michigan taxation works, new development is the main path toward increased revenue. If the next generation of leadership thinks that's not as good an idea as he did, they are going to need some new policies, and they may not think every new road project ever proposed is a good idea either.