Rochester Hills Mayor Talks COVID Surge and Building Community Future

so many communities tyler are still you know navigating the crisis and rochester hills this is a tough time for so many of our elected leaders to continue to try to help guide all of us through this pandemic talk a little bit more about what's happening in rochester hills we're joined now by uh brian barnett the mayor thank you for being with us hey good morning uh thank you for having me how are things going over in rochester hills well i think we're doing okay i mean obviously this uh third surge has been a bit of a a mystery and a uh and a surprise as you know i mean obviously you've all seen the heat maps that suggest are sort of a one-state outlier relative to the amount of cases we're seeing and and we are you know certainly seeing that in our city uh family as well we've had probably more people off with coven in the past three weeks and we had the first six months of the pandemic wow um but uh we are um you know i mean our team most of i think everyone except one is uh is back and uh you know we're continuing to do all the things that we're known for good governance hopefully service to the community and just having to do a little differently and continuing to manage those those precautions because uh this you know this this latest hit of cobit has uh has been substantial so can we talk about your budget right now how is that looking do you anticipate uh getting some type of relief from the federal government yeah we do um obviously i was a an outspoken um advocate for that nationally about the need for cities to receive direct funding it was a portion of the president's plan that i supported that portion being the monies that came directly to cities and so talking with some of my city colleagues last week and we know about the amount that we're going to receive and it'll you know it'll be a tremendous boost for us to be able to fill revenue gaps that we missed from last year um and to begin to kind of stabilize some of the things that um you know we're a property tax state so we we we've been okay but um you know there are a lot of things that we missed out in terms of revenue on this will be able to fill those gaps and we've always been really conservatively financially managed to been consistently ranked in the top two percent of cities for financial strength and so we don't anticipate any challenges that would impact our bond rating or impact service levels but we're going to be very mindful of that moving forward we're talking with brian burnett he is the mayor for rochester hills um with that too how are you guys doing uh meeting wise are you still doing those virtually and do you anticipate that's going to continue for the remainder of the year yeah uh no um actually uh this week we have our first uh in-person meeting in in over a year wow um our council chambers have been uh uh reconfigured um so it's really it's a hybrid a few the council will be in the chambers um and as well i and my administrative team and any residents that choose to show up but you can also continue and we've been uh sort of accustomed to zooming uh and other platforms to to engage virtually so we'll have the opportunity for residents to either uh engage virtually or in person following the the recommendations of the cdc and of the state of michigan i will say as a resident i like that process so that i think more people could actually get involved with their local government but we know what this is only allowable uh due to the pandemic right right but i think we've actually talked with our team about how we make this more a part of how we do business in the future i mean it may be some people may never be comfortable coming into a relatively unfamiliar building or unfamiliar surroundings and so if we still value those voices we want to find a way to continue to hear them and engage them and so my guess is that many municipalities will look at for example one of the the ways that they could use the funding they'll be receiving from the government is to equip their their buildings um or they could choose to equip their buildings with ways to to con continue in a hybrid format where you could both contribute online and um you know in the past of course you could watch it was just not possible to interact and we had to purchase some technology and retrofit some things it cost us some money but i feel like this is probably the way of the near future and maybe even longer term so with that of course everything right now the focus is on the vaccine how um how is that rolling out in the city of rochester hills are you pretty much just relying on the county well you know we most cities uh i think with the exception of detroit don't have their own health department and so we we rely on the county to lead uh to lead that of course we work with many of our private institutions whether it be uh the hospital systems uh ascension in our community uh or um you know some of the the other for-profit organizations meyer cbs and others we've done pretty well i mean i think we're ahead of all the averages in terms of those that have wanted to get vaccinated or all of the folks associated with our school districts have been vaccinated should they choose all the folks associated with the city just very recent have been given appointments in the last week or so and are are being vaccinated those that want it so um i think we're doing as good a job as possible it's a challenging process but you know i think more and more people are being vaccinated we set up a vaccine hotline here at the city helping to direct and connect people where they needed to go of course at the very beginning of this process it was very uneven and and even somewhat mysterious to folks especially when it was a 65 and older crowd um so we've been trying to be a strong assistance uh in the provide strong assistance along the way and i'm really proud of our team for that i think it's great that you did a hotline because we know a lot of seniors don't have the internet or if they do they can use it with limited capabilities so sometimes you have to go back to the old-fashioned way of doing things absolutely and a lot of folks it was just um having a voice you know they'd call and they'd be you know a thousand people that's not a joke or a rounding error a thousand people ahead of them on the phone and um some people were on hold for you know eight hours um so just to have a friendly voice saying hey listen we're going to stay with you we're not going to uh to leave you hanging here we're going to get you the information that is important to you and i think that we provided some level of comfort and counseling along the way which is sort of a side aside benefit so mayor barnett with us here on the mega cast mayor i anticipate the conversation going forward with the vaccine is going to be about requirement and the so-called vaccine passport as an elected leader do you anticipate those conversations are going to come up in the city of rochester well i um i'll let amanda speak for the city of rochester um for uh and i see you there for rochester hills no i mean listen and and you've heard the president speak pretty definitively about this um um you know that there will not be um you know national mandates for this locally here you've seen leaders like dr pescovitz the president of oakland university talk about vaccines being required unless you have a religious exemption to live on campus at oakland university in the fall um you know we we don't control any housing here we don't control uh we don't have any public transportation that we would have authority of so there's there's no reason for us to get into that game i think that's probably the next level of discussion nationally that people are going to have in terms of you know what what what may or may not need a vaccine to continue to participate in but but right now we're just trying to get vaccines to those that want them and that's a pretty heavy lift um and that's really what we're focused on and the other things will sort of take care of themselves and be really vibrant uh discussions that you know people are obviously pretty passionate about um so if we can shift away from the conversation about vaccines and cover 19 for just a minute i know you guys have an exciting project underway uh innovation hills park do you want to tell us more about that yes it's like my third child i love talking about that park now we just specifically what we've we've just launched is a a campaign for the community to uh to show their support so far we've put millions of dollars in this all from the private sector nonprofit groups and and we're building a four million dollar playground out there over the next 90 days and um we have another boardwalk loop going to the council uh this this month so this campaign which you can find at rochesterhills.org forward slash playground is a chance for the community if they've been out there if they've enjoyed it you know we partnered with the medc they're gonna match dollar for dollar the next fifty thousand dollars that's donated uh in the next few weeks and so we're encouraging people to contribute we'd love to see families who've enjoyed it and experience out there contribute 25 50 maybe a hundred dollars we've had some students contribute 20 because they had a unique experience out there it's just kind of a good old-fashioned community fundraiser to uh to show support for this project and we've been overwhelmed um with their support that we've received so far and and we think we're going to reach our 50 000 goal well ahead of schedule and again if any listeners want to uh our viewers want to contribute it's rochesterhills.org forward slash playground hey even if it's you know five dollars it all adds up all of it adds up and it creates a great story um you know anytime you have a buy-in community buy into a project that uh you're raising funds and you're raising friends and both are equally important when you want to advance something new in the community and so we're excited about this effort we appreciate their partnership with the medc uh and uh we're looking forward to hopefully meeting that goal coloring in the thermometer all the way to the top and celebrating more investment into our incredible new park so do you want to talk a little bit more about the playground because um am i reading this correctly it's going to be designed so people with disabilities can enjoy it as well yeah it's it's really a unique endeavor which is why sometimes the price tag is you know can be a hard swallow but we wanted everyone in our community of all ages and all abilities to be able to enjoy it and so when i asked our team to put this together i said i want here's what i don't want i don't want anything you can find in any other playground within a two-hour drive i want all unique elements here and so we've got this giant tree that's like this three straight tree actually under the playground on the second level and you slide into the playground to get into where all the fun stuff is parents and grandparents alike and so we've got a river right now they're digging the river that's going to run through the uh the uh the playground which you know kids will be able to to manipulate the water flow and learn and and see how the river changes things and really we've worked with ou cares which is an autism group that uh to really plan everything the way it's laid out from the colors we use from the sounds you'll hear from the way you enter and exit the park uh we've tried to really have a a really all-encompassing focus on that so that every guest has an opportunity to have a unique play experience at innovation hills what's the timeline for completion i want it done by friday but they tell me that's humanly and physically impossible uh and so then i say next friday and they say mayor same thing so uh generally we hope to have it done um by uh the beginning of june this year so like i said it's it's out there now we actually have a time lapse camera that's capturing the all the changes happening every day and uh we're excited to see this and i'm excited to to play on this playground hopefully by the time school gets out in mid-june that is so awesome to have that in the community because so many people are taking advantage of our parks now more so than ever yeah we recognized that in throughout this course of this last year in fact in the first month of the pandemic our parks usage was up like 350 i mean where where could people go last year um that they could feel safe and it was outdoors and it was on the trails that we share with the city of rochester and and and and all the great uh public spaces that we have uh here in our community and so you know we said we look took a look at this is that this is um you know some people are kind of pulling back and say no this is where we absolutely should invest during this time because if the one thing that our people have told us is that when times get tough they like to go outside they like to recreate close to home they're not flying overseas not flying a lot of places and so this makes sense for us to invest their money into their parks and to do it in a really unique and an important and impressive way and that's what we're doing we've got that project another project about the same time we're gonna open the city's first splash pad on the south end of town and so um residents of rochester hills we're kind of calling this the summer of fun uh we had a tough summer last year but we're excited to celebrate with some really unique cool outdoor spaces all across our city this year uh summer of fun i like that i may steal that as a slogan you just send us a nickel to the playground every time you use it and you can use it as many times as you want there you go mayor barnett with us here on the mega cast for the city of rochester hills mayor anything i didn't ask that you want to touch on before we say goodbye uh just uh just encourage our folks to continue to be vigilant thank the folks out there that are doing a great job we are really standing with our small businesses as they've been challenged and um you know trying to communicate as best we can i launched a new podcast to uh to try to continue to communicate with our residents so proud of our team proud of the way the city of rochester hills has responded and just want to keep people diligent and vigilant in the remaining months here to hopefully get to the summer of fun as quickly as possible so thank you for the opportunity this morning ronnie appreciate you great talking to you again again if you do want to donate to the park it's rochesterhills.org forward slash playground