The Growing Michigan Together Council is preparing to send recommendations for growing the state’s population to Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
The council has held meetings all over the state with the body divided into five subcommittees. They focused on jobs, infrastructure, K-12 education, higher education, and revenue.
Serving on the infrastructure subcommittee was former state Senator John Proos. He tells us the group held seven weeks of meetings, and a big topic was municipal growth.
“There are some structural reasons why our municipalities are precluded from growing as quickly as they might like because of both constitutional and statutory sorts of changes,” Proos said.
Proos says the group has looked at how state and federal funds could better be funneled to cities, township, and villages. Another topic was making sure Michiganders have good places to live.
“There was an awful lot of discussion around housing choice and how we work towards a stronger engagement with the Michigan State Housing Development Authority to draw down some of the dollars that exist as the federal and state level for implementation of good development opportunities for growth and housing.”
Proos said one idea is to develop sites that already have infrastructure in place so that when a development comes along, that’s already taken care of.
It should also be no surprise the committee talked roads with a focus on how to pay for road maintenance when gas tax revenues are going down due to the electric vehicle revolution. Proos says a user fee based on miles driven is looking like a likely model.
The various subcommittees will have a report for the governor in December. From there, implementation of the recommendations will be the next task.
