The Farmington Press: “Rich expressed an interest in boosting residents’ trust in local government”
Two candidates file to run for mayor of Farmington Hills
FARMINGTON HILLS — Two candidates have decided to enter the Farmington Hills mayoral race in November, and both are likely familiar names for some voters.
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Since serving one term on City Council, Rich said that she has been leading the Oakland County task force on elder abuse and exploitation and was elected as one of the vice presidents of the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments.
“I am running to help build Farmington Hills as a destination city and continue building a community that works for everybody,” she said. “I did have a term on council from 2015 to 2019, and we were able to get quite a bit done. There are some things I would like to come back and continue working on.”
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“I am very much a proven problem-solver, so I am not one who believes all the solutions come only from within Farmington Hills,” Rich said. “I think that solutions happen by building coalitions with different groups of people and hearing different points of view. What I would be doing is increasing partnerships with other entities, and that’s how I’ve gotten things done in the past. I would encourage Farmington Hills to do that to a greater extent.”
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Rich shared another factor that helped her decide to run, and it came as a result of being part of a political leadership program offered by Michigan State University.
“Every year they pick 24 people — 12 men, 12 women, 12 Dems, 12 Republicans — and we meet for 11 months, one weekend a month to work through, ‘What are issues in our state, and how do we listen to and hear each other’s viewpoints, see where we have commonalities and what we can learn?’” she said. “That’s part of what helped me figure out that it was the right thing for me to run, all the conversations with people with different points of view than mine.”
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Rich expressed an interest in boosting residents’ trust in local government and being an inclusive community.
“I am not running on a platform of anybody doing something wrong or that we should be making wholesale changes. I’m running to look at, what are the problems that we have on the horizon?” she said. “For instance, in our city, by 2026, we are going to have more households with seniors than households with students. What are we doing to make sure that, first, we are providing the services that those seniors are going to need, and second, what are we doing to attract more people to our city? … Becoming a destination city is something that’s important to me.”
Rich and her husband, Brian, have a law firm in Farmington Hills. They have two children.
She is also an adjunct faculty member at Wayne State University’s business school.
Read the full story here: https://www.candgnews.com/news/two-candidates-file-to-run-for-mayor-of-farmington-hills-3099