2017 Candidate Interview: Ferndale Councilperson Melanie Piana

(Crystal A. Proxmire, Oct. 13, 2017)

Ferndale, MI – Ferndale Mayor Pro Tem Melanie Piana and Councilperson Greg Pawlica are unopposed in the Nov. 7, 2017 election, as is Mayor Dave Coulter.  Yet the election will go on and the candidates continue to connect with voters about the issues impacting the city.

Piana has a Masters in Urban Planning and currently works for Jefferson East Inc, a Detroit-based nonprofit that serves the community.  She has been on City Council for 8 years and is now seeking her third term.

“In the last 8 years this was all about Council stabilizing our finances and so we made a lot of difficult decisions to restructure our government to better serve our residents and be more responsive,” Mayor Pro Tem Piana said.  “I think we really need to focus on how do we maintain stability and how do we deal with prosperity. Even though we have statewide municipal finance challenges that are limiting our ability to grow, we are facing a growth period in our community and we’re trying to make sure we’re deliberate and intentional in including everybody in the conversation on how best we move forward.”

Hear more of what Piana had to say:

Check out our Elections Section  for other candidate interviews, or use the search bar at the top to find stories for your community.

All candidates are invited to do an interview and we are doing our best to connect.  If you are a candidate that needs information, please email us at editor@oc115.com.

The Oakland County Times is a nonpartisan news source and interviews are done to help voters get to meet their candidates. We do not endorse any candidates, and statements made in candidate interviews are not fact-checked, though if we know of any errors we will include them in our story.

More candidate interviews are at http://oaklandcounty115.com/2017/07/01/2017-candidate-interviews/

If you support independent journalism and local news coverage, please consider donating towards Oakland County Times operating expenses at http://oaklandcounty115.com/reader-support/.

Also help spread the word by sharing posts that you think are valuable, such as this one.

Learn more about this candidate’s campaign at: http://www.melaniepiana.com