ADRIAN — Voters in the city of Adrian will choose three city commissioners in the Nov. 4 election.
Voting will take place at the Lenawee County Fair and Event Grounds, 602 N. Dean St., from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Residents can also cast an absentee ballot. For information about absentee voting, contact city clerk April Hamann at [email protected] or 517-264-4866.
Mayor Angela Sword Heath is unopposed for re-election, but there are six candidates for three commission seats. Commissioners serve four-year terms. People can vote for up to three candidates.
Aaron J. Chesher is a teacher and a volunteer with several community organizations. An Adrian native, he volunteered for six years in the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary, Civil Air Patrol, learning about leadership through its Cadet Program. He moved away for several years before he and his husband returned to Adrian in 2022.
Chesher said he was inspired to run for office after seeing the positive impact of building healthy relationships between marginalized people, such as the LGBTQ+ and Hispanic communities, and local government representatives.
“What began as a hobby quickly became my passion as I realized the importance of giving residents the opportunities to be involved in the decisions our city makes,” he said.
He believes the city’s top priorities for the next four years should be supporting small businesses and attracting employers, enacting a common-sense and pro-resident strategy to combat blight, expanding recreational and cultural opportunities in Adrian, and re-establishing the Human Relations Commission to fight discrimination. He supports policies to prevent the city from working with federal immigration agents.
Chesher said he would like to improve communication between City Hall and Adrian residents by holding neighborhood town halls and increasing bilingual access to city decision-making.
“I want to work with businesses, employees, city staff, and residents to bring innovative solutions that lift everyone up,” he said. “If you live in, invest in, or spend time in Adrian, your ideas and concerns are vital to the overall success of our community.”
He also wants to create more opportunities for young people to get involved in local government and help make Adrian more welcoming to all.
Gordon D. Gauss is an incumbent running for his second full term on the commission, having first been elected to a partial term in 2019. He is a retired auto executive who grew up in Adrian and graduated from Adrian College, then spent his career in California before he and his wife returned to Adrian in 2012. Before being elected to the city commission, he served on the planning commission. He is active in the Kiwanis Club.
Gauss said one of the city’s biggest priorities needs to be cleaning up blight. He voted for the point-of-sale inspection ordinance that was passed last year, and still believes it is a good tool for getting rundown houses into better shape.
When he first ran for the commission, he said, “I heard so much from the public about how we’ve got to clean up our community, we’ve got to clean up our neighborhoods.”
He also said the city needs to invest in infrastructure, taking care to maintain the city’s assets — something that he compared to keeping up with the maintenance schedule on a car to make it last longer.
He said another priority needs to be increasing the amount of housing in the city, as well as attracting businesses. This doesn’t mean trying to land huge investments — “Amazon’s never going to build anything in Adrian,” he said — but rather smaller companies like PlaneWave Instruments.
Gauss also said he would like to see the city increase recreational opportunities for young people.
He believes the city commission has been doing a better job at transparency — citing as one example the process of hiring the new city administrator — but can continue to improve.
Douglas Miller is an incumbent running for his second term on the commission. He is retired from the theater department at Siena Heights University, where he also serves on the alumni board. He is also a past board member of the Croswell Opera House.
Miller said that his career in theater has parallels to a city commissioner’s role.
“I work with budgets and I work with personnel and I work with time schedules,” he said, “and those three important jobs are really quite applicable to what we do as city commissioners.”
He believes the commission needs to work to “make the city as vibrant and upbeat as possible,” and he cited the efforts to develop North Winter Street downtown and address blight as two examples of that.
Attracting businesses both large and small is also important, he said, and he believes the city has a lot to offer businesses.
Miller said the city needs to try to help residents who are struggling, even if that sometimes means spending money. He also said it is important to think about everyone in the city, regardless of what neighborhood they live in.
“We need to serve everyone in the city,” he said. “We need to make sure the citizens feel like they are being served, like they are being taken care of, like they are being embraced.”
He said he feels the commission generally operates well, and that he’d like the opportunity to continue to serve.
Chip Moore is a native of Hillsdale but a longtime Adrian resident. An Army veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm, he is the owner of Adrian Insurance and Tecumseh Insurance, both of which he purchased in 1993.
He is a member of the Adrian Noon Rotary Club and the Adrian Symphony Orchestra board, and several years ago he also served on the Downtown Development Authority board.
Moore said he was drawn to run for office because he was disappointed with mandatory shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic and their impact on small businesses. He also believes that business owners need to be represented on the commission.
“There should be a voice for small businesses on a city council,” he said.
He said it can be difficult for businesses to work with the city, and he would like to change that. He wants to make it easier to start and run a business in Adrian, and proposed having a “concierge system” to help people who want to start businesses deal with the issues they face.
Moore also said he wants to make sure the city gets the best use out of its assets and gets the best value for taxpayers’ money.
One thing Moore would like to change about how the city commission operates is that he would like the public comment section of commission meetings to be more of a dialogue between residents and commissioners. He also would like to discuss the idea of electing commissioners by precincts.
Tiffany Sieler-Zych is the owner of Downtown Dempsey’s restaurant, which she opened after graduating from college in 2018. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University.
Sieler-Zych was originally inspired to run for office by the city commission passing the point-of-sale inspection ordinance, which she opposes.
“While I understand that it theoretically was pushed to better the aesthetics of this community, it’s not a good fit for Adrian,” she said. She sees the ordinance as an obstacle to families moving into Adrian.
In addition to repealing the point-of-sale ordinance, she said one of her priorities would be ensuring that the projects the city spends money on are aligned with the goal of “creating a safe, assistive, and attractive community for us all.”
Sieler-Zych said she initially hesitated about running because being a commissioner sometimes involves backlash and she is a business owner — but she believes a lot of community dissatisfaction comes from lack of transparency and communication, which she said are “solvable frustrations.”
She said the city can be difficult for businesses to work with, and she would like to see more transparent communication and clear policies.
“Policies should not be adopted or precariously enforced until they are polished and clearly defined,” she said.
Sieler-Zych said residents should be able to trust that elected officials will honestly and fervently represent their interests. She said she wants to make sure that residents’ concerns are validated and discussed.
James Trull works as a truck driver. He started going to city meetings a few years ago when a controversial ordinance about recreational vehicles was proposed. While attending those meetings, he said, he realized that many citizens felt they were not being heard.
“I felt that way myself when I sent an email to the commissioners and a few never responded or even acknowledged that I had sent it to them,” he said.
Going to city government meetings sparked an interest in getting involved himself, and he recently participated in Adrian’s Community Academy to learn more about how the government operates.
Trull sees housing and blight as two major issues for Adrian.
“I don’t see houses being condemned and demolished like I do in the other cities that I’ve traveled to and worked in,” he said.
However, he believes the city already has tools in place to address blight. “Instead of adding more ordinances we should be enforcing the ones that we have,” he said.
Another issue for Adrian, Trull believes, is how both potential businesses and currently operating businesses are treated in the city.
“I have been told that the process can be full of roadblocks and it ultimately makes them either close their business or choose to build their business in another community,” he said.
Trull also said he would like to see more information about city government get out to the public.
