Keeping Novi among the best places to live
July 25, 2008

Last week, Money Magazine named Novi one of the top places to live in America. Money cited great schools, lots of green space, and cultural diversity as key factors. In the printed version of the story, public safety was listed as the #1 best thing about Novi.

They're correct on those these factors, and it would certainly appear that the People of Novi have been placing their priorities in the right places over the past decade. We're also pleased that a special census pushed Novi over the 50,000 population mark, which allowed us to be included on such a prestigious list.

We believe it's also important to continue to look forward, plan ahead, and work toward ensuring Novi stays at the top of the list of best places to live.

Some of the key things we hear over and over are managing growth, keeping taxes down, roads, roads and roads.

The key road issues in Novi all revolve around the Road Commission for Oakland County, and the state. The state issues are slated to be corrected next year with work on I-96. The county issues, including Haggerty and Grand River Avenue, are years away (Novi Road work is scheduled to begin next year).

Folks, that's not good enough. We need to work today on getting these critical roads upgraded. There's not much to do on Haggerty, and that should be an easy fix. Grand River Avenue from Haggerty west to Novi Road is another story. It's just one big pothole today, with no immediate plans to fix it.

Without a smooth and efficient Grand River Avenue, traffic moves down to Nine and Ten Mile Roads - where nearly everyone in town doesn't want it. Fix Grand River Avenue and you eliminate a lot of traffic backups in the rest of the city.

Novi's too big for a little two-lane, 50-year-old Grand River Avenue. In fact, we'd bet Novi's the only town in the entire mid-west over 50,000 population without a single four-lane road running through it. Not one.

We challenge our city administrators and elected officials to come up with a solution to get Grand River Avenue fixed sooner, rather than later, and to press the county to get the little parts of Haggerty Road done, today.

Another key factor for future success it public safety, which takes years to develop. In fact, it takes a couple years just to get a new cop comfortable on the street, and many more to be proficient in their job. Same with firefighters. We need to ensure we are planning today for public safety demands in the future, in a fiscally prudent manner of course.

We the People believe that roads and public safety will continue to be to key success factors to Novi's future. We're doing good on the public safety front, but moving too slow on roads. These two issues should continue to be our focus over the coming years.

Roads and public safety, two important areas that require years of advance planning. These are two key factors we'll continue to keep an eye on.

p.s. - Driving from Detroit west to the end of I-96, why is it that Novi is the only town that has rough pavement on this road? Isn't Novi the fastest growing area in the state? This makes no sense. It almost appears that the state is trying to hamper economic progress through bad roads in the wrong places.