38.5°F  Website Login | Sterling HeightsOctober 19, 2011Michigan Municipal League honors Sterling mayor
By Cortney Casey
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Sterling Heights Mayor Richard Notte speaks during the Michigan Municipal League’s Oct. 6 convention in Grand Rapids, where he received the organization’s 2011 Michael A. Guido Leadership and Public Service Award.
Sterling Heights Mayor Richard Notte speaks during the Michigan Municipal League’s Oct. 6 convention in Grand Rapids, where he received the organization’s 2011 Michael A. Guido Leadership and Public Service Award.
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Sterling Heights Mayor Richard Notte’s name may have been on the Michigan Municipal League’s 2011 Michael A. Guido Leadership and Public Service Award, but he insists many names not on it helped make it possible.
“I was very happy about it and very appreciative, but it wasn’t only me,” said Notte, who accepted the award from MML Board President Carol Shafto during the organization’s annual convention in Grand Rapids Oct. 6.
Notte said he believes his receipt of the accolade — which, according to the MML, is a “peer-nominated honor” that “celebrates a chief elected official who personifies professionalism and leadership” and “is dedicated to the citizens in their community and advocates on their behalf in Lansing and Washington, D.C.” —??stemmed primarily from helping avert closure of Chrysler’s Sterling Heights Assembly Plant.
“I think there were a whole lot of individuals that were involved in making that happen,” he said. “Having Chrysler change their mind about closing that plant was just huge for the city. I think we all did what we could do to hopefully keep it open.
“It was all of us — the City Council, administration, federal government, state government, the county — everybody just working together, and it happened,” said Notte. “I just happened to be the mayor.”
During the Oct. 4 City Council meeting, Mayor Pro Tem Joseph Romano heralded his colleague for the achievement, chalking it up to Notte’s activism in the wake of Chrysler’s bankruptcy and subsequent plans to close SHAP.
Notte served as vice chair of the Mayors and Municipalities Automotive Coalition, a nationwide consortium of municipal leaders that lobbied for federal assistance for communities decimated by plant closures. He also was active in the Sterling Heights Automotive Task Force, which helped develop incentive plans to entice Chrysler to stay.
“Not only (the) mayor, but this council and the administration, was instrumental, along with the other people that I mentioned, for saving 1,200 jobs in Sterling Heights,” said Romano, “and for that, I think the mayor deserves a round of applause.”
In a press release, the MML also praised Notte’s “leadership and professionalism” for helping Sterling Heights earn its status among Best Life magazine’s top 100 places to raise a family in 2008.
“He’s the small-town mayor who knows everyone, yet leads the fourth largest city like a business, emphasizing financial stability amid the state’s struggling economy,” the release states.
But the looming Nov. 8 election ensured that the award wasn’t without controversy.
A few City Council candidates chided Romano, alleging that his comments overstated Notte’s — and the council’s — role in saving SHAP.
Mayoral candidate David Magliulo made similar remarks at an Oct. 6 Meet the Candidates forum.
“The leaders at Chrysler made a financial decision that it made sense to keep that facility open,” he said. “There’s a little bit of arrogance to try to take credit for that.”
Others expressed irritation that the MML convention conflicted with the usual timing of the candidate forum, held in the past at night on the first Thursday of October.
This year, the forum — which featured all 12 contenders for City Council — was shifted to the morning, requiring some candidates to take time off of work to attend.
