00:00
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CP
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We are here today with Charles Gaba, who is running for County Commission for the 12th District. How are you doing today?
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00:12
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Charles Gaba
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I’m okay.
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00:14
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CP
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Good. Can you talk a little bit about what is the 12th district? What community is it you would be representing?
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00:21
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Charles Gaba
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Sure. The 12th district is the City of Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills as well as most of Bloomfield Township, out to around Inkster Road on the west side, I believe.
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00:36
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CP
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Where are you from?
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00:39
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Charles Gaba
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I actually grew up in Bloomfield Township. I was born and raised in the same area I am living in now. I did move away, first for college, and then for about eight or nine years after that. I moved back in 2009. I moved back to Bloomfield Township with my wife and son, mainly for the school district, to raise my son and have him attend the same great public schools that I did when I lived here.
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01:06
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CP
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Thanks. How are you involved in the community?
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01:09
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Charles Gaba
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Probably the best example would be, about four years ago, shortly after my wife and I moved back to the Bloomfield area. I got heavily involved in the campaign to get a new high school for Bloomfield Public Schools. As anyone from the area knows, there had been a very long, contentious debate and battle for a solid decade about what to do about Lahser and Andover High Schools. They were two high schools that were very old, and they were kind of falling apart. At the same time, the school-age population had been growing for some time, and there just wasn’t enough funding or population, really, to support two full high schools, and we kind of moved back into sort of the thick of it all, so I got heavily involved in the final attempt to get a new high school bond issue approved, and we were able to do that. There had been two or three previous attempts, all of which had failed at various levels. I actually voted against the prior attempt, the 2010 issue, not because I was opposed to the idea, I was actually all for unifying under a new single high school, but just the specifics of that plan just didn’t wash with me. That one went down. But then two years later, I got heavily involved in the new plan, which I felt was much better, and we were able to get that approved. I believe it was around 60-40 approval throughout the district.
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02:51
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CP
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Are you happy with how it turned out?
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02:56
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Charles Gaba
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Yes. It officially opened last fall, and they got an open-house kind of thing to tour it and check it out, and I think they’ve done a fantastic job with it. The school looks fantastic. The students seem to be happy, the ones I’ve spoken to. There had been a lot of worrying about whether the Lahser and Andover student communities would fit together, whether they would mesh well, and, as far as I can tell, with everyone I’ve talked to, it’s worked out fine. They seem pretty happy.
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03:30
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CP
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Thanks. Have you had any other political involvement?
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03:35
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Charles Gaba
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Yes. I’ve been involved as a political activist at various levels for about the last decade or so. I was not particularly involved in politics until around the 2004 election. That was the point when I was inspired by Howard Dean. He was running for President back then, and I got heavily involved after that. I worked, in addition to helping out congressional candidates and so forth, at the local level when my wife and I were living in Berkeley, which is where we lived before we moved back to Bloomfield Township. There had been a local issue there. It involved a nativity scene on the City Hall property, which I was not approving of, and I got involved in the campaign to not allow that, and that was passed as well, so at the local level, I’m two for two, so far.
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04:44
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CP
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Thanks. Now why did you decide to run for County Commission?
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04:45
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Charles Gaba
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Well, because, as I said, I’ve been politically active for some time, but I’ve never actually run for office, and I’ve thought about it for a long time. I was considering it a few years ago, but actually I ended up getting sort of side-tracked by more of a national project, regarding the Affordable Care Act, of all things. As sort of a hobby, I started tracking enrollments and tracking progress of the ACA, and it sort of caught on nationally, and the next thing I knew, I was being interviewed by various publications and magazines and radio shows and such, and so, in addition to my day job as a web site developer, that took up all my side time. I have been doing that for about three years now, and I am still doing some of that, but I felt that it was time to refocus efforts at the local level and see how I can improve things in my community. Once I looked around, I decided I needed to find a position which would allow me to help out locally and improve things at a lower level, while also running my business. I am a website developer, and I’m not really in a position to give that up completely, but county commissioner is a part-time job. I know it is still important, and it still takes a lot of time and responsibility, but at least it’s something that I can balance, the two.
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06:17
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CP
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If you are elected, are there specific topics that are important to you that you would want to look at?
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06:22
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Charles Gaba
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Yes, the top priorities for me, there are a couple of them: One is basically improving the roads and general infrastructure. There has been a lot of talk about road repair at the state level, but it is also true at the county and local level as well. Just right outside my subdivision, I live just off Lahser road, and I think it’s ironic that you look at one of the wealthiest parts of the county, and right outside of that, or right in the middle of that, you have a road which is in pretty bad disrepair. Maybe they are working on it. I know I’ve seen some action done, I just think that’s very striking. But the other thing about roads is I am a big believer in sidewalks. There are a lot of nice things to say about Bloomfield Township, but one of the things that I really miss about Berkeley is sidewalks. I like to have a walkable community, and there are some sidewalks, but I would like to expand upon that. I would like to get those sidewalks, or safety paths, I am not sure what the right term is, but I would like to expand on those. But my other major issue, that I would really like to push hard, is green technology, alternative and renewable energy, to push the use of that and expansion of that as much as possible as quickly as possible within reasonable economic reality. Solar and wind technology has advanced tremendously over the last few years. The costs have come down dramatically, and I would like to see the county now push for the expansion of solar/wind technology and perhaps geothermal or other renewable energy, but mainly solar and wind as much as possible, because climate change is real, and it is no longer theoretical. It is no longer, “Well, in a few years.” No, it’s not in a few years. It is causing serious damage now, and we need to do as much as we can to mitigate or reduce the impact of that. At the same time, it would be nice to have, climate change aside, it would be nice to have renewable green technology for all of our needs as quickly as possible anyway.
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08:54
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CP
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You are a Democrat, and you’re running in a district that is heavily Republican and has been for a while. What do you think some of your chances are? What are your challenges in this?
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09:11
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Charles Gaba
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In a heavily Republican area, obviously the fact that I’m a Democrat at all is a challenge. People don’t tend to like change. But at the same time I would point out that my opponent, whichever one it turns out to be, the two of them have been county commissioners, one or the other, for I think going on something like 18 years now. They have basically been swapping the job back and forth, and I think, given the state of what’s happened to the Republican Party nationally, I think it might be a good year for some people in the area to take a closer look at what to the party has become and consider an alternative. I know that my views are going to be different from many people in the area, but I think that there are some projects, some policies, that I would like to think that I can find some common ground on. As I mentioned earlier, I was heavily involved in the high school bond issue, and that was actually an amazing thing, because we had Republicans and Democrats working together for a common goal. I remember specifically driving through Bloomfield Hills proper, doing literature drops at people’s houses, driving with a pretty solid Republican, and we discussed issues. We discussed the economy and foreign policy and domestic issues, minimum wage, all sorts of things, and it was spirited, but it was friendly, and we were able to respect each other’s views, and at the same time that we were actually working to get a new high school, a new public high school, funded with public dollars for our community, and it worked out great, and he’s happy, I’m happy, and I would like to see more of that. Now, having said that, I am an unapologetic, progressive Democrat, which means that there are some views that I have that may go against the grain of this area, but I would like to have a chance to make my case, and I think it is never a good idea to have one ideology that’s overwhelming for too long a period of time, because I think that breeds some stagnation, regardless of which party it is, so I would just like the people of the 12th District, Birmingham, Bloomfield, Bloomfield Township, to give me a shot, to hopefully change some minds.
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11:56
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CP
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I think some people may not really know what a county commissioner does. Can you talk a little bit about what you see that job would be? What would you do to get elected?
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12:05
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Charles Gaba
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As I said earlier, I would like to promote, wherever I can, policies that help promote the use of renewable energy, the reduction in the use of fossil fuels. A lot of it has to do with things, like, for example, the upcoming Regional Transit Authority. There is a rapid-bus transit proposal for the four-county area, Oakland, Wayne, Washtenaw, and Macomb Counties. That is one area where, when it comes to regionalism, where county commissioners can play a role in acting as a liaison between state and local authorities, dealing with zoning ordinances and that sort of thing. And of course there are property taxes, just the day-to-day operation and budget of county services, like the sheriff’s department, the county clerk’s department, and so forth. I know, for example, one good example would be, a few years ago, I know that the County Commission, I believe they voted to lower the fee for the County Clerk’s Office for getting a copy of a birth certificate for certain low-income individuals. That seems like a little thing. It does not seem like that big of a deal, but if you’re in that situation, if you are facing some hard times, then even a reduction of 10 or 15 dollars in a filing fee or a form fee, a little thing like that can make a big difference, if you are really in hard times, and you have a job interview or you’re applying for financial assistance of some other sort. Just little things like that can make a big difference in people’s lives I think, and so that is the sort of thing that I would like to promote, helping to improve peoples’ lives in both small and large ways.
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14:06
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CP
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Could you talk a little bit about your education and your job skills?
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14:13
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Charles Gaba
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Sure. Again, I grew up in the area. I was a graduate of Lahser High School, class of ‘88. I went on to Michigan State University. After that, I spent about a decade in an attempt to become a film producer. It did not work out too well, but I managed movie theaters for many years. In fact, the old Showcase Cinemas, before they shut down. After that, I started my own website development firm, and that’s been my primary occupation for at least 16 years now, and I’ve actually survived. I’ve outlasted a lot of much larger website development firms over the years, but along the way I’ve learned. I know how quickly technology moves, and it helped. Obviously, doing that I have to keep up with that, and the changes are dramatic and rapid, and the county has to keep up with that as well. I’d love to see an Oakland County app that can be used for various functions, but also, after that, as I mentioned earlier, I started on this Affordable Care Act project and tracking project, and what I learned there, and what I’ve been told by many, many very respected healthcare professionals and reporters and insurance company executives, and so forth, I have been found to have a knack for data analysis and taking the numbers in the raw form and interpreting and recompiling them into a format that is easy for people to understand and to understand not just what the numbers mean but what they mean for other areas, and that I think is a skill that should serve me well when it comes to doing budget analysis, and that sort of thing, for county projects and county proposals.
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16:14
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CP
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Is there anything else that you think voters should know about you?
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16:20
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Charles Gaba
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I have been married to a wonderful woman, my wife, Elizabeth. We have been married for coming up on, let’s see, 13 years this year, I believe. We have a 10-year-old son in the Bloomfield schools, and I love this community, I love the area, and I just hope that people give me a chance to hopefully try and improve things further.
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16:48
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CP
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If people want more information, where can they go?
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16:49
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Charles Gaba
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Ah, yes. They can just visit my website, my campaign website at simply charlesgaba.com, and I am also available on FaceBook. Just run a search for friends of Charles Gaba, and it should bring up my FaceBook page, and that’s about it.
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17:08
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CP
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Okay. Thank you for coming out and talking with us today.
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17:22
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Charles Gaba
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Thank you.
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