About Max Donovan
I'm currently a Social Worker at EastersealsMORC, using my own background in mental health recovery to support my community and foster healing. I have a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from MSU, and years of experience effecting change at the state and local level through both paid and volunteer activism. I've helped to develop new programs, change state laws, and update city charters throughout Michigan. I've door-knocked, petitioned, and organized my way around the state, and now I'm ready to make a difference right here at home. I came to Rochester Hills 5 years ago after a brief period of homelessness. This city has opened its arms to me, and now I'd like to show my neighbors some return on their investment.
Platform
It's not enough to want to be something. You have to want to do something. Too many leaders will ask for votes, dollars, or hours without telling you how they plan to fight for you. Rochester Hills is fortunate to not need much in the way of major change, but here are the ideas I'm bringing to the table:
Solar Carports: a pathway to Smarter Funding, lower costs, and a greener city
In January 2025, DTE was already allowed to raise rates on Michigan families. In May of this year, they've already asked for a second rate hike. Together, these price increases will amount to an extra 20 dollars per month per family. As long as another entity is generating our power for us, we'll be dependent on their benevolence for our financial wellness. Instead , let's claim energy independence for ourselves: I propose we build covered parking spaces in our municipal parking lots, and fit the new car ports with solar panels. This will generate clean energy for Rochester Hills and its residents, create revenue that doesn't have to come out of your budgets, and save significant money while also increasing property values. The savings and additional revenue this plan generates can empower business centers, neighborhoods, and HOAs with a grant to do the same thing with their own parking.
A worker-Powered Rochester Hills: siding with our every day heroes
As I sit right now and type out my platform for this website, the city's fire department has been six months without a contract. The Nurses at Henry Ford have gone two years without a guarantee of their wages or benefits. Even as a former Meijer employee, I was warned by my own union against voting for better contracts in part because "the support isn't there to see us through a tough negotiation." While Rochester Hills is only negotiating directly in one of these conflicts, the city has the power to support its workers, help them to organize, and endorse their fight to get great contracts. The city needs to remember that the fire department is not a hero: it is only where heroes work. Funding and equipping the building is not the same thing as giving the people who protect us what they need. We need to formally pass a resolution calling on Henry Ford to give our nurses what they have always been owed, helping to ensure a higher standard of care for ourselves and our families. And we need to make sure that workers all around our city know that if they work here, we want them to earn enough to live here. This is one of the only ways that Rochester Hills has failed to tell people that everybody is welcome here. It's time to solve that problem.
Leaders Training Leaders: No more empty ballots, plenty more partnership
This year, your ballot will have multiple candidates to vote for in the at-large race. Here in the first district, there are two names on the ballot. In the 4th, only one person decided to make the effort to run, and their election is guaranteed. This is not an anomaly: my neighborhood has not had a choice in who represents us for the last 15 years. Indeed, we've had at least one Choiceless District in every city election since 2009. We've been fortunate so far that the only people who have run unopposed have the city's best interests at heart; if we don't act, that luck will run out eventually. I propose a plan to generate more interest in municipal leadership, and it will carry on the reputation our city already has for leadership. This plan includes added encouraging OU students to get involved, improved compensation for staff and officials, and a leadership academy available to all Oakland County residents so that Rochester Hills can continue training the leaders of tomorrow. Rochester Hills has been the beneficiary of phenomenal leadership since our very founding, and the way we live our lives is proof of that. Our problem isn't a lack of quality in our leadership, but a lack of people who believe they can meet the high standards we're right to expect.
Campaigning Through Service
As a Candidate, I'm Trying to make my Community a better, safer, more beautiful place to live. Winning will make it easier to do this, but there are lots of ways to do it if you really care. I've never been satisfied by just talking the talk, so here's what I'm doing to show I mean it:
Campaign Materials in one hand, a bag in the other
While walking neighborhoods for other people's campaigns, I would often find that litter collects in ditches, or on the sides of the road. Now as a candidate, I see an opportunity: if I knock on your door during this race, you'll probably see I'm also holding a bag of trash. I won't ask for a voter's support without first filling a bag to clean up their neighborhood, and I take a bag with me while I canvass as well, filling it with any litter I come across as I pass through. Win or lose, Rochester Hills will be a cleaner, lovelier place because of the effort our campaign puts in.
Solidarity, now and forever
If the people who work in a city can't reap the benefits they create, what are we even doing as leaders? As a candidate, I pledge to stand with workers at every opportunity. Unions and workers they represent have had too many candidates pretending to be their voices instead of listening to them. I pledge not to pick up a microphone on their behalf unless directly invited to. I have already attended pickets with OPEIU Local 40, and advocated to the city council side by side with Firefighters Local 3472. I'm excited to do more, and can't wait to make a more worker-friendly Rochester Hills.
Action, not words, to promote local businesses
Watch this space: as the race goes on, I will be filling it with the names and contact info for consenting small businesses owned and operated in the 1st ward, especially home-operated businesses. Any event held by my campaign will also offer explicit invitations to those budding business leaders to share space with our campaign and share their work with the community. Community support should be reciprocal: I'm not comfortable asking you to support me without offering support in return. This is what that looks like.
Phone
(989) 254-5949
Call or text!