Meet the Candidate: Cathy Albro

The Bellaire resident is running as an Independent against Republican John Roth for Michigan House District 104.

Cathy Albro ran as a Democrat for Congress in 2018 and again as a Democrat for our state House district in 2022. Now an Independent candidate for that post, she came to the Village Office on October 4 to talk about how she intends to work for Michiganders in the 104th District. We talked about the never-a-dull-moment nature of government and community work, how Elberta’s small village operation is structured, and what needs the many communities in this large, backwards-L-shaped district have in common.

The following is a condensed and edited version of our conversation.

Cathy Albro by the Elberta Quince Mother Tree, October 4, 2024.

Map of the 104th State House district from Albro’s website. These district lines were drawn in 2022, after the 2020 census.

Why did you switch from Democrat to Independent?

For a few reasons. For the last four years, I was chair of the Michigan Democratic Party Rural Caucus. That gave me a lot of experience working with and talking to people in rural counties all over the state. I was a coach to some of the counties trying to build community, and they didn't talk about politics at all, or party affiliation.

What they talked about is, What do we need in our community? I was there to help them figure out a way to get people together and structure the meetings and then find grants for them. What I found was that when you don't talk about politics, people can be friends and they can work together and they end up trusting each other. And then you can build on those relationships and talk about things that you don’t have in common. But you wait until you have that trust and you start with the things you agree on.

Compared with the last time, when I ran as a Democrat, I am able to talk to so many more people, or they’re willing to talk to me, because I'm not a Democrat. I'm open to everybody. So that's one of the reasons.

The other reason was that Larry Knight filed on the very last day to run as the Democratic candidate, but only because it was a blank line and the Democrats didn't want a blank line. He had an agreement with the Michigan Democratic Party that he would put his name on the line, but he would not campaign. So he wasn't raising money. He hasn’t been at any of the events I've been to.

On June 17, two months after he filed and a month before the deadline for Independents to file, I decided that, to help our democracy, somebody needed to be running an active campaign against John Roth. I had the network from my previous campaign, and they helped me get 600 good signatures by July 20 to get on the November ballot.

I love campaigning. This is my third campaign. I ran for Congress when we lived in Grand Rapids in 2018. I got 44 percent of the vote—not enough to win. Then in 2021 we moved permanently to Bellaire, where we’ve owned property since 1990. I just enjoy meeting people and listening to what they have to say. And I would've never had these experiences if I hadn’t been a candidate.

It actually is super exciting to be involved in local government. There’s so much to learn! Someone’s trash tote is missing. What are we going to do?

You can be a real problem solver.

Yeah. It's like every day there's a million problems and you can usually solve several of them. I can see how going around to different communities and seeing how they do things could be very interesting.

If I see a group or a person who has solved a problem or figured things out, I love to connect them to other people who I find are having a similar issue so they can work together. I have that luxury of being in a huge district, and I have worked throughout the whole state, so I have been able make those connections a lot.

[Justin Towle, of the Elberta Department of Public Works, came in and we all chatted. Justin is a California transplant, and like many people in Michigan, he isn’t too familiar with how the state level districts are structured. Albro described the 104th and asked him some questions about DPW’s work, snowplowing, how we determine how much salt to buy (we have a lot left over from last year), whether we’re getting a big snow this year. Justin’s first job in Michigan, in 2018, was making snow at Crystal Mountain during the polar vortex.]

I live right by Shanty Creek, and I just feel so sorry for the workers and the owners when there’s no snow.

So yes, the 104th is pretty huge. In addition to snow issues, what similarities and differences in needs do you see throughout this area?

Almost every part of this district is a tourist destination of some sort. So I see issues with retaining service industry workers, especially through those slower seasons, especially if it doesn't snow and restaurants and resorts close early. That's a big problem for the service workers I've talked to, to be able to survive and for the communities to have steady employees they can rely on.

And I believe that in most areas there aren't enough young people staying or coming back into the area. I worry that it's already quite a bit of a senior haven in some ways. I do believe that this area could be a climate refugee area because of our clean water and our temperate climate. And I don't see communities doing enough to prepare for that.

Just in the last few years, we’ve had more people buying property in the Village and property values have gone up quite a bit, which has been good for some people and bad for other people because they’re on a fixed income. There are people who grew up here, their tax bills were pretty stable, and now they’re up. And our water bills are up because we’ve made necessary upgrades to our system. In our tiny village, we have a very big range of financial situations.

I know. I've knocked doors. It's multimillion-dollar homes right next to or not very far from people who are struggling and who've been here all their lives.

I think communities need to get down to business and start planning for it. Do we have the housing infrastructure? Do we have water and sewer infrastructure in our plan?

And most areas have internet now. It's coming in the next year or so. Internet is going to be hugely important. What kind of service do you have?

In the Village itself we have Charter/Spectrum, but the rollout of the new broadband further out seems to be happening very slowly. The fiber has been laid down some of the bigger roads, but now we’re hearing that in some areas the actual service won’t be provided until 2027.

Oh, really? That’s not good. So next week, Merit, the nonprofit in Michigan that's trying to get out the internet to everybody, is having an event called Building Bridges for BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment). It’s a federal program to make sure that even low income people and furthest out rural people get good internet. It’s a state event at Crystal Mountain, and people from the state should be there to answer questions. It's from 12 to 5 pm on October 15. It would be good if you could get some people to attend that. [Unfortunately by the time I followed the link Albro sent, registration deadline had passed; but maybe you could just show up?]

Small businesses are another thing I want to focus on. Some of the main-street areas in some of the villages and towns have shuttered stores, and I think that's unattractive to people moving in or visiting. We need to have vibrant main streets.

I ran a business for 30 years, actually two businesses, and I survived or grew my business with SBA loans: I would get a small loan and pay it back and get a bigger loan, and I kept growing for 30 years like that. I would love to help employee-owned businesses get off the ground so that they, especially young people and young families, could stay here and have a decent living.

I think there needs to be a little more consciousness about gearing businesses toward the people who live here year-round. In Frankfort it’s gotten a lot better in the past 10 years, basically since Stormcloud Brewing Company started, but a lot of business is still tourism focused or seasonal. Frankfort just got a new butcher shop, which is great. And Elberta really needs a grocery store, or at least a party store, where you can go and get a thing of milk.

A little market. It doesn’t have to be Meijer. Something to get you through a few days of food if you need to, rather than going to a bigger store.

And especially here, because there are people who don't drive (or don’t want to). It'd be nice to be able to walk to a store. It just seems like a lot of people, when they're seeking to open a business, if they're just opening a business as an investment or something, they're not thinking about what the people who live here actually need.

I used to work for a couple of schools in Flint. I was a consultant for the HighScope Foundation in some Flint schools. A lot of people lived in food deserts, and if they didn’t drive, they would get on a bus and have to do two stops with a cart just to get groceries and then carry it all home. I was thinking, what if a business took maybe an old school bus, with part of it refrigerated, and went to neighborhoods at a scheduled time every week and sold local produce and the staples.

Like a food truck, but like a grocery truck. I love that idea.

And it could be restocked from a grocery store 20 miles away, and also farmer's markets. You would have some pasta and rice and enough to make a meal or two with the ingredients that were there, for people who can't get out.

You have to think outside the box. And it may not be super profitable, but it would be a community service that maybe grants would be available to help fund, and it would give people jobs and people would be have access to healthier food.

And people who use the truck or use the service could say, Hey, I would really like to have some sweet potatoes next week. Could you load some? You could do special orders.

That’s the kind of thing where, when people see that it’s working and that people are using that grocery truck, the business investor dude might think, Oh, look, they do eat food in Elberta.

But stuff like that, it's not huge profits. And I see this also with housing, that we need a whole new paradigm of thinking about small homes. A person, a single person, could live in a 400 square foot home if it was designed efficiently. And right now, some people where I live near Shanty Creek, they're living in hotel rooms, and a 400-square-foot home that they own would be a huge improvement.

And that’s where zoning comes in.

Zoning has to change. And, again, working with the community, having people come together and talk about what needs to be done to get ready for people moving into the area. We need to be attractive to young people. We need to have affordable housing for our service workers who can't afford a $2,000 a month mortgage or rent, or they don't qualify for that kind of credit, but they still deserve to own their own home and build up that equity. The community could come together so that instead of fighting zoning, they're saying, yes, let's permit this one square mile so that we can build smaller homes closer together.

It’s exciting right now in Elberta in particular, because we might have this new nine acres of land to work with if the Conservancy is able to acquire the waterfront property.

Yeah, I've read about that.

And we’re updating our zoning ordinance, so we have the opportunity to do community development and make some interesting decisions about housing and other issues.

And there's money out there. It really depends on who wins the presidency and congressional elections. But if it all goes well, first-time home buyers would have money for down payments, and there would be grants available to get that kind of thing done.

My point is, you have to think outside the box. That's kind of a cliché, but you have to stop thinking about old ways of doing things and think about, well, what's another way that it might work? And people with growth mindsets will get on board, and it takes a little longer to bring other people, but once they see that it works, maybe they're willing to join in.

And even just the idea of what is growth? Maybe growth doesn't have to be a ton of new 2,000-square-foot houses.

And wouldn't it be better if it was planned, rather than just one lot at a time, unplanned?

Yeah. I love it. So we were talking about similarities and differences. Generally speaking, as you cover your district, does it feel like cognitive dissonance from one end to the other?

No. I think that for the most part, they're tourist areas. They're very natural in their environment. Kalkaska may be different in some ways from Benzie for sure, because they have hundreds of acres of potato farmers. I don't think Benzie has any potatoes, but…

There's agriculture, yes, but a different kind. We have a different kind of industrial base, or at least a history of a more industrial, manufacturing, and of course maritime kind of mindset.

And different areas have different ways of thinking. I would say that Elberta and Frankfort may be more open to certain ideas than Kalkaska.

How do you feel about the Whitmer administration?

I think she's done as good a job as she possibly could. I agree with what she did with Covid. Nobody knew much about the disease, and it could have been worse had we not had a lockdown. We didn't know what we were dealing with. And maybe we'll be ready for the next pandemic. A little more ready.

So, housing, internet. What are some other issues that you would love to tackle?

Well, education in general, K–12, and early-childhood education. I was a childcare center owner. That was one of my businesses. And I also helped a couple of large employers open onsite childcare centers in Grand Rapids. My degree is in child development, plus I was an elementary teacher. Only wealthy parents can afford to pay what it really costs for good childcare. And every parent, every child, deserves to have a good early-childhood experience. When children are in a good environment and are nurtured and have a trusted caregiver, they grow up to be much healthier mentally as adults.

I think we're reaping the whirlwind of the people who had crappy early childhood experiences. I would love to see some sort of childcare initiative happen here.

Well, there's money, not quite as much as is needed, but I think about $34 million has just been put into the state budget to help childcare centers.

[Albro took a call from a campaign volunteer about a mailing they were doing.]

So [a volunteer] just sent me a link. There are 73 public officials in Michigan who have credibly participated in election denial activities. And John Roth is one of them. Thirty-one of them are Michigan State representatives. This flier is going out to 10,000 people. That's what they're working on, stamping these:

A promotional flier put out by Albro’s campaign.

Education, childcare, internet, preparing for climate refugees, housing, these are some of the issues you want to tackle. Now, when you get in there, what will you do to make it happen? Are you writing legislation?

Well, I can't wait, because as an independent, I really am not going to be controlled by a party. I have friends who are in there now, and some of them are pretty frustrated with the things they have to do as Democrats to toe the party line. And I feel like I could have a lot more freedom to say, OK, I like that part of the Republican platform; my constituents could benefit from that, but also from these other ideas. Let's put a bill together that incorporates both.

Now, John Roth, every time I hear him talk, it's like, “I can't do anything. Democrats won’t let me do anything.” So what's the point of electing him, then?

And in order to complete the picture, I need to know what constituents want and what they need. And I can maybe use economy of scale, considering the whole district, and say we need $50 million for housing, because I've already talked to every township, and I know their plans. I’m going to ask every entity to come up with a plan that involves the community. It's not just a county commission idea. You tell me what resources you need to get that plan at least started. And I'll find the money.

The Office of Rural Prosperity is a great resource, established by Whitmer. You won’t hear about it from Roth. I've listened to him at coffees and events, and I don't think he ever shares an idea with people. It's always just complaining about how he can't do anything because the Democrats don't give him enough time to read the bill. And that may be true, but then he votes no.

Somewhere along the line, it's your job to find time to read the bill.

I mean, you can at least get your staff to read it!

What challenges do you see here in Elberta?

We covered some of it. Housing is a massive problem here. I heard from Gary Sauer that there were five applicants for every opening at the new Frankfort Area Community Land Trust housing. It seems like we need more housing stock!

I am in favor of a short-term-rental tax, which is something that the legislators are talking about. I don't think it'll happen now before the election, but it would mean anyone that has short-term housing income from more than 14 nights in a year has to register with the state. And then they have to pay a 6% tax, which they'll probably pass on to the short-term renters. And then that 6% goes back to the local community to use however they want for housing assistance.

That's great. We do have a fee in Elberta, and we're pretty on top of it, but even our rule I think allows too many STRs—we have a limit of 25 short-term rental units in the village, and that's assuming people are actually following our rule.

Another big problem we have is code enforcement, and just finding good staff in general. Part of it is money.

But it's also about attracting people to the area—

Which is housing.

And childcare. So it all comes back to that same stuff.

So we’re trying to get creative. Can we give NMC students an internship? Could we ask a few of the short-term rental owners here to do longer-term, more regular market-rate rentals to a person who could come in here and work for us for six months in the off-season? That kind of stuff.

Well, you're getting creative and thinking outside the box, and I think that to have the best plan, you should probably be working within the township so that you can help each other and be more coordinated.

If the community comes together and they think through a plan—what do you want your main street to look like? What do you want for housing, childcare? I mean, when you're building housing, you can build a childcare center that's part of that housing.

I can't believe that people, if they knew what was available here, that they wouldn't want to move here. It's so beautiful.