By Meg Peters
Review Staff Writer
Orion Township resident and previous township trustee Eric Wilson will serve as the Vice Chairman on the Road Commission for Oakland County three-member board for 2015.
Each January the board elects the Chairman and Vice Chairman to serve for the year, and Wilson, along with Board Chairman Ron Fowkes of the Village of Milford, will do just that. Former Chairman Greg Jamian was also elected at the first RCOC board meeting of 2015 on January 8, and will serve on the three-member board too.
The Chairman and Vice Chairman have traditionally rotated every two years among board members to give each member an opportunity to serve that capacity.
Wilson was first appointed to the RCOC in 2007 and was reappointed in 2013. He is an attorney in private practice and also a former member of the Oakland County Board of Commissioners.
As Vice Chair, he will be expected to fill the shoes of the Chairman in Fowkes? absence, help establish the policy for the RCOC to be used in regards to the budget and purchases, and to represent the local area.
‘We are out there lobbying trying to obtain more funding for our roads in Oakland County,? Wilson said. ‘We’ve been behind the 8-ball here several years in regards to roads, and I support any type of opportunity to increase road funding to get these roads in the shape that we need them to be.?
Wilson said Oakland County would definitely see improvements to road surfaces if voters pass a legislative package on the May ballot for an additional one percent sales tax increase from six to seven percent. The one percent sales tax hike would garner an additional $1.2 billion a year slated for road improvements.
‘We need that increase,? Wilson said.
Wilson, who has lived in Orion Township for the past 37 years, has paid his local dues. He sat on the Orion Township Zoning Board of Appeals on and off between the years of 1987 to 2003, and served as an Orion Township trustee from 1994 to 2003.
‘If the millage passes in May we would have more funding for additional black-top resurfacing. A perfect spot is on Josyln between Heights and Clarkston,? he said. ‘Our funding would increase over three years, increasing the extent of repairs not only in Orion but all over the county.?
One of the road projects Wilson had been pushing for was the widening of Baldwin Rd., which the RCOC announced would begin in 2017 from two to four lanes.
That project alone had been sitting on the Oakland County Federal Aid Committee docket since 2013. The OC Federal Aid Committee allocates funding for local roads.
‘It hasn’t been easy, but that’s what we do. My heart is in Orion Township and we try to help as best as we can, but at the same token we have to help the entire county,? Wilson said.
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