Traverse City Record-Eagle

Election 2009

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October 18, 2009

Bzdok: Public input is key

He's running unopposed for mayor's office

BY Sheri McWhirter

Editor's Note

This story is fifth and final in a series of profiles of Traverse City Commission candidates.

Read the entire series in our election section at record-eagle.com/election »

TRAVERSE CITY -- Chris Bzdok is looking for a leadership role.

Voters first elected Bzdok, 38, to a partial term on the Traverse City Commission in 2007, following his appointment earlier that year to a vacancy created when former Commissioner Rick Csapo resigned. Now he's running unopposed to become the city's mayor for two years, after serving this year as mayor pro tem.

"When you live here and start getting involved in public service, you get invested in the improvement of your community," Bzdok said. "What is valuable and rewarding is when we produce outcomes that are good for the community. I want to spend two years getting more outcomes."

Bzdok, an environmental and municipal attorney, plans to start by generating more public input. He created a Web site -- www.planfortc.com -- where city residents can submit ideas about what the community needs and how best to achieve it.

"If you want to do anything other than kick the can further down the road, you have to have the support of the people. Our job is to do what people want," Bzdok said. "I'm trying to create a vehicle for a dialogue with as many people as possible."

Bzdok already has some ideas.

The city hiked infrastructure spending this year to $1.2 million, but Bzdok wants to increase it to around $2 million per year. He's a proponent of improved streets, sidewalks, bike lanes and traffic-calming measures in neighborhoods, where residents have long complained about cut-through traffic that moves too fast, Bzdok said.

Bzdok also wants to see the city's bayfront improved with safe crossings at Grandview Parkway, public restrooms and other possible improvements like an ice-skating rink.

"We're a destination community, not a drive-through community. I would like to see the waterfront with amenities people can use," he said.

Bzdok is floating the idea of using up to $3 million from the city's Brown Bridge Trust Fund -- about two years in oil well royalties -- to pay for bayfront improvements. City voters would have to go to the polls to approve that.

Bzdok moved to Traverse City in 1998 and this year married Colleen Masterson-Bzdok.

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