Candidate list is finalized

By Charles Sercombe
Hamtramck’s city council election is all set to go forward.
Last Friday was the last day for any candidate who had second thoughts about the election to drop out of the race.
As it turned out, no one quit the election, although one candidate, Armani Asad, was disqualified earlier last week because he had not paid a $30 late fee for a previous campaign financial report.
Let that be a lesson to would-be candidates: You have to follow the rules.
Six challengers will now be going up against incumbents Mohammed Alsomiri, Nayeem Choudhury and Mohammed Hassan.
The three councilmembers will be facing: Lynn Blasey, Muhtasin Sadman, Nasr Hussain, Ruhel Amin, Sari Ahmed, and Yousef Saed.
Blasey is the only female candidate running for a seat on council, which is currently all male. The mayor is also male.
She previously had run for council, but came in last place.
Hussain has been a frequent critic of city officials, and is a former member of the Hamtramck Public School District Board of Education. He resigned from that post in mid-term.
The candidates will initially face-off in the Aug. 2 Primary Election. At that election, the field of candidates will be whittled down to six, who then advance to the November General Election.
At this point, it’s not clear if there will be other items on the primary ballot. In the November election, Hamtramck voters will also be asked to approve three changes to the city charter:
Councilmembers are seeking a pay raise from $3,249 a year to $9,749.
The mayor pro tem’s increase would go from $4,874 to $11,374 a year. Councilmember Hassan is the current mayor pro tem, whose duty is to chair council meetings when the mayor is absent, as well as fill in for the mayor as needed.
And for the mayor, the current salary of $6,499 a year would go up to $12,998.
The total salary increase for the council and mayor would be $45,500 for the year.
The yearly salaries are based on a percentage of the Michigan governor’s salary. For council, it’s currently 2 percent, for the mayor pro tem it’s 3 percent, and for the mayor it’s 4 percent.
The amendment, if approved, would change that to 6, 7, and 8 percent respectively.
Another potential change in the charter would remove the restriction of making councilmembers and the mayor wait at least two years before being eligible to be appointed as city manager here.
And the third would-be charter change would strike down the requirement for a councilmember who wants to run for mayor to first have to resign from council no later than 60 days prior to the filing deadline to run for mayor.
The same would apply to a mayor who wants to run for council while still in office.
In both instances, no resignation is needed if they are in the last year of their term.
Posted May 5, 2023

One Response to Candidate list is finalized

  1. Shari Bloomquist

    May 6, 2023 at 3:28 pm

    Lynn Blasey has a campaign page on Facebook:

    http://www.facebook.com/LynnBlaseyforHamtramck/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *