{"id":1768,"date":"2018-08-04T23:00:36","date_gmt":"2018-08-04T20:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/?p=1768"},"modified":"2018-08-04T23:00:36","modified_gmt":"2018-08-04T20:00:36","slug":"navy-veteran-brian-stone-wants-to-bring-energy-to-wayne-county-commission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/navy-veteran-brian-stone-wants-to-bring-energy-to-wayne-county-commission\/","title":{"rendered":"Navy veteran Brian Stone wants to bring energy to Wayne County Commission"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dearborn –\u00a0The Yemeni American News<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Wayne County commissioner candidate Brian Stone promised to bring energy to the commission and push for it to be more active on important issues, namely infrastructure and the jail project.Stone, a 31-year-old Navy veteran seeking to represent Dearborn and Allan Park as a county commissioner, said he is looking to bring a fresh way of thinking to Wayne County.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t have anybody on the commission who\u2019s under the age of 50, so we really don\u2019t have any new ideas or representation for young people. That\u2019s something where I know I can make a big difference,\u201d he told the Yemeni American News in an interview.
\nStone is aiming for the seat of long-time incumbent Gary Woronchak who is running for the State Senate.
\nHe shared his experiences when he served in the Navy and was impressed by the infrastructure and economic development of some countries in east Asia.
\n\u201cWe were in the middle of the recession, so I had family members who are unemployed while I\u2019m seeing where I was serving these countries were booming. And it really impressed upon me the need for us to change our policy,\u201d Stone told YAN.
\nThe Navy veteran criticised the commission for the way it handled the failed jail project, which was halted in 2013 after going $91 million over its $300-million budget while it wasn\u2019t even halfway finished.
\nAlthough the shortcomings of the project were mostly blamed on the administration of then-county executive Bob Ficano, Stone said the commission should have played a greater role in the process.
\n\u201cWe need a lot more energy on the commission,\u201d Stone told YAN.
\n\u201cI think that the commission hasn\u2019t been as active as it could be on so many different issues. I think the best example is probably the jail project. You had almost a half billion dollars of your own money wasted over something that was visible… We knew that this project wasn\u2019t finishing or being finished on time and that wasn\u2019t even addressed as an issue really until it became a major public issue.\u201d
\nStone started his interests in politics and advocacy when he worked to get public universities to stop charging Michigan veterans out-of-state tuition after returning from service.
\n\u201cThey say that all politics starts out as personal and it was very personal [for me],\u201d Stone, a University of Michigan-Dearborn graduate, said.
\n\u201cI was going to have to pay an extra $15,000 a year just because I had served my country when I had grown up in Dearborn, went to Dearborn High, my parents had paid taxes in Michigan their whole lives.\u201d
\nWhen he found out that veterans are being marked as out-of-state by default, he started mobilizing around the issue.
\nHe said the campaign and the media buzz it generated convinced the universities to reverse course on the policy. \u201cAnd that\u2019s saving to this day veterans about 9 million dollars a year, just in Michigan.\u201d
\nStone ran unsuccessfully for Dearborn\u2019s State House seat in 2016, but he says his previous campaign was a \u201cmeaningful\u201d experience.
\n\u201cI actually think having lost my first race better prepares me for this than anything else,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cOne of the things that I\u2019ve heard from a lot of politicians and that I really believe is true is that it\u2019s actually important for a politician to lose the first time. And there\u2019s a really simple reason for this and it\u2019s because if you start out winning you\u2019re not as compassionate towards those who lose. It really forces you to humble yourself.\u201d
\nThe Navy veteran called for bridging racial and religious divides in Dearborn and slammed the phenomenon of ethnic voting, where voters pick candidates based on their name not merits.
\nStone said some white residents sometimes refrain from voting for qualified Arab American candidates, while some Arab American voters only choose Arab American candidates.
\n\u201cOne of the things that we really struggle with in Dearborn politics in particular is that on both sides of town there\u2019s a lot of racial voting that occurs,\u201d Stone said.
\nStone explained that the pattern breeds complacency in politicians who may not be held accountable by their constituents.
\n\u201cWhen every vote isn\u2019t up for grabs it actually disempowers the community that engaged in that kind of politics,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cThis is something that cuts across all sides in Dearborn and whether people realize it or not when their vote is not up for grabs when they\u2019re not up for contest when they default to the person of the same race as them, they\u2019re giving politicians a pass.\u201d
\nStone said he started witnessing a separations between the city\u2019s ethnic communities after 9\/11 that he found \u201cfrightening\u201d, adding that he has always believed that people must face shared challenges together.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dearborn –\u00a0The Yemeni American News Wayne County commissioner candidate Brian Stone promised to bring energy to the commission and push for it to be more active on important issues, namely infrastructure and the jail project.Stone, a 31-year-old Navy veteran seeking to represent Dearborn and Allan Park as a county commissioner, said he is looking to […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1770,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768\/revisions\/1770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}