Troy City Council meeting gets heated over mayor's driveway controversy

TROY, Mich. – The controversy goes back to Troy's former city manager, who is now in prison.

Brian Kischnick admitted to taking cash while on the job and accepting a free driveway from the city's main paving contractor.

The mayor addressed the concerns about his own driveway at a City Council meeting Monday evening.

"Congrats for driving a wedge between the City Council personal attacks on volunteer job that's supposed to be nonpartisan, unbelievable," Council Member Ed Pennington said.

Pennington was the first to throw words aimed at the newest council member, David Hamilton. At the last meeting Hamilton publicly raised questions about Mayor Dane Slater's involvement with a paving contractor. The reaction left Hamilton, he said, feeling threatened by the mayor and councilman Dave Henderson.

"I had council members get angry with me, grab me by the shoulders and the last meeting and tell me to go blank myself and have the mayor call me chicken blank and both of them just furious," Hamilton said.

The mayor believes Hamilton publicly tried linking him to Troy's old city manager, Kischnick. 

Kischnick is serving time in federal prison for taking bribes from a local contractor. He also had a private company pave his driveway. It was revealed the mayor had his driveway paved by the same company, a company who failed to get a city permit for the work and was up for contract renewal with the city.

"It's never been a secret it's just the way the question was asked on camera grandstanding," Slater said. 

He insists he paid for his driveway to be repaved.

Some on City Council support the mayor and his strong stance. Others believe in the light of the Kischnick scandal the question was and is valid.


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Kayla is a Web Producer for ClickOnDetroit. Before she joined the team in 2018 she worked at WILX in Lansing as a digital producer.