Contact us     Home Page     

Coffee Conversation

Andrey T. Tomkiw
President, Royal Oak Chamber of Commerce

 “Part of every business’s mission should include being a good corporate citizen. Many businesses are. More should work at it. And part of City Hall’s mission should include encouraging businesses to become good corporate citizens.” 

After perhaps 15 seconds of scanning his mind, that was Andrey Tomkiw’s response to my opening invitation to “wax philosophical” as we began our conversation in the conference room of the Tomkiw Enwright law firm on Fourth Street.  Andrey, a business lawyer, started his law firm in Royal Oak almost 10 years ago and has made a name for himself, being honored as a SuperLaywer for the past 3 years in a row and most recently as a Top Lawyer by dBusiness Magazine in 2 categories: Business Law and Labor/Employment Law. 

Currently serving his second 1-year term as President of the Royal Oak Chamber of Commerce, Tomkiw has long been civically active, including 8 years on the Chamber’s Board of Directors, 3 years on the Downtown Development Authority, 9 years on the Board of the Boys and Girls Club, and chairman of various committees. His concern about the relationship between business and city hall has become public in recent months when he addressed CITCOM during Public Comment about the Chamber’s disappointment at being blind-sided by official actions taken which affect the commercial community, without offering the Chamber the opportunity to provide input. 

The most recent example is the attempt to pass a party bus ordinance which would hold drivers and owners legally responsible for the behavior of their passengers, under the threat of punishment by a $500 fine and potential incarceration. 

We warmed up by going “around The Table,” meaning that off-the-record we exchanged thoughts and opinions about the individuals on CITCOM. Obviously, part of that exercise focused on pro- or anti- business/development attitude – and the observation that some of the elected officials demonstrate that attitude differently away from The Table. 

After we had finished with the mayor and the six commissioners, Tomkiw wanted to chat about City Manager Don Johnson, about whom he said, “his financial background enables him to operate largely above the political fray when dealing with the issues and with elected officials.  I truly enjoy working with him”  

When the discussion moved from the Commission to the Administration, I had occasion to mention that scores of construction contractors whom I served during my management consulting years place Royal Oak as Number One or Number Two among cities which are the hardest to work with. That led Andrey to offer such observations as:

• Dealing with Planning, Engineering and Building departments should be an inviting collaborative process; instead it is frequently combative and frustrating.
• There are some in city hall whose attitudes serve as “impediments to development.”
• It appears some ordinances only purpose is “generate nuisance fees from those seeking to do business in Royal Oak” instead of seriously considering a millage.
•  Refusal to consider changing “the way we’ve always done it.”
• Lack of forward progress with a Task Force set up to streamline the planning, engineering and building departments.

All is not lost, though. Andrey bubbled a bit when recalling how his persistence led to angle parking on Washington, despite almost universal opposition at city hall and by the police department.  There were safety concerns and snow-plowing worries. “In the 12 months preceding angle parking, there were three accidents on Washington; in the first 12 months after angle parking, there were zero accidents.”

My notes show that Andrey made no effort to tout either the Chamber or his law firm during the conversation. Turning the page for a few minutes, I asked him about the ethnicity of "Tomkiw." 

"Ukrainian. One hundred percent Ukrainian!" Andrey enthused. When discussing his family, he proudly boasted that his wife Marta, also Ukrainian, is the Chief of Staff at TARDEC for the US Army.  Andrey conveyed a story how soon after the birth of their son, she was in Berlin at a NATO committee meeting when the U.S. invaded Iraq.  "It was a little stressful."   

That led me to mention a passage in Condoleezza Rice's recent book about the Ukraine being the fountainhead of "Slavdom," and that led to his description of Stalin's genocidal man-made famine: refusing to permit distribution of foods which rotted in their storage facilities. “12 million Ukrainians died.” 

When I mentioned that I am anti-DDA, Tomkiw quietly said, “I’m pro-DDA.”

He agreed that the agency has been diminished by CITCOM’s micromanaging and by a drift away from his preference for concentrating on bricks and mortar. “I want to build parking structures,” he cited to make his point. He acknowledges and agrees, to a degree, with those of us who are disappointed that the agency has concentrated a disproportionate amount of its budget on marketing rather than on new brick and mortar projects.  "But it is dificult to take on larger projects when the bulk of your money is diverted to non-core projects," Andrey said in their defense.  "At least the DDA made up for the Christmas light fiasco last year by hiring a quality Royal Oak contractor to make it right this year," he said, referencing the markedly enhanced light display by English Gardens. 

Tomkiw added another perspective on the whole DDA-Downtown Manager-Oakland Main Street experience. 

In outline: I have long contended that former Downtown Manager Jerry Detloff used to walk the streets daily. He visited stores, talked with owners and workers. He brought new merchants into town. When the DDA joined the Main Street program, I saw Jerry leave the streets and become essentially the secretary for the several mandated committees. 

Andrey remembers it differently. He sees Jerry working with those committees to develop “an army” of enthusiastic young people who generated new ideas, ideas which were not necessarily rejected, but were neither acknowledged nor accepted by the DDA.  “Perhaps the DDA, at that time, was unprepared to deal with the committees’ zeal and enthusiasm,“ Andrey suggested, clearly lamenting a missed opportunity to harness that energy.  Jerry left and the DDA went for two or three years without a Downtown Manager. When they did hire one, they used her as a secretary and event planner, in my mind, and there is no individual assigned the task of serving downtown merchants or attracting new ones. 

The DDA disengaged from Main Street, which had anyway acknowledged that Royal Oak was well into doing many of the things Main Street recommends. 

Planning Director Tim Thwing is the chief executive officer of the DDA. Of him, Tomkiw says, “He does a masterful job of walking the fine line in serving both masters,” having to keep in mind that the DDA and CITCOM do not always agree.  

Using DDA money to pay for the city’s needs bothers Andrey, citing paying for the court’s debt fund as an example. About the DDA’s paying for three police officers for downtown, he told me these officers too support the neighborhoods and sees the neighborhoods and the downtown mutually benefiting from each other. 

When I suggested that if the DDA were dissolved, so-called “DDA money” would revert to the city, Tomkiw disagrees: “I’ve studied the numbers. If the DDA didn’t exist, the city would get less money.”
December 2011