The Road Commission for Oakland County (RCOC) Board of Road Commissioners, at its regular meeting Thursday, Jan. 5, re-elected Andrea LaLonde as Board chair and Nancy Quarles as vice chair for additional one-year terms for 2023.
“I am honored to continue to serve the residents of Oakland County in this capacity,” LaLonde stated. “I am proud of all the work the Road Commission accomplished in the last year, and I look forward to continuing that forward progress in 2023.” LaLonde was first elected RCOC chair in 2021.
Quarles, in her third year on the Board, also expressed her desire to continue to work to improve the county’s roads. “This past year, this agency made great progress in improving the roads in Oakland County,” she stated. “We are absolutely committed to keeping that momentum going for the coming year.”
The RCOC Board consists of three members, with road commissioners appointed for staggered six-year terms by the Oakland County Board of Commissioners. The Oakland County Board of Commissioners is expected to appoint a new road commissioner in the near future.
RCOC is a separate unit of government and is not funded by the County Board. Rather, RCOC receives the bulk of its funding from the state in the form of fuel-tax and vehicle-registration-fee revenues.
Chair LaLonde is a resident of Clawson. She is an employee of Pangea in Rochester Hills, where she is executive coordination manager, and is a graduate of Kalamazoo College. She joined the RCOC Board in January 2019.
In what may be a first in Michigan, Chair LaLonde is not the only member of her family to chair a Michigan county road commission. Her father, Timothy LaLonde, serves on the St. Clair County Road Commission and is currently that board’s chair.
Quarles has a PhD in public administration and public affairs from Western Michigan University. She served in the Michigan House of Representatives from 1996 to 2002 and on the Oakland County Board of Commissioners from 1995 to 1996 and again from 2011 to 2020. She is a resident of Novi and a faculty member at Central Michigan University.
At its meeting today, the RCOC Board also reappointed Vice Chair Quarles to serve as the RCOC representative to the Oakland County Parks Commission.
RCOC maintains the largest county road system in the state, with more than 2,700 miles of roads. It is a national leader in both road safety and the application of advanced technology to road and traffic management. For more information about RCOC, visit the RCOC website at www.rcocweb.org.
Editor’s Note: Photos of Chair LaLonde and Vice Chair Quarles are attached.
