It’s time for Schor’s fourth State of the City address. How did 2020 pan out for him?

Lansing Mayor Andy Schor delivers his fourth annual State of the City address today (Feb. 3). Officials said only a very small, socially distanced crowd will be allowed to watch the event live from the city’s South Washington Street office complex.

Two challengers have already surfaced as Schor faces the end of his first term. And depending on how things pan out in November, this could mark his final State of the City speech.

But before the mayor can take the virtual stage, let’s look back at 2020. Last year’s remarks were delivered about one month before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Michigan. It also included several major announcements. Here’s an overview of how those have panned out:

The city hired an environmental sustainability manager. We haven’t heard much since.

Last year, Schor emphasized that “something” still needed to be done to address climate change in Lansing and hoped a full-time sustainability manager would help figure it out.

In April, Lori Welch, an environmental specialist for Capital Area Recycling and Trash, was promoted to the new position to review, revise and implement the city’s sustainability plans — like a grant-funded study commissioned in 2016 to help create an energy management plan. The position pays $78,000 a year.

In July, Schor asked local residents to cut back on needlessly using water as part of a competition between other cities that offered participants a chance to win a new Toyota.

In  October, the city rolled out a 27-page “Action Plan” on climate change and Schor announced the Mayor’s Advisory Commission on Sustainability to build on Welch’s planning efforts. It doesn’t appear that Schor ever appointed anyone to the commission. It may have never met.

The plan itself included broad goals to reduce the city’s carbon footprint through obvious things like increased energy efficiency, reduced waste and plans to “look at other areas” to save costs. Specific operational changes were scarce. Schor is relatively skilled at planning to make plans.

And like many other city issues, any real adjustments relied on recommendations and input from yet another mayoral advisory board. The plans also included an executive order in which Lansing joined a “Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy” — an “alliance of more than 10,000 cities” that will reportedly help hold city officials accountable to environmental goals.

Part of Welch’s role is tracking data to better understand how the city can adjust its operations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Much of that initial work is about assessing benchmarks and setting goals. Additional details will be provided as they become available, officials said.

The only mention of the word “climate” in Schor’s annual report in 2020 referenced the “heightened political climate and racial tensions” that kept Lansing in the headlines last year.

A flashy new program — BOLD Lansing — was announced.

At last year’s address, Schor announced the creation of BOLD Lansing. It was billed as a “breakthrough concept” that brings together city programs and local partners to provide step-by-step financial education and planning for high school students and their families.

The program essentially amounted to a website that aggregated resources for residents, like Lansing SAVE — a partnership with MSUFCU that helps open savings accounts for kids and links to free financial counseling through the Cristo Rey Community Center. Schor’s office reports that 19 students attended 29 sessions. Seven of those participants earned $90.

In September, the city also announced that 300 local high school graduates had been awarded scholarships through the Lansing Promise program “in concert” with BOLD Lansing. Like sustainability efforts, the BOLD Lansing program wasn’t mentioned in Schor’s annual report.

More public artwork arrived in Lansing.

Last year, Schor said that artwork — and especially public artwork — had been a “significant focus” of his administration. The pandemic and a tense election might have shifted focus and local priorities, but the artistic culture in Greater Lansing certainly hasn’t been lost in the fray.

Schor’s wife, Erin Schor, has served as chairwoman of the Mayor’s Arts and Culture Commission, which has been busy since 2018 awarding Arts Impact grants and breathing new life into otherwise mundane concrete spaces throughout the city. That included 19 ARTpath installations over the last year, which stretched over three miles of the Lansing River Trail.

Among them: A portrait of George Floyd by Isiah Lattimore that was later damaged by graffiti.

The Durant Park Tree Project was approved and initially set to proceed over the summer, but has since been postponed until 2021. The commission also worked with the Lansing Economic Area Partnership for a permanent art installation at Reutter Park that hasn’t yet materialized.

Other projects included a stunning scale projection mapping that was displayed downtown during an abbreviated Capitol City Film Festival. Schor also announced the winner of the 2020 Arts Impact grant for a ceramic tile project that will cover parts of the Shiawassee Street bridge.

A $75,000 grant also helped fund a Southwest Lansing Arts Impact Project at the corner of Pleasant Grove and Holmes roads, livening up the parking lot of a southside liquor store.

Officials said an art project will be installed at Reutter Park in the spring.

The pandemic delayed improvements to a local neighborhood.

Schor named a new “Neighborhood of Focus” in 2020 following improvements made in the Baker-Donora Neighborhood and southwest Lansing. In 2021, properties near Willow and Walnut streets in the Comstock Park neighborhood were named the next target for the city.

That goal, like in the Baker-Donora Neighborhood, was to reduce crime in the area while focusing on both aesthetic and functional improvements like parks and bus shelters, and partnerships with entities like Habitat for Humanity to help rehabilitate neighborhood homes.

Officials said that work was paused during the pandemic and will resume this spring.

A mental health task force was

supposed to help Lansing’s most

vulnerable residents.

Schor created a “mental health taskforce” last year that was set to help address a growing mental health “crisis” in the city with new solutions — like creating an inventory of local organizations, making recommendations on how to streamline services and forming a “communications matrix” so that city officials can better understand mental health treatment.

That task force formed in partnership with Michigan State University shortly after Schor’s speech. That local listing is available online and includes dozens of local nonprofit organizations from across Greater Lansing, but that group doesn’t appear to have done much else in 2020.

Members of the task force said last year wasn’t the most productive. When asked this week, a spokeswoman for Schor’s office also didn’t provide details about that group’s accomplishments.

Lansing didn’t forget about its older residents.

Last year, Schor appointed City Councilwoman Carol Wood to lead a new “Age-Friendly Community Steering Committee” to help develop a more walkable city for senior citizens. The city also joined AARP’s Age-Friendly Communities network to assist with accessibility.

That committee also never met due to AARP’s offices’ being closed during the pandemic, a spokeswoman explained this week. Still, some benchmarks in a report submitted to the committee have been met regardless — including retrofitted CATA bus stops and River Trail connectors. The city also installed a “Fit Lot,” an outdoor fitness park along the River Trail.

Wood said the task force redirected its attention to more urgent needs of seniors after the pandemic arrived. The group plans to meet virtually for the first time this month, she said.

“Our main concern was making sure people were receiving essential services, more so than making sure that parks had senior-friendly amenities,” Wood said, noting the group will still explore issues likes transportation, housing and food security for seniors.

COVID-19 obviously derailed

progress.

Schor closed all city buildings to the public in March and sent a large portion of the city’s workforce home due to the coronavirus pandemic. It can be difficult for anyone to live up to their goals from February, especially with how quickly cases spread afterwards in Greater Lansing.

While many worked from home, police officers, paramedics and firefighters still responded to tens of thousands of calls. Public Service staff finished 14 miles of road repairs, more than 1,200 tree trimmings and cleaned out more than 66 miles of storm and sanitary sewer pipes.

Trail work was completed through millage funds. Parks staff partnered with the Lansing School District to host online learning labs. Lansing saw the opening of a long-awaited grocery store downtown. An attached hotel is poised to open later this year. Construction is also moving along at the former Red Cedar Golf Course and at McLaren Greater Lansing’s new eastside campus.

Schor said the community — and his staff — have kept up in the face of an “invisible adversary.”

“This will be a tough year both, budgetarily and mentally,” Schor said in his latest annual report. “As the distribution of vaccinations continues, I hope we are able to move closer to a time where we can be back in each other’s company enjoying all the great things our city has to offer.”