East Lansing voters have some pivotal decisions to make in the Nov. 7 general election.
They’ll have to choose three of eight candidates to join to join George Brookover and Dana Watson on the five-member City Council. Also up for consideration are a trio of ballot issues, including one to expand the Council to seven members.
The timing could not be more impactful. The city has faced several tumultuous circumstances in recent years that have led to a large staff exodus at City Hall. The Council’s 4-1 decision to approve new City Manager Robert Belleman’s contract last month was the latest move to draw some criticism.
Last summer, the Saginaw County Board of Commissioners fired Belleman as controller and chief administrative officer after some members criticized his job performance. He had worked there 11 years.
Noel Garcia Jr. is now running to retain the seat he was appointed to fill in January after Lisa Babcock was elected a district judge in November. The retired police lieutenant and single father voted to approve Belleman to replace longtime City Manager George Lahanas, who was fired in January. Randy Talifarro, the city’s former fire chief, served as city manager in the interim.
“I came on at the time when the Council had decided to separate from Lahanas,” Garcia said. “I’d heard some reasons why, but it wasn’t all clear. I’ve always subscribed to the philosophy that, yeah, it’s important to know what happened, but it’s more important to move forward.”
Garcia said he supported Belleman after doing his own research on the latter’s time in Saginaw County.
“It wasn’t this longstanding issue that he had,” Garcia said. “He has regional partnerships that were impressive to me and comes from a strong economic background. I chose him because I feel he was the best candidate.”
Candidate Mark Meadows, the former East Lansing mayor and state representative who resigned his Council seat in 2020 after the Council’s controversial decision to fire City Attorney Tom Yeadon, has a different opinion.
“The decision was a little unusual to say the least. To bring in someone who was terminated, allegedly because he had created a toxic work environment, to a city that just lost over 50 upper-level employees probably qualifies as the definition of a toxic workplace,” Meadows said.
Meadows said he decided to run again because “the decision-making at the city seemed to be very troubled.”
Another former Council member, Michigan State University Professor Erik Altmann, entered the race with similar motivations.
“What they can’t afford to do, in my view, is treat the decision of the current Council like it was normal, because it wasn’t. It was a deeply flawed process and a very suspect outcome. And under those conditions, you can’t just run with it and pretend that everything’s fine,” Altmann said, adding that he wants to help the city “return to the basic norms of civil conduct.”
The remaining five candidates had less to say on that matter.
“We just have to move forward. You know, right or wrong. It was up to the current Council to choose, and I stand by that decision to hire him,” first-time candidate Chris Wardell said.
Aside from the proposed addition of two seats, another ballot question asks voters to consider delaying the date when newly elected Councilmembers take up the office to comply with state law. Under the city charter, Council members are sworn in on the first Tuesday after they are elected. If the ballot proposal succeeds, they would take office on the first Tuesday after Jan. 1.
The third would implement ranked-choice voting “in the event that the Michigan Bureau of Elections certifies the process.”
Meadows and Altmann join architect Daniel Bollman and 22-year-old MSU student Joshua Ramirez-Roberts in opposing all three proposals.
Bollman, a member of the East Lansing Planning Commission since 2015, said that although strong arguments could be made either way, he thinks the city “moved too quickly” in adding them to the ballot this year.
“My preference would have been to appoint a charter service commission or a committee to actually study in depth what the impact of these different changes might be,” he said.
Kerry Ebersole Singh, Rebecca Kasen, Wardell and Garcia favor expansion because it could bring more diverse perspectives into the fold. Garcia said he opposes ranked choice.
“There’s plenty of people who can’t run because there’s too much of a time commitment and not a significant amount of money attached to it,” Kasen, executive director of the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing, said. “Those might be people who have qualities that the board could really use as an experience of a truly representative democracy.”
Ebersole Singh and Kasen were less enthusiastic about delaying the date on which new members take up office, but they also don’t want to see East Lansing fail to comply with state law. Wardell, who serves as the chief of staff for Rep. Kevin Coleman, sees both sides, but he said he understands the opposition to creating what would essentially create a new lame-duck period for outgoing Council members.
“It’s quite a chaotic process, and often personal priorities are getting shoved through at the last minute. I feel like we should get new City Council members as soon as possible,” Wardell said.
“I think a lot of it is vague or convoluted,” Ramirez-Roberts said of the swearing-in date. “I don’t think the public would very easily be able to understand what’s happened.”
On the topic of ranked-choice voting, he said he supports the idea, “but not how it’s written.”
Kasen agreed, citing disdain for trigger laws that complicate the matter in her mind. Wardell was previously on the fence, but issued his support after a discussion with a potential constituent. Ebersole Singh, wife of state Sen. Sam Singh, a former East Lansing mayor and a longtime policy activist, said she signed the petition to bring the issue to the ballot.
“I agree with it in concept, but know that it will be fought in terms of implementation because of the current state policy on the books. I don’t see it being able to be implemented,” Ebersole Singh said.
“I hope we really start thinking about how we can make East Lansing a model college town in North America, so that people point to East Lansing as a place where they’re establishing best practices and creating a community where everyone, no matter the age, wants to live, work and play,” Ebersole Singh, a 1998 MSU graduate, said.
“It’s just quietly tense,” Ramirez-Roberts said of the city’s current relationship with MSU, adding that the university “really is our economic lifeline and pretty much the whole reason East Lansing exists. To make it better, we have to go in and at least get an idea on where we stand in terms of funding.”
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