Council Hears From Public on Wide Array of City Topics (UPDATED)

Note: This article has been updated with a report on what happened with the “Parcel C” discussion.

East Lansing’s City Council meeting this week saw an unusually heavy level of public comment, including advice to the Council from two mayors on three proposed City Charter amendments. ELi will be bringing a separate report on the discussion of those proposals.

Here, we give you a rundown of what else happened at this week’s meeting.

Jeffrey Friedle of the Ivanhoe/Red Cedar Neighborhood (near where Trowbridge Road meets Route 127) came to tell Council he had attended a Michigan State University webinar on the subject of the new recreation center being built to replace IM West. The new gym is being constructed on university land off Harrison Road just south of Shaw Lane, where the Cherry Lane Apartments once stood.

Friedle said MSU plans to route all construction traffic for that project along Trowbridge and Harrison Roads and the project will extend through 2026. This is going to make life harder for residents of that area. 

Friedle noted he had previously talked to Council about the problem of bad road design and traffic along Trowbridge Road in relation to the planned opening of a Starbucks drive thru there. The situation is only going to get tougher as MDOT is planning to rebuild the Trowbridge ramps to and from the highways.

Parker Knepp came forward to say he is an MSU alumni who works in the music industry and he is unhappy that East Lansing has no good venues for live music. 

“There’s a big difference between a bar and a venue,” Knepp told Council, saying he also wishes East Lansing’s downtown featured movie theaters and large arcade facilities like High Caliber Karting. He said Ann Arbor, Madison (Wisconsin) and Athens (Georgia) are far superior, with comedy clubs, music festivals and the like. He said he wants to lead East Lansing’s music scene.

Mayor Ron Bacon responded to Knepp’s comments by saying changing Council elections from odd years to even years – one of the Charter amendments under consideration – would get more young people involved in shaping East Lansing’s government. He suggested that in turn will change East Lansing in ways that will retain more young people after graduation. 

“It’s come up so many times, they’re telling us kinda what they need,” Bacon said. “But we absolutely refuse to even look at or have conversations around what it means to be a Big 10 city, what it means going into the future and what that’s going to look like.” 

Bacon said the city needs to ask “the people who consume our product every day who we are,” and “the students are as big a consumer of East Lansing as any resident that lives here.”

“The students are our greatest asset,” Bacon said in his comments. “The students differentiate us from other cities and there’s work to be done on that relationship….They have the ideas that are going to take us into the future. They know what’s next, what’s cool, what’s going to create economic development.” 

Council voted unanimously to dedicate up to $1.275 million to employee retention bonuses.

East Lansing has been allocated $12.2 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds and City Manager Randy Talifarro recommended Council take about 10% of that to provide retention pay bonuses to workers in an attempt to slow the flow of employees out the door.

East Lansing’s city government has been suffering from an extraordinary wave of resignations, from directors of departments on down the line. Talifarro said there are other efforts, besides this plan, to improve retention, although he did not go into detail at this week’s meeting.

The policy passed Tuesday breaks 2023 into two even halves and will provide bonuses to workers who are employed at the city from Jan. 1–June 30 and July 1–Dec. 31.

Full-time non-contingent employees will receive $1,800 per six-month period. Regular part-time employees will receive $900 per six-month period. Regular contingent employees who work at least 40 hours per month will receive $450 for each six-month period.

The payments will be given in July 2023 and January 2024 and will not be used for retirement benefit calculations.

Councilmember Dana Watson asked if Talifarro had received feedback from employees on this plan. He answered it had been met with “optimism” and that employees had signaled they wanted to see it approved by Council.

Watson also asked if there might be a way to measure whether the bonuses have made a difference in retention. Talifarro answered that there are so many variables, it would be difficult to measure the effect of this one intervention. But, he said, his staff could ask.

Talifarro also said the city is undertaking a “wage and job study” to understand if its compensation packages are in line with what employees can obtain elsewhere. ELi previously reported that Talifarro believes it’s time to grow the city’s workforce even beyond the large number of vacancies.

Property owners assessed for sidewalks will have three years to pay.

The cost of sidewalk assessments have risen dramatically with the cost of concrete and labor increasing and, following concerns from Council members (especially Watson), city staff have developed a new plan to stretch out the assessment bills to three years.

Acting Director of Public Works Ron Lacasse explained the new plan, developed by his team and the City Finance Department. Property owners will now be billed in three equal installments over a three-year period. If they don’t pay the bills, the charges will be transferred to their property tax bills.

The established timeline “provides the property owner with 14 months to pay from the due date of the original invoice before it is placed on their taxes and 16 months to pay before any penalty is assessed,” according to the staff memo on the subject.

Talifarro noted that property owners always have the right to hire their own contractors to fix sidewalks identified by the city as required to be repaired. Mayor Pro Tem Jessy Gregg asked how common that is.

“Generally, only people that know contractors or have them in the family typically are [doing their own], because our scale is so much larger, they can’t compete with our numbers,” Lacasse said.  “So typically I would say…a very, very small number.”

A committee will be convened to consider naming the Hannah Community Art Studio after Kelly Arndt.

Talifarro apologized for not moving sooner on this naming request sent in by the Seniors’ Commission. He said he thought the city’s policies required that honorary namings of parks and other facilities only be done in the names of persons who are deceased. 

In 2013, East Lansing’s City Council suspended that rule in order to name the city’s soccer stadium after Nick Archer, long-time coach of East Lansing High School’s boys soccer team.

It is rare in East Lansing to see a facility named after a woman like Arndt. In 2017, ELi reported that every park, school and community center in East Lansing named after a person is named after a man. That hasn’t changed.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Council signaled support for naming the art studio after Arndt, the long-time director of East Lansing’s senior programming. 

To get to that decision, Councilmember George Brookover noted, Council needs first to appoint a committee to make a recommendation.

At the meeting, Talifarro also reminded the community that there will be a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday (June 15) at 2 p.m. to officially open the new Patriarche Park pickleball courts.

Council discussed but made no decisions on what to do about “Parcel C.”

“Parcel C” is the name given to an empty lot at 341 Evergreen Ave. that might become home to a low-income rental apartment building or might become an extension of parkland in Valley Court.

For background, check out this report. This week, Council was discussing whether to stick with a prior deal or move to a new deal.

If Council approves shifting the project from Convexity, developers located in Chicago, to PK Companies, PK intends to submit for state-level financial assistance from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA).

The normal MSHDA fall deadline comes in October. But Jacob Horner, Vice President of Development for PK Companies, told ELi after the meeting that MSHDA may move that deadline to December. That would allow for time to consider changing the building’s design before going to MSDHA. Any revised site plan would have to go through the usual review and approval process.

Councilmember Noel Garcia noted in Tuesday’s discussion that the current site plan calls for five levels of residential housing and one level of parking at the base. He asked if that would be sufficient.

Planning Director Tim Dempsey answered that the current plan includes 99 apartments and 34 parking spaces. He said that the “remainder of the parking” would have to use the city’s parking system.

In response, Bacon asked whether there is going to be a parking study to examine the lack of parking west of Abbot Road. Dempsey said he’s working with staff and a consultant on a master parking plan, and more information would be forthcoming.

Watson asked if the developers are planning to use the existing site plan. Horner answered that that’s the expectation, but if they aren’t competitive at MSHDA with that plan, they may seek to have a new site plan approved to get the project done.

Horner explained making the proposal competitive could mean making it bigger, but it just as well could mean making it smaller. The six-story design that was approved requires steel construction. Taking the building down to five stories would allow for less expensive wood construction.

During discussion, Brookover pointed out that, under the deal being proposed, if PK can’t get the project approved, the Council would need to pay $1.5 million to acquire the land, whereas under the existing deal, if the current developers (Convexity) don’t get the project done soon, the land will be given over to the city to be used as parkland, free of charge.

Brookover said he wanted the taxpayers of the city to understand the deal because Council has to do a cost-benefit analysis. He appeared irritated that “it is what it is after all these years” of waiting for Convexity to build the affordable housing.

Bacon answered Brookover by saying Council had to deal with the dilemma it had been dealt, adding, “I think leverage was lost a long time ago.”

If the project is to go forward with PK, Council will need to agree to a Pilot in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT). This means that, rather than paying conventional property taxes on the building, Council will agree that the city will accept the equivalent of 4% of the building’s actual rents (less any utility charges included in rents).

The PILOT would help the project be fiscally feasible. Council appeared comfortable with the idea of approving a PILOT if they agree to shift the project from Convexity to PK.

The expectation is that the proposal will come back to Council next week, June 20, possibly for a decision.

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Note: This article was updated on June 15 with the information about “Building C.” This article was amended on June 16 to correct Jacob Horner’s title. We had misidentified him as PK’s attorney.