How Interim City Clerk Marie Wicks Thinks about the Charter Amendment Proposals

With East Lansing’s City Council likely to vote on July 11 whether to bring three City Charter amendments to the electorate for a vote, ELi asked Interim City Clerk Marie Wicks to share how she is thinking about the three proposals.

Wicks has worked in East Lansing government for over 17 years (as assistant city manager, clerk, elections assistant and interim city clerk) and has staffed about 25 elections. She has also recently testified at the state capital about statewide election legislation under consideration.

While Wicks plans to personally vote on any charter changes brought to the ballot, in her role as city clerk she’s working to remain politically neutral and to provide historical and professional perspectives that might help inform decision-making.

One charter amendment proposal calls for increasing the size of Council from five to seven.

Indicating he is in favor of this proposal, Mayor Ron Bacon said at the June 13 meeting that Council has found itself in a weakened state in recent years because of resignations and illnesses, with the Council sometimes struggling to meet quorum.

A five-member council requires three people for a quorum, while a seven-member council would require four.

Wicks acknowledged it has been an extraordinary few years recently.

In July 2020, two members of Council – Ruth Beier and Mark Meadows – quit during a meeting. For about two weeks in late July, Council was down to three members. Those three members – Aaron Stephens, Jessy Gregg and Lisa Babcock – appointed Bacon and Councilmember Dana Watson.

Then, in July 2021, Stephens resigned to attend graduate school. Former Councilmember Shanna Draheim was appointed to serve out the remainder of his term. In January of this year, Lisa Babcock resigned to take on a judgeship she was elected to, and Noel Garcia was appointed by Council to fill the rest of her term. This left Jessy Gregg the only person not to resign from the Council seated in November 2019.

During this tumultuous period, no meetings were said to be canceled for lack of quorum. But Bacon said the public has simply not seen how Council has struggled to reach quorum.

Wicks told ELi in a June 16 interview, “The last few years have been really tough on council members.”

But she doesn’t think this pattern of resignations and appointments is going to continue.

“I would say in my experience, this is pretty unusual.”

“I would point out,” she added, “that when we’re looking at [reaching] a quorum, we are going from three to four [people if Council shifts to a total of seven], so that’s not a hugely significant change at the end of the day.”

Two more members of Council would mean two more people representing the electorate. Is there any downside to that?

Wicks noted that two more members would mean a need for more staff support, specifically 40% more. East Lansing employees support council members with such things as agenda preparation, scheduling and IT.

Wicks also noted many people who sit on Council have experience serving on city boards and commissions and have been through the Emerging Leaders Program, the city has regularly struggled to seat enough people on boards and commissions

Another charter change proposal is about bringing East Lansing in conformance with state law.

Recent changes to Michigan election law means that certification of elections occurs later than it used to, as certification now waits until overseas and absentee ballots are counted. Recounts and legal disputes can also delay certification.

East Lansing’s charter currently states that terms of council members “shall commence on and date from the Tuesday following the regular City election at which they are elected.” This can be sooner than state law allows. So, Wicks refers to this charter amendment as “housekeeping.”

The current proposal on the table calls for the swearing-in to occur in early January, leading to a two-month lame duck period.

We asked Wicks if she sees anything wrong with just changing the charter’s swearing-in date to read “first Tuesday after certification.”

“I don’t think so,” Wicks said. “The objective is to be compliant….And clearly Council was concerned about lame duck.”

The most controversial proposal, based on public comment, is the amendment that would shift the dates of Council elections from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years.

Wicks said there is no question that far more people – particularly MSU students – vote in even-numbered years. That’s because they are drawn to the polls by big national elections.

Wicks expressed excitement at seeing larger numbers of people exercising their right to vote. She also said she can imagine that voting in Council elections might make students more interested in East Lansing, potentially increasing their interest in staying after graduation.

“Having a voice in your community is very, very important,” she said. “Having a voice at the table and a seat at the table might convince you to stay in East Lansing after you graduate, fighting the brain drain….People don’t think of voting as a placemaking tool, but I see it as one.”

Like Mayor Pro Tem Jessy Gregg, Wicks objects to the claim that students don’t pay taxes so they shouldn’t decide who is on Council.

“Students definitely pay taxes here,” she said. “They’re paying through their landlords, and I agree with what [Gregg] said, you don’t have to pay to vote. We know that people experiencing homelessness have the right to vote.”

But, she added, “I do think it is interesting to look at what this would mean and how are [students] going to vote. I know, for example, when I voted when I was younger and I didn’t really know the candidates…I would tend to vote for a minority and women. If I didn’t know who else to vote for, that was my failsafe.”

Wicks said she has personally pushed hard to get students to exercise their right to vote. But she does understand the concern about having thousands of people – not only students – voting uninformed in the Council election if that election becomes, in effect, an afterthought for most voters.

“I think you get a higher level [of informed voting] with a standalone election,” she said.

That said, she also thinks, now that absentee voting has been made much easier, many more students may stick with voting from their family home addresses, which would mean, in most cases, they’re not voting in East Lansing City Council elections.

It’s difficult to know how this will play out.

“There’s a lot of moving parts,” Wicks said, “and I’m trying to look at both sides of this.”

In our interview, she seconded a concern raised by Councilmember George Brookover that having Council elections in the same cycle as big races means Council candidacies will be ignored or lost in the shuffle.

“When we were on campus for the month prior to the 2021 Council election, people didn’t even know there was an election going on,” she said. “So I guess part of  my concern is that if they didn’t know, during an odd year, when this is the only election in town and it’s being talked about, how aware are you going to be during an even year?”

There is recent data that shows the lack of interest among on-campus students in recent city council elections.

In the last Council election (2021), a total of 4,704 voters participated. Of those, a total of 37 people voted at the campus precincts.

Here’s a chart showing total number of voters participating in the 2021 and 2022 elections in East Lansing by precinct:

In 2022, there were three times as many voters as in 2021.

In off-campus precincts, 6,881 more people voted in 2022 compared to 2021. That represented an increase of about two times in the number of people voting off-campus.

In on-campus precincts, 2,504 more people voted in 2022 than 2021. That represented an increase of about 68 times in the number of people voting on-campus.

For the 2021 election, the City Clerk’s office maintained a polling place at Brody Hall. In a month, a total of 13 people voted there, so it’s not just a question of providing clerk’s office staff on campus.

“I am concerned about the level of engagement with voting,” she said. “I think that if we want to stay with odd years, we definitely need to look at how we engage with students and do a better job.”

Speaking of students who were elected to Council – Sam Singh and Aaron Stephens – Wicks raised the concern that student campaigns would simply go unnoticed in big-year elections, potentially making it harder for students and recent graduates to get elected.

“It’s also very costly to run,” she said. “Is that student really able to compete with all that mail [in an even year]? Is anyone really able to compete?”

“Again,” she said, “I can go either way on this….Not having enough students voting in November in odd-numbered years, and having people turn out that may not necessarily be up on the issues. I think that’s a fair thing to say. It’s a long ballot [in even-numbered years], and City Council [would be] the last thing on the ballot.”

Want to weigh in to Council before the vote on July 11 about whether to put these amendments on the ballot? You can speak at public comment at Council’s June 20 or July 11 meeting, and you can write to Council at council@cityofeastlansing.com. You can also do both. In ELi’s experience, oral comment seems to weigh  more heavily in Council’s deliberations.

Kepler Domurat-Sousa contributed reporting.