Know the Candidates: Patrick Lindemann is Challenged by Brian Bruce Beauchine in County Drain Commissioner Race
In the lead up to the election, ELi will bring you articles highlighting the choices for state- and county-wide election. We seek to interview each of the major candidates for these offices and share an objective look at their backgrounds and goals for office.
Today, we focus on the Ingham County Drain Commissioner. The office directs the construction, maintenance and improvement of public storm drains, while also administering drainage districts and monitoring lake level control, soil erosion and sedimentation control. The Ingham County Drain Commissioner also acts as the county’s director of public works.
Patrick Lindemann
Patrick Lindemann has spent his entire life in Ingham County, living in Lansing and formerly serving on the city council in the 1970s and ‘80s. He has owned 13 businesses through the years, including a meat market and delicatessen.
He was first elected as the Ingham County drain commissioner in 1992, making him the longest serving elected official in county government. If you ask him about his job, you should be prepared to be quiet and listen closely for the next several minutes.
Lindemann said he minored in cultural anthropology in college and learned there are four things needed for a culture: a place to put stormwater, a place to flush your toilet, a consistent source of drinking water and a transportation system.
“All of those things make the legs of the table that hold up a civilization; without one of them, you’re pretty much sunk,” he said. “Forget the playgrounds, libraries, schools, police department, fire department, all that stuff goes away if you don’t have one of those four things.
“Infrastructure is the basis of who we are and I build infrastructure. I built ecosystems.”
When asked about the biggest change he’s seen over his three decades as commissioner, he said the very ethos changed when he won that first election. In 1993, the office responded to problems, he said, spending millions of dollars to correct problems.
Now, Lindemann and his staff aim to be proactive, addressing concerns before they become major issues.
“The key for me is fixing it when it costs a nickel versus when it costs a dollar,” he said. “That’s being proactive.”
This change has saved the county millions of dollars, Lindemann said.
When asked about specific projects he was proud of, Lindemann had trouble narrowing it down to fewer than half a dozen. He did mention the work completed in the Towar Gardens project northwest of the Lake Lansing and Hagadorn intersection that added miles of drainage infrastructure and hundreds of rain gardens.
“[It’s] the largest collection I can find anywhere in the world of rain gardens,” he said. “There are more than 550 separate rain gardens in that neighborhood and we’ve reduced the flow to Looking Glass River by 90%. And prior to me rebuilding that system, we had a lot of flooding problems. Sump pumps would kick on all the time and they would lose use of their basement.”
Brian Bruce Beauchine
Brian Bruce Beauchine lives in Williamston and first called Ingham County home in 1976. He has worked in IT enterprise and owned his own consulting business.
This is his second time running for drain commissioner. Beauchine also ran in 2020.
When asked what caused him to run this time around, he cited frustration at Lindemann for not taking “into account fiscal responsibility.”
“Go take a look at the [drain commissioner’s] website,” he said. “Their signature projects, he spends whatever he wants to spend. Water is super important [but] we don’t need to spend millions of dollars on something when it can be done with hundreds of thousands [of dollars].”
Beauchine cites several projects that he feels the county overspent on.
He said when the drain commission worked on a drain project adjacent to Grand River in Meridian Township, a walkway that meets Americans with Disabilities Act standards was added and paid for by the county, when people in the drainage district should have footed the bill.
He also mentioned a water project in Frandor that has been in process “for years.”
“They’re working on pumps to move water up the hill [with] no restriction on spending,” he said. “There are ways we can improve water quality without spending all this money.”
Beauchine also criticized a dam at Lake Lansing that, he said, is in need of repair because the drain commission has not done regular maintenance on the valve.
“Those people around the land are going to be paying a great big bill,” he said. “Maybe we should look into doing a little preemptive maintenance instead of spending all this money.”
When asked why the voters of East Lansing should cast their ballot for him, Beauchine said it would be a vote for fiscal responsibility and clean water.