Mayor by Day, Meijer by Night: The Price of Leadership in East Lansing

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Aaron Stephens spent his days as the youngest mayor in East Lansing history, passing resolutions to help guide the city through the health crisis and urging Michigan State University students to follow safety precautions. But at night, he was just Aaron, shelf stocker at the South Lansing Meijer. 

“I got maybe three or four hours of sleep most nights. I’d be mayor during the day, and I’d go stock shelves at Meijer during night. And that’s how I paid rent,” Stephens said. “That’s a pretty large issue, considering that what I wanted to do was just fully commit myself to serving the city.”

Today, the East Lansing mayor is paid $11,000 annually and the other four members of City Council are each paid just under $9,500 per year. 

Still, council members are tasked with reviewing agenda packets that can be hundreds of pages long before the body meets, sometimes three times or more in a month. Council members are also expected to attend city commission meetings and be responsive to community inquiries.

Juggling council duties, family obligations and a career can be overwhelming. Former Mayor and Councilmember Jessy Gregg remembers being asked how she balanced these three responsibilities at the same time — to which she responded “I am failing drastically at least one of those things at all times.”

“You just can’t be doing all of those things right,” Gregg said. “Either I’m being a fully present and engaged council member, and I’m not able to be as fully present and engaged for my kids in that moment, or I’m putting something on hold at the business because I need to take care of my kids, and I also still need to be the council member. Multitasking is kind of a myth.”

Some believe the pay-work balance for council members makes the elected positions unfeasible for many community members and contributes to a high rate of turnover among council members.

In East Lansing, the pay for City Council is set by the East Lansing Elected Officers Compensation Commission. The commission is scheduled to hold its first meeting today, Sept. 30. The commission will recommend to keep City Council salaries consistent or make adjustments. Council will then vote whether or not to accept the recommendation. 

An agenda report for tonight’s meeting shows that since 2009, the commission’s largest raise recommendation was adopted in 2023, when the commission recommended council members and the mayor receive $400 raises at the start of the next two fiscal years. 

While the pay of City Council members varies from municipality to municipality, almost all cities in Michigan compensate City Council positions as though they are part-time jobs. 

East Lansing operates as a council-manager style government, as opposed to a strong-mayor style government used in cities like Lansing. City Council acts as East Lansing’s legislative arm, while the city manager works as the city’s top employee and supervises staff. In Lansing, the mayor receives a six-figure salary and works as the city’s chief executive. Council members in Lansing are paid much less than the mayor, but still earn about three times as much as East Lansing council members.

Councilmember Dana Watson said she has noticed trends in who throws their hats in the ring to run for and be elected to City Council — namely, older white male homeowners.

“Does that mean this position isn’t for us, or does that mean there needs to be space made?” Watson said. “Because representation does not just look like the white males who can make it work.”

Watson is one of just three Black council members in East Lansing history, and will finish her tenure in November as the longest serving, after she was initially appointed to the role in August 2020. 

“That is not representative of our numbers,” Watson said. “You see how and why those decisions trend the way they do.”

Gregg came to a similar conclusion.

“If you look back historically, you definitely see people that have higher earning jobs, that have scheduling flexibility, or are retired and do not have those kinds of scheduling conflicts,” Gregg said. “If you have major chunks of those populations that aren’t represented on council, then how complete is the messaging that’s coming out of that body?”

Watson has served on council while being a single mother of three and working full-time for the Ingham County Health Department. She described the balance as “overwhelming,” and said she feels lucky when she is able to attend her childrens’ sports games and practices.

Gregg said she was prescribed blood pressure and anti-anxiety medication due to her many responsibilities when she was on council. After she decided not to seek reelection in 2023, she no longer needed the medication.

It isn’t just Watson and Gregg who decided to step down after one full term on City Council. Including this year’s election cycle, no sitting council member has sought reelection immediately after serving a full term in the last three cycles. 

“You do see moms represented in plenty of board or parent teacher associations, so it’s not that we can’t find that time,” Watson said. “It’s who’s making space to accommodate everyone, and who just says, ‘well, it was their choice to put all of that on their plate,’ as opposed to looking at the problems with the system.”

East Lansing is unique because a large portion of the population is made up of MSU students. Stephens made history when he ran for and won a seat on City Council while still a student. Stephens said it is important to have students and young adults on council.

“It’s important that people that are of that age have some kind of representation,” Stephens said. “There’s, you know, about 1,000 things that you experience as a student that you might not experience as a permanent resident, and vice-versa.”

That’s a big part of why Stephens said he ran for council in 2017. But just like Watson and Gregg, it wasn’t smooth sailing handling council responsibilities and eventually, the mayorship, along with other everyday needs. 

“It’s extremely difficult because they say it’s not a full time job, but I think if you’re doing the job to the level that you know you’re supposed to be, it’s pretty close to it,” Stephens said. “And when you’re mayor, it’s certainly a full-time job.”

Stephens acknowledged that a sitting council member calling for an increase to their own pay isn’t a great look, especially as the city struggles financially. But at the end of the day, he believes finding a solution to the pay-work balance is essential to ensuring representation in the city.

Increasing pay isn’t the only route the city could take to reduce the burden on council members. Both Watson and Stephens suggested expanding the council. 

“If Council were expanded, the pressure could be lifted off of a person who might need to do something important, but knows they have to show up, because if they don’t show up, it really matters,” Watson said. “[The Council has] five people, but if one person is absent, two people alone can control a vote. And do we want that?”

A proposed city charter amendment to expand the size of council from five to seven members was put to vote in 2023, but was narrowly rejected. 

“I don’t deserve to be the most stressed because I wanted to represent my community and my constituents voted me in.” Watson said. “We shouldn’t be the most stressed because of what we have going on in our life outside of attending [meetings], and then earning just 10 grand a year.”

Other councils in Michigan, like Portage, are larger. Portage has a similar population size to East Lansing and seven council members, including a mayor and mayor pro tem. Like East Lansing, the Portage Elected Officers Compensation Commission decided on pay raises, which this year amounted to a 9.4% increase for council and 13.6% for the mayor, according to MLive. This will bring compensation to $9,300 and $12,500, similar to what East Lansing pays its five council members. 

Larger cities, like Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids, also have seven council members. 

Increasing pay, and not just to keep up with inflation, is another commonly proposed solution. If council members were paid more, then those without significant savings wouldn’t need to work as much to make ends meet.

“I’m not rich, I’m not retired. I don’t have a crazy amount of money in the bank and I certainly didn’t at the time when I was 22. That kind of restriction is going to just lead to a very skewed representation in the city,” Stephens said. “It’s going to lead to representatives being there that can afford to be there.”

Stephens, Gregg and Watson all agree that change is needed to ensure the council is as diverse as the city it represents. 

“I do not think it is a crazy concept that the mayor of East Lansing be able to pay rent in East Lansing,” Stephens said.