Meet East Lansing City Council Candidate Steve Whelan
This is part two of ELi’s City Council candidate series. Over three days, ELi will publish articles introducing each of the six candidates in this November’s election.
During his 25 year career at the East Lansing Police Department, Steve Whelan thinks he perfected one skill that is crucial to public service: the art of listening.
“I’m not an expert on everything,” Whelan said. “I don’t know that we need to have experts in everything, but I want to make sure that we are engaging with and listening to the community as a whole to find out what our community wants. Because really, as a City Council person, we’re responsive to the community.”
Public safety, smart growth and a balanced budget are Whelan’s top priorities. Before his retirement from ELPD in July, Whelan held a variety of positions in the police department, serving as a training officer, detective, fatal accident reconstruction specialist and as the ELPS school resource officer.
“I don’t think I’m done serving yet,” Whelan said. “I was ready to retire, I was ready to think about doing a lot of other things. As the time came closer and closer, I felt like my heart and my body was made up to serve, and I’m ready to continue serving, just in a different way.”
The 60-year-old candidate has been an East Lansing resident since 1996, and raised three children in the city, who all live nearby.
Top priorities
Having been both on the front lines and behind the scenes at ELPD, Whelan said he has a deep and unique understanding of the problems East Lansing faces. He said the city needs to continue to invest in public safety.
“I want to make sure that we continue to make public safety a priority,” Whelan said. “Public safety is not just police departments, it’s if you keep the downtown clean, then that’s going to prevent things from happening.”
Listening isn’t exclusive to community members, Whelan said. Hearing perspectives and solutions from outside sources could also be effective, such as in the case of ensuring smart growth, another of Whelan’s priorities.
“We need to have balanced and smart growth, making sure we’re listening and hearing the people that are willing to invest in our community,” Whelan said. “We need to really make sure that we have some vibrant investment, which will also increase the tax base, which also helps out everybody in this situation.”
The city’s budget is one of Whelan’s top concerns, and he advocated for a people-first approach not based on raising taxes.
“Every time you talk about cutting something, that affects people’s lives,” Whelan said. “That’s really difficult, and a very hard conversation, but I think it’s an important conversation we have to have. I’m not ready to say which offices need to be cut or this and that. All I know is we need to make cuts, and some of those cuts may be hard. I just don’t want those cuts to affect our residents’ day to day lives.”
Other priorities
Many of the connections Whelan made as a police officer were Michigan State University and ELPS students he met while working as a school resource officer. Maintaining and improving connections with both institutions is important for the city’s wellbeing, Whelan said.
“It is critical to see them [students] as viable parts of our community, and not to see them as temporary people popping in and out,” Whelan said. “Because you think about it, one person stays for four years, another person stays for four years. Together, that’s eight years, so you’ve got a lot of investment in the rest of their life. They’re looking at how they’re treated by the city. Were they hurt or not?”
During his time as the school resource officer, Whelan said he met many ELPS faculty members, students and families who helped him truly understand the district’s importance.
“I love the public schools, I love the kids there,” Whelan said. “I want to make sure that we are communicating with the school district so we can help give support. When people look for a house, they’re looking for houses in districts they want to live in. We want to make sure our school district is a place everybody wants to put their kids. We have incredible teachers. We have incredible administrators. I want to really make sure we continue to encourage them in whatever way the city can.”
One virtue Whelan believes aided his career, and is crucial to a public servant, is inclusivity. Interacting with people all over East Lansing during his law enforcement career strengthened this value for Whelan.
“Anyone that would know me, I believe they would say that I have always treated people with respect, regardless of their background and regardless of their persuasion,” Whelan said. “I would really want to make sure that we have all people come to the table, and all people have their issues heard and their issues dealt with in an equitable and fair way.”
If elected, Whelan said he would be driven by the same goal of helping people that carried him during his 25 years with ELPD.
“When I woke up in the morning, I thought, ‘I get to interact and help people in a time of need,’ and I love doing that every day,” Whelan said. “Even on my last day, I was excited about who I’d meet and how I’d go about meeting them, how I could possibly help people.”