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A weekly show from the folks at East Lansing Info breaking down all the news and happenings in East Lansing, Michigan.
WDBM East Lansing. This is East Lansing Insider brought to you by ELI on Impact eighty nine FM. In this show, we break down all of the news and happenings in the East Lansing
Dustin DuFort Petty:Hi, this is Dustin DuFort Petty, a reporter with East Lansing Info. We're speaking with East Lansing's new mayor, Doctor. Erik Altmann, this week. Altmann was first elected to City Council in 2015, serving four years before losing a bid for his reelection in 2019. He won a seat again in 2023 and was selected by his peers to serve the next two years as the city's mayor, a position he describes multiple times as merely a council person who runs the meetings.
Dustin DuFort Petty:He told me he has been a resident of East Lansing since the year 2000 when he became faculty at Michigan State University in the Department of Psychology. Thank you for joining us, mister Mayer. How did your journey with East Lansing begin?
Erik Altmann:I was looking for an academic position and at the time, and I had offers at a bunch of different places around the country and visited them all and was taken by East Lansing. And so we moved up here. It was you know, it's a beautiful campus, and it's beautiful neighborhoods around the campus where you can live close by and walk into work, which is a big attraction.
Dustin DuFort Petty:What was it about East Lansing that called you to be a civic leader?
Erik Altmann:Well, that's interesting. You know, there's different paths that people follow into into politics. And what actually got me into politics was noise of all things. So in 2012 or so, the state legalized fireworks for use by civilians. And for a long time, that fireworks use had been prohibited.
Erik Altmann:And, you know, municipalities, for example, could use fireworks, but not your neighbors. And the area where I live close to campus in the Bailey neighborhood got really loud one summer, and it was was tough. It was tough to sleep at night. You know, we didn't have dogs, but people that I knew had dogs were upset about this because the dogs were upset and it was a rough summer. And so I did my homework and I discovered that the the legislation that legalized these fireworks would allow municipalities to regulate.
Erik Altmann:And so I showed up at city council one Tuesday after I'd been woken up at 5AM. I happened to know that meetings were on Tuesdays. So I showed up at city council and I spoke during public comment and I said, look, we got a problem here. And one of the council members, Vic Loomis, at the time actually said, you know, I agree with you. And a month later, had an ordinance and the ordinance largely solved the problem for us.
Erik Altmann:And I thought at the time, wow, that that is an example of local government making a difference in people's lives. And that got me really interested. And I started going to meetings regularly and following the other things that the council did. And I decided I was really interested in this work And, went to meetings for a full year and then decided that I wanted to try to get involved a little bit more closely. So I got on boards and commissions and then ended up running in 2015 and winning that year.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Like you said, you started, on the planning commission, and then you were council member for, quite a time. What lessons did you learn from that earlier service that you think prepared you for, the mayor's feet?
Erik Altmann:Yeah. That's a good question. So it was great to serve with Meadows as mayor and then with Brookover as mayor and they made it look easy. They did things differently. And so I had an opportunity to watch and think, okay, well, how would I like to do things in terms of running the meetings?
Erik Altmann:And so I think that experience is useful both to serve with the mayor and to be on council and to sort of understand how you like to be treated and what works and maybe what could work a little bit better. And lots of opportunity to interact with the community and public comment in various other contexts. It is something that over time you acquire a certain amount of experience. If know, if it were during my first term, I'm I'm not sure I would say I was as ready as I am now. But, you know, you're you can prepare for these things as much as you want, but then when when you actually take the job, it's a pretty steep learning curve.
Erik Altmann:And so I anticipate that's what it's gonna be over the next certainly over the next few weeks and months, but possibly longer.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Now how is your discipline you teach psychology at MSU. How has that work informed your approach to public policy and municipal leadership?
Erik Altmann:Yeah. Another great question. So I'm a cognitive psychologist. I focus on, cognitive processes like attention and memory. So I, I have some intuitions about how to draw attention to people how how to draw people's attention to particular ideas, excuse my cat, and how to make things stick if you wanna make things stick in people's memory.
Erik Altmann:So I have some intuitions about that, which I sort of try to bring to my remarks and my advocacy for particular issues. But I have to say that beyond that, there's not a whole lot of spillover from from my discipline to my work on the council.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Were you expecting to be, elected mayor? Did you know, council member Meadows was gonna nominate you?
Erik Altmann:I you know, I had had some conversations with other council members before that, but you never know until it happens.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Yeah. I hate to ask you to put a number to it, but do you have two or three top priorities, for the next two years as mayor? And, if you do, how will you measure measure progress?
Erik Altmann:Yeah. Excellent question. So, you know, just by way of context, the the mayor in East Lansing is a very different kind of mayor than the mayor in Lansing, right? The mayor in East Lansing is the council member who runs the meetings and so II have no more or less authority than really anybody else. And I am I am not interested in shaping the agenda of the council.
Erik Altmann:That that is up to all of us working, jointly and also the city manager. So I can say as a council member, you know, my top priority and and we don't have any choice about this, but our our top priority is gonna be the budget. We will have to act quickly on that because we don't have much of a cushion, and we have a substantial deficit at this point. By my estimation, it's about 8% of our general fund is the deficit. And we already have a very lean organization and you don't cut 8% out of a lean organization without people feeling it.
Erik Altmann:So that is sort of the number one challenge. And that will, that will we will have to face that in the coming months. We will have no choice. And the city manager's gonna play a central role in in wrapping his arms around, you know, where we can cut, where we can find new revenue. So city manager's role is gonna be central there.
Erik Altmann:And then the other big priority for for me is, addressing the concerns that we've heard from the community, which I share, concerning, public safety and quality of life issues in our neighborhoods and in the downtown. And that includes noisy cars, the modified mufflers, which is which are they're driving people crazy, and they have for years. This is something that grew out of the pandemic for some strange reason. People decided during the pandemic to start driving in crazy ways and also to make their cars make a lot of noise and it's it's a real problem. It's a safety issue and it's a quality of life issue.
Erik Altmann:People need to be able to sleep at night, and they can't in the downtown. And it's a hard problem to solve for lots of reasons. Police are understaffed. We need changes in state law to help us to give us more enforcement authority. We need changes in local law, to help us, give police more authority.
Erik Altmann:And so we need to be able to make progress on a bunch of different fronts in terms of measuring success. I think if if people feel like their environment is less noisy and safer in two years, then I will consider that a major success in terms of the budget. If we can avoid running a deficit in the next couple of years, then then I will consider that a major success especially if we can do it without, axing important programs.
Dustin DuFort Petty:When you ran for council, again two years ago, you spoke about, rebuilding the city's workforce. What does that mean in practice to attract employers, train local workers, or something else? If I if I can throw this in there as well, East Lansing government or city leaders have earned a bit of a reputation as being not pro development downtown over the last year or so, with certain projects not moving forward. How will your, time as mayor or as council member for the next two years, how will that change, or will it?
Erik Altmann:Well, so it sounds like those are two separate questions. Right? The first one was about rebuilding the staff and the second one was about development issues. So in terms of rebuilding the staff, I think our our the main breakthrough there was the the slate of people who got elected in 2023 because those are people who brought some who ran on the platform of bringing stability back to the council and restoring a culture where the city manager runs the city and the council doesn't try to interfere, which was a big problem in that period between 2019 and 2023. And so I think that just that election by itself helped.
Erik Altmann:City manager Bellman has done an excellent job, I think, stabilizing the workforce also. And so my impression is that things are are on the upswing as measured by, for example, the amount of applicants we get for jobs now. Okay? Not just in policing, the applications for police positions have gone up, but also for administrative positions like the new downtown director, the new DDA executive director applications there have ticked up and for other positions. So, so that's, think a very good sign.
Erik Altmann:We're still recovering from the, from the dramatic loss of institutional memory that we suffered during that period. That is still making people's jobs more difficult every day. And that's gonna be a years long process to rebuild to rebuild what we lost there. So I think we're on the right path, but there's a lot more work to to do. And it's gonna be difficult work, especially given the the funding environment, the budget environment.
Erik Altmann:In terms of development, in in the past year, so so the the two main issues, one was the the project in the Bailey parking lot that failed right before the twenty twenty three election. And that was not a decision that I was involved in. But in that case, I think the developer did not do a very good job of engaging the community and people got really annoyed and people in this community get really annoyed when you don't engage them about big projects. That's just an absolute that's just an a fundamental issue in this community, and it's it's perfectly reasonable for people to be concerned about those sorts of projects. And if developers don't engage, then then that does not bode well for the project.
Erik Altmann:So I think that's the largest issue that happened there. I mean, more recently, the conversation has been about the Howard, right, the ball line project. And there, I have to say the developers have made a a a strong effort to engage. I'm a little concerned that they've only told half the story about the benefits of their project. They've talked about the tax revenues that their project would generate.
Erik Altmann:They haven't talked about the costs and the expenditures that a new project that like that would generate. And so my perspective on that conversation has been to to point out that when you build a big project like that, the people who live in that project consume a lot of resources that the city has to pay for. And so there's two sides to that equation, and we have to factor both of them in. So that's been one important part of the conversation that I've been trying to press just to remind people that big projects have costs as well as benefits. And then the other aspect there is that the developer has been pressing for a change in our ordinances.
Erik Altmann:We have an ordinance in place that requires a diverse housing contribution from every developer, And that ordinance has been really successful. It gave us the Neumann Lofts community, which is which is a downtown neighborhood, and I'm really glad that neighborhood is there. And I want another neighborhood like it. And if we keep the ordinance in place, I think there's a reasonable chance we'll get another another contribution like that. If we got the ordinance, then we're not gonna get that.
Erik Altmann:And this is all about a developer trying to reduce their costs. And I understand that because, of course, they wanna reduce their costs, and that's fine. But we need to think about what we want in our downtown. And I want another community of residents living there that brings some diversity to our downtown. And the ordinance that we have in place basically just says, yes.
Erik Altmann:You can have your 12 stories of student housing. That's fine. But you've gotta give us another kind of housing that we want and that will help draw businesses and people to the downtown that diversify the business profile there. And so I feel pretty strongly that we need to try to keep that in place. And so that's the side of the conversation that I've been trying to hold up.
Dustin DuFort Petty:You already spoke about noise. We have a large student population. Tension sometimes arise because of the noise and, housing standards and services. Are there any steps you would take, in the next few years or try to initiate to promote a balance between the student needs and the long term resident needs, in East Lansing?
Erik Altmann:That is the million dollar question and has been for decades, in the city because you've got a conflict of lifestyles, and there's no easy way around that. I think that improved policing. Well, policing is already good. Police are understaffed. That's the problem.
Erik Altmann:So increasing police staffing will help with that. And I also think that we need to improve communications at the highest levels between MSU and the city. The the head of the company needs to be talking to the head of the company town on a regular basis. And in this case, I believe that the head of the company town is not actually the mayor. It's the city manager because the city manager is the de facto chief executive under our form of government.
Erik Altmann:The mayor has no executive authority to speak of, unlike in Lansing. And so I think I would urge the president of MSU and the city manager of East Lansing to start to develop a relationship and set up a communication channel where they can speak candidly to each other, Because I think a little bit of communication at that level could go a long way to unleashing progress in terms of how do you deal with these massive off campus parties. Right? Every everybody's got a stake in that, and that's gonna take coordination across the two jurisdictions. And I think that has to start at the top.
Dustin DuFort Petty:There have been, some accusations, especially after a proposal won, a few years ago, that you might be little hostile to student voters in the area or or think that maybe their influence is undue because they're not here long term like the long term residents are. Is there any truth to that? Do you do you do you see the significance or the importance of having MSU voters in our elections?
Erik Altmann:MSU voters have the same right to vote as everybody else. They are here for a couple years, and then they are gone. They do not have the same stakes that people like me have who have lived here for a quarter century and plan to live here a lot longer. Those are just facts. Those are just facts.
Erik Altmann:I'm not hostile to any voters at all. In the in the case of proposal one, I pointed out a simple fact, which was that proposal one lost in off campus precincts and one because of overwhelming support on campus. That is just a simple fact, And it's worth everybody understanding where the community sits on issues like that. And so I think it was a perfectly reasonable thing to point out. It's no different from any other post election analysis, you know, that looks at how different people voted and how different groups voted.
Erik Altmann:And it's just a simple fact. And if it's something we wanna plan around, that's fine, but no hostility here.
Dustin DuFort Petty:At the meeting where you were selected to be mayor, it seemed to me that there was a deep divide during public comment. There were those who were eager to voice their support for chief Jen Brown in the ELPD, and there were those who took counsel and the city manager, Robert Bellman, to task for not firing her. Where do you stand in that dichotomy, and what can you and the council do to help bridge the divide that appears to be amongst the city?
Erik Altmann:Another important question. Let me address the second one first. This was a central concern of mayor pro tem Grigsby's in his remarks. He noted this also. He he had a very similar take on this that that the the divide seems very deep here.
Erik Altmann:And I don't know how you bridge it except conversations. In terms of where I fall, I think our chief is doing an excellent job. I think all our department heads in the city are doing an excellent job, and that includes the chief of police. She's working hard respond to the calls from the community for traffic safety and noise enforcement. She's working hard to figure out how to address the issues with violence in the downtown.
Erik Altmann:She's, you know, taking a regional regional approach on this and also, you know, developed an internal task force to address these issues. She's been working hard to build morale of her officers. She has support from her officers, and she's trying to boost staffing by making East Lansing Police an attractive place to work. So, I think the chief has been doing an excellent job and we're lucky to have her and so that's I guess if there's a spectrum there, that gives you an indication of where I fall.
Dustin DuFort Petty:I don't know how much time you spend on social media. Hopefully, not a lot. The last few times that Eli has reported on the BWL fee and the reimbursement, there have been folks who have gone after you and council member Meadows. Looking back, would you have worked to would you have supported that fee when it was instituted knowing that it would eventually be overturned, or do you still think it was a good idea to support more revenue for the city?
Erik Altmann:Well, of course, if I had known that it was gonna be overturned, then I would've made that decision. I always, I always chuckle at the Monday morning quarterbacks who, who pretend like they can see around corners. And what I wanna say to them is, okay. Where were you in 2017 when we made that decision? If you knew exactly what was gonna happen, why didn't you speak up then?
Erik Altmann:It's important to recognize that we had a legal opinion supporting the franchise fee. We had a unanimous vote on the council to adopt the franchise fee, and we had a a bunch of neighbor neighboring jurisdictions that had a franchise fee and that continue to have a franchise fee because they haven't been sued yet. Okay. And that includes Meridian Township. And so there was no particular controversy at the time.
Erik Altmann:And the controversy that people are trying to sort of spin up now is twenty twenty hindsight. And so it turns out that we had a legal opinion that was weaker than it should have been on the analysis of the Bolt decision and how that was relevant. And that happens, and that's not an attorney I would return to. But that stuff happens. We did not move in We moved forward based on our due diligence.
Erik Altmann:And so in that sense, I would not do anything differently knowing what I knew at the time.
Dustin DuFort Petty:I think one of the biggest questions in everyone's minds right now is the what's gonna happen with the future of the parks?
Erik Altmann:Yep.
Dustin DuFort Petty:After the millage passed, it seemed like you were saying before the millage of vote that, you would see this as a kind of the people's taking a stance on whether they wanted to fund the parks or whether they were okay with, cuts being made. Is that is that a good assessment of where you stood at the time and stand now?
Erik Altmann:Yeah. It it it is. And I you know, my my rationale for putting the millage on the ballot is that it I don't think it's fair to cut programs unless you give people a chance to decide whether they wanna pay for them. And so that's how I saw the millage. Now that is one council member's perspective, and it takes three council members to pass a budget.
Erik Altmann:And I am certain there's gonna be a diversity of views on the council about how to interpret the results of that millage vote and how to deal with our deficit. And that's gonna have to be part of discussion. My perspective is and was and is that we cannot cut public safety or public works any more than we already have over the past fifteen years. We have been whittling away at both programs, both sets of of services for the since the financial crisis in 2008, 2009. And we can't cut them any further and expect to be able to meet the expectations of the community for basic public works and public safety services.
Erik Altmann:And so there's no way that you can cut across the board 4% off of the general fund. There were some candidates who made that proposal, and that just reflect the fact reflects the fact that they didn't know anything about the history of the city because you can't. You can't do that. You can run a city without parks and rec. It's not fun, but we did it for decades, right, through the mid nineties.
Erik Altmann:You can't run a city without adequate support for public works and public safety. And so that's where I come down. I'm just one vote, and other people will have their own views, And that's gonna be part of the discussion in the coming months.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Under different circumstances so for example, if the BWL, the ruling from the court came down saying that the, the fee was, not right. If that had happened at a different time than the Parks millage, do you think the vote would have gone differently? Do you think anything could have changed the way the vote had, came down?
Erik Altmann:I think that the vote was overwhelming. I in some sense, I'm relieved about the clarity of that message because now I'm not second guessing myself. You know? You know, if I only had worked a little bit harder to support the millage, we could have got, you know, a few 100 more votes. And so it was a very clear signal from the community.
Erik Altmann:And I think that in part reflects a trend. A lot of millages have failed around Michigan recently that could be related to what's going on at the federal level and the state level. There's all you know, there's a crisis in funding and all over the place. And, you know, in my view, if if the feds are gonna pull back and the state's gonna pull back, that makes it all the more important that the locality contributes to keeping local government functioning. But I understand.
Erik Altmann:I completely understand people's hesitancy to increase taxes on themselves. I I get it. It makes complete sense to me. The the loss of the BWL revenue moving forward was one part of the impetus for the millage. Right?
Erik Altmann:So by by my calculations, we have about a $4,200,000 deficit. 1,500,000.0 of that is the loss of the franchise fee moving forward. If we hadn't suffered that loss, then maybe the calculations would have been different.
Dustin DuFort Petty:You are if I'm if my research is correct, 61 right now.
Erik Altmann:Correct.
Dustin DuFort Petty:You you have two years as mayor, and then and after those two years, you can run again. Yep. I know it's really early to start thinking about that, but do you think you're gonna run again?
Erik Altmann:I do think I'm gonna run again. Okay. Yep. You're not gonna be oh, go ahead. I like this work.
Erik Altmann:I like being able to interact with my community in this manner. I have met so many amazing people who are so dedicated to their lives in this community and the community overall and the health of our neighborhoods. It is an absolute privilege to work with them and to know them. And this work gives me a lot of satisfaction.
Dustin DuFort Petty:What do you want, East Westinck residents to know about your approaches, mayor, or about you that they might not already know? Anything you wanna clear up or just get out there?
Erik Altmann:I want to sort of emphasize again that my perspective on this role is that I am the council member who runs the meetings. So it's it's a little confusing that the mayor of Lansing, you know, is the person elected at large by the people to run the city. Right? And the person in East Lansing with the same title has a completely different role. Right?
Erik Altmann:And it's really hard to keep those two things straight. I think a better name for the mayor in East Lansing would be chair of the council. Right? That would be much closer to the to the to the truth. And and so that's how I'm gonna approach this job.
Erik Altmann:And I understand that there's considerable there's a considerable ceremonial role, which I'm going to take very seriously. I'm just starting to discover, you know, the scope of that over the last couple of days. And I'm going to, I'm going to take that seriously. But in terms of executive authority, the mayor is the council member who runs the meetings. And that that puts certain limits on what I can do and what any council member can do under our system of of government.
Erik Altmann:Council members have relatively limited power. They don't have staff, right, of their own that they can use to respond to resident complaints. We're volunteers. You know, we have day jobs. Right?
Erik Altmann:And so we we have limited scope in terms of what we can do. And I'm and I'm not trying to I'm not trying to cop out here. I'm just trying to say, you know, there's that that's sort of the the limit on our on our power. We are primarily an oversight panel and we hire a professional to run the city, and that is the city manager. And so that's how I'm gonna approach the job, and I'm gonna do my level best to run scrupulously fair meetings where everyone gets to have their voice heard.
Erik Altmann:The the mayor has considerable power to control the flow of information in the meetings. And with considerable power comes considerable responsibility, and I'm gonna take that very seriously and ensure that everybody has their voice heard. I will speak also because I have to vote and I have opinions on things, but I'm gonna try as hard as I absolutely can not to put my thumb on the scale so that everybody has a voice and so that the body as a whole, can move forward.
Dustin DuFort Petty:Doctor. Eric Altman, East Lansing's new mayor. Thank you for your time, sir.
Erik Altmann:I appreciate the questions and the opportunity. Thank you.
Introduction:East Lansing Insider is brought to you by ELI on Impact eighty nine FM. We are on the web at eastlancinginfo.news and impact89fm.org. Thanks for listening.