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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 community. And now, today's East Lansing Insider.

Hi, everyone. I'm Eli's Deputy Editor, Anna Liz Nichols, and today we're going to be reviewing some recommendations heading towards East Lansing City Council. Earlier this month at a downtown development authority meeting, East Lansing Police Chief Jen Brown presented possible changes that could be made to the city's downtown that aim to promote public safety in the area. The recommendations come from a collection of city employees that met over the course of several weeks set on addressing issues like excessive noise in the downtown and a recent rise in crime. During the presentation, Chief Brown said she was set to give an overview of recommendations including the possibility of East Lansing getting a social district to city council at their meeting on November 18, which would be this week.

This is also not an ordinary city council meeting as the city just elected two new city council members, and this will be their first meeting. Joining me today to talk about what to expect, this is our managing editor, Lucas Day. It's always nice to have you, Lucas, on East Lansing Insider. Thanks for joining me today, Lucas.

Yeah. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

This is gonna be an interesting city council meeting as it will be the first, it's supposed to be the first that the two new members join the council, Chuck Grigsby and Steve Whalen. So it'll be interesting how they chime in on some of these issues. One element that's going to be spoken about at this city council meeting will be the idea of maybe altering the noise ordinance. Noise in the downtown area has been a huge topic for years. I know, Lucas, you've heard a lot more conversations than I have about this.

What do people what's the issue with with noise in the downtown?

So the discussion about noise in East Lansing, it goes back years. People don't like loud cars. I think nobody likes them. It's it's mostly the modified mufflers that kind of sound like gunshots. And we've heard from local musicians that are playing at Harper's or wherever out in a balcony, they've got to stop their whole show because nobody can hear them because these cars go by.

And then the whole discussion really picked up steam about a year ago when the oversight, the Police Oversight Commission recommended passing an ordinance to end pretextual stops. What pretextual stops are is it's basically stops that officers are able to use their own discretion to make. So if you're pulled over for speeding, they've got a speedometer that can say, you know, you're going 15 miles over the speed limit. There's no discretion that you're breaking the law. Pre textual stops are for things like tinted windows or a cracked windshield or the location of a registration sticker.

Those are just three of the examples, but there's a list with, you know, about a dozen of them on it that the LPD is no longer allowed to do. And the one that got the most attention is loud exhaust. And the reason why this is a pretextual stop and not something that the city can enforce noise ordinance on in most cases is because ELPD and most police agencies around the around the state don't have the technology to pick up a decibel reading on a moving object. So this got a lot of backlash at the city meetings. But the justification from most of the council members or at least Brookover and Meadows were the two lawyers that were more that were pretty legal minded about it was that this that the loud muffler part should be included because you could never defend it in court.

Because you can't say our noise ordinance is this and this car was this loud unless, you know, the car was parked, which I understand isn't the main issue. Now, we've heard from council member Eric Altman, who says that this sends the wrong message to people. Right. Because it is a big quality of life issue. People are getting woken up at night.

Nobody likes to listen to these loud cars like they're just a nuisance. And so there's been a lot of pushback against it. But just how enforceable the ordinance itself is, even if it's even if they reinstate it. Like I said, the the issue with loud cars didn't start when this ordinance was put in place, and it doesn't look like it will end if they repeal it. But they are considering repealing it because Altman has objections to it.

He thinks that he thinks that in some cases, you know, if a car is still or a motorcycle revving its engine or something like that, it does make a difference.

And like you said, there's more than a few things listed for why or for things that you cannot pull people over for in East Lansing. I don't believe East Lansing is the only local municipality that has come up, at least in Michigan, that has come up with a bar on pretextual stops. There's states that now have rules about pretextual stops trying to limit them, as there's a lot of research and a lot of advocates that say that pretextual stops impact, you know, people of color, more dressed of color disproportionately to their white counterparts. There's been a national conversation about pretextual stops, for a while now, especially following the 2023 killing of Tyree Nichols down in Memphis. It was a national case.

I think I think LAPOC had conversations about, you know, what the impact of these pretextual stops is because ultimately, in Michigan, we have a vast motor vehicle code that, like, lots of things can cause you to get. If we didn't have rules about pretextual stops, things like an air freshener hanging from from the rearview mirror, which look in any parking lot, you're going to see more than a few of those. The the total repeal poses a lot of concerns from people in East Lansing.

Yeah. And this ordinance originated with the Oversight Commission. They they kind of crafted it and recommended it. And then just at last night's meeting, we're recording this on Thursday, so the night after the Oversight Commission's meeting that came up again when Dana Watson, who is an outgoing council member, kind of gave her closing remarks to the commission as she's stepping down and new members will be sworn in. She said that she's counting on Chuck Grigsby, who's a newly elected council member.

She's counting on Carrie Singh, who voted to put these pretextual stops in play or ban the pretextual stops previously last year. And then she said that she's counting on Mark Meadows, who was the other oversight commission liaison that was at the meeting to uphold this ordinance because Steve Whelan, who's former LPD officer, and Eric Altman, who's, you know, been pretty outward against this against this ordinance, or at least the part with a lot of exhaust, she doesn't have any faith that they'll vote to keep it in place. Meadows has indicated previously that he wants to take another look at this and that he's not sure about his first vote. I think he said you were right to Altman at a previous meeting when they were talking about this because really the conversation about these loud cars in this ordinance itself, the effect that it has has just picked up since it was passed. So we'll see.

Yeah. And much of the the suggestions that are going to be presented at this week's city council meeting revolve around the idea of promoting, like I said, public safety and economic opportunity within the downtown area. Another thing on the docket is the consideration of a social district, which is where people can buy, alcohol from certain downtown businesses and have like a marked cup saying like this is the social district cup and kind of socialized in a predetermined area, often, you know, with signage so people know the bounds of where you can go with this open containers of alcohol, which is not new in Michigan. Most counties have at least one municipality that has a social district. During the pandemic, those became allowed in Michigan as a way to promote economic opportunity as, you know, unemployment and economic turmoil were at an all time high in Michigan.

East Lansing has some neighbors that have implemented social districts, Williamston, Lansing. So we would be we would be in close company with the social district, but it's not a new idea that our local government's governance has considered.

Yeah, and I think Lansing has a bunch. A lot of Lansing's a social district. Learned during the presentations about this. The district they've talked about previously is kind of what you think of as that major stretch of downtown around the big bars. It goes from over to the rib.

I think that the Riv is actually left out of their newest draft because it was just off of where they drew the boundary, but really close to where that Albert Al fresco areas that they block off during the summer, which is, you know, it becomes kind of a plaza. It's it's funny to talk because I went to Michigan State and I talked to people who went to Michigan State and I was talking about how they're considering creating the social district. And everyone kind of looked at me funny. They're like, isn't that area already a social district? So they did have the social district during COVID.

The major concern that came out of that was some people would get the social district cups and then, you know, maybe buy liquor or something else from the seven Eleven nearby, which is not an approved vendor. They pour that into their cups. So skirting the rules. They're concerned about enforcement, I guess.

Social districts are wildly popular in Michigan. I haven't heard a lot of downsides about social districts, especially if you're a municipality that likes to host social events, which East Lansing has an art fair. East Lansing has other, you know, public gatherings, to enrich the downtown area culturally and socially. I I went to the Tulip Festival this year and Holland had a social district.

Yeah, and there's some art club in East Lansing that that's one of the reasons they want it because they do an art walk where they go through the art show and they look at all the different paintings and things like that. And they'd be like, yeah, it'd be nice if we could have a glass of wine when we do this. But they're concerned about I mean, at the first DEA meeting, I don't can't remember if they said this at the city council meeting or not, but they the former mayor, George Brookhoeber, explicitly said he was concerned about homeless people downtown drinking. So that's that's that's the concern right now that's holding it back. But they're considering right now is a trial runner for a social district.

When I put it in place permanently, but, you know, maybe a holiday weekend or something like that, they open it up to see how it goes, and then they'll vote on it again. I'm guessing in the spring, the previous consideration was during the season of that Albert Alfresco on Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights. I I think those were the days. And then they also shortened the timeline. So, like, it would end at 08:00 instead of 10:00 during the previous proposal.

So

What do you

think the

likelihood is that we would get a social district by, say, next summer or this upcoming summer?

I don't think that we're gonna I just I don't think Altman will vote for it. He's had a lot of concerns about the capacity in the bars, like just how many seats we have at establishments serving alcohol. I mean, we'll see how Steve Whelan ends up voting once he's on council. But, you know, he just retired after twenty five years with the LPD. The LPD has expressed concerns about this.

He's got that perspective of the problems that people are worried that it may create. Carrie Singh was she was pretty she seemed like she was pretty into it. She works at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. So I know that she's probably seen this work in other places, things that can work here. And then I guess we'll see how new member Chuck Griggsby votes and Mark Meadows.

Meadows had some concerns about it too. He he talked about how easy it would be to, you know, buy a cup and then, you know, maybe hide it somewhere while you go into seven Eleven and fill it up. I don't think that, like, if they approve it, putting it in place is going to take very long because all they've got to do is make signs and buy cups and the BDA can do that pretty easily. It's really just whether or not they pass it, which we'll see.

So some of the things you're mentioning are the other elements within this presentation we're gonna hear. Concerns over our unhoused population in East Lansing. Chief Jen Brown, along with other members of city governance, have raised questions and concerns about recent growth in that population, increased presence in the downtown area. Also concerns over the bars, namely in this presentation, the safety of bar goers, especially when they're in line outside. Those lines often are raped by where traffic is going.

There's concerns over the public altercations that happen in those lines. And so several ideas have been thrown around. Some of a lot of the ideas presented in this presentation were not received favorably by the DDA. In a recent presentation, these were presented to them. Namely, especially when it came to concerns over bar lines.

Members of the DDA shared their thoughts that, you know, people in the city like to complain about the noise and disturbance of college students, but college students in East Lansing are economic drivers. They are are the consumers of goods within East Lansing. And so when we consider ways to promote public safety and economic opportunity, viewing college students as a detriment rather than, you know, the lifeblood of downtown isn't always isn't really the best idea. So some of the ideas that Chief Brown has presented to alleviate some of the concerns about the bar lines were to figure out a new location for them to be in line, barring bars from allowing bar lines on those sidewalks, which was not received well by the DDA. I mean, where are they supposed to go?

Another thing was that tied into more of the overall public safety element was implementing more lights around the downtown area, which again wasn't a favorite of the DDA, but a a middle ground was the idea of having more businesses in the downtown have those light fixtures. Like when you have neon around the windows of bars and stuff like that, it's kind of a more it's a lighter, gentler way to implement more lighting in the downtown area to promote public safety. There's negotiation and brainstorming to be had here.

Yeah. And some of the some of the things we've heard over the last few months, like just last night at the Oversight Commission, one of ideas they had is if you don't want people at, you know, in line at the bars on the sidewalks, why don't they take their phone numbers and text them when they can get in? And I know some of the restaurants do that, but I don't know how well it would work at these bars that have got the long lines where they're letting people in semi frequently and letting them out as people come out. Also, bars collect a lot of money in cover. They do have some of those they've got, like, the FastPass apps already where they you can skip the front line if you pay some amount, I think.

Yeah. I saw I've seen at least one sign for that on the side of the of the Grand River side of of things in the downtown. Knowing that this, presentation, which should be more robust in this meeting, I was told by chief Brown when this is presented to city council, then the full list of of recommendations will be made public, and we'll hear more about the ideas along with along with this presentation. Like I said, this will be the first meeting that new city council members will be will be sworn in and

so the agenda is not out for the meeting as we're reporting right now, but we anticipate I mean, we know that they're going to swear in the new members. And then the way it works in East Lansing, so your city manager who's unelected, hired by the city, is a top city employee, which is different than cities like Lansing, where you elect the mayor and that that's kind of the leader of your your employees as well. Mayor, I guess, has a lot less power in East Lansing than cities like Lansing. So you don't vote for a mayor. You vote for five council members and then those council members pick a mayor among themselves.

So they go in and they vote. I think the last vote was unanimous for George Brook over, and then it was three to two for Carrie Singh to be mayor pro tem. And she was a new member of city council. She'd gotten kind of a crazy amount of votes in the election, which I think is why they felt comfortable voting in a new member. But we should we can expect to see that.

I'm not sure who's going to be mayor. Before before the last time they did this, I kind of had an idea that it was going be broke over. His dad was mayor. He's pretty familiar with all the different rules and how to run meetings, which is a big responsibility of the mayor because he's got a legal background. I'm wondering I'm wondering who they pick.

I'm really not sure. Carrie Singh is still the mayor pro tem, which is like the substitute mayor. If the mayor is gone, they take over running the meetings. So it could be Carrie. I'm not sure.

It's gonna be interesting to see, though.

Last week's podcast, we had a post election day conversation with both the new, city council members, Steve Whalen and Chuck Grigsby, and they both talked to me about the fact they've had many interactions with the current city council. Both have said that they feel like they're on pretty good terms and in the energy of having good dialogue with city council members. I'm not saying that translates to necessarily these incumbent members of the city council voting new members to leadership positions. But in terms of who might side with who, who's going to be a bit on teams in this new city council. We might get a sneak peek on how future shakeups of votes might look like in the near future.

Yeah. And I mean, that is something that you start to pick up pretty quickly. I'm not sure how much is going to be on this agenda. The way it was described to me is that this is like a half meeting because they've got to do the whole swearing in process, which takes up time. They can't put too much on the agenda if they're trying to get out of there at a reasonable time.

But you do start to see those trends of who's in favor of what early on. Like to give you an example, if there were liquor licenses in front of the last council, you pretty much knew that Eric Altman is going to vote against it because he thinks that there's too many thinks that there's too many seats in bars that serve alcohol already in the downtown. It's contributing to safety problems. Mark Meadows also had issues with adding seats to the bars because he didn't want to add seats that weren't physical seats. So if you added occupants to a bar, he wanted there to be chairs that they could sit in.

That was a big thing for him. And so if you'd see these expansions coming to council, you could kind of pick up on who was going to vote what way. And there were some exceptions. I think that one of them voted for the Pizzawallas, which is in the old MSU FC building by Peanut Barrel because it was a little bit outside of that downtown area where we've heard safety concerns. But in that downtown area, you kind of could pick up on who was going to vote what way before the meetings even started because you start to notice these trends with how they vote.

Like, Singh was much more pro development, I'd say, then and usually Dana Watson too. Those two are usually much more pro development than the other three on council. Brooke over, you know, I I could never guess how he was gonna vote. But, you know, you'd you'd figure out specific concerns that certain council members had. And then you use the word teams, which I think is kind of a good good way to put it.

You could kind of see where projects were going to go early on. There were some surprises, but just generally, I think we knew how things were going to go.

And, you know, Yeah. Knock on wood, this might not be the most eventful city council meeting we have this week, but it is significant in terms of we're getting new leadership in the city in a time where pretty soon they're gonna be having to make some pretty tremendously impactful decisions, especially when it comes to, the city's economic future.

Yeah. I mean, so and this is where I think the biggest divide on this next council that you're going to see is is that some candidates that were running for city council, not the two that won, they were a little bit more vague, I think, their views and development, although they certainly did see more pro development in some members on council. Some people that were running for city council thought that the way to address the city's significant budget issues were building, you know, building big apartment complexes to generate more tax revenue. And now you've heard Eric Altman, who's a city council member, say that that tax revenue isn't we can't build our way out of this budget deficit because he thinks that the revenue raised by these new developments is just going back into paying for the extra costs that are associated with having that development there, whether it be policing or infrastructure changes, you know, whatever it may be. And so I think the development side of things is is it's going be interesting to see how they view it because the city does have very serious budget concerns and they're about to have a committee.

They're about to put together a committee. I think that's one of the first things that you're going see out of the next council that's pretty major is that this volunteer committee is going be put together to do a deep dive into city finances. And I've looked at the people who apply to that committee. There's some very qualified people that have interest in volunteering to try to fix the budget deficit. But another factor that's going to play into this is where they view the city's financial standings.

So a lot of developments need incentives. So if you think that building is the way to fix the city's budget issues, you might not want to give tax breaks to developers. And that can prevent things like affordable housing or, you know, more affordable housing to come in from coming in the area. Yeah, I mean, there's just a wide range of things that every council member is going to have to consider. Stormwater is another major one.

The city considered putting a moratorium on all developments in the downtown not that long ago because of stormwater specifically. Now they didn't end up doing it, but it was something that was talked about at meetings and there was even a vote on. And that's kind of, I think, thought of as a background issue just because we didn't have much as much flooding in East Lansing this past summer as the couple of summers before. But, yeah, there's just so many factors that come into play when they consider these developments. I think that's going to be the the major thing that you're going to see these differences start to emerge with the different members of city council.

Yeah. And I think that another thing to keep an eye on is outgoing council member Dana Watson was the I you know, I think it's fair to say that she was the most progressive member of city council. I don't know if anyone's going to really replace the voice that she had. Chuck Grigsby, who just was elected, he's now the only black council member. He was a pretty prominent voice in 2020 during the police reform, during the protests, before the George Floyd police murder.

But then also, even before that happened and things kind of blew up, Chuck was protesting policing in East Lansing. So I think on some of the police issues, you might see some of the I don't even want to say pushback from Chuck, but maybe some of the perspectives that more progressive voices would have just because Chuck's also getting a doctorate in criminal justice, so he understands the system. He's going to consider a lot of factors.

Yeah. In fact, both of the city council members we just elected into office have that criminal justice background, albeit they may have different takes on things. These are nonpartisan elections, but we've had two candidate forums and candidates had their platforms. So it's safe to come to conclusions about political affiliations. Wayland has been honest about how he understands that he is seen as the the he was seen as the conservative candidate in this election.

Some other candidates, namely Rikiki, who, you know, works in in Michigan Democrats. Adam Delay works under a Democrat administration. And so, you know, you you you mentioned Dana. You kind of touched on this, but it's it goes beyond what her, you know, political affiliations were. It was the fact that she, in rooms where maybe the majority of people disagreed with her, she would still voice her perspective.

And I don't know if Chuck will be a similar voice. I don't know if if if Wayland will be a similar voice.

Yeah, there's

a lot of disagree like there's a lot of infighting within city council. Think both in my conversation with both Grigsby and Wayland, they talked about wanting to, you know, build bridges and have actual conversations. But there's something to be said about being willing to be the only person to to say something.

Yeah, and I think that would you made an interesting point with so both these the two candidates that are coming in are very different than the two council members that are going out. And during that conversation you had with Steve Steve Whelan last week, he mentioned that, you know, he he is more politically, I guess, neutral. He said that he's voted for both Democrats and Republicans. You're not going to get that from anybody else that's on city council now. Anybody that's on city council in recent years, like these are all true blue Democrats.

Brookover, his father was a Democrat in the sixties, and he's talked at length at some meetings about how he's a Democrat, even when he's voting in ways that maybe you wouldn't associate with Democrats like he voted. I can remember the speech that he had when they voted to make the city a sanctuary city and Brookover was the lone vote against it. And he talked about how he's a proud Democrat, but he thinks that locally, this this policy may, you know, it may draw people to the city that we then don't have the resources to care for. And so the way he explained it was a very local angle. But he also talked at length about how he's a lifelong Democrat.

And so it'll be interesting. Just the three members of city council mostly got their way or at least got one candidate they wanted because they all endorse people before the election or they send them money or whatever. Meadows sent a letter that endorsed Whalen and Grigsby, the two that got elected. Singh endorsed Grigsby or at least her husband's PAC gave him money. I don't know if she publicly endorsed him, but we saw that her husband, state senator Sam Singh, his PAC purchased mailers that endorsed Chuck.

And then Eric Altman endorsed Grigsby for sure, or, again, at least donated to his campaign. So everybody that's currently sitting on city council at least got one candidate they like. Meadows got both of both of his endorsements. And, yeah, I I I guess that there's no way to tell. I mean, you can guess how they're going to speculate how they're gonna vote, but there's just such a wide range of different outcomes.

We're gonna wait and see and notice patterns, I guess. But it just the two candidates we're getting are much different than the two that are stepping down. I think that's a point that you can't stress enough.

Yeah. I don't know. I think it'll be really interesting to see if we enter a new era of maybe peace getting along better or or if we continue to see fireworks at these at these meetings.

I haven't seen much peace on city council in the years I've been here, so I'll I'll approach it with skepticism. And the point you made about Dana Watson, I think is and I think that you can say this about George Brookhopper as well. Both of them, their influence on the city isn't necessarily always about just the votes that they took, but it's about the way that they spoke. Watson is an extremely talented speaker, whether you agree with her or disagree with her. She's she's just a talented speaker.

She she got people's attention when she spoke. Brookover, I think, did a better job than anyone on city council at explaining his votes. And that's not to say that they don't explain votes. I think that usually they all do a pretty good job of explaining their votes. But Brook over would go by line by line and tell you why he thought something was a good idea or a bad idea.

And I think that prevented some arguments in the community because a lot of people pay attention to these meetings that could have popped up because they had a better understanding of why something passed or failed because broke over, explained it to them in a way that they could understand. And so I guess that we're gonna see if it if the new council, if the public relations aspect, I guess, has changed with these new members because there's just two people that are going out that were good speakers and I think interacted with the public very well, which isn't to say that Whelan and Grigsby are going to do a bad job. I think that they're both, you know, people when you talk to them come off come across very well. But speaking publicly to a roomful of people is different than speaking, you know, one on one on individuals, which is my experience with these two so far.

Thanks for joining me for this conversation, Lucas.

Yeah. It was a lot of fun.

I've been Anna Liz Nichols. Be sure to follow along with East Lansing info as we navigate this recent shakeup in government, and thank you so much for tuning in to East Lansing Insider. See you next week.

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.