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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.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the East Lansing Insider podcast. I'm East Lansing info managing editor, Lucas Day, and today, we're gonna be talking about controversies the city has been navigating going back to late last year. For months, residents and civil rights groups have been speaking out at East Lansing city council meetings about issues involving policing and decisions made by the city council. Get To a better understanding of the perspective of city leaders, we're joined by former mayor Aaron Stephens. Aaron, thanks for joining us.
Aaron Stephens:Thanks for having me.
Lucas Day:So you were mayor from 2017 to 2021. Can you just catch us up on what you've been doing for the last few years?
Aaron Stephens:So I was on the city council from 2017 to 2021. I was only mayor from 2020 to 2021. But I I did what did do what everybody does when they don't know what they wanna do next, and I went to grad school for a little while. And then after that, I've been I've been basically like a good guy lobbyist for the past few years. So, you know, Amazon and and, you know, Walmart have their lobbyists, and then and then I'm a lobbyist, like, for the people.
Aaron Stephens:I work for a group called the Progressive Change Campaign. We endorse, you know, good progressive candidates across the country, and, you know, I also fight for a lot of really good policies on the congressional side, although I will say it's been a little bit more in in recent years than it was in the past. My main bills are, like, banning members of congress from trading stocks, some other anti corruption measures, and a lot of antitrust stuff. So, like, holding corporations accountable that that take advantage of folks. And additionally, some more consumer rights stuff is, you know, tends to be a little bit more of a scam economy nowadays.
Aaron Stephens:So so it had been a lot of what I've been doing.
Lucas Day:Yeah. And I saw you at a couple of city council meetings last year and then maybe even earlier this year. Are you are you still local?
Aaron Stephens:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We we live in East Lansing. We're gonna be spending a lot more time in DC.
Aaron Stephens:I've tried to avoid it for as long as I as long as I can. But at this point, I'm spending so much time there that that my wife and I might be might be might be taking a temporary leave over there. But, yeah, I've been trying to stay as active as I can and, you know, obviously, help out help out where I where I can for folks.
Lucas Day:Yeah. Absolutely. And like you said, 2020, 2021, you're the mayor. Good years to be mayor. Nothing
Aaron Stephens:Yeah. Yeah. Super fun. No no problems and and very, very smooth, and easy easy time to be mayor.
Lucas Day:Yeah. And, you know, since you kind of navigated because the way you're sensing government structured is the mayor you know, as far as direct power, they're just not another vote on city council. Right? It's not like anything where they run the they run the city government, but you've really got an important an important job as far as far as, like, communicating. And so you're a mayor during the COVID pandemic.
Lucas Day:And so I I I think that you might have kind of a unique perspective on what, city leaders have been doing lately and what's what's continued to draw people to these meetings. Because I never thought that I'd see, you know, going back to when I covered East Lansing as an undergraduate student in the state news when I covered your government, there'd be spurts where you'd have people come to meetings, but I've never seen consistent presence at meetings like this, like we've seen in the last few months. We've seen, the Lansing n double a c p branch coming consistently. The ACLU had a presence for a while. Homeless advocacy groups have shown up, and, you know, that's just to name a few.
Lucas Day:And, so to get started, I just wanna recap what kind of kicked off the series of controversies last year, which was, there is two young black men that were pepper sprayed in downtown East Lansing. The city released a press release about the incident about a month after it happened, which was extremely unusual. I went through all the city's press releases from 2025. There was one other incident about, a criminal case where someone was named, and that was very different. That was, there was a manslaughter.
Lucas Day:Someone died. And so Mhmm. The need to communicate that was different than this because these two young men were charged with, misdemeanors, which, you know, busy downtown East Lansing nights are gonna have several misdemeanor fights. And then about a week after the press release came out, the attorney released the footage, and it's just not a fight. It it doesn't show up.
Lucas Day:Right? There's a man in line. He he's, you know, arguing with some people. His friend comes from the curb. The friend that comes from the curb to, you know, between his friend, the man he's arguing with, is named Yeah.
Aaron Stephens:If I if I remember correctly, it was it was I mean, is the friend basically tried to stop him from engaging in, like, whatever argument he was engaging in. Right?
Lucas Day:Yeah. Absolutely. And then the thing that was more concerning was the next week at city council, one of the people that we've been seeing for the last week, it turned out that he was he was her son. The Yeah.
Aaron Stephens:That that I remember. I think I was at that meeting. Yeah.
Lucas Day:You were. You were. Yeah. And so you've got this extremely unusual press release, and then you go on to find out that it was written about, a local advocate's son, his sister was actually making TikToks that have gotten a lot of attention about the drawing criticism to the LPD. And, you know, we're eight, nine months after the fact now.
Lucas Day:We still haven't gotten an explanation of what happened. What the city said is, they've got insurance lawyers that are currently in litigation involving this. There are lawsuits filed in federal court, so they can't talk about it or else lose their insurance coverage. But there's also things like use of force that, I haven't heard city leaders talk about. That's even when there's a 50% increase in use of force amongst the the police department in 2025.
Lucas Day:Really?
Aaron Stephens:That is a that's a pretty crazy statistic, actually.
Lucas Day:And and that that number actually didn't come from the city. That that number came from me. I manually added up their monthly reports, which it's not calculus. I added up 12 numbers from the monthly reports on the thirteenth.
Aaron Stephens:They used to not release those monthly reports too.
Lucas Day:I know. The monthly
Aaron Stephens:reports Those those, that was, something that we put in place at the when we've made the police oversight commission.
Lucas Day:Right. Right. And, you know, as you know, the oversight commission has also seen, power stripped along the same. But I I just wanted to get your thoughts on do you think that if you're on city council, you could go, you know, ten months with seeing people come every single meeting talking about this and, you know, saying very little?
Aaron Stephens:No. I mean, I I mean, no. I I I don't think so. I mean, like so there's this there's this, like there's this thing that I don't wanna do, which is which is and it's it happened to me when I was on council. Right?
Aaron Stephens:Like, council members or previous mayors coming in and being like, actually, I would have handled that much better, and I'm I'm much smarter than, you know, the people that are currently there or whatever else. But I do think that there's, like, certain situations where it's like, okay, you just kinda have to be a human being. And the the video that I saw, and I think everybody else saw, was, like, a guy that basically tried to stop his friend from, you know, engaging in a, you know, argument or, like, disagreement with somebody else. And then that guy, the one that was, like, trying to deescalate, got, like, you know, I I believe pepper sprayed. And then, you know, there were charges against him.
Aaron Stephens:Am I wrong?
Lucas Day:No. Was correct. Then they
Aaron Stephens:were Yeah. And I remember speaking at that meeting, and I was essentially, like, you know, what we're what what's happening right now is is, like, the the desire to to not be wrong is stronger than the desire to just, like, admit a mistake and and and address it. Right? And and I just don't I think that, like, there's a there's a certain level of trust that is broken when you, like, are just being told something that you, with your eyes, can see is not accurate. And again, like, mistakes can happen.
Aaron Stephens:There needs to be accountability, but, like, mistakes can happen, but you you just have to you just have to face them head on. Right? Like and the the press release thing, to be clear, like, there was there was a situation a number of years ago where a release got put out with name, like, identifying information of a person. Charges ended up getting, I believe, dropped on that person, and we made a policy internally that basically said, like, you know, when somebody's arrested for something, unless there there's a really strong public need. Right?
Aaron Stephens:Like, we're talking a situation where there's a a mass shooter. Right? Or, like, something that there is a strong enough public need that things need to be released, because like that is something that the public needs to know. We're not gonna release identifying information in, like, arrests. Right?
Aaron Stephens:Because again, everybody's proven innocent or everybody's innocent until proven guilty, and when you release somebody's name publicly on, like, an arrest report or something, like, that's just what comes up when you Google search their name. Right? And that doesn't really, you know, coincide with the whole guilt or innocent until proven guilty. So, you know, the press release thing's weird, you know, again, because we we had that policy internally. I don't know what happened to that policy since I've been gone.
Aaron Stephens:But, you know, I think that, again, this is just one of those situations where, like, doubling and tripling down on a situation where really what should have happened is is, you know, there should have been some accountability to the mistake made, and then we should have, you know, moved forward with maybe some some different guidelines for for our officers is is again, it just it just harms the trust between between the council and the community.
Lucas Day:Yeah. And just just touching on that press release again, along with just how unusual it was, we we later got some we we we foyied communication around it, and it showed that it wasn't really written by the public information officer. There were several city attorneys involved in writing that, and then the police chief was supplying information directly, like, supplying information about the names to Input, which was, you know, the two young men. And, that that release, just the way that local media works, like, we don't really write from press releases because our publishing schedule is different. We only put about about two stories a day.
Lucas Day:You know, we think that most of our readers get the city's press release anyway, so we don't recreate them. But other media does because they're looking for content. When I talk when I when I talked to the sister of, Lani Lani Smith's sister, the the, you know, the kid that came in to deescalate the situation, she said that she's not talking to any other media because she was so upset that they'd put her brother's name in the media after the initial press release. Because that press release was really about violence in downtown East Lansing. Yeah.
Lucas Day:Of course. Exactly. Yeah. Hearing from bar owners about, like, situations with knives and stuff that was scary, and then you've got two names that are attached to it. Exactly.
Aaron Stephens:Yeah. And I mean, that that's the difference. Right? It's like it's like putting the and and by the way, like, I I think potentially if you were gonna release and this is like a hypothetical situation. Like, you're gonna release a press release that essentially said, like, we're noticing an uptick in, like, you know, violent crime in downtown.
Aaron Stephens:Right? And like, these are the things these are some things that we've observed. Right? Like, an individual did this and, like, was arrested. Right?
Aaron Stephens:Or, like, you know, an individual was allegedly involved in y and was arrested. Like, that to me makes some sense. I mean, you might disagree with, like, the premise or, you know, I don't necessarily, you know, know if the data's accurate, but, like, that to me is is one thing. Again, releasing the identifying information for an arrest, and we're in a society where you are innocent until proven guilty, that becomes a problem. And to be clear, like, you know, during when I was on city council, like, it happened, and we changed the rules because we were like, oh, this is bad.
Aaron Stephens:Right? Like, this is this is not a good situation that that doesn't actually help anybody. Right? Because again, what happens is no matter what, that person's name, when you Google search them, will come up with whatever stories were written immediately when the press release came out. Right?
Aaron Stephens:And and so you just, like, switch from the presumption being innocent to the presumption being guilt, and that's that's just a problem. Regardless of whether or not they're they're they end up being guilty, right? It's just a problem that the presumption initially is guilt, right, off the rip. We live in a different time. We live in social media.
Aaron Stephens:We live in an age with the Internet, Right? Like, you just have to adapt. And one of the things that you have to adapt there is making sure that, like, we're not unintentionally putting people in a really, really bad situation when that's that's not what we're supposed to do. Right?
Lucas Day:Right. And, you know, I've talked with, Nadia Sellers who's Lani's mother, the local advocate. And, just what I've gotten from her conversations with her, like, she's obviously upset that her son was pepper sprayed. It's it's very painful, but she's more upset about that press release. And so now this is dealing with two federal lawsuits, and I wonder if these could have been avoided if you didn't put out that press release a month after the fact and instead, you know, had meetings with Nadia and maybe apologized, disciplined officers involved, you know, just taking some sort of different route.
Lucas Day:But moving on from that, like I said, there's been no discussion of this publicly. The city managers told me that city council members wanna talk about it but can't because of litigation. Yeah. And I was just wondering what sort of role city attorneys played in your ability to communicate while you're on the city council.
Aaron Stephens:Yeah. I mean, it's tough. Like, I'm gonna I'm gonna give, like, a little bit of grace here and just say, like, you know, you're sitting there as somebody that might wanna talk about something, and your attorneys are telling you, like, you definitely cannot do this. Right? And it's, you know, again, I'm I'm not in the closed door meetings anymore, so, like, you know, whatever the attorney is saying is whatever the attorney is saying.
Aaron Stephens:Right? But it is difficult to a certain degree when there's, like, a lawsuit involved, like, to say things publicly. That being said, you know, I think that that there there comes a point where, you know, you have to shift from from trying to to, you know, shave off some liability to to being responsive to the people that elected you. Right? And, like, that's a, you know, that's a balance that you have to strike.
Aaron Stephens:Right? And I have been. I've been I've been in that room where, you know, I'm like, okay, I really wanna wanna talk about this publicly later, and the city attorney is like, hey, you can't do that because it will really harm our position in, you know, whatever the next step of this is. Right? And it's not, you know, a very comfortable position to be in.
Aaron Stephens:But again, I think that, like, when you have that many activists showing up to meetings, you know, asking and pleading for some kind of, like, empathetic response there, I I would have broken. Right? I would have I would have given it. Right? And I and I I just think that that's that's kind of, you know, you have to figure out where you draw that line.
Aaron Stephens:And I think that I think that that line was was drawn by the community forum.
Lucas Day:Yeah. And and so moving on to the next, I wanna say, string of events that were was bringing people to city council meetings was some proposed ordinances that would have banned public camping. This got the attention of the ACLU Yeah. Of the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness, another national and then there's a third national, homeless law group, that sent letters opposing this. And, you know, the thing that was kinda striking to me about this was it was some time before we understood, like, what the justification for it was, what why it was being proposed at all.
Lucas Day:This came this was coming to meetings for months and months. They kept rewriting it and writing it. And it was near the end when they eventually rejected the camping ban that they said this is in case somebody sets up a structure on, like, a public stage. We're trying to avoid that because I guess that it was almost an issue last year. But when they asked somebody to move before a festival, they did.
Lucas Day:But for the longest time, we didn't know why these were being proposed because there's not tents in Downtown East Lansing. Like, camping's pretty rare. And I I was just wondering if you had any thoughts about, you know, just just communicating why you're doing something when the the need might not be apparent to the community.
Aaron Stephens:Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, people in communities are are smart enough to to come to their own conclusions. And if you don't give them, you know, an answer that satisfies their own questions about it, they're gonna come to their own conclusions. Right? I think that that's, like, part of the reason why being transparent is a good thing in general.
Aaron Stephens:Even, you know, being a little bit more transparent to a fault, I think, is is and, like, when I was when I was mayor, to be clear, like, it was during COVID, we were making a lot of decisions very, very quickly with limited information. And I, whether this was a good thing or not, and I'm, you know, I'm sure it bit me in the ass a few times, like, was trying to be very very open about, like, this is the information that I have, this is the decision that we're making based on the information that I have, this might not be the best decision, but this is why we're making the decision. Right? Because again, we were we were operating in a situation like a global pandemic that we had, you know, not really there wasn't necessarily like a playbook on how to how to how to, you know, move forward. So I felt in that situation, like, transparency is probably my friend.
Aaron Stephens:And if, you know, somebody disagreed with, like, the end result, that's fine, but at least they would know why I was making the decision that I was making. And, you know, I think I think with something like this that's fairly sensitive, you know, it's it's important to to kinda walk people through what the what the reasoning on stuff is. Now, I I wanna I wanna give a really quick disclaimer here too. Like, so a lot of cities have disorderly conduct codes that are, like, fairly outdated, and disorderly conduct codes, you know, are usually things that get added to, not subtracted from. And, you know, a lot of cities, including East Lansing at a time, have some really outdated things in those disorderly conduct codes.
Aaron Stephens:Like, we used to have this is this is this is to be clear. This is my would say this is, like, probably my proudest, like, legislative, like, win when I was elected, was that we we basically, like, redid the disorderly conduct code in East Lansing when I was there. Now, the I think the thing that got the attention was that a woman exposing her breasts was not qualified as inciting a riot. I think that was that was, like, a provision in the disorderly conduct code, that was what got the most reporting on. But we actually got rid of a number of of very outdated provisions, right, which was like, if you're, like, walking around a building suspiciously, you could be arrested.
Aaron Stephens:Right? And, like, had anybody been arrested for that in the past year? No. But it's bad that it's in there. Right?
Aaron Stephens:Like, it's bad it's bad that an officer could be like, I have this ability to, like, arrest this person because they're walking around a building suspiciously. Right? And again, like, things get added to the disorderly conduct code, not taken away. And I think that, like, when you're giving, you know, when people are already nervous about, like, police actions, then you're trying to give them, like, more ability, more power, like, you really have to be very, very intentional about why you're doing that. So I do think the transparency is an important factor there.
Lucas Day:Yeah. And I think it's important to note that those, homeless ordinances actually came out of closed door meetings. They they assembled some downtown committee that included the police chief and, several different city staff members, I think some downtown business owners, and that's where the ordinance is originated from. So they didn't originate from a public forum. This committee that came and presented a whole series of recommendations, and that was the one that, gained the most attention.
Lucas Day:So people really didn't know where where they were coming from for months and months. And then the next thing that I just wanted to move on to is, what the city is navigating right now, and we're recording this on Monday. The podcast will come out on Sunday. So, maybe this changes by then. But the city manager was recently put on leave, and it it really dates back to an investigation that was started in September when a grants coordinator for the city initially made a complaint.
Lucas Day:They had a third party attorney that conducted an investigation, that did not find, evidence to back her claims, but it did find some issues with toxic workplace environment through six different, interviews with city employees, with the city manager, and with the grants coordinator. Things like he can talk or speak down to a I I think the exact wording was, can be a little bit more, stern with women. Can some some people describe not feeling comfortable in their workplace. Workplace. I mean, we sent a leadership training.
Lucas Day:And, again, this this investigation was completed in November. And then just at the May nineteenth city council meeting just a few weeks ago, that same grants coordinator came and spoke during public comment of a city council meeting and announced that she had accused the sex the city manager of sexual harassment and other verbal abuse. She described the behavior. The sexual harassment was that he nicknamed her too easy, she said. And, again, this is stuff that's Terrible.
Lucas Day:That the investigation couldn't find evidence to, but it seems like conversations might be kind of a difficult thing to prove happened. Yeah. And then some other things like, would ask her rapid fire questions and make her feel stupid. Just made kind of demeaning remarks to her. And so the city council got this investigation November.
Lucas Day:It came to light that this accusation it had in May. Two days after the grants coordinator spoke at the city council meeting, they held a special meeting that was all in closed session except for public comment. They came back and said that they were going to release the investigation, which is how we know all this information now. At that meeting, the mayor said, everybody deserves due process. Everybody has rights.
Lucas Day:That applies to complainants, and it applies to respondents. And it's a relief for me to be able to final and it's a relief for me to finally be able to make this statement to the public that these claims are unfounded. And then he said a few more things, and then I look forward to continuing to work with city manager Bellman in his position, and I offer my support to him. Now since the mayor made that comment, the public's been able to see the investigation, and they've changed course, I think, I'd say a little bit. He's now been placed on leave.
Lucas Day:The city manager has been placed on leave, and that that that's where we're at. We don't know when he's going to be back on leave. We do know that a third party attorney, a different one, was brought in that the city council is going to ask some questions too. We don't know what those questions are. We don't know what the timeline is.
Lucas Day:But I I I just wanted to get your thoughts on, the mayor's comments at that meeting. But
Aaron Stephens:And she she went to, the city council meeting recently. Right?
Lucas Day:May 19.
Aaron Stephens:Publicly. Was that was that the first time this was talked about publicly?
Lucas Day:Yep.
Aaron Stephens:Okay. And this is, like, also corroborated by Marie. Right? Marie Wicks?
Lucas Day:Marie Wicks, who, I'm just gonna note it's on our board. So WLNS has done some reporting on it that, we've attached WLNS' reporting. We haven't interviewed Marie directly about this just because she's on our board, so she does have oversight over us.
Aaron Stephens:Sure.
Lucas Day:But Marie has, corroborated former city clerk Marie Wiggs has corroborated some problematic behavior. She's described some of her own, issues in employment and said that, city manager played a role in her, leaving her position. He was, fired from his previous position as Saginaw County controller in June 2023, about two months before he was hired to East Lansing City Council. His side of that has been that it was more of a disagreement between new board members and him than issues with city employees. But there were city employees that spoke at that meeting, describing some behavior that I'd say is similar to what, Desikszik Hernandez described, the grants coordinator, as far as, being demeaning and, yeah, being demeaning was was the behavior mostly described at, Saginaw.
Aaron Stephens:Yeah. Well, I mean, the behavior that you described is obviously really, really terrible to hear. And I think that it's very brave of her to even come up and talk about it publicly, especially because I think that's a really difficult thing to do. And, you know, it sounds like there there is potentially a little bit of a pattern there too. Listen, I mean, you know, I understand the the the push for for a level of of due process.
Aaron Stephens:And as I said, like, you know, this is a society where, you know, you're you're innocent until proven guilty, but, you know, I do think that, like, there's a, you know, there's a level of, like, there's a difference between, you know, somebody being arrested and somebody being removed from a job, you know? I think that, like, the the something that I think we sometimes forget in, like, local government, too, is, like, if it's somebody is just managing in a way that you don't want them to manage, like, you can just not have that person manage. Right? I think that that's, you know, something that's that's out there. And and again, I mean, the things that that were described there are really terrible, and I, you know, I really can't imagine, like, what that woman was going through in in that situation.
Aaron Stephens:And also felt like probably fairly trapped with without, you know, maybe the the best ability to have recourse. So much so that that she felt the need to to talk about it publicly at a at a city council meeting. Again, trying to trying to get a response from the from the folks that were that were elected. But again, I mean, in in this situation, like, I think that the calculus here is is, like, you know, not necessarily, like, I I fully agree with the position to, like, have an independent person look through and try to figure out whether these claims are are founded or unfunded. I think that makes a lot of sense.
Aaron Stephens:But the second part of that is, like, you know, is this a person that you want leaving the city? Right? I think that that's an important question. And you ask yourself that, not because you're saying, like, you know, there is a, you know, there's gonna be something, there there's a lawsuit, or there's gonna be, you know, action against this person, but it's just, like, based on the information that you're getting from your staff, right, based on the the history of of maybe the not the best management style at previous, you know, organizations, is this the person that you want managing the city? And I think that's probably a question that that you can have, because the city manager is an at will employee to the city council, Right?
Aaron Stephens:You don't necessarily need to have the the the dedicated background there. I think that's the that's kind of the point is that the city council gets elected and then they're able to make that decision. Right? So, yeah. I mean, again, what you described is terrible, and, you know, I I think that, you know, having Marie there to to corroborate that that, you know, situation is also an important piece of evidence as well.
Aaron Stephens:But again, the city council, like, they hire the city manager, it's an Atwell employee. This is a job, not necessarily, like, this isn't this isn't arresting somebody, this is a job. Right? And somebody's telling you that, like, this person is managing in a certain way, and like making employees feel a certain way, and you just have to make the decision. Is that something that, you know, is that is that who we want, hired to manage the city?
Aaron Stephens:And I would argue that that there's probably a a question in there for members on the city council.
Lucas Day:Do you wonder about the process that this investigation was closed in November, and now, he's placed on leave and, he was placed on leave on in late May after this, grants coordinator who still who still works for the city, as as far as I know she did when she made this complaint for sure, spoke publicly about it. It it seemed like it was kind of a closed chapter until she let the public know what it or spoke publicly, about her experience.
Aaron Stephens:Yeah. I mean, that's super concerning. Right? Like, I I just think that, like, there's this I mean yeah. Like, the the fact that, like, there was an investigation closed in November and then, you know, nothing was talked about and then somebody talks about something publicly, and then you have, you know, an action given.
Aaron Stephens:Again, like, obviously driven from a level of public response and public outcry there, but it is a bit concerning that you have a situation where this was, you know, behind the scenes, and then there was action taken only when things were were public. Again, like, it's it's difficult to to know everything that occurred behind the scenes because, you know, you're just not in the room. But, yeah, I I understand why why people would be looking at that with maybe a little bit more of an inquisitive face.
Lucas Day:Yeah. The action that was taken in November was he was sent to some leadership training. And then, I mean, I guess we don't really know what the action is now. We know he's on paid administrative leave, and they have this new law firm coming in, that they're gonna ask him some questions too, but, we don't know what, I guess, what they're trying to figure out. Again Yeah.
Aaron Stephens:Let let me let me let me be abundantly clear, and then let me let me make a let me make a side point. So the abundantly clear part is, like, you should not treat people like this. You should not treat women in the workplace like this. Like, women in the workplace fee face, you know, unreasonable amounts of sexual harassment, and also just generally have a harder time, like, getting their voice heard and, like, getting their ideas through and moving up the ranks. You know, men have a much, much easier time in those situations than than women do, and what this woman described is terrible.
Aaron Stephens:The the other part of this that I think is is really important, and this is something that I realized too, like, when I was elected, is, like, you have a city of employees that are really, really smart and really dedicated, like, that that all could be doing different things than working in the public sector, maybe making a little bit less money than they could probably in the private sector, but they're doing it because they they, you know, most of them really want to like serve the public, right, and they have ideas on how to do it, and they they are, you know, ready and rearing to to bring those forward. One of the, like, most important things to do is to have a head of the management of the day to day operation that is encouraging people to come forward with new ideas and new solutions to things, and to bring up problems that are happening, right, that, like, need to be addressed. Right? You wanna create an environment where the, like, flow of information coming from the people that are actually doing the work to, like, the top is really, really seamless. Right?
Aaron Stephens:And so if you have a manager that is stifling that, that is a bad thing. Obviously, in this case, this is, like, a very extreme situation that, like, is much much, like, more severe than that situation. But even if it wasn't, right, I think that if you have a city manager that is not allowing their employees to feel comfortable, like, coming forward with ideas or talking about things that are going on or bringing up problems, or, like, proposing new things without feeling, like, belittled, that's a problem, and that is not serving the public well. Some of our best ideas when I was elected did not, believe it or not, did not come from me. They came from, like, city employees that had been doing the work for, you know, sixty hours a week for the past three years.
Aaron Stephens:Right? And they, like, found a solution to something that I wouldn't have thought of. Right? And if I didn't hear that solution because the city manager, like, didn't allow, you know, that person to, like, say their piece, then that solution would never exist. Right?
Aaron Stephens:In fact, like, that Albert Alfresco, like, the closing down the street, right, that thing, that was a city employee. Like, that wasn't us, that wasn't, you know, George Lajanas at the time. That was a city employee that said, you know, I talked to a bunch of businesses and I think this would be a really cool idea, and then we did it. And again, that only happens when you have a city manager that is encouraging of people to to come forward and and talk about things. And it seems like in this case, that might not be the situation, so I'd be concerned there.
Lucas Day:Yeah. And I just wanna go back to the quote from the mayor because I think it was kind of an important thing that came out of this closed session meeting. This was before anybody had seen the complaint, but it drew a strong reaction from the crowd. What mayor Eric Altman said is everyone deserves due process. Everybody deserves rights.
Lucas Day:That applies to complainants, and it applies to respondents. And it's a relief to me and it's a relief for me to finally be able to make the statement to the public that these claims were unfounded. And then he's went through a few more lines, and he said, I look forward to continuing to work with city manager Baumann in his position, and I offer my support to him. And this was different from what was communicated by two of the city council members, mayor pro tem, Chuck Grigsby, and, council member Carrie Abersal Singh, who later put out a second statement but denounced his comments, who said if you're having issues in the city, please come forward. Please file a complaint.
Lucas Day:And then you had some advocates who have worked with sexual assault survivors like, Tajmika Torok and, Abby Tykaki, who's also on the school board, that said they're not going to. They're not going to believe you. They were shouting this at the other members of city council as they were making their statements. Because what you know, when I talked to these people after the meeting, they they feel like the mayor had just exonerated him. Now, obviously, the calculus has changed over the five days between when that meeting was held and when Robert Bellman was placed on leave.
Lucas Day:But I I I just wanted your feedback to the comments from the mayor made at that meeting. There was concerns that that that comment was exonerating the city manager and may have some sort of chilling effect on city employees.
Aaron Stephens:Yeah. I mean, it probably, you know, seems like that because I believe that's what those comments mean. Right? I I I don't really know if there's another way to interpret, you know, I fully back him and, you know, nothing was wrong. Right?
Aaron Stephens:I I just I don't know if there's another way to put it. And Teshmik is incredible, and Abi Taikaki does does does incredible work. And, you know, I'm sure all of them can speak to this better than I could. But again, you know, you you defend somebody in that position that that is doing, you know, not great things, and it's gonna be even more difficult for people to come forward and feel like they have, you know, the opportunity to be heard in in a real way. I'd also be interested to, like, know what the internal investigation did to, like, also talk to other city employees about, like, how they've been treated as well.
Aaron Stephens:Like, not just not just the incident that this person, you know, has has talked about, which again, is awful, and should not have happened to her, and is unacceptable. But also, like, if this person has exhibited somewhat of a pattern of this behavior, there are probably other people that feel like they've been maybe talked down to or belittled in some kind of way, or or potentially even worse. So, like, I just, you know, I I again, transparency is important, especially in delicate situations like this. I think, you know, the city council has has every every ability to say this is not the person that we want to to lead the city. And they they could they could say that because they disagreed with, know, his policy on on street parking.
Aaron Stephens:Right? Like, they that they could make that decision based on that, you know, that small of a of an although I I think there's probably some people that think, you know, on street barking is the biggest deal in the world, which fair enough. But, like, they could make that decision based on that. Right? And so, like, City Manager is an at will employee.
Aaron Stephens:You have a bunch of people coming forward and saying that this is this is a problem. You just have to have to respond to those people and respond to their concerns. And again, if you have a city that's that's or, you know, a city staff that's unwilling to to bring up problems that that are occurring, you know, at any level, you're gonna start to see cracks in the services that are provided for the public, and that's that's a problem. So again, what happened to this woman is is absolutely unacceptable, And yeah, I think that that statement probably didn't didn't do a lot to help people feel like they can they can come forward and and talk about things that are going on.