City Manager

East Lansing’s City Manager George Lahanas announced today that a series of long-blighted commercial buildings on Grand River Avenue near Abbot Road will be demolished by the end of this year. According the announcement, the new owners of the “Big Bank Building” at the northwest corner of Grand River Avenue and Abbot Road and the commercial property between that structure and People’s Church have agreed to a “stipulation and consent order to demolish the properties” by December 31, 2016.

On Tuesday evening, at the East Lansing City Council’s first special meeting to consider the Fiscal Year 2017 budget, City Manager George Lahanas told the Council that the City staff spent the last four weeks developing the proposed budget for the year running from July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2017. It is now up to the Council to spend the next four to five weeks in deliberations on the matter. The Council currently plans to adopt the Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 budget on May 24, 2016.

Image: An East Lansing Department of Public Works team filling potholes last week

Above: City Manager George Lahanas and City Attorney Tom Yeadon, courtesy City of East Lansing

Michigan’s Department of State has determined that East Lansing City Manager George Lahanas violated the Michigan Campaign Finance Act (MCFA) when he used his column in the City’s Dialog newsletter to encourage voters to vote “yes” on a ballot initiative in the fall of 2014. In a letter dated March 2, 2016, a representative of the Bureau of Elections advised Lahanas, “you are not entitled to use public resources to solicit a favorable vote regarding a ballot question.”

Facing numerous financial challenges—including the funding of MSU emergency services and substantial employee-related costs—City of East Lansing staffers and City Council members convened Saturday morning for a special budget meeting. The meeting, held at Hannah Community Center, included an overview of the City’s budget, a review of the City’s General Fund five-year forecast and discussion of preliminary budget assumptions for fiscal year 2017.

Above: rental houses in the Oakwood and Bailey neighborhoods

Image: City Manager George Lahanas and former mayor Nathan Triplett

Above: Nathan Triplett and Mark Meadows

ELi has learned—and has confirmed with multiple sources—that East Lansing’s Mayor Nathan Triplett has been pushing a landlord-friendly bill at the State level for many months and that now, since being voted out of office on Tuesday, Triplett has been working with East Lansing landlords to push the bill through quickly.