Altmann To Run for East Lansing City Council

Erik M. Altmann says he’s tired of watching the City of East Lansing giving away money to developers and ignoring the needs of its neighborhoods.

“It’s out of control,” said the MSU professor of Psychology. “It started with City Center II. The city got starry-eyed and we are still paying for it.”

With a replay of the failed development deal on the corner of Abbot and Grand River underway now, it is imperative that the city start changing its priorities from developers to residents, said Altmann, who is running for a seat on the East Lansing City Council, in an interview with me.

“We need to make it clear that we won’t be giving developer subsidies to companies with shadowy records or poor records,” he said. “We should all be terrified of what is coming. But, to put a positive spin on it, some of the really controversial votes have been 3-2 so we only need to flip one seat. We do have a reason to be hopeful.”

Altmann, 51, also pointed to the recent redevelopment on Trowbridge Road as what he sees as a missed opportunity for the city to see some much-needed revenue. In addition to ending or decreasing tax breaks for developers, Altmann would like to see the city be more pro-active in addressing hazardous and blighted property in the city.

“Eminent domain is there for exactly this reason,” he said. “It won’t be cheap or fast but we need to decide if it is worth it. For instance, having a nice new park would be terrific.”

But instead, as a result of the decreased tax revenue, the city’s infrastructure is failing, Altmann said.

“It is a slow motion train wreck,” he said. “The sewer and water system is 100 years old and there has been no planning at all to update it. They should have been building a sinking fund but they didn’t. There is no money for infrastructure because we’ve given hundreds of thousands away in unnecessary development support.”

“The priorities have been backwards,” he said.

Finally, there is a lack of trust that the residents have for city leaders that stems directly from past development deals, he said.

“They need to start telling people the truth,” Altmann said. “The city does not need to sell off parking lots in order to attract developers. That is simply not the truth.”

Altmann received his bachelor’s degree at the University of Alberta (Canada) in 1987 and his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 1996. He joined MSU in 2000, and was promoted to full professor in 2013. He studies memory, attention and cognitive control.

He said that when he and his wife, Kathy Swedlow, a criminal law professor at Cooley Law School, toured MSU, it wasn’t the campus that brought them to East Lansing, it was the neighborhoods.

“We had options but when we toured the neighborhoods, it sealed the deal. Nice houses, nice neighbors, a chance to live around some really cool people,” he said, looking back 15 years.

He said that while he has always had policy interests, he hadn’t considered running for office until he realized how little representation “the little guy” had on the City Council.

He has served on the City Historic District Commission and is currently a member of the City Planning and Zoning Board.

“I came in with an interest in housing policy, especially for the neighborhoods close to MSU,” he said. “These neighborhoods can be saved, revitalized and we need to figure out how to do that.”

He also wants to play a role in shaping the city’s comprehensive plan update. Specifically, Altmann wants to ensure that the city’s public assets are strengthened – such as the Bailey Center – and to decrease the non-conforming rentals in the city.

“Giving incentives to landlords to retire their licenses is a simple and obvious move we have to make,” he said. “That will allow us to increase the number of rentals for faculty, families, and city employees – housing supply that is missing right now.”

Altmann’s activism has roots in the long, hot summer of 2012, when Michigan’s newly enacted law lifting restrictions on fireworks wreaked havoc in East Lansing. The City Council could have moved quickly and enacted local ordinances to control the outbreak but they waited, he said.

“We lost an entire summer. It was an acute quality of life issue in my neighborhood,” he said.

The election will be November 3 and three seats will be up for grabs: those currently held by Mayor Nathan Triplett, Mayor Pro Tem Diane Goddeeris, and Councilmember Kathy Boyle. Councilmembers serve for four-year terms.