Change in Meeting Style with New Council

Above: East Lansing City Council at its meeting this past Tuesday

Regular watchers of East Lansing’s City Council have noticed a number of changes in style under the Council that was seated this past November. Mayor Nathan Triplett lost his seat in that election and was replaced as mayor by Mark Meadows. Mayor Pro Tem Diane Goddeeris chose not to run for re-election and was replaced in that position by Ruth Beier. (The Council decides who will be Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem from among the five at-large Council members elected to office.) Beier and Susan Woods were not up for re-election, and the other two open seats (vacated by Goddeeris and Kathy Boyle, who also did not run for re-election) were filled by Erik Altmann and Shanna Draheim.

Under Triplett’s mayorship, Council generally would not respond to any citizen making comments at the podium, even when citizens specifically asked questions of specific Council members. By contrast, the new Council interacts in dialogue with citizens coming to comment. Council members now sometimes even ask City staff immediately to answer questions raised by citizens. Triplett also sometimes asked those commenting to wrap-up their remarks if he felt they were taking up too much time, whereas Meadows rarely does this.

What has not changed for the most part is the persistence of two kinds of votes: either unanimous (5-0) approval of an item if the matter is uncontroversial, or, if a matter is controversial, a consistent 3-2 split. In the last Council, the 3-2 split consistently went Triplett, Goddeeris, and Woods versus Beier and Boyle. In the current Council, 3-2 splits are consistently going Meadows, Beier, and Altmann versus Draheim and Woods.

We have seen this, for example, in this past week’s 3-2 vote over permit parking in Chesterfield Hills and in the 3-2 vote over a moratorium on the cutting of certain trees. The same 3-2 split also occurred in a Planning Commission appointment that, as we reported, was controversial for how Meadows handled it. This week a similar division occurred during Council’s Tuesday discussion of who to appoint to the new rental nonconforming study committee.

I asked all five Councilmembers this week to comment on the change of style at Council and to speak to what they see as working or not working. Altmann did not reply. Woods responded only to say, “One of the most obvious changes is that I am now in the minority. Not fun!” Beier limited her response to saying, “The change is mostly in tone, which seems to make the public more at ease when addressing Council.”

Meadows and Draheim each provided a more comprehensive view of the situation.

In Meadows’ view, the style may be “new” since the last Council, but it is not new to him as mayor of East Lansing—a position he also held from 1997-2005. He told me, “I just handle the meetings the way I always have. I believe in interacting with the audience and the speakers in a positive way and I think that tends to tone down any anger that a speaker may have on a particular subject. . . . I want every citizen to feel comfortable attending Council meetings and welcome to voice their opinion on any subject, whether on the agenda or not.”

About public comment, he noted, “public comment comes before Council comment for instance and [on Tuesday] the Chesterfield public hearing was conducted the way I used to conduct them and the other two hearings were conducted like they have been conducted most recently. You may have not even noticed the difference but there is a different tone to a meeting when the public gets to comment first and then the staff and the applicant and the Council are fully aware of potential issues that must be addressed. It makes for a more productive meeting.”

As for the politics within Council, Meadows told me, “Council elections cause some disruption and in my experience it takes a couple of months for everyone to get over the election, especially one where an incumbent is not reelected. Some Council members may be used to doing things a certain way, some may never have operated in any kind of meeting system.”

Draheim told me she sees “signs of both promise and concern when it comes to the operating style of the new City Council.”

“As an example of the promise,” she said, “I was pleased by my collaboration with Council Member Beier on the ethics ordinance changes we made last year.” (Read details.) “She gave thoughtful consideration to changes I offered to her proposal. We talked it through, reached a compromise, and adopted good public policy in a unanimous vote. The listening, respect and collegiality demonstrated on that issue is a model we should strive to replicate moving forward.”

“On the other hand,” said Draheim, “there are signs that Mayor Meadows and Council Members Beier and Altmann intend to rely heavily on an approach for which they criticized our preceding Council. On key issues, they haven’t really been open to discussion and compromise. In fact, there have been times when they clearly had caucused and decided important matters before our meetings. In those instances, it hasn’t felt like we’re a five-member team working together to find solutions for East Lansing.”

Draheim concluded, “I'm an optimist by nature. As we build our individual relationships within the Council over time, I’m confident we’ll learn to trust each other more and recognize that we’re all smart people with significant knowledge, experience and creativity to offer. The best decisions and solutions will come from leveraging what we all bring to the table. I think the community wants and expects us to operate that way. I’m as anxious as anyone to see if this Council will live up to that promise.”

Reminder: You can write to City Council as a whole by writing to council@cityofeastlansing.com, and you can write to individual Councilmembers by using the email addresses provided at the City’s website. You can write or speak to Council on any issue, not only those on the published agendas.