Charter Amendment on Land Sale Pushed for May 5

As we've previously reported, the City Manager is seeking to change how public-land sale approvals occur, folllowing a failure to obtain the required citizen authorization on the sale of parking lots for development last November. Last night at Council, there was a long discussion on this topic, getting into lots of detail on what other cities do.

Bottom line for East Lansing: A majority of Council wants to try to push this onto the ballot for May 5, and to do so, they have to have it all set by February 10. They are not planning to also put the parking lots back up for sale at the same time.

Council instructed City Attorney Tom Yeadon to come up with four possible ballot options for Council to discuss next week.

Right now the Charter says: “The Council shall not have the power to sell any real property of a value in excess of four dollars ($4.00) per capita according to the last preceding U.S. Census, or any parkland, or a cemetery, or any property bordering on water, or vacate any street or public place leading to a waterfront, or engage in any business enterprise requiring an investment of money in excess of ten cents (10 [cents]) per capita, unless approved by three fifths (3/5) of the electors voting at any general or special election.”

I honestly had trouble following what four permutations the Council last night instructed the City Attorney to draft, but it seemed they involved various versions of raising the minimum value of land that requires a vote from $4/per capita to $25/per capita, requiring only a simple majority of citizen votes instead of 60%, requiring a supermajority (4/5) of Council to approve these sales (taking it away from the people as a vote), letting the people vote but allowing Council to override the vote of the people, allowing Council to decide which votes go to the people, and possibly others.

A suggestion arose about continuing work on this at the Financial Retreat meeting of Council scheduled for February 7, in order to make the February 10 deadline, but Yeadon said he would much rather see it worked out at a regular meeting of Council, from a legal standpoint. That would mean it will be worked out next week, February 3.

Before the meeting, a protest was held that included many people objecting to the City's desire to change the City Charter on this matter.