Here Comes a Big Week

It’s going to be a big week of news in East Lansing, which means a big week of obligations to you for ELi's team.

This week, City Council is set to hold a public hearing on a marijuana-focused zoning issue and to hear a special presentation from ELPD on local manifestations of the opioid epidemic.

Council will also be deciding on significant amendments to the Center City District deal, and whatever decision Council makes on those will be followed by further review of the amendments by the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) and Brownfield Redevelopment Authority (BRA).

This week, the Downtown Management Board also meets, and is likely to be discussing effects on downtown businesses from ongoing demolition and construction. This week also marks the biannual meeting of the Elected Officers Compensation Commission of East Lansing, which determines how much City Councilmembers and the Mayor will be paid.

These are meetings you expect us to cover for you, and we will. Also this week, we’ve got four of our cub reporters (all East Lansing High School students) from our Summer Youth Journalism Program working on special reports for you, while our newest sports and music reporters are working on other stories about goings-on in our community.

This is not the kind of week Managing Editor Ann Nichols and I can handle both the news needs of East Lansing and ELi’s fundraising needs—even though we are in the midst of our 2018 Sustainability Campaign.

So which do we choose?

Bringing you the news.

That’s our core mission, and that’s what you rightly expect of us in our roles leading this public service news operation for East Lansing.

Want us to keep doing this work in 2018? Want us to keep engaging community members as reporters, asking them to go to these important meetings and events and report back for you?

Then please, while we are out working for you, donate generously to the cause. I don’t get paid by ELi but I do need a commitment of $100,000 from this community to know that we can get through 2018 without the struggle of reporting-versus-fundraising.

So join me in donating to ELi.

I can’t bring you the work of this amazing team without funds to support them. They ask very little in terms of compensation, but they are, at this point, a big and active team, and we need to give them the resources they need to get the job done—the tech support, the editing help, the funds to use the Freedom of Information Act, and, for our high school and college student reporters, enough pay to pull them away from their part-time retail jobs into reporting work for us.

Pitch in.

Already donate monthly via PayPal? Here's how to up your contribution by a few bucks a month. It matters to us.

And thank you.