In response to Eliot Singer’s most recent post –a small group of activists looked into creating “Spartan City” out of the shallow hull of the city that would formerly be known as East Lansing. It could be done, but there is one rather large complicating factor: Abbot Road forms the dividing line between two underlying Townships (Lansing Twp. to the west, and Meridian to the east).
So, in order to create “Spartan City,” the voters both east and west of Abbot would have to separately vote to separate from “East Lansing” and join their respective Townships. Then voters in the two townships would have to vote to form “Spartan City.” Not impossible, but most likely it would be very difficult to pull off.
There is also the very confounding problem that Abbot Road splits MSU down the middle, as well. Lastly, we can’t forget that the “northern tier” was once Bath Twp. So, not only do we have three townships to deal with, we have two counties, as well.
As a consequence of all of this, any attempt by the taxpayers to split off any portion of East Lansing would provide “McYeadon” with huge amounts of the very same taxpayer dollars to fight the very same taxpayers.
Phil Bellfy