Covid might be over before East Lansing’s downtown mask mandate ends. Dr. Marty Makary a surgeon and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health argued in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial that it will be “mostly gone” by April. City council this week extended the ban to May 16.
I’d planned to log on to the council meeting to object, but why bother. The decision had been made.
If I’d participated, I’d have … Read more →
East Lansing Info (ELi) provides nonprofit, nonpartisan news and information for East Lansing. A major part of that service is providing information and investigative reporting about elections for voters in East Lansing.
Jessy Gregg and I have produced a comprehensive nonpartisan voter guide on the income tax proposal, with substantial help from Chris Root. You can read that here:
https://eastlansinginfo.org/content/elis-voter-guide-income-tax
Additionally, Chris Root has provided an in-depth look at the Ingham County jail and justice millage, published here:
https://eastlansinginfo.org/content/august-ballot-has-another-proposal-ingham-county-voters-new-jail
Karessa Wheeler … Read more →
My thanks go out to Matt Kazmierski, Public Response’s Administrator, for his “Sunny Side of East Lansing” post. What a great list!
As a follow-up, I’d like to remind people that ELi’s Managing Editor Ann Nichols is always looking for story suggestions about East Lansing, so if you see a “sunny side” story ELi should cover, please be in touch via this page: https://eastlansinginfo.org/contact You can also reach our Managing Editor via ELi’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/eastlansinginfo and Twitter account @eastlansinginfo.
Our readers especially value stories that … Read more →
Just over a week ago, Public Response asked you all to respond with the things that you like about East Lansing and living here, and your responses did not disappoint. Thank you all very much for taking the time to respond!
I meant to send this follow-up post with the compilation of answers sooner… but Spring Break got in the way last week. I apologize. However, it seems fitting to send out this “Sunny Side” email on a cold, snowy, spring day here in … Read more →
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 … Read more →
I am very curious about why certain non-city taxes are so much higher in EL/Ingham County than in TC/Traverse Bay/Grand Traverse. I have analyzed why EL city taxes are so high—the disproportionate cost of policing a college town with much smaller tax base than Ann Arbor, with collateral effect on legacy costs, which are mostly for public safety, and the huge amount of money squandered on building public works, without seeking voter approved debt millages, and pursuing public-private development with snake oil finance.
ISD … Read more →
Having recently received my Traverse City 2018 assessment, with 2.1% inflation increase, I have been trying to more fully understand my tax millages in comparison with what I was used to in East Lansing.
Both communities have significant aging infrastructure problems. As far as I can tell, public safety and public services in TC are as good or better than in EL.
Bottom line is TC local taxes (defined as for a brownfield plan, including ISD but not school district) comes to about 27.8 … Read more →
