CHARTER REVIEW: What will East Lansing's Charter Review Committee look like?

• The East Lansing City Council recently approved a Charter Review Committee, which will review the city's charter for any necessary updates.
• The city will appoint the committee from applicants from the neighborhood, which will be staffed by the City Attorney and City Manager.
• Video shows city officials explaining more about the committee and how neighbors can get involved.

(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)

After months of pushes from the community, changes could be coming to East Lansing's city charter. I'm your neighborhood reporter Colin Jankowski. The City Council has approved the formation of a Charter Review Committee.

Mayor George Brookover served on the last revision committee in the late 1990s. He says this Charter Review Committee was one of the city's goals for the next two years.

"This council started to look at strategic planning late last year after the new council was seated," Brookover said. "And so a charter review became one of our strategic goals. We adopted the strategic plan for the next two years. A charter review commission was one of our goals that we wanted to start in on right away."

Comprised of seven members, City Manager Robert Belleman tells me the committee won't be looking for major revisions to the charter, and will instead be looking to make administrative changes.

"Some of the administrative changes are gender-neutral language," Belleman said. "Talk about how we should look at when council members get sworn in. Outside of that, it's up to that seven-member committee to really look at our charter and make recommendations."

Mayor Brookover says the next step now is getting neighbors involved.

"It's a participatory form of government from this standpoint," he said. "And so people are interested in what's going on in East Lansing and interested in where we go and how we go forward. So I just encourage people to apply."

Applications will be accepted until June 15 , and then council members will appoint members to the committee.

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