LANSING, Mich. — Decade after decade, Nancy Mahlow has done community service in Lansing, and over the years she’s seen a need for warming centers.
“It gets cold in Michigan for God’s sake,” she said. “There’s people out here sleeping in tents, sleeping in cars. Why can’t we have a warming center?
The push to bring a warming center to Lansing recently took a big step forward when the city secured around $800,000 from the state.
From there, Mayor Andy Schor put out a request for proposals for the new warming center, but residents and community activists say they knew nothing about it until they saw an ad in the paper.
“These are our tax dollars, we should have been notified and have a say,” Mahlow said.
Residents aren’t the only ones asking to join the discussion. A few council members also said they knew nothing it, including Patricia Spitzley, who has been pushing for a warming center...
“I knew about the mayors thought process and using the 800,000 to go towards the center but I knew nothing about the proposal.”
Spitzley did note that Schor is not required to inform the city about proposals like this.
We reached out to Schor and his team sent us this statement saying. "City Council has had a report from the administration for weeks and talked about this and the plans moving forward at their last meeting. At Council leadership’s request, we are presenting more details of the plan to them at their next meeting. Nobody from the Administration is available to speak to the media on this before it is presented to Council.”
Going back to Nancy, She said she wishes the mayor and his administration would simply have asked for help.
“We have over 30 neighborhood organizations within the city,” she said.
