- Noel Garcia Jr. is one of eight candidates running for an open East Lansing city council seat in the November election.
- Garcia said his top two priorities are stabilizing the workforce and continuing to work with young citizens in the city.
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
It's a crowded race for the November election in East Lansing with three open city council seats. There are some big issues for the city to address. Over the course of the next week, we will be introducing you to all eight candidates with a series of four questions.
Our eighth and final candidate is Noel Garcia Jr. An incumbent candidate for a city council seat.
Background:
Garcia was appointed to city council in January 2023 to fulfill the term of the seat left vacant by Lisa Babcock.
He has spent 25 years in law enforcement serving in various roles with the Lansing Police Department including lieutenant, detective sergeant and patrol lieutenant. Garcia also works in law enforcement education at the Wilson Talent Center.
Before being appointed to city council, he was also a member of East Lansing's Independent Police Oversight Commission. He now serves as a Council liaison to the commission. He has also served as chair for the Cristo Rey Community Center Board of Directors and the Hispanic/Latino Commission of Michigan.
Question & Answer:
Q: What would be your top two priorities if elected to city council?
A: "So what's different about me is I'm an incumbent. I was appointed, not a traditional incumbent, but I was appointed in early January to fill the position of Lisa Babcock. So I've kind of already been doing some of the functions of a city council person the last 10 months. So my priorities are what my priorities were even back then or the priorities that occurred Council.
One is to stabilize our workforce. We've seen a lot of, I would say, turmoil down in our city hall with our workforce. I've always advocated since beginning my position of trying to get a culture survey of our staff to find out what they think the problems are. It appears there might be some infighting or some groups that are opposing each other in the workforce and that needs to come out in the open so that we can move forward in the future. Not to kind of dwell on the pastm but so we can move forward and try to fix those problems. So stabilizing the workforce is a big part of it.
The other thing I'd like to see, as again, what we've already started and that's working with our young citizens in the city. The mayor, you know, we were having problems in the schools, with our school safety last year. Ron Bcon And Jessy Gregg instituted a youth Task Force. They're going to be gone and I'd like to take the reins on that if I continue on council. We've began the interview process for those students in our high school and middle school age students in City of East Lansing. I'm also a high school teacher. I teach juniors and seniors in high school at a law enforcement program, I've been doing that for 10 years. I've listened to students for last 10 years, they have some great ideas. It's kind of like going back to the workforce and listening to what they think the problems are. We need to hear from the students themselves of how they can improve things or how we can help them improve things as far as safety in the schools, which I think the superintendent has already done many great things over the last year. So, since we've been having those problems to kind of stabilize things down in the school."
Q: The turnover rate in the city has been high the last few years. What would you do as a council member to encourage employees to stay in the city?
A: "We have to make working in East Lansing attractive. That starts off with, and I've spoken to the city manager about this, I'd like to see a staffing study. I really believe our workforce throughout the city are understaffed. I know that our police and fire are. Our police used to have 70 plus sworn officers two or three years ago, we're down to close to under 50. And again, it's not just the police, police and fire are first responders so they're very important, but every position in city hall or in our city staffing is important. So, you know, I just kind of like, in our city staff, as seeing these vacancies go, they're like a hamster in a wheel. They're working so hard, I'm so proud of them too and I've seen that, I know who they are, I've seen them step up and fill the void without complaining much, but they're overworked. So, again, we start off with a staffing study. Find out how many like communities, how many like workforces around the state, similar sized cities like us, find out what their staffing levels are and get to those staffing levels. Make our jobs attractive to people to come in. I think turnover is bad in the sense that we're losing some institutional knowledge, but it can be good too. Bring in some fresh perspectives and I think that's what we did by bringing in our new city manager with some fresh perspectives."
Q: Affordable housing and student housing are always hot topics in the city, but with downtown space so limited, how would you want to see those addressed?
A: "I'm on council currently and I'm all for affordable housing and student housing. I'm all for housing near the downtown area. I get it. it's appealing, people want to live close to downtown who doesn't? When people hear me say I'm for affordable housing and then I voted no against the Albert Street development, they don't believe that I am and that's really not the case. There were so many things wrong with that Albert Street development that I really don't want to go into detail on, but location, parking, business, it was going to hurt some of the local businesses or they felt like it was going to hurt their businesses and who wants that. We have some great small businesses in our downtown area that I can rattle off a lot of them and people say yeah, I've been to those businesses. We don't want to hurt those businesses. So there was a lot of things wrong with that project in my opinion.
I think we need to do a new master study, to be honest with you, to find out what our students want. I talked about getting the youth voice, let's hear from our students. What kind of housing do you want? Where do you want it? There's very limited places downtown or close to downtown that we can build more affordable, more student housing. We also want to maintain our neighborhoods downtown, our homeowner neighborhoods. Those people came out and spoke against Albert Street as well. So we have to listen to those voices as well.
What I'd like to see is some type of a study and bring in people, bring in partners. Part of that development problem was they weren't talking to the businesses. If you if you have a plan, I think go talk to the people that are going to be affected by it. So partnerships, relationships, talking to those that are all going to be invested in what affordable housing is going to look and what is affordable housing? The rent that I saw in that latest development didn't sound affordable to me. I'd like to just see some more collaboration between all the stakeholders when it comes to what affordable housing or student housing is.
Q: Why should people vote for you this November to serve on the city council?
A: "I think if you've watched me on council this year and my fellow council members, we didn't agree all the time. It's relationships. I've been in many committees and commissions over my years, I would say the last 35 years since I started in place work. I've been on a lot of task force, different commissions, committees and fostering relationships on those committees is so important. I think about the last time when we voted Albert Street down and Dana Watson was just heartbroken. I followed her out of the parking lot, I gave her a big hug and I said, I'm with you on this on this affordable housing, but there's got to be a better project. She was still hurting, but we could walk away with positive relationships. Don't hold any grudges. Don't storm out of a meeting and quit and just get up and quit. We have to be able to maintain positive relationships. And I think if you look at my track record, I'm the person to do that. But we really need that moving forward. Not just on council, but in City Hall. With all our commissions and committees that we have throughout the city. We just have to maintain positive relationships."
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