With misgivings, Gregg is quitting the East Lansing City Council

When Jessy Gregg decided to run for the East Lansing City Council in 2019, she had no idea the tumultuous ride she was in for.

A global pandemic. A reckoning on racial equity and policing. A revolving door of Council members. A shakeup in city staff, starting with the dismissal of the city manager.

Combine all that with owning a small business that is expanding to Kalamazoo.  After “some pretty heavy soul searching,” Gregg has decided not to run for a second term.

The tumult of crises was not even on the horizon when Gregg, 46, won her seat four years ago.

Five months into office, the pandemic hit, causing a major upheaval for the city as downtown stores closed and downtown workers stayed home. Moreover, when restrictions were loosened, Michigan State University ignored guidelines. A COVID outbreak was traced to one downtown bar and restaurant.

Allegations of racially motivated policing in East Lansing followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020, pushing East Lansing leaders, including Gregg, to create a citizens’ Police Oversight Commission. The commission released its first assessment in June, which found significant inequities in who was involved in police interactions and violence.

“Of the 144 use of force incidents in 2022, approximately one-quarter involved officers interacting with people experiencing a mental health crisis,” the executive summary reads. “There were significant racial disparities in use of force during 2022: of the 167 people involved in use of force incidents 56% were Black, 36% were White, 5% were identified as other racial categories, and 3% were of unknown race.”

Gregg said she was not surprised by the findings.

“We know that we have policies that are out of date and need to be updated in terms of how our police are trained and how they interact with their community,” she said. “So, it’s also something that we’ve been working on outside of the recommendations of that report.”

Another key responsibility of the commission is to hear and review civilian complaints against East Lansing Police Department officers. Gregg hopes that, as the chair and vice chair of the commission have promised, the body will focus on identifying officers with a “troubling pattern of issues.” Identifying those patterns will help prevent troubles or issues before they happen, she said.

“How do we change our underlying policies and training to prevent those from ever happening as opposed to cleaning up the mess after it has happened?” she said.

As the race for three Council seats shapes up, she said she is concerned about the future of the commission, which is “just beginning the process of rebuilding trust in the community.”

“I know that there’s a facet of our community that does not think that what the Police Oversight Commission is doing is having a positive impact, and losing that body when they’re just getting started would be to me devastating,” she said. “It’s hard for me to decide to step away from all that. I’m actually getting emotional.”

Indeed, even in the midst of the COVID crisis, she and her colleagues made a controversial move to dismiss the city’s legal firm.

She said that she and former Council members Aaron Stephens and Lisa Babcock “felt very strongly that we needed a different direction for our legal counsel,” she said. “We just had a general dissatisfaction with the advice that we were getting around the pandemic.”

Thomas Yeadon had served the city through a contract since 1985. He provided legal advice to the Council and prosecution services for misdemeanors in the city’s 54-B District Court. He was fired with a 3-2 vote on July 14, 2020. Just the year prior, Yeadon was awarded a 25 percent increase in his salary by a 3-2 vote. His dismissal led former mayors Mark Meadows and Ruth Beier to quit the Council.

Beier had served on the body since 2013, while Meadows was re-elected to the position in 2015, after serving in the state Legislature representing East Lansing. Meadows has filed to run this running again this year, but he declined an interview before the July 25 deadline.

“Mr. Meadows and then Mayor Beier left us mid-meeting, announcing their resignations and signed off, leaving us as a Council of three in the middle of a pandemic and the middle of a national police reform conversation — so, very tumultuous times,” she said.

Beside Meadows, three others have filed for the race already: incumbent Noel Garcia, Jr., Rebecca Kasen, who is the executive director of the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing, and Daniel Bollman, an architect who ran unsuccessfully in 2021. Garcia was appointed to the Council in January to take the seat vacated by Babcock when she was elected as a judge on the 54-B District Court.

Since being elected, Gregg has been balancing not only her elected duties but has been running a small business called Seams in downtown East Lansing. That business has expanded to a second location in Kalamazoo.

“It’s a sewing supply fabric store, sewing machine dealership, and we also teach classes,” she said.

She also has three children, including an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old. She said that her kids are “super artsy,” which means clubs and other social scheduling conflicts.

As a former journalist for the nonprofit news website EastLansingInfo, she said she saw up close “throw-away comments” from Council members demonstrating a lack of understanding of how hard it was to be a small business owner in East Lansing. She was just launching Seams and saw the vacancies throughout downtown.

“I wanted to be part of that conversation. I had some other strong feelings about how we could change some of our city policies, specifically our zoning to be a little bit more balanced in terms of the needed economic improvement that businesses bring, but also the stability for our residents and the climbing property costs,” she said of her decision to run in 2019.

The vacancies in downtown East Lansing’s commercial properties, she said, have declined.

“We’ve actually been gaining strong long-term tenants downtown,” she said. “It’s much more vital down here than it was before.”

While her decision not to run is set in stone, she is still queasy as she watches the forming race for three seats on the body shaping up.

“I’m not happy to be stepping away and leaving so much yet to be accomplished on the table,” she said. “I’m concerned frankly that me deciding to leave this position vacant is going to open the door for somebody who does not feel positive about the changes that we’ve made.”

— TODD HEYWOOD