Your Charter. Your Choice.

The City’s Charter Commission, which includes nine elected residents, has spent nearly two years listening, researching, and drafting an updated city charter that reflects our community today.

Now it’s your turn to decide if these changes move Lansing forward.

Following is a video presentation by Charter Commission Chair Brian Jeffries that provides an overview of the proposed Lansing charter revisions.

Proposed Revisions to the City Charter

For more information on proposed revisions to the city charter including a complete copy of proposed charter and red-line version that shows every edit, visit here. See below for summary, PowerPoint Presentation, video and other resources.

The Charter Commission voted unanimously to retain a strong mayoral system, not an unelected city manager, to ensure the mayor remains accountable to the voters.

The mayor would have to publicly present a three-year plan that includes comprehensive data on the city’s current situation, high-level strategic goals; detailed strategies for achieving the goals; and a system for regularly measuring and reviewing progress.

Seeks to improve transparency by providing residents with a clear, written roadmap of priorities.

Seeks to increase accountability by creating measurable benchmarks to evaluate whether promises are met.

The new city charter also would:

Establish the city’s internal auditor as an independent agency to improve accountability and transparency at all levels of city government.

Expand Lansing City Council from eight to nine members by increasing the number of wards to five while retaining four at-large members.

Allows a wider range of neighborhoods and communities within the city are represented in the decision-making process.

Each City Council member would represent fewer residents, helping to improve responsiveness and give people a greater voice in the process.

Moving to an odd number of members helps prevent tie votes, enabling more decisive outcomes on important issues without procedural delays.

Your Charter Presentation

Following is a PowerPoint presentation that provides an overview of the proposed charter revisions as well as the charter commission’s work on the new charter. The presentation has been given at public meetings across Lansing:

R9 Your_Charter_Your_Choice Download