East Lansing Mayor Jessy Gregg is stepping into her new role this month following the resignation of former Mayor Aaron Stephens.
Though her contract runs for three months, Gregg says she plans to continue the work of Stephens.
She joined WKAR’s Megan Schellong to discuss her vision for the city.
Interview Highlights
On Finding Out She Was Going To Be The City’s Next Mayor
Well, it’s obviously something that I didn't look for at this exact moment, obviously. But I'm confident. I think, in East Lansing, the mayor is really the point person for contact, as is really the primary difference between the mayor and the rest of the council.
On Her Plans To Address Police Use Of Force And Transparency
We want our community to be safe, we want our officers to be safe. But we want to make sure that our level of enforcement is truly focused on crime and not just inconvenience. And we definitely want to make sure that our laws are equally applied to every member of our community, regardless of their race or economic status, or whether they're a resident or nonresident.
On Her Plans To Address Diversity And Equity
If you're going to truly address a culture change, I don't think video meetings are the way to do it. I think in-person conversations have a lot more depth and passion involved in them. Basically, every single employee in the city is going through a realignment training with an outside firm called Truth & Titus, which we've contracted to help us through this process.
Interview Transcript
Megan Schellong: East Lansing Mayor Jessy Gregg is stepping into her new role this month following the resignation of former Mayor Aaron Stephens.
Though her contract runs for three months, Gregg says she plans to continue the work of Stephens.
Joining me now to talk more is East Lansing Mayor Jessy Gregg. Thanks for being here.
Jessy Gregg: Morning Megan, thanks for having me.
Schellong: Thank you so much, so I wanted to ask, what was your first reaction to finding out you were going to be the city’s next mayor?
Gregg: Well, it’s obviously something that I didn't look for at this exact moment, obviously. But I'm confident. I think, in East Lansing, the mayor is really the point person for contact, as is really the primary difference between the mayor and the rest of the council.
So, I’m not quite the smooth talker that Aaron was. I'm pathologically myself, is the way that I describe my personality. It's pretty hard for me to fake it, so hopefully, that resonates with the community because I can only do what I can do, so little different tone. But I'm confident in my ability to carry out my responsibilities.
Schellong: And one of the projects that was underway during Stephens’ term was the East Lansing Police Oversight Commission.
What are your plans to continue to address police use of force in the city and also increase transparency within the East Lansing Police Department?
Gregg: So, myself and Councilmember Ron Bacon are going to be conducting interviews with the 40-some people who have applied for [The East Lansing Police Oversight Commission]. Usually we do not have 40 people looking to serve on our different boards.
So, I think you can tell just by the level of community interest that this is a high priority for everyone. So we're going to try to figure out how to get through 40 individual interviews, while still making sure that we spend enough time with each applicant that we can really assess their expertise and suitability, and then get that 11-member body seated so that they can start their work.
That's a big one. I also check in with our police department when I can, probably more now that I'm the mayor than I was when I was in the pro tem role.
I've been trying to do some ride-alongs with different officers within the department to kind of get a little bit more feel for what the individual duties are amongst our different types of divisions.
I've spent a couple of ride-alongs with our patrol officers, I'm going to try and check out the detective bureau to just make sure that I understand the scope of what we're trying to undertake.
And then we really deeply addressed our disorderly conduct code last year as a council. And I think it's time to spend the same amount of energy on our use of force policies. So, we'll be working with the department to look at those. I think that that's something that we probably would want to have that oversight committee seated, so that we can get their input as well.
And just obviously, we want our community to be safe, we want our officers to be safe. But we want to make sure that our level of enforcement is truly focused on crime and not just inconvenience. And we definitely want to make sure that our laws are equally applied to every member of our community, regardless of their race, or economic status, or whether they're a resident or nonresident.
So we're just going to kind of address the one that's in front of us right now, which is that study committee.
Schellong: Moving on now to your vision, what vision do you have for the city?
Gregg: Well, my vision as mayor is really the same vision that I had as a council member, so I saw a complicated system that could move more smoothly.
So that's one of the things that I'd like to help with is just interdepartmental communication, communication between City Hall and the public. We've got a lot of different departments, a lot of different boards and commissions, and not all of the information flows smoothly in every direction. So that's just one of my, kind of, long-term goals is to get people talking to each other and collaborating and cooperating.
The other thing that I really think we need to work on in East Lansing is just our business attention and retraction climate. I am a downtown business owner. So I have a kind of, front row seat, I would say, for our microclimate.
And I think East Lansing, sometimes we get caught up in our process, and we get caught up in our paperwork. And we kind of lose sight of the fact that businesses are taking a taking a bit of a chance really doing business anywhere these days. It's very difficult to be a brick-and-mortar business owner, whether you're a restaurant, or retail, or even office-based businesses.
And I think we just have to revise that process to make it more inviting and make sure that we understand that businesses are kind of taking a chance on us, as much as we're taking a chance on them.
Schellong: And I wanted to ask next question, how do you plan to address diversity and equity in the city of East Lansing at the government level?
Gregg: If you're going to truly address a culture change, I don't think video meetings are the way to do it. I think in-person conversations have a lot more depth and passion involved in them.
Basically, every single employee in the city is going through a realignment training with an outside firm called Truth & Titus, which we've contracted to help us through this process.
Hoping that that can really create a climate within our departments within the city where people can feel that they can be genuinely authentic at work and share their real selves, basically, with their coworkers.
We'll see how it goes. We've just started, so it's a it's a long process.
Schellong: Mayor, Jessy Gregg, thank you so much for being here today. I appreciate it.
Gregg: Anytime.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.