That is just crazy! My house on Cape Cod had a smaller tax rate than a home in Lansing! Maybe Lansing should have a nickname like "Taxachusettes" something like "Taxsing" or "Lansing, The Taxing Capital of America"! We have the most expensive parking lots in the country. PS I love Lansing!
Yeah, I always have to chirp when I see people mention low property taxes on Reddit. Yeah, nominally because the homes are low value relatively, but they're the highest rates around. Detroit is even worse.
I honestly don't know what Lansing can do to fix it though, they need revenue or a level of budget cuts that I don't think anyone wants to discuss.
Big news: Tesla signed a deal with LG to switch their Lansing plant to a new battery tech which will supply Tesla through at least 2030, the deal is worth $4.3 billion and they expect production to start in just over a year. Sad for GM that it turned out this way but good for Lansing, I'm sure there will be quite a bit of money spent during this conversion and with Tesla's demand I'd expect to plant to hum along at capacity when it gets going.
Say what you will about them, but I haven't seen a lot of "and here is some new manufacturing coming to your community because of tariffs". And this does appear to actually be that.
This is interesting and good news for our community, high paying jobs and producing products that lessen our reliance on fossil fuels. I hear a different opinion from DC about electric vehicles and renewable energy in general, so this seems plan to be made by someone dealing with reality which gives me some hope for the future.
You'll get no arguments from me against the Chinese tariffs as China has been fighting a soft/grey war against the US for decades, how directly related this move is to that is tough to say but it's hard to argue it's unrelated. I'm hoping Tesla eyes our area for a more direct investment, another major employer would be great, particularly if in a new sector.
Speculative news on CADL leaving their current downtown building to move into.... the ground floor of the N Grand Ramp. The fact that moving our central public library into a functionally obsolete parking ramp is even being considered is disheartening. There's been too many things like this lately, this sort of news is becoming exhausting. The lack of leadership & vision throughout our local government and local agencies is concerning. Like, who runs an organization without planning for these expenses? Why are we ok with this? Why are people so gullible as to fall for the "this building is in disrepair" garbage? If the building is in disrepair it's because of someone's incompetence. Buildings have to be maintained, occasionally they need more significant overhauls. This has to be planned for budgetarily and through extra space to shuffle things during work. I wonder if it's pure ineptitude, short-sightedness, or is malice involved? It's hard to believe that so many of our leaders lack basic facility maintenance knowledge.
I pay just over 1.5 mils to CADL. I haven't been in one of their libraries in 15 or 20 years. I appreciate that they exist and am happy to pay to have nice facilities that are not only practically useful, but are beacons of the community. Libraries in strip malls and parking ramps are not that. I do not support funding them at all if this is what they come up with. I cannot stress at how bewildering I find some of the actions taken in recent years, it's like their purposely trying to squander all of this hard-earned positive momentum that has taken 3+ decades to get rolling.
EDIT: Also add the lingering potential sale of the former City Market building to Lansing Shuffle as things to be aware of, it'll have to go to public vote before it can be sold. I'm personally against it, I'm fine with the city leasing the property until when/if the property warrants a RFP for something special someday. It'd be a great spot for a hotel if the Lansing Center is ever expanded, or a high-rise apartment building if the market ever can justify it.
I wonder if some of it is just, do we have optimism about the future? I recently took the train to Chicago, and if you've done that, you know that little Niles, Michigan has a beautiful 100-year-old train station. I tend to think that even small cities built like that, a hundred years ago, because they thought "we are going to be a great place, and this station should endure and reflect our aspirations".
Today, by contrast, the vibe often seems to be either "decay" or "just limping along, let's make it to tomorrow, that's our only concern". And so if we can shove the library under a parking garage, that'll keep it going for a few more years at a reasonable price, and that's really what we're after. We aren't going to build a great structure that will still be a pride of the city fifty years from now... will we even still have a city library at that point, after all? Who knows?
This idea reminds me of the destruction of the East wing of the White House. Move the downtown library from an historically important and beautiful building into a gray cement parking ramp. Wasn't there a rehab of the library in 2018 or so not very long ago? I wonder why these important functions of the building were not repaired then. I often wonder if the mayor was actually born in Lansing and grew up here, he would more interested in keeping the facilities we inherited from our parents' generation, they built a beautiful building for a great library downtown so everyone could see it and use it, the thought of moving the library to the ugliest parking ramp in our collection of ugly parking ramps is ridiculous. I guess if it were a temporary measure to make room for renovation that would be OK, I would like to see a plan that guarantees they will move back to the building after renovation. I went to LCC in the '70s and Gibson's bookstore was just rows of bookshelves inside of a warehouse like room, nothing worth staying longer than it took to buy a textbook.
It really is a societal issue. Looking at the big picture I often wonder whether we're at the beginning of a structural decline and some of what we're seeing with some of this stuff is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. It really does wreak of managed decline or societal triage. I've become dramatically more pessimistic just in recent months. I still have some hope for the AI wildcard.
***OFF TOPIC WARNING (lol) I try to not get political too much, I haven't touched on this here and I won't go off on a tangent too much since this isn't the place, but after writing the above paragraph I felt a strong need to blurt this out at least once on this site just for my own sake.... For me it all ties to the broader Epstein situation. If we can't hold those people accountable (yes, even including Trump), then I have no hope for our government at a structural level. This is not partisan, it's been ongoing for many decades. Both sides are deeply implicated. The private sector, including major media, tech, finance, energy, defense are implicated. Eisenhower, JFK and others tried to warn us decades ago. I don't see a way to fix things at this point.***
As for the library specifically... Another of my worries is that this is ultimately something of a ploy to back CADL and voters into a corner where we get asked to approve another millage hike. "Look at our embarrassing library in a parking ramp, don't you want to pay more to build a shiny new building"
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I honestly don't know what Lansing can do to fix it though, they need revenue or a level of budget cuts that I don't think anyone wants to discuss.
https://electrek.co/2026/03/17/tesla-lg-energy-solution-4-3-billion-lfp-battery-deal-megapack-confirmed/
I pay just over 1.5 mils to CADL. I haven't been in one of their libraries in 15 or 20 years. I appreciate that they exist and am happy to pay to have nice facilities that are not only practically useful, but are beacons of the community. Libraries in strip malls and parking ramps are not that. I do not support funding them at all if this is what they come up with. I cannot stress at how bewildering I find some of the actions taken in recent years, it's like their purposely trying to squander all of this hard-earned positive momentum that has taken 3+ decades to get rolling.
https://www.wkar.org/wkar-news/2026-03-16/cadl-exploring-former-gibsons-bookstore-space-for-downtown-lansing-branch?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHtxwf1lZu21_5umKMTkdYi5Y01fkPSIt1t-rR3HRaeyutK5v8Kd0wrYKM-9l_aem_gzXxXabWNHCCvKgfmINIKA
EDIT: Also add the lingering potential sale of the former City Market building to Lansing Shuffle as things to be aware of, it'll have to go to public vote before it can be sold. I'm personally against it, I'm fine with the city leasing the property until when/if the property warrants a RFP for something special someday. It'd be a great spot for a hotel if the Lansing Center is ever expanded, or a high-rise apartment building if the market ever can justify it.
https://www.wkar.org/wkar-news/2026-03-24/lansing-park-board-member-wants-updated-appraisal-of-lansing-shuffle-before-sale
Today, by contrast, the vibe often seems to be either "decay" or "just limping along, let's make it to tomorrow, that's our only concern". And so if we can shove the library under a parking garage, that'll keep it going for a few more years at a reasonable price, and that's really what we're after. We aren't going to build a great structure that will still be a pride of the city fifty years from now... will we even still have a city library at that point, after all? Who knows?
***OFF TOPIC WARNING (lol) I try to not get political too much, I haven't touched on this here and I won't go off on a tangent too much since this isn't the place, but after writing the above paragraph I felt a strong need to blurt this out at least once on this site just for my own sake.... For me it all ties to the broader Epstein situation. If we can't hold those people accountable (yes, even including Trump), then I have no hope for our government at a structural level. This is not partisan, it's been ongoing for many decades. Both sides are deeply implicated. The private sector, including major media, tech, finance, energy, defense are implicated. Eisenhower, JFK and others tried to warn us decades ago. I don't see a way to fix things at this point.***
As for the library specifically... Another of my worries is that this is ultimately something of a ploy to back CADL and voters into a corner where we get asked to approve another millage hike. "Look at our embarrassing library in a parking ramp, don't you want to pay more to build a shiny new building"