lansing

Update, Monday November 16: After a weekend that was "incrementally better" than expected in terms of COVID-19 patient admissions, Sparrow leadership now believe the Lansing hospital will reach full capacity around Thanksgiving, rather than this week. As of Monday, Sparrow was at 81% capacity with 136 COVID patients, according to the state's census. 

"You never know what will happen day to day," says Sparrow spokesperson John Foren. "The latest I saw was conceivably Thanksgiving week. It'll be day to day." 

The group Stand Up Michigan rallied Thursday at the state Capitol in Lansing. The event came a few hours after news broke of the foiled alleged kidnapping plot against Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Monday, the Lansing city council may take a step toward considering slashing the city’s police department budget by 50%.

Councilman Brandon Betz says his proposal is about “re-envisioning public safety”.

The Lansing Police Department says it will no longer stop drivers for traffic violations that don’t pose a threat to public safety. 

The new policy means Lansing police won’t pull drivers over for so-called secondary violations.  Those include things like cracked windshields, loud exhaust and broken tail lights.  Lansing Police Chief Daryl Green says it’s an effort to protect the constitutional rights of citizens and eliminate bias-based policing. 

Hundreds of people marched from the Lansing Center to the state Capitol on Wednesday as part of a march against police brutality.

The words "Black Lives Matter" echoed across the Capitol lawn at the NAACP’s “We are Done Dying” march.

Nathanael Jefferson has been to several protests in Detroit and Lansing. He says he has personally been profiled in Lansing and sees police profiling all the time.

More than one hundred protesters gathered on the state capitol steps Sunday marking a week of protests in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, a black Minneapolis man, by a white police officer.

About 100 gun rights supporters rallied on the steps of the state Capitol building in solidarity with Virginia, as a lineup of speakers warned the heavily-armed crowd that the gun control measures proposed in that state could happen in Michigan, too.

“They could literally be at our doorstep tomorrow here in Michigan with those same bills,” said DeeDee Dubose, one of the event’s organizers from Jackson. “That’s why we’re here to stand with Virginia, and our people saying, 'No, no, no, that’s not right.’”

Lansing’s Catholic bishop has responded to an internal review into complaints the diocese’s schools were racially insensitive.

The diocese was criticized after several African-American Lansing Catholic High School football players were benched after kneeling during the national anthem in 2017.

Preparations are expected to begin this week for a quarter billion dollar mixed-use development on the border of Lansing and East Lansing.

Lansing Mayor Andy Schor says workers will be begin clearing the 36 acre site of the $270 million Red Cedar Development Project. A ground breaking is expected next month.

Local student organizer, Khadega Mohammed, has been working on raising awareness about the current turbulence in Sudan by helping organize rallies across the state and sharing information through awareness campaigns on social media.  

Detroit and Lansing are among ten U.S. cities picked to be part of an effort to improve economic mobility.

Foundations linked to billionaires Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and Steve Ballmer are behind the effort to improve the future of America’s children.

Lansing held a ceremony this week to celebrate an end to veteran homelessness in the Capitol City.

The Lansing, East Lansing and Ingham County Continuum of Care, the Capitol Region Housing Collaborative (CRHC), was recently recognized by the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) as “effectively ending” homelessness among veterans.

The mayor of Lansing wants to power all city buildings with 100% renewable energy starting with the city's new fiscal year.

Mayor Andy Schor is including the switch to primarily wind and solar power in the budget he’s introducing this week.

“We will be the first city in the state of Michigan, as far as we can tell, that will be 100% renewable energy,” says Schor. “And I think that’s really important; we have to lead by example.”

A Lansing Board of Water & Light official says roughly 99% of the power would come from solar and wind sources. 

A company angling to be Michigan’s largest cannabis business harvested its first crop this week.

At Green Peak Innovations' south Lansing grow operation, hair-net wearing workers are spending this week harvesting 600 to 800 pounds of marijuana.

“We are bringing a tremendous amount of production to the market. And some of it's ready to go to the market in the next couple of weeks,” says CEO Jeff Radway.   

Radway says 50% of Michigan’s medical marijuana dispensaries have committed to carrying Green Peak’s Skymint brand. The company is also planning on opening 19 retail stores.  

In the middle of a tight re-election campaign, Michigan Congressman Mike Bishop took time Thursday to escort a top Trump administration official around a Lansing development project.

A recent poll showed Republican Mike Bishop holding a slim lead over Democratic challenger Elissa Slotkin.  Slotkin has raised more money than Bishop in the traditionally Republican district.

There are plans to turn a run-down Lansing golf course into a $100 million mixed used development.

The rough on the old Waverly golf course has been growing wild for years. The city closed the golf course in 2007. City voters agreed to sell it in 2012. 

City prosecutors in Lansing recently dropped 50 misdemeanor cases after the city council accidentally let hundreds of ordinances expire last year.

The Lansing State Journal reports that as a result, the defendants in those cases won't be prosecuted at any level.

According to city officials, the alleged crimes were non-violent. The most common charges were trespassing and providing false information to a police officer.

There’s a new tool that Michigan cities can use to better understand their health care needs.

The NYU School of Medicine has developed what they call the City Health Dashboard, which looks at 36 key measures and drivers of health.   

Marc Gourevitch is the Dashboard’s principal architect. He says health problems like opioid abuse and obesity are tracked on the dashboard.

“Not only looking at health itself,” says Gourevitch, “but some of the things that cause health, like housing and transportation and air quality. So we try to bring all that together.”

Lansing’s mayor is putting the sale of city hall “on hold”.

Last year, former Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero picked Chicago-based Beitler Real Estate Services over three other developers, to turn Lansing city hall into a new hotel. 

Lansing officials settled on the idea of selling city hall, since the estimated $55 million cost of renovating the aging building would be cost prohibitive.

This past week, Lansing’s Catholic bishop introduced a special panel that will examine issues of race in the diocese.  

Gov. Rick Snyder wants a federal disaster declaration for eight Michigan counties affected by severe flooding last month. He's asking the federal Small Business Administration to study the damage caused by heavy rainfall and snow melt Feb. 19-21.

If approved, the disaster assistance program would provide money and low-interest loans to repair homes and businesses.