March 8, 2011

Dear Friend,

It seems like just yesterday I began knocking on doors as a candidate for East Lansing City Council. It’s hard to believe that my first term is now rapidly drawing to a close. I could not have won that election or accomplished the things that I have in the last four years as a Councilmember without your constant encouragement and generous support. Thank you!

I’m proud of the record I’ve built in my first term, and of all we’ve accomplished together as a community, but I know there is a great deal more work left to be done to keep East Lansing moving forward. As friends and supporters of mine, I wanted you to be the first to know that I have decided to run for reelection to a second term on the City Council this year.

Despite significant budgetary challenges, East Lansing has been able to maintain essential city services like police and fire protection, sanitation, and parks and recreation. If Governor Snyder’s recent budget proposal is any indication, we’re not out of the woods yet. Many difficult choices are on the horizon. I want to continue to be an advocate for maintaining the public services East Lansing residents depend on.

Despite the down economy, East Lansing remains an attractive place to live, work, raise a family, or start a business. Promoting sustainable development, while attracting and retaining businesses in our community remains critical. We’ve made great strides in building a vibrant downtown by approving transformational mixed-use redevelopment projects and investing in our business incubator/accelerator—the Technology Innovation Center. We’ve worked diligently to maintain neighborhood stability across the city. We’ve put East Lansing on a path towards greater walkability with our Nonmotorized Transportation Plan. I believe that our community is heading in the right direction, and I want to help keep us on the road to prosperity.

East Lansing continues to be on the forefront of government reform and innovation. Every time I hear someone in state government talking about a “best practice” for local government, I think to myself: “We’ve been there and done that in East Lansing.” We’ve sought out greater efficiency through regional cooperation and sharing services. For example, we recently began providing assessment and housing inspections for neighboring Meridian Township. Our Healthcare Task Force has held annual increases in healthcare costs to 3.5%—a third of the national rate of healthcare inflation. Unlike many other cities, we’ve begun making regular payments towards our unfunded OPEB liabilities. Here again, I’m proud of these accomplishments, but there is much more we need to do.

I’m also proud that during the last four years I’ve had the opportunity to champion a number of initiatives and policies of my own:

• The adoption of East Lansing’s Green Building Policy, which made our city the first in the State of Michigan to condition economic development incentives on the use of sustainable building practices.

• A Local Preference Policy to keep East Lansing tax dollars in our local economy by ensuring that contracts paid for with taxpayer dollars are awarded to qualified local businesses and contractors first.

• When Proposal 2 and subsequent court decisions banned public domestic partner benefits, I led the effort to extend Other Eligible Individual (OEI) benefits to East Lansing employees and ensure that our community recognized the dignity of every employee with equal compensation for equal work.

We’ve come a long way in the last four years and we have a long way yet to go. Over the course of the next eight months, I look forward to talking with East Lansing residents about both the challenges and the opportunities facing our community. As always, if you have any questions or if would like to talk about my campaign or any city issue, please feel free to contact me at any time.

Finally, to help kick-off my reelection campaign, I hope that you will join me at my first fundraiser on the evening of Tuesday, March 29 from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Dublin Square in downtown East Lansing.

If you are unable to join me for the kick-off, but would still like to show your support for my campaign, please consider making a contribution using the enclosed envelope and response card.

Thank you for your continued support!

Nathan Triplett
ntriplett@gmail.com
517-719-6499

P.S. I look forward to talking with you on March 29th about your ideas for our community. I hope that you can make it!