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Lansing City Council At-Large Candidate: Tirstan Walters

Here are the responses from Lansing At-Large Candidate 2025 Tirstan Walters to the 6 News Pre-Primary Candidate Questionnaire. Website- Facebook- Instagram- Threads- BlueSky- I am proud to serve as an At-Large member of the Lansing Park Board, Vice-Chair and First Ward Representative of the Lansing Neighborhood Advisory Board, and as Vice-Chair of the Ingham County Equal Opportunity Committee. I have had the honor of bridging the gap between these departments and the residents that they serve and I am running for Lansing City Council At-Large to expand my advocacy to citywide issues that matter most to our residents. I graduated from Michigan State University with a bachelor's degree in Environmental Geography and Economic Geography and I currently work for the State of Michigan as a grant coordinator focusing on gun violence intervention and community policing grants. I previously served as the Ingham County Democratic Party Elections Committee Chairperson in 2024 and have been an Ingham County Democratic Precinct Delegate since 2022. I am focused on improving our city infrastructure to better fund our roads and sidewalks, ensuring that we have safe and supported neighborhoods, bolstering our parks system to encourage and increase recreation and green space for our residents, supporting our small businesses, increasing opportunities for our youth through increased collaboration between the City of Lansing and the Lansing School District, and increasing housing developments to ensure adequate and affordable options for all residents. My accomplishments include assisting our neighborhoods and civic organizations through the neighborhood grant programs and with accessing neighborhood resources, creating Capital Improvement Project (CIP) recommendations and overseeing the creation and funding of the Park Board Grant Match Program, and working to broaden the contractor pool of Ingham County to make it more representative of the population. The role of City Council is to act as the legislative branch of the City of Lansing. The duties of the council are to approve the yearly budget, to pass city ordinances, to advocate for constituent issues, to attend council, committee, and external board meetings, oversee the approval of board and commission appointments, and to work with the administration on policy and budget amendments throughout the year. The role of a City Council member also includes serving in an advocacy role for residents to our county, state, and federal representatives regarding local priorities. As a City Council member I will support additional housing projects, funding additional code enforcement officers to ensure our current housing stock is kept up to date and our red and pink tagged properties are brought up to code, supporting our new form-based housing code to increase housing densification, and working with the Economic Development and Planning Department to make our permitting and inspection processes more efficient for new and existing housing projects. As a City Council member, any disagreements would be addressed on a case-by-case basis. I would work toward expressing my perspective in various ways depending on the circumstance, whether that be discussing those differences during council meetings, constituent meetings, on social media, or in private conversations. I have been able to work effectively with both the current administration and with many current council members on issues involving parks and neighborhoods and I feel that these relationships will allow for meaningful and respectful conversations on issues that there may be disagreement. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.