EAST LANSING, Mich. — Adam DeLay has worked for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Sen. Debbie Stabenow. He worked in the state Senate and sat on the Lansing Township Board of Trustees for three years.
Now, DeLay is running for one of the two open four-year seats on East Lansing City Council after making his way back to the city in 2019.
“We kind of bounced around between Lansing, Delta Township, Lansing Township before finally winding up back here in East Lansing,” DeLay said.
DeLay originally made his way to East Lansing for college.
“I first came up here from metro-Detroit to attend MSU where I graduated in 2010 with degrees in journalism as well as social relations and policy from James Madison College,” DeLay said.
Alex Dardas worked with DeLay in both Stabenow's office and Whitmer's office, where DeLay trained him. He said working with DeLay was a great experience.
“He approaches everything in very much a team-oriented way and it’s about delivering for the people we’re serving," Dardas said. "It was a great experience working with him in both cases.”
He describes DeLay as one of the most dedicated people he's ever met.
“He’s about the work, he’s about serving others, he’s one of the people especially in this day and age of really fractured politics that you feel really good about in positions of power because he’s there to serve others,” Dardas said.
Delay now works for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and serves on the East Lansing's parks and recreation advisory commission.
If he's eleced, DeLay said, he would like to work on the city's budget post-pandemic.
“What COVID has shown us is that in a lot of ways sort of economically, socially, things can change very, very quickly,” he said.
And he has a plan to restructure the police department.
“Taking 25 percent of the East Lansing Police Department's operating budget and moving that into a new department, a new city department that I would call the Community Services Department,” DeLay said.
The new department would help the police department do welfare checks, he said.
“That department can focus on things such as mental health crisis, utility shut-offs, evictions, homelessness, some of those issues we see folks facing,” DeLay said.
DeLay said what sets him apart from other candidates is his transparency and that he's ready to step up to the plate.
“I think that the council is taking steps in the right direction, but I think sometimes hesitates on taking some of the bigger swings and I want, to keep the analogy going, step up to the plate to try to take those swings,” DeLay said.
DeLay is running against Daniel Bollman, George Brookover, Dana Watson, and Chuck Grigsby.
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