East Lansing’s interim city manager thrust into crisis. It’s a familiar role

EAST LANSING — Randy Talifarro joked boredom was part of the reason he agreed last month to become East Lansing's interim city manager.

The former East Lansing and Lansing fire chief returned to Michigan from his home in Arizona Monday afternoon to begin his new role. A few hours later, tragedy struck when a gunman killed three students and critically injured five others in a mass shooting on Michigan State University’s campus.

The 62-year-old walks into a city facing vacancies in many of its leadership positions due to high turnover at a time when the city and region are suddenly navigating a crisis.

It's a familiar role for Talifarro, who led the fire departments for East Lansing and Lansing during the region's response to the 2013 ice storm that crippled the region and left tens of thousands of customers without power in frigid temperatures, some for nearly two weeks.

“At least to me in my line of work, there was always a new challenge, a new crisis,” he said, and you work through them, do your best and move on to the next one.

That's his plan now, as his initial tasks of stabilizing city department leadership and helping the City Council usher in a permanent manager in the next six months suddenly also involving helping the community recovery from the latest mass shooting on a college campus.

Talifarro was the fire chief in East Lansing from 2001 until he retired in 2021. He was also chief of of the Lansing Fire Department from 2012 under a deal with former Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero that included the cities sharing a chief until he resigned in 2018 early in Mayor Andy Schor's administration. He previously worked for Flint Fire Department. He's currently employed as a safety technician for Arizona State University.

The city is paying Talifarro $15,000 in salary and $3,000 for housing monthly after City Council members dismissed long-time former City Manager George Lahanas. Lahanas was quickly named city manager in Northville.

Talifarro spoke with the Lansing State Journal recently to discuss the MSU shooting, his experience and East Lansing issues.

On the MSU shooting

Talifarro said he found out about the shooting quickly from East Lansing Police Chief Kim Johnson. He said he asked if he was needed on campus, but Johnson said it was being handled. Talifarro said he didn’t want to cause problems for first responders on campus, though he felt compelled to go with his experience.

“But I resisted that urge because I know I've been on the other side where you're trying to focus on the incident, and then you have other issues that you are trying to accommodate other people and other needs becomes really sometimes problematic for you,” he said.

So he monitored the situation from his room at an East Lansing extended stay hotel off Hagadorn Road, listening to the scanner. He spoke to East Lansing Fire Chief Dawn Carson to make sure everything was moving according to plan. He knew there was a good, unified command structure and they were deploying assets, he said.

He was also listening to the shooter’s movements, concerned the shooter would move from campus to downtown East Lansing or somewhere else in the city.

He said city officials are focused on how they can be supportive and make sure staff get needed services and emotional support.

Talifarro completed a master of arts homeland security program through the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security, and with his training has mixed emotions on how to move forward in some ways.

“I’m torn because you want to get back to normal as quickly as possible so that people who create, who commit these kind of horrendous acts, aren't victorious. They don't change you. They don't strip away some of your rights and some of your freedoms and some of those things that you value,” he said.

“But balancing that with the reality that in some respects, you have changed. That it did impact you emotionally, that there are real people that lost their lives and their families that are dealing with all of those things and injuries that may be lasting and then also just the emotional trauma that remains and lingers.

"And so I go back and forth on that as to how much weight to give either. You try to strike a good balance, but you don't know if you're doing that or not. You just do the best you can I guess.”

On East Lansing’s leadership transition

There are currently many vacancies for leadership positions, including city clerk, city manager, director of planning, building and development and human resources director.

East Lansing City Clerk Jennifer Shuster accepted a job opportunity with the Michigan Senate, Senior Planner Darcy Schmitt accepted a job with the City of Battle Creek, Director of Planning, Building and Development and Assistant City Manager Tom Fehrenbach accepted another job opportunity, and Director of Public Works Scott House is temporarily deployed for military leave.

East Lansing Mayor Ron Bacon has said there was "nothing disparaging” regarding the settlement agreement to oust Lahanas or council and Lahanas' relationship. This was “the direction of things and what we want to see done and things along that,” he said.

Bacon declined to answer a question from the State Journal about why so many top-level staffers were leaving the city but said the city is in a time of staffing transition and that it has a deep organization of trained professionals to help many of its departments in the interim.

“Well, there's definitely concern about the loss of institutional knowledge,” Talifarro said.

He said it’s a challenging time to be in the public sector and there’s stress with the job, so with such a competitive job market following the COVID-19 pandemic East Lansing needs to figure out how to make the jobs attractive for employees, whether it’s large pay increases, work flexibility or letting staff have more input opportunities to control their jobs.

“And I don't know where we fit in that,” he said. “I don't know if we have to put more effort and energy into retention. Or if we have to acknowledge that we probably will have a constantly changing, more dynamic workforce that has different desires. That's going to be a question that I think will have to be answered at some point.”

On getting the interim position

"I was a little bored, I guess, with retired life,” Talifarro said, laughing.

He said East Lansing city officials reached out to him and asked if he would consider taking the position if they made staff changes. He declined to name the officials who contacted him.

He said he thought very highly of Lahanas and wanted to be clear that he didn’t want to be part of an equation to have him removed.

“And so I wasn't even certain, and I still am not entirely certain with regard, other than what I've read in the newspapers, about whether it was council’s decision or whether it was his decision or theirs collectively (for Lahanas to leave),” he said.

Once he learned his decision wouldn’t impact Lahanas leaving, he said he thought about if he wanted the job. At first he didn’t think he did. He thought about the pros and cons and said he thought he left with a good legacy and didn’t want to tarnish that.

“Eventually I decided that maybe I could add value,” he said. “Maybe I could give them some consistency or continuity because of all of the changes that they might be going through in terms of city staff. And so that might have a calming effect, if nothing else.”

Talifarro is on a six-month leave from Arizona State with the opportunity to extend it to a year if needed, he said.

On getting a new permanent city manager

“I hope to have one within six months or shortly thereafter,” Talifarro said. “...But at the same time I don't want to move so fast that really there's no opportunity to have discussions about some of those larger, more complex problems and issues.”

He said city officials will need to find out what the City Council's and community's expectations for a city manager are, whether they want a visionary who tries to get people on board or someone who implements City Council’s visions and expectations.

“And then I think trying to just reach out and reach as far as you can in terms of making sure that you get a good pool of applicants,” he said.

His personal sentiment is that East Lansing officials also need to consider whether they want someone who is willing to stay and become part of the community, not necessarily someone who’s here for a “very transitory period.”

“You don't want to just pad a resume,” he said.

Contact Bryce Airgood at 517-267-0448 or bairgood@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @bairgood123.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: East Lansing’s interim city manager Randy Taliffaro faces several challenges