A copy of the report created by the independent commission investigating the April 2-3 disturbances will be in the hands of the East Lansing City Council at today's meeting.

Councilmember Mark Meadows, who is on the commission and helped draft the recommendations, said the presentation to the council is a formality.

"You have to establish the direction people should take and ask them to get moving on it," he said. "And that's exactly what these recommendations do. I think we made some pretty practical explanations of what we thought decision makers should do regarding this."

Mayor Sam Singh said city staff is beginning to work on some of the recommendations.

"A number of these things I would consider 'no-brainers,'" he said. "They're things that are looked at by individual departments, and I anticipate a number of these things to be implemented by January, February, March timeline."

Singh said some of the recommendations require more time to work on.

"One or two (recommendations) would need legislative decisions by Michigan Legislature," he said. "The implementations should begin as soon as possible. A number of these will be ready when we hit the spring time."

The council has received the crux of the report, Mayor Pro Tem Vic Loomis said. But the public needs to know the council received the report.

"We know we need to be taking action with the report and the recommendations included," he said. "As far as the public is concerned, (tonight) is the night the East Lansing City Council received the report from the independent commission, and now it's up to us to begin our work.

"We may add to the recommendations and modify them, but what's important is we get through the report, we understand it and we begin working on recommendations to put it into effect."

A public hearing will also be held at the meeting in regard to applying for Environmental Protection Agency grants totaling $300,000 to clean up and develop brownfield sites, land with a suspected or known presence of past or current contamination.

"I don't anticipate any concerns," Singh said. "It's a technical part of the process we're complying with. The citizens of East Lansing want us to access federal money to clean up areas of the city that are eligible for tax assistance."

This is not the first time the city has applied for these grants.

"We're hopeful the second time we'll fair a little better in the process," Singh said. "We're aware this is a very competitive grant pool."

Another public hearing will also be held concerning the possible stray cat ordinance proposed in September by Mark Grebner, Ingham County commissioner and chairman of the county board of commissioners.

"I hope they (council) adopt the ordinance," Grebner said. "The problem is recurring. We need to have a tool ready the next time it happens. The problem comes up and there's no method for dealing with it.

"The county has animal control, but we have no control over cats. We're not permitted to regulate cats. The city doesn't have an animal control. It divides the responsibility in two places. They (council) have the ordinance and we (county) have animal control."

City Council will meet at 7:30 p.m. today at City Hall, 410 Abbott Road.