Lahanas has been on the council for 13 years, serving in many different positions such as director of administrative services. Although he clearly is qualified and knows the ins and outs of the council, he might not have been the best choice for city manager for that same reason.

It could have been a benefit for the city to bring in an outsider who would bring change to East Lansing rather than Lahanas, who is familiar, but only offers more of the same.

It’s difficult for a city to improve without altering the leaders who will make changes. It’s doubtful East Lansing will ever experience improvement by merely advancing current council members into new positions. The same people with the same views and ideas the city has seen the past few years continuing to run East Lansing is a recipe for stagnation.

Although familiarity with East Lansing is necessary in the council, there might be too much familiarity stopping the city from making any meaningful changes.

It’s early: Lahanas might be capable of causing effective change and he might just bring more of the same ineffective ideas the city council has seen before.

Also, with East Lansing being a large college town, it could have used a city manager who has experience working with nearby communities, in this case students. It remains to be seen if Lahanas has the ability or experience to maintain and improve the relationship between MSU students and East Lansing government.

The city needs to work to fix its real estate issues. With the recent closing of Barnes & Noble on Grand River Avenue, and the City Center II and East Village projects being stuck in nonexistent development for far too long, the city needs to begin heading out of its development deficit.

Although Staton had big ideas for real estate development in East Lansing — demonstrated by his plans for City Center II and the East Village — it is nonsensical to aim for huge plans when the city is having difficulties filling storefront windows downtown.

As deputy city manager, hopefully Lahanas learned from Staton’s mistakes and uses that experience to better the city of East Lansing. That said, a fresh perspective would have been useful in leading the city’s future.

The future holds new problems and the council will need a new perspective to help solve them. Hopefully Lahanas will be able to bring a much-needed new perspective to the city, in order to improve East Lansing.