All right. Good morning, everyone. We will now call to order the expanded budget Finance and Audit standing committee for the purposes of our budget hearings. And good morning Mr. Clerk, please call the roll.
Morning. Councilmember Scott Benson. Benson I councilmember for $1 Third. Councilmember Leticia Johnson resident councilmember Gabriela Santiago Romero. Councilmember Mary waters present councilmember Angela Whitfield Calloway. Councilmember Coleman Young the second. Council President Pro Tem James Tate, Council President Mary Sheffield. President. You have a quorum present, Madam President.
All right. Thank you. There being a quorum present. We are in session we will go straight to our first budget hearing, which is the human resources department. We have director Denise Starr and others who have joined us this morning.
Do you need someone to share the screen or? Oh yeah, I see it. Okay. Good morning and the floor is yours to begin.
Good morning. Denise Starr human resources director
Arthur Taylor, HR Deputy Director
Kimberly Hall Wagner chief policy and compensation officer.
Regina Greer,
Deputy CFO odjfs Right.
So good.
Good morning as team members of city council. As you know, I'm Denise Starr, head of human resources department. Joining me today are so Taylor and Deputy Director and Kim hallway ignor our chief policy and compensation officer also joining us today seated behind us is Keith worthy, the director of labor relations. We are here today to present our accomplishments for FY 24 and outline our plans for FY 25 in hopes that you approve our FY 25 budgets submitted. First I'd like to personally express my gratitude to each of you for your unwavering support of the HR department. Your fiscal support ensures that our employees feel valued and recognized which enables them to directly impact the lives of our residents and visibility of our businesses. I would also like to extend a special thank you for your support and funding our training initiatives. Once again the talented development team led by Dr. Iris where has excelled in facilitating training for over 25,000 employee instances. This current fiscal year, which was over 3200 classes in total. We offer an extensive array of classes and we're on track to facilitate over 30,000 employee instances which will add another 1500 classes class offerings by the end of this fiscal year. Unfortunately tacked aware was it was unavailable to join us today as she is off site facilitating an HR D retreat and engagement training session off site. Our popular book clubs as well as our learning engage, apply perform workshops referred to as lead for the rising leaders among us now boasts waiting list. We've also partnered with organizations that have helped nearly 250 employees get on the road to eliminating their education related debt through the federal through the federal student loan debt forgiveness program. The city's investment in employee learning employee engagement and technical enhancements has resulted in an impressive 25% internal promotion rate within our workforce since this school year. This strategic investment in our internal marketplace focuses on employee growth and opportunity, which we believe is is leading to our increased employee retention rate of nearly 90%. While building a highly skilled workforce has associated costs. We anticipate that as employee retention rises, the cost associated with external recruitment efforts will decrease over time. In short, the more that we build, the less that we will have to buy. It goes without saying that post COVID that labor market has really not stabilized. But we truly believe that in vesting in by investing in our employees, and by leveraging innovative approaches to keeping the gems that we have here at the city, we can stay the course and thrive. HR continues the challenging yet rewarding work of our mission which is to attract on board develop, value and retain our employees. We want the city of Detroit to receive the recognition of being a great place to work. We want our employees to remain healthy and heard in FY 25. Before I turn it over to Ursuline Kim I would also like to recognize a few of our other HR leaders not able to join us today. Val Kolbert, our deputy director of labor relations in Darrell Conrad, our chief of talent acquisition. I would also like to recognize the 100 100 Plus HR professionals that support our nearly 10,000 employees citywide now I'd like to invite Ursula and Kim to highlight some of our success stories this year. And this year and beyond as we continue to collaborate with dishonourable city council to increase employee satisfaction and retention and engagement. First, Campbell will share insights into the perks that we've implemented in Ursula we'll close out the presentation with highlights of our employee engagement and wellness programs.
In the morning. We're in. Luck
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all right, there we go. Thank you. Thank you to Councilmember Benson and to Councilmember Whitfield Callaway for your unwavering support and your vision councilmember Benson and having us to start and launch our paid parental leave program. We just reached our one year anniversary. And we have over nearly 100 people who have participated in this program. And we just wanted to share with you that this is a 100% city paid benefit employees mothers fathers, parents, grandparents who are adopting foster fostering children all had the opportunity to get six weeks of paid leave. Um, it does not come out of their banks. It does run concurrent with their FMLA and it has been an overwhelming success with the city of Detroit. So thank you. I wanted to go see if this works. Have a testimonial from one of our employees as well.
Not sure why the sound isn't working, but we'll be sure to share this with you at another time. But we have an employee Tanisha Warren as well as another employee of the fire department who were so gracious in filming for us their situation, this particular employee that we will share with you at another time, unfortunately lost her sister who had a two month old child and so she was able to adapt her nephew and have that time to not only greet but really to bond with her nephew so it was an awesome experience. So just really wanted to say thank you and highlight that perk that we have provided our employees. I know that our next step is to look at childcare. I know that is a hot button item and we certainly want to dive into opportunities and different options that we can provide whether it be an actual care for daycare facility, or if it's looking at some services that will provide tremendous discounts to our employees with different apps where they can search and find what's in their neighborhood. We could potentially fund that but that's something that we'll be looking at during this next fiscal year. Next I wanted to highlight our employee discount program. It's powered by perk spot. Hopefully you have seen this and participated in signed up. We launched this in February of this year. We've gone on site at the DDOT locations and just from that on site alone. We started off with 19 employees signed up now we have over 2100 employees who have signed up in our employee discount program. what's so wonderful about that is because in the past you had to be signed up in our or logged into our intranet. And of course our bus drivers are boots on the ground are folks who are frontline employees don't always have access to their computer or email so they weren't participating. And so we're very excited they can do this from their mobile phone. And we have wonderful discounts. We have disney world who does want to go to Disneyworld. So now our employees can get these wonderful discounts. We also highlight about 90 Detroit based in Detroit headquarter businesses. So we've got shoe repairs, we've got trap yoga, we've got 313 presents, the pistons you name it, so if you and your staff today, we're going to park spot, even on our UKG landing page, there's some information about how to login and we will also send that to you. Please do don't shop without it. Don't shop in Detroit without it. If you know of any Detroit businesses that you would like to participate, let us know we'll sign them up but it's a wonderful part. We're very excited to provide that to our employees. All right, so now we'll move on to keeping our employees engaged.
Thank you Denise and cam and thank you to this honorable body. One of the things that you'll see throughout our presentation today is an intentional focus on our employees and our employee population and making sure that we deliver optimal services to our Detroit residents and businesses. And so we really want to highlight our employee engagement strategy that was really birthed out of having the ability to hear the voice of our employees and so I really want to paint this body for approving a contract that give us gave us the ability to submit surveys, employee surveys so that we can really gain an understanding of our employee population from the perspective of what their true needs are, how they feel about leadership and leadership's effectiveness, as well as their role and being connected to their role as city of Detroit employees. And so one of the things that we've been very intentional about is looking at the demographics of our employee population, looking and analyzing the results of the feedback that we've received from them. And based on that we've been able to build a very robust strategy that is focused on value and employees focused on making sure that we improve city services. And so with that, we heard from our employees and there were three key areas of attention. One was around communicating, making sure that we communicate in a more timely fashion. The other one was around collaborating across departments as well as recognizing our employees for the phenomenal job that they do every day to support our citizens. And so some of the things that we did in terms of from a communications perspective, as Kim talked about, we have frontline employees and so it's critical to move beyond just sending email communications and sharing information in the media. And so we hired a communications manager who was really able to expand and increase our presence on social media, social media, we expanded other communications modes by going directly to our employees through resource fairs and with those resource fair it's not only did we tap into internal resources but external resources. With the FERS we were able to provide information from a financial perspective participation with some of our local credit unions as well as our employee well being services, sharing information regarding the benefits and employee resource groups, and various ways that our employees have the ability to connect not only to colleagues but also to connect with community so we're really proud of the work that we've been able to done collaboratively for those efforts. Some of the other things that we've looked at how can we become more collaborative as a city and so we've we've been partnering with media services Creo do with all of those departments to support our strategy we've incorporated cross functional groups that we call champions within each department, and our champions are a mechanism for weeks for us to communicate and engage with employee share pertinent information about any changes that are occurring in the city. And so they've been an additional arm to the human resources department. And we're very proud of the fact that we've been able to launch employee resource groups and with through those resource groups, they've supported our goal of really driving inclusion, diversity and equity, as well as collaboration. And then the one key vital component for us is really valuing our employees for the work that they do and in that, developing various mechanisms to recognize employees when it comes to employees that want to be recognized, very weighed in so with that collaborate our collaboration with Media Services, and our communications team to go out in the department's spotlight employees. We've interviewed some of our employees that have been with the city for several years for them to share their story to and it's helped us from a retention perspective, getting that type of information now, we we within human resources, we have an HR Rockstar program, and we've been working with various departments to develop programs to recognize their employees. We've also launched a service award to recognize our employees for their years of service and tenure with the city. And so through those various mechanisms, we've really been been able to began to move the net needle related to employee engagement. And as Denise said to reduce our total turnover for key departments. I'd also just really like to take the time to highlight the phenomenal work that our employee resource groups have done. We we launched two additional resource groups they were birthed two years ago as a result of some of the feedback that we received from our employee engagement survey. And so that we have culture connect focused on various cultures within the city of Detroit. You know, I'm so proud to be able to receive emails and communications from employees thanking us for celebrating various ethnicities Ramadan, you know, got a call from an employee and saying, we've never been able to celebrate Ramadan before, as well as various
workshops that we've done to just really increase the great culture that we have in the city of Detroit. So our employees have been able to connect with different community organizations to support that effort, sustainability that has really been one of our phenomenal resource groups as well as gender G disability awareness. Our veterans employee well being LGBTQ plus our win network was which is women's inspiring network as well as pack of the parenting and caregivers Alliance they were able to partner to ensure that employees were aware of this new benefit through information sessions and we were really proud of that. And so collectively through our ER G's we have over 1100 employees that have participated that are members and that are actively engaged and involved over the last year. They have conducted over 60 different city wide events focused on driving inclusion, cultural awareness, collaboration, as well as connection and so we've conducted webinars Lunch and Learns information sessions. collaboratively supported the Juneteenth Celebration on spirit Plaza. We've been able to support and partner with other entities such as the Detroit Regional LGBT, Chamber of Commerce as well as the Michigan Rehabilitation Services and our employee wellbeing partnership. And so with that, the focus on employee engagement it is also critical for us to ensure the employee wellbeing and health of our employees and so our focus has also been on promoting not only to help but the safety, excuse me and well being of our employees. And so we've been able to enhance our services, some through various web based programs where we are now receiving insights from the type of things that our employees are interested in. And we launched that in December and we were able to get additional information on over 300 different webinars that our employees have participated in. And we've also partnered with our risk management safety committee to also incorporate our employee wellbeing specialists who supports and drives various employee wellbeing initiatives through the city of Detroit and making sure that we connect with our frontline departments so that they are aware of the various benefits that we are offering. We've worked very closely with the fire department on employee wellbeing initiatives, we were able to train over 900 employees through our employee wellbeing services vendor, and thank you for approving that vendor and your support in that effort. So they were able to provide substance abuse disorder training, as well as understanding their mental health. And so in partnership with the commissioner, Commissioner and his leadership team, we've been able to continue to provide ongoing trainings to support them as well as support their what we established collectively with the fire department, a peer support Council, and we meet with human resources, the fire leadership, as well as union leadership and talk about key metrics around employee wellbeing, talk about training and just additional needs that not only the employees of the fire department but their family members may need as support. And so through all of our focus employee wellbeing initiatives, we've been able to move the needle increase awareness as well as utilization of the various services and so about 30% of our employee population have have taken advantage of well being services, program services, and 5% have taken advantage of clinical services and lastly, I just want to take this opportunity to really plug our third employee engagement survey. It is currently active. It was launched on March 11. And it closes out on April 5 so far over 2000 employees have completed the survey and shared, you know, their feedback, and we are looking for at least a 68% feedback participation and that gives us the ability to continue our action planning efforts and choose to continue to hear our employees voices and gain additional insight on what their needs are. And with that, I thank you and I'll turn it over to any questions that you all my hand.
All right, thank you so much. And Denise, anything else any good?
No, we're just opening up your questions right. Perfect.
Thank you at the clock window. We've been joined by member Callaway in first just thank you to the HR department for all the work that you all do. You guys are pretty busy. And I definitely have seen an increased presence with you also you are doing great, great work and we appreciate the work that you all do. We will start with questions from my colleagues. Everyone will have two questions. And we will start with councilmember der Hoth.
Thank you, Madam President. And good morning to you all. My questions. My first question just centers around something I'm passionate about which which are our returning citizens. When we talk about the ability to hire them. When I was in a legislature, I pushed really hard for the bandbox to get implemented and law for the entire state of Michigan when I came here, someone who was here before this council member here is obviously who was a champion on that. work to ensure that that is our city policy here relative to hiring returning citizens are justice impacted, as the term has changed. What are we doing as far as recruitment though, and putting that out there and marketing and saying we are a friendly hiring employer here at the city of Detroit, and there are opportunities available? are we connecting with the Michigan Department of Corrections and or some of our jails so upon release, prisoners know that this is a place that they can find opportunity and work to change their lives.
Through the Chair. Thank you for that question. We we have been very successful in in response. I don't have the number with me, but I will send that to you during this budget process, but we have partnered with the Michigan Department of Corrections with local agencies to help connect us to the individuals because we have so many opportunities. I think when you see the number you'll be very surprised at the number of returning citizens justice impact individuals that we have been able to hire and in councilmember IRS and all the efforts that went through I think it was back in 2012 that we actually were able to change that in our application process. And so we that is not even, you know on the application at all. And we are very, let's say employer friendly, and we really do look for various opportunities. We've done jobs fairs specifically for justice impact individuals, and whenever we have that opportunity we are so you know, excited that we're able to participate in events that happen.
And I'm glad to hear that and you know, obviously as we push forward, I know from our returning citizens Task Force, we try to work to ensure that we are doing our part and then I know there are many initiatives that HR has as well. But I think all of us coming together together is incumbent upon ensuring that the you know, our folks get access and so but I'm glad to hear that I'd be interested to see those numbers as well. My second question just revolves around talent retention. Obviously, when you talk about a competitive workforce, and as we continue to build here in the city of Detroit, we are surrounded by other opportunities that come as a government we cannot necessarily pay what some other folks pay. But sometimes it's all in the benefits. I remember some of our employees who are still working here, not talking about Mr. Corley or Mr. Whittaker per se. But some folks who have been here a long time or some folks who ever retired said when they came to the city of Detroit, it wasn't necessarily the pay that really brought them here, but really the benefits and the possibility of opportunities for what the future would look like when they retire. What are we thinking relative to talent retention based on the market that we are in right now? providing some type of benefits and then ensuring that when folks actually retire if they have a city job, they are going to be able to sustain themselves and get really what they work for?
Through the Chair. I in my earlier introduction, I did speak to the promotion opportunities here at the city and we've had of the 2000 positions that we have filled this year for over 500 of those were actually internal promotions. So upward mobility. All of the training and development that we offer through talent development is just phenomenal. When when I first joined the city, we didn't have that because it had been cut during bankruptcy. And so we have really invested and pivoted to make it easier for our employees to have those opportunities. When COVID Unfortunately hit we were doing most of our classes on site, okay. And that was difficult for a lot of our employees that our customer you know, front facing to the public because they don't have computers, city computers, or the ability to come in in the middle of the night for a class. We now offer it so that you could use your smartphone and take it when you can consume it. So they might be taking it on the weekend. They might be taking it you know during the business day or in the evening. And so we've really made extra efforts to accommodate our employees where they are and to help them to grow within the organization. And
let me say I think you do a phenomenal job at that. I do want to give you your kudos on credit where credit is due. I know my team has attended a lot of training modules as well that have been helpful to them. So thank you for the job that you're doing and connecting folks to resources while we talk about upward mobility. And finally, I would just say, as a comment as member waters and I chair the retiree Task Force as I was looking through the slideshow, we were talking about some of these benefits that current employees get whether it's discounts or going to Disney World, or whatever the case may be. I'm going to make a motion to put this in executive session because even though I know it's retiree services, maybe when we talk about our retirees they can be eligible for in some way for these benefits as well and we can find a way to lighten the blow is not everything obviously, but just something that we can examine as well. So Madam President, I'd like to make a motion to put the Human Resources budget into executive rec, I'm sorry, executive session to examine post employee benefits for our retirees.
All right, any objections? Hearing none, that action will be taken. Yes. Mr. Connolly.
Thank you, Madam President. So this remind the council the mayor is putting about $10 million in a budget to improve the 401 K benefit and that's going to be discussed probably next Wednesday. No non departmental. So that's one effort to retain employees.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Corley. Oh, thank you remember, ah,
no, no, that was what I said. Thank you very, very much for that Mr. Quarterly. And when they come amongst us as well. You know, we want to talk about benefits. I know this is not completely in your wheelhouse, but because we provide benefits for current employees. I think it'd be interesting to see how we could connect our retirees to that, but thank you for that as well. Mr. Coralina? Thank you, Director star. Thank you.
You're specifically referring to like both like actual discounts that could be given to retirees specifically, right great idea. Yes, I
can remember Dr. Hall, we actually have enough spots for the retirees that is in our vision to include them. The challenge is finding their emails, because that is something that we would have to input so we did purchase enough spots for the retiree. So we're aligned in that
battle president to I can we can work to help get get to those emails. I'm sure members of our council get multiple emails from our retirees. So I'm sure we all have a dedicated list, particularly also working with some of our retiree groups to get them plugged into that pipeline. Yes,
and I'm a member of the Pension Board through the PLC. So we were working on it. I just wanted you to know that it's something we were actually excited about doing for them. We're not there yet, but we're working on it.
Thank you, Madam Thank you.
Thank you member Doha member Johnson and we've been joined by member Callaway as well to in potentate in Santiago Romero. Or console. No, thank you, member Johnson.
Thank you, Madam President. And good. Good morning to all of you. Great presentation, great information. And I feel like I don't take advantage of any of it. I know right? And I think it's because I don't necessarily use u k g as often as other people may use it. But glad to hear about the various programs. I have had police officers and others who worked for the city asked me about mental health care, dementia in particular, not necessarily for themselves, but for a loved one for a parent. And so I would love to hear a little bit more about the well being ERG because I think it's something that I can share with them that may help them become better care providers for their loved ones. And I know I've had numerous people ask me about dementia in particular. And then a number of people have just asked about services that are provided to seniors in the city of Detroit as a whole not necessarily an employee of the city of Detroit, but I think it's beneficial to be able to share resources that we have available for our employees that can extend to their loved ones.
Yes, through the Chair. Yes. Thank you for that question. The one thing that is really good about our current employee wellbeing program is that it is extended to immediate household family members that it also includes children and not only are the services for counseling sessions, but also referral services to various programs, including financial programs and so dementia, caregivers all of those are key components of the employee wellbeing framework and
all of that information is available. So do you find all of these ERGs via UKG?
So it's twofold. We currently have a contract that provides confidential employee wellbeing services and with the launch of our employee wellbeing ERG, it's been able to weave utilize them to raise additional awareness for other employees who are interested in well being. They've offered yoga classes, they've offered dealing with stress, healthy eating, there's an actually a healthy eating session that scheduled for Monday from 12 o'clock to one o'clock. For some of our frontline departments. We provide brochures, postings with the web information and access and participation in in various monthly meetings to ensure that our employees gain ongoing awareness. So I can also make sure that to do a connection with the police department to share brochures, brochures and information as as well as with this body. So when you're out that you'll have some resources to share.
That will be perfect. Thank you. You're welcome. The other question I have is relative to hrs role with labor contracts, I tend to get a lot of employees or even past employees reaching out to me asking about a particular issue that they have within their labor contract asking if we can do something about it. And so can you direct a star speak to hrs role, if there is any and going through the process to negotiate the labor contracts and being able to respond to anything in particular that is within a labor contract?
So through the chair, employees they'll I believe most employees know that they can reach out to employee relations, labor relations directly. Normally, how the processes works is that the employees would meet with their union rep or the union leadership, and they would bring the concerns that they would like addressed in the next formal contract. And so there is outreach that happens as we get closer to explorations. And I think that some of the reasons that you that this honorable body may receive them is that you know, eventually we bring the contracts forward to for approval through this body. And I believe that, you know, many of them want to have the you have the awareness of maybe some of the things that they would like addressed in their contracts, but there is an avenue directly to their union is where they really should start. And then if there is anything you know, that we can help them in labor relations, they can come down to the third floor or they could reach out to us directly.
Thank you. I believe many of them who reached out to me want to remain anonymous, and that's why they reach out and just kind of share or want to address a broad issue. So I was planning on speaking to you directly about one in particular, because it is it's affecting them now. And it's it's a strange portion of the labor contract. And I don't necessarily understand it, but would like to have that conversation with you offline. Okay,
through the chair. I welcome that and, you know, many employees have my direct cell number and will call me and you know, and it certainly, you know, we're here to support the employees and anything that we can do within the confines of their actual contract because you don't, you know, want to deviate from that because then you're setting a past practice, which could then take us down, you know, another path. But, you know, I, you know, I would certainly want to meet with you and talk about whatever it is that we can do.
Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you, member Johnson Member Santiago Ramiro.
Thank you, Madam President. Good morning. I have a lot of questions. I think. I'll focus on the questions been a beginning of conversations that I would like to have moving forward. I'll focus my questions on the potential of creating an onboarding process for new Council offices. So when, when I ran for office, I ran for office with changing policy and minds, not necessarily managing a team and managing feelings and communication and conflicts. You know, investing in their leadership making sure that I'm meeting their needs, that I'm providing opportunities. And I wonder if it's possible, and we did a brief onboarding, we went over what HR provides and what you do and how you can support us, but I'm wondering if there's any space to help us create a onboarding program for new newly newly elected council members. I feel like I spent my first year not just learning how to be a council member, but learning how to manage a team. There's just a lot of things that happen where I want us to work smarter. We're limited on time these seats are not promised and I'm really about how do we be effective and efficient with what we have. So has has there been programming like this in the past? Could there be some kind of training that we creates for future offices so that they're able to just hit the ground running have what they need and be supported?
So through the Chair, I know that the city council has their own HR issues, and so they you know, don't report through us although I we do support them when they reach out and I you know, Kimberly has my phone number and and all of our phone numbers, basically so that we can help in any way in what you're talking about of onboarding of council members. I think that's a phenomenal idea. And maybe there's something we could do to actually work with your office's council president. To come up with something for for that day,
the Chair Thank you. And yes, we do and even themselves, when we got in, they were busy onboarding all of our staff, so it's hard to onboard and train where I want us to be able to work together you clearly have the the programs, the capacity, the knowledge, I know that we have great HR staff ready to onboard our folks. So how can we work together to make sure that any new elected is is ready to go with the resources that they have. So if I will move this conversation to Executive Session, once I go through these questions, but thank you, because I would love to see that happen to make sure that we're ready to go because that means that we're not wasting time. That means that our residents have members and officers that are ready to serve us as soon as possible. My have all the other questions out I can ask during our city council hearing because it's related to our HR, but when it comes to the ERG groups. I know that we've had conversations Our office has had accommodations with the LGBTQ ERG and some policy recommendations have come from from those conversations. Is there an intentional check in with our ERG s asking them maybe once a year in like what are the what are the the outcomes I know it's collaboration, it's engagements but is there any goal setting around policy recommendations from from different ERG groups?
Or? Thank you for that question through the Chair. Yes, there are various checks and balances that are in place in terms of goals for the ERG s and then there is also an annual report out to our HR Equity Council. And during that time, they the ergs have the opportunity to share any recommendations that they may have around policy, any recommendations that they may have about infrastructure changes. And so Miguel who's the chair for LGBTQ plus and France just recently did a presentation to our Equity Council. And so he's done a phenomenal job along with Kevin Bain who was the previous chair to really support various initiatives. There are there are some items from a system perspective that we've been working on as we continue to refine our HRIS system to provide key report data to support their request. We we've talked about that. And that is really one of the goals that we plan to accomplish
through the Chair. Thank you. I appreciate that. Let us know what comes from those conversations because we are happy to help with implementing or changing any of those policies. I know through conversations with the erg. Our office is looking at a mending policy that allows for gender neutral options in our paperwork and in our processes. So I think there's a lot of benefits that comes from from these groups. So thank you so much. Those are my questions. The other questions I again, I will hold for future conversations because I would love support for our offices to also access resources to help solve any conflicts that might be internal through our office to help us make sure that we have the best and competitive pay scale for our offices as well. So we'll have those with our own internal HR. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President.
All right, thank you council member. So council member Johnson really asked one of my questions regarding labor relations, and we have worked extensively with your office regarding the salaries for the mechanics throughout the city of Detroit in over the last decade especially more recently, our office has been approached by several unions due to the dissatisfaction with the contracts, working conditions and pay. how are decisions made to reopen contracts before they expire? Or their attempts to me to educate union members on new contracts, changes to classifications, compensations, new certifications, etc. Can you speak a little I know you kind of touched on a little bit with Mr. Johnson's questions but can you speak to how are they made our decisions made to reopen contracts before they expire? Because I know when we were negotiating with or at least talking about the mechanics, you're reopening a contract for a different union. And so I'm just kind of curious to how those decisions are made to reopen contracts before they actually expire
to the chair that you how it is supposed to go. Is that when the employees bring those types of issues, they should take them to their union and the union would approach us okay. In that particular case, the union has not approached us. In fact, we've had extensive conversations which we can't share at this table. And the good news is their contract does expire at the end of June. And so we will be in active conversations with them. As well as there are 16 other contracts that are expiring at the end of June. of this of this fiscal year. And so they they'll all the unions will have the opportunity to speak to what's important in work rule changes that they might be requesting. You know, we will do market studies for those positions that are hard to feel are also, you know, maybe underpaid to the market. We do market studies all the time when these contracts come up for because things change over the four years. We hope that when we implement the new salary ranges, that they remain competitive in the marketplace, that's why there is actually a spread in the ranges that we bring forth to Council for approval. And sometimes market conditions change. And, you know, Amazon look at all the truck drivers and mechanics that they probably have had to hire over the years which puts some compression or pressure on us as an employer to you know, to work to increase salary ranges when appropriate.
Okay. So specifically for the mechanics I know we put in the budget, I thought last year $2,000 bonuses, and from my understanding, if it's not used by June 30 of this year, then it's gone. And you mentioned that the contract expires at the end of this at the end of June June 30 of this year. So I guess I'm trying to get at do we need to add or allocate additional funding for the mechanics again, this fiscal year, forthcoming starting July one
through the Chair, I don't believe that you will need to do that. Asked me as one of the unions that we are, you know that we have actually been reaching out to to have them come to the table sooner rather than later. And so I don't believe so maybe budget could respond to that. Yes to but
last use me last year through the third chair last year. When you when you added money, the budget it was actually in the workforce investment account. That's how we sort of made that commitment. That money is still there in the Workforce Investment Fund, and it's still available, so there's no need to adjust again. Okay,
great. Thank you. And then the second question is around continuing education. I know every year I add an opposing resolution how we can expand or invest more in continuing education for city employees. Can you speak to that if there's been any progress? I know you mentioned for example, the police department has tuition reimbursement, specifically tuition reimbursement programs that are available for city employees.
Okay, through the chair. We have not added an Employee Reimbursement for continuing education. What we have focused on is improving and adding more discounts for continuing education so that employees and their families could take advantage of that. So it's those discounts are not just for the employee themselves, but extends to their immediate family, their children. And so, you know, that is you know, that doesn't cost us anything. But for we just did do not have the resources you know, for to add that at this time.
Okay. All right. I'm going to again, ask that we add this to our closing resolution against specifically tuition reimbursement. I know you did a report in city wide it was a huge figure and I understand it does cost a lot but still want to encourage as much as we can. That we do offer some type of tuition reimbursement to city employees and try to expand that particular program. So is there a motion to add this to our closing resolution? All right, Hearing no objections that action will be taken in council president pro tem Tate.
Thank you, Madam President. Good morning. Thank you for being here. My apologies colleagues and to I guess for my tardiness, don't have much to ask a lot of the questions already have been asked and waiting for the responses from LPD as well. Just want to thank you for the assistance that you and your team have provided my office over the years consists consistent for certain. And just a quick question. I mean, we love the fact that we have these lunch and learns the webinars are awesome opportunities for employees. How do you track the return on that investment, if you will, and we citywide wide they're offered. They're offered every month. They're great courses. I'm sure some are full, some are not. How do you how do you track the effectiveness of these courses?
Through the Chair several ways doctor were actually looks at the attendance of these courses to see how many individuals are taking advantage of it. If it happens to be a course that there's not a lot of interest in then we would drop it and substitute it for something else. Or put those dollars in in a different track. We also have seen a significant increase in the number of internal promotions as I spoke to at the beginning. In my introduction, we have out of the 2000 vacancies that we had had in this fiscal year. Over 500 of those vacancies have been filled internally with promotions. We also have opened up a leadership development track that is a year long program where you you are nominated either yourself or your leadership in the department in some way maybe your supervisor to say you would be someone that is should be, you know considered high potential and you know to enter into this program that has been very successful. We have seen numerous individuals that have graduated from those programs for over the last two years. get promotions and so that is how we measure the effectiveness and we get comments back from managers. There's creative writing or business acumen. There's so many different courses that individuals take advantage of and I think that that helps with our retention as well. Retention is approximately 90%. Right now it runs between 8890 Now some departments like we'll say deedat drivers okay that that their retention isn't that high. But we've really in the department has been investing in DDOT drivers for training, and then they're now you know, able to take advantage of some of the class offerings that we have as well for customer service or other types of professional acumen that they might take advantage of.
What about those hard to feel positions? What what do we classify? What would we classify as those hard to fill positions in the city of Detroit?
Through the Chair so hard to fill positions? Up until recently have been deedat drivers. But we are now we just started another class of 61 this past Monday. We currently have 150 individuals actually in training. This is the higher not the highest number of drivers that we have hired. And that in total for the department. We were you know about a year ago, we were maybe getting a class of 20 Then we moved it up to 40. And now it's been in excess of 60 and you know and the instructors are doing a phenomenal job there. They you know, their workload has really picked up because the classes are larger. There's a lot of work that goes into training the the drivers other hard to fill positions will be Parks and Rec sometimes you know we just started going through our seasonal hiring right now. There are I believe 125 that are starting this coming Monday. They might have started this past coming or this past Monday but in the next week or so. You know we've seen returning seasonal workers about 40 The rest were brand new. So you know those sometimes can be hard to feel because their entry level positions but it actually then builds them to you know, they have more awareness than of the other positions that they have and they move into something better and then that creates a vacancy. So those are what I consider high turnover positions.
How about it because I know we constantly get a lot of IT contracts with em behind it is in millions. What's what's being done to try to fill that gap. I know we've talked to the director of do it about this bit, just from your perspective, how do we get the talent internally and I know it's a very competitive especially in it and you can either get snapped up quickly with the skill sets and go to the private sector. Is there any any push any drive any concerted effort, anything new and innovative that we are can do to not rely so heavily on contracted employees and the it sphere?
Through the Chair? Having come from a computer software company myself, okay. Sometimes it's best to contract out some of the work because it's a special skill set. That if you hire for that special skill set internally, they would end up being bored and move on very quickly because then they you know, they want to do that type of work going forward. So there's you know, there's certain circumstances that you do want to you just need a special skill set to get a certain type of project on and then move on. We just recently and I don't know Kim, if you want to speak to it. We just did a salary market study for all of it.
Through the Chair, the morning, yes. And so our salary study, which we looked at all of the titles within the IT department came in that they were within 90% or more of the market. We normally try to price out our jobs at about 80% And so they were higher than their norm. We also to speak to your innovation question partner with a company called apprenti. And so they are the only nationally recognized by the Department of Labor apprenticeship for technology and bringing women and minority into the IT space. And so it recently completed. Their first round they selected I think was four individuals in the cybersecurity I think systems administration and business analyst position. So those individuals went through about a 12 week program through apprenti that was paid by a grant I think it was a $17,000 training grant for each employee. And once they completed that now it has onboard them for a one year apprenticeship. And so again, to Denise's point in her opening we're trying to build versus buy but that takes time. And there's not a lot of companies like apprenti or nonprofits like apprenti that will do that. And so until we get to that point, we're going to have to continue to work on those short term projects, and work with those vendors.
Thank you so much. We do have additional questions that we will be presenting in a minimum but thank you again. For all the work you do. Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you, President Pro Tem say councilmember waters.
Thank you, Madam President. Good morning. So first of all, I certainly plan to take advantage of some of those discounts that you listed. That thank you guys for putting together because this is not the entire list right? The entire list is on your website. Okay. And now I want to just give a shout out to my two colleagues sitting to the right of me for making sure that we have parental leave 100% paid parental leave. I do appreciate that. So thank you members, Benson and Callaway. Um, you know, actually, madam president did ask part of my questions about some of the workers will be so I've reached out to you regarding one and I just and you say wait until the union's put it in the contract. Is there not anything that we can do especially to change the for example, the pay grade, which were then do you need the unions to change the pay grade to elevate that range of salary yourselves? That does it have to be done through them through
well through the chair typically the the union would be approaching us right and we work with them very closely. Many employees would like an increase in have their range, you know, ranges expanded. And it is a an organized approach to doing that. When we do see in your and we bring those forward to you. When you'll see in between contracts when we will bring a title forward to modify the range. It's because we have seen high turnover or we've seen that it's a difficult position to fill and so we will do a market study during the contract period without the union approaching us and then we will bring it forward to through your you know, this body but we also work with the union on that as well. Yeah,
because I gotta tell you it you know, when a lot of times when I go over to the garages, and you know, people want to see some sort of salary increases. I just wish there was something that we can do. Not to say that, you know, to go against the contract break in and deals I think but I would think that human resources would be able to do and I have seen some of those because they do come to internal operations. We've seen those a number of times. So I just wanted to just kind of if asked you guys to just please look harder, especially for those employees who are unionized, but feel as though they're not being paid enough. I think it's just incompetent above up on all of us to see if we can find a way to ensure that so that exactly what you just said can prevent a lot of turnover. We'll have we'll be able to maintain experienced employees. Oftentimes when you know when I'm in the in the community, people say to me, Well, I applied for a job with the city but I never heard anything back. You know, so what's what's the process for that? How How, how do you notify people after those positions have been filled to say, well, you know, the position has been filled. You are not selected or whatever the case might be, so that people don't feel as though it's a waste of their time to apply. We have a lot of vacant positions here at the city and the various departments and we have people who need jobs, and I'm always encouraging them apply when when things come through. I try to say okay, who do I know can apply for this job and I send it out. But then when people don't hear anything back, they become discouraged. So how often do you notify people once they didn't receive the job? And I think also what might be good, if you say, you know, maybe the experience that they were lacking or something like that I don't know if you can do that, but but I'm even inclined to say that for people like that, who didn't receive the position, but who took the time to apply? You might tell them where to go to look at other positions in your letter, or however it is that you notify them. So what do you guys think about that?
Through the Chair, we do actually have a letter that is sent out to individuals in I believe that he has the link to our website to apply you know, so that they could see other opportunities because some get filled in OWL because there was only one opportunity but you know, 15 people applied so they should receive a communication if you do ever come across someone who indicates that they did not if you could please forward that to me that'd be helpful to make sure that we don't have any gaps in our process. And but, you know, I will make sure that there's the link in to our website for other opportunities. And some of the, you know, could be that they were highly qualified. It's just that another individual with you know, higher qualifications might have been selected.
Well, thank you for that. And believe me when people say they want to work, I want to help them to work. I encourage them all the time here and you'll apply for these jobs. And I'm so thankful to finally Mr. Chairman, I'll just say, I'm so thankful that you're taking a look at expanded daycare, childcare, that kind of thing. Because a lot of our bus drivers say to me, you know, we you know, we need help, you know, childcare so extremely expensive, and there's a way for us to be able to assist them. That would be great.
Thank you. Thank you. Remember, Benson.
Thank you. Thank you all and thank you for the work that you do and being so responsive. I had the opportunity to work with many of you, behind the scenes on many different things. Director Star had been very supportive of our bikes for employees program and we still are partnering with you all and we're using the data from the employees that we worked with to actually move to next phase and hopefully this year, fingers crossed we will be the recipients of the larger grant to help scale that out over the next five years or we're still working very hard on that. And then also thank you for this recognition, just like the military. We can't give bonuses to the public employees but it's nice to be recognized in front of your peers for good works. And so just to my colleague, thank you for that as well. And just so good to know that we're able to offer this type of support and benefit to the families who work for the city of Detroit and to make this just another tool in our toolbox to make this more welcoming and attractive workspace. And so with that we there's a lot of gnashing of teeth. When we started this conversation a couple years ago it was going to cost this much and we don't know what it's going to cost and can we afford it all things might fall out of line to Earth may CO out of orbit. So what is the cost of the program now that we're a year in? Do we know what it actually costs the city of Detroit to implement this?
Through the Chair, not yet. This is our first year we will be looking at that, you know the the complexity of trying to figure out what it really cost is based on how much you actually make and what department some departments need to backfill their employees, whereas someone else could take that six or 12 weeks and somehow absorb it through their existing workforce. So we that's why it takes a little bit longer to figure that out. And so now we have the experience behind us. So we're working on what department were the individuals in without identifying names or anything but what was the average salary for that position? And, you know, our a average, you know, age of our population is actually reducing, which is a you know, which is good. And so we believe it's actually going to be a benefit that more individuals may be taking advantage of as well. So I think the second year might be a little you know, that, you know, have a higher number.
Let's get us boosting the population the old fashioned way, and we really love to see that. What so I'm also hoping to find out which pay grades are using this benefit as well. Are we seeing the managerial class or are we seeing more of our entry level workers who were able to take advantage of this? I'm really hoping that we're able to push this down. Not anybody shouldn't use it, but we want to make sure that everybody feels comfortable taking this entitlement that we've now provided them. And so then the next question is going to be six weeks. That's a very robust, paid leave. Can we improve that to eight weeks? What would that take? What would it look like to go to 12 weeks, and as someone who has bragged to me their office provides 90 days of paid leave at their space. And that's a great perk store fairly expensive, not sure that we could ever be in that position, but what would it take to them just lean in a little bit more to make it even more robust and more beneficial for those and that's a challenge. Nothing that we have to worry about now to worrying how much it actually cost. The city like to see us think about that in the future as well. If we can. Could we make that more robust? And then now that we have to pay parental leave, and obviously you're working on that childcare and I'm fully supportive of this as well. And as a parent of a small child. That cost became the number one cost in our household childcare once they once we had to go back to work. And so and I know that's that that hits so many of our young families as well. There's the ability to find quality childcare, where you feel comfortable with your child that's secure. That's reliable that is so huge to you can get them into the public school and even then, there's opportunities so I'm hoping that when we talk about childcare that we'll be creative, and we'll think latchkey is part of that as well. Good to be here early or stay late. Last King is an additional cost even in the public school setting. And then maybe even instead of just childcare tuition for the child as well, to help with those type of costs. And so if we can just be creative in how we look at that type of benefit, just to make the CBH wait an even more attractive employer. And so for our 10,000 employees who can look and say hey, you know, I mean, I've got to pay like my baby. We had our children we've got we're able to take the six, eight even maybe 12 weeks off at one time. Lash key we get a suit we get a certificate in discount because the city will help us support that even tuition for the child as they go off to school and then they increase I mean, even at 789 years old. I mean, you still have to have a place for your child when you're not directly supervising them. So hopefully you all will lean in and we'll be looking for some creative ways to to add those as maybe potential perks in the future. Just to make us an even more robust place to work with this. Thank you all for the work that you're doing. And thank you for your continued support for the bicycles for employees program as well. We're really close and announcements going to be made this summer so we're really excited about
that. The chair that's exciting and just to answer you from the first question is all levels of employees that are taking advantage of this benefit. So that is really wonderful to see. And so it's very exciting. And you know, I came from a company that actually you know had their own on site childcare center. And so I know the liabilities, the cost to do something like that, but we're gonna look at, you know, creative ways that we might be able
to I'm not suggesting that we get into that business, but that I mean, there are others who do that for a living, but just have financial support is so critical. I mean, 20% 30% 50% support, I mean, it just makes a huge difference and in the ability to provide a higher quality as well, which is so critical for those emerging agents. So anyway, thank you. Thank you.
thank you and good morning, everyone. And good morning director start to you, you and your team and thank you for the acknowledgement. And thank you for implementing it. And I hear that it's very successful. I spoke to Denise Raizel and she and her husband were able to take advantage of it. And I'm not sure if councilmember door Hall was able to take advantage of it. I hope you did. And that is the purpose of it is a benefit. And I don't look at it as a perk. It's a benefit. But um thank you for the recognition and the acknowledgement and implementing it. You and I've been talking about cheer on child care for about a year now. And I remember spending hours on the phone with you with Ramzes and we've talked about a lot of different avenues of how we can deal with that child care component and the benefit to our employees and you also share with us Ramzes and myself over the phone that you do have a background and some you know just some experience with dealing with on site childcare and we looked at that option. It was not really an option for us here. But we also talked about vouchers. We talked about offering childcare discount vouchers for our employee employees, and we talked about contractors. And where are we with that? Because we've talked about that extensively over the phone. Do you remember those conversations through
the Chair? Yes, I do. And we you know, we just haven't been able to come up with a plan yet. We are still working on it. We do have the PACA ERG they will also be very helpful for us for looking you know at different options of what employees they actually would want to sit you possibly see in a program. And maybe through our perk spot. There may be some centers that we could go to to to see if they want to join that for discounts for our employees.
Yeah, I like I'm going to ask that this can be placed in Executive Session, just the whole conversation around childcare. But before I do in the 20 in the fiscal year 2024 adopted budget there was 112,000 allocated for other expenses for your department. And for the fiscal year 2025. The amount is allocated over $600,000 What accounts for the 350% increase in funds for other expenses? And what are some of the examples of those expenses based on this increase?
Through the Chair I'm probably going to ask budget to reply to that because I believe it was moving from one account string to another. It's not an increase of the expenses but maybe budget could
speak. Yeah, through the Chair. Thank you for the question. I think this is like Denise was saying it's actually just a transition from the professional contractual services to training in other expenses. So it's training has gone up. My understanding is this was always spent on training but we just reclassed it in a different way and from an accounting perspective.
So through the chairs, just a transfer. Yes. Okay. All right. And then also, and it goes to what Member at Large Waters was saying lots of positions, and we get a lot of phone calls about job openings, and it appears in the there are a lot of positions open. What innovative steps are you taking to recruit and retain talented individuals to fill these positions?
A through the chair. We do an extensive outreach to either in the community. We do a lot of job fairs throughout all of your districts. We try to make sure that we touch each of your districts because we really want to of course you know hire Detroiters we also have relationships with veterans and returning citizens of course, and in various other to the faith based community we have extensive relationships there where they have assisted us to get the word out and you know, we look for every opportunity that we can we go to the colleges, we go to Wayne State University, we go to Wayne County Community College and we use Detroit transportation corporation which is DTC or Detroit training Corporation. They actually help us to get CDL drivers for us because we don't just have the deedat drivers we have a lot of CDL drivers that need a CDL before they can start here. The deedat program you can get your CDL you do not have to have it to be a driver. We you earn that during the I think it's 12 week training program that they have to go through. So the first few weeks is trying to get that for them. So we do have a lot of different avenues that we do the outreach. And when specific issues might come up for hard to fill, you know particularly hard to fill position. We collaborate with the department to come up with a actual plan for those specific positions because we don't want to leave them you know vacant we want those positions to be filled. Yeah.
Thank you, Director star. Thank you for all that you do in support of my office. I'd like to see us use some QR code. I was in DC just recently and they all their businesses, all their city offices use QR code. So if you're standing at a bus stop, it'll save job postings and the person can take their phone hit that QR code and all the jobs will drop down in their phone and also has the capability of from that phone to apply for that particular particular position. So maybe consider that the QR codes we can dump in in our website we can dump in our newsletter and people can check hit it and apply right then in there. Sometimes websites I've found are kind of difficult to navigate but thank you so much. And again, I'd like to make a motion to add the childcare conversation into Executive Session, executive session so to see if we can get it funded in terms of the vouchers that you and I've been talking about for over a year and a half now. Director star. Thank you, Madam Chair.
All right, any objections? Hearing none that will be added to our executive session. And that will conclude our budget hearing. Thank you to the HR department for the work that you all do and we look forward to working with you all. Thank you very
much for your support.
Madam President,
well, yes. Member waters. Yes.
Yeah. Could we add the QR code to Executive Session? Okay, please. Thank you.
Okay. Is there any objections to add that to our Executive Session? All right, hearing none, that action will be taken. And I think you also mentioned you were going to add something as well Member Santiago Ramiro.
Yes, thank you, Madam President. I am hoping to add to the closing resolution that city HR and council HR worked together to create a onboarding program for City Council offices.
Okay, any objections? Hearing none that will be added to our Executive Session for our closing resolution. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you, HR department. We will now move to our next budget. Hearing which is the employment solute solutions Corporation.
Thank you for sharing your screen Rachel names okay.
Right, good morning to you all and whenever you are ready to begin to sweep the floor is yours. Good morning.
Thank you very much. It looks like our slides are up I appreciate you guys allowing us to present today and talk through the Detroit at work draft budget. The ESC of course is the nonprofit organization that operates Detroit at work and I have officers here who will walk you through the budget. I am Terry Waynes. I'm the Executive Director of Workforce and of Detroit at work. Dana Williams is the President CEO of de SC Stephanie Nixon is the chief program officer. And Tracy Sasak is the Chief Financial Officer. Next Slide Thank you. Obviously our goal is to increase residential employment, reduce barriers and increase economic mobility and I know that those priorities align with all of the members of city council. Next slide. Briefly, Detroit at work is a brand. It includes the mayor's Workforce Development Board which is appointed by the mayor as required by federal law. D SC is the fiduciary it is the Michigan Works Agency identified by the state of Michigan, and D ESC then procures third party service providers who actually provide direct services to Detroiters. So DSC is not performing direct services themselves, but employs third party providers who operate our Career Centers to gather. That group is called Detroit at work to make it seamless to Detroiters. They don't have to worry about who they need to go to whether it's the third party or the ESC or Detroit at work is just Detroit. At work. We get our funding from the Department of Labor, mainly the WIOA Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act. That is our primary source of funding. It gets funneled through the states and then the state allocates it to the chief local elected officer which is for the city of Detroit, the mayor. There are 16 of those again throughout the state of Michigan. Next slide. We get various funding mainly again from the Department of Labor in the state, but we also receive funding graciously through the city council thank you very much. And also through philanthropic investors. We are subject to lots of audits monitoring and reviews probably a couple of times a month. DSC is subjected to some sort of review, monitoring or audit including our annual audit every year and we make those available. We operate next slide nine Career Centers, one in every district as you know and then we also operate six youth centers. Those youth centers are also identified for you on the next slide in response to feedback we've gotten from some of you. We're working to increase awareness around these youth centers, particularly around the offerings that are available there. They're focused on work experiences for young people between the ages of 14 and 24. Tutoring, exposure to careers and also mentoring. Next slide. The public workforce system requires us by law to operate Career Centers to refer people to training to provide Employer Services and to also operate certain programs like path and so forth and so on. In addition to that next slide, we do so much more I'm probably bragging because because we can the city of Detroit. Seriously, our Michigan Works Agency is doing so much more than a traditional Michigan Works Agency, and that's because we've been able to identify and diversify funding and offer programs like the $100 million scholarship. There's no way that other Michigan Works agencies could do that. Similarly, the Grow Detroit young talent that everyone here supports, is being nationally recognized on a regular consistent basis. And again, there's no way we'd be able to operate that kind of program without additional funding, the workforce funding that we received the baseline is just not enough to do all of the great things that we're doing to support the disabled population, English language learners, returning citizens and all of that extra stuff. I hate to call it extra but it is because the regular Workforce Funding would not allowed us to do that. So we are definitely going way beyond the requirements with your help. Thank you very much. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Tracy who's going to walk you through the financials and again, these are draft financials
through the Chair. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to present for the very first time to you today. This morning. I'll be sharing with you our draft budget for fiscal year 2425. This information is draft as we await the final funding allocations from the state of Michigan, which comes closer to our May timeframe and then our board approves our budget. In June. On this first slide, you'll see our funding sources which represent a 13 year trend in our funding. As Terry mentioned over the last several years, you can see that we've been diversifying that funding for 2425 fiscal year which starts July 1, we are estimating about $75 million dollars in total funding. With our largest funding source continuing to be the state of Michigan federal formulaic funding, which includes WIOA and path. We do expect to see a gradual decline in our revenues over the course of the next years as the ARPA funding sunsets. However, we are in a very healthy position. Next slide. You can see here an estimation of our spending on our largest our largest expense being the nine career centers. We run throughout the city of Detroit to help the Detroiters. In addition, we expect to continue to support the GED YT program as Terry mentioned, a very popular program and supported by all of you at our $14 million level. The chart outlines a few of our signature programs including Skills for Life and learn to earn and we continue to prioritize training for Detroiters and removing the barriers they have with supportive services funding. Next slide. Here you will see the $5.1 million we asked for from the city's budget which is consistent with the past several years. This includes general fund dollars for GED yt, as well as community block grant, which also supports the GED YT program. Now I'd like to turn over the presentation to Dana Williams, our president and chief executive officer to walk you through the program system funding will support.
Thank you, Tracy Good morning Council through the chair. A little bit of information about the staffing grant that we received from the city of Detroit and has been for some time now. The primary goal of the staffing grant is to again go beyond what the system would normally allow us to do. And so it allows us to be connected to city projects in a way that without that funding would be difficult for us as a system operating the regular Michigan Works Agency. The big part of that is of course the marketing and outreach that it goes to support. But we have an incredible open and unsubscribe rate to our 200,000 Detroit our email list. We utilize social media, text messaging, and all sorts of other things in order to get the word out about the Detroit at work. Services. You may have even heard because I love to hear it when I listened to the radio, the Detroit at work job of the day that is existing on the radio because of the work of the team that this grant goes to support. We of course continue to operate and utilize other various diverse methods for our marketing. A large part of that I'm proud to say we have reactivated our Detroit at work career center communications ambassadors, so these will be folks who are on the ground and all nine in soon to be 15 of those centers, who are actively engaging Detroiters and community outreach so that we can continue to do some of the career fairs and resource fairs that some of you have, indeed, partner with us on and so that we're able to really reach Detroiters where they are. Next slide please. Another large component of the staffing grant that it goes to support is the partnerships that we are able to enjoy with our economic development team. A large part of those efforts shows up in the priority hiring agreements that we've been able to secure with companies either newly coming to Detroit or who are expanding their operations here over the past five years with all of that support. We have been able to refer almost 40,000 residents to these new jobs, and over 11,000 residents have been hired as a result of them. We've grown this list since last year by another three we believe five more are coming and this list will continue to grow. As we continue to partner with the new and existing employers that are here in the city. You'll see some of the projects that you all have actually approved and represented that are represented here organizations like Amazon and Henry Ford and still Lantis they continue to be our partners and because of that we will always have at least an inroads for Detroiters into these companies to specific programs of course we want to call out over the past year. One is of course the district Detroit. We know the details of that and the opportunities that it's set to bring not only the construction when it hits ground, but also the businesses that will be in the retail and commercial spaces. And then as well Michigan Central. As the HR team was describing here in Detroit, we know that we need to increase our resident talent pool around it and mobility and the partnerships and the training programs and job placements that will begin to do through the Michigan central Workforce Committee will go to support that same effort. Next slide please. An additional part of the funding that we received from the city is of course the executive order funds, still connected to those projects, and has to do with the Workforce Training Fund, which goes to support our construction and construction related careers through that program. Next slide please. And actually the next one is Well, we continue to receive dollars on an annual basis. And you'll see since 2018 Since we started tracking this information. We've made 3000 job placements for Detroiters into the construction construction related industries. And the average wage this is incredible. is over $28 an hour. It's what we all know right we know that construction is a wonderful career path. And so as we continue to partner with the development organizations with the construction companies, the subs and our union partners, we know that this will continue to grow. Included in the slide is also some of the details around the different areas that people are training in and how many folks are going into those as a result. So to conclude the executive order programming I will toss it over to my partner Stephanie Nixon, who's our chief programming Services Officer.
Thank you Dana. Through the Chair, I'd like to share with you one of our premier youth programs. It's jobs for America's graduates. We are in partnership with dpscd at three high schools in the city of Detroit this year, we're serving 505 young people of those 101 as a result of our work have graduated high school, we follow up with them and of those 43 are placed in full time employment at an average wage of $17 an hour and then also enrolled in post secondary education. As part of that program, we have a 10 week Skilled Trades Program with the Operating Engineers union. It's local one local 324 those young people engaged tonight hours in training and then during the summer GT YT places them and occupations along along the lines of the the opportunities that they selected. And we're very excited this year to be able to use EO money to support that because that is the skills skills trade initiative. I'd like to share now I'd like to hand off the mic to Dana again, who's going to share some of our lessons learned from some of our signature programs.
Thank you Stephanie through the chair once more. We won't go through the details of these programs. She'd go ahead and advance those slides. Rachel, you are all extremely familiar with these these are the Detroit at work signature programs, all of which of course funded in all or in part by The American rescue plan dollars that are here. These we have been able to grow and expand and learn significant lessons from because of the investments that you've approved again through city of Detroit dollars. That are here because of arpa. We also presented the details of these very recently just a couple of weeks ago at BFA. And so you also have some information from us around the details of these programs there. So as Stephanie mentioned, we have learned some things through the operation of these programs that we're excited about that is really going to help us continue to enhance the system that we already have today. The first is that we now have proof that we need to expand support services and coach the most difficult residents differently. We know that the standard one our career coaching that we typically set up for our Detroiters is just not enough for people who have multiple barriers. And so we're going to be exploring through some of the methods that we have experimented with through jumpstart and skills for life. Other ways to do that within our career center system, either by group coaching, extended or expanded time. Those who may have had a similar experience as the people who are coming through our doors. So you'll we hope to be able to expand that here soon. The other that we of course, always know but has been solidified even more through the Career Pathways extension of Gd YT where we have folks that are actually in summer jobs that are connected to the high demand high growth career paths we have here in the city is that we have to continue career exploration for youth. Without them knowing what's out there. We as as an economy would struggle because they won't know where to go and so we have to continue those that really important career exploration activities like GT YT. The next is that we know we need to incorporate a program that provides a wage opportunity where people can both go to work, get work, experience and train at the same time get paid for the whole thing. You have heard a lot about skills for life over the past couple of years and is a program that is working. So whether it's the city of Detroit or another employer, a program like that we always want to have as a part of our system and then lastly, and perhaps the most important, because it is the underpinning for everything else that we're doing here is a continued focus on foundational skills for Detroiters, and this comes by way of literacy and numeracy. I know many of you have interest in that as well. Not only the specific job training but making sure that we're catching folks up where they need to as well. And so including adult basic education as we've learned, again, through jumpstart, and through learn to earn is going to be an incredible and new focus for us and hopefully will be a regular part of our system. offerings as well. It takes a lot longer for someone who comes in through our doors at third grade leave reading level versus a ninth grade reading level to be able to go to work and get a good job and enter the middle class as we all hope that our fellow Detroiters will, and so we know that we'll want to continue that at the same time. So those are the big learnings that we have. We wanted to share those with you again as the thanks for the ARPA dollars that we've received for all of those key programs. going to toss it off to Stephanie here if I could, just to talk a little bit more about Gd y t, and then we'll likely wrap it up and be open for questions. Absolutely.
Thank you, Dana. Through the Chair, our beloved GT YT everybody knows gro Detroit young talent. And Allow me first to thank all of you for for supporting the program. You guys have provided opportunities that we know are changing lives. So thank you so much, and thank you in particular President Sheffield for joining us in our kickoff this year, and we look forward to a great summer. Last summer at 546. We placed 1546 young people that was a record to this date. We have over 10,000 applications and the applications don't close until May 30. So you can imagine the demand. So of course you know we'd like to touch every young person and give everyone an opportunity and we aspire to do that. Over the years we placed young people as you can see here through a number of opportunities from from our police cadet programs for the younger youth to the curb to the CPIs which those are the career pathway opportunities that many of you share. I understand councilmember Johnson that you'd like an intern, I'll make sure that a team member meets with your team and make sure you have the process so you can have your young person this summer but look forward to that. If you can Next slide please. We as I said in 2023 8500 Young people, that was definitely a record $13.5 million raised at $15 an hour as you know the last couple years we increased the wages to $15. So we could compete with McDonald's. We know we have a better opportunity to make the McDonald's. So we definitely increase that so that did increase our our fundraising goal for 2020 for 8000. Young people again, of course we're going to exceed it the same but well a little bit more. The budget is a little higher because we looked at some of the young people and we have more people earning the $15 an hour because our babies aren't $12 which is great. 14 year olds they earn $12 But we're looking at more 18 to 24 year olds who actually earn that $15 So that's the increase in the funding funding needed. We have 262 community partners. They help us engage our young people make sure that they have youth development kinds of activities, project based learning as the younger the younger students, they don't have work experience so we make sure that they have youth development and project based learning. So they're really, really ready, as they matriculate up into some of the more more professional opportunities. So that concludes our presentation. Thank you very much.
All right. Thank you. Thank you so much for that presentation. I just want to just start off by thanking you guys for the work that you all do. I've worked with all of you are you are do a phenomenal job. Just your outreach or community team is amazing. They come out to all of our events. We always have a just a wonderful time, helping Detroiters that have just such good personalities, energy that all of them want to serve, ready to serve and so just have a fantastic team, the entire Detroit at work. So thank you all for the work that you all do. And I'm sure everyone can echo that as well. So we'll go straight to questions from my colleagues. And I'm going to start with you wrote him tight if you're ready. If not, I will. Okay. I'll start with President Pro Tem Tate and we will have two questions per colleague. All
right. Thank you so much. And thank you all for being here. Best presentation we've had as far as you all coordinated
Callaway but they are phenomenal. Yes. Yeah. Just talk to us a little bit about that engagement. I mean, we miss Williams, you talked about one of the things you've learned over time is the coaching the more difficult residents differently but the outreach also has to be different as well with those more difficult residents. So I see you online. I mean, heard about the acts I hadn't I don't listen to the radio very often but when you talked about the the job of the day, I think that's very innovative as well. But that still doesn't hit the mark for some of our more difficult residents. Hand hand combat so to speak, it's got to happen. Talk to us a little bit about the hand to hand combat in those spaces, not necessarily just at our events, but just in general.
Very good. Actually prototype if I would I would like to allow Terry first and then allow Stephanie as well because she truly is on the ground running programs and has been doing this for a long time.
Thank you and through the chair. Councilmember Tate you guys may have received a 2023 report that outlines a lot of the outreach that we're doing, I think that Dana Williams provided, I would encourage you to take a look at page 10 where we've analyzed that our website traffic is significantly increased year over year 327,000 new visitors over the past couple of years, I've noticed a significant increase in our call center volume, a significant increase in our website traffic and all of that is driven by the marketing and outreach that our team is doing. Either from radio, television ads we've started doing and promotional materials, including written materials that people can pick up in our career centers and libraries and churches and all of that sort of stuff. We are extremely visible. We're attending lots of events. We're holding more and more and more job fairs. I was incredibly impressed by the number of people who actually physically come out at a lot of the events, especially around the Jumpstart promotions. So I think that this is actually driving an increase in awareness. If you don't know about Detroit at work or haven't heard of it. I think I'd say you're living under a rock if you have not seen the billboards or the commercials or whatever the case may be. I think there's still more work to do but I have noticed that we are finally starting to reach the population that we've been looking for. I've noticed that we've increased the number of people who are entering the workforce. Our labor participation rate is higher than it has ever been before. There are 10,000 Actually 10,800 more people this year than last people looking for a job that's outstanding. Now that will initially make our unemployment rate look a little lower, but that's great news that more people are coming out that's what we're doing is driving a higher labor participation rate. So I'll stop because I can get kind of long winded.
This is your presentation.
What through the Chair, if I'd like to speak to our justice involved population, we have a program. We call it choices. And it basically works with young people who have been engaged in gun violence either directly perpetrators or influencers. And what we found is the word on the street. It's like they they tell their part their colleagues in the community, hey, they they work with you. They're committed, they will pay you a stipend. They'll put you on a transitional work experience. So what we know is that that economics, that's huge, so we immediately put money in their pocket through transitional work experiences. So when the word on the street says you go over there, you engage, they will pay you and you will have an opportunity to move into some permanent, permanent jobs. That really, really works. We went from five initial individuals in that program to over 200 and it was all about community referral. We didn't have to put up a sign we didn't have to put out a flyer we didn't have to, you know, make a radio announcement. It was about look, go over there. Go over there. My cousin you know, can benefit from this. Go over there. And so we really when you talk about the grassroots hard to reach those who don't have technology to who don't have access, it's about the boy thy friend they bruh go over there and they will help you. So that that is one of the ways that we've really been able to get engaged with the harder to serve and doing a good job with those those individuals. So I just wanted to share that
through the chair. I'll just also lastly mentioned jumpstart Of course, right? So some of those organizations are some that we've been engaged with for years, right. We do know them. They know us as a system. There are certain organizations that we met for the first time and we believe that they are helping us to reach populations in Detroiters that we might not have hit before. And so we are grateful for the structure of that program and for the relationships we now have with new grassroots organizations. A lot of times I believe what you're talking about President Pro Tem is the grass tops right. We know how to hit them. But the grassroots is something totally different. It goes to what Stephanie was saying about the Each One reach one strategy as well as again, the use of these very different the partnership with these very different type community organizations. So we'll be also looking at different kinds of ways beyond jumpstart that we can work with them to be able to get the word out as well.
Thank you. And I want to thank Dr. Williams what we've been talking about trying to get folks over and bright more you know, as we have the bright more framework that's going on to revision bright more as a whole we got a commercial corridor also increased the residential capacity over there, but the first thing we've got to do is increased their skill set and workforce development and all the other things that they need in terms of education, academic academics, so I appreciate you making that commitment. We're moving full steam ahead. I was at a meeting last night and folks still are not aware of these programs. So I had to continue to go up and talk about so those are some of those hard to reach more difficult. Communities. They kind of see the billboards, but it becomes kind of, you know, just wallpaper to them because they're just not used to the services being something that they can apply to their lives. I mean, just suspicious about government to mean let's be honest, there are a lot of folks who just don't trust us. Um, but again, thank you for your commitment in assisting
if I might through the chair to that point. You are absolutely right, we can see that folks are hearing and seeing the messages because we can see the click rates, that translation into enrollment. There's a large drop, we're seeing a huge increase in enrollment but not at the same level as the number of people who have initially expressed an interest. So I really hear your point on opportunities to convert more of that interest into actual enrollment in our program.
And I know we had talked about lawn signs in the particular area, so still looking to work on that with you. Yes. Last thing. One of the issues that we have within many of our establishments, that's customer service, and you have great product, you have great location, all that good stuff, but customer service and that's the thing that make customers not want to come back. And then you tell someone else about this horrible, horrible experience that you had. I was how are you all helping to improve the overall customer service challenge that we have in the city of Detroit? I know you can't solve everything. People come to us wanting us to solve everything. So now I'm putting on you, how do we how are we how do we solve this? So I'll
give a couple of thoughts and then I'm gonna pass it over to Dana Williams, who is actually more entrenched in this but you are absolutely right. We conduct regular customer service experience surveys. And our surveys actually tell us that our customer service folks, our career counselors are doing a good job. They have very high rates. I wonder whether people who are disgruntled perhaps are not filling out the survey. Because the survey data tells us something different. What we are doing is exploring different incentives for our customer service facing folks to make sure that good behavior is rewarded, and that we're identifying where we have some opportunities for improvement. I think customer service is an issue across the nation. We're finding that more and more. There are more and more opportunities across a variety of industries for people to focus on the human element. We spent and invested a lot several years ago in what we call human centered design. And making sure that people were trained on a regular basis to focus on the people experience, inclusive of not just how we connect with people and talk with people but how our environment is structured. So that is welcoming, and and open. And so I'll turn it over to Dana in to talk a little bit more about some of the additional efforts that we're employing to address customer service.
Thank you and through the chair. President Pro Tem let me make sure I understand your question. Would you like us to discuss customer service that's happening in our career centers, or what's happening more broadly in our retail and hospitality? establishments?
Scale? Because again, when you look at the people facing positions, but when you go to a grocery store, I say when you go to a restaurant, when you go to fill in the blank, just the customer service has I mean, I get complaints all the time from citizens who will come into me to complain about a business's customer service, go figure. I mean, we work with the EGC and see how we figure it out. But that's dealing with the business itself and how they address it. The question is, how do we get a better workforce? everybody's not going to be working in the C suite. Let's be honest. So we've got folks who start like me, I My first job was as a bad boy, and I'm very proud of it, but it gave me skills that help lead me to where I am, I believe today. So
broadly. Thank you for that clarification. So through the chair, we of course as a part of our five high growth high demand industries for the city of Detroit have identified customer service as one of them. And so we certainly have training programs today that prepare folks for jobs in more traditional customer service areas like a call center. And so we certainly have ways to train folks to have those types of experiences. But I know what you're getting at because I'm in Detroit and I experienced the same as well. So what I can share with you is this so we're working on a couple of things right now, very early stages. One actually that's being supported strongly by one of your fellow council members here. But there are some other business organizations that we're in talks with, around trying to solve how this works. I have my own desires for you know, joint customer service certification program, but very early talks, but it is something that we really do want to focus on. Because it affects every single employer in the city. Customer service is a part of every job. You don't necessarily have to work in a retail establishment or a restaurant to understand customer service. You also have your internal colleagues that you should also present with the same type of respect. And so we are just now beginning to think about how we do that. My pie in the sky idea was bringing the Ritz Carlton and Disney institute here and things like that may happen one day, but in the meantime, let please let us do this work and then continue to talk with you about what the possibilities are.
And through the chair. One of the things that we are doing is requiring career readiness training for a number of our customers so we started that with Skills for Life was very successful. So this career readiness training helps people understand how to show up at work, how to communicate with others, how to talk to your boss, how to avoid conflict how to address conflict, when it arises how to how to just exist, it's it's customer service, sort of plus, you know, like just really how to behave in a work environment. We learned a lot with that population with skills for life. We got a lot of great feedback from it, but one of the things that I heard was that they wanted more of it. So it was helpful to go through that sort of training but I heard that people needed regular reminders. Oh, yeah, this is not how I'm supposed to behave at work. This is you know, oh, I remember that strategy. You know, when I'm when someone is getting on my nerves. This is how I should approach the situation as opposed to, you know, go on from zero to 10. And those kinds of things. People said that they needed more. So in response to that we actually lengthened the program. It was a couple of weeks. We extended it to six weeks for some of our participants in an effort to really focus on how important it is to not just get a job but retain it. And part of that means, you know, showing up with the right behaviors. So that that is something that we're currently doing and we're thinking about potentially requiring it for for certain populations, depending on what training track or employment track they're going into.
Look forward to working with you in that aspect. Like I said, as a Detroiter, trying to do all you can to support Detroit businesses. It can be big tough at times. Even when your hearts in the right place. I'll be submitting some additional financial questions and budgetary questions in writing. But again, thank you for the great work that you all done. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you pro tem, Councilmember waters
Thank you, Madam President. So good afternoon. You know, I gotta tell you, I just hit my all the hard work that you guys do. I mean, i i everything that you do, I support 200% And that's for sure. And I thank you for for all of your hard work and I know you don't have enough money to do all the things that you do and all the things that that you need to do. So I want to go back to jumpstart just quickly since that whole idea was led by both myself and member Yang. Tell me what type of What's the age group? That's that's enrolling in Jumpstart.
I think we have you know, everyone from 18 to probably 70 I think Oh yeah, yeah, we have a we have a range of age groups and with that program, I can't say that there's like a concentrated number
not a concentrated that that one age group over the other. No, we
have a lot of older individuals, in fact, uh huh.
Oh, okay. Interesting. At some point, were you able to break down the numbers for us, so that we can have that? Sure. I'd like to know what that looks like. Um Oh, let's talk about literacy a little bit. Um, we, you have a couple of literacy task forces that are going on here at the city and I know that my colleague to the right of me, has the financial literacy piece and and we do it all, but now that we know how engaged he is in the financial literacy piece, we're going to kind of pull back from that a little bit, but still identify ways to help push literacy across the board, whether there's reading adult reading or financial or even digital. And so I've been told when do it came here? I talked to them about well, okay, can you do like a one stop workshop? So that one we could put place on? Because we want to be able to highlight literacy with some sort of connection to the city's website. We want literacy to pop. And on that website, we want to be able to to list our partners or providers in each category, both reading financial and, and digital. So that and then their contact information. So and I thought that do it would be the the department what why should seek this but after speaking with the administration, they said no, can you put it through workforce development? And so that's, that's what we will, we'll do. And do you have any idea because I'd like to see two things happen that particular website, along with promoting literacy a little bit more, do some promotional ads, as it relates to literacy. And I think maybe we can include some of our programs with that when we promote as well jumpstart those kinds of things. That will that certainly helped people to become gainfully employed. Do you have any idea of what something like that those things would cost?
I don't offhand, but I do know that there are there's some strategies in place right now that I think would lend themselves to what you're talking about. I think there's an opportunity for us to leverage what we already have. I really believe that the Detroit at Work website is I think it's intuitive. I think it's easy to access. I know that we highlight learn earn as an example, if there were a desire to highlight more broadly literacy, we could certainly do that. And so I think that there are some opportunities to leverage the the infrastructure, if you will, that's all that already exists. After you and I talked to actually went on to the city's website and Detroit to work to see was it intuitive? Was it easy to find? I found that it was I hear that you're that
it wasn't that it was not? And I really sat through it with someone from the administration. They were like, Well, no, it's not easy to find. So they kind of felt the same way that I did. So I
think that learner earn is easy to find, but what you're talking about financial literacy, digital literacy and numeracy, maybe that's not all in one place. Yeah, but I think that it it could be I think there are opportunities for us to bring that together. I've looked at the Digital website, they've got a laundry list of free digital skills training available to every Detroiter, which I thought was wonderful. So if there's an opportunity I think I hear you saying like to put someone brought umbrella over that. That's something that can certainly be explored.
We can that's this one I want to see because what we want to do is we want to make it easier for people to be refined access to the various programs that either we offer at the city level or that our partners and other providers have to offer. And that way we can probably will see that the numbers will escalate a lot more if people because nobody is just gonna say Oh, well, you know, I'm interested in some help and literacy they're not going to think most people aren't going to think to go to the Workforce Development website, that kind of thing. But they know how for the most part to go to the city's website. So we want to make some connection there so that they can see what the what the city is offering those opportunities.
And so those are the kinds of things that, that I'd like to see happen.
At what type of financial support you need to in order to, to build out that type of, of website that's connected into in your department. Because I wanted to put it somewhere else but administrations that know
where to put it in not, and tears we can't we can certainly give that some thought. I don't have any financial information to show the offer right now I have to do some research to make sure that I completely understand what it is that you're looking for and see whether it's something that we can do on the back end with the again infrastructure we already
have or whether that would be at an additional cost. All right. And so do you mind having conversations with our literacy Task Force as well?
Because they certainly have some some ideas. Absolutely. I'm sorry to interrupt. Yeah. We offered in person to join your task force who has been regularly
attending so we can we can certainly do that. Okay. All right then. So since already have the website in Executive Session, but I have been under do what
do I do I need to change that. Madam President. Mr. Corelli, can you just know that we'll be before both do it in the ESC or Detroit at
work for her request from an electrical place? Okay. All right. Okay.
All right. Thank you, Madam President.
All right. Thank you, Councilmember waters councilmember Benson. Thank you. Thank you all for being here. And thank you for how responsive you all are. You all are fantastic. Making phone calls. You are very helpful, very thoughtful about how to find solutions to help our residents to get to that next level. Next step. One of my concerns is looking at your funding sources. And so the growth or the flows and the abs of the size of the program, fiscal year 23 Just sub 120 million for fiscal year 25. Just 80 million. And then looking at sources, the federal formula rather stable, but it grows and then it subsides. And then we're looking at a corporate philanthropic investments, and then ARPA, which will be losing quickly here, and then comparing that to their fiscal year 25. Budget, your pie chart here. Just close to 35 million of your program is GT yt, and career center operations. And so what is the plan for being sustainable? When I talk about that? I mean, some of these programs are fantastic when you talk to the workforce development professionals. Skills for Life is what really bubbles up as the cream of the crop and what they rarely talk about, and how successful it is. And their fear is what's going to happen once Arper one is out and go to the federal government. Are they going to be supportive? How much can the city support it? I mean, you know, we have grown our budget over the years, but we still can't support everything that comes to this table. So what are the plans for
being sustainable, and specifically for skills for life? So I will take that one. Some of the ARPA programs were not intended to exist beyond the ARPA period. Frankly, they were programs that would help us identify more one provide opportunities for residents with this one time funding. And once that one time, funding goes away, we're going to leverage the learnings that that we were able to obtain from these programs and apply them going forward into the programs that will continue to run post arpa. So as Dana Williams said, there's there are lots of opportunities for us to maybe have some conversations with other employers about opportunities to have people both work and learn at the same time. We all need to get into this mindset of continuous learning, right? And continuous skill building because the world is changing. The jobs of today will not be the jobs of tomorrow and we're encouraging employers to train incumbent workers along the way this Skills for Life model works and perhaps the city of Detroit may be able to continue it along with some other employers to help people skill up. I think it would be a great idea it works phenomenally for those who need improvements in literacy or numeracy as an example, paying people for full week's worth of work and allowing them to skill up at the same time is a win win for everybody. So, in the long term, those programs may not exist within the workforce system as a distinct, unique program. But we're hopeful that those learnings will continue to be investments in future programs. So we will continue to do temporary work experiences. We've did them before. We'll continue to do them going forward. As more employers realize the benefits of these types of programs. We hope that they will join us alongside and we can continue to do some of that stuff. A lot of our focus has shifted from a funding strategy from philanthropic investments to arpa. So you'll notice that the philanthropic bar if you will, has gone down. It's not because our philanthropic community isn't invested anymore in us. It's that, frankly, we've given them a break. While ARPA funding has come in to close some gaps and we fully expect that we'll be able to continue to fund the GED YT program going forward. So we've got some strategies in place to continue to look at philanthropic investments, competitive grants, there's a ton of funding available at the federal and state level for all of the infrastructure work that's going on energy work that's going on mobility work that's going on so we feel very confident that we'll be able to continue providing the same level of service. The programs may look different, but
we're going to continue to provide the same level of service to Detroiters. Okay, so it sounds like this has been a real time laboratory for your organization's to see what is able to work. So then what should we look forward to as a sustainable, optimal level of funding then? I mean, we're looking at fiscal year 13 About 40,000 to now decline from fiscal year 23 to fiscal year 25 of 75 million. In April losing ARPA, it looks like maybe 60 million would be around a sweet spot, which then goes to the question, what program should we look to be removed from this pie chart? Are we looking for Gemstar learn to earn a wish programs
will not be back which one should we not expect to see in the future? I would expect jumpstart not to be back. That was an incredible program aimed at you know, helping people get that Jumpstart. It was a pretty sizable program. At $25 million. I don't anticipate that going forward. But what it did accomplish was draw in 3000 people who were previously not working, drew them into the workforce. I mentioned earlier that there are 10,000 more people in the labor force this year. versus last year and 8000 more people working this year than last year. Jumpstart is a huge part of that. So that investment yielded that dividend. I don't expect that we will continue to do that going forward. But that model we're learning from one of the things that we learned was that this idea of a mentor or partnering with a career coach is hugely successful. So we talked about the drop off rate from people expressing an interest actually enrolling with jumpstart we see a much bigger take rate with people moving from expressing an interest to actually enrolling and we also see some stickiness is what I call it. So traditionally, someone might come into a program and or our Career Center and say that they're interested in something and then realize, Oh, I gotta fill out all of this paperwork or I got a transportation barrier. And and and and we may not see them again. But because of the Jumpstart model with his mentor, they have more capacity. The mentor does then the career coach to regularly check in with that person. Hey, how you doing? Oh, you got a problem with the paperwork. Let me fill that out for you. Oh, you don't have a driver's license. Let me take you over to the Secretary of State. Oh, you got a transportation problem. Did you know Detroit at work and help you with that, that partnering on a normal program we probably see about 50% drop off people who enrolled last is not for me and leap. I haven't seen I've seen one
person drop off of jumpstart like, you know, there's some people who are a little rocky and need some help, you know, staying on track but actually dropping off. No one No one has dropped off. So the things that we're learning from the Jumpstart program are going to be hugely helpful as we help Detroiters in the future. I think especially post pandemic, we're learning a lot about how people behave, how people need to be incented and what works and we're going to be able to leverage all of that learning and continuously improve the system. So long winded. Let me just button it up the ARPA program, the ARPA programs, the unique innovative programs that were designed, are hugely successful either in producing outcomes. For Detroiters and informing us of where we need to make some course corrections to help advance Detroiters even further. So those investments are going to also help us improve the system. They're helping Detroiters now in the short term with that one term, one time funding and then in the longer term, they're helping us to design a new system that will work for everyone. Okay, and then just specifically which ones we're gonna see gone I do not expect jumpstart to continue the only one. Pardon me, maybe skills for life. Yeah, we were not sure about skills for life, but I am in discussions with some funders to see whether there are some opportunities there through thinking jumpstart and skills for life will not be potentially okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you, member Benson member Callaway. Thank you Madam Chair. And good afternoon everyone and thank you for all the wonderful work that you all do with connecting Detroiters to jobs and ultimately careers. I hope we don't add skills for license because we've pumped a lot of money into skills for life we've rented and leased vans, we've ordered millions in uniforms and safety wear so I hope we don't you know, discontinue it. There's a lot of money that we've invested since I've been sitting on this council of Arper dollars into this particular program and sometimes you know, I would be screaming about it but I have actually seen some work some some some success stories. I've actually you know, visited some work sites where they were cleaning out alleys, they hadn't been cleaned out in 30 years on the east side of Woodward. I've been to the job sites and they are skill for light workers with the hard hats and everything that we order, you know, in our committee, so I'm praying to God, we don't end skills for life. May I just through the Chair? Yeah, I believe that the work will continue. I don't know if all of the all of the investments in equipment that that equipment will continue to be used. It may be that the added supplement of being paid additional wages. I'm not sure where that would be funded going forward. Well, I hope that the actual work that GSD is doing I don't expect that they're changing their direction at all. Yeah, and that was not a question. I was a statement. I hope that we Yeah. I don't want to use one of my questions for a statement, but that they're doing amazing work. The sites amaze, you know, how's the trash and, you know, it's just it's just amazing work. But at any rate, um, most of my question has to have been asked, I was proud to have three GD YT interns in my office. And I was hoping to get them back this summer. But they visited me yesterday because now they're working for Quicken Loans. So, you know, they're still at Renaissance High School. They're seniors, but they're working part time at Quicken Loans. So, you know, I was a little teary eyed, but hopefully the experience in my office helped them to get that job, but they're very long. It was a very good program for us. And I'm hoping that we got our application and to get our interns and I hope my Chief of Staff is listening. So, that being said, I'm looking at page six and it says six, Detroit at work. youth centers this page. Yes. Okay. So I looked at each brick and mortar building one looks like a church. I see no signage, no banners that says anything about a youth center. So how would a kid know or youth know if they're in the neighborhood that this has a center for them? And then I'm looking at your fancy sight 300 River place that you can how to get in. So how would a person a youth catching the bus there on the bus coming from Cass Renaissance or wherever? Why would they even stop at 300 River Place to inquire about the services. There's nothing I looked at all six of the centers, nothing says View Nothing says workforce workforce development thing. So I mean, I don't know how these locations were chosen. I don't know if we're paying anything to rent. them. But they're not youth friendly. They're not. I can't see it. I looked while we were You were talking and you were answering some member Benson's questions, I went to each individual location and nothing shows me or is provides any evidence that it's a youth center. It wouldn't give us a huge reason to get off the bus and go in there and knock on the door and inquire about nothing. So I mean, I'm hoping we can fix that but I know 5555 Connor has a lot of different things going on in that building, but why would a student leave their school to go there? There's nothing out there to says welcome youth we have you know this sweet for you. There's, you know, so, you know, that's one question, I guess but you know, that's kind of frustrating for me just looking at it. It's just not um, student. Youth Friendly. Why? Not put some of these centers in the schools? We got a dozen high schools. Why not? I'm inviting you to district to come to Renaissance come to marry, grow come to Mumford come come to university Troy Jezza with please come set up the youth centers where the youth are why do they have to go to 300 RiverPlace. It looks private. Why do they have to go to what it looks like to me a storefront church? So I mean, maybe I'm missing something. That's one question if you could pull that one question out of that, but I like to see some signage and maybe, you know, help you with or give you some ideas of what I see. And then I'd like to know
Oh, wait for that. Oh, wait for that response. Because I got one more question. Yeah, thank you through through the chair. And I'm know that Stephanie Nixon was formerly our youth program officer and can definitely speak to this but there isn't a whole lot of advertisement of the youth centers that has been in the past by design. We are thinking through a strategy to make sure that we can help residents know that these centers exist and where youth need to be connected and want to be connected cam. The these centers are funded by WIOA the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act, that act actually requires that we prioritized out of school youth. They want that those dollars to be spent on out of school youth. The idea I assume is that the K through 12 system supports youth that are in school and they want those dollars. They actually had had a requirement that 75% of it needed to be focused on out of school youth their focus needed to be on dropout prevention strategies and career exploration activities for higher risk youth that were out of school. That's why it goes to 24. Each of the centers were procured that offer those youth services and they are required to recruit. So the strategy for the youth is more of a recruitment strategy than it is for an everyone comm strategy. And again, those dollars are are finite. I'll leave it to Stephanie Nixon to talk a little bit more about the US strategy. That speaks a little bit more to you. To your to your point, we hear you. And we are encumbered by how the federal funds are allocated to us and what we're required to
do with that funding. But go ahead, Stephanie. Yes, thank you, Terry through the chair. To Terry's point, those providers recruit, they go out, they go to schools, they go to community centers, they go to churches and they reach the young people. In a couple of these cases. These are the offices where the career coaches are and they bring the young people in, that's what they that's where they certify them. The YMCA is an active center, both symmetrel sites are active centers. So I would definitely take a look at the centers that you saw. But that is there. The goal is that they outreach to the young people and then when they do to serve when they certify them, they may bring them in the office but that's kind of an appointment piece but they do go out. We serve in school kids in the schools, we have relationships inside the schools, and I mentioned our JAG program. And then we also have relationships with recreation centers and centers that serve young people. So these, for the most part are kind of administrative sites that the young people come in and register but the outreach is there. We have career fairs, job fairs, education fairs. So to your point is really more convenient for the young for us to go to them versus them coming
to us and then they get direction from those activities.
We are going into the schools
Yes, yes. We have employees like resident at Osborne, Pershing and
Cody, Cody and a couple of other schools as well. Yes, through the chair. We have self contained classrooms our jag those students receive an elective credit for our classes at those three schools. So we're directly in the schools working in the population relationships with the administration, and we've been doing that for the last like six years with that. So but I appreciate your concern and
that makes a difference. And we'll we'll definitely look into that. Thank you. That's the educator. And me talking 15 years. And I was with dpscd for close to 20 years. So you know, youth are my heart and I'm a mother of four children. So whenever we talk about youth, children, childcare, parental leave, I'm all in. I mean, you know, I'm just gonna light up and jump right in there. My second question and thank you for your clarification, but I would like to see more happening with with the schools. What about a mobile unit? What about traveling with it? It doesn't have to be a 39 footer like Henry Ford has, you know, the little health unit. It doesn't have to be that it could be half the size of that just traveling throughout the city, wherever the kids wherever the youth are, wherever the people are. I mean, I can show you some places where they hang out in my not just youth but just people in general. Take the jobs to them, get in that mobile unit have that music plan or that you know, what do you call that? That the speaker the bullhorn, they will come? If you if you build it they will come so instead of thinking they're going to come to you go to them, I invite you to come to the avenue of fashion bring your bring the truck, I mean if you just have to lease it for a month you know I work on a proven that contract. Just just get the get the mobile unit out into the community where the people are go to the different events go to the parade, go go wherever you can, this public space where you know people are going to be congregating. You understand and I promise you you'll get a lot of a lot of people to come in and visit your mobile site just to see what's inside. I remember going into a mobile unit, um, a couple years ago, and they had laptops in there, you can go on there and you know, whatever you were doing. It was It wasn't another another municipality but they had it and it was going throughout the city and I just you know, I went to see what they were doing and they were you know, had people on there accessing city resources accessing what we're talking about accessing job postings in that truck. So that was my second question. I'm hoping we can move to that. Bring that contract to us. Maybe we you know, you'll get your five volts but you least you got one. But get that mobile unit. We could call it the mobile workforce vehicle, whatever that is. That's all interesting. Oh, anyway, that's my question. But, you know, I'd like to see us get more innovative and take that take the resources to the people instead of us waiting there waiting for the people to come to
us take it to them but what are your thoughts on that? Oh, remember, Callaway were right with you actually and love your passion. We have a true loving relationship with what we called workforce. One president has Air Force One we had workforce one. This was a mobile unit. A bus that had everything that you are talking about on it that we took out to various community events. Unfortunately, workforce one got a little old. And so it became cost prohibitive to continue the repairs that it needed. So over the past year, we have retired her but it has to be hurt. Doesn't have to be hurt him they say him. And so our plan, actually in this next budget year is to think about what we will be doing next to be honest, we want to move away from one large to various small so that we can be more places and it doesn't require a CDL to drive it. Right. So then we have more employees and staff who can Yeah, we hope that it will become a part of the final budget exercises so that
we'll be able to be out in the community just like you're asking us to do that. Let's go to Bob mask Max what does it master your max What is it Bob Matthew the Bob Max taking millions from the city. Let's pick them up. Okay, so maybe I'll make a phone call to Bob Massey this morning. Afternoon. They owe us a couple bands. So that's, that's that's my opinion. But um, thank you so much. And I hope that what we've talked about with the youth I'm really concerned about that or not concerned interested in that and also that those units those mobile units, I'd like to see one in my district.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, member Member
Santiago Romero. Thank you, Madam President. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here. And thank you for the work that you're doing. You recently were BFA, we were able to ask you some questions there. So really just wants you here for from you if you wouldn't mind sharing with us. How it is that we determine the jobs that we prepare our Detroiters for. I'm happy to see that the average range, the average pay be about $20. But there was a recent reports that shared that Detroiters are still living at or below poverty they're still making at or below the Michigan living wage, and we need to make sure with the cost of living going up that residents have access to high pain quality year round jobs. A lot of the work that we're supporting for new construction or construction jobs that are limited as we see outside we can't see through the window because of the snow. It's why it was late this morning. So what are how are we define the need for jobs? And how are we preparing residents for high, high skilled,
high paying jobs or high paid jobs? Thank you for your question that you found out over my microphone. Oh,
thank you very much. We actually on an annual basis go through what we call a talent pipeline strategy exercise. We take labor market information. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics the state of Michigan and incorporate surveys from our local employers Ellis as well as from job seekers to determine where we should be focusing our training in our employment efforts on for Detroiters. We also consider the average wage for those positions. The number of job postings that we see all sorts of things there's quite a bit of data that we utilize in determining where we focus on an annual basis. We it's not only the DSC team, we also ask our Career Center leadership and our training providers as well. What are you seeing in the market? Where should we be and inserting Detroiters into one of the largest issues as we've identified through these ARPA funded programs, of course, is the continued foundational skill problem. And so until we're able to get more Detroiters into the actual training programs for these middle class jobs, we've got to help them remove that barrier first. And so that's why programs like learn to earn other even non paid literacy programs that were already operating today. We want to continue to grow. And so that's where I believe we'll be able to then push more folks into the higher wage earning careers that you're talking about. And in the meantime, continue to pump those that do come through our doors who are ready into those careers, but we do review that at least on an annual basis so that we're
relevant and timely in terms of what we're preparing Detroiters for. Okay, thank you through the Chair. Thank you. Good to know the process to identify the need. Now wondering what we're doing to be proactive. So in the same report, it has been mentioned that Detroiters lack access to these high paying jobs because of our lack of education. That is the lack of I would say lack of funding that's coming through the states. Currently, the state is trying to recruit more people to live in Michigan. I don't know how we're going to do that with the lack of transportation and lack of quality education. Do you talk with the state at all and letting them know that we need investment in education early I in Headstart specifically, I went through Headstart. I was reading that four years old. It's probably why I'm so annoying now. Because because I was I was I was in school, I was reading I was interested. They got me while I was young. And the more I'm seeing what we need, it's not just developing putting money in downtown. It's about making sure our children are prepared from day one. are you what are those conversations like with the states about making sure that we're investing in our education system and if we want more people to move to our states? That needs to be I think
one of the key pillars that that we're investing in? Yeah, so thank you for that question. I am also very passionate about education and am through my efforts. I'm on a board of education. So I've have these conversations on a regular basis. I was also benefited from a headstart program. And I believe that it's extremely important to invest in young people in that brain development period of time. I know that the governor has over the past couple of years, significantly increased the budget associated with education. I'm very grateful for that. I think that there is more opportunity there. To be frank, I have seen very recently the state issued a draft workforce plan for the first time ever, and it includes a focus specifically on increasing education levels. So I anticipate that there will be more funding associated with that. I know that the governor is focused on universal pre K. I know that there was legislation recently that came through to require kindergarten at five instead of six. So I think we're moving in the right direction. I don't think any of this happens at the pace we would like to see it. You know, I've got kids in in school now. And I think we all want to see Michigan advance in education sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, I think things kind of move at a glacial pace, in that respect, but things are moving. I am seeing movement and I was really pleased to see that the workforce a strategy that the state put out for the first time ever
really focused on
education in the chair. Thank you. Oh, yeah, I was just going to add through the chair. We also have regular connections with our partners at the states so the Department of Labor, economic and opportunity, their efforts now on credentialing as well as on foundational skills and also we have members of the Workforce Development Board, who are privy to the conversations happening on the population growth committee that the governor has as well. So we're right with you in touting the importance of education as the foundation of our workforce system
going forward because we know we can't have one without the other. Thank you for that through the chair. There. We actually have you reminded me I think at least two of our workforce board members were serving on committees for the road
together, rural Michigan together Task Force channel states. Yes. That's good to hear. And thank you for doing that work. I think that's really the crux of where you got to be and hearing us you know, share that we have residents that I think they're just going through more barriers. I think that they were set up to fail from the very beginning when we were disinvesting in our education system, and now they just have more barriers in front of them. So happy to hear that we are doing outreach trying to meet remove those barriers and where they're at right now, but as adults, but all I can think of is they were once children in our city that lack the resources that invested in them early enough to prepare them for what's next. And I know that I am incredibly lucky and privileged to have access opportunities that were available for the city, but they are unlimited. And there, there are a few of us and there should be more of us that are able to have those resources. So thank you for the work. I asked him to continue to do that because it's how it's going to be able to trickle down to us. So thank you so much for that. Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you, Councilmember. Santiago Romero. Councilmember Johnson. Thank you, Madam President. And good afternoon. Thank you so much for the presentation. I appreciate all of the work that you all do. Thank you for acknowledging that. I'd like maybe two GED whites. Since somehow we've missed out in previous years. But I do want to just kind of piggyback off of where Member Santiago Romero left off and looking at a holistic approach to address unemployment and underemployment for Detroiters. I believe a response that you recently gave as relates to barriers to access for Detroiters was relative to unstable housing. You know, lack of reliable transportation lack of reliable childcare, mental mental disabilities that may have been undiagnosed. Can you talk about the work that you do that helps to provide support in any of those areas? I do know that the Detroit work facility and District Four does have resources or individuals that are there at the facility to help provide support to address a number of those things. But I also know because we've been in communication and trying to connect them with resources that they don't have access to as many resources and maybe even programs that currently exist for them to be able to fulfill the needs of individuals that go through Detroit at work. So can you speak to the work that you all do that helps to provide support for those Detroiters who identify
some of those challenges? Thank you for the question through the chair. A number of things first, I want to acknowledge that we there is not enough funding in the world to help everybody with all of their needs. We try very hard to prioritize what is first impacting a person's ability to work and that is very customized and different for everyone. One of the challenges that we find is through Stephanie's point earlier a lot of people anticipate getting barriers addressed based off of word of mouth. And so we often get, oh, well somebody's got a gas card. I want my gas card or somebody's got this I want mine. And what we really want to focus in on is what is the unique barrier of this individual. And so if it's transportation, sure, we could refer somebody to ride united. We could give somebody a gas card, we could give somebody a lift certificate, but if the real problem is that you need a new spark plug or you know, transmission, let's fix that. Rather than have you continue to come back. So this is actually one of the learnings from lots of the ARPA programs that we've been administering. We really want to get at root cause of barriers. And address that and folks sometimes don't appreciate that. Their barrier is different than someone else's. And we want to get to the point where we're addressing unique barriers. It's not this one size fits all. Everybody gets 1000 bucks and barrier removal. That's not what we're trying to do here and when we don't have the resources for that and too we want to make sure that we're actually solving a problem. Giving someone a gas card. Giving someone a lift certificate is not solving the problem. It's a temporary Band Aid and, you know, our ability to have those conversations with people. It happens over time once we build trust, and that takes time because again, people come in and they want that immediate removal of a barrier and and don't want to have the conversation about what the long term plan is. So we're working on long term plans is the first kind of response to your question. The second thing is, we're also trying to leverage the ecosystem. We've identified hundreds of partners that do really great work across the city of Detroit, and there's no reason for Detroit at work to replicate what they're doing. So in instances where we can partner with United Way as an example, to help people who are getting a job, get back and forth to work or partner with an organization that's doing home repairs as an example. Let them do that work as opposed to DSC taking on a whole other suite of business. When we did that, over the past couple of years, we were able to leverage $1.7 million of other funding that we didn't have to spend because we were relying on you know, this ecosystem of other supporters that do this work this great work already. So that's the other thing that we're trying to do is partner more with referral and reverse referrals. All of us are trying to help support support Detroiters. Let's not trip over each other and I think there's some work around making sure that we're all aligned. All of the nonprofits are doing really great work, I think if we and we are working better together to make sure that we're not duplicating effort. And so, the the last point that I'll make is around funding. I think the state has been really generous in the past couple of years and offering what they call breeze funding, which also allowed us to help significantly more people than we would have in the past. Our Supportive Services budget has, I'd say doubled over the past couple of years because we're so focused on giving people what they need. And that doesn't even include the Jumpstart additional boost that people were getting in order to resolve some of those barriers. That was a long winded way of sort of talking about all of the things that we're doing around barrier removal. It is not enough. It will never be enough. We're going to have to continue to try to get smarter. I think the best thing that we can do is try to leverage more of what already exists and is out there rather than trying to do new things. I think there's
there's a lot out there that we just need to leverage. Well I certainly do appreciate that are you ensuring that all of the resources that you're aware of are
available at the various locations? That's a good question as well. So we've employed resource navigators and every every one of our career centers in an attempt to do that because sometimes a career coach or counselor may not know of this home repair program over here or ride United over there. And that was the purpose was to get these resource navigators who are more steeped in all of the opportunities that exist to remove barriers and help people get connected.
You want to talk about the PRs. Sure, through the chair, through the chair member Johnson, we also in each of the centers have a kiosk right so where it's may not be appropriate for somebody to talk to a resource navigate or they're not comfortable even disclosing they actually can search by barrier by issue that they might be having. And so the organizations that we have partnerships with those hundreds that Terry just mentioned, they can also find their find the phone number and email address if they'd like to go in and access that themselves. We do try to centralize all those partnerships through DTSC so that all the senators know about them, but we also know some things are local. And so from time to time, there's a career center that has connections with a partner that might be
stronger than what we have as a system and we find that that's okay as well. Excellent. So I will say that I think that as you have determined work facilities in neighborhoods throughout the city of Detroit, you're getting the grassroots folks who may not have gone to a facility somewhere else because they couldn't get access to it right but they can walk around the corner and go to a facility so that's why I love the district for the newer Detroit to work facility because it is in the neighborhood. We hosted a job fair there last year, and it was raining. But we had over 200 people that showed up and a number of young people and I said okay, we need to do this more frequently because the young people in the community are showing me that they want to work. They were walking from the neighborhood going into the facility. So I just think it's it's important because as you talk about the various resources that are available, and you want to get them to the people that probably need them the most. That's one great way to do it. Because the facilities are in the neighborhood, and is residents that are coming from the community that can benefit greatly from all of the resources. So I appreciate that and I'll be more mindful and aware of the kiosks in the in the facility. The other question that I just wanted to ask very briefly, is relative to Gd y t. So when we look at the poverty rate in the city of Detroit, and we try to retain our young people in the city, how do you all track GD YT participants do you keep track of them to identify Okay, they've gone through the program this number of years now they've gone on to college or some training program, but we're still tracking where they ultimately
end up in a career. Through the Chair, we would love to be able to track 1000 young people a year we don't quite have that kind of resource. But we do track a number of them that are enrolled in our year round programs, because we have to track them 12 months after they exit. So we do have a population of GT YT young people that we do track and that's why it's so important that they have positive experiences in the city. So they stay here they work here they play here. So this gives them an opportunity to see what's really available for them as adults inside the city. That's why GED yt is so impactful in not just teaching young people and giving them an opportunity to explore careers, but explore careers right here and see the benefit of staying in the city. All of our jobs are in the city. All of our jobs are we ensure that young people know what the city has to offer that so we really appreciate you guys stepping up and giving our young people an opportunity to work in government to work in offices because they can see that their real jobs here real opportunities for Sally future. So no, we don't track all 8000 It's been over 70,000 kids that have gone through this program. We just don't have the resources. We'd love to do that. But we do have a number of them that we fund with our federal dollars and we track them 12 months after
exit. So we do that. So if I if I could also follow up with that through the chair so to Stephanie's point, we don't have the we can't I don't want to say we can it will be difficult to track 70,000 youth that would require them to maintain communication with us. So what generally happens is and this happens with our job seekers as well, and once they get a job, thanks. You know, they're gone. We can call they won't return the phone call so we could try to do some of that. I wonder what the success rate would be we do have a better ability to track when they're in high school. And we do track that. So we're able to see and we have University of Michigan poverty Solutions who helps us analyze some of our GED YT participants so we know as an example that they have a higher graduation rate, that they are more likely to stay in school that they have less absenteeism, you know that those kinds of things. So we have been able to evaluate the program for that from that perspective. But tracking where they went would require us to maintain communication over a longer period of time, and it would require them to communicate back with us. We could make I don't know what our take rate would be maybe 10% of them would would respond. I'm not sure it's something that we could take a look at now one thing we have been thinking about and this gets to retaining the population and making sure that we retain our talent is better connections to colleges and universities. We have really good connections with our high schools. But once our students leave like how often are we attracting internships in the city of Detroit, you know, with respect to our college students to make sure that they have experiences here as opposed to other places. That is something that we're taking a look at and we want to be mindful of because we want to make sure that our college students come
back to Detroit through the chair quickly what I just thinking one thing we could do we could send out we do have contact information on all the young people that have engaged we can send out a text blasts Hey, what you're doing and just to see what we get back. That's that's a good idea. Thank you for for that because we can absolutely do a text blast in send out a note and maybe say look, if you contact us, we'll give you a little $20 gift certificate or something but just you know, a way to get them engaged and
just to see where they are. Thank you for that. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you and I was gonna add that to executive session to have a conversation we do it. Because I think that's important as we invest in our young people. I think it's really important to kind of track them to see who stay in what why they stayed or why they didn't stay and so that we can work on addressing those things as a city as a whole but I like that idea starting out with a text message because you know, young folks love to text. So okay, all right. Excellent. Well, thank you for that. And thank you for everything that
you do. We appreciate it.
Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, member Johnson member Doha. Thank you, Madam President, and I will not have any questions. As we just saw you in our budget finance audit standing committee for your Arper presentations. I will say I appreciate the work that you do. As you know, I call you guys at Charlie's Angels at a workforce development. And you guys are always responsive, particularly to our officers. We work on initiatives you were very responsive. That was as we were talking about our disabled community. We're working to build out programs for that and connect members of our disabled community to jobs. So thank you again, for that work, and just keep doing what you're doing and keep pushing it forward. So again, I thank you for being responsive always and helping
push our city for Thank you, Madam President. Thank you member Doha in most of my questions have been asked as well. I did want to You didn't mention the Community Health corpse program and that is near and dear to me. When we talk about barriers to employment. I know that that was a program that was centered around providing wraparound services for young people. So where are we with the sustainability of that particular program? And how does it intersect with the housing services now that we have in place I'm just kind of figuring out how that all
kind of works. If you can briefly speak to that, yes, through the chair that will occur to you thank you for asking that question about sustainability. We've been giving that a lot of thought. And I think it makes sense for this to have a home going forward. And so the housing department has agreed to transition the program over to housing going forward so that it has a more permanent home. We have established a really good relationship of referrals and reverse referrals, and really want to make sure what we want one of the things that we learned from the Community Health Board was the importance of a sustainable outcome for individuals. So we want to make sure that as we're supporting someone that they're not regularly coming back for the same support. We want to give a hand up rather than hands out. And so we're coordinating between us and the housing department now to make sure that we are aligned on making sure that where people need support, whether it's you know, food insecurities, or housing or rent or whatever it is, we're also supporting them on the workforce side. So we're tightly coordinated and from a sustainable perspective,
that work will sit with the housing department going forward. Okay. And then from a funding perspective, how much is allocated for the community health courts?
How much our book Right, correct. Okay, what is the so I'm sorry, it's all through ARPA, there are some additional grants that the ESC has to to support
the Community Health Corps in addition to ARPA, small amounts. Okay. And I haven't seen like a budget for in quite some time. So is there like a budget as far as staffing, how many people we serve annually through that particular program that week that you all can submit to council? Yes. Okay. Okay. So I would love to see that and then just on the mobile units, we used to always have the bus come out to all of our events. So thank you for raising me with Callaway, the workforce bus always for monitoring. I thought it was just down for quite some time. Not that it was down indefinitely.
How much would it cost to get another bus? 100 grand I'm gonna say is about 100 grand. Yeah, and especially wanted Oh, you could share it may be so what we're anticipating is actually again to have multiple, so it's probably between 20 and 25 each so between 80 and 100,000. So it's not small dollars, certainly but we want to outfit each one just like we had that one with
seating and everything laptops and things inside as well. So was that something that the city provided previously? Or was that through a grant
through state funding? How did how did you all procure it? We years ago, like a decade ago, likely? It was it was procured through DTSC through its federal formula funding, so it was it was not funded by city funding and carving that out today, in today's dollars would be difficult. But to Dana Williams point, the we thought it might be more cost effective and efficient and useful. Rather than having a large RV essentially mom have smaller mobile units right because like where we store that is the issue. maintenance on it is an issue and drivers are an issue. So it might be a parking right? So having smaller vans might be more helpful. Get us to more locations might actually be more cost effective to and also allow us to potentially you know do something else with those vehicles once they retire like I don't know what we do with this RV
is huge. It's huge because we used to watch it back into our events and we couldn't believe it but and we always wondered the effectiveness of them anyway because we would have them out and I'm not sure how many people actually went on them and apply for jobs
and you know, but they were good to have it was and it was great branding blue. I mean, it was wrapped, you know with Detroit at work, I think it I think it was helpful. It was useful. And it probably could be you know still Yeah.
Yeah, okay. So if we could just at least add it to Executive Session even if we put it in our closing resolution to support
you said you want at the federal funds to curate. It's actually not determined yet. So right now, the budget that we've built is so tight on what we believe are the core services that I'm not sure we'd be able to fit it in. That's going to be continued conversations for us internally. If not that we'd have to go
out and get corporate or philanthropy philanthropic dollars to support
it feel Callaway was just going to donate them we will add this portion to our executive session to see how we can further support you guys. Is there a motion to do so motion? Okay, chair. All right, Hearing no objections and we could put that under me and Callaway member Galloway's name, Hearing no objections that action will be taken. All right. Thank you ladies. We appreciate the work
that you all do. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Yes, before they leave, we found money for golf carts, and I'm sure we can find money for your business.
Okay, so I need to say that. Thank you. Thank you so much. Y'all. Have a great day. Thank you for being Have a great day. All right. We're gonna go straight to our next hearing. The WSD director Brown is with us.
Right, yeah, we never had a we I didn't want to say that council member. That's what happened when you know. You guys will like a five minute break or to move forward. Or if we can keep a quorum. We can continue. This is our last two we have this one. Drive know
Brian was off today but he probably would remind us to do that.
No, it's okay. We'll be back right.
I have one yes. Anybody promoted on Zoom? Okay. Thank you
you need another layer
is hearing someone's on sharing the screen? Okay. You're gonna promote whoever needs to be promoted to share the screen.
