revenues and our expenditures and make sure that we were being you know, we were spending our money and being judicious that we do and we do sharings of the money that we have. So that is that change. as I just indicated, we kind of changed some names of departments to better reflect what they actually do. So this position is now called Real Estate Sales and Marketing. Inventories no longer exists, it is now planning data analysis. And as I indicated previously, maintenance used to be under inventory and now rolls up under Reginald and Robbins department completely now functions to do planning and data analysis. So my my thoughts were that we would, you know, call a thing a thing and align our roles and responsibilities with doing that. I also have great a great announcement. As you know, we had been looking for a general counsel for a few months, and Doug Parker has accepted the position of general counsel for the land bank. We are excited to have him in this role. His leadership and thoughtful legal counsel, I think will take us very far over the next few years.
lations Doug, they do? Great.
Because we are moving Doug to this elevated role of General Counsel, Doug and I were talking and decided that instead of backfilling for someone like Doug because there is no one like the year, we're going to look for a chief counsel for litigation so that they can manage all of our defensive litigation, the nap and the quiet title on a day to day basis, all rolling up under the rug, but having someone who has, you know, keen oversight on those functions. So Doug and I are in the midst of, you know, trying to figure that piece out, but that is, as far as the legal department is gonna go and then finally on the organization's and staff, I'd like to introduce our new director of HR Michelle Shelton, who joins us up started yesterday, so Happy Friday. But um, Michelle joins us with HR experience. She, she came to us from the city of Detroit. She and I can I can I absolutely can tell you this will be sorely missed because I got a lot of glares, and a lot of Snickers when they found out that we were poaching her. So, Michelle, welcome to the team and Carol. Richard. Michelle.
Well, welcome.
Yeah, thank you. And as you both know, Michelle fills a gap that has existed for a long time, and we are hopeful and grateful that she will lead us in the right path as we try to, you know, support our team and provide quality HR services for the entire Olympics.
Well, this is exciting and thank you Tammy for moving into this so quickly.
is critical. So, some other key updates. We are effective October
be working two days in the office three days remotely. We are now moving to a three day in the office today remote work schedule effective October 10. As as the pandemic dies down, we feel like it is safe and in the best interest of our operations to start to transition back to an office a more of a in office presence. I wanted to talk to the board I feel like this is something that we have to plan for but I would like to make jutti a holiday that the land bank recognizes currently it is not not a part of our schedule, but I just think it would be very important for us to recognize that they are moving forward and we as we began to plan our 2023 calendar year I wanted to put that on the board's radar that is my attention to make that a holiday that we recognize strategic planning so as you know, we are working with the Center for Community progress to draft our strategic framework and strategic plan. They have been extremely engaged and they produced a draft in the last two weeks which we have been, you know, combing through with a fine tooth comb and giving feedback. We've provided some feedback to them. And we will be meeting in the next I think next week to start to put together that final document which we will be circulating for the board. I think you should have something and then at the next board meeting our model spinal document document if it's not our final document, our employee satisfaction survey. So as you know, we engaged customer insights to do an employee satisfaction survey. That survey closed on September 15. And I'm excited to announce that we had almost 90% participation. Click Insights is currently doing some tabulation and we should be meeting with them next week to talk about the outcome and the results and I will report to the board on in October about goals the results from our our satisfaction survey and then finally I just wanted to let the board know that we attended the RBP conference last week. And that is the reclaiming vacant properties conference which as you guys know is a you know is the conference for land banking. Across the country. It was in Chicago, we had a contingency of our team attend. A group of our team members did a presentation and I wanted to give a shout out to those team members because I'm still getting feedback from people who participated in the conference that just how great that group that presentation was, that was robbing land Carla Marshall, Roslyn Harper and Savannah Robbins they did a phenomenal job. And the work that we are doing is we are on the We Are the yardstick by which every land bank judges their successes, and that conferences is the place to go where you really feel like your hard work is appreciated and I'm hopeful that next year more of our team can go because it really does help you to see that the works that you're you know in doing is appreciated by other people who are trying to do this very hard work as well. So, those are my updates. Do you have any questions? I
know you've been busy.
We try to stay busy. Oh, good. Yes. Next person on the agenda, you Reginald?
Yeah. All right. Morning. We're just kind of as a piggyback off of that last comment about the conference. Also, coming up next month is the Michigan Association, the land bank conference, and that's going to be here locally, but we do have the opportunity for many of our team members to participate in that local conference as well. They've been offered the opportunity to grow so we will likely be participants and kind of leaders in that as well. So in the upcoming month. As Tammy indicated, I am excited and pleased to be taking on the new role and the new responsibility of coo as well as CFO, and I feel like there's a definite alignment and it's definitely a critical time for us to do this. As we are transitioning, continually transitioning in a downward trend. Not bad but in a downward trend as far as our structure sales. are concerned, it is going to be critical to make sure that we are able to predict and anticipate revenue in a in a steady fashion and in a steady manner in order to be able to maintain the function of the organization. Moving forward. And it is good to do this now. As always, we've always been doing it but it's good to focus on it now as we are in a stronger financial position that I can touch base on a little bit later. But part of the transition of operations under finance and operations team is couldn't be done without the members of the team and certain members that are coming that are going to be coming on board. So as this announcement was made to the team, I immediately met with the maintenance team along with them by Jamie first in her role and assured them that this transition is likely going to be it's definitely going to be seamless, but something that they may not even recognize. But it is just a better alignment. of the services and working with vendors and things like that. So I was able to sit down and talk to them and what was encouraging about the conversation is I got some critical feedback about the impact that our own internal maintenance team is making throughout the community and throughout areas in which we're doing work. So throughout throughout the city, so that input was able to you know, kind of give me better guidance beyond just the numbers of maintenance. It kind of leads to the next thing on the agenda. For example, we couple years ago started with the internal maintenance team. We started with having vehicles. So in that we we acquired two use vehicles to start this process out and one of them we went for low, low cost and one of them was a van that we were able to use well two years or three years into our maintenance program and recognizing the needs of the team and their necessity to transport or things like that. We recognize that that van no longer serves the critical needs of our external maintenance team. So we are replacing that maintenance van with a vehicle that is more aligned with the work that they're doing. For example, it has significant hauling capacity or capabilities. And you know now I'm becoming more and more aware of the amount of equipment that is our own equipment that we have to move from site to site when they're out doing their work. So
we did our research we got our procurement team has been working with Jamie to get to do the research on the best vehicle possible. We've identified that vehicle and we will be sending that purchase request forward for all formal approval. And that's, you know, just one example. But Jamie was diligent in working with and Bob Maxie Ford, and they were actually able to they actually offered us a trading value so we were able to trade in the van instead of investing over $7,000 in the transmission replacement. So with our current vehicle that we're purchasing, we made sure that we got an extended warranty to be able to address any of our you know, future mechanical needs, but being able to put this vehicle back into service versus our team, using their own personal vehicles is going to be you know, really necessary. So I'm looking, you know, looking forward to that, and we will continue, you know, transition within the next month will be the full transition, but we wanted to make sure that it was seamless, both on the inventory side, as well as seamless coming in on the finance and operations side. So Robbie and Jamie and I are all working together. This transition has been great so far. Robbie's been very accommodating, but we just want to make sure that it is the move is as I said as seamless as possible. Briefly from a procurement perspective. As you are aware, I believe this was reported to the Board in prior meetings with our rehab and ready team right now. We moved from a larger general contractor or or we've enhanced I should say have expanded from just not doing just a general contractor, but having individual trades. So Veronica is working with our procurement team to release digitalized RFPs for those trades. So as of today, we awarded we've released their 35 bids currently open. We awarded 12 of the 17 tre packages for 2920 Baldwin which is a rehab and ready property. So the procurement manager I would love to say team with the procurement manager right now she has been very busy and working with Ronak and other members of an organization for RFPs as well as RFQ and the RFQ is a request for quote, one of the things that Gianna and her team has requested that we continue is for our marketing and sales brokers to make sure that that RFP or that RFQ remains open throughout the year so that any broker or sales agent who would qualify to list and sell land bank properties, is eligible to submit those and I'm eligible to submit them throughout the year. We're also looking for that at that for that posting. So the template of Melissa has worked with gay to formally formally adopt the RFQ template and we will be releasing those for the nap postering and like I said the sales and marketing within the upcoming weeks.
Can I just piggyback on your Veronica Riyadh and ready reason Veronica has moved from the general contractor to the the individual trades is because we wanted to ensure that we gave small minority of lead companies an opportunity to bid and to grow their business and we were finding that we were seeing the same subs on our projects. Over and over again. And this allows them to have some more agency over the work that they are doing and to expand their business. So I just wanted to add that to the reasons why we were moving from the one general contractor agreement to the individual
trades and I'll turn it back to original
so touching on procurement, the next thing is IT services and we are continuing to transition and IT services. Specifically I want to talk about our Salesforce. We have an annual agreement, but we have a overall licensing agreement with Salesforce. That's continued but in this current fiscal year, we decided to expand that support role with Salesforce to basically a full service enterprise support where we have 24/7 access to our Salesforce developers and the Salesforce team as a part of our subscription and as part of our own renewal. Justin has been managing that process. And he's been working with Derek and Michelle, to continue to make sure that as an organization, our Salesforce needs are being are being met and aligned with just the overall needs of the organization for and one of the things that I'd like to point out is we are we have recently offered to contract positions and those kinds of one of those is specifically for Salesforce build out and Salesforce build out is a specific need that may be something that is within the organization. For example, the team needs a specific build out on how they maybe potentially track their sales, track. Purchasing or invoices, contracts spin down. Those are a number of like individualized dlba specific build outs that we need to do in Salesforce. And what we've done is we've identified contractors who are capable and able to come in and provide those services. Now that is in addition to like I just spoke about our Salesforce 24/7 service enhancement. So the combination of those two, we are going to monitor and continue to monitor over these upcoming on the contractors haven't started yet. We just negotiated with them on this last week, and we'll be moving forward. But we're going to continue to monitor that to make sure that all of our critical internal and back end needs as it relates to Salesforce are being met. And there has been turnover with the staff. We've had a lot of our service techs turnover for a number of reasons. One was performance, but why would someone have moved on as a pregnancy to be very candidate, but what Justin is doing is he's kind of rolling up his sleeves and and burning the midnight oil, but he wants to make sure as always, but he wants to make sure that the individuals that we bring in are capable and qualified for providing the necessary service, the internal support that we need for our team. So we're going to look to a contractor contracting company that we utilized in the past to potentially provide those services. They are typically have individuals with a high technical skills that can can also provide those services so that those are like the two to three ways in which we are addressing currently. Our IT services needs some of the specifics of it. Derek Bennett has been working directly behind the scenes with and we've recently coordinated on how we're going to pull all of these things together and make sure that all it needs of the organization are being met. I don't know if Derek on the show you want to add any
Derrick, I don't know I know you're on the call if you want to speak specifically to what you're helping to identify as you work through with disposition process improvement and the IT strategy behind it. Sure.
We're basically trying to get a full cradle to grave
process built out
for the dispositions team basically modeled after the other sales departments. But of course in project oriented environment. And with this we're identifying different processes through the actual application and to the monitoring and management of the purchase agreements and the project itself as well as the closing and compliance. we're delving into all those pieces to streamline those activities and place them in the right place, if needed. And through this process. We're we're diligently working. We're about halfway through right now. We've identified a few things that we can improve and some of them do require the Salesforce buildouts which dovetails from last conversation. But that's really all I have to update right now.
No, thanks. That's that's, that's fine. And I think as Tammy was speaking earlier about our organizational structure and me working with my colleague, John Doe and the real estate sales and marketing team, I think how this ties together as if, as the board is aware, all of our sales programs from auction are only now so I lost all my lab programs. They are a formalized, streamlined, automated process, where sales are separated from closings. However, when those things were built out in the past it was it was challenging to remain somewhat challenging to build that same type of automated and systematic method for our projects team. But and but it is critically important because in order for us to not only just project on revenue, but make making sure that all of those processes are lined and identified for just ease of management, making sure that we are properly staffed in those areas. It is critical to take those processes that are highly manual and automate them in an effective manner. And so from a business operations standpoint, the IT component, and those the gaps that may exist right now that need to be enhanced, are critically important. But all of those things coming together from the IT side to the process improvements to projects does ultimately affect our operation and it does ultimately affect our bottom line. And as we transition again, like I said in the beginning, from more structured sales to a lot sales and development projects, and working with development projects through the city, the stream of revenue is going to have to be something that we can continue to anticipate and predict. So this alignment is is something that you know, as you can maybe tell, I'm excited, I'm excited about and it is something that is keeping us all busy, but it doesn't allow for us to continue to work in silos, but all of the unnecessary departments are working collectively together to hopefully bring about these process improvements. So that is like the first part of my slashed. So now on the other side is the CFO report, which I have to admit is going well. And why I say well, there's I had the opportunity to kind of review some internal financial statements from our auditors over this last week and I was like wow, this is early to be reviewing these. I typically review them in October in preparation for our October meeting. But Jeff and the team has been working with our auditors and they're having thus far there have not been any concerns or issues. All of the necessary schedules that were requested have been provided to them within the necessary timeline. We had an August a big August 15 deadline for a lot of our schedules. We were able to provide those schedules. We got some additional support from Marlene beach and you Ah why during this time period, but we fully anticipate that our audit will be of course over time and be prepared in advance of your next month's committee meeting for the Finance and Audit Committee to review and we will prepare to have our auditors present to the Finance and Audit Committee as well as the full board during the month of October. Subsequently, we will be able to file our audit with the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan before the October 31 deadline.
We have had we we actually since we last met we've had a couple of vacancies. Project manager and Treasury manager are no longer with the organization, as I said we've been utilizing. So you hy for some of those treasury functions and other members of the team have filled in our filling game. I had a contractor, Susan Williams, who had been contracted with us for the latter part of the last fiscal year fy 22. She filled the vacancy she transitioned from a contractor to an employee and fill the vacancy for the AP manager. And she started that position actually as of yesterday. So there are a couple of vacancies that we're still looking to fill. But again, they're going to be positions that are lined with you know the overall finance and operations standpoint. So somebody that is, you know, technical accounting skills and ERP system skills are going to be necessary in order to be able to effectively you know, complete those roles. And lastly, last month I submitted our city of Detroit capital projects. The city requests for if they're capital expenditures that are outside of your typical budget that we submit a plan we reviewed and talked about is as we had discussed before, we asked the city to assist us in identifying, acquiring, and then potentially the rehab and remodel of a an office building. We put that in as an as an option as a possibility. A more permanent space for the land bank. And, you know, I noticed throw it all in. I'm not saying that we I don't think we will get it but I'm not hanging my hat on it. I don't look to the email every day thinking that it's going to happen. But this is again a part of their annual capital campaign project. And the last thing that we put in, I say the second thing that we put in is as we are going to be responsible in future years for maintaining many of our properties and lots and things of that nature. We're putting in for a fleet of maintenance vehicles, and maybe it's appropriate maintenance equipment aligned with how the cities have a portion of the city's GSD program so that is being reviewed, and I will have to update the board when we get any information on if any of our capital projects are going to be funded.
And I
believe that is that's it for all of the updates. I did send this up this report over to work digitally for your review. Are there any questions at this time? Excellent. Any questions care?
I don't think so. Now, I'm absorbing.
It will be basically paid for the building was
Yeah, great.
So we are we're going to we're continuing to do a lot of the background research on overall identifying a building some overall. Basically cost related cost per square foot for rehab and things like that, and how what actual size we would need to support the number of employees that we have. So we still have some, you know, some legwork to do as well. But since the capital campaign was due by the end of last month, we decided to just go ahead and put it in so looking forward to hearing your response.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you.
So next up, we have real estate sales and marketing
Yep, I'm gonna turn it over to Karla.
Okay, you should have the deals in front of you. Our first one is Michel. This is Daniel rebar and Martina Alexander. This was marketed this is the only offer we received. The applicant is going to live they live one mile from the parcel they want to purchase. They're going to design a native species habitat and cottage style garden. They have proof of funds in the amount of $52,205 and the estimated project costs are $11,000. And this is there a plan
for that question. Thank you. All right. Our next project is Ashland. This is
a number of parcels on Ashlynn. This was also marketed we have this was on a market for 481 days. This is the only offer we received. The applicant wants to do work with youth community members and residents they want to transform the six man Food and Agricultural Service Learning and planning initiative around games in Detroit Hamtramck and Highland Park they want to grow a fruit and nut orchard and provide a community space. They did read they are a black farmer land fund recipient as a lot of our buyers have been recently. They estimate the completion date of four months.
This is their plan any questions? No. Thank you. Thank you.
Okay, our next project is this is brush and mountain Vernon. This was also to market it for 657 days. This is received the applicant in their partner would like to purchase a lot and build a 1600 square foot single family residence. They want to sell this and acquire more capital to build more single family residence homes in Detroit. They do have experience with infield they develop this project right here on Dearborn along Ford Road. They have proof of funds in the amount of 50 $542,685 They estimate the project is going to cost 160,000 with the 18 month completion timeline.
Thank you. I mean, you know, obviously keep an eye on everyone. Do a new build at a reasonable price and you know, so that we know who's who's been successful and who should tap for more.
Okay, our next project is Davidson. This is the Davidson garden this was these are six lights on Davidson Miss Brown would like to purchase the lot these lights to join the growing gardening community in the area. She wants to implement raised bed and vegetable tea gardens on each lot. She owns the commercial property across the street. She thinks it's going to be about 1500 to do this and she has 46,000 in funds.
Any questions? No. Thank you. Okay.
The next one is a brother nature's farm expansion. This project has been in the works for a very long time. There was a hole in the area and we're now working with the city to get this project completed. The applicant is purchasing property on am Vermont and temple. In addition to that they have a city property that they are going to either purchase via the city or the city is going to transfer the property to us. This applicant has been in North Portland for over 15 years. They applied for these lots in 2016 but they've been on hold due to delay city transfers the planning area in the study area. They've grown their farm over the years. They even have properties within this footprint where it's privately owned but the owners are so supportive of the applicant that they allow them to farm on their privately owned land. They've shown proof of funds in the amount of 63,000 from a bank statement. They've also already made the earnest money deposit of $7,000 and black farmer land fund has given them an award of $10,000.
Any questions on this one? No no? Thank you
our next project is an interesting project on Tillmann This is JC world why we've actually transacted with this buyer before they're purchasing these slots on Tillman. They want to purchase a seven lots to do for infill houses, they'll each be one bat going bedroom, one bathroom, a frame structures about 800 square feet. They want to build a sense of community in the neighborhood. They believe that this neighborhood is largely ignored, which is true we've had we have a lot of ownership over here. They've already completed an eight unit residential project and this is adjacent to it. This is the design for the houses that they want to build. Quite interesting. The timeline for the store they have 800,000 in their Chase account, they're offering 20,000 for the properties
any questions on this one? No, thank you.
And our last project is also a project that we've been working on with the city for a while this is resurrection CDC. This is the park Meadows development. they're proposing purchasing 22 properties in phase one a 29 properties in one V and a contingent 39 properties in phase two. This is of course subject to city council approval. They they're going to do a demo pool and demo two of the structures. As you can see, this is a pretty large footprint, the applicant, they want to develop approximately 6060 unit independent senior living facilities. And then you want to do multiple new build construction duplexes and the College Park neighborhood. They have construction costs of about 11 million they've applied for HOME funds. They're also doing live tech rounds, the options is an option and it's going to extend them to about three rounds. They've also have a funding letter from new mark for about $4.1 million in construction. Using HUDs. Two to one D four program. They have a funding letter from Citizens Bank for about 10,300,000 and Park Meadows has 13 million equity letter from Alia capital. They are partnering with a number of people in the community, our AD conversion specialists, the Slavic company and scenario which scenarios a very influential developer in the city. We're going to need conditions of their exercise include city council approval, Mr. Award of the light tech funds obtaining design package approval from city planning and compliance with all zoning codes.
Any questions? No. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. And that is it for me. Thank you.
Thanks so much.
Next we have planning and data analysis. So thank you both so much. I wanted to talk through kind of a few key updates and then discuss briefly a pair of potential resolutions. I was hoping to take to the board next week. Board report talks a little bit about property transfer affidavit process, and I really want to call this out for you. Thanks to kind of a new role we added to the budget this year. We have a staff member really helping us process property transfer affidavits really for the first time as an organization and she's been really gung ho and running through things. These are really the the means by which we sort of communicate sales to the city assessor and it's really the vehicle by which we can increase our 550 revenue and so when we sat down really looked at it, we discovered we had about 15,000, property transfer, affidavits that needed to be either because we never had or we had and this assessor had not updated their records to reflect the filing. And so this new PTA Pro is filing about 1000 PTAs each week right now. So we expect to really be caught up more or less by the end of the year. We also have been sort of working on a new sort of understanding with the city assessor by which historically, you know, our process was that we would file PTAs on behalf of our buyer sort of to avoid some of the issues that the city had experienced or folks just never filed PTAs we now have a sort of process in place, working hand in hand with John Doe and the rest of the disposition staff where we are allowing our purchasers or encouraging our purchasers to file PTAs for their new acquisitions within that 45 day window that any other buyer would on the private market. Then after that 45 day window expires we're then seeing whether any remain on filed and filing those to kind of fill in any missing gaps. On the neighborhood lot front, processed another upload of lots since we added to just about 3600 new neighborhood lots to the website. These are lots that primarily were previously in hold areas that have been released or had back tax bills that have been cleaned up through a sort of ongoing administrative process we work on with the county. We also kind of embarked on a major cleanup of our garage inventory through a sort of you know, weird happenstance as in history, we ended up with about 500 properties that only have a garage on them. These are typically cases where past the city demo efforts funded the demolition of the house but left the garage for one reason or another. And so consequently, we're left with a sort of orphaned garage. And, you know, it's about 506 properties that haven't really moved in our inventory historically. And so we've surveyed all of them and are working on a couple of final kind of site visits, but our hope is to post about 350 of the 500 for sale. To the adjacent neighbor in many cases, it looks like the adjacent neighbors already using it by parking their car in it or maintaining it, and to help them just to you know, have ownership of that asset. And about another 100 of them are not adjacent to a home and appear to be in really poor shape and so we're going to move them to the demolition pipeline, try to abate that problem but I'm really excited to kind of have some movement on this universal properties that historically has been kind of, you know, stuck for us. Also, since our last meeting, we closed on the purchase of a handful of properties from the Wayne County Treasurer, we purchased 12 properties from the Wayne County Treasurer for a total of about $59,000 These are really five houses in kind of very key napus you know, really in East English village Marygrove and Pingree Park and then also purchased seven vacant lots with the really in the kind of greater downtown area in Midtown Woodbridge and North Corktown with a hope of a feeding our marketing pipeline and hopefully trying to attract some, you know affordable infill development to these sites are very sort of, you know, a catalytic site I think will help us attract
very cool projects. And finally, I just wanted to quickly call out a pair of resolutions. The first is a an effort to really sort of correct a land bank error in 2019 and early 2019. We listed the house at 14148 Burwood. For Sale. Someone bought it through on it now just recently finished the rehab and I completed the rehab of the of the property. It's come to light recently that the listing listing photos of the home incorrectly included some photos of the attached garage, but the sale did not include them and then to sort of double down on the problem. Their rehab rehab, a compliance rep. Made them rehab the garage as well, however, is never included in the transfer and so our standard process is to you know, when we see a house in a garage next to one another is to combine them so it's all one sale. In this case. You know, I really dropped the ball with a team and our hope was to get Board approval to transfer the garage to the purchaser for $1 Really in light of our own error to kind of reunite these two parcels. And it's sort of in the spirit I think of a sort of, you know, a sort of equitable transfer, even though it doesn't quite fit that fact pattern. But this is really sort of a collective transfer of sorts. The you can see a photo of the house and the attached garage as well here is one like a big thank you letter for donating grass to us the other resolution I was hoping to get Board approval for which is a sort of latest installment in our call it semi quarterly it's supposed to be quarterly but happens two or three times a year. It's really a back and forth transfer of property with the city. We're really transferring property to the city in order to support city led projects and then we're acquiring you know, sort of a residual residential inventory from the city and so this is a total transfer about 156 parcels 118 of them are owned by the land bank bound for the city and 38 would be owned by the city bound for the land bank. And so the properties we'd be sending to the city are to support a land swap the city's orchestrating with the local Catholic Church to support the expansion of City Airport. Beth commits in the mayor's office is working on a corridor parking project to launch kind of city funded public parking lots along key corridors on live Hanoi, East Warren West Warren and Gratiot and so they're asking for 21 Lots for that. The planning department is working on a dendro remediation project in Delray. This is to really plant a forest that the idea is to help clean the soil of any sort of soil borne contamination. Also, near the i 94, industrial complex DPW needs to widen a road to ease truck access at the corner of Conant and the like. And our hope is to transfer one property there. The city rec department and parks team is asking for six properties to expand the Dexter Alpers rec center and add parking and park behind it and they want six properties. And finally is really the transfer of that sort of remaining residential inventory to the land bank. You'll notice this this does call for us to transplant homes to the city. But in each case the homes are in the demolition pipeline or and our expectation is that the demos will occur kind of as the properties are being transferred back to the city. On that note, that's really the extent of the updates I had for you. Did you have any questions?
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. So much. Thank you so next we have legal
All right, well, here we go. I'm afraid I don't have a whole lot to report as this just became effective in the last day or two. So I still have some work to do. I think to to you know get to know some of the people I'll be working with here in the next little bit. Gabe is going to have some resolutions to discuss in a minute. But I will just take a moment. Thank Tammy for this opportunity and everyone else that was involved in the decision. I'll do my best to live up to it. And thank Tim Devine for leaving, I think the department in pretty good shape. And it's going to make the transition I think pretty easy and will retain some continuity in what we've done in the past going forward. As Tammy mentioned we're going to be getting somebody do manage the litigation side of things. And I mentioned that again, only to say that I will be keeping busy with some of the transactional work. The last couple of general counsel's haven't done that as I really taken the lead and I've been asked to kind of retain some of those obligations and I will continue to do that. So all that said, before we turn to gave I think that probably the most immediate task is working with the nap team. And as you know, over the last, you know, few few months, we've been ramping up that process. Since we last spoke a couple of months back there have been some additional hires. I think we brought in at least one attorney, two paralegals and a clerk all to the goal of getting more done, you know, getting more nap houses in the pipeline. And to that point, Tammy, I think we can talk briefly about a potential resolution coming to the board next week. Where in that in that effort, we're going to outsource some of the work that we've done at least more recently in house back several years we contracted with IE Vantage to do the lion's share of certain steps in the nap process primarily identifying you know when we have a house that's identified as a nap candidate, one of the early steps is to identify the parties we need to serve. Notice on if we're going to go down the road. So we're going to hopefully contract again when you Vantage there I think now owned by revs legals so you might hear either of those names, but to to do that process it's essentially a title search where they try to find any party that would have an interest in the in the house so that we make sure we give them notice service and process they also prepare would prepare the initial complaint and do some filings for us as well as then coordinate the actual service of process that frees our team up to focus on the actual court proceedings any negotiations that have to be done once we have had people's attention, right though they often will come to the table and we can make an arrangement with them to fix up the house and and enter into an agreement to do that and then we'll monitor compliance with that agreement as we do with other renovations. So it's a big step to outsource this and we've been working with their team. We've had help from Michelle Chittick. In addition to the to Giuseppe and Maisha and then app team in getting this done. I think we're close on the agreement. I don't know that I can promise we're gonna have it at the board meeting but I really I think that's the goal, right?
Yes, absolutely. The goal. As the indicated over the last several weeks and months, the mayor has put an increasing spotlight and focus on the number of privately held blighted houses in the city. As our structure inventory takes down and as the demand department is operating at a steady clip eliminating the city own blight so very soon, private all blight will be again you know at the end will be the spotlight by which you know our successes are measured how many privately owned blighted structures, and we abate in the next few years and so we felt the need to restructure the way that we were operating. And as Doug indicated to farm out the heavy lifting on the front end, so that we could get as many properties in the queue as possible. And so that is the purpose and the goal behind pivoting back to like contract with ivantage to help us attack as many properties as we can because what we know currently, is that there are approximately 3500 to 4000 privately owned writing structures in the city that are vacant and blighted that needs to be addressed. So we have a huge volume of work that we need to address in a relatively short period of time. And ivantage will be very critical and supporting us and cheating those goals.
Right so again, if we can get this fully negotiated, we'll have it out this week and the board package. I think if hopefully when you see it, it will pretty much follow our standard services agreement so it's not that unique in that respect. Although it's a it's a it's a it's a major helpful undertaking for us. I think the actual form you will find isn't isn't that different from what we usually do. So with that maybe gave if you can leave a sir
Thank you, Doug. Good morning, Richard and Carol. A four items I would like to brief on this morning. The first two are some pretty straightforward procurement resolutions that teams are hoping to bring before the next week. The first is at the request of our partners in rehab and ready the the team currently has an agreement with Door and Window guard systems they go by the acronym dogs you may have seen that acronym before. It's a service for dog metal door and window coverings that Veronica's team utilizes during the rehab process to ensure security at the property. There's currently an agreement in place it is expiring Veronica's team would like to renew for an additional one year period. So we will be bringing that before the board for your consideration and vote. The second is a proposed amendment we would like to bring with hnr process serving. This is the organization owned and led by Mr. Herb Alexander, you're probably familiar with that name. The land bank has had a very long and productive relationship. With this vendor. Historically, teams we have historically the land bank had multiple contracts with each and our process serving each team would negotiate and execute their own contract. Under Tamizh direction we tried really hard to merge any. Anytime the Landbank was was party to multiple contracts with the same vendor. We tried to merge that into one omnibus contract. We were successful at doing so with HR process serving earlier this year. So I think at the height we might have had three different contracts. We now have one omnibus contract that contract is set to expire at the end of the month. I given the vital work that hnr process serving does for legal inventory dispo and rehabbed and ready, all the teams are hoping to to get approval for another one year amendment with this with this vendor. Any any questions thus far before I move on to my third item?
No, thanks. Okay.
Very good. Thank you. Well, the third item is a procurement process update. As you both know, Richard and Carol, any contract per person landings procurement policy, any contract that exceeds $100,000 requires majority approval of our board of directors. It's something that that this discord this body sees on a monthly basis. The next level down the procurement policy calls for the approval of one board member for any contracts between the $50,000 and $100,000 threshold. Historically, these were approved, either with a wet signature or there could have at times been an email approval, but there's really a push to get this digitized. And so the team as as as reginal and Justin mentioned earlier, the team is really moving forward to put a lot of these processes in our Salesforce on our Salesforce platform. So over in the short term, we're hoping to build out a process similar to our check approval process and Salesforce for these contracts valued between 50 and 100,000. So I'm I'm giving this update just by way of a briefing, this committee that in the near term, you may you may see a Salesforce request for approval come your way in the near term. It might take the more rudimentary form of a PDF document being sent. That requires an electronic signature just so we can start to go down the electronic approval path. As Rachel mentioned, we have a new procurement manager on board Melissa Rio, she's hit the ground running. She's already done some amazing things during her her short tenure. And this is one of the process improvements that she has proposed. I think she's exactly right. I think it makes all the sense in the world to get on the Salesforce platforms. Any questions about that? That exercise?
No, thank you.
Thank you both. And finally, the last thing I wanted to brief about is in regards to the the land banks deed Fraud Unit, you may have noticed in previous board reports that there was a specific section titled entitled deed Fraud Unit and it would give a various updates as to the the difficulties or reports we were encountering regarding deed fraud perpetrated on land banking property you'll notice in this this month, quarter report that that specific in this month illegal Board report, excuse me, you'll notice that that section as a whole has been removed. Let me let me assure of both you Carolyn Richard that's not that's not because the land bank is neglecting deed fraud but what we found is rather than having one dedicated unit, to combat that, what we found is that we've been more effective with a cross team across departmental approach. So there's not one person or one unit responsible for addressing these issues. We've taken on a more collaborative approach and quite frankly, I think we've been we've more we've been more successful in that approach. We will of course, continue to brief the board, if any deep matters arise that defraud matters excuse me arise that report require the board's attention, we will be certain to to bring that before before this body we specifically regarding the sort of the Cross team cross departmental approach, what we found is many times very often the harm that the land bank suffers as a result of a fraudulent deed or a fraudulent document being recorded on a property that you own is one of one great remedy we have is simply to to kick it over to our friends on a quiet title team to to include this in one of their quiet title actions that that very often is the exact remedy we're looking for. So this is a little plug in shout out to our friends over at quiet title led by led by Mike Donovan, but I just wanted to brief the board. You may notice that there is a bit of a difference in the legal Board report this month going forward. But just to reassure that that the team is that the teams are on it. We are responding to these matters as they arise and working closely with our partners over at the Detroit Police Department. Any questions from from from either board member on on that matter specifically?
Thank you, Gabriel.
Thank you. Thank you both. Really appreciate it. And Doug, I'll turn that back over.
All right. Thanks, Gabe. And I think that's really about it for the legal department. We'll have something more maybe a little more comprehensive next month for you.
All right, thank you. So next we have communications and engagement.
Absolutely. Good morning, everyone. And I'll jump into our report here. So when we think about our work, we'll start with our social media and digital content. During July and August. You know, we continue to grow across all platforms. Whatever you felt post on Facebook, earning 1000s of unique impressions Facebook continues to be our strongest channel, gaining close to 20,000. engaged followers. Instagram saw an increase with versatile user generated content and multimedia as well. So we're growing on social and doing a lot around that as well. It takes us to our virtual events. So you know, we hosted our monthly virtual office hours and neighborhood Enhancement Program Lunch and Learn for community partners, each reaching more than 5000 Facebook users. So in July, the virtual office hour focused on educating our audience on becoming a community partner and kind of you know what what entail what what all entails that process or what all that process entails are in August the second installment of our Lunch and Learn series was designed to provide insight into into DVLA application processes. So the series you know educating our audience about various types of DVLA or dob, I'm sorry, agreements, navigating the application compete completing with partner offerings, lending options for development and land based projects, etc. These events these events reach 1000s of people through Facebook with dozens of participating in each event, each individual event on the events are also on our Facebook page. So those who weren't able to attend could go down our our videos and find those as well. So now we talk more about community engagement. So we received an influx of participation requests for July and August. We participated in 33 events during that time, five in person. In July, our communications and engagement team collaborated with our compliance team in support of the brilliant Detroit, Dexter Lynwood open house. In August we collaborated with ourselves and programs compliance, rehab and ready teams to participate in the revived Detroit and invited participants from the Detroit real estate weekend to tour our properties our auction properties as well as those in rehab and ready as well. We attended to the spirit Plaza resource day just outside of our office here in the Denby neighborhood Alliance, neighborhoods day, getting out in the community and just kind of being forward facing outside of the other work and we also partnered with the Department of neighborhoods to grow our reach of you know, our fliers, our digital and our physical physical assets that we share out for Open House flyers. Any other things that we're doing so we've done something really good partners with us and they're downcast typically reaches 170 participants. So every week, our stuff is going out to them as well. So if you see if you notice, you know, the theme here we're doing a lot of collaborating in our organization and with some of our partners as well. And we continue doing that into our city council and government work which I'm responsible for. So you know, during July and August, we worked internally and externally to wit vlba staff City Council ombudsman, Don's and other partners to resolve escalated inquiries. In addition, I continue to build relationships that facilitate interaction and proactively communicate with our leadership and council members, receiving you know, requests for information submitting memos, our q4 report, one on one meetings, etc. And I've been reaching out to a lot of people to get that done. Council was in recess for August. So I let a lot into the department of neighborhoods and then the you know, picking up the inquiries that they had as well, as far as some other strategic things that we'll talk about as we move forward. And then finally, our constituent experience. So in July, our constituent experience liaison began hosting in person monthly office hours to create a pathway for situations to resolve complex inquiries. The goal was to ensure that you know, the land bank is accessible and available to constituents who require additional resources to complete the more complex inquiries the constituent experience liaison also worked closely with DCS to develop a social media strategy to a forum constituents, community associations, partners upcoming July times and dates.
Also engaged with various community meetings on behalf of dlba Community black clubs and associations and arranged monthly meeting schedules for the communication engagement team to do presentations. Additionally, the CEO assisted in panel interviews for internal candidates to fill vacant customer service manager positions. So as you've seen, we've been up to a lot with keeping the work going. We're up in our collaboration and our effectiveness. And I believe that we're moving in a great direction everything that we want, and we still have a lot of meat on the bone to continue to reach our goals moving forward. Any questions?
Dwayne is an inquiry a problem or just a question? Um,
so I define it as an issue that comes to us from a partner. So it could be something like a problem yet. So something as small as you know, we need a long work on a particular property or lot
or it could be a councilmember reaching out and say, hey, I want to talk to your team from you know, rehab and ready are some of your other programs. So I defined it as just anything that comes to us from a partner. Got it. Thank you. Yeah, no problem at all. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Let's see. So that's the end of our agenda. Do we have anything else? I don't think there's anything else for Martin. You can do anything else you've done so much. We're also busy. You're supposed to go with the hour I guess if that's all you all did. A few months worth of information we're sharing with you. It leaves me breathless. Nope, this is the this is the new standard you know, so. Thank you all so much for all you're doing and how well the organization is moving along and building on everything. So please let us know as always anything where we anyplace we can be helpful and helping, you know, goals will be achieved. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good day. Thanks, you too. Bye. Bye.