Good morning. Lauren Goodspeed Auditor General Office of the Auditor General city of Detroit.
Mark lochridge, Deputy Auditor General Office of the Auditor General.
Kevin Assadi, Chief Auditor Office of the Auditor General.
The morning again honorable city council members. First we want to thank you for this opportunity to present our fiscal year 2025 budget. I will now turn it over to Mark Lockridge, our Deputy Auditor General, who will kick off our presentation.
Thanks so much. Miss Goodspeed. Thank you, honorable council members for allowing us to come and speak today. Very happy to see all of you in person. So we were just going to start out briefly with a little overview of who we are and what we do. So the auditor general's office is one of four oversight independent agencies of the city. By far we are the oldest oversight agency of the city with nearly 90 years. We are an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity and as stated here we we like to add value to our partners in city government. Our partners are our clients, which are the departments that we serve through our expertise, and we have many years of expertise we provide our recommendations and hopefully, those turn into action plans. A little bit about what we do. Here are generally accepted government accounting standards requires that we do performance audits, so not just financial audits. In nature, but performance audits. And so we have to go in and we have to learn the business of every department that we serve. The Office of the Auditor General is actually responsible for the annual comprehensive financial report also known as the act for I will say it's probably been about 50 years that we have outsourced our responsibility we contract currently, as you know, plan Miranda's is our auditors that perform the audit of the CAC of the AXA and also we perform the audit of the Federal Financial programs, also known as the single audit. We also settle all disputes or claims on behalf of the city. Next slide a little bit about our staff. And I like to think there's our body for increasing our staff by five members that recent times. I can recall when we were down to 10. When I started here we were at about 26 But thank you very much. We have 19 full time employees so we are fully staffed. We have three administrators that includes the Auditor General Deputy Auditor General and our administrative assistant. We have 16 auditors under our audit operations. We added a Chief Auditor was so happy that we have our Chief Auditor that's Kevin Assadi. That's sit here today, which provides a lot of expertise, our credentials. We are fully professional staff. The charter requires that your auditor general and Deputy Auditor General are certified public accountants and we are Laura and I are also certified are auditors for a long time. We have six current, we have about five studying for it. I know I have one individual that will probably become certified internal auditors soon. We have certified government auditing professionals. We have a risk management auditor certified Certified Information Systems Auditor and we have over we have 14 graduate degrees in our department. So a little bit next slide about our operations in the current year. And we wanted to highlight to spotlight that we did pass an external quality control review through the Association of Local Government auditors. Next slide. So this was our peer review. We went through a peer review this current year. Our standards require that an external independent peer review is performed every three years. What do they do they determine if the organization system of quality controls suitably designed, that the quality control system provides reasonable assurance that is performing and reporting in conformity with professional standards and applicable legal and regulatory requirements and all material respects. And we know that this is very important. Very important for us and we've always felt like we could have passed his peer review, but certainly for the public, for the administration for our bodies to understand that that we are following government auditing standards. What we have achieved, well, let's just say well, we did achieve and that peer review is the first one we ever had in our 87 year plus history. We received the highest rating of pass with no deficiencies they noted our structural independence, our strength, and that is through our charter. So there are many municipalities that do not have that are not deemed as independent and they're not predicted by charter. So they made a note of that in our report. They also noted that our current leadership was certainly experience knowledgeable and qualified and that is the three individuals here at the table. We have over 100 years here at the table and related experience. And now I'll turn it over to our Chief Auditor Kevin Mossad.
Thank you, and good morning are on honorable city council members. I'm going to talk on this slide about the types of audits. So the city is required to have an external audit of the financial statements on an annual basis at the close of each fiscal year. This external audit determines whether the city has prepared and presented its financial statements fairly and in accordance with stablish accounting criteria. Today, our office facilitates the contract with our independent external auditors plant Moran in order to perform the annual comprehensive financial report, commonly referred to as the act for which reports the financial position and results of operations of the city and plant Moran also prepares the single audit, which is the financial report on federally funded programs, which includes ARPA initiatives and other grant funds from the US Treasury. In talking about operational performance audits, and internal audits, our office conducts internal audits that are mainly operational and performance types of audits. These types of audits are typically complex in nature and review the financial transactions performance and operations of city agencies, which is based on an annual risk base audit plan that's prepared by the auditor general or as otherwise directed. By the city council. Internal operational and performance audits are typically broader in scope and cover a diverse range of areas including financial reports, compliance information, security, operations, risk management, and more. Operational and performance based audits include the assessment of operations or functions, systems and processes to assess the efficiency, effectiveness and compliance with legal and other requirements. Next slide.
Talking about the 2023 published audit reports our office publishes our audit reports. And memorandums to the public through our city website, with the URL noted at the bottom of the slide in 2023, our office published the final reports audit of the trade transportation Corporation in January of 2023 audits I'm sorry audit of the Civil Rights inclusion and opportunity department the third report on compliance V dollars that was amended in October 2003. And also the audit of the American rescue plan act renewed Detroit home repair program in October 2003. It should be noted this was the first audit issue related to the ARPA funds and a series of audits that are plant. Next slide. Heard audits This slide details the audits that are currently taking place and the progression in each phase. There are five phases to an audit, which includes planning risk assessment, fieldwork, reporting and wrap up. The planning stage establishes the auditor staff assignment determines the scope of the audit documents audit staff independence, gathers background information notifies the oddity of the engagement and concludes with our conducting of an insurance conference with the oddity during the planning phase our OB our office establishes a Communication Matrix with the audit team to ensure that communication is clear, concise and with the appropriate persons. After the planning stage is complete. The next phase of the audit is the risk assessment phase. Risk assessment phase is the critical phase of the audit that identifies and evaluates the risks that may impact oddity. The auditors in this phase use various techniques including interviews, inquiries and analytical procedures to gain an understanding of the oddities risk environment. Based on the results of the completed risk assessment, the audit staff will develop the strategy and detail the audit work steps for the fieldwork phase. During the fieldwork phase of the audit, the auditors will use audit techniques in order to gather and examine evidence, test internal controls and validate documentation. At the end of the fieldwork phase, our office will conducted on field work meeting with the oddity to review the results of the audit testing and review any deficiencies identified. Once the fieldwork stage has concluded the next phase of our audit is the report stage in which our office drafts and develops the audit report and publishes the report. Our office provides a copy report to the audit team with a two week notice to publish in order for them to provide a response to that audit report. And the last phase of the audit report is the wrap up stage where office will send an exit communication to the audit team and perform any miscellaneous administrative work to finalize the audit. Based on this information, I'll briefly briefly talk about the audits that are listed on this slide. The first one listed is our ARPA neighborhood beautification initiative. This is the second audit of the American rescue plan act being conducted by the Office of the Auditor General the first audit being the renewed Detroit homework prayer program with the memo that was issued as mentioned in October 2003. This audit is currently in the early planning stages. The next audit is the board of police commissioners currently under process. The audit of the board of police commissioners was included in our audit plan as part of a request by city council. Our office has completed the planning and risk assessment phases of the audit and is currently in the fieldwork stage of this audit. Next to talks about the city wide Employee Services audit. So our office is currently engaged in a certain city wide Employee Services audit which is comprised of three audits including the audit of employee pre onboarding and position control, audit of the Human Resources Employee Services and audit of citywide payroll. The purpose of this audit is to focus on hire to the payroll experience for a city employee. This audit is a long term audit. With the payroll portion of the audit being conducted by our audit partners style resists Ross and HR Employee Services and pre onboarding being conducted by our internal OAG staff to pre onboarding and position control and citywide citywide payroll audits are in the risk assessment phase. While the Human Resources Employee Services portion of the audit is in our fieldwork stage. The Detroit Police Department drug law enforcement fund so as noted on the slide the audit of the Detroit Police Department's drug law enforcement Fund is a limited scope performance audit currently in process with a focus examining and inspecting documentation of assets of both the drug law enforcement Fund and the Federal forfeitures fund. Currently the audit is on our risk assessment phase of the audit. Our office is planning to conduct an audit of the Secret Service Fund as required by the city's charter. At this point, I'm going to turn over to our auditor general or Goodspeed to talk about property tax assessments.
Thank you, Kevin. Um, before I talk about the property tax audits, I just want to make a point that in addition to us auditing individual initiatives and programs with APA funding, we are also working very closely with members of the old CFO the Office of Grants Management, the Office of departmental and financial services as well as LPD, Mr. Quarterly and Rene short, to ensure that information that's presented to the public information that's being presented to this honorable body is accurate and transparent. And so we've been working with them to understand and be able to reconcile dollars as they are reported out of financial systems, all the way up through to the website and reporting to the Treasury. So you will see additional memos and other reports related to the overall proper funding. In terms of the property tax, for rental property tax audit, we should have first report in 2022 that reported on the activities in the office of the assessors related to the pre mass property appraisal. The last two reports. As you can see, we've completed the planning, risk assessment and all of the field work and they are both in the draft stage. The second report is in draft review by myself. And the third report is being worked on these two particular audits originated under my watch when I was audit manager. So it's difficult to transfer that responsibility to the other leaders here. And so I'm having to work that through those reports through my activity. I expect to publish both of those reports before the end of the second quarter of this year.
Next slide. This slide is gonna talk about the audit challenges that we face. So Office can face many challenges when conducting an audit. Some of the common challenges our office can face are delays in the receipt of documentation, obtaining access to systems and data. Our office does have charter authority to access to all access records and systems. Our office has experienced challenges to our charter mandate authority. And based on this challenge, our office has received confirmation from Corporation Counsel that our office does have the authority to all access records and systems. Another challenge can be the responsiveness from the oddity. Also, another challenge can be NC department work priorities. oddities may have other high level conflicting priorities, which may delay our audit progress. And then lastly, the complexity of the audit which can include federal oversight laws, rules and regulations, integration of enterprise wide data and information systems that can be numerous legacy systems and also across functional multi department agency audits. An example of that may be our neighborhood beautification. Initiative, which covers seven programs over four departments, which includes channel services, the mayor's office, construction, demolition, and also HRD. Human human housing revitalization department. Excellent.
Thank you, Kevin. So I'll go into one of our other major activities, as Mark mentioned, in what we do. We are part of the charter. We are authorized to settle all disputed claims for or against the city of Detroit. And so that means that if a claim is denied by the law department, the claimant has 45 days to appeal that decision. To the Auditor General, we assemble a board of auditors elect a chairperson. And so essentially we act as a small claims court. The claimant can opt to have the hearing in person or virtually, and they are allowed to bring in additional documents or evidence to help explain their claim and present it to the board. The board's will make a recommendation to the Auditor General and then it's my responsibility to either deny or award and notify the claimant of my decision. If we deny the claim, they still have the right to take that claim to a court of law and have it settled in a court of law. So this is an overview of our 2023 claims activity. I want to say it was slow in picking up and 2020 22. The law department basically was without an investigator for quite a while and so we were not receiving claims for the bulk of 2022. That activity has since picked up. By and large. We had 16 claims in 2023 13 of those claims were property damage, accounting for about 81% of the claims. Three involved personal injury claims. I can tell you that of the property damage claims about 54% 53.8% involve tree damage. And so I want to I know councilmember Tate has been helpful and in getting additional funds for citizens to have trees cut down on their private property. I was pleased to hear in the mayor's presentation that they are proposing additional funds to beef up the city department to go out and cut down those trees. As you can see though, the dollar value is in terms of the property damage claims, only accounts for about 9% of the amount claimed we have $1.5 million for three personal injury claims. In terms of the award. We did not award any dollars for the personal injury claims about $9,588 for the property damage claims. Just a note as returns of 2024. We have seen that activity pick up we've had several property claims. Six in January alone, one in February for about $44,000. So we do we expect that activity to continue at a much higher pace in 2024 than what we heard in 2023. One of the things we're I am proud to announce is that we've reached tightened up and beefed up our metrics and tracking of how we do in terms of hearing claims. The city code of ordinance has three requirements for us. We are required to schedule the hearing timely. We are required to notify the claimant timely, and I'm required to bring a decision timely. We're required to notify the claimant within 45 days of the claim. And I can say that out of the 16 claims we met that metric with 15 claims that we notify the claimant timely, at least 10 days before the scheduled hearing. We met that metric 100% Did the Ag render a decision timely again within five to seven business days or 15 calendar days. Of the hearing out of the 16 claims. We met our metric at 100%. Mark
Oh Thank you, Laura. So a little bit more about the activities of the Auditor General in the Office of the Auditor General. So just to point out that the auditor general in accordance with city ordinates is the chairperson of the Torian rate commission as you know that that will be convening, soon. Way convenient February 2024. Also not mentioned here, the Auditor General is the chairperson of the taxi cab commission as well. That we don't have one there. We're going to speak about that. And it says the Auditor General the next bullet says the Auditor General member but I would like to point out that an auditor general is a member of the risk management council but the Auditor General is the chairperson of the police cost recovery review committee and also the fire cost recovery review committee. Other activities we participate three times a year in the revenue estimating conference. We assigned auditors to perform that analysis along with budget and LPD. As to the city's major the reasonableness of the mayor, the mayor's proposed major revenues and other revenues and that process has been working very well as you know for the last 10 years because the mayor has balanced his budget we also assist LPD with their budget daily information analysis hearings, which is taking place now which is what we're what we're doing right now. And just to point out that every member of the Office of the Auditor General must receive 40 hours of continuing professional education so whether or not that person comes in certified and most of them don't. We truly encourage our new hires to become certified internal auditors and they must get those get those 40 hours a year in continuing professional education.
Laura, thank you. So I'm happy to talk about operational successes. Because we strive our goal is to become one of the premier top notch local government internal audit firms or a shops in the country. We have enhanced our organizational structure through the addition of strategic positions. The number one that we've mentioned before is the addition of the Chief Auditor because you approved five new hires last year we were able to add two new audit manager positions, which not only increases the internal growth opportunities for our staff, but it does relieve bottlenecks and strengthens our supervisory capacity that we are required to do and have in place for us standards. We implemented audit boards audit management software in 2023. But we we implemented an IT steering committee for the oversight of that audit management software. So as you probably are aware these software companies routinely issue releases, upgrade their software. And so we felt the need to have a steering committee in place that can review the releases and determine what impact that may have on our operations do we need to change processes or is it just something in the software that enhances the software? We are pleased to announce that we have asked for and received the help of our service level manager I want to give a shout out to Amber Eastern and her team who have consistently been a part of our IT steering committee. They are committed to make sure that our software operates as it should. And to help us with those releases. We developed then I would like to say Kevin Assadi developed and released a wonderful internal OAG dashboard slash resource hub. It is one stop shopping for our auditors, so they don't have to go looking for criteria or links to the old CFO directories or internal standard operating procedures. It's one stop shopping. It certainly has added much to us being able to bring in new hires and bring them aboard and get them acclimated to our processes. Along with that we published a comprehensive online standard operating procedures meant manual so no more hardcopy manuals that may or may not be up to date. I mean, SOPs are kept up to date again, the auditors can go to our one stop shop and find any of our operating procedures that they need. I'm happy to announce that we have five auditors that are certified by the Association of the local government auditors to perform external peer reviews for other local governments. It was part of our reciprocal agreement, as we as they conducted our peer review. We agreed to have to train other audits or to have other auditors certify that can go out and do peer reviews of other local governments. And that's a win win because it allows our auditors to see what other internal audit shops are doing, to bring back best practices and for also for them to share our best practices as well. We have standardized and internal audit training requirements for new hires. Although we hire a new hire and typically have a six month probation period, we have realized that it really takes more than a year learning curve for them to learn this profession. It is not taught in schools it is not taught in colleges. So most of the learning is through training and on the job work. Again we've standardizing that internal audit training and make we by including mandatory types of training, such as understanding our standards, and professional skepticism which is a big a big part of what we do. As I've mentioned earlier, we have enhanced our response to claims and tracking of those claims and implemented metrics for claims hearings. Next slide. And with that, we'll take a few minutes and now get to the meat of this hearing. And that is to present to you our fiscal year 2025 budget. Next slide. Then the mayor's fiscal year 25 proposed budget budget as he presented to this honorable body it is basically status quo. The mirror proposals in overall 2.7% budget increase for our fiscal year 25 of that over the 24 adopted budget. Those changes which total 132k $103,000 of that increase relates to primarily a general wage increase in our salaries and wages. There's $43,000 required for our increase to in the to conduct the annual comprehensive financial report, and that is per our contract. And then there's a small decrease in other expenses. I want to note that the actual costs are 37% of our proposed budget. So I understand the pressures that have may come upon the general fund, those pressures that we talked about in the mayor's presentation, but I also understand that there is a need for adequate and proportional funding for oversight agencies. This is also codified in the city's Ordinance of proportional funding. And I want to thank Council President Mary shuffle, who organized a proportional funding Working Group in 2022, and we look forward to that ordinance coming to full fruition. Next slide. Oh ag office renovations this topic is no stranger I'm sure to anyone of this honorable body. We were made aware about the budget department that they did include in the proposed fiscal year 25 capital budget. I line item for the Office of the Auditor General Office renovations for $500,000. Next slide. However, I want to point out that we believe I believe there is some funding there's some risks in the proposed funding source. As you will note on the previous site, the line item is based on a fiscal year 25 General Fund surplus Pay As You Go funding source and as described by the budget department Pay As You Go is basically you counsel or the administration will fund these individual projects based on available money. My concern with this funding source is number one it says fiscal year 25 General Fund surplus. That says to me that the funds would not be available for use in fiscal year 25. They won't be available for use until fiscal year 26. It says to me, that is dependent on a general fund surplus at fiscal year 25 year in you will note that this funding is not included in the proposed fiscal year 24 mid year supplemental PAYGO for capital projects if it weren't and if the so honorable body approved those additional fundings and the use of that funding would mean that come June July one I wouldn't be able to proceed with our office renovations. My other concern it's not major, but the amount proposed is less than the last quote that we have as of October 22. Our last quote in 2022 was 561,000. So this 500,000 does not account for any increased cost that may have occurred since then. Nor does it include the full amount of the quote I have been directed I was directed over the course of the last year and throughout the budget preparation directed by not only this honorable body, but the by the Oh CFO to include our request for funding as the supplemental funding in our budget. In our general fund budget. And for me, that is the only guarantee that if that happens, that is the only way that I will feel that funding for our renovations is secure. If this honorable body decides to move forward with the leaving the funding source in the proposed capital budget, I would urge you to make sure that the administration intends to release that to designate that funding for use in fiscal year 25.
Next slide. So we had three additional supplemental requests, the one that the first one prime. Well our first priority was of course, the office renovations. We also asked for an additional $200,000 in supplemental funding for professional services. We feel this funding is necessary to support contracting for additional specialized auditing professionals. As Kevin mentioned, we've entered into the audit of the city wide employee activities. We're auditing a payroll system that was implemented. We've contracted with outside auditors because they possess certain specialized skills in terms of being able to handle data analytics and mass amounts of datas we don't know what we're going to find in this this audit. We are asking for the supplemental funding because we believe we need some flexibility. Also this increase in supplemental funding will allow will add to our capacity to audit other funds, programs, and any other significant financial and operational activities such as additional ARPA audits. And again, it will increase our flexibility to react to emerging issues and or any other special requests that may come from this honorable body for us to audit. Next slide. And lastly, the mayor's proposed fiscal year 25 proposed FTE, again is basically no change it proposes 19 FTE, we are fully staffed. We have no vacancies. We asked for an additional three staff on our way as we marched toward our target optimum proportional funding goal of 25 FTE is next line. And our always keep this in because councilmember Dubois asked me a few years ago, Please rank the priority of your auditors. We asked for three auditor threes. The noted the various salary amounts are at the max medium and low end. We've ranked them so if this honorable but if it pleases this honorable body to again approve additional FTEs for us. We've ranked them from first priority the second priority and third priority and the cost related to those FTAs. And lastly, next slide. Again, this is just an overview or a summary of our supplemental as ranked in order by priorities number one our office renovations at $600,000. Second priority would be additional funding for professional contractual services $200,000 And then the ranking of our additional audit threes. And again with councilmember Dubois we've included a column that shows our cumulative as as you make your decisions in terms of awarding this office with additional funding. Next slide. We have received the questions budget questions from LPD and from council member waters and we will respond to those in writing. And we expect to have those to you before the end of this week. I want to thank this honorable body for allowing us to present our fiscal year 2025 budget presentation. I want to thank members of our office who have joined us and you see in the office there. And again I now open it up for questions, comments and or concerns. Thank you.
Thank you so much attorney. fee for that very thorough presentation and the work that the entire department does We appreciate it. I do have questions that I did commit in writing so I'm excited to get it but of course at the top of my questioning was the office renovations I had the opportunity to come down with him one day and tour the area and get a better understanding of you know, your cost and efficacy to push to that office get renovated. So I'm glad to see that it is included but not to your liking again, which I really hope that we can nail this out this budget because this really has been lingering over us for far too long. And quite frankly, we're not even talking about that much money. And when I went down and I hear the back and forth I just think that is unnecessary and we can get this done.
So my question actually is to Mr. Watson, if you can speak to what our auditor general just mentioned regarding the funding, will it be available this fiscal year for the office to utilize. Thank you,
madam president for the opportunity to speak to this issue. So the proposed budget before City Council includes $20 million for capital funding for capital projects citywide funded from the fiscal year 23 surplus and, apologies the table in the budget book is a little ambiguous in how it's worded about what surplus would be used, its last year surplus. So, the funding is available. It's proposed in this budget - $20 million for capital projects city wide. We pre-designated $500,000 for the office renovations, understood the request for this year was $600,000, and as we move through this process, you know, if the will the body is to move on an additional $100,000 from the overall capital needs budget, you know, that's something we can work through at the table in the coming weeks.
Okay, just so that she's smiling, that's good. That's a good thing.
Thank you. Because we've all heard it down. I'd say we've all heard the same thing we
have we and that's what I was gonna say because before I thought it was a part of the capital agenda previously, and it wasn't honored at that time either. So I just want to be certain that you're saying that we're using surplus dollars from the capital that is included in this budget. That council will vote in one. Absolutely. Okay. So that's that's the main thing for me is that we're actually going to vote in the affirmative to approve the allocation for this office renovations to take place. Yes, Madam President. Okay. And then we will deliberate I'm sure council members will probably want to add this to Executive Session if we want to include the total $600,000 for the request. So based on that, can you just speak to how the office will change this upcoming fiscal year as far as moving people back in office? I know you talked about people were working remotely and how that will take place in the office as well.
Absolutely. First and foremost, it would allow all of our current staff to have desk right now we only have 11 desks for 16 auditors. And yes, it it does several things. It makes our office ADA compliant. As I mentioned earlier, we have a lot of our claimants want to come in in person. Thank God we've not had someone claim it that may be wheelchair bound. That needs to come into the office because our doors won't allow it. So our floor plan is designed to house up to 25 FTE, which again, is our proportional funding optimal goal. So we plan that our training room will be to our conference room will be turned into a training room. So so that we can have our internal training in our office today currently or prior to the COVID we would have to seek locations throughout the city to have training. And so yes, it will allow us to return to a hybrid work schedule that, you know, it's being done across the country as well as in other offices in the city.
All right, thank you and is there a motion colleagues to add that portion to Executive Session? So moved? Okay. All right, Hearing no objections that action will be taken. And just the second question. Again, we have questions we submitted in writing, wanted to get a better understanding of the prioritization of how you pick and choose various audits. I know counsel can initiate some to you are, but it also mentions here that operations of city agencies based on an annual risk based audit plan prepared by your office. Yes. So can you just speak to I guess for me, I want to know which ones have been initiated by council which ones you guys are initiating on your own and what is the process behind how you determine, you know, the beautification overhaul repair versus all of the various ARPA funding programs that there are, what's that process look like? And then lastly, is the Joe Lewis Greenway going to be audited? Because we have roughly about $200 million. Now going into that project as well.
First of all, our annual risk based plan, we actually have anything to create a two year annual risk based plan and I presented that last year. We rank the we have seven metrics or scoring items that we use for each department. So these, the scoring includes the amount of revenues, the staff, the number of staff, whether or not it's a general fund or enterprise agency. We look at the last time it was audited. We look at emerging issues. We look at the number of expenditures because some departments don't have revenues. They just have expenditures. And we look at whether or not it was a council special. So for example, if you've requested us to audit a department that gets the extra scoring, and so we we scored each department and look at the top, you know the high risk agencies. The border police commissioners was a council request back in 2020. But we were just now able to initiate that audit this year. So that's the first level in terms of arpel audits. We have looked at the various programs and the Renew Detroit was chosen because it was a program in currently an operations, a high visibility program. And the thing about the audits are we are conducting audits as these programs are going on a little bit different than our typical historical audits. And so we chose the neighborhood beautification audit, based on looking at the number of programs in there. The various departments looking at trying to consider the contracting and to so part of our overall objective for the Apple audits is to look at the effectiveness of the program. Is it reaching or doing what it's supposed to do and reaching the residents? How how effective and efficient are the programs being run? And so with the iPad, it's it's at this point, again, just try to see where we can get in, do some audit and provide some valuable constructive information and or action plans or recommendations that will benefit the remaining ongoing programs. So we have received the question, are we going to audit the Joe Louis Greenway? We do plan to do that. But we are looking to do that later on. In here. The reason being that program has been well under the weight. A lot of those dollars have been contracted and spent. And so it's it's less valuable for us to look at it now. As opposed to some of the newer programs that are coming on board where we feel we can make a better impact and better recommendations.
All right, thank you. And I still overall want to be able to support the level of staffing that's needed within a department so that you are at the optimal level to be able to provide these audits. And so if it's not mentioned by my colleagues, I'll make sure that we add that as well to our executive session.
And just as a follow up, thank you, Madam Chair. We will we it will take some additional resources either through the professional service contract, or FTE in order to do more apple audits. Okay. All right. Thank
you. All right. We will go to questions from my colleagues, Councilmember Doha.
Thank you, Madam President. Good morning to you all. First, let me say thank you for including the ranking. As asked and last budget season relative to employees. I will be making a motion to put that into Executive Session, because I do believe having the ability and the capacity to operate in what you need is very important. Second thing I will say just as a comment, I'm glad to see that there is no ambiguity that exists. We're not confused with the budget of where the funding is. And then transparency. I know my office's kind of work with you every step of the way to ensure that that funding hasn't gotten into the budget, particularly to Capitol agenda. And now we know exactly where it's where it is and how it will be spent. So I'm glad to see that in there for those renovations as well. And I'm glad to see that you know, CFOs have worked that out. My question is just revolve around. The first question I have is just providing a breakdown of how the increase in ACH for costs will contribute to a more thorough and effective financial audit.
Thank you through the chair. The it's it's really not an increase in extra costs. During the COVID a pandemic when the city reached out to all the contractors, plant Moran stepped up and reduced our five out at our cost over the term of the five year contract. By $2 million. Along with that, they requested that we extend the contract for an additional two years. We're in the first of those two optional years. So although it looks like an increase, it really is not we still have received over the five years of that contract. A sizable reduction from plant Moran but the the amount is in step with the ongoing increase costs just in that contract. Does that answer your question comes from well, they did come and ask for a recoup about 700,000 of the 2 million that they gave up. They Oh CFO agreed that they that we would they could recover 300,000 of that. This is the last year of that recovery. And so the next budget year would be the second year of the option, and that is back to the reduced costs.
And just following up on that same question that was pretty much to my point just to recoup fee. I know and like I said I think that shows. I don't want to say just a level of commitment by plant Moran you know, we're definitely appreciative. But if you say like, Hey, we're giving you a discount, and then you come in, Hey, can I get that discount back? Right? That's not necessarily a discount. And so that's, you know, that was the premise of my question, but thank you for mentioning that and talking about the recoup as well. And just going forward again, I think plant Moran and I'll just say that I record now I see it because I chaired a committee. I think they've done an amazing job with the audits that we see. But just want to make sure that we are paying for those services that are market based that we're not over or under and if we're paying up front, are we thinking that something's going to be one cost up front and then they come back for to recoup fees? Want to make sure we know where we are relative to that. My second question just revolves around the your intent to measure the success of or your How do you intend to measure the success of your expanded role in the enterprise? Why risk management?
Thank you. Um, before I answer that question, I do just want to point out for plant Moran on their behalf when they responded to the call for contractors to reduce their costs for COVID. No one knew that the city would receive such an influx of money, that 826 million of ARPA money falls under the single audit. So because of that, I believe they've had to expand their audits during the single audit by 10 programs. And so that's pretty that's we predicated their request to really recoup some of those costs, because it did require additional bodies additional look through you see the difficulty that they had in in publishing the single audit this year, because this was the first year that the major our programs was included in that single audit. They recognize though, that once we're over the hump once we will over the learning curve, you'll see that cost to go down. We expect to put that contract out for bid at the beginning of January 2025. In preparation for the contract ending in 2026.
You know, and again, before you answer secours, I appreciate that. But I know you have mentioned again I'm coming and talking about a reduced cost again. And so to that point, I know there won't be any additional ARPA funding coming and so things will be a little bit different. So that's the only reason I asked that question relative to that. And then the second question for the risk managers, which I think is amazing for the expanded role, by the way.
Thank you so part of our goal in optimum staffing is to 25. My plan is to implement a team of auditors that will look at the enterprise risk and begin to perform audits at a different level. We will be looking at the risk across the enterprise as it relates to the city's five strategic goals and to do a different type of auditing. So Enterprise Risk Management auditing is more agile. Again, it looks at the emerging issues that may impact the city. We hope to have an expanded role with risk management and how the city operates now and conduct our risk management activities. So I'm looking forward to that and that will come as you approve our additional FTE request.
brings me to my next thing I was gonna say Madam President, I would like to make a motion to put the auditor general's FTE ease into Executive Session. All right,
is it just the FET FTE or also the contractual portion of
TAs and contractual services as well? Perfect.
So you're welcome. All right, any objections? Hearing then that will be added to our executive session. Thank you, Madam President potentate.
Thank you, Madam President. And thank you, moderator Auditor General and Deputy Krejci well to entertain as well. Great job and what you do we always look forward to seeing the audits and seeing how we can adjust city government as it relates to what your findings provide, and also provide us with guidance as well. I don't have any questions, but when we talked about that the the contractual funding was that the 200,000 supplemental that was going to add that to the executive session. Okay. There it is. Thank you. No further questions. Thank you so much for the work you all do.
Thank you pro tem member Yeah.
No, I don't want that smoke. I
just want to say I appreciate you and all the work that you guys are doing and keep up the good work and other than I have no questions. Thank you.
Thank you, member Yang. Councilmember Santiago Ramiro.
Thank you, Madam President. Good morning, everyone. My questions were asked already really wanted to focus on the office budget, which I believe a number of us have been working with you on trying to make sure that we got that through. So really grateful for the team here working together with you to make sure that you get what you need. And the other question that I had was also about the FTE and meeting your 25 requests, and what there'll be utilized for which you kind of went into that already. But that is a space if you want to share more of the importance. Essentially what is is is the asset that it'll bring by hiring more staff to your team. Specifically
through the chair specifically, we've asked him we're asking for three auditor threes. Our auditor threes are don't want them to be offended are the workhorses. This is where you have a seasoned auditor that is able to conduct an audit with a little supervision but they their season. They know the standards, they know the programs. And so that's what we're looking for to beef up that level of activity. Thank
you. i Those are truly the only questions and just the comments. To hear you talk about your hug that you have in your in your office. We have one as well. One of my staff members Joelle Reyes clan went through our sigma green belts and has been looking at ways to simplify and better are processes within our office. So we have a hub where all our documents are easily accessible, where everyone knows where everything is out so that we can just get right to work. So happy to hear that you're doing that. I believe a lot of us should be doing that work as well and we'll be sharing more about that with the rest of council so that we can all just do best practices. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember waters.
Thank you, Madam President. So good morning. I'm just I know that we submitted some questions and so thank you for that. So how does the agency ensure independence and objectivity in the audit process, particularly when audits may involve sensitive or high profile matters?
The Chair Thank you for that question. As Mark mentioned, out the charter, it guarantees our structural independence. And that that means we report to this body, the budget finance audit committee, we do not report to the administration. And so the the other thing is we are follow our standards, and our standards are are very detailed and require ethical and conduct it requires making sure we have the appropriate levels of education making sure we adhere to all the confidentiality statements, not just in our work, but in our reporting. And by Mark and I being CPAs. We also held to make sure that we maintain the standards for CPAs. Again, when you talk about ethics and integrity in the work that we do because we're not going to we don't want to lose our licenses. So those things work together to to make sure and assure you and provide this body with some assurance and with the to the public, that the work that we do is free from it can't be objective. It's free from interference. And so we work under the body of their standards, and that gives us that independence and that objectivity, and you should see that in the work. That we do.
Just another quick question, you know, you have budget constraints and that kind of thing. So how do you just kind of prioritize things? How do you ensure that they are done in a timely manner? The audits, given budget certain budget constraints at any given time?
Through the Chair, thank you. First of all like to say I'm coming up on my one year anniversary in this position, and I've jokingly have said I used to look at Mark and say oh, he's not doing anymore. I thought he wasn't doing any work. But I found out differently, different level different responsibilities in terms of budgeting, the work. Again, our standards help us with that. As we plan our audit. We have to look at the resources available for those audits. We are required to make sure that the folks that are assigned to the audits have the requisite skills to perform those audits. But that being said our major challenges as Kevin presented are outside of the audits. This is the first time in my career and I've been with the city over the 15 years that we've felt so many challenges about our authority to access systems to access records. It's kind of unusual to the extent that Corporation Counsel has had to step in and advise certain functions and oddities it yes to charter says we have access to all financial systems or HR records. So those things causes us delays out of our control. We try our best to educate the oddity that you know we want to get in and get out of your life as quickly as possible. So but it's dependent upon the cooperation and I don't want to say they're not cooperating but there is a lack of cooperation if documents are not provided to us timely if if directors aren't responding to our requests for meetings, that type of thing, or if there's unusual delays to our request for access. So it's a it's a balancing act. My goal though, is to have a seasoned staff that we can get in and perform my audit and report our recommendations or action plans timely so that they're meaningful and my favorite two words are evaluated to the city, to the departments to the public, and to this honorable body. Thank you. Alrighty.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you member waters. Councilmember
Gunson?
Thank you, Madam President, and good morning. certainly do appreciate all of the work that you all do and the information that you provide to us through your audits. It's very insightful, extremely helpful. And I'd love to talk about I believe it was pre bankruptcy, that the staffing levels that you are aspiring to give back to the 25 auditors. So can you talk about how things were back then? Were you able to audit every department within the city on an annual basis?
Let Mike answer that.
Thank you, President. Our charter, our previous charter did state that our office would audit every city permit every other year. But at that time, the government auditing standards did not require us to do performance audits. So we will do just financial audits of departments. I recommended to the 2012 charter commission, that we changed that to auditing on a risk basis, which is pretty much how any audit shop would determine what's audited, but I knew we couldn't do every department every other year especially now that we are we are required to do performance based audits. So we really look at the risk. And
through the chair. We recognize that the charter also requires it states that if you don't do an audit, then we are to perform a financial assessment of all of the, you know, departments that we have not audited, I think in a two year period. We're looking to do that and incorporate that in our enterprise risk management team in the area. Because this team it's envision that they'll be able to go in, do follow up audits quickly. Do self assessments. And so we could manage that requirement through the enterprise risk management team. We're not there yet. But that is my goal to get there and so that we fully comply with the requirements of the charter.
Okay, thank you. Um, so I really brought that up because there are a lot of questions surrounding the assessor's office, whether its staffing levels and their ability to provide efficient and accurate information to residents, but I don't believe in recent years that the assessor's office has been audited from a performance perspective. There were some concerns even floating throughout the community that the assessor's office was going to be outsourced, if you will, because of its staffing levels that there was going to be a law firm that was coming in to do all of the assessments for the city. And I'm not sure where people get that from, but I'm really interested in a review, if you will, of the assessor's office and would like to see that taken on. If that's something that I can request.
Through the Chair, Councilmember Johnson, we have we are conducting a forensic audit of the property tax assessments, which is an audit of the Office of assessors, I will send you and point you to the first report that was published, I think, in 2022. That looked at the activities of the office prior to the maps, appraisal, and if you recall that gave rise to or has given rise to the over assessments. It's mentioned in our report. We do have two reports that will be coming out this year that addresses the operations of the Office of the assessor's and so it will provide you with information and details specifically relative to your questions and your concerns and again, I'm working through that and hope to publish those before the end of the second quarter. Okay,
thank you. So I didn't realize the second and third report will include information that's more maybe tied connected to staffing levels. Absolutely. Okay. All right. Excellent. Glad to hear that. And the other question that I had is relative to the appeals process that you oversee. Do you are you aware of what where the funding comes from for the awards? Is this still potentially risk management?
Yes, but I just want to make a point on the floor, the property tax. The very first report does include findings and and recommendations related to it does speak to the staffing issues in the office of assessors as well in terms of our claims, I believe those dollars are paid from the risk management fund. But it's shown it's relatively small dollars, nothing in comparison to the many lawsuits that come before your committee.
Okay, thank you. Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you, member Johnson and Councilmember Benson.
Thank you. Thank you all for being here for this comprehensive report as well. And so for me looking at page Bravo 1550 Tac Three, looking at metrics in data. And so if you look at page eight of your report, we talk about the types of audits. If you look at 50 Bravo 50 Tac Three, you say under metrics, number of external audits completed per year, data two related to goal number two and Goal number two talks about the aquifer as well as ARPA audits. Can you just distinguish that when it comes because ARPA is going to be going away soon and so will we see to one audit annually and when it comes to external and then will that be allow for more audits when it comes to our internal or should we look for a another audit to replace that the ARPA money, but and maybe I'm just not tying this together? Can you help me here please?
I believe I don't have that in front of me. But I believe you're speaking to our metrics and goals in the actual budget. Don't have that in front of me. I you know, we have the one audit the export audit as a goal and that will not go away. I don't believe we set out separately arpel audits in this one. Or do we? Exactly. We have a goal to publish seven murders per year.
So if you look at page Bravo 50 tacked to under goals for teacher priorities related city outcomes under number two, it indicates complete an optimal number
of internal and external audits of ARPA funded initiatives. And that ties directly to 50 Tac Three, under number of external audit reports completed per year data to lead to goal number two, and that's where I'm getting that from mean if you look below that the number of audits started and completed. It says seven and that's related to the goal of just of completing an optimal number of performance audits, investigations and special projects. Then we look at your report you published three in 2023. I'm not mistaken in your report. You also have a total of eight audits underway right now. To clarify through the chair, the number of external audit reports completed per year that two includes the act for as well as the single audit report. Okay, so those are those stages for my audit, the single audit report how is that different from the act for the single audit report focuses on the compliance of our federally funded projects. So it includes your CDBG CDBG. Grant, the other ARPA funds, and that is produced by our external audits. It's a federal requirement, as opposed to the act for which is an audit of our financial statements. So two different works two different entities and two different activities. We counted those as two separate reports. Okay. Every artists have a report Correct? Yes, they are. Okay. And then in terms of the number of artists started and completed, that would include all of our internal audits, including our internal audits of our funds. Can you just differentiate for the public's edification? The difference between an internal audit and an external so we have, including myself has a better understanding of the difference between the two? Okay, if I can I would like to defer that to Kevin. Absolutely. So it's kind of mentioned in like we're talking about our types of audits, the external audits is where we do their financial statement review. So that's why we can track with plant Moran or external independent auditors. into more of the internal audits we get into the performance and operational as we talked about those complex go in there looking at their operations, looking at their processes, and going through but not all look at financial transactions, but we're not doing an actual audit of the General Ledger details and preparing a financial statement and that's where you get that differentiation between external and internal worlds we're planning grant comes in the required, you know, the city government requires that we come in, have an external audit on our financial position for the city. So the purpose of the external audit is to audit our financial statements and it's it's to report to the investment community and to Bill's really in the investment community and the public. Basically, it determines whether our financial statements as presented are free from material misstatement. And so when they conduct their audit, the level of materiality is much higher. For example, plant Moran may look at accounts payable, but the level of materiality may be a million of dollars because you're looking at $2 billion budget whereas if we were to look at the accounts payable function, or department or process, we're looking at the processes, the operational efficiencies of that department, so much broader in scope, much more detailed in scope, but both have their place. Both are required, as again by the charter, and a both speak to the effectiveness of city government. So it sounds like this is something that I was unaware of. That the Auditor General plays a huge role when it comes to our bond rating, as well. And how Wall Street looks at the city as a risk when it comes to investment quality. And so your report is playing directly into what Wall Street is going to think about the willingness for people to lend to the city of Detroit, the Ag for and through the chair the Ag for an external report. I will state that, you know the charter requires the both of those artists to take place under the authority of the Auditor General. There are some activities that doing an in house is mirrored effect I'm told in our history we used to perform the Office of the Auditor General used to perform both the external and the internal audits. And I think at some point in time when the investment community really wanted to have that audit done independently so you're assured it's independent. And so we that's why we outsource it or contract that through plant Moran. Do you support that still to this day? Oh, absolutely. That's for question. I apologize. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you, Becky. All right. Thanks for the rest of the writing. Thank you. All right. We are going to start we are a little bit over now and we have our next department here. So thank you for the presentation. Thank you looking forward to continue to work with you guys. Thank you for all the work thank you so much. Thank you guys. Thank you
Madam President.
Yes, ma'am. May have a clarification on what's going into executive session is the office renovations added to it because I can get possession?
Yes, ma'am. It was the office renovations. The professional service contract, the professional contractual services and then also the three additional FTE ask. Thank you, all three of those. Yes.
And those who are with us for our next budget hearing for Detroit Historical Society, please come forward.
Okay, Yvonne she has some packets for us to pass out.
Way behind you. Yep, she's right behind you.
All right, and good afternoon. Good morning steel. Sorry for this slight delay, but the floor is yours when you're ready to begin.
Sure. No problem. Thank you so much. It's great to see everyone today. We always appreciate the opportunity to let you know what we're doing and how we're doing. Again, I'm Ilana root president and CEO of the Detroit Historical Society and with me is our CFO Matt Gray now, and really appreciate to all of you who have visited our museums this this past year in particular thanks to Councilmember waters for her great service center board. She's been very engaged, which has been wonderful. At the Detroit Historical Society, we continue to just feel so privileged to be the keepers of our city and region stories and heritage it's been 103 years now since the Historical Society was founded and as the steward of Detroit's history, our work to share the city's past, present and future has never been more important as it is today. So as you know, we serve as Detroit storytellers, by welcoming visitors both locally and from around the world to our two amazing museums, the Detroit Historical Museum in Midtown and the Dawson Great Lakes museum on Belle Isle, and addition were responsible for the conservation and preservation of almost 300,000 artifacts that represent three centuries of our region's rich history, which are stored in the collections Resource Center at Historic Fort Wayne. In the past year, we have welcomed more than 85,000 visitors, including over 16,000 schoolchildren from around the region to learn about our shared past and to envision our future. We still believe that every pilgrimage to the city of Detroit, whether you're a lifelong Detroit, or you're a visitor to our city, should begin with a visit to the Detroit historical museum so that you have context for everything else that you'll experience here in our city. So we truly believe that Detroit starts here. I continue to be committed to our evolution to making sure that our exhibitions and programs are reflective of all of the people and cultures that make up our city in our region. We need to tell the stories of all people who made Detroit what it is today and to do so in partnership with the community, engaging stakeholders at every step. And also every day. We're always collecting new artifacts so that 100 years from now, when people visit our museums, they'll know what was happening right now. And that's a critical part of our work. Today, I'm happy to report that our visitors ship is strong we had an amazing year, actually with 19 new exhibits in the museum's so if anyone tells you Oh, the Detroit Historical Museum or the Dawson Great Lakes museum Been there done that that's not true. There's always something new for you. In the past year, these exhibits and programs included things as varied as camp Detroit, which is a new camp that we have for kids who are from eight to 12 year old tribute to Mary Wilson and our motor city music exhibit are really popular Hudson's holidays. We also had a partnership with University of Michigan at the Dawson called microplastics. here there and everywhere. We've continued our updates to the story of Detroit founding in our origins life where the river bends exhibit and of course are really popular behind the scenes tours, which sell out every single time. We continue to prioritize the telling of all of Detroit stories in our museums and to making that important work even more accessible, which means that we're lifting local storytelling and seldom heard histories as part of our everyday work both inside and outside of the museum. Detroit's neighborhoods continue to receive special attention from our curators and historians. And you know, you're aware of our community gallery, our long running exhibition based community outreach initiative at the Detroit Historical Museum. That's the space on the second floor there where we tell diverse, inspiring and little known stories of historical educational and community based organizations that don't have anywhere else that their stories can be told. So it's a free partnership that we have with these organizations are usually quarterly. In the last year one of the most impactful and inspirational exhibits that we told and they're held in this space was the traveling exhibit called the soul of philanthropy, which was truly remarkable it was the country's most celebrated exploration of black philanthropy. And we pair that locally, with another exhibit called giving black the soul of philanthropy reframed. Philanthropy reframed, where we featured, engaging and authentic stories of the black experience as well as a portrait gallery of more than 80, Black Detroit based philanthropists who all came out and we're very proud to see their portraits and stories told in the museum. Currently in the community gallery, we're telling the story of Detroit's two Chinatown's you might not know that there were two over time and that's in partnership with the AAPI community and up next, in that space. We have a collaboration with the Jewish Historical Society. That's called in the neighborhood life on Hastings Street which tells the really early story of the black bottom area. In the coming months, we're unveiling new exhibitions, we're celebrating the centennial of the Kresge Foundation, we're very proud to be partnering with them on that. We're also going to be telling the stories of Detroit Diesel and Ziebart to iconic Detroit, founded companies. We're unveiling a new permanent exhibition about our rich sports history. You know, we don't really have a Sports Museum here in Detroit, so we're gonna have a designated area, it'll become a permanent exhibition that changes a lot in its content. That's going to be called city of champions. And we're also partnering with Wayne County to launch the first ever comprehensive online and in person at The Guardian building. exhibition about the history of the entire county, which is going to feature a series of exhibits over about two years that covers every single one of the 43 municipalities in Wayne County. So we're very excited about that. That's a huge undertaking. We're creating a fellowship around it. And working closely with with that exact Evans team on that. I also was proud to come back and share with you that in the past year, we did achieve our goal of being named the first officially certified Autism Center in the entire state of Michigan 100% of our staff have received in depth training from IBC CES, which is the International accrediting organization for that. And we're in the process really, the last step of this is creating sensory rooms in both of our museums, so that families that have that need will have a safe place that they can go when they're visiting us. And that's really, you know, part of our work to elevate our level of accessibility to the neurodiverse community and be a leader in this really important arena for our city and really the entire state. And the last thing I wanted to share with you and talk about a little bit as the success that we experienced with the hustle which a project that I introduced to you when we were here last year and there's a lot of information about that in your packets. I really wanted you to understand that the breadth of this I honestly think that this is the most important exhibition that we have launched since Detroit 67 and arguably maybe the most important thing we have ever done. So this was a two years long project that you know, our goal was to delve deep into Detroit's neighborhoods to tell inspiring stories of today's black entrepreneurs who are based in the city of Detroit. With a series of exhibits and public programs and educational offerings, and the response was overwhelming. As you may recall, the project included a crowdsource nominations process we asked the community to identify and nominate successful Detroit entrepreneurs. I know some of you nominated businesses, so thank you for doing that. We had hoped for a couple 100 nominations we received almost 800 And out of those. A community based group of volunteers helped us I was glad I did not need to pick they selected 34 entrepreneurs as honorees to have their stories told in the museum, which we did through a series of five exhibits. had free days for those openings. Over 65,000 people came and were able to hear those stories. We're also supporting hustle nominees and in ways that we didn't expect and you know, mostly by bringing them in as new vendors to the Historical Society. We're also helping them promote their businesses and, you know, through vendor fairs and press opportunities, but our nominees for the hustle have become the society's primary source for new vendors. In the past year alone, we've worked with over a dozen of them and spent over half a million dollars in their businesses just to keep the museums going. So that was a an unintended blessing for both them and us because they have been wonderful to work for them with. So in addition, the hustling gauge nominees in the public in educational programming and a resource summit I put the program from the resource summit for you it was very, very impressive. We had almost 1000 People come and experience that and it was really a great opportunity for them to hear, you know, particularly from the entrepreneurs who have been so successful, and the whole project culminated last month with the big party with a black tie. gala celebrating all of the nominees, honorees and sponsors. So we're we're excited to announce that we're going to be embarking on hustle two beginning in 2025. And we're looking forward to you know, also hope hoping to partner with you on a deeper level to introduce us to entrepreneurs in each of your districts who, who we should know.
So that's kind of my high level overview here moving into the financials, as those of you who have been around a while know that when I started I think this is my sixth time in front of you my initial plan was to achieve long term financial sustainability by you know, really including a focus on shoring up and enhancing all of our earned revenue streams. Also working to develop a more robust philanthropy program. Both of those efforts, were you know, certainly stunted with COVID. But we're definitely bouncing back.
But what has become crystal clear to us in the wake of the pandemic is that the Historical Society is still at risk. Without a significant financial game changer. We just cannot fundraise ourselves to sustainability.
So you're all also aware that we do we're still working on turning to the residents of our region to help us with a millage to protect our collective culture in partnership with our friends at the Charles right. We're still hopeful that this will come to our to fruition but it's important for for you as our city leaders to know that without significant additional support like that of a millage. Detroit's history museums could close. We've been underfunded for years we are running out of reserves. Like unlike some other museums in the region, we don't have a sizable endowment in 2018 the Historical Society had an appropriate level of $5 million in endowment and in 2024. We have barely over a million so the clock is ticking there. But, you know, as I sit here, I continue to be optimistic that a successful millage run will be in our future. It has been a super long and frustrating path to that and it's not for the faint of heart. We have been stopped over and over again along the way. We've been really fortunate that many of you and other local legislators including Speaker of dotate rep. Tyrone Carter and Senator Santana have been like so supportive and in this effort,
we're hoping that a vote will be called the enabling legislation this spring once things are kind of right sized in the house.
But in the meantime, you know, we also have had a lot of folks step up to assist us in securing another tranche of transitional funding. So when we're at, you know, Mackinaw and a couple of months, that's really what we're going to be talking about.
It's looking like a millage is not you know, we can't expect to be on the ballot until probably 2026 Which means that funding won't come until 27. And, you know, again, we're running out of runway as far as the budget goes
to the transitional funding, which you see in our budget has been absolutely critical to us staying afloat and not having to reduce the, you know, programming that we're providing to the community. So we haven't received the current year's grant from the state but the most recent allocation was 3.2 million, along with 4 million from the previous year has allowed us to begin to right size our staff. We are still probably, you know two thirds of the size that that we should be. We also were able to undergo a critical compensation study. We kept losing our qualified staff, to other museums around the country and frankly to you know, if quickened, took another staff member, you know, just to higher salaries. So, we were really happy to that our board support is undergoing that compensation study. So that we have now are ensuring that our staff are fairly paid and hopefully won't leave us for greater pay somewhere else.
A particular bright spot for us is the recent hiring just in the last month have a new vice president of education and outreach, his name is Rodney David Deal. You might know him from the community. He is also a historian and vexoologist, which is a flag expert.
Oh no. Amazing guy though. He's gonna make us even better. He's He's over 20 years dpscd As a principal, so we're really excited to have him on board there. So the state funding also is allowing us to begin a concerted effort to return our reserve fund to the appropriate levels of in that four to $5 million range, hopefully over the next few years. So now I'd like to ask Matt to walk through the financial slides with you you have a deck in your packets. Yeah.
Good morning, everybody. Again, I met Greenville. I'm the Chief Financial Officer for the society. I want to spend a few minutes to walk through our business plan for next year. The good news is that with a transitional funding this year, we're going to lay in pretty close to our original budget. We expect to receive that 3.2 million from the state that's really critical. But looking at other avenues of revenue that contributed revenue. Our philanthropy team has been very successful this year in raising funds through our foundation base and we expect to continue that next year. In addition, as Ilana mentioned, we are going to embark on a new program of the hustle two, which will mean that we'll have a chance to engage with some of our corporate partners, as we did in the first round and we're expecting to raise several $100,000 For this renewed initiative. Awkward a pinch contributed revenue. We're counting again on the very, very much needed million dollars and operational support that we received from the city over the last couple of years. And we hope that that will continue this next year. We expect to continue our trend in earned revenue. So we're really, really have made some progress in that especially as it comes to admissions and tour revenue, even collection fees that we get with renting out images or loaning images, creating pop up exhibits that are in libraries or in communities around the city and around Southeast Michigan. Those all generate fees for us. Our facility rental fees have bounced back. As you might remember last year we had taken a step back from facility rentals, but we've actually recently fill that position of facility rental manager and we're actively pursuing more facility rentals than we had in the last couple of years. There seems to be an appetite for the use of our space, and we put some bigger guardrails up in our space in terms of the use and the contracts. we signed. So that people are respecting the artifacts and the museum buildings themselves. All of this leads to continue trend of improved earned revenue. When I first started five years ago, the goal was to hit a million dollars in earned revenue and I didn't think that would ever be possible. But now I can see that happening over the next several years as we continue to build on the base. And as a lot of said visitors ship in this past year was really it's been just excellent. We've had expanded hours. We now are open Wednesday through Sunday, and we actually open Wednesday through Sunday in the summertime from May to early October at the Dawson as well. So that allows our residents of the city who of course can come in for free as members as residents of the city of Detroit and it really allows the community to have different experiences between the two museums, which all helps that financial picture in terms of earned revenue. And the operating expense side. You know, our biggest expenses are people and we have made a concerted effort over this last year to adjust your compensation and also to really return staffing levels that had been vacant since before COVID. So for instance, this last year we were able to hire a manager of public programs. That's a position that had been vacant since four years ago today when we shut down for COVID. And we've also added more mission focused and curatorial focused and collection focused positions. We are on a multi year program of capturing cataloging digitizing the historical patrimony of the city which resides in the CRC and digitizing everything from a 1963 Cougar Shelby platform. That's probably our most valuable car all the way down to, you know small miniature toys and things of that were made here in Detroit 100 years ago, we've actually added to our collection staff. Our coordinators are really moving the needle in terms of capturing all of these artifacts that belong to the city. So for instance, when I first started in 2019, we had about 21 terabytes of digitized catalog material. And we got to 22 terabytes last March. So it took about four years to go one terabyte, we've gone from 22 to 23 terabytes since last March till now so we're really picking up the pace by having these additional staff on board. And also when we capture things like that in our collection, we're also improving our accessibility so people are able to access you know, images of these items through our Encyclopedia of Detroit online, both for students and just for the general public and that accessibility is an important, important value in our museum. It's certainly a physical accessibility. It's an accessibility as it relates to our initiative with the IBC CES and now in accessibility as it relates to using the digital tools that are available to us so that everybody can can see what our artifacts are regardless of whether you're able to physically come and see us or if you're able to go online. Some of our other expenses that you're looking at. Concern things like it. So obviously, when you improve your capturing of data you need to improve your infrastructure with your IT, backups and all that that's involved with that. One thing that I did want to comment on in terms of the expenses too is that with the addition of Mr. Dill to our team, we expect more have a more robust program in terms of outreach and education. And that's where you're seeing an increase in that expense as it relates to previous years. The curatorial and collection team, again with the inventory project, they're going to be spending some more money as well. And then our exhibit and design team. Any of you have met our chief exhibition officer Tracy Irwin, she is very, very efficient and knows how to put our world class exhibits with a mind towards a budget but she's going to need some more resources. With the programs that we have ahead this next year. And that's where you're seeing an increase in that line item as well.
In terms of capital funding, this is really where we need your help. We know that we are in line to receive $1.2 million in ARPA funding. And with the recent finalizing of MOU we now know that that is possible. We've identified two big ticket items for that capital expense. One concerns are 1951 windows in the Detroit Historical Museum. So that's a 70 plus year old building. Those windows are of mid century modern style. This isn't a wall side window replacement. This is a full on historical replacement. That's going to be a big ticket item. But we're able to do that, thanks to the ARPA funding were receiving from the city.
The second big ticket item is to get a generator out of the Dawson great lake Museum of our two museums. The Dawson is the one that has a less reliable electrical service, as do so many of the other places on Belle Isle. We know that by getting a generator in place, we're going to provide for the safety of our visitors. We have a lot of events of the Dawson and then pat in past years we've actually lost revenue from events because we weren't able to execute on that because we don't have power in the building. So that generator will really give us some stability, not only in terms of electoral service, but also making sure that the environment at the Dawson for the artifacts is is the best environment it can be.
In addition to that 1.2 million we're asking the Council today to consider a million dollars in capital funding. In addition to that, we were given a million dollars this year, but we weren't able to spend it all because of the MOU. We're only going to be able to spend about $770,000 that but we're looking to spend another million dollars this next year
and we really break that down into two two types of funding. We've got some permanent exhibit upgrades at both museums. And then we have some building enhancements. So a building enhancement
of that historical museum for instance would include getting that safe room that a lot of referred to so that when our visitors come and our neurodiverse visitors come that we have a safe haven for them within the building itself and at the Dawson just because of our economic circumstances. We've really
put the Dawson of the site in terms of enhancements where we really want to get a couple of key things done the maritime library there, the offices, the MS. Pepsi pavilion, and some other enhancements to the building itself. That's a building that's, you know, a kid compared to the historical museum built in 1960. So it doesn't have that it's only 60 centimeters a little bit that is what we're looking for in terms of capital funding. I've provided for you some comparatives over the last several years, just so you can see what the impact of COVID has been, what the impact the positive impact of transitional funding, and certainly the positive impact over the last several years of receiving support from the city at the integrator level we used to receive half a million dollars that we started receiving a million dollars several years ago. That's made all the difference in the world. With this we're able to continue to build on a staff. We look at expanding our full time equivalents this next year with two positions. One position as a project manager or a fellowship that relates to the Wayne County project. And we at long last want to place a maritime curator on site at the Dawson we the city has a fantastic collection of maritime history. And we want to supplement that with a maritime curator somebody that we really needed for many, many years now.
In addition to those two full time equivalent staffing additions, we're looking at supplementing our part time staff with interns. We've had great success with giving students an opportunity and high school students as well and opportunity to work at the museum. And one of the things that I'm excited about is you know, after 40 plus years, I'm looking at the tail end of my career over the next couple of years and I'm really looking to see who's going to be the next person that's interested in working in the nonprofit or working in museum. And so it's exciting for me to see these 20 Somethings, use our internships as a way to get their feet wet. They're they're just a remarkable group of people that provide just new vision and new talent and new energy. Especially so with that. Thank you Yep.
Well, so thank you. Thanks for your continued support. Thank you, thanks for your continued support, you know, continues to be an existential time so we appreciate everything that you are continuing to do to get us across the finish line or the start millage. You know, as I said, I continue to be optimistic, but we're we remain so proud to be the stewards of your museum and and your history. And we're happy to take any questions.
All right, thank you. We appreciate the work that you all do as well and thank you for that presentation. One of my questions was around the millage and you pretty much addressed the timeline and you say 2026 is the earliest that we could foresee I
mean, 25 is possible. But you know when we all think about not every municipality has, you know anything on the ballot in an odd year. And so that just seems kind of insurmountable logistically of how we would do that. So 26 seems the most likely
in roughly how much would be generated for the museum. Well,
we've we've done a lot of financial modeling, which was required and I think really beneficial through our work with the county execs offices, and so we're looking now at point two mils the original legislation would have allowed up to point four. So for us that would be $10 million a year with a 6040 split between us and the right it would change everything forever. Yeah. So I'm you know, again, I remain optimistic. We have done some recent polling, which continues to help us continue to feel optimistic. Okay.
All right. And then and I know my Robbins has been working on it a lot. So he has economic we had the pins protect our culture. So we I'm sure we all support the work to get that millage pass. I was just looking at the budget. So for 2025 I do not see the state of Michigan transitional funding there. So is there a gap there and I can't count on
it. You know, so we're not the because the commitment was made this fiscal year. It's booked all in the year that the commitment was made.
So how would that impact the operations? What was it allocated for it? Was it day to day
to things we would rely on our reserves that we have been able to keep in place and we would hold off on on staffing, you know, that's really the start increasing as far as increasing and, and, frankly, if, if needed, we would leave positions open, open positions open. So is
there anything we can do to support the 3.2? Is that just being taken up in the in the legislature? Yeah, we're
all of our paperwork in I mean, it's already been approved. So it's just it's in Leo. And so we just, you know, finished our paperwork and our we fully anticipate that will receive that. I mean, so now then is, you know, achieving another amount hopefully. So yeah, our lobbying team is working on that. And, you know, again, we're really fortunate to have, you know, Speaker Tate and Rob Carter and Senator Santana, who are really being very vocal for us about that with the state. So that would, you know, kind of cover the the next round of that to get us across the finish line. Right. All right. Thank
you. Thank you. Again, for all the work that you guys do. Councilmember? Yes,
guys want to take off my council had an ad put on my board hat real quick, just to add on to what was being said about the support for the transitional funding. And so we are working closely with both counties weighing in Oakland to receive verbal support for transitional funding, which will be for fiscal year 25, as well as 26 to get both institutions across the finish line. So while it can't be both now, the conversations are being had about having those county executive support in Lansing to ensure that both institutions receive that transitional funding. Continuing until we get to the millage vote hopefully we will be in 2016 to make sure that's known and that the executives are helping as well. They are
Thanks for clarifying. All right, thank
you. You were actually makes them or Benson for questions.
Did you want to go? Sure. Yes. Number one,
thank you all for being here. And thank you to my colleagues for continuing to support our cultural institutions, which is so critical. And so it was briefly discussed described earlier by the President. So I'm looking at the proposed budget and I see a total capital expense deficit as well as an operating reserve balance that zeroes out this fiscal year, which is very, very concerning to me, and I hope that others who least from my assessment shows that when you talk about the runway quickly, coming short, that there is a threat that we would see another cultural institution. go dark. In our cultural center, ie the Historical Museum is something I do not want to see and something we've seen in the past with the Science Center. And so which is why the transitional funding is so critical and why a sustainable revenue source, ie a millage is so critical as well, but looking at what we can do here at the city interested in seeing how an increase in your capital, a capital support could help extend that runway and I know what you're looking for operational support, but just thinking about one time expenses around capital, supporting I'm looking at $2.2 billion here, I got to distinguish probably a significant amount of other items that could be funded to help. I'm looking we haven't used the word interest at the historic Museum, and probably decades since it's looking at what else can be done from the city side on the capital side to the support.
We have. So we've mapped out in cooperation with the city staff mapped out a rolling five year capital strategy budget and we know that beyond this year, we have at least a million and a half dollars in must do capital spending over the next three fiscal cycles. So between all three buildings, we're really challenged most of all by the collection Resource Center. That's a world war two era building and even meeting with city staff. It's you know, we've put a new roof on it. We've addressed the humidity controls we've This is thanks to the support we received from the city for capital spending. We've been able to keep that building and the artifacts inside it intact, but long term we're not really sure if that's the best use of the space or the money and, you know, we're starting to have early discussions about finding a building, you know, in in the city that would be better suited towards 300,000 artifacts and climate control and a building that we better suited to allow visitors to come so right now we do do a tour of the CRC once or twice a year. But the building really isn't conducive for people to see it. Although I encourage you all to come and see it and we'd be happy to set up a tour. It's really extraordinary at any given time. We're only showing about 8% of the collection. Between the two museums. So that 92% of of history that is behind closed doors. And if we were to go beyond the million and a half dollars I'm gonna do over the next three years. That's really where a big chunk of that money would go is to get that collection in a more secure building and in better situation. And that's that's a $10 million project.
Okay, and I know that we add member waters is our council board member to destroy society. So I'm hoping that she will make the motion to get some additional capex dollars in there. I'm gonna support that. But also just want to say and I also concur and encourage my colleagues they haven't been to the to the archives to go see the archives and see what we have in the holdings there. But also as a way just to keep you public facing people can't make it to Dawson or they can't make it to the short society. You've got 1000s of visitors who come through Kmart on a regular basis. Why not display some of those items here that can be displayed in a safe manner to keep the Historical Society winning center. Let people understand that this these are our assets we own these. In addition, why not have some of these on loan on the 13th floor in our offices if you go to Washington DC, at their civic center to the council persons they have the museum they have their own portfolio art and artifacts in their offices and those are a a day turn over on a regular basis. And that just helps keep running center the need to support our cultural institution so strongly suggest that we look at how we can bring some artifacts here to the 13th floor and throughout the museum so that people understand and know what we own what our history means, and why it's important to support our cultural institutions financially.
Yeah, I love that idea. It's one of our favorite ways to get our artifacts out there and you know, help the public understand what we do is to have it in other locations. We have an installation at the book right now you know when new places are opening, we look for opportunities to partner. That's great. We can start with your office. So
I'm hoping to get the Edmund Fitzgerald anchor and I've had that conversation. Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember waters.
Thank you, Madam President. And so I'm very thankful to my colleague right next door for laying everything out. And so with that, I'll just ask that we put the million dollars for capital improvement in Executive Session. That's my motion. All right.
motion has been made and you did submit a list of how that will be utilized because okay, I was making sure okay. Hearing no objections that will be added to our Executive Session. All right. Thank you. Remember waters member, potentate.
Thank you, Madam President. I don't have many questions to kind of hit on right off the top, which is great. You're doing a tremendous job. Just really quickly. It's been now 10 years since the state has taken over responsibility of operating bailout. And that's where Dawson Museum is. So talk to us about what that transition has looked like for you whether good, bad, indifferent, but just outlined some of what those changes have been anecdotally
I think it's been great. I mean, that the islands never looked better. So you know, that was not always the case. And you know, they they provide a great presence for us as far as safety and all of that goes. I will say our biggest challenge is the number of people that come out in the summertime so you know, the Dawson's really popular for rentals for weddings and such and, you know, we've had situations where wedding guests haven't been able to get on the island because they closed it off because they hit their max capacity. So and that should be our biggest problem, right is that so many people love Belisle that, that it's so crowded. We recently instated for the first time ever a small $5 admission fee to the Dawson we use the initial few months of that specifically to when we had our model ship collection, we have the largest model ship collection in the world and that was on display for about I don't know a year or so. And so we get $5 per and that was designated towards the restoration of our model ship collection that was really popular. No one batted an eye. So we continue to charge that $5 admission. But I think I don't know that we've had any negative effect I think you know, prior to that there was concern about safety that you know, had more issues with the building and now with the constant police presence out there. It's been really good for us. So
yeah, the one thing I wanted to remind everybody to is like the historical museum residents of the city can enter the Dossin for free, they get free admission.
The other thing I wanted to comment on is that the Dawson is unique in that we have artifacts outside outdoor artifacts such as councilmember Benson's desire to have Edmund Fitzgerald anchor, but we have lots of artifacts outside and even the Miss Petzi pavilion can be viewed, you know from outdoors and you really get a good chance to look at what a mid century hydroplane boat looks like. And so having that outdoor space now and the island being in such good shape, even on the days where I open it gives the visitors a chance to park walk around. We're right on the river. There's lots of viewing areas and so that's been an add enhancement for us
in any challenges or issues with stormwater management mitigation. Know
that no we That's a great question. We actually are looking very seriously at the next time we redo our parking lot and looking at better ways to do it. We had resurface the parking lot a few years ago, but we know that the next generation of stormwater management even setting out a parking lot in the heart space. We know that there's better technology out there and that is something that we need to look at. So
So you think about approximately when looking at that because a parking lot doesn't look horrible. It's actually a nice looking parking lot if I recall. Yeah, but it's just not permeable. Right.
And it was just resurfaced a few years ago. So yeah, I would say that the useful life right now is five to seven years before we look at it again.
Thank you so much. Thank you again. Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you, Tim. Member Young.
Thank you, Madam President. Always good to see you guys. Always a pleasure. To know great things are happening. I just want to ask you really quickly. As you know, we are the home of the UAW and the Teamsters and the Battle of the overpass. Has there been a discussion about a deep dive into our city's history when it comes to labor? I know you have the answers. I know you have the car. That's there. Really cool. That's there and the museum but has there been like a deep dive into labor into unions and how that could play into contemporary society? Because unions are really making a comeback. Particularly you know, from the pills pandemic on. Has there been a real deep dive into that history, in terms of what the city of Detroit has conjured has contributed? I mean, it you can say things from a basic standpoint that the unions brought you to collective bargaining in the weekend. But you could also say that just in terms of well, this, unions have done to shape Detroit in the country. Has there been any deep dives into that at all?
No. think there have been and I think that's a great idea that this is how new ideas surface right?
Does this budget suffice? You tried to do that? I don't want to ask you do start. They leave you hanging you've already
booked for are we booked probably you know, 18 to 24 months out. So but for future I think that's a really interesting idea. I mean, Detroit certainly has a really relevant role. That's really what we look at, right? So what was our role in for the nation? What where did we show leadership as far as something goes? So I think that that's a great opportunity. We do somewhat tell the story in the Detroit 67 exhibition. But, but that's just a small piece of it. We haven't, to my knowledge, had anything focused on labor and I think that that's a great idea. So we've noted it, and we'll keep you posted.
Excellent. I appreciate that. And then secondly, is my final question. Um, we're in a real kind of tenuous time in this country where I have seen EV here. A lot of sort of, and people are hurting. So it's kind of you have to attribute it to the pain that people are in because you know, hurting people hurt people sometimes. But I've seen some things hurt some things involving other cultures, other you know, in terms of the demonization and the dehumanization, whether it be in the Latino community or Asian community has there been there is now more of a need for us to understand the contributions they have made, not just to the country, but also to see Detroit's whether it's Sixto Rodriguez or even not on this trip, but I know Cesar Chavez in terms of labor on a national and global scale. Has there been any discussion about that contribution in terms of what they made to labor or what they made Detroit in total, in terms of from our Latino community in terms of from our Asian community? I know we have a real strong Hmong population here in the city of Detroit because I know you talked earlier about Chinatown and to China. And I found that to be fascinating and incredible. And kudos to you. I just want to know how we really emphasize that because I think we can really kind of start to understand each other, we know each other's history and contribution.
I agree. Well, we talked about it all the time. So the challenge is capacity and space. And that so as the keeper of Detroit stories, it's all the stories and so we're not so like the right isn't the black Museum and we're the white museum right? Why don't you tell everybody stories in its there's so many communities. So right now, you know, you could walk through and there's you know, kind of a smattering of stories throughout the challenge is creating spaces and times for, you know, particular community to really have center stage to have their story told like we're doing with Chinatown's right now. And so, we certainly have in the past we had southwest Detroit was featured. We had Eldon Duran come and paint a mural live in the museum and you know, have done some you know, in in the past, we are as we're planning especially for that community gallery space, we're always looking ahead and to say whose story Haven't we told for a while or maybe even ever? And so, you know, but we look to the community, to our partners to our trustees, who are members of the community and our committees to bring those stories to us. So it's always top of mind and it's frustrating because we you know, each I think each ethnicity deserves to have its own museum, but they don't. So it's upon us to find ways to tell those stories even though they may be a temporary exhibit, then live on online as part of our archives and the online collection. So yeah, I'm
gonna be doing I'm gonna be done after this. Are you doing anything involving the Israeli Palestinian conflict?
We're not. So
to do that, and I just think that it's vital one because you know, we have the largest you don't have Arab population in right outside of the Middle East here. And also just because of what's going on with Israeli Hamas conflict, I think it's important for us just to know, the history and I'm not just saying that for people as I was saying it for myself as well, because I'm learning more and more as I have to go on and deal with this. And so I just want to make sure for my own p's and q's. Sound like I know what I'm talking about. Sure. Is there any sort of real exhibits at all just for people to kind of understand that how we got here what the history is.
We haven't done that. I mean, certainly is, you know, we're telling one story of the Jewish community coming up here and we're very close with the National Arab American museum. So Deanna and I talk a lot about you know, what sorts of exhibits and the ways that we can partner you know, it's challenging for museums, we are intended to be neutral spaces, right. And that's, it's a slippery slope and all that it does it, it doesn't mean that we shy away from difficult stories. So that, you know, I think one of the most important things we can be doing right now is collecting the stories of what's happening right now with this conflict and how it's affecting our city and the residents of our city and region. And, you know, it gives me something to think about. We don't have plans right now, though.
Thank you. I appreciate you and all the great work that you're doing. And I just wanted to say I'm also been there for the French collaborations. Yeah. The Dawson museum. So thank you. Thank
you, member Yeah, Member Santiago Romero.
Thank you, Madam President. Thank you to my colleague member Yan the questions that he asked her very much in line with the questions that I have. So beginning with the work that you're doing in documenting and showcasing our historical Chinatown's. Do you partner with our city's historical designation board? Learn about what the city is trying to do?
Because right now currently, they are looking to designate the Cass Corridor area as historical Chinatown. We have organizations, nonprofits, local leaders from the Chinese Asian American community that is looking to do more in the city. What is your partnership look like with our historical designation division here?
Sure our our curatorial team you know are connected there and involved I'm not myself so I can't like particularly speak to that, you know, certainly am aware though, and a lot of times it you know, I would say we don't have a formal relationship there, though. And maybe that's something that we should cement as opposed to being you know, we're called upon right to provide input to participate in meetings and conversations and things like that. So
through the Chair, I agree, a more formal relationship, I think would be really beneficial. There seems to be an opportunity here, because a lot of us care about the city's history and making sure that it's been documented and shared. To remember Young's point, I agree the need to showcase the history of really immigration from all over world. Growing up in southwest Detroit on ternal McGraw. I had someone from every continent on my blog, could hear every music, smell the food, it was beautiful. And as he just mentioned, unfortunately, our recent politics is really dividing us. Have you ever partnered with local nonprofits organizations to do smaller traveling exhibits? We don't have a Mexican or Hispanic American museum here. When I go to Chicago, I go every single year, you know, to just to go see that Museum and I think these things matter. Have those discussions happen? What does that look like? And what would the possibility look like? I am sure Mexican town CDC, who's doing a lot to documents, Hispanic musicians here that are sort of a lot of the work in the City of Detroit's so there just seems to be opportunity for us to be talking together sort of working in silos, but or has that happened or what can that look like? That looks like? Well, for
now, I think you know, we when we think about showcasing the different communities in the community gallery, once those exhibits exist, then they exist forever. So oftentimes, we'll be able to have that go back to the community, you know, that we partnered with, and I have to have my head. I'm not sure what happened with ourselves was Detroit exhibit. I mean, certainly, it's all online. But this is one of the things that I dream about with a millage is that part of our commitment to the counties is to not only set aside a portion of the income from a millage to partner with local history organizations, and it doesn't mean they have to have a building, right? It could just be a historical society or like you know, genealogy society or something, you know, who is it in a community that is capturing the history? So there'll be some financial support that but also once our staff is expanded, and we have the capacity to our team is so excited about having I mean, I could see a team devoted, you know, solely to doing exactly what you're talking about, about, you know, partnering with the community and ensuring that that because we have the ability because of our size and our presence, online and in the museum's to be able to, you know, pull those together and prioritize and have you know, not just have to do things one at a time, but to be able to work with multiple groups at once. So right now, it's, you know, I think historically, it's been a capacity issue. But I'd love to start talking about it now because I'm optimistic and we could start there.
Yeah, through the Chair. I'm also optimistic and I believe in starting early, the process takes some time. And we should have a full strategic plan of how we documents the city's history, the way that you're doing with the county. I think it also would be really, if we do this rates, it could help generate tourism, you know, I just mentioned if I go to a city that I know has a good Museum, I will go there every time I visit the city. So really excited that you're interested in those conversations. And frankly, excited to talk to you after budget when we have some more time to start to plan that out. But because I think we should do it. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you all right. Thank
you. Council member member Johnson. Thank you, Madam
President. And good afternoon. I have to say that first and foremost, I think you all have selected an amazing gentleman and Rodney dill as your vice president of education and outreach. He is a district four resident I've known him for a number of years. I'm so glad you brought him on to your team because I was afraid he was going to leave the city. He is a wealth of knowledge. didn't know anything about him being a Vex apologist. So but that's that's not surprising to me. Tell me that surprising. You mentioned a number of different exhibits that you've hosted recently. That just sound amazing to me. And unfortunately I'm thinking to myself, why didn't I know about this and why did not go to the museum to see them? And so I'm really interested in knowing about your marketing plans. What do you do to share information with with a greater community about the various exhibits that you have, right?
I feel like I want to come up here. But I'm not I'm not close to the mic. Well, the best way to find out everything that we're doing is through social media, but I'd like to invite you to if so all of our members receive every Sunday, an email from me that says you know that tells a story about Detroit's history, and then tells you everything that's coming up. So it's called history from home. We started it during COVID and we will do it forever and get great feedback from it. So as residents of Detroit, you get no cost memberships unless you'd like to purchase one which is great too. And then you will know you know all the time for that. We do have a you know a robust like, like you would expect marketing plan social media. We have had more hits on TV. We were actually will be on tonight. We were we have a partnership. Oh today we're free all day for 313 day how appropriate that we're here. today. We have a partnership with Detroit vs. Everybody and they created special history based items that will be for sale in their store but they're just showing them now. So if you have time today when you're done here, come on over. But um, you know becoming a member is is the best way but, you know, TV, radio, social media, we don't have a huge budget. When I started in 2018. I inherited a budget and the marketing budget had been slashed by 65%. And so historically, we have not spent a lot we don't typically buy advertising and that sort of thing. So but we were building our marketing team up. We have one and a half people now doing marketing so but social is the best way and becoming a member is absolutely the best way to find out what's going on.
Got it. So when you talk about membership we know that Detroit is can access the museum free Have you had any membership drives because I think you will still get Detroit is that want to come out just to support the museum. Absolutely.
Well, you have our brand new hot off the presses in your black folders. I passed out our brand new membership brochure that that you know, tell us everything that you get as far as the membership goes and yes, we're in one right now. Okay.
All right. And then my last question is, Are you doing anything around the NFL Draft? I learned that there are a couple of young men who were drafted into the NFL that attended southeastern high school there was one gentleman who was actually homeless at the time. I did not Yes. I'm not sure if you are doing anything around sports, sports history with the city of Detroit and the NFL, but I think that is would be a great opportunity to engage. Yeah, you know, can I writers let me just say this traders. We know especially now that all of the teams play downtown. Metro Detroit, though has historically been huge sports. Yeah. But Natick and I think that could be a great opportunity to draw people to the museum.
No, absolutely. Well, so one of the new exhibitions that we're launching is called city of champions. So we will in you know, have a permanent space to tell Detroit sports history right now we have an exhibit about the pistons about their two championship years. So come on, and come down and see the app that's really fun, good photo apps there. But I would love to learn councilmember Johnson more about that gentleman. So could I send you an email if I didn't get that information from you so that we can follow up? We're doing some things. We're so busy right now with other exhibitions that we're launching, but we will have special football themed kind of pop ups in the museum. And we'll be doing a lot of social media around that, you know, to share the sports history out with you know, with people that during veteran town during that time.
Okay, thank you. I'm gonna make sure I sign up to become a member because I have not been in a long time. But thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, man. Come down to free 313 day today and do it in person.
All right, thank you, member Johnson member Dr. Hall.
Thank you, Madam President. And good afternoon. Now to you. I will be very brief. I don't really have that many questions. And then I know we have another committee convening at 1pm. So any questions I have, I'll submit to you. But what I will say is big fan visit the museum often with my children. And we are members. And my youngest daughter particularly just loves obviously to the streets of Detroit. We visit that whole community you know the whole museum community over there and so keep doing what what you're doing and mine is more so have a comment, particularly for the state level, anything and as I've already been supportive, though, anything else that we can do to get that message across the finish line? We're going to continue to do that. So again, thank you for your advocacy. Thank you for all you do, and making our museum Great. Thank you Madam President.
Thank you remember, they're half. All right. Thank you so much. That will conclude our hearing for the historical museum. We so appreciate you guys and keep up the great work, you know, thank you. Thank you.
