Good morning, everyone. We will now call to order the regular session of Tuesday, July the 29th and Madam Clerk, please call the roll council
member Scott Benson,
customer Fred Doha, the third council
member, Leticia Letitia Johnson, present
council member Gabriella Santiago Romero, present
council member Mary Walters,
Council Member Angela Whitfield Callaway,
Council Member Nicole manonta, second
council president pro tem James Tate
and Council President Mary Sheffield. President, we have a quorum. Professor, madam.
President, right? Thank you. Member Young did indicate he will be running a little bit behind this morning, and we will start off with our invocation. We have Chaplain Aaron who is with us. He has been with the Detroit Fire Department for 22 years and 90 years young. Amen, it's over one
more if we can help him turn his microphone on, Madam Clerk, on. Oh, there we go. Good
morning. Good morning. It's been my privilege to serve the Detroit Fire Department, actually, for 37 years. 37 I used to, I used to run the Salvation Army canteens back when we had many, many players. But it's my privilege now to serve the Detroit Fire Department the best in the country, beautiful God our Father, as we commence this meeting, pray that you will be with us Council as they deal with the problems and the plans of the city, keep everyone in safe, keep our all of our first responders, safe while they're protecting us. And be with the great city of Detroit and let us keep growing in Betterment all the time, in Jesus name, amen.
Amen. Thank you so much, chaplain for being here with us today, and feel free to hang out as long as you can. If you have to go, we do understand, but thank you again for the invocation. God bless you. The Journal of the session of Tuesday, July the 15th, will be approved. There being no reconsiderations or unfinished business. We will proceed to the internal operations standing committee
for the internal operations standing committee.
These six reports will be referred to the internal operations standing committee for the Planning and Economic Development standing committee,
six reports from various city departments.
These six reports will be referred to the Planning and Economic Development standing committee for the public health and safety standing committee,
three reports from various city departments. The three reports will be
referred to the public health and safety standing committee. We will now move to the voting action matters under other matters, there are no items. Madam President, under communications from the mayor and other governmental officials and
agencies, there are no items. Madam President,
all right, we're going to move to public comment.
All right, we will start with public comment. Everyone will have a minute and a half for public comment, starting with Mr. Cunningham. Okay?
Good morning. Everyone on this.
Good morning. 31344491143134449114313444914,
that number was made so you can remember it and on Facebook, two words, not enemy. Again on Facebook, not enemy. Click people and put in, not enemy. You can't help see it. Thanks for all the support. The cash apps so I can purchase bus tickets and water. Once a week, I give out over 100 bottles of frozen water and bus tickets to the people that need it. I think each and every council person that has assisted me is sure different than a long time ago, and I thank you for the kindness from all council members. This young man behind me has some complaints about DDOT bus, and I say, y'all don't buy I come with you. So he's here, and I just want to thank Councilman Benson for the chicken feet, and he surprised me by giving me bus tickets, because at one time, you know it is not your responsibility, but the people need help, and the system is still lackluster. Everyone under some Tiffany Gunter took over smart. Thank you for signing the card. Councilman Benson, anybody want to sign the card for Tiffany Gunter, who's taken over for smart, and she's She always has done a great job. She's continued. I go to the smart board meetings, the sounding board, DDOT, Mayor, City Council, but if you gotta do with some busses. Thank you so much. Council President, thank you.
John Jones, followed by Jacob Smith,
everybody doing well. My main concern is with the DDOT bus, the timing, because I'm double majoring in school and I work, and so I just recently lost the job because I've been late getting there because of the busses, and I recently missed a couple classes due to the busses not coming, or I might have to take an alternative route. So and then it's the they rudeness. It's the way they deal with the public. They don't know how to they don't have the proper communication skills. I understand. Sometimes you don't want to come to work. You have issues on the way home, and we have issues too, because we got to get up and be outside, either in the cold or the heat. Also attitudes clash, but there's no professionalism there. You know, there's no common courtesy for the community. I've seen them ride by people that's at the bus stop trying to catch the bus, and you just keep going. No. So I'm like, well, that's unfair to us. You are. We understand you already at work. We're trying to get to work, we're trying to get home, we're trying to get to school. There are places that people need to go, and there's just some people understand it's just here, just to be here. No, we can't, can't change that. They have nowhere to go. They stuck in a diaspora wherever they ask. But we it's unfair to us, you know. And I just That's all that's my main concern. If we can get some more, some better time and more busses put on some of these routes, then we'll be cool.
All right. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. I can tell you, we're definitely trying our hardest to ensure that we have more timely and efficient bus service here in Detroit. No one should have to wait that long into miss their their their work and or school because of the lateness of our busses. So continue to let us know and specific routes that you all have as well, and also, the training of our DDOT bus drivers is extremely important as well. So thank you for letting us know. And I know Mr. Cunningham will tell you that the monthly meetings, right, DDOT meets as well, when you get to talk directly with the director of DDOT as well. So that'll work. Okay, yes, ma'am. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Appreciate you.
All right, we will continue with Mr. Smith.
Morning, everybody. My name is Jacob Smith. I'm with the Detroit, Detroit alliance against racist and political repression. I'm here today to speak on the police body camera lease ordinance as submitted by members of the coalition for police transparency and accountability. The ordinance, I think, kind of highlights the importance of like what Detroiters deserve, which is accountability and transparency with regards to the police, particularly releasing police body cam footage anytime harm is caused in a reasonable time frame, and also not having exceptions carved out for the police union whenever police footage might make them look bad. Council member Calloway, I'm aware that you are going to be presenting something that has been considered and pushed through the law departments today or soon, but I look forward to seeing what you put out, just like the entire city council to know that you know the community in the city is depending on you, they're also watching you. So thank you. All
right. Thank you. Member Callaway, thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning everyone to you, young man, yes, it's in the process. It's on the corporation Council's desk as we speak. So it's making its way through the process, and we will have an ordinance. Yeah. Thank you.
All right. Thank you. Connor Roth,
Valerie Parker,
city councilors. My name is Connor Roth, and I'm speaking today to demand basic accountability from the Detroit Police Department. Too often after incidences of police violence, the DPD refuses to release body cam footage of the incident until months after the fact, effectively hiding the truth of their conduct from the people of the city. Recently, a proposed ordinance was drafted and submitted by members of the coalition for police transparency and accountability that for forced police body cam footage obtained during any incidents of police violence to be released within seven days of the incident. It is my understanding that the draft ordinance has been taken into consideration by city council, although in a heavily watered down form, the ordinance currently being considered allows for police body cam footage be held up for 90 days and has exemptions that would allow the police union to prevent the release of the footage they find problematic. This is unacceptable. I am demanding that the ordinance be considered by city council, unaltered, as submitted by CPTA and made into law as soon as possible. Thank you.
Okay, thank you as well.
Valerie Parker,
hello Council. My name is Valerie Parker. I'm precinct delegate in my in my area, and I run up the city council at large, and I'm coming before the council to follow complaints against Councilman Tate. He's in district one, where I am. The last time I complained about him, Brenda Jones said, and you'll see he has a problem with me. Being a Republican. District One has a problem under his watch, which allows somebody to get killed, you know. So I call the police, I don't get no answer that man, no deal. I've been called. Councilman Tate. Can't get him. We had to call Fred dura. The neighbors had to call Fred dura and ask for help. Now, somebody there didn't have to be like that, called Six precinct on my birthday last time they tell me six o'clock in the morning. And seriously, what they want them to do? Somebody gets shot next day, somebody the house gets a car gets shot up third day, proposing my house. Did a search engine on my house, campaign, campaigning. I got a missed phone call. It was the sergeant Brown. I called him back. He said, You want to be part of the investigation. I told him no. He asked me again. I told him no, I want to have people at my house. Tony. Pull these deep take them cars because I told him no. Now either I'm this, it's some discrimination going on because I'm Republican, or Y'all not bipartisan, or y'all don't care about the people I run for office, because some got to change, and that is not right. They too. Need to do better. I've been talking to you for a long time. You need to do better. I don't even see why you still there?
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Madam President, so Miss Parker, I appreciate you being a resident of district one I know, but the reality is, this has been an ongoing this has been a years long situation. She falls out of love. We fall in love. And right now, for whatever reason, we have an issue, my staff tried to address her, but she called She insulted my staff. Called them peons and all types of other names, and that's not acceptable. I've always said that we're willing to provide whatever assistance that you cannot abuse my team or myself as we try to assist. There's connections that we try to provide, and if you're not willing to take that assistance, I'm limited in what I can do. Thank you, Madam President,
thank you so much. Pro Tem uh, Miss Tony,
followed by wendellon Adolph,
hi. My name is Tony McElwain, president of ravendale community, Inc, which is a 50 block area on East side of Detroit, we are here today to ask city council to help us get the travelers in closed down. The reason being is because there is so much illegal activity that is causing the increase in crime in our community. We're looking at located at 1156, old Harper on the corner of Connor. There is drugs, there is prostitution, there is killings there, and you should have before you a copy of the report, and it even has in there the amount of illegal activities that is reported by the police officer that is coming from the travelers in we are in desperate need of getting that facility closed down, or either used for a more positive activities for the community, we are begging you to really, really look into this. For two years, we have been fighting to get that facility closed down. It is horrendous. It is causing an increase in crime in the ravendale community. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Ma'am council member Johnson,
thank you, Madam President, and I know that we have a number of other residents here from the ravendale community. First, I want to say thank you all so much for putting this together. This comprehensive report is is extremely appreciated. It is the first time that I'm seeing some of this, but I am aware of the issues and the concerns at the travel in I actually visited there last November, and after my visit, I did pull in corporation Council, as you know, Chief Betson is working on the issue as well and BC, so I have asked for them to provide an update, once you all have completed public comment, So they will be here to provide an update. And Madam President, I actually like to make a motion to line item this in
PHS, okay, Hearing no objections, we will add this to public health and safety as a line item to get a written response to the formal petition that you submitted today. Okay, okay. Thank you all so much.
Okay, we will continue now with
Yes, yes. Come on
morning Council. Good morning. I'm lynellen adolhoff, and I am a resident of District Four in ravendale. I've been there for 46 years, since October of 1979 I've seen things when they were at their best, and I'm living in a situation where it's at its worst, as our Councilwoman, Ms Johnson, has already indicated, Chief medicine has been with us in terms of what we've been facing. Ms Johnson has been with us, and I'm standing here before you right now, very disheartened with the prostitution. We can't even get our grandchildren to go outside and walk the streets. We have cars pulling up and dropping off individuals in front of our home. I actually follow a sex worker to the travel in as it is known now. It's under the parcel name of the Regency and formally known as the park crest, as I wanted to share with you. It's very crude for me to say this, but reality is what it is. No one wants to pick up condoms and bras and things of this nature in their front yard. You can't walk to the corner without someone soliciting someone else. This is not the life that my husband and my grandchildren and our community has signed up for. We need you all to help us. We're just north of 94 we have a channeler Park Library that's been barely existing. There's more to District Four than East English village and the Chandler Park community. We're on the other side, and we need your help, and I really know in my heart that you will do this
for us. Thank you so much for your time.
Hi. My name is Crystal Hinkle. I was a resident at the traveling and I'm here to speak on behalf of some of the residents there, the conditions we were forced to live in and whatnot, with the prostitution, the illegal drugs, the owners getting kickbacks from the prostitution, and the drug dealers, also the owners sleeping with the prostitutes in order to come into The building. It's absolutely horrendous, and just because some of us doesn't have money to afford a basic housing doesn't mean that we should go on health and not being able to live where we have decent utilities, decent place to live without bugs, without bed bugs. I've also talked to miss waters. I've talked to you, Miss Johnson and I have gotten no help. The only person who has helped me is the police chief, when he had moved us out after I had gotten threatened and had to have the him send officer Harper and Officer Wade over there. We still are on house. We're still in a hotel, still no results, and still to travel in, remains open to keep doing this and tearing down our community, allowing the drugs, allowing the kids in our community, to keep seeing this. When is enough going to be enough? These are our generations coming up. This is our next generation here in Detroit, and I love my city, and I will continue to fight for anybody who is in human trafficking and drug trafficking don't make sense. We need you guys. Thank you so much.
Council member Johnson,
thank you, Madam President. And I just want to share so we lean on the departments to come in and provide the support to our residents. So I'm glad that you were able to be moved to a hotel, and we'll follow up with the housing and revitalization department on the status of permanent housing. And again, you know, I'll just wait for the update from the police department from BC, and would also like to pull in the health department, because I believe this is a tremendous health challenge in our community. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President,
thank you Member. Member Johnson,
good morning everyone. Thank you for letting me speak. My name is Cynthia Adams. I'm one of the oldest neighbors on maiden Street, along with Wendy. I've been there 47 years, and have seen some unbelievable things. When I moved in, our neighborhood was very integrated, and then slowly but surely, I've seen it move from owners owning the house and living in the home to people buying a house and renting them out, and renters do things differently than owners do. I would have to say that probably not even half our block is empty houses, dilapidated houses, but I have to say, thank you for the land bank, because you've allowed people to come in, buy the house and renovate it. But not everyone is doing that. They're not cutting the grass and not keeping the streets cleaned, and that is one of our initiatives. Some of our neighbors, we cut the lawn next to us so that the lawn is cut because the person that owns that house is not cutting that lawn. So that's one of the issues. Another one that I want to speak on is the prostitution. I wasn't really aware of it until I started walking, doing my walk around my neighborhood for exercise, and when you walk from Harper up Park Drive And then on to made maintenance, thank you.
Rita Steele,
followed by morning Council. My name is Sarita Steele, and I've been in the ravendale area for over 40 years. I've seen what's going on at the travel in it's always been an issue. It started out as a small issue, and it's just accumulated to what it is. Now I look at the travel in more as a dealership rather than a hotel. They're dealing drugs, they're dealing prostitution, and it just goes on and on, and it's just getting worse. So we do have a wonderful district person, Letitia Johnson, and we also have good neighborhood police officers. They're on the spot, and they they have been over there to see what's going on, but I think at times, their hands are tied to they can only do so much, and they need more help from from the city. So thank you very much. Thank you.
So good morning. I am Lynette Bowers, Hello, Madam President. I don't know if you remember me, but I also worked on your campaign when you was okay come running for city council. So with that being said, I've been in the ravendale community for going on 18 years. It'll be 18 years in September, and I stay right around the corner from travelers in now, there's a gas station right across the street. Now, countless times I have took on my car to that gas station get some gas, and there's two or three police cars in the parking lot at the traveler's Inn, which means something ain't right when you call the police, something's going on that's been going on again and again, if not at least once a week, maybe twice a week. So I'm just here backing up my fellow labor nights, hoping that y'all will please, please, please listen to this. My mother is very, very passionate. She started this so many years ago, and I just really want to see it like it used to be. So I'm here on behalf of all my red waver nights, and hoping that y'all will please, please, please take us serious, because to us, this is our livelihood. This is not a joke. This is what what we passionate about. We've been walking up and down the streets, putting them flyers here and there and everywhere, so please just take us seriously. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you as well. Good
morning, Council, good morning. I'm sorry I have to read this. Okay, there are three issues currently that are currently threatening instability and future of my neighborhood and morale of my community. That's the commodification of single family residential housing, the commodification of single family residential housing and the city's inadequate response to ordinance violations, particularly illegal dumping and substandard rental maintenance and zoning for car lots in my district, the preamble to charter says that you guys are supposed to provide a sanitary a clean city for us, but it doesn't seem to be happening in my neighborhood. Let's be clear, residents in my neighborhood are deeply involved. We report issues, we clean up, we invest in our blocks, many of us, particularly our elders, because of our government, our government is not holding up its end of the bargain. Imagine living across the street from a house where someone is evicted or landlord dumps the contents of an entire home on the curb, no dumpster, no urgency from local government, just the slow Decay of a neighborhood and plain view. Would this be tolerated in Rosedale Park, Boston, Edison Palmer woods, Dearborn? No, it would not. Then. Why is it allowed in predominantly black, working class, low income, mixed income neighborhoods like mine. You all may never have to deal with this kind of blight, because when something affects your neighborhoods, you can choose you have authority to get rid of it, the Blight our elders, many of whom marched and built these communities, now have to watch in disappointment as our neighborhood goes downhill. Thank you so much.
If I familiar, because
I've been over in the community, had the opportunity to walk through the neighborhoods. That's council member Door House, district, district seven. And if we can know pro Tempe, member young and member door Hall are all present, we'll continue to work with you. And I know member door Hall as well to address some of your neighborhood issues that that you mentioned today. Council member,
thank you, Madam President, why I appreciate that? I know Miss Williams knows that our office works with her very closely. Miss Ladon Davis, obviously, to address that issue, and it's an ongoing issue. When we get it cleaned up over there, then they come right back, you know? So, so, so, as we talked about before, I just seen, yeah, my ice cream social just past Friday. Yeah, there is a need for stricter fines, because sometimes this looks like slaps on the wrist to a lot of these folks, and they continue to do that, and that is something that we can work on from this side of the table. But also have to be very sensitive of unintended consequences that may come to that fine for also seniors who don't have the ability to upgrade their homes and don't have the funding to do home repairs or maybe not mobile, they'll still be under that ordinance as well. But I'd love to talk to you again, as we do offline. You know, my team is always there for you and so, but we appreciate you. We're working on it. Thank you, Madam President, thank you.
Mr. Gardner, hi. I was here at the last Council meeting, and I just found out today that Miss Johnson is the council member for my district. So let me put it like this. I know y'all say, y'all want to help everybody. Okay, so I want to put that to the test. I'm trying to find out the information who bonds the city officials, like the prosecutors, the judges and the police, because what these people don't know is all the problems that with this traveling is from the corruption in the ninth precinct. Ask me how I know, because I got robbed and I got jumped by cops about a year and a half ago, I got the case dismissed, and just because the prosecutor lost, he decided to refile and under the law without new evidence. That's called prosecutor misconduct. So that means that nobody's following the law, but y'all want us to follow. Y'all say y'all want us to vote y'all in, then maybe y'all should start listening to these people. Chief medicine, your cops are crooked in the ninth precinct. You want to know how I know because I can bet my life on that's why y'all got problems. It's not because they can't get rid of it, they are part of the problem. And as we say, follow the money, because I'm gonna tell you, the owner at the traveling ain't the only one taking payoffs, and y'all can call me on that. You got cops out here who's using a badge to break the law? I spent two days in the hospital,
and y'all don't care, but y'all want us to go to
pick up your mind what y'all want to do. Thank you,
Member. Member Johnson, thank you, Madam President, So sir, if there's something that I can help you with directly. I know you mentioned, excuse me, excuse me. So can you I'll make sure that you receive my contact information so we can have a direct conversation.
Are you done? Yeah, okay. All right. Thank you so much. Okay. All right. Miss Betty Lyons, and also, public comment is cut off as well. If I, if I did not mention that already, Miss Lyons, Okay,
where is our over $600 million in stolen, overpaid property tax? Where is it? Dugan has it. Don't. Don't believe that lie is gone. It's not he has it? Look at Mexican town, millions of dollars, free money. Mexican town, they're finding lawyers for them, but yet you have to come up here every week and ask them the same thing that police department they they babysat over there in Mexico. Mexican town came here and answered to Romero. I think Romero is Dugan. He's He's her mentor, because whatever she wants she gets, and what we want we don't get. That's true hate when you hold money, property tax that's ours, and give it to the Arabs. You give them, you give it to the Chinese, and you definitely give it to the Mexicans. You know it? Know it free money. So I don't want to hear about i We don't have any money for us? No, it's our money, and that coalition needs to step up, because they are like some something behind the shade. They present nothing, and we are working on our own. So don't forget, Dugan is dirty and stays dirty. Don't vote for that devil. You
exactly
all right. Adrian,
yes, good morning. Hi, good morning. I'm here again because when your team, Ray Simpson came out over a week ago Friday, and the building inspector and Steve Riemer, the owner, threatened them to get off his property, people are still man just died in the unit last week. I'm getting sicker, and I'm finding out the commander is a part of not looking into the prostitution, the drug activity and more going on, covering up the owner, like officer told me, and I just went to the ER yesterday to get seen. They have no records of me going to the hospital about being getting sick from the building. And I've been there over 20 times. The police department is saying they have no records of me filing police reports. The whole community filed police reports against the building I live in, with prostitution and drug going on and more. So how in the heck is this going on? And people are still getting threatened, people getting sick in the building, rain in the building, coming in for years, a lady died in her unit last year that the guy's getting sick in their unit. Now, in that building, the owner is not allowing anyone in. He threatened them to leave. So this is very serious. What's going on in this building at 375 West Grand Boulevard, kidis McGinnis, the owner, everyone states he's no good and one of his building. Managers that used to collect the rent told him, I know all about your illegal activities. He ended up found dead. So this is serious. What's going on? Too many people dying off.
Thank you so much for coming down. And it sounds like Ray Simpson from my team went out with you to check out the building. We will get it over to DPD and also. Madam Clerk, if we can line item 375, West Grand Boulevard for public public health and safety committee as well, to have a written report on that building as well. And people need to get safe because he's threatening us. Thank you so much for coming down. Madam Clerk, do you all have that?
You all have it? Okay? Thank you, Miss Patty.
Good morning. I'm Patty fedowa. Nice to see all of you today in this honorable Council. Just wanted to say it's summer, and for transit, that means one thing, the summer slump happens every summer. Service is bad. I was hoping we weren't going to have to have go through all this, because we have a good director at DDOT. We have a larger budget. However, we have been underpaying the mechanics and drivers, and now our system is falling apart. You can do that for a while and get away with it. After a while, it catches up with you. I'm asking all of you to use the time during the recess to lean on the mayor's office to get contracts for the mechanics and for the drivers. There's no reason this can't get done now we are severely underpaying both groups of people, and this is why we have the mess we have right now. I am pleased. Please. I'm asking you to push on the mayor's office to see if we can get some real contracts. And the mayor always says, I'll match smart. Why don't we just match smart and move on? Never mind that smart is going to have some new contracts with raises coming up, they are bargaining. We need this to seriously get taken care of now. Now's the time, because right now we just don't have a system that's working well at all. It was moved getting a little better, and there were plans to make it better, and now we're backtracking. And even the proposed changes that were supposed to happen in September have been put off because there's no way they can put right now. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Miss Ann Goulet, followed by Lieutenant Mark young,
good morning members of city council. My name is Ann Goulet. I'm a licensed architect, designer and development specialist. I worked in property development, management, design, planning, construction, business and financial, operations and Regulatory Affairs all over the US for about 30 years before I moved here five years ago. Last week, I asked three important questions about City Council's duties and work for the people of Detroit, and I followed up twice afterwards with the Office of council president pro tem Tate to schedule a meeting to review City Council's answers. Also wanted to discuss four simple and low cost solutions to the city's ongoing problems with its current highly questionable approaches towards developing, managing, operating, maintaining, buying and selling of Detroit public and private property, focusing especially on the current attempted sale and destruction of 22 acres of community owned parkland in district one council president pro tem Tate. Will you meet with me about this?
With the rest of my speaking time, I can share a quick pass at my first research on my questions related to City Council's duties. To answer these types of questions, you must first read the city charter. The preamble states, Detroit city government is a service institution that recognizes its subordination to the people of Detroit. The people have the right to expect aggressive action by the city's officers and seeking to advance, conserve, maintain and protect the integrity of human, physical and natural resources of this city.
Thank you so much. Miss Goulet,
can I contact your office to schedule a meeting?
Yeah, we can reach out to myself or whomever up here to schedule. Yes, ma'am. Okay, okay. Thank you so much. Lieutenant Mark young, followed by Melissa love, followed by Miss
Williams. I'm Lieutenant Mark young. I love here. I live here, and I work here. I support changes to the parent responsibility. As far as a curfews.
It's eight o'clock. Do you know where your children are?
My line as a young person from my parents was the street lights. We're beyond that. The City of Detroit is doing so well, and all of a sudden, this uptick in this young foolishness and criminality is taking us backwards. If we do not stop it now, we will cascade into the abyss where we will have regret. This criminality must stop by these young folks. No one's trying to stunt their futures, nor is trying to stunt their growth. In fact, we want less law enforcement encounters with our young people. But something must be done. This is a great start. We are trying to do all we can. We need the support of Council. This is a great start. I live in the heart of the city. I can live anywhere I choose to. I choose to live here because this is my home, and it was good enough for my parents, then it's good enough for me. You don't realize it, but you may be saving some of these young people from death, from injury and from going to prison. If you enact this, no one's trying to punish anybody trying to save
them. Thank you.
Melissa, love, followed by Miss Williams, followed by Fidel L.
I warned y'all about these nasty motels as I stayed in a couple on eight in Greenfield. And yes, they are above bed bugs and roaches in there. Cheated votes is real. Cheated votes is real. I'm Melissa love. Never voted in November, 2020 or August, 2024, I am the evidence. I am the proof that there was a massive election fraud in 2020 and I will not be silenced and justice will be served. I will continue to come and call every day until this evil corruption be exposed and removed, no matter if I'm getting ignored, overlooked and even slandered, I will not give up. I will not be defeated. No matter what enemy come up against me, I will show up and apply heavy pressure. I know what's right and what's wrong, and I do know I didn't vote in person or absentee in those years, and somehow I'm on the vertebral so I'm here to collect my share off that pot y'all stealing for I'm I'm here to collect what's rightfully mine and to demand my name off the border roads. If you vote, they will change it to absentee. If you don't vote and you move around like me, they will vote for you. Stay alert. We need an update on election fraud and questions about what's happening to election fraud. Y'all robbing us with no gun anybody that's coming against voter fraud is a part of the problem and planning and getting paid. I will continue to fight for my right, the elderly, disabled and children. I will continue to show up boldly. Thank you. Thank you.
Williams, followed by Ramon Jackson, hello
through the chair. Um, I'm happy that the chief is here. I've been complaining about officers living in these facilities. And like the chief said before, this Chief, Chief white the green lights so on Seward and 112 Seward, they have green lights all up and down these streets where police officers stay at and you continue to lie to City Council, to madam president, saying, and so police officers living in shelters, you all are in cahoots with each other, because none of this can be going on if the mayor, city council in the chief of police before him, Chief white, let's get it clear so you take advantage of the housing system. Housing vouchers, not more they stand in the shelters, but after they move out, they receiving a 30% off for light, permanent housing. That's not acceptable. I am tired of these lies. So why I'm here? Madam President, ask this chief, because she say they see everything. I see everything too. When I'm on these busses, people wonder why these bus routes is changing to make sure these police officers are getting to work. Excuse me, are getting to work more easy for them to get back and forth, especially the Dexter. So the Dexter been over 45 years. They didn't change it now, because he gonna pass the third, the 10th, the eighth, the second and the sixth. So make me understand this, madam president, and why should we vote for people don't do their jobs correctly?
Alright? Thank you. Miss Williams,
and as I've stated several times, you know, we we've actually physically our team has went out to the locations that she's indicated that police officers were were sleeping in and that they were homeless. We've reached out to DPD. They've told us several times that they have not found anyone that is an officer that's staying in the shelter. But again, if you have a specific location, we will continue to investigate and see if that is something that we should address. So thank you for being here before I turn it back over. Council member waters wanted to respond,
all right, so, so thank you, Madam President. I wanted to respond to miss Hinkle before she left, because I know that back in May, when my staff started working with you, we referred you, and DHS has been working. I just got the response from the department that we referred you to. DHS has been supporting ms Hinkle by paying for hotel since May, as well as providing relocation case management services, we have also supported with many job fees and interview support. And so I wanted to put that out there. Since you said that nobody had been helping you, I wanted to make sure that we put that out there. We did refer you to a housing revitalization department, and they've been assisting you.
Thank you, Madam President,
okay, thank you. Member waters, all right. Fidel L,
oh Lord, here we go again, Detroit. Welcome to the most devilish, corrupt and more City Council in all America. Detroit. City council. Hey to the detective that just came up here. Why would you say giving the kids a ticket and they parents a ticket is the way to solve this? Give them a contract. I guarantee you they'll take they butt home and get up because they'll be making money when you guys walk in here, that's all you see. Is contracts. Non Detroiters working making good money. You got Hindus got our parking lots to this group over here on the east side. What do y'all expect for these ladies to do if you can't get a legit contract? Guess who will get you a contract? Crime will I mean, all this is good, common sense. But when you talking to devils, this is the this is what you gonna get you understand me, it makes absolutely no sense for y'all to ask for us to vote for y'all and y'all give our money out to majority of non majority black Detroiters. That makes no sense. Bring forth one black businessman, one black contract that got a billion dollar contract. Give me 50 black men that got a $50 million contract, or give me 10,000 black people that got a million dollar contract, and so all y'all that work for him, that's all up there. One day, y'all gonna wake up and say, I've been playing like a fool. Y'all next to the man that's next to the man that got millions of dollars, and y'all ready to work for y'all sounding praise the Lord. Won't God do it all the time,
Jackson followed by Mary leg
James Tate, you have made comments about disinformation pertaining to the election fraud. This morning, I sent bridge Detroit a letter telling them to apologize and recant. Now this what I'm challenging you to do. You say it's this information. I'm going to sue you, and then this what you do. You stand on it, on your own. Don't run to the law department. I'm going to sue you with my intellect. You challenge me and listen, listen to this people. Imma come back when he say he didn't say this to me, because that's what he's going to say in the lawsuit, or he's going to run to another man and say, defend what I'm saying here. So when that law so is your position that we saying this information? We was, we was voted on illegally. They registered us to vote the Secretary of State. It's your position that we spread this information. I'm asking you a question. No, it's a question. He don't got nothing to say. You just be running your mouth. Okay? Wow.
Think, all right,
Miss Mary lay, yes, good morning. My name is Mary leg. I reside in the gateway community in district five. My elderly neighbor stands behind parked cars waiting for traffic to pass on his daily walks. Children walking to the store feel a rush of air across their backs from the bus. Bus riders quickly walk to their stop with their head on a swivel, because on Harmon Street, we don't have a clear, safe walkway on either side. We have to walk in the street. Our sidewalk is in disrepair so badly we mow it. Homes that were demolished left sidewalks broken and uneven. The cracks and loss of concrete has allowed the vegetation to take over. We are on a busy bus route with stops at each far corner. We have large industries near us that use our street as a thoroughfare, busses, dump trucks, semi trucks, other commercial and private vehicles use our street. I have reached out to our council person and city offices to no avail over the past two years. I appreciate any and all efforts to help make our community safe. Thank you.
Thank you. Miss Mary Legg, if we can make sure we get Tyler's right there. She's has her hand raised your information to see exactly what we can do to support you. And you said heavy truck traffic is coming down a residential street. Is that what you stated? Well, we have
industry near us. And okay, there's a lot of factories there. We have. DTE, yeah. So you we've got a lot of large industry that's coming our way, but we need a sidewalk to walk away.
Okay, alright, so let me get your information if you can, while you're here. Miss Mary leg, uh, Tyler's right there. Okay, we'll connect and get that submitted to the department. Okay, thank you. All right, we will continue. Miss Miller, yes, Miss Miller, followed by Mark lane,
I just want to say good morning and to Mary waters, I really appreciate I watched a public hearing yesterday your response with Kim worthy, I thought it was offensive of her to go when she said, We don't want to go there, and you had asked her a legitimate Question. Her she's supposed to be professional, and I didn't understand why she would behave like that. I did come to say to speak on something else, but now that I hear what's going on in ravendale, I live on the east side, and I never knew this, you know, I drive down there. Never was aware. I remember when that was actually a Holiday Inn, back in the 70s. So what I want to say to the ravendale people is that my council person, Leticia, started Mecca, where she bridged our communities of Morningside East English village and cornerstone. So maybe we can all reach out, you know, in communities more to support each community. Because I, I mean, you know, I'm sitting over there shivering at the things that they're saying, but that is my comment. Thank you.
Mark lane, good morning, Council. Well, let's see if I get an update to a situation that occurred in recent years where a lot of people lost their homes for back property taxes, and at that time, the tax rate city county combined, was a little over 4% so say, on $100,000 house, you would pay about $4,000 a year, where, after about three years, if you didn't pay, the house was subject before closure. At that time, you owe maybe about $12,000 with interest and penalties. Let's just say, for example, around $17,000 Well, if you couldn't pay, there was enough left for you to sell the house, pay off the back taxes. If the house was really worth $100,000 even 80, 70,000 but so many of the houses were worth not even what the taxes outstanding were on the house. So a lot of people lost their houses, and I wanted to see if there was some update for remediation that might be available for those individuals, because the tax rates were based on assessment values that were obviously way off. And for some of the people, that was all they had was a house that was left. And so I heard some things recently that suggested that maybe there was some recourse with some of the people that had lost their houses.
Okay, I would need to look into Are you district? District? No, yeah. What, what? What area are you referring to? Is there? Well, it was the city of Detroit, all over, kind of city wide, right, okay,
okay, and there were maybe 15,000 houses annually that were foreclosed upon that were available in the tax sales that had been lost through non payment of back taxes. Okay,
alright, let me, if you don't mind, we can work with you to see if we can get some information while you're here, sir. Okay, I'm not sure off hand what you're referring to, but we can definitely reach out to see if we can get a response and answer. Okay, okay, alright. Thank you so much. Yeah, maybe Thank you, sir.
Chief Davenport,
good morning. Chair to the body. My name is Demetrius Davenport. I serve as senior pastor of the new mission church, and also currently serve as Chief chaplain for Detroit police department chaplain Corps. I come today to implore you to pass this motion to increase dependencies for our curfew violators. It is a help to families. We have to understand that Scripture tells us, in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, that children shall obey their parents and the Lord, for this is right, that's what it says. It also tells us that love or charity starts at home. Well, so does accountability. This isn't a measure to parent to punish anyone. Our chief used a word yesterday. I thought was very good. He says, leverage we have in this system. In our world today, just because of the nature of the world, we have encourageable children, and we have parents who are afraid of their kids. This is an opportunity for these parents to get help, to get their children help. Contrary to what people want to say, this is not a money grab. Five will go down. It isn't a deterrent. As chaplains, as volunteers, we go out to support our officers and families and men on the street at night, middle of the night, whenever we get called out, it is a terrible thing to try to comfort a mother or father who lost a child. It's even worse when that family member realized that they were not in place for the safety of their children. So I ask you,
thank you so much.
That will conclude all of the in person public comments, and we'll now go to those who have joined us virtually.
Good morning, madam Oh. Apologies. Good morning, Madam President, there were 27 hand I'm sorry, 28 hands raised before you would cut off public comment, and the first caller is Lenore.
All right. Good morning. You.
Lenora, good morning.
All right, good morning. Lenora,
can you hear
me? Hello, yes, we can hear you. Okay, I'm from District
Four, and I'm with the
correlation of the Property Tax Justice, and I want to talk about how we need help with the information that we get from the IAA, and have that prevented for us to understand our low taxes,
and with the rest of it, and I had it written down,
the rest of It is we just need your assistance for the a, oh, the A, the I, A, O, information to be taxed for, for us to get the information that we need, that's it.
Okay, thank you so much for that information.
Okay? The next caller is Mikko a Williams,
good morning.
Yes, hi, good morning. Can you hear me? Please? Yes, we can. Yes. Hi. My name is Damico Williams. I'm a private citizen, taxpayer, Legacy Detroiter. I am against the curfew and the parental involvement changes that were made yesterday. There needs to be a little more room, and this needs to be tabled. A lot of the time. We approach situations with reactionary outburst, emotional and passionate reactions, because we've been taught to do that, especially as leaders, but off rarely, often do we lead with sympathy and empathy. We fail to consider how others, especially young people, are screaming for our help, not with words, but expect through behaviors. We don't always understand a lot of these young people are neurodivergent, and we don't recognize their outbursts and challenges as cries for help. We push them away because we don't process or communicate the same way we do. And still, there are people who are continuing to push this narrative, but I have not once heard from young people, or we've had a young town hall meeting proposed where we can hear from young people. So here's why, I say to anybody for this curfew, especially the people running for office. Know the city that you live in, understand that there are half of Detroit students on IEPs individualized learning programs. Learn what that means, learn how they communicate and process. You may think, Oh, they're awkward, they talk too much, or they're hard to manage, but you're overlooking how their brains work. Often, the people you write off are the bravest, smartest and most resilient individuals you ever meet. Don't dismiss them. Include them, because when we lead with empathy instead of ego, we build a voice.
Thank you.
The next caller is over with all right
to the corrupt city of Detroit City Council. Now, Nene wants what she wants. She wants y'all to stop saying her momma killed herself. Y'all didn't want to give it to her, and y'all don't want to give it to her, so I'm going to take it and give it to her myself. Now, Fred doerha, you got veterans now over in district seven, helping out the neighbors across the street from st Suzanne's church, where you got that resource center. At Veterans Certificate of Completion is acquired well, but for business. Got two facilities looking for more in Detroit now. Mary Sheffield, you the council president, and I'm taking this upon myself to say this, you've been prancing around showing people all kind of this person doing this, this person doing that, this person doing that. Why you ain't been over to the veterans housing facility and why you ain't heap no praise on my partner. He is doing great things. That's why I linked up with him, because he's what he's doing over there is marvelous, and that's what the Veterans Housing and what he was doing before then. So answer me that.
Thank you
the next caller, and I apologize if I mispronounce. The name is Nefertari. Nicking Nefertari,
good morning.
My apologies I had not unmuted them. Good morning.
Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear wonderful. Thank you, Madam President, Sheffield and to this honorable body. My name is nefertarian, Ken Jay and I reside in district one. I'm calling to respectfully request and call for a moratorium on the housing foreclosures. I'm not sure if the city council is aware, but the foreclosure listing, which is as long as six mile, was published on social media this week. There are approximately 45 properties per page, and 101 pages. I teach high school, and in teaching my students about the racial wealth gap, I instruct them that home ownership is the foundation of wealth, and I give them hope that they can one day achieve their dreams here, right here in the city of Detroit, because I teach in Detroit Public Schools, we're reading from scholarly work such as plundered, which referenced the the fact that we have been overtaxed and lost so many homes to foreclosures, and to have this outrageous list made public, we need a moratorium on all foreclosures across the city of Detroit, and it needs to happen immediately. Let's give our youth hope that they can, too, have a future.
Okay, thank you so much.
You're welcome.
The next caller is Steven haring.
Steven Harring, good morning.
We need me. Can I be heard? Yes. Okay, sorry, I didn't see the unmute button. So yeah, I'm just here to I'm actually here in Detroit for the week, at, you know, my apartment. But I just want to mention why I'm speaking in this council is today is because, you know, I'm in strong support of the curfew. You know, too many times. You know, you watch on the news that there's youth and youth crime going on. You know, it's definitely a big problem in this city. And, you know, I feel like this order, of course, it's not going to solve the issue, but it will help. So I'm in strong support. And you know, most of the opposition to it, I think, is more because it was something proposed by it's really just because people like to complain about any proposal that comes to this council. You know, Nico Williams, his comments were just completely misleading and complete trench. This proposal is needed. We need to do everything we can to prevent youth crime in this city because, you know, it's a problem. And you know, I might have made an overstatement saying it was a majority, but you know, still, it is a large percentage of the time that happens in the city. And you know, it's very important that we have a good curfew,
and I yield the rest of my time.
Okay, thank you.
The next caller is William M Davis,
good morning. Can I be heard? Yes, we can hear you.
Okay, I think that the curfew, the proposed new curfew, audience needs work. We already have a curfew, or it's not being enforced. We have too many offices downtown. Need more in the community, also, as relates to the body worn camera. When I was aboard the police commissioner at one time, we released video the same day an incident happened. How to keep from having a riot, you know? So you shouldn't have to drag this out. A lot of other major cities release body cameras in less than seven days, the city of Detroit could do that, and if he knew that that was going to be released, we probably have less problems and have less lawsuits coming our way. Also as relates to 15 point 17, of course, you know, I'm in favor of us getting a partial supplemental check, because, you know, y'all been robbing us blind for years, even though, the way I do it, the way the mayor is doing it, is, you know, still racist, and that the police and fire, who are predominantly more white than general retirees, get less also, as relates to appointments. You know, I believe that is wrong for this body to appoint people to a position for four or five years, more than two years into the next administration. That's just wrong. Y'all need to rule against that. You know. Y'all need to act a little bit better and think about the next people that's coming behind y'all. Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
The next caller is not that. Karen, Hello, yes,
yes, good morning.
Yeah. I'm disappointed to hear all that illegal activity going over on over in will there ravendale area? I mean, people wouldn't come and complain if they didn't have an issue. They didn't have issues. People who don't complain, we don't hear anyone complaining. All of the benefactors of these abatements and grants, we never hear anything from them. We always see the money disappearing, going down the drain to help them. So perhaps if the citizens complaining, citizens got better service, you wouldn't have so many complaints. And thank you for the 90 seconds, even though, being as though you didn't have a presentation today, two minutes would have been much, much more leisure
acceptable, in my opinion,
the fundraising for the mayor's campaign is almost two and a half million dollars. The majority of that went to current president, Sheffield. I can't help but believe that that's because of her relationships that she has with the business community now, and they want to guarantee that that stays intact. So of course, they'll donate to that campaign. Campaign pensioners. We need to be restored. You did pass a resolution to fast track us. We want to be fast tracked to money. We don't want to be fast tracked to opportunities. We want that claw back eliminated.
Right? Thank you.
The next caller is iPhone.
Good morning to all within the sound of my voice. This is Betty, a burner, president of DeSoto Ellsworth black Association, advocating for my community. I'm gonna start out by humbly asking me, if Assistant Chief Hayes is within the sound of my voice, would you please give me a call. I've reached out a couple of times. I'm going to thank you in advance for your cooperation. We are still humbly asking for support and donations for our fundraiser. In regards to our fence being stolen, we've had two incidents. We were blessed to receive a grant, and we had an incident in October of 24 and another one in January 25 where majority of our fence was stolen. So now we are trying to raise money for landscaping voters. So if anybody within the sound of my voice can help us out with that, we would very much be appreciated please attend our event that we are having this Saturday, August 2, I rise Detroit event, everything is free to receive a prize. Please share it
all right. Thank you so much.
The next caller is, you matter.
You matter? Good morning.
Yes, good morning. May I be
heard? Yes, thank you.
So it was a couple of weeks ago. Member Sheffield, you showed up at a local block club meeting, and I asked you what we would do to ensure that people believe we will get decent constituent services from you and to discuss the problems I'm having with your office. And then you said that I lie, and I've asked you in writing, and I've asked you in person, what did I lie about? So listen everybody else, I'm a district five resident. I asked for help with the legal dumping way back in March, they haven't resolved it. The Mary Sheffield let the land bank lie to her, plus she supported all these policies that allowed for this thing back in 2015 when I urged her not to and of course, the money community is supporting her. That's who they want, right? And she's also, she claims to be some civil rights leader. Why are you letting the election department lie about me and lie to me? You are on the election commission. And then there are people who come here repeatedly talking about the problems in the election department, and where's the real serious concern about it also, where's you told the black club people that day you cared about the environment, but the people want to build North End landing. They got a building collapsing in the back open to trespass. They move over the garbage, and what about the dirty dirt and all the dirty demolition holes? So member Sheffield, will you meet with me? Let's clear this up.
Miss Warrick, we will always meet with you, so just give us a call. Looking forward to meeting next caller, please.
The next caller is phone number ending at 434,
caller, 434, good morning.
Morning.
Good morning. Yes, good morning.
We can hear good morning. You can hear me. Yes. I just want to say good morning, good morning to the council. I just want to recognize Council President Mary Sheffield today as not a disruptor, but a reformer. She's built community trust, using data and accountability, respecting law and process. Chief medicine, you're there. I want you to hear this. That video that you showed about the kids in basketball the other day is fantastic. We should utilize that as a platform to incorporate more youth in the call in. Because if you can talk to the coaches and interact with adults on the basketball court. They should also be able to interact with the adults to say what's going on in our city here at these open forums and these speeches and these conferences and these talks, we have so many titles for these things, but these things that Mary chef knew as a young leader step in the city of Detroit, and what she has done all your life. You teach your youth that this woman has a track record of not disrupting our government, but forming this place. She is a young, strong, powerful, black woman that has a lot of tenacity and vitality and will get the job done. I bless you. Mary Sheffield, thank you for this day. Thank you for going to work today, and let me know that you hear from your city of Detroit, because it is a special place. It need angels like you and like the chiefs, and like those powerful people that listen to you and like that Mayor that listens to you and to the young lady the money wasn't stolen. We should ask these businesses that have invested their funds, that has come to wonderful people in this case, okay,
all right. Thank you so much.
The next caller is Steven Grady.
Steven Gray, good morning.
Good morning, Madam President, through you to this honorable body. This youth curfew is not new. It already exists and was created by Mayor young in 1984 in response to Devil's Night arsons, an emergency curfew was enacted in 1976 after a big fight at cobor Arena as a kid growing up, the name of my curfew was Mrs. Zephyr Grady. The tool she used was a street light. If I wasn't in the house by the time it first flickered, there was hell to pay. Why? Because Zephyr Grady knew that nothing good was happening to youth after the street lights came on. Other kids I grew up with who ignored the streetlight rule are either dead, strung out, or in prison. The amendment proposed by Councilman young removes incarceration and raises the fines. Chief medicine has enacted a public, private partnership with foundations, the courts and CVI community partners to offer better recreational opportunities, more programming, parent and family counseling and employment assistance. Former Council President Emeritus Brenda Jones used to always say, the children are not our future. The children are our now, because if we don't take care of them now, they will have no future, and neither will we. I support this amendment to the youth curfew ordinance, and I urge all council members to show you care by voting unanimously to pass it. Thank you for your time. You got a rough
Thank you.
The next caller is Sonia Brown,
good morning. Maddie, heard yes
again. Pro Temp
tape, we just honored a young man with an award for all the greatness that he's shown and accomplished. I can't imagine that young man being caught up into this system with a curfew that should not be taking place anyway. I can't imagine his mother losing funds that she would not have had to pay for a curfew incident. I can't imagine these families that are going to be hit and money taken from them, where they have other children to maintain and sustain, and their income is just that of $1,000 maybe in some cases, most of the time, we don't take a look at what's creating the situation. How about many of these young men that are out here unhoused because their families are in shelters, shelters that won't accept these young men after the age of 12 or 14, in many cases, how about the fact that they don't have jobs, jobs to get up early in the morning to have to go to so they're out here creating mishap and mayhem. Let's look at how we can actually aid our youth and not lock our youth up. We all know the slogan, school house, jailhouse. Let's not make this for our youth. We can find other means. There are grassroot organizations like Auntie Nate's house that have shown that we can wrap our babies up with love and give them what they need so that they're not out here creating these situations. I still ask city council to support me in the situation with the water and sewage department. I should be compensated for all that I've lost at this village I need so much.
Thank you.
The next caller is Marguerite, Scarlet Maddox.
Good morning. Morning.
Yes, we can. Okay.
You. About whatever the
not and
issues.
There is unnecessary above The
do not complain.
Lastly, I agree with the Last one. This?
Oh, women were not we
had to be in our own
neighborhood like
I Say, I Say, being
built on.
Well,
and then leave
here too. So let my late grandmother used to say being
make sure we are
not use the kids our
right, Remember, we
Detroit
one, Detroit
Japanese, get our own
vote. And
then,
thank you very much. Thank you.
The next caller is Bobby's iPhone. Okay.
Good morning. Good morning.
I'm calling today. My name is Bobby Johnson. I'm running for city council district seven. Good afternoon, council members, I'm here to urge you to reject the proposed curfew, especially the current form that threatens to find both parent and child. This proposed will punish families, not protect them. In a and district seven, we have no Recreation Center, no late night activities, no youth land program. It limits safe space and limited safe space where, where we are effectively saying, Stay inside, pay up. But we haven't given our youth a place to go. Finding children and their parents for simply being outside in the city that has failed to invest in them is not safety. It's injustice. It's also unrealistic, especially for single parents, working families and those struggling to make end meets. Let's let's be honest. Five out of the nine council people do not have teenagers, and that that's a and that's critical. It's reality. It means that this body may lack the first hand understanding of what families with teens are facing. Instead of punishing behavior we do not like, let's address the lack of opportunity and what's causing this. We should be funding Midnight Basketball, safe zones, teen led programs, mentorships, and even keeping community spaces, openly, later a curfew without alternatives. Thank you.
The next caller is Frank Hammer.
Frank Hammer, good morning. You.
Hello, can you
hear me? Yes, we can. Good morning
in solidarity. I say stop funding the genocide and starvation in Gaza and the West Bank. No APEC money for politicians. Cease fire. I agree with William Davis. I support expanding funding, DDOT mechanics, bus drivers, accessibility, more electric busses and yes on smart we need low income housing at 40% the AMI and fully fund the right to counsel with ARPA money to continue free legal counsel to renters threatened by exploitative landlords. Both are a bulwark against further homelessness and keep neighborhoods stable. We need to make whole those overtaxed and oversested. Stop this practice foreclose. Foreclosure moratoriums are in order make whole the libraries, the Detroit Public Schools, Head Start Title One and community colleges and more, yes, more programs for youth will do a lot more than curfews and fining. Thank you. Thank you.
The next caller is Joyce e Jennings,
good morning.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Joyce e Jennings spells, and I'm a write in candidate for mayor of the city of Detroit. I've been a write in candidate since May. I was raised and groomed to care for people. A part of caring for people is being prepared to do so, as I have assessed the election process in Detroit, well qualified to do so at on also being a former public servant, I've heard the groanings of people who spoke to the fact that we have cheated votes. I don't know about cheated votes because I voted in every election, but I will say that there are some serious concerns that are going on in the election department, as far as releasing candidates who have been certified to run for office, whether you have collected signatures in some elections when people pay to run, or whether you have been certified as a write in candidate, all names should be released once you are certified. Now I'd like to speak to the issue of what's going on with the curfew. As a parent, I have not had many of the challenges that some people are dealing with that would result in a curfew. But we all have a responsibility to train up children in the way they should go, so when they are old, they will not depart. We have to be so stop being so quick to penalize children and families and do what we can to help. God bless you. All right. Thank you.
The next caller is phone number ending in 270,
good morning. This is Malik Shelton,
these curfews for our youth in these punitive measures with the associated high fines for violations will not have any significant impact on reducing the epidemic of violence in City of Detroit. In fact, it probably will have the opposite effect by placing more stress, more strain
on poor
households, and pressure them to pay these curfew fines when they are already struggling To pay for housing, pay for food and other basic necessities. We already know what happened to the housing here in the city of Detroit, based upon all of these illegal activities that the local government was involved in, these children come
the housing
in Detroit has become destabilized and so these children are not coming up in a vacuum. Also, if you want to have put a curfew on something, put a curfew on all these marijuana stores and these liquor stores and beer and wine stores that plague the city. Detroit has more liquor stores per capita than any city in Michigan, in most of the cities in the United States, got liquor stores blue and wine stores everywhere,
and they've been proven to call. Thank you.
The next caller is Mr. Ronald Foster,
good morning.
Um, good morning. President, just a few things I noticed, probably the last one before you guys go on session. I did want to express although I do not agree with a lot of the policies and different things, I do enjoy the walk in the parks, and different than district two. I do enjoy Java house. I do enjoy the policy sessions and the community engagements and things, and those things are just the start of restoring trust in these communities. We have to be able to have the authority to respond to what the citizens are saying today, very rarely do I agree 100% with the community. But today I agree 100% mister Miko, Miss Karen, a lot of them speak truth. You know, when it comes down to our children, you know, and curfews, this is not authority or in state, and we don't want this nation to be that just because it's the President's idea. It should not be trickling down to local governments. Local governments have to have the integrity and maintain checks and balances here. We want the control and say so in our communities on every level. We don't want to be ran by European or mayor oral that have no idea of whatever is going on here. So it don't make a difference about color. It makes a difference about education and social right
now. Next Caller, please.
The next caller is Tahira Ahmed
caller, the floor is yours. Minute 30. General public comment,
okay, good morning. Um, wanted to say thank you for your work on trying to implement a moratorium on foreclosures. We're calling on Eric Sabri, it's time for you to be the hero again. We need you to implement a five year foreclosure a foreclosure moratorium like you did five years in a row, and to the people who are running for mayor. If you're running for mayor and you've been involved in this 12 years of illegal property taxes and illegal foreclosures, you need to come up with a plan on how to pay us back President Sheffield, I'm smiling, not trying to. You know, this ain't personal. This is business. We need your plan. We want you to hold a town hall meeting so that we can give you some ideas on how to pay us back, because apparently you you don't have any. And this is what we need for you to be eligible to become mayor, we need you, anyone who's interested in the Coalition for Property Tax Justice, so you can work with us to demand that they pay us back and stop the foreclosures and stop the illegal taxes. You can call 313-329-7610,
that's 313-329-7610.
Miss Lyons, you blaming the victim? Which
caller? Please. The next caller is Frank Hammer. Frank
Hammer, the floor is yours. You have a minute 30. General public comment,
thank you. Can you hear me yes
to President Sheffield, I believe next Tuesday, you will win the city support to be the next mayor of Detroit. When you do, I beseech you to revisit the resolution you pioneered back in 2019 in support of the green New Deal. It came on the heels the first time Trump took us out of the global climate treaty, and here's what you said. According to scientists, we now have less than 12 years. Now, it's only six years to reduce all carbon emissions by half, or we face even more catastrophic climate change. In response to this existential threat to human civilization, climate justice activists have demanded a green New Deal. The Green New Deal can is an urgent 10 year plan to mobilize every aspect of American Society for policy transformations on a scale of the Depression era. New Deal The time for action is now to boldly transform our economy and society to stop climate change from destroying us by adopting systems using 100% renewable energy, guaranteed living wage jobs for everybody who wants one, and a just transition for both workers and communities because of the massive threats posed by the global warming and related environmental challenges, the time for far reaching radical action is now. Thank you. Carry on. Mary Sheffield,
thank you so much. Mr. Hammer,
the next caller is Cindy Dara.
Cindy Darragh, good morning. I
Good morning. Cindy Dara.
Cindy Dara, good morning.
Okay, let's come back to miss Darragh, please,
Okay, the next caller is. CC,
right, good morning.
CC, good morning. Good All
right. All right. Let's come back to this caller as well.
I do see them as unmuted.
All right. CC, good morning. Good morning. Through the Chair. May I be heard? Yes, you can. Thank you. Yes, I am against the it's an ordinance that's already in place, and I think increasing the fines for the people, as Mr. Shelton said, would only cause more undue pain upon the residents. I think that the only thing that the police should be involved in our children with is more pal League, more recreation and less of the enforce of children who may find themselves homeless. Does Mr. Bettis have any data or statistics on the amount of children that he's picking up that are actually homeless? We need to address the issue of homelessness and stop turning the city of Detroit into a Soweto 16, dot 24 through 27 CDBG, funds which have been misappropriated for the last, I don't know how many years with especially with this panel, it the responsibility ordinance, parent responsibility ordinance, I'm looking for a responsibility ordinance for people who have public office. What you heard from the community about the police department needs to be investigated, and we need to hold off on this ordinance until we can have a proper conversation around what we need to do. Thank you. Thank you.
Apologies. The next caller is Charles miles, let me move him over.
Hello. Can I be heard? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, well, I'm calling in again. I've been talking to you guys for a few years now, and it's all about these gas stations, liquor stoves and grocery stoves. And I think that you guys should try to shutting down all the gas station and liquor stoves. That's not green light at 10 o'clock, they got a mandatory shutdown in the suburbs, everything is shut down at 10 o'clock. That's not green light, that's not safe, that's hazardous, because all of the problems are happening in those areas where the gas stations are not green light, and the gas stations that are green light, y'all need to step them up and let them and make sure that nobody's lottery outside, so they can't be doing nothing, selling anything. You're looking at them, you can hear them, and check those places for expired food. People getting sick right at their local gas, gas station, grocery store, and they, uh, liquor store, buying these products that they selling expired. I don't understand, like they paying you off to not do your job because you're not doing nothing about this. And Miss Callaway, well, I gotta praise Mr. Der Hall today. I'm always talking bad, but I witnessed today garbage being picked up in district seven. I'm talking about debris, trees and all kind of stuff. So thank you, Mister der Hall. You're doing a great job, but over there in district two, thank you.
The next caller is Alexandra.
Alexandra, Good morning.
Hello. My name is Alexandra, and I'm a homeowner that lost their home through the illegal foreclosure process, we are calling on Eric Sabri in the moratorium to stop the foreclosure of homes on the least of us here in Detroit, we need a plan. We need a plan from the city of Detroit on how we're going to get compensated from the homes that have been taken from us. I had a home in Russell woods, wayne county treasurer's office. I had an exemption. I had a contract. I had uchc helping me. They didn't represent me. My home was taken by some blight, illegal blight thing from an investor that didn't do it. Then it went to the land bank, and I told them that my home shouldn't be there. They never took it out. Then my home was sold in 16 I was here in 15, my home could have been returned back to me if you guys had followed the paper trail, but you didn't. They used that information against me and sold my home for $12,000 on the land bank. I could have got that home for $6,000 I worked for the school board. My dad was a city of Detroit employee. Now we meeting every first Saturday at a month, trying to organize these homeowners who have been who have been over taxed, so that we can be a coalition and and help you guys run the city better with homes that people want to be in. Now I can't be in my home because somebody bought my home for $12,000
from the land bank.
Thank you so much.
The next caller is Michelle Jackson.
Michelle Jackson, good morning.
Michelle Jackson, good morning you.
Good morning. Michelle Jackson,
oh, good morning. Can you guys hear me? Yes, we can. I'm sorry. I'm on my cell phone. Good morning. I am calling in for the travels in that sit on the corner of hopper and commerce. So just really need to know that something needs to be done, whether it's shut down or not, even if it's shut down, it's a large building. We would hate for it to be empty. So a lot of times we do, we have good gestures in shutting people down and keeping outsiders from coming in, doing certain things. But we have to have a plan. So if there's a plan for the shutdown and we know what's going to happen towards it, please, let's not just have another empty building, because I live in the community. I live there. It's in my district, and I'm very close to it. So it is a lot of rigor act that goes on there for somehow. I'm not sure how they're still open, but they are, however, again, if it's going to be shut down, I hope that is the plan when it's being shut down, so it just won't be an empty eyesore that I have to look at daily for those that are, you know, not in the neighborhood. So thank you.
Okay, thank you.
The next caller is renardonski. I manski,
all right. Bernard machonski, good morning.
Good morning, Madam President, can I be heard? Yes, you can. Good morning, Madam President, and honorable members of city council. Name is renardski, and I'm trans organizer and writer with the transit justice team Detroit people's platform. I just, of course, over the past few times, I spoke to this party about the metal detector issue with the Rosa Parks transit center and Jason Hargrove Transit Center. I know that dlac goes on break on August, so unfortunately for the public, we won't be able to have our voices heard until September, which is will be the third Thursday of September. However, we are opposed to the installation of these metal detectors, and for their bring an unnecessary step that weeks of security theater. And security theater is the appearance that you are keeping people safe through certain things, like taking going through metal detectors, taking things out of your pocket, and that creates a semblance of security, but it doesn't actually make us safer, because there have been incidences on the busses in other parts of the city, and there's this increasing push to put more rules and more draconian punishments on bus riders, when really we don't have the protection of the police force or non uniform police officers, which did not used to have and what the public wanted more so so We need to have a conversation about security and safety.
Okay, thank you so much. Bernard,
the next caller is Galaxy S 22 ultra.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes, we can
Oh, okay, we have a problem. I have a problem with the team. Now, I have a good city council over here in District Four, but you guys gotta work as a team to clean up a lot of this mess, like the whole the traveler place, the the films over here that we inhaled over the years, and it's back and forth, the grants, they have to be a team effort. I don't know everybody said, talk to your city council, but she need, she need backup from her team. Y'all got to work with it. I called the service. The inspector. He was calling me back, but we got stuff over here next door. I called him to see what's going on. Why these bushes pushing my fence down? I haven't heard from him. He haven't answered. I called him for the last three days, around his phone twice a day. I'm getting no answer and no call back. I have a good city council, like I said, but you guys gotta work with her. Yeah, she's she's working. It's supposed to be a team thing. If one have a problem, we work together. If District Six have a problem, we work with them. District Four, but y'all not doing that. You know, y'all hear us complain about this every time land bank need to go. We need to get all our resources back so we can make the money from it. We gave away everything, and we ain't getting it done.
All right. Thank you. Mr. Holloway,
the next caller is Cunningham. I'm
sorry you said Cunningham,
Yes, Madam President, Cunningham.
Cunningham spoke in person already.
My apologies and the next caller is Lucius Conway, morning.
Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Very good. I'd like to say, since at least 1985 the city of Detroit has imposed curfew fines on parents, yet nearly 40 years later, there's been no comprehensive data as as to how these fines actually or if they actually deter youth behavior or improve public safety. The one known evaluation from 1976 found curfew enforcement simply displaced incidents into different hours, not that it prevented them. I asked, where is the data showing that the policy works while these fines are being offered as in being increased to improve, allegedly something that's not supported by data. I have heard to ask, what is the moral logic? The Moral logic of increasing financial penalties on working class parents who are already strapped or under resourced without proving any effectiveness. As these fines being addressing root causes until data justifies the penalty, I urge this body to reject it and reallocate efforts toward community repair and the restoration of our villages through our neighborhood neighborhood Department.
Thank you for the time.
The last caller for public comment is Cindy Dara. All
right. Cindy Dara, good morning.
Cindy Darragh, good morning.
Cindy Darrow, going once.
Cindy Dara twice
and Cindy Darragh, please submit your public comment to the clerk's office, and it will be a part of our public record. And that will conclude all of our public comments for this morning, we will now proceed to our agenda, Madam President, yes,
before we proceed and before they all leave, I did request that we get an update from DPD and from BC relative to the travel in if there is anything that can be shared before they leave.
From BC to DPD,
I don't know, Chief. Are you prepared to I
and through the chair, hey, Mr. Washington,
yes, good morning. We do have director Bell online. If he can be promoted,
okay, we'll promote him as well.
Good morning, Madam President, and through the chair the rest of the honorable body of city council, I'm Chief Todd medicine. Into my left is
Captain Stacey Travis. I'm over organized crime, which is over vice enforcement, as you know, Vice enforcement deals with the quality of life issues, which is prostitution.
Okay, you all can maybe provide just an update based on the public comment today from the
Yes. So since June of last microphone, since June of last year, until present time, Vice enforcement have conducted 11 ote operations in that area. Also November of last year, we did a street engagement, and that is an outreach that we do with our partners. We do it with alternative for girls and echo house, I mean, Echo Detroit, Ellie's house, where we provide services for people that's in that business prostitution. It is to provide services to see if they can sign up for it. If that day, we did not get any success with anybody signing up. We have people coming over and they were interested, but nobody signed up for the help. Also December of last year, we vice with ninth precinct and BC, we went to that location and did a business inspection. They did find bed bugs and some violations there as well. On the same day, December 12 of last year, we had a number of telephone numbers people that lived in that hotel. We put their telephone number in a tool that we use. I don't want to say that too just because I know it's public, but there's a tool that we use to find out if those telephone numbers are attached to any not any type of lines for communication dealing with prostitution. We got negative results from those telephone numbers also on December 17, we went back again and did another inspection. I personally think they showed us the cleanest room because there were no sign of bed bugs. That's just my personal opinion. I think they showed us the cleanest room also, December 9. December 19. We also ran how many calls for service at that location. It was 488 calls for service, some of which 21, of those calls were violent crimes. 13 were death investigations. Four actually were overdoses. Um, also on April 19 of this year, we did a UC operation where we had male decoys go in to try to see if, um, because we got word that the prostitutes are hanging in the hallways. On that day, we had male decoys go in with negative results. On this particular day, there were no prostitutions, no prostitutes in that location I've reached out to BC their hands are tied because this business had a business license and they have a certificate of compliance. So I reached out to the law department and all the information that I just presented to you, I'm working with the law department to see if we can somehow get this closed, but we have to do it legally. We did recover a missing but she runs away a lot. She's a female. Don't want to say her name, because this is public. She's 13. When we recovered her, we did find out. And she she told us that she had been at the travelers and for two days, gave us the name of the person. We did do a search warrant on his house, and we did arrest him for FIP, so we've been working it. It's just that it's kind of hard to try to get it closed due to the legality of it.
Thank you, Captain Travis, and I have even personally been there, walking the halls myself. And we will continue until we get this done. And I do believe they showed me a clean room also in like Miss crystal said, I've helped and assisted there. And so this is a continuation, and this is the commander, John sabeck of the ninth precinct, so we're working this, and we'll continuously give our findings to the law department, so ultimately, through legal proceedings, we can do it in the correct way, but the work continues.
Okay, all right. Thank you so much. And director, Bill, did you want to add anything additional?
Yes, Madam Chair, this like they said, this location does have a certificate of compliance. It does have a license. However, it does have violations. We have issued $500 in tickets. We plan on having a sit down with the owner to address those violations, if he does not address those violations within the next seven days, he will get another $500 in tickets, and we look forward to working with DPD and law to come up with the best strategy for dealing with this location.
All right. Thank you so much. Member Johnson,
thank you, Madam President. I appreciate the information that was provided by DPD and BC. I know we've all been in communication with Corporation Counsel as well with the law department, and I look forward to following up with you all, because, as we heard from the community, this continues to be a problematic establishment in the district, I want to ensure that we don't have any one being trafficked that are utilizing this facility, and just to make sure that we get it cleaned up as best as possible, when I went in November, the room was not clean. It was disgusting. It was disgusting to say the least, and so I will pull in the health department as well to make sure that they're doing everything that they can to address the establishment to the community. I will say, just continue to make the calls to make sure that we have documentation of everything that's happening in the community. And I will be sure that we continue to press this issue to clean up the establishment or to get it shut down. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. Thank
you member Johnson pro Tempe. Thank
you, Madam President, and just for everyone's my knowledge as well, what when does an entity like this cross over from just violations to a nuisance, which would then begin us, which would then take us to nuisance proceed procedures.
So that's why I reached out to the law department. So that's why I reached out to the law department to see and all the information that I just presented to you. I presented to the law department. I'm actually working with Doug Baker, and once he goes over everything, then he's going to get back with me so we can try to do it as a nuisance. Okay, thank you.
And while I have the mic, while I got you here, we talked about something that's not on the agenda, Chief, when you were deputy mayor, we went out to Eliza Howard Park, and you saw what I saw, and I appreciate your commitment at that moment, just it's summer, that issue of individuals conducting sex work over there, unfortunately, is now still continuing. I know you have officers who kind of walk or drive through every once in one but just again, want to lift that up while you're here and see if we can get some assistance out there, because renovated, yes, ma'am, we renovated the park. Put a lot of money into it. Neighbors want to go to the park and enjoy themselves, but they don't want to see that. They don't want to have to experience that, especially with their children. We got a walking trail, something we've never had over there before. So tell me what I need to do to assist, and I'm here to help, but just relaying the message again, we need some assistance over there at Liza
Howe, yes, sir, we'll put on our radar. Thank
you. Alright, thank you. And if you all can please keep all of us abreast of what's happening here with the ravendale community and particular establishment. I think we all want to kind of be engaged and know what's going on. So all right, thank you all All right, we are going to now go to our agenda, and if there are no objections, and thank you all for coming down and speaking up and advocating for your communities. We appreciate you guys, and we're looking forward to working with you guys. Goodbye. You have a blessed one. Thank you so much. All right, there are no objections. We will take up line item 18.1 any objections?
Okay, Madam Clerk, if you can, please move forward with 18.1
Yes, Madam President, remember council member young an ordinance noting the roll call line 18.1 also noting that this line item was reported out of committee without recommendation. Council member young, resolution, I'm sorry. Council member Young. Member Young,
thank you, Madam President, I moved to take from the table in ordinance to amend chapter 29 of the 2029 Detroit city code, minors. Article Three, adult responsibility minors. Article Three, regulation of minors in public places and adult responsibility for violations. Division six, adult responsibility by renaming and amending section 29 dash three, Dash 74 parent, responsible, adult or legal guardian, responsible for compliance with this article and by amending article seven, parental responsibility by amending section 29 dash seven, dash two, parental violation and penalty to help mitigate violent crime and reduce teenage gun violence laid on the table. July, 22 2025
right Hearing no objections that action will be taken. Council member Young,
thank you, Madam President, I move the ordinance be placed on the order of third reading and considered read,
Hearing no objections. That action will be taken. Council member young, I move the ordinance be passed as submitting Okay, and we can now open it up for discussion before we move forward. I know we have the chief here and others you want to please come back up chief medicine. I know there's been a lot of discussion on the this particular ordinance, and just want to give you opportunity to provide us kind of an update and an overview on where we are today. I
Madam President, into this honorable body, I'm in full agreement that the ordinance as proposed, be passed, and listening to the public comments, some of the things that were raised were how much enforcement has been done, or are you enforcing the curfew and so as of after The Halloween, not Halloween, but, um, the Fourth of July weekend, which had a violent uptick in teen violence, we introduced our plan as far as what we were going to do and address and how we were going to go about it. Curfew enforcement is a component. It's already on the books, and typically, whether it was the fireworks or whether it used to be angels, night, we would come and ask for a different curfew, an emergency curfew. Many residents had already said, What about the neighborhoods? As a result, I am enforcing curfew throughout the entire city of Detroit. To date, we have issued 234 curfew violation notices, a total of 86 parental responsibility tickets. The amendment is not to criminalize or create a hardship. It is to increase the fee, which hasn't been increased in almost 40 years. I'm asking for a fee increase so that it can create leverage. We have already my office myself, have talked to 36 District Court Chief Judge mechanical. He will, as a result, he will, if parents don't want to pay the fine, they have a deterrent option. The option is to take services. I have a list of the services, and he's going to take it on his own personal docket and in conversation with pro tem Tate, and we've had a meeting with Chief Judge mechanical as well. They have a parenting intervention. Course, they have a whole litany of services that they can provide to the parents. Now, in talking to some of the judges, one of the things that judges told me is oftentimes, individuals will say, I don't have time for that. I'll just pay the fee. If the fee is low, they'll just pay the fee, and they don't get the services that they need. I'm requesting that the fee be increased to a point where it will create a situation where they'll say, we will take you up on the various services that are offered
to our young folks, the curfew violators.
Council Member Santiago Romero heard you loud and clear when it comes to what about the kids, Chief Judge McConnell as well, in working with Third Circuit Court, we have programming available for our youth, also very comprehensive, where the judge, Chief Judge McConnell, on his docket Will if the parent don't want to pay the increase in the fee, it's all type of courses that they'll have to enroll their young person in also as well, so that they get the services that they need, such as it's individual case management, it's conflict resolution, anger management, social skills development, substance abuse, referrals to community, community, community, mental health, truancy reduction, intervention, anti bullying intervention is a whole litany of services. So what I say to the Detroit community, as your police chief, I'm not coming here just asking for be increased so that we can get additional money to the city coffers. That's not it at all. Matter of fact, I don't think it's going to bring in any additional revenue. The whole issue is to change behavior. And so I'm about the and working council member Johnson, one of the things that our conversation that you advocated for is increased activities for young people to have something to do. Even before this, I had already reached out to Crystal Perkins of the director of Parks and Rec, and said, Hey, can we get our recreation centers open on Saturdays? Wanted to start a community violence intervention Basketball League, and we did that with pal. I heard one of the callers call in and say, Hey, where's pallet? Well, Pal is involved. PAL has gotten involved. We have a community violence intervention basketball league that's headed up by pal. The recreation centers have opened up. The recreation centers. I thank you, Madam President, for coming out. I know council member waters, you came out as well on Saturday, which was a wonderful event. And with our community violence intervention groups, we have the white population of youth that typically aren't involved in traditional basketball leagues, but are the young people that are most at risk of being a victim of gun violence or a perpetrator gun violence. And when we talk about the cost, what I will say to you is this, the cost of violence is far too high. It's just far too high. The cost of a gunshot wound, trying to pack somebody up with the medical expenses, and then if your child, if your child is out, and they end up being the perpetrator of it, the cost of attorney fees, and then, Lord Be it, the ultimate case where we talked about a mother having to bury their child and and so I know that the fee increase is not the end all, but it's an additional tool in The toolbox that will help us get individuals to services that they need and help change behavior and help us with our continuous push of crime going down in the community. It doesn't feel like it right now, but statistically, crime, our shootings, our homicides, are down 20% our non fatal shootings are down roughly 30% but when I have a two year old shot, when I have a four year old just doesn't feel good. So doing this to save lives, I
I'll open it for questions as well.
Chief, can you just clarify that for the parental course that you don't have to be below a certain income, you can just opt in and say, hey, it's not based on whether or not you can afford the fine. It's whether or not you want to pay it regardless. Yes, originally it was if you could not pay, then you can opt into a parental
response, no, they're going to have the option of opting in. So even if they can't afford to pay, it's not about the fine. It is about changing the behavior. And I want them to get the services that they need. And when we look down at a breakdown of our stats as well. Everyone thinks that it's just Detroiters. I have a lot of suburbanites driving their kids into our we made our parks beautiful. It's so many things to do. It's not just a Detroit problem of the curfew violation or parental responsibility tickets that were issued 100 and I'm sorry, 46 were issued to non Detroit residents. You know, for their kids, I had an incident where I have a lot of young people coming from other places here, and you know, we're going to hold their parents accountable as well, because all of the children are ours when they come to our city. But it's about changing the behavior. And we have funding is that we've identified, and we even have additional funding where we're going to even get our community violence intervention groups involved. And just had a conversation with former Chief of Police James White yesterday, of D win, which they fund many of these services and programs, was D win is black. Family Development is so many others as well. Team wellness, where they're the funders working through 36 District Court, specialty court, to provide these services. So this amendment is an enhancement is a lot better than the old one that hasn't been updated since the 80s. So I commend you, Coleman Young, for what you're doing, because you're actually, and I think a lot of people are missing this, the amendment is actually decriminalizing this minor infraction. Is decriminalizing it. We're taking the aspect of it out where it's even jail time. So I just, I, I just think that a lot of folks are misinformed. I just need individuals to get the right information. And we're doing the and and we're not going to stop until we get violence to an acceptable level in the city. One life lost is too many, and I think we're all feeling that right now, because, like I said, crime is down, but when you have one of our most precious individuals from our community, a six year old that just lost his life, it just gets to you.
Thank you so much, chief. All right, we will open it up now for questions from my colleagues,
Council Member waters,
thank you, good morning, Chief morning. Yeah,
is boot camp the same thing as jail
boot camp? No, and I'm when I say parental boot camp. That's, of course, that's, you know, I just use that as a term, but that's parental responsibility courses. It's a whole litany of courses. And having conversation with Judge, Chief Judge McConnell specialty court, they're going to examine the situation of the parent that is before us, meaning, if the parent has substance abuse disorder, they're going to make sure that they get them in the correct program so that it can assist with that if there's some mental crisis that's going on, because that may be it as well. That will be addressed also.
And what about this probationary period for parents?
The probationary period will be set aside, but that's the leverage that's over the parent to ensure that they comply with meeting the obligations that they have to complete the course
or they'll have to pay the fine.
I've been going back and forth with this issue. And you see, we cannot legislate morality. We just can't do it. Even when I was in Lansing, I mean, we surpassed all of these state laws, and half the time chief people didn't even know that the laws were being passed. How are we going to educate parents? Because most of the time they would have, they would have broken the law or gone against this ordinance and not even know it next day until it actually happens to them. So and then, if you have situations where, after you know, parents are stressed, they're going to work every single day just to try to make ends meet. And they have some bad actors in their home. Teenagers, peer pressure. They listen to each other. They don't listen to their to their parents. One day, a parent is going to snap because they have to pay these fines because of these kids, and they're going to do something crazy to them, beat them up or something. Then here comes CPS Child Protective Services, you know, saying, Okay, we ought to take your kid, because you just abuse this kid. And so, I mean, it's a double edged sword when it comes to what in the world we're going to especially when these kids are 16 and 17 years old, they need to be held accountable themselves. They really do. And there comes a time that, like they should know better, and somehow another we need to hold them accountable. We're putting all of that punishment blame on the parent. You know, these fines that they cannot afford to pay, the stress that they're under just to make ends meet? What about those teenagers? I'm not saying all ages. I'm talking about those that are 16 and 17 years old. There has to be something that we can do to light a fire under them too. We're talking about broken homes that we have in in this city. I mean, we really do. And how many of those? What's the economic status of the 234 you said you had within the last couple of months, or whatever, who broke curfew? What's the economic status and what was the age of those children? Through the Chair
council member waters, I don't have the economic status. I didn't do a comprehensive data research of the individuals, as far as asking their economic status, but what I can tell you is, over the past weekend, we arrested a 13 year old out at two o'clock in the morning, roughly, for a serial arson, setting multiple places on fire. I have 12 year olds, so it's not just the anomaly of that. We're decriminalizing this, but this will give us the leverage to make sure that we get the parents the assistance that they need as well. I have to do something. This is a better deal right here. My almost like my boss, my the police commissioner who has oversight for the Detroit Police Department, just walk to my left, Mr. Darrell woods, and I see that He's itching to say something, so I'm gonna relinquish the mic and turn it over to Mr. Woods, absolutely. Thank you for your question. What you're stating is the reason why we need to do this, when you talk about decriminalizing this situation and giving hope and resources to the parents as well as the children. We just done a number of mediations with families with children and their mothers their stepfathers, and we connected them to resources and opportunity and hope. And I tell you this, if they are incorrigible, all you got to go is do a tour in JDF, and you will see a lot of those incorrigible young people inside the juvenile detention facility who have no hope, and we just leaving them there to languish. And that's why we're stepping in and said we're going to do mediations with them and their families and connect them to community based resources and services, whether they get mental health support, substance use support, walking with them to school, engaging with them. We are boots on the ground 1,000% but this is historical in the city of Detroit. To decriminalize this thing we talking about, saying we're not going to make criminals out of them. It's already in the ordinance right now that it is criminalized. And so we decriminalizing this thing, and we can bring a hope and resources and opportunity and love to these families. There's this is a no brainer issue right here, because all of us are responsible for the children. The chief and I was in the hospital with the six year old child with a bullet in his head, and, you know, and the mother crying in my arms
like a baby. And we're still we when we leave here, we stepping out of here to put our arms around that family. We went to a funeral of a four year old at a park in a super in a Spider Man casket, you know, a shot at a park. And then we left this funeral, and we went to a two year old hospital bed with a bullet in his heart in his chest, two inches from his chest, and me and the chief had to work and organize and get that family relocated to a different spot.
Commission, this is about love.
Commissioner, it is about love number one for all of us, yes, though we cannot find our way, you can make it $1,000 and it won't make a difference. For some of these bad actors, it will not make a difference.
We saying the same thing, Madam Councilwoman, we're saying the same thing. It's an amount about the money to define. It's going to reduce on how much you're going to collect in this because we're going to overwhelm them with resources and program. We on the same page. We don't want them to pay. I pay the fine if necessary to get them out and get them the services that they need. Many people in the community will help them, and when I will show you my phone where I have paid numerous of fines, it's not about trying to make these families cripple, because we want to help them, because we love them, just like you love them.
You doggone, right. I love them, and I want to make sure the single mom in particular not so stressed out because they've had to work midnight. Yes. And this kid Yes, got them a fine that they cannot afford to pay. Yes, and they go off on him, you know, I remember, I'm giving an example. A friend of mine's kid was called out, like, 4am or something like that, and the police called her, said, we've got your kid. He's he managed to sneak out of the house, yes, you know. And she went down there to the police precinct and just started beating the crap out of him right in front of the police. They finally said, Ma'am, you can't do that here. But she was upset because she got the call. She really wants to hurt him really bad. And I get that. I get that these kids, these teenagers, listen for all of this mess, you know, online, you know the rap songs they listen to each other. I mean, just yesterday in Lansing, the house denied cell phone usage in the classroom. That's horrible, because they don't need cell phones in the classrooms. They need to help these schools out, and they need to help these parents with these
phones. We are the change we've been looking for. We're here right now. This is an opportunity to do exactly what you said, to wrap our arms around our young people and give them the hope. I'm with Councilman Tate protect the crown. You know, we got D win right up there right now they here in this building right now, we got services ready to roll and get to the families, to the children, to intervene right now today, through the chair Graham Anderson law department, one thing that I really want to highlight here, too, and it's a phenomenal question council member waters, about these parents that are doing everything right, and parenting is not easy. No one here is going to dispute that. We don't in the language of the ordinance does address that too. Not just any kid who gets in trouble. Doesn't mean their parents going to be fined. So if you look at 2029, seven A, the first portion a, if a minor commits a delinquent a delinquent Act, the parent shall be guilty of a violation of this article if it is proven that any act, word or non performance of parental duty by the parent encouraged, contributed towards, caused, or tendered to cause, the Commission of the delinquent act by the minor. So this is not going to the mom who is working late, who's doing everything right, who's making sure her children are going to bed at the right time, and the kid just happens to sneak out and be in the wrong place at the wrong time, that mom's not going to be fined in this case, this is something that the court will look at, they look at the facts, and they will weigh the evidence. One thing I want to highlight, too is we're really talking about curfew a lot in this ordinance, but this is not exclusively just a curfew ordinance. It the curfew part of this comes because, of course, there has been the need and the high sensitivity of young people in shootings and after hours. So that's where the sense of urgency has come from, of course. But this is the parental responsibility ordinance. We're not editing and amending the curfew ordinance of the code. We're amending the parental responsibility ordinance of the code, so if a kid gets in trouble at three in the afternoon drinking, and it turns out mom bought him the booze that would apply here as well. So this is not just a curfew ordinance. I want to highlight that as well, too. Of course, the curfew is the huge reason for the sense of urgency. But this, this applies across the board as well. Thank
you. Alright,
alright. So
mom has to take off work because now here's this, this situation, right? And take off work too. Some of these, these, these parents are going to lose their jobs, especially if they didn't work right here in the city where you might sheep have some sort of leverage to help protect them with their jobs. Now they've got to take off work. They'll see about we know about this issue. I mean it. How do we keep them working? Are we going to be are we going to hire them when, when they lose their job? And then, how you going to prove what you just said, Attorney Anderson, that you know the parent, parent knew this. The parent knew that. And so, I mean, there are things that we have to be able to approve, to prove rather, and then, how do we protect parents, I mean, from losing their jobs? I mean, you know, jobs are hard to come by. What do we do to help them with that? There's a lot of things that we have to take into consideration. You know, when you when you mention that, even when you mention the boot camp chief. You know that's going to take a while. Are we talking about just on the weekend? Where are we talking about when they're not working? My fear is that we are acting based on our emotions, because we want to stop this, this, this, what's happening with the crime in this city. We want to stop it. And I know that we're doing, Chief, I know that you do, because I've seen you with these young people. I know that you do. But are we being reacting instead of being proactive? I don't know if this is a proactive approach that we're taking very quickly, and maybe you're saying that there, there's a combination of things that you're trying to I just don't know. I am still
bothered by this approach
with what you and through the chair council member waters, I definitely understand that you're weighing in. You're looking out for the parent. All we're asking for is a fine increase, and we're decriminalizing it. And so the curfew is still there, the parental responsibility is still there. And so as far as them having to take off from work because their kid is out, we still, I'm still going to enforce the parental responsibility. We're still going to enforce the curfew, even as is, and so they're still going to have to go, except I'm really wrapping in resources and we're decriminalizing it. You.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Member waters, were you
done? Yes, for now
through the Chair, if I may, Council. Member waters, you mentioned your fear for the parents, your fear. I'd like to share with you the reality of what's going on with the youth violence. Right now, when we talk about statistical data, we have a 33% increase in juvenile victims of gun violence. We had nine year to date last year. I'm sorry. We had six year to date last year. We're at nine already with juveniles being victim of gun crime and violence. When we talk about young people carrying guns, both under 15 as well as 17, we are up 18% over last year. 2024, we had 34 incidents where we caught a young person with a gun. We're at 40 this year. This is not punitive. This is simply trying to change behavior. And with the resources that this amendment and with this brings, that is the goal, again, not to enrich the city coffers, not to have anyone go bankrupt, attempting with the proposed additional fines, but again, as the chief indicated, just leverage so that we can get them the help and the resources. Because the parents, they're minors, they don't get to do it nothing. They have to do something. And when you're looking and your child's on Instagram, he's 14 or 15, posing with the gun and smoking weed and things of that nature, you have a firearm in your house that you know isn't where it was supposed to be, or now it's been moved. You had it this way, and now somebody's obviously picked it up and it up, and it wasn't you, and moved it. These parents have to do something. Some don't know that what to do or what resources that they have. We want to bring that to them, not again, with the purpose to put them in jail, because under the current ordinance, that's what we that's where this will lead, but to give them the help that they need, that if they have a young person that needs this help they can get they say two things can be true at once. So while we're certainly addressing the parents to help them with parenting skills or let them know the resource that they have, we also are addressing the youth, and some are encourageable, and sometimes those parents need to have those uncomfortable conversations and say, Hey, this is all I can do. I need help with this program. We are there with the resources. With this amendment, this is a pathway to it, as chief always says the and this isn't perfect, but this is definitely a start, but we can't sit back continue to watch our young people go down these paths. We have to do
something. Thank you. The proactive approach to this as well is in Councilwoman Johnson district, Michelle Davis. She reached out to brother to ferry brand said the students want coming to school. She needed some help with transportation. We got her she asked for some bikes. We got her 100 bikes. She'll come here and it went helmets and everything, and she said her enrollment came up, went up, not her enrollment, but her attendance went up because of that type of intervention. And so on Friday, you know, to fair and I and a bunch of leaders would be here in at the Spirit of Detroit and saying that we're going to pray for our power, and we also going to call for the spiritual leaders and the business leaders to adopt every school in the city of Detroit, so that we can wrap our arms around them, so that we can encourage them, and so that we can love them and mentor them, so that we can keep them in the home at The proper time. So we're very, very proactive, madam, Councilwoman and so, and we say, come join us. We've been out with her, with all of you guys, for that matter, and we ready to roll this is an opportunity.
All right. Thank you so much. Yes, member
waters, thank you so you say that it's decriminalized, but yet there are fines, and you have about 40% people here in this city who are who live in poverty. So how's that decriminalization fines are going skyrocketing?
Member waters through the chair Hassan Bedouin council to the mayor. So that's not a unique situation. There's various instances in our criminal justice system where you use that sort of threat of penalty as a jurisdictional hook to bring someone into court and get them the services they need. So I'll give you an example, human trafficking. Human trafficking victims in Michigan enjoy what's called a safe harbor. They're protected from criminal liability. However, in order to get them the services they need, the victim services, they can technically they're charged with a crime, to get them in through the door at a courthouse so that the probate court can actually order services and bring them back in rehabilitation. It's very similar here. You're using the fine as a jurisdictional hook so that you can get the parents into court, so that they can receive parenting classes, so that they can address their familial situations that give rise to the violation, whether it be addiction, whether it be parental issues, you name it. And to your earlier point, ma'am. So I want to emphasize what Graham said, essentially, that this isn't a strict liability violation. Just because a kid violates curfew and gets hit with a ticket doesn't mean that their parent automatically is going to get a ticket, and the numbers play that out. So you've got, you know, just in July, 148 curfew violations on juveniles, and you only have 86 parental tickets, meaning that you have more than 60 cases in which police made the determination that the parent shouldn't be liable for a violation, for the kids curfew violation. So I mean the numbers play out that, you know, roughly half the time the parents aren't on the hook
through the Chair, if I may add as well to Graham Anderson law department again, that 36 District Court is very familiar with the process of defendants struggling to pay fines. They are very welcoming and having very generous payment plans that will work with the defendant. They understand that, and if you show a good faith effort in making payments, the courts really, really real will work with the individual. Thank you,
Madam President. Let me just, let me just say this, I am still within my heart of hearts, trying to understand how these fine are going to legislate morality. How can we find our way out of this? I don't care what you say, it is not going to matter. Now, maybe for a few. Perhaps I'll let live that perhaps so few, but for the masses, it's not going to make a difference. So I think that we have to continue. We have to go back to the drawing board and do some additional things that's going to help our children. This, in my heart of heart, I do not believe is the answer we're looking for answers. We're grasping for straws. This is certainly not the answer. And and you can prove me wrong a little bit later, if you like, because I look forward to to be proven wrong about this. I hope that I am wrong, that this is not going to matter. And so with that, Madam President, I know I've taken up quite a bit of time just before we take a vote
another statement. Thank you. Thank you to
ferry Yes, ma'am, good morning, good afternoon. To all of our council members. And I appreciate you, Council Member waters for your statements, because I understand your history as it pertains to anti poverty work, so I know it hits close to home for you, and I'm with you in that. And to be honest with you, if this wasn't decriminal if this didn't involve the decriminalization component, I probably would feel differently about it as well, right? If it didn't involve in my conversations with community leaders throughout the country about curfews, and the data is clear. It's up and down, some say it's successful. Some say it works. Some researchers, some data would say it's not as effective. But what's different about ours are the wraparound services, the mediation work that we're doing with mitigating we get involved in conflicts. We're involved in family restoration. We provide family Restoration Services brother Hank McClendon, as some of you know, he's doing restorative circles with families throughout the city, with the police and with our organizations as well. So Detroit is unlike any of these other places, we are on the front end, doing serious preventative work. A core part of our CBI work is family restoration. The first thing we do is get with the boys, because most of the boys are shooters, and we get with their families. That's a big part of this. And I would encourage you guys to consider this, right? Do you know what the number one complaint is about principals of mind? You 20 out of 20 principles that I surveyed about this. Specifically, they all supported 18 out of 18 mothers who have murdered, whose children have been murdered, and whose children were murdered during this curfew period. During this curfew time, they all supported 24 out of 25 are bona fide boots on the ground. Urban peace and justice activists in the city. They all support this increase as well, with, of course, the caveat of decriminalization, and, of course, the mitigation services, the intervention work, the family restoration piece and all those things. But you know what the number one complaint is, and I'll close on this family The number one complaint of principles and educators. You know the number one complaint is, what is a lack of fam a lack of parental involvement. So what are we talking about here? Right? So the people who are closest to the problem, the ones who do this every day, they're saying, it's not the parents being impoverished, it's not the parents. It's not about them working and it's not about none of that stuff. The parents are not engaged. Now there may be some mental health issues and a myriad of other underlying issues that's contributing to their lack of involvement, but we're talking about parents not assuming responsibility for doing what's necessary to protect their babies, right? So sometimes we're doing all this work on the front end. We're trying to prevent it. We're way ahead of you. We've been many of us. I've been doing this for 35 years. We are working with mothers and fathers. 24/7, in many cases, it's killing us. It's killing me, physically. It's hurting me, right? We're doing what you're asking us to do. I am telling you it's not enough. We need this. We need to do something to kind of force parents sometimes, to receive these services and these programs. Sometimes you gotta force them. Sometimes you gotta trick them, unfortunately, but I'm with you 100% that is a legitimate concern. I would never devalue a degrade what you're saying. Ever you have a very legitimate concern. I'm saying we are at a historical point where we got 27 babies that's been shot and or killed in the last 30 days.
We've held these babies. We've held these mothers.
We've worked with these mothers, these we buried these children. We paid for these funerals. I've taken their children back and forth to school because their parents were unable to do it mentally and emotionally right? We are doing this work on the front end, back, end, middle, end, every end. But we need more help. We need other strategies. So I'm begging you just seriously consider this. And it's not a reaction. This ain't emotional, but it's emotions tied to it. We got 246, 12 year old babies dead. How can there not be some emotion? I hope you're emotional about it, right? This is an emotional issue, but we're not just operating out of emotions. We're operating out of intellect, strategy, a data driven decision making, research based practices that we have seen that have worked throughout the country, again, the fines, in and of themselves, no but all the other services, the wraparound services, the other programming that come along with it is what makes it unique for us.
Thank you so much. The fearing. Thank you,
Madam President. I agree this was this was necessary, because there's a lot of folks who feel like that, and I think it's important to start having, or continue to have these conversations even after. And I hope this ordinance gets approved, or the amendments gets approved today, but it's important to still continue to have these conversations, because it's not them versus us, it's all of us in this together. Reason I raised my hand, Madam President, is initially, it was chief medicine and AC there, and they were, they were, they were in news media, because I come from that that world, they were burying the lead, and the headline only read City Council requests to increase fines, but the lead, the true lead, is decriminalization. There you go, as well as resources being provided to the families. There's options here now that are available. And so the first thing that I did when I heard about this chief, we talked, okay, what are we gonna do? How we gonna help the parents? Because we can't just add a fine. We can't increase the fine. Because while I understand cost of living on itself and gone up, and it's not as a deterrent as it was back in the 80s, we also need to make sure we're taking something here, but offering something with this hand. And so I I get it right. I get the pushback. But when you just read the headline, the headline is increasing the fines. But you got to read in between everything, all the words, every letter in this document, and it shows that there's a pathway potentially, and this doesn't guarantee anything, but there's a pathway, potentially, for a more responsible parent, a child who now understands their role as a child in this society, yes, but also it shows our values and our morals that we are willing to take away criminalization of a parent and offer them the services at 3016 if you look at 3060 District Court, they have specialty courts. Specialty court is used when you have these cases of individuals who have no sex trafficking in their lives, those who have addiction issues. I mean, you name it. That's their whole purpose. They can look they can literally go through and say, 300-500-6000 whatever. But they're trying to actually help the family, and that's what I believe. This particular these amendments, do I thank you for bringing these forward. But we're not done with the conversation. Similar to what Brother Brent said, we this, this is a tool. Yes, we got the CVI work that's happening. We have DPD that's out there on the streets. We got community organizations doing what they do. This is a tool that I believe can and should be used to help change behavior. That's what this is all about. And if the parent you said something that was very, very critical, the parent can't pay they have an option. They didn't have that option yesterday. No, but they, if this is approved today, they have an option to now go to Courses now with some that's still not enough. My question is, if you have so called repeat offenders, right, these young folks, and if a parent is showing themselves not to be as responsible as we want them to be, and they've chosen to take courses over and over and over and again. The courts, I know, have the discretion to say, No, we won't do courses this time the penalty. When does the penalty? And that's where I think again, we got to tell people what's in that document. That's that's something that we have not heard. I've read it but, but they haven't heard it yet. If a parent is continuing, allowing their child to be irresponsible, and they're being irresponsible as well, how many times, how many bites at the apple do they have in court to say, I don't want to pay I just want to take a course and take another course and take another course, because it really not doing anything at that point, similar to if they were paying a fine and then paying the fine and then paying the fine, and it's not changing behavior. But talk to
us about so council member Pro Tem with the commitment, with Chief Judge mechanical 36th district court, the specialty court, with their experience, and then also with the fact that, hopefully that the misdemeanor ordinances, etc, that they'll be prosecuted with our city attorneys. It's a lot of discretion and leeway there, but with the specificity of that question, I'll turn it over to
our lawyer,
Council Member, pro 10. This is actually what what I was when we had a chance to speak and with Judge, Chief Judge mechanical, and he mentioned that he wanted to put this all under a single docket under his name. This is, this is the benefit by doing that you have one single person who is intimately familiar with the facts of all the cases before. So if you're going to get a repeat offender, a parent who's continuing to come back, you're going to have a judge that's very familiar with their case, who's familiar with their history, who's going to be able to adjust the sentencing based on that, who's going to be able to keep them essentially on probation longer, you know, under his purview longer, so that he can make sure if there's another screw up, that he can tailor a punishment accordingly to actually produce a change of behavior. That's it's an incredibly powerful tool. We see it in other contexts with specialty courts, when you have, when you when you centralize the adjudication, like that. I mean, you're going to to incentivize accountability for repeat offenders. And then, of course, there's, there's the penalties that are actually in the ordinance that do increase for repeat offenses up to the maximum allowed under state law, which is 500 which is $500 and the corrective coursework.
Thank you. I'll just say this, and I'll end some of you may or may not know that from and I've talked about it before. From the time I was in kindergarten to the time I graduated high school, I was either kicked out, put back a transfer nine times, and I came from a good family, all right, so, if not for the guidance of not just my parents, but all those other folks in the neighborhood that I knew that my coaches, if it wasn't for all of that, I wouldn't be here today. And I say this for all the parents, and I know we make sometimes excuses and sometimes they have some challenges, but by law and by nature, you're responsible for your child.
Amen. Thank you. I'm
looking forward to supporting you.
Thank you so much. Pro Tem council member Young,
thank you, Mayor Preston.
Wow. Um,
I just wanted to say, I think the reason why all of us are elected, why all of us are here, is because we want to make sure that the word murder and child are never in the same sentence again.
And thank you.
And so I just wanted to say, I want to thank all of you for working with you. Commissioner woods, I want to thank the CBI. Want to thank the chief medicine. I want to thank you for him. You know, especially I want Mr. Badu. Thank you so much, as well as Chief of Staff, Solomon as well, for listening to me about the decriminalization when I found it, when I read through it, being open to being able to change, being to work with us, to be able to get that done, that means so much to me, that sister G page, being able to listen and do this. So I want to appreciate your work. But I just wanted to ask you really quickly, you know, Chief, I mean, I think you might, or anybody who might be able to answer this, I think there might be some issues in terms of decriminalization for the audience, for people who are listening, I just want you to be able to define what that means, and then I also want to be able to say because I think we're kind of getting caught up in the fines, and we're not getting caught up on what the real reforms that this package is, which is the services that are being provided. I know that I work my colleagues to be able to appropriate to ARPA million dollars for mental health services for the police department. And part of that, part of that was also making the hotline 24 is available, 24 hours a day. But also was checking up on people who were homeless and being able make sure that they have housing and things of that nature. I just want you to know. Kind of tell me how those programs coincide with each other, and how this program kind of helps people with those services as well, in terms of mental health, terms of cognitive behavioral therapy, and working with der and other programs to be able to do that. I'm going to let attorney Hassan be doing really quickly address the piece, as far as the decriminalization aspect of it, and then I'll talk about the programming aspect.
So through the chair, Council Member under current law, a person, parent who is convicted of this crime can potentially, especially in repeat offenses, face up to 90 days in prison, in some cases, with a mandatory 15 day minimum. So this ordinance change removes all that, it just delegates it to a simplifying along with the court ordered services, and in some cases for repeat offenses, making that mandatory.
Yeah. I mean, this is a drastically different piece of legislation to start out, I remember reading it was like 15 to 30 days for first offense, like 15 to 90 days for second offense, plus the increase in the bond. And so I think to be able to change this drastically has changed this legislation for the better. And I think the programs that are associated with this, I think, are going to be helpful you, Chief, just kind of go through what some of those programs are, what? Because these are really about resources for the parents. That's really what this is at the core of it. And we're using the ticket process in order for them to get the resources through the chair. I think that another aspect, and we really have to lift up the chief judge of 36th century court. Chief Judge mechanical because we met with him, he personally said, to ensure continuity, I'm going to take on this case loan. And so it's not going to this judge here, that Judge there, he's taking it on. And as a result, he sent me over the litany of courses of wraparound services that they have to address the various needs that a parent standing before him may actually have, and so it the programs are supported like What I say about matrix Human Services, Black Family Development, D win supports these courses, Team wellness, but going through here, it gives the parent group counseling, individual case management, substance abuse services, truancy reduction, intervention, anti Bullying program. And we're also building something out as well, through Wayne County, where our CVI groups, you'll have an opportunity to have parents and or youth participate with various CVI groups and have their their children receive mentoring from them also and help them with whatever conflict resolution, anger management, bullying situations that's going on. And it's family counseling, you know, the dynamics of, you know, family issues. And so the parents will it could be really a life saving or a restorative type thing for the parent who feels like they're losing everything. It doesn't feel good at first, but by being brought to the court, then they get the opportunity to get some assistance. But for that they wouldn't have no absolutely I agree that. And I just wanted to address a couple things really quickly, Madam President, and then I'll wrap up. But I just wanted to address, I know, Madam President, you were talking about earlier, about earlier, about terms of income. There is a program in San Francisco called income fine scaling, where they actually do issue tickets based on people's income. I think, with your permission and allowance, I think that we should probably have a committee of the whole to be able to talk about how we could change the ticketing process overall to be able to include people's incomes and implement that like they did in San Francisco. I don't think they should just be focused on this issue. I think it should be broadly throughout the entire tickety process. One, I think second, I think what member Waters was talking about was very important in terms of recreational centers. I know we've had conversations about keeping them open, keeping them open later. What are the costs of that? Where the programs are being associated with that? I don't know. We have another committee to hold or something that nature. We should talk about that and have that and have a much broader discussion about emergency appropriations, how that looks like, versus opening new recreational centers or having existing ones and programs and how that looks like. I think that those are really good conversations that need to be had and deserve to be had robustly. I just don't think it's appropriate for us to stuff all of that into this discussion. I think at the core of this, for me, this is about saving lives. This is about the fact that you have four year olds that are being gunned down by 17 to 18 year olds that cannot stand, period. And I'm sure, as all these gentlemen have said, and everybody else here has been to, I've been to these funerals where they had these tiny caskets, you know, and they've had these mothers that have been crying, and I see, you know, I think the closest thing to Hell is a parent burying a child, and we've seen too many mothers bury their sons, and too many fathers bury their daughters, and too many aunts and uncles who are in pain, and, quite frankly, also too many people who are in trauma afterwards, who've seen this event and continue This because they can't get the treatment or the support that they need. And so this is a way in which to get the people to help the resources and the treatment they need, because at the end of the day, the government can't protect its citizens. The government can't protect the babies. Why are we here? And so this is a program to be able to do that. I want to thank everybody here. I want to thank all the gentlemen be here, because it does take a village. And I want to just thank you for this, and I hope I can have everyone's voter support. Thank you. Thank you so
much before we continue to go down. Just really quick. You know, I do support the ordinance, and I want to thank you member young. I know when you reached out to me, we originally saw the language about the jail time, and we both were like, Hold on, wait a second, and to see where we are today, with removing it and offering the programs I think really should, as Pro Tem state should be the lead of what media takes away today, because what we're doing is very comprehensive. I don't believe that one tool is going to solve anything. It's just not. I mean, anytime we talk about gun violence and public safety, it has to be a multi faceted, comprehensive approach to how we address gun violence in Detroit, whether we're talking about technology, what we're talking about curfew, investing in DPD. I have always stated that it is a holistic approach, where we're supporting the work of DPD, we're supporting the work of enforcement, but we're also addressing the underlying social issues, which I think we all can agree we have to do more at providing good paying jobs, housing, mental health, education, and that is always been my focus, is, how do we how do we invest more in direct you, services and prevention? And so I know that there are separate conversations. And when we talked, I know that was the first thing I mentioned to you, is I actually cited Baltimore, and I said, what Chris Scott, I think, is not Chris God mayor is doing over in Baltimore. The young gentleman has reduced crime, and he's opening up the rec centers and things of that sort. And so I was hoping that director Perkins can actually come on really quick, because I just wanted to hear from her directly regarding what has changed from my understanding, there are opening up rec centers now on Saturdays, and there is some additional youth programming. And I would like for the public to hear that as well too, regarding what additional support is happening within our rec center. So is Director Perkins on
mr. Washington.
Brandon Scott, yes. Brandon Scott, I said, Chris Scott. Brandon Scott, yes
through the chair. We do have director Perkins online, or
if we can, Please promote her. Please,
Hi, good afternoon. Good afternoon through the chair. I did hear your question. I just want to add that we do have nine of our rec centers open on Saturdays. We have at two of the rec centers, the pools are open, but we've also been working with the community partners like the CDI groups to offer additional programming and mentorship in our rec centers. We're also looking to do some major events, like we do with our festivals, like our Easter fest, our Fall Fest. We're looking at doing some major events for our youth. We want to target these specifically for our youth. And one of the things that we're planning right now is a eSports exposition, and so we're looking to do that across the city. We're gonna pilot it to see if that's something maybe we can do, like a league. And then there's competitions and championship games as well, because that is a big thing in the amongst the young people at this time. We're also looking to host what we're going to call like a backyard, back field, outdoor event, where it be different sports and different other activities, but just targeting this age group, this 12 to 18 year old age group. All
right. Thank you so much. And I think also you submitted another memo regarding some of our partner organizations and partner sites, and I think that's something that we can have a greater discussion, hopefully in the committee of a whole, but trying to expand as many partner sites as possible, not even just within our rec centers, but having safe spaces for our young people throughout the city of Detroit, not just within our rec centers, but also partnering more with churches and local organizations to open up those spaces for safe spaces for our young people. Okay, all right, thank you. And then lastly, one quick question. We have a youth services department with the city of Detroit in the mayor's office, and I'm just curious, has young people at all been engaged in any of the discussions around curfew? What they see they need, what they would like to see, just any engagement with young people, possibly through the mayor's office in the Youth Services Department. Because what I've been hearing so much from our young people is, again, we're talking about them, but we're not talking with them. And so I think they can also help with what they need.
I sit on a juvenile advisory council that is housed by young people, people who have been inside the juvenile system, and is housed with judges as well as youth, the youth and lead it. And in fact, they created a whole manual that I will get to this body in terms of some of the things to avoid. And so these, all these young people that's on this advisory council have been a part of the juvenile justice system. In fact, one of those young people got their life together and got appointed by the governor and sits on the state juvenile Advisory Council.
Also. I am the chair of the James E wasburg center board of directors, and we oversee the nation's oldest African center of Christ, who writes a pastor's program in the country called into Johnny and the so to institute, we've been developing black boys and girls since 1979 started by Reverend Wendell Anthony on Dexter right. So we had an intimate conversation at camp, and at some of our sessions with our young people. We're looking at over about 150 young people about this very thing. You know what our young people say? Number one, we shouldn't be out at that time of night, is what they say. And number two, they say, brothers for we don't feel safe. It's not safe. So we need, we need you guys, meaning adults, to do everything you possibly can to ensure that we are safe because we don't feel
safe. Thank you. Thank you so much. And just want to thank you all for the work that you all do definitely always on the ground, connecting and empowering our residents, and that also gives me the comfort too, knowing that we have some amazing grassroot organizations that are doing the wraparound services that we need in our city. So thank you all so much. Member Santiago Romero, no. Member Johnson,
thank you, Madam President, and good afternoon to all of you. Thank you for your your passion, your compassion for our young people. It is clearly shining through. As a Detroiter who grew up in an impoverished household, I can I can say as an adult now that I couldn't expect for my family to instill things in me, to provide to me things that they didn't know, right? And so I appreciate you all for being part of the village, because we talk about parents and families that may be at work or need to do, you know, a variety of things, and so they cannot provide adequately to their young people. But it takes a village, it takes all of us to come together to provide that support and to recognize where we know someone does not have all of the tools to be able to raise their children the way society would like to see them raised. And it takes all of us, I'm glad to look out and see all men standing before us, because not often enough do we see the men in our community standing up and stepping up to help to be part of the village. And I'm really grateful for you all who I have encountered in really unfortunate situations as a mother, and some people will call me a stepmother, but I call myself a mother of a 22 year old that I raised from the age of nine years old, every single Day, I was always concerned and wondering how he was going to show up as a citizen for society, because no matter what you teach them in the house, they can always be influenced by people that they meet On the street, and you hope and pray that doesn't happen, or you hope and pray that they meet all great people when they get out on the streets, right? That's not likely going to happen, but I'm just grateful to see the young man that he is today, and it was really because we kept him in programs, whether he liked them or not, he was always involved in something. And for my husband and I, it took a sacrifice. So before I got elected, people know that I volunteered. I volunteered all day, every day, and so I had to take time to make sure he got to these programs, to make sure that we could connect him with different things. That's where I think we have the greatest challenge, connecting the young kids in our neighborhoods to these programs that we've talked about, that we've made sure exist, that we've expanded the hours on and all of that. How do we get it to them? How do we get it to them? And I have some ways that I'm trying to do it in the community, but I think it takes for all of us. If you know about programs, if you know young people who live down the street from you, around the corner, get that information to them, and where I think the disconnect is is in transportation, getting them to the program. So I think that's where we all need to provide support to make sure they can get to the programs. I appreciate all of you. I know this. This is difficult for some people. This is, again, one part of a number of different things that need to be stood up just to make sure that we are focused on preventative measures. And I know that you all have been doing that. I do want to ask chief if you can share if you have community organizations that are supportive of what you're asking us to do today. I know you mentioned some partner organizations that will work with the courts that provide supportive services to our parents. I just need to make sure that we have done our outreach in the community, because I know you all are on the ground in the community. So can you just talk about some of those organizations that are supportive? Oh,
absolutely. Team wellness, Black Family Development, the People's Action forced Detroit and I can just go on New Era,
yeah, and so
dignity for Detroit.
We have a lot it's a lot of support for this.
All right. Again, I thank you. I don't want to see you all in another park, because we're having a repast for a four year old in the park,
and the casting is in the park. The casting came to the park of a four year old child where he was killed, and you was there. We was all there together and on disbelief.
It is very emotional. It is very emotional. And you know, that was one day, and we still have to make sure we keep our arms wrapped around the family and the other young children that she has who actually witnessed the incident. So how do we prevent that from happening? Is what I think about all day, every day, and really who I am in that work. So I thank you all for stepping up for being part of the village and for being here and being as passionate about this as you are. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President,
thank you member Johnson. Member Santiago Romero, thank you, Madam President, and thank you. Member Johnson wholeheartedly agree that it takes a village, and I really believe that we need to start early. So I have made it clear where I stand on this issue. I still need to see more data that shows the success of change behavior when it comes to curfews. I'm not here to fight this actually, I'm here to work with you along this process to figure out what else we can do to support the village, and wondering if we can bring back director Perkins, because some of the programs that have been mentioned that are being provided through the courts, like anger management, peer mediation, these are things that I went through in Middle School because I was once young, still pretty. Am I am and I needed guidance. I needed support. I was raised by a single mother who also needed help. But wondering director Perkins, as we're expanding the rec centers, can we have some of these programs be already given? Because my concern is that once you go through this process, you're in the system. The system is old. It's slow. You have to get to the courts, you have to get to where you have to go. What if we provide these opportunities, these services, these workshops at our rec centers, really they should be at our schools. This should be a conversation that we should be having with our school district to be providing these services. But Director Perkins, is there, is there? Is there space for these kinds of programs at our rec centers?
Good afternoon through the chair to member Santiago Romero, yes, absolutely. There is space for these type of programs in our rec centers. Again, as council president Sheffield mentioned earlier, I did submit another memo this morning, and you will see in that memo, I was asked from Council president's office to do some research and on comparable cities and some of the things that they are doing, and the cities that I saw where the violence among youth was improved, where the violence decreased, the arrest decreased, and they saw sustainable results. Those cities took a multi faceted approach. It wasn't just programming. It was treating the violence amongst our youth as a public health issue, and they're addressing trauma, they're addressing poverty. You know, they're definitely addressing, I think I heard it was commissioner would say absenteeism at the school. But it's also like a mentorship and teaching these individuals life skills as well. So definitely not to criminalize them, or not to just try to shove a basketball or a gaming device in their hand, but to also do a multi faceted approach to make sure we're just capturing them solving the root problem so we can develop citizens that will be productive in their future years.
Thank you through the Chair. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I had mentioned that when I was in high school, I also snuck out. But that wasn't because I was doing anything bad. That was because during the day, I went to school and I worked and I did not have an opportunity to hang out with my friends, or really felt the motivation to to be engaged in anything. We do have ace that works with the arts. I do not see the city. I believe we can doing. We could be doing a lot more with the arts and young people. Director, have have we talked with ace about bringing either poetry or writing or photography into our rec centers as well, for for something for young people to do, to be engaged with
yes through the chair Yes, ACE has been involved in the conversations even prior to us realizing we need to make sure we are exposing our youth to a vast variety of activities. ACE has been in talk with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra about bringing music, symphony music into the rec centers. But she also works with young people. She had seminars last year with them, and that's something that we plan to continue to do going down the road.
Okay, thank you
for me, our children need inspiration, motivation, care, to be guided really through through their young adulthood, and we need to be providing those opportunities. So I will continue to work on that front. We'll continue to see what the city can do to invest more money into these programs, and I will mention the programs that are provided now by the court are not new. I used to work for some of these prevention and diversion programs when I worked for alternatives for girls, and they need resources. And they're also very specific to how the grants are written, where not everyone is going to be able to access them, which is why I'm thinking we need to do more to provide more opportunity, and I'll be working on those things moving forward. Thank you, Madam President, thank you.
Good morning to you all. Good afternoon. Now to you all.
You know, I agree you cannot legislate morality and you cannot legislate parenting, but what you can do is set a standard and set rules.
In that regard,
it is immoral to kill someone, right? But yet we have laws on the books that state you cannot kill someone. It is all about setting a standard and setting a culture, I will tell you. As a parent, I often think about the village aspect as well. And since we're talking about the village aspect, one of the things that I think is missed upon us is that the village used to hold each other accountable. So if you are a parent, uh, or excuse me, if you were a child part of the village, it used to be that you didn't want to embarrass your family. You didn't want to embarrass your family's name. And there was a certain standard that was set within this village. We have started to stray away, that it is not important to parent your child, I will tell you, poverty is not something that is new.
Poverty always existed,
and what we are seeing right now, yes, there are social determinants that lead to violence in our communities, but it is not okay to make the excuse for violence being in our community a poverty, it has it exists. Poverty existed in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s, where violence rates were at a low what we what we have started to see is the lack of accountability in our communities, and we don't hold ourselves accountable. So what I will say is I'm very supportive of this ordinance. As a parent, we use the street light analogy where you used to have to come in at 11. I think we have to ask ourselves, what is a child doing out at 11am if they're only 14 years old, right? They should be sleep, getting ready to go to school the next day. This is not things that we're not talking we're not talking about these things. And so what I would say is this, I appreciate the work that many of you have done to decriminalize this. I think that is a is a good step, but I'm unapologetic about setting the tone for our parents. I think we don't talk about it enough here in the city of Detroit Franklin, I am a parent, and I will tell you, as my child grows and even now, both of my children, I take responsibility for their actions, because until they are old enough as adults to leave my house, they are under my kill. They are my responsibility, and we will fail our city if we don't set the tone that parents should be responsible for their own children. And so I will hope everybody supports this ordinance, and even the public understand that we are not trying to penalize anyone, but we are trying to reclaim the soul of our community and our village, and I really believe that is what we are fighting for right now. And so every tool that is possible that will allow us to save the lives of our young folks allow us to bridge the gap between our parents and our young folks. I think we have to utilize here in the city of Detroit. So I appreciate each and every one of you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Derral and and I'll finally on this. This, this came out of
a bedroom of a young person who turned this over to me after I bought a mother talking to him, and he went, he was inside of school and not in Detroit, but another city, a neighboring city, and he said he wanted to give up this stuff. He was 15 years old. He met me at police headquarters. He came to Detroit because he lived in Detroit, went into his bedroom and had and put inside a duffel bag, and I took it back to headquarters, and the task force came to pick up, pick this stuff up without penalty. We talking about parent responsibility. You know, this is
okay. Tell them what it is. What it is. There
you go. These are weapons. And
he talked to me on the phone like, Lord, have mercy. Man, don't don't go by yourself. But he said he wanted to give it up after he talked to a parent. I mean, talk to a parent whose son was murdered, he gave this up, and it was in his bedroom. He went straight to his bedroom, got this stuff put in the bag. Task Force got this stuff. We put them in mentoring programs and wrapped us our arms.
And that happened three times. He tried to stop me every time. You know police, not because of the kids, but I call the police and
coordinator, you know,
so, so this is what we're talking about. This is what we're talking about. That young man ain't locked up right now. He getting help. He's working. Got resources,
Madam President, just to follow up. Thank you. Through that to that point, and again, that's the type of tone I'm talking about. Listen, we know and we understand that some of our parents here have difficulty with their teenagers, but you don't give up on them, right? That's the tone that we're setting. You cannot give up on them, and many of us, even the president pro temps, I'm glad someone didn't give up on me. Thank the Lord. So so that that's the tone that we're saying. I'm just saying that's that's the tone that we that we need to say here. I'll also say this because I was talking to a young man at a at a barber shop this past weekend over there at shears and shapes. He is a gdyt. He's going through the program. And he brought up the curfew to me, and he said, I understand you guys have to do the curfew. So I asked him, I said, What do you think? What would you recommend that we need to do more for young folks? How do how do we, how do we deter a lot of this stuff. And one of the things he said, he said was it's not just about giving us something to do. We want to
make some money, there you go.
We got to understand what age we're in as well. These kids talk about cryptocurrency. They talk about, you know, things we never would have matched. So it's more than just opportunity, but it's also giving them something that they can have, that they can take back, other than just just the opportunity and the lessons. And so I think even as we talk about how we build this out, and we talk about, you know, how we can keep these young kids off the street, giving them a job is equally as important. You know, when I was coming up, you know, you wanted to work between 14 and 18, you were in school because you wanted to be able to go buy those new pair of shoes that you want, right? And I don't think we're connecting even our young folks to enough opportunities relative to jobs nowadays, and some of that is our economy, because you don't see teenagers working at the Walmart, because we got 60 year olds working at the Walmart based off the economy. But the question becomes, how do we connect them, you know, to those jobs, and I love to get with each and every one of you and talk about kind of how we do that outside of the programs that we have, but even to any of our businesses. Listen. You know, this is how we curtail some of that. You know, my grandmother used to say, keep both hands busy to stay out of trouble. That is, that's how we curtail that so. But that is my two cents. I love to talk to you offline, Chief, as well as some of you, as we always do, how we connect them to that opportunity to also make some money, madam, and put some money in their pocket. Madam,
madam, President to Member Santiago's point. But I love about this particular Council, and I've worked with many over the last 30 plus years, is that all of you guys are heavily rooted in the community. I know your work, so this is why honor and respect everything everyone has to say here, because I know what you guys do in your communities. To remember Santiago's point, I would be willing right to work with anyone in here and their block clubs in your communities, because to be honest with you, when it gets to the police is way too late. When it gets to the rec centers, it's way too late, right? These services should really be offered by the block clubs. And I'm telling you from practice, this is what we did on the north end. I know because you know, you're my rep for many years, for 12 years, when I started the Horton street block Club, which became a Horton Bethune Cookman Oakland custard Oakland block Club, which is not a lower north end block club, one of the big one of the biggest, most powerful block clubs on the north end. The way that we cleaned up our streets is by we pushed the program. We created the programming. We patrolled our communities. We built relations with the families. We restored our families, families. We put them in. We put the children in. Flip the script. We put the children in youth, real programming. We put the children in Vanguard, but that wasn't from the city down. It wasn't from police down. It wasn't from the recreation centers down. We dictated and determined what services we need for our neighborhoods and for our citizens. Because guess what? You know who really knows? And this is what all of you got to own. You know who you know. Who really knows who's out here, violating curfew violations, your neighbors, your neighbors, Miss Jones, Miss Jackson, who's sitting on the porch watching your bad little nephew and your bad sons and daughters run up and down the street at 12 o'clock at night. They know for real. So really, this work needs to start, and this is what we are. This is what we're trying to do here. This work really needs to start with your block clubs and your neighborhoods before they go to school, before they go to before they go to the rec center, right, and before they get locked up by the police. So I'm willing to support any of those initiatives, any of that work in any of your communities. We will come out directly and work with you and your neighborhoods and your block clubs, reforming and structuring those kinds of programs, right? And I haven't heard one organization, the most powerful parenting organization the country, over 10,000 families. No one mentioned DPN, Detroit Parent Network. That's what they do, right? So I'm going to personally reach out to them and tie them into this work as well, at the neighborhood level, right? At the neighborhood level, right? So we can address these things as early as possible.
Completely agree to fairy. Thank you for that completely agree. All right, we still have two more, member Benson, followed by member waters, and if we can kind of bring this to a close, y'all, we still have a full agenda today. We haven't even started. This is very important. This is very, very important, and we've had a very productive conversation today. Member Benson,
thank you. And number one, thank you all for being here, and thank you all for taking the time to make this happen. So as a parent, I concur with what has been said here about parents, but I also want to say parenting has been hard now, yesterday and 1000s of years ago, there's a reason why the Bible calls up for children to behave and honor thy parents, because parenting was hard then as well. And so if there's expectation that the city is going to play a role in managing your children, that is an incorrect assumption to have. It is up to our parents to manage their children, to know where their children are. And also, this is a very robust conversation. It's also a bad assumption to think that the vast majority, or even the majority of our children behave in this manner, or the majority of our parents don't know where their children are and aren't managing their parents. This is a very small percentage of our youth and a very small percentage of our parents that are having a challenge, these type of resources are critical, I'm glad are being brought to bear. But I do want to make sure, when the story is told, it does is not told, saying that Detroit does not know where his children are. Detroiters do not know how to manage their children, and that our parents don't care. That is not the case, nor is it the truth. And I'm glad that you are here today making a difference, because when we are seeing children has happened in my district, far too often. Shot raised two year olds. I have a very small child, and to think that we go out and are doing what we're supposed to do as a family and are the victim of random senseless violence. Scares me. Now, if we want to maintain and keep our community, keep our young families here, this cannot continue, and we do have to step up. We have to increase the bar, and by managing this ordinance and just bringing it up to inflation and then reducing the criminality is a good thing, and I'm glad that's been called out by my colleagues this afternoon, and so I'm hoping that the next person that speaks will call the question that we can move on from this, because we have to, but we have to make sure that we as a city continue to provide these type of resources and services, and that we stay competitive. And having a place where all children are being murdered and street with with their parents nearby, doing what families are supposed to do does not make us competitive, but this type of policy should help. So thank you
all very much
for your leadership. Thank you. Member waters,
thank you. Thank you, Madam President. So I just have a few closing comments. I certainly hope that we can find additional ways to support our black folks. We need to put money in there. District seven, who has the majority of single parents there. We should be identifying recreation centers for them. We need to make those happen. I hope that we can revisit this ordinance and say in one year, let's see how it's working. Bring some data to us. And Lord knows, I'd rather have a pair pay a fine than to bury their child. But I also don't want to mislead people. You see, we're talking about these drive by shootings and stuff. This one is not going to prevent that. So I don't want to mislead Detroiters by saying that this is going to be the answers. I like to keep it real with people, and so I do know that. I mean, and the baby you, that you talked about, that you, that you held, it's that's not going to stop that. This ordinance is not going to prevent that. So, so let's just, let's just be, be straight with people when we do that. And so I just want to say that I'm not going to vote against this ordinance because I want to. I want to give us an opportunity to make some things work. Um, so I'm going to vote knowing that it is unlikely goals of achieving reduction and violence reduction is not achievable without addressing underlying causes simultaneously with poverty, poor family structures, schools that don't work, health care, disparities, joblessness, parents not employable, no skills, etc. Trump like law and other approach will not work for our people, so we need to use our common sense on curfew. It could be raised to $1,000 per curfew violation, and the behavior of too many of these youngsters and non responsive parents will not change. We have decriminalized parental irresponsibility. We need a Detroit wide intervention to instill a family value, sense of community that attacks the root causes of violence, poverty, illiteracy, joblessness, infants without health care, schools that don't work, uninhabitable housing, I could go on and on. Find them for truancy too won't happen anytime soon to so take a Trump values Law and Order journey into that rabbit hole so we can have that that oh and I did say, oh, did I say? Fine. Elected officials were not supporting a strong Detroit community benefits agreement to really help majority Detroit. We are jumping on those that are used to being beat down. Get the really wealthy that have pimped Detroit while not sharing their wealth with Detroit children and seniors and single mothers and the poor. Push law and order on the streets, but not in the boardroom and Mackinac Island. So I just want to remind people that I'm exercising my leadership as a legislative branch of government, because that's why I serve, and I'm not here to take directions from the executive branch of government. Thank you, Madam President.
All right, thank you. Member waters, all right, we will end the discussion now and again. We thank you all for your time. Yes,
good morning, good afternoon. Council members, I'm attorney Linda Bernard, the elected police commissioner for District Two, I just want to say that the course the chief has discussed this with the board and and I'm in favor of an ordinance. However, as I listened today and everything I thought about the fact that this body has the has the ability to make certain amendments to the ordinance, this is a highly punitive ordinance in a city which has the highest poverty rate in the country, although there have been people forever, where we are right now, has the highest poverty rate in the country, in terms of major cities and a 250 and I'm speaking now both as a parent and as a community member, $250 ticket may be something that all of you can write a check for, and it's done, but the people that we're talking about that are going to get the tickets don't have that ability. And what happens? You now have a debt collection agency that works with the city, so that person is going to get all these Dunning notices. This is, this is going to affect, can affect their credit report can affect their ability to get employment, etc. So my suggestion is simply that if there should be a bright side to this, not just a negative side, and perhaps if my kid is out, I fell asleep on the couch and my daughter went out and I didn't know she was out, so I get the ticket. If there's no other tickets, let's say within 90 days, or even 120 days, then that ticket could be dismissed. I wouldn't have that
debt. Thank you, Commissioner. I thought it was already addressed, though, that that we that if they cannot afford to pay the fine, then they can go into a program. So we just want to make sure that that that was already discussed. I'm not
talking about a criminal penalty. I'm talking about a debt that your debt collectors will be calling me. They can go on on it
question, Madam President, I call the question
motion to end debate.
All right, here's a
there's a motion to end debate.
Any objections,
hearing, none that action will be taken. Member young, stepped up. Are you back? All right? Member young, you want to move the ordinance to be passed as submitted.
I move the orders be passed as submitted,
right there being a roll call required with the clerk, please call the roll
council member Scott Benson, yes. Council member FRED DURHAM Hall, the third Yes. Council member Letitia Johnson, yes. Council member Gabriella Santiago Romero No. Council President Pro Tem James Tate, yes. Council member Mary waters,
yes, educate the people first
council member Angela Whitfield, Callaway.
Council member Coleman Young the second Yes. Council President, Mary Sheffield, yes. Madam President, eight yeas that motion. Pardon me, seven yeas, That motion passes.
All right, the ordinance,
the ordinance is approved. Council member young,
I move the title to the ordinance be confirmed,
Hearing no objections that action will be taken.
Waivers, Yes, Madam President, I would like to request a waiver for lying on 18.1.
Is there any objections to a waiver?
Hearing? None that action will be taken.
Thank you, and we will go back up to our agenda. I
Madam Clerk,
Madam President, we are the
contracting of, excuse me from the Mayor's Office for internal operations, standing committee.
Council member Johnson, a resolution. Line item 15.1
member Johnson, thank
you, Madam President. Move for approval. This is to appoint Robert Jones to the board of police commissioners, council confirmation with a term ending on July 17, 2030
Are there any objections to the resolution?
Hearing no objections. The one resolution will be approved
and President request a waiver in writing, a 15.1 please,
and Hearing no objections, a waiver will be attached to 15.1
from the Office of contracting and
procurement. Council member Johnson for resolutions, line items, 15.2 through 15.5
contract number 6000554,
dash, 815, 100%
city funding. Amendment 15, to provide an extension of time and an increase of funds for legal services. Contractor, think resc, PLLC, total contract amount, 5,970,000
that's for law. Contract Number 6005384,
dash, 821, 100% opera funding. Amendment two, to provide an extension of time only for installation of fiber cable between Detroit Public Safety headquarters and the Lyndon data center contractor, five star Energy Services LLC, total contract amount $1,582,366.88
cent. That's for do it. Contract number 6007175,
100% grant funding to provide legal representation to cover individuals at risk of losing their housing and or housing subsidy or voucher contractor, neighborhood Defender Service incorporated total contract amount $1,531,320 that's for law And the last is a DSS number 10 legal services, attorneys for indigenous individuals, schedule 10 total contract. Maximum order limitation is $30,141,587.97 cent. Council member Johnson, five, four resolutions.
Thank you, Madam Clerk, Council Member Johnson, thank
you, Madam President, Move for approval on line items, 15.2 through 15.5
right. Are there any objections?
Hearing no objections.
The four resolutions will be approved
from the law department.
Council member Johnson, 11 resolutions, line items, 15.6 through 15 point 16,
right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Member Johnson, thank
you, Madam President. Move for approval. These are various lawsuit settlement requests and requests for legal representation and indemnification.
Are there any objections?
Objection member Johnson, line item 15.8,
the clerk would note. Clerk was on note, Madam
President, any further objections?
Hearing? None. Hearing none the 11 resolutions will be approved
from the Human Resources Department, administration.
Council member Johnson, two resolutions, line items 15 point 17 and 15 point 18.
Council member Johnson,
thank you, Madam President, Move for approval. Line item 15 point 17 is a request for the supplemental checks for city retirees and beneficiaries. And line item 15 point 18 is a resolution for the implementation of the 2024 through 2028 labor agreement for employees represented by the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council,
Okay, are there any objections? Discussion, discussion. Council member Benson, just
so we know, put it on the record. What's the value of these individual checks for each system? Right?
Mr. Corle, if you want to come up, but I have approximately 467, for general retirees, and 654, for police and fire. Very, very helpless. Want to make sure that on the record. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else additional? Mr. Corley, okay,
all right, any additional questions or comments?
All right, hearing none. Any objections.
Hearing none. The two resolutions will be approved. Madam President,
I'd like to request a waiver on line items 15 point 17 and 15 point 18.
All right, Hearing no objections.
Waiver will be attached to both items for the classification and compensation
division. Council member Johnson, a resolution line item 15 point 19.
Member Johnson, thank
you, Madam President, Move for approval line item 15 point 19 is a request to amend the official compensation schedule for 2025 through 2026 for the property assessing technician with the Office of the Chief Financial Officer.
Okay, any objections,
hearing none the one resolution will be
approved. Madam President, I'd like to request a waiver on line item 15 point 19.
And if there are no objections, a waiver will be attached to 15 point 19
under resolutions,
recommendations for appointment to the board of ethics, Madam President. All right,
see, I know what we did receive a ballot,
and I'll see Miss barcliff here with us. We are select only one individual name, and once our ballots are received, we can pass them over to peers. You're going to collect the pairs. Okay? You
Hey, I I'm in fact, the brown they have some big items, And we can get them out of here too. I
Madam President, I have the results. Okay?
Raymond card, Council Member der Hall, Council Member Johnson, Council Member young Brie Williamson Council Member Santiago Romero. Joyce Moore, there were no votes. Marcia Spivey Council President, Mary Sheffield, David Bonner council member, Scott Benson, Josh Mack council member, Mary waters Council President, pro tem James Tate,
Madam President, Raymond card has three votes,
that person has the most votes.
Attorney Barkley, if you had anything additional,
yes, I do,
because not one person received a majority vote, we probably will have to narrow down the field of applicants. We can do that by reducing the number of individuals who receive the least amount of votes, and that will be the persons that receive zero or one votes, so that will leave the field holding Raymond card and Josh Mack, that
will leave us with what
names Raymond card and Josh Mack, okay, and then you would vote to
vote between those individuals, right, colleagues. So we're going to vote again, eliminating those individuals who had the least amount of votes. And we are to vote for one person Between Raymond Carr and Josh Mack. That's Correct. I
Madam President, we have the vote
for Raymond card. Council member der Hall, Council Member Johnson, Council Member Santiago Romero, Council Member young that's four votes for Josh Mack. Council member Benson, Council Member waters, council president pro tem Tate Council President Mary Sheffield, that's four votes.
So at this point, since there's a tie, we could do one of two things, either it can be brought back after recess, or you can re vote at this time if there is probably some indication that someone may change their votes. Otherwise, I
I think there's this time. Are we
going to vote again? Or do it? Can I say
something? So I'm going to say something about a candidate? Well, I can't do that. Oh, we don't have to vote again.
Okay, all right, all right, fine, I'll wait There.
Okay, you
so moved.
Madam President, speaking on behalf of the Board of ethics, the executive director has indicated that they are having difficulty with quorum, and they do want to have meetings pretty soon, so I think in the in the month of August, there's a desire to meet. There are a number of issues that they have to that are currently before them. They need a quorum to be and they're having difficulty with quorum. I don't know if that's going to change the outcome of this, of this vote. You still have to to vote, your your you know your pleasure, and if no one wants to change their vote with eight, you're going to keep running up against a split of four. Four split. So waiting your waving your vote, I don't know if that's going to make a difference either, because you're going to you're going to keep running up and against the same option with only two candidates, but you might try it again. You might get a different result, change the outcome.
Remember water? President? Yeah. Thank you.
I happen to know both of those candidates, both of them, and I can tell you that Josh Mack is going to show up and he's going to do his job. He understands that it's he's not being paid to do it. He is. He is that type of person that will show up. He's an extremely intelligent guy, and he is going to be there. He's going to make sure that there's a quorum, because he's a committed kind of guy. I just wanted to put that out there, since I do know both of them that we're holding on, I wanted to say that, not saying anything about the other candidate. I'm not going to say but what I am saying is that Josh Mack will certainly be committed.
Thank you, member young,
all due respect to member waters. But as good as Josh Mack is, I think that Mr. Card is superior and better in every way, anything that Matt can do, Mr. Card can do better, and I think that he has a very long standing service record in the community, and I endorsed and fully throatedly Get behind a man who has ran a small business, who has put Detroiters to work, and is the glue that makes Detroit Great. So let's vote for excellence. Let's vote for greatness. Let's vote for Mr. Card. Thank you.
We got a campaign running around here.
All right, anybody else? All right, exactly.
All right, so we can turn our ballots into Paris again to see if anything changed for all of us. Yes,
we already have, okay, okay, okay,
reconsider, okay, Hearing no objections, we will reconsider the vote to bring this item back and.
