Budget — Construction & Demolition Department / Dept. of Appeals & Hearings

    2:00PM Mar 20, 2024

    Speakers:

    President Sheffield

    Keywords:

    property

    demolition

    demolish

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    work

    tickets

    process

    city

    locations

    number

    issue

    talk

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    hearing

    blight

    team

    year

    residents

    provide

    budget

    grass

    All right, good morning everyone. We will now call to order the expanded budget Finance and Audit Committee for the purposes of our budget deliberations and if our curtain please call the roll.

    Councilmember Scott Benson. ROBINSON I councilmember fragile halls third. Councilmember Leticia Johnson present. Councilmember Gabriel Santiago Romero. Councilmember Mary waters present. Councilmember Angela Whitfield Calloway. Councilmember Coleman Young the second. Councilman, President Pro Tem James state your council president mayor, Sheffield president. Madam President, there's a quorum.

    Thank you and Member Santiago and muralist present as well.

    Sorry, Paul, so no,

    right and we will start off we have our first budget hearing for the construction and demolition department and all of the representatives that are here can join us at the table.

    Direct accounts do you have a PowerPoint?

    Good at a good morning? Yes we do. We have Nick Payne who's in his in person but he needs to be able to be promoted so that he can share.

    Yep, we're making giving you the privileges now.

    Okay, he has his permission to share his screen

    so good morning. I am lawan counts director of the construction demolition department. Tim Peltola, Deputy Director of construction and demolition

    Lashonda Davis agency CFO for construction and demolition.

    And it looks as if we have our presentation up and we are ready to get started. And we're going to kick it off. Like we kick off every presentation that we provide to the community and we're going to start with our pillars. We are going to continue to be dependable. We understand that we have to earn the community's trust. And so we're going to do that by being consistent and account of being held accountable. And we are continuing to be data driven. We create a lot of information so whether it's facts, figures maps, we continue to make sure that all of that information is available and in real time for the community as well as for this honorable body and then deliver. There were promises that were made under the resolutions for proposal and so whether it's jobs for Detroiters or safer neighborhoods, we must ensure that those promises are kept I want to start off by just revisiting our mission. The mission of the construction and demolition department is to promote health and safety and the quality of life for the people of Detroit through the elimination of demolition through blighted structures. And we do that with our team. Um, you have a very high level view of our org chart. And we try and keep this structure very simple and basic. Each team has a function and responsibility and it's their job to stay in their lane and be the experts in what they do. What I have come to see is that there's because of how we were formed, and we've been we've been changing over the years, um, that there's some some focus that needs to be given to exactly what it is that we do. And so I wanted to get into the specifics of each unit and kind of walk you through what they do for us and how that work relates to the budget as well. So let's start off with our planning and strategy team. What we do is we have all of the services that need to be procured or received, whether it's services, goods or supplies that's run through this particular unit. And it's a staff of four, four individuals. Um, they're responsible for preparing all of our scopes of services, whether it's bid documents on whether it's our notices to proceed to the contractors, but they also had that over view of the entire department to understand where efficiencies can be met, as far as combining contract needs across services. So whether it is supplies that we are procuring for facilities, but we can also use that same contract to support our security. It's their responsibility for that particular aspect of our operations that allows us to operate as efficiently as possible. We also have our first set of boots on the ground, which is our environmental due diligence group. This is a staff of 13 individuals. They're responsible for overseeing our survey and abatement activity across the city. This is a part of the demo branch of the department. This element allows us to ensure that we are maintaining our level of safety. As far as watching those abatement projects, make sure making sure that the contractor is aware of all the materials that need to be removed from those demos that demo locations as well. Now, the demo field operations team this is probably what people usually think about when they think about demo. It's it's a portion of our team another 15 full time individuals who are responsible for overseeing our day to day demo operations. So whether it's residential or commercials, we ensure that we have 100% of our demos are monitored by our field team. They're also responsible for ensuring that any damages that happen in the course of a demo, whether it's a neighboring property that's damaged or the sidewalk, they ensure that that those instances are tracked, monitored and then repaired as required. They're also our main team that liaisons with the community to ensure you know that the community is aware of exactly what's should happen, how it should happen, and provide just that level of support and question answering for the residents while they're outside for those demos.

    I'm off by my slides. Oh my and so the next unit is compliance. Compliance is going to be our unit that's responsible for ensuring that all of the contract performance, discipline and invoicing is addressed. They're responsible for making sure that what the contractors are supposed to provide us after the work is done is is submitted before we allow or authorize that final payment. And so they're responsible for our pre invoice reviews. They issue all of our letters of discipline, and they are responsible for liaison with liaising with all of the other units to ensure that any contract issues or contract concerns on contract or concerns are addressed. We also have our data and GIS team. That's a staff of four individuals they're responsible for basically providing everything that you see on our website as far as any of the data all of the maps any of the facts and figures anytime information is requested from us. Our this team is responsible for making sure that they're able to access it, whether it's from our Salesforce application or from a number of smart sheets that we have that track all of our work. This team is responsible for providing that support for us. And then we have our Venket property and stabilization team. This is 42 team members. They are what most commonly called the board up team. So whether they are installing the plastic, which is the polycarbonate or just doing plywood boards. This team is responsible for ensuring that those vacant and open properties whether they're the land bank, properties that we are secure and under Prop in or just complaints that we received from the community for structures that need to be secured. That's the team that's going to be providing that response. They also assist on some of those locations that we have trash out situations. So whether it's monitoring our trash out, contractors are providing some lightweight kind of go in and clean up those areas just because they become a nuisance and that community is complaining. We provide additional services just to clean up the properties as best we can when we come in to do a board up situation. Then we have our Capital Management Team. This is Nine staff members who are responsible for overseeing the design and engineering services as well as providing those capital improvements or those large scale renovations or new builds mostly new rec centers, that the city for those city owned facilities. Their responsibility, their main responsibility is to ensure that the repairs that we're making or the improvements that we make and we're making are maintaining a state of good repair for all of our facilities. And then lastly is our facilities main management team. This team is a staff of 40 team members, and they're kind of our probably our most unsung heroes of the group. They're the ones who come in and do the repairs that you usually just don't think about you think about having a broken item. Whether it's a leaky faucet or back the toilet, and then it's fixed. Well you don't usually see them they come in they get the job done and they leave out but this team is responsible for 142 locations across the city. All city owned facilities and their job is to ensure that we maintain that level of state of good repair. Those responsibilities cover whether it's elevator maintenance, age, back repairs and services. Fire Protection, pool maintenance, electrical, plumbing, structural Roof Repairs, anything that you would think that requires any tasks that would be required inside of a facility this team is responsible for

    so some of the baseline information that I feel is necessary for us to kind of get into before we talk about how we generated the thought process for the upcoming budget request is our past numbers. So on our residential demos, we over the past couple of fiscal years. We've shown we have a significant amount of effort that's been performed. So back in 21, fy 21 We were 772 demos completed residential completed demos in FY 22. We had 2367 in FY 23. There were 2200 and currently in FY 24, we've performed 17 174. Now that's broken down into either an ODM or an emergency so the emergencies everyone is pretty much familiar with. Typically a fire has happened the property is in imminent danger of collapse, BC issues in emergency order. And we respond typically in about seven to 10 days. And we take those properties down in opuses 21 to current. You can see those numbers, we typically we typically budget for or anticipate anywhere from 300 to 400 Emergency demos on throughout the course of the year. And so currently in FY 24 We're about 143 completed thus far. On the ODM side, which is an order demo. Those properties are properties that had been ticketed there blighted concerns. They've gone through the process from BC been elevated to City Council for approval as a dangerous building. And then they're determined to be an ordered demo. And in the past, those properties have typically set in inventory and thus we have crop in so we have a huge bank or backlog of podiums that we had to address. And so that's where basically where prop in came from, was to address those backlogs. But if we look at them on an annual basis and have more consideration about how we address them in a more timely manner and not allow for the backlog, the numbers here show you that in FY 21 We had 273 in FY 22 There were 715 in FY 23 633 In FY 24 currently to date we have 365. Now for our commercial demos we have mostly in an emergency state address those commercial demos over the years. Currently today we've completed 87 commercial demos now. Of course we're talking cross funding here. So now we're talking about ARPA on the commercial demo side. But the demos still exist, right. And so the funding sources provided in it's not general fund, but we currently have budgeted all of our ARPA funding and so we want to be mindful of that. Any future commercial demos we will have to address there's no need to continue to let them pile up and have backlog like we did with to get to property and same thing applies or same kind of logic applies to our commercial demos. So you can see in FY 24 We currently have 34 commercial OEMs and we performed 37 emergencies.

    So that takes us to our general fund, demolition budget, kind of overview and requests. All of that kind of background information determine what we thought was a reasonable amount to to kind of prepare and plan for in this upcoming budget. So in FY 25, we are currently requesting enough to cover the funding for 375 Emergency residential demolitions and 20. Emergency commercial resident I'm sorry, commercial demolitions. Now in FY 23, we performed 330 Emergency residential demolitions and 30. Commercial emergency residential I'm sorry, emergency demolitions. Today we've already discussed how in FY 24 We've already performed 37 commercial EMGs and we've already exceeded what we had planned for the previous fiscal year. Those average costs are running us about 104,000 for the commercials and 25,000 Almost 26,000 for the for the residentials. Previously, however, the costs or the thought had been we just an emergency was an emergency and it was not really viewed as whether it was commercial or residential. It was just viewed as an emergency. And our commercial demolitions number one were much higher. So we experienced demolitions that were costing about 300,000 on the on the on the commercial side, and that that definitely reached into our budget greater than we had anticipated, because our initial focus was that our emergencies would really cover just the residentials and what we saw was, yeah, the number is slightly more but it's also way more expensive on the commercial side. So in FY 24, we also have budgeted 75 privately owned OEMs. This is something that historically we have not budgeted for prior to and we currently are to the point where we are moving into utilizing those funds so we have completely expended all of our prop in funding. So on the residential side, we are no longer using prop N funds to do those podiums, or those order demos. And we're now moving into this number of 75. And at that time, we weren't really sure what that number was going to look like. It's hard to predict how many properties are going to transition into that. ODM category. Um, so we gave us a best best effort. We're hopeful that this ODM number of 75 will take us through the end of this current fiscal year. So in 2025, understanding that there will be no prop in funding to support any OEMs and moving forward. We're planning about 200 privately owned OEMs to take place in the next fiscal year. Again, this is an estimation because we are still kind of learning and getting a grasp or what the future of a demo maintenance program is going to look like. The next is just a map that shows you the volume of the demos that we've performed across the city so far today.

    This next slide I'm add order so this next slide addresses some concerns that we have that shows the difference in the increase for our facility maintenance. So in FY 24, we were tasked with budgeting for are being budgeted for 142 facilities with a budget of a little over 5 million and that really equates to a little over 35,000 per per site for annual funding. Unfortunately, a significant amount of that was eaten up with emergency facility repairs. What we have found is that the budgeted amount for the previous year was not really enough to support the need for our facilities and so on. We were not even reaching that basic level of state of good repair. And we were just barely keeping you know things going. And so what happens when you're not providing the base level maintenance for those facilities, you deal with problems so whether it's um drains and we were not expecting to be to snake and jet rod to failures on the electrical side failures to mechanical equipment that we you know, we're not particularly into anticipating because we were not able to perform those kinds of base level maintenance services. We incurred a significant more unique set of emergencies than we had planned. What we would like to be able to get to is a more standard, a standard level of service. And unfortunately, the budget does typically does not support that. What we are presenting here is a budget that we feel will be able to allow us to provide the level of preventative and scheduled maintenance that's required in order for the facilities to not be in that kind of reactive, emergency need. emergencies are gonna happen. We anticipate that you know, there's always going to be a certain level and we've also provided a certain small set of funding to support those emergencies when they come up. But we definitely need to make sure that if our intention is to have these facilities and they're going to last for the next 2030 years, we need to provide that level of maintenance for them in order for that to happen. So when we go to the next chart, it this gives you kind of an understanding of what the amount of work that the facility teams put into the locations each year. In FY 22. The number is only 1130. It's it's only low because we transitioned into a new software system, that software system the team had a difficult time transitioning into. And so the reality is we weren't able to capture all of the information or all of the work orders that were performed during that time. But in FY 23 You see that the amount of work orders completed was 4126. This is more representative of what we anticipate work order repairs to be this a combination of some preventative maintenance and some reactive or emergency service repairs. The it says is that the numbers should in theory go down. Because as you're performing more standard preventative maintenance repairs, you have less emergency or less knee jerk work orders required. And so that's our overall goal. Currently right to date. We are at 2983 So we've completed already almost 3000 repairs, and we haven't hit our busy season our busy season is typically the spring into the summer, we're activating all of the conference stations. We're assessing what locations might have had freeze thaw thaw issues, all of those things that you typically would not see in the wintertime. We're starting to see as we transition into that summer setup season. So the number definitely will go up there is a significant amount of work that takes place and from April until June and until July. I'm just getting us set up and so the number will go up, hopefully will be under our 4126 but the overall thought is that in FY 25 Our numbers will start to go down because we will be more proactive on our response to the locations. So if this school year 24 The budget the total budget shows 8.1 And based on roughly about 14,000 square feet per location. Now keep in mind our locations range in size we have some that are well over 100,000 square feet, and then we have some that are much smaller in the five 600 square feet, but using a rough number of about 14,000 persons per location. We're averaging about $4. On last year's budget we we averaged about $4 per square foot for maintenance costs. This year's budget request really takes us to only about $6 per square foot which is really small in comparison. But the impact, I believe will be quite significant. I think that there will be a much, much higher level of response and care for the facilities that we're just not able to give at our current budget amount. So that takes us to the end of our presentation. But I do want to make sure that I I'm I presented to this body that it was important for me to be able to kind of give you that breakdown of what the hard working people of our department provides to you. I feel like I have personally been doing them a disservice by not making sure that it was clearly understood how much of an effort and support that they provide to not only the facilities and to the community, but some to myself as well. Their efforts are greatly appreciated. And I just need that to be kind of formally and publicly known. We look forward to being able to continue to share with the body. We continue to have our newsletter that we put out monthly and that we hope all of you get and share and read every month. We continue to make sure that we provide our quarterly updates coming up in April we have our demolition week so you're all free to join as well as the community to come out and see and experience what work and life and demolition is like. In May we will highlight our facilities team so that the residents, community, the staff, everyone can get a feeling and understanding of what exactly the facilities team does. And we'll be highlighting that team as well. And with that, we I'm done from our from an operation standpoint.

    All right, thank you so much. Director counts and thank you to yourself as the director for your leadership in what you're doing with the department into all of the men and women that work in the construction department for the work that you all do. But no, it's not easy, but we definitely appreciate the hard work that goes into cleaning up our city. So with that being said we will start with questions from my colleagues and I'm going to start with councilmember DuBois.

    Thank you, Madam President. Good morning to you all. First, let me thank you for what you do. Every time my team has reached out to demolition whether we have a dangerous structure in district seven, be it commercial or residential. You are always responsive always on the ground. You have come out with us personally they even look at the structure. And I really appreciate that type of communication that exists. Particularly when we have residents who contact us every day and say, Hey, do you guys know about this structure? This structure is sitting here this is becoming a nuisance. It's dangerous for our neighbors is dangerous for our kids. And you guys and your entire team as cows are always on so I did want to thank you for that. And so you kind of touched a little bit on a question that I had. We know that ARPA funding is expiring, and I'm glad that you mentioned that we know prop N expiry and as we look forward, you know, thinking about how we maintain our funding obviously for our general fund to be able to put a whole lot more into demolition could put pressure on our budget. Have we looked at any other outside sources, whether on the federal level, whether on the state level to see if we can get some influx of funds or resources to help us kind of move a little bit forward after this funding has been appropriated and spent.

    At this time, we have not it's definitely always an option. And I'm sure as those relationships you know, between the city and other members of whether it's federal or state level, continue to to be what they are. Hope we I'm sure if there's any opportunities for funding for demolition, some that those opportunities would be met. I mean, we did. We were able actually to source some state funding for the northern portion of Packard, um, so that that portion did not is not incorporated in our current, you know, ARPA funding that we're that we're utilizing right now. So, but as far as additional conversations, I'm not aware of them. I know I'm not personally having them but we definitely you know, we're always entertaining the thought. Okay.

    Love to have those conversations with you as well, as we talk about looking forward. You know, I think we've done significant work when I look at the seven, you know, just to see the impact this has had on our neighborhoods, helping stabilize our neighborhoods has been tremendous. My second question just revolves around how demolition has come a long way. Obviously, you have done a great job since you come into the department helped turn it around working to change the narrative relative to demolition. So my question just revolves around what strategies do you employ and your team employee to ensure that you're monitoring the work of our contractors to ensure that they are doing exactly what we contract them to do and doing it to the tee?

    I think our main strategy is that our team members are empowered with the ability to be able to to make those judgment calls. It's if there's not a member on our team that can't point out something and say, there's a flaw there's a shortcoming on this particular contractor and we won't support it's important for my team members to know that they are literally when we say you're our boots on our on the ground, you're our eyes in the streets, we mean that. And so if that report comes back to us that there's a problem or a shortfall. We address it and we believe what our team members are telling us. We have. We're all operating from a sense a strong sense of public service. My team members know that they are supposed to be responding as good neighbors. They're supposed to treat each resident as if they were their own mother or father and how would you want them to be responded to and so because you treat each each demo that you are that you touch on like it's a demo that's next door to your own family member or next door to your own house? It's a it's an added level of, you know, just interest in protection that you place. Um, so for us, we took the whole we're going to monitor we're going to make sure we have 100%, you know, eyes on 100% of every demo that we complete, we took that very seriously.

    And I thank you for missing that. Again, I think as we talk about how the city is coming forward, again, stabilizing those neighborhoods are important. But again, that communication between our departments and the residents are important, and I liked the fact that you attend meetings, obviously I have maybe a couple questions, but we talked to you often so I can so I can and your team often so I can ask you those questions offline. But finally, I just wanted to say as well thank you for your commitment to even higher and returning citizens, particularly putting them in a department and given those giving them those opportunities to work for the city. So thank you very much. Thank you, Madam President.

    Thank you member Doha council member Johnson.

    Thank you, Madam President. And good morning. Thank you so much for the presentation. It is very detailed. And I think when we talk about the construction and demolition department for me, the focus has to be on both and I know that you're not responsible for construction, necessarily in our neighborhoods. But I think it's important for us to ensure that while we are demolishing residential properties in our communities that there is someone within the administration that's having the thought and the conversation around how are we rebuilding our neighborhoods, and that's the position that I speak from, primarily because we all know that as we went through the redistricting process, District Four lost the greatest population that was also equivalent to the greatest having the greatest number of vacant properties or vacant lots in the neighborhood. And so as we demolish properties, who's thinking about who's rebuilding within our neighborhoods, and I know is not you and so my question to you is when I look at downtown, and our neighborhoods, do you have a sense of the percentage of properties that have been demolished in the central business district?

    I do not. Wait, it's probably some information that we could gather for you and provide for you offline, but I don't I couldn't give you a number off the off the top of my head but we definitely could provide that information for you. I can tell you that from our department standpoint, we we see the critical need for those properties that are still in the communities. But we also know that something has to be done right? There's there continues to be blighted structures in the neighborhoods. And so we are included kind of worked into this. This current budget is a plan for how do we more aggressively kind of protect and secure those locations, um, that we encounter when we're out, you know, doing what we normally do, and maybe there's a structure or a house on the block that we're not we don't have any plans for but we want to make sure that that property does not transition over to the demo side. We don't want to demolish them any more than you know, then then then those who need them want them to be demolished. Right. So we have established a kind of a different plan where we're going to go in and survey and where we're not going to continue to just use plywood, there's going to be a slightly more aggressive plan to deal with those properties so that we have less transitioning because we don't want them to come to we don't want them to come to us. We would much rather someone purchased those properties or those owners actually stepped up which is something that we have seen since the city has taken a more aggressive stance on if we say we're going to demolish the structure, and we actually show up. Those owners know that it's going to happen now. And so a lot of those owners are starting to come forward and say Hey, can you pull it from the list because we actually want to be more intentional about protecting and saving our property. So we're hoping that this level of intensity has a has a different counterpart as well, whereas it causes those private owners to be, you know, come forward and actually take care of their properties. And they don't come to us in that regard. as well.

    Thank you. And to that point, I was going to ask you about the deferral process, because I know there have been several properties that have been brought to my attention where folks were trying to get it off of the demolition list and I think it's important for us to provide that support. Pending folks come with, you know, adequate financing and that they can actually show that they can take that property off of the demolition list and put it into active use. So can you talk about that process as it relates to your department because it's, we have to transition from demolishing a structure to helping to save structures in our neighborhoods, if we are going to have a city. We have to have properties for people to live in. And I think part of the challenge is we've delayed our processes for so long. So people have sat on properties for so long, they've been open to trespass, they fall into a state of disrepair and they continue to just decay. So I understand the need for some of them to be demolished. But at some point in time, we have to get we have to be more proactive in addressing our residential properties particularly to help stop the vicious cycle of houses sitting being vacant for so long, and then going through that demolition process. And one of the I've been having conversations with the land bank about this as well, because we see how long properties sit, how long it takes for the foreclosure process to happen. The property has likely been sitting for a number of years before it goes into foreclosure the three years before it's foreclosed on, and just what happens to a house with it sitting for that long. But can you talk about how if there is a an effort and intentional effort to provide support for individuals that are looking to take a property off the demolition list to put it into active use.

    So the process is if you are interested if you own the property, and there's there's there's very many stages to how things happen or how they come to us. But if you own the property and you want for that property to come off you have to apply for a a you have to be approved for a deferral of demolition. That approval comes through built as a safety. The moment that you receive that approval and they have their steps that you have to to complete in order to get that approval. Once you receive that approval. We immediately stop any demo activity at the property. That that's been the understanding. The problem that we had is that typically we don't get you know that interest or that activity until we have identified an actual demo date. What's and I'm just going to be honest with you what's what's troubling to me is that when we walk into actually do a demo on a particular location, we've been at that location for months. And it's if you've been to your property, if you're an actual owner and you've been to your property and you really been concerned about it you know that we've been there. We've posted your location we've come in we've surveyed it, there's markings all over your location. There's been a lot of activity at your location or your property prior to us saying today is the day that we're going to demolish your structure. So when we get those calls, you know, three or four days before the actual demo was going to happen. It is confusing because it's like well, I'm, I'm fully supportive of you getting your property off the demo list, but you wait until the ninth hour. Not only that, but we've also extended a significant amount of funding to do so. So it can still come off though if you come in and you actually provide that information. It shows that you've got the proof of funds and BC is willing to issue you that approval does not matter if it's the day before or two hours before if BC issues it will stop. Now, I do think that we need to establish a better timeline. It's really to the point where we've scheduled the demo. Maybe that's too late. But typically when we encounter those locations where the property looks as if it's in good shape or it appears that someone has been doing some work, we ask the questions we just don't barrel through and keep moving. We do ask those questions. We'll reach out to BC and say, Hey, has a permit been submitted for this? Are they actively doing work at this location so that we can make sure that we're not moving forward on a demo that's really not required? But at any time like I said it anytime if you submit if you follow the process and request your your deferral, we pull it, we absolutely would rather see that property, renovate it and then demolished.

    Thank you for that overview. I know I believe you've shared that with me previously because there was someone in District Four who came to me at the last minute asking for the property to be pool as your team goes out. So you indicated that you know you all spend several months even going to that property. Do you all poster anything on the property when you go out?

    Yes, we do. Yes, we do. The minute that property is contracted for demo, a poster goes up and from the time that the contract your they're issued there on the actual contract and the time that they actually Demolish. There's a there's a gap because the property has to be abated. There's in those if we moved as fast as we absolutely could. We're probably about six weeks from the time that they will be posted to the time that we would actually demo and that's that's really aggressive. We typically don't move that fast per property. And at the residential level, it's much the time span is much longer because what they want to do is have a group of properties that they can go in and start to demolish and keep working. So the abatement period is a longer period so it's usually in everyone knows, you know, like when we come in, it's very clear that we're coming in and we've been to the property there's been activity at the property. Okay,

    thank you. I have a number of additional questions that I'll submit via memo one in particular that I'd love to have some great a conversation with you about in the future in the near future relative to the environmental due diligence team and the impacts of the demolitions on the community. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President.

    Thank you, member Johnson Member Santiago Ramiro. Thank you Madam President. Good morning. Thank you for being here, Director. We speak lots overseeing public health and safety contracts together. And I do appreciate the work that you've been doing. I very much are in line with thinking of Mr. Johnson on how we can transition from demolition to rehab and reconstructing the properties that we have currently. I also have a number of questions that we can send out in the memo the time that we have here. I want to focus on one question being you know, following up on the conversation that member Johnson brought up about the financing and support that we're providing for residents are brought up and you may have heard even I'm not sure if you've listened into the did to the dangerous buildings hearings, but you may have heard residents say I just need 510 $1,000 to fix a window to fix the roof. And I I'm toying with the idea of creating us creating either a fund or grants that can provide resources to to residents. I know that we provide a 0% loan already through the city, but this fine I think should be very specific to the properties that are in the dangerous buildings pipeline and wondering if you if you know and I'm asking cuz I don't know it's going to be consistent. I have with HRD and everybody else NBC but where do you think a fund like this should live and and be managed?

    I'm not really certain I'm not quite understanding exactly what you'd want to provide a what level of service you'd want to provide if what you were interested in would be having a unit that will be able to respond and actually perform the install for them because you're right. In some cases, there are just like a window that needs to be replaced. Well, my team, my vacant property team could definitely install a window. I think we'd need to have some more conversation. I I feel like that would be something that we would like to actually support. Because a lot of times they're out. And it's just easy. They're already there. They know what to do. They're familiar enough to be able to provide, provide that service and then move on and we not even have to worry about it anymore. Um, but I think the question comes in is is how do we actually cover that cost? Is it a private residence? Is it a public rent, you know, if there's, there's so many variables to it that I don't know exactly how we would actually fund it. Or cover it. And I've already gotten myself in trouble because I like to just get stuff done so that we can just take it off the table and, you know, the resident is happy. We don't have to worry about it. So but, I mean, it's something I think we could do on a much smaller scale. If there's a submission of you know, 10,000 people, then that will be a much harder ask for us. But if it's just the one or two offs, it's definitely something we can handle in homes. Okay.

    That's helpful, actually, because I also don't know I'm literally trying to figure this out and I'm trying to figure it out. If it's the city that does the construction and as the construction and demolition department you're right, it does make sense that we do that. Are we just providing the funds that the residents can then go find their own contracts for to do it, but we just shared actually sparks more ideas and and and pathways to cut to go down, which I appreciate. So we should have this conversation offline to see what barriers or opportunities are would be to do something like this in house. I'm, we would have to evaluate homes from last year to to get a sense of how many are what the need is and what we could potentially provide. And what I'm looking to do is if we can't pilot something this year, to figure out the structure. So this is something that we can pilots, maybe next fiscal year, but it's something that I'm hearing from residents almost every single time we have a hearing and there have been at least a handful of properties each time that we pull because they're literally just missing a window. And these are properties that we could be saving money from demolition, and instead, we could be saving money by replacing the window set of demolishing. So excited to have more conversations about that offline. My next question that I'll focus on is about the construction. And we brought this up before I believe in PHS around our ability to deconstruct and recycle and sell, if you could please share again with the public what it is that we do when it comes to the construction and if there have been any developments in trying to repurpose or sale any of them arterial.

    So we did we instituted a pilot program in which we contracted with an outside company to come in and salvage whatever materials they were able to from the group of properties that we had assign them. And that initial kind of lift a properties did not really yield much materials for them, unfortunately, because we're required to perform abatements on the materials that are inside of the structures. It renders a lot of the materials kind of useless as far as from, you know, trying to, you know, people always think about, oh, they're going to, you know, use the doorframes or the trim and they're going to take the man Oh, well, when we've come in and removed all of the material that needed to be removed prior to the demo. A lot of that material was damaged. We did have some additional conversations with with the vendor. And we thought about potentially expanding that program to try and capture some of the more structural members in the House. We have not yet performed that effort we did. We've identified a location that we want to actually I'm kind of target to see how successful we could be in that effort. So we we're not, we're not giving up on our deconstruction possibilities. Part of the problem though, is that we are we are encountering some pushback from Eagle as far as what they are considering to be hazardous containing our hazardous waste. Because a building or a location might have had asbestos in it. They're kind of categorizing all of the materials as asbestos containing and so that's going to make our kind of normal recycling efforts because we do typically recycle the metals and concrete from like on our commercials. It's going to make that effort a lot harder, if that if we're fine following that guidance. So we'll we'll continue to push until we get the final guidance issued from Eagle. Um, but for right now, that's kind of the struggle that we feel like we're going to, to kind of hit a brick wall on as a as it relates to trying to salvage and recycle material from our demolition candidates

    through the chair Understood, thank you for that. I asked because I know a lot of smaller developers, folks that work in the construction business that actually asked for materials that are happy to go into homes and all that. But if it's if it's something about finding the right partners then that's something that we need to discuss first because I know that there, I'd be happy to connect you with folks that I think would be really good at at repurposing some of the material that we might be using or removing their deconstruction or during demolition. But thank you. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilmember potentate.

    Thank you, Madam President. And thank you, Director Council and your team for being here. Appreciate the work that you all do. I just got a question about and a lot of my questions sometimes become parochial, and we talked about district one. And you know as a district, one resident as well. How much we love our district. How does do the department's Rebecca I just flat out say so there's a a sure you should be aware of because we've been talking about it. The self carwash on Finkle is has been brought up as part of the bright more framework project. Probably the PDD talked to the young folks in the community say, Hey, here's a possibility the Breadman framework project isn't done yet. But that self carwash has now been placed on the demo rolls. Just trying to figure out how about the communication pre and now post because now it's been it's very clear deputy mayor has gone over we've all talked about it. But my understanding again from from Gail is that it remains on the demo rolls. Talk to us a little bit about the process between departments and how does a project like this or I mean, granted it has definitely been a challenge for the neighbors in the community but part of it was about the maintenance of it. That was a big piece but the young people really wanted to use that as an entertainment venue. And it was, again kind of dangled in front of the folks in the community as an opportunity. And then it got placed on actually was on the demo list prior to that. So how does that work? Because it really is created a little bit of a concern for the folks in the community on a framework that's already challenged.

    So I mean, the honest answer is we internally we have to do a better job of communicating between departments. We do send out our list we have sent out this list this this list of over 300 properties commercial properties we shared with all of the other city departments. And it's been some time though. And so if the thought has changed or the plans have changed inside of a separate department, that information wasn't necessarily communicated to us. In they might they just fully might not have been aware that it was on the demo. List, even though it's been on the list for several years. And so we we do we have at the start of this particular group, we reach out to all the departments and say, you know, ask if there's any development plans, is there any interest you know, should we isolate this particular property? We asked those questions upfront. And that particular property is currently on hold I placed a hold on it until we can determine what what the plan or the direction is should really be. It will continue to be on the demo list because I'll continue to watch it to see you know what it does the plan come to fruition or do we need to continue to move forward with actually taking the structure down. But that's in theory we should be talking and so in in that particular location. Yeah, we did we we we that the open line of communication was just not there on that one. All I can say is, you know, we actively share all of our properties on our website. So if anyone had any question, there was another particular property that that's how exactly how one of the other departments found out about it. They were on our website and saw it. They reached out to us and we started talking about that particular property, just because we do provide that information upfront. Hopefully, this is this is the last time that we have this kind of this, you know, we want to do some development issue on it. But I can't say that, you know, it won't happen again. But we're mindful to it and again, like I said, if that's if that's the plan, if that's exactly what. So if there's a developer or if there's interest in the property, and they want it off the list as long as you do the steps that it school required for it to no longer be a blighted issue for us. We're fully supportive of it coming off the list. Yeah, I'm

    glad to hear it as far as I've heard that it's been placed on hold because I've just constantly been told it's on a list. It's on the list. It's on the list. Oh, it's still on the list. Appreciate it. But again, hearing that it's on hold is a very, very important thing that I can go back and talk to the residence as a matter of fact, tomorrow. We have a bright more framework meeting and I'm sure that questions going to come up again, as it constantly does. So thank you for that. Thank you for being a nimble enough in this situation to put it on hold because I'd like to be honest with you. If it was demolished prior to it being dangled to the community, I would have been fine. But the fact that we have now as a within the framework and the PDD told the community this is an opportunity, I think that we should allow for at least every exercise possible to ensure that we do what we can to make that happen. If not take it down because it is a blind community. Certainly when it's not maintained. My other question is, I know last year, you mentioned that we went back and look at approximately 30 privately owned and commercial structures that had been demolished over the past two calendar years. And you said that you were pursuing the cost recovery. So if you can talk to us about that, because that's a part of the reason why I vote no on these because I want to know how we're going to recover those funds because I believe that those funds should go into you know, additional demo or constructs but certainly demo. But talk to us about those 30 properties and again provide us with an understanding of how we're executing cost recovery.

    Up to date. So last year when we had this conversation, it cost recovery was it was a vision, right? We didn't have the process formerly worked out. I have shared with this body, kind of the breakdown of what cost recovery looks like for us now. There's a complete process in place. It involves our department law as well as odf s and we actively go after every privately owned demo for those privately owned, commercial demo that was performed. So far to date, we have received about 900,000 Back of about 3 million in cash for those commercial demos that were performed. We have not stopped the process just continues to exit escalate until, you know, worst case scenario. It's attached. A lien is placed on ultimately a lien is placed on the property. We're very intentional about ensuring that we are following up on what we said. We are planning to actually expand this cost recovery effort to our residentials as well because we feel like everyone should be held responsible for the actions that were required to in order to maintain or take care of, you know, handle their blighted concern at their property.

    Okay, when when do you think is a fair time to judge if it's working or not? Because when we hear 3 million in 900 out, that's the third year but that's still tax dollars.

    I understand. But I mean prior to

    I'm just asking the question, when do you because we can always disagree. And I'm not judging you on what you do or what you're not doing. I'm saying when you hear when I'm as a resident 3,000,900 back out. While we may say this, it's a third. That's not impressive to the average Detroiter. So I'm just asking in terms of the when can we determine it to be a fair time to judge it because you say that we're just now really getting getting the ball rolling? Correct. It's

    I don't know I don't guess I don't have an answer for you as far as what a what a time period is like, I guess I would need to know what and what an expectation as far as what would be a reasonable to us uh, you know, for us to consider a win. Is it 50%? Is it 80%

    So it was a third yours because you started to defend a Third.

    Third is successful to this point. We're not done. I didn't say that we were finished. So we're continuing to press on those same ones that we've issued. And it'll continue to it'll continue on, we won't stop the process. We're not saying that. A third is a complete win. But it's definitely more than what we would have gotten had we not instituted a process at all.

    So I just ask the question because we have to continually evolve just like your department is continuing to evolve. So having a goal that we set allows us to see if something is successful or not. If we just say well, whatever we get is better than what we would have if we would have had anything. I don't know if that's necessarily a good litmus test on success or not.

    I'm not saying that it's the litmus test on success, but I'm just saying as far as right out the gate, we started the process and of our process, we recovered 30% of what we set out to do, just for the first phase of the process. We haven't even gone completely through and actually placed the liens on the properties. So we're still in the process. I mean, for me, the goal would be complete return for everything that we spent, we get our money back

    I don't I don't have a good answer for you right now. I don't um, I guess I need to spend a little bit more time to see what our ultimate what would be considered a success for us.

    I just want to build on it, if I will, if I can present. So when did we start? What was the official start of the collections of the cost recovery?

    We didn't really start our efforts until the beginning of this past fiscal year. Okay,

    so the July one. Alright, so July one of last year. So I think if we just look at one year, are we saying that a year at least gives us a time to capture and say okay, well maybe there's a way that we can look at this differently, better increase? Is it a year and a half? I'm just trying to find more. Because we have things that are out here and we don't have any benchmarks. We don't have any checkpoints. We just continue to move without identifying how to better shape it if it needs better shaping or maybe it doesn't, I don't know. But if we don't have anything that we're searching for, or striving towards, other than more than nothing, then it doesn't help me. Or the

    chair pro tem. Yes. So to elaborate a little further on director counts as comments of the $3 million that are currently in the process. They are in various phases. So each property is currently in various phases, most of them still being held by the law department. And so with that, I would think that we would need to go back to the law department to evaluate the timeline for successfully completing each phase of getting to the collection fee, my team is working and we have done the invoicing part of the process, however, so all of those properties have been invoiced. The collection rate currently is at $900,000. However, we had the intention and collecting 100% of the $3 million that is still actively being worked by the law department. So with that, I think that we could give a better response if we had time to circle back to the law department to get a true timeline on how long it would take for them to effectively get through the process for each individual property and we can return you a better response

    to see that's all I'm looking for is the timeline. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. President.

    Thank you Protune member waters.

    Thank you Madam President. I'm certainly my colleagues have raised a lot of my concerns. We do go back and forth in committee regarding demolitions and members Santiago Romero talked about some sort of fun in fact, there's a building right now that's in that situation and we've been trying to help them save that building and not have you demolish it. It is it is a fight. Because they do me the exact type of assistance that that my colleagues just spoke about. And so that becomes a struggle. And oftentimes when I'm sitting on committee, I see buildings and houses and so forth brought to us and in fact, there are some out there there's worse that should be demolished. Some of those homes and buildings can be saved. I do support us trying to figure out a way of rehabbing. All those structures I do and I hope that we can all work together to identify ways to do that. So I wanted to just say that um, so once all of these structures once all of this began to pivot, what are you gonna do? Um, you know, the blighted structures and so forth. You don't have as many in detail now and Omar, what are you going to do with your your the people in your department, then you're going to train them all the things, they're going to be ready to do some other things, for example, like rehab for one.

    So definitely, we're we're constantly looking for areas for our staff to transition into. We definitely know that on our environmental due diligence on our demo staff, they will have to transition into other roles there will be need still for some to perform those current functions that they perform, but we definitely won't need the current amount when we talk about having a more proactive approach to surveying and monitoring those vacant properties across the city. I feel with some of those, those team members, their current skill set will be useful in that survey aspect. But some of them will no longer be with us. I mean, the reality is they will either have to be laid off or they will have to hopefully find other positions somewhere else in the city.

    Okay, so I believe I heard you say property and dollars are basically a wash. Um, has there been some conversation about some other type of done another bond initiative? Have you guys had a conversation about that?

    So far? No.

    Okay, I'm just curious. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President.

    Thank you, Councilmember waters, a member of Benson.

    Thank you. Thank you for your team and all the work that you all do. We see you on almost every Monday. During public health and safety. You're very responsive. Phone calls requested to come out to the district and you drive through to the residents who have concerns about the condition of the blight in the neighborhood, you come out and answer questions and give realistic expectations and manage expectations as well for residents so it's not pie in the sky. And I really do appreciate that. And there's my question is going to be about sustainability and about the maintenance. And so you were with us with the green taskforce in Minneapolis, learning about sustainability and seeing what other municipalities are doing on the demolition side or on the construction side. What are we doing as a city to implement sustainability to help reduce our operating costs and just to help comply with our own greenhouse gas ordinance?

    So the major portion for us is to be able to control our facilities. That's That for me is my main struggle while we in as we're doing renovations, we're constantly ensuring that we're installing the most efficient equipment that we can. But because we have such a limited staff and we have 142 plus locations is difficult for there to be somebody who can go out there each time and make sure that the temperature the thermostat has turned down, right. I mean, it's I hate to make it just that basic but what we're most interested in doing is having a a inventory, wide building monitoring, control kind of system. And we have several locations about 21 of our locations already are on for us, we call it Niagra. It's on this Niagra system. So someone is able to basically a tech is able to sit in one location and see what's going on at all 21 of these locations. If they need to adjust the system up or down, they're able to do so if there's a failure, they're able to determine in from an efficiency standpoint, do I even need to go out or is this something that we already know we need to call a service call in for, um, so it allows them to be a lot more efficient, not only operationally because of just how mechanical systems work, but just physically operationally, because they don't have to go directly to that location to see exactly what's going on. We'd like to expand that. So we'd like to have every facility to be on this Niagra system. And we would also like to expand it to include being able to see what the usage is. Our system doesn't currently allow us to see how much energy is being used at that particular location. It's an additional module that we'd have to add in. We definitely would like to be able to do that. We'd also like to add in lighting controls because that's the other thing whether it is motion sensor so that those lights just are not on if no one is there, but then we can schedule the time. So definitely by 10 o'clock. I don't know what the time is but just by 10 o'clock we can have it set so that the lights are all cut off at those locations. I'm in a rec center as far to say you know you've got kids are running around all the time, lights in and off, off and on. If you can just have one central location that is responsible for ensuring that all of the lights are on just think of the energy savings that we can experience there. We are always interested in finding ways where we can fold in those sustainable practices in our aging stock because that's really kind of difficult to do, right? A lot of times these great ideas come up in a lot of these other locations, especially like in Minneapolis where we visited their technology and their facilities is far ahead of where our technology is. But there's ways for us to kind of bridge it and so that's what we're that's our main bridge right now is just to really have them all on that kind of standardized building control system.

    Okay, so I'm looking forward to seeing how we make that investment and what are you going to ask for that and this looking at your your slides and then on page Bravo 16 tag 10. I mean, we see a significant increase in this year's budget for construction and facilities management. It's like $3.7 million there. And then we see a brand new line item on our DDOT facilities management is another $2.8 million. So we're looking at close to $7 million and increase when it comes to management and then I'm looking at your slide and we talk about a $2 per square foot increase which is a 50% increase in maintenance investment in our properties. And then you just look at the age of our facilities. We're very mature city with very mature assets that continue, as you said to have deferred maintenance and so as our deferred maintenance increases. At a certain point we need to start talking about the lifespan of these assets. And when do we just demolish and rebuild versus continue to put band aids in so then, do we have a facilities master plan that talks about that? What are we looking at in the future? I mean, we've got new rec centers coming online, we're making improvements to existing rec centers, but you've said as well, that we're just not investing enough when it comes to maintenance and so our deferred maintenance increases. So what are we going to do about our assets? And when are we going to take a realistic look at an actual maintenance budget to to keep our assets at a well? At a good condition level so we can extend their lifespan and then looking at a number of other assets like the Charles H Wright love to have some help from the construction department there when it comes to a facility like the historic museum love to have additional help because they continue to see deferred maintenance and those are our assets. And so we need to make those investments and you've talked about other software that could be very helpful. So what's the future of our assets and demolition and construction department when it comes to realistic budget of what we need to invest into these assets.

    So we're that's currently what we're actively working on. Right? Now. We are having those conversations with the individual departments fire police were layering in their capital needs and as well as folding in what we know maintenance wise for their facilities as well. And so typically what you see when the contract when an improvement contract comes before this board, we have taken into the consideration what we know to exist so buyer might want something nice and pretty right? And that helps them and supports them operationally, but we know that we need to layer in the support as far as the piping for this location. They're not thinking about the piping, we're thinking about the piping. We also know that it's an it's a good opportunity for us to layer in those controls. If we need to update a particular h HVAC unit at that location, we use that opportunity to mirror that together. What we have kind of lacked in the past is understanding operationally what their thoughts are on a much larger or wider span. So as and I'm just going to keep using fire as an example. They have needs in certain locations. There. We're not really privy to we address the 40 or so fire locations, and that's what our concern is, but they might actually have a greater need for a fire location in an area that we're not currently serving brand new, or it's a facility that we probably need to consider expanding. We need to have and we are having greater communications with them to understand exactly what it is that we need to provide them to provide the actual support. So it's it's not it's not finalized where we're figuring it out. Now the intent is by next fiscal year, indefinitely by the our next capital request, we will have layered in all of that information so that we can present that plan to you. But we definitely take into consideration all of that I've just told you as far as adding facilities to Niagra and then updating those kinds of deferred maintenance items that we know that exists at those locations. We capture that as we present those improvement points to you. Okay,

    and I really look forward to seeing what that capital plan is going to look like and I've got to gotta guess it's going to go into the nine digits of what we have in deferred maintenance and the need for new facilities. I can just look at the Public Safety facility on West burner versus what we have as a fire station on Hoover in the third district. I mean, it's just night and day and then looking at our historic fire stations around the city. I mean, beautiful historic portfolio, but just the living conditions and the operating conditions. At a certain point we have to be prepared to let go as well and modernize our facilities and looking at how our police department how many of our precincts look as well glad to see we're modernizing, but that work environment and operating environment leaves a lot to be desired. And so we need to look at how we're going to move ourselves into the 21st century and as we approach the year 2030 We have to stop talking about it and start doing this. I'm really looking forward to that and seeing what an actual modernization of our infrastructure assets look like. They want to make the ask as well, that you all please start looking at these other assets like the museums the zoo, what we own, that we have allowed to fall without maintenance and investment, just based on the fact that we are just a landlord and not the tenant. But we still have the obligation to maintain these assets. And if we don't do that, they're going to fall further and further into disrepair. And those tenants just typically don't have the ability to go to the to the private market, to the public market or to the philanthropic community to ask for money because they don't own those assets. And so what you hear is, you don't own it. Why should we give you money for a city asset when the city's not asking for the money? The city's put the responsibility on you and it's falling into further and further disrepair. And these are jewels, and I hate to see us is not talking and working together to make sure that we can improve this and we have a department whose responsibility it is to do this. I'm hoping that we put those on a capital plan as well and that we're thinking long term about how we facilitate the maintenance of our assets and give us a reasonable Responsible Budget what is actually going to cause and so I'm looking at a 50% increase in the cost per square foot, which means we're probably still underfunded, what is the actual cost to maintain our assets? into a state of good repaired? Thank you.

    Thank you, member Benson member Callaway.

    Thank you. Thank you Madam Chair and good morning everyone. I have a list of questions. I don't know if you've have received them. If not, we'll make sure you get them today. And while I was sitting here I wrote an additional list of questions. Pro Tim zeroed in on one of my main question I've been asking about this issue since 2022. And I'm glad somebody's beginning to listen. I had several conversations with Corporation Counsel, counsel regarding liens and cost recovery which had not been done. So I'm very grateful that my recommendations are being considered and we are moving in the direction of recovering our costs to demolish privately owned, residential, particularly privately owned commercial structures. And if we would recover those funds, then we would have money to cover our emergencies for maintenance and facilities when we have those emergencies, and I'm hoping that you will continue to work with the law department and the the other departments to place the liens on those structures and continue in a more aggressive way to get the cost recovered that we expend. But my question is I was looking at the number of FTEs that you have how many are devoted to cost recovery it or are we leaving that to the law department because I know we're not a collection agency. But what system do you have in place to collect those costs and how are the liens being processed or is that totally on the law department?

    It's a joint. I think you've covered like two different departments. The recovery of the funds, I believe comes through odjfs and then the lien portion is with law in house. I can't identify is so many of us that are actively participating. It's it covers data, the data team planning and strategy as well as compliance is several team members who are involved in the cost recovery effort from demolition, construction and demolition effort. But from odf s and law I'm not really certain to

    chair. My team currently has three members that basically manage the process of evaluating the costs that are associated with the demolitions, helping are assisting the law department with identifying the owners to ensure that the invoices that we do create go out to the right receivers or owners and then the collection portion and then validate your reconciling to ensure that the payments are processed and are received accordingly. Yeah. And to thank you and to pro Tim's questions, I really want us to focus on that whole area and get more aggressive about that because a lot of what we're doing is like you're chasing your tail because when we demolish these properties, then we're what happens to the property what happens to the land after the structure is demolished and removed and cleaned up? What happens to the land is it revert to the ownership of the city or does the property owner still own the land through the chair to I

    think that's I think that's a lot apartment question. But yeah, I really think it's a lot apartment question. I believe we don't take possession of it of the property upon demo. And because we have submitted an invoice to the owner, it technically is still the the ownership of the owner as an assumption that I'm making. I don't think we would have any rights to it until we get to the point where we're placing that lien on the property. I

    disagree with you on that. I do believe we do have rights to it because it sounds like they abandon the property. My question was, once we as a city taxpayers, demolish the property pay for that, then that property should become the property of the city. Because it seems to me that these property owners are abandoning the structures walking away from them. And we are left with them to keep them safe. And then once they're beyond maintaining in terms of safety, then we have to develop demotion we're forced to demolish them, for the public, for the public and their safety right. So I do believe it probably is illegal question, but I believe once we demolish the property, if the property owner has abandoned the property, then I would imagine that we would own it if they've walked away from it. And so that's that's a whole nother conversation that maybe I can have with Corporation Counsel because they must there has to be a way for us to be more aggressive in our efforts to go after these property owners because we're spending a lot of money of taxpayer dollars are for dollars, which I don't support anymore using opera dollars for commercial demolitions because you said that it takes $104,000 to demolish a commercial property average, and then 25 to $26,000. to demolish a residential property. I think that's what you said early and I'm looking at it in your report. So into my colleagues point, remember Gabriela Santiago Romero and two member Johnson's point. I would like to see that 25 to $26,000 go toward rehabbing at least stabilizing the house and putting my family in there that I picked off off picked up on Sunday. On my way to church on eight mile they could use that house, Miss Carter and her three children. So instead of us using and I'm always baffled by us spending so much money on demolishing when they're saying that same amount of money to demolish we can construct use the other part of your department to construct and preserve. So I absolutely don't support us continuing to demolish all these houses. We wait until they get to the point where there is no no returning. It's no way that we can save them. It's no way that we can salvage them. We just wait and we watch and neighbors start calling us so we got to do a better job of saving houses instead of demolishing houses and putting the Carter family in one of those homes but I'm glad to hear about the cost recovery efforts. We have to beef that up in my opinion. Last my last question is what are the plans for the approximately six correct me if I'm wrong through the chair to you? Mr. Director counts. What are our plans for the approximately 60 vacant school buildings that the city acquired from dpscd Don't know why we acquired them. We can't even maintain the bed buildings that we already have in our portfolio. So why we would go and acquire buildings from the school district. I don't understand that but I'm sure there's a reason for it. Probably to keep the neighborhoods safe. But specifically the plans for zone School in my district at Meijer and I've talked to you maybe five times about it. It's still open and the coffee school at 19 300. Lindsay both are in my district so you know we are working on on bank got repurposing hickinbotham in district two, and it's going to be an amazing housing development. So I'm happy about that. But it's unfortunate that coffee and bassoon can't also be repurposed for housing. We have the structures in the city but we are not about building up we're about tearing down in this city. We tear down historic structures every day for new and every time we build something new is not always better. And sometimes we you know, we build these new structures and they don't last as long as the ones that we've had. So 60 vacant schools and police through the chair. Is it 60 vacant schools that we have in our portfolio or are there more

    through the chair I own I'm only aware of about 33 that are in our current inventory, I believe dpscd has another 30 or so that they we don't have ownership of but in our inventory, it's about 33 schools and of the 33 Six have been identified with some sort of development deal. And then the balance are supposed to be transitioning into or have transitioned into demo.

    So on through the Chair, I just hold up the 33 I read 60 and a news article so the reporter was wrong. 33 is 33 Too many. I don't think we should be demolishing any schools. I went to Cadillac and I see that on the list of what is the status of that Cadillac. It was called junior high now I think it's called middle school but that has been closed for a number of years just like Cooley, but specifically only in my district just but phone and coffee. What are the plans for those two schools that missing windows? They probably have been vandalized probably have been stripped. We didn't have to allow that to happen. But those two schools and then Cadillac

    more detailed information I'd have to provide to you it would take me a significant amount of time to research each particular property but I can definitely get you that information.

    So I'm only talking about three so that's not a significant number of structures I'm talking about but boom coffee and Cadillac. In terms of where they are on the demolition list,

    they're on the list.

    Do we know when the demolition date is that's No

    ma'am. That's what I'm saying it will require me to go into each individual property and see exactly what the status and so I can get you that information though.

    I like that. And if we can, and this is my last question in terms of the schools, if we could get by the phone and secure that. That was this is my third request on that one I've had people from my staff to call you as well but don't is still open and the windows are gone. And I don't know what I think you did try to put some plastic up that that that covering but um some of that is missing. So thank you Madam Chair, member Callaway, can

    we add that portion to our executive session the 33 schools that you said you have in your inventories just so that we can get a status update on each of those schools? I think that will be very helpful for us the city wide

    that'd be a motion. Yes ma'am. Okay, so motion, madam chair to move the 33 vacant school buildings into executive sessions. To get a more in depth report. Thank you, Madam Chair.

    All right, hearing no big bills that will be added to our executive session. And let me just say that I share very similar concerns as relates to the sometimes what it feels like an equal focus on more so demolition, then rebuilding our communities. And so I just wanted to stress that I didn't want to ask though, because I didn't see in your presentation. How many actual homes had been preserved of the 6000. I know the goal was 6000 homes to be preserved. Where are we with the number of actual homes that have been preserved under the prop and when it was sold to the residents in Detroit? It was 8000 I think homes to be demolished and 6000 to be preserved. So do we have a number to date of homes that actually had been preserved currently to

    date? We are at 3637. So 3637 properties have been stabilized. Okay,

    and are we on track to get to what we attended to with the 6000? Or have we identified how many more can possibly be saved so that we can reach what we told Detroit? We would do? I think I think

    we have to we have to layer in the amount of properties that the land bank sold, because that's part of the struggle is that they sell them faster than we can actually get to them. And so while we've been able to stabilize that 3600 There's a number that lambic would have to provide. They showed how many sold and I feel like we I'm almost certain we exceed our 6000 at this point. I think we have currently about another. I want to say it's like another 600 that are in our pipeline to address so that will take our number closer to the 4500 mark. But definitely the land bank has been selling those properties at a much faster rate than we were able to actually perform any actual security and olan

    Okay, and then also I think a part of it as well was that it was a certain amount of homes or I think all of the inventory of vacant residential homes should have been boarded up by a certain amount of time to remember the mayor stating that quite often and so where are we today with vacant homes actually being boarded up

    so across the city we we've we boarded up more than close up has been last count. It was like 26,000 We've boarded up a significant amount of properties. What we have found we've learned a lot about that process too. Is that we have a high reward rate. So as fast as we board them up, we can pull off the block and we would turn right back around and come in and re secure it. That's kind of the reason why we want to shift to the plastic because that allows us to have greater control. Once we seal it up. It's harder for those who don't We don't want to have access to the property to have access to property.

    Okay. And then I do have questions I'll submit in writing. I know we are behind. But looking at the 2020 resolution that was approved. Two of the goals were that we agreed upon with the mayor and city council was to give preference Detroit residents to actually acquire and reuse of properties in their neighborhoods. And then the second one was to partner with CDOs and other qualified groups to rehab and redevelop the property within their neighborhoods. And I'm not sure if you can speak to this. But where are we with those two particular goals as it relates to actually Detroiters purchasing having opportunities to redevelop the homes that have been stabilized? So

    unfortunately, I'm not able to speak to that the purchase portion is handled through or was handled through land bank, and then the the renovation or revitalization piece would have been managed through HRD.

    Okay, okay. So I will follow up on those two questions, because I know there were several goals in the resolution that should have been tracked over the years to see if we actually reached those goals. So those are some of the questions I will submit in writing as well. Through

    the Chair, we actually do provide that update as far as where we are with the resolution goals in the quarterly report. Okay, great.

    Okay, great. Thank you. All right. We will now conclude this man by cheering

    Madam Chair. Yes. Would you like to complete your motion? Without objection, or which motion that Miss.

    Thank you Dr. parliamentarian Hearing no objections that will be added to Executive Session for the vacant DPS schools. All right. All right. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for the work that you do that will conclude this budget hearing. Thank you. Thank you guys.

    Wait, and we will now proceed to our next hearing. Which is the Department of appeals. In hearings.

    Right? I'm Director pastula. When you are ready to begin, we are ready for your presentation.

    Thank you very much Madam Chair. And actually I will I will start speaking because I have some introductory comments and then the slide deck. So I'll go ahead and get started. Good morning to everyone. And thank you to this animal body for the opportunity to present today. My name is Julian pastula. I started with the city in 2003. And I've been honored to serve as the director of DH since October of 2023. I'm joined by Leticia Perry. I had clerk on our team. She has been with the city since 2002. And I'm grateful for her institutional knowledge and expertise. Before I address my slides I want to thank the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, particularly Mr. Walker and Mr. Space, Mr. James as well for their guidance and support. I also want to uplift and acknowledge my staff at DH. The information in this presentation shows the hard work and dedication of my team. And lastly, I wanted to acknowledge receipt of the budget questions from LPD. I am currently working on providing written answers to those questions as soon as possible. Okay. There we are. Alright, wonderful. Thank you Leticia. Okay the agenda, the agenda I would like to cover today is background and highlights. Our goals, then proceed to process reviews and improvements and end with the fifth fiscal year 2025 budget for da h. Let's start with who we are. Da H opened its doors in January of 2005. And since then, has adjudicated over 500,000 blight tickets. We're the city's independent administrative hearings tribunal that is committed to delivering our services in a timely, efficient and fair manner. We operate under the authority granted by state law and the Detroit city code and we have two distinct bureaus. The first is our blight administrative hearings bureau. This is the city's blight court and is responsible for adjudicating blight violations in the city of Detroit. We provide due process and an opportunity to be heard to challenge blight violations received and we also include the right to appeal. We have the authority to determine compliance with the city coal code, uphold fines and penalties for non compliance, including the city's costs for remediation if there are any. We also take affirmative steps to collect unpaid judgments and pursue collection actions, garnishments and liens. Please note that individuals or entities with unpaid blight judgments are unable to enter into contracts with the city. Obtain city permits or participate in either the Wayne County or Detroit Land Bank Authority auctions. Shifting to numbers. Tickets for the Blake court. There were almost 8000 more tickets issued in 2023 than the previous fiscal year. Tickets adjudicated. dropped by almost 2000. These tickets were resolved prior to the DHS hearing, either by admission of responsibility and payment on the part of the respondent or dismissal by the city. An example of that would be if the property owner brought the property into compliance. This mirrors the $2,000 Excuse me, the 2000 number mirrors the trend that we saw in fiscal year 2022. As to revenue regarding the Blight court in 2023, almost $30 million dollars were assessed, nearly $5 million was collected that results in an overall collection rate of 16%. The second Bureau I'd like to highlight is our administrative appeals bureau. It is responsible for the review of certain administrative decisions of city departments and agencies. The administrative decision itself will indicate whether that decision can be appealed to the DH examples include business license determinations. I also wanted to note that administration is strict administrative decisions excuse me can be appealed to the DH by either the individual or by the city department. Administrative Appeals by the numbers our business license appeals more than tripled last fiscal year. The number of dangerous building hearings conducted by DHS doubled we also had significant increases in both recreational and medical marijuana license appeals. And last but certainly not least, our variance appeals also doubled from one to two DH staff by the numbers. We have 15 FTEs for ARPA funded positions and have those 19 positions. We currently have two vacancies, as to our head clerk vacancy and offer was accepted just this Monday. So we're very excited to report that and the administrative staff position has been vacant for less than two weeks, and a requisition has already been submitted. The total expenditure for our staff is an increase of $23,000 over the prior fiscal year. Our organizational chart is also included for your reference and convenience. And I'll move on to our goals. We aim to systematically examine our current operations, prioritize improvement projects and build internal efficiencies in order to increase public awareness and participation in both our blight administrative hearings Bureau and our administrative appeal processes without reducing our customer service standards. Our operations review is ongoing. We've already completed and implemented FOIA improvements, strategic planning efforts and updates to our payment and ticket processing protocols. Our current initiatives we're wrapping up our communications project, our website Refresh is ongoing and we're starting our motion project. In the future I would like to reinstitute the community Blake court and increase automations and efficiencies for both our appeals and blight clearance processes. I also wanted to note we have an RFI in the works for a docket management software system and are looking forward to bringing that before this annual body as soon as we possibly can. Moving on to the department's overall budget. We have expenditures of $1.77 million and revenue amount of 5.31 7 million has been identified. The fiscal year 25 proposed budget is $46,000 less in both expenditures and revenues as to current year to date for expenditures. DH is $182,000 under our budgeted year to date figures and are on track for spending that this current fiscal year as our to our current year to date for revenue as of January 2024. Our actual year to date is only 168,000. Below are a 5% difference from our budgeted year to date amounts. I highlight that to note that DHS currently outperforming the prior fiscal year and on trend for approximately 5.6 million in revenue this current fiscal year. In January of oh three we're at 2.4 6 million. And in January 2004 We were at 2.9 4 million. This is nearly a half a million dollars over where DH was this time last year. And again if we follow the trend of last year, we anticipate exceeding our projected revenue amount by an estimated 240,000. Moving to a budget breakdown and offering some highlights there. We're maintaining the professional and contractual services general fund amount of $2,931 for total current total armored car services in Cannon. Our operating services increase would go to telecommunications, printing and bar do expenses. The $14,000 increase in equipment acquisition in the proposed budget is to enable DH to live stream our hearings and record in person hearings. And lastly addressing the 90,000 capital project. That was for Digitation of records that backlog has been completed and that impacted that need for funding moving forward into fiscal year 2025. For my final slide, I invite the public to connect with us online at Detroit mi.gov forward slash DH via telephone at 313-224-0098 at div debt chaos throughout the city, or stop by Coleman a young municipal center sweet 124 to conduct business with the DH. I again want to thank the CFO for their support in this process and uplift and acknowledge my staff again and express my gratitude for the hard work and dedication they bring to our team every day. Particularly as a newly appointed director. Their commitment is truly the driving force behind our collective success. And I'm confident that together we can thrive and achieve great things. Lastly, I want to thank this honorable body for your time. I'm confident DH can operate within the proposed fiscal year 25 budget and I welcome your questions and comments.

    Thank you so much, Miss pastula We appreciate you and good seeing you back here with us. I know you're going to do great things where you are certainly miss you here working with you in the law department. But congratulations to you and thank you for the presentation. We'll go to questions now from my colleagues and we'll start with Mr. Callaway.

    Thank you Madam Chair and good morning everyone. At your 2023 budget hearing, you stated that in calendar year 2023, you were on track to have 112,000 blight tickets, and do over 110,000 hearings. You also stated that at that time you have five hearing officers, two of whom were funded through ARPA and seven clerks, two who have two of whom were funded through ARPA, the fiscal year 2025 proposed budget includes 15 FTEs for your department, including five hit clerks, three hearing officers, considering that this is fewer than you had last year, and the number of blight tickets continues to increase. Will you have enough capacity for the increased number of hearings? And what is your plan to address the increase in blight tickets?

    Thank you member Whitfield Callaway through the Chair and thank you also President Sheffield for your kind words of encouragement I appreciate it. I also miss my city council family but I'm thrilled to be still serving the city in this new and exciting capacity to answer council members questions regarding capacity. Our staffing has remained the same the level so we were able to increase our FTE as the prior fiscal year for the administrative hearing officers but our staffing of 19 is consistent. So we still have the five administrative hearing officers and the the clerk totals that you gave we're also we're also accurate, what we have done for capacity with increasing ticket volumes and hearings is we're really trying to look at how we can do process process improvements internally to encourage respondents to participate in the process sooner. That will allow us to utilize our resources differently internally. I will also say that we're doing robust metrics collections on on capacity issues and have been communicating with Oh CFO, but we're very comfortable with our staffing at this point. And at this time. I know last year in when I came into the position, there was an expectation for the administrative appeals to increase. I think we see that in the totals in the presentations and we certainly see that in the current fiscal year as well. So that is definitely bearing truth. But But capacity is something again, Council Member that we're comfortable with right now. And If a need arises in the future, I will not be shy to make sure I uplift that need to the OH CFO. Okay, thank you.

    No, thank you. And my next question is in November of 2023 Bridge Detroit shared an article which stated that dollar tree which owns Family Dollar has earned more than 2400 and blight tickets since 2020 and racked up more than $740,000 in unpaid fines. However, they were allowed to enter into an agreement where they were only required to pay $150,000 out there fines was Dollar Tree required to have a hearing through your office and how was it decided that they would be allowed to only pay 20% of their fines.

    So again through the chair to Councilmember Calloway, thank you for that question as well. So the Dollar Tree of there was a settlement negotiated by the law department. They were noticed for hearings for each of the tickets that they received. Some of those tickets were sent into collections. But due to the volume, we had the collections vendor we centralized all the tickets back within the city, so that way we could move forward with the Settlement Agreement.

    Okay, so you're saying it was the law department that negotiated the settlement with Family Dollar and Dollar Tree?

    I believe that to be true, ma'am. And I believe that the previous director participated in those negotiations

    as well. And I asked that because the Regional Director flew in and we met with him of Family Dollar and Dollar Tree because they're owned by the same company. And I asked because they gave me their word that they would do better. And we've been visiting their locations in my district and they've not done that. So we've been in touch with the regional director as of yesterday. So I asked that because Are we still writing blight tickets to Family Dollar and Dollar Tree

    through the chair to Councilmember Callaway. It's Whitfield Callaway. Pardon me. It's my understanding that a portion of the settlement agreement did have ongoing compliance and an only result tickets through a certain date. So they would still be receiving tickets and would still be bound by the terms of that settlement agreement. Okay, as my understanding, okay,

    I just want to, you know, just have a better understanding of what's happening. Is it your office that writes the blank tickets, or is it B seed?

    So through the president to council member, the ticket issuing departments that B seed is by far our largest volume of ticket writing, but we also receive their tickets are also issued by the Detroit Police Department. But I believe the bulk of the Family Dollar tickets were through BC

    and into the into the same question I you know, we're out there writing tickets. We're, we're doing our job. The city's doing their job. The investigators and inspectors are doing their job, they're writing the flight tickets, but then we turn around we're wasting their time and wasting resources that we can ill afford to waste by writing these tickets and then negotiating 20% of the, the amount that they actually owe. So I don't even know why we're in the business of writing tickets. We're not going to collect on him and get real serious. I think some businesses know that we're not serious and that's what we have a lot of businesses in the city operating illegally without a license because they know that we're not serious about what we're doing. Because if we weren't, this would never have happened that we would settle for 20% of what they owe. So that's just my opinion. And I'm glad we did get the 20% But you know, we're going to my district, we're going to make sure that we hold their feet to the fire and make sure they clean up their Family Dollar source and dollar trees because right now they're not clean. Thank you Madam Chair and thank you, ma'am, for all that you're doing.

    Thank you and madam president, if I could just add also there were recently changes to Chapter 28 licenses that this animal body approved. So that business license appeal process through DHS also significantly changed and a big focus of the internal process improvements that we're working on are to address many of the issues that Councilmember raised.

    Thank you. So I recently have been receiving quite a nice amount of concerns from our senior population. Long term generational Detroiters who have been in their homes who are getting tickets, and I noticed this probably through BC as far as the department that actually issued the tickets, but when they do seek relief or try to go through the process, I've been hearing that you know, it's not necessarily fair they don't feel like it's really a due process that is kind of already laid out. They there, the department in the board or whoever is doing the hearings, kind of already had this, you know, that is just not a fair process, I should say. And so, if you can just speak to the public in general about how you ensure that it is a fair process for residents when I go through the appeals portion, and how are we working with our seniors who are getting these tickets, and they call us and I'm trying to figure out how we can help but when it comes to your process, or to your point of the administrative appeals, it's almost as if we can't really do much. So I just wanted to kind of hear about how we're working with our senior population through the appeals portion. And I was a really a due process a fair process for somebody actually appeal if they believe that they were not properly targeted throughout the process.

    Know this wonderful questions. Council President, thank you for those and for the opportunity to speak directly to that issue. So and I am fairly confident that the BCD inspectors would would have a very different opinion about our administrative hearing officers, because Because quite often the tickets are held not responsible by determination. So when the ticket is issued, it's an alleged flight violation. The respondents are given a notice to appear on the ticket for D cheering I have five independent hearing officers that operate by swearing in both parties. The inspector is able or the police officer is able to provide testimony and exhibits in support of the ticket issued. Then the respondent is provided also the opportunity to provide pictures, documents, narratives, whatever would support their arguments why the blight, the alleged blade violation would not stand and the hearing officers those

    based on the evidence presented. And again, I wanted to highlight that I do think many of the inspectors and officers that write these tickets would not feel that that the hearing officers are affording them any special consideration. And I do acknowledge that to the extent that is the perception in the community, part of our public outreach and education efforts really in the website refresh or to educate the entire community on what the DH process looks like. So if a respondent does not show up to the hearing, a default judgment will be entered. After that process. They have the opportunity to set aside a default or if they were found responsible by a hearing officer at a hearing. They can also appeal that decision to the Third Circuit Court where the court the Third Circuit court will consider the entire record evidence of what occurred at the DH level hearing. So there also is that ability to appeal a DH decision. But no, no, no one reaches out to the hearing officers they all understand very clearly if they receive any contact from anyone that they're supposed to notify me immediately so that I can address it. We work very hard to keep them insulated and away from really any any discussions. With the departments outside of the courtroom setting. Okay, and then just the fees for all of these different appeals. Is that taken on by the resume because I'm also hearing that's a concern as well, too. There are fees Madam President and and and then I will address the senior portion of your question as well. I have not forgotten it. So the fees to set aside a default judgment. The motion fee is is $20 however, the bond must be paid so you must pay your your ticket that was issued in order to facilitate that appeal. If you're held not responsible. We do refund that ticket the city does have a refund process. That is that we engage so the individual does get that amount back for a third circuit court appeal Madam President, and I should note that for a set aside, respondents have 21 days to file a set aside in the case of an appeal from a determination made at a hearing so you were found responsible at a hearing. The appeal for that goes to the Third Circuit Court. There was a transcript fee that goes to the court reporter that's outside of the DH process. We don't collect those fees. And there is a $175 filing fee to appeal to the circuit court. And again, that's a circuit court fee. We have no impact on that. Does that answer your question regarding the fees for the appeals? Yes, it does. Okay, great and moving to seniors. I actually received some phone calls since I've been in my position from senior citizens. So what we did was we reached out to Mr. razo and got a really a resource list for our seniors so that we could provide them when they reach out to our customer service team, that we can provide them information and connect them with resources that are available to assist. And we're also looking at at some future initiatives that I hope to be able to bring forward in the future that would also have a benefit on our senior population. Okay, I just wanted to raise that because it's challenging for us as a office and me as a council person to help them when it gets when the ticket is issued. Then it goes to your to your department, and you know, they feel stuck or as if they don't have the due process. So just want to make sure that we're protecting them as much as we can. And some of it is not actually your department is the issuing of the ticket itself, which is a whole nother conversation with BC that we could take when they come up. The only other thing I wanted to mention is you did mention the community blight court, which I was really excited about when the previous director initiated that you mentioned that you're looking to have it come back online. Do you foresee that in this fiscal year or the forthcoming fiscal year or this year I should say in general or when do you foresee that? Thank you for the question, Madam President. Yes, I was thrilled when I was looking over the previous director who again set set such a great foundation in the department that I truly appreciate. When I looked through their slides from last year's presentation, I thought oh, she was talking about reinstituting flight CT two. So that was really exciting for me to see because that really I feel very strongly about reinstituting, the Blight quarry, bringing it to rotating council districts throughout the year. But before we focus on that, looking outward, there are a few more in house things that I would like to get done as far as process improvements. So we are looking more towards the end of this fiscal year, Madam President, and we've already been in conversation with council member Santiago Ramirez office, you know, respecting her white work with restorative justice in the communities. So we're really excited to get this initiative going in the future. But but hopefully it's my goal to get it this fiscal year, Madam Chair. All right. Thank you so much. All right. We will go over to Pro Tem. Thank you, Madam President. And thank you, Director Patrick, and as been stated earlier welcome back. Certainly glad to have you back for certain requests. I know. It's a two parter. I know that at one point in time, there was a challenge with a city employees appearing over 36 District Court for cases in that capacity. My two partners, do you see that we have a failure to failure to appear situation at times for city employees and dealing with your cases. And then are there any policy changes that your department recommends? to various departments to make things more efficient, better, stronger, faster, so to speak. Thank you pro tem and thank you for again, the warm greeting. As to the challenges. I know there were several factors at 36 district that kind of fed into the issue that was was being experienced there. As from the DH perspective, we really do not see any issues with either inspectors or officers appearing but at our hearings. The way our dockets are scheduled is inspectors and officers are designated docket space. So they know that they have court every Tuesday afternoon. They know they have court every Friday morning. So it operates a bit differently than the 36th district. My understanding of how 36 district was operating years ago when that was an issue. So right now, I haven't identified or thought of any policy changes that I would recommend because I'm happy to report I don't see it as an issue currently. Well, not so much. Not so much just from the standpoint of the employee, but in terms of the way that we operate from the city side of things. If we see that there's a possibility that, again, it's been mentioned some time residents are confused or they feel that a process is not fair. Are there any recommendations that come from you because you're at the end of the chain, so to speak, and have an opportunity to affect the beginning of the chain? Through the Chair to pro tem? No, I appreciate the clarification. And yes, I do have some thoughts on that. I was restricting my answer strictly to the city ticket issuing department staff, which again, they're they're timely for their hearings, they're prepared and that flows very well. From the overall system, what I would what I would recommend and what I would encourage to anyone hearing my voice or visiting our updated website in the near future is the earlier you engage with DH or with the city I should say the better. So if you receive a blight violation reach out to the ticket issuing department and speak to the inspector going towards what the President was referencing in regard to our seniors. If you are responsible for the Blight violation that was issued, they okay that that was mine, you know I did that I timed it wrong for bulk pickup. I whatever the situation might be, and you can accept a responsibility and pay your fine with a 10% reduction in advance of your blight hearing. So there's

    that opportunity at the hearing you have again the opportunity to come before an independent hearings. Officer that will listen to your story and listen to the city's story and and look at the facts and the evidence presented and make a determination. So you have that opportunity as well. And then you also have the opportunity again for the appeals process but what I will say is, is unplayed by Blake judgments, we transfer those to our collections vendor after 30 days on paid and that's an automatic our systems are integrated. So that is an automatic transfer. So I would highly encourage everyone to go on our website. You can look up tickets either by your name or business name or a property address. Look for if you have any outstanding blight violations. And again, engage as soon as possible in this process because it we will definitely benefit you more to not to not delay. Okay. And I apologize maybe I wasn't as clear and maybe I didn't hear it in terms of policy change from the city side. I mean, that's more educating the public and that is critically important and we should be doing that and maybe that's the change that will be recognized, but any policy change from government that we can make to again be more efficient, or you know, remove a process or include a certain process because again, as I mentioned, you all are at the very end of the ticketing process or the enforcement processes be Are there any recommendations that your department if you see that there's a number of infractions that can easily be clarified if this happens or if there is a situation where the city has gone into enforcement and it appears as if our side got it wrong. Is there have there been any recommendations and I know you're still fairly new in the department, but are there any recommendations that come from your department to other departments within city government on how to be more efficient? Oh, yes. Certainly through the through the president to pro tem. Yes, definitely. again, my apologies if you're leading I'm following you through this questioning. As best I can. So yes, there are so the the projects that we've already undertaken are collaborative projects with the ticket issuing departments on how to get some of those process improvements in place. That don't necessarily that don't necessarily require legislative changes. One thing that I started when I when I first began in October was a list of hey, this might need to change this could possibly need to change whether it was at the local or state level. So I look forward to continuing that analysis as well. But But presently, I really believe that that with the internal changes that we're we are making that that should have a large impact and if we can encourage and educate the public to get involved in the process sooner that will also have a very big impact as well.

    And the last question I you may have touched on I believe you did exactly touch on it, but I'm not sure about her this. The response to this question. I know that the judgments have judgment collections have gone down. We're down and 23 versus 2216 versus 23%. I believe I saw earlier, is there a reason why those judgments collections have gone down?

    So thank you for the question through the through the chair to Pro Tem. Thank you for the question. Yes, there was a drop between the prior fiscal year 22 And between fiscal year 23. So we are working with our collections vendor and we had actually already identified some collections projects to to address that number. So there is an opportunity there and that is something that we're going to be working on internally.

    Is there a certain goal that you're setting there? There is

    not a goal, I'm setting now what I will say is, is the collection vendor was that was the first year they were, excuse me the second year that they were starting so they were still ramping up in this fiscal year that they have been reporting high their highest numbers yet to date consistently. So I think some of it we've already addressed and some of it we're addressing moving forward and the vendor, the collections vendor contract was competitively bid. It's coming up on a renewal date, this would be the first extension so I am planning to come before this honorable body in the in the near future to get that contract extended. Because they're there they are doing excellent work they're doing the garnishments, different types of garnishments their communication is really good and what we're really trying to do on our end is really close the gap from when things are going to collections that they're at collections. They're not with the city anymore. Oftentimes now that we're we're still involved after the files have been transferred and I would very much like to change that policy moving forward. But and that is something we've been working on. And those changes when they occur would be communicated to the community at large. So they're not they haven't been finalized yet. But there are some internal changes that I would like to make in that regard. That should impact that number.

    Thanks so much, ma'am. Thank you.

    Thank you Protune Member Santiago Romero. Thank you, Madam President. Good afternoon. Good to see you, Director. I had questions that have already been asked. As you mentioned, we have been in conversation about how we bring the community blank quarterback, which really excited about and we will continue to work with you to to do so. I'm not sure if this question was asked already. I know that when we were in conversation in the past we discussed the need for the city or for the court system. And this is a little different, but it's still something that that that you have some insight in. We are looking at policies that we want to essentially decriminalize and we want to be able to provide an opportunity to create policies that instead of giving you a misdemeanor gives you a civil infraction, but we are told that the courts can't process these and if you could please share with us and the public again what is needed in the courts to be able to do so because I know that our offices is looking into this as well. Okay

    and through the chair to Councilwoman Santiago Romero. Thank you for that question. So I'm very excited about the Blight community by courts as well, just to acknowledge that again. So looking at the policies for the municipal civil infractions and shifting, shifting violations that are currently classified as misdemeanors to be civil infractions. There's quite a bit I think of work on the front end and the back end, that would would to bring a project of that nature to fruition. So for you know, it would be identifying what violations would be reclassified and making those ordinance changes. And then also making sure that there's the framework to to be able to handle those whether it be at 36 district or the Department of Administrative Hearings. Again, our jurisdiction is set by the state law and in municipal civil infractions is something that can come through our office. So I think a key part of that would be our docket case management system. upgrades that aren't that are critically needed, presently, and certainly would be a key factor in adding another administrative Bureau to our operations. And so I think building that out, you know, building out those tickets, getting those tickets approved by the state in kind of being able to do all that background work. It's it's a large undertaking, but certainly if that's the policy direction the city is going in, we fully support it and would be able to handle that and and have those discussions. About needs with OCFS office, because that would going back to Councilmember Whitfield Callaway is an earlier question that might actually impact capacity with that shift, particularly when there's more of an understanding of what violations are being thought of and getting those that data and those metrics from 36 District as far as volume, and we would be able to, again, make some recommendations based on the volume and capacity needs at that time. Is that responsive?

    Through the Chair? Yes. Thank you. And we see 36 district court next week. And I things take time, and I see things that we talked about our first year coming to fruition the next year, so I'm just trying to begin to have these conversations. Because I do believe this is needed for us to be able to create policy that doesn't create more barriers and harm our residents and it really helps us all hold ourselves accountable to our laws and making sure that we're following those through. So I look forward to continuing to work with you I look forward to having 336 This report here next week for us to continue to have the conversations about our systems and how to better the system so that we can all work together. So thank you, Director. Thank you.

    Thank you, member Johnson.

    Thank you Mr. Chair and good afternoon attorney pastula Great to see you and congratulations on your new position. I want to go back to the collection rate. The 16% What happens with the a the other 84% I know we've talked about a collection agency we've talked about them putting liens on properties garnishing people do we ever collect the remainder of those dollars.

    So through the chair to council member Johnson and thank you thank you again I'm very happy to have been appointed and looking forward to to doing great things in the role I have a fantastic team. They're very knowledgeable and dedicated. So I've been very, very lucky coming into the role. The 16% collection number again, we identified as an opportunity. What I will say is that is just capturing what was collected during that fiscal year. So there we are able to to pursue collections of unpaid light judgments and their collections vendor is able to pursue for numerous years so that it wasn't collected this year does not mean that it's not still an active file that we're pursuing. So So I would like to also I did not make that point earlier and I should have so thank you for the opportunity to do that.

    Okay, thank you for clarifying that because I was wondering that very thing if it was rolling and not necessarily specific to the particular year that you've identified. So I wonder if you might be able to share with us what the actual collection rate is of the assessments that have been written. And you don't necessarily have to do that now because I can't imagine that you'd be able to, but if you can share that that would be really insightful. Because I think a lot of times so we just talked to the construction and demolition department. We've talked to the Detroit Land Bank Authority about how long property sit in a state of disrepair, that ends up needing to be demolished because of that, right. And so if there's a way for us to get ahead of it, how do we do it, but it'll take several departments in the city in order for that to happen and I know that you know, be seated issues, the tickets, but is there a way for us to ensure that these properties just don't continue to collect by blight violations? They go unpaid. And then down the road, the house needs to be demolished? Is there a way for us to get ahead of that to get in front of it is really the question and it's not just a question for you. It's really a question for all of us. How do we do it? So that we're holding on to more properties than we are demolishing properties?

    That's an excellent question. Through the through the chair to the council member. So we're dH is certainly committed to providing information and and that's generally the way that we're able to provide support with those types of of, of initiatives is that we're able to to provide the information and in really collecting that data that says, You know what the outstanding fees are? The ticketing departments are able to increase fine amounts for second and third offenses. So that's another way in which we're currently see that issue that you're identifying via be approached and and addressed currently, and certainly look forward to being a part of future conversations of how to positively impact and I made a note of the request for the collection rate assessment as well.

    Thank you and the other thing I wanted to ask about is just the timeliness of hearings. Residents call in and complain about when a blight violation was, I guess given by BC but by the time they have received the notification, it's usually a short timeframe from receiving the notification and actually having the hearing but it may have been two or three months when the the violation occurred. Is there can you talk about what you all I'm not sure if you've experienced that but if what it is that you're doing and what you're able to do to shorten that that timeframe and to give the property owner more notice for the hearing so that they can come and be prepared.

    Thank you through the chair though. Those are excellent questions about the timing of hearings. So currently with the weather, and normally we have would have had snow this winter, right. So right now the dockets are slower. So every spring certainly be seed announces to the community about a blight push. So generally our dockets increase in volume during the summer months and in the fall in so for the timing under the state law we cannot hold a hearing. We it must be at least 14 days after the ticket is is issued. And tickets are sent via US Mail and posted on the property. So those are the two ways that the property owners are received notice so the timing of the hearings can fluctuate based again on the volume of the docket when that inspector is assigned to a docket and how fast those dockets fill. So two weeks would be the earliest they would have a hearing date. And I would also like to highlight that you can request one adjournment um, that that is also available to respondents to get that hearing adjourned. If you're working with the ticket issuing department on compliance issues. That can certainly be a factor as well. We've also discussed with the ticket issuing departments putting in and again this is part of the fiscal year are part of our fiscal year budget ask was some some easy easy initiatives of can we use yellow envelopes or red envelopes are some different color envelope that really make that blight violation notice stand out? I know municipal parking hits success with when they changed the look and feel of their envelopes that they were mailing citations and so we're hoping to replicate that to also impact that. We have many property owners that live out of the state of Michigan or out of the country. So I think that those getting those notices to those individuals, again, that might pose a timing issue, but again, the notice has been posted on the property. So if they're maintaining the property if they have tenants in the property, if they have a property management company if it's registered as vacant, I mean there's a whole host of ways that these property owners should be notified of these of these violations. And again, they can contact the city whether it's the ticket issuing department or my department and began to be engaged in this process and that's what we're really going to be hoping to do is encourage more property owners to engage in the process. Again, for compliance. We would like compliance.

    Excellent, thank you. And the timeliness is extremely important. I've had residents reach out to me about a violation they received a year prior and they never responded to it. And at that point, it's with the collection agency and there's little that we can do at that point. So I appreciate you know your efforts, and I think the different color envelope would be extremely helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President.

    Thank you, Madam President. Good morning to you or good afternoon to you now all. I don't have many questions. A lot of questions I have have been answered. I do have one question just relative to ordinances that we passed last year relative to the proliferation of auto related businesses here in the city of Detroit. Have we seen any of those cases come where any appeals come from business owners or folks that may have been given blight tickets due to their businesses or the surrounding area?

    So through the Chair, thank you member Dr. Hall. So those tickets, go through our environmental docket. And so unfortunately, I don't have a statistic to give you whether those have increased since those changes or not, I'd be happy to to pull those to get that information for you. What I will say is we do monitor the changes to the code. Again, there were the significant changes to Chapter 28. I know the license renewal was just changed for a variety of licenses from May 1 to May 31. So just one we're anticipating our docket capacity and our flow to do that, but I am I do not know if that that really increase the tickets, but I'd be happy to get that information for you.

    Okay, thank you and I'd love to get with you offline. relative to that specific issue. And that's all my questions. Thank you, Madam President.

    Thank you member Dr. Hall. All right. That will conclude I'm sure. Yes, member Callaway, I'm

    sure would like to put the Blight tickets and senior citizens receiving them in Executive Session. We have to provide them some relief. I'm not sure how we're identifying seniors but they call your office I'm sure they call all of our offices and they need relief and they're on a fixed income. And I don't want whatever they have garnished or I don't want liens placed on their homes. We have cut some deals with commercial property owners in terms of reducing their blight tickets amount like we've done with Family Dollar Store 20%. So I'd like to put I make a motion to put into Executive Session, the whole bomb blight ticket process and senior citizens and how we can provide them some relief since we've gotten this huge infusion of federal funds through arpa. Madam Chair, just to give them some relief. All right, any objections

    to adding that to Executive Session? All right, hearing none that will be added to our Executive Session. All right, and then motion is approved. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. And we appreciate the presentation and we look forward to working with you. All right. If your time you as well. All right, colleagues, we have a break now. I know there's a 1pm Neighborhood and Community Services Committee. So we will stand in recess until 2pm