BFA: Detroit Water & Sewerage Department / Airport

7:07PM Mar 21, 2025

Speakers:

President Sheffield

Gabriela Santiago-Romero

Keywords:

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. We will call back to order our expanded budget Finance and Audit. Standing Committee, Madam Clerk, please call the

roll council member Scott Benson. Council member Frederick Hall, the third present council member Leticia Johnson, present council member Gabriella Santiago Romero, present council member Mary waters president, Council Member Angela Whitfield, Callaway, Council Member Coleman Young the second. Council President, pro tem James Tate, council president, Mary Sheffield President, Madam President, you have a quorum, right?

There being a quorum present. We are in session, and we will start off with the Detroit water and sewage department, Director Brown and your team, whoever's here can join us here at the table. I

a PowerPoint.

Maybe print out any. But Mr. Peckinpah can come she's not here, is she? Yeah, I think he's fine to come on up. Yeah. Do I have any printed versions of the PowerPoint or,

I think they were delivered a little earlier today, I know that they were

copies were delivered. Okay?

Thank you. All right. Well, good afternoon. You all can proceed when you are ready.

Okay, thank you very much. Gary Brown, Detroit water and sewage department. I'll let my team go down and introduce themselves and

yeah, good afternoon. My name is, stick around, and I'm the Chief Financial Officer.

Good afternoon. Lashonda Davis, Director of Finance, DWSD,

good afternoon. Brian Peckinpah, Public Affairs Director, DWSD,

and today, I mean, we have a very thorough budget presentation. I've asked is to Kerr to go through the summary of it and get right into the rates and charges for next year. I know that's always very important to city council, and we can be as thorough and in depth as you like, but I thought we would start there, mister. Okay,

thank you, Gary, so you have the package in your hand. It's kind of a detail information of about FY 2026 budget, but I'll go through a high level summary and then be open to any questions you may have in the process. So we want to start with the with the fact that there are several considerations that we take into account when we come up with our budget for any specific year, and the same is true for FY 2026 there are a few factors that are very critical for us and plays it play a very important role. Affordability is certainly on the top of the list. We We take that very seriously, and our commitment to keep rates below 4% and for any specific year is true for this year as well. We also believe in compassionate and responsive customer service, which is critical part of our overall budget environment. Next is public health, our operations, which are the core of our what we do, we want to make sure we support and preserve public health, meet or exceed all federal, state and local regulations throughout the year. Safety of our employee and our infrastructure our assets, is critical. Keeping in mind, while we develop our budget, we also are very cognizant of the fact that our infrastructure is several, at least 100 years old. We need to keep upgrading our systems to keep our maintenance costs down. So water and sewer upgrades is another factor that we we take very seriously, including the replacement of the lead service line throughout the city. And finally, but not least in importance, is our focus on our employees. We want to make sure we hire, retain and train the best of employees we can Having said all that, I just want to give you a high level summary of our current budget environment and the highlights the proposed FY 2026, operating budget, again, was developed with the two two goals in mind, keeping rates affordable At the same time, we did not want to sacrifice on our service level initiatives. When we accumulated all the expenditures that are needed for to keep the system operating efficiently and effectively, the total amount is what we termed as revenue requirement, or total expenditures, that equates the revenues that we need to come up with to cover our operations. The first phase is that departmental overall, our revenue requirement, or the expenditure part of it, increased 5.2% or roughly $25.9 million when you compare it to FY 2025, departmental expenses, which we also term is direct expenses increased by 5.6% or approximately $6 million and non departmental expenses, also termed as indirect expenses, have increased $20.2 million roughly 5.2% the increase in revenue is primarily due to increase in our our share of GL, W A's revenue requirements. This year, it increased to $12.3 million and that becomes a part of our cost structure. Bad debt increased $6.1 million again, based on our collection history, and we do our math in terms of coming up what the estimate should be for bad debt expense, we have also increased our personal expenses by $2.1 million this is mainly because we are adding an at 20 FTEs, all of them in our operations. There are no additions to our administrative functions. All of the 20 employees would be included in our operations. Various operational departments, non personal expenses have a three and a $3.4 million increase. And again, these are expenses that are necessary to support our increase FTE and increase service levels, to improve our services even more and also to catch up on backlogs pension expenses, which we have no control, is increased by 1.9% this year, as I mentioned, 20 new FTEs will be is estimated for for inclusion our Operations units, so on a total system wide revenue basis, we have a $521.3 million increase In revenue requirement. This is offset by non retail revenue and non rate revenue of $25.9 million that brings us down to $495.4 million in rate revenue requirement, which means we need to collect rate collect $494.4 million through rates and charges, another component which helps us keep the rates down is our volume data. So any increase in rate revenue is offset by any increase in volume. So for 2026 we are projecting an increase, or rather a range of increases from 1.2 1.1% to 2% for our volumetric as well as our drainage Dias, or which is the billable impervious acres. So the 4.8% increase in rate rate revenue is offset by these increases in volume, bringing our rate revenue requirement to 3.5% overall for fiscal year 2026 so at the end of it all, the budget for 2026 proposes a three and a half percent rate increase across the board for water service, sewer service, as well as drainage. And just to let you know that the rate increase is quite consistent with the inflationary environment that we've been going through over the last several months or years. So we believe that three and a half percent is consistent with with the inflate inflation rate, as per the consumer price index, the inflation rate at the end of December of 2024 was hovering around 3% the rest of these are all detailed numbers. How we came up with the total revenue requirement. I'd like to go down to slide number 18. I This slide summarizes our rate structure for FY 25 as well as FY 2026 as you will see, the volumetric rate per MCF, which is 1000 cubic feet of water for tier one, which uses only up to 0.6 MCF, has increased by 93 cents. For Tier Two, it's an increase of $1.65 and then if you convert those two gallons, the increase is less than a cent per gallon. Same thing for the sewer fund, our volumetric rate has increased by $2.05 per 1000 cubic feet. If you convert that to a gallon again, the rate increase in terms of gallon is less than a cent compared to FY 2025

the service rates have increased by 28 cents and 23 cents for water and sewer fund, respectively, per month, and we have a similar increase for drainage fees at three and a half percent.

So I'll just go through the final slide here. What is what does it mean with all this increases that we have factored into our budget? How does it impact the customer? How does it impact, you know, our citizens as a whole, these are value added services that we provide to our citizens. We clean 600 miles of sewer lines to provide capacity to the current design standards, cleaning entire system in a five year cycle, we inspect and clean 8000 cats basins to reduce street flooding. We're replacing 3500 lead service lines. We could do 8000 lines if additional state and or federal funding becomes available, with the goal to remove all our lead service lines within 10 years. So nearly 12,000 have been replaced Since 2018 we are painting 5000 fire hydrants, which reduces corrosion, complete the five Far West project, detention basins and sewer to remove 100 million gallons of water and rain rain water and snow melt annually from our combined system. We continue to provide and procure resources to support water affordability through the lifeline plan as well as an effective payment plan, which we call easy pay. This is all to the benefit of our customers in keeping water services on while at the same time improving the collection rate. I'll stop there. I'd be happy to answer any questions in terms of these numbers,

a little bit of context to to the budget. And we thank Mr. Corley for reviewing our budget and looking at our audits, and I'm proud to say that we have a clean audit and so that there are no issues regarding the finances and the auditing of DWSD for 20 years prior to 2014 we had double digit rate increases for 20 years, sometimes some years, as high As 17% we've averaged since 2014 to today, an average increase of 2.9% which is below inflation. We're proud that we're able to keep rates down. I think it's because of we're a lot more efficient today than we have been over the last 10 years. That's one reason. The other reason is, is that all over the country, all over the state, volumes are dropping in every utility in Detroit, volumes are going up because we're putting more housing stock online. And when you do that, you spread the cost with more people using the system which is able, is the reason that we're able to keep the rates below 4% and so we do have challenges. We'd like to be able to remove 10,000 lead service lines every year for the next 10 years, and they would all be gone, but that's $100 million endeavor. Last year we had money out of the Biden administration, and we were able to do it. This year, that money is not there, and we won't be able to do it. As a matter of fact, by April, we will be out of the $30 million that I moved from bond funding that would have been used to improve the system. I moved it into continuing to remove lead service lines. That money will be gone by April. We're bleeding through approximately two and a half million dollars a week in removing lead service lines. So the $30 million will be gone, and there's no federal or state money that we see on the horizon for that. I can't pass $100 million cost into into rates, it would be cost prohibitive, and so we've got to be able to find those dollars through grants or through the federal government or through the state. That's that's just one, one challenge. And when you have a water main break like we've had in the last few weeks, the last 30 days, there's a cost to that, probably about $5 million to DWSD, and so we've got a hiring freeze on for the rest of this year to July 1. We have 67 vacancies. We won't be filling those so that we can recoup the dollars in order to support the budget. With that said, we're, I know there probably be questions regarding lifeline and and some of our affordability programs, and so I'll as well as I can talk extensively about the 54 inch water main break and the progress that's been made on that and but I'll wait for your questions to be guided by the responses that I get. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Is that the end of the presentation? I think so. Okay, all right. Well, thank you all for the presentation, thank you all for the work that you all do. Just want to thank the entire team. Always have to give a shout out to Brian Peckinpah. That's my guy right there. I just say that he always is. We got to share him. Remember, we all, we all share Brian Peckinpah, but we definitely have a lot of love for him. He's public facing. I mean, always dealing with the community. Whenever I send anything over to you, you always respond to you as well. Director Brown, so I do appreciate the work that you all do. I just want to talk a little bit about drainage fees. I saw you put here 3.5% drainage charge increase, which translates to an increase of $24.82 cent per acre per month. Yes, which is a challenge for our residents. And, you know, I constantly am still getting stopped about this drainage fee. What more we can do about it? I know you all have credits, a green credit, 25% you know, if you make you connect your downspout to the grass and just, I'm just trying to think of what other ways are we looking at how we can better relieve Detroiters from that that fee, or some believe, attacks,

yeah, the it's the two categories they get hurt the most by the drainage fees are not necessarily residential, although that's who You hear from the most it's churches and commercial business. The commercial churches that have large parking lots. I There are some churches in this city that pay in excess of $10,000 a month in drainage fees alone, without even factoring in their their water and their sewage bills, and so we're always looking for ways to reduce the cost of drainage fees for all categories of our customers. But it was a it was a court order. It wasn't something that DWSD decided we wanted to do. We got sued, and we paid. We settled the lawsuit, and basically said that we would abide by the settlement agreement that says we'll charge per acre, per impervious acre, and so the formula is based on the impervious acreage and every utility charges a drainage fee. Now they charge it differently. Sometimes it's in property taxes. Sometimes it's a separate fee to homeowners. We put it into the drainage bill, into the water bill, as opposed to into property taxes, because that would exasperate foreclosure rates by raising property rates to the point that people couldn't pay those so we try to keep the rate down. It only went up, the same as water and sewage, by 3.5% which is well below the inflationary rate it it's used to clean all of the storm water that goes through the system to the wastewater treatment plant, and also to make sure that we're in compliance with the regulatory requirements by the state of Michigan. And that regulation is costly. It it costs money to comply with the regulation, and that's where the drainage fee comes up. So unfortunately, we aren't able to reduce it at this point, but at least it hasn't gone up any higher than 3.5%

so I know at one point, though, you had a program where you did offer credits in ways for commercial property owners and churches and others to incorporate more green initiatives within their property to give them a reduction in drainage fees. Are there any more initiatives and programs that push for that to help churches, residents and commercial property owners? Yeah,

right, right now, we haven't been able to secure the same level of grant funding that funded those programs. As a matter of fact, as I'm sure we're going to talk about shortly, we don't have the dollars available for lifeline to assist residential customers. As you know, we had 27,000 customers in that in the Lifeline program, which in lifeline, you would get, it's truly an affordability program where customers pay 1.8% of their household income towards their water bill. So no matter what the water bill is, they're only going to pay 1.8% of their household income. 27,000 customers were in the program. It was one of the most successful programs in America, and we were just forced to send out 6000 letters to customers that were in that program, saying, essentially, there is no funding. And as you know, we spent all last year in Washington trying to get the same amount of dollars that the energy sector enjoys, gas and light they have funding. The state just passed a new bill that also funds the energy sector same customers that we have, but we couldn't even get a vote after we spent a year and a half writing legislation that would have put $2 it started out with $2 a meter on every meter in the state of Michigan that would have gathered a pool of money for every utility in The state to be able to help with affordability. We couldn't even get that to a vote, and so right now, DWSD, through the Cox order, puts 1% of our annual budget into lifeline, which is only $2.4 million to have 27,000 have 27,000 people, you need $25 million not 2.4 25 million, the state kicks in another $8 million and so we're able to support right now, approximately 10,000 residents in lifeline when we had 27,000 in life line, and so finding dollars to be able to offset bills, whether you're talking about residential customers or at the drainage level, is just challenging. And we we thank the advocates that have stood with us in Lansing and in Washington. I've seen them in Washington, in the same halls that I've been in, and I'll be there the first week of April again, trying to get some long term funding for these type programs, affordability and drainage offset green credits. But EPA is is being gutted by the Trump administration, and the same dollars that were available for these type projects we don't anticipate will be available in the near future, so we're going to have to find other grants and other ways to raise the money to offset both drainage and the affordability programs.

All right, thank you for that. That that is definitely concerning. And I know when I'm in the community, people always ask, what is going to be the state of DWSD or infrastructure with all of the changes happening on a federal level? And people want to know what the answer is. And it sounds like we really don't really know. The strategy is to find private and grant funding to replace those gaps. But I had the opportunity to go to Lansing myself and testify on behalf of those water affordability bills, and still will be pushing that we get those done. Just lastly, if you can briefly, just speak to how the increase in the budget will address the backlog of sewer related complaints, cleaning of catch basins that we typically still get. I know sometimes the length of time for people to come out and get those do those repairs can be quite timely sometimes. So if you could speak to the increase in the budget that addresses that, yeah,

and not only increase in budget dollars to be able to do more, but we're also hiring more Detroiters to do that work as Issachar has just explained, we're not using any of the new FTEs that we're putting into this budget for administrative jobs. They're all going out into the field to be able to do two things. One is restorations, where, when you're doing 10,000 lead service lines, and you're doing them across the winter. You come into the spring with 345, 1000 restorations. To get you know to start with, the construction season is short, and so we have to put more staffing on both cleaning catch basins as well as to remove lead service lines, as well as the other maintenance and operation work that needs to be done. So there are extra dollars in the budget this year for that.

Okay, all right, thank you. We have several other questions that we'll submit in writing, and I will continue to move on to my colleagues. Council member Young, thank you. Good

to see you. Good to see you. Mr. Brown, always a pleasure. Director Brown, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Brian and Brian Peck Paul is like Raymond. Everybody Loves Raymond. Everybody Loves Raymond. Everybody loves Brian pegabo. We appreciate you, sir. I want to say this, and I want to make sure I get this correct. Basically, what it sounds like you're saying to me is that you're going to increase the water rate and we're going to decrease the or see a decrease in the water affordability funds at the same time, and you're hiring 20 people. Yeah. On top of that, after the water main break that we had, that seems like a whole lot. One for me to be able to sell to my constituents. And secondly, do we have an analysis of what the impact would be in terms of water shut offs if we're doing this, and how much more will the taxpayer have to pay for this per dollar? Yeah,

all good questions. Average Bill right now is $84 and this increase is going to be less than $3 impact on the average bill. Okay, understand that for the affordability issues, you cannot use rate dollars in you can't take a customer who pays a rate for a service and use that money to offset another customer's bill that would be considered a tax you cannot use rate dollars to offset other customers bills, and so dollars that go towards affordability programs have to come outside of rates from a different source, and that's why we go ask the federal government and The State and and try to find grants in other areas to support the affordability programs. The dollars that we have increased the budget to hire additional people are based on the increase in volume that we're seeing and and that will be able to support it. And again, we're keeping rates at inflation or below the inflation rate, and earlier this year, inflation was at seven and 8% but yet we're still keeping rates chemical costs have are driving most utilities budgets. Utility costs are driving budgets going up. Certainly our employees work hard and deserve contractual union, contractual raises that health care is driving this, but yet we're still able to keep rates at 3.5% even in face of the challenges that inflation cause.

Okay, no, I understand. I just think it's important for us to understand that, you know, like you said, inflation is driving a lot of this cost, and so people are really hurting right now, and so it's kind of hard to be able to justify that. We're going to increase the rates, we're going to take away from affordability, and we're also hiring new people, and I'm assuming the people that these 20 people that we're hiring, they are part of that has going to be stronger focus on infrastructure repair and preventative maintenance so we don't have happen what we had in South Detroit happen again in other parts of the city. Can you just kind of explain how that is going to be used to address that? Because that's going to be something that my constituents going to tell me about. Yeah. How are we going to invest more money and take away from affordability and not deal with the issues of of aging infrastructure

and and be clear that we're talking about the operation and maintenance budget of DWSD. But there's also a capital plan that invest in infrastructure, and over five years there, that's a half billion dollars, $500 million so we're spending $100 million in our capital plan, as well as the Great Lakes Water Authority, as you know, the South the break in southwest Detroit was not a DWSD line. It was leased by the Great Lakes Water Authority. They are also spending a billion dollars to invest in their infrastructure. But our infrastructure is 100 years old, and the more that we can replace, the less emergency work we have to do. And our water main breaks are down. Our sewer line breaks are down because of the investments that we're making, but it's going to take time to make up for decades of deferred maintenance that hadn't been done for more than 20 years because the city just didn't. The water department didn't have the money to invest in either people or infrastructure. So we're getting caught up, but it's going to take time.

And then it is my final question. I'm done. I just wanted to ask you, I'm looking at the drainage fee fees in the page 14, the submarine revenues and expenses, and I've seen that there's a $75 million more in terms of the drainage fees. I just wanted to ask you one is the amount that you charge? Is that pre determined by the court DWSD, or the Great Lakes water.

It's affected by the wholesale rate that we receive from the Great Lakes Water Authority.

So that the term that the Great Lakes Water and DWSD

determines what the rate will be based on what we need to operate the system. Okay, so, so

I just make sure I get this clear. So there's G there's great lakes. Water Authority determines that

it may determine our wholesale rate, okay, which was higher than 3.5% we still were able to to get a higher wholesale rate and still deliver less than 4% 3.5

Okay, thank you. I'm done. Members.

Thank you. Member pro tem, thank

you, Madam President, thank you for being here, director and your team. Appreciate your responsiveness when we reach out. You all reach back and address the issues that we need as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Wanted to talk. We kind of had a conversation director brown about American Water Resources and about the tone and tenor of the community. I know when we talk, you kind of mentioned that they were doing pretty good. That's not necessarily the comments that I'm getting from folks. Some of it is potentially in the the wording in the warranty information and that they provide. Some of it may be just in terms of expectation as well. You know when you look online, they have horrible, horrible reviews, and I know when we discussed that, you indicated that they were doing something a little bit different in Detroit than they were doing in some of those other places. But I'm starting to not starting. I'm continuing. Let me just say that to hear the concerns from the community about American Water Resources and the services that they provide or don't provide in terms of expectation. So one, do you know when that contract expires? Two, what is you know? Is there a request going to be a request to re up their contract? But then? Three, what is the How are you all you know, giving a full analysis not just of the services that they provide, but the expectation of the services that they provide, because as it is, you know, as we talk about perception and reality, they live right next to each other. I agree

with you, and you know, it was a member of the city council that really pushed me towards a warranty program. He's no longer on the on the council now, but when I was on council and there was a big push for to have a warranty program. And I fought it for many years, and then we decided to put it out for bid. American Water Resources won the bid, I think the and we bring them in to our board of directors and make them report out their statistics on how many people they denied. How many, how many, how many dollars, how many millions of dollars did they service other customers with? Originally, they came in, and they came in with a program that we endorsed that dealt with the the pipes that go outside the house, the lateral sewer line, as well as the water service line that comes into the house. And by and large, that's the contract that we have with them, and they do a good job with that, and then they expanded their services. And without my permission, or anybody from DWS permission, used our logo to announce a new program that's on the inside of the house and speaks to appliances as well as pipes inside the house. We do not support that program. We only support the program on the outside of the house that we contract with them on. So we've, we've asked them, and they've, they've honored it, they've removed any logos. But the fact remains is most Detroiters don't know that. We don't endorse that particular program. So their contract is, is coming up. We're going to have a conversation with them. I'd like to be able to put the data in front of this body, give you a report so that you could see the dollars that are being spent. I will tell you that with this 54 inch break, they stepped up big time. I mean, they put all of their contractors to work on that 54 inch break. They donated $20,000 that was is going to allow me to give every customer that we, we we service their homes by putting a furnace or high water tank. I'm going to give them a warranty for a year and pay for it with the donation that they're providing. But there, there is room, there, there's this, there is some concern and and whether we should continue that relationship or not is to be determined. I'd like to be able to present the data so you can take a look at it, and then we'll, we'll make a determination whether we want to continue or not. When does it expire? I'll get the date if, as Brian

No, May of next year, May of 2026,

but we, but did we? Isn't that, you know we can, we can cancel the contract at any time. I mean no cost, or with it, no cost. We can cancel that contract if we deem it necessary to do it. So let me present the data so that we're not acting. I know that we hear a lot of complaints, but there are a lot of good stories out there too. So let's present the data, and then I'm not I'm not wedded to anything. I just would like to act based on the best interest of the citizens of Detroit and the data that's being produced.

But in terms of, I mean, and I'm glad we're having that this conversation before we have a nick here at the table. But what are they changing? And I mean, again, perception, people believe that they are, and I'm not familiar with the change that they, you know, made without permission. Was there any type of repercussion as a result of that, because that that's kind of, there's

nothing illegal. They they wanted to generate additional business, and so they came up with a model that allows them to give warranties to appliances on the inside of the house, as well as the plumbing on the inside of the house. Yeah, when I,

when I take our logo, though, that's, that's that's we

had a real we had a serious conversation about that, and that was removed immediately, and it won't happen again. But the damage was done. People think that their their complete program, is that DWSD supports that we do not. We only support the part of the program that we contracted with them on the outside of the house, not because the complaints I'm hearing is that that if you if someone has a pipe that burst in the house, they will repair it, but then they leave the drywall not repaired. Now that might be in the small print of the contract, but people don't know it. And so look,

that's kind of what I'm leading to, like, what our these are our citizens. They don't mean that's a business. And to your point, they wanted to expand because they wanted to expand the services. And when you expand services, that means you're expanding customers. When you expand customers, that's revenue, yeah. So that's them on their side. That's not our focus. It shouldn't be. And I don't think it's based on your career and your performance thus far, that's what you're concerned about. But how are we making it very clear? I mean, we've talked about it so often on our water bills. Now we got bright lines and bright letters and big, you know, bold font and messaging that clearly states what is and what isn't. This is a bill. This not just a note that you can just throw away and put to the side. How are we working with them, knowing that these are the concerns that we have, and you can't put the horse back in the barn, so to speak, but we can ensure that people are now more clear, and they can take real onus on what the reputation that they may have damaged for us, yeah,

I know that we took legal action through our law department with regards to them using our logo, and we rectified that particular program. That part of the problem, as you said, the Genie was already out of the bottle, and now I think what we need to do is take a look at the data from the secondary program. Even though it's not a it's not our, a part of our program, because I'm not sure that there aren't many people that are pleased with the program. We just, we need to look at the data. I know we hear from the constituents that aren't happy, but how many of the constituents that they have are happy? Let's sample those. And then again, we can take even if we don't, even if we don't do business with them, they're still, they still will be in the market with other warranty companies that will be doing business in the city of Detroit. So let us look at the data, and then we'll come up with some recommendations on how we can notify our customers. With regards to the distinction between the two programs that we don't that one of them we do endorse, that other one that we don't, and then we'll take a look at whether or not we need to be endorsing any of their programs and just walk away from it.

When do you anticipate the report to be we can

put it together in 30 days. Nikki branch is the liaison between us and them, and she has most of this data already, and I'd suggest that maybe we come back, either in committee or the full body, and and give a presentation based on the data that we find. We can do it within 30 days.

Okay, I would just so that we don't lose it in the the sauce, so to speak, like to motion to like to move to add to the closing resolution that the city works with American Water Resources to clearly delineate what their services are. And

I'll just leave it at that. And we can also bring them to the table, and no, they're coming.

We didn't let them on my list too. Okay, for sure. I mean, because, I mean, again, if this, this is a, this is a major concern from a lot of folks, and not to the point where, you know, they're calling every day, as they do, I mean, but when things happen, we get that call, and there's certain calls that are a higher volume than others.

I look at the data, they're they're heavier in your district than they are in any other district in the city of Detroit. There we go. There we go. I know. I know where they are.

Okay. Thank

you so much for that. And then my motion,

oh, I'm sorry. So motion was made to add that to Executive Session Hearing no objections that action will be taken. Thank you

so much, Madam President. And then the last is I saw on page we saw on page B, 48 dash eight in the budget book, under miscellaneous, it has 4.2 million identified for adopted fiscal year of 25 but we don't see anything after that, 26 and beyond.

I think that's that's my LPD. I believe what you're reading from

LPD report is that

an LPD report. No, it's in the budget book.

Madam President, yes, I might. Donnie Johnson, deputy budget director. So through the chair to President Pro Tem Tate, the differences that you're seeing are going to be the result of the fact that when we prepare the budget book, we don't have DW st final budget. The water commissioners haven't taken their action yet. And so we use what we call the placeholder budget, and in order to just get the numbers into the book, they're not fully distributed out to the various like categories and cost centers. A lot of times, it's just kind of a lump sum that goes into one place in each fund so that the budget book looks whole, because we don't put $0 in for water that wouldn't look right. So we use this placeholder budget as part of the finalizing of the budget. By that point, the commissioners have voted and adopted their budget, and we will, you know, we'll slide in the final numbers for the water department after that. So I'm believe the discrepancies you're seeing are just a result of this placeholder budget holding places that aren't as granular as the adopted budget would have been

through the Chair if I can add to that the budget the board meeting was held on yesterday where we got confirmation. We are now in the process of finalizing those numbers to provide back to the budget department. And so with that, we'll have a finalized budget that will be updated in the slides that you have so that you'll have updated numbers. Thank

you so much. Thank you. That was my other question. Thank you, Madam President, thank you again. Okay, thank

you pro tem members. Santiago Romero,

thank you, Madam President, good afternoon through you to our water department. Good to see you all. I have been in constant communication regarding the flooding, so thank you. We also discussed this during BFA, so I'm going to focus my questions on issues that I hear from my residents often. So one of those being when someone buys a home, usually from the land bank, there is a line that is cut. I believe it's a water line. Wondering, does the water department do this? Why it is a lot of money for residents once they buy a home, it's it's a surprise cost. Can we stop? Can we better communicate? Is there a program, because I want residents to purchase properties, but I keep getting complaints about them having to reconnect the line? Can we not do just why do we do that? And can we work together to really not add more burdens for residents who are purchasing homes.

Yeah, six months ago, that was the biggest complaint that we received at DWC, at both my board meetings and in in the community. And what happened, you know, years ago and I was on city council, and I chaired the committee on Monday that did dealt with dangerous buildings. Yes, yes, and these buildings were scheduled to be demolished, and so the contractors went in and cut the lines because the buildings were going to be demolished, and they never got demolished. And then the Duggan administration came in and said, We're not going to tear all these buildings down. We're going to sell them or and get them back on the market. And so there weren't good records of which lines had been cut and which had not and quite frankly, the land bank sold some without notice that the line may or may not be intact. And so DWSD, I believe we put $5 million into a pot, and we allowed the land bank to go back and use the money with our contractors to fix those those lines. So if the land bank had sold a property, they didn't give proper notice, we used our contractors to fix those lines. And it's my understanding today, and I've seen documentation of this is that when you buy a house through the auction at the land bank, you have to sign a document understanding whether that line is intact or not, because it you buy a house $4,000 and you you fix it up, and then you get to ask us to turn the Water on, and then you're looking at a $10,000 expense. It was unfair to customers to do that. I think that we've gotten I haven't heard this complaint in the last three months. I know that we went through the complete list that the land bank provided us. We called those customers and we told them we would fix that at our cost. We did that, and now the land bank is required, is required to have them sign a document at closing that says whether the line is intact or not, and so they shouldn't be surprised by it

through the Chair. Thank you. Do you have resources still set aside in case? Yes, I acknowledge that the line isn't connected, but I can't afford that additional $10,000 cost since it's been cuts. Well,

the land bank might have resources available. It's they're selling the property, so no, the money was exhausted that we used. But certainly if there were some cases that fell through the cracks, we'd be more than happy to find funding to make sure that they're made home.

Thank you. That's helpful. I will take that and if it comes up again, we'll move forward in that way. And thank you. Expectations are just really important, also regarding expectations and water basins, excited to hear that we're going to clean. I we've reached out regarding some concerns of some streets not having water basins and there be flooding. Do you have, do you know which water basins you're going to be cleaning? What you're going to be focused on? Because if not, we have some that we know that have been problem areas in the district, and then also to the comments of, I don't have a water basin on my streets. Is there a way to invest in that infrastructure so that there's not flooding on our on our residential neighborhoods? Yeah,

we can. We can certainly take a look at it that's not prevalent all over the city, in some areas of Southwest Detroit there that that may be an issue. But if you certainly, if you get us the streets that you are are concerned about, we will make it a point to put them into this year's program early this spring, to get them clean so that we build as much capacity as possible, and then we'll take a look at the streets that don't have catch basins or don't have enough catch basins.

Okay? Thank you. So we will send those over to you. I will keep to our two questions, but would like to add to Executive Session. Yeah, Hubbard, Hubbard farms, I don't know whether or not they are eligible now for the lead service replacement line. If they're not, I would like to add that to the Executive Session. Would like to add to Executive Session Hubbard farms and just discussion seeing whether or not it's possible to add them as eligible for the replacement program given that there is a high number of seniors, children, low income families, and we have very, very old housing stock. So that's a motion, Madam President, to consider Hubbard farms for the lead place lead replacement program.

Okay, Hearing no objection that action will be taken. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President, thank you all right. Thank you, Council Member waters,

good afternoon. Thank you, Director Brown and team for all of your responsiveness so well. Tim kind of took my question on water American Water Resources, but you know, I just want to, I just want to say that I'm one of those people who took advantage of both the programs. Guilty Yes, because I kind of like what they had to say about the second program I knew that you had endorsed the first one, but the second one, I thought, well, that's gravy, so I'm going to take advantage of it. And so I did, so we'll see what your data shows. I don't know, but I wanted to just kind of say that the thing I want to ask you about I had a resident constituent to reach out to me, and they're trying to get the water turned on in their name right. And he, the previous owner there, had it in in her name. And he says, Now it says current resident, but when he's tried to get it turned on, they said he need a physical social security card. He says he's been waiting for his social security card for the longest while, and he hasn't been able to get it and and it's stressing him out about being able to get his one.

We just need the name and we can take care of that. The normal, the normal problem when a a new owner buys a piece of property from the old owner, if a property transfer affidavit doesn't get filed with the assessor, then the legal ownership doesn't get changed on the on the water bill. So we want to make sure that that happens. But even if he doesn't have a social security card, we can find a way to make sure the water gets into his name that we'd rather have his name on the bill than have resident. Resident. Yeah, somebody needs to be responsible, right? We want his name. Okay,

I'll get that to you, Director, thank you. Um, it's, um, it's 48217, slated to because they have a lot of floods in 48217, um, they have about 10 streets, and I think maybe eight of them flood all the time. Are they in line to receive some upgrades?

And so I can get you a map of citywide of all the areas that we're going to be working in through the next year. I don't have them all memorized, but I can certainly get a map. And if you have areas that you think need to be assessed because they're problematic. We certainly can take a look at the Oh

yeah. They've been hollering and screaming about it. They they want to be on the list. So I like to add, make a motion to add 48217, to Executive Session.

Little bit more detail for LPD. As you write they're going to write it down. Oh, what? No, no, you just said add 40, 217,

for it, for so that we can take a look at whether or not they, they for their assessment and so forth, the whole water, sewage line repairs, yeah, again,

I just want to make sure I saw mister for him. Thank you so much. There's a motion on the floor Colleagues, any objections Seeing none that action shall be taken.

That will be it. Thank you so much. Alright, thank you. Thank you.

Member, Benson,

alright, thank you. Thank you all for being here. Always great to work with. DW SDS team been able to a sponsor and proudly a number of ordinances to help with storm water and to help with just the proper function of a properly managed water department. So just appreciate you all leaning in and working that way, and especially working to educate our residents when it comes to policies and procedures and why water is so important, why drainage is so important, and why conservation is so important, how the proper management of our homes and water really impact everybody in the whole ecosystem. So thank you for that. I do want to say that I am the person who advocated, pushed, encouraged, cajoled Gary Brown to get a water warranty program into the city of Detroit, and that's a direct result of my attendance at the National League of Cities over a number of years, seeing what they were doing in other parts of the country, knowing that we needed something like this here in Detroit. So I'm really interested in seeing what those numbers also say when it comes to how they've performed for our residents. They gave very flowery programs and how they were performing. I was now we can actually put some pen to paper and see how, how they've actually performed, looking forward to seeing those numbers, also storm water as well as I know this has been talked about, it gets talked about, ad nauseam, just the cost of water and the ability to support our families who cannot afford it. For me, this is not a space the city should play. This is really a federal government support. We continue to try to do the city level. We try the state level. It's just not successful. The federal government has to play a role here. And I know that you all are in Lansing on a regular basis. Excuse me about Lansing in DC on a regular basis, we've had numerous conversations with us, senators, Congress persons, still to no avail. If we're going to play in that space next to provide relief that our residents and Americans deserve, we're going to have to get a list swap or a lie wop at the federal level. And I'm hoping that you all will continue to advocate at the federal level for this type of support and relief. If DTE and the energy community can have one LIHEAP, the water community needs to have one as well. And you all also believe need to be going out and organizing your cohorts around the country, and list swap is what they want to see if you bring the West Coast providers in. But we really need to have something if we're going to ever practice nuts. So where are we with that? How are we looking what can we do to help? And I know this has been talked about already, but I really want to focus on the federal

side. Yeah, I know you know my former General General Counsel, Deborah posh speech, and while she's not general counsel today, she works on special projects, and that's, that's her main project, and I thank you for setting up meetings with Senator Peters office. Just recently, in the last few weeks, we've had several very good meetings around this subject. Next week, next week, the first of next month is Water Week. We're all from all over the country. Water Utilities will converge on Washington, you know, I think we have to work both sides of the aisle. You know, I think that John James has a part of the city of Detroit and that we need to ask him to advocate or support those type bills. And I know that that's not popular, but I'm I'm asking any and everybody that has a vote and an opportunity to help Mr.

Brown. Does that mean he doesn't have any of Detroit. He does have the metro area his Macomb County, yeah, well, no, no, but that's good. I'm glad that you're looking to work both sides of the aisle. I just wanted to make that clear.

And he's he's shown an interest to sponsor a bill on affordability, as long as it was not strictly a Detroit bill, that it was a regional approach. And we're more than happy to put a regional spin on it, if we can get that support. So we'll be, we'll be, we'll be in Washington next month, and we're going to continue the fight. I think those trade organizations that the energy sector has put together, they need water utility folks like me on their board so that we can speak to sharing those dollars that the energy sector enjoys. And I think DTE could could be helpful in getting a water utility executive on their board so we're not leaving any stones unturned. We haven't given up. We're still looking and you're right. This can't be done by Detroit. This has to be regional, state or federal dollars that support these programs.

And so how are we how are you being supported in that endeavor, from our own lobbyist.

They're helping to set up meetings with our Congress representatives, as well as, again, across the aisle. We don't, you know, frankly, you know, talking to Senator Peters is speaking to the choir. We are already know where he stands on the issue. We have to go and and GCS, I has to be able to get me into some of the other offices in Washington that could be helpful, because then they're not all against it. I mean, we got, we have, we had a lot of support in Lansing for for the bill. I believe if we had ever got it to a vote, it would have actually had a good chance of passing. I know that's debatable, but I think it had a good chance. But I know this, it didn't have a chance if it didn't come up for a vote, that's the concern. That's a different story. It didn't have a chance. So we think we had a lot of Republican support in Lansing for the bill to get it passed, just never got up for a vote, unfortunately, but true.

So then to did this get make it to the Executive Session. This conversation regarding a list swap low income waters motion to put into executive session, and actually executive session, and a closing resolution, continued encouragement to DWSD to partner with anyone and everyone to have established a list, swap at the national level by working with our federal

legislators, colleagues, there's a motion on the floor. Any objection. Seeing none, that action shall be taken. Mr Brown, thank you. Thank you, Mr Chair, over Callaway. way. Good.

Services program, just a complaint after complaint. And some are in district two, June Mac Georgia, Campbell, they put their information on here. A lot of them from East English village. They are putting all their information in this article. So when I saw June Matt, June Mac everybody knows June Mack and and a lot of these are senior citizens, and they're saying they've paid the $40 they paid $50 it was taken out of their account, and they still haven't gotten any services. They reported them to the better, bitter, better, better business bureau in New Jersey, because I think they're located in New Jersey. But it just goes on and on and on, and when you get the letter, it's pretty frightening. It's a very long letter. I had several I couldn't interpret it. I don't know who to refer them to. I mean, I tell them to call you Mr. Brown because I can't help them. I don't know what to tell them. Cassandra Hall just goes on and on. Amy. And some of these are from January 2025, and they started back when the program started, I think as early as the summer of 2022 so if you just read I mean, they're giving all their information. So I don't know what to tell you. I just got a text message, and I was asked to ask you this. Please ask about the $7 insurance letter that was sent to residents. I'm a senior citizen. It scared a lot of families, we still don't know what it means. Or that letter that they sent to everyone about lead in their water, very scary to receive. And then they go on to say, after you have them answer those questions, can they please go out to Comstock Park, which is near Jalen roses Academy, every time it rains, that entire park floods. And I just said, maybe we can just do a water garden over there. Let's try to keep the water, make it beautiful, you know, put some, you know, those native flowers around it, or bushes,

and just turn into something beautiful. So

those are the questions. Is just Yep, we don't know how to answer it. Brian will get a copy of bridge magazine's article, and we will contact each one of those customers. I'm certainly not here to defend the American Water Works. I do participate in the part of the program that I endorse outside the home, but the part I think when people sign the contract for the inside of the home, a lot of them didn't really understand what was going to be insured and what warranted, what was going to be warrantied and what was not. And again, we don't endorse that part of the program. But again, let's get the data, because, you know, I know for a fact, they've, they've spent more than $2 million fixing things for people, and there are a lot of people that are very happy with the program. But if

we have this many people unhappy, then that's not acceptable, and we have to do something about it? Yeah, I don't know where the Belmont neighborhood is, but this lady, her name is Katrina Johnson. They're putting their names in here, so it's not a secret. She says she sent in her application for the insurance the same month the program began, and hadn't heard anything from them. So now, you know, we're in January. And then this one lady said they cashed her check for $95 but have received no services. So I don't know, you know, I don't know if they're ripping off people intentionally or but it's a lot of bad customer service. And pro Tim is already alluded. He's already not alluded to it. He actually explained it was happening in district one. So I don't know if there's a large number of folks in district two having problems. I don't know, but I know three on this list are in district two because I recognize their names. June Mac is the first one, and Georgia Campbell is the second one. But okay, so the bad debt, the bad debt $6.1

million

who handles the collections of the bad

debt? Is it internal or is it third party? Both? Both. I both

are we pretty good at getting the debt collected or not? On the commercial side, we are outstanding at getting the

delight the debt collected on the residential side, not as successful. We got a plan in place, because I know I often talk about with demolition and construction, we tear down a lot of buildings. We we tear down buildings for folks who own commercial structures. We know they have the means to pay for the demolition themselves, but because they end up being a very unsafe condition, we have to for the safety of our residents. So we have, we're forced to tear them down, but we are not good at collections. I know we hired a firm to collect we I guess we'll get a report from Corporation council regarding how successful they've been with collecting on some of the bad debt. But we're getting ripped off. We do all this work, we tear down all these buildings, we remove graffiti from privately owned buildings, but we are terrible at collection. So I don't know how to get at that. I've been complaining about it since 2022 if we can just collect from people who owe

us, we wouldn't be in the situation that we're in. But we're not good at it. You, I mean, you're absolutely right with the first part of the statement, yeah, let me say that on the commercial side, in the industrial side, we are very good at collecting it is residential. And quite frankly, a lot of the tools that other utilities use around the country, we don't use, we don't put people on the tax rolls. It would be, it would it could exasperate the foreclosure rate if we don't use their credit rating, we don't affect their credit rating without them. Because, you know, the problems that we would have if we did that. We do a very limited number of shut offs. We don't collect a deposit. If I collected a deposit after someone was shut off of two months, then they we'd always have the amount of money that they owe before they got back on. We don't we don't do those things. And so we understand the affordability issues Detroiters are having. We did have the collection rate up to 93% on the residential side. 95% is the national average. We were very close until COVID hit, and then after COVID, we've had issues collecting on the residential side. But we're using every tool that we can think of that won't negatively affect mass groups of people to

collect, and as the economy gets better, hopefully we'll get better collection

through the chair to you, Mr. Brown, have we ever thought about what the courts do? Like, if you have so many outstanding parking tickets. They'll give you the month of May to pay a certain percentage of those tickets, and then they waive the other fees. Maybe we can think about that. At least we would come we would collect something instead of nothing. But I know 36 District Court does that. They routinely do it certain times of the year, you have $1,000 in parking tickets. If you can pay 70% 60% of this, we will forgive the rest of it. That something is better than

nothing. Have we thought about that? Well? And I think they call it amnesty or something amnesty program. We've we've used to amnesty programs in the past. What's really paying a lot of dividends is really the easy pay program, where you simply put $10 down, and we allow you to take up to three years to spread out any debt. So if you were in the Lifeline program and you were paying $18 and now we don't have the dollars available for you to be in that program. We've already paid off all of your arrears, so you don't have large amounts of arrears. You put $10 down, and then we give you three years to pay down your debt. And the success rate of people staying in that program is really high,

and it's allowing us to collect at a much higher rate than we did before. Okay, alrighty. And then lastly, Fairfield and six mile. Did we ever make it out there? Every time I go to the University of community association meeting,

I saw your emails. Sydney Bailey, I'm saying, sir. Sydney Bailey, I drove down some it's a mile away. I drove down Fairfield, went and found that spot you were talking about, and immediately called Ron Brundage and told him to get out here and fix this. Ron, it's not it's not a water issue, but it is, it, it's going to be

addressed. And Ron Brundage is is taking care of it, and if he doesn't, I'm going to stay on him until he does okay, because I've been out to that location, you know, I've been, I've been calling you a Mr. Brundage. Hopefully by the next meeting, that April meeting, I can proudly say that the location near University Detroit, Mercy on Fairfield

and West McNichols, has been fixed. I can say

that I'll be at that meeting, and you can point

at me if it if it hasn't been

done. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chair, whoever

I'll cherish, appreciate that chair recognizes member Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon to you all. I can say for certain that the more American Water Resource Program is a challenge in East English village. It's been all over social media, and so I'm looking forward to the data. And one of the things I will say that it looks like they're starting to limit what they will cover, even if it is outside, they're limiting what they'll cover. I've heard of one particular situation where the person was applauding them because they came and did essentially what the basement backup protection program is doing now, but that is the extent of the applause that I've heard. So definitely looking forward to it, because I know the residents that have been very vocal on social media in District Four would love to get some feedback about it. I will ask you, I first want to start out asking about the new meters that have been put in. This has been another hot topic on social media, and I experienced what the residents talked about. I experienced it earlier this month. The new meters seem to come with a horribly inflated bill. And so can you help to explain that I recently my bill for March was three times what it typically is, and there was a small asterisk that said that it was a new meter. And I've heard numbers of people say they've had bills that

were more than $300 for one particular month. I have not heard this is the first time that I'm hearing that the new meters are causing large bills, so I'd like to take your bill and do a history on that meter in that bill and find out what's going on. But I haven't heard a lot of that. We have put in hundreds of new meters in and I haven't I'm not going to say I haven't heard any complaints. But I haven't heard large amount

of complaints about the new meters, okay, but let me, I will, we will investigate that. Brian will probably already look up my address and tell you what's going on with it, but I will say this number one, I didn't realize I had gotten a new meter, and I know how to check for leaks in my toilet, so I use some electrolytes, because I didn't have any Kool Aid, so I put electrolytes in the tank, and I did not see it going into the bowl. And so I said, Okay, I know it's not me. I know it's not my

house, unless there's a leak somewhere where I can't see it, um, so I will certainly make sure. I just want to, I just want to be clear. Are we talking about the the new

Miu that's on the outside of the house, or did they come in and put a new meter? No one's been inside of my house and and you don't have a new meter if, if I look at my ring doorbell, it doesn't look like anyone's been on the side of my house to replace the exterior meter either? So I wasn't sure, but that's what it says on the bill. The bill

says something about a new meter and and certainly, if this

is no you don't

have a new meter, that's what

the bill said that's what I'm look at it. Okay, we'll figure that out. I will thank you, and this will I, what I'll also do is get some bills

from some of my neighbors who have been talking about it as well, and

share that with you through the chair. Will have an answer for you on your bill by the end of time. I knew you would do that. Okay? Thank you, Brian. The other question that I have is if you can share progress on the east side storm water relief project, but I also want to ask about whether or not you all use modeling to help provide flood prediction and flood preparedness solutions. I know you've met with this entity that has reached out to me

as well about some modeling for our water system. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, we can't do what we do without without engineers modeling the system and using that data to determine, you know, what course of action we're going to take. Is there a new

Are you referring to a company that's coming in and trying to sell some modeling, or the Yes, I believe you're familiar with the company, and I was going to put it into executive session, and I will still do that, and then maybe have a follow up conversation with you to understand what you are currently doing in comparison to what it is that they are offering, because their approach is really looking at the Water Infrastructure as a whole. It may be some Great Lakes Water Authority assets. Um, it may be dw, SD, but it's ultimately looking to determine, if we were to implement this project,

how would it address and affect the entire system? Yes, okay, the chair you're talking about, remember,

remember Johnson, you're talking about the Army Corps study? No, well, is, I wondered

if this was a part of the Army Corps study, the East Side stormwater relief project. Yes, that is a DWD project. Is starting. The study

is starting. So we don't have any data yet to share with you, but we will provide updates too soon. Is That's the Army Corps project that DWSD is working on with the Army Corps. It's a separately funded, exclusive of the Great Lakes Water Authority. That's

correct. Okay, thank you. Alright,

thank you. Thank you. Mister Chair, alright. Member, dehaal, go ahead. Thank you, Mister President. Good morning to you, or good afternoon. I'm sorry we've been here a long time today. Good afternoon to you. I don't have many questions. A lot of my questions have already been asked. But I do want to talk a little bit about water runoff and drainage fees, because again, we hear so much about it, particularly from business owners and residents, how are those calculated? And I'm asking that publicly,

because that is the question that I get all of the time. How are those calculated? It's as you have in front of you, the amount that we charge per acre. So they're calculated based on the amount of impervious acreage you have on your property. Most residential properties, if they have less than point 02 we don't charge them anything. So most smaller homes in the city of Detroit don't get charged drainage charges. It's really churches, businesses, small businesses, anyone that has a lot of concrete or impervious surface. And so you simply, if they have a half acre, they would pay half the amount of an acre that we charge. I believe I just heard it was $670 but most residential homes have point 2.3

and so it's a nominal amount of money for drainage charts, if I may add also, the drainage hours calculation is also based on a comprehensive professional study. We had done a cost of service study in 2022 because we have a combined system. We don't have a separate system for wastewater and for storm water. So it's a combined system. So a professional company did a our study of our system and how the information, how the water flows, how the sewage flows, and the determination of the drainage part of the cost is based on that study. So in addition to what Gary just said, impervious acres,

it goes through a series of formulas, and then we come up with the cost that's associated with we can provide as you're talking about the Stantec. Stantec is the

engineering firm we hired to do the study, and we can certainly provide that to you. Yeah, I'm fine. I again, I spend probably about 10 minutes breaking it down at the community means of how they're calculated based off of the study that you have. I guess my question came because I think it would be a little bit more palatable or feasible, even for residents, if you were to market, I don't want to say market, but even at least put a campaign out there and explain why and how these fees come so many people, again, they say they don't know. They just see it on their bill and why. We may think in some instances, it's nominal as regarding the cost. Some folks, when they see, particularly utilities, you know, if a rate goes up on utility that the red light goes off, the alarm goes off. So I like to make a motion to put into dw, SDS budget into Executive Session, the creation of a water drainage campaign program to

let not only residents, but businesses in our commercial corridors know about drainage fees. Yeah, we change the campaign every quarter, and so certainly then the next quarter we can make Brian can, can

put that together for you, and we'll, we'll market it to the community.

We'll let you see

it first, and then we'll market it sounds like a plan, and that is my motion.

Okay, any discussion? No, okay, Hearing no objections. That action will be taken. Thank you. And then my next question is, just even for some of our businesses and commercial corridors, how do they mitigate or lower the cost of those drainage fees, of stormwater runoff, yeah, What? What? And I know that's a that's the million million dollar question. Director Brown, yeah, I'm not going to ask to put a million dollars in the budget for that. But what are some what are some ways that they can try to lower and mitigate those costs. I know infrastructure is difficult. These buildings were built a while ago. People design parking lots different

ways I get it, but what are some ways that they can mitigate those costs? Yeah, reducing the amount of impervious acreage, especially in parking lots. The real problem, honestly, is it's the return on investment, the amount of money that you invest to do that, it just takes too long to recoup those dollars from a business standpoint, and that's why most of our churches struggle to reduce their parking lot size, because the investment that they're going to make, it could take them 15 to 20 years to get a lower bill that would recoup the dollars to do that. So until we can find a way to scale up these projects so that we can make them cost effective for people to be able to reduce the impervious surface and then recoup that cost, and that's where we had, even with, with the credits that were we were giving, it just wasn't enough to make a business case for a business person to make that investment, unless, for some reason, they were about to replace their parking lot. Anyway, they were already had a project underway, and then, you know, they they could make it make sense, but it's the cost

of doing it that's been difficult to for us to solve that problem. And I would state we know about a lot of the grants that flow that that came down from the state, that allow for that level of abatement for our businesses, small businesses, as well nonprofits. But frankly, those dollars, we haven't really seen them, and then there's some concern, obviously, on the federal level, how they'll flow. So it's a level of unpredictability. But in that, we've seen in other places, some maybe some churches, they have garden retention gardens that are attached to the parking lot. I guess

this is another question, but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the most successful one is they can do is

Jay zoo in district

242, I'm sorry, two, two. Jay zoo has an extremely successful where they put tanks in under their parking garages. They did some things in the street, and they did and they phased it in and and DWSD can help business people with engineering support. We can, we can have our engineers help them design a project so that we can defer that cost. But the construction cost is really where we haven't been able to,

you know, get the cost down to make the ROI make sense. But I don't expect us to do that here on the city level. Our general fund, just, frankly, can't take it, so we're talking federal dollars. No, there's some state assistance. But I'm glad to hear what you said, because now my next motion is to put into executive session the creation of a program that focuses on small businesses and commercial corridors providing those services that you talk about those suggestions

and access to the engineering and blueprints to address

drainage fees. Yes, Hearing no objections that action will be taken. Thank you. And then finally, on the back end, we will have a conversation offline about how we connect to federal grants that may be available. I saw a few floating out there as well, but those numbers are starting to diminish relative to those grants. There are a lot of grants that I saw six to eight months ago that are not online anymore when we talk about energy efficiency, obviously. But I love to infrastructure, but I love to have that conversation offline of how we can plug that even into the program to churches and nonprofits or

even other small businesses that may be

able to qualify to have those upgrades to

lower those drainage fees will do. Thank you. All right. Council member Young, thank you, Madam President. Just one more question. My final question I want to ask. I looked at a comparison of the revenues in the water fund, your commodity sales, it's about $105,338,800 and then I looked at the drainage fees, it's about $196,000,351.08 100 $351,800 if you make a comparison between those two, the commercial businesses and the churches are paying 53% more for drainage fees

than they're paying for drinking water. Can you explain that difference? Drinking water is very inexpensive

and

drainage is is very expensive. I mean, that's why, that's the difference. Why? Because of the cost of cleaning, not only sewage, but also rain that goes into the storm drains, it has to go to wastewater treatment plant. There's a there's utility costs, there's chemical cost. There's regulation that has to be adhered to, and you got to do something with the byproduct, the bio solids. It's very expensive to treat waste and not as expensive to clean the source of the water coming out of the Great Lakes. I'm not going to say it's pristine, but it's, it's the Great Lakes. It's very clean, as long as we don't put too many chemicals in it.

It's, it's, I don't want to over simplify it, right? But on the other hand,

because I'm thinking that we're literally paying people for

water going into, yes, range, water going into a ditch. So the water's coming out of the out of Detroit River, and it's all going into one

pipe, because it's a combined sewer overflow. So your rainwater, your wastewater, it's all going into one pipe, yes, and then it's got to get to the wastewater treatment plant

and be treated and and it's very expensive to get it there,

as well as that is the 53% a little bit excess, that's a lot. I think

it says that we do a really good job of keeping water at a very low rate. I'm not saying you're not the water. Yeah. I would just like you to do a really good job with like, with cheaper in a cheaper way. That's

always what I'm saying. I just want you to do more with less

baseball. Tell you all right, I'm done. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Member Calloway, yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to put something into Executive Session. Mister Brown, we've talked about rain barrels and we've talked about rain gardens. We've had this conversation, I think, in the last maybe 3540 days. And I think mister Ron Brundage was on and we were talking about another topic, but I'm going to put the the use of rain barrels and rain gardens into in residential areas into Executive Session, maybe some type of feasibility study. I don't know it's working everywhere else. I just don't know how we can do more of it. We know the church that you know I told you about, they totally their parking lot doesn't flood anymore. They have rain gardens. They did, you know, they had rain barrels. It's just doesn't flood anymore. And you know exactly which church I'm talking about. If we can just do that across the city, it might address some flooding in some areas and some possible basement backups. I don't know, but I know it's worth looking into. So for Executive Session, Madam Chair, I'm asking making a motion to put the use of rain barrels and the installation of rain gardens in residential areas to avoid flooding or prevent flooding, and base up basement backup, possibly a feasibility study. Thank you, Madam Chair.

That's my motion. And I know Mr. Brown was going to say something, but I want to get that motion before I forgot. I think that's a great idea. I think the Green Acres would be a good pilot program. I'm hearing from the community there that they really want those rain barrels. And so if we can find a grant, and I'll work with you, if we can find a grant to do a pilot program, and if it's successful, we can spread it throughout the city. So I'm willing to work with you on that. I want to, I want to see how many people really are going to utilize the rain barrel. Here's your faith. I have faith in recycling, trash, and council member Benson knows, but the number of people that are actually

using it on a weekly basis, can we make it make sense? Okay, financial that's

my motion. And hearing no Hearing no objections that action will be taken. Council member Johnson, thank you, Madam President, I use my rain barrel every year. I have for the last five or six years. But I did want to add to Executive Session. I'd like to make a motion to add water infrastructure modeling to Executive Session, and I will be sure to reach out to Director brown to understand what

DWSD is already doing and come up with a figure. Okay, Hearing no objections, that action will be taken. And I just wanted to add one more thing. Is maybe similar to der Hall, but I just want to add the support for drainage fees for residents, commercial and churches as well into Executive Session. There's no objections. May I have a motion? I should say, thank you Hearing no objections

that action will be taken. And Mr. Corley, do you have that? Okay? Thank you so much, Madam President, yes. Thank you. Just very quickly, the rain barrels, rain gardens, downspouts being redirected

was at one point in time, a part of the basement backup protection program. It still is.

It still is. We disconnected downspouts as a part of the program,

okay, but no rain barrels. No rain barrels that I know of. I don't know of anyone that has really asked for a rain barrel, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna,

I'm gonna find a grant, and we're

gonna stock up some rain barrels and make sure that, well, gardening Green Acres. Director Brown, actually, to that point, there is about nine and a half million dollars of ARPA re, whatever we're calling it, that we can utilize for ARPA programs that were in existence, which the basement backup protection program was I will be advocating to add some additional funding to the basement backup protection program, because I know there were numbers of people who were not able to get it installed, but then when private sewer repair program came online, they didn't income qualify, and

so we had that challenge. So just so you're aware, okay, all right. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President, okay, thank you. All right, that will conclude your budget hearing.

You're free to go.

Thank you. Thank you guys.

Thank you all for being here. Thanks for the work you all do.

Grant Mr. Brown,

all right, we will now move into the Detroit City Airport, hearings, applause,

else who are here for our next hearing. You can join us at the table. You

Good afternoon. Make sure the microphone is on. Press the bottom. Good afternoon. Ma'am, airport

department. Jason watt, airport director, and then I'll let my team introduce themselves. My name

is Ramon crow. I'm the community outreach and public relations manager for the

airport. You're turning it off?

Is it on? Yeah, okay. George Gray, account for airport. All right, so we do not have a presentation for you, but I I'm waiting for the State of the State of the City. There's going to be some announcements come through the state of the city, and a lot of things happening right now. So, but I do have a lot of really wonderful announcements. I guess where we'll start out is right now, the airport is going through a huge redevelopment. Currently, we on April 9, at 2pm we will be having the first groundbreaking of a new facility at the airport in approximately 60 years, about 59 years. So we're very proud of that, and that's going to be my flight Corporation. They are going to be building a state of the art entertainment and terminal facility for their passengers, and then within two weeks of that, at flight will be having their groundbreaking for their new hangar facility. In addition to that, we have a new tenant at the airport that will have a ribbon cutting, which is obviously different than a groundbreaking, but a ribbon cutting to launch a new flight school at the airport called fly by wire, and that's going to be operated by Mr. Wetzel Tucker, who is a vo Davis aerospace grad, and he has come back and just been a god send to the airport. His commitment to the citizens of city of trees, phenomenal. In addition to that, we are streamlining our programs at the airport so that we can provide wraparound services for the addition of Detroit public schools, which will be moving back to the grounds of the airport in August of 2027 we anticipate, yeah, August 2027 and we are currently working through negotiating the final finalization of the lease for that particular for Detroit Public Schools, and that's for Bo Davis aerospace technical high school to be moved back. In addition to that, we are also doing a we are in the environmental phase for engineer material resting system, which actually will bring our airport into complete compliance with all FAA airport design standards. That project is going to be. This phase that we're heading into is going to be 100% funded by the federal government in the state of Michigan. So that's that's pretty exciting. This phase is roughly, we call this pre planning, and it is just going to be the design and the engineering. And then the next year we will actually do the, finalize the design, and then 2027, the system will be installed. In addition to that, the air traffic control tower. We have cleared the way where the construction of that tower, when I say that right now, we are finalizing the environmental mitigation for that particular site. We have completed the French row to give a mini take, the exception of two, two homes that are in probate. Uh, nothing horrible to speak of with with those it literally it was had to deal with individuals that ownership of the property, type stuff, but nothing regarding how we acquired the property through the condemnation process. In addition to all of that, we are going to be starting the title work for the mini take property on the back side of the airport. Historically, I believe you probably all know that title work in the city Detroit, when you have a lot of properties, sometimes we have some significant title issue. So we are in the process of reviewing all 494 parcels of property with our legal team to clear title. Some of the things that challenges that we have back there right now are, for example, where we they have things in the deeds that state that it can only be used for residential purposes, things of that nature. But because we own all the property, we're able to to change those things. So we're going through that process now. But the site for the air traffic control tower has been cleared. We do own that completely. Title has been taken care of. And again, we're starting on the environmental mitigation, and the total cost of that facility is now estimated some 60 million so the price has gone up, and it's a it's a huge, huge, huge project. And as of right now, we have seen no delays in the federal funding around that, although we are early on in the process, so I cannot guarantee that there won't be delays. I don't anticipate any right now, but given where we are in Washington, DC, maybe there will be, I don't know. I'm also in negotiation on three additional facilities at the airport. These are large, 21,000 square foot hangers, so that's very exciting, and I think that that's about it on that, what I'll do is I'm going to hand it over to my colleague here, Ramon Crow, and he will talk to you about

the educational outreach programming that we have been doing that is extremely it's extensive. So one of the programs that we are providing support to community groups. Director Watts said about fly by wire by Wesel Tucker, we provided support through Wessel Tucker and put up a collaboration for him to apply for the FAA Workforce Development Grant for his school for a million dollars. So right now, we're waiting for further award to see how that grant comes, because that will be for him to train pilots up to 25 pilots with pilot training get their pilots license for free. So that's what that grant will be used for. One of the other things that we're doing is we're working with the community groups in the airport to help them streamline their programs and process to provide even a bigger impact to the citizens of Detroit, and some of those community groups are in this chamber right now. One of the other programs we're doing is the city has partnered with us on what we call ABH Career Education academies, which is the academies that provide first introductory education to students to get them

to raise awareness, to get them into aerospace career pathways for

high school students. Also, we are hope. We hosted a program with with the community groups to raise awareness about all the activities that are going on in the city, because one of the feedbacks that we've received is they drive by the airport and they don't really think anything is going on. So we are opening up the airport that increase awareness, and we started a quarterly newsletter, and we're getting more and more engagement from to raise awareness. And we're also working with the media team with the city of Detroit to raise that awareness as well, and also. The last thing I want to add is Director Watts and I are talking to industry leaders and professionals about and they express interest in the airport and programs which

that is forthcoming, information

which director Watts will speak more about. So some of the programming that we're looking at involves mechanic training. So not just pilot training, but we're also looking at mechanic programs. These will all be in addition to what Detroit Public Schools is bringing to the table. There's a tremendous demand for these types of professionals, and we have a unique opportunity this airport, with the partnerships that we're bringing to the table, to be able to deliver huge success to this as a city, Detroit. So it's very exciting right now. I can't get into the middle of all where we are in the

negotiation, but I could tell you for sure that we are having them. And I was just in Norfolk, Virginia,

talking about it.

Sure, yes. And Ramon would like to state something I want to also add the importance of these jobs that we want to talk about, these career pathway opportunities to have upward mobility, is these careers everybody we know is not going to be a college graduate, but these jobs require a certificate, because aviation is safety related jobs with a certificate, which is a fraction of what a cost to go to college through vocational school CTE program, you are able to make a minimum of 80 to $150,000 a year with just a certificate. So this is one of the things that we really are trying to raise awareness with our programs and working with the community groups is that If college is not your pathway, you still have an

opportunity for upward mobility, upper middle class job with a certification absolutely so on that. I think that's a it's a lot. I know it's a lot. We blasted right through that. But if you have any questions, please, I'd like to engage with everyone you've given me so much support over the years. I'd love any opportunity

to discuss with you what you would like from us, or what you'd like to know about today. Okay, all right, thank you for the presentation and for those updates, and

we appreciate the work that you all are doing. I'll start with council member Benson, thank you, and thank you all for being here. Just glad to see the airport here, and your supporters, who have been with the airport for years, helping to make the airport such a great asset that it is for the city of Detroit. Also just really glad to hear about the groundbreakings. My flight, Ave flight, new flight school, air traffic control tower coming online, the existing terminal, dpscd. Where are we with their commitment to that terminal? And then what does it mean for you? Detroit Aircraft

Corporation, your offices as they come in and take over that space? So all the tenants start with the second part of the question, all the tenants that are in the terminal facility right now are going to be either relocated to the executive terminal or executive base, or they'd be given an option to develop a property on the airport. So everyone has taken advantage of that. I am currently in negotiations with the company, Detroit Aircraft Corporation that you just mentioned on the development of facility for them on airport. Also, as it pertains to where we are with Detroit public schools, we are in final negotiations on their lease. We ran into a situation where the FAA had required us to do what we call a section 163 which is determination of aeronautical versus non aeronautical activity for the facility. We thought it was going to be very extensive, but DPS just informed me on, well, this week has been very long, because I started on Sunday, so I think it was Tuesday. I had a meeting with them, and they stated that they had talked to the FAA, and FAA had given them clearance and said that this was going to be an aeronautical activity so we can move forward with the

lease. So we are, we've reopened that negotiation, and we'll be finally finalizing that shortly, okay, and then, just with all these plans, where are we with CPC, do they have an understanding as PDD, know what's going on and there's a lot going on at the City Airport. I mean that the the new air traffic control tower is going to be moved from its current counter site over through French road frontage. I mean, that's a major change and investment for the airports. Want to make sure everybody understands what's going on there? Because oftentimes that type of investment and infrastructure change doesn't make it all

the way back to k map. We want to make sure all of our stakeholders have an understanding of what you're doing. Yes. In fact, this has been extensively run through every department, working with every department, basically in the city of Detroit, to include the water department. I mean, we're talking about major utility transformation, going from residential to commercial on the backside of the airport. Currently, we have anticipated project costs just in utilities on the backside of the airport, some $300 million and we're working extensively with DTE, the water department. Everyone on that I can't speak highly enough about my colleagues in the city, all the all the departments, have

reached out, and this is a major, major, major, major redevelopment on the east side the city of Detroit, okay? And then I want to make sure that I add to the closing resolution, as well as to Executive Session, $1 million for infrastructure upgrades at the airport to ensure that there are administrative offices during the transition period between dpscd coming on board and until the New City cad

terminal is constructed on the French road frontage. Thank you very much there. Okay, Hearing no objections that action will be taken. Thank you very much. Thank you. Um, wanted to recognize the Tuskegee Airmen that are here. Thank you, Council Member young for reminding me to make sure we recognize them, so if we can just recognize that they are with us today. Thank you. Um, just really quick, I wanted to ask about the black pilots of America program.

How was that funded? How much is available? And just a little bit more information about that program. So my

I, are you familiar with the funding? All the funding that they have available.

Okay, currently, that organization is funded internally, meaning that they raise their own capital. They do many community outreach type things, and they literally pay out of pocket to do a lot of the things that they do. The president that organization, Andreas. It goes by Andreas. Andreas is awesome. Awesome. He participates in almost every event that he can at the airport. He has went out and purchased flight simulators for children. He has even donated aircraft to to Mr. Wes Tucker for pilot training. So the black pies of America have been phenomenal, along with friends of Detroit City Airport, Beverly Kendall

Walker, I mean, it'd be impossible for me to do my job without the support of these individuals. Okay, all right, thank you. And you mentioned, when you opened up with all the amazing improvements and things that are happening at the airport, a lot of people don't know what's happening, and people still do ask me, you know what's happening at the airport? You know, what's the status of it with? You know, what's happening, just in general. So you talked about more marketing newsletters. Can you is that currently in the budget to increase awareness around what's happening

at the airport? Or is that maybe something you may need additional funding for? Just curious about your marketing strategy? Yes. So, so I did request money for marketing, but it didn't make it to the to the table. So any support there that you would feel is necessary would be greatly appreciated, but

it due to constraints in the city, our

marketing budget was, was didn't make it okay. And then, do you know roughly how much that was? It was a small, I think we had 25,000 that we had just put aside there, and that was just to to to start everything out. I mean, we're in the early phases of this. We do a pretty good job as far as getting information out to our existing tenants at the airport. But I believe if we had just as a smaller, small amount of money, a little more budget. $25,000 we can make a bigger splash. And we are working with the the our marketing folks here in the city, the social media media

service right through looking at social media campaigns, things that nature. So yes, ma'am, yeah, okay. But I would like to add that to our Executive Session, the $25,000 for marketing of the City Airport.

All right, Hearing no objections. I will add that to Executive Session council member Young, thank you, Madam President, Director Watt, good to see you as always excited about what's going on with the airport. Listen, I wanted to ask you two things. One, it's mine, and I don't know if it's with a flight with somebody, but I saw a lot of evitas that are actually in the airport. I just want to know, is there a plan for us to have air taxis at all? Is there a plan for us to have taxi hubs where they can land in other parts

of the city? Can you just kind of go over me what that plan is and how much that would cost. So currently, it's a, that's a great question through the chair. So, so what, where we're at with this is that we are looking at, they call it beyond visual line of sight. So we're looking at low level air traffic management systems right now, evaluating how they would be utilized in the city. We just had, I think there was a actually, I don't think that it went but there was supposed to be a test demonstration that was going to be done out of the train station for some work that they were going to evaluate one of our buildings here in the city. Long story short on that is, we are working closely with them so that we can, I'd like to do all the testing of these systems before we put them over our citizens heads at the airport. And the FAA has a way that they've shown us how to do it, and we can do it within FAA regulations, and we're currently working through that model with the train station on how to get this done. So, yes, there is a conceptual plan, but we do not have anything in writing yet. We're still testing systems to see how they're going to work. MDOT aeronautics is rolling out a big program that is with Detroit Aircraft Corporation, WSP, that will be rolled out in the Lansing area, the i 96 and 69 corridor, where they're going to be testing these, this particular system, and operating, I believe, operating drones on it. So there is a big push by the state of Michigan as well as our department to find out what systems work, how they work, and

what would be best, so I could bring them to you, and we can

talk about them for Oh and yes, we are the only airport in the state of Michigan that has a site at vertiport. So this is part of our plan for this has always been part of the plan to be looking forward thinking as it relates to mobility, so

we can keep Detroit in the center of global Mobil not just in the auto industry, but but mobility in general. That's excellent. I'm really excited about that. I really, I really think that's a great thing. I also want to ask you this too. I want to ask you, what is the plan involving freight, and since we're talking about technology as well. Are you partnering up with the I know there is a mobile, a mobility, Air Mobility corridor in southwest Detroit that m.is having. Are we using, you know, eu TOS for freight as well? Are we using drones, other such things for freight as well? I know we have some freight that's going on right now, but it's kind of small. I know the majority of that think is over in Wayne County Airport. But is there any plans

to expand freight at all, and are we using drones and other technology in order to be able to do that? We so we are evaluating So currently, I've had extensive conversation with m dot aeronautics on this topic. And Detroit is uniquely situated. Our city is uniquely situated because we have more use cases than any any other state or any other city in the state of Michigan. And because of that, they are really looking at evaluating how this technology works and what we call our urban mountains, right our where our buildings are, and trying to see really it gets to the key focus on this is the beyond visual line of sight, which means that you can take these drones right now, the only way you can operate a drone in our airspace is if you have eyes on it, right So, so if you, if you can't take it around the back of a building, you have to walk around. You actually have to have it. You'd be able to see it. The operator has to be able to see it if, in order to make the advancement forward to where we would actually be able to utilize this technology, this particular beyond visual line of sight operation is for low level air traffic management systems are critical and without extensive research, it's just not, not feasibly possible right now. Now we're pushing the envelope, not, not when I say pushing the envelope. The industry is pushing the envelope to try to see what, what capabilities this particular these

these technologies have, but we're still in the infancy of them and learning. And that's even if you like, if you use, like, the Internet of Things, or if you used, you know, like a vehicle to, like, building your, you know, to machine communications. Still, even with that technology, even though I know that's kind of infancy, you're still saying that that it has to be something that has to be light aside, you have to actually see it. And that would not be enough, that the technology is not advanced enough, right,

for us to be able to know that it's coming to even if you use it or not, is that well, see what you're trying to tell me, yes. So the FAA doesn't allow you can get a waiver for beyond visual line of sight testing, currently testing correct,

not actual deliveries. That's correct. Yes, sir.

That's exactly right. Okay, yes, okay. Was there something else you want to do? Wait you can? I was just Detroit, watch this. Said it the a lot of the technology does exist. This is through the chair, is the regulations, because the safety component is getting FA regulations to approve it. There's only one company, maybe two, right now, that have approval to deliver beyond line of sight, and that is zip line.

But right now, most companies are not allowed to be on line

of sight because of policy. And real quick, if you could elaborate on what zip line is, so zip line. We went to visit zip line with Wayne State, because they are the largest drone delivery company in the world. And just to give you some background, got a chance to meet with the owners and go through their facility. They started their company in Rwanda, delivering vaccines and other medicines throughout the country of countries in Africa, because the regulations did not exist in the US. So they perfected they're out of San Francisco. They perfected their model, and now they have done over a million, a million, 1,000,002 drone deliveries, and they signed a contract with Michigan medicine to deliver medicine in in the southeastern Michigan, and also talking to the marketing person they signed a contract with, also jets pizza to deliver pizzas in the southeastern Michigan as well. Now they have, I don't know where they are with executing that, but that's they are the only ones that have the certification for the FAA to deliver beyond line of sight. Wow. Okay, and you can go to their website, they have a drone that flies out. It has an Android inside of it, and it can drop a tether with an Android on it 100 feet and deliver a

package within 18 inches delivery point, and it flies strictly autonomous. Okay? So, so, no, that's really exciting. I think that sounds great, but I think what, what I what I'm hearing, is that you're basically for both of these. These are things that you're kind of still kind of planning out how to do and how to get the approval from the FAA for. So these are more like in their study phases, that's exactly right, and they are in their actual so if money was appropriate more for the

analysis of these things or the studies of these things, rather than actual implementation, though, correct. So where we are as a city is we are working with entities like Wayne State University and some of our partners at the airport, like Detroit Aircraft Corporation as well as the train station, to evaluate these technologies. I can tell you that the conversations I've had is we're not going to just deploy technologies that we don't know anything about, because I'll end up in front of this honorable body answer a lot of questions, right that I won't be able to answer, and I would never, I would never do that. So that being said, I got it. We are. We're evaluating, and there are some really great technologies out there that I am very proud of and and as as I get more familiar with them, and we get a chance to test them at our beautiful airport, we will have a chance to I will be able to engage with this body as an educated person and explain to you exactly what we're going to

do and where I think the biggest benefit for our citizens will be as it pertains to this particular set of technologies. Excellent. No. Thank you. I'm done, Madam President. I just wanted to make a motion. I want to make a motion to put a study of air taxis and

a study of drones for the issues of freight

in the Executive Session. Right. Hearing no objections that action will be taken.

Freight and Eva tals, I'm sorry for freight.

Is that it memory? Member, Santiago Romero, thank you, Madam President, through you. Good afternoon. The questions that I have regarding certifications that you're providing. Thank you for that. That's exciting. Wondering, do you partner with our Employment Solutions? Is there in is there, Are there conversations for pipeline? Because these are good jobs,

and we do have employment solutions of providing those pipelines. Have you had any discussions?

Yes. Yes, I'm going to turn these questions over to Ramon. He's he's had me leading that for us. Yes, we have those conversations, and those conversations have been going ongoing, and we're also looking at the data, and we're also working. We started an internship program also, and that was part of the grant. So we are not just looking at certification, just for the fact of certification, it has to lead to a job opportunity. And so with our strategic partners, Wayne County Airport Authority has also stepped up and said we are willing to offer internships to those students to get those certifications as well, so they get an opportunity, not just to see get a pilot's license, but get a drones license, they get to see all the other wraparound careers that associated with the airport. So that's one of the things we do with the aviation career academies. We take them through every possible career within that week, so we can expose them. So yes, it has to tie to a actual career and job. So we are talking to the employment. So we're looking at secondary, post secondary

vocational and companies. Okay, so having them through the chair, having them share that whenever you're ready, will help promote. I agree. We need residents to know of the opportunities. So I support funding to be able to help us share that. The remaining questions were regarding how we can market let other Detroiters know about the resources and opportunities that we have. So thank you for doing that. You talked about your engagement with youth,

which is really my other questions that I had.

That's it for me. Thank you, Madam President, okay, thank you council member Johnson, thank you, Madam President, good afternoon. I see the excitement all over your face. I'm really looking forward to hearing the announcements on Tuesday and having the general public just kind of hear a little bit more about what's happening at the airport. I can say that I'm not happy that Davis aerospace High School will be leaving District Four, but I think they will be well suited at the airport. I did have an opportunity to visit recently, and saw that some students were learning how to via simulation, land a plane. Some were learning how to do a figure eight with the drone and to land the drone within a small box. So I think there will be some tremendous career opportunities for them as they get more connected with the airport and being there on site at the airport. I am also looking forward to making sure our residents in District Four, just across the street, know everything about what's happening at the airport, and certainly looking forward to making sure that our residents, our young people, in particular, are connected to the opportunities there. I wanted my son to go through the air traffic control, the apprenticeship, the program that you had there, but he's in North Carolina now, so that didn't happen, but really ecstatic for everything that's going on. And I know that the residents are interested in hearing about all of the updates, so would love to

bring another meeting to the airport for them to learn all about it. Yes, and my colleague here just recently retired from the Federal Aviation Administration, he was instrumental in doing this type of programming throughout the entire United States of America. He wanted me to let you know that your son will have an opportunity in air traffic wherever he goes. That's something that he would choose to do. They the FAA is in desperate need of air traffic controllers, I think, as we all know, and if

you need assistance in trying to figure out the pathway for that, I offer

my assistance as well as my teams.

I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam President, right. Thank you council member, durha, thank you, and good afternoon to you. Thank you for the tremendous work that you're doing out there, keeping things going, keeping us reaching for the sky, as they say. So let's talk about commercial there at the airport. Look, I got you uncomfortable now, let's talk about commercial use at the airport, and let's not say some plans, but let's just say just maybe some

ideas of how we can better utilize that, even in a commercial way. So as a public use airport in the United States of America, it's if we were to get interest from from a commercial carrier, which we, we do not have at this point, if we were, they would have to operate a an aircraft. There is a specific aircraft that would be successful on an airfield, the Airbus, a 220 is, is an aircraft, a commercial type aircraft that would be able to be utilized for our airport. That being said, there has to be interest. I never rule out the commercial service side of things, but, but I can say that there hasn't been very much interest. Now, when we get EMAS at the airport, potentially, maybe then, as we get up to speed on FA airport design standards and we meet them, we possibly could. We've had several successful air carriers at our airport in the past,

but at this point in time, there's, there's no interest. Yeah, I would be interested to see if, well, let me say I think fixing our infrastructure there is is important. Would be great, even if it is not mass commercial, even if we could do some private things. Be great if, when we have visitors, like the president united states or whoever flies in here, I don't know if that's the same plane as Air Force One, but I'm not, I'm not good at Aviation, but if that can fly in there,

it'll be a good use, even in private, private jets as well. So I want to engage with you on this one, because we have some very exciting announcements as it pertains to now, commercial services one aspect of the business, right? That's like what Detroit Metro does. So for you and our residents, what I'll do is I explain how some of this stuff works. So that's one side of it. That's in order to do that, we have to become a CFR Part 139 airport, which means a commercial service airport. And there's a high bar that's that's set there, just like there is with everything in the FAA, there's a standard. There is no way to be below the standard. You either meet it or exceed it. That's a fact. It's a period on the end of the sentence. So we do not meet the 139 standard at this at this point in time. So commercial service is is out of the question as of today, right now, now, the next side of things is 121 operations or 135 operations. So 135 operations are what we would consider to be private. So I can, I think I can make this announcement just fine. Is we have several private care folks out there. Usually these are fractional type ownership companies. We have East Side aviation as well as now. We have my flight so they have a fixed wing component to their helicopter operation now, and so you can buy by blocks of hours on their aircraft. I know, I believe that Mr. Trione, the owner of the company, is working through that business model, but he did purchase an aircraft for that purpose. And I don't want to steal any of his thunder, because he has a huge, you know, groundbreaking that's coming up. And I know he wants to make some of these statements on his own, but I see a tremendous future for us in the private sector, and there is a large entity that we have been discussing with that has made substantial investments in our youth. Are ready as they they want to have a commitment to us. I don't want to get ahead of that because they haven't signed a contract with them. Yeah, I was trying to put you on the side, but we do have significant interest

from from large entities to do large charter operations out of our airport. And again, I love to just have further discussions offline. I know we kind of talked about some of that use. And just to kind of piggyback off that question,

do we generate revenue from these entities being at the airport? That's another wonderful question. So yes, the answer is yes, we do generate revenues from from these individuals. Obviously, they pay leases to be on our airfield. They pay landing fees to to operate out of our airport. They pay fuel flowage fees to operate our airport. But in addition to all of that, the the the 135 operators at our airport are will allow us to to change the so right now we are operated as a general the classification of our airport is a general aviation airport in the United States of America. Now we that's because we're not we don't have employments. Now, our definitions of passengers and employments are two different things, but enplanements are people who depart from our airport and come into our airport. And the FAA does not count those numbers because we are considered our classifications the GA airport. Now, if our because now we have a 135 operator, and my flight is going to be operating all of their helicopter tours under their 135 which is gives them the ability to operate that fixed wing aircraft that we talked about, we will be able to count all of those passengers as in plane minutes. Now, currently they do about 10,000 enplanements, or actually 20,000 enplanements a year, which would give us the ability to become a primary non hub airport, which takes us from right now we get through entitlements $150,000 a year for airport development from the FAA. It's like a, I want to say, a welfare program, but that's what general aviation airports, United States America get. We, when we move into this new classification, it allows us to get approximately $1.3 million a year, which is a huge difference, like 10x and because, and that is all strictly because of our helicopter tour operator. So yes,

their their presence at the airport will be felt for many, many years to come. And I would just lastly, select Lastly, say even my flight an amazing place to be. Three years ago yesterday, I actually proposed to my wife there. And so when I tell you how just great, that was an experience for us, but also so many others. Because as we got off the runway after our proposal, I think they had about 10 to 15 other people lined up to hop on a helicopter. But what I will say is I think that's one of our jewels that we have here as well, and to the point of marketing, if we could get that out, I know madam president, put that in the budget or in the executive session, if we can get that out even further to a lot of our residents, that would just be so meaningful. I think it's a great experience, even for our youth, to have the opportunity to be able to get more involved in aviation, which I know so many, even folks in the room right here, are dedicated to doing so. Thank you for that, and I look forward to future announcements. In the very near future, I got a I think some things are coming up

Tuesday, probably, but look forward to hearing that. Thank you, Madam President. All right, thank you member durha, any additional questions or comments? All right, thank you so much for that presentation. Thank you, ma'am, excited to work with you guys. Thank you all All right, that will conclude our

budget hearing, and we will go directly to our public comment for this afternoon. Anyone here joining us would like to make a public comment? I

All right, everyone will have two minutes for general public comment. Thank you for being here,

and just make sure the microphone is press the bottom. It should turn green. There you go. Good afternoon. My name is Tony Stevenson. I'm a member of the Davis aerospace Technical Advisory Group. I'm also a captain in the Civil Air Patrol and member of the Tuskegee Airmen, president of the Detroit chapter Tuskegee Airmen. One of the things I wanted to touch on that was brought up in this is the advantages and careers in aviation that the director touched on with the Civil Air Patrol and we are based at City Airport. We provide search and rescue missions for the United States Air Force and also homeland and other coast guard and other law enforcement entities that gives young people from the age of 13 to actually as old as I am, to work in conjunction and get aviation experience that can be turned around and used for the military. The director would probably tell you, with his military background at how essential this is because of his time in the Air Force. So all of these factors are used, and with the Ramones abilities and community outreach, we work with the community. We try to bring in young people from the community. To take advantage of this, we do open houses where military recruiters are there. It is not mandatory, but it's a good

way to get experience and to forward their career in aviation. Thank you.

Oh, your microphone. Make sure it's green at the bottom.

Over there you go. Hello. My name is retired Master Sergeant Alphonso King, United States Air Force. 30 years in the Air Force, working as a jet mechanic and aero medical technician. I worked for Chrysler for 38 years, robotics and welder repair. I'm also with the Civil Air Patrol, with the Friends of the city of Detroit. Beverly, our job out here, being a member there. We're working with them, with the drones, me and Mike into it up to my right here we are in drone instructors, qualified drone instructors to teach the kids how to fly. We're trying to get this program going so we can get these kids off the street. We want to get them in there so they can start learning something other than the regular vocations that are out here for the kids, this deal is open, is why, and it's for females as well as it is for the males.

We want to make sure we get that

that information out to them.

Wow, that's great. Thank you. Yeah, so I'm in the role of cleanup woman by Beverly Kinder Walker, friends of Detroit City Airport for only 35 years. Women in Aviation, girls in aviation. I first appointed to the Detroit City airport from the Honorable Mayor Coleman Alexander young back in 1990 1990 something like that. And so just to remember the passion that he had in aviation, stemming from Tuskegee Airmen, of course, but his desire for the community to understand the opportunities aviation presented itself to young people. So that was my start and getting young people involved, and coming across the field, if you will, across the street, to engage in the airport, because it's such a huge footprint in the East Side Community, so therefore we take advantage of that opportunity. Everybody's not interested in flying, per se, but there's so many jobs within aviation that young people could get involved in. One thing that I wanted to talk about, storm water runoff situation that happens to the airport with the drainage fees. So now, with this, all this new development, we're hoping that we'll have more green infrastructure there, because that is a large problem to have that drainage fee overhead for the airport. So again, we're looking forward to the marketing opportunity that you're going to provide us with. And even not we had the word of mouth of each of you all to talk about the airport that

has never closed in its existence since 1927

Okay, thank you so much. Yes, and you all should have had two minutes. So if you have something additional, one thing that Mr. Walker reminded me, one of our Tuskegee members is now starting the drone class there at the airport. So in approximately eight weeks, students or adults will be able to get their drone license to fly drones. I myself Captain King and Miss Walker, hold your own license. I'm a licensed drone pilot here in United States as well as Canada. So I can have a dual license. We want to spool up our young people, as Beverly said, male and or female. To do these to do these jobs, if you work in real estate, if you are a photographer, you want to work in law enforcement, you can get your license and work for

these different agencies as a qualified drone pilot. Okay, so your idea forget something, that drone program will start this coming Monday, 7pm and it's also our Women in Aviation Women's History Month program. We're going to have another drone program that's going to start in May, for adults on Saturdays that these two are going to be part of. And and then my, my, my final thing that I did want to talk about is we do have the Tuskegee Airmen monument that's out front that we've been working on for a couple of years. And right now we're calling it a kiosk, because it has pertinent information as to what's going on at the airport that's around the base of it, and so that much that project is coming out of our pocket, pockets, just like BPA and all the other tenants. We all do this stuff with no government assistance. It's like federal money. We don't we don't look for it. We just do it because we feel the necessity of it. The young people could take advantage of opportunities that aviation presents, as in the Tuskegee Airmen in years past did, because they knew within their souls that they could fly and maintain

aircraft. So we want to continue that legacy to

our young people. So that's what we do, what we do. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yes. Member young Yes, thank you. I also just want to acknowledge you. Also want to say that I am also a very proud member, as well as your father, and I definitely look forward to talking to you, to ask you terms of how much you need for the programs you're talking about,

we'll talk about offline. It's an honor and privilege to see you today, and thank you for your service to our great nation.

We love you. Thank you. Ronald Foster, good afternoon. Just to work backwards here I do like the work that they're doing at the airport. I too am an Air Force veteran and have my experience and things and in the service, as well as a testament to Mr. COVID Young, who was a bomb and dear I speak more about his views as a civil rights leader, while in the Tuskegee Airmen, which is equally as oppressive as our flyers, I would say. And so I'm very grateful for that. When it comes down to aircraft and disposal to children, I will ask that airport maybe be open to part 103, aircraft which are ultra lights, which have a different criteria for flying and can be very instrumental in learning. Also, I think that the city, although our population is in there, the city, has a lot of work to do, a lot of advocacy, a lot of lobbying to do. And maybe time that the city considered purchasing its own aircraft or doing a study to see if, if they could go to DC, go to Mackinac, go to Lansing and other places to conduct the business other people here, and I think that's very important as I continue to listen to every other department that's trying to go lobby and do different things, I think it all need to be brought under one accord and being and move forward as a city as we should. Secondly, when it comes to GSW, for the last 30 seconds, it is a very precarious situation. With a change of administration, there's been a lot of money put there. I wholeheartedly believe there need to be oversight, a council person there, especially after audit general spoke, GSW is not under their watch, and so we have no way

of being accountable for what's been spent there, what's been going on. And I ask for that.

Thank you, Mr. Foster,

okay, we will go to those, those who have joined us virtually,

Good afternoon, Madam President, or

sixth caller who raised their hand on Zoom,

and the first caller is, we see you. We see you. Good afternoon, good afternoon. And through the chairman, happy, hurt, yes, yes. Mister Foster, it. It definitely needs oversight. I've asked them to ask about the $3 million plus they spent for a reservoir when we still don't know if we have lead lines coming into our homes, and we build a reservoir to nowhere, and spend millions of dollars when we could have put that money for the citizens to find out what we were having. And yes, that drone class is interesting. I did take the the helicopter ride, but I had a party that was greater than two, and that's was disappointing when only two can ride in the helicopter together. So I wanted to ask that they were going to expand the helicopter size so that it could hold more than two passengers. We don't get a chance to question the people that came in. You know that, that we, that we have that we pay, and we really should have a chance to question them. The Employment Solutions, I'm not sure when that became a department. I'm not aware of Employment Solutions being a department, and there was a little accounting confusion or deception. When monies are being transferred, especially ARPA funds and federal funds between it shows up on this person's book and not that person's book. It's very disappointing how we operate. It really is and yesterday, this public lighting authority is actually, you know, you all telling the residents that it doesn't matter whether you're in bankruptcy or out of bankruptcy, you're going to have an authority, whether it be land bank, whether it be lighting, even though we have a public lighting department, and I'm concerned as to why we Have a department with one employee. Who are they overseeing this? This is

absolutely a waste of our money, and we have many places where we need to put our money. Thank you.

Next Caller, please. The next caller, be a Varner. Good afternoon to all within the sound of my voice. Betty, a Varner, president of the soda ELS world black Association, I want to say that I am also guilty of having the interior warranty from the American waters Resource Program. And, and I know this is legal, but they lure you in, because when I first applied, and you know, became one of their customers, the cost was very, very reasonable, and now they have increased the cost of the program, and then they I've had a problem. They use tech, technical excuses to say you're not eligible for services that you might need. I had a problem with my panel box, the electrical box, and they did not help me out. So but anyway, I'm going to advocate for the senior. What is it? Senior disabled accessibility home repair program. We need those walk in showers. Also for the Detroit home Accessibility Program, please allow monies for these programs to continue so that the seniors and people that are disabled we can continue to stay in our homes. We appreciate the work that is being done now, but we need more money so more people can be service also, please allow monies to help black clubs and associations with their projects that they're doing in their community, and let it into include funding for corridors throughout the city of Detroit that are not being funded But the organizations are trying to work to get their area improved also

help people to become a 501, c3,

all right, thank you.

The next caller is William M Davis.

All right, good afternoon.

Mr. Davis, good afternoon.

Mr. Davis, good afternoon. Okay,

okay, let's come back to Mr. Davis, please.

Okay, the next caller

is Mr. Rueben Crowley, good afternoon.

Hey, uh, Coleman, listen up, man, check this out. The City of Detroit is corrupt. Mary, you don't want me to demonstrate who I am, for real, for real, your business will be all over the streets, and you will be not running for mayor, you will be in hiding. It's that deep. Now, I done told James E Tate even called conditions, mom, mother, DVD, case, two, zero, dash, one more, 1112, and said I wasn't the right representative for the family. Well, I don't the family didn't ask me to do nothing Mimi did, and I'm Mr. Rule, and I work for Nemi now. Scott Benson, James T ain't there, but I want both y'all to understand I'm not nothing to play with. It. Ain't nobody's kid. I'm a whole 40 year street veteran, and here in the city of Detroit, and I'm standing up 100 I go in and out of 16 neighborhoods anytime I want to with no problems except for the police, they've been done put cuffs on me 10 times since Mimi asked me to help her with her mom, 10 times. DVC, nine times. Detroit detention center, nine times and one time to receiving hospital and then to the severity and behavior Center, where I stayed for 13 whole days, 13 of them, they try to chew me up with six different psychotropic medications that Judge Willie Burton oversaw. I went to court. While I was in there, he gave the order for them to do it. They tried to shoot me up with something, man. But luckily, the father was there for me again. Now he didn't got me through 40 years out here in the streets. For real, for real, Detroit city streets, and I am who I am.

Y'all better take the tag

off, dealies mama or Mama's chair, I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do.

All right. Thank you our next caller, the next caller is Cindy Dara. Cindy Dara, good afternoon. You.

Cindy Dara, good afternoon.

Cindy Dara, good afternoon. Okay, our next caller, please. The

next caller is Cunningham. Cunningham, good afternoon.

Cunningham, 31344491143133, 491143134449114313449114,

that number was made so you can remember it and on Facebook, not enemy. Again. On Facebook, not enemy. When you go to Facebook, click people and put in, not enemy, you'll see me and my mom in blue and then my nieces, nephews, and my sister, my brother and all that. I'm currently driving down eight mile road. Well, actually, I pulled over for safety reasons. I'm going to visit my mom at the rivers of gross point. Keep her in prayer. Cheryl Marie Lyons, disabled, registered nurse with multiple sclerosis, and myself, keep me in prayers. I have to do a big shout out. Big, big shout out to Councilwoman Callaway. Councilwoman Callaway, Councilwoman Callaway, this morning, before a session, we did a ride along. We checked out the Rosa Parks trans Center and the Hart road Transit Center. I get low income housing packets. I pass those out. She purchased $100 she purchased $100 of bus tickets with her own personal credit card, her own personal, not the city. And I want to emphasize that she's she's, she stated that she used her own credit card. She also bought me and Miss Rochelle Hopkins Stewart of Detroit people's platform, transit justice team, a meal. And we got that meal from McDonald's, and we appreciate her. She got in there. She was not to ditty. She was not up and she talked to the folks. In fact, the bus driver actually has five children at home, at home, and she's homeless and driving and taking care of the people. Every day, she gave out her business card, just like other council persons have give out their business card. It was nice. It was refreshing. And if anybody needs to hit me up, 313-444-9112, 449114,

thank you, Mr. Cunningham,

we are back to William M Davis.

Mr. Davis, good afternoon. All right. Mr. Davis, going once, going twice,

and we will catch you next week, Monday. Mr. Davis, thank you so much our next

caller, please. The last

caller, raise their hand. Is Cindy Dara. Cindy Dara,

good afternoon.

Cindy Dara, going once, twice, Cindy Dara and we will also catch

you next week as well. Oh, you're here. All right.

Go right ahead.

Go right ahead. Cindy Dara,

okay. Cindy Dara, are you with us?

Ari, is she showing muted or she's

showing that he needs to unmute herself. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Oh, thank god. Okay, now I want to go back to the water department. When you have a percentage increase, you know, each year you're taking a percentage of a bigger and bigger number. So you gotta remember that when you think these raises aren't aren't critical to people, because it was $30 for two months for water when I came to Detroit. Okay, so I don't like the idea of contracting everything out. I want to see you. I listened to the your people that are supposed to hire people. It sounds to me like they're they're not hiring people. They're passing all the work to contractors. I want you to figure out what's the difference in costs by having a city worker versus contracting out. Now, I realize it gives you long term responsibilities for pension and health care, but people deserve that, and I think that we're wasting too much money on contracting, if not being monitored. And I will say this, that you've got people renting trucks that contractors to rent equipment to do work that our own workers could be trained to do. When I was in public lighting, we had to change this. I think this stop lights and the traffic lights every year, but the other lights, maybe i It seems like it was every two or three years, but they were on a schedule, but they said they got a five year schedule, and they got some of their own trucks, if that isn't enough, then then rent some trucks yourself and train some of your workers to do more than one type of job and hire them in The Water Department. So we got and give them housing specials and and feed them good like the Chinese used to do in their factories for lunch. And you start seeing

people really want to work here,

you know. But this is alright. Thank you so much. Miss Dara, that will conclude all of our public comment in all

of our sessions for today. Everyone have a you had something? Yes, Mister Courtley, thank you, Madam President. Real quick. So of course, we've had a week and a half of budget hearings. I think they're going well. We have one more week and and the day after that, that'd be March, Monday, March the 31st there's a lot of items in going into executive session that probably going to end up in a closing resolution, so the quicker members can give us, you know, language specific language, so we're not, hopefully not, on Monday, April the seventh, my council votes on the budget, you know, Here real late, as much as possible, right? So, yeah. So the more you know folks can share language with us, I would be it would be very helpful moving forward. So just thank you so much. Oh, and also, I want to give a shout out to the departments and the ocfo we're getting, we're getting responses. We're getting responses to our questions. You know very well, and I'm seeing them in the email, and really

want to give us, because I know that's not It's not easy. So just want to give a shout out to them as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you so much, and you as well. Mister Corley, OPD, for all you guys are doing as well. So we will conclude for today and resume next

week. Everyone enjoy your weekend, and

this meeting will stand adjourned. You. Ned.