Committee of the Whole - Interviews for Board of Zoning and Inspector General

8:54PM Jul 24, 2024

Speakers:

President Sheffield

Keywords:

city

inspector general

office

detroit

job

council member

question

called

terms

position

president

madam

department

director

bca

investigations

opportunity

community

process

board

Progress You

Good afternoon, everyone. We will now call to order the Committee of the Whole for the purposes of our interviews for the BCA in the Inspector General appointments. Mr. Clerk, good afternoon. Good

afternoon. Madam President, if you can, please call the roll council members. Scott Benson, Council Member Fred der Hall, the third president, Council Member Leticia Johnson, Council Member Gabriela Santiago Romero, Council Member Mary waters, present.

Council member Angela Whitfield Callaway,

Council Member Coleman

Young the second

Council President, pro tem James Tate Council.

President, Mary Sheffield President, Madam. Madam.

President, you

do not have a quorum. Oh, Tim

is here, and as we await the remaining of my colleagues, we're going to just go straight to public comment to start that process now. And we do have a quorum now. And so how many callers do we have online? Do we have anyone in in the chambers here who would like to speak for public comment? Okay, how many do we have online? Yvonne, oh Ari, how many do we have online? Good

afternoon. Madam President, there were, there are three hands who raised their hand for public comment.

Okay, and if the clerk will note member Johnson, member Benson and President proton Taylor, all present. Clerk will so Nope. All right, we will proceed now with public comment, and everyone will have two minutes for public comment.

The first caller is William M Davis,

good afternoon. Mr. Davis,

good afternoon. Could I be heard?

Yes, you can, sir.

Okay, I like to start off by saying I would like to emphasize the fact I think anybody that's appointed to any board or anything associated with the city of Detroit should be a Detroit resident. I don't know if that's always the case. I don't think it has always been the case. It used to be the case when we had Coleman Young as mayor. But also, I would like to see each and every city council person do a little bit more as it relates to helping to get out the vote for the August primary. I'm not saying you're supposed to send out stuff telling people who to vote for, but you should do like man, in my organizations, we encourage people to vote and come up and vote if they haven't already voted. So I think it would be a good idea we could see more of that happening. And also, I think it's a bad thing that city trade retirees are paying a claw back, you know, all of our annuity savings. But yet, I won't take money back from these developers when they promise things and they cut back on that project. I think y'all should do that is stand to practice. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Davis, our next caller, please.

The next caller is phone number ending in 124,

caller, 124, good afternoon.

Oh yes, good afternoon. Ma'am. You heard Yes. You can Okay. Thank you. So I understand the meeting is to interview candidates for busy director, which is fine. I would also like to let the City Council know I think it's time to revise the BCA rule. There are problems with access to information, and the charter does say that a person should have reasonable access all files and records of the city in accordance with applicable laws. So if residents are supposed to come to a meeting give public comment, they need access to the information. You know what it is they're commenting on, and time to digest that information right now that's not being provided, at least in a certain set of cases I'm aware of also. So hopefully the BDA director will, you know, understand this, and be very open to being transparent with the public. And so while there's a lot I think that these the a director can do, I also think it's incumbent on the council to revise these rules and make sure that we're treating everybody involved fairly, so that, I mean, these hearings are for people could potentially be very much affected to give a comment, But you can't give comment if you don't have enough details, just like the solar plan, again, I was told I have to FOIA the solar plan. Cut proposed contract. I won't get them. It looks like in time before you vote, if I had to FOIA the documents I'm looking for right now, I didn't get enough notice to get them through a FOIA process. So this access to documents and transparency, which I do believe is called for in the preamble and declaration of rights in the charter. Please. Let's take a look at it and make a process that's fair to everyone. And I don't know where these I heard the directors are the candidates being interviewed are from elsewhere. Let's ask them what they did to make information available to the

alright. Thank you. Miss Warwick.

The next caller is Mister Ronald Foster.

Ronald Foster, good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Um, I just wanted to call in to just encourage city council to to keep going in a positive direction. Um, obviously these appointments are more than just appointments that just come across your desk. These are appointments that have meaningful purposes within our community, within government. Now I know Inspector General, ha, this is her last month or so. And so I'm just asking council as a whole to change perspectives. Take into account what direction we trying to go in. Look at all the work that your eyes have been doing the last few years, and then you build off of that. And so it's not just a rubber step or anything, but I ask you guys to ask fundamental questions, like they do in iOS. They ask real questions and and they deny when they feel this need to deny. And so that's just my position. Just moving forward, let's capitalize on the opportunities to do right. There's little accountability for things that have been done in the past. We don't have to continue to go that route. Let's find ways to capitalize on how to build this city and how to do right. I've been afforded numerous times with a fresh life and everything else, with second and third opportunities. Everybody have those opportunities. That's what we do with the opportunities that we have. And so, once again, our community. I'm sure you all aware. of it. Plenty of people call in with inspector general complaints, Creole complaints, all of that. I'm not here to judge nobody or nothing in the past. What I'm simply here to say is, let's move forward right now as we have it today, every decision you guys make affects tomorrow, and so that's it. I encourage you all to keep up the good work, change your perspectives and try new things with new people in places that's going to be in the best interest of our community, in the best interest of our city, and that's going to be transparent.

Thank you, right? Thank you.

The next caller is LaQuita Brown,

thank you. Hi everybody. I would like to mass speak. Please.

Yes, you can. You

have to thank you. I would like to speak on behalf of James Rian. Um, I met Mr. Rey brown two years ago, and it wasn't up until last year that I knew he worked for the city. But from the time I met him up until now, he's done nothing but pour into me and the people around me, as far as the community, and fed us to the way where we are molded to be community leaders. So I know everybody has their problems, and they have their you know, the negative side of things and the people that serve on our city, county and for our city, but I'm here to speak on a positive I wouldn't be where I am today had he not gave me the chance that he's given me. I now belong to several organizations, and I'm able to speak on seven different forums, and able to advocate at such a much higher level for basic needs, for families. And I think that's the greatest reward anybody could have at the end of the day, is to change the life of family. And I believe that's what Mr. Rind does when he's not at work with you guys. We we like I said. I never knew he even worked for the city. So that's the type of people we need as leaders, those type of people to feed just citizens, regular residents, that just think that they can't change. Because that's what I was I thought I couldn't my voice wasn't loud enough. It's only me. But now I know I can be heard. I know I can lead, I know I can facilitate, I know I could organize. I know I could do all of these things, because that man gave me a chance, and I would like you guys to reappoint him so that he can give, continue to pour into people and give others a chance and just be a role model and a good leader of the city. So I back him. I hope you guys back him and reappoint him as well. Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

The last caller who raised their hand for public comment is Cindy. Dara,

good afternoon. Ms. Dara,

yeah, I've been listening to your meetings today. I'm sitting waiting to get a place license plate, but my phone went in and out. But the things that occurred to me I wanted to know on these I think number one, I want to make it clear I am against rehabbing those buildings, the new you need to fix up the housing. Those are one bedroom units, not for families. They're they're going to price them out of the people that are staying there probably won't be able to afford it, even though you're saying it's such and such a percentage of AMI that don't spend the money rehabbing those these old buildings were built right now. I don't know how much they're spending, but I don't trust mister either. I gave them two houses once, and I got on a auction that I could have kept close to the river, and I think both of them were demolished, and they said there were four poor people. That's why I gave them back to them. So anyway, I don't like you spending a whole bunch of money without actually going out there. And you better look at the buildings with somebody who knows about construction that you can trust and find out what really needs to be rehabbed and how much you think it should cost. I don't see years ago that the federal government had a two 2002, or something bill that would you they subsidize the interest rate? That's what they did for the one on Stimson between Woodward and park Co Op services built that Glens. That was his first big job as an African American country. Became very successful after that, but they they got a subsidized interest rate, and it was a co op, and that's what we need, some co ops in the neighborhood, so people have a stake in what's happening. You're not going to solve it by the bureaucrats. That's just a waste of money. It's too bad, and you've demolished half the city. That was a potential asset, if you would have enlisted the people.

All right. Thank you, Miss Dara. And that will conclude our general public comment for this afternoon, and we will proceed to our interviews. And we are going to start this morning with the Office of the Inspector General interviews, and we are going to start first with Randall Harrison.

And as Mr. Harrison comes in, I'm not sure director Whitaker or attorney Barclay, if you want to provide any additional details before we begin our interviews. Good afternoon. Just make sure that the microphone is on. Just ended. Okay, there we go.

Good afternoon. Lakeisha Barclay, legislative policy division. There aren't really that many instructions. Today. We're doing the interviews and the vote for the appointment will be this Tuesday, coming up.

Okay, all right, and then just, just front of housekeeping, or how we're going to move forward today, we're going to allow each of the individuals who are applying for the positions to have opening remarks, and then allow colleagues to ask, starting off with one question, and we can go back to another round, if need be, for additional question. And then closing remarks from the applicants as well. President Pro Temp

Tate, thank you, Madam President, to through you to Attorney Barker cliff, can you explain, for those who are watching, what the term would be for this particular position, just a little understanding of what that what the role is for those who are watching, seeing that we're doing this publicly in front of everyone.

Okay, the Inspector General is a six year appointment. Is a six year appointment, and is that all you want to know, or is it more information? Give me a second,

was the six year appointment to serve as the Inspector General for the city of Detroit. The Inspector General is one that office is one of our oversight agencies. The appointment, the individual appointed can only be appointed for one term, and again, that's the six year term. Did you want details about the position?

Again, I think it's as much information as you can provide the public with watching, but as abbreviated as possible, just to kind of set the stage for this, as well as when we get to the BCA director.

So the the inspector general doesn't is responsible for investigations for fraud, waste and abuse within the city of Detroit, that individual has a staff. Generally speaking, the person is either an attorney or someone who has served in a oversight agencies in that type of position previously. There's not really much more to what

you and so the

the appropriate individual would have 10 years experience or combination as a federal law enforcement agent, law enforcement officer, a state or local

government attorney, including a public defender.

A federal or state court judge progressives supervisory.

in an investigative investigative public agency, similar to the Inspector General's office, has managed or completed complex investigations involved, involving allegations fraud, theft, deception and conspiracy, and has demonstrated the ability to work with local, state and federal law agencies and through you, Madam President, for and thank you for that, for for all of the 123445, individuals that are coming before us Today, they've all at least passed that threshold at this point, and this is we're not looking retroactively to see if they fit those qualifications. We know that at this point, currently, for all of those five Council Council President,

we have given you the resumes and the information provided by all five candidates, but only three candidates were selected by council for interview, and of three selected for interview, all of them would meet the qualified the basic qualifications for positions. Thank

you. Thank

you Madam President,

thank you president. Pro Tem, all right, any additional questions council member Johnson, thank

you, Madam President, um, can you all share who identified um, that background, the requirements for the Office of the Inspector General, those background, those

qualifications, came from the the charter commission who developed the the 2012 Detroit city charter.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you. Any additional question? Okay, so we will proceed now with our first interview, Mr. Randall Harrison is here. You can join us at the table, sir. And again, we are starting our first interview for the Inspector General Office of the Inspector General and

as you get situated, you're going to turn your microphone on by pressing the bottom, it should turn green, and we're going to allow you to have opening remarks followed by questions, and then we'll allow you to have closing remarks as well. Okay,

all right.

Well, first of all, this is a little intimidating. Didn't know you're going to have this. You know, I'm pretty much used to panel interviews, but it was basically three people in front of me, but my name is Randall Harrison and Council. Thank you very much for having me. I tell you a little bit about myself. Currently, I am Assistant Administrator for the state of Michigan Office of Labor. I've been working in state government since I completed my undergrad degree back in 2005 I started with the state in 2006 had about three jobs there. My first job, I was an investigator with what is called the Wage and Hour Division. I'm not sure if any of you all know what that division does, but that division impacts every person that has a job in the state of Michigan, it deals with wages and fringe benefits. Everyone works a job, everyone is paid, and we enforce the laws to ensure that you are paid equally and and on time. My second job, I serve as a senior investigator for that agency, pretty much overseeing all of the investigators in the state of Michigan, up west side, east side, etc. And to now, I am now serving as the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Labor, directly with the die, excuse me, the deputy director of labor, and that that is me and my professional experience.

All right, thank you so much, Mr. Harrison, the clerk will note member Young has joined us. First of all, we thank you for even taking the opportunity to apply and for your service, and we are looking forward to learning more about your experience. And so we will kick it off with questions from my colleagues. And again, we're going to start with one question per colleague, and then we can go back around again if more questions are needed. Council member Benson,

alright, thank you, and thank you for being here today. Can you just tell me what would you do differently? What would you change about the department if you are appointed the

IG Well,

I have read like the quarterly reports, and I think IG ha and her staff did a great job with performing their investigations. They were very accurate with the state of Michigan. We have an office called the Office of continuous improvement. And what, what they do is they have a process which is called LPI, which is lean, lean process improvement. So we're constantly looking at any process or procedure as to eliminate the waste. You know, there's always room to get better. So so that would pretty much be the first thing that I would want to do, just to see where we can be more efficient within our investigations, back in our labor agency, we had issues with the timeliness and finishing these investigations. What we dealt with, we dealt with people's livelihoods. Someone does not receive a paycheck, if you're taking, you know, 120 150 days to complete that investigation. That means that individual now has lost their means to earn an income, which is their car, they've lost their house, so that would pretty much be the first thing that that I would do to see is there anything that can be improved as far as the accuracy and the timeliness of completing the the investigations. Thank

you. Council member Benson, Council Member waters,

thank you. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Are you able to make sure that you don't have any biases when it comes to various elected officials.

Uh, yes, so I think that that's a plus for for me. So I've been in state government for 18 years now, so I know there's politics everywhere. Me being someone from outside of the city, I don't have any connection, any biases, I will be able to come in and but you still have to establish the relationships with the department heads, just so they know what to expect from the office. But me not having those relationships, I definitely helps, because I'm coming from the outside, so I don't, I don't have any tie to anyone, so I can just do my job, and you know,

okay, yes, ma'am,

thank you. That's it for now. Madam President,

thank you member waters president, pro temp Tate,

thank you, Madam President, and thank you, Mr. Harrison, for your willingness to serve in this capacity. I've got one question, but two parts. Okay, I'll see. The one question is piggybacking off of what member Benson asked, but doing it the other way. What? What is the IGs office doing? Well, and how would you be able to how do you envision the staff that you're working with to help continue moving in that direction and doing those particular things that you believe? Okay? You know doing well? Yes,

well, we all know the issues that the city had before this office was put into place. So, so we're now on IG number three. So it is my understanding that if the IG is not doing a good job, you all can remove them at any point, providing it two thirds of the council vote to remove him or her. So they've had to. Both of them have have served out their terms, so that means that they've done a good job. Can you actually repeat the second part of your

question? Yeah, just in the first as well. From your perspective, what has the IGs office done? Well, okay, and how do you anticipate, as the leader of that particular office to continue the office moving in that direction, even taking it further? Yes,

yes. So in my eyes, reading those quarterly reports, as I previously stated, the investigations are thorough, and I love that they look into any and everything, and even if there's not a violation, they provide recommendations of how a process can change. I used to do that all the time. Back when I was an investigator, I may not have found a violation, but I am going to provide you something that I see where if you remove this step, you're not going to have this issue where someone is filing a complaint again. So that is one thing that excuse me, that I believe they do great now going forward, it's always hard to accept change the new person coming in, because they people are used to doing whatever they were doing before. So what I am looking to do is because a good leader, in my eyes, do not tell somebody what to do. A good leader, pretty much lets them know what needs to be done. And if you're a good leader, those individuals are going to take care of those tasks for you. So that is what I will be looking forward to. I'm currently reading a book called The psychology playbook that focuses, excuse me, that focuses on the safety of the individual. So when individuals feel safety, or, excuse me, feel safe, then you can get their best production. They're motivated. They become more innovative. So that is what will be my focus. When I come in, pretty much letting the team know that, you know, I have their back and and that some changes may be made but, but they're made for the best for the city. Thank you,

Madam President, thank you.

Thank you President. Pro Tem council member Johnson, thank

you, Madam President, and good afternoon. Mr. Harrison, thank you so much for your interest in the position. As I look at your resume, I see that you've been with the state for your entire career, or at least that's what's documented on the resume. Can you speak a little a little more in depth about your investigative experience? Because, as you know, the city of Detroit has numerous departments and agencies that are a part of the city, and there are complaints, concerns that come in from various entities that may be relative to any of those departments. So can you share a little bit more about your investigative experience and how it lends itself to this position?

Yes. So, so I will say that when I first started in state government. I was very familiar with the with the city of Detroit, because I, I was the one that was responsible for Wayne County. And at that time, we received over, maybe over 100 to 200 complaints a year from the city of Detroit. I got very familiar with the lawyers in the city of Detroit law department. So my investigative experience deals with public and private sector investigative municipalities, counties, companies within the private sector and and what I would do during these investigations, because our our motto is to educate before we regulate. So we we never wanted to, you know, find, find a business out of business, or, you know, make it so hard to where they want to leave the state. So I would try to build those relationships, to encourage the entities to come into compliance. Because the more you educate them, the more less likely they are to violate the law. And that is something that I that I do believe, is that will be important in this role, establishing those relationships so you're not in in those situations where something has got so bad, where someone is calling the tip line. Now, you're having to go out and investigate.

but I have investigated all municipalities, counties, anything from payroll theft, payroll fraud. Also a lot of times during our investigations against the actual entity, we may uncover something that was useful for the entity. Prime example, it was a business, and Taylor and the and the gentleman, they filed a complaint with our office, stating that he hadn't been paid. Is his last few weeks of pay. So when I actually went in and and I requested the financial records, as I'm looking at the at the financial records, he was the only person with with like the initials of JH for his first and last name. But then all the way at the bottom, there was another miscellaneous payroll item that said JH. So I so I started asking a few questions, and I found out that his mother was one of the accountants within a firm. So so once we found out that his mother was actually paying him an additional check. The way our laws re they still had to pay him for those last two weeks, but we were able to provide that information to the business to to go after the mother to recoup those monies that he had been paying on top of his regular payroll check.

All right, thank you. Thank you, Madam President. You're welcome.

Thank you council member durha,

thank you,

Madam President, and good afternoon to you. Thank you for being here first. Also, let me say thank you for your service to the state of Michigan as well. Reading your resume, notice just some really cool things, some great things, and noting some of your key accomplishments. Seems as if you had the ability to work in collaboration with elected officials, but that's kind of where my the premise of what my question will be noting that it is not probably very popular to be an inspector general, and you won't have relationships with departments and particular individuals. How do you How would you respond to that type of environment to ensure that no biases, and you are allowed to be fair in your invest investigative duties. Yes, so

I will say, my whole State career, I've kind of been the bad guy. You know, people did not like to see me come out, but once I explain to them the reasoning, why I'm here, why I'm in this position, then there's that understanding. So to answer your question, I will respond great to that, because in my mind, I know that there's an understanding that I have a job to do. And whoever that person is, if they work for the city of Detroit, they should understand the job that I have to do to combat the fraud, waste and abuse.

I right, we only get one question I wanted to follow, but thank you, Madam President,

thank you member we can come back. We'll go back to you. Thank you, Council Member durha, I mean council member Young, I'm sorry, Council Member young,

don't make you. Let him follow up early. No questions. Excellent job, brother.

All right, and my question is kind of similar to council member duha, just as far as the environment here local government and how would you handle resistance or pushback from other departments or city officials when your office does uncover issues? If you could speak a little bit to that? Well,

I I'm going to piggyback off the same answer that I just provided council member Dural. You just have to fight through it. You can't let your feelings get involved when you're doing this type of work, because the fact of the matter is, if I am provided with the position. My job is to the city of Detroit, first, no other individual, and if, if that department is pushing back on, you know, providing documents or whatever they're pushing back on, I have things that I can incorporate to go around that so that necessarily would not be an issue for me, because I've been dealing with that my whole career. If there's pushback, there were legal means that we had to go forward with to get whatever we needed to get. But I don't see that being an issue with me. Okay,

all right, so we will go back now. I know. Member Doha had a second question. Member durhau, thank

you. Last question. Thank you, Madam President. It's kind of in the same wheelhouse that we're in. So just pushing back a little bit because just diving a little bit deeper and obviously serving as a state legislator there in Lansing, know the culture very well relative to investigations. And then sometimes it is stated that in Lansing, whether it's the executive branch or the legislative branch, they police their own. So talking about, I want to just take a deeper dive into my question, even relative to your experience, you're working through your experience working in the executive branch, and I know here, although it will seem as if it falls under there. These are actually independent agencies, as prescribed by our charter. And so I guess you know to that point, what happens? What happens when there's no agreement with the executive branch, there is no agreement with the legislative branch, and you have to operate independently without bias, investigating these particular entity entities, utilizing your team, right? What?

How, how?

How do you respond, even to criticism from the community, because, again, I would like to think I knew a whole lot about government. I do, but I learned a lot more serving down here, which is a different environment, and it's a lot more brutal. I will tell you, there's no public comment in Lansing, and so I'll be the first to tell you that. But how are you going to if, if we are to choose you, how are you going to respond? Just provide a little bit more specificity. What are your plans to ensure the overall direction of that department maintains integrity, operates without biases and or political pressures from not only other elected officials or residents. Okay,

so, as you all know, from 2012 to to the start of Governor Whitmer first term, there was a different landscape in Lansing, the trifecta wasn't there. So for those eight years, I'm not going to lie, it was very hard, because we kind of had the foot on us in reference to what we could not do so, but we were able to find strategic ways to enforce the law without that phone call coming out from the governor's office, okay, but you are correct. Lansing is different from Detroit. I'm a I was born and raised in Detroit, only been away from Detroit for five years when I was in school, so I know how we get down here, but to more go towards your Question, you have to build those relationships and educate people on what your task is. It doesn't matter what it is. So this is the OIG office we are responsible to hold the integrity and combat fraud, waste and abuse. You have to have your microphone out explaining that to people, this is my job. And if there's people that has an issue with the job that you're doing, in my eyes, you're doing a good job. So I'm not sure exactly what, what specific item that you're looking for. But I've always been this is my job. So it really doesn't matter what someone is saying or or how they feel about me doing it, I'm going to do my job no matter what. So that's the best thing I can give you. Council member to her, thank you,

Madam President, thank

you. Member. Durham, okay, any additional questions? All right. Well, Mr. Harris, we will allow you now to make closing remarks.

Okay, well, I would first like to say I really appreciate you all's time when Miss barkcliff called me the other day and told me that I was selected. I was out. I was very honored. And it's so funny because like, I like, I love my current job. I love it, and I wasn't looking for a job. To give you all a little background, I have a buddy lost his wife, and then he got into a little slump and he lost his job. So a few nights a week, I just go online, just looking for jobs for him, since I'm a labor guy and I would send him jobs. So I was on the city of Detroit website, and I I just saw this job, so I clicked on it, and I already know what an inspector general does, because I work very closely with the one for Detroit Public Schools back when I was investigator. So I was just looking at the job, and, you know, I thought about it, and I said, this is me, you know, I I need to apply for this job, come back home from Lansing and do something for the city that I grew up in, so I really appreciate you all's time today, I really do. All right, thank

you so much, Mr. Harrison, we appreciate you, sir. Thank you for your willingness to step up and serve and being here today, and we wish you the best of luck. Okay, thank you. And again, thank you for your time. All right, thank you. All right, thank you so much for being here, sir. All right. All right, we are going to proceed now with Attorney Tanya. Long applause.

Good afternoon, attorney, long

just make sure your microphone is on, and we're going to start off with allowing you to give introduction, and then we'll go to questions, and then allow you to do a closing remarks. Thank

you very much to this honorable body. My name is tiny, long for those who are watching, I currently serve the city as the chief administrative Corporation Counsel for the law department for the municipal section. I have worked for the city of Detroit for 23 years, and have a passion for public service. I believe that is built into my core, and I have a deep love for the residents of the city of Detroit. I bring with me to this to this interview, to this application and intimate understanding of the architectural framework of the city of Detroit. I have learned that through my time with the charter, through my time with the ordinances, with my time with the departments, with my time with this honorable body. I don't believe that there is an area of the city that I have not within the 23 years had some opportunity to to work with, work on, work around, work to improve that. There has been some way that I have touched that that department. I have the fortitude to stick to the right course of action, which should not be confused with the easy course of action, because they are often not the same thing, and because I believe that government should do the right thing every single time, and I recognize that that can sound naive or that can sound unattainable, but the purpose of government is to serve the people. The people cannot be served well if government is not operating in the manner in which it should. I have extensive research and experience in applying facts to law, in finding the law that applies, in determining what facts are important, and these are often in novel areas of which I before that issue did not have any experience. I have the rigor to manage dynamic office. Our municipal section writes dozens of opinions a year and dozens of ordinances, as well as respond to immediate calls for concerns of things that are happening in the city I am experienced in operating where politics and and personalities coincide, where there are often differing opinions, where there are differing perspectives, and to Listening to all of the sides and coming to a conclusion after the review and not before the review, but allowing people to to express or find the facts out of a particular situation, before making a determination and ultimately writing an opinion or advising. I would like to thank you for this invitation to interview with you for this position. That's all. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Attorney long, and we truly appreciate you for your years, years, years long of service here in the city of Detroit, and wanting to continue your service in Detroit with this new position, can you just start off talking a little bit more about what your vision and goals are for the Office of the Inspector General and how you will work to achieve those goals? Yes, ma'am.

Thank you. Council President, in my role Currently, I have observed areas for improvement within the the Office of the Inspector General because of calls that have come to me, I would like to build on the good work of the previous inspector general's. Usually when I come into a situation, it has been a situation that there's a lot of cleaning up that needs to be done. And I do not believe that is the case with this inspector general office. It is a well run Office, but I've, I've identified two areas that I believe are right for improvement. The first is, is in communication, both internally and externally. Internally, how the OIG interfaces with the city, how it interfaces with with its investigations, with with the public servants as well as the officials, that that communication can be improved, I would, I would provide an example of debarment appeals. I believe that process could be better, not codified in the city code, but it could be better codified from beginning to end, so that we know every step of the way, not just the individuals who are coming for the debarment hearing, but the city clerk's office, the City Council staff, so everybody is aware from the very beginning to the end of that appeal process, what that next step is, how long That should take and spending time to not only identify what that process will look like, but communicating that to all the stakeholders, I think, would make that process a lot easier, not just again for the individuals who are going through the process, but for the staff on this side in the city, so that they know exactly what their next steps are, which would bring some certainty to what that work looks like. I also have identified externally where better communication would provide clarity in where to file a complaint. As a supervisor of the General Counsel for our Board of ethics, I see often where an ethics complaint will be filed with the J A G's office, the I G's office, as well as the BOE, all at the same time, and it makes it difficult for any one of the offices to work, because the other offices have to defer first, because there's there's too many things happening at one time. I would propose that identifying for our external stakeholders, the individuals on the outside of the city who are or filing the complaints. What a complaint with the Ag would necessarily look like, what a complaint with the IG would necessarily look like, what is waste, abuse, fraud and corruption. What might be some examples? I believe that we can provide some some clarity so that that process from the time of the filing to the time of completion takes less time because it's going to end up in the right department in the first place. Okay, all right. Thank

you so much, Attorney long and we will go now to questions from my colleagues, and I will start with council member door Hall. Thank

you,

Madam President, and good afternoon to you all again. Thank you for your service. Thank you for all that you do, my question revolves just more so around experience. I know you've had vast experience as an attorney, Prosecutor, litigator. What do you think that would bring to the Office of the Inspector General, and what does that mean in regards to maintaining ethics and integrity?

My experience as an attorney as it didn't make it to their to my resumes, was a long time ago, but I spent quite a bit of time as a defense counsel, too, and so, so I've had this, this opportunity to really see the city from a lot of different perspectives, and I think all of that knowledge comes with me to this role is in temperance, in understanding the need to look at all of the different information prior to making a decision. The area that I've worked on the last few years is in leadership, which is very different than my attorney role, but it is in setting a standard for my staff. It's for requiring not only behavior, but work, their ethics, the way that my staff interfaces with this body. All of that is something that is under, under my responsibility, and I take that very seriously, and I think that that function transitions to the Office of the Inspector General. In the same thing, I would identify the integrity aspect, less of a of a matter of my being attorney, and more as a person who has a moral compass that is outside of the area of law, in in the truth is the truth in the right is the right. And it doesn't matter if it's you, member hall or council president, who's on the other end of that, that truth or that right, it's still, it's still that thing. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, Madam

President, thank you

council member door Hall, Council Member Johnson.

Thank you, Madam President. And good afternoon, Attorney long. Thank you for your interest in the position, and I think you essentially just kind of answered my question. My question was around because you've been with the city for so long, because you have experience and relationships with a number of people within the city. My question is, relative to being unbiased in doing investigations when questions or concerns arise, how do you see yourself leading in that work considering the relationships that you do have.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you very much. That presents itself now I would anticipate it would present itself as an issue in the new position where there may be a presumption that, hey, we're friends, hey, we can make this work. And that don't fly. It is, again, it's part of it's part of what I bring to my office. It's what I bring to your service. Is a person who I hope acts always with moral integrity, or at least in the pursuit of moral integrity, the right thing is the right thing to do, even when nobody is looking right. We've all, we've all heard that phrase, but it doesn't change. It's it. Council member Johnson, you could, you could ask me, like, hey, Tanya, this is, this is okay, and the answer still no. My very best friend, one of the department heads, could say, Could you, could you work something out for me in the answer is still no. On a personal note, I've had that experience with my kiddos, right? Like, Hey, Mom, can you bail me out of jail? The answer is still no. Thank you. All right, thank

you. Thank you, Madam President, thank

you. Member Jackson, member young. I

don't know why you want to not me after that. Okay, um, in a perfect world, your position wouldn't exist. You know, it's kind of like what James Madison said, of all men were angels. Government wouldn't be necessary. I just wanted to ask you, how do you measure progress? How, what, what kind of metrics are you going to be able to use to determine, you know, improvement, and is that so is that something that I'm not sure that something you're going to report to city council, but I just wonder what kind of metrics you're going to use to show improvement? What kind of metrics are going to use to show progress at all?

A phrase I commonly use with my team is, if I ran the world, you're right, we wouldn't need an inspector general. And it's not an inspector general that's going to make government act right, right. What an inspector general, I would propose does, is highlights when in action is improper, and can can better direct government to make a different choice the next time. And I would propose that the type of metrics that I would offer to this to this body, as improvement is is better, turnaround time is better, communication is better, outreach, it's not going to fix moral questions. I wish I could do that council member young, but what I can offer is a person who's going to provide consistently stable, appropriate responses and investigation that are unbiased and are timely. That's what I can offer this body.

And I just wanted to ask you, oh, no, you don't have one question. I'm sorry. I forgot. I'm just used to asking questions. I'm sorry. Oh, sorry. Thank you. Thank

you. Thank you. Council member, young president, pro tem Tate, thank

you, Madam

President, quickly before you go. I've

got Child Care conflict, so I have to leave. Just want to make sure that this body and thank you for being here turning long did

you want to go before you leave? Remember missing any member, thank you.

And so attorney, long, thank you for being here, and your interest in this position when it comes to timeliness, is something that you talked about. How would you ensure that, based on the resources that you're provided by this body and the mayor, to effectuate your work there,

that's a matter of process improvement, and in all honesty, that's not something that could be undertaken until I was in that position, but I can offer to you but I've worked very consistently on making sure that the team I currently direct is reaching out to our client to let them know where we are trying to manage things in a reasonable period of time. And I will also offer to you that we're accustomed, I'm accustomed to working in an area where there's more work than there is personnel in finding a way to get it finished. All right, thank you. Yes, sir.

Thank you member, Benson president, pro tem Tate, thank

you, Madam President, and good afternoon, and thank you for your service and willingness to serve in this capacity. I don't believe that you have applied for this position before, and this is the third time around. Now, if I'm not mistaken, so the question would be, why now and not the first two times that they came before us.

This is when I'm ready for the position, sir, that when Ellen ha interviewed, I was standing because I believe I was a liaison. At that time, I was standing over in the corner and watched the interviews at that time, and and, and Ellen was my chief when she applied for the position, and I watched with interest, because the person that I worked with was moving forward, but since that time, I've had more opportunity for leadership. I've had more opportunity for management. I have a better understanding of how the city works. My professional growth in the last six years has been so that I am in a position now when I believe that I could handle this job very well and do good service to the residents of the city. Six year ago, I would not have said that, sir. Thank you. Thank

you, Madam President. All

right. Thank you. Pro Tem council member waters, good afternoon. Good

afternoon. Ma'am.

Um, do you believe that this position is appropriately defined in the city charter, if not, what would you what would you change? How would you define it?

I believe that this position is appropriately identified in the city charter, and I do not believe that there are any unreasonable limitations or expectations that are set forth in the city charter, I would propose that the the the Inspector General, him or herself, would have the opportunity within those boundaries of identifying how that office may grow, how it may how it may go beyond what the requirements of the charters are, so that it could be an excellent office. What's in the charter is not adequate, but it's not meant to be. It's meant to be what's required, right?

Okay, thank you. Yes, ma'am.

All right. Well, we thank you. If there's no additional questions, attorney, long for you have one more go right ahead. Member waters, um,

of all of your positions, which one did you enjoy the most? Wow.

So I really love public service. I believe I was, I believe I was made to serve, to serve people. And so my time with the city has been, has been a great joy, not easy, but a great joy. I think that where I am right now I feel like I can, I can mentor attorneys. I can, I can mentor externs. I can. I feel like I've got part of a teaching role, helping people grow in the best that they can, as well as really working to perfect what I do individually. And I think where I am right now is the thing that I enjoy the most so far.

So you did a city prosecutor and Detroit Housing Commission landlord. Why don't we pick between those two? Which one did you enjoy the most? Oh,

Prosecutor. Why

it had a different impact on individuals. There was an opportunity then to look at the individual and to look at the judge and to try to find a way not to penalize the person necessary, but to help the person learn. A lot of the the circumstances were just, were bad choices or bad circumstances, and some probation or some help, or some some counseling might have made the difference between that person continuing to break the law or or turning it around and doing something different. And I like to be part of the doing something different. Thank you, Madam Chair.

All right, thank you, President. Bottain, thank you, Madam

President. Last question for me is in terms of pulling a team together, what I mean for me, at least, always look to identify folks who have certain attributes that I may not be a strong in or accentuate certain things that I think is extremely important. What would you be looking for in maybe a deputy or any other individuals that would you would on board on your team?

I have had the opportunity to interview very many people over the last few years in an effort to find the right people for the team that I currently lead. And it's not law and it's not necessarily technical knowledge that has been the driving force and how I hire, it's been integrity. Does the person act with integrity? How do they present themselves? How do they feel about public service? I have found very infrequently that when people are me, people they do well in this type of environment, because I was looking for how it's going to benefit themselves, right? They're not looking for how this is going to benefit the community as a whole, and that's what I typically look for in new hires. Now I recognize that the IGs office already has a staff, and I would rely on their technical knowledge. I don't have a good understanding from the beginning to end of a process right now, of all the steps that that goes through. And so as part of understanding what the processes are and looking to improve the processes, there would be a reliance on technical knowledge as as things are currently, as we move forward, but fundamentally, I think a good team has a foundation of integrity and desire to serve. Thank you,

sir. Thank you. All right. Thank

you council president pro tem Tate, all right. Thank you so much, attorney, long and we will allow you to have closing remarks.

I prepared openings, but I neglected to prepare a closing what I would offer to you is that serving as the IG would be a fabulous opportunity for continued public service, I bring to you a person who has who has a moral compass that's well settled is is temperate and willing to listen to all parties before making a decision. And I would relish the opportunity to work in that role on behalf of the residents of the city of Detroit.

All right, thank you so much, attorney, long we appreciate your service and good luck. Thank

you. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, so we will move now to our next interview.

You're going to get a Mr. Marble. You

had your hand raised. Member, draw, No, okay, you

all right, good

afternoon,

good afternoon.

And we are going to allow you to open up with opening remarks, and then we will go straight to questions and answers. All right, great. Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me. Good afternoon. Honorable council members, it's an honor to appear before you today. For the record, I'm Kamau Marable, and I proudly serve as the Deputy Inspector General for the city of Detroit. I have served in this role for the first 12 years of the office's existence. As you will read in my cover letter and resume, I believe I have accomplished much in that time. I am passionate about the work we have done and are currently doing in the Office of Inspector General. I have a passion for good government. I have spent my time in government striving to provide the very best service for citizens who I serve in whatever capacity, from helping the wife of a Nigerian green card holder get her husband back into the country after his passport was stolen and he was stranded in Brussels Belgium, to helping Debar contractors who broke the public public trust, I know that an OIG helps deliver good government. As a born and raised Detroiter, I bring to the table not only my professional experience, but the heart and inspiration of my parents, Timothy and captain, who moved to Detroit during the latter half of the great migration, who managed to raise four girls and three boys without a high school diploma between them, although neither gained much formal education, they stressed education. I would be remiss if I didn't honor them on this day. They are both passed, but I carry their determination with me. I believe I have made them proud by not only being a successful man, but a good man. I hope, with the time allotted to me today, that I can prove to you that I am not only a good person, but one that has the integrity, skill and knowledge to do the job of Inspector General.

Thank you so much. And again, we thank you for your willingness to serve and to step up for this position. And we will now go to questions, and I'm going to start with council member waters.

Good afternoon, good

afternoon.

You seem to have a pretty extensive resume. Just kind of share with us why you believe that you really want this, want this job.

Thank you, Council Member. As you can see by my resume, I've been in public service or public service adjacent my whole career. It's a decision that I made. I don't and it's a decision that you all make because you're here. So you know, this is the next track to that, starting off working for Congressman Lewis and Atlanta, doing constituent services, to coming up here working for council, Council, Council Member Hill, being my last boss here, to working for mayor, Being, well actually, in between having a consulting firm, and my last client in that consulting firm was Mayor Bing, where at that time, he was candidate being and we were able to successfully get him elected, he decided to ask me to come on. I said at the time that I didn't want to go back to city after being around this table for 12 years and all the rigmarole. But the one condition that I said that I would come back to if the mayor asked me himself, and he called me in and he asked me to come and be his legislative liaison. And so we did that. And then this opportunity, well, you know that that ran its course. I don't know how it is today, but back then, and I know that there's at least one more person in the room who's been that liaison back then, it was like what they say about the first lieutenant in Vietnam, how long you last? So I did, I did my tour of duty in that liaison role. I went over to work on the light rail project. It's not the project that we have today, but I think it was the better project, but that's just my opinion. And then after that program was ended, I was without the job for a few months, and then this opportunity came. My good friend, James Heath, got appointed as the first Inspector General, and he came to me once again and said, I need your help to get this thing started. So we did that for the first six years. We flew the plane as we were building it, in terms of setting up a new office under very challenging conditions. This was 2013 the city was heading into bankruptcy. We were a new agency. Money was hard, you know, in that time, I think that he got allotted to him a $250,000 budget to start was probably just enough for him and an admin. I volunteered for a few months before I even got paid in terms of setting up the office, because there was no pay, and then there was no position, so I actually had to come on under a personal services contract, which was fine. Six years later, we had an operating office. We had hosted a national convention of the Association of Inspector Generals in his term ended, and I had a decision to make whether or not I wanted to be the inspector general at that time and stay on or do something different. And at that time, I didn't have the passion that I had now I, you know, wrestled, you know, what was my destiny, to do something else. And in that transition period, I helped our current IG, Ellen ha had the first meeting with her, and you know, she said, I definitely want you to stay on. And she asked me a question, and I'll never forget this question. She says, Kamal, why aren't you IG? Why didn't you go for this position? And I didn't have a good answer for at the time, it just wasn't the right time. But in retrospect, I know why I didn't, because it allowed me to work those six years with Ellen high, which was an absolute delight. I learned a lot from her, and just getting to know her and work with her was was a blessing in my life.

Thank you, man. All right. Thank

you. Member Pro Temp tape, thank

you, Madam President, Good afternoon, sir, good afternoon. Thank you for your years of service with the city, and thank you for your willingness to continue to serve in the OIG office. Oh, I guess that's the OIG the OIG office. Oh, so you've worked for worked with two dynamic leaders sitting that position. One, James Heath, and we talked about Ellen high as well. If you are selected for this position, I want to ask you. First, what have you learned from those two dynamic leaders? And then two, how would you be a what would be your mark? As you know, number three, serving in that position, in this position.

Okay, thank you for the for the question, James Heath and Ellen, how are very different people, but they have the same work, work ethic. I would say what I learned from from James Heath was to be yourself, that you can be in a role like this and still be truly authentic. And that's something that it was good to see, and that left a mark, you know, on me in meetings. He was the same guy when, when meeting with the police chief and meeting with a guy in the community, or even talking to staff, he was always the same guy. So I have picked that up from him and pattered myself with that. IG Ha is an over preparer, and she stresses about being prepared. So as you can see, that rubbed off on me in terms of preparation. So I think that was the two things that I would have learned from them in terms of the mark that I want to make. You know, I can't divorce myself from anything with this office. My DNA is all over this office, so I can't say that anything that that we've done here today, I wasn't for but, but moving forward, there are some areas that I think that we have to be better at, one of the things that we need to do, and I'm not sure, I'm sure there are theories out there why and how this is but one of the things that's happened Over the last few years is that our complaints from administration, from directors, supervisors, have gone down. Those used to be some of the better and more actionable complaints that we've had. So we got to figure that out. So I one of the first things I would do is, you know, one meet with the mayor. You know, have that conversation with him about why we are here and how we are a part of this city, and we're here to help make it better the then meet with any directors or supervisors, anybody who want to meet. We're going to have an open line of communication and just sharing with them. I know, I believe, that the Office of Inspector General is medicine. And what we know about medicine, sometimes it don't go down easy, sometimes it don't taste good, sometimes it even makes you sicker before it makes you better, but given a chance, it will make you better. And if you will allow this office to work, this is my pitch to them, if you allow this office to truly do what it can do, it'll make the city better. The other thing that we want to do is, after 12 years, we're still meeting folks in the street, or I'm still meeting folks in the street. I live here so you know, people reach Hey, what do you do? You know, Office of Inspector General. Oh, what do you do buildings, you know, so we have to do a better job at getting our name out there in the community. So, you know, we're going to revamp, we have some literature. We're going to revamp that literature, and we're starting to hit, hit the community. And we'll, we'll do that just as a matter of introduction, but we'll also have our our intake forms, and I'm going to talk to do it about giving us some tablets, so if there are any complaints, we can take them right there on the plate, right right there, then and there, and then ultimately, you know, look into doing maybe some sessions ourselves. I mean, I think we are experts in fraud and and now, particularly our seniors, are being taken advantage with by fraud. I think that's something that we can step in and either work in conjunction with council members or do some programs on our own. In regards to that, we've already increased our we started the beginning of the year in terms of increasing our our social media presence. We sent a couple of our staff members to a training offices of inspector generals in the like in terms of getting that up, we are already seeing results. And like I said, we put together a committee of some folks that are more apt to social media. I'm not a big social media person, but I got some folks in the office that are and they've been raising our profile. That's how we get out the cases that we release. Now, in addition to press releases, the third thing I would want to do please is we have to get proactive in terms of the one thing that I think over the 12 years of the office, 95% 98% 98% of what we do is complaint based. And what I would like to see us do is start being more more proactive. The charter gives us the ability to be proactive. So one of the things that we want to start doing, in addition to audits, is something called a fraud examination, and that entails inspecting systems and processes most vulnerable to fraud, to root out embedded schemes that are not easily identified. So there's levels that, if folks don't take a vacation and somebody finds it, that we're never going to find so what we want to do is start these fraud examinations to get at areas like ghost employees, falsified wages, personal purchases with city funds, falsified invoices, embezzlement, skin skimming schemes, which is basically stealing funds before they are recorded, and lapping schemes, which is stealing funds and alternate records of to high theft, you know. So that's what that would allow us to do. So we want to get proactive. So those are the things that we would want to do differently moving forward. I think that, if I was to be succinct, I think the main thing from that is, one, to be more proactive. And then two, really, I would like, by the end of the six years, if I'm so blessed, I would like the Office of Inspector General to be a household name, and people say, Oh, you work there.

Thank you so much, sir.

Thank you pro tem council member Young.

Thank you, Madam President, sir, good to see you always good. Um, thank you for your service, your distinguished service and long service. We appreciate you and all that you've done to make the city great. Um, I wanted to ask you, hypothetically speaking, if you were to come across contracts, or someone were to come to you about a contract that was that contracts that were issued out, and you notice that the same companies, same amount of size, same amount of employees, but you saw that one company was paying that one company was a female company, and The other company was a male company, and the female contractor was being paid significantly less than the male contractor. Would that be something that you would look to investigate, or would you defer that over to the Department of the creo? Yeah, I

think that would be in the realm of creo. I mean, we have a narrow focus in what we do, and that's fraud, abuse, waste and corruption, right? So, unless there was somewhere a mandate that said that the contract should be paid at this level, yeah, and and a female contractor was would be paying, was getting paid under that and that was purposeful, then that gets into to our business in because that's abuse. If somebody is saying, right, I don't like female contractors, I'm never going to pay them what I pay a man. Now, that's abuse, but just on the on, on the nature of within what is allowed. If that happens, that, you know, imbalance happens to be there, that would necessarily be

us, and I'm talking about from both sides, whether it be from administratively issuing those contracts, or whether it be internally from that company itself that's receiving city funds. Yes, that would decide if I'm going to subcontract this work out. I'm going to, I don't, I don't think that women can do the job the same way as many can, yeah, and I'm going to pay them significantly less. It would you take that same position, in all that same posture, and is there, is there any way where there would be joint task force set up around that, where you would work with Creole in order to prosecute in certain situations we

have not to date? I mean, it would be something that we could definitely explore. You know, one of the things that I mean, because we get asked to look into a lot of things, and we are clear on our mandate, and if we the charter only gives us the responsibility to do fraud, abuse, waste and corruption, so we try to stay within that, you know, daily, with that realm, because, you know, one of the things that we're too far out that you know we're supposed to stop abuse, and then if we're too far out there, then we're actually abusing our authority, and that's a place we don't want to be. Thank

you, Madam President, thank you, sir. Thank you

council member, young council member Johnson, thank you,

Madam President, good afternoon. Great to see you. Thank you for your interest in the position. Pro Tim asked a number of questions, and one of them was my initial question. So I had to come up with another one very quickly. Can you share with us your greatest contribution to the Office of the Inspector General?

Greatest is a you know, we've done a lot. We've done a lot since we've been there. So I don't know if I can speak in superlative, but if I could twist the question a little bit like my proudest moment and and I think the biggest accomplishment was I mentioned it briefly, about us hosting a national association of inspector general's conference. That's their national conference, and that's, that's a big deal. We did that within two years of being in existence as an office, and we did it with a staff of eight or nine people. They're pulling this off. You know, they're doing it in some places where they have a room full of people working on this project. We worked the hell out of our staff to do it, and it was for this reason. Omar IG he for myself, went to the conference. We got involved in the association from the beginning, which is a big help in terms of really learning this craft. But when we showed up, you know, this is 2015. So we're still reeling from some things, the way that people were approaching us, you know, oh, Lord Jesus, you have the hardest job in the world. And, oh my God, how.

And, you know, spewing all this negativity and and I remember former

IG he, you know, saying, he said one thing about it, you know, we deal with our problems and we lock our criminals up, I don't know about you. And so the person was to take taken aback, but they didn't come back. And we, at the end of that conference, we looked at each other, and we said, we got to bring these people to Detroit, because one, they don't know the city. They don't know that. We got it going on. And so we moved heaven and earth to convince them to have that 2015, conference there. And we pulled it together. And I think to this day, and I've been to a few of those conferences, it was one of the better ones that we've ever done. Awesome

that's, that's a great accomplishment, especially to me, just because of my time at the convention Bureau, I always think it's, it's great to have an opportunity to showcase Detroit to a number of different people and have different perspectives in doing so. So thank you, Council Member. I just want to say, if we get to do, if we get the chance, and if I'm so blessed to be the next Inspector General, I want to see the conference come back within the next couple of years. So that would be my goal to I mean, if they thought they saw something in 2015 wait till they see 2024 and beyond, because we got a lot going on. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President, thank you. Member Johnson council member durha. Thank you, Madam President, good afternoon to you. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your interest in this position. I believe institutional knowledge is important, but also believe going beyond institutional knowledge is important as

well, how we change things view deficiencies that we may have and not develop, develop a level of comfort knowing that things can always get better, I think, is the most important thing. My question just revolves a little bit about narrative. Transparency, obviously, is one of the most important things as a government official or as a government so residents know what's going on. However, transparency sometimes can often be put in a narrative that could be considered bias

that may have an effect on our city and the trust of our residents to its government. What is your idea behind, or what are your thoughts, or your opinion on how the Office of the Inspector General, while providing that transparency is responsible for the narrative to ensure the trust from our citizens and residents here in the city of Detroit, and for them to have faith in our government. I like to take the I guess the first point you made about experience, and then I'll try to answer the second question. So there is a old African proverb that I've kind of attached to. You know about experience. So experience can either be a a hitching post, meaning you don't go anywhere, or it can be a guidepost. So I plan to use the expense, the experience I have as a guide post. You know, having been in these roles and in this office for for the 12 years, Councilman, that's always a challenge. I mean, we're always I just wish you know if it was possible, if we could have one of these reality TV shows in our office, the amount of time

that we labor on what we release and what we don't release, and the amount of time that we go over to absolutely make the make sure that when we come out, we report that it's factual. I mean line by line, sentence by sentence. Not only that, we have the right stuff in the report, but we're seeing it in a way that will be understood what what you said, in terms of that we know that this can carry weight in a negative way, so we have to be careful about that. So one, I want to say that that's something that's kind of ingrained, at least in the office ethos in terms of how we do it. The other

part is, and we talked about transparency, it is a balancing act. But you know, for one of the things about offices of Inspector General, and it's just not our office. I mean, if you look across the country in terms of these decisions that had to be made, the independence that they're imbued with means that ultimately we have to deal with the facts, and we can't necessarily make political decisions in regards to saying, like, Man, this is this is bad. You know, I don't know if, if we want people to see that our whole reason to being is to be able to make that decision and say, Here it is. Give

the offender or the department an opportunity to kind of, one, explain their side of the story, and then two, say, Hey, you're right. That's an issue. We're going to move on beyond that. But we don't have the luxury if we're doing the office the way that we should be doing the office. We don't have the luxury to make those kind of political decisions. So it kind of goes back to what I said. You know, sometimes the medicine might make you a little sick, but it'll make you better in the end. Hope that answered your question. No, no, it did. It did particularly about the balancing act, and Gack and I appreciate that. Again, transparency is important, but I think also, again, as stewards and officers of the city of Detroit, no matter what department we're in, whether it's an independent agency, it's also equally important to be able to tell the story like you say, factual, but also help to rebuild the trust for our residents and our government. And I state that, without going too far beyond, is because our city has had a tremendous amount of challenges when we talk about ethics, when we talk about integrity, and our city has come a very, very long way from some of the old days, but the narrative and the stigma

still is attached at times, and I think that is one of the biggest drivers behind the apathy that we see here in our city, because that faith in government has kind of been lost. But I think it's also incumbent upon us, yes, to tell the truth to ensure that we are ethical, but I think the way you tell the story as well is just as equally important. So I appreciate that, though, and and I appreciate your words. Thank you, Madam President. I will have a follow up question, but thank you. Okay, thank you so much. Member, durha, and if you can briefly, just talk about how you have handled and will hand handle high profile or politically sensitive cases as it relates to your independence and objectivity? Yes, so Council President, thank you for that question. I think that that's kind of a two issue. So certain things happen depending on the profile of it. I mean, generally, you know, our goal would be, be fair across the board, do what you would do, you know, in every situation the same. But that's not the reality, because sometimes we get things that are brought that show up in the newspaper. And, you know, we had an instance, this was during IG he's term where something hit the papers, and we looked up and we had a office full of people out into the elevator demanding that we do something about this issue. So whereas generally, the charter calls for confidentiality, and we operate on that, in this case, we couldn't be confidential because, to the councilman's point, we wanted to let the citizens know that, hey, we're going to look into this, we're going to handle this issue. So what we generally don't do is announce that we're what we're investigating. And in this case, because it was already out there, we had to say, look, give us some time we're looking, we're going to look into this. We've opened a case on this so, you know, and just in terms of that, a lot of that, you know, from the media perspective, and dealing with that, then you getting calls and what's going on with the case and and all of that. So you just have to be sensitive in regards to that, but generally, how we operate is the same along all lines. But we know at the end of that, that investigation in that report, then that's probably going to be something that we do release, a press release on, just to let folks know. And you know, what people don't necessarily give us credit for, is as many times that we do reports as we say, hey, there is a finding, the same amount of times we say there is not a finding that that this was, this was misconstrued. This isn't what it was, and we put that in our report, we don't have a problem being wrong. Or at least, you know, the IG officer I'm involved in, we don't have a problem being wrong. We backed off of debarments on multiple occasions now where we started the process, and they came in and said, No, it was this. And then we say, hey, in good conscience, we can't debar you this thing. And we understand the severity, or let me say, I understand the severity

of the role that we have and what we do, and the impact that that can have on folks. So like I said, we don't have a partner, and our process is built in for folks to tell us if and when we're wrong, and then it's incumbent on us to say, You know what, we were wrong on this call. Let's back off of that. And we're not. We don't do it in the shadows. You don't, you know, we'll put out a press release and say this person's not, you know, the bar. We didn't go through it because of A, B and C. So I think that there has to be, you know, the King, the same kind of respect given to every case. But I understand that those high profile cases, the media is going to be kind of hovering around. Confidentiality exists, you've never to date, got a leak coming out of our office in terms of what we were doing. This is an aside, but I just want to briefly go into it. One of the you know things that we've been working in Lansing and getting an amendment to the FOIA statute is now because we are one of two offices of two and a half three, there is a State IG office the FOIA did not necessarily bring

into my administrative investigatory agencies like ourselves. So right now we are subject to FOIA, meaning in one of those whole high profile cases that we can be FOIA, when an incomplete, you know, case and everything that we have going on or interview, so we've been working on amending

that, and we actually have it introduced in Lansing now. To get that change, that's one of the things that has to change. We're exposed right now, and the last thing that we would want is for somebody, the FOIA, at the beginning of an investigation, get the allegation without any of the facts to back it up. So that's something that we have to, we have to close out. So okay, all right, thank you for that response. And I know member Doha, you had a follow up question. I do thank you, Madam President. And I just want to ask you just very quick question about implicit bias. When we talk about implicit bias, what does that mean, if you are the director, I'm sorry, the inspector in general. What place does that have in your department, and what are some ideas and strategies around implicit bias? So I have a staff member who's probably watching this now, who's laughing because she's been wanting to do a training for us on bias, you know, specifically on bias, but it is something that we try and we work toward pulling out of ourselves. And I understand what implicit bias is, that that you know, you look at a at a person and and, you know, even without it being a conscious response, you think a certain way, you know that that's something that, in general, our process is kind of, you know, clean out, but it still doesn't. You have to recognize that that's something that happens in you so, you know, we're working toward creating some implicit standards around that we don't have it now, but one of the things that we have kind of a meat grinder type of process in our office, in terms of, You know, every investigation is brought to the entire staff. And one thing that you know, our staff has, they don't have an issue with speaking up on any particular issue. And there's always somebody in that office. If it's not one of the leaders, it's somebody saying, Well, let's think about the other side of that, or what about this? Or it could be that, but we don't allow that to paint the final conclusion. So in terms of, at the end of the day, the facts are the facts, and we and we go with that. And my time there, we have never made a decision or a finding based on how we feel. It's always been about the facts, but we recognize that implicit bias is real and it's a thing, and like I said, we're working on on training toward that. Well, no, I appreciate hearing that. I know oftentimes too, when we think about implicit bias, we just think about exterior we don't talk about preconceived

notions. We don't talk about, as I like to call them, environmental opinions that existed before we were placed and thrust in the environment. We don't think about our own experiences that we have had that help guide our thinking. And I ask this question is specifically, because when we talk about our oversight agencies, to be specific, these are supposed to be our most independent agent agencies relative to the way they think relative to the way they make decisions, meaning that I don't care what somebody said about this individual, that's not how I view that in my job, and it is not going to affect my decision making or my investigative duties and so but it's good to hear that that that thought is floating around. I know even on the state level, they do a lot relative to implicit bias training, which I think is very important. But I'm glad to hear you touch on that. Thank you, Madam President, and and what I would want you know folks to know, because we, you know, we get this a lot by our reaction, and sometimes we get them from individuals who we end up, you know, having to interview that we come to the table. You know, we don't get paid by the department. We don't get paid by the finding if you will. I think we're there to be fact finders at the end of the day. And I think if you look at our record to date, that's what we've done in our office, right? Madam President, if I was one quick follow up that's kind of into this, and I noticed that I wanted to ask you, and I'm probably asking you more questions, because I know you've been there since the inception of this department, and I think it's very important. I know you talk about risk management. I did want to touch on that, because that is generally a component that comes in front of my committee when we talk about risk management, because it is your or the Inspector General's duty to find the fraud malfeasance, particularly helps our auditor general do their job when we talk about these departments coming together, but the risk management important portion is important, because I think about many lawsuits we face as well. So when we talk about that narrative, what are your thoughts behind in some of these investigative duties and then the findings, how do we work with law to put that forward that will not potentially put us at risk of legal Action? Yeah, that is a great question. Councilman, I would want to say that that and one of the things I did not listed upon, you know, with the things that I wanted to do. But, you know, by the ordinance, the Inspector General sits on the Risk Management Council. And you know that's dealing with everything, every other kind of risk, busses, policemen, you know, things that we're going to kind of, but it does not encompass the risk of fraud, which is a very real thing, and it's something that I think we need to start looking at. So our auditors have already, you know, begun putting together this kind of risk assessment. And it kind of goes back to the examinations that I talked about us getting into and being more proactive looking into those areas where I mean this is as much science as it is art in terms of doing this so so we know, in empirically and based on studies that they Are fraud in every system in government and private sector, it's just a matter of how you how you find that. So what we're looking into doing is being more proactive and getting into those systems in terms of, I guess, letting the stakeholders that need to know, know, we generally, you know, if our findings kind of rise to citywide, multiple departments and whatnot. We do include the law department. We do send them a copy of that report with the findings that are in there. So that's something that we, like I said, we do already, and we recognize that, hey, this isn't just a department we've had those cases like this is not even a departmental issue. This is a city wide issue, and we need to get a hold of that ultimately, you know, that's kind of where it ends. We can put that out, but it's up to the law department and the administration to act on it. So, you know, what we do and what it offices do is put the findings out there, publicize it. We put it on the website. We recently started in our office over the last couple of years of sending those putting those findings in our quarterly report. So if you look at it in terms of the outstanding findings and whatnot, we list that every quarterly report so you can see what hasn't been responded to what has been responded to, so that that is an issue. But across across the board, when we see something that rises to a level of risk, we do let somebody know. Okay, thank you, Madam President, thank you. Okay. We have two more questions. Member pro temp, followed by council Maria. Thank you, Madam President, last question for me, sir, and I'm asked this, ask this question earlier to a previous applicant, what would you be looking for in a deputy? You serving in a position two times now, and I believe, done so admirably. Typically, we find someone who fills in a gap that we may not have, that that we may not be

as strong in, or we find someone who's extremely strong in an area that is a focus of ours. What will you what are the qualities, qualifications, things you would look for in a deputy that you would hire if you appointed to this position. Thank you for that question, Councilman. In terms of, I think, first and foremost, what I would like in the deputy, somebody tell me the truth. You know who is strong enough to pull my coattails and tell me when I'm wrong, or when I'm acting outside of the scope of my position. So I need somebody who's strong in that in that realm, I'd like, ideally, somebody who knows the city you know my value to begin. And I think why James Heath brought me in is because I knew the city I had served in both both the legislative and executive branches, I knew how to get things done, so that that was useful at that time. Now we got to playing built and we're flying pretty good now, so that probably isn't as important as it was, but it's still important that there's still things still need to get done. So somebody understanding the administrative operations of the city, and ideally, somebody who knows the business who, and I don't know if that's somebody currently in our office or somebody doing investigations, you know, elsewhere, but somebody who has an understanding and appreciation for what we do. I think if we have that, I think that would be great, like one of the things that we've been having to do, and I pray and I hope that you all select me, but you know, one of the things that we had to start doing, and being forthright is, is getting some positions, some things that I had been doing the whole time I've been there like I've been the IT guy for office the whole time that we've been there. If there's a problem, they call me to fix it, and I've been handling that. So the position that you all approved for a Inspector General, information analyst, if I'm here or not here, and Lord, I pray that you all keep me that that somebody will be in that role to do that job. I've handled the HR all the you know, positions and things have gone on. So I had a multifaceted role. I don't think that I need anybody to do all of that. I think

I did that for, you know, for the love of the office, and I did it from the beginning, so I continue to do it. But to be succinct, I need somebody who can stand up and tell me the truth, somebody who understands the city, and ideally, somebody who knows the inspector general business. Thank you, great. Thank you. Pro Tem member Young, thank you, Madam President, the question I wanted to ask you is more of a question about data. I wanted to ask you, would there be any sort of artificial intelligence that you would bring or use for your position, you know, in terms of improving efficiency, or in terms of cost

reduction, in terms of using algorithms to be able to process massive amount of data, to be able to do your job more efficiently and effectively, would you be comfortable using technology at all, and how would you go about balancing that Liberty versus that security question? Yeah, this is something that has

come up in recent conferences and is something that we're looking at inside the inspector general community. We have to be careful of what data goes in to any IA, because right now those aren't closed systems. So you know, my fear would be, you know that if I got my folks

working on on a report, and they're using AI, then that information is available to anyone who pulls and queries the same question. So just from a security aspect, you have to be careful with that. But I think that as the possibilities grow and as we kind of, you know, get some affordable, closed systems, I'm a technology guy, so I would absolutely, you know, like to do that, but it's just got to be safe. And folks you know, you know, we have to maintain our confidentiality. So that would be my only concern about using IA. But you know, I think that if it makes us better, and if it makes us operate quicker, then I would absolutely be interested, yeah, I also just wanted to ask, yeah, I think that's very important. I think it's very important we're talking about artificial

intelligence, how you would go about doing it? Would you use any would you use it for predictive? Any predictive technology be able to predict it. Be able to be proactive, because I know a lot, and rightfully so, for this job and the way that you're doing it, you want to you want to be more reactive, because you want to make sure the bats are correct the things. But would you use predictive technology at all to be able to kind of get ahead of this. And like you said earlier, is it something where you would have to secure your cyber security first to make sure that it's something that's closed first before you do that? And how would you and then, would you use predictive technology to be able to do to find out who might be vulnerable? Yes, and, and, I am aware that there are some software out there that currently exists to kind of look at the data sets and the data systems, to kind of point to those kind of things. So that's actually what I'm talking about when we start this process of doing fraud examinations, of using the technology in order to get that the analyst position, which thank you all for approving. This past week, we're trying to bring in an IT expert, somebody who understands systems and what I would, you know, ideally like them to take over all the data gathering for the office. The thing that slows down the efficiency of us turning around is the fact that

we are always waiting on information from various city departments, and we understand that we're not their main business, so that's no critique on them. But at the end of the day, we often stand in queue in terms of getting our information, be that from finance, be that from HR. So one of the things that working would do it once we get this person hired, is maybe looking at getting more read only access to some of these systems where we don't have to necessarily wait in queue to get this information, like it literally in long gates our investigations by months, in some cases, in terms of getting this information. So that's something definitely I would want to explore. But yes, definitely interested in predictive, you know, algorithms and things like that. And then I just wanted to ask you, because we going into

like three now, this is my final one. I promise. Thank you. I promise. I'm doing that. Thank you for your page. I'm doing that, but as I promised. So I just wanted to just say, is this something that you would also be willing to share the methodology of how you use this with counsel and the public so they can make sure that when you're doing this, you're doing this, you're using this in the most responsible way, because when we're going after people, I know these are investigations. Investigations happen for a reason, so it's innocent until proven guilty for someone that's committing fraud or things that that's much more sensitive, especially if you're talking about from the criminal aspect of it, yeah. So I just want to make sure that when you're doing this, would you be willing to partner up with people to explain to the public that this is something that you're doing, it's above board, because I know you're going to we're going to get a lot of questions. I can see a lot of people saying we're using this to do this, to go after these people the wrong way, depending on who it is. And so I just want to make sure, would that be something that would be transparent with or would that something that you probably have to partner with the information of technology to be able to really explain that further, I would say, generally, that would be, you know, the case to let folks know, I would say, and right now, you know, we haven't engaged that, so I don't know what that looks like, but I wouldn't want to make your promise that I couldn't keep, in terms of when you Looking at investigations and where you're looking into

you want to necessarily let people know that you're looking and how you're looking, because then they can defeat your system. So I will say transparency in that regard would have its limits. We got to weigh that out with our effectiveness. All right. Thank you, member young member waters, thank you, Madam

President. I you know, remember young just said something that just kind of stirred something up in me. And it would talk about AI, I think that it discriminates frankly. I mean, it it can based on race, it can based on age and all of those kinds of things. So when you're talking about a person's life, because that's what you would be doing in terms of investigations, you know, I prefer you use human beings. That's it. Thank you. No Councilwoman, I agree wholeheartedly and and you know that that's the thing with AI. It definitely has the systems. I mean, it's issues, it's not there yet, but I want to be clear, the kind of AI that we're talking about is looking into data, not people. So I wouldn't use a system that would say, you know, Jane Doe is the one that's doing this. She's more likely to do that, but we would want to have a system where we're crunching data and says, you know, this number should be this, but it's this, and there's a delta in that, and you need to go, so we'll send a person to go and and look at that, that number and that difference, and see if we have a true problem. But we're not going to let AI loose on on the public servants of Detroit. Alright, right?

Thank you.

Super quick instead of your question statement, yeah, everyone is not. I think we're going to move forward, and we're going to allow

Mr. Merribo to have closing remarks at this time. Okay, okay, that's pretty significant. Okay, alright. Thank you, Councilman. You can feel free to call me offline. Okay,

go ahead. Okay. In closing,

I'd like to thank this honorable body for all of your support for the Office of Inspector General, and once again, for this tremendous opportunity to make my case to be the next Inspector General for the city of Detroit. I am a humble person by disposition, but I understand that humility doesn't get you the job at the end of the day. Therefore, let me go there. I am the most

experienced candidate to ever apply to be the Inspector General for the city of Detroit, the only candidate to be a certified inspector general as well as a Certified Fraud Examiner. Not only do I bring 12 years of experience as Deputy Inspector General for this office, I have served in both the legislative and executive branches of Detroit city government. It takes a spine of steel to do this job. You must live with the fact that you bring disappointment more than you bring satisfaction. It comes with the job, but you must do the job professionally and respectfully, our citizens, public servants and contractors

deserve that. I have a proven track record in carrying myself in a manner that exudes confidence, but not arrogance, compassion but not weakness. So I want to take a moment as I conclude to thank my beautiful wife brandy for her loving support and encouragement. I would also like to thank both inspector generals that I've had the honor to work with these 12 years, James Heath and Ellen hop each of them provided a great standard to live up to professionally, but their enduring friendship I cherish most of all, I would like to thank the dedicated staff of the

Office of Inspector General. They push and inspire me daily with the staff, with their steadfast commitment to service and professionalism. Lastly, but definitely not least, I'd like to thank God for bringing me to this point in my life. His blessings and grace sustain me, and once again, I thank you for your time and attention today. All right, thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Maribel. We appreciate you, sir and your service, and we will be following up. Thank you all so much for the opportunity. Thank you. We appreciate you, sir. Okay,

all right, that will conclude all of our interviews for the Office of the Inspector General, and we will now pivot to the interviews for the board of zoning appeals. Which one? Yeah, you

got to leave too. Oh, no, I think we should be good. Yeah, we should we're good. I got a response the last statement,

and

we are going to start with Jada Filson will be our First person. I

This

time,

good evening. Council members, good evening. Miss. Jada Filson, right, it is evening already. Yes, good evening. Thank you for being here. And we are going to kick off with allowing you to have an open introduction, and then we'll go straight to questions and answers, and then we'll allow you to have closing remarks at the end. Okay, so the floor is yours to begin. Thank you once again. My name is Jada Filson. I have been working in the city for 20 years now. I can't believe that. Um, I started my career in the city as a planner with BC, and then I moved to BCA and became a zoning inspector. Then I came back to BC as a zoning inspector, and now I'm currently the manager of zoning. So come to work every day, and I am a supervisor for planners, building inspectors, zoning inspectors. So as you know, BC is a very busy department, and pretty much everything starts with zoning. So I have my hands on a lot of different projects within the city of Detroit that you all approve, and ordinances that come before you that I don't personally write, but I do have my hand in with writing it, with CPC, with the law department. But you know, BC enforces and interprets the ordinance, so I am always dealing with that. Also, currently, as a zoning manager, I have to do the we do the intake for BCA, so any cases that go before bZA, I personally look at before it hits

to that department. I sometimes write up those cases, or my staff writes up those cases, and so I am very familiar with the board of zoning appeals. All right. All right. Thank you, Jada. And if you could just start off by kind of briefly stating why you want to be the director of the BCA, and some of your overall goals for being the director of the department. I would like to be director because I am very familiar with the department, working with the current director, working with past directors. I know the process also. Currently as a zoning manager for BC, I feel like I may have done all I could do at that level, and I would love to get the opportunity to be director at the BCA and see where I can go and go and help that board. You know, the next years I know as the director I would be currently, my main goal is to make sure that the board has what they need to render decision in cases for residential properties, variances for industrial variance and spacing. I just want to be able to help the city in that aspect. Alright, thank you. I will start with council member Johnson. Thank you, Madam President. And good evening. Miss Billson evening. Thank you for your interest. So when I served on the board of zoning appeals back in 2015 I remember you coming before BCA, representing BC relative to zoning issues. So you've had direct experience with the board of zoning appeals. You've had direct experience with the director of the board of zoning appeals. What do you how do you envision improving the processes or the department, if you were to become the director? I would try to approve. I'm sorry. I would try to improve by having more training for the board members. I would kind of give them a cheat sheet, because I think when you're doing it so long, you kind of forget what findings you need to make for certain cases, you might look at a denied site plan, and there's different findings for that then instead of a spacing approval, so I would like to provide the board members So this is what you do for this particular case, but this is what you do

for another case that is different. So I think they may have those challenges sometime that I see just presenting in front of the board each week that they can forget because they're not dealing with the ordinance all day, every day, like I am, all right.

Thank you. Thank you. Madam President, thank you. Member Johnson, member Young. Thank you, Madam President. I just wanted to use this opportunity, just to make a quick statement. When I was referring to artificial intelligence, I just wanted to say the reason why I was referring to that was because one, I think that by

20, I know that by 2030, 10% girls, jobs, I'm president. Uh, 60 is a point of order. I mean, it's not fair for Miss Filson, who has nothing to do with this. This guy's conversation. One second, one second. Okay? President, protest point of order. We're we're interviewing a individual who's coming in very clean, and I think it's unfair for her to have to be subjected to comments for a previous interview. Point of order, I wanted to make those comments previously, and I was cut off. So that's why I do this now, so I understand what about me as a member the doctor. Doctor, not clear to me at all. So the parliamentarian is stating that Pro Tem is in order here. Okay, so we will continue to proceed with where we were. So are you asking? Excellent presentation. I have no questions for you. Thank you. And then we'll move now to you. President pro tempore Tate, thank you, Madam President, so

what are, what are some of the things that you have? We have

stuck with me. Sorry, yeah.

Good afternoon, ma'am. Thank you for your years of service, and thank you for your willingness

to serve in this capacity. Can you just dive a little bit deeper into some of the things that you would like to see altered a bit with the BCA? I mean, I know that these are commissioners, and you don't run them, you can't make them. You have to suggest, encourage all those things, because you're also

part of the structure of the BCA. So looking at where it is now, not saying it's horrible, not saying it's great, allowing you to say whatever that is, but what would you do that's different, and what would you look to see in terms of at the end of your tenure as the litmus test for your success. Thank you. Pro Tem, I would like to see that if the budget would, if the budget allowed for an extra zoning inspector for the BVA, as ordinance are coming in to the city, those ordinances sometimes require variances, and so that would mean more cases would be coming into the BCA, and currently they only have one zoning inspector. I would also like to make sure that the dockets that are going out are grammatically correct. Have the right

section numbers of the ordinance before they go out, making sure they're proofread. Also, I want to have more training for the board members, and

this could be a monthly training, or every few months with the law department. Sometimes we have those trainings where I would speak to the board members. The Law Department speaks to the board members on different facets of let's say, for 10 cases that could potentially happen that they

need to respond to in a certain way, also making sure that community

or citizens have plenty of time to speak at these hearings, because sometimes there may be a longer cases where they don't have, they feel like they don't have the the correct amount of time, or long enough amount of time to speak on that so and then I also want to make sure that the relationship between bZA and BC stays strong as Vc is the intake for BCA, so I always will want to make sure that there's always that great relationship between the two departments. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you pro temp Tate council member waters, thank you, Madam President. I want to go to just say independence amongst board members. Do you

believe that as a director, it would be your job to either control what they say during the meetings, how they think,

or do they have a right to have some some form of independence, and if in fact, their independence should sway other members by virtue of what they've said. How do you handle that? Do you? Do you? Is that fair in your belief, or do you believe that you should, you should control them. Thank you board Thank you council member waters, no, I do not think I should control them at all. I am. I could be strictly a staff person for the board members, so I am there to provide the facts the cases to them and for hopefully them to stay impartial before they make any decisions in the case and hear the facts from both sides, if that's from the developer or if that's from the citizens that are could be directly affected from this development or establishment come into fruition. I do not think they should sway other board members. There is a point in the in the hearing where board members can give their testimony. It could sway the board members, but I think they really should stay impartial to any decision that they make and make sure that decision is the best decision for that community.

Cool, okay, thank you, ma'am, right. And

wanted to get your viewpoint on just like the community's role in the BCA, if you see that in any way, what strategies would you employ to balance the needs and desires of the community with development goals? If you can speak to that briefly, um, thank you, council president. Um, I would try to make sure that, um, more citizens, uh, come to the board meetings. Sometimes they it seems a little light when the notices go out and you're trying to inform citizens that this development is happening. I would like to put maybe more things on social media so people can see what is going on in their

community. You know, we have the people, the regulars, as I say, that come out, but we definitely need, you know, people that are currently buying homes in this in that particular neighborhood, or people that are currently starting businesses to come out and give their opinion and and support or or be in opposition to what could happen it. It just depends on getting the word out there. But the main thing is that BC is is

doing the plans, reviewing the plans, and then that information comes to the BCA. And so the board is making sure that this spacing for this proposed light duty vehicle repair is, if they approve it, it will be within 100 feet of this residential neighborhood, or if they deny it, then it won't be and they have the opportunity to go to Third Circuit Court, and maybe that Judge will approve or deny that development. But I think the VCA really needs to get out there to say like this is a process, and this is a process that can help many businesses and that people need to be aware of it. Okay, thank you so much. And if that is all of the questions you have, one more Yes, President Pro Tem Tate, thank you, Madam President, and I want to just give you an opportunity to answer the question, because I know you may have prepared yourself for possible questions about conflict. As you mentioned, BC is the intake, if you will, of the BCA. So how do you how would you respond to those who may say, though you don't make the final decision, the board does, but you may have influence over them to essentially move into the same direction that BC indicated if they if selected in this position. Thank you. I don't think at all as a staff person, I don't think I would have any influence over the board. The board is independent. The board makes their own decision. As a director, I don't think you should put that your opinions onto the board members. They are there to make that make that judgment call for that particular development.

Thank you. All right. All right. Thank you so we will now allow you miss Filson to have closing remarks at this time. Thank you. I just want

to thank you so much for the opportunity. You know, I currently have three children, and so working and you know, being the zoning manager is a lot of work and trying to raise three children, but I know if I get this opportunity as director, I can

do both efficiently. It won't hinder me in any way. I stay busy with VCs, you know, BC never stops, never sleeps. Work is always coming in, and as zoning manager, I have my hand on everything. Every development in the city, you need to start with me to know if your development is even going to correctly or it can even start in that zoning district. So I think as a a director for the board of zoning appeals, I have the knowledge and the skill set to to take it to the next level in that department and help staff that's currently there and help the board members, um, become better board members. Excuse me.

All right. Thank you so much, Miss Phil thank you for your service, and thank you for being here today. And we wish you the absolute best. Thank you so much. You all have a good evening. Thank you, you as well. All right,

thank you Miss Filson, and we have one last interview that would be Mr. Rebron. Can go get him. I'm president. Yes, President. Polite. So I know for the Office of the Inspector General, we had where we asked the spark, Attorney Barclay, to kind of give an overview, and for the public who's watching, we know all of this, but we want to make sure the public is aware. So if through you to Attorney Barclay, can you explain to the public, why city council, we have numerous directors within the city of Detroit, but they may not be sure why City Council has the authority to approve this particular director, as well as what the terms are and if there are any other qualifications, the

First question the reason that you appoint to this body is because, generally speaking, when you look at municipal government, city council is the oversight agency for the administration as such. A lot of times, the city council actually does this role in city government

zoning, enabling that bill allows for the city to create a board, the board, which is the board of zoning appeals, to take on the task that would generally go to city council. So by doing this, it is your role to appoint the members of the board and to appoint the director

that serves them. The board of zoning appeals director is, is the administer, Administrator for the board of zoning appeals. This is a role that has been created by the zoning enabling that. And the primary

role of the board is to hear appeals from the building safety and engineering. BC, I missed a e somewhere in there, but here appeals from there, and then to also to consider variances and such for for zoning that don't necessarily adhere to the the well are not by right, uses for in the zoning in the city zoning, and this is a six year appointment. This is a six year report. Thank you. Thank you. Alright, thank you, President Pro Tem Tate, Alright, Mister rebron, good evening, good evening. And we're going to allow you to have an opening remarks, and then we'll go straight to Q and A how long I haven't put a time? Okay? Yeah, you tell me if I get long, if I get long, I know you'll stop me. Okay, good afternoon, council members, and thank you for this opportunity to speak with you about the directorship for the board of zoning appeals. I do want the job back in 1988 I was with the Davidson

association of neighborhood block clubs. I was the president of the Davidson Association and the PTA. It was called neighbor PTA was called something else back then, but PTA president for Davidson Elementary School, the Kellogg Foundation came into the area and identified 50 leaders to be a part of a program the Kellogg Foundation did in the northern high school area. Davidson fed into northern I was a part of that group. Lynn Smith, who was with the Youth Advisory Commission at that time, was a part of that group, and she hired me to be a part of the Detroit City Council Youth Advisory Commission. At

that time, I came on to the Youth Advisory Commission, and I set up what was called the Youth Committee. It was high

school students from all of the Detroit high schools sitting here in the city council chambers, learning about civics and government in real time. We also work to get two seats of youth on that board. I was also introduced to Marcel Todd at that time. He was in the City Planning Commission, and he came up to the youth, youth advisory commission to find out what was going on. And the two of us have been marching this track since that time, 1994 the Youth Advisory Commission was shut down for what was supposed to be a youth department that we're still waiting for. But instead

of me leaving Mel rabbits allowed me to come on to his staff to work for a couple of months. This was in 1994 until 1995 when Clyde Cleveland hired me on his staff. And that first picture that you're looking at, he handed me that book that says Municipal Code, and he said, rebron, if you learn this, you'll go places. That was the best advice that he could have given me, because I didn't know what the Municipal Code was or what it was he that he was handling me, handing to me. But I'm glad that he did that, because that is what put me on the track to where I am today, and learning about zoning, Clyde didn't run for real reelection. So in 1998 I left and went to run a nonprofit called Eureka communities. If you look at that class list, these are leaders in the city of Detroit that I worked with back at that time, just to demonstrate the work that I've been

doing and the leading that I've been doing in this community to support Detroit in 2004 I had the opportunity to come back to Detroit to work with the City Planning Commission, and I got to work on one of the most exciting projects The city had ever had, Africa, town. And that picture became Paradise Valley. But the beauty of that work, I went to Marsha broom, who was the director at that time, and said, I like this work that I'm doing in the City Planning Commission, but I don't want to be architect. She said, there's a program at University of Detroit called masters of community development. I went and got that masters, and that sent me on the trek to go to Michigan State University where I got my training and zoning and community development. This is the picture where I was in Port Huron, Saint Clair, county where I got

my training, I am so glad that I had that opportunity, and I thank Clyde for giving me that opportunity.

So back to the BCA, the best qualified person, the best trained person, the person with the most experience and the best candidate,

is me. I've trained I've been doing this. Some of the accomplishments that I'm proud of is increased revenues. We were averaging around $90,000 a year. We're not up to $125,000 a year as of today, I have worked through a transition to get two new citywide members on the city on the board of zoning appeals. That was a long process, but we're there. My greatest accomplishment was during covid. Now I'll end with this was during covid. The

city in March 2020. Was shutting down. Everybody was going home. I called Council President Jones at that time and said, BCA has an idea, and it's called Zoom. She said, what's the zoom? We can continue meeting and have our meetings on Zoom. We were the first, one of the first entities in the city to keep meeting. We stopped in March and May of 2020, we were up and running again. The best accomplishment with that was that it opened the door for the community to be openly involved in this process, and that's one of the things that I'm most proud of, most frustration, but most proud of, because it gives the community the opportunity to be a part of this process. And that's the most important part of being the zoning director, is making sure that our constituents are part of the development process. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Mr. Rebround, we appreciate your service and willingness to continue to serve here in the great city of Detroit. Thank you. Question when, as the director, when do you believe a member of the BCA board should recuse themselves, and how are you communicating that to the board? From your standpoint, our rules and procedures have

reasons as to why you should recuse yourself. Obviously, if you have a financial benefit, if you are benefiting any way financially, if you have

been involved, say in the development, if you've been involved and a process, any way that is beneficial, you must recuse yourself. We do tell them outside of financial benefit. If you feel that you can be objective, and we feel that they are, because you all have selected these members, that if you can be objective, you do not have to recuse yourself. Basically, if it's a financial or if you are a part of a development, then you must recuse yourself. For the most part. We

let them decide. We have had an occasion where board members may question a board member, and then there's discussion, and then that board member can either decide to step down, or there's a vote of the board to ask that member to step down. We have not had that happen in the time that I've been here. People have stepped down voluntarily. Alright? Thank you so much, Mister rebron, Council Member, young I see

you got this on the front page. I see you got my father's name on here. Yeah, I had the message, or those were the council members that I worked for when I first started back in 1995 exit presentation, no question. Thank you. Council member Johnson, thank you, Madam President, and good evening. Director. Rian, of course, I know your work very well in the community as the director of the board of zoning appeals, and I want to ask you a question relative to the staff of BCA, when I was on the board, there was an appeal specialist that worked with us, Mr. Lyle hogat, and I really felt like he helped me with getting comfortable and acclimated

to the work that was being requested of board members. Do you currently have that position still in place? No, we don't. When the bankruptcy happened, there was a lot of shake up and changing of things,

and I have not revisited that since that time, but I have been having discussions, we do have an open position. It doesn't, it's just an open position. So it's there's no definition to it. I'd like to revisit that and also revisit the possibility of having a deputy, okay, all right, thank you. I think again, the individual in that position really helped me to get acclimated, and I know that when new board members come on, as I did myself, I felt like a fish out of water. I didn't really understand what was taking place. I felt like the appeal specialist helped me tremendously, and so would certainly encourage you to consider bringing

someone in for that position, because I think it can tremendously help to support the board members and ensuring that they understand was before them and the different types of requests that come before the board members, and making sure that they understand those unique requests that come before them. So thank you. Thank you, Madam President, thank you council member Johnson, President, pro

tem Tate, thank you, Madam President, thank you sir. Thank you for your willingness to serve again in this capacity. Thank you for your years of service as well with the city of Detroit and elsewhere, because you've been doing this for a long time. Thank you for that. My quick question is in terms of things that this

body should be aware of. I mean seeing that you are in that seat. Now, what are some of the things that we should be aware of as it relates to zoning laws that we potentially can alter, and then also second to that is communication with the BCA and city council. I know we don't want to direct those, those board members, exactly on what to do, but there should be some level of communication. Doesn't seem like it's as strong as, in my opinion, it should be and could be. Want to get your reflections on that. I'll start with the second part. First, we encourage board members to be independent. That doesn't mean that they can't talk to council members or know what's going on, because they need to know what's going on in the district, but we want the appearance to be that they are independent. We do support that they have conversations. We support

that they go to their district meetings, citywide meetings, that way they are aware of what's going on in the community director, if I may. I mean your position in terms of communication with this particular body. Okay, two things I do want to begin to do quarterly

reports that reflect what's going on in each district. So you would get a breakdown of what's going on in your district, what cases happen, where they were. You see a citywide and then you see that quarterly breakout. That's one thing I want to do. Secondly, I have been

doing individual meetings. Lot of things happen where those get slowed down. I think it's important that I get on your calendar and and have those meetings, whether it's with you or with your staff every couple of months. I'm also willing to come and speak at any time, if you all feel it's necessary for me to come. In terms of issues,

I stay on the east side and District Four on Mac, there are a lot of issues that impact gross point and Detroit and sometimes Hopper woods. Sometime a conversation amongst the governmental entities could help the community understand what's going on. So some cross communication with with the other governments. That's something that I could do working with the other zoning directors to make sure I give Chick fil A was one that came up on the it didn't happen, you know, for many reasons, but we could do better at informing the community on what's happening in in their community, long

before it comes to BCA. A lot of the issues that I have is by the time it comes to the BCA, this is the first time people are they're being engaged with by the city. They've been through a process where they request a building permit, and they've been through some type of hearing in BC, but the community, a lot of times, I can't speak for how the communication goes. We're required, by law, the ordinance, to identify people within 300 feet community organizations and so, so communicating with with you on a more consistent basis having those reports to you. And lastly, I would encourage you to have your staff sit in on BCA hearings that that that is the best way yet, or call

me and ask for a recording. We record their zoom recording, so we're open to making sure that you have all the information that you want, and that I'm open to you to be able to give you the assistance you need. Thank you. Thank you. All right, thank you. Pro Temp Tate council member waters, all right, just, just quickly. Thank you for always being accessible and responsive. I do appreciate that, when BCA denies a project or whatever, it goes directly to circuit is there ever a time that it has to come to council? It will not come to council, and before it goes to circuit board members have 72 hours to reconsider their vote, so that that there's a step in there. So if it's if it's a denial, sometimes somebody might change their mind. They have 72 hours. If they don't, then it goes to circuit court, and Circuit Court does a couple of things. They either send it back to us for reconsideration, or they uphold our decision. We have had no decisions overturned to return for reconsideration in the time that I've been here. Thank you, Madam President, all right. Thank you. Council member waters, all right. Member Johnson, thank you, Madam President, I just wanted to make a quick comment because director ribrah mentioned this, the communication with our suburban neighbors. I get a lot of information from residents in the district concerned about our suburban neighbors, voices being elevated and us responding to them, as opposed to the residents in the district. And so I just want to make sure that people know and understand that my number one responsibility and priority are district four residents. I appreciate what our suburban neighbors have to say, and they've said it based on what they allow and what they don't allow in their community. So certainly want to be open and communicating with them, just to make sure that we have communities that are supportive of one another, but not that we are dictating what happens in either community. So thank you, and I appreciate the conversation that has begun already with those communities. So thank you. Thank you, Madam President, thank you council member Johnson, and that will conclude. Do you have any closing remarks? I know member, we gonna lose the quorum. I just want to say thank you to to the community and to you all for the support over the last several weeks and my mother passed. It was a rough time for me, but but the community really stepped up. And I It was unbelievable. So Detroit, thank you. Thank you. Thank you and our condolences and prayer with you and your family, as we mentioned before, and we thank you so much for your service, Mister and director Whitaker, all names that we've interviewed today will go before us on Tuesday, and we will select one individual for both positions. Yes, okay, thank you all right. Well, we thank everyone. Thank you colleagues. If there is nothing else, member waters is out of here, there's nothing else to come before it, we will adjourn this meeting. This meeting will now stand adjourned.

Okay? I.