Budget — Public Lighting Dept/Public Lighting Authority
6:00PM Mar 18, 2024
Speakers:
President Sheffield
Keywords:
city
dte
lighting
lights
work
detroit
madam president
pla
poles
bond
neighborhood
department
issues
caller
councilmember
year
executive session
corridors
good afternoon
budget
Good afternoon, everyone. We will now call back to order our expanded budget Finance and Audit standing committee for the purposes of our budget deliberations. And Mr. Clerk, you can
please call the roll. Councilmember Scott Benson.
Councilman Robinson indicated that he will not be present. Your clerk was no, no.
Councilmember for $1 hold a third present. Councilmember Leticia Johnson, Councilmember Gabriela Santiago Romero present councilmember Mary waters. Councilmember Angela Whitfield Callaway. Councilmember Coleman Young. The second,
Councilmember Young did indicate that he will also not be present. The clerk was so no. Councilman, council president pro tem James taste Council President Mary Sheffield. You have a quorum present, Madam President. All right. Thank you so much. We will now proceed with our budget hearings for this afternoon. We have the public lighting department and also the public lighting authority. And so you all may proceed when you are ready to begin.
Good afternoon, John. Premack PLD I'll give you my short presentation here as always, this year, title bullet volume will be the director appeal the I guess how is that
and I started the public lighting authority first or the public lighting department department first.
We have a total expenses of 20 point 5,000,018 point 18 million from the general fund revenue of 3.4 and a contribution by 115,000 to the general fund. We're also gonna have we give PLA 10 point 4 million. We have 1.6 million operating expenses which is basically a big Safelite reduction in McKinney infrastructure. We have an expense of 6.3 million for electrica for the lights for the streetlights. 1.3 million the contractor services. And last year we had 1.5 million in revenue from Condit rental and pole attachments. And last year we have metal recovery at a $2.3 million recovery from our recycling program which undercover underground assets and this year so far is 1.8 5 million. Also like to speak to how much we have actually captured of our old cable under the streets of Detroit. We have under 86.5 miles underground cable last year, recycled and at 85 miles overhead wire we also fix three two manholes for damage from traffic and wear and tear in the city Detroit. Thank you
I'll give a brief overview and then I'll turn it over to Janet to give a more detailed in depth review of what we're looking at for the upcoming year. Abroad basis. Our budget this year, or at least the ask from the city is to fully execute the contract at two point 10 point 4 million historically up until I believe around 2020 21. We operated at a surplus we were taking in more money than we were spending because it was a new system. We didn't want to go ahead and zero out our budget by spending money on things that were not necessary. So we accumulated a reserve and we talked to the city a few years ago and came to an agreement that we would draw down partially on that reserve and not fully not received the full amount of our contract this year. We've looked at the run rate for the past year as well as what we expect into the upcoming year. And we do believe that we will, you know, encumbered and spend all of the money on current maintenance needs as well as some money coming out of our reserves. So all of it is being applied to the system. The first generation of lights are failing at this point. So we are in a sense of urgency a little to get these lights switched out and we do believe that that is the is the cause of some of the more frequent outages. So over the course of the next few years we'll be replacing most all the fixtures with a modern with a better quality fixture that we hope will last longer and it is the next generation. That should reduce our response times as well as the number of outages you're seeing. But we do feel as though we're in a good place financially. And we also are reapplying our reserves in a way that augments our daily maintenance and is in a preventative way. So Jan, if you want to go through some of the details of what we're doing.
Thank you, Paul. Thank you this honorable body. We have submitted a few slides make sure I don't drown anyone's ears a little better. We have submitted a few slides to you in print and I would like to just spend a minute to walk through them with you, if I may. Here it is. So as both said, our operating budget as proposed to you fully funds the 10 point 4 million and what we've done on this slide is to show you the line items that make up that amount. You can see it's largely driven by our two contractors. That's about 15. Crews doing three to 4000 work orders a year throughout the entire city. We do tree trimming when it affects the lighting output on streets. Our operating staff is highlighted in the org chart also appearing on this. We operate very small, cohesive staff most of the work being done by our electrical contractors. We do have a lot of technology have very exciting mapping capabilities throughout the city. To show you the block by block level. Our administration is also highlighted in the organization chart. It's basically the same today as it was in 2017. No increases in staff, a few positions in house that used to be contracted out. But again basically the same size team and likewise with our occupancy overhead. The interesting piece of this slide shows in the bottom right corner to Mr. Taylor's point, you can see the actual trajectory of our own nm costs as the system ages 2024 represents the 10th year not surprisingly, we've seen doubling of the light outages as we begin to replace those first generation looms in year 10. By completing the planned maintenance, the loom swaps the old wood poles, neighborhood wood poles, you can see that again the maintenance costs start to stabilize. That's still another year, year and a half as we actively swap out the looms. The other note I'll make we all know the suffering of inflation in the last couple of years and we are we have experienced that with our materials costs. We're expecting that again with our contractor costs this year. Just one other comment if I may regarding planned maintenance, and Mr. Taylor highlighted that there the money that we have set aside for our capital plan does allow us to swap out the luminaires does allow us to make a major dent in the legacy wood poles. Legacy meaning they weren't replaced in the 2014 construction 2014 construction focused on getting every loom lit throughout the city. So this basically it's a dump of numbers tells you what was old, what was new. And what we're trying to do. The gray boxes are the funds that PLA has and is expanding. You heard our Honorable Mayor propose a bond issue. And the black box highlights how that bond issue would retrofit some of their reengineer some of the safety of our highly trafficked corridors in the city. We are also actively grant seeking with a couple of partners and utilizing the city's great development staff largely targeting some of the federal infrastructure funds hopefully we can get some of that for undergrounding. I think we all know we'd love to have you know, poles that are more resilient in that way. So we have a lot of information and this kind of gives you the high points. I think that would conclude what remarks.
One quick note a lot of these legacy polls. I want everyone to understand that that they've been around for a long time, but they were being used up until a few years ago in a lot of cases for the public lighting department. So this wasn't that we overlooked anything or anyone had any bad planning. They couldn't really go through this process until until the PLD was done delivering power and now they have done that. So it's a good opportunity for us to go in and take care of some of those legacy issues that are a result of the decommissioning process.
Okay. All right. Well, that concludes your presentation.
Thank you, Madam President.
All right. Thank you so much. And we will go to questions from my colleagues. And I'll just start off. I do see one, your slide three it talks about the gap lights that were overlooked in 2014. And that's one of the questions that I have regarding a lot of neighborhood residents who express concerns about not having adequate lighting on their blocks. And so if you could just clarify if the POA operating funds will cover city wide gap lighting issues that have been reported or what exactly are we proposing for this fiscal year?
So when we talk about gap lighting, we're referring to the secondary roads in the thoroughfares outside of the central business district. So when they were spaced originally 100 years ago, they were spaced in a lot of cases for power lines and then we used street light we use streetlight arms on the power lines and we would adjust the intensity of the light so there would be continuity of light throughout the corridor. Now that the power lines are going down, we can re space the lights equidistant from each other with the sole purpose of providing light. So that will take make up a lot of the shortfall in lighting on the roads that people drive the most. Now, I think what you're referring to and I'm not going to dance around it is the midblock light and the residential areas. Now here's what I personally believe. I believe there's a lot of work that needs to get done to make what we have sustainable and able to stay on over the long term. I believe once we get that process done, we should enter into a discussion in the formal process outlined in our legislation that takes place by the by means of a legislative process involving our board, city council and the mayor's office. If that is the desire of any of those three entities, then I think it's prudent for us to sit down with LPD and define what that process looks like because there's a number of prudency requirements in there that are were included because of the bonds 10 years ago and I want to make sure that one we have a sustainable system. And two we're following the process because there are a lot of bonds out there with prudency requirements associated with the lighting system. But I do think it is that time you know it's a good time to have that discussion. With us changing out the remainder of the failing lights us getting the rest of the system in a sustainable way. Having a thoughtful discussion on what we want the lighting system look like moving forward is something that I welcome and I would very much like to have that discussion. All
right. Well, I definitely think that in light of changes that are going to be made now with the residential poles being switched over the luminaries being switched over that the neighborhood lighting concerns should have been a part of that conversation because that's still one of the number one issues I get when I refer to it as it relates to lighting in general is that there's inadequate lighting sometimes or neighborhood blocks. So we'll love that to have that conversation. And then also in that same vein is Ali lighting. I know I talk about it every year and I will continue to talk about alley lighting because there's a lot of neighborhoods in district five that use it to go in and out of their homes. We know that DTE has a program that's $14 I think a month however there are still black clubs that are pressing me to see if there is a way that the city can take on the responsibility of providing alley lighting within neighborhoods. So my question is where are we are we with that? Have we considered it and do we know how many black clubs or neighborhoods that are still looking to have that service within their neighborhoods?
I would give a similar response to the previous I will say that alley lighting would be if you wanted to make it in an order of priority. I would put this after the midblock lighting issue. So I would think we would be overburdening ourselves right now if we were trying to do all of those things at the same time. I think we need to have a systematic approach to it and as it's being as it's being flushed out with the midblock light Once we're through that process and we see how much of an undertaking that is at that point. Look towards the alley light if it's something that that the city wants to do with alley lights is very difficult because alley lights were were throughout the city there were 20,000 of them before then there were a lot of areas where they they weren't necessarily needed. So going through the process of determining which block absolutely needs it which block doesn't is very, very cumbersome and I think it'd be something that that PLA the city needs to do together as we address this.
You can go based on the residents now who were asking for it to see what potential block clubs or neighborhoods actually needed. Is there a cost associated right now with how much it will cost to replace the black lights or provide LED lighting because I have never heard an actual figure?
Well, I think it's a rolling figure based on labor costs. And but the problem with the midblock light is there's one in the middle of the block and you don't it's not a matter of adding one light you have to move that midblock light to the other side of the block so that labor is a compounded you know factor in terms of the cost. So we right now roughly estimate I believe it's right around $2,000 per block. To do that. There were what roughly 8000 blocks, mid blocks is that sound right? There's there's roughly 8000 mid block lights so the math is right there. I think when we initially fix the lights in the city, there was a sense of urgency to get light everywhere as quick as possible. So I think what we're experiencing with this issue as well as the as well as the alley light issue is you know us coming to the next phase of a city in terms of its infrastructure, you got over the triage phase. Now we're at the point where we're looking to what we want to see for the next generation and that's definitely a policy decision for the City Council, our board and the mayor to make together we can help facilitate in any way possible.
All right. Well, I'm definitely looking forward to those conversations. I know the last six years you've been here and I've talked about those two things every single time. And so I would love to see some progress on it. And then also, as relates to the alley lighting based on the resident black clubs that actually requests alley lighting that should be able to give you some data as to who's in need. And who's interested in it and using that to quantify how much it will cost to provide that service. So would you be able to provide that because I want to move this to Executive Session. But would you be able to provide what block clubs or neighborhoods have requested alley lighting and which ones actually have it?
Do you know we don't have that
information? Okay. Well, I know I have it for district five, but I will move this portion to Executive Session just because I want to continue to talk about it and figure out what we can do to assist those who are in need of ally lighting. So there is a motion to do so. So all right Hearing no objections we will add that portion to Executive Session. or Yes.
You actually want to add mid block as well.
I wasn't going to but if there's a motion and we came here motion to do so. Alright Hearing no objections, we'll add that as well. Thank you Mr. Whittaker. All right. We will go from two questions from my colleagues and we will start with councilmember Santiago Ramiro. Thank you, Madam
President, through you to our PLA Good to see you all. Since we're talking about DTE, and replacements of poles. I was wondering if you could explain with the public, to the public, who's responsible for what and what the partnership looks like for DTE when it comes to identifying dangerous trees or old poles. Just trying to figure out who's responsible for what and if you guys partnered together to ensure that you're identifying old dangerous trees or poles that need to be replaced.
Let's see if it has a streetlight on it for the most part is going to be a city asset, a PLA maintained asset now if there's an active power line on it, then it will be a DTE asset. There is some overlap. We communicate regularly with DTE on issues of safety So when our field staff goes out and there's an issue with DTE they know exactly who to call and they get someone on site immediately to mitigate any hazard from from from that as far as the agent of the poles DTE maintains their system and we maintain ours from a preventative maintenance bases. I can tell you that they're going through a significant capital upgrade to harden their system within the city. So there is significant investment going on. Likewise, we we do our own monitoring of our poles and we will tell them if they have something they need. They'll tell us so we have that communication but it's not an integrative capital plan because the assets are owned by separate entities.
Understood and did the truth Thank you.
I have other friends that I can send over a question that I sent over in a memo their district specific the really followups regarding some of the violet flooding that the President's plan to replace in District Six, we can follow that up in the memo just to receive that information in writing. I think the only other question that I have for you all is you mentioned that you do have a plan of replacements. Wondering if there is a strategic plan of search of sorts to make sure that we are replacing what needs to be replaced and and what the ultimate goal is when it comes to investments of technology. So what we're looking at and what that strategic plan looks like.
Well, I will turn that over to Jan Jan was brought on two years ago for this specific purpose and she's I will say the most talented planning capital, you know, Guru that I've met in my 12 years here so I'm fully confident that we have a plan in place to address the issues in your question.
Does that say at all? Thank you balling Madam Chair. Yes, we have a long term capital plan that traces the entire life cycle of all of our assets. We're looking and working with the city on what are the actual requirements of the system we have. You're raising a couple of questions related to modernizing and of course we're talking about expanding as well. The system the plan we have right now is focused on state of good repair. So we are doing advanced planning we have in the audience today our plan maintenance analyst who has stood up a specifications committee, and we've actually made visits to look at smart technologies, you know that it's coming and we want to be ready for it. I don't know if we're going to be first out of the gates. A lot of places have already deployed that. But when you understand the system and all the ways that it's customized to different neighborhoods, it does put you in a position to start rolling out pilots or project by project with respect to the remote monitoring. We're also the plan maintenance team is also looking at the actual specifications we use in the materials that are the most durable. That's an ongoing activity every year. So much coming out in the field. We have a brief summary of the plan that will be circulated among the members through the budget office as well. So you see a lot more of the detail behind the slides that I showed you. Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you through the Chair, Madam President. This brat one more question to me. Would you mind if I ask this? Thank you talking about technology one thing that just came to mind is some polls some places have pools with solar attached to them. I'm assuming this will of course look different on have we talked about potentially having city assets utilize solar technology to lights? Of course I know that we work with DTE for for for the connection but if it's city assets, if it's if it's if it's our own technology, have we considered utilizing solar to provide lighting? I
think in isolated areas that may be okay, but the technology just isn't there. Yet. And I say that because the sun comes out during the day. Obviously lights come on at night and you can't power them simultaneously with the energy so you have to have a battery. Oftentimes that battery's lifespan lifespan is significantly less than the light so you have to switch the battery that eats up a lot of your maintenance costs and in the form of labor. The other thing that really concerns me is the technology hasn't really been proven on scale yet. So there's no redundancy. So say you have a weather you know variation in the state that we haven't had before and they're not able to charge all the batteries. If you have only solar lights, all your lights are gonna go out. So I'm reluctant on the solar side of it to get too far down the trail until I see some other municipality leverage it at scale. Once we see someone else to do it and we see it tested then then we can go in and do it. I'm a firm believer that you know, everyone wants to be the pioneer but I don't like being a pioneer. I like being a settler because then you know what is gonna you know, the successful on what not what's not. So that's kind of my approach to it. I'm more than happy to look at it and continue to look at it. We don't let it go by the wayside, but it's not something that we're planning on trying to implement anytime soon.
Okay, through the Chair. Thank you. And I completely understand right you, you want to make sure that you're following best practice. I would like to go make a motion to include folder discussion into Executive Session. This might just turn into a closing resolution, but just thinking proactively and ahead. What we should be looking at right now for a potential solar investment in the future. So Madam President, that is my motion will carry no objections that action will be taken. Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you, Council Member, Council Member waters.
Thank you and good afternoon. Good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
was like I need to know if you can talk a little bit. All right. So, um, how much of your infrastructure does DTE use? And is there something more we ship a requiring them to help us build a stronger system and also address a lighting in Highland Park and how it may or may not affect boring, bordering Detroit? Residents and businesses.
The only overlap and infrastructure that we have with DTE is we may put some of our lights on their pole and we use their electricity to buy electricity from DTE to power our lights. But we maintain all of the lights and we own all of the poles. And the overlap with DTE is purely in the sense of they have a power line power pole right here. We may put a light on it.
But that's you that's not DTE using our infrastructure is this is the reverse
yes previously DT PLD had power lines and DTE had power lines and they both commingled the infrastructure so there weren't dual dual power lines in the same place. Once PLD went away. PLA still uses some and a limited basis of DTE power poles but DTE no longer uses the city's poles. So there isn't DTE assets on city owned assets anymore. Oh, awesome.
Okay. All right. Then I'll move on to my to my next question that that I want you to explain. And we have some that will email to you as well. The public act 392 of 2012 and that was introduced by Dr. Stallworth during that time in 2012. And I want you to one talk about you know, its successes, its failures, the efforts that you've put placed into it. The percentage of Detroit businesses as well as the workforce, where are we with that? And explain the legislative intent of public act 392 of 2012 and I'd also like to know because I'm curious, your thoughts, in terms of what did you think the sponsor Dr. Stallworth would have to say about how this whole thing is doing how was working at this time, and and we know that it was put in place because of prop two because we couldn't hire or select bonuses based on race and that kind of thing. So tell us about it. Thank you.
So what you're referring to is the best value Legrasse
value program. That is correct. Yes. So I
was a party to that at the time. And the intent was to ensure that the dollars being spent, stay recirculated within the local economy to the best extent possible. So when we look at contracting, I think it specifically revolved around contracting and how are we leveraging the businesses within the city to provide a service for for the city? It was very loosely worded, though it was very, you know, left to discretion. And initially it was was a program that did focus on contractors and those contractors, putting money back into the city, they would take a portion of their revenue that they got from PLA and reinvested in the side program. When I came aboard, I wanted to not only continue to do this stuff on the contractor side, but also incorporate workforce development and more of a culture at PLA that everybody instinctively did the things that were intended in that legislation as part of their everyday, everyday work. So all of our vendors, nearly all of them are Detroit based businesses that goes without saying but what we've done is expanded that to include workforce development both internally in our office and also with our contractors and in DeAndre Brooks, has put together what I believe to be one of the most innovative programs in the city in terms of attracting Detroiters into the skilled trades, and they've historically been left out of that. So I'd like Dre to take just a couple of minutes and talk about the plant program and what its goals are and what we've been able to achieve. All right, good afternoon.
So we initially worked with our contractors reached out to our contractors and told them what our idea is. We're also sat down with the IBEW Local 17. Collectively, we came up with this plan to bring Detroiters into the skilled trades. They realized that there was there was a deficit there's a deficit of Detroiters for that can qualify for skilled trade jobs. So we're offering them an opportunity to come in to up under our full work with our contractors learn the business. We're giving them all of the tools that they will need to actually apply for an IBEW Local 17 apprenticeship program, getting them to that process through the interview process, as well as the following steps once they actually get into the into the actual program. So we have a program that is set to give individuals an opportunity to make money learn a skilled trade to develop themselves for their future.
And so and thank you for that, because we do have DTE participation who comes to who participates in our skilled trades, task force meetings on a monthly basis they come out and and explain exactly what you're talking about. And and, and do recruitment. So we do appreciate that we were happy when when DTE decided to join us. So so thank you for that. So percentage wise, in terms of businesses, as you said the majority of them is that is that 90% Is that 80% And then the workforce in terms of Detroit, where's that?
I can only think of one business off the top of my head. That's not Detroit based that we got major relationship with Pfizer qualify that. But that business moved to Detroit they established a presence here so obviously they're a national company, but I was part of their contract they committed to establishing an office in Detroit, the employees, you're working out of that office. So that's how we kind of mitigated you know, the aspect of having one that wasn't a Detroit based business. As far as workforce. You know, it fluctuates obviously, because we have contract crews that go on and off property, but we historically have been north of 70% Detroit based okay. What we also do, though, is recognize that let's be clear, there's not a issue of people not wanting to hire Detroiters. There's something else going on here. So we encourage our our contractors to look beyond the borders of eight mile and entrust the root cause and not just, you know, the symptom of it. So on top of the Detroit residents, we have a good number of minority participants that don't live in the city and we found that that is good. For crew morale. It's good for the industry. And we intend to continue to encourage our contractors to do that. We got to be careful about requiring them by if you work with people and you have a good relationship. We found that they have no problem working with us on this aspect. So oftentimes we get 75% of our crews are alright,
well that's really good. Then finally I would just say it sounds to me, I think I heard you say that. You did some things to enhance the best value program and is that what you're saying? Yes. All right. So that's a real good thing. Okay. All right. Thank you so much, Madam President. Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember Robbins. Thank you, Madam President. I don't have any questions to solve. LP DS list and we will be sending any additional questions in addition to that, so thank you all for the work that you do. Nutrition. Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you pro town. Council member Johnson.
Thank you, Madam President. And the question that I had had been asked. I do just want to double down on council president's requests relative to alley lighting. In District Four, I tend to get a lot of commercial businesses asking about alley lighting. And as we look to activate or reactivate many of our neighborhood commercial corridors, I think that's something we need to be mindful of because a lot of the businesses utilize the alley for parking. And so I've gotten a number of requests about that. But I would like to get some additional information about the proposed bond measure.
The Chair, I believe the budget office is preparing a fuller package for you. Because the bond proposal includes three other entities besides PLA PLA has prepared some in depth materials. The thrust of it, as I mentioned in earlier remarks, is to go through the highly trafficked corridors, the ones that were the most accidents are happening. The ones that account the 118 miles that we could do under this bond, account for over a third of the pull knock downs that we typically experienced in the year that 400 to 500 hole knock downs that we experience every year. This is a safety initiative. That would be beneficial to pedestrians, bikers, etc. As well as vehicles. It would be business friendly in terms of evening out and making the lighting more attractive for nighttime activity on these corridors. We are able to go the highly traffic corridors bring us throughout every neighborhood of the city under an 18 Miles gets us to about I think it's about 40% of the you know, corridor throughout the city. So it is a lot of detail to it. And we'd be happy to meet and talk more about that when budget puts its package together.
One of the things that sorry.
A couple of things that we considered when we when we entered into this discussion was we wanted all the money to be spent outside of the central business district of all the money that's being invested downtown. We wanted the taxpayer funded money to be out in the residential areas. And it is. Again, it'll be taking up a lot of it'll be addressing a lot of the legacy issues from from the old PLD and we also wanted to make sure that it was addressing issues in each all areas of the city. We didn't look you know, heavily focused on one geographic area. We wanted to make sure that there was equity throughout the city. So we did look at a number of scenarios to ensure that all the council districts have appropriate coverage within the program as well.
Okay, thank you. But so it sounds like all of the lighting that you're referring to relative to the bond is street lighting within the corridor, no alley lighting to accommodate the corridor necessarily. Yeah,
this bond program is not to expand the footprint of the system. There are parts of the system that were not fully restored in 10 years. ago, there are legacy polls that have since become obsolete out of date, and those need to be fixed. So this is keeping what we have up to up to date and not adding additional lights to the system per se as we spoke before. Once this portion gets done, then we can look towards how we can expand the system with nuances like additional lights or smart technology things of that nature. But this part of the system is in dire need of modernization lest we risk having it fall over due to wind and things like that some of these polls are that old
Mr. Corley,
amen president so you know as we know, about $12.5 million in usually use a tax revenue is to pay off the bonds. And so are you saying that there's no room available to cover $22 million from that debt service that you receive because you're building up a reserve of about $20 million or so. So you say you have no room from the $12 million, that $12.5 million that you get every year to do the $22 million investment?
Unfortunately, no. The reserves that we have, were already allocated to replacing the fixtures. So think of the reserves we have as a means to replace the fixtures and keep the lights on and think of this bond proposal as a means to which the keep the lights on top of a poll. So they're separate linked, obviously, the $12.5 million annual bond funding that we get is fully allocated to repayment of our current debt service. I believe there's maybe $400,000 available on top of that, but I don't think we can meaningfully you know use that to retire debt. Right now the capital markets and interest rates are such that it's not optimal timing for refinancing. So, this debt service is not necessarily PLA specific in that it was authorized by voters I believe in 2002 2004 and just was never executed. So this is an execution of a previously approved voter voter approved bond initiative. So short answer is no we there's no way for us to do all of this with our current Finance, Financial scenario.
President Yes, just one more. Thank you so much. So, um, as as Janet indicated, the mirror is looking to do a bond sale and total about $46,000,000.20 2 million out that would be a part of this 46 million. So I'm just asking, Mr. Johnson. We want to make sure we have the necessary voter authorization available or this or do you need to go back to the voters to add more authorization by authorization and that's it.
Thank you. Mr. Coralie.
Thank you, Madam President and through the chair to Mr. Corley and to the rest of this honorable body. The administration does have we do have the existing voter authorization voters approved these authorizations in 2004 and 2009. Obviously, a lot happened in the city between then and now. And we are finally moving toward getting the last of these voter authorizations out. So this resolution we're bringing to issue bonds, including the 22 million for the public lighting authority would extinguish the last of the voter authorized bonds. So if any future bonds were to be needed, what would desire to be issued? We would need to seek additional authorization via the ballot from Detroit residents.
All right, thank you. Remember, Jackson used to have a Florida Thank you,
Madam President. No, I'm just looking forward to receiving the details details on where these, the $22 million will go as you talked about, essentially just addressing the the current infrastructure and not necessarily adding anything but just looking forward to that. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you, Councilmember Johnson, member Doha. Thank you,
Madam President. And good afternoon to you all. The question I have is just if there are any new initiatives or activities for 2025 Are you guys expected to lease any excess capacity to private on fiber that may exist throughout the city
the PLA will won't be connected. We're not allowed to generate revenue from from such services. John can talk to how they will be doing some of the things we're doing that we didn't mention today. We'll continue to work with the telecommunication providers to ensure 5g and continue to ensure that they're getting as much of this out to the neighborhoods as possible. Let's see we have a lot of short term projects that were that we're doing. I think there's some some issues, some areas that we're going to bury some wire for some special projects, and we're going to increase our ability to respond to outages by having some additional crews come on. So from the PLA perspective, it's business as usual, aside from the capital plans that we've already talked about. And John, if you can talk about what you're doing on
like last year, we build out $1.5 million in conduit rentals to the city Detroit. So we have all the major players using our assets underground. So Detroit from your verizon deal rocket fiber so we do open all our condo rentals with city treasurer them to us actually encourage them very much so because around us RSM digging up the roads again, we encourage them to use our infrastructure.
And just as a follow up, do we have any expected Do we have any expectation for revenue on this upcoming fiscal year relative to leasing
which probably grows every year by about 10 to 15%.
Well, we will be looking forward to that obviously, even maybe asking you to come in front of our BFA standing committee, just to take a little deeper dive in that I think that's a very important aspect to generating revenue that a lot of folks particularly residents don't know about when we talk about right aways and things of that nature. My second question just revolves around the master plan. When we look at you know, redoing the master plan, has there been any conversation any cross pollenization between you and PDD relative to the master plan, any input from you guys how lighting will affect the rest of the city and some of these other corridors that the administration plans to set a footprint?
Through the Chair, we have been working closely with a number of city departments DPW planning and development. Some of the analysis that we've done has been done jointly, I mentioned about traffic safety, and the whole like, some of the timing in which we're deploying our replacements and improvements are in sync with theirs. DPW has a new road safety. I believe it they have two grants for Road Safety, and we're working hand in glove with them on that as well. I think there's some longer term conversations, as we mentioned, and we're certainly prepared to have those conversations with them.
Just Just to follow up anytime the city does undertake a project that requires lighting, we either do the lighting portion, or we approve the lighting portion, ensure that his designs meet our specification for maintenance because what we don't want to do is have people go rogue and install stuff that and have us maintain it without us knowing what type of materials because that drives inventory issues and affects our response time. So, you know, every department knows who we are, and we're very much embedded in in the city's planning. I do think that you know, there is opportunity for us to be more involved in everything we do and City's master plan is one of those and we'll make sure to inquire and ensure that they're there. They know our resources are available to them for that purpose.
And I hope that she would I mean, I think you touched on a strong point, which is part of the premise of my question as well. You know, obviously, when these plans get going, I think we've talked about this before, right? You have a project, then a project gets done and lighting gets done all to come out then find out you have to redo it or dig it up and then that costs additional money. So additional resources coming from the general fund. And one strong point may I mentioned I think we've talked about this before just about that working relationship between the utility companies. So for instance, let's say if someone comes in tears up the sidewalk to fix the water or whatever the case is, and then we repave the sidewalk, and then now the tea has to come in and then we have to tear up the sidewalk again and then we've got to rebuild it. Again, that partnership, working close together when everybody can come in at one time and do that and then replace what is already there and put the infrastructure back whether that sidewalk or whatever I think is just very important, particularly on the DPW side when we talk about our capital outlay, or when we say outlay, something like that from the legislature again, but capital or capital, the capital agenda that exists and talking about pushing out those silos that I think that cross pollination is important and I think it starts right at the master plan. Getting it together at that time and saying these are the projects coming forward. This is our timeline where we all are going to come together and do and accomplish these projects. So we can kind of make it I don't wanna say a one stop shop but just you know, one hit at one time. So look forward to having further conversations obviously have multiple questions. We're going to see you I think we're just for the public to know because someone asked, I think I have to bring you back sometime this year, because we have to go over the audit report that we had last year to see where your progress has gone, as well. But I'm looking forward to that. And again, thank you guys for the work that you do. Thank you, Madam President.
All right, thank you member Doha. Councilmember waters.
Thank you, Madam President. Just quick question for you guys. Do you believe that the best value program could probably work in other departments here at the city?
I think from a culture perspective it should work in every department intuitively. I think it does in a lot of cases. I think one of the things that that is unique with PLA is is for better or worse. We've been given some autonomy to make some stuff work and kind of chart our own path and our own course in which we've done so could it be completely emulated? No. But I think it's an example. I think we're good example of what what departments can be if they put their mind to it. So you know, I'm proud of the work we've done and I'm more than willing to work with anybody to replicate that you know, throughout the city anywhere because I'm so glad
you said that. Madam President, can we move the best value program to Executive Session?
All right, Hearing no objections, objections that action will be taken.
Thank you. Thank you. Well,
thank you member waters and thank you to before we close out Mr. Whittaker, yes.
Just wanted to ask in anticipation of the mayor's solar panel project. This either your departments have or either of the entities that you represent, have any role there.
PLD does not have any of that project.
I have institutional knowledge so if people need to bounce ideas off me sometimes I'll get a call but it's not something that really includes PLA other than we use electricity and they're looking to offset city use of electricity. So in terms of quantifying the electric use for the streetlights where we do that and we can talk about other things just because I have industry knowledge but nothing formal.
Thank you, Dr. Whitaker. Mr. Corley, anything else? Okay. All right. Thank you all for being here. And that will conclude our budget hearing for the POA and the public lighting department. Thank you so much. All right. We will move to no one's here. In person for public comment. So we will proceed to our online public comment and how many callers do we have?
Good afternoon, Madam President. We have 10 callers for public comment. And the first caller is ADOS Detroit.
All right, good afternoon
All right, good afternoon.
Right, um, alright, let's come right back to this caller please.
Okay, the next caller is William M. Davis.
Good afternoon, Mr. Davis.
Good afternoon. Can that be heard?
Yes, you can.
I was really wondering, you know, and that I have a number of dealings with public lighting over the years. I was really wondering is it that public lighting cannot generate revenues like they used to they used to generate revenues like say with steam and lights and what have you. And also I find it fascinating and disturbing that the fact that public lighting is not going to be involved with the with the solar arrays. Also, I believe that it should be a great app made to make sure most city buildings are able to generate power and you know, be able to maintain it. So I think that public lighting can and should be more utilized, unless there's some language that I'm not familiar with from the bank roughly that keeps them from actually generating and selling power because they used to be able to sell a variety of different types of power. And they used to be an excellent source of backup for major equipment throughout the city, Detroit you know, so that we don't have no major air pollution excursions or contaminants going into the river. You know, so I think that we know we need to be exploring all sorts of ways that the same to Detroit could be generating power, be it through wind, solar, hydro, and, you know, all sorts of ways that the city should be able to generate it and possibly be able to make money and also be able to possibly pay off some of these debts to the city heat going into on these different bond debts just highly questionable at times. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Davis.
The next caller is Cindy Dora. Good afternoon.
I used to work 82 to 86. I worked for public lighting department and then the lamp room and as a mechanical helper, Mr. Husky, but I went back and Grinnell where we used to work out in Fern street light maintenance. And this is after the bankruptcy it looked like a ghost town that went up there. I was asking somebody what do you still have those cards for? I think they're five by eight or something big cards that they use to keep track of every poll that we own. And they said no Petey had those destroyed but evidently you do. They did keep a record maybe a digital record for our light poles work because I thought we could have been providing internet to people maybe you know, and I just want to propose a different type of budget. Maybe it would be best instead of giving tax breaks. I want to do to get state of the art infrastructure that we owned all the pipes underground, and like dirt, sand, dig want replaced make a state of the art infrastructure separate the sewer from the storm water, give it a separate drinking line, so we can make sure we can purify water cheaply and compared to try and purify all of it for drinking and get internet pipes and run a couple extra pipes to that we can run out to some people. If we can't afford to put all the wire in the pipe we can make a deal where eventually we will own all that wire and DTA turn it over we'll have a public utility instead of this type of political system that dt is and it's and we are and we don't really have a good choice. A lot of times so that's I just want to propose that you try and fix the downtown infrastructure and and focus most of the budget there instead of piecemealing like you're doing
alright, thank you Miss Daraa
the next caller is d to victimized over tech senior
Yes, good afternoon.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, well, I do work the public lighting Whoa, 30 years. And Mr. Davis almost had a right. DTE was the backup Republic lighting. It is not vice versa. We own public lighting owns all those poles. Both Taylor's not even an engineer. He shouldn't even be in there. He was instructed to instruct them and giving public lighting away he was very instrumental in that you know in lining everything up for himself to have a look cushy job. Neither him nor Mr. To do primax are engineers. So this is why you have so much you know both tabs are still talking about well, yeah, well, you gotta have a battery. Well, that's exactly get a battery then. You know, so if something wasn't workable, then the mayor wouldn't be going around trying to get these solar farms. It doesn't even make any sense. Even to a dumb person. It wouldn't make sense. So I just want to say that we need to get the proper people into city jobs. So we can, you know, make some progress. But another thing when I was working there, we had backup generators to all of the fire stations and police stations just in case because you will have cable failures. You will have storms so you have to design in minus one which needs redundancy. You know, you can't just have a straight line and think you're gonna have redundant power. And that's basically what DTE is. That's what it is, is putting up poles, but they don't own any of them. Within the city. Now. ordinance number 00 114. Do you have wires in the air? That's our ordinance. So the city of Detroit owns all those. All the utilities. I have all the records. I can prove it to you and we need to get the validation on these guys experience. They have no no reason. You know, we shouldn't have them sitting there if they don't know what the heck they're doing. And if you don't understand what they're saying, then you gotta find somebody who can tell you what they're saying. Don't get me a fish out of water. Thanks.
Okay. Thank you. The next caller is phone number ending in 124.
Color 124 Good afternoon.
Good afternoon caller 124.
Okay, can we come back to this caller please.
Okay, the next caller is Betty a Varner.
But Atheneum is foreigner.
Did afternoon, Madam President and to all within the sound of my voice. BARRY BROWN The president of soda Ellsworth black Association. I want to speak today this afternoon about expired products that my community we see my neighborhood Saturday. Some of us we see two boxes on our porch. The boxes contained a hand sanitizer on the bats. It said it didn't have our names or anything on it not addressed to us. It said consumer commodity and it also said that it expired. The product expired. June of 2023 the actual hand sanitizer container had the words Biosilk on it. Now I want it. I'm trying to find out what's going on. You know, it seems like now there's somebody thinking that this neighborhood is where you come to do Your dumping. And now, this is going to be the area where you come and drop off your expired products to my community No, I want to know if there's anyone on the council members can find out has any other neighborhood received these products or any type of expired products. But this is a no no. And I want to know is there any way we can find out if what company or organization is doing this? They should not be giving out expired products to any neighborhood. It wouldn't happen in the suburbs, and we don't want it happening in our neighborhood. Please consider continue to support my brother and I activities. Thank you for this time.
Thank you so much. Miss Barnard. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. I am not aware of that taking place anywhere else but I'm sure that member Dora Hall can work with your office on getting the appropriate information to look back into what you are referring to this morning this afternoon. Yes, member Doha.
Thank you, Madam President and Miss Varner. If you can give you a line to call, right. You know after you get off of this session. We'll look into it and get the information out of folks that are on that box and try to figure out where it came from for one and then for number two, we'll contact some of the other residents throughout the district and see if that has happened. So thank you for calling Miss Varner.
Thank you so much. Miss Varner. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. We appreciate you Thank you. All right, our next caller please.
The next caller is Mr. Foster.
All right, Mr. Foster, good afternoon.
Good afternoon. I want to say appreciate you guys. It's choice in the fire commission. You really bring in that department of law. I think one of the good things that may help the department if you guys get added on there is more like social support then public service and notice line and work is easy to you know when you're away from your family not to have a lot of social support and another thing for the fire department really been advocating for is to get Dalmatians. I think the kids would be more involved. I think it would bring a lot of character to the department. And it'd be something that really could help transform our community. And I appreciate everything. You guys been doing during this budget asking all the right questions. I know you can't ask them all at once. But I do appreciate all the tough questions you guys asked to try to bring relief to our community. Appreciate you all working with the mayor's office. You know, I think everybody expressed that very well. They got good relationships with the mayor's office. That could be possibly why we're getting good results this year. So keep up the good work. And as I said, I appreciate you guys.
Thank you, Mr. Foster, we appreciate you as well. We're always being engaged. Thank you, sir. Our next caller please.
next caller is black bag Roo.
All right. Good. Afternoon.
Can you hear me clearly? Yeah. Folks, can you hear me clearly?
We can hear you Mr. Crowley go right ahead.
Okay, now you're ahead. Janice Rafi and Deena Avery Walker. Come in here before you're doing a budget. Here's an excerpt with some morning money. 40% increase, or rip 20% of the city's annual general operating budget needs to be earmarked for Detroit's youth. The black youth especially especially the black youth, because they've been getting robbed you have been taking aid money and they've been getting diverted to everything tall, shiny buildings, dog parks, all kinds of nonsense. And we got absentee ballot fraud. Now I confirmed it when she told Janice Winfrey Detroit City Clerk about the investigation, not leading up and knows nothing substantiated. That's probably caught. It's been demonstrated proven with bear trap. ironclad still to prove on video or y'all got the video. Now what needs to happen in Johnny to call for and find out who Mary Elaine Declan is because one to eight for two Detroit, Michigan on Sussex street for a two to seven is a Detroit voter trap house as the new vernacular in the lexicon Detroit story history. We've been getting cheated. Some of y'all on that city council right there. Have been cheated in it looks on your faces tell everybody in attendance the story. Everybody else in here the city workers in that room with Tom No. And I'm telling you to y'all know I'm telling the truth, and the next person and insinuating that I'm alive. I'm gonna demonstrate on them this who black bag Louis is not been around for 40 years. With a stand up reputation. I'm not gonna let a jmz tape I'm Mary Sheffield and Scott Benson and Fred Dewar Hall, your Gabriella Santiago, the mirror, disrespect me insinuate that I'm coming forth with bad information or misleading the public. enjoy hearing that clearly. And I mean every word I say down to the final day.
Our next caller please.
next caller Steven hollering
Yes, we can hear you good.
Well I have to disagree with the last comment. Public comment was definitely misleading the public. There's no question about that. But regarding I know the airport was discussed today, I've never really seen any like community outreach for the airport. Like I don't really know much about it. But you know, I've never seen any, like air shows or any open houses or any rally activities for you know, the kids. You know, I really haven't seen much community outreach and I feel like that's something the airport really needs to work on. And the Friends of the airports are doing a great job with kind of, you know, maintaining needed and kind of showing how this is a very iconic landmark in our city. You know, we're probably never going to get back to commercial flights, but I just really wish you know, that silly or just find some creative way to really get it, you know, have some meaning because, you know, when I drive by it, I barely see any planes there. You know, I don't really go into that area much but, you know, the P times I do I've never seen any plates, you know, there really needs to be more and I just don't know about it. And regarding lightning, you know, there's so many areas in the city because I'm an avid binder, that you know, there's just no streetlights and it's just pitch black. You know, there needs to be some type of light, you know, software map that kind of shows you know, where street lights are working, and they're not working. Because, you know, it can get really dangerous, you know, with all the kids out all the, you know, suspicious activities. You know, I never thought that the lighting department did a very good job. Probably one of the worst.
Right, thank you, Mr. Hari.
The next caller is ADLs Detroit.
All right, good afternoon.
Good afternoon in through the chair. May I be heard as you can. Um, it's been a very interesting afternoon. We have a lot to say about what we've heard today. I know that I do. Engine 57 Mr. Hall, which is in our district, I do believe he says he has an increase. I would like to know why that increase has has occurred. I think this has been going on for some years. And a city council member has a staff member who discovered there must there may be something nefarious going on. I'm interested in why you have business self inspections how that is going to benefit the citizens for having business self inspections, and the Narcan that we have a reduction and you say and the use of them, but we received a lot of money from the federal government and in the opiate disaster that what I would like to know where those funds went, because I from what I understand Wayne County was using them for Narcan and if we have a decrease Where can those funds now be diverted? Now? Are we having a decrease because addiction has decreased or because people are dying? I also had a question about the young man who was killed in the gas station that was had the the clerk who had the ability to lock people in. I've looked up some some code and I think there are some guidelines and I've worked in the security systems and I know that when we came up with card access, there had to be certain guidelines that were followed. I'm not sure if a business self inspection is a good thing when we have this these kinds of things going on in the city and Henry Ford Hospital. If they do health checks, they perform health checks, shouldn't they deliver that information to our our public health department and shouldn't they have some results of those health checks that they have been doing with the police depart I mean, the fire department there's a lot to be said but not enough.
All right, thank you so much.
And the next caller is phone number ending in 124.
Right caller 124 Good afternoon
All right. Caller 124. Going once. Color 124 Going twice. All right, that will conclude our public comment and feel
free to I'm sorry, there were there was one more before you cut off public comment Okay. Joyce E. Jennings.
Okay. Good afternoon, Miss Jennings.
Good afternoon, President Sheffield and council. I would like to address a great need for our students. For Cass Technical High School as we look at departments who are coming and presenting budget and looking to expand whether it's departments or businesses. Cass Technical High School is in desperate need of a track. outdoor track season begins today. Last night, we had the parent meeting, and Coach Baxter mentioned that she only has a $99 budget. And as we look at our school meals being transferred to for other uses, I would ask if we could consider making sure that we have sponsorships to support every need of our school children, whether it's academics or sports, as we are preparing them to be trained up in the way that they should go. If they don't see us investing in them the way they need to be invested in when we get older and need someone to make a decision for us or to take care of us. It's my hope that they don't remember these years and turn a blind eye or snub their nose at us who are in positions to make decisions for them. Today that are essential to thrive. Lastly, I would like to encourage every department as we look at preparing the next generation if we could open our city departments for tours, the operations for tours so that the young people even know about job opportunities that are available for their future. I know there used to be tours of the water department when we were younger, and if we could just look at highlighting what we do as a city to prepare the next generation in addition to just summer job opportunities. Thank you for this opportunity to speak today. Talk to you tomorrow.
All right. Thank you, Mr. Jennings. All right, that will conclude all of our public comment for this afternoon. They just want to make sure that I mentioned that member Callaway councilmember Benson and Councilmember young odd did submit a memo stating that they would not be present today. So their absence is excused. Or Kusano. Thank you so much. All right. Anything else? Mr. Corley? or Mr. Whittaker? Yes, Mr. Corley.
female president so of course we in a second week of the budget hearings, and then we have one more week. And then one on April the first, so I know there's some items going into executive session. And the quicker we can get numbers, you know, to some of the suggestions and executive session you know, the better and just to just to alert you all on page a 53 of the proposed budget. So when you have a chance, look at that, please. Because on page a 33 and a 54. It shows the one time sources that the mayor is proposing now, the first one says capital projects funds on designated $18 million that appears, you know to be a source right and we know that in the past is easier for counsel to do one time things you know versus doing the recurring things because we current, you know, it's harder to find money in that but just want to talk to you about that. And then the third item on a 53 I did not know this they the mayor is suggesting $1,250,000 for the Community Land Trust. Um, and then there's, you know, 2.6 million associated with the ADA accessibility improvements. So there seems to be some things that the mayor is proposing. That's addressing some of the council's priorities. But just to alert you ahead of time. You know, there seems to be $18 million possibly that Council could tap for your one time things. So the quicker we can get start getting numbers in to your suggestions, the better because I brilliant, Miss short, was the one that oh my team thank goodness, yes, she helps to put together the Executive Secretary, you know, spreadsheet Executive Session spreadsheet. So as you know, we have a column of the one time things and then we have a column of the recurring items. So the quicker we can start you know, determining which goals were the better so that when we start going into the second session, which is April, we start April the second that Tuesday, I think at two o'clock on April the second you know, the better that we can provide and then um sometimes council members are saying, you know, maybe that you give us a phrase of what you're looking to do. So again, if you can provide more specifics, that's better for us as well. So, and I probably say this again next week. As they get close to a second session, but thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Corelli. We will try to get to you as much detail as possible prior to our first executive session. So thank you for that. And thank you for identifying a possible source of funding for our initiatives that we can look into so thank you for that as well. Mr. Corley. All right. We will conclude for today in we resumed back again on Wednesday at 10am. Because tomorrow, we have no budget hearings because of formal session. So if there is nothing else to come before us, everyone, thank you for an amazing day. Thank you to all of our departments and my colleagues are being here. And we will stand adjourned and continue on Wednesday at 10am. This meeting will stand adjourned.