Right. Good afternoon. We will call back to order our expanded budget Finance and Audit Committee for the purposes of our budget hearings. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
Councilmember Scott Benson. Councilmember Schrader have a third present. Next. Councilmember Leticia. Johnson present. Councilmember Gabriela Santiago Romero president, Councilmember Mary waters. Council member Angela Whitfield Callaway president, Councilmember Coleman Young the second. Council President Pro Tem James Tate,
Council President Mary Sheffy. President, Madam President, you have more present all right there being a quorum. We are back in session and we will start off with the Detroit Police Department. We have our chief here with us. And whenever you are ready to begin the floor is yours.
Thank you very much, ma'am. I'll be getting started. I'm one moment.
Okay.
And I think we did pass Do you have any friends? Do you have any notes?
Madam President, I'll be joined by a number of my staff momentarily, but we can get started in the interest of time. The agency CFO neveress is here. Give him an opportunity to introduce himself
as the bottom here you go.
Good afternoon, Madam President. Honorable Council. My name is nevers Nazarenko. I'm the agency CFO for the Detroit Police Department. And we're here today to discuss our budget for the fiscal year 2025. And to listen to your comments and concerns regarding the budget. Some of those questions if we don't have the answer will respond to you in writing accordingly to to our established process. And with that, I'll turn it over to the chief of police. Mr. James White. Thank
you again, honorable city council and through the chair. I'll be delivering an overview of our budget and certainly available to answer any questions that you all may have. Once again, good afternoon. It's my pleasure to deliver these remarks. The trip Police Department's FY 25 budget. We are very grateful of this Council's support of the police department of our initiatives over the past nearly three years with your support city has seen record reductions in violent crime, including the lowest homicide rate in over 60 years by the close of last year. Down 33% this year and homicides compared to last year, which equates to 17 Less people being murdered in our city and this is on top of the historic reductions of last year 7.8% reductions in sexual assaults compared to last year 3.7% and aggravated assaults compared to last year. 25% reduction in robberies 2% reduction in larcenies 20% reduction and motor vehicle fests and that equates to 413. Vehicles not stolen this year that were last year. A 23% reduction in non fatal shootings, which is a 33 person count as 33 Less people that were shot in our city this year, as compared to last year. And again, that's on top of other reductions of last year. And then a 33% reduction in contracts and I do want to just briefly go back to the non fatal number. The we all know that a non fatal shooting is a filth murder. I mean essentially someone tried to kill someone and was not successful. So when you are able to see those types of reductions, you're essentially able to equate that to one life not being lost and one family not being victimized. And it's a tribute to the men and women of the Detroit Police Department you all hear me say often. We are not celebrating we our city is way too violent. We still have too much senseless gun violence in our communities, but to see those numbers going in the right direction. And to know that the officers are out there, working very, very hard. It was this council and the mayor that gave record raises to our officers that a unanimous vote from this council. is paying dividends to see a major city like Detroit, who historically has been on the other side of this data point. To see the numbers that we're seeing now and to see the number of officers that have returned to Detroit from suburban communities is directly attributable to the economic and the balance that the economics have provided to our officers. Many of them in our exit interviews I've expressed not wanting to leave DPD but was eight were forced to do so because of the economic situation here. And so I again, cannot thank this board or this council and the mayor's office enough for these raises. These statistics illustrate the impact of DVDs current crime strategies, which represent a modern progressive data and technology driven approach to crime fighting. We know that our city has over 600,000 residents, we know that we have a number of other people who visit work and play in our city. And we know that we have a lot of different attractions to our city, which can push our numbers up to well over a million per year that we have to provide police service to our data driven approach is one that we know we don't have an officer for every corner. We don't have an officer that was just over 2000 officers and policing almost a million people throughout the summer months. We have to do so smartly. We have to use the data to tell us where we need to deploy and again I want to thank this council for their support of this progressive and modern crime fighting approach. Most importantly, these statistics demonstrate what the city's various branches can accomplish while working together. There's certainly accountability with the CX report, there's there's accountability and our process having to come before this honorable body and explain that we are good stewards of taxpayer dollars as we utilize those to to fight crime and to pay our officers. The DPS budget is a manifestation of its of its mission statement to encourage thoughtful decision making and a strong sense of community responsibility through education, equity, empathy, professionalism, transparency, and policing standards properly informed by community input input and civic leadership. Every line item in this budget takes us back to this mission of encouraging through decision making on the part of those who conduct themselves within the city's boundaries from our rank and file to our crime analysis to our public information office. Everything is geared towards accomplishing this mission. As we turn to art to slide three. We're already there. Our work in the community is rich and diverse, ranging from patrol and investigative activities to community relations, including dei and LGBT LGBT LGBTQ responsibilities. Let me restate that including di and LGBTQ responsibilities and assignments. I'll talk a little bit about the DEI when I returned to the department from a brief stint with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights. One of the things that was illuminating to me looking at an organization not from a law enforcement lens was the fact that one area that we could grow in in the Detroit Police Department was diversity, equity and inclusiveness. The proofs of diversity, equity and inclusion isn't necessarily that you have a presence in diversity, equity and inclusion. It's how people feel, and where I thought that we had an opportunity was to make sure that our employee group felt included and felt that and felt that there was equity in our organization and felt that we considered diversity at every level of our organization. So when I returned as chief, selected by this honorable body Council and the board of police commissioners, I knew quickly that I had to bring my number two from Michigan Department of Civil Rights. And I did and she was agreeable to come here and she serves as the department's Diversity Equity and Inclusion officer and has done a phenomenal job of work now is starting to garner national attention. Our organizational chart illustrates how widespread and complex our work is. We have more than 100 different sectors of our department. The organization spans three primary offices, the Office of the Chief of Police, the Office of Phil support, and the Office of Enforcement operations. Under these entities, you will find seven bureaus 18 divisions and more than two dozen sections, more than 100 independent units and include everything from precinct operations to investigative operations to training to HR to crime, intelligence, and many other assignments. The next few slides that you're going to see provide some level of context to the department's budget. Mr. Zarco can provide a breakdown in greater depth. But there are a couple of key points I'd like to highlight for you very quickly. First, this budget request for 2025 is along the same lines of last year's budget. As the chart illustrates, 92.6% of the budget is devoted to salaries and wages. So while the 2025 budget is along the same lines as last year, because of the historical raises approved by this body last year, there is an increase in wages and benefits compared to the prior year. Secondly, there has been a minor change to the structure of DPS budget. As council may know, Transit Police will be falling under the DPS budget upon Council's approval. Furthermore, Homeland Security previously under the mayor's budget is being absorbed into the DPS budget. The bottom line is this after extensively, looking at this, working with the mayor's office and city budget this budget as proposed by the mayor represents our needs, and it's fiscally responsible and identifies the needs of the department to continue operating the department effectively and efficiently.
Turning now to some deliverables. What will Council get to measure the success going into next year as indicated before our measure of success is data? We close out last year with significant reductions in homicides, non fatal shootings, carjackings, and other crimes. Our deliverables for the next fiscal year will be similar. Our target outcomes will continue to be to reduce crime to lower response time and to continue to build trust in our community. An additional layer that counsel will see is community engagement, high level community engagement. One program that council will see very quickly as soon as the weather breaks and stays broken. Is our serve them protect and what that is what the number of officers that we have coming back to the Detroit Police Department. We've implemented a program where the officers will do a community service engagement before they're able to patrol a neighborhood what community engagement looks like? It could be as simple as walking in a neighborhood Each class will identify what they want to do as their serve, then protect obviously the protection is when you're in the car, you making the runs. You're patrolling our streets, but the service model is something they this class uniquely did before they went on patrol and some of those you've seen some last year but you're going to see a more concentrated effort this year. Foot beats bike patrol, you may decide to help a senior cleaner front yard to introduce yourself as a member of the Detroit Police Department but we want you to have an individualized story to tell about being a member of the Detroit Police Department and contributing to the community. Our continued efforts will be to hire additional officers civilian professionals. You'll also see an emphasis on putting our civilian professionals in seats that are currently held by police officers to put more officers on the street. We will continue our partnerships with educational institutions to ensure that our members have access to education and continue to build diversity within the department as I indicated earlier, our diversity is our strength. We are quickly becoming one of the highest educated agencies in the country. We are now doing some research on this to prove that statement. But just looking at the numbers of undergraduate and graduate degrees, you're at a record number. We're working with Wayne State University. We're working with Clara University and it's just been amazing and what education brings to our department is problem solving ability. You've running an organization that this council knows more than anyone. This is a multi multi million dollar business. And contrary to popular belief, crime isn't our business. keeping people safe is our business. Our community is our business. Those people who violate the law represent a small number of people in our community. Our community deserve safety. And when you have a agency that's highly educated with business principles, you're able to make the deployment decisions that we're making now. That are both effective and fiscally responsible. Understand that council has issued a number of questions regarding our budget. We received some of those last week and we're in the process of answering them as we speak. But I'm happy to take any questions that you have now. Thank you.
All right. Thank you. Anything else that we'll be at? We are here to answer any questions or concerns about the budget.
Yes, or no member waters has joined us in pro Tim T. All right. All right. So just want to start off of course by thanking you, chief for your leadership. I always say it I am proud that you are my chief as a Detroit resident first and foremost, and just the work and leadership that you bring into the city of Detroit and one thing I know is that our residents appreciate you as well, too. I see you in and out of our precincts in and out of the streets and we just truly appreciate what you've been able to bring in conjunction with all of the men and women of the Detroit Police Department. So just thank you for your leadership in what you do. And all of the men and women of DPD that work day in and day out. So appreciate you. I wanted to mention we just had a budget hearing with our Chief Judge Macondo. And he mentioned the number one case or the volume of cases coming through the court our domestic violence and I know he reached out to you he's reached out to me and I wanted to ask you, what are we doing to address from the police perspective or through the police department? I'm not sure if it's the victim assistance. But how are we supporting the increase in uptick in domestic violence situations and in the city of Detroit?
Yes, ma'am. It is a major issue and continues to be it's something that we saw an uptick on during the pandemic and unfortunately, it continues to to become even more and more violent. We know that it crosses all demographics. And the victim assistance is one strategy in which that we've deployed. We've we've hired social workers to do the backend work to to ensure that the victims have resources at their disposal. But candidly is going to take a more comprehensive approach is going to take a more stricter laws, frankly, that once someone victimizes someone in a domestic setting, that penalty has to be absolute regardless of the the outcome as relates to that relationship because what we do see sometimes is a lack of prosecution in some of those cases, and repeat offenders and there's I'm not being critical of that at all because there are so many variables that impacts a victim's ability to prosecute one of being financial. Some, some people just don't have the resources at their disposal. They have children, and the perpetrators know that and they're able to use that as a tool to continue the violence. So we're working with our social workers. We're working with victim assistance, but I must say more has to be done in this area. So
I did notice there was a reduction of an employee within the victim assistance unit, and I'm not sure if that why are we losing and I'm not sure what that is a social worker. But can you speak to a reduction in that particular department
there is no actual reduction and that section is covered by a grant. So the there is a movement upon the chief reorganizing the department constantly. That position has been allocated to another call center, however, the total number stays intact. Okay.
All right. Cool. So we have the eight I think, eight social workers that are assigned because I no victim assistance. And we've worked with them before and they do an amazing job, those who are there, the social workers, but I do recall them needing some additional support. And if there's grant money to cover it, that's great, but just wanted to be clear on the amount of actual social workers that are handling CTY.
will pull that number one of the biggest things that we had to do right out the gate was to give them a raise. There was such a demand on their services, and we were under paying them and we were able to resolve that by making some movement with some positions. And that were not feeling that's one of the positions that you saw, where we were able to take those dollars and pay them more to keep them because we had an attrition rate that was really creating a situation that we were not going to have consistency in that role. But now if you want to talk about the positions, Yes,
Madam president I just got the information here on my slide. We did not reduce the number of positions. We now have a position called principal social worker, so basically some type of the supervisor of the other five. He said we had six one line item and social workers now we have principal social worker in the new budget and then five social workers. Okay,
so right now people who are experiencing domestic violence could access these particular social workers for counseling or as well as those who are victim of violence as well too.
So the idea would be that if they are a victim of violence that the the SVU Special Victims Unit would would make that social worker available to them, and then they would start the process of getting them directed to the services that they need it. Whether it be an additional social worker, if they did not want to take the level of going to an independent social worker, then there's some work that can be done with the social workers that we have on staff. Oftentimes, what we find though, is that many of them need specific resources and specific areas that they're coming from. And as you indicated, they do amazing work, and they availed the there's so many different layers, housing and medical care, and sometimes there's an economic issue. They work them through all of those things. And what generally happens when they're done with our social workers, is that there's a natural natural, natural handoff to another group. Okay,
and I guess I'm just making sure we've assessed that department accurately and just making sure that the appropriate funding is there to service the needs of Detroiters that are actually accessing or utilizing victim assistance. Because I think right now it's at like $770,000 and has been pretty consistent at that amount. So
it has, it has and there's also grant opportunities that we continue to explore but what I what I I guess what we have to be careful to not miss characterize, is that they're not taking the they're not providing the Social Work from A to Z. I mean, they do a lot of different pieces of it, but their role is to stabilize the situation to provide safety for the family. Sometimes that includes shelter, but then there are other resources that they have access to to expose the the victim to and get them on the right track. I think initially what we were solving for with the social workers is that they would they will be case managers A to Z and that there's just no model that works in policing when you look at the volume of cases that we get here at DPD. But if you can set them up for success with other resources throughout the city or even the state that's the model that works. And this budget has addressed that and those numbers make sense. And now that you see that additional layer of supervision is someone that can focus on case management and making sure that there's an efficient transition to the resources that each case manager has so that's what that's why you see that consistent number now what you what you don't see there, well maybe they do is the increase to the to sellers. Okay, yes. All right. Okay,
thank you. Well, I'm gonna continue to push in support victim assistance I think is incredibly important in the city of Detroit, not just social workers, but offering services to families of individuals who have experienced gun violence as well too. So appreciate your work on that. Last question is just around auto theft, and I know we approved so many grants for auto death prevention. I see him all the time before Council. We've submitted several memos and I know you can't disclose much detail because you want to protect you know the integrity of what you all do. But it's a huge issue throughout Detroit, district five as well. Just want to know what I can tell my residents how this budget addresses the issue of auto theft, how you are cracking down on I'm not sure if there's a special unit for it, but how this budget addresses this issue of auto theft. Thank
you, ma'am. And so you can tell them that we are on the right track. We have 413 less than we did last year we were off the charts last year. We're using a number of different things to combat the problem. One of the biggest things that we're seeing with auto theft, particularly last year were young folks not to pick on our young people, but it is what it is in terms of social media, driving a lot of behavior. We saw an uptick in auto thefts. Through the Kia boys we saw people emulating what they were doing because they had determined how easy it was to steal a Kia. We are investing in our commercial auto theft unit. They're doing things such as meeting with with high level executives at these automakers discussing some of the issues that we're having for 13 down is good for us. We're not satisfied. We're going to continue to disrupt these these chop shops. We have a very, very comprehensive unit that does a number of different things. One of the things that we're going to do for our residents this year, we've already started is if a car is stolen, and we put we put it in the LPR system and as it drives around, we're going to hit on that LPR. And we're going to have a team of people that are in recovery that are going to be moving with that car and when it shuts down or stops. We're going to make an arrest and we're gonna get folks their car back before it gets strip. We've had a significant amount of success early on with that we're gonna continue to do that we're going to expand that program. We this budget also has asked for a replacement helicopter. Again, I will highlight extremely fiscally responsible. I hope that Deputy Chief bliss is here. Should you have any questions about that, um, that will help us we can't chase these cars through the city. It's too dangerous for someone to lose control and hit an innocent person but cannot run a helicopter. And what we will do is we will use that helicopter to identify the stolen vehicles and where they're headed. And then we will meet you where you're going and let the helicopter tell us the direction you're headed in. And again, we'll recover those vehicles the idea is twofold a make the arrest, get the message out that this is not okay. And be hopefully that message will then be communicated amongst those who choose to steal vehicles. And Detroit will not be seen as a place you can get away with stolen vehicles. But the other thing is we hope that people will say hey, they got a helicopter up there that's totally devoted to auto theft drag racing and drifting. Why don't we do it somewhere else was just stop all together. And that's the goal and that's what we're hoping for. We've seen some promising signs with that last year but are drifting utilize the state police helicopter are very old and they could not stand the rigor that they were put to. But they can do smaller deployments. But the state police helicopter was up to the challenge and we were able to really disrupt a lot of drag racing and drifting. So that's the goal this year. I'm confident that we're going to continue to see these numbers drop, but I'm ready to hold people accountable of facilities, vehicles you saw earlier last month, we had a group of young people who were still in cars off of lots and ultimately that ended up turning into a shooting of an innocent child because of their internal beef, and I'll stop there because the case is still pending. But it doesn't I guess the point of the conversation, it doesn't stop at auto theft. there's money to be made and then people have conflict. So this is bigger than just auto theft, but for our community you lose a car, people can't get to work, they can't get to the doctor's appointments. And so this is not just somebody losing their car for a couple of days. It's being stripped they can't afford the insurance is a big issue.
Well, thank you for that response chief. We do have additional questions that we will submit in writing and I will now continue on with my colleagues and I will turn it over to Councilmember Young.
Thank you Madam President. Chief Good to see you. And I just want to say congratulations on the two areas I think with the shot stoppers program that had reductions of 50% and 70% and violent crime. That's a real big deal. So I'll just say congratulations to you about that. I want to ask you two things. One, I'm about senior citizen buildings. Do we Do you have people that check in to the senior citizen and buildings do that? Well, how often do they do it? Is it based on data where crimes are happening? And do you track you know, via you know, either violent crime reduction or do you track auto theft reduction in these senior citizen buildings because a lot of times, I get complaints about people breaking into the senior citizen ability to do what they're not supposed to be doing. I get a lot of complaints about people taking their catalytic converters and stealing them. So I just want to know, what is it does it the server protect, play into that? And could it if it does it
through the chair it could most certainly play into that but I would like a more exact approach to anyone being victimized, particularly our most vulnerable citizens like seniors. So I'd really like to know specifically and we can do this offline. You can put in your questions, what the response from the specific command has been to to that area, but to answer the first part of your question, we look at all data points, any upticks anywhere in the city, senior citizens or otherwise. Now, my expectation for command is to know where your hospitals are, know where your seniors are living. Know where your specialty areas are in your precinct and to give those the appropriate attention, particularly our senior home. So if that's not happening, just let me know what is that and we'll do what we need to do on that. But that is a measurable that I can only measure the effectiveness of a command team on
so just just just just to clarify. So there's not like I have to be more specific in terms of what I'm asking. It's, it's it's, is it something that you do send on the regular or is it something that someone from that building would have to request board in order for you to have to be able to check in on
them? Well, my again, so through the chair my expectation would be that the commander she or he would know their their senior homes or hospital, okay? And make sure that they have a relationship with whomever manages that facility. But if they haven't bring it to me and I'll manage and then I'll check to see why they didn't because that needs to be done that shouldn't they know that they're there. They know that they're the most vulnerable groups in our community and if they're being victimized, you know, the expectation will be that there has been something put in place that includes but it's not limited to MPOs that are working in that facility talking to the the management team at that facility. If their cars are being victimized, the expectation would be that a commander and a captain would come together with a strategy and make sure that that stops. It's not hard. One unique thing about seeing your homes oftentimes, there's one way in one way out. So if people are still in vehicles then I would expect the command officer to have put some type of strategy in place, but if you could for me that address specifically and I will take a look at it and I'll be happy to follow up with a couple
levels. It all started and thank you for that, sir. I appreciate that. And then secondly, I just wanted to ask you about our police many stations. I know this is something that has been an issue you know back when my father served and he's had for a while, and we couldn't do it before because of budget constraints. And because of lack of manpower. I think now that we're having more officers come into the Fed. Do you think that that's something that could be targeted in certain areas that are I crime that maybe can coincide with shot stoppers, a Shot Spotter, program, a or maybe even be within senior citizen abilities? Do you think that's something that could happen or do you just think because of the strategy and the way in which you deploy your officers, that might not be the best move for what you're trying to achieve? Well,
like you I grew up with administrations and they worked effectively for their time, when we dropped under 3000 police officers to maintain them became quite a challenge because those required officers could be in those buildings. I think the most effective deployment strategy that we have that works in our favor right now. And not that I'm opposed to entertaining in certain areas of the city, revisiting it, but the idea I always ask myself every day and I drive myself crazy with this, whenever we make any decision, what exactly are we solving for solving for reduction in crime, then that means visibility and officers moving and making decisions? What I don't want as a building in 2024, that represents officers inside while crime is happening on the outside and around the building. So I think the most effective way to utilize resources to get them moving and get them engaged in a community, get them asking those questions. You know, maybe we increase bike patrol in the area that you're speaking about, and because I think talking to the community and hearing from them, hey, here's a problem. And oh, by the way, here's what's causing it is the most effective way that we can take that knowledge and make some deployment decisions. So that works for us now, but I'd like to continue to do that. I think it's effective. I'd like to see what what the summer brings with more visibility in the neighborhoods, not on the thoroughfares in the neighborhoods get up and down those veins of the of the city. Talk to those residents get out of that Scout car, walk up and down those streets and not bring them back the old foot beats, but I'm doing a hybrid of it. I want you to park that car, get out and walk past Mr. Mrs. Johnson's house wave and maybe they'll walk up to you to say hey, you know, somebody drops a stolen car here every day at eight o'clock right on that corner. And guess where we're going to be the next day at 755? Okay, excellent.
Thank you so much for that. I'm a male president. I had a plan to move many stations into the executive session, but after that brilliant flourish I don't think I want to say that. But I definitely think that we can have you know, you can just destroy maternity leave. But I do think I would like to move bike patrols and server protect into executive session. So I like to make a motion to move bike patrols in. Sir protect into executive session.
Mr. President. All right. Thank you member young Hearing no objections. That action will be taken. Are you done?
I think yesterday was your birthday. So happy birthday.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thanks. All right. Thank you. President Pro Tem tape.
Good afternoon, Chief. Ian Chang, thank you for all the work you do and please send my best to all the men and women of the Detroit Police Department those who have not already given my best to already thank you for the work that you all do a couple of quick ones I see here. I know that the presentation that was provided to the board of police commissioners I want to talk about the supplemental requests for fiscal year 25. And it indicates there is a request for a contribution to the end DLC for $3 million. I can talk a little bit about that if you will, please. And is this a historical payment or is this something? Yes
through the chair. The City of Detroit has a five year contract with MDRC to handle the DDC operations. And that contract calls for a base amount of $8.7 million approximately 8.8 And then the state of the end of the year doesn't matter as to the actual costs, and then builds us to the difference. The first two three years of the contract, they stayed within the cost, but last year, they notified us that and then they had a few meetings with them along with this list, that the actual cost now is inching towards the 11 million and surpassing the $11 million. So to answer your question is short. The $3 million is the additional cost over and above the contract that you have with them you'll see that we expect to be paid in fiscal year 2025. And for that matter this year as well. Do
we expect? I guess we can it's fair to assume that that number is going to continue to rise that
number it will continue to rise. However DPD is looking because that contract ends and the chief is looking for alternative ways to to handle the DDC operations. Yes.
And if I may add to that sort of the you will remember the consent judgment and when we close out the consent judgment after being in it for almost 13 years. One of the agreements were that we would get out of the prisoner business because that's where a lot of civil litigation came from. And quite frankly, we just were not good at housing prisoners ourselves. The solution at the time, was just the Michigan Department of Corrections. Under emergency management, that agreement was signed years have gone by, and we're looking now to explore if there is and they've been fantastic partners. Let me put that on the record. But they don't have a model like this. To reference. This is the only one in the state that where they do pre arranged prisoners. So it's a challenge for them. as well. And so we are looking at putting this out to bid to see if there's a more effective or efficient way to do this. And we're exploring every avenue to partner with a third party. So yes, the costs are robust, but we think we don't know we don't have any context. To say whether or not we can anticipate a reduction but we will certainly be looking at the most cost effective and safe way to house prisoners going forward and we are very close I believe DC bliss is here can talk about if you if you choose or we can put it in your questions where we are with the RFI process but we're pretty close to getting ready to get this RFP out there. So
just so I'm clear, so there's a five year agreement, but there was no funding agreement that was that came to conclude because I know that when we have contracts, whatever we agreed to, that's the number we agree to until that new contract or RFP is put out. So
currently is this five year agreement, by the way ends at the end of July of this year. And the there is a specific language in that agreement, the five year agreement that calls for the total amount of as I said $8.8 million, but leaves the door open that if the cop actually the cost if they were lower, they were paying us refunds. So in the first two years, three years of that contract, we got money back from the amount monthly amount we paid them, then as the cost increased their labor costs and otherwise, then now they're saying that Okay, now, will you have to pay up for the difference. So the contract is clear on that and there is no ambiguity as far as the the amount.
That's the agreement. So I have a better understanding will ask for more details on it in written in written form. Other questions in chief and I know this is probably gonna be controversial. Excuse me to some folks, and we've kind of talked about it when you came to the D one monthly meeting. The helicopter knows it's been requested here. How much is that helicopter?
Approximately $5 million, but just to clarify, on behalf of the chief that that is not part of this budget. This is ARPA allocated already and approved by this honorable bar.
Gotcha mean but still the
approximately $5 million
and so you have to also how much is the pilot?
He's already sad. Okay. So that's it's, it's already here. On
in the budget, fuel.
We already it's in the budget, center budget.
All that all I'm saying is all these budget items, and so the reason I raise it Okay, well let's see what happened with that. So I raised because again, this is going to be controversial to some folks, but I know we talking about a helicopter, but there's like 1400 police departments that use drones across the country. And what is our how we explored or explored the concept of utilizing drones in some capacity for monitoring, if there is a situation where there is a high speed chase and maybe there's two Unfortunately it happens it multiple times have potentially opportunity to use a drone in that sequence. So can you talk to us a little bit about the thought process what's been contemplated or why why not?
Yes, sir. And it has been explored and we have to do and we have done a lot of work with explaining to the community, the utilization of a drone. We don't think they replace the helicopters, particularly in high speed chases particularly. But we do think that there is an absolute fit for them. Specific to special response team barricaded gun people, folks that are holding a roomful of people hostage and those types of things. We're able to get up on a drone. See inside the building. We also make drones now that you can basically deploy inside the building and if it's destroyed us destroy, but the information that you get from those those high situations and particularly we're seeing again, in our in our country, these mass shootings and things like that there's an application for drones from a security standpoint, as well. As relates to the helicopter we think they work together. We think that high speed chases, area containment, things like that, that you can get from a helicopter you will not get with the drone utilization, but we do think, to your point President Pro Tem that it is time for the department to bring forward a request such as that and with a very responsible deployment strategy and consistent with you know, all of our policies, as well as CX on how it will be deployed and utilize. So we're open to it. We have studied it, we've looked at other major cities. A lot of major cities are going to them and but many are not giving up and I haven't seen and I'm sure someone will will say I'm wrong on this, but I have yet to see a major city give up their airship or I'm sorry, their helicopter for a drone, but I see them working together in
tandem. Yeah, and that's kind of what I'm alluding to when we're talking about budget. It's always smart to think about how efficient we can be with all these dollars that we have, and that we're utilizing and to give more assistance to the department to help bring folks to justice. Of course, there's issues that we have to worry about policy in terms of retention and transparency and those things. I don't want anybody to think as I mentioned this that we want to throw those out the window. It is imperative that we work on some data sharing as well. But it's time for us to have the conversation because we're not have we may not be having a conversation today. But within five years, I guarantee you we're going to be having that conversation based on what we continue to see in terms of the evolution with
policing in general. Chico I want to talk just a little bit about the
My favorite subject or annex over at the eighth precinct. And I know we talked about parking. I know thing we're supposed to have a grand a ribbon cutting this year. I'm looking forward to it but the parking over there is a major challenge and I don't know if there's been any conversation with the Detroit building authority or with the EGC or whoever who can help assist us with how to address that parking issue because as we know, these are seniors more than likely who are first going to dab into you know, that that facility because those are the folks who always seem to lift up our communities first, and be the ones who test out things and then everybody else followed them. Gotta love the seniors. But that's a long walk from all the way back in the Myers. Parking lot. Can you talk to us just about what is being contemplated? Because I'm looking forward to
it? Yes, sir. Um, you and I have been on this journey a long time with this annex. And just for the benefit of the audience. So we've been working on this annex now for about over three years as I've been Oh, yeah. So and but just to bring some context to the discussion, initially, it was going to be torn down. And that would be the parking lot for the for those who were visiting the precinct. I agree that it shouldn't have been. You were right on point you and those who who felt that you did that. There was benefit to that building, and it is now absolutely beautiful. We've finally solved the the elevator crisis there for our seniors, because it was a historical building. There are certain things that had to be kept intact. The cost overruns and everything else to finally get us to this ribbon cutting denim being told is going to happen in the early spring, mid to late spring. will give us some questions, but we're really focused on early spring getting this thing done parking what has been put in place when they built when we decided that the the Annex was not going down those many years ago. There was a relationship built with Meyer, who understood our situation agree that the the library should stay intact, and they were going to provide a designated area for parking when when those events were happening at the annex. So we're going to reactivate that agreement and talk to him about it, get something in writing. And then I'm going to direct the command that when the seniors are there and they're having an event or if anybody's they're having an event they're going to have to have a shuttle service. So we're going to use either reserves or somebody to shuttle them from a pickup point in the parking lot to the front door of the annex. I think that's the best idea that's bad idea we got because there's no way to have parking over there anywhere else because the area that was parking is now the annex. So I think that we can move forward with that. And unless you have any concerns with it, that's going to be our strategy. No,
I have none whatsoever. So in terms of like the shuttle, are we talking about a police vehicle that we already have? Or are we looking at possibly some golf carts and things of that nature?
We have this fiscally responsible budget, sir. So I'm going to use stuff I already have. I'm going to use the in all seriousness we will be using the MPLS van. Those big white vans with the police insignia on the side and they will be bringing the seniors right to the front door. And we'll run that detail. I mean, it's not every day they're there. So if it's a couple times a week, we'll make it happen. We'll make it work.
Last question. Are we thinking about the same concept for bringing the auditorium back to life because I thought at one point it was designed to host police graduations and other ceremonies as well. And it is woefully under
you I agree. And I'm not happy with the utilization of that library. We put a lot of resources into I'm sorry, the auditorium we put a lot of resources into. I think there just needs to be a little more clarity brought to the expectations of that auditorium. We shouldn't be turning folks down. It should be utilized. And I'll get more involved in that. But I think we're already where we need to be with the auditor and we just got to make sure that the motivation is aligned with the directives of my office and I'll make sure I do that.
I look forward to having more conversation about you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. President.
All right. Thank you, bro. Tim Tate Member Santiago Romero.
Thank you, Madam President. Good afternoon. Good to see you all. Thank you so much for your work. The questions that I have, I have I have a lot so I'll send over the ones that I should that I can send over. But the questions that I'll ask here
so the department does really incredible work to address mental illness and supporting our unsheltered population. We have a whole office of workplace and community resilience. When looking at the budgets, I don't see anything set aside it's not clear to me, and I want to make sure that these programs are sustained. I know that receive a lot of grants for a lot of the work that you're doing for the department, but I'm wondering, are we thinking strategically about funding these programs? Because my concern is, you know, 20 years when you're 10 years done with us here, the next chief, how are you going to make sure that these programs stay in fact, and that we are still providing these resources to residents.
I will let Neff start off with the financials and I'll comment on that.
Through the Chair, the personnel for that function is budgeted and there's obviously no reductions. As a matter of fact, if my understanding is correct, 1514 of the supplemental requests of 25 officers will be cit. Working that area. Therefore, the salaries and the operating expenses are reflected already in the budget sustainability as far as the dollars are concerned. We are funding them through our general fund. And although they are some grants in and out the the expectation is that the general fund in the foreseeable future will sustain those operations based on the direction from the chief's office.
And if I can add to that, as you know, ma'am. Mental illness in working with the mentally ill is near and dear to my heart as someone who is a licensed therapist, and I see the impact that mental illness has on our community trauma, as well as resolving conflict. People just are not going through the natural processes of conflict reduction and elevating everything. Not everything but oftentimes too quickly to violence. So we decided when we when we built our budget out is that these responses will not be a one and done. It's not something we're just going to do because we had a little problem is woven into the fabric of the organization. So a mental health care response is policy. A Mental Health Core response exists in the agency, a and that's where you're seeing that really good work of over 10,000 runs they had a suicide jumper this weekend and they were able to successfully talk down without incident of course it didn't get any coverage but but and that's okay, but it's got to be some balance to it because what community doesn't see is all the hundreds and hundreds of times that the officers are doing amazing work that's not brought to their attention. I do think that that's somewhat irresponsible if you're only going to report the times that it goes bad because then in the mind of the resident, it just it always goes bad. And so I'm going to do a better job of highlighting their great work, but we put that in the department and we looked at our personnel we sharpen our pencil we move people around. This is a unit now is it's and it's and it's going to be part of the department and any changes to the organization goals before the Board of police commissioners but anyone who tries to move a position that's so important. Office of workplace and community resiliency speaks volumes of what the goal and intentions are of that unit. In addition to the the the mentally ill is our shelterless our homeless population who are victims of crimes at a greater rate than any other person in our community because of the unique dynamics of their circumstance. And both of those groups are doing phenomenal work. So it's not going anywhere and for anyone to want to change it they would have to go through a multiple layers of process and I just don't think that it would serve any benefit to change it and we've budgeted for it responsibly. Going forward.
Chair Thank you. I appreciate that. And I agree with our council presidents I think I consider myself very lucky to be able to serve right now with someone like you that thinks this way. It's hard to find someone a police chief that thinks that knows that we can't police our way out of crime, police our way out of mental health issues and is being creative and I truly appreciate that. We just had the fire department here mentioned some of their strategic planning because police and fire you are the frontlines you're the ones that are dealing with this every single day. And I don't believe it's going to go away. And frankly, I agree we need to share the good stories, the positive impact that you have. I think it's important for residents to know that if something does arise, they can turn to you and trust that police are trained and trusted, something happens that there will be a consequence. I think that's the only thing that we need to know as well.
How how do you discuss with
fire your strategies? Do you think about ways to work together? Because my one one goes to both your streamlining both conversations. Has there been a concerted efforts to combine your your strategies so that you're able to support each other? Because we're hearing fires interested in doing nursing navigation which should support all of the efforts. So what is that? How has that transition been going has it happening at all? And can that happen so that we can utilize our resources in a more efficient way? Well,
I think first of all that fire commission I talk weekly in sometimes depending what's going on daily, and so we we have a unique situation in police and fire and DPD public safety. So all the calls that come in the call takers, they work together, police and fire. They're right there together. And then those calls are navigated out based on the type of calls that come in. And so you've got your 911 Dispatch, you've got your fire dispatch, and then you've got your call taker layer. Because of the volume of calls that come in. We always talk about ways to gain efficiencies. He's talked to me about utilization of equipment when we've had situations throughout the city where we've needed a fire ladder. He's been right there. Chuck's a great great partner. But when it comes to those efficiency gains, because we have two different domains, two different areas of the city that are very different. We have already explored every opportunity like nurse navigator, right that that is something that we're going to partner on financially because we think it's awesome it's it's it's got two huge components one is to get treatment to folks before the the the MS. Rig even gets there he's trained up all of his I don't want to say all I want to put words in his mouth but almost all last time we talked I think all now but we'll have to tell you that his EMS response team as paramedics so you're getting this professional medical treatment from these paramedics. What's running concurrent with that is the fact that with nurse navigator, you'll be able to direct people to do certain things from a professional lens to provide those services before EMS even gets there. The piece that I'm most excited about is the stabilization of mentally ill folks and to start the conversation with them about tomorrow because many of them are hopeless, helpless and they can't even visualize the next moment, let alone tomorrow. And so I've seen a lot of promising pieces on this nurse navigator, super excited to have it and we're partnering fiscally to make it happen. So it won't be the burden won't be on one. police or fire be on bolt
or the Chair. Thank you. That's exciting to hear. I think both departments are doing really well. And working together gives me a lot of hope for us to be able to be smarter and addressing the issues that we're dealing with. I will further up afford other questions about current vacancies, questions eg mentioned about the education that is being invested in to your officers. I have questions about leadership and what that looks like. And one final question. Just for you to know there's been a lot of concerns that I'm hearing from protesters and strikers
just wanting to make sure that we are aware of the kinds of training officers receive. So I look forward to those questions. Thank you, Madam President. All right. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember waters. Thank you, Madam President. And good afternoon, Chief. Good afternoon. All right. Um, I just, I'm not gonna ask a question. about crime and buildings, but I want to uplift what member Yang said, because I know that we did an extensive write up a few weeks ago sent it in, and the first review was done by BC. Um, the problem is Chief, the management is not always honest. They will say there are no issues here. Then the seniors are afraid to speak up after management gets engaged because they're afraid of being put out. And so I am going to resend all of the documentation that we sent so that you can take a look at it, Chief if that's okay. All right. Um The next thing is I'm going to say basically, I'm going to include it in in one one question because only get to so um, the the the first one has to do and you can respond to them after I finish. The first one has to do with a store honor down on Cass and I'm afraid this this is going to end up being an incident because there are people who come in and take over his parking lot that they're supposed to be used for his customers going into his market. They're taking it over and they are renting out his spot and daring him to do anything about it. I mean, they are getting getting paid for money using his privately on lot. And I'm afraid for his safety, frankly, at this point because they feel like they have a right to do it and so so they're doing exactly that. Um, this other one, I want to just read you a text that I received from an Indian village and West Village and they said good morning, Mary, a group of us met with DPD Commercial Auto Fest on Friday regarding ongoing and escalating incidents of car thefts, and vehicle B's in Indian village and especially West Village. years ago, they were able to deploy bait car, which is highly effective. There's no intrusion on privacy except for someone stealing or breaking into a car. DPD has DPD told us that city council would not approve this. Respectfully ask that this be supported to help neighborhoods. They also need to pay to hire and retain officers. So and so how do you respond to those two things? That's one question ma'am. She
even knew after that, okay. So, is that a recent It is okay. So, I like to kind of unpack when they say DPD set and to hire and retain officers as I started off this conversation thanking this honorable body for the historic raises that our officers have gotten under this leadership. We are seeing record numbers of officers coming back and our attrition rate has gone from 30 a month to single digits. And although single digits those are natural retirements in some discipline, so the raises are paying dividends and we're very appreciative of them. It sounds like that conversation maybe been a little bit self serving by one or two people in attendance, but let me unpack it a little bit more into it. I will say this the first issue you brought up, we're already on that. I did get your message on that. I can't tell you what we're doing. But I just want you to know we're all over that right now. All right, and I'll follow up with you offline on where we are with it, but we're all over it. Okay, and with regards to Indian Village, I'll talk to the commander of the seventh precinct West and West Village, and I'll have a follow up for you this evening. All right. And lastly, the bait car. I haven't brought a big car to this council. So for someone to speak, that council didn't approve it. And I don't know where that's coming from. So someone's obviously misinformed. But I'll find out and we'll make sure that they're educated. Fantastic.
Thank you so much. Now my I'm so happy that you started talking about foot patrol, because that was going to be a question that I asked so I just want to get just a little bit deeper into it at you. And I was going to ask you in the sense of a suggestion that we identified high crime areas for foot control and it sounds like that's what you're probably trying to do. I just think that it means a whole lot for people to see police officers in their neighborhoods and especially in high crime areas. So but it sounds like you've gotten a whole piece together both budget wise and everything in terms of how you going to lay that out. So that's really that's really great news because that my question is gonna be you know, how much money do you need to make this happen? So, um, but I'm a strong supporter of that. I'm out about a high crime area myself. There's some unsolved murders you know, in Lafayette park where I live, um, but, um, I'm just happy that you are headed in in a positive direction. We appreciate it a lot of work chief and I know you can't do it all at one time. Thank you. And so So I just want you to know, and you and you always work so well with us. So I just want to use this as an example if you if you have officers patrolling the north end, for example, of Detroit might actually know 80 year old Agnes Hitchcock has rheumatoid arthritis. And instead of giving Agnes tickets for objective to work, his blocking her garage door when Agnes has to go to the doctor, that foot patrol officer might engage in a positive interaction, resulting in long term citizen cooperation helping to solve crimes. So I want to use that as an example because of the recent incident that Miss Hitchcock had and so forth. But I believe that when we establish those positive relationships, you'll be surprised and maybe you won't cheat because maybe you already know how much people information people will be willing to provide. Just based on those positive file relationships. The way you treat people, it means an awful lot so but I don't guess I had a specific question. When it's all said and done, because you already I was really set on the foot patrol. I've been waiting to ask you about that. And but then you laid it all out. And so thank you so much. Thank you, Madam President.
All right. Thank you, Councilmember. Waters, member Johnson.
Thank you, Madam President. And good afternoon to the chief and the department. I appreciate you coming to the internal operations committee meeting to talk about the impact that the raises had within the department. Thank you for speaking about that when you first started on your presentation, and certainly do appreciate all of the work and seeing the various crime rates decreasing. There is one that I noted in the information that you share with us today that had an increase and I kind of want to focus on that and really just talking about property crime and and how the department is looking to address and reduce property crime because when we think about how we retain residents in the city of Detroit, property crime is probably one of the things that will make a person turn around leave this city immediately. Over a decade ago, before, bliss was running the fifth precinct I worked with the Eastern District Commander. It was Eric Jones at the time on looking at the broken windows theory and trying to figure out how is it that we address the small things before they become much more significant in the community? So can you just kind of talk about what the department is doing relative to property crime I heard, you know, officers being more present and if you're you're driving through and you see someone maybe stop and have a conversation. Is there a greater approach as you mentioned, being more involved in the community community relations, realistically, not enough people attend our Police Community Relations Council meetings. So how do we help people to feel more safe in their community, knowing that perception is reality?
Yeah, that's a very good question. And it's a very complex answer. We got to do a number of different things. Number one. I also subscribe to the broken windows theory and I think what demolition and the land bank has done has helped with crime. Being able to get those abandoned buildings taken down helps us people feel better in their communities, they see these areas being cleaned up and they react differently, which is the premise of the the whole concept behind the broken windows theory. But when it comes to larcenies it's there's a couple of different problems. So a stolen phone or stolen whatever whatever article you may have is treated the same as a stolen packet bubblegum out of out of out of Family Dollar it is it is characterized in our UCR data it's characterized in our state reporting data as a larceny. So as of this morning in a crime briefing this morning, we were looking at the number of larcenies and we've got businesses in around the city that are driving larceny number. specific to that precinct. We've got a precinct that would not have a larceny problem, if it didn't have so many retail frauds out of I'm not going to embarrass the business right now. But this one business, and so what I've challenged them to do and it affects all of us, it affects insurance rates, it affects everything, but it also affects that narrative like you just said, you look at our crime data report. So today, we've got all green arrows until you get to one arrow right? And so listen, is our focus, but it's a complex issue, and we need these business owners to be part of the solution. We're driving down beneath we're driving down I mean, I can't stop folks from leaving a laptop in the front seat for some reason and going into a game I wish I could. But those those petty thefts, you're absolutely right when people hear it especially with the advent of technology, there are people who will make a decision to buy a home in a particular area after they run the crime reports and they see that it's a 60% uptick and larceny says all somebody's gonna break in my house. I'm not buying that house. And so it's affecting everything. So we're gonna, we're gonna be talking to these businesses, about helping us help them. It could be as simple as security. It could be as simple as you know, working with the department, I'm not pushing green light, but that's an option as well. It could be special attention, it could be having a security guard have the phone number of the officers that are patrolling the area or the NPO or the precinct command officers. So we're working through a number of solutions, none of which have been finalized as as at this point, but we can follow up with you on that but we do have a more comprehensive approach as it relates to the B and E's which are not categorizes as a Larson either either home invasion ones or home invasion twos, those there's things that we have done that have been successful. We tried to tell folks who bought a new TV, don't put the box out front. We tried to get people to be very selective about putting their home addresses on the oil change forms. You don't need to give everybody your home address because now they see you got this fancy car that you just got $100 oil change on maybe you use a post office box. We call it being systematically unsystematic sometimes you can look out your door and say John's porch light is on that means he's still home. If he leaves he turns his porch light off before he gets in his car and pulls out. So we tell people don't do that. Don't Don't let people sit there watch by your routine, because everybody may not have your best interests at heart. So those are the conversations that we're having with our MPOs to have with with our community. The other thing and the last thing on this question, unless you have more, ma'am, is we do security assessments with our MPLS are trained to do security assessments. So if somebody wants to know what they can do better to to help secure their permanence, they can come out. They can walk the property line with them. They can tell them hey, here's what we're seeing. Here's when we debrief b&e, folks, this is what they say. Cut the bushes down in front of your house if they're blocking your windows, make sure you have some type of security system now it's so inexpensive you can get a ring doorbell for 100 bucks. And you know it's so many things that you can do not pushing ring I'm not going to work for him or anything like that. Any electronic doorbell company you can get that will help you out. So those are the things that we're doing.
Thank you for that. So you did mention B and E's which is one of the things that I was thinking of. Are you is the department do you have a different policy on responding to security or alarm companies?
That a different policy? We have a policy we had a pilot we changed the policy. I think that's what you're speaking two years ago wasn't aware? Yeah. Many many years ago what was happening is security companies were getting rich off of calling the police on the alarms that goals that were going off, and they were basically utilizing the police department to provide the service for them. And that's changed, I think in the past 10 years to what's called a verified response. And what a very it's it's much more complex that I'm going to make it but essentially, people were leaving their house forgetting to hit the pad before it went off. So then we started ticketing folks for that because it takes a car out of service to come and if you did it more than twice in one year you were getting a ticket. There was a lot of complaining about that we moved away from that. We now only ticket the absolutely most egregious folks, I mean people that are just not even caring about turning the alarm off before the or when we call they're not saying it's a false alarm. One of the biggest problems that we didn't anticipate Well, I don't want to save time Okay, so the the other part of this though, to to your question is the verified alarm system means that there's more than just the alarm, there's got to be a movement or motion or some other activity, not just the alarm, and then the company has to call back and say you know, either try to get you and if they can't get you then it's verified that something is wrong and then we go out now that sounds like it takes a half hour it doesn't. But there are still some that that wish it was like the old days where every time it went off we came but it was truly draining our resources and it really didn't make sense. And we just we didn't make that decision in a vacuum. We looked at best practices around the country. And we looked at what other agencies in the very state did and we modeled ourselves directly after what they were doing.
Thank you for that. And of course DPD gets the bad rap for the verification process because a lot of people will complain and say they they believe that an individual needs to be present needs to be at home when the incident occurred in order for DPD to be called out. And so it's there's a lot of misinformation around the process. In order for DPD to respond to an alarm going off.
And so that's what I was going to say when I said what makes it even more complex and what we didn't anticipate and I stopped saying that was that and so each alarm company has its own policy. And so when that policy doesn't necessarily fit its miraculously becomes what DPD said. But our policy is black and white and clear what we respond to and what we don't. But some of these companies are promising folks that you know, every time alarm goes off, the police will be on the front doorstep in seconds and they just can't make those commitments for the department but certainly we're going to respond to alarms in our community.
Thank you.
And so I'm trying to avoid asking five questions like many of us have done, but if they just end up being follow ups to the initial question so I'll just make a couple of points. I do have some green lights in the district that have a lot of loitering steel happening at them. I have residents who reach out to me saying I'm afraid to go to this business, it's a green light. But because there are so many people around the business that they don't really want to patronize the business. I've reached out to the commanding officers and a vehicle goes by and they say nope, everything is fine. And I don't know what everything is. Fine mean. So I'll have a conversation with you about that later. One of the other questions that I wanted to piggyback on what Member Santiago Ramiro mentioned as it relates to 911 calls. It looks like we still have a about 13% of calls that go unanswered. That's based on information that is in the budget it is B 37 Dash five it states that about 1.1 million calls are made in Detroit and 13% went unanswered.
Yeah, there has to be more to that man that that would be outrageously unacceptable. It sounds like it's at a tech request, which
I have it as B 37 Dash five.
The only thing I could think of with that is if they're talking about the tower issue from Canada to Detroit, but it shouldn't be
I see what you're saying. That says that's accurate, but that's there's no reason behind it. Some sometimes those are dropped calls. They're they're categorized as unanswered. Let me give you more information on this in your question. I know exactly what they're showing you the data set is showing. So we don't answer 100% of the calls that come in. But what it felt like you were saying is not what the data is revealing is that we're just not answering them. What what's happening is there's a variety of different reasons where someone will accidentally call 911 or move to the fire department, or it'll get moved. It'll jump over to the fire department or it's somebody's playing with the phone. What we've should have done here,
too, is like we walked in, right? Yeah. Okay,
let me give you more information on that. I'm gonna but I'm it's not that we are just not having the resources to respond to the call. There's a variety of different reasons why the call is not being answered. Yeah.
Yeah, thanks.
Okay. Well, we'll submit the question in writing along with a few others. If you can give more detail and background that would be greatly appreciate it. You don't need to do it now. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, member Johnson. Councilmember Benson.
Thank you. Thank you all for being here, Chief and thank you to your team. Because we're very, very responsive here from DC bliss on a regular basis here from DC A's on a regular basis and whenever we have issues or concerns, you are very responsive question looking at page Bravo 37. Eight. Under equipment acquisition. We're looking at a significant reduction from 4.1 to $1.25 million. And if you look through the expanded spreadsheets, you just see increases it doesn't really give the picture of why we're seeing about a $3 million reduction in equipment acquisition. On revelatory seven tag AIDS
through the chair, this represents the for example, this year we had to budget and purchase 10 new tow trucks to the tune of close to $1.1 million. So that's not there well is one time expenditure. And then most of that relates to the equipment we purchased for the 911 operations that that we have at this year. But we do not expect to spend again the capital. There
you said Z nine one operation 91.
The mergency Okay, the equipment and supplies that that once we purchased for example, if we spent $4.1 million in 2020 for that same equipment and again, trucks are a prime example. We do not expect to have that item again in the next five years. So just to make sure that this is not major equipment or major capital purchases. That's not the line this is for for expenditures that are covered by the General Fund forfeiture fund or e 911, which is a special revenue fund. And again, if we put just this year we do not expect in 2025 to have the same type of equipment purchase. Okay. And
then just looking at the state of precincts and I realized that the capital budget isn't isn't here, but just the quality of the work environment there. And then looking at I believe many of our precincts may have exhausted their work their working life, and maybe you need a new Is there a conversation? about updating upgrading new precincts, new public safety facilities like you have on each burner? Yes, sir. And
through the Chair, I'll turn it over to Deputy Chief bliss to just run the basis on the improvements for the precincts and the the entire portfolio. Yes.
Through the Chair. We are always looking at the next iteration of facility wise the Detroit Police Department. Currently we're finishing up the ninth precinct we're looking at doing our Metro Division which is on Sherwood, our seventh precinct, our second precinct, and several others along those lines. There's always the question of should we rebuild or should we build out? When it comes to fiscal savings? We have to look at how much of an impact usually if we're going from the ground up, it's anywhere between 15 to $20 million, where if we were to take the structure and then build that out, that's several million that could be $5 million. So we have to kind of leverage and look at and balance is it is it feasible in order for us to do that? Right now what we've what we've done if we looked at our current precincts, found a very cost effective way to upgrade them. And then in the in the very near future. We will look at probably within the next 10 to 15 years of do we start from the ground up just due to the technology and things of that nature. So that's a consistent conversation with the chief.
I think, though to further explain or respond to the question, we should talk about the work that we've done. We've improved second precinct obviously the ninth precinct is a big one that one is coming online very soon. There were some things that we've had to work through with that with some construction work. We're getting pretty close to that. But it's better than it's ever been. But it's not where it's going to be. We anticipate by the end of the summer. That project being complete. We have invested in the fifth precinct which is really beautiful. Second precinct. We've done a lot of patchwork there there's going to be a more detailed plan with that. We are looking now we finished three. We're going to do third precinct parking lot. The new academy or I'm starting to new training center on Linwood significant ARP ARP investment going into that we put a significant RP investment into the gun range on spark joy and Spinoza just really beautifying that place with the new officers that were getting in to train them. So you got to have a professional training environment. We have a partnership with Wayne County Community College, building out which is counselor has approved the investment of this facility and the equipment but they've taken on the lion's share of the cost to build a state of the art police academy so you will have a police academy and then you'll have a training center on Lynwood. The significance of that is to provide high level training to officers separate and apart from the academy, keeping the Academy students independent of the training facility. The other thing that we're going to do with the training facility because we have such experience officers is open our training up to outside agencies to come here and be revenue generating to train with us. We're working through that with the legal folks now to see that make sure there's no liability with that. In the new academy. We have a training driving simulator, a shoot no shoot simulator. That's in the basement. That's going to help us reduce our I know getting off into something that's going to help us reduce these accidents, reduce liability around those accidents. But going back to your point we have a strategy around every precinct including the seven three saying and I thought you told me if I'm wrong please correct me that we had investment to start number 12 and do some work there.
Yes, chief That is That is correct. And also Oakland are another facility that we are looking at. breaking ground on in regards to updates. Okay,
Ziwi master plan.
I do. I can provide a tire portfolio the DPD SS Yes, sir. I can give you the Master Plan. We can provide that to you. We've got a strategy around every building. We know the status of every building. We know everything from state of good repair to what it's going to take to overhaul all right and includes repair or replace. The thing that we don't have is a is a determination on repair replacement we can't make that without talking to the one counts. But we certainly know the status of our buildings and what we'd like to see like number seven, we're excited that that's that's not going to be a brownout, they're going to they're going to use an existing facility and build it out and it's gonna be great for that area.
Okay, thank you. Motion to put DPD capital assets into the closing resolution.
Hearing no objections that action will be taken. And then
motion to put for 36 District Court replace for that capital asset including resolution as well. I'm sorry for the 30 cities record, replace real property into the closing resolution. Okay. To replace it, I'm sorry, I'm rebuild a new 360s record. Okay,
from the previous hearing, okay. Any objections and that's for the closing resolution. All right, Hearing no objections that action will be taken. All right. Thank you. Member Benson member Doha.
Thank you, Madam President. Good afternoon to you. First like to start out by saying thank you for all you do, as well as the other officers your team again, I'm not saying anything no one else has said very responsive. One thing I find interesting you are responsible by yourself to Chief you send us correspondence correspondences letting us know what's going on. I don't know if I've ever seen the chief do that. And I promise you I start responding and tell you hey, I got it. And I read it. But thank you for taking the time out to do that individually. I think that speaks volumes. The thing that I want to ask is just relative to our disabled community. I know last year in the budget, we put about $150,000 of the existent DPD budget into visible disability trainings. Can we get an update on where we are with that funding, how that training is going and where the program is.
This year? I couldn't provide it to you. I don't have it with me today, but I will.
Okay, so I look forward to that. But are we implementing it now? Or are we still in a rollout phase of that? Can we speak to that a little bit
we can not hear. Okay. I asked him to bring that part of the presentation. I have not been updated. I did not I knew this was going to come up and I don't have that information.
That's okay. I'll get on DCH where I got all right.
I will make sure that you have that I can get it to you today. Okay, no worries. I just don't have it with me. I don't want to speak. I know that we've implemented some of the training. We had a big event last summer and visible disabilities training is part of our ongoing training and the police academy to identify and explain to the officers what they're encountering, but I just don't have it with me and I don't want to misspeak. Okay.
And that's not where as I know, we've had conversations about it, but just wanted to put it on the record. I know in this budget season, a lot of our groups stakeholders, ask about that. That was a huge piece for them and just wanted to publicly give them an update but we will be able to get them get that information to them as well. My second question just revolves around more so the youth I know. We see police community relations meetings. The average age there is probably about 50 years old. And I can remember coming up as a as a kid, being in school, there was a lot of engagement with the youth and a connection to the police, whether it was the blue pigs or whether you know, it was yeah, the when I grew up speech, you know, we had a lot of officers instrumental are instrumental excuse me, in that. Where are we at? How are we looking at connecting our youth to our law enforcement community? And I'll say why I say that. Often there is a reluctance to have that relationship. But I believe it is. It is very important. It's imperative to establish that early relationship and build that trust at an early age between youth as well as our law enforcement community and just work on the relationship that already exists and kill some of the stigmas that are attached. Where are we at with connecting our youth to our law enforcement community here in the city of
Detroit? Yes, sir. Through the Chair. We do a number of different things. We still have a very robust explorer program. We launched a program and I can think of the school is the Detroit Public Safety Academy. That's the name of the school where we work with the students there throughout the year, and we give them opportunity to join police fire dispatch, cit. We have our MPOs that are encouraged to put together a youth program. We have an annual youth summit we did youth summit a few months back. early part of the thing was just right before Christmas and we had over 500 kids show up for that delayed URL cure Tim Woods era was our keynote. So we do a number of different things this year. I'm super excited because US Attorney Don Ison is going to be hosting our peaceniks both East and last, with an emphasis on young people from the three on three basketball to all those other things that gets the kids attention, but we are very focused on getting to our youth early enough that they don't have to interact with us in a negative way. The ninth precinct started something called the brotherhood and sisterhood years ago. It is now going gone city wide. One of the founders of that elevator to cap His name is Captain third keel. He's over at the second precinct. And so he's bringing that program to the second precinct. And it's a very positive program where we sit down and we talk to young people about law enforcement and what our role is in it and what their role can be if they ever have to interact with police. And it's all proven very positive, but it's never enough to get a get a hold of our youth and put our arms around them and make sure that we're giving them the right message. You know, we don't do scare straight programs. I don't subscribe to those I don't think their work. They work. I think that most of our kids are already scared and you're not going to over scare them to do the right thing. So you have to be a little bit more deliberate in telling them what the expectations are and given them a place to go. When we debrief gangs and we look at the activities of gangs. One of the things that we find is the prevailing issue with gangs and young people is a sense of belonging before anything else before any violence is having a family and a sense of belonging to something. And so what we try to do is give them something to belong to. That's positive and so we're going to keep doing that and we're gonna keep encouraging young people to get engaged but you know, it's the police too, right? So that's why I'm excited about Donaldsons peacenik she did it last year was phenomenal. And it was raining so we get some sunshine this year. It's gonna be even better. And and but what's good about it is it's not just standing there yelling at kids telling them we're gonna lock you up if you break the law, but they get it right. I mean, that's kind of oh that we get it. But it is saying is, here's a whole bunch of decisions you can make. And if you do those things, then you've got an opportunity to have never happened to interact with us negatively. And President Sheffield leads the way I gotta give her credit, I had stolen some ideas from her at some of her events that are phenomenal. Hundreds of kids, they're excited and she did something that we couldn't she can keep them for a long time. So we're gonna bring some some musical guests and some stuff like that and give them bikes this year, because it works and they, but it's not just the bike. It's not just the environment. It's the story that they tell later in the community. And that's what we want to be a part of. So we're engaged. It's a lot of work to do and we can do more. And I'm
glad to hear that safe. I know again, you guys are very active with that I did want to before I make my motion for something, but did want again, just thank you for even connecting with our CBI groups. It's not in an overreaching way, but more on a side by side way and I think that has spoken volumes as well added to their success and then just kind of that cross learning shared experiences as well to contribute together to bring crime down. And so the most of that will be making those that request from one of our stakeholders. I know you talked about serve and protect. I know you're gonna get out there kind of in the community or you guys are out there in the community but more than just take you know, more focus on it. But there has been a request from our disabled community about this increased accessibility hospitality and to safety ambassadors, so to speak, for the community to them, so they can you know, even at some of their meetings, they can have more of a presence or whatnot. And so I want to help assist with that. I don't know what that cost is. But we are going to have another conversation with them as well. And maybe hopefully we can add to your budget to increase that as well and kind of move them forward. So with that, Madam President, I'd like to make a motion to put in DPD budget and increase for expanding special events ambassadors for our disabled residents.
All right, Hearing no objections that action will be taken. And again,
thank you so much for your service on all you do. Thank you, Madam President.
All right. Thank you, Councilmember Callaway,
thank you Madam Chair. And good afternoon. Chief white into your entire team. Thank you. Just a blanket. Thank you for all that you do. Just love love love. Deputy Chief Franklin Hayes. I can call text them on Sunday after church and he responds. And second deputy chief grant ha has a lot of ideas and does all of that training. He listens to us during internal operations. And so I'm grateful for that that your team is engaged and they're listening. And I did have an opportunity to witness the foot beat on the avenue of fashion about a month ago. There was not one there was not two, there was not three there were four young officers on the beat. And we ran outside and got them and asked them if they could come into an establishment and introduce themselves and tell them about the foot beat patrol and they did that they were very, very professional. And I thank you for that. The citizens radial patrol, established in 1967 Right after I do believe the uprising, some people call it a riot. And I guess it's celebrating 57 years of being in existence uninterrupted. We need to expand that program. I'm looking at your budget for 2025 and it just has one full time FTD Ms. Gracie is amazing. But she needs help in that department. And if we know that we it's working. It definitely is working in Green Acres. We just celebrated our 37th anniversary of having our citizens ready to go patrol under the leadership of Mr. Jim Ward. And Peter wrote, so we need to expand that program. If we know it's working in one area of the city. We need to focus on expanding it across the city. I don't know what that looks like. But if we know that it's working, then our focus should be on expanding that program. We need more eyes and more ears and that's the model more extended eyes and ears from the community. And if we're going to solve the crime problem is going to be a concerted effort with the community involvement and also the intervention and from the community violence program that you started I think it was a year ago for Crimestoppers or shot stoppers. So what is your plan? If there is one, um to expand the Citizens Radio patrol Miss Gracie again, wonderful. But this is driving down on crime where it's been implemented. And I know that to be the truth personally. In the Green Acres area we talk about how having that has driven down crime and ours was founded in 1986. And still running. So that's my first question, sir. What is your plan to expand that program? If you don't have any plans? Why not? If it's working, we know what's working. And top Edison deputy mayor top Edison was there as the guest speaker last I think it was Thursday when they celebrated the 37th anniversary, but to just see one FTE $89,000 proposed. We have to increase that if we know that's one program that's working to drive down and prevent crime through the Chair. Thank you.
So thank you for that and let me bring some clarity to that that one FTE. So the director of that program, my RACI as you know, works for the office of workplace and community resiliency. And so under that umbrella there's there's a multitude of resources that she has at her disposal that FTE does not identify every person that's tied to that responsibility. She is the she is the person that drives it. But there are resources supervision and others that that that are available to her she needed. The reality is she hasn't. She's done a phenomenal job. We're very happy with her. And I think that that, you know, ask Him for that additional resources. There was no real purpose behind it would be fiscally irresponsible. And so that's why you see that I did not what I what you don't see and that has been pushed is a recruitment drive. For radio patrol. The problem is there's just there wasn't a lot of really good succession planning over the last 10 years done with with radio patrol, and then it flatline particularly when we hit COVID. And people just weren't interested. And so now that we're kind of back to where we were, we're concentrating on how do we recruit. What's interesting about radio patrol is that group is generally people, the more mature group of folks who are interested in doing radio patrol, and what I've challenged the team to look at is how do we make it a little bit younger in terms of time, energy, and desire to do it, and there's a disconnect between recruiting the the younger population, and not that we don't appreciate the seniors but we've got to freshen it up so that because many of the seniors have been there 2025 years, and so they started off, you know, 4050 years old now we've got some that are in the, into their 70s. And they bear the burden of doing all of that work themselves. So that's the push. That's the strategy. That's the plan. And what we're going to do, we've asked now we've directed we've asked now we're gonna get a little bit more strategic in our command team to identify some folks bring two or three people to a meeting to talk about taking over the reins and helping the group and lastly, I will say you're absolutely right. They are as much responsible for our crime reduction as our CVI as our state, local and federal partnerships. As his race for the officers, the hard working men and women, you all have the best police department in United States. All of that working together has led to where we are now, not just one thing, but I agree they have been a constant for us. When no one else was doing it. They were out there. So they need to be loaded and we also need to recruit
the Chair. Thank you, Chief White. I'm hoping we will beef up our recruitment efforts because the Citizens Radio patrol is successful. And we know that if something is successful, we should duplicate it. So thank you for that. My second question is and I am sure you receive the questions that we submitted on March the 14th. But it has to do with high speed pursuits, and we know that they will can be deadly at times. If not deadly, can be a hazard to the community where this pursuits pursuits are occurring. And I just read an article where the state of Michigan has implemented new policy procedures in terms of high speed chases. And in 2023, they had 233 chases, and so far in 2024, they've only had 33. So whatever they're doing is working. And so my question is, please provide a plan of action to avoid high speed pursuit by utilizing and this is just a recommendation. I'm going to also make a motion to put this into executive session in the closing resolution. We have Dearborn heights. They are using GPS tracking devices contained and darts shot via air guns at the fleeing vehicle so they can kind of pull back on the police chase, high speed police chase, and this system is being currently used by them and they're seeing a reduction. And so in that less there's like a felony involved or the commission of a felony. They use these darts. And so what you're doing is not only you're protecting the safety of the officers, but you're protecting the safety of those in the surrounding area where the pursuit is occurring. So has your team thought about implementing the dark program? I don't know that much about it. We're reading about it and I know that reading article Dearborn heights, it's working for them so it's called Star Chase and there are other vendors as well for providers, but have you thought about implementing some like something like that just to kind of curb our high speed pursuits
through the chair first, let me say that MSPs policy on chases is almost mirrors ours so one that we've been using for many, many years. And I certainly understand why they have adopted a policy as restrictive as ours. Because it's a very dangerous activity, particularly in a city with the with the population density of some areas that we have. It could be deadly. So we restrict chases to violence. felonies are their attempt. We don't chase for because you you're speeding, and some people use that to their benefit because they know that that doesn't mean we don't come get you I want to be clear on that. Those who may be watching. It just means we're not gonna chase you. We may meet you where you're going but we're just not gonna chase you. But if it's a violent felony, we're gonna do everything we can to get you off street free hurt somebody else. I've looked at a number of those things. I'm actually getting ready to get a test done with stop sticks now. We'll stop six hours just flick them out. Pull the car over, you put the front of the tire and you're interviewing the suspect. The problem is you got to be remembered to pick it up. Are you gonna keep everybody pull over a flat tire? So it's those kinds of things that have to go into training and policy to make sure that people are making the right decision. We're exploring everything. The GPS brings on a privacy issue, but I'm very excited to hear how much technology I'm hearing from Council today. It's encouraging that we are we are partnering in this crime thing and it feels good as chief of police to hear this. So we will look at that I'm not familiar with the work, but I will look at it and certainly anything that we can do to reduce car car chases is something we want to do. Our officers have been phenomenal at adhering to our policy and they they really have been. I know you hear about the one out of 10,000 incidents that it doesn't happen and that's important. I'm not marginalizing that at all. But the hundreds and hundreds of times like even this weekend, where the officers body camera on, try to make a stop, stop doesn't go person won't stop they stopped chasing they make the notifications the supervisor comes out to the scene to verify that they stopped chasing. All of those things help in additional tools will be even more helpful for it.
So Madam Chair, I'll make a motion to move the high speed pursuits, this new technology, I guess they're called Star Chase technology into Executive Session. Because we're thinking that we can reduce the number of high speed chases in our city with this technology, at least consider and look into it, and then also put into executive session and close the resolution the Citizens Radio patrol and understand what the chief was saying but I really want us to expand the program. And right now it has not expanded the way that it should expand knowing that it's the another layer of no public safety. And it's the eyes. What Does she
remember cowboy? Yeah, you can separate them as well. Yeah. Absolutely. So
there's two separate motions, one for the star Chase technology. And then the other one is for the citizens radial patrol. Okay,
and those are both for the closing resolution. Yes. Okay. Yes. Any objections? All right, hearing none that will be added to our Executive Session for our closing resolution. Thank you. All right. All right, Chief. Thank you so much. Anything else? Yes.
Yes. If I may. Madam president just want to bring clarification on two very quick things. We actually have $125,000 available for Citizens Radio patrol. That we've budgeted for it. The 89,000 is just the FTE. So there's $125,000 in addition to the 89. And then lastly, and very briefly, I would like for Deputy Chief bliss to bring clarification to the helicopter. I misspoke earlier. That's our dollar funded. It's 202.7 5 million, is that correct? Correct.
Yes. And to add to that, we did budget for the for the period, the the maintenance, the fuel, and also the insurance for that vehicle.
Madam Chair, Yes, Madam Chair. Just real quickly. They said $125,000 Is that to cover the mileage that you paid the volunteers? Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Remember John Cena. Madam President,
thank you to the chief before you go. You did know that Homeland Security will now fall under DPD our Homeland Security was here I shared with Director Kincaid, a situation that happened with me not long ago in my neighborhood. You may have heard about it but I'm hoping that DPD will utilize alert 365 to make sure that residents are informed when there's something happening in their respective community.
Thank you. Yes, ma'am. And they will.
Thank you very well.
Thank you, Madam President. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank
you so much, chief. Thank you. Yes.
Hello, the movement of Homeland Security Police Department may require a executive organization plan change. So I'm not sure to what extent that that is happening, but you may want to look into that.
All right, Mr. Watson.
Thank you, Madam President. So yes, I've already reached out to the law department to look into that issue. So that whatever additional document will be necessary for the transfer are prepared and filed.
Thank you, Attorney bar cliff. Alright, we will proceed now to our next budget hearing. Which is the police commission.
Detroit Police Commission.
All right, and when you are ready to begin the floor is yours.
Good afternoon to this honor body to the council president pro tem and to all of our council members. It is a privilege to have an opportunity to provide some clarity on our intentions and expectations for the border police commissioners moving forward into next year. It is clear that we're in a very critical posture and a board of police commissioners as we carry a pretty substantial backlog of citizen complaints, which is our primary responsibility in order to ensure that we have oversight of police misconduct. It's been almost a perfect storm that has created that scenario with the events of COVID where we lost extraordinary amount of our staff then we had an investigation with the Office invested inspector general where we just received about 1400 cases back 700 of which we were made aware did not have proper investigations and so those had been added on to it. But I don't want that to color, the work and the effort that our investigators have been doing not only to keep up with the current cases that are currently coming in, but also to meet the challenge of the backlog. We've been seeing that in this year. We have less investigators than we've ever had. While we have more CC ARS that have been reported more than we ever had, while the investigators are closing more cases than they ever have. And so again, I think that speaks to the productivity of our investigators with again, meager resources. And so we are encouraged to see the mayor's proposed budget that provides us additional funds to be able to hire additional investigators. And our desire is that with these additional investigators, they will have the opportunity to not only keep up with the current cases that are being filed with OCI, but also to a significantly impacted backlog that we currently see. I'm joined here by our executive manager of fiscal drew freeze as well as our chief investigator. Reverend Warfield and our acting aboard secretary is also here, Robert Brown. And so we're prepared and willing to answer any questions that you might have a relative to the proposed
budget. All right. All right. That will conclude your presentation. Yes. All right. Let me just say thank you for your service. We truly appreciate you and we will go straight to questions from my colleagues and we will start with council member Johnson. Bryce
Thank you, Madam President. And good afternoon to all of you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for standing in the gap and being there to address the citizen complaints. I do know that we just recently in the internal operations committee, added I believe, a position for the board of police commissioners. So can you speak to the additional position and how it will help to assist with addressing citizen complaints.
If you're talking about the executive assistant to position, which is a change position, which was formerly a legal assistant position, but we wanted to provide a little more scope of the work so that that individual not only could assist our chief investigator but also our acting board attorney. And so again, by having a broader scope of work, it provides the opportunity for that individual to not only assist our attorney, but also our chief investigator.
Okay. All right, excellent. Thank you for that. And so the board of police commissioners has a goal centered around community with a plan to improve transparency, accountability, public education, engagement and trust around police policy and misconduct. Citizen Rights. And responsibilities. Can you talk about what you're doing around public education and engagement?
Well, to be quite honest, it's been challenged right now obviously, with the Office of Inspector General's report coming out suggesting that again, there have been complaints filed by citizens that have not been appropriately investigated, really does harm the credibility that the board has in trying to again ensure citizens that their concerns are being addressed and police misconduct and see indeed being looked after. However, I believe that it has really provided us a great opportunity now that we really know the scope of the challenge. We know where we are with the backlog. We now have a sense on the timeline of what it takes to close the backlog. And again with this budget, we are optimistic with the increased staff. We will now have the people power in order to close that I think that that will begin to rebuild the credibility in one's community. Now, as it goes to education, we always try to use our meetings to provide insight about crime statistics, meetings that can be had community organizations that they can be a part of so that their awareness is increased. A part of our strategy moving forward is to engage in more community meetings, which again, we have some line items there to make sure we have the technology and resources to be able to do that effectively. But again, I think that all of that is moot if we're unable to really address the backlog, which is our primary function.
Thank you and just as a quick follow up, so now the buck stops with you right as the chairperson, and so I know you fairly well and know your background, so appreciate who you are as a person and know that we can count on you to ensure that everything that is due to happen shall happen in a timely fashion and making sure that we are actually investigating and the work is being done before signing off on on these documents so greatly appreciative of you and your service, and look forward to getting an update on how we're addressing the backlogs.
Well, I'm deeply appreciative of the competence that you shared in me, and my hope is that that competence can be shared with my colleagues, because I'm clear that my term as chair ends June 30. And so we're not yet clear on what the leadership looks like. Beyond. But again, I think that with the new appointments that have been made to the board, and again, having a clearer sense on what our objectives are, I'm confident that we will be able to meet these objectives. And when we come here next year, we'll have a much more optimistic report, particularly as it relates to the citizen complaints.
Excellent. Thank you. Thank you Madam President.
All right. Thank you, Councilmember Benson.
Thank you. Thank you all for being here. I've had a chance to attend a number of the meetings. And just always great to see you all when you're hosting them. In the third district. You spoke to credibility and then you spoke to what we were looking to do and looking at the mayor's proposed budget. Can you just go further into that and the credibility challenge I believe, goes further than just the most recent report is just impact fulness effectiveness results. Can we talk about some goals results, what we're really looking to do and to make sure that our residents have a level of confidence in this what is really historic board of police commissioners in the city of Detroit can live up to his full potential. Here
we're on the precipice of celebrating 50 years of existence and so again, I wanted the oldest police oversight boards in the country. I mean, we do carry a great weight not only to hold this standard for our city, but the entire country. But again, noting the challenges that have existed. I think first and foremost, again, none of us were really prepared for the impact of the global pandemic and how that really disrupted our work again, with over 22 employees either resigning retiring or finding work elsewhere, that left about 60 cases per employee that added to the backlog and then coming out of that, obviously, with the investigation of the Office of Inspector General, you know, compounded, you know, the real challenges. Not only that was waiting, employee morale, but again, community credibility. And so our focus now in the intermediate one is to hire a permanent board secretary you all may or may not know, but at the beginning of the year, our board secretary resigned and so we're in the processes of hiring a board secretary which again is absolutely crucial to the efficiency of our work. We are very proud and confident to have chief Warfield as our chief investigator. Having been a former member of the commission, having a extensive resume and having a zero focus on ensuring that we are appropriately investigating citizens complaints in a timely and efficient manner. And again, I think that once you begin to see those building blocks I should also add with the new commissioners who have joined the board and level of passion and focus that they have not just individuals who are at the table but also are out in the community with community knows their resume and their work. Again, I think that these things begin to rebuild the trust but I am a man of faith but I don't claim to be able to work miracles I do know that it will require some time trust when it is broken is not something that is regained immediately. But again, my confidence is that if we can show our effectiveness and addressing the backlog that that trust will be able to be regained. Okay. And this
I did I did not want to miss this opportunity as well to thank you and other police commissioners who actually came out to support us when we closed down the city. The hookah shop that was selling marijuana to the teenager across the street from purging High School just we want to thank you personally
spearheaded by Commissioner Darrell Woods, who again takes this matter very seriously. So thank you.
So I want to thank you for that. But also just wanted to talk about your search for the secretary. I believe that professional staff can be so so important to a board and we're basically volunteers. I mean, there may be some stipends, but in our reality, little work you do is really far less than properly compensated. So talk about that search. What are you using? Are you using the city's HR department? What are you looking for to help provide the professional staff or the board of police commissioners needs?
Yeah, I mean, I found that the the title that we use for Secretary has been misleading because again, you see the term Secretary, I think a lot of people expect it to have a more administrative capacity. But again, it's more like an executive director. The role of that board secretary really is crucial to the efficiency of the board. And so upon the resignation of our former board secretary, we did engage city HR to post for the position, they were able to vet three individuals who they found to be qualified to go before the personnel and training committee to be interviewed. However, my colleagues felt like we wanted to expand the net of those we wanted to interview until we were able to secure a a search firm i ivantage, who just concluded their posting this past Friday, they had over 150 people who they reached out to 65 who they communicated and they've added an additional four so we didn't want to dismiss the three who were selected through City's HR. So with the three that city's HR identified in the four that I advantage has identified there are seven, who will be going before our personnel and training committee over the next two weeks, and then three of those will go before the Board of police commissioners and our hope is that we will have hired a permanent board secretary by the end of April. Okay, I'm
hoping that you will bring that person to city council to introduce them as well. So we will know who will be working with awesome, sure. Thank you. Bottom tape.
Thanks, madam president. And thank you Mr. Chair for your leadership and all of your team as well. Chief Investigator Oh, it was good to see you as well. I know. Mr. Chair, you mentioned that there is there within the budget and allotment for additional investigators. How many are we talking?
eight in total. So it's six investigators and they like to senior investigator positions.
And real quick, quick question on that. Is it enough?
It will be enough. I know that it's stated in the budget as temporary though, and again, I'm talking to the chief investigator. Our confidence is that by the time we come to the budget process next year, we would have put a significant dent in the backlog about 70%. We will probably need additional quarter beyond the budget term next year to really eliminate the backlog. And so if it's a situation where we had these 23 Investigators for this year, and then it drops back down, that might cause some delay and how quickly we're able to close the backlog. But if we can be staffed at 23 Investigators over these next few years we're competent and and not only allows us to meet the current cases that are being filed, but also to ensure that the backlog doesn't
exist again so no need for any additional this well
now, I mean, if you say more. You know, we know that every department probably would say that more money helps. Let's say we want to be responsible in that guy. But yes, I mean, obviously with the amount of cases that are coming in and the trend that we're seeing is that he's actually going up over the last two years, we've been seeing more citizen complaints being filed than the prior years before. And so if that trend continues, there may be a need for additional investigators, but our chief of Warfield to speak on that regard through the chair or relative to whether or not 23 is a sufficient number for our efforts through the
Chair and thank all of you for allowing us to be here. Right now. We want to make sure that we maintain a full staff. We have not had a full staff at the Office of the Chief Investigator for several years. Which leads us to the backlog situation that we're in. So we believe if we had a full staff will be able to work these cases down to an appropriate level will all of our investigators will have the efficiencies and effectiveness that they would to keep that backlog number non existent. The other thing we're adding to this is that we've already automated the form that we use, that cuts down about eight hours of typing that our investigators have to do to type up a case our investigations are technical pieces of work that has to stand up in courts, and so we've eliminated a lot of that. Another part of that that piece though, is that we also are looking forward to a case management system to bring that on board and that same case management system that the Office of the Inspector General is using as well as the Ombudsman's Office and the ethics office is using is what we want to bring in house in an effort to help even increase our efficiencies more. Getting back to your level of staffing for us, we believe with those additional elements that we will have the right amount of staffing that we need. So what's proposed
is what you need at this moment. Yes, sir.
I will make one one additional point to that because there was a quote that we received relative to the case management system of weighing swept, but that was prior to a noting the communication metrics that would be needed in order for us to access DPD data. And I think that there was maybe a dis difference of was $17,000 or so $18,000 or so. And so I mean, obviously we feel again with the great work that our fiscal manager's doing that we could make that work with the current budget, but again, noting that now the quote is $18,000 higher if there is an opportunity for increase of budget that that will be helpful. That's the
case management says case management system that we have currently at 65,000 But you're sending you need an additional 18,000 will increase the efficiency of it. Yes, I'll
let the fiscal manager do freeze to clarify that to the chair Bucha.
Council members. Thank you. When we originally submitted our budget in November, it was more in tune with this increased costs we'd submitted at 100,000. We'd been working with the budget department and when we got our first quote back from windswept it was at 65 That was number that was passed along. So the good partners that they are that's what they submitted. But now with the API, the application processing clean interface, which is which is truly needed for this to be the tool that it needs to be for the OCR team. The updated quote is $87,885 and so that just the Sherman said we probably could make it work at 65. But if we're able to go up to this at 5000, it would help.
I believe that at this point when we are trying to gain the public trust, regain the public trust and really provide what is necessary to get you all the tools you need to believe 18,000 is not a huge number, especially when we're talking millions in front of us for other areas. So, Madam President, I would like to add in the Executive Session $18,000 to go towards the case management system for the border police commissioners motion,
Hearing no objections, that action will be taken.
Thank you. I'm sorry. My other question was going to be on the case management so we don't really hit both. You know, I take the back so I know. Mr. Chair, you indicated that you your term is up in June. For those who are watching right now who may not understand what the process is because I think you've done a tremendous job picking up the pieces. Let's be honest things you inherited. So talk to us about the process that the board goes through to identify its newest, its next leader. So
a current according to our bylaws, there is a election of a chair and vice chair in June each year. The current serving chair cannot serve consecutive term and so that creates a kind of rotation in leadership. And so when we get to June, it is just by majority of the sitting commissioners who selects the next chair. And so again, all of the current commissioners, with the exception of the current chair has the opportunity to serve in that role. And I think there have been really some commissioners who have demonstrated themselves to be willing and capable to do so. Again, coming out of the OIG report. There was a couple of motions that precluded a couple of our colleagues from being able to serve in the leadership capacity and to their terms have ended and again, that is our desire. To try to, again show the community that we are being responsive to what is being shared and to rebuild that credibility. But again, my hope is is that whoever comes in next I will still be able to provide whatever support that I can, but again with the kind of staff that we have the case management system that we have, it'd be a lot easier for us to focus on ensuring that the citizens plates are investigated than I might have been able to see during my tenure.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you pro tem councilmember young.
It's good to see all of you guys and happy 50th I know my father did a lot to bring this forward, but I have no question. So thank you, appreciate you.
Thank you, Councilmember young councilmember Callaway.
Thank you Madam Chair. I submitted my questions on March the 14th and received the responses so I have no questions at this time. Thank you. Okay.
Thank you, Madam President. And good afternoon to you. I want to share some of the same sentiments. You are a stalwart in D seven, so we know you very well as as well as you Reverend Warfield. So I want to thank you both for your leadership. Obviously, restoring the integrity is important. The trust is important, particularly amongst the community and I appreciate I appreciate you taking that very seriously. Moving forward. My question was just going to revolve around a case management President Pro Tem already asked one of my questions, but this is 65,000 in annual cost that come that comes with that. Is that is that on a payment plan to lease or buyer for the case management system? Can we get a little bit deeper into that to be
chair out loud? executive manager fiscal response
to the chair, Councilmember Yeah, thank you for asking. So it is just a annual maintenance training fee that is that is asked of by windswept. So the startup cost was originally going to be planned for next year, which is around 120. Because of the favourability and this year, and because of our eagerness to do all that we can for our OCI team, we are in the process of implementing that startup cost this year, which then our maintenance cost of of 87,000 will be next year and that is through increased maintenance and training. That is what that cost is about that reoccurring costs will take place. It will increase by 5%. The year following it will increase by 5% year following after that
okay, and is this to go on 5% for the next 10 years. 20 years or what are we looking at?
That's good question. We we received a three year plan from windswept and so that's that first year the the maintenance costs for next year of 87,000. year following 93,000 In the year following 100,000 That's what we have in front of us now. This vendor was was selected amongst many others. They are the best in our eyes and then we were affirmed by the fact that the wings swept is being used by several other departments throughout the city. So we look forward to working with them.
Okay, good to hear. And then my final question is just about you know, last year when you guys came in front of us you were talking about resources. So yes about laptops you asked about all these other tools that are needed to effectively do your job and particularly in the community. Again, a lot of folks don't know. And I can least speak to some commissioners that I know are very active and engaged with community groups and things of that nature. When we talk about some of these resources, are they not needed now as far as these one time cost for tools and infrastructure or resources?
Well for the equipment that Commissioner use, is there sufficient but again, in trying to be more present in the community to ensure that you know, we have screens that are available, that they're seeing the presentations that we have before us and making sure that there's a you know, efficient kind of sound system? Those are the sort of equipment needs so we're kind of turning away from what commissioners need to do our work and more so to what would allow us to be better in serving servicing the community. Is
that available in your current budget? Would you be able to operate what what's in your current budget to be able to get some of those resources?
Not to the amount that we initially proposed. But again, noting where our focus is, which again, is these investigators, if there's any additional funds in that regard, it will really just be for staffing. And so I think they'd be sufficient for what we're hoping to do.
Thank you. And I believe President Pro Tem already put this in Executive Session relative to case management, so I'll leave it alone there but again, look forward to having further conversations on how we can connect with you guys to get a deeper imprint in the community, how we can you know, partner and assist you in that again, I believe that trust is a big thing. Again, I think you've done an amazing job. working to restore that takes time. Obviously many members on this council know that. But I do believe that that is some some we can get there and restore that trust for our residents. So again, thank you for your service as well. Thank you, Madam President.
All right. Thank you, Councilmember Santiago Ramiro.
Thank you, Madam President. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here. A lot of the questions that I have have already been asked as well. Happy to know that you have what you need at the moment and we are ready to support you. Moving forward. I will focus my question on just what I've seen lately on the news and there were some recent reports about a lack of quorum and decorum at the commissioner meetings, wondering what training looks like I just asked this for city council members as well. When you have new members. You oftentimes don't know the responsibilities or the motions or decorum wondering is there training before for knew where to police commissioners? What does that look like to make sure that you're prepared to serve? Yes,
there is training for new commissioners. So when you come on primarily with our board secretary, each commissioner is given a very healthy binder that we go through again with Robert's Rules of Order the policies, the bylaws and procedures. And then they're also dollars in our budget for additional training opportunities. And so we're a member of NATO. So the National Association of civilian oversight and law enforcement and commissioners had the opportunity to go there and to utilize the resources that they provide again to bolster our work. And so there could be more consistent training opportunities. Because again, you know, when community members serves on the board, there's a real passion for the work but then the technical kind of things, does have its learning curve. But there is training that is provided. And so we look forward to increasing that over the months
to the Chair. Thank you. That's helpful. Now we all know yes, there is and there should be some best practices that are held during committee meetings. So good to know. The next question that I have is really around the tow truck commission. So we are going to embark on this process. I do believe that BOPC plays a role are you prepared to engage with us as we go and and regroup our tow truck commission? Yes.
We just had a presentation at our meeting last Thursday. And so the question is provided for us by the auditor general, we're in preparation of responding to those questions so that the tow truck Tow Truck commission might move forward with his business. Wonderful,
thank you. The only other statement that I'll make is that I know there's a request before me to come to PHS I will be reaching out to see what the outcomes are that you're looking for to make sure that this is the best avenue. And if it's not, we'll figure out which is the best place to have the conversation. But I do want to speak with folks first about that, and then we'll see if we can move forward. But thank you so much for your work. I appreciate it. Thank you, Madam President. Sounds
great. Thank you.
All right. Thank you so much. All right. That will conclude your budget hearing. Thank you so much for being here. Keep up the great work and we will be in that I mentioned last week. Why not trying to remember why?
That's what happens. I don't really have that much to say anyway. Because all the questions have been asked. So I do thank you all for all the hard work that you do. But how many investigators do you have? Currently 1515 and you're looking to add how many each eight have those positions been field? A?
We are currently posting positions for six more and the budget
to train them. Right? Correct. Correct. Okay. That's all I want to know. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam President.
Okay, thank you member waters. And that will now conclude the hearing. Thank you all for your time. Thank you for your patients. Thank you for being here. Right.
thank you
You're so you
you don't need to have a PowerPoint, do you? We do. Okay. Want to make sure we promote individuals so they can share their screen for you?
All right, well, good afternoon and when you are ready to begin the floor is yours. Just make sure you introduce yourselves and make sure your microphone is on. By pressing the bottom of the microphone. It'll turn green. And the floor is yours to begin.
Thank you so much. So good afternoon. Thank you for providing the DEA team with the opportunity to attend the budget hearings today so that we can share everything that's happening at the museum. We're going to detail some of the special benefits available for Detroit residents, and also a little bit more about how we bring experiences to your communities. So I'm just going to begin with a few introductions. My name is Julie McFarlane, I lead community engagement and public affairs. We have solidor Solar ponds, our director, Eliot broom, or chief operating officer Kate Spratt, Chief Financial Officer, and then we also have some staff members in the behind me so I'm gonna say their names I'll let them weigh when they hear their name. Anthony Smith, Vice President of learning and audience engagement, Carla Tinsley Smith, Director of inclusion, diversity, equity and access Nick Davis Petroski, our Director of Talent and culture in rip Nicki public affairs officer, and I believe we have Judith dole cart to our deputy director of art education and programs. So we have a brief PowerPoint presentation today. To sort of guide guide our talking points. So Salvador is going to begin our presentation. With information on current and upcoming exhibition, Elliott will provide an overview of the Cultural Center planning initiative. That brings together all of the organizations in the cultural district to elevate and transform our area. And then finally, I'll provide a brief walkthrough of the special services and benefits that are available for Detroit residents through the service agreement with Wayne County. So Salvador is going to begin
Yes, sir. Thank you very much, Julie. And I'd like to see the PowerPoint if possible on the screen so we can walk the console through the through our presentation.
Do you have someone online that is going to share their screen or?
No, we provided that in advance. We provided the PowerPoint last week.
Okay, you have to give us a second to load it up. Okay, of course.
So, you know, I, some of you might have the PowerPoint presentation on hardcopy. We provided some folders with that information. And one of the things I'd like to start is by acknowledging that the DI again this year has been named the best art museum in America. And this is through voting that is done through the USA Today, news newspaper, we're choice. So we're very proud. It's a great testament to the staff for the 22 Awards of the great work that they do at the service of these communities and the extraordinary experiences that we provide through our education programs as well as our exhibitions. We have two exhibitions one exhibition right now. That is a really a collaboration that dai has established with the Academy of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles the exhibition is called regeneration black cinema at night at 971. It has had already over 20,000 visitors is free for the residents of Wayne County, and he tells the story of black directors, black actors and cinematographers through the 20th century. There is another exhibition that we will be opening in May 5 This is without Detroit artists TIF Massey is quality of Massey, Seven Mile and liver and I this is some exhibition that I really wants to bring to attention the great talent of our Detroit our Detroit, Ras, Tiff Massey who is a graduate from Cranbrook and in the metal smith department has created a new pieces for the DIA as some of you might know she she makes jewelry but this time the jewelry is going to be jewelry made for the building of the DI so I'm very excited about about this exhibition coming up. And it will be open for an entire year in our galleries and contemporary galleries and it will be free for the residents of avoiding avoiding count count in our in our slide deck and the next is light was actually a video that we have prepared for all of you. This is a video that show the interior and exterior of the museum. It was film through with military drawn and it's really exciting experience to see it to see the DI in this way. This is a video that we have created to provide for some advance experience to the schools when they come to the museum so the kids can see what they are going to be visiting as well as we use it for marketing and promotional reasons and is on our website. Did the I really encourage everybody to take a look at it. It is one of the first amazing products star our new digital division has done for for this community and we are very proud and excited about about it. The next slide is next slide number six. And this is a slide that opens a new subject and that my colleague Alia broom, the chief operating officer of the museum would like to speak to all of you about is the Cultural Center planning initiative. Elliot.
Thank you, Salvador. Good afternoon, members of the council. Thanks for having us here today. As Salvador just mentioned we we have been working along with the other cultural and educational institutions in the Midtown area along with Midtown Detroit, Inc. Building on what right now is referred to as the CCPI. The Cultural Center planning initiative. You Sue Mozi at some point may have been before you to talk about various aspects of this project but what it is is it's it is a think of it as a master plan that will connect all of the cultural and educational institutions in the midtown neighborhood. Right now we all we are part of a form of a campus but the way the buildings are all laid out. We're not really interconnected. In some cases. Some of the buildings have them have their backs to one another. And there is no real connective tissue except for the one big parking lot out behind the DIA that runs alongside the Science Center, the Charles Wright Museum and part of the CCS campus. And so what the CCPI is all about this creating a true sense of place where all 12 of the institutions are better connected through varying platforms. They have something called the necklace which is a is a meandering walking path. There's the band, which is think of it as roadways that still connect all of the institutions. And there's a water reclamation a major part of this project to help us reclaim some of the runoff water. So the process has been underway for I think we're in year six right now in all of the pre planning. We have been eager to get started as soon as we can build funding for this project and and we know this is not a project that will be essentially overnight. This is a long term project, possibly 10 plus years before we would be able to complete the project and total oftentimes when I talk about the CCPI project, I asked people to think about Millennium Park in Chicago. Most of us who have been to Chicago at some point since 2006 have at some point been to Millennium Park and that was a transformative project for the city of Detroit. It single handedly reinvigorated the South Loop section of downtown Chicago. And so while we don't have a grandiose vision that this project will single handedly transform an area we we do very firmly believed that this is the kind of project that will serve all of the institutions in an incredible way connecting us giving us the connective tissue and creating a sense of place a place where people can gather residents of the city of Detroit and and beyond. Come in gather go to one institution or another and very easily be able to find one's way to and from each of the institutions along with having outdoor entertainment possibilities. outdoor art installations and other other items like that that can help energize a neighborhood. So I don't know if you if you have questions if you do, I'm happy to answer now or at the end of the presentation.
Thank you
um, so I just want to kind of walk through the benefits that are available for Wayne County residents including the city of Detroit. These benefits are provided in consideration of the generous millage support we received from Wayne County, Oakland County and Macomb County residents. The categories of the benefits, there's sort of four buckets, there is free general admission school program, Senior Program, and community partnership programs. If you have your PowerPoint, I would say if you're starting on slide 10 with free admission if you want to follow along that way. I always say that free admission is really just the beginning of your museum experience. This special benefit is really the key to unlocking all that the museum has to offer so we have Friday Night Live we have drawing in the galleries, films, lectures, free special exhibitions, like regeneration. There's always something new going on at the museum to a joy in addition to our wonderful permanent collection that is brought to life by our dedicated volunteers. We are open six days a week and Friday nights are our late nights we're open till 9pm. The second area of benefits for slide 11 Is the school program. So Detroit K through 12. Students can visit the museum for free field trip and this includes the cost of bus transportation. These visits are available by reservation for any k through 12 school group. So it can be a field trip organised by a dpscd teacher, private school charter school, or a community group that engages young people. During the school year we see hundreds of students from school groups and in the summers that brings in our mixed age groups of camps, community groups and church groups. These groups come participate in a self guided or a guided experience in the museum. Last year, we had more than 10,000 students from Detroit visited the museum for a free field trip. We also offer to support the young people's experience. We offer a variety of educator professional development events throughout the year, so that the teachers who are bringing the kids can understand what the DEA has to offer, and then how to make those connections from the field trip experience. Right into the classroom before they go and when they come back. Last fall. We were really excited to participate in the first ever Cultural Center, education Open House evening. We had over 300 Teachers visit the cultural district to learn more about all of the organizations in our neighborhood, including the Wright Museum, Detroit Historical Museum, Michigan Science Center. We were really happy to be part of this evening and to help showcase the richness of cultural offerings available to our young people and not so young people. Lastly, our education department collaborates with school districts to design private teacher professional development events. In we also have resources available online for our educators. These are materials that support the field trip experience and really extend that experience well beyond the time that kids spend in the museum. The third area that we work in is the Senior Program. We have senior group visits, those are made by reservation and those are either for a docent led tour or a volunteer led a docent led tour or self guided visit. Again, if the group is 25 or more, we provide free transportation and our groups are also given a voucher for free cookie and coffee in the cafeteria after they've had their time in the museum. And I do want to mention just a special thanks to Councilperson, Callaway and Johnson for continuing to arrange senior group visits for your residents. I'm always happy when I see those pop up. On the list of tours for the week. In 2023, we added the new offering for our seniors, we know that all of our seniors don't come in groups so we wanted to make something special available for individuals. So we added a program called melodies. at the museum. We offer a live musical performance in our historical auditorium. And then we do provide group transportation for a group that has 25 or more. This Thursday, we're welcoming groups for the bluegrass group, the Russell rally testing trio. And then in April we have another trio performing jazz music. When we have our seniors in every second or third melodies we put out a little survey just so we can understand what they want. To see and we can help their input inform what we booked for upcoming performances. So just to bluegrass, jazz and Motown all scored really high. So the Motown performance that we scheduled for me booked up in about a week, so we added another one for June. So it's great to be able to kind of tune these offerings into what our seniors are interested in. Um, also for seniors who may not necessarily want to come down to the museum, we offer a program called behind the scene. And these are art talks. There's about 20 topics available online, and a group organizer can contact make a reservation, and we will send a docent out to give a talk on one of those specialty topic topics. Usually those happen at libraries or recreation centers, so we'd love to have her seniors in the museum but we'll meet them where they are. And then lastly, just rounding out benefits, a little bit about our community partnership programs. These are activities that are in collaboration with cities, towns, trip villages, arts and culture, nonprofit groups. You may be familiar with our program outside of the museum. Inside Out we partner with communities to bring reproductions of artwork from the collection. Through this locate through this outdoor program in the summer months. And then we support these support these partner organizations in really helping them bring this program to life in their community through things like bike tours, scavenger hunts, and other activities that they may designed to engage the residents in their area. We also as it's getting nicer out or thinking about our drop in art making tables that we have at community events. This summer will be at the Detroit height festival. Metro Detroit Youth Day jazz on the Avenue in the city of Detroit de Kamp de. So our community partnership programs really range from live outs like really big large scale events like concert of colors, to smaller things like the DA studio, community group program. And you can find more detail on all of this in the narrative report that we provided in advance of this meeting, and also in the folders that you had today. So that's a little bit about the URL and we have a PowerPoint now great thank you. So moving on to the next slide. Thank you. So speaking of spring, it is almost that time of year. We are on our 87th year. These are two special exhibitions, our 87th year of the dpscd student art show at the museum. So that will be opening soon. And then that will be followed by the Wayne County High School student art show that is in its third year so at seven years in three years. So I hope that you'll come out first just to see those shows and kind of help celebrate the artistic achievement of our young people. Next slide.
And then just a little bit more of our engagement. We've talked here when we come about, you know, priming that pipeline and helping our young people see their future at the museum, see what museum careers can look like. So we do have a paid internship program. Um, this really supports a pathway for our young people. who are interested in the museum field. Our summer interns work 24 hours per week, for 12 weeks in the summer. They work in various departments across the museum, and our talent and culture team also coordinates group activities. So they can learn cross departmentally regardless of their specific assignment for the summer. This year's program will run from May 27 to August 11. And the opportunities to apply for this are posted on our website in I believe January or February. Next slide. And then just rounding out our engagement with with young people in the area is our teen Arts Council. This is a group of a dozen students from Wayne Macomb and Oakland County high schools. It was launched in 2017. And the group meets weekly during the school year, and the members are paid employees of the museum. They design and implement meaningful empowering entertaining programs for metropolitan Detroit teens. They're focused on community building social justice and culture. This group is really energized. They want to create a space within the DIA that gives voice to creative outlet to youth. So we're excited to have this group.
I love that
I love that slide. There's some mad posing going on out there behind the museum. Next slide. So that rounds out our presentation for today. There's some contact information and you have information in your folders that we provided. There's also the answers to the questions that were submitted on Friday afternoon. I believe we also sent those via email when we finish them up around lunchtime today. So we're happy to answer any questions or go into more detail on any of the things we talked about. Hey, thank
you so much for the presentation. And we will go straight to questions and I'll start with councilmember waters.
All right, thank you, Madam President. Federation I just want to ask about that. Do you work with Wayne State University Michigan State UVM Wayne County Community College or creative studies to help students create pathways to curation
Yes, we do through our paid internship program. The paid internship program has a section for curation and through that program, we've been able to build the pipeline.
And what's the size of that program? Right about now? You say people that are going into curation Do you know off the top of your head?
Didn't you please repeat the question? I'm sorry, how many people are in such a program right now? How many people Nick, do you want to answer the question, please?
Of course. So typically each year we have two to four curation internships per summer, okay.
Yeah, I guess meant a lot of people running to do it. But I was just kind of curious about that. How, how many employees do you have? How old are employees and how many live in the city of Detroit?
So we have around 400 employees and I think 189 live in the city of Detroit.
180. No
more 100 at night. Yes. All right.
Thank you, Madam President.
All right. Thank you. Councilmember waters Member Santiago Ramiro.
Thank you, Madam President. Good afternoon, everyone. Good to see you. I have a question around any potential collaboration with our arts culture, entertainment departments, or with the city's arts and culture commission. Do you have a relationship if you do, what does that look like?
Yeah, so we don't have any specific collaborations or, you know, currently, I mean, we certainly welcome you know, Rochelle Riley to the museum. She's been a good friend to the museum. And a supporter a lot of the programs that we do, but we don't have a specific program that we're doing in concert with the city of Detroit arts and culture division through
the Chair. Thank you. That's helpful to know. I asked because recently, Berlin announced that they received the UNESCO World Heritage status for their contributions to techno and respectfully, Trevor Noah was created here in the City of Detroit's so I'm just asking myself, why aren't we highlighting the assets that we have our history and benefiting from it? I think Berlin has got it right. They invest in their arts in their culture, and it's a part of their economy. I don't understand how the City of Detroit's that is the home to techno and Motown hasn't done the same. So then that goes to my next question around music. So I know we read a lot of beautiful artwork. I know that there is some programming with music at the DA I've been to it. But what are we doing to engage local Detroit artists who are in the music worlds and engaging them with the DIA and to the larger arts and culture of culture in the city? For me, I think there's a huge opportunity there to to really dig deeper into our music and have us getting our economy through through that really special talent that Detroiters have.
So, thank you, and yeah, thank you for that for that question and comment. So we do and I don't have statistics with us today. The senior program the music that's monthly, that is all local talent. And you know, I mean, that helps us so much to have local talent because right our you know, our talented musicians here have followings. I'll give you an example. We had elven Walnut Hills and Marian Hayden and a couple other musicians come to perform for seniors in December and again, that sold out right away. So we added a second one. Same with our Motown like that sold out right away and that's a local group. That's like Motown. Tribute. So certainly, we haven't talked about techno in the museum. I didn't come up on the senior feedback. But I think that's that's a great point. And Tony Smith, who's here, who heads up our public programming department I have a feeling is probably taking some notes we do have live music, you know, every other I think we're on about an every other Friday. We do bring in Acts from around the country and some international, but you know, certainly we do a lot with local artists and we'd be happy to get you some statistics on that. And yeah, techno I'm going to be thinking about that. And then concert of colors. That is a huge that is like a three day Music Festival on the grounds in the museum, that food features global music, and that's in partnership with concert of colors. So that's another way that we elevate music, you know, on the lawn and very accessible. Not everyone wants to come to the building as part of the video just trying to let people who've never been inside get an idea of what's really going on in there but having things on our lawn outdoors like that, I think is a great piece of the breadcrumb trail to get them to come in.
Thank you through the Chair. Thank you. I appreciate that. I really do want us to lean more into our strengths into our assets. And I think tattoo music is one that is often overlooked and seeing a whole other country benefit from it. So well is a little frustrating because I know that I know we have it so it was started here and we can benefit so much from there. I've mentioned that the table you know a potential board or commission or or table of partners that are thinking long term strategically about how we utilize the talent that we have here to attract more visitors. We're building a city for ourselves but but also for folks to come and enjoy and what I want to make sure is that we are being proactive instead of reactive. The way that we have been, you know, we're getting more popular now we have scooter bikes, I want to be here but we should be proactively thinking about whether or not we want these things here. There's just so much coming down the pipeline and I want us to be thinking about this in a proactive way and make sure that the triggers are in the forefront planning how we're doing this work. And I think leaning into techno music is one there is grandma techno cuwbc Every year in her her wheelchair at movements, there are plenty of seniors black and brown. And everyone in between that that loves a good house music session. So just really want us to look into that a little bit more and hopefully gain economically and culturally from there. So thank you for taking notes. Thank you Madam President.
Thank you Thank you, Councilmember Santiago mero. Councilmember Callaway
Thank you Madam Chair and good afternoon. I always love bringing my seniors to the DIA and you always so receptive and welcoming. We always have a great time. So thank you for the opportunity and thank you for the transportation I have a question about only because of my Native American background, my great grandfather, Choctaw, and Chickasaw, Chickasaw, and Lowndes County, Mississippi. And the slaveholders of my ancestors, Peter Hairston, who was Dutch, so pretty in touch with my history, and our plight from Lowndes County, Mississippi, where my relatives still live and where my mother was born. She was a Hairston. And I say all that because there's a book out in a documentary called The Hairston. My mother grew up with her Caucasian Hairston cousins on they considered a farm but it was a past plantation. Right? And Lowndes County, Mississippi, and if you look up the hairs to name you'll see my bloodline from the hair stands and the Native Americans, the Choctaw Fs and the chick assaults. So I bring that up because I'm very interested in an update from you regarding the Native American Graves and read patch reIation. Act, and how does it different from the museum's prior responses to requests for the return of cultural artifacts? And I've been reading that the British are returning some things to some artifacts to Ethiopia and Egypt, which they ought to and and what impact had the updates had so far on your museums relationships with tribes? And thank you.
Thank you very much for the question. I'm going to let my colleague Judy dhankhar Deputy Director answer.
Thank you very much for the question. We have been working very hard with tribes from Michigan the audition audit to very carefully review the collections and determine which object which cultural items should be returned. We've had very positive meetings that have resulted in repatriations and this is ongoing. This will be a project for many years to come not only with the Anishinabeg but with tribes throughout the country. We welcome consultations. It's not only an opportunity for repatriation, but it also helps us learn much more about the collections from culture keepers.
And thank you for your response. I'm really personally interested because of my own background and my family. So I'd like to know what you know, maybe I can visit and just, you know, sit down with you. Because my family down in Lowndes County, Mississippi are very interested in and we're following on what's happening here in Michigan. So that being said, That's my only question My only interest right now but again, I thank you for all the wonderful work that you do in the community and welcoming seniors you have the senior program and they love coming. So thank you, but I definitely want to meet with you regarding how you're how you're handling that and I know it's going to take years to make all of that right to right those wrongs.
Thank you. Yeah, we would be delighted to have you I will mention that my colleague Dynjandi cantar leads this work as the curator of Native American art. She came with a lot of energy after a 10 year absence in the position and she has worked tirelessly to connect with the tribes and to make the museum as accessible as possible. Thank you. Thank
Thank you, member Callaway, Councilmember Johnson.
Thank you, Madam President. And good afternoon. Thank you all so much for coming. Out. This afternoon. I think the DIA is absolutely phenomenal. I've always had a great experience. I appreciate you hosting our seniors from District Four. We had a great time and looking forward to coming back. I also appreciate inside out I know that's been in District Four it was numerous years ago. But I just appreciate the connection to the community and really looking to engage more with the community to attract them to the museum. I have a question sort of in line with what members Santiago Ramiro asked, and just thinking about the numbers of community based art galleries that are opening up in the city. Have you all ever considered partnering with them to be able to showcase some artwork perhaps as a part of the inside out? Partnership or gallery that you have, but just in general, have you considered partnering with them just to maybe provide a little bit more information to residents about what the DIA has to offer?
Yeah, thanks for that question. That's not something we have done a lot of really, you know, our focus with inside out in you know, through the service agreement is to work with nonprofit community partners and you know, villages, townships and cities. We did however, and I can't I'm not gonna remember how many years ago we did partner with the Charles right. Maybe it was I know it was pre COVID And we did add some of their pieces to the collection of inside out but we can certainly look at doing more of that in the future. Primarily the program has been focused on you know, bringing the DBAs collection out to the community to help people understand what their benefits are and sort of ingratitude and consideration of their millage support. Okay.
All right. I think it would be a great idea if that's something you're willing to entertain. Think it could be mutually beneficial for, you know, the new museum that may be coming online but also to encourage residents to visit the DIA just getting a snippet of what you have to offer. I'm also really interested in the Cultural Center planning initiative, because I think a lot of people just don't realize the amount of cultural institutions that we have in the city of Detroit. So can you talk about like the cost that you anticipate to make this happen, but also the synergy that it'll be able to create amongst the cultural institutions in such a small footprint?
Thank you for asking that question. So as as for the cost in and 20 $24. The last estimate, I heard was somewhere in the range of $250 million dollars. So hence, that is the reason I mentioned that this is a 10 year plus kind of project. You also pointed out something that's that's a really great point that I neglected to mention, and that was the fact that I've learned since being a part of the CCPI project, and that is Detroit has the single largest educational and cultural district in the country. There is no other city that has this many cultural and educational institutions that are essentially all together in one neighborhood which is why once again, the the the impetus behind this project is to create a campus a truly connective tissue so that we can take advantage of the fact that we have Wayne State, and CCs and the Charles right, and the library and the Historical Museum and the Carr Center all of these institutions from large to smaller, but we're all nestled in one neighborhood. And you know, we're we've been working hard on gathering funding. I mean, much of last year I spent a lot of time working with a small team from Midtown Detroit and from the museum and from some of the other cultural institutions as we go out and try to try to build funding for this. What I regard is a very important long term project.
If I may add a lot of notes to my colleagues remark. One of the things that the museum and the community in the cultural district is working very hard now is to find a solution for the underground parking structure. The Detroit Institute of Arts, this is unnecessarily fixed right now. The parking cannot be used by the cultural district. These are the CCPI project is predicated on the use of the John R la the surface lot and we want to transform that lot into a community space for all organizations around it. To get there the first thing that we need to do is to repair the underground parking structure the DI the class for this is $30 million. We have been able to secure some funding from Lansing and we need anybody any anybody who wants to help with this project contribute to it. So obviously we're hoping that the city of Detroit would also be involved in some capacity or some level in helping with this very important project that would not only be transformative for the city, but for the entire region.
And if I may add to what Salvador just said, when he mentioned that the underground garage, it's really the whole project is is predicated on that and that is because if you we the lot behind the museum is
the primary space primary area where we're visitors who come to the district Park, whether they're going to the DIA or to the Science Center or to the Charles right. Most visitors Park in that lot first. So we understand that we really want to turn that back lat into like, I call it a great lawn, a place that can be activated, but we but we can't remove those parking spaces that currently exist without having another place to move all of those visitors. So we are hopeful that we can be you know the as the kind of the cornerstone we can begin with the underground renovating the underground garage which is adjacent to the to the DIA. Once that work is complete, then we could move on with the next phases of the project which would be kind of bound between John Armbrust streets on the big on the big parking lot transforming it into into a more useful space. And is that part of the CCPI? Or are you doing that work now that that is part of the CCPI and as Salvador mentioned, we have been able to secure some funding for that project but we're not all all the way there yet. And so we continue to go out and and fundraise for the for that project as well but it's all part of the overall plan for the CCPI. So but remind me did you say that the plan is not yet complete? When you say plan, which, which CCPI Oh, sorry. So earlier I thought when you were speaking you were saying that you're still going through the process to identify the plan to implement. So so the the the CCPI plan itself, the master plan that's complete and that started I think that was at the when I said it's been underway for about six years that was at the at the inception. There was a competition that was held to find architectural in our architectural form firm to lead that project. So over the last six years, that master plan, you know, was it was conceived, it was refined all of the institutions had monthly meetings giving, giving feedback. So we're at the point now where we have a plan. It's about it's about funding to make it happen. And my last question relative to this is are all of the cultural institutions helping to raise dollars to implement the plan? We're all playing a role. I think varying institutions have their have different abilities based on on the size again, I said we scale from a smaller institution, something like the Scarab club to to one the size of the DIA or the Detroit Public Library. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. All right. Thank you, member Johnson member Young. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you always good to see everyone here. First of all, I just want to say thank you, Executive Director at Salvatore Pons for being for dia being the number one museum in America for two years in a row. That's a real big deal. So congratulations to you. And also thank you for allowing the people to vote on the public depart for free. When we had our council meeting in November, you sent me a lot of phone calls in my office. So thank you, I appreciate that. Um, most of what I ask I think that you already do. Um, I you know, I know I asked I asked you about Bosque I know I asked last year about African art, for I've been a couple times it seems like you really kind of have all of that covered. For the most part. I I will say, um, the only thing that from my perspective, that I would really want to see more of, I think, because obviously you deal with the creative class and you deal with those and you're talking about I was gonna ask you about that but you're talking about building a campus, but connective tissue. So I think you've really kind of addressed most of what I wanted to say. But I would think that it would be important, particularly now, you had to be careful how you do this because it's kind of in the Crossroads. But I would think more just from a historical perspective. You might want to talk about African American history. I think just because a lot of it is it especially here, it turns of the rich history that we have. And what I mean by that is threatening Lucy Blackburn across the cane or river, the Canadian River and their case in terms of from running from slave catchers from Kentucky. And that case became the seminal case which allowed African Americans to go to freedom in Canada because Canada decided we are not going to send slaves back. You know. And I think what we don't have that conversation that allow that start here, that the Second Baptist Church was the last stop that a lot of people would make for the Underground Railroad before they would go to Canada. Um, you know, I think you're going forward and Martin Luther King given his first I Have a Dream speech here with Malcolm X give a message to the grassroots here. There's a lot of rich history that we don't talk about in Detroit, and I think the DIA would be perfectly suited to talk about that. A little bit differently with the Charles H. Wright museum would just from his perspective, I also think there's a lot of discussions about other groups of people that we don't have conversations with. For the Latino community, I think that that's something that we should highlight more particularly when we're having these conversations about immigration, and undocumented workers and what they mean to this country. And the fact that the rice that you pick and the fruit that you pick, more than likely are picked by our Latino brothers and sisters, and have been doing that for a very long time and pass laws to exploit them for that purpose. And I also think as well, from the Ag perspective, I know Grace Lee Boggs is a world renowned activists here in the city of trade and we have a lot of real active is roots here. It makes a choice. So I think that that would really be a good sort of thing to talk about. And I think that also was Well, I think the relationship between the Arab American community and how right on our border, we have the most air lyric, it's outside the Middle East, here. So I think especially now what's going on with is Israel, Middle East conflict. You got to be careful because you don't want to come across as too preachy, but words are putting your thumb on a scale of justice, but I think it's just really important. And I think that you've done such a good job with all the other things that you've done that I've seen, in terms of African American representation, and not just the terms of art, but just in terms of some of the I remember I saw this portrait once in the DIA, African American young man with a sword in one hand, he was wearing jeans and a jersey, and a throwback jersey with Jordan shoes on. And he was on a horse and then he had like a sword and like the horse like kick it up in the air. The I don't know what that was, like, a shout out to like, you know, 5026 in America and wall Garrido with African Americans. Were coming here as cookies, the doors or maybe I'll just learn to read too much into that. But I just think that that type of stuff that I've seen that sophistication, and artistry and flair, I think would really be good to attract not just a lot of people to learn about history, but a lot of young people to really be involved with dia, which is what we need it so I know I kind of went long with that. But I just wanted to say I just want to say thank you for all the work that you do. And I look forward to work with you in the future. I've got Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you, Councilmember young councilmember durchaus.
Thank you, Madam President. Good afternoon to you all. I want to thank you for what you do. Obviously, DIA is one of our gyms. With so much wealth our you know, I have opportunity to attend it. I take my daughter there. She is excited to see just a lot of the exhibit season aspiring young artists, at least for now. But she loves it. So I really don't have any questions. I did want to just say thank you. I know member Johnson and I member Johnson. I brought it to my attention. Just about Mr. Whitacre honor honoring Mr. Whittaker Mr. And Mrs. Whitaker should I say for their art collection so didn't want to just personally thank you for that as well. But other than that, please just keep what you're doing. Connecting to our youth obviously is important and I'm a proponent at artists. I graduated from high school finally performing arts so I understand the importance of our arts, how I culture's our youth and broadens their horizons. And what folks don't know also helps them get access to college scholarships, which is something that is very important, so please just keep pushing and I will continue to support the arts in any way that I possibly can. I was trying to think in my head the name of the portrait that member young talked about because I know it very well but it's a young man holding a sword he's got on a Timberland boots, it's got my jeans, and I just can't think of the name of it but I enjoyed the DI so much obviously exhibited by Frida Kahlo as well and the man and machine just just just a wealth of great artifacts there. So thank you again for everything you do.
Thank you if I may name, the name of maybe say the name of the artist is candy Wiley. And right now we have two works by these artists on view iddi. We're very proud.
Sounds like I had to come back there again, and view the second piece but thank you for that as well to acknowledge our artists and just in their vision. Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you, member Durham member Benson.
Thank you. Thank you all for being here and all that you do. Thank you for your support of the child base right and our work towards and the DHS work towards a millage. Just looking at question number two that came from LPD and he responded and I wasn't aware that we're looking at it as an extreme reduction in millage revenue over the last four years. Can you speak to that and how you're dealing with it and you spoke to a briefly here, but I believe it deserves a deeper response just based on how deep that cut is over four year period.
Yes. Good afternoon. Thank you for the question. So what you're looking at there in terms of the decline in the tax base in the city for the museum because our millage is across all three counties. We've been able to really manage within that. So, you know, at this point that we haven't felt significant impact from the city's tax base declining, but it's certainly something that, you know, we're acutely aware of and monitoring as we go through future budgeting and forecasting.
Okay, so I wasn't aware. the responses This is a Tri County revenue decline, but you're indicating that these numbers are actually the city of Detroit. Revenue declined from this past year was 26 point 4 million, whereas in 2020 was 34.6. That's just in the city of Detroit.
We just received this information Friday so we can look further into that because we haven't had an opportunity to look at across the county where these figures came from. It could have
been looking to Mr. Corley is that are these this must be Tri County collection. It couldn't be just in the city. In Detroit.
President so yes, I believe is Tri County is from their 2023 financial statements. It's in one of their footnotes, okay
in the CIA's footnotes. Yes. So this is information that we got we received from you all indicating this.
Okay, we'll have to look further into that. Because we don't typically disclose the all of the county revenues. Okay.
Alright. So
you think in your, in your information and your documents that you publish, you don't know we have your collection from all public funds
we do but I I'd have to verify where these numbers are coming from. Because in our audited financial statements, we have not shown a decline in millage collections over the last four years.
Okay, that's good to know. And I'd like to find I like to have those numbers tie in. So we'll work with you after this to find out what those actual numbers look like. Then when it comes to the DIA in its financial health as well. With the endowment. Can you talk about your endowment and how the millage has played into that?
Sure, I can. I can talk about that and Salvador can add as well. So you know with the millage funding does not contribute to our endowment, it supports our operations. What we are really focused on right now is building our endowment outside of millage funding so that we can be in a position to be financially sustainable, sustainable beyond the millage which will end in 2032.
Can you talk about the level Yeah,
we've been we've been increasing our endowment through fundraising. And right now then dominates the operating endowment, unrestricted operating endowment around $385 million. Okay.
So while the millage may not contribute directly, I'm going to go on a limb and suggest that having a stable revenue stream allows you to be more strategic, strategic when you go after funds that can be used towards your endowment. And so having the ability to be strategic and not worry about the operations, I'm sure helps it maybe I'm mistaken there.
I think that's a really good observation. I would like also to point that the millage covers around 68% of our operating expenses every year therefore, we need to make up for the other 32% and that is through earned income. And also through fundraising. That is true that the millage help us be more strategic about our asks and fundraise towards the operating endowment. That's accurate observation.
Okay, I suggest that to my colleagues as well when it comes time to support a millage from the Charles H Wright in the Detroit historic society that we look at that as well as another way to look at removing or at least making sure that our assets, our sustainable forward into the future as well, and that we can grow those endowments also because those endowments just aren't nowhere near that level. Not sure me institutions have an endowment. At that level. It was very robust one and when it's necessary to ensure the sustainability of America's greatest art museum as well as we want to get there with all of our assets, our cultural institutions as well. And so thank you for that.
You know, there's still a long way to go to be financially sustainable in 2032, we will have to find an endowment of around $100 million. So there's a lot of work that we need to do. The millage is great, it's helping us do the work, but there is a lot of work and focus that we need to place in the next 10 years to be successful.
Thank you. At me, lady here.
All right. Thank you. We appreciate you all being here. I do not have any additional questions, but thank you for the work that you all are doing. I know you all just recently also have a new Chairman and Mr. Coleman right. That was just I know that made the news and excited to bring his leadership and his passion for diversity and inclusion and making the DIA more of a community gathering spot. So that's great news as well. I just wanted to mention with the senior transportation we tried to use it a few times and we have we have had issues with reaching the 25 number so just hopefully we can work with you on if we have some buildings that get to 15 or you know, they kick can't make the 25 but we can still possibly provide some options for those buildings within district five as well.
Yeah, and sometimes so so that happens occasionally. And we can also talk about grouping your group with another group. Sometimes we can make the 25 of the stops aren't too far away from each other. We can pick up one group, grab the other group, get everyone in a museum, so All
right, great, so we'll be reaching out to you. And if there's nothing else, no additional questions or concerns that will conclude the budget hearing we appreciate your time and thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, Mr. President. Thank
you. Thank you. All.
Right, we will go directly to our public comment. Mr. Foster,
you will be our only in Person public comment.
Good afternoon, Mr. Foster, you have two minutes for public comment.
Good afternoon through the chair. It's quite a few presentations today but I want to focus on a few important items. I think that we need to advocate for more crime victim assistance. We heard a little bit about it today. But what do I look like? What do I mean? It's more than just a program under the law MCL 780 point 751 through 780 point 775 outlines what must be done for Victim Assistance here, which means that we have to have resources there were social workers or people come around and keep them informed and abreast on their cases at all times. That assistance is supposed to be emotional assistance. It's supposed to be judiciary assistance. It's supposed to be all type of assistance that our Michigan cup power law requires. It's supposed to happen for any victim in any situation. And so until we have a different perspective, and we started doing what the law says must be done, then our community will have that opportunity to grow. A lot of times victims here when they have on resolve issues become defendants in cases. You know our resolve sexual assaults lead up to prostitution cases, and so forth and so on. So it's incumbent upon us to make sure that we have all the tools necessary in our community. So that we do not continue to criminalize issues and we can correct now. Second thing I will be asking for is quality of life department within our community within the police department. They could use their reserves potentially to address quality of life crimes. I mean, it's crimes that cannot afford to be investigated because they overwhelmed with more expedient crimes. Maybe our crime victim could work with them the prosecutor's office and everything else. But this community needs relief and it cannot go on as it has man.
Mr. Foster? All right. We'll go to online callers and how many do we have this afternoon?
Good afternoon, Madam President. There were 10 Hands raised before you've cut off public comment. The first caller is Peggy Goodwin.
Good afternoon, Miss Goodwin.
Okay, good afternoon.
Go right on the floor is yours. Okay.
Thank you. And as you proceed through reviewing the fiscal year, 25 minutes will budget for the city of Detroit. I just wanted to remind the council and the public about the issue with police authorized killing. As you know, the city of Detroit has acres of professional compliant impound yards run by members of the Detroit towing association with more than 600 years of combined experience in police authorized towing. If the mayor is recommending funds to be allocated to improving the Detroit Police run impound yards and Grinnell and Grand River that currently appear to be noncompliant. The funds are extraneous 20 million is currently being recommended for capital improvements and another 8 million for special one time expenditures. I hope that none of these funds are being used for the DPD tow yards. taxpayers deserve those funds to be used for initiatives that improve their quality of life, not replace private, professional and compliant taxpaying businesses by returning impounds to the police authorized Tours The City frees up police personnel to be working on public safety net towing an impound and the city is still receives a substantial administration fee and every police authorized tow so the city of Detroit would continue to obviously work with the towers on police authorized towing, but they wouldn't have the burden of training tow truck drivers buying tow trucks that are very expensive. The maintenance of tow trucks and the overhead of running compliant impound yards. I am sure if you asked the Detroit taxpayer if they want their police personnel to be working on public safety or towing, they would answer public safety unequivocally. Thank you for your time.
All right. Thank you.
The next caller is ADOS Detroit
Good afternoon
Good afternoon ADOS Detroit
Alright, if we can come back to this caller please.
Okay, the next caller is phone number ending in 124
or 124. Good afternoon.
Yes, good afternoon. May
I be hurt? Yes, ma'am.
Okay, thank you. I second the emotions and Mr. Foster and I commend his dedication you know somebody can be a victim of crime but you won't get victims resistance if the police don't charge it and the prosecutor doesn't charge it and I agree on the quality of life crimes. Member Johnson you get an Eric Mays award for asking about that. Also member waters gets double Eric Mays award for asking about putting attention in the north end which has had three current lately and how Miss Agnes Hitchcock was treated and stuff like that. So so I don't know the MPOs the neighborhood policing officers Brad Hawkins told me everybody knows who I am but they don't seem to know to call me back and that's a problem. So do we need a police ombudsman or what what can we do when we need attention and we're not getting also I know the health department was known today but seven dash 201 of the charter. We are not fully implementing the charter in the health department 36 District Court. I've had people there. I know they don't have enough staff. But I've also had people there telling me things that were incorrect. And when I asked what the legal authority was, they acted like I was the problem. The BOPC I'm glad they are trying to turn the ship around. I have seen in the past where the OCI just ignored. Residents statements about someone and took the police's version and just said that's it. So I don't have a lot of faith in the BOPC but I do hope it will turn around. I would also like to know how many migrants have been brought into Detroit. And I'm not I'm not against legitimate asylum seekers, but I know not all are I've done immigration law. I know what the standards are for asylum. We don't have a broken system. Well, it could be improved, but we definitely have.
All right, thank you Miss Warwick.
The next caller is Betty a vana
Good afternoon Miss Varner.
Good afternoon, Madam President and to all within the sound of my voice. I want to say first of all, Betty a bow, the president of sodales were black Association. I want to say that I support Mr. Foster and the things that he spoke about. Also, Miss Miss Maddix this morning she spoke about and concerns in regards to zoom not being available for us people with disabilities to have this option to be able to attend the meetings. I support her concerns because it's very difficult for some of us to get down to the City Hall to attend the meetings in person. So this is a great option for us. I want to personally publicly thank honorable council member Mary waters for helping a family member of mine a young man who is part of the skills trade apprenticeship program. Young men that are trying to do the right thing. Sometimes they need that support. I reached out to her and she has been very helpful and so I just want to say thank you. This is the type of support that young men need here in the city of Detroit, you really stepped up and showed that you really care about making sure these young men be successful. Please. Council members continue to support my association. Support our program. Our project grew out there for I think a quarter and also support deeper community park thank you and keep up with good.
All right, thank you Miss Varner.
The next caller is Marguerite Maddox. Scarlett
is Matt X Good afternoon.
Big Daddy was over there
down
there day one, we'll learn the Port Authority was listening to it this morning. And their mission about the pack and the power. Is she be the port and about the glory what what? Become? Yeah pull you back during the garden and the winds pour. I'm done. Thank you very much. Thank
you so much Miss Maddox.
The next caller is Ruth Johnson.
Good afternoon, Miss Johnson.
Good afternoon. Ruth Johnson, Public Policy Director at sea dad Community Development advocates of Detroit. First I want to thank Chief Judge mechanical and the landlord tenant division judges, the 36 District Court administrators and other staff and the legal services attorneys and their staff for what they've done so far to implement the right to counsel law. It is not a program. It is a law. I urge the city to invest in Detroiters facing eviction by fully funding the right to counsel law for 27 million for fiscal year 2025. There will be we anticipate 20,000 Detroit household or household facing eviction. That means approximately 50,000 Detroiters experiencing housing instability and that affects us all. Invest in the nonprofit legal services organizations that provide full legal representation and other services. Invest in effective community engagement and education to be provided by the city through the office of eviction defense and other departments as well as nonprofit organizations. That serve Detroiters facing eviction and housing instability. What the coalition of the right to counsel coalition is asking is a dedicated website and phone number that is known to Detroiters a public facing office of eviction defense that is fully staffed community friendly information printed materials and outreach activities to prevent and divert avert diversion. Eviction I'm sorry, in this can be used general funds, including any budget surplus. ARPA American rescue plan axons and all available federal, state and local funds. We thank you for your support so far. Let's get it done so that we can help the entire city
Thank you, Miss Johnson.
The she's made the next caller is Cunningham.
Good afternoon, Mr. Cunningham.
First Timothy chapter two, verse two, and this speaks, praying for all those that are in authority. And I want each council person and I want our great police department to know that I continuously pray for all those that are in authority. Also, I had a council member state that they bought that I was talking about council that has not ridden the bus with me when I say that don't be severely or uppity when you get on the coaches. Ask people at home to get on the coach see what they have got on the coach with me. I have people in power get on the coaches with me. And all I mean is when you get on the buses talk to the people mingle whatever a person does, to benefit transit. We're all on the same team. So just know that I am when I say that I'm not talking about any council member, by no means pray for all those that are in authority that I might lead a quiet and peaceable life as everyone in the sound of my voice if you pray and Holy Spirit, please do so throughout today only. There's a lot of water. Say my mother's name into that Patricia Marie Lyon at the rivers a girl's point and myself brother Cunningham. Business has been extremely slow I think though that I've done business with me and that have donated so I can purchase the bus tickets. The and then I think all those are donated hand warmers, gloves, but there's a huge need for bus tickets. There's a lot of people that you probably don't even want to talk to or talk with or encounter that I see from homeless two that I cut every day. So please keep me in prayer up with that to get those bus tickets and get them disseminated to the people in my shunyata my pool yet on my CRM i shondo mashanda Goya Rama, Rama Rama, Rama
right thank you Mr. Cunningham.
next caller is William and Davis. Mr. Davis
yes okay. I'd
like to start off by talking about Detroit Police Department. I think it should be a greater effort to find missing people in the city of Detroit. I think it should be a greater effort to deal with these people that are doing evil things. Especially with our young women or young girls in this city. I think far too often it appears to me as if there's not the effort that should be done, you know, looking for black people and they come up missing. Also, I think it should be a greater effort to get more detritus on the Detroit Police Department. Far too many of them live outside the city of Detroit 75% of the regular officers 85% of command officers. And also I think it's tragic and the waste of our resources for our Detroit police cars. We're going out to the suburbs where these people live. Also as relates to the board of police commissioners, they need more investigators than what they asked him for. You know, the goal should not be to try to get you know the the get the numbers upon the 90 days for the investigation. The goal should be able to get the numbers up under 60 days or 30 days and maintain it in a one of the reasons why we was up under federal decree is the fact that they wasn't properly investigating cases. We have people and authority that was on this board that was causing cases while investigating to him was elected a former police officers you know and the fourth and the sixth commission district areas so you know, a lot more needs to be done. And you know, we need to make sure that people you know, as we approach RPF and diversity, the people respect what's going on and say Detroit right now is highly questionable because questionable individuals are still sitting in those positions. Thank you.
next caller please.
The next caller is Motor City rue.
Good afternoon.
It ain't good about this afternoon Mary Sheffield. Now my investigative skills around Detroit and legendary what Dan has went for he came in here and total jaw is straight. Copycat. She knows what that letter come from came from. It wasn't anonymous. She knows whose name is on here. How can you conduct an investigation? And you ain't talked to the persons who are named in that anonymous letter as she calls it. But Mary Sheffield, you and James Taylor, especially every elected position in this whole city is now seriously in question. Because of the fact we got Detroit voter trap house now as I said my investigative skills are legendary. But this one way over my head out of out of my league is so deep that I understand law Gabriela Santiago remember why you would vote no, just as well as Scott Nelson just as well as James Tate Jr. and Mary Sheffield. And I'm wondering why Fred Doohan didn't show up to vote no, because he definitely don't want this information out there. But all of them voted. traphouse is over in district seven. And I'm 60 votes he won that election back told me a question. When garland Gilchrist raised the issue in 2017. He only wanted to count certain precincts. Smart guy I T guy used to work for the city never held no political position whatsoever. Now as a lieutenant governor of the state of Michigan, but he identified it was more ghost coming out to precincts than it should have been. Just like I'm seeing right now. Not triple dare any city official in the city of Detroit to say I'm lying about anything. He's voted trap houses it's absentee ballot fraud, and that video clearly demonstrates 12842 is a Detroit voter trap house.
Thank you our next caller please.
The last caller who raised their hand before he cut off public comment is ADOS Detroit.
Good afternoon. ADOS Detroit Good afternoon. ADOS Detroit
going once
going twice ADOS Detroit. All right, Miss Hewes. If that is you if you can just submit your public comment if you would like us to have it a part of our public record. All right, that will conclude all of our public comment for today in all of our budget deliberations, we will stand adjourned and resume on Wednesday. There was nothing else to come before us. This meeting will stand adjourned.
