Testing testing 1212 Hey the money man is here. Hello, hello. Alright, let me test this right away points should work now. A perfect okay Are we all good on Zoom? Sir Sir Thomas TJ, are we good on Zoom? Yes. Okay, thank you All right everyone, we're gonna go ahead and get started. This is nice and loud, which is appreciated. Thank you all so much for joining us. I really appreciate you taking the time to be here and we are going to go ahead and get started. So for folks who don't know me, I think everybody here we've met at least once a Teresa but for those who don't know me, my name is Gabriella Santiago Romero. I am your city council member here in District Six, the best district in the whole city of Detroit to be honest, we all know that and this is the first of a quarterly series that our office is putting together that we're calling the building power training series. And for us, and for myself as a community organizer. It's incredibly important for us to educate ourselves on how systems work, how processes work, for us to be better engaged, and better capable of advocating for the things that we want. I know that I'm a council member, I know that being in this position means that we have some power and some leverage, but truthfully young after being in this position for a year, I realized that my voice can be strengthened or amplified when I have my community behind with me. And we're all echoing the same thing. We're all saying the same thing that we need more funding for environmental protections. more funding for housing, more funding for sidewalk repairs. It really goes a long way when we have residents that are advocating along my side because our voice is just that much stronger. So thank you so much for being here. And I really do hope that the series and these trainings help us all understand horror city, funk functions and works so that we can all really integrate ourselves in the process. So today, we are going to be here we also have some folks online so thanks for the folks online that are joining us. We are recording the session we are going to share it out in our newsletter and are different platforms. Thank you to media services for helping us make sure that we're able to be a hybrid thank you to my team. For all the work that you guys have done to get this together. I would like my team to introduce themselves briefly if they wouldn't mind. We'll start with Trish. Trish, if you wouldn't mind raising your hands. She is Deuter office. We're incredibly excited to have her. She's our community liaison so any support that you might need. She works closely with Joelle. We have Ray Duncan Ray is my policy adviser incredible with her dope Howard University shirts. today. We also have TJ looking fabulous. He is our communications manager. And then we have Lauren who schedules and controls my life. She's our title administrative. Thank you. Yes, I'll just leave it with administrative assistant. And then we have my Chief of Staff, my incredible Chief of Staff, Kristen. We're missing Joe. Well, I think that's all we're missing right now. But thank you all again. And thank you LPD. Thank you, Mr. Corley. Thank you, Renee for being here. I am not the money girl. Mr. Corley is the money man. He's been working for the city for many years. He has in depth knowledge of how the budget works. So he's here to help me really ensure that any questions that you might have are answered. Just some quick housekeeping. There's food please do grab some pizza. We can donate a pizza from Little Caesars. Thank you Little Caesars we got some water. We do have some resources in the back. If you haven't signed up yet please do and then the bathrooms are going to be down the hall to the left. I believe that is everything for housekeeping and just a huge thank you to to committee rec center for having us and Cynthia who just laughs But who really helped us ensure that we were in this space. With that, we're gonna go ahead and get started. So what today is going to look like is we're gonna start on time and end on time. Everybody knows that. This is really how we roll. Our agenda is going to cover we're going to have a short presentation that's going to cover the agenda, the city's agenda and how it functions. We are going to have a q&a session at the end. For those of us that are online. We do have a q&a chat box. Please please please utilize that throughout the training. My staff can pause me as I'm going along if we do have any questions, but you are able to ask questions online and then we'll have a brief closing, hoping to end around 730 so that everyone's able to go back home and enjoy watching The Last of Us. It was just me. Okay. So with that so the budgets, nay, the budget, you're like, yeah, the budget is incredibly important. The budget really is a priority. budget that reflects our priorities that reflects what we value frankly is how I see it what we value and where we want to see our money go to. So the budget that you see that you'll see at the beginning of this budget process will be the mayor's proposed budget. So council was going to get the mayor's proposed budget. Our fiscal year. Our fiscal year is from July first through June 30. The proposed budget is to spend is to plan the supplant the the money that will be spent for city services and for programs over the next fiscal year. And again, this is a reflection of the mayor's priorities all of our budgets have to have revenues that equal our expenditures. So the money that we're getting in has to balance the money that we're spending, and this is per city charter and per our state law. And what you will always see we always get this a big book that's about this big. And what when what we receive is a four year term period. It's a proposed four year plan. That's how far in advance we are planning our budgets. But what we are approving is the next fiscal year. So just so folks know, the mayor will be presenting his budget to city council on Friday, Mitch March 3. So Friday, much March 3 City Council was going to hear the budgets proposed the mayor's proposed budget, we will that's going to be open to the public. So I really encourage folks to join us. And just so folks know. This is an example of what our books look like. So City Council receives once again, this big beautiful book of our budget what we see on top is the expenditures so what we're spending our money on and the green is going to be our revenues, the money that we receive and we haven't we have a page that's going to show you what our revenues look like. But this is what our budget looks like. There are different line items that break down where each where each of our spending is going to last year what I realized is that these are not as detailed as I would like. There are some detail but really it's just an overview. Not as detailed as I would like, but I have encouraged and had been asking that we get a more detailed budget because I want to see what kind of programming we have underneath departments. How we're actually spending this because right now we're kind of just getting an overall picture. And I'm someone that would like to see more details where they're not will ever see that. Mr. Corley, you see you said at one point they were pretty detailed the budgets. Were they ever more detailed than what we see now or do you think that it's the same amount of detail that we've always seen on our budget?
Same amount of detail and again, Earth quarterly from our city council's let's say the policy division, I'm joined by my colleague nice short and heavy to hear happy to be here, by the way. It's been a long time since the budget in more detail. I mean, you go back years, so it's been like this for a while now.
Great. Thank you. So let's go into the city revenue. So currently, these are all the different types of revenues that we receive. As you can see, the biggest amount of revenue that the city receives is from taxes, assessments and interests. That is where the biggest chunk of our money comes from. Next you'll see us from sales and charges for services, followed by grants shared taxes and revenues. We get a lot of grants from the federal government's state government as well. We have revenues from use of assets, next contributions and transfers and then we've got some licenses and permits a lot of this coming from these seed fines and forfeitures and penalties. And we leave it to the very last portion there are the sales of assets and compensation for losses that we have. So this is where were they see the majority of our money. All of this is in the millions, by the way. So all of this is in the millions, which adds up to the city's total revenue of over $2 billion. Mr. Corley, anything you would like to add? On this on the slide?
So not really, I guess when it comes to taxes, it's important to know that that makes us made up of Minnesota. Income Tax usually uses tax special assessments, missed a lot of taxes that goes there. So we spend a lot of time looking at those. In fact, on Monday, the citizens should try to zoom in on the February 2023 revenue conference and they're going to go over the revenues at that time on my day. So it's our conference that is under state law has to be conducted twice a year, in September and in February, and the conferences is made up of three board conference. Participants you have the CFO from the city, you have representatives from the State and an economist from the U of L. And they're gonna go in depth on the revenues on Monday and the revenues that are approved by the Board or the revenues that the mayor He bases his budget on those revenues.
Thank you. Thank you Mr. Corley. Any questions on this Yes.
Point analyzing the ones that I would like to see the back to face balance with well established, good, responsible people make almost half of the budget. Wrong, how much you guys get some fights for people to take it off.
So as you can see, not a lot. That is 28 million. Okay. Okay. That's a good point. I will get to that in a second Teresa. Oh,
to the mic. Oh, thank you. So we're gonna give you all the mic so that people online can hear. I'll just repeat the question okay. What time is the conference? It's one o'clock the revenue conference is at one o'clock and is it hybrid can people watch from my mind? Yes, it is hybrid? How, okay, if you want to go in person, it's going to be in the auditorium downtown. That's a good question. It should be on the Council website. So and we can double check that right now staff if you wouldn't mind looking at the calendar to ensure that it might not be there just yet. But it should be because it's coming up pretty quickly. It's on the city's website. It's been confirmed so you can join through the city's websites. Mr. Corley, there's a point made about a lot of our revenue comes from taxes and we are taxing residents. Has this always been the case? Is this normal for municipalities to tax to have a majority of their income come from taxes? Do you see it differently in other places or is this this is pretty average that municipalities get the majority of their revenues from taxes.
It's pretty average. You'll see that a large part of our revenue also comes from fees, for instance from the water source department. But when you go to look at cities throughout the country, it is pretty normal to have you know property taxes, sales taxes in some cases in some cases like city trade and income taxes. Thank you, Mr. Corley.
We have somebody online. TJ, what's the online question? wonderful grace. We're gonna move us along again, folks. We have the q&a section at the very end as well. Okay. So
so for the fiscal year 2023. Our general revenue is 1.2 billion. The general fund is comprised primarily as we see from taxpayer dollars, and this does not include so the general fund does not include funding from grants from other entities. Here you'll see how the majority of our general fund is made up so a large portion of it is from wagering tax. From state revenue sharing and from income tax. Income Tax beam, as you've known, I'll notice being the largest portion, we also have some utility tax. We have funding from about 6% of funding from the prior year surplus and then other non major sources are about 70%. Mr. Corley, what usually is under nine major sources.
So our non major
sources are our revenues our fees and reimbursements that's coming from our departments. That would be we also have our because because signalman administrative fee in for our casinos, we have any of the fees that's coming from the departments like fire. Those EMS fees. Let's see There's there's so many of them but 36 District Court their fields are included in general fun and then we have central Staff Services where support departments would charge a fee to our other departments and then you have those type. So fees, reimbursements.
Got it. Thank you. And just so folks know I'm going to keep us going along just so that we can soak in all the information and then we'll we'll get into q&a At the very end. So outcome budgeting. The administration has moved to this term or this breakdown that they call outcome budgeting. And this is to help guide the funding and to track how it's how what they're hoping to impact. So this slide right here breaks down what the different outcomes are that they're prioritizing, and the next slide is going to show how much money is going to each. So for them. Outcome budgeting outcome budgeting has five different areas. The classifications are as follows. The first one is safer neighborhoods, and we see a lot of this money going towards safe streets, fire safety, law enforcement, crime prevention, what they call resiliency, and health emergency response. The second category that they have is vibrant and beautiful city. This includes having the healthy inaccessible assets includes housing stabilization, inclusive of walkable, walkable neighborhoods, beautiful and sustainable physical environments and access to cultural amenities. Again, this is what the administration's defined as their outcomes that they're budgeting for the third the third one is economic equity and opportunity. The are funding this to reduce barriers and fights intergenerational poverty to benefit from the vital vital neighborhood business climate and robust City economy. Their first their fourth category is effective governance. So this is for city wide community collaboration for equitable progress involves accountability of leadership oversights, and outreach and the last category that they have is efficient and innovative operations. So for them the city's government operations and internal facing administration sold things for financing Personnel Information Technology IT facilities fleet legal and agency administration. This also includes funding for debt service and fiscal stability reserves and government operations. Mr. Corley, anything that you want to add to this section? And Mr. Short, okay. So now we're gonna see what this actually breaks down to. And for those that have been following around the ARPA process, I think a lot of those buckets look similar. So the fiscal year 2023, general fund expenditures is 1.2 billion. And here's how it's broken down. This is the general fund, the only fund that has a flexibility in how our monies are spent. So we're able to move things around here and our general fund. As we can see, the largest portion of our funding is going to safer neighborhoods, the largest. The department with the largest budget is our police department. They receive about 30% of the city's budget. We have next government operations, followed by both fiscal stability reserves and economic equity opportunity, which leaves us with debt service and vibrant and beautiful neighborhoods, beautiful city and effective governments. Now, that's what the budget looks like. That's what we that's, that's a very broad overview. Again, we have a book that breaks it down even more. But I do want to show folks how the departments look so I should write a book. For next time we will. We'll bring our books for you guys to see. So there's going to be an overview of what the buckets are that he has, and there's a breakdown of each departments. We're not going to show you every department here because it's a lot. But we are going to show you some key ones that we think everybody really, really cares about or wants to learn more about. So here is our first department profile, which is the seed building safety, engineering and environmental departments. They have 34 million. Their key responsibilities are monitoring blights, enforcing ordinances, rental ordinances, they grant commercial licenses and construction permits, and they monitor environmental issues. And again, for folks that are online if you want to ask him questions, please do so. And we also have a q&a at the very ends. Now this is what each department's budget looks like in our budget book. So we have a department name. On France here we have building safety engineering and environmental department. We have, again, as we said the forecasted next three years so a four year budget that we see, but we're really just discussing this budget that we want to adopt. And then it breaks down how they use their funding in the departments. We actually fought to add the $100,000 to the public fund. There was no money in the public health funds we put that there which is pretty exciting. And this is what we see for each departments just wanted to give everybody an example what that looks like. But as you can see, I want more details. Where how more details are or things that I wish we saw. Another department profile is the Detroit water and sewage departments. They're at 629 million, with their main responsibilities been maintaining water, sewer and drainage infrastructure. They fix clogged catch basins and sinkholes, they work on the lead line replacements and basement backup protection programs. These aren't all the responsibilities but these are their key responsibilities that we know many people care about. Department of Public Works 151 million, with the key responsibilities being monitoring trash collection from contractor street maintenance, sidewalk repair, installs, speed cushions and snow removal. Just applause for DPW twice this year. My garbage was not picked up on time. Please let me know when that happens. Email us text me because we approve these contracts. And if they're gonna get it goes pick up our garbage and time. I'm not going to approve their contract. We deserve nice things and we pay for this. So let us know if it's working for you. If not, we can change that. The next department profile is whoops. And behind General Services Department with 146 million, the General Services department or GSD. They're curious. Their key responsibilities are ground maintenance. So you'll see them in the parks cutting grass removing trash from city owned properties. They bought up any of the Detroit Lyon bank owns they get homes. They work in forestry so they trim or cut the the the city trees the ones that they own on the brands. They also plant trees around the city. This is where our parks and recreation division lies under and they also work with the fleet and facilities management so all the cars that the City manages the last department profile that we have here is housing and revitalization. Departments HRD at 65 million and just get a sense, right? These are priorities and from what we shared so far. So far housing has the least amount from what we shared so far. Okay. So housing has 65 million key responsibilities our home repair programs, manages the Community Development Block Grants Program to CDBG money. They provide teacher housing services through their the teacher housing services office. They have the housing affordability network. They work they currently are working on a website's they received the funding through ARPA, it's supposed to help highlight affordable housing in the city. So they're they're really trying to ensure that they're providing access to services and resources that residents might need. Again, we didn't highlight everything. But here are just some more allocations that you'll see. Noting that schools and libraries state or county services are not funded through our city's budget but the other departments that we have here, police departments, again, the largest sum of our money, their 366 million. The fire departments is at 130 931. The Health Department's at 44. We've got planning and developments at 9 million. Our Detroit Land Bank Authority we have here this is all just to know also this is a non departmental This is an authority that we have here. But they they receive 10 million. We've got the Charles Wright museum with 4 million and the Detroit building authority, the DBA at 1 million
so once again, here we see only from what's been presented in our in our department profiles. We have DWSD receiving the most amount of money next to DPD DPW GSD DFD is going to be a pop quiz after this HRD D HD BC PDD we got to practice these alphabet soups Jaquith. Everyone speaks in alphabet soup so it'll be good for us to know Yes. Okay.
Thanks for listening so you're wondering why you pay taxes and at the same time had to pay the water water bills
so actually, the water department is supported by your water bill, which includes your sewage bill. They do not charge you a another tax. So once you paint is just the fees or the water service as well as a source our services and so on your water bill you do not pay an additional tax
so that 600 million is coming from the water bills and sewers because that's not in this you're not paying additional tax. So so it is a part of city budget and the water department is called an enterprise agency they function like a business and so when you pay your water bill and your sewage bill that's what they're collecting. That's what's making up that $626 million.
They not they are not the type of institution
they should
be yeah well unfortunately.
All that is done is face to face. Three months, I'm going up to $70 to 170 $5 for a gallon of gas so what the department is up guys
so you want to
Yeah, so
I would say you know, it takes a lot to operate the water department. They have to treat the water of course that you're drinking and then the water that goes to your sewage they have to treat that as well. And you know when there's a heavy rain that goes into the water bases all of that it's a lot of infrastructures, a lot of pipes, you know to transport the walk the water there's a lot of places to to take the sewage you know from your toilets and whatnot. To go to the sewage treatment. Plants is Allah is Allah
Oh, now your left image, again is water, there's no need to leave. This is just the facade it's making it easier for some flat to waste effect they the same or not? But they just lose the field because of omnicef which is limited because two arrays one effects which is needed I have no control.
So it'd be wonderful during the budget process. We have a we have a budget hearing for the water resource department. Please raise all those great questions, put them in writing and make sure they
need so Mr. Corley, just had a great suggestion, folks, for anyone. And we'll get to the we actually will we can have this whole discussion during q&a. I guess before I move on because you're correct. We are able to ask these questions of the water departments because anybody have any questions regarding what we just talked about right now? Yes. Sir Cedric, if you wouldn't mind going up to the mic so that people on line can hear us.
Last monies that the President Biden provided, should you have some surpluses of snatching the cities has some surpluses in some category that people should be able to see more and spend less.
So for instance, the city received $100 million plus from the American rescue act. And so that money has to be used specifically for purposes of treating, you know, or or helping people to get through the pandemic. Now that we're kind of controlling the pandemic situation. We still got this money to help people that were that were affected, you know, by the pandemic, but monies that we received from the federal government and also from the state government. Usually those monies are just for specific purposes. We can't we have monies left over we have to spend them for those purposes. We can't just put them in a in the surplus fund and spin for you know, things that are not associated with the grant. So we have to spend though specifically based on what the federal government tells us and how we spend them, as well as the state. For American we have for awkward American rescue dollars, those have to be spent Yes By December 31 2026.
The the administration and city council so it's so very similar to this process. This and this happened before my time this happened actually the year before that I started, but the administration did the same thing. They had a proposed budget or breakdown of how to spend ARPA money. If you go online. If you go check on the ARPA box on the city website. You can see the different categories that the mayor proposed that City Council approved, but that is that's how that money was was allocated. Tracy, did you have a question? Okay. Yes. So we're not going to discuss our budget during this budget process, which is why we didn't bring it up. But we do always talk about ARPA especially when it comes with the contracts that we're approving. Alright folks, since we want to get deep into the discussion, I'm going to try to get us through this quickly. 10 minutes no. All the kids gotta go. For folks. So for folks online, we were just reminded that children come in the park have to go home. Yes. Okay. Detroit animal control, General Services, General Services. Okay, folks, so timeline. This is the timeline for this budget for this budget process. So the mayor once again, will present his budget on Friday, March 3 to city council. We are we are going to be in the auditorium. Please come through. We're on the 13th floor. The public is welcome. And we're also going to be doing this online. It's going to be hybrid. Once again, you can find that link on our city council. calendar that's online. So what happens is that the mayor proposes his budget to us on Friday, March 3, on March 8, city council has our budget hearings. We have 45 about 45 budget hearings. So 45 hours of our lives plus will be spent listening to different departments telling us how they want to spend their money, what money they're going to be asking for. We get to ask them questions. A lot of the questions are what you're asking us, sir, why isn't this working? Why are you spending this much money on here? So we'll get to a point where I want to hear from everybody what questions you want me to ask during these hearings, but there's an opportunity for us to ask those questions. Um, so we have our budget hearings. Next, we conclude with the budget hearings, and then we start through the executive session. So executive session is basically where we get to pull. So during the budget hearings, if there's a department that we want to discuss more on beyond the one hour that we have, we then asked to pull it into the Executive Session, executive session are more series of meetings that we have for us to be able to deliberate further ask more questions to departments and essentially we spend a lot of time asking them about resources and services and why things work or they don't work. So that's actually a really good time for us to be able to ask those questions. Then executive session ends on April 10.
We then
the mayor of the eighth by April 14. We all know April 10 is when city council votes on the budget after we have our executive sessions and after city council votes on the budget on April 10 After we've heard every department for an hour during the budget hearings. After we've had a few other sessions where we continue to deliberate and ask more questions. Then city council votes on the budgets. We can vote it up or down and we can also have our own make our own amendments to the budget. So but that also takes a while for us to figure out what we want to amend because it has to be nine council members that agree to these amendments. But we are able to make amendments. And then once we made our amendments we vote on the budget the mayor has an opportunity to veto our budget. That's going to be on April 14. But City Council has one more opportunity opportunity to override override the mayor's veto if applicable. Mr. Corley, there really hasn't been I mean last year we amended we approved. The mayor getting come back with a veto. And it sounds like he that hasn't happened in the past.
The mayor has been the mayor since 2014. He has chosen not to veto councils changes to the budget Council's changes to the budget is typically one to 2% So about 10 to $15 million. And tassel can only reduce monies from a program if they want to fund their change to the budget they cannot add revenue they cannot adjust the revenues they have to move money around, cut somewhere to find their changes to the budget.
And for folks that are here online, in person, I mean everyone in front of you has a breakdown of the hearings. So here are all the hearings that we're going to have folks please tune in based on departments you want to hear more about. Correct. Thank you, TJ these are these are tentative they sometimes change but if you follow us on either our newsletter or on social media, we always update you on those changes, but these are tentative because sometimes these do change. Okay. Just a few more. And then you can get to the good stuff. Any questions online TJ? Okay, we'll get to the q&a portion then. So what does it look like if you're going to be online watching and this is what you're going to be seeing? This is what the budget hearings look like. Here we have HRG are director giving us an update of what they are proposing. And this is the breakdown. And again, we only have an hour for each of these budgets, these budget hearings, usually about 15 to 10 minutes of it is spent sometimes more of the dispense hearing from each department. We then gets to have City Council Ask q&a. There's also a public comment section. So this is very important. If you attend these hearings and if you like what you hear or you don't like what you hear if you want council to make any amendments that is a time to say hey HRD actually want you to put more money into sidewalk repair or into Roof Repair. Because because they deal with housing right so I want HRD I need to put more money, more grant money for for for home repair grants. And that's your time to make that come usually folks have about a minutes depending on time. So it goes by fast unfortunately, but we're happy to help you. Ensure that you utilize your 60 seconds very well. Mr. Corley, Rene anything to add to that. Okay, so And here in this slide is just explaining or sharing with folks how to tune in virtually. So and also how to grab all this information so the budgets is public, and you can get the budget information at Detroit in Detroit mi.gov/budgets. This zoom link is the Zoom link that we'll be using for all the budget hearings. You can also call in by by your phone and then this will also be in channel 10 with closed captioning means yes,
what do you guys are recorded so if you if you miss it, you cannot you can go back on Channel. Oh no. You go to the website and city council website and then you can look at archive meetings.
Quarterly Yes. Okay, do I go back Are they just gonna queue it up?
There's gonna be three quick
clips. One is just council president opening up the budget. Hearing. The department director will begin. Then we'll fast forward to a council member asking questions of the department. And then lastly, an example of public comment. So we're gonna flip through all of those
you can start your presentation. Morning
everyone, just make sure your microphones aren't on.
Okay. Good morning. Julie Snyder director at the housing and revitalization department. Good morning. I'm Dan Miller, Chief of Staff for housing revitalization. Good morning,
Jonas. Braxton Williams agency CFO HRD. And Steve Watson, Budget Director of CFO
thank you for this time to present the proposed budget for the housing and revitalization department, the city of Detroit. I'd like to begin by providing a brief presentation to this honorable body but the work of the housing revitalization department or HRD. And the service that we provide to residents of the city so that you this honorable body and the public have information on the types of activities that are proposed to be funded in the 20 to 23 budget.
Next slide.
And they usually show the slide,
whether revitalization department's mission is to sustain and grow neighborhoods with quality, affordable housing and economic opportunities for all. We have seven different divisions in the department responsible for everything from compliance and reporting of the federal grants that were required to manage community development, immigration affairs, housing development, investment, homelessness solutions, policy development and implementation and special projects in real estate. We have over 100 employees within the department. That number has grown in recent years, and I'll provide information as to why that is later on in the presentation. Next slide, please. HRD supports the development of affordable housing and preservation of it as well through financing and pre development work in 2021 10 development started a construction that HRD directly supported that will result in over 387 New regulated affordable housing units for residents of the city of Detroit. Next slide please. One of the big highlights from 2021 was securing a Choice Neighborhoods Initiative Grant. This is a $30 million grant. It's the first first of its kind that we've received for the city of Detroit, resulting in 841 new units of housing 600 of them being affordable, including both for sale and rental options. That first phase of that work. is expected to start in April of this year. Continuing through 2027 Next slide please.
So that was just a little snippet of the presentations. As you can see, she's trying to go pretty fast cuz she's got a lot to go through. And every single department does this again. So this is going to be a really important opportunity to join and listen in showing a little bit about each departments and how they function. Thank you, Madam President. And hello HRD thank you for being here. It looks. So my first question is actually in the same vein, as member Johnson as our strategy for homeownership and for single family homes. So according to our community partners, there are 216 proposal and homes in District Six that are ready to be stabilized and could be renovated. So this to me seems like an opportunity for homeownership to really allow folks to build generational wealth. I'm wondering and then yesterday we also heard from the land bank that's there are retirement ready homes. A rehab program that is strictly funded through Phillip philanthropic dollars, so I would love to know hrs role in renovating homes and making good on proposal ends on proposal ends promise. And this strategy can be a little bit more I know it's been discussed already around the programs that you have, but it's a bill of some more details on strategies that that you have for to to make sure that we are providing homes that are ready for purchasing. That's just an example of the many questions that I asked. And just so folks know, we were able to allocate a million dollars of ARPA money into a home pilot program where the city is utilizing land bank homes, renovating them and selling them back to residents and supporting them with financing. We're doing our job you guys. It's so much fun. I love it. All right. I think we have one more. One more clip for you. Madam President, the next caller is Casey N. May I be heard? Yes, you can.
Thank you to the council and HRD My name is Casey masseter. And I'm the Policy Analyst at Detroit disability power. I am super encouraged and appreciative of all the conversation today about affordable housing. It's definitely a need. I would love however, to hear more about affordable accessible housing for our disability and aging communities. We also need affordable avenues for home repairs and modifications. We know that households that include at least one disabled person need 28% more of an income to maintain the same standard of living as a similar household of non disabled people. We also know that housing equity is a key to a future in which all people feel valued in the city regardless of their demographics. The main ask today is to increase the funding and building of accessible affordable housing as well. As increasing the renewed Detroit funds for those home repairs and modifications. Thank you.
Thank you. So that was one minute. She got a lot in there. She got an Ask she got a she gave us a little bit of a context of what the issue is. And then she shared her hopes so it's possible to get a really good public comments and it does take some practice but we can help you that with that again. So moving us back. Thank you media services. Okay, so now we now that we've seen what it looks like in action and what you will be seeing this year if you do tune in, we shared how to tune in how to make public comment. Would you want to share a little bit about what we did last year because Mr. Corley said about 10 $15 million are be are able to be reallocated. It's exciting that about half of that is something that we were able to get for residents in the city of Detroit. So last year, I asked to reallocate $8 million. We were able to reallocate 6.3 million which I was super, super proud about. This is my first budget. I didn't know what I was doing. I was wearing a sweater up there. Oh my god. But we worked hard for for these wins. So for HRD we were able to add $3 million into the housing trust fund for the office of immigration affairs. We all know this just as beautiful and diverse. We asked for $190,000 versus Dziedzic plan and to hire additional staff. And we got that for planning. So for PDB we were able to put $2 million to update the master plan. And they're doing it. The RFP just came out which is pretty exciting. So the city is going to update our master plan which is it's been a long, long time. Since we've done that. For the public works. We added $1 million to the sidewalk repair program for disabled residents. I was really pushing for sidewalk repair programs for low income residents and for seniors. We were able to allocate it for disabled residents. For BC for building safety. Again, we put $100,000 for the public health fund. I want to put more. The public health fund can put air monitoring around the neighborhoods. I know that we need that here. I know that we knew that in in southwest, all all through Southwest and then under creo. We did ask for $30,000 for language access interpretation, and we were able to receive that as well. I believe the rest of the 2 million that we asked for was more money for housing and more money for transit. So that was the money that we were not able to receive. Yes sir.
Are you able to come to MIT when you guys want to the rules for repair the house or something? I think that's a very unfair way you guys distribute the public money. I think that that's the city surplus divided by how many residents you have and sell the little check to every one of them because in that program only very few are selected very few have access to so they get a free roof $10,000 for she lives right next door to the guy she doesn't get nothing. So I think that's a very barbaric and cruel and unfair program of distributing the public money. And give we have a surplus divide like Alaska dollars all the oil surprise divided by how many residents and then send them a check. I think that'd be much better than give everything to 10 or 20 families who nothing to direct.
And we're also hearing thank you we're also here that it's not enough money, right? Things are really expensive, right? Now the funding that they have is not enough. So what I'm also hearing is to ask how we distribute that money. So that's that's a question that I can ask on at the floor as well.
For everybody. I know it's not easy. The light is getting here on it and I know it will get harder. I know people need to be responsible to give you an example. Don't tell this to IRS. I bought me a Mercedes public
sir. Just so you know this has been recorded. So okay. You're telling my Rosco
Mercedes Benz for 32,000 miles at 50 formatic. Picking up pumpkins I don't pay no taxes don't tell the IRS. You see how much people they waste. People need to learn to be accountable for the little a dime they have. Don't throw it away.
I hear you sir. So we gotta keep going. I was just told I got to stick on type. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, good. So this is what we asked for. Again, we got 6 million out of the 8 million that we asked for last year. And this is frankly, all of these asks and the ask that I made. I got all I made all of these suggestions or I made all of these amendment proposals from door knocking from my campaigning when I was door knocking and when I heard from residents, I need more funding for housing. I need more funding. Funding for public works. I need more funding for public health. I need more funding for transit. We asked for all of that. So this year, what we're asking for, we are asking to fund the Office of Violence Prevention and neighborhood safety. So an Office of Violence Prevention, neighborhood safety is offices that are being opened up across the country right now. They all look different. I would like the ones that we have here to house our ceasefire efforts. They can house Policy Analyst if you have house grantors that can give money to the nonprofits that are working on the ground to really prevent violence from happening in the first place. The Office of Violence Prevention can look like whatever we want it to look like that prevents violence from happening in the first place. So happy to discuss some ideas that you might have for us to see how we want this office to look like I know that member Dr. Hall wants this to have a gun gun. What is right what is he calling it gun? violence prevention efforts as well here? Yes. I think thing that we're asking for is language access. This is always going to be needed in our district. So And frankly, I'm the only one on council that that is representing of this neighborhood and of this district. So I'm going to always be asking for this as well. But I do want to spend a little bit of time now to ask you. Do you want us to ask for something different? Do you like what we're asking for? Do you want to see more and in a different bucket, but I do want to get a quick, quick does this look at what we're asking for? Yes, now Teresa. Okay. Okay. Anybody else have any other ideas on what they would like us to be asking for? Yes, Teresa, and then TJ, do we have any questions online? Okay, sounds good. Teresa.
Oh, I just want to piggyback piggyback off to what gentleman said equity and regarding home repair, because this this budget covers so much, but to me, is useless because it doesn't seem to be benefiting my community. And I want to thank you for this budget overview. So we can actually see how where most of the money go and how it kind of works because it is very confusing. But I see that the city talk about beautification, and they talk about equity and home repair. But there are so many restrictions that people that are what I'm going to call The Inbetweeners. Yeah they don't meet the income qualifications. So as the gentleman said, about the roof, she may need a roof but she can't qualify because she may have some extenuating circumstances in her home that prevents her from having the money to put a new roof on her house. So the barriers that they have so in the budget, I think that the hearings because that no discussion come up, there should be some kind of way that the NBA chip tweeners people that have stable homes that want to maintain that need upkeep, that pot needs to be expanded and the the the it needs to be expanded to include people above that, that what they call it low income, right? Because we see everything's going up food, everything so that she's retired, I'm retired, my income is not going up. So that needs to be talked about and equity, that pie chart. Last time you came to us about the budget. What do we ask for? We were open at Jim, we ask for our fair share of the monies. 40 217 We have not gotten one dime. Okay. Okay. Then my other thing is I got a lot, okay. The Detroit land bank, Detroit Land Bank is a nonprofit, right? You given them $10 million? Correct? How much 15 million. The Detroit land bank is in shambles, as we know and they're restructuring hopefully they do a good job, but they are getting properties through foreclosure. Many people over tax many people couldn't afford to keep the house and they lost their houses. They're selling the houses, right? Why can't they use that money for their budget instead of the city giving them more money? Because they're nonprofit and they got all this land and all these houses, right? And they got a lot of it on land law for the developers we know that. The other thing is, is that I wanted to ask how this gentleman just talked about equity distribution. As we look throughout the city and look at all the different districts. How can it be equitable distribution among all the how many seven districts we have? Yes, because it's unfair. The way the money has been going going on Yeah. And the other thing I wanted to address I wanted to address the water department. The water department always comes back and ask for increases for infrastructure repair, because we have been living on an antiquated system, then many many years our system as well. almost 200 years old. I'm saying over 100 years old 100 years old, okay, yet and steel here in southwest Detroit. We see water main breaks all the time, and then we get these increases. Right now. We're flooding had never been flooding because years ago when they built the Oakwood pumping station CSL right okay and pleasant. The engineers and architects design the drainage system wrong. And so now we're flooding we've addressed this with the city I got pictures on my phone when I've sent them to the department neighborhoods because liddesdale Floods from visitor to Gleason that's two whole blocks that covers almost 100 homes. And the city has not worked for my community. My tax dollars has not worked for my community. Also, I wanted to say that right now, we had a meeting today with the people that are some of the representatives for the Joe Lewis Greenway. Guess what 40 217 has been locked out. They said we they we won't even be considered for Pauline 10 years being closing all the parts of the city connect but this one beyond the bridge does not connect but the textile is so I want to know where does what money does the pocket money come from for the Joe Louis Greenway? What part of the budget where the city allocate some of the money for the Joe Louis
Greenway? Oh, Mr. 40. That's primarily from the Yarbro money. Right and this also from the state and county as well. So yeah,
well Jake, well just bring up the conversation. Why this area for a 217 has not been connected to the Joe Louis Greenway. We were the book was passed to us today. Oh, we'll talk to the iron bill will talk to Great Lakes way. Now we talking to the city because we know that that ARPA money is our tax dollars and for us to be said that John Lewis Greenway is tapping that bridge. Why are we step children and we're being punished because we speak about pollution. There's got to be something that we have not gotten any of our tax dollars to work for us. And then the other thing, okay, Gary Brown was on TV. The other week talking about how the city is going to worry prime is going to address over 1000 fire hydrants being broken in the city of Detroit. We told that to the city back in and beings ministration that half of our fire hydrants don't work it took the eye of the residents to address that issue. Then we learn about infrastructure monies coming up. Right increase and then to find out that over 100,000 fire hydrants in the city is not working. Come on some ground that
I hear you, Theresa, thank you. You're not wrong. I do want to touch on a few of the points that you mentioned. So and Mr. Quarterly, and my team can attest to this. I always, always ask, what are we doing about those folks that aren't making not enough money? Because I understand because my mom worked her whole life and she always made just enough or not always they got to a point where we were just making enough where we weren't able to receive certain services. So I understand that deeply. And I always always ask at the table, how we can do that. Actually, I'm working with Donald rancher I've I've asked him he works with HRD. I'm trying to figure out what kind of grants what kind of services can we do but just so you know, that is a question that I'm always asking to your point four to one, seven and how much wanted to receive, we can look that up because I will be happy to figure out what money you'd be receiving. Because I will hope that there is and again, this is the whole city budget, but I I want to check and I want to see but I'm pretty sure I'm pretty positive that there is funding coming here if it's either through HRD or through parks, and if not, that does have to change. But there are unfortunately many, many neighborhoods here that do not see the funding and resources that they want to see before getting to us, Cedric, we have a question from online. And then folks, I'm looking at the time. I have just like one or two more things to share before we can continue these discussions, TJ
we have a few I'm trying to group together. So a few things that I want to echo in terms of things that people want to see funded. One will take note of these sidewalks, roads and trees, particularly in core city, as well as money for amenities like that as well as highway barriers based on protection program in Midwest neighborhood. And then here are I'm going to do group these into two areas of questions. One is d dot one when riders pay fares, where do those funds land this go back to DDOT or the general fund? didn't do that. All right. Next one. There were lots of comments in here about grilling DDOT in terms of why drivers aren't receiving a decent and fair wage and so just lifting that up. How do we advocate for higher pay again for them and then specifically, given the city will have increased revenue from cannabis sales, where there'd be more room in the budget for increased operator capacity, ie d dot, which would increase frequency of important routes like fortnight teen,
so we always ask for more money for pain, dots, drivers more. So that's something that we always advocate for. There's a question about cannabis. Mr. Corley, would you can you repeat the question again, teaching them I'm going to hand it over to you Mr. Quarterly. Sure.
Given the city will have increased the revenue from cannabis sales there'll be room in the budget for increased operator pay to increase the frequency of important bus reps like fortnight teen
independent contests. Yeah, so far. There's not a lot of money that will receive me from the cannabis sales. I think the latest projection is like four or $5 million. So it's not really a whole lot of money. You know, that's making a big difference. Thank you.
You guys became pretty late. Unfortunately, I think that has a big issue to go with. Quick Sure. Okay, can you because they're gonna ask. You're good. My name is Hilda.
I'm from cut for eight to nine. I just wanted to let people know that the medic station at Fort and Clark has been closed as of early January. So that means no EMS off for that area of Detroit. So I would like to ask for more funding direct funding to EMS. And I have a whole list of stations that are that are closed medic two luminaries in Chicago made it six casts and Alexandrine medic 12 chain and brink it medic seven macaron lingwood, Medic 13 French and Shumaker medic 21 Mt. Elliott and Lafayette medic 22 Southfield and Curtis, Medic 24. Like like point and Witter. So many are closed because there are not enough EMS personnel. So we need more people more money for the department and more people for the the medics Thank you.
Thank you Hilda Yes. And we are aware of the situation and we are working with with fire and police. I think it's also going to be a good idea array for us to line item that for public health and safety. So I do chair public health and safety and we are able to create line items for further discussion around these issues. We haven't done that yet. But this has been brought up enough it is a huge issue where I think that we should learn from that issue. We meet on Mondays at 10am. So public health and safety committees on Mondays at 10am. And we are also online. Before I get to you sir, I want to finish this one last slide my last slide before we get to questions and hear from folks. Actually I'm going to go through two more slides because we're running out of time I'm gonna get through these last two slides. And then we can get into questions and I do want to hear from folks the questions that you have said IT departments for the budget and then any more ideas of what you want us to be advocating for or for funding for this budget of this year. So ideas for budget advocacy. This is when thank you thank you for being here. Thank you for letting us know what your concerns are, what you want the funding to to look like. What we recommend is that you get together with your neighbors that you take pictures that you talk to neighbors that you tell them to call in during public comment and that you guys let Council know and the administration know of what the funding priorities are that you have. Again, you can come to public comments during departments that you want to be listening to and talking to, but come come make a public comment during those budget hearings and make and make those needs known. You can organize a petition you can say you know we are sick and tired of having water main breaks here the streets here the petition we have three hundreds of residents from this area that are demanding and this is happening across the city. All all through these districts six icy water membranes. Joel is not here, but he always deals with these cases. It's not just here unfortunately. It gets can send a letter draft a letter, I would draft a letter on behalf of your block club. You know here the block club is asking for these many things for the budget of this year. Council members here are what we're asking you and you can send it off as as your as your block club or as an organization, send it to all council members send it to the district offices and to the mayor. Send these petitions these letters to the mayor you can write an op ed if you if if 4217 is tired or feels like they had been neglected. Write it write a story let us know because it's not just myself. I know what these issues are but again, amplifying the voices from residents get this a lot gets gets this much further. Having other council members advocate on your behalf will get this much further. The last thing that I want to share with folks before getting to questions are just public comment tips. So if you do decide to call in to make a public comments, be prepared again. You only have 60 seconds you have one minute, but you saw an example of someone that did it very well. I was able to fit in a lot of things into that one minute comment. You can also write your remarks in advance and submit those suits to the clerk's office. And we suggest that you practice your one minute public comment you can write it down. Don't waste your time by saying like, like, you know, like thank you, counselor to general No, that's five seconds go right into what you're asking us for. Be specific about why it is that you need the support or why you don't support certain funding for certain departments. Let us know what neighborhoods are calling in from which districts are calling in from. If there are five other people making the public comments similar to yours to save you some time. Maybe you want to say I support the previous five people that called in and here's a reason I would add a different context or something else so that you can keep adding instead of repeating. And the very last thing of being polite, professional and respectful. We are people I am a human. And when someone talks to you respectfully like you're human, that goes a long way and I see councilmembers get turned off and just not even listen if someone's yelling because this is a system, an old system, a complicated system. One that frustrates me as well. But really working together goes a long way. With that we have about 15 more minutes 10 more minutes. I do want to get into what you want to see as your policy priorities for this year, as well as get to any final questions. TJ Do you have some okay,
we've got a few so we start doing maybe back and forth between online
we'll get back and forth. Next one big
lots of comments about the library, some internet group them and I think there's one question among them. One this library budget should not be transferred from Detroit schools to the city. The library versus the city is a critical issue that needs to be recognized. It's viewed as a power grab. I'm opposed to the city of Detroit attaching the library budget. Already the city is using funds for city projects. And then the question specifically for you, Mr. Corley, please explain why the city of Detroit must approve the Detroit library but excuse me library budget when the library is under the jurisdiction of dpscd
I guess if you wouldn't mind explaining how the library budget works and if the city contributes if not what that looks like.
So it was a very complicated and convoluted situation under under different laws but primarily under state law. The Detroit Public School system is not required to give funding to the Detroit libraries. The library does receive all about 30 30,000,030 $5 million from its library millage, which is 4.63 meals that you pay from your property tax bills. That's about 90% of their budgets they live in primarily from the library millage. See Detroit is not again required to give money to the libraries. However, under the city charter, it can if it has resources to share with the library. And so right now, the Library Commission commissioners are appointed by the tripod a school board. But again, no monies come from DPS. And so therefore the library if he wants to have additional monies the has to request for those additional monies. And they primarily come to the city for those additional monies
to be asked for last question
yeah
you in personal question, Cedric I guess if you want to get in line we can get you in line and then I want to I
want to piggyback on some of the questions you brought up about to boy to one seven. I'm I'm taking it all the way back to the first time I met you just before you want election. Okay. And then on a second meeting when I brought the developer to you. I said to you Dan, for a 209 got demolition and get is just take been taken over for things that you had nothing to do with it. But you sitting on a goldmine and there's no such thing as there should be an equal pot when it comes to foi 209 should be shared with these community out here because he's to go hand in hand. There is no such thing as the rest of the city has suffered. Like these two communities have and moving forward they will never suffer the way these two communities will be. So the city will get beneficiary get benefit and the state will get the benefit of that bridge. But you are sitting US you the major stockholder because you have the biggest elephant in the state. You should make sure that you get your people get the most out of that room. I said that to you. Don't forget that. Don't fight that fight.
I'm trying subject. Thank you. Yes, we'll do TJ and then Wanda.
All right. Next one. Again, I'm going to group together. The first part is who actually validates the information presented in the budget as factual. And then the second part is interested in learning how we can create a measure of departmental efficiency in a sense of grading them.
So outcome bunny is supposed to get to the point where we where we are grading departments based on goals that we would establish for the department and making sure that they meet those goals. So that's in the works. How come buddy we listen to policy vision. We help to get a date the numbers for city council. Also there's a FRC,
the
Minister of Youth, the Financial Review Commission, as you know, it was established come out of bankruptcy. And so they also validate the numbers because they want to make sure that the city is not going into back into a deficit situation. So
thank you, Mr. Corley. Yes, one.
Just to piggyback off of what Teresa and Cedric says I'm not going to belabor their point. I do have a question. In light of the Joe Lewis Greenway implementation, recognizing that it was created to correct the atrocities that were done against the African American or black communities. How did they encompass all of Southwest Detroit, which is majority Hispanic and fail to include the African American community of 40 217?
That's a valid question. That's a question that I have to ask. And I will ask, so that's a great question. I can ask them how they came up with the map. Why we're not including 42 and seven, and actually, I'm failing for us to do our own updates because last year was a priority of us to do more bridge building between four to one seven, I understand that it feels very, very isolated. And it's something that we just weren't able to do last year. I apologize for that. It was a first year there's a lot going on. But we do understand that there does need to be connections bridging between the neighborhoods but we can ask that question to the Greenway. Yeah, yeah.
I hear you on the
Greenway wine. Okay. We'll go back to one line.
The idea of risk based audits or five years start to finish audit is unreliable data. Many violations of accounting practices are citywide, yet it continues. How many times have we prosecuted the violations amount to unauthorized bonus payments to contractors and authorities? The question is will action against violations be addressed? We can't hear
you know of any Mr. Corley and what does that look like if there is an I don't know.
So there's problems with violations or something that you see that is not proper? I would contact the Inspector General's office and they want to take you know a investigation. And if they feel then the audit needs to be done they will work with the auditor general's office but I would contact us but the general's office. Hello.
Hey, how's it going? Mr. Coyle, you have mentioned that the budget usually doesn't get vetoed by the mayor once they pass the amendments and there's only so much that council does once they receive the budget, because you speak a little bit more about the merits parameters of the budget and then what Congress does in terms of making amendments and real allocation of funding.
Congressman counsel Oh, yeah.
So, again,
the mayor is basing his budget off the revenues that will be established at the February Conference, which will be this Monday. And so Castle is only constrained to move money around and that's, that's, that can be difficult. And again, that's why I've been with the City Council, thankfully, about 3535 30 years. And in that 30 year period. Typically Council just moves around 2% of the budget because it's it's very difficult to shuffle money around. And so, you know, given that and this council member Santiago Romero indicated she got $6 million you know, that's, that's pretty good for first time. First time council person to do that. So, again, one or 2% a budget, that's 20 million 15 million, that council can change around. It's just very difficult to do. Thank
you. Mr. Corley. Yes, TJ. I
think this was similar to the question that was just asked what I'm going to ask to make sure I was reading while he was asking. The question is also on relocation for the money that was really reallocated last fiscal year and the money we're asking for this year. Where does that money come from? Is it reallocated from a different department or different programming?
Yes, exactly. So a lot of the money that I reallocated last year came from police, or it came from GST. So it would be from other general fund buckets. I do also want to say there's about two minutes left. If you have, do we have any more questions online, TJ Okay, So sir, last question. last comments before I asked folks, I do want to hear about your budget priorities for this year. And again, it's difficult to try to get everything and Theresa, I can hear you and I can see looking at well, what did you allocate just so that folks know we allocate money, but I don't see where it goes. That's the other thing is I can't say this must go to this part of the districts are this must go here. So that's the other thing that makes us difficult is that I can't that's not in my purview to be able to do that which is frustrating. Um, but we are going to check to make sure where money is being allocated and how much of it has been allocated here. Just wanted to note that you have a final question. And then before we leave, folks, even if you don't make the comment here, please talk to me or anybody of my staff, please make folks that are online right now. Either in the chat or in the q&a. Say budget priorities for myself are because this is us trying to collect information from you to prepare for the budget hearings. Yes, sir.
I would like to comment on what this lady said that the system the sewerage system or that was improperly designed, which is wrong city of Detroit was designed properly. We have a fresh water plan to focus on the state pumps all the water from Detroit River for free and sell that for money. And then all the drainage goes to wastewater treatment on Jefferson West. The problem was the Detroit was designed for 2 million people in 1950 Detroit that 2 million people now flooding, Obama drowned. Detroit because he said you got to treat the rain water which our wastewater treatment plant on Jefferson West is not designed for doesn't have the capacity. So when there is a lot of rain they have to decide should they flood the airport or flood your houses? And the government always says well, let's say they're poor, let's flood her basement so that the sewer department was designed the right way, but did not include to treat the rainwater. The rainwater was going straight to the river, the Detroit River. So that's one problem The second thing, which I have, whenever I call the city government, I don't know what the budget is. I present an issue or a problem and they asked for my number, my name and they'll have a supervisor to call me back. I don't want to hear that anymore. Put an end of it. Fire the supervisor get some more people to do the job. I don't want to make last calls. Hey, what's up how you doing? I love you too. Oh, that I have a problem. Take action. Don't call me back. I don't have a secretary on payroll. I don't get none of that budget to hire a secretary to have an answering service for Detroit to call me back. So please make a note more people to do the action less people to call back all that BS we don't need that. Now the last one which I already stated. I would like to see a Detroit softer or responsible people allocate more money from the water mafia which gets the water from free for free from Detroit River and retails it to us to our police department. Have a good policing in Detroit. We have to be tough on crime by the people who destroy our property. People park our grass they make our streets like like a farmland or something and the police don't do nothing. People park right in the middle of the street and they stay there and you going you have nowhere to go because one guy on the left one on the right and the police don't do nothing. We should give more money to police and cut some of that water. The water is for free. They get the water from the they're not buying it from Saudi Arabia or Iran. They get it for free from the Yeah,
got it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Our last comments or question, Teresa.
Thank you. I want to really thank you guys for this presentation. It really has been enlightening. But you said Be specific. Yes, please, for for the ass for me, okay. It's for my community. Okay, is that there'll be a way that it'd be equitable distribution of the home repair program. Because if we have a house two houses on our block, and it's 33 houses, that's 31 houses that are stable, if they can stabilize our block by rehabbing a home or allowing development on that empty lot. It will stabilize that block. We stabilize one block at a time, one street at a time. That's how we build right. So I would like to ask that monies be put into I don't know a I wouldn't call it investigation, but evaluation of neighborhoods to see disability. Right. And see where rehab homes can be rehabbed and made livable. Right. That would be helpful. And then equitable distribution of the Home Repair and the block grants because it seems like as a gentleman, we don't want to complain. We want to have input so we can get some output to our community. So that's one and also I would like to see how we can get money. I don't know if you can earmark it or how you can get it to go into the police department and the fire department. We have a fire department right next to Kennedy recreation center. Right. But we get our fire engine from across the we call across the bridge. Yeah, why isn't that a full fledge fire department here right next to us and so I could exert Ziller II when they need three or more fire engines so money towards that and if we can, I don't know city council, please hear us. Make it a rule that once you be trained as an EMT, firefighter police officer, you must get at least six years before you go seek another job in the suburbs or another city. And then when when the mayor gave the breakdown of the arco funds, he said I'm giving the police and fire. Yes he is but he's taking care of downtown Midtown tectonic Corktown and the borderline communities the African American communities are being left out of the pocket of money. He does not like to be chastised but we do not we don't like to be ignored and left. You know, we've asked for the city planner for this area to come and look up for economic redevelopment along the Fort St Schaefer corridor. So we got all this open land. We want restaurants we want businesses that will sustain our community. It's not resiliency and sustainability. This is a fight for survival. So so we need more money to be the budget looked at say how can we be more equitable to the seven districts that we have?
Thank you, Teresa. You're right. And I love the idea of a planning study for 40 to one seven, I don't know if there was one in the past we can double check if there wasn't that's a really good ask for us to make. I know that we also need police active police here in 42 and seven it's what I've heard in the past. I discussed what about a satellite location for for down here. I like the idea of looking into evaluating how we are distributing our money to the neighborhood's. I also want to say I probably misspoke. I'm not exactly sure. But I can double check to see if we can be specific about where certain monies go to. Because right now, and how I see it, I put money into the housing trust fund. But I don't get to see exactly where that goes. Which is why I see that I don't dictate that but maybe maybe I somehow cancel I'll do that. And sir, to your point and but you don't want anybody to call you back. I did ask for a 311 line where you have trained people to be on the line to give you the the answers as you need. them immediately. But that's not something that was favored. But I think that you're right instead of instead of calling around to every department or being sent around to different places, a 311 line with trained employees, a lot of trained employees to answer your call and give you exactly what you need it residents deserve last 311 line which a lot of cities have, and we don't have that here. It's a line where you call and they give you exactly what you need. last comments and then I'm going to end with how to engage with us
for budgeting. I agree. I think it should be in an equitable way. I think housing by maybe funding the right to counsel ordinance because one thing that seems like is you know, a lot of people are facing evictions, but then they have rice in there, you know, a land landlord isn't, you know, upholding their end either and there are things you know rises they might have they might not even know about what our council Yeah, and and also the property tax, you know, hope because that's another thing where people may be entitled to you know, benefits or exemptions that they don't even know about, but as far as keeping people in their homes, I think those are two of the main things is protecting the right to counsel and then not getting evicted from property taxes. And just were to do it in an equitable way, like maybe even like a stimulus check or something, you know, that was just for ARPA money, which is the relief plan the stimulus that was the way it was distributed out so maybe even something like that.
Yes. And we have asked for that. We have asked for ARPA money to be distributed either through stipends we we pass the right to counsel, it needs to be fully funded. We ask for that all the time. And when it comes to foreclosure prevention, my office knocks on doors last year. We knocked on over 400 600 doors. For colder prevention 400 doors, we were going door to door talking about the whole program and we're gonna do that again. So if you want to volunteer with us, please help us because we go door to door and we give out information for people to sign up and we also give them information for workshops to help you fill out that application. Who told to you who knows in detail the whole program it's
oh yeah
what they need it was got it right.
It's for taxes.
Yeah
Yeah, I hear you, Theresa. Let me just end with this. Thank you, Teresa. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. I really do appreciate it. I feel like I'm living my best parks and rec life. People are coming out advocating for what they need learning together. We do want to share with everybody how to continue to engage with us. So we do have monthly team GSR virtual meetings. Our next one is going to be on March Tuesday, Tuesday, March 8. Oh, that's Wednesday, March 9 to excuse the typo. Our next virtual means to be on Wednesday, March nine. We do have community office hours. We are going to be a bridging community on the on the 13th. We're going to be Clemente on the 20th. And we're going to come back to Kemeny on the 27th. We've been here a few times already. We have a newsletter. And of course you can call us, email us or follow us on social media. I really, really appreciate you all being here. Thank you so much. I appreciate the feedback. We're here for you, please. Take some pizza folks that are here in person. And we'll be around for the next few minutes. If you have any other comments or questions. Thank you all. recording stopped