The City Council convened on January 5, 2026, to address technical difficulties regarding language access and the public comment process. The meeting experienced disruptions involving a sign language interpreter and audio feedback issues, prompting a brief recess to resolve connectivity problems before proceeding with public testimony.
Oh I think my uh interpretation is going public council Gabriel Santiago Romero Present Conseil Gabriela Santiago Romero, Councilmember James Tate, Conseja James Tate, Councilmember Mary Walters, present Mary Waters, Councilmember Angela Wilfield Calloway. Consejal Angela Witfield Callaway. Councilman McComan A. Young II. Here consejal. You have a core member. Thank you. It appears that we have some technical difficulties going off, but I think then the technical. Do we have any cards for public comments? No one for public comment and present. Okay, we'll move to public comment via Zoom. Deputy Clerk. First person we have. First person we have is William M. Davis. I'll be heard. See um I'm calling again saying that the fact that this whole massive recovery has been on the backs of City Detroit retirees. Perhaps this year with a new mayor to perhaps care a little bit more than the last one. We could get city council to agree with the fact that the city deterrents need to have this call back discontinued. We need money. The average city church retirement only gets $20,000 a year, which is like one-fifth of the salary the city council get and like say you know one-tenth let you know less than you know less than one-tenth of what the mayor gets. So we need to make sure that more is done to help City Detroit retirees, more is done to help the average uh poor person in the city of Detroit. We have a lot of unhoused people, we have a lot of problems that the city needs to be looking at. And also we have a fact that you know millionaires and billionaires, they do projects in the state of Detroit, and they most of the time they don't live up to their promises, but they do the city do not call back anything from them. Madam Clerk. Yeah, hi madam clerk. Would it be possible to take a reset to figure out the technical issues? We've been trying really hard to make sure we have language access. We have to make sure it's working. Um so if we take the time to figure that out, then we can continue to make sure that it's all working well. Yes, so the issue is um we've asked her to un to mute herself, and she has, but then she unmute. So we'll work with it. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry. Am I gonna get my time back? I'll stop it. You can continue. He's uh we stopped it. Well, I was being interrupted. That's powerful the course with the city of Detroit. Um needs to be the residence okay. We're gonna call Reta at this time. I'm sorry, we're gonna allow you to have your uh public comment over again, but we got to stop this um this interference with the uh interpreter. So give us a uh recess call to the chair, please. Thank you. One minute. Excuse me, also, this is the sign language interpreter. The other interpreter has not been allowed into the meeting either. So if someone could allow the other interpreter, sign language interpreter into the Zoom meeting, that would help.