Ms.

Modani, I think you're leaving something in the chair.

Yes, ma'am.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for your patience.

As we move through our budget hearings, we're going to dive right in.

If you can please introduce yourselves, and the floor is yours.

You want me to start?

David Bowser, Chief of Staff for the Mayor's Office.

Brittany Brown, Director of Media Services.

Andre Blair, Agency CFO.

So just wanted to open up to acknowledge the sort of unique nature of this particular group, the Media Services Group.

It's a capacity that services both the City of Detroit and City Council.

And so it also has the potential through Channel 10 to touch so many different residents.

And so this mayor, you know, sort of vitally understands the importance of how we get our messaging out and wants to make sure that this capacity is framed in a way that meets people where they are and gets the messaging out in a way that you know increases access to services and awareness of the things that all of us are doing.

And so this presentation will go through how we're sort of reshaping that capacity to make sure that happens.

Executive branch, legislative branch.

I'm a communications guy.

I just want to make that clear.

All right.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Happy 313 to everyone.

Happy 313 today.

Um, as mentioned and introduced, my name is Brittany Brown, and as the newly appointed director of media services, I am honored to be here today to present the Media Services Fiscal Year 2027 budget.

Over the past 67 days, we have begun implementing a strategic review of the department's operations with a focus on strengthening internal processes, establishing clear workflows, and identifying opportunities to streamline how media services and the administration and departments across the city work.

This work is helping us bring greater structure on how requests are received, prioritized, and delivered across the department, ensuring that we continue to provide a consistent and effective service to the city leadership as well as residents.

As a part of this effort, we are placing and putting a stronger system currently to aid in the betterment of production communication requests and project timelines across our team, allowing us to operate in a more organized and streamlined way.

So of course, in recognition of Mayor Sheffield's RISE Hire platform, we want to ensure that media services aids in that bringing that vision to life to helping residents understanding what Rise Hire means as well as what it looks like.

Continuing our responsibility to ensure that residents have access to clear, timely, and transparent information about the work happening across city government.

This includes strengthening the city's communication platforms such as Cable Channel 10, while expanding ways residents can access information through digital platforms and cute, including YouTube and the City of Detroit's website.

Media Services, um, the general definition we know it is as the department that is responsible for ensuring that residents are informed and aware of the activities and initiatives that are taking place of not only cities, the city's elected officials, but across the whole spectrum of um our government as well as our um city.

We heavily rely and use um channel 10 as the city's primary public information platform as well as media services films and produces critical public awareness content that is also distributed throughout the city of Detroit's website and YouTube channel.

We know that the goal of media services is to deliver information to Detroiters when they need it, why they need it through a variety of platforms where we can meet residents where they are.

So to date, a breakdown of our budget, primarily between about 80 to 90 percent of our budget is designated for staffing, which also includes the support of personnel and operational infrastructure.

And that is aided in the need to carry out the department's daily work.

Currently, we have a team of 38 full-time team members supporting production, digital, and administrative operations.

These team members support a wide range of work, including public meetings, mayoral events, and ensuring that city programming is broadcasted to residents using governmental access on the Channel 10, Channel 22, Channel 21, and public access 68.

In addition to our internal team, Media Services also works with contracted partners when necessary to supporting larger productions such as state of the city or investiture.

I also like to add that in tandem and hand in hand, our internal team is also gaining hands-on training with these individuals in terms of these larger entities to help us giving that support to making sure that our internal team is gaining more access and education on how they can be equipped to supporting us as well.

In addition to that, it also allows the department to bring in additional technical experts and equipment when certain events require expanded production support outside of what we have.

For example, we have a vendor SR Audio, which is one of our newer vendors who is a minority or minority-owned and detract-based vendor that provides audio visual services, including lighting, sound, and technical production for some of your events, council, as well as major city events.

This approach allows the department to remain effective while still ensuring high quality production services for city initiatives.

So we are a melting pot of what we serve currently, and just of course we want to mention that we are expanding and looking into how we can better serve the city.

So across the board, we are offering the photography coverage, which is the steels photography as well as videography, as well as the broadcast and live stream, which we are functioning right now.

Our team is working hard currently, as well as graphic design.

So this is our one of our fame fame claim to fame of what has been an increased service lately, as we last year have over 1,500 requests, and we're gonna go into that in the next slide.

In addition to that, we have our copy team, which services supporting documentation production across city departments, as well as film permitting coordination for productions taking place in the city of Detroit, which also creates and going goes into our ecosystem of those who are coming into our city to film in our in Detroit, as well as digital content distribution through the city's website and YouTube platforms.

So to date, um our top requests within the past year, as well as I also have from the last 30 days graphics.

We have received over 1,578 requests last year.

In addition to that, for photo and video requests, 500, and then followed through the rest of the chain of how many requests that we've received, as well as that we have hoped to fulfill and satisfy all your needs.

In addition to that, currently, between January 1st and March 10th, we have covered and taken in requests of 35 city council requests, 29 mayoral press conferences, 19 external department requests, 10 formal requests, and nine Board of Police Commissioners requests.

So we are busy and we are still excited to serve everyone.

So in closing, we want to continue to work and ensure that residents have access to clear and timely information about city programs, services, and resources through a variety of access public platforms.

Through Channel 10, the City of Detroit website, and our YouTube platform, Media Services works closely with city's elected officials and your honorable body, as well as the wide range of the full departments under the city of Detroit, as well as ensuring that key initiatives are photographed, recorded, and documented so that residents can stay connected to the work that's being done across their city government, as well as ensuring processes of how we can transfer that documentation and that those photographs and things of that nature into historical archives, which I know President Tay will be speaking about in terms of how can we build a relationship with those historic museum.

As we move forward, we are also continuing a thorough review of our equipment, internal processes, and team workflows to ensure that media services operates in a streamlined, modern and efficient way while continuing to meet the needs, the growing needs of communications in our city.

So on behalf of Media Services, we would like to thank you for the opportunity to present today, and we are open to welcoming your questions.

Thank you.

And uh congratulations on your first budget hearing, the beginning of it.