The Detroit City Council heard a budget presentation from the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) for fiscal year 2026-2027. Director Ray Brown highlighted a leaner staffing model, a significant decline in projected revenues, and ongoing challenges with community appeals, transcript costs, and circuit court cases. Council members discussed the budget, operational issues, and community outreach, and made several motions.
Thank you so much. We have a quorum, which means we're now in second. In session, excuse me, I want to bring up the BZA. Director Bribron, come on down. Mr. Brubron, is that for us? Those documents or no. Okay, good. Tell you what this is. Uh oh. He's got props. He's got props. All right. Mr. Burrown, we do, and uh, Madam Clerk, if you can know that we've been joined by Pro Tim Young. Thank you much. Uh Director Rip Brown, the floor is yours, sir. Uh good morning, council members. Happy 313 day. It is a pleasure to be before you once again. I believe this is uh year 13 for me. The irony of it. I love it. Um I'm here today to present my uh BZA budget presentation for fiscal year 2026-2027. This presentation provides a concise overview of the BZA's budget, operational needs, and strategic priorities for the upcoming fiscal year. Next slide, please. This slide that you see is the desktop computer that is in the office of the Board of Zoning Appeals at the front desk, so people, citizens, anybody can come and look up a BZA case. There is no reason for anybody to say that they don't have access to our files because the computer is now on the desk and being uploaded with all of our files. We're working our way backwards, but right now I think we're up to about 2200. So that should not be an issue going forward in terms of people having access to the files. So the BZA mission comes directly from the fiscal year 2027-2030 financial plan, emphasizing public interests, ordinance integrity, and equitable land use decisions. The BZA's mission and role is that we are a quasi judicial body that administers the Detroit zoning ordinance. We hear appeals, variances, and exceptions, and land use modifications. We ensure decisions are upheld according to the spirit and intent of the ordinance, and we support neighborhood and commercial stabilization. The fiscal year budget reflects a leaner staffing model and a significant decline in projected revenues compared to 2026. One thing that you have in your packet, council members, is uh this graph, and this breaks down the BZA cases by district. Uh it is not based on the fiscal year, it's based on January to December. Um we're working on getting that adjusted to the fiscal year. So you will see in 2023 how many cases we had, how many we had in 2024, and the significant drop in 2025 and 2026 is continuing that that trend. So our budget snapshot, our total expenditures are $57,100. Our total revenues are $53,040. Net text tax costs are $5,000 $118,768, and we have three full-time positions. The personnel and benefit accounts for 71% of the total budget. Contractual services primarily are court reporting remains a major cost driver. Salaries and wages around $308,000, employee benefits, about $98,000. Professional and contractual services, 141,000, operating supplies, 4,500 operating services, 18,250. The reduction from four full-time to three full-time increases the workload on remaining staff and impacts our processing capacity. So this position that we have been trying to fill is now frozen. Revenue from sales and charges for services dropped by more than half in fiscal year 2027, which is why I wanted you to see that chart. Fiscal year 2026, the adopted revenues 112 proposed for 2027, 53,000.