The expanded Budget, Finance, and Audit Standing Committee convened on March 26, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. to review the Department of Public Works (DPW) Fiscal Year 2027 budget. Director Ron Brundish and his team presented a $212 million budget, a $40 million increase from the current year. Council members discussed sidewalk backlogs, traffic calming, solid waste services, street repaving, contractor oversight, and future technology. Numerous items were moved to executive session for further discussion.
Note: The agenda and minutes were not available for this meeting; all summary content is derived from the raw transcript.
Good morning, everyone. Would now like to call to order the expanded budget finance and addict and audit standing committee for today, uh March 23rd, excuse me, March 26, 2026. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Councilmember Scott Benson. Yeah, Ben China. Councilmember Letitia Johnson. Present. Councilmember Denzel and Thomas Campbell. Present. Councilmember Renata Miller. Member Miller indicated that she's dealing with a family issue. So her absence is excused. She sent a memo. Councilmember Gabriela Santiago Romero. Present. Councilmember Mary Waters. Present. Councilmember Angela Whitfield Callaway. Council President Pro Tim Cole Second. Council President James Tate. Yep. Mr. President, you have a quorum present. Thank you, ma'am. We have a quorum, which means we're now officially in session for our budget hearings for today. We're going to start off with the Department of Public Works. We can have Director Brundes and team come on down. Thank you for being here. You uh would like to introduce you and your team, and the floor is yours to begin. Good morning. Thank you for having us. I'm Ron Brundish, Director of DPW. Sam Krasenstein, Deputy Director, DPW. James George is here for an Prime Gidra. Yes, sir. Floor is yours. I'll get right into our presentation, and uh this should only take a few minutes uh so we can uh get to the question portion of the presentation. Uh DPW's budget. Uh first of all, we're proud to align and support uh Mayor Sheffield's Rise Higher Platform and vision to lift neighborhoods, improve the quality of life, ensure equity for all of our residents. Uh DPW's fiscal year 2027 budget includ includes funding to ensure that our neighborhoods remain clean and that they're appropriately maintained, uh, and that uh we're performing our construction work uh on streets in a manner uh that takes in into account all uses of the public right-of-way. Uh DPW's budget includes funding to increase multiple services, including aggressively addressing and eliminating a backlog of 6300 sidewalk related requests uh that existed on January 1st of 2026. Uh just wanted real quickly, uh I know we have a couple new council persons just provide uh organizational structure for DPW. Uh DPW has has four core uh divisions that are four divisions that provide core services to our residents. Uh our solid waste and street maintenance divisions are led uh respectively by superintendents William Collins and Patricia Henderson, uh our city engineering division, which is responsible for maintaining the public right-of-as well as the designing uh and managing all of our major road construction uh projects is led by city engineer Richard Doherty. Uh our traffic engineering division led by Prasad Nana Panini also includes uh our traffic engineering science shop, which is responsible uh for fabricating and installing uh all of the parking and traffic control signs throughout the city. Uh and we have a complete streets unit led by Deputy Director Christina Peltier, uh that's the responsible for ensuring that all of our construction projects are again again designed and implemented in a manner uh that ensures that all users of the public right-of-way uh, albeit whether they're uh operating vehicles, riding buses, uh pedestrians walking, uh, individuals in wheelchairs, uh, but ensuring that all of our projects are designed in a manner uh that is safe and accessible for all users of the public right-of-way. Uh and our complete streets unit is also responsible uh for uh providing planning uh and outreach for all of our streetscape projects. And also uh within DPW's solid waste division budget or solid waste funded budget uh is the Greater Detroit's resource recovery authority uh that's led by Director John Primack, who reports directly to the chief operating officer and Gidra is responsible for everything associated with disposal uh of uh of all silo waste, including landfilling, uh trash and bulky items, as well as the processing of recyclables uh and the composting of yard waste that's collected separately. Just a brief high level summary of DPW's budget. Our budget for fiscal year 2027 is 212 million dollars, roughly uh 40 million dollar increase from the current year's budget.