The committee convened on June 10, 2026, with Councilmember Letitia Johnson and Councilmember Mary Waters present, and a quorum was declared. The meeting covered approval of minutes, public comments, unfinished business including a payroll performance audit and a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) proposal for the City Club Apartments CBD, and new business including MRO supply contracts, an ARPA budget transfer, and a neighborhood enterprise zone (NEZ) housing project.
Councilmember Letitia Johnson present council member Mary Waters present. Mr. Chair, we have quorum. Thank you so much, Madam Clerk. That'll move us on to the approval of the minutes. Um from our June 3rd, 2026 meeting. Members of the committee should have received a copy. With that, is there a motion to approve the minutes? Motion. There's been a motion to approve the minutes on the June 3rd, 2026 meeting. See no objections, the action shall be taken. I know today and tomorrow the heat index is supposed to be over 100 degrees. And also at the Detroit Library branches. So if you know someone who may not have um access to shelter or uh cooling systems in their home and need a reprieve, please do share that information. Um with that, that'll take us on to public comment. Uh public comment. The request for public comment will close at 119. Um folks will have two minutes. We'll start with folks in the room and then move to folks virtually joining us via Zoom. If you are on Zoom, please use the raise hand feature to indicate that you are wanting to give public comment. Uh saying that there are no folks currently in person for public comment, we'll move on virtually. And who is our first speaker? How many folks do we have so far? Uh good afternoon, Mr. Chair. We have 10 hands raised as of now, and our first speaker is Jadante Smith. Thank you so much, Mr. Smith. Good afternoon. Um, you have two minutes. Good afternoon. I want to say I appreciate you, Chair, for reaching out about my issue uh with this not necessarily my issue, but it's an issue with uh our voting system and how um my sister-in-law has been canceled at the state level, but she still received an absentee ballot um application form, which doesn't make sense to me because that means that anyone in this household or anybody at the city or the county level could use this person who doesn't live in the state of Michigan who hasn't live who hasn't lived in state of Michigan for the last 20 years, who is registered to vote in the state of South Carolina and has had a driver's license there for 20 years almost my entire life. Actually, 25 years, 25 years to be exact. Um I think that that is fraudulent, and I think that Giannis Winfrey um and at the county level, uh Kathy Garrett are both committing fraud uh in their in their handling of our ballots and our systems. Also, I just spent some time in district three, didn't even want to do it, but I was riding down Van Dyke and I saw uh one of those orange coned off areas of a lot. And I feel like whenever you see one of those in C V tray, you know there's contaminated dirt. So I it was on Elgin Street, so I'm thinking, you know, this is odd to see one of those lots right by the solar farms. So I go down the street and I see not only uh contaminated lot hole is a hole in the ground, just like we've seen in district four, we're gonna see in district six, we're gonna see all across the city. Uh the sidewalk was not replaced as well, and there's a giant hole in it in the ground, and there's a house that has kids a block away. So not only do residents have to contend with this 35-year plan for um DTE to have these solar farms there, which is continuing to blight their neighborhood because these things aren't pretty, and people are going to scrap them. They're not going to be protected. The city of Detroit Police Department is not going to be able to protect these solar farms, especially not over people. And then they have these contaminated dirt lots. So in Eldrin, in between Castle and Van Dyke, there are three lots. So one is got the dirt removed already, and so there are two other lots, and there are sure multiple other lots that have this contaminated dirt. We need to do something about that. Nobody should have to pay taxes to have to live around contaminated dirt and solar farms. We didn't ask for. Thank you, Mr. Smith.