Remarks by Bridget Brooks
92 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 4
I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to thank you all for coming. I already signed up, so just did my little walkthrough there, but I'm really happy that it's happening again this year and that you guys are all going to be there.
Thank you for coming, and I'm glad that you're working on the supportive housing services with Montreal. That's really good news. We just had a meeting earlier tonight with Megan about our coordinated services person here for housing insecurity and homelessness, and we were talking about, I was talking about the fears that I have around housing The need of enough services for people that are going to be dealing with their requirements for their disability payments, they're going to change quite radically.
Decreased federal funding, increased reporting requirements, and paperwork they're not used to doing. And I just know from working with the population that if one thing goes, then the next thing goes. And the estimate that we heard at the... local Advisory Committee for Health and Human Services was that right off the bat if they keep the Budget as it is at the state that 4,000 people lose their housing They're very concerned about they're gonna be spending a lot of money on state funding just to get the the paperwork filled out so I just am hoping that we can look a little bit at putting…
I just think that for this upstream, we can go the most prevention that we can do, and it's a low-cost solution compared to trying to, and I've tried to get people housing in this state, and it's very difficult. Thank you.
My biggest concern is I I never would want our city manager to feel pressured by the county or any of the county Employees to do certain things that they wouldn't do on their own and I think that just like other cities that has this form of government that we have Oversight with our city city manager and that we don't want her to be in a position or him to be in a position of being so if there was technical to technical, but any kind of Reporting out our pressure from other County Elected that makes sense And then I had a total left-hand turn Stepping back to councilor a asked question about…
It's interesting because I was just having a conversation and I was talking to my husband. I'm going to send you an article that was in the New Yorker this month that was about the studies and the trends around centralization and how small bookstores are coming back and how a lot of the trends that people have been considering around this topic have shifted quite a bit in the last small amount of time. So I think it's good data to look at and understand when we're making these kind of decisions because some of the presumed notions that we have are not holding as people thought they would.
Thank you for the work and I was there on the grand opening and it was not as empty in the front yard that day.
That was quite a day. And the best part of it was going through and talking to each provider system that was there. I guess my first question, one thing that What struck me when you were speaking was when people first come in, that they can sometimes see, I forget how many different services. So do they do, is there a, Is there a coordinator that goes with them, or do they do all different intakes for all of these? Oh, that's a great question.
Oh, that's great. I mean, my next thing is, of course, like, how do we duplicate this for housing insecurity and all kinds of things like that?
I know. Okay. I'm in. I always found that when we did community assessments for services in Detroit and everything was on the same street, it wasn't necessarily all integrated at that time, but everybody knew each other, so it was just a way to work together and nobody... It's to me so great to not have wraparound services mean that you're wrapping yourself around 500 different calls. And I don't know how some people can jump through this many hoops that have to do this while they're traumatized. So to have everything like this and not have to go through a bunch of different intakes is pretty…
And I know sometimes, too, they align with the county mental health services that do transport, and then I think we also have a, we have mental health that we share, so I don't know if they're doing any transport or not, but I know that the county will sometimes. All right, well, those were, I think those were my biggest questions, and I also go into wondering about how, how do we identify who a survivor is? And that's a bigger conversation, but I think that it's something that we should keep thinking about, because I think there's a lot of, in violent situations, there can be a lot of cross…
Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Is there any restorative justice in this system?
Thank you very much for the presentation. I love systems. I have two questions that just sort of pop out at me. Well, three. I'm curious when you look at that first piece, what people answered that question, those questions about which ones that were really leaned into. I'd like to know what kind of numbers were for each one of those, whatever you called them, was it columns?
And then the other question I had was, A lot of what it seems like to me is how one would go in and out of it. So it feels like a closed off system with a lot of, like you said, blank sides, but also like a maze that you're kind of guessing at, or is there even anything back there, right? So I'm just curious about like different entryways and also the integration. I know a lot of times when there's rivers and communities, I just think it's cool that we're like the only downtown right on the 1210 River and the whole River Basin But you wouldn't have a river walk necessarily on our River which…
And that's my last one, is just with the environmental nature and the artistic nature, especially if we're going to do things that help with existing buildings for a start, my concern always is I wouldn't want it to feel like something that we put all this energy into that feels like it was yesterday, which sort of it feels like right now with all the parking lots and all that. So how do we do something that's revitalizing existing buildings and increase function but also form where things are more environmentally sustainable as well as appealing and modern in the future, not modern today?
Thanks. I just wanted to invite everybody and remind anybody that the third annual Titanium Trades and Manufacturing Forum is going to be this Thursday. I think it starts either 1230 or 1. I have it earlier because I'm helping to set up. But just look at the Chamber website. Also that night, the league of minority voters is having a state of the civil rights and candidate forum which is not it's not what would you call it partisan it's just a conversation about inclusion thank you anything else I'm gonna say counselor hillier from Zoom I'm yep I am moved to adjourn second
Thanks for hanging in there, you guys. I hope you feel better. Yeah.
I have heard conversation about this, but have not engaged directly and believe that I can render an unbiased opinion.
I'm going to ask one question about what we're proposing, just real quick. I understand that we are not looking at environmental issues, but I have questions about how we are how we are taking care of what the livability is around the people that are living close by around sound. I mean, my thing is, like, I feel, I think that there... Might be something that we could be looking at around how we're enforcing different rules with the things that we have going on right now. As a city. Sound noise. I'm just curious about how that fits into this.
Aye. I am feeling uncomfortable lately with some of the ways that things have been coming forward around how we're enforcing different codes. So I want to make sure that we're doing a really fair, objective job, and I am concerned about consistency with the data and things that we've been getting as far as how These codes are being enforced and how the city is managing that I don't know Who like we have these codes around? noise for instance But I don't know the mechanisms well enough to understand this. We have never had it, like the eight years I've been on, we really haven't had that…
I'm just curious. If I were to call about a big noise, like I listen to the gun range all day, I don't know how that fits into our code. I know that the gun range was there before we are, so it doesn't impact quality of life from where I stood from moving into this community. But as far as things that have changed from noise, how quickly does a person that's doing this kind of code enforcement come out? What's the community expectation supposed to be around being able to get that kind of result that's accurate if noises come and go?
I'm curious about how that process goes and just other complaints too about code enforcements because I feel that there's just been a few instances lately where I don't understand how long people are anticipated, if there's really an accurate way that we can catch a time span, et cetera. I don't think that the code enforcement officer is doing anything wrong or that the city is doing anything wrong. I'm just saying that I don't know if it's effective. So I'm just curious about how we're doing it, and I'd like to learn more about that. Thanks. Also, I think that we should do a work session on…
Thanks. The thing with the sound isn't really about the sound, even though I know that we have a direction. It's more about code enforcement. I think that there's been a conversation around code enforcement on more than one topic and subjectivity, and I think that's the role of the council is to understand that what we're doing and if we're doing it, I would like to know more about how we're doing that. Yeah, so it's not really about the, it's not about this application. I want to be really clear. I voted yes on the application. And this is not a mini trial of any sort. This is just me being…
but I think I think even just the framework of it around whether it's putting more resources or not or be not proactive for everything but if there's like ongoing to be looking at how are we targeting things that could be of concern like we just don't if there was a smile or if there was something and it would cause there could be a problem like how do we rank priorities and how do we make sure that we're responding to things that are, you know, it's just like first aid or triage or intensive care, you know what I mean? So it's like levels of prioritization. And I'm happy to not have the…
One of the times when I first started being concerned about this kind of thing was when I did a tour with the mayor over at the electric and plumbing trade school. And they were talking about how they build these double pipes because they can't touch the air, certain chemicals. I don't think we have that here, but there's some places that that's true. And they also have specific, we have one of the best schools like that in the whole region in multiple states. And so they have a lot of understanding around safety and precautionary work and they do a lot of specialized things. So I think that,…