Finance/Audit Committee Meeting
Detroit Land Bank Authority
Development
Finance
Location unavailable
Check the source website for additional information
Reporting
Edited and summarized by the Detroit - MI Documenters Team
Note-taking by
Mrinalini Pandey
Financial report, includes $11M ask from city for 2021 budget. Transfer to DPD for RC racetrack, project updates.
Live reporting by
Noah Kincade
Financial report, includes $11M ask from city for 2021 budget. Transfer to DPD for RC racetrack, project updates.
n kincade
@SFtotheD
Good morning! Today I'll be live-tweeting the Detroit Land Bank Authority's Finance and Audit Committee Meeting for #DetroitDocumenters. @WDET @media_outlier @CitizenDetroit @Detour_Detroit
08:22 AM Apr 13, 2021 CDT
This meeting starts at 10am and is being held remotely. Info on how to join may be found here: buildingdetroit.org/events/meeting… https://t.co/qFcqxKuMFT
The meeting is called to order and has a quorum. Minutes from the meeting on Mar 9, 2021 were approved. We're moving on to public comment.
Shirley Davis, president of the North End Block Club, supports the building of a supermarket at Woodward and Euclid. She is in agreement with the development of North End Landing.
The next commenter also supports the North End Landing development. He thanks the Land Bank for their work and thinks they've done a great job. Detroit needs to develop in ALL neighborhoods and continue to hire Detroiters to work on these developments.
With no other public comments, we are beginning the key staff updates. (the meat in this meeting :)
Reginald Scott is reporting on financials. His audio is cutting out repeatedly so every other word is difficult to hear. There was an $11 million ask from the City?
Director Saskia Thompson is stating this is the first time the DLBA has been able to forecast budgets further out than a year.
Thompson explains that now thanks to Prop N, maintenance $'s are being supplied from three sources, not just the Land Bank. detroitmi.gov/departments/ho…
R. Scott reports that the Land Bank is in the process of closing out their HHF grant (Hardest Hit Fund) and only have $204k left to collect. treasury.gov/initiatives/fi…
Karla Marshall is presenting current projects. A ton of details here with these. Screen Shots!! https://t.co/W4PFRURce4
The next project is a consulting firm for cannabis entrepreneurs. It involves community space around the parcel. The neighborhood may not be aware of what will be going on in the building. It doesn't appear that this involves any cultivation. https://t.co/z8ql88TSWa
Land is being sold to MDOT for freeway expansion. No real discussion on this project. https://t.co/l9cMxX1GHA
Robert Linn is presenting on inventory issues. There's an interesting land transfer deal to the Detroit Police Department for a remote control RC race car track. https://t.co/esmI5uNDYg
Inventory is going to start dropping rapidly as the next round of demolitions begins. Also, soon they plan to shift all remaining Side Lots to Neighborhood Lots. THIS IS BIG NEWS! Sending out 100k postcards to neighbors to make the public aware. buildingdetroit.org/sidelots/
It's unclear what the timing is on rolling out this change. Jano Hanna explains that they are staffing up to get through the next 6 months. The Land Bank is also going to start packaging existing homes in their inventory with any available side lots.
Demand for houses with the Land Bank is high. Whereas before there was only interest in the very best of the best properties, they are now seeing interest across the board.
Demolitions and compliance: they ended March with 6,817 cases. https://t.co/g2e4R1QZPY
Currently closing an average of 125 cases per month. https://t.co/XwA4jBERT6
Board member Hosey points out and questions the obvious: if they expect to have over 7k compliance cases pending in a few months, and it's taken 7 years to close the last 5k cases... What Is The Plan??
He suggests the answer is to have a separate fund, outside of their budget, just to address rehabs and compliance. Director Thompson agrees and suggests they need to get the data in front of City Council so they understand. Sales are decreasing while expenses are rising.
Call volume to the Land Bank is up 50% over this same time last year. Lobby visits were also up dramatically in March. https://t.co/4ptU15Glxv
Numerous city agencies use the Salesforce databases and staff of the Land Bank. The majority of the work the DLBA staff do regarding these databases is for outside agencies. This costs the DLBA a lot of $. https://t.co/KvbCpSPlqm
Here's a breakdown of total inquiries to the Land Bank by the public in FY 2021. Sales/Purchase is still the major inquiry. https://t.co/fSJioxh9Z2
Alyssa Strickland is highlighting DLBA virtual events. They are building on the postcard effort to make sure the public is aware of the Side Lot graduation. Videos of the virtual events they hold are the main draw of people to their Facebook account.
With no other business to discuss, this meeting has adjourned at 11:45am. The next meeting of the Finance Committee will be May 11 at 10am, and the Full Board of the Land Bank meets April 20 at 11am. There is also a Community Engagement meeting tomorrow at 2pm.
As always, more information on this and other city government meetings may be found at documenters.org.
Agency Information
Detroit Land Bank Authority
The Detroit Land Bank is a public authority dedicated to returning Detroit’s vacant, abandoned, and foreclosed property to productive use. Current programs include auction, side lot, community partnership and demolition.
There are about 150 full-time employees at the Detroit Land Bank Authority. While all the names are not available on the DLBA site, Documenters was provided with the following list of some of the board members and staff.