Detroit council advances $4M recurring for forestry, adds staffing and security funding in GSD hearing

Director Crystal Perkins told the Detroit City Council that the General Services Department (GSD) is positioning parks, recreation and ground maintenance as a neighborhood-stabilization strategy and that the proposed budget focuses on outcomes such as participation, facility condition and response times. "We view ourselves as the operational backbone of the city," Perkins said, listing parks maintenance, blight remediation, animal care and fleet operations as core functions.

Councilmember Scott Benson pressed for more detail on the city’s tree-removal program backlog and proposed a recurring $4,000,000 allocation for forestry. Benson also moved to increase forestry staff from 33 full‑time employees to 57, an addition of 24 FTEs. Both motions were called and, with no objections recorded on the hearing floor, the council took action to add the recurring funding and the staff increase to the closing resolution. "I am going to make a motion to add $4,000,000 recurring to forestry," Benson said; the motion was treated as carried after the chair called for objections.

Benson also argued for beefed-up security in parks and asked GSD to partner with Detroit Police Department to reestablish a park patrol. He moved $1,000,000 recurring to the security line, and council members amended the motion to include coordination with the county sheriff’s department where county property is involved. Council President James Tate noted the motions were on the floor and, when no colleagues objected, recorded the actions for the closing resolution.

Perkins said the department will prioritize dangerous, dead and diseased trees and work with the Department of Neighborhoods to deploy limited resources equitably. She described previous program cycles that produced high demand — "we had over 7,000 requests" — and said that after inspections about 3,906 city trees were serviced in an earlier round. Perkins told the council that with $1 million GSD can service roughly 350 trees and that 73 eligible trees remain from the prior cycle; she pledged to provide exact backlog numbers by memo.

Councilmembers asked about recreation operations, including the Brennan Recreation Center funded in part by a $20 million donation from the Detroit Pistons and a $3 million contingency in the city budget to cover cost escalation. Perkins said the administration is targeting a mid‑to‑late April groundbreaking for the Brennan center, dependent on the Pistons’ playoff schedule.

Members also raised maintenance and reimbursement questions related to freeway cleanup. Deputy Director Jarrell Harris said the city now performs more frequent bowl and service‑drive maintenance than the state did previously and that the program costs about $5.5 million annually while MDOT’s reimbursement is roughly $650,000, a gap GSD said it is pursuing.

The hearing produced several other closing and executive‑session motions — including creation of an advisory body for Palmer Park’s bandshell, studies on pocket parks and geese management — and Perkins committed to follow up with memos or written answers where staff did not have figures on hand. The council recessed the budget hearing with multiple items slated for the closing resolution and for staff follow‑up.

What’s next: the council recorded the motions for inclusion in the closing resolution and requested written follow‑ups on the tree backlog totals, capital allocations for specific parks and details on MDOT fuel/fleet contract terms. The full council will consider the closing resolution and the FY‑27 budget package in subsequent sessions.