Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud (left), holds a town hall meeting April 1 at Henry Ford Centennial Library.
By SUE SUCHYTA
Times-Herald Newspapers
DEARBORN – Mayor Abdullah Hammoud met with residents April 1 at Henry Ford Centennial Library to provide updates on issues ranging from traffic control to flood mitigation.
Hammoud spoke about public safety, infrastructure changes to prevent future basement flooding, the RX Kids program, city development projects, neighborhood and business district updates, city service improvements and a newly launched survey of Dearborn residents to identify the issues most important to residents.
Hammoud said he would walk through at a high level some of the priorities that are funded in the city budget.
He started with public safety, saying “our streets our so quiet, and nobody speeds ever,” earning a round of April Fools Day laughter.
Hammoud said the city has installed about 530 units of traffic calming infrastructure, including speed humps, illuminated stop signs and 20 raised cross walks, predominantly in the downtown areas and near parks and schools.
He said the work continues with a three-pronged approach, including education, enforcement and engineering.
Hammoud said they now have a driving simulator that visits every high school in the city every year, which is similar to what police officers experience during training.
“We run about 1,000 students at each high school,” he said. “Inside the simulator are actual officers, and they are able to simulate real driving conditions on the road, and they give real-time feedback to some of our youngest drivers.”
Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud holds a town hall meeting April 1 at Henry Ford Centennial Library.
Hammoud said traffic and ticket data indicates that the majority of tickets in the city are given to men under 20 years of age.
“And they are probably driving some Dodge vehicle,” he quipped amid laughter.
Hammoud said the city sent letters to all the driving schools in the region, informing them that it is their duty, as licensed by the Secretary of State, to make sure that they are graduating qualified drivers.
“After we sent out that letter, the Secretary of State actually shut down a few driving schools in the region that were graduating unqualified drivers,” he said.
Hammoud said that enforcement is at an all-time high as well.
“We had a 20 to 30 percent increase last year in citations issued, an all-time record in the city of Dearborn, and we saw a 15 percent decrease year over year in the number of car accidents that led to bodily injuries,” he said. “That’s progress.”
Hammoud said there are a great number of engineering projects under way.
“Warren Avenue received a $25 million grant from the federal government to redesign Warren Avenue from Lonyo all the way to Greenfield, a two-mile stretch,” he said. “This is one of the most dangerous roadways in Wayne County.”
Hammoud said they also just received a $250,000 grant to begin to begin to reimagine Schaefer Road between Warren and Michigan avenues.
“Schaefer Road is also considered one of the most dangerous roads in Wayne County,” he said. “We are trying to tackle some of the most dangerous roads by redesigning them.
“We are not going to ticket ourselves out of this issue: we have to redesign the roadway.”
Hammoud said Schaefer Road and Prospect Street is one of the most dangerous left turns in Dearborn, where the majority of the T-bone crashes occur, and the direct left turn will be eliminated at the intersection, with a safer engineered option built.
He said that flooding is also a major issue in Dearborn, and one that has to be worked on diligently every year for the next several decades.
“As we know, climate change is real, weather patterns are changing on an annual basis and we have to keep up with the times,” Hammoud said. “The underground infrastructure that was built 100 years ago was not designed to handle the storms that we see happening far too often all across the world, especially here in the city of Dearborn.”
He said the Rouge River lacked maintenance, with more than 50 logs jams present in the city, and while it wasn’t the city’s responsibility to take care of them, they didn’t want to sit around and wait for someone else to take responsibility for them.
Hammoud said the City Council allocated $1 million to clear the log jams during the past three years, which allowed water levels to drop more than a foot, which increased river capacity so that when rain events happen, outfalls that end up in the Rouge River from upstream communities have increased capacity.
He said water monitors were installed so the city can remotely monitor the height of the Rouge River and know when they are approaching flooding stages and inform public safety personnel so they know which viaducts are flooded when they need to navigate public safety routes.
“In moments of emergency, we know what roads we can pass through and what roads are blocked,” Hammoud said.
He said water is now clearing through the Rouge River 70 percent faster, which adds capacity to the system without having to build giant underground water or sewer lines.
Hammoud said city easements are being converted to bioswales to better absorb water during rain events, and if the pilot is successful, it will be expanded across the city.
He said a 1,000 bioswales across the city could absorb 1 million gallons of rain water during every single rain event.
Hammoud said the challenge is to keep rainwater off the streets and out of basements by absorbing it in other areas, and green infrastructure has to be a part of the solution.
He said the 12-foot diameter Colson-Palmer storm water line can hold 7 million gallons of water when it is 100 percent operational, but about 50 percent of the pipe is currently blocked with debris and dirt, and clearing it out would add 4 million gallons of capacity.
“We received the funding through a federal grant, we are currently designing the cleaning out of the Colson-Palmer line and adding what is called a gate at the end of it so that the debris is not coming back in,” Hammoud said. “So, without adding any additional water or sewer lines, we are going to add 4 million gallons of capacity back to our system as originally intended just by evaluating current infrastructure that we have.”
Hammoud said the installation of flap gates, to be built with federal funding, would protect entire neighbors by a mechanism similar to the operation of backflow preventers, which protect individual houses, and would protect about 3,500 single family homes.
He said the city is currently working on a long-term plan to increase the city’s storm water runoff capacity in all areas of the city.
“It’s very expensive, it’s very timely, but we are doing this all in parallel with one another: the short-term projects we can do now to add immediate capacity and the long-term projects to increase our overall capacity by 50 percent, and lastly we’ve identified two to three short-term emergency projects that will allow us to push out water at a far greater rate than we currently do,” Hammoud said.
He then transitioned to a description of Rx Kids, a community-wide prenatal and infant cash prescription program.
“I don’t know if you know this, but Dearborn is the baby-making capital of Michigan,” he said amid laughter. “We have more babies per capita – about 1,700 babies per capita – that’s more than any city across Michigan.”
Hammoud said he has three daughters age 4 and younger, so he is doing his part to add to the city’s population growth.
He said more than 900 families in the city have enrolled to date in the program, which is federally funded.
For more information about the program, go to rxkids.org.
Hammoud said the blighted Oakman Boulevard Apartment buildings came down last year and he hopes the land will eventually be available for redevelopment.
He said the Village Plaza demolition has begun following extensive asbestos abatement.
Hammoud said it will take quite some time to take down the Village Plaza because it can’t be imploded, and the parking deck will be demolished first, with the office tower being the final structure to be demolished.
He said the former Hyatt Regency site has a new owner and they have been approved for a mixed-use project. The new development will have about 200 hotel rooms and 200 apartments, and the building will bring back the convention and meeting space, but not the monorail.
Hammoud said construction is currently happening inside the building, and he believes it will be completed sometime in 2027.
He said the third PEACE Park, in the South End, is completed, with a ribbon-cutting planned for June.
Hammoud said the Esper and Brayant branch libraries are being converted into STEM centers, a science, technology, engineering and mathematics hub, with funding secured. Both libraries will close for about a year for renovation and transformation.
He said they hope to bring back some of the historical architectural beauty of Bryant Library as well, with the Chamber of Commerce being relocated.