This article first appeared on Outlier Media and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Detroit has a new ombudsman. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo will lead an office responsible for investigating and making recommendations to resolve confidential complaints about city services or employees. Her salary is $195,000 a year, and she replaces outgoing ombudsman Bruce Simpson.
Gay-Dagnogo, 58, is returning to city hall, where she worked as an assistant to Councilmembers Clyde Cleveland and Alberta Tinsley-Talabi in the 1990s, after serving on the Detroit Public Schools Community District Board and in the state Legislature. She’s also a former teacher.
We sat down with Gay-Dagnogo to ask her about the visibility of the ombudsman’s office, the effectiveness of the Improve Detroit app and what she sees as Detroiters’ biggest challenges.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
OUTLIER MEDIA: A lot of Detroiters don’t even know the city has an ombudsman. What will you do to change that?
GAY-DAGNOGO: I have to say that the former ombudsman did do some of that work. But, I think we want to just expand and scale it a bit more, making sure we also meet people where they are. We have on our team one of the youngest individuals on the previous ombudsman staff, who are well-versed in the use of social media platforms and making sure we have some online conversations with our residents, our seniors, those who are not necessarily able to come to (city hall) but are watching us from their phones or from their desktop.
We also want to expand our youth fellows program (through Grow Detroit’s Young Talent) to make sure our young people are getting the word out about how to solve the challenges and problems that many of our residents have.
OUTLIER: If a resident has a problem, they can go to their city councilmember, their district manager, the mayor’s office, and some districts have advisory councils. How is your role different? What should people call you for?
GAY-DAGNOGO: I see (the way) that this office works as twofold.
Number one, it’s educating our constituents in the event that city ordinances or state law do not provide for the outcome they wish for. So, if it is in alignment with the law, with city ordinances, with state law, then we move accordingly and make sure they get the answers they need. Hopefully, that’s by building relationships with every department leader, and we’ve hit the ground running and started to meet with leadership in every department.
And then it’s the turnaround time for answers, making sure residents receive the proper communication in a timely fashion. Sometimes, it’s a lot that departments are dealing with. So, I want to understand their pressure points and areas of potential bottleneck, and how we can help ameliorate that. And then, there may be an instance in which we may have to advance policy to change it at the city or the state level.
That’s why this office has the level of importance that it does for residents — to not just say, “oh well, we’re sorry, we can’t help” — but to see if there’s an opportunity for policy and legislation to get that done at the state level. That’s why those relationships are important.
OUTLIER: People write to us and say, “I complained about illegal dumping or sidewalk repair, but I didn’t get a response at all or nothing changed.” What can we do to improve responsiveness through the Improve Detroit app or the other ways residents make complaints to the city?
GAY-DAGNOGO: As we communicate with department heads and the current and future (mayoral) administration, we might look for ways we could provide a more seamless, integrated approach to delivering communication to our residents.
The ombudsman’s office is independent, so we don’t necessarily want the same platform. We want to make sure we provide a “bridge” to our city councilmembers and mayoral administration to make sure we’re capturing any challenges that residents have expressed but have not gotten the response they wanted.
We are not trying to take over the role of any city councilmember and how they handle their constituent complaints. But we do want to be a support, and we do want to advance efficacy, and we want to minimize the need for a resident calling their (at-large) councilmember, their (district) councilmember, and then our office. I feel if there’s communication to some degree, we can help create and advance efficacy in that way and get faster response times.
OUTLIER: What are the most common complaints people take to the ombudsman’s office?
GAY-DAGNOGO: Based on my listening with the (ombudman’s office) staff, a lot of bottleneck is coming from the Buildings, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department. A lot of challenges are coming from the Detroit Land Bank Authority. A lot of challenges were highlighted from the Detroit Water and Sewage Department. I’m looking forward to having meetings with those department heads to hear some of the challenges and barriers they may have.
OUTLIER: Do you have any recommendations for new offices or programs for the city?
GAY-DAGNOGO: I go back to my 90-day plan: listening, listening, listening. Although, I was here 30-plus years ago, working for two city councilmembers, and I’ve kind of kept my pulse on the city.
We want to work very closely with those who want to uplift education. There is one position I certainly want to fill sooner than later, to make sure there is integration and collaboration on Detroit’s education landscape, be it traditional public school or charter, to make sure we’re moving the needle on academic achievement for residents in the city of Detroit. Because that’s ultimately how we’re going to help our students thrive.
While we may not have directly received complaints for education through this office, I’m fully aware of the problems many of our residents have called the school district’s Board of Education for. Much of it is transportation. Some mothers have and fathers have had to pay in excess of $40-$50 in the morning because you have these car services that are charging us, doing a surcharge during the hours of school. That’s unacceptable. So, there are a myriad of other issues that exist to make sure we are doing right by city residents and those with school-age children, because our very economy and the ability to thrive rest on how well we provide academic excellence in the city of Detroit.
OUTLIER: The salary for this job is substantially higher than city councilmembers, and it’s a 10-year appointment. What measures are in place to ensure you’re accountable to residents throughout your tenure?
GAY-DAGNOGO: I’m hopeful our residents will evaluate me based on my accessibility and willingness to make sure that their complaints are heard. That they call our office and are not on a delayed wait, but get an immediate turnaround answering their claim, giving us time to resolve the resolution through the departments. Making sure we answer their calls, answer their emails and meet with them when possible and when needed. That we have community-based meetings to bring accessibility to them.
We know it’s not always easy coming downtown. Many of our residents are seniors. Many of them lack transportation or don’t drive … (or) are impeded from driving and coming down to pay parking. So, accessibility is one of the key focal points to me, as well as being able to review (records), like an annual report, the number of complaints that come in, being able to see what the numbers are.
I (also) want them to be aware that these systems exist. I don’t want it to just be a conversation that takes place between my office and council.
OUTLIER: During the interview process for this job, councilmembers asked a lot about subpoena power — which the city charter grants the ombudsman. Can you talk a little bit about how you plan to use that power or what you think the function of a subpoena is for the ombudsman?
GAY-DAGNOGO: I think it’s important we build a rapport with (city councilmembers), meeting with them, talking to them, understanding their priorities and being able to show data which reflect some of the needs that have been reported in their district. I think understanding that and meeting in that capacity helps to build the expectation of where we are in advocating for our residents.
I would hope that subpoena power — the power to take legal matters toward any agency or elected official — would be the last step. That’s not something that should be waved around without respect and without the understanding of how important it is. It’s the absolute last resort of taking any legal power that the charter provides as a weapon. We don’t want to weaponize that. We want to make sure we are working together and that what members swore oath to is upheld.