City Hall Insider … 8/11/26

By Charles Sercombe
The city council met on Aug. 11, and all councilmembers were in attendance.
Hamtramck firefighter Joseph Wylie was honored for helping a family escape from a house fire. Wylie spotted the fire as he was driving into work, and he immediately drove to the scene, where he climbed to the second floor of the dwelling to help family members escape.
Hamtramck Fire Chief Matthew Wyszczelski said Wylie’s actions are “huge for us. It’s our job as firefighters and police officers. We rush to danger.”
Community Economic Department Manager Isabel Allaway talked about a proposal to limit how long people can park on Jos. Campau to four hours at one space.
She said that, ever since the city removed parking meters on the streets, there have been complaints from business owners about people who park their cars all day and hog parking spaces.
The proposed four-hour limit would be in force from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day of the week.
Police officers would be tasked with monitoring parked cars, and then ticketing ones that overstay their allotted time.

A discussion was held on the practice of councilmembers adding items onto the council agenda right before, and during, meetings.
Mayor Adam Alharbi reasoned that it’s not fair to the public for items to be added on at the last minute. He said the public has a right to know what will be discussed at a meeting before it starts.
“This is something I’ve stated many times before,” he said. “Everything should be on the agenda.”
One example, he said, is adding on an agenda item to give a street an honorific name.
“It should be on the agenda because, what if there are people in the public that oppose it?” Alharbi said. “They need to know ahead of time.”

During public comment, Chuck Brainard encouraged the council to pass a resolution giving Berres St. the honorific name of Hamtramck tennis legend Jane “Peaches” Bartkowicz.
(The council’s agenda erroneously referred to the street as Barres.)
Brainard said that Bartkowicz is well-known in the state for her achievements in tennis, at the highest levels.
“Peaches was the very best,” Brainard said.
Later in the meeting, the council approved the resolution for the renaming.
A representative from the Al-Islah Islamic Center urged the council to discontinue allowing a festival music stage to be erected in front of his mosque, on the northwest corner of Jos. Campau and Caniff.
The request was in reference to the annual Hamtramck Labor Day Festival and the location of its main stage.
The representative requested that all festival stages be set up a block away, at Holmes St. The representative said that the stage volume interrupts its prayer services throughout the day and evening.
Later in the meeting, the council agreed, in the future, to require festival stages on Jos. Campau be placed no closer to the mosque than Holmes St.
Councilmember Mohammed Hassan said the new stage placement will be “good for the festival committee, good for the bank, good for the mosque, good for everybody.”
(The bank he referenced was PNC, which is across the street from the mosque.)
Councilmember Yousuf Saed objected to the change, saying the festival has operated at that location for many years.
“Why are we changing?” he said. “Leave the festival as is.”

A resident spoke out against councilmembers adding agenda items at the start of meetings.
“Please don’t do it,” the resident said. “Residents should know about (these items), and there are a lot of people who read the agenda before the meeting.”
In an email, Charles Blackwell said that Councilmember Hassan should resign since he was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of making a false statement in a case involving election fraud.
In old business, a lengthy discussion was held on whether to sell three properties on Conant back to two (out of the three) previous owners. The properties, one of which is the former Kabob restaurant, were lost due to delinquent property taxes.
Councilmember Nayeem Choudhury said that “It doesn’t make sense to give back to two owners and leave another owner out.”
At this point, councilmembers talked over each other.
Councilmember Mohammed Alsomiri said the deal is “under the table.”
The council eventually OK’d the sale, with Councilmembers Alsomiri and Yousuf Saed objecting. The city sold the properties for $100,000.

A discussion was held on whether to fund the creation of a traffic weight station for trucks to check if they are overloaded.
Interim City Manager Syed Aamir Hassan said enforcing truck weights will bring in revenue from fines.
The cost of the station, to be located on Hamtramck Dr., would be $200,000.
City Attorney Odey Meroueh said fines from tickets will produce “a lot of revenue. Truck tickets are way more lucrative than regular tickets. Please approve this.”
Ticket fines are $1,000, Meroueh said.
Police officers would be assigned to monitor trucks on Hamtramck’s portion of I-75, and trucks that are suspected of being overloaded will be directed to the weigh station.
Deputy Police Chief Andy Mileski said overloaded trucks are “damaging the new roads, and that’s why we have state laws.”
Mayor Adam Alharbi said the cost of the weigh station “will pay for itself.”
Interim City Manager Syed Aamir Hassan said enforcement will help “protect our roads. A lot of trucks are overloaded. We are spending a lot of money fixing these roads because we are not obeying the law. These trucks are getting away with it.”
The proposal was approved.
The council cleared the way for Gajiza L.L.C. to open a restaurant in an empty storefront on Jos. Campau, thanks to a matching $25,000 grant from the state.
A proposal by Councilmember Choudhury to change city hall’s operational hours on Tuesdays to 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. instead of the standard 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. was approved.
Choudhury said this will allow people who can’t make it to city hall during normal business hours to still be able to conduct their business.
“The public comes first,” Choudhury said.
In the mayor’s report, Alharbi said:
“I look forward to make sure that our city moves forward. We have to make sure that we’re focused on the city, and try to not make any disagreements, division.”
He added that the council needs to focus on “improving the lives of our residents.”
Councilmember Hassan commented on his misdemeanor conviction connected with election fraud.
“My case for the election is completely done, with the provision whatever I have done was done by the book,” Hassan said. “I follow the rules. Information was correct, but I have to respect the court judgment. Respectfully, I disagree.”
Hassan then talked about helping a family he knows from Canada, and that he gave the city a heads up about a “suspicious” signature related to an absentee ballot.

Councilmember Choudhury said, in his turn to speak:
“We are all in this together. The vote is your own vote. You can have your vote your way and other councilmen can have their vote their way.”
He also urged the council to begin searching for a new city manager. He said the city’s interim city manager is also the city’s full-time finance director.
Hamtramck, Choudhury said, needs a professional city manager to stay focused on city employees and various projects.
He said the process to find and hire a city manager will “take a long time. It won’t be just a quick one, two, three searching for a right, perfect candidate for the city. … It’s going to take time, so we need to start that. That way we’ll have productive and constructive decisions and a better understanding of the city.”
Councilmember Muhtasin Sadman said his votes on council are “based on applicable laws and rules. … I don’t think we’re doing any illegal stuff here.”

During public comment, Bill Meyer questioned how much money the marijuana dispensaries pay to the city. He said the public was told millions of dollars would be collected.
(According to the state, about $100 million a year is shared back to communities that are eligible to receive payments collected from dispensary taxes and fees. Over $116 million is also funneled to public schools. In 2024, Hamtramck received over $230,000 from its state share.)
On the subject of lawsuits filed against the city, Meyer said the public is not informed about the status of the lawsuits.
“We never know who’s winning the lawsuit. Who lost it? How much it costs? The public doesn’t know. Maybe we’re losing hundreds of thousands (dollars). We don’t even know,” Meyer said.
As for the sale of the Conant properties, “There are conflicts of interest here,” Meyer said, about unnamed city councilmembers.
“We have people on this council who are very close to the owners of this place,” he said. “They probably even own part of the thing. I don’t even know.”
Meyer also accused an unnamed councilmember of signaling to the buyers of property when the sale went through. He did not elaborate.
Later, Councilmember Hassan said he was signaling to someone else in the chamber.
Another speaker during this public comment period asked for transparency, and noted that the lawsuits filed against the city are “way too much. It’s time to stop the lawsuits. Let’s fix the streets.”
What is our City Council up to these days? We have the highlights of the latest council meeting.
Posted Oct. 9, 2026