City Council Budget Work Session Meeting Transcript – 2/15/2017 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 2/15/2017 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 2/15/2017 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:09:30 AM] >> Mayor Adler: So let's go ahead and start this off. We don't have a quorum so we can't take any action. We do. Then we'll grab the quorum here real fast. Not that we need the quorum for us to have a briefing like this because we don't take any action, but we will note in the record that we just happen to have one. But today is February 15th. It is 9:08. We are in the boards and commissions room, work session, just to do a little bit deeper dive on the police department budget. Who is going to start us off? >> Well, mayor and council, good morning, ray Arrellano, assistant city manager. I would be happy to start us off. If you will recall, the police department is the last of the three public safety departments that are scheduled to be presented to the council in this format. One of the things that we observed from last presentation with the fire department last week were some questions that came up around the contract, some of the portions of the budget and their relation R. Relations to the contracts that we have in place. We responded to those at the time, but there's some additional information that we would like for clarification and in fact there's some areas of questions where we had responses that weren't necessarily correct so he would like to take this opportunity to provide the correct information and also to provide you with the fact that here shortly we'll be entering negotiations with the associations, the three associations, and so as we hear the police department's presentation we have with us today -- I'll ask Tom industriling, our labor relations officer, to come forward and difficult information with regard to the -- and give information [9:11:30 AM] with regard to the fire department. But as questions up with regard to the police department and have a bearing on the contract negotiations, from time to time I may ask Tom to respond to those. So with that I'll ask Tom to talk about the clarifications we'd like to provide you with regard to the fire department. Stribling. >> Mayor and council, Tom Stribling, labor relations officer. In the the brief -- as assistant city manager Arrellano said in last week's briefing in regard to fire there was a question we were unable to give response to and we would like to give that and there are a couple more that we would like to have some clarification. Councilmember Houston asked us with regard to whether or not the collective bargaining agreement covered the retesting of firefighters or sworn personnel when it came to the bilingual pay. I know that assistant city manager Washington provided at least what he believed to be the situation, but promised that we would look at the contract and make sure of that. And his initial thought was correct. The collective bargaining agreement provides the amount of money that people will receive if they are entitled to the bilingual pay. But with regard to the testing and retesting, the three public safety departments all follow the corporate model that we use throughout the city and the collective bargaining agreement does not provide what that testing process is. With regard to a couple of other questions, we want to make some clarification on, councilmember Flannigan asked with regard to the fire dispatch whether or not they could move firefighters out of dispatch and fill [9:13:31 AM] those positions with civilian employees the answer that was given was somewhat correct, but not completely. The answer that was given is that collective bargaining agreement prevented us from doing that. Actually, state law provides specifically with regard to fire a list of fire duties that must be performed by sworn personnel. And the dispatch function is one of those that the state law requires that it be performed that way. Our contract does have a very short provision that talks about this because we have exempted one civilian employee who has been in the fire dispatch for a number of years and then the contract simply says, but with regard to all others it will be filled by firefighters, which is just simply a restatement of what the law S. So it's not necessarily that we in negotiations gave to them the right to have firefighters there. That is something that was initially going through the state legislature and is provided by the state legislature. Councilmember Flannigan also had a question about the wellness center. And I think the question was sort of is the wellness center the same idea? Do we have to staff it with firefighters? We didn't really give an absolute answer to that. The question is that we do not have to staff it with firefighters, but the answer that was given was correct, that there were very few sworn firefighters who are in the wellness center. But that also did bring up the question with regard to supervision of firefighters. That was sort of the follow-up to that. And it is correct that state law provides that a firefighter cannot be [9:15:32 AM] supervised by a civilian employee. Now, again, our contract recognizes that in one sentence, that that is the law and that is the law that we will continue to follow. But again, it's the idea that we cannot have civilians who are supervising firefighters is really a question of state law, as opposed to the contract so much. Even without the contract, we would still have to have firefighters who were supervised by other firefighters. And the same with regard to the dispatch, even if we didn't have a collective bargaining agreement, we would still have to fill the dispatch duties with firefighters. So those were the clarifications that we wanted to make. And one of the reasons -- and I know each one of these points is really not that significant, but we didn't a few people did come away from the impression that through the contract we had provided a lot of rights that the firefighters had won through the contract were actually -- were these particular ones. And certainly there are cases where we have negotiated rights that they have that do come from the contract, but that these particular ones were given to them by state law, not by any negotiation with the city. Any questions? >> Mayor Adler: Any questions? Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Good morning, mayor, council, Brian Manley, Austin police department. I have with me on my right assistant chief Troy gay. This is our person who [9:17:34 AM] oversees civilians. I won't belabor your time with introducing everyone. All our chiefs will be with us today and our entire command staff along with leadership is watching via remote because this is important to be aware of what goes into this process. We do want to start off with just a five-minute video excerpt just showing who we are as a department, and realize that this video that we show you are something we're going it use as our new recruiting video, the advertising video that will be on the front of our website. We believe that this is much more reflective of the community policing focus we have as an organization compared to prior videos that we've had. So with nothing further, I'll go ahead and put this up. >> ... Facing the blazing eyes. >> The Austin police department, how can I help you? >> Police, fire or E.M.S.? >> >> Austin police department, how can I help you? >> Austin 911, do you need police, fire or E.M.S.? >> I think I shot my leg. >> Somebody needs to come get my son. He stopped breathing. Please rate structure R. Hurry. >> I can't wake him up. >> You've tried waking him up. >> He's passed out in the back seat of a car. >> I need you to pay attention as to where you're shot at. Take a a look at it and tell me. >> In 2016 the Austin police department fielded more than one million 911 calls, responded to more than 572,000 incidents and investigated almost 52,000 cases. >> About 1900 sworn officers and 732 civilians, not to mention canine officers and our mounted patrol, helped keep Austin safe 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To serve the nearly one million people in Austin, the department uses a fleet of marked and unmarked vehicles, motorcycles, [9:19:35 AM] helicopters, boats to keep waterways safe as well as speed detection trailers to monitor speeds in neighborhoods. APD also uses incar computers, dash cameras, hand-held guises to write tickets, license plate readers and social media to keep austinites informed. APD's mobile app allows users to submit tips, see crime trends and keep up with department news. APD is more than about the numbers. What we do is more than about writing tickets and making arrests. It is about being part of Austin, being part of the community and building trust. In 1829 when sir Robert peel created the first professional police force in Austin he said the police are the public and the public are the police. From national night out, operation blue Santa, shop with a cop, coffee with a cop, the citizen police academy, to mentoring children through the blue guardian program, Austin police officers are working together with our community to build and maintain strong relationships. APD actively works with Austin youth through the police activities league offering boxing, basketball and soccer and through the Austin police explorers program for teenagers interested in law enforcement. Many times when citizens meet police officers as they are serving their community, or in times of crisis are emergency, but sometimes our officers get to be superheros, like superhero day at Dell children's medical center. >> That's the heros arriving to save the day. [♪Music playing♪]. >> With the help of the Austin police department and the helicopter and our rappeling skills, we were able to recover the goodies and the kids will have a fun day now. [Laughter] It's an awesome feeling to know that when you see these [9:21:37 AM] kids, even for just a moment, to come out of the current condition that brought them here at the hospital, it's like worth all the work in the world. >> Austin's ever growing landscape and population mean that the city has ever-growing public safety needs. >> Mayor Adler: You should know that Austin is one of the safest cities in the country. One of the reasons why we are so safe is because the people in our community trust our police officers. This level of trust is earned. And most importantly, our public safety officers do what they do because they believe it makes us more safe. Now, I trust our public safety professionals because they are keeping us safe. I asked my community to trust our police. It's simple and it's about public safety. And the question we face as a community, I think, is simple. At what price do we sell ourselves? >> I love this job. I wouldn't change it for the world. [♪Music playing♪]. >> I was going to open my comments by saying that. I apparently don't need to now. [Laughter]. >> Well, you will be saying that a lot as that's going to now be our promotional video and that will be our [9:23:39 AM] line. We shamelessly stole from your state of the city address and we think it's appropriate in what we're doing here. So thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> If you want me to jump right in we'll go ahead and get started. I think you are used to seeing slides similar to this. >> Houston: Let me jump right in. I think it's a great -- a very diverse view of what police do in the city of Austin. I even saw the children's defense fund freedom school with tank in there. So who they loved. They thought he was the best thing in the world. I thought the diversity was good. So thank you. >> Great. We know for a long time and we've talked about it and may tricks brought it up in their study that we should promote ourselves for the type of men and women we're trying to recruit. And being a community agency we believe better addresses that audience. I won't go over everything on this slide. If you have specific questions on it I know we'll get to them. There are some things I would like to highlight on the presentation here and the video referred to some of them. As you see, we received over one million calls to 911 last year. 1,032,076. Of those we dispatched 376,476 to Austin police officers. On top of that we had an additional 572,303 actions taken by police officers. These may be traffic stops, neighborhood stops, so again the total volume that you will see is 572,303 incidents that we actually responded to in 2016. And we handled additionally to that 143,000 violations for citations, traffic violations. I think you all are well aware of some of the challenges that we have with mobility and traffic safety in this community. We saw our traffic fatalities reach 102 in 2015 and last year was 79. We put a lot of emphasis on safety on the highways. So a lot bit of the [9:25:39 AM] activity that unit had there. I think the important number is D.W.I. Arrests. We had 5,640 D.W.I. Arrests. We all understand the dangers that that pose and the lives that has taken. We had 23 drivers involved in fatality crashes that were under the influence of alcohol last year and 13 pedestrians that died in traffic crashes that were under the influence of alcohol. So again we put all of these resources towards that effort to try to keep the community safe. We have our metro tactical numbers there. Each region has a metro tactical team. There are 12 officers, a detective and a argument. And the purposes for that commander to be able to use this team to address the biggest challenges they're facing at that time, whether or not it be a burglary spree that popped up, a drug house that's hit that neighborhood, this is a versatile team that can go in and provide in many different areas. We had 47,000 total arrests in 2016. I won't go too much into that, but I would remind everyone that we track all of our arrests and use of force and in those 47,078 incident we used force just under four percent of the time. So these arrests are being done most of the time according to policy and we do track all of our use of force incidents. And when we did use force, 89% of those usages were actually level 3, our lowest level of force. So just a point of reference there. Our part 1 investigations, we had 33,902 property crimes last year. And these are the burglaries, auto thefts and thefts. And then on top of that we have the 3,745 violent crimes and these are the part 1s, which are the murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults. So you all are well aware that Austin is the fourth safest city when it comes to major crime and those are what we're seeing in our community. [9:27:40 AM] Unfortunately that does reflect an eight percent increase from where we were the year before. We did experience an eight percent increase in violent crime in 2016. And it was driven by individual robberies and aggravated assaults. And so that is a focus area for us this year as a department is to hone in on the data, to better understand exactly where in community these incidents are occurring so that we can deploy our limited resources to those neighborhoods that we will make the greatest impact. So that's what we've got on this one one. One. And of the cases assigned to detectives those are assigned among the men and women we have in the investigative ranks. When we look at our budget overview, our budget is -- for this fiscal year is 40.6 million. That consists of 386 million from the general fund. 6.3 million in our grants and another 8.7 million in reimbursements. I think it's important to note on this slide here when we look at our staffing we are authorized for 1,908 sworn positions, 732 civilian passions. We do have a couple of divisions where the majority of our civilians work, so although that seems like a large number our communications division has 229 personnel assigned to run the 911, 311 and dispatch operations. We have 117 positions that are assigned to the academy so that when we have cadet classes they have positions to be placed in. We have 84 our in our forensics and then we have 47 in our records division. So -- then the remainder of spread throughout the department. But just to give you an idea of where the majority of our civilian resources are housed. And then the pie chart really just breaks down the budget amongst our different service programs. Again, with what you would expect the largest [9:29:42 AM] portion being neighborhood-based policing with that being 50% of our budget. We have seen a growth in our authorized strength of 178 positions since 2012. But where we're at right now is we have 117 vacancies in the department right now. We have a cadet class in session that has 77 cadets in it. We're currently recruiting for two cadet classes. One will be a regular class, our standard class that will begin in may and we're targeting 120 to begin that class. We know with an attrition rate we need to start with the large number. And then we will start a modified class sometime around the October time frame so that it will coincide with the graduation of the other class. And again that class normally we put about 25 individuals in that class. And these are men and women that are currently serving as police officers in other communities around the country that we can bring here and cut their training time almost in half because we just need to teach them things specific to our community and how we operate. So the vacancy rate was something that you were aware of we were challenged with last year and we believe that we've taken steps to see improvements in that area. We've added additional staffing to our recruiting division. We've brought an online recruiting tool, an application, online application that applicants can go on now. So we're seeing a much quicker turnaround and what we're looking at right now with current predictions is that by the end of this calendar year we should have addressed the major vacancy rates that we experienced throughout last year and should be able to move forward focusing more on attrition and new positions as we recruit for upcoming classes. On our capital budgets just a few areas here to highlight. Our mounted patrol facility, we're currently in the prebid phase on our mounted patrol and we're working [9:31:42 AM] to control costs on this project. This project was funded by a 2012 bond for $3.6 million and then re- reallocated additional funds that were additionally for the Home Depot facility to be a substation towards this project as well so we can move it towards completion. Again right now we are in the prebid phase and we're trying to get the project to a level that it is within our funding amount right now. So that's what we're working towards on this. And this is a facility that will be located out in the etj, out off of the toll road 130. We're currently in a leased space that we could be -- we could lose that space at any time so we realize the need to go ahead and move forward with our own facility. We also have our joint park patrol and park ranger facility. This too is -- is in its architect and design phase and we are working towards that with the parks department. And this was part of that 2012 bond as well and was funded at just under two million dollars for the design phase. And the last one is the northwest police substation. We were funded on that one for the design and land acquisition. And we are working right now in identifying the appropriate tracts of land that we will ultimately want to place that northwest substation on. And then once we find that land and can get moving on that we'll start the design phase, but as the city has grown -- I'll talk about this later in the presentation, but as we've grown our substations really are accommodating a much larger staff than they were meant to, and when the units that are responding and patrolling the neighborhoods out in Anderson mill and out in 183 and 620 area are coming from Parmer and lamp light where we've got a lot of lost time in that travel. So again, we'll be excited when we can get the north sub up and operational, but currently we are in the preliminary phases on that project. Adds we look at some of our -- as we look at [9:33:44 AM] some of our operational impacts, I think you've heard from some of the other two agencies that have gone ahead of us, obviously Austin is a growing city, depending upon which city you look at we had about 110 citizens a day, 110 people join our community a day. What we've seen is a population growth of 90,000 since 2012. And as would be expected, with population increases comes increased service demand, increases calls for service, the traffic becomes more congested, more frequent traffic crashes and all of these come together to put much greater demands on us as a service department keeping the community safe. We've got the issues that we will continue to work on with the DNA lab. We've briefed you a few times on that and that is something that we are still putting a lot of resources to, trying to clear up our backlogs, along with identifying what the operation would look like as we go forward, how we want to perform analysis in the future, and we're working again with that stakeholder group that we have talked to you about before, partners within the district attorney and the county attorney's office, the county judge, the mayor and others have all been a part of this. So this is something that will again impact us as we go through this year as well. I mentioned the violent crime rates in my introduction that they are up eight percent. And that that was based on a 32% increase in aggravated assaults and a 13% increase in individual robberies. And again, the efforts I discussed will be trying to combat that this year and really bring that rate down. Special events staffing. We talk about special events a lot. Austin is a destination city and we have a lot to offer here as far as special events. A lot of people come to Austin for all the things that we have here, all the celebrations and the music events, but that too places a strain on our staffing at times to keep these events operating and operating safely. And we don't expect to see any change in that so that's something that we see as a driver this year that will impact our service delivery as [9:35:45 AM] well. And then the last thing that we'll talk about as far as the specific impacts is the diversified community. Austin does have some specific communities that require a lot of services. We have a very large homeless population in Austin and we have a very large community that needs mental health assistance. And we have worked in both of these areas to try to make improvements. You all are well aware of and actually created the host team which we are finding to be operating successfully. I think you all are aware of the success stories that we're seeing as far as finding folks housing, getting them aligned with the medical treatment that we need. That will continue this year. And again as we do with all of our programs, if we believe that this is successful and something that we could implement in other neighborhoods across the city, then we would look to do that and then that would then of course create an additional resource need. In working with the mental health community, we have a lot of calls that involve individuals that are in some state of mental health need. And we are part of the mcot program and we partner with our partners over in Travis county. And again, what we focus on is diversion. We focus on at that moment of service whatever we can do to avoid putting somebody in jail or having to -- having to institutionalize them, so we're providing at the point of service help with our partners at the Travis county. And what we've seen is we've seen a 99% diversion rate with the incidents that this team responds to. So it's not across the board, but the incidents that we got this team to respond to we're finding some very good success rate with. A couple of the other service challenges, we are -- the recipient of a lot of open records requests, as would be expected. We keep a lot of data and the public requests a lot of data from us. What you will see here is that we've seen those requests grow from [9:37:46 AM] 18,000 in 2012 to 31,000 right now. And at some point when we can implement a body worn camera program, we know that we will probably see an increase in open records requests as well, and that will require editing and redaction and all once we're looking at these videos. So that's been a pretty significant demand placed on our civilian staff, processing all of these open records requests. And then the other area where we've seen another significant increase is the number of alarms that we receive. And again you will see the numbers there have grown from just over 15,000 in 2012 to 40,000 in 2016. So again we're seeing some great growth -- I'm sorry, it was 24,000 in 2012 and then we've grown 15,000 over those intermittent years to where we're at now at 40,000. So again, that's just something that we feel that we have to respond to and even though the majority of those are going to be false alarms, we think that that's a service that the city deserves because we don't want to miss that one or two that may actually be real in the moment. Some noteworthy prior council actions. Back in 2002, the public safety task force was created and it set our staffing ratio at two officers per thousand. So it was a calculation based on population for every increase after thousand we added two officers to the department. We stayed with that for several years and it was seen as a minimum staffing level and that's how we approached staffing. I think you all are all aware that we've switched how we approach that now and we now focus on community engagement time. The time our officers have that they're not tied down to 911 calls for service, but instead that they have to proactivelyngage the community and to build those relationships. [9:39:47 AM] In 2012 per conducted a study. The council funded that. Perf came in and conducted a study. That study showed we needed an additional 257 officers over the next five years. And we've received 190 during that time. So based on the study that per performed on us back in 2012 at the request of council, we are 67 officers short of where we should be right now. And as you are aware in 2015 council funded us again to do another study looking at how we do community policing in Austin. And then part of that study was again a patrol utilization study, a staffing study to determine what the size of the department needed to be to successfully conduct the community policing. And what that study showed was that we had a need last year for based on their analysis, 82 officers and eight corporals. And we received 10 officers and two sergeants last year and 21 civilian positions that we then really able to put 21 officers. We're in the process of filling those to put the 21 officers on the street. So the net gain was 33. Out of that we came up 57 officers short based on the study that matrix did under this council item last year and then that report also suggested an additional 20 officers for this year based on population growth. So the matrix study would put us at he 77 officers short of where we should be at this point. So that's the past work that council has endeavored to identify what our staffing needs are as a department. Some of our key indicators that you see up here or emergency response times. Our emergency response times to emergent calls, are those can violence occurring, emergency injuring and either the perpetrator is on scene or immediately left and is in the area and we may be able to [9:41:47 AM] successful fly apprehend them with a quick response and that goal is 8:04 and we met that goal last year. Our part one violent crime rate as you can see based on the eight% increase that we experienced last year and the raw numbers and the rate also increased to the highest level since pre2012 as you will see on your slide. The part two quality of life crimes have continued to decrease. We've had strong gains in our part two crimes. These are the ones that don't fall under the part one. Part one is the murder robbery rape and aggravated assault, auto theft, theft and burglary. So the crimes just blow that are part two and so they're tracked in a different way. We're seeing some success there. And the last one will be the citizen satisfaction survey and our results last year had a 76% satisfaction rate among our community. And this was 25% higher than the national average the 61%. And I do believe you all just received the update yesterday from etc with the new numbers and we were at 71% last year which is still 16% above the national average, but it's a little bit lower than where we were the previous year. Just of note here, one of the things we were working towards this year is in continuation of the work we've done with the center for policing equity, we've partnered with the urban institute and the urban institute is working towards a community survey that is going to be conducted in Austin, but in a different way. When normally we do a community way we survey the entire community and you may get the results from the community of where you spend most our time or where we take most of our enforcement. The message from that community can be watered down potentially by communities where we don't spend a lot of time or we don't take a lot of enforcement action. So urban approached us and we agreed to do this. They're going to do a target specific survey of the 10 zip codes where we do take our most active approach. We are engaged more often and we have more [9:43:49 AM] enforcement action taken. So I think this is going to provide us another level of understanding our community, the desires of the community and our relationship within certain parts of our community that may not be as evident under the current surveys that we do. Some of our horizon issues, obviously workload challenges. We've talked about the fact that we're a growing department. We're adding 110 -- growing demands, we're adding 110 civilians, people moving into the city everyday. And so again that poses challenges to us on the workload. As we try and get more proactive in how we approach policing, as we try and get towards that 35% engagement time so we can build those relationships, again, those are challenges we want to get. Special events, we are a special event driven city and we will continue to have major special events that will strain our workforce and pull officers into those so we can effectively police those and let those occur in the safest manner. I think we are a very temperature city in advocating for change and so we have seen recently and I expect we will see a continuation of the public protests of the public gatherings of the public speaking and we will be committed as a department to allow those to take place in the safest manner possible and that will require us to send resources there to either close roadways or to keep partisan groups apart from each other so again, we see that continuing this year based on what we've seen here over the past couple of weeks. And then really also towards the end of last year, at last year's political season. So that will again place additional strains on our department as we try to keep those events safe. When we look at our supports and operational service, when we've grown as a department, [9:45:52 AM] of those 178 commissioned positions to the department, but what we've not really added is the support staff, the civilian staff. We've gotten staff to increase our communications division. You all have been able to give us positions for our forensics, but we have a lot of demand growth when we add additional investigators and add additional cases that need to be investigated. Civilians have a role in all of that as well. So there are some challenges in our civilian staffing, and that's why last year when we came to you we actually were able to identify 21 positions in the department where we had uniformed men and women, police officers conducting jobs that really didn't require any police responsibility. That they actually could be performed by a civilian, and that's why we came to you and you all granted that and gave us the 21 civilians so we could put those 21 civilians back in a frontline enforcement capacity and we were able to do that and again we're in the hiring process right now for those positions. The last one I mention Ed earlier, the facilities. We do have a challenges at several of our facilities. The headquarters we realize with the waller creek project underway we will at some point need to vacant APD headquarters and have the headquarters that works for us as an organization that's located in an appropriate location so we can be responsive to city hall, city management. I know that's a project that's being looked at right now. The northwest substation, currently three demands working out of our north station at Parmer and lamp light. At best that facility would house two. And we've got -- we're utilizing every square foot we can. As we continue to add officers to that substation, the parking becomes problematic as well because for every two to three officers we're going to add another patrol car so that we have enough vehicles there to support the officers that work out of that substation. So I do believe the men and women up there have become the best experts they can and they're parking the cars as [9:47:52 AM] creativitily as they can and we have hard parking at our substation. We were furnished for the northeast substation and that was never constructed so that's why the northeast is operating out of the north substation as well. We really are at a critical point in our needs for our substations. And the last one here that I'll mention is our training academy. We have a shared public safety training academy with our fire and E.M.S., and we are experiencing based on the hiring that we're all doing now some serious challenges in accommodating all of the classes and the ongoing training. And that building was constructed to house a third floor, but the funds are not there for that. But that is something that at some point in the future we may be discussing as a public safety group with you all is the ability, the need and then maybe the opportunity to increase our footprint out at the academy. These are just four of the programs. We gave you the highlight pages on these. If you remember the four different highlight pages that kind of break down these different areas, the investigations, the neighborhood policing, our operation support and professional standards. These are four of our six programs. As an organization we have 19 activities. We have 147 units and our budget has 4,676 line items and 2,172 of them actually carry a budget. So it's a very large budget. Of that budget when we look at that, we have discretionary control over three percent of that budget. So although the budget is $401 million, only three percent of that is discretionary. It's driven by salaries, contracts and other obligations that we don't control. [9:49:54 AM] >> So with that, what we'll do is transition -- let's see if we can get the right slide here. So as before with the fire department and as we learn from your interests, we've queued up a number of topics for our consideration. Each of these is followed by a one or two page more in-depth, but what he'd like to do at this point is turn it over to you to see what areas you're interested in focusing on. It doesn't have to be these specifically, but they're there for you as a starting point. So with that I'll turn it over to questions you may have. >> Thank you. Council? >> Tovo: Could I ask a global question? Do you have more presentation? Is this a midway break -- >> If you want to have any discussion on the topics that we've preidentified here, then there are additional slides on these topics. And if these are not of interest to you then we can go right into question and answer. We did try to modify the presentations based on what we've seen with E.M.S. And fire and we've tried to condense them so you have more control of the discussion. >> Tovo: I like this. This is sort of like a choose your own adventure book. >> Mayor Adler: And you did, you presented this exactly the way we talked about. I appreciate that. Now we are in conversation and anybody can bring up any of these topics, but it comes to us to give us the time in some of the past presentations people had expressed the opportunity. Mr. Flannigan, do you want to start? >> Flannigan: I have many questions. When we did the fire I had a few and other people went if you would like to do this the same way. Can you help me understand generally speaking the difference between the cost drivers bringing on sworn versus civilian? >> Are you talking about the cost of hiring an officer versus the cost of hiring a civilian? >> The comprehensive cost. There's the recruiting, [9:51:55 AM] the training, the support, retirement. Can you give me some rough parameter around the difference between sworn and civilian. >> Sure. Some of those have changed now that we have menu civil service. Some of the hiring processes for civilians now mirror those of our sworn staff. If we're going to put them out in our communications divisions they have to go through a lot more thorough vetting than they used to have to. On the commission side of the house, again, that recruiting cycle, it used to take us approximately 14 months by the time we would take an application and we would actually get an individual in a cadet class. So we've shrunk that down. That is not the same as with the civilians. We put a lot of advertisements out there to try and recruit men and women into the commission ranks of the department. We go to a lot of career fairs that are driven towards certain populations that we're trying to recruit from to reflect our community. We do put a lot of effort into recruiting on the commission side. On the civilian side we don't do as much of that active going out, going to job fairs. Instead we do the postings and we advertise in trade magazines. There's a little bit of a difference in there. The training is much different depending upon the job for which we're hiring you. Our cadets, when we hire a new cadet into the police department, we train them for eight months. If they are a modified officer, someone who is currently serving as a police officer in an acceptable department across the country. We have standards as far as the size of the agency and the population that you serve and the manner of menu policing. Then we can do those classes in just under four months. So there's some savings there. That's another difference between the different groups that we actually recruit. The salaries, we have civilians that make the lower end of the civilian spectrum and then we have some in the professional end of the ladder. So the salaries, I don't know how to really sum those up other than we could probably get you the pay ladder for our officers [9:53:57 AM] at different ranks along with the civilian pay scales. But there are differences. Then as far as pensions, the police department has a separate pension system and our officers contribute 13% into that pension system and I believe the city's match, I think it's 21%. Right now -- I'm getting a nod. Good. So the city contributes 21% into that. So that's the way the police system is set up. And we can get you the information on the civilian. >> It's eight percent for civilians, what they contribute. And the city is contributing 18 percent. >> Okay. So eight and 18 on the civilian side. So I don't know if that answered all of the. >> Flannigan: I understand it's a very complex question with a lot of complex answers. I'm trying to run through the questions I have here. So slide 4, we'll go through the slides that you've presented and I'll kick it to my colleagues here. On slide 4 you mentioned investigations include property, violent and organized crime cases. Is organized crime a different category from violent and property? Because in all of the other statistics that I see on crime it's divided between violent and property. Is there a third section that's organized? >> Organized is where our house our narcotics unit, our gain unit, our human trafficking unit. So they may be investigating a murder, they may be aassisting homicides if it has gang ties. Those numbers fall into the -- they fall altogether. The work they do is so specialized that they work as a special division. >> Flannigan: Got it. On the northwest Austin substation, obviously it's an important topic for me, but can you help me understand better more to a numbers perspective, what are the operational efficiencies we will see from building a new substation and how might [9:55:57 AM] those be reflected in future budgets? And kind of this thought process around taking what are high operational costs associated with serving some parts of my district that may get shifted into a capital budget? Is there a trade-off there we should expect to see? >> I think the trade justify you will see is what we lose most often is we lose the time the officer has to go to their substation and back out into the field. That happens at a minimum twice a day, coming on duty, going off duty. You're losing that time and that probably impacts us -- it impacts all three shifts. When your shift is coming on two, 3:00 in the afternoon, you know probably as well as most what traffic is out like trying to get out north at that time. So we lose a lot of time when officers are trying to get into their districts to patrol and then at the end of the shift when they're coming off duty they will have to leave their districts sooner to accommodate few that transport time to get back to lamp light and Parmer. If the substation was closer out along that 620, 2222, 183 corridor, they would be able to stay in district longer because to get in for the time to go off duty would not be nearly as much, nor would the time to go out. >> Have you done specific analysis on that? >> Well, we'll do that analysis once we kind of hone in on where we think we're going to put it. We're still looking at where the parcel of land is going to be. So what you will see and how this will play out is the approach we're taking to staffing right now is on community engagement time. Time the officer has. So this will create more of that because they will be out there in the community more because the travel time will be lessened. >> Flannigan: Okay. That's going to be a really fun conversation. Really honing in on the operational efficiencies that we achieve through this capital expense that hopefully we will get to sooner rather than later. >> Sure. I think what it will break down to is we will look at what is the travel time now for an officer that will head out to Anderson mill, out to the 183, 620 area, what does that transport time look like now, and once we look at [9:57:58 AM] different pieces of land that we want to settle in on and evaluate it during those same timelines, then we should get an idea of how many [lapse in audio] Per officer that's working there. >> Flannigan: Great. During slide 7 when you were talking about the open records request, you mentioned that that number is likely to increase because of the body cameras. Has the -- has there been a measure of the expected increase in %-@staffing required as part of the budgeting for body cameras? I hear very fairly large numbers around the cost of body cameras, but I have not heard staff required to manage open records requests as part of that conversation. >> I believe we did have the discussion last year when we were working through this and, correct me, I think there was one position we were going to add for open records for that very purpose. And then it might be that we would come back to council once we have a program up and operational for awhile. A lot of the discussion really was honing in on state law because state law is pretty restrictive on what video can be released. So we expect that we're going to get a lot of requests. And we might actually have to go to the attorney general to get rulings on some of these requests to show that we cannot actually release this. And then on the ones that actually meet the parameters that we would release, then we would have to get into redaction issues as far as redacting images or license plates or things like -- or things like that. >> Flannigan: Okay. So slide 9 where we have the violent crime rate per thousand, can you speak to whether or not this variation is statistically significant? It seems that there wouldn't be really that much difference. It could be any number of anecdotal factors that could change. It all seems very similar. >> So what that is -- and that's the number obviously per thousand population. So what that means is -- so let me give you the numbers behind this to good put it in [10:00:10 AM] perspective. So when we look at our violent crime numbers for last year, where this really honed in, and again I talked about the two driving factors being aggravated assaults and individual robberies. So last year our city had 1,129 aggravated assaults as we closed out the year. And that was compared to 854 the year before. And then when we looked at the individual robberies, it was 861 last year versus 765 the year before. So we -- the numbers boil down to that you had, you know, 96 additional civilian citizens, members of our community, that were robbed over the course of a unique and almost 300 that were -- that suffered an aggravated assault upon them. So the numbers behind those small increases there are real people that got robbed or got injured, got assaulted. So the total number of crimes was we experienced 3,867 violent crimes. The homicides, rapes, robberies and sag evacuated assaults, so it was 3,867 compared to 3,578. So that's what we look at and that's where the eight percent increase came from. >> Flannigan: How do we differentiate between the types of crimes in the community that you could actually prevent from increased patrols or increased officer presence versus the types of crimes that are maybe more economically driven that more police officers driving the neighborhood really aren't going to stop that type of crime? Is that analysis done? >> I think what we look at is even the economically driven ones, like theft and burglary, a larger police presence will deter those because we do believe that's one of the greatest deter rents to crime is a visible police presence because it just plants the seed in someone's mind that they're more apt to get caught because they saw that police officer two blocks away. So I think maybe the one that is a little bit more challenging is our [10:02:10 AM] aggravated assaults that involve family violence because they happen inside a home, inside an apartment, but we don't throw our hands up and give up. We've taken steps to address those. We've created a team that goes out and follows up on these aggravated assaults that occur on family violence to make sure that if an individual had a retraining order put against them, we will actually put them on a list and regularly go by the home to make sure that the vehicle that person owns isn't did there so we're trying to stop that cycle of abuse that we so often find folks in. >> You said the phrase, we believe police presence is the best way to stop crime. Is that a belief or a data-driven analysis? >> Well, it's -- it's hard to determine what you've prevented, right? It's kind of like when we talk about homeland security and what kind of attacks as a country have we prevented? We know we prevent time. Anecdotally when you interview folks and you interview them on a series of crimes, they may talk about they didn't commit a crime they were about to because they saw an officer. We can look to see if there's any hard and fast data driven research out there that's support bid that. >> Flannigan: Sure. It's also a return on investment question because I've gone to all the commander's forums in northwest Austin and I've watched the numbers trend over the last three or four years and the challenges of that where certain times are crimes are being reclassified and then it makes it very difficult to see trends over time and that's also problematic in terms of measuring this. But most of the crimes that we talk about in my part of time are crimes of opportunity. And these property crimes, car doors left unlocked, garage doors open, I don't know it's the best return on investment to do more patrols as opposed to doing better investment in maybe D R's or community service officers. And I have more questions about that too. That's my point about that. It's not so much that patrols do nothing, but is it really the best return on investment for our taxpayer dollars in terms of trying to address some of these [10:04:11 AM] crimes of opportunities? Certainly in suburban an areas like mine where the violent crime rates are significantly lower than other parts of town. Mayor, I'm willing to kick this over to someone else and let someone else ask some questions. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Houston? >> Houston: I thought -- >> You can go first. >> Houston: She had her light on first because I'm not ready. [Laughter]. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Houston: I had to turn my pages around. >> Kitchen: Okay. And if you addressed this before I got here, then I'll go back and look at the tape. But my questions relate to the community policing. And the report that came out last year and the recommendations. Did you guys already talk about that? No? Okay. And I was looking up the report right now to try to recall the specific recommendations, but the ones that I wanted to hone in on were those related to developing the metrics. So there were some recommendations about -- about developing metrics that are consistent with community policing. And there was some -- I'm not finding -- I don't have the specific recommendations in front of me, but, you know, we've talked for a long time about how the time spent in the community is the measure that you all have used historically, but as part of that recommendation there were recommendations to put some more parameters around those metrics. So I just wanted to -- my general question is what is the status of following up on the recommendations in that community policing report and then a drill-down to that is where are you guys at on developing the metrics? And I believe there was also as part of that you all were needing to develop more your systems for capturing data and that kind of thing if I'm remembering correctly. So if you could speak to that. >> Certainly. So the matrix report, I'll give you kind of an overview of where we're at and then specifics on what you've just asked [10:06:11 AM] for. So we worked through the matrix report, what we did was we had a total of 78 recommendations that we agreed with and one that we did not agree with. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> And the one that we did not agree with is they wanted us to write policies and track officers' volunteer time and volunteer hours and for the fair labor standards act and all we've had issues in the past. So officers volunteer W know they do, but we're not going to put in formal measures. So of the remaining where we're at today is that we have 53 planned, 16 in progress and nine completed as we work through those. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> So to highlight a few of where we're at with some of these, and you actually -- you did mention this one, tracking the amount of proactive time spent by patrol officers in aggregate and in the regions. We have created cad codes as far as when you're doing community engagement time. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> It's very rudimentary at this point. We're working to further develop them, but we wanted to start capturing that data. So those codes are there and we're working -- we don't have enough data yet to really make sense of it yet and we want them to be more comprehensive, but that one is something that is currently listed as in progress because it's not where we want it to be, but we've made some gains on that. >> Kitchen: Go ahead and finish and then I'll have some questions about it. >> And again, that kind of alines with the tracking relevant individual measures of proactive community policing and then a lot of the ones that you're talking about tracking tracking is oh what we capture there. When we get to the community policing chapter we have several completions here. We put additional resources into the recruiting division. If you remember there was a lot of talk about recruiting and hiring so we did assign the additional personnel that they suggested. We did automate the background. We actually have an online application tool now so our applicants can actually do it online and we have seen a significant increase in our volume of people applying since we've gone with an online tool [10:08:12 AM] versus the formal handwritten tool. And just as trying to sell ourselves as an agency, trying to bring someone to a city that's seen as one of the most tech no lodge kickly savvy cities and your first introduction to the police department is a 27 some-odd written page application, this was something that was a long time needed and we're glad that that's up and running now. And then the revised -- revising the website and our intro video. It will be on the tape when you go back. We actually played the video. It's a new approach and highlights our efforts in community policing and I think it will help us work towards recruiting the appropriate staff. And that plays in line with some of the other fto issues as far as how we rate our cadets or our new recruits along with their efforts in the community and monitoring. They call them a neighborhood portfolio and we actually have the first class that's graduated the academy that is currently doing this neighborhood portfolio exercise. So we're about to get some evaluation of what that looks like. We didn't give a lot of parameters because we really wanted to see what do they come up with and then we'll work offer of that. We don't want to just take something that another city has done. We want to kind of see what we get as the first batch and we're going to further hone that in. So we've done a lot in the area of implementing those parts. As far as metrics, and we've had this conversation last year. >> Kitchen: Yeah. >> The metrics that we're very familiar with and what we expect to see as we add additional resources and we focus on our community policing. We expect to see the easy ones. We expect to see satisfaction with police. We expect to see the etc results increase. We're going to partner with urban institute as we mentioned earlier. Going to do that other study that's really neighborhood focused and we're going to get some feedback through that mechanism. We expect to see impacts on our crime rates because of the community -- if the community is more willing to partner with us then there will be more eyes out there for us either reporting [10:10:12 AM] things or being witnesses for us. Where we're really focusing and where we're about to move into is meeting with the community to hear from them what is it that is important to them because we know we have hundreds of metrics that are important to us as a city that we've been tracking to decades but a lot of them don't get to the core of this. So we know the ones that we're interested in and we'll now start having these meetings out in the community to hear from community on what they would like for us to track and then determine is it something that we can track? Do we have the software to track it now. Do we need to make changes to that? So chief gay is actually the lead on that project and this is actually his spreadsheet that tracks every single recommendation, who that recommendation is assigned to, what the status of that recommendation is at this point, so so we are going to work that into the community meetings and design that. If you remember measure Austin, that was young local leaders here, young local activists that came to us a couple of years ago and it was all about metrics and measuring Austin. So we've had -- we've had a little bit of work in this area and we're now going to take that out to the community and do more. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you very much. That really is going to align as we -- as we talk at our council retreat about our outcomes and drilling down to indicators and metrics. So this is going -- this is another arena in which we're going to align, you know, with making sure that the metrics that we're looking at is the ones that are appropriate and that we're honing in on them. >> We didn't want to use this just as a report to tell you how many more officers we needed. That's this there, but there was a lot more in there and we're paying attention to that and we're roadmapped now to work towards that. >> Kitchen: So my question is really -- let me ask about a [10:12:13 AM] timeline. So your starting the -- you're starting the process of community meetings. Do you have a timeline at this point in time about where you will -- I know that will take awhile, but do you have a timeline of when you might wrap that up and get a better handle around what metrics you think you want to move forward with? >> We're working on that occurring this next quarter. We have established meetings, commanders forums where we get some level of input. We don't always get the level of participation we would like, to we're going to look to identify other opportunities to hold meetings out in your districts, out across the city to get as much feedback as we can. >> Kitchen: Okay. And then the final related question is I'm wanting to understand and make sure that you have the technology resources that you need to do this. And I'm also -- another reason I'm asking this is the council passed a resolution that I brought forward related to the smart city's strategic roadmap. And the purpose of that exercise is at the end of the day to really end up with an inventory of where the city needs to -- where the city has opportunities to take advantage of technology to improve our efficiencies. And so I just want to make sure that that's on y'all's radar screen. Of course I've talked to our innovation officer and our cto and it's supposed to be a comprehensive look. So if there are areas that you all are seeing that there's the opportunity in the near or longer term future to use technology in a way that -- that is much more -- will add to your efficiencies, I want to make sure to make that connection. So -- I mean there are a lot of things you're already doing, of course. >> I think the biggest one that's an opportunity for us at this point and we talked about it last year, and that -- [lapse in audio]. We've got the online app and it's going to allow us to do a lot of things out in the field. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> So that's probably the next piece of technology that we really are going to try and work towards because we see that as something [10:14:14 AM] that's really missing in our department. A lot of agencies have already taken this step and have already implemented this. And that was -- I know that when we talked about that last year it got mixed up in the whole body worn camera. It really was a separate project for its own reasons and we still believe that that's technology that we should have at this time. >> Kitchen: Well, yes. And also perhaps related to that, but the ability to collect information and get information that's needed to do the job and the quickest way, most efficient way possible, just has the potential to add to efficiencies. And also it also makes it easier to collect information to measure >> Okay. Thank you. >> I've got a couple questions on slide five. Could you talk to me just a little bit more about what those classes look like? You said they were eight months in length for the academy. >> Our cadet class? >> The cadet class. >> Just what the cadet is exposed to during training? >> Uh-huh? >> We teach officers policy and procedure. We have a thorough policy and procedure manual about how do you police, how do you approach certain calls for service. There's a lot of that. There are tactics built into our training. We have to teach officers how we teach defensive tactics. We have a firearms component where we teach officers throughout the training academy. Firearms discipline, appropriate firearms handling. There's a strong component on mental health. Every officer goes through a 40-hour mental health course. That's the basic. So every Austin police officer has been through the 40-hour basic course. We have some that have graduated to get additional. We teach Spanish immersion. We want them to know basic [10:16:16 AM] Spanish for situations they find themselves in. We try to weave -- it's not like a course, but everybody wants to talk about deescalation. That's the buzz word in policing, deescalation. It's not a class. We don't say for these two days you're going to come in and we teach you deescalation. That begins the moment you step out of that car and what your demeanor is, and the words that you choose to use and how you use those words. So, again, what we look at is weaving that -- every realm of training, our use of force is built on deescalation. Our off years use the least amount of force necessary at the moment. So the academy brings us through a lot of those areas. It's another class or a week-long project in community policing. That's woven into every one of those classes as well. It's not a 40-hour block. It's how we approach everything we do. What I can do, if you would like more than that -- >> No. No. >> I can give you a course outline. >> I'm a graduate of the citizens police academy. I just want to get that out that, community policing starts when the door opens. >> Yeah. It starts before that door even open. We try to vet our candidates and talk to them through the recruiting process as well. >> It's not a specific block of time. It's everything we do as sworn and unsworn personnel. Any interaction you have with the public is community policing. >> I can tell you were a good student at the citizen's police academy. >> The modified classes are [10:18:17 AM] different because they come from other jurisdictions and have policing backgrounds. So we teach them our policies. What else do we do that's different in the four months that we have these new people? >> The biggest difference is they will come to us and take their exam and they will be a peace officer. We don't have to run them through the required course work to be a peace officer. They need to come and challenge our exam and pass our exam. That takes out the required courses they might have to go through otherwise. >> Hold on a second. So there's an exam they come in even if they're a peace officer in another state. What about another jurisdiction in Texas? >> They're already certified on the Texas commission of law enforcement. If they come from other states because states have varying laws, if they come from a Texas agency, they've already passed the Texas test. Sot they don't have to. >> Okay. My next question has to do with slide 7 regarding the increase in number of false alarms and, of course, we run a car -- not every time, but most of the time. What causes that and are there any kind of educational things you're looking at to reduce the number of false alarms we're having in the city? >> So I think what causes the increase is a number of factors. There's a lot of homes being built in Austin. We've seen tremendous growth in homes being built. I think most of the newer homes being built, they put an alarm system. I think they have a lot more alarms that are in our community now, and with that increase in the number of alarms, we actually get the false alarms. As far as the education, I know that when they're required to register their alarm, there's a conversation that take place, but more importantly, when that alarm is installed, that alarm company, to some extent -- I [10:20:19 AM] don't know. It depends company by company -- what education they give them on the operation of the alarm. >> So what is the cost if there's a false alarm and multiple false alarms? Are we charging people anything? >> $30 annual alarm permit. >> You're going to have to speak in the mic. I can't hear you. It was on. >> So the annual alarm fee is $30 a year. It's a permit fee. Then you get three false alarms and there's no charge. And on the fourth false alarms, you start getting fines for false alarms. >> What kinds of fees? Is it a slap on the arm? >> I think it's 50, 75, 75. >> She thinks it's 50, 75, 75. >> On the fourth call? >> The fourth is 50, is sixth would be 75 and I guess going forward. >> And a non-permitted alarm will be $200. If you don't have the required permit, you get a hefty fine because you need to come in compliance with the requirements. >> Okay. Thank you. Are the overtime costs for the March festivals, not things we talk about, fourth amendment rights for people, but those March festivals, how is overtime handled for the police officers? >> Well, as a council, you all, I believe, it was two years ago, put funding in our budget for $1.5 million to handle the [10:22:21 AM] festival. We were reassigning personnel and having to budget. It was very much a challenge. When we look at your special events, you're looking at particularly March. That was funded by the 1.5 million that council approved for us two years ago. Additionally, we have -- you know, we want to look at the non- reimbursed overtime. These are city co-sponsored events, south by southwest is the largest funded at the 1.5 million mark. The Austin pride parade was 25,000. The juneteenth celebration, a little over 29,000. There was an Independence day March for 6,000 and the veteran's day parade was 5,000. We have events that occur in our community that are just without a sponsor, but we still have to make sure they're handled in a man their east safest for our -- manner that is safest for our community. Halloween festival, Austin's novas celebration. The fourth of July fireworks at 45,000. That's the area of non- reimbursed overtime. >> With the March festival events, is there ever a conversation with them about providing more funding for police overtime protection? >> That's not a conversation we would have at the police department level with the promoter. I think that that's maybe one for council to have with them as far as if they want to put funds towards that. That's not something we get involved in the negotiations over. >> When we talked to the fire, they have a different arrangement with some of our festival events that happen. Some of the largest ones. So I'm not sure why the police weren't included in that. It looks like Ms. Farside may [10:24:25 AM] have something. >> I can tell you that council waives those fees. >> I think what I'm saying is during the permitting process, when fire was here, they have an agreement that they are reimbursed by the agreement. I understand that council put money in the budget the last couple of years for this, but why couldn't we have the same kind of agreement with police overtime when they come through that centralized permitting that some of these larger festivals would be responsible for some of the overtime that is occurring. >> They can if council chooses to give that direction as a body. But right now, council has chosen to waive all of those fees. >> There may be an occasion where fire gets involved and they're paying for those services. The indication for law enforcement is, yes, in a particular case of south by southwest, there are areas where they're reimbursed, but south by southwest, there are many more parties, things happening throughout the community where there isn't a sponsor yet it's because south by southwest is here, not necessarily beyond their specific locations, that is the issue at hand, I think. Yes, to some degree the council doesn't waive the fees, south by southwest pays for the venues where they need to have police enforcement, but there are many number of other things happening that are not specifically paid for. That's part of what the police department is challenged with. [10:26:29 AM] >> So south by southwest does reimburse or pay for some specific? No? Okay. >> We do have some events that actually pay. We have the acl fest that pays 402,000. The work we have to do for the UT football games at 209,000. The trail of lights was 149,000. The PGA world golf championship pays at 149,000, and the Austin marathon pays at 127,000. So we have some events that actually pay the cost. >> Thank you. >> Mayor protem? >> I have some other questions, but now I feel like I need to ask some clarifying questions here. It was my understanding, though, that there is a distinction that can be drawn between, say, the policing costs that are immediately around the Austin city limits taking place and just what assistant city manager areano described. The spring festival week, it's my understanding that south by southwest applies for a waiver of those costs because they're not all directly attributable to the activities they have going on. It's not exactly apples and Oranges with those other events you mentioned. You have staff directly in front of the street at, say, trail of lights >> That's the discussion brought forward. There are events occurring during their festival that are not related to their festival. Those events wouldn't be occurring if it weren't for the festival. That's exactly what they're talking about. Some of the costs is directly associated to the venues that are part of their event, but, then, a lot of them are coming here just to try to tag on to the south by venues and the week that's going on. >> So, I have some other questions more generally and other things. If there are more questions, mayor, with your permission -- >> I want to pause for a second [10:28:29 AM] and talk about the events. You had your hand raised. >> From the council action, my understanding was, as you mentioned, mayor protem, there was some stuff that was going to be paid for by the festival promoter, some things that the city was waiving. We're trying to figure out where the negotiated space would be where south by southwest would be covering more of their costs, but that wasn't immediately available coming up to March. I recall that the council did include direction to say we wanted the city to actually try to come up with a negotiated place where you can say this is what south by costs are and these are costs incurred by other venues. I'm not sure. That's a complicated back and forth negotiation, but I do recall that council did include -- because I think it was an amendment that we drafted with the law department -- the direction to get that sorted out. So I guess I would say that the ball is -- if the ball is still, indeed in council's court, I would love to hear from the manager's office, what we could do. I thought with that provision we were putting that ball back in the court to come to terms with what the appropriate costs would be on either party. >> We can certainly follow up and see where that's at. >> Do you have more questions about south by southwest? >> No. >> Is there more discussion about south by southwest? >> Go ahead. >> I wanted to ask a question about events, sort of. So I had actually submitted these questions to the police department a week or so ago and thought -- I have not received answers back. So I wanted to just ask them in this forum. [10:30:30 AM] There was media coverage -- and we may have even gotten a memo -- about Austin's police department sending people for security for the inauguration in January. I think the number was something like 65 officers who went. And the media coverage indicated that those costs -- the costs for those officers and any overtime -- I assume any overtime they might accrue gets picked up by the federal government. >> That's correct. >> Is my understanding correct? What I was wondering: Are there any monies that flow back to the city for the overtime that the city might have to -- that the city might accrue because we are down 65 officers who are now in D.C.? You know, it seems to me that while there's -- while there's a cost associated with those 65, we then have a gap in our force that might have to be covered you there overtime costs. I was wondering if Austin receives any reimbursement from those from the federal government? >> That was structured in a way that we spread it across the department so we wouldn't have to have back fill costs. I have to confirm we were able to do that at 100%, but we picked people from across the department so we didn't hit one shift, one sector. I would have to confirm we were able to do that at 100% level. >> That would be great. I would like to receive that confirmation. So I assume the answer to that is, no, the federal government does not provide any funding that has to come back to the city because you have officers helping out at that event? >> That's correct. >> And, then, too, it strikes me that that weekend we had several large events here in the city of Austin for which the police department had to provide, I would guess, significant additional staffing. [10:32:30 AM] So how does that all shake out? You have -- had we had those 65 officers back here in Austin, perhaps we wouldn't have had to accumulate -- perhaps there would have been less overtime costs because you would have had less officers to help with the events that are austin-based. I think it's a consideration. It's terrific that the Austin police department is regarded nationally as being of such value that you're invited to participate in those events, but when we know we have events that are going to require significant police force here in Austin, I wonder about those decisions. I want to make sure they're not costing Austin taxpayer. >> Sure. We participated in inaugurations -- I believe this was the fifth one. I know we participated in at least one of the bush inaugurations, both Obama inaugurations, and obviously we participated in this last one with president trump. The agreements are made many, many months in advance. And so when we made this agreement, we didn't necessarily understand what the political climate was going to be like here locally, and we're going to have the large scale protesting that we had. Washington, DC cannot handle this without the assistance of the major departments across the country. We're not one of four groups that participated. There are departments across the country that send resources there. Although I would say they get the most benefit out of us sending our officers there. We do learn every time we go, as far as just crowd control, homeland security issues and all, so there's a benefit that comes with that, and then again you mentioned yourself -- not prestige, but the attention that's placed upon us as a city, that we are represented at these events because we're seen as having a team of officers that are highly skilled and trained in the area of crowd control that can assist with that. So, again, this is something that we've done -- like I said, I believe this was the fifth inauguration that we've actually participated in. And we believe there's benefit, [10:34:31 AM] the fact that the government pays for all of the costs of the officers that we send up there. This was just very unique. I can tell you in the past few that I remember, when we sent a larger contingency even up to the inaugurations, we didn't have events back at home. >> I appreciate that, that those commitments are made in advance and there would be no way to predict there would be such a need back there. I would be interested in knowing just for those officers that went, did you have to back fill those positions with overtime? You know, I fully understand what you're saying about the benefit that comes to those officers who participate in the training, but, you know, with every benefit, I think we do need to assess the costs. That's what I'm trying to nail down. >> Sure. >> And then I have -- let's see -- some other very specific questions about line items, but I can either jump into those or we can go somewhere else and come back to it. >> I just had one follow-up question to the questions that the mayor protem was asking. It may be this was part of the cost assumption at the federal level. Was the travel and the housing and the food also paid for? Entirely there was $0 impact except for potentially having to back fill with people here? >> Yes, that's correct. >> Okay. Thanks. >> I have three. I wanted to ask a question about overtime, if we're still on that topic. Based on the line item budget we've received from the three public safety agencies, ems over time is 24% of the total sworn wages. Fire is 14% of total sworn wages [10:36:34 AM] and police is just 5%. To me it makes me sound like the larger the department, the easier to shift around situations where we're not able to appropriately staff up in advance. Is that a fair analysis? Or is there something more detailed about the dramatic difference in overtimes between the three departments? You know, I think there is a difference. I will have to go back and check. I think ems, prior to shifting to the 40-hour work week, you think they shifted specifically to make the coverage. I can get back to you specifically. I think it's one of the three departments that does that. >> And then the fire department has mandatory staffing on each fire truck. We don't have that in the police department. What we have is when shifts run short, we have to either hire the overtime and back fill it or what we're doing currently since we've had the vacancy issue we've had, we've had to redeploy detectives out into the field because we don't have necessarily the overtime dollars to do it on overtime. We're having to redeploy officers doing investigations a week at a time. >> I have three general policy questions that are budget- related. The first, you may have answered it when I stepped out, which is: I saw the increase in false alarms. What percentage of those 40-odd-thousand calls are not false? >> We don't have those numbers. I can tell you anecdotally, the high 90% are going to be false. We'll pull that data for you. Most alarms we respond to are false alarms. >> And I know it's a controversial topic, but one I think considering the budget conversations we're having with every department, it seems like [10:38:36 AM] there may be a revenue savings side. The 90% level. >> We talked about it. It's a verified response. There are some agencies that will not respond to an alarm until that actual alarm company responds to a valid alarm, and there are some agencies that will not respond to an alarm that's not registered. We believe that what this community wants and deserves is if the alarm goes off, we want to respond because we don't want to miss the one, two, the ten that are not only a real alarm but that bad things are happening. So that's just our approach. Different agencies approach that in different ways. >> And another question is I recall that at least a few legislative sessions ago, but not that long ago, there's been some state Laos around citations for certain arrests as opposed to arrests more cite and release policies to relieve police department from having to spend time booking folks for those minor expenses. Do we have policies? >> We have policies on cite and release. We've expanded our program over the years. We do cite and release for more offenses now than we did five year ago. We do continually look at the landscape and look at which one should be an in-custody arrest where we're taking the officers off the street and doing a booking and doing a cite and release and have them show up in court. >> Some folks have brought that up during our discussions, and just because the budget is so expensive and we only have so much time to work on it, been able to get back to folks to say we're utilizing that for savings and not in these areas for X, Y, and Z. That may just being something for the council to know about. And then my third question was when we passed the last budget, there was additional budget direction to work on and look at. Not just the consultants recommendations, but also the community recommendations as it relates to how we deal with mental health calls and training [10:40:37 AM] issues in particular. I don't know if that engagement has happened yet. I want to bring it up as a reminder that some of the folks that brought up the cite and release issues had recommendations on ways that we could best pursue justice and also have a good impact on the budget. And so I just wanted to bring that up as a reminder point. Thank you. >> I had one last question. >> Okay. >> We went straight to events, and I had one last question. On slide 10, we're talking about facility needs, and you mentioned the downtown headquarters which needs to be moved. I think it's too close to the interstate. I think it's a threat right there. So I think it needs to be moved. But you also mentioned something about an east substation. I thought the Springdale station was the east substation. What did you mean? >> Northeast. That was the site of the home Depot up on the St. John's area. That's what I was referring to. >> That's the north? >> The northeast. >> As we continue to annex property, we may need to think broader about northeast than right there on I-35 because I don't know if we have data in here about the number of calls and accidents we're getting on toll road 130 that's beginning to -- toll road 130 is beginning to work now, and we're having more collisions. 183 south is being built. I'm hearing more and more calls for police in that part of the community. If you can get me some information about how fast the response time is to those locations that are further east. Parma lane is another one in district one is another one that continues to have accidents. If you could get me information about that, I would appreciate it. We need to think further than [10:42:37 AM] the Home Depot site. >> I agree. If we have a discussion and we're looking at a substation, I agree with that. We would look for land that's more appropriately situated. >> And do we have conversations with developers in those areas about space that we could place a substation on? How are those conversations handled? >> Well, we would need funding to actually move forward with the project. >> New developers -- development is going on in those areas. Do we have conversations with the developers about providing space, land to have a substation right there on a development. Has that ever happened? >> I think that would be through the officer real estate services. The example I think you're thinking about is prior to what the department briefed on, we have at least one area where we need a fire station, where we're working with the developer or the developer has offered land there. So I'm not sure if it's as explicit as with the police department, but we can certainly explore those students >> I think it's worth exploring because we're growing east of 130. That's a conversation we could be having with developments. Thanks. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I just wanted to ask about -- I guess similarly for any plans -- police stations west of mill pack. >> What we're working on now is the northwest substation. Council approved in a prior budget, I believe, two years ago, funding for the land acquisition and design of a new northwest substation. Currently we're working on identifying property that is west of the area you're talking about. West of mill pack. It will be west of Austin. We have yet to find a piece of property that's going to meet our needs. >> Sorry. I was thinking northeast, but northwest. What about southwest Austin? >> We're not currently budgeted [10:44:38 AM] for a new substation in southwest Austin. The one we're budgeted for is northwest. >> Do you think there's a need? >> I think as the city continues to grow, that we're going to potentially come to you and look at the potential to put in another substation. That will be driven by a couple of different factors. I think it will be driven by staffing. These substations can only hold so many folks. When we get to the point where we don't have enough work space in there, that will be one issue, and the other issue will be how far the city continues to grow away from the base substation, kind of like what we're experiencing in council member Flanagan's district, how far away those districts are from the substation. >> Does the location -- does the proximity of substation -- is that a big factor in response time or because there are people patrolling -- because there are police officers out patrolling, is the proximity of an actual building not necessarily have a big impact in reducing response times? >> The reason it might have a slight impact is just -- what we do is reduce the amount of lost time that the officer spends at the beginning of the shift, at the end of her shift or anytime during the shift he or she has to go back to the substation. At the beginning when they're trying to get to their district, if you're leaving Parma or lamp light, straying to get to Anderson mill and 620, we're losing a lot of time as the officer is getting into the district. I think that's one of the things to look at. And so the quicker an officer gets into their district, the more time they have to start engaging the community and doing what we want them to do. >> But I'm not hearing you say it necessarily affects emergency response times? >> Well, the quicker they get to the district, the quicker they will be able to respond to their call. I think it will have a slight [10:46:43 AM] impact. Based on them getting there quicker, which means they will be there longer throughout their shift because they won't have to head back early. They're in the district longer. So we should see quicker responses to some extent. >> Council member, we talked about this a little earlier. The building of the substation is more about, to my mind, reducing the amount of officers required to serve an area because there's less wasted time than it is about response times specifically. >> Thanks. >> I will take a turn. First I want to go back again to thank you and, again, on our behalf, please thank the folks in the field for the work that's been done here, especially over the last couple of weeks. The piece that you had in the video about trust, you've talked about it a lot. Basically helped me find that vocabulary in terms of how I talk about a lot of these issues. We are one of the safest major cities in the country. That's one of the reasons why we like to live here, and it's a good place to live. The number has gone up by 8% after a long trend where it's been going down. Is that something that you also see that other major cities are seeing? Or is that just something that's happening to us? >> First again, mayor, on behalf of the men and women that I have the honor of leading, thank you for thanking us. They're the ones out there allowing folks to express their opinions in the safest way we can provide for. On their behalf, I accept that. [10:48:45 AM] >> Question about the 8% in other cities. >> Thank you. >> That's part of a larger city we're seeing across the country. Maybe to put it in perspective, I don't have the exact percentages other cities have seen, but we had 39 homicide in Austin. That's 39 lives we wish we didn't lose, but look right down the road to San Antonio, they neared 149. Houston came in at about 350. Chicago came in at about 750. So, you know, big cities experience big crime. We're fortunate that ours is low, but an 8% increase in Austin gets our attention because that has not happened here in many years, but, yes, it is part of something we've seen across the country this past year. >> Do you know why? Is there any guesses as to why cities across the country are seeing similar kinds of increases in rate? >> You know, I think we have growing populations across the country. As a country, we were very divided last year on a lot of different issues, whether it just be political issues, social issues, and so I think that as the rhetoric builds, I think people's - - maybe they have a shorter fuse, and they become violent sooner than they would have. I will see if there's any social logical research that's been done at this point, but we're early in this uptick right now, but it is something that has us concerned as a profession across the country, not just here locally. >> At this point, we don't know if that's a continuing trend or if that's just a one-time spike. >> We're not sure if that was an anomaly year, sir, or if we're starting to see -- I'm sure as we look for the research as with most issues like this, we're going to find data with both. That it was an anomaly year or this is the beginning of a longer season of uptick. We're a data-driven police department. We're fortunate that we have the [10:50:45 AM] analytical tools that we have at this point. We're able to hone in on where some of our more challenging areas are, and we'll continue putting work into that. >> There's an uptick in traffic fatalities where we went over 100 for the first time. Again, we're asking the question, was that a one-time deal? I guess it's early in the year. >> We're fortunate, major. We had 102 fatalities the year before last, and last year we were 79. It was a significant year in that it spiked. We've been able to bring it back down to 79 last year. Again, if we consider how many people we have on the Royce, how much more congested the roadways are, we'll continue to work in that area. Highway enforcement is a focus area for us. We devote a lot of resources into our highway enforcement command, trying to combat those. I'm happy to report that it was a one-year spike to that level. At the same point, I want to say we're not satisfied. We want to work to bring that down because that's 79 folks, people that didn't go home to their loved ones. >> Here's hoping that it's a one-year spike. Sometimes it's hard for me as a member of this council, dealing with budget questions associated with public safety, to know how to put into context or handle the things that seem like they're important for us to do. They come almost as one-offs. I've been talking to management about getting something in the budget process for a five-year play to make sure over time we're delivering all the things that we need to be able to deliver because the list -- and we don't even really have the list yet, but we know that there are really good arguments for us having cell phones. We took that out of the last [10:52:47 AM] budget when we were looking at cameras. We have the balance of the cameras to do in a rollout in that. There were requests for vests, different kinds of equipment vests from the officers to handle higher caliber projectiles. I know some of that may have been handled internally, but we want to make sure the officers on the street are as safe as they can be in changing times and conditions. We have the facility questions about the substation questions and several different areas we've addressed. Part of that, you know, we handled not as an operational expense but more on the debt service side. But even still with the additional facilities, there's going to be increased operations costs associated with just having more substations or relocations of the facility downtown. There's the community policing effort that was spoken about in a report that we saw last year that also asks us to get to a higher force level in order to have time that is able to be spent more in building relationships and building on the trust that you guys have spent a long time developing in the community. It's identified in this report. Additional needs in addition to the officer number needs, there's the civilian force need as identified in the report that you've given. There was some question over this year, I recognize that came from the association about training as it related to one or more incidents that we had. [10:54:48 AM] I don't know if that's an additional resource issue or redirection issue, but that's also something that has been raised. I'm sitting here on council with all of us wanting to do all of that, but also a push to also deal with the other things that are in the budget too, the social service needs that are unmet in the city. So at some level, being able to put these kind of things in a longer perspective to figure out what the glide path is to ensure that we're actually delivering on all the things that we need become important to have that context for me would be important. It goes to the statement that you made that council member Garza raised last week with the fire department. She's not with us right now. She called in and was not feeling well. She's not with us at the moment. The question said only 3% of the available money is discretionary that you can apply. The reason that it's only 3% is because a lot of it is locked down in the contract negotiations that come up. I don't know how it is that we daylight or bring into the process, the broader conversation from the city's perspective, from the association's perspective. It almost seems these conversations need to be happening together as opposed to separately and in order to assure that the community is safe and our officers are safe as well and that to handle them separately, at some level, it doesn't seem right. It's almost like an open question to ask procedurely how it is, whether it makes sense to [10:56:48 AM] daylight some of these at the same time, to be able to discuss them together to make sure that what will always be a limited amount of funding for government to do anything, that we're spending all of that money in the best possible way. We pay our police, our law enforcement, our public safety people really well because there's -- we have the best ability to recruit people and have the highest caliber force we can have. I asked the same questions about fire. What are we paying relative to other cities in the country and what are we paying relative to other cities in Texas, pay and benefits both. I know that they're redoing the pension plans in Houston and Dallas. I don't know how they're redoing that. I don't know enough to really know what that means, but an understanding of what's happening in those two large cities would be a helpful thing to know, I think. But it's -- you know, in that larger conversation, I want to make sure we're doing public safety right, and at some level it feels like one conversation and not two separate conversations so that hands aren't tied and so that together collectively we're actually putting the resources where they keep us safest and keep our personnel safe. >> Could I? >> Yes. >> I just wanted to say that I think that that's the kind of questions that we need to be asking. I think we really need to be focusing on where can we spend our dollars that are targeted to get the results that we need. That's what we've been trying to talk about from the budgeting. So understanding that sometimes [10:58:49 AM] it takes an up-front investment of dollars to get us to efficiency, and then it's a question of when. You know, is it this year, next year, or whenever and how do we make those investments. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm reiterating what I think you might be saying. When we talk about the budget -- and this is what you've been talking about -- whatever it is, we really need to tie it back about how it's going to improve and make it better for us to reach these metrics. Of all these things we need to be looking at, what is going to do that best for us? That helps us figure those things out >> I would say three global issues, and they all intertwine. Identify the metrics and how we're working toward those metrics, which is consistent with the conversation we just had as a group with the strategic planning. The second one, for me, is getting longer time frames, like a five-year time frame. I think some of the things we're trying to achieve, we can't achieve in one year. >> Right. >> And I don't want us to not achieve it one year at a time and at the end of five year, we haven't achieved it one year at a time, I would like to know how it is we're able to achieve the things we need. And then the third one is today light the conversations that occur both in the contract negotiations with these other considerations so that one does not dictate the other so that collectively -- which might be a bad word to use -- but together we can make sure that we're making the best decisions. Mayor protem? >> I have some kind of rapid fire, relatively quick questions about the line item budget that you supplied us with. Thank you very much for that. [11:00:50 AM] The first is on APD, temporary employees. Can you help us understand when you use temporary employees? One of the undercommunications that's more than a half million dollar figure. I was wondering in what context do you use temporary employees across the department but with regard to communications. Are those 311? >> We used to use temps in 911 and sea tech operations. We have two techs out there in administrative positions, but all the folks actually handling the incoming calls are all full time. This money now goes to cover the overtime costs when we have staff shortages. You obviously can't leave a comm channel open. >> So that's 624 and the other budget on the employee line goes to overtime? >> Let me just say by way of anecdote, I was a little surprised. You know, some of us have had 311 individuals who work in 311 and have been selected for ambassador program. They undergo a good deal of training to be able to do their 311 responsibilities well, and they know a tremendous amount about the city. I was surprised to find out that they are actually for the most part contracted. They're working not for the city of Austin but for a contract service. Many of them. So they don't receive the regular city benefits, and their wage is pretty low. I hope as a council, as we move toward budget, we can talk about that. Our 311 operators, everybody those not fully city employees, seem to me to do a really great job. That concerns me a bit. That was a side note. >> I don't know if this helps. The 1.4 million you're seeing for temps is actually split across several departments. I don't know if that's what you have in front of you. >> I'm looking at APD [11:02:53 AM] b3. 27,000, and 868 under traffic enforcement. 624,686 under communications. It was particularly communications that caught my attention. >> Because it was such a big number. We used to have a significant operation where we would hire them in as temps and they would work toward a permanent employment spot as we had openings, but that's not how we operate anymore. >> This is 2016? >> That's how it was budged, but we ended up using it for overtime? >> When did you stop using -- if you would like, I could submit it in Q and a. >> That would be helpful. >> Educational incentive pay, we talked about that. Under fire, is that something that's specified in the contract? >> Yes, it is? >> I've heard this phrase so many times I should haven't to ask. Can you remind me what call-back time is? >> Our swat team, they work a 40-hour work week, but we could have an incident occur during the night or weekend, so they're called back to work. Detectives can get called back for an investigation. That's what we do there. >> Thank you. What are the other areas -- you addressed some of the rental spaces during your presentation, that the department uses. I was looking at the budget line for that. It's a pretty considerable amount of money being spent on lease space. Centralized investigations at 1.5 million, where are they leasing space? That's apd-b4. >> I think that's going to be Rutherford. We have a lot of investigative folks at Rutherford and motorola as well. >> The Rutherford campus is not a city-owned facility? >> It is. >> I thought it was. [11:04:54 AM] >> The costs are aallocated across the departments using the space. >> But the landlord is the city of Austin? >> That's my understanding. >> Okay. Thank you. Grants to others and sub recipients on apd-b5. Can you give us some examples of what kind of grants you make to others that would fall into -- it looks like patrol support and air operations. Wait a minute. I con flated the lines. I think it's just patrol support. What do those look like? >> And I can certainly submit that to Q and a. >> The regional intelligence center. >> That's classified as patrol support? >> That's where that -- yes. >> Okay. Police supplies, can you give us some sense of what those are? There are a whole lot of very specific categories. So that general category wasn't immediately apparent to me what that was. Patrol is about 757,000, and then there are costs across the other divisions as well. That's apd-b6. >> We'll try and get you -- supplies can be anything to operate the unit as far as -- ticket books, there's a lot of things we have to have to run [11:06:55 AM] the operations, but we may do this as a budget question as well if Alice can't find it. >> There's clothing, printing, all kinds of very particular cost lines and so that just -- >> Sure. What I'm seeing here is fingerprint kits, gas masks, safety glasses, flashlights, batons, various pieces of equipment that we have is what I'm being given here. >> So those don't fall under an equipment line? They fall into -- >> Those are actually under lines 7458, police supplies. I'm sorry. I'm looking at a different document there. But they're under police supplies. >> Okay. Again, I'm asking that question because there are small equipment lines, all kinds of different equipment-like categories -- >> Across the department, depending on the means. >> I'm not sure why those are in a general line and not a more specific one. I guess that covers most of my specific questions. Can you tell me what departmental services, what that category is? It's one of the main categories. >> It's not a line item. It's one of the main categories. [11:08:56 AM] So it's a column rather than a line item. >> So these are just [overlapping speakers] >> It's just from horizontal to vertical. >> I want to make sure we're coming off the right document. You should this group, that's the chiefs in the department and what it takes to support our operations, our public information office. So, again, these are the different departments that fall up under the support service division. Is that what you're asking? >> Exactly. >> Financial management, our computer services, police technology, equipment and supply. Mail services, vehicle equipment and maintenance, personnel services, facilities planning, facilities maintenance, academy facilities maintenance. Honor guard. Alarm permits. Administration management, facility expenses. There's four more, five more. Purchasing, human resources, and technology. That's what rolls up into that. I apologize there was a delay. We wanted to make sure we had the right form. >> I appreciate that information. >> Has there ever been a discussion -- I know -- actually, I'm not sure we're able to stay too much longer because I've actually go to go to the police retirement board by 11:30. It's a related topic, but not this unwith. So I won't have a chance probably to ask you to go through the slide on community liaison. I know you have the police explorers program aimed at teens, but I wonder if there had ever been the thought of starting an academy like the fire academy that could serve as a direct pipeline to recruiting different candidates into the police force. >> We talked about it over the years. That's actually got me into this course that I took in high school that expose med to law enforcement. I think the reason it's [11:10:57 AM] different for the police department versus fire is we have -- you know, we have to have them at 21 before they can even come into the department. We can't bring them in any younger, so we lose them for a few years after high school where they can't necessarily transition right into the department unless they came in under a civilian position and worked their way towards a commissioned position. I think it's something we could look at. We have looked at it in the past, but that's some of the challenges that we have that are a little bit different than the fire department. >> Thank you. And I think my last main question -- and it's just a small one -- back in December, the council -- I think it was December -- passed a resolution asking you to move forward with something that was already under way of distributing gun locks and gun safety information. I just wanted to see whether that's starting at some of the festivals and events around town. >> I know we have received a lot of the locks. I'm getting the head nod that we have started the distribution as well. I thought it had, and they are under way. >> Great. Thanks. I look forward as we all go out to the festivals of seeing that information at some of the police information booths. Thank you for your work on that. >> Okay. So back to the original presentation. I will just move forward through all my questions here on slides 14 and 15 about community liaisons and drs. Can you help me understand the relationship, how those two different functions collaborate or work together. >> Our community liaisons will be community employees and district reps will be actual police officer. So the district reps will be out in their field offices. They're going to be out in the community on a daily basis attending meetings. The community liaisons are not distributed out in the community. They work out of the ocl, but they also attend functions. We've got, you know, some that are specific for certain populations in Austin, and so they will attend a lot of the community events. They will attend a lot of [11:12:57 AM] community events with the drs, but their functions are separate. >> So when you say the community liaisons are the civilians, the slide shows it's two-thirds of the community liaisons >> We have sworn ftes in that unit, but those will actually be the pal explore officers. We have officers assigned to those programs, and they fall under the same budget. >> On the Dr specifically, can you give me a sense of how the Dr's duties are splint. It's dramatically different than educating school children and different than dealing with abandoned vehicles. >> So they work -- within their district, they will have special neighborhoods they're responsible for. You're aware of this. They're going to be focusing on their needs. Some have an issue with yard parking and things like that. They're going to focus on things like that. Others may be challenged with a string of business burglaries and home burglaries, and they're going to focus on education and prevention. It's not that at least necessarily a specific division that they try and achieve. It's what are the needs of the specific area they're serving. >> And it's somewhat discretionary to the Dr? >> Most likely their sergeant and lieutenant who are giving them direction. >> In response to the community. >> Yes. Matrix brought up we should have one lieutenant that's over the program to give consistency and oversight to that. We're working on identifying a lieutenant position that we can retool for that very purpose. We think there's value there to bringing all of our district representatives to coordinate their efforts. >> The matrix report also talks about a type of officer called a community service officer, which is a civilian that takes on some of these duties. The matrix report talks about [11:14:58 AM] reducing the number of drs and increasing the number of csos to provide these services. I imagine that as civilians, this would be a cheaper way to provide some of this service to the community. I know that in my part of town, like I mentioned before, I feel that we could go even farther in the types of services that we could provide through a cso program, versus sworn drs. >> We actually last year in the budget when we put forward, when we identified positions across the department that we had officers conducting work that we felt like really didn't require an officer, we identified the district representative program and we felt like we could do a mix, you know, some officers and some positions being civilian. And I think your peers would tell you that that was not met with very much support out in the community because the community absolutely loves their Dr's and there was a lot of comments and discussion on that. And ultimately as a council the decision was made not to select those positions, to have civilians in place of them. So we felt like there was an opportunity there maybe to assign one or two civilians in lieu of officers, matrix felt like that as well, but we have an opportunity here that absolutely -- community supports, as we do, this Dr program, and they did not want to see us at all reduce the number of officers assigned. >> Flannigan: I think there's another way to approach that that where it's not so much reducing the number of Dr's, but looking at the number of police officers a police department offers to a region. I think in like my community where cfos are more focused on educating the community on protecting their property might be a more good use of funds than increasing patrols. And I think the community necessarily assumes that increasing patrols is the only way to improve crime rates. I think there's maybe better ways to improve crime rates and the cso program is specific that I specifically talked about on the campaign trail to my community to be smarter about how the police department expands over time so that it can be, to [11:16:58 AM] councilmember kitchen's point, that the resources are responsive to the needs. Not necessarily doing what I think we end up doing in the fire department, which is one type of service trying to do all the things when it's not necessarily tied back to the type of service we're providing. That's something I intend to do a lot of work on through my council office to explore that as an opportunity. On slide 16 I worry that there's maybe background on this that I haven't been given, but given all of the other things going on around the forensics challenges, is there a sense of this budget number. In order for us to improve and catch up on backlog is there a budget analysis in terms of impact that we're looking at? >> So this eight million is not really -- [lapse in audio]. Is not really the operations functioning and that would be our chemistry, crime scene, forensics. Everything else is fully operational. We're not doing searology and DNA. So we want to keep those operations functioning. As we talked about I guess it was yesterday, we had identified the 1.2 million in forfeited funds and we had $8 million in front funds and we're using those to address backlog issues in the DNA world. So these funds are just to keep the remaining services operational. >> Flannigan: Is that a smaller number than in prior budgets that include DNA and the serology. >> No. This includes the DNA and serology budget and we're using those dollars to support some of the efforts in DNA. >> When you say 1.2 million -- [lapse in audio]. >> The forfeited funds, as you know we seize properties and funds if the courts award them to us based on organized [11:18:59 AM] crime activities. So we identify that those funds are for our discretion to use for certain categories of items. And when this issue came up last year it was important enough to us as a department because we understood the need, the council and the community, understood the need, that we dedicated $1.2 million of those funds to clear up the backlog. >> And those funds are only the result of a court order. >> Yes, they have to be awarded by a court. >> Flannigan: And maybe this is a question for ray, but the monies that are being allocated to address the backlog, are we thinking about if that's enough? Do we know from a longer term perspective, how many funds are going to be necessary to fully address this issue? >> So I think we're in the process of analyzing that. There's a lot of good work that the police department is doing in order to fill the gap. And as we get more stabilized and put these pieces in place we'll analyze what additional further will be needed. But there is the additional study for what are the options for providing different DNA and serology services. >> Flannigan: So we're in kind of an emergency situation, find the funds where we can, apply them as quickly as possible, but the longer term situation about the cost still ongoing, that analysis still happening. >> That's fair. >> Flannigan: Great. And slide 17 -- some of these questions aren't as intense as others. On the park police, can you help me understand again the ratio of work that they're doing that's proactive police presence, responding to calls and -- I lost it. And special events. Because it says this is also applying to special vents? >> And the special events link is a lot of our special events take lace place in the parks and zilker and that's why we break that out. When we look at the [11:21:00 AM] unit, you can definitely see the staffing levels. You can see that we have 41 positions with all of the supervision and we do the seven-day a week coverage from six A.M. To midnight in the parks. So we look at -- although they're assigned to the parks, they also respond to calls for service out in the community as well. So if there's not something happening in the park at that moment, if there's a call that they're nearby that hasn't been covered yet or if they're close to making backup, they will go and do that as well. So their work is not always in the parks. >> Flannigan: Interesting. All right. And 41 sworn ftes for parks and greenbelts. Are we to the extent that it makes sense to tell me, how are we determining where we're allocating those resources geographically? >> So obviously we have the Emma long park and zilker park are the two largest parks where we have the most significant presence. And then the unit itself then just works throughout the community and just if we're getting problems in a park, whether it be lewd acts being committed in a parks, burglary of cars in the parking lots, as these things occur then we will put more resources towards those. >> Flannigan: Is there analysis, deeper analysis in the crime data that shows crimes occurring in the parks? >> We can definitely do it at the granular level. We can do that in the parks. >> Flannigan: I would love that. And slide 18 the many court, when I look at the activity reports I don't see muny court services mentioned. Is that something that's outside of that? And kind of in a larger question on the reports, I don't see that the staffing numbers add up. The first slide in the presentation lists 1908 ftes, but when I add up the ftes in the activity reports it's 1806. It's a bigger difference on the civilian slide. Are there reports missing some stuff? Yes, thank you, city manager. I'm just trying to do the math here. [11:23:02 AM] Again, the same question as before. It seems to be a big difference between providing protection at the court building versus serving warrants and transporting prisoners. Can you help me understand what that is and when it says to either the respective court or Travis county, are we also taking people to Williamson county? What does the respective court mean? >> We also have downtown community court as well, which is the court on sixth street. It depends on which court we need to take them to. The way that operates is we have static posts in the building that have been staffed everyday. We have a uniformed presence. Those officers can go into the courtroom if there's a need, if it's a particularly concerning case or for a reason they stay in the courtroom, otherwise they will work outside so that they're there for an emergency response. Based on how many officers are available on a particular day, how many officers on shift are there, whether you have folks that are out for sick, vacation, any of those, what we are left with then is the officers that are not needed to provide the immediate coverage in the courtroom can then go out and do warrant service and try to bring in those that have unpaid tickets. >> Flannigan: And this is warrant specifically for the municipal court? >> Yes. >> Flannigan: At what point is it Travis county central booking? >> We have different units that focus on the warrants that are higher charges that would end up going over to Travis county. >> Flannigan: And -- >> Menu court is -- >> Flannigan: But it's list heared under the muny court slide, which is why I'm trying to understand where things are applied. I'm on slide 18, the last sentence of that second bullet point where it's to the respective court or Travis county central booking. [11:25:10 AM] >> Assistant chief Troy gay. What we'll do is the arrests are actually made and booked into Travis county. And then those officers actually have to go to Travis county and pick up those prisoners and take them to our community court. And then they have to take them back to Travis county depending on the resolution there at the court. >> Flannigan: All right. And the last bullet point there where it says the municipal court reimbursement is significantly smaller than the budget, but my recollection is that muny court is somewhat of an enterprise fund where it's funded separately. Am I misremembering that from a slide, from a budget presentation? >> It's funded by the general fund, the tax base. >> Flannigan: The many court is? Thanks, I must have missed that somewhere else. Down to slide 20, this 9.4 million on five-year cost of ownership, that is a different number, that nine million is different number than I've seen elsewhere, which was over $10 million, $17 million for purchasing cameras. Is this just about the operating of the cameras once they're obtained over five years? >> No. I think the numbers there -- there were different ways this was looked at in prior years. I think the cell phones got grouped into that discussion and that cost ended up showing up in that larger number. So this is the number for the five years' actual cost and operation, storage, that's what the nine-million-dollar number is. >> Flannigan: Okay. I'll have to figure out what those other numbers meant then. All right, on the activity report, on investigations, is percent of violent and property crimes cleared? A number that is at all useful? I feel like the percent of violent crimes is cleared is much higher, the percent of property crimes cleared is much lower, but there are a lot more property crimes. Is this number actually being used as a metric operationally? >> Yes, it is. We compare ourselves nationally. And we are above all of the standards that were compared to. I have the numbers here [11:27:11 AM] if you want them as far as our clearance rates. But clearance rates show the effectiveness of the work that we're doing. So if we had a lower clearance rate than the national average or if we saw a drop, then maybe we don't have enough resources dedicated to a certain unit, so internally it is important to me to make sure that we have the appropriate number of resources geared in those types of investigations. And so I think that's what's -- that's why that's an important metric for us to follow is that we want to make sure that we are where we need to be on that. >> Flannigan: Okay. Some of these charts are a little confusing about down 19 percent from '12, but the graph shows that it's up. Am I just reading it backwards? Do you see that on a-1? And then I think there's another slide that it does the same thing. It may just be a weighing that you're laying out your graphics. >> To us we consider that a bad thing if our clearance rate is down. We want a high clearance rate. >> Flannigan: But the clearance went up from 12 to 14. From 16.4 to 19.5. >> I'm being told that's the quantity, not the clearance part. >> Flannigan: Maybe the line going back is confusing me. Good. On -- where am I at? Page 5-8, there is a -- no, wait, not 8. Where is this one about response time. There it is. 5-4, the response times says five minutes, 49 seconds. The second half of a-4, but elsewhere I see response times. >> This response time is from dispatch to arrival so we're a tracking our portion of that. What's not on there is the time from the call initiating on the call making it to the dispatcher. That makes up the delta there. So the total time from when you call 911 and we get there on the emergency is 8:04. But what we have here the 5.49, that's when our officer gets the call to moment he or she arrives. >> Flannigan: That seems like an important [11:29:12 AM] difference in terms of measuring where we put resources to address response time. >> Right. But it's also important so that when we look at our communications operations we understand the flow of the call as it processes through. That's why we break it down into all of these increments. >> Flannigan: Is the part that's during the call, is that fairly static? Is it generally -- what would that be, three minutes, less than three minutes? Is that not terribly variable? >> It tends to be steady, but it could be seasonal, it could also be event driven if we have a lot of events. That's why we open up additional radio channels if we have some significant events occurring in the city we will open up additional radio channels so we can cut that down. So yes in theory it's pretty static other than when we get peak events. >> Flannigan: And much of my questions got answered elsewhere. My last question is on the last page of the activity reports where it talks about -- on -- where is that? A N 12 where it talks about ammunition as a cost driver in professional standards. In the lane item it shows it as just five percent of the total training budget. Do we expect that ammunition is going to go up dramatically? Is that why we're listing it as a cost driver? >> It's five percent of the budget, but we don't control -- a lot of that budget that's assigned to that division is salaries. So it's five percent of the three percent. So if you look at it that way, it's a large expense for us. Now that we've transitioned to the nine-millimeter and we're working our way to - - it's a cheaper round and then the other challenge for us over the years is when we've had conflicts overseas, the 40 caliber round is one of the premier rounds that the military uses so on we found ourselves competing with the military trying to get ammunition, so although we have contracts, when you get the next contract that cost can go up. The delays -- at some point the delays got to the point where we had to find ammunition through other sources because it was just -- it's a cost driver because it's five [11:31:12 AM] percent of the three percent and it's a big expense. >> But do we expect that's going to change dramatically. >> Now that we've transitioned to the nine-millimeter I don't believe that that's going to change significantly. >> Flannigan: It's just -- the phrase future budget drivers, to me sounds like something that's going to be changing that we need to account for as opposed to the percent of its component. >> It's just because it's a large part of our budget. >> Flannigan: All right, thanks. >> Houston: I've got one last question and it's about -- on APD 17 regarding park police. Again, are you going to send us some data regarding where the park police are distributed? I don't think I've ever seen a park police in any of my parks. And I may be wrong, but I think they're primarily focused on zilker and Emma long and downtown. And that seems like they need to be -- and I understand if things come up then you will redeploy them elsewhere. I think I have one that I see out at Emma long. At Walter E long park. I see when I go out there I see one out there on the weekends, but there are times when they are just helpful to be visible and then go away. But if we're -- if they're never visible nobody knows that they're patrolling. >> I can give you a little bit here as far as the responses we've had. And this was for a period back in 2016. This should be one year's worth of data. We had 272 units respond to zilker. 116 to Emma long. 40 to Walter E long, 27 to Beverly S Sheffield, 20 to the zilker nature preserve and then it goes to smaller numbers that I won't put out here. So we do track where we're responding mostly to, but then on top of that there should be preventive patrols. They should be showing [11:33:13 AM] up at the neighborhood parks just to have that presence that we talked about. >> Houston: And one of your top challenges is non-reimbursable special events. You all realize that's an issue. I just want to thank you that you're putting it it your challenges section. >> Sure. >> Mayor Adler: You guys did a really good job. Thank you. This report was very good, real helpful. I think the way that we're moving forward on these have been really good. For the public I would point out that the next one of these reviews is going to be March 1st, Austin public health and animal services. And then March 22nd we'll do parks and recreation and the public library. Again, for you and your executive staff that's here and everybody that's back, thanks for this and thanks for keeping us safe. >> Thank you. [End of meeting]. >>