Public Safety Committee Meeting Transcript – 07/20/2020 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 7/20/2020 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 7/20/2020 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [2:05:48 PM] Flannigan: It is 2:05. We are convening this meeting of the public safety committee. I am chair of this committee. Council member Jimmy Flannigan. We are on the virtual dais. Our agenda today has three items on it. We're going to talk about public safety metrics have the around mayor pro tem's item from the 11th. We'll dig into the city budget, specifically around public safety issues, and a high level conversation about 911 call center data, including the consultant that was used by Austin justice coalition and some words from staff. We have a panel of staff for each of these items, a slightly different panel of staff for each of these items. I will do my best to pull people in and out of the meeting as we work our way through it. As I always like to start a meeting with, just a little bit of a technology check-in. I can see everybody on my screen so if you need to speak, you can raise your hand. If you feel more [2:06:49 PM] comfortable, you can also use the raised hand feature that's part of webex. I will watch for both. I am also going to be muting you. If you forget to mute yourself, please don't take it seriously, it works better if you're muting, but keep an eye on that to unmute yourself before you speak because you will still have the ability to do that. As a reminder to the public as we do these public safety committee meetings, these meetings are not scheduled for action. We don't actually take votes or we're not planning to take any votes on any of these meetings, this is to dig into the work that has roughly, essentially been approved by the council through resolution and work that we know the council will be adopting in short order, namely the city budget. So hopefully today what we can do is daylight the general areas of issue, help focus the work of the staff and set up the council for success as it goes into hearings and budget work sessions over the next two weeks on that part of the budget. So let's go ahead and dig [2:07:50 PM] in. Our first item, a discussion on safety metrics. We have one guest joining us, Ms. Styles, why don't you introduce yourself and let us know what you've got to contribute. >> Thank you so much for this opportunity to address you all and I haven't seen you guys in a while. Good to see you here. Councilmembers, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. Sarah, it's always great to see you. Just to give you a little bit of background about myself for this, for those who do not know, I get to be the president and founder of measure, we're a research and public education organization that really likes to address community needs through data activism. And then also public education. And so our mission is to use data in education to mobilize communities to eliminate social disparities. And so before I get into the meet, which I'm [2:08:50 PM] really excited to be on this side -- on this side of the discussion, a lot of times we're advocating for something special to happen, but that has already happened through item 50. But what I'd like to do is provide a definition of public safety that you may -- I'm sure you've never heard of, I'm sure have considered, but just to kind of give you a little bit of background, measure recognizes public safety and its applied metrics holistically, facilitating engagement to improve community relations and decrease community harm. So for that we've dreamt up this definition of what that might look like. We keep talking about reimagining public safety and we're defining public safety. And so for us -- I mean, I can send this to you later because it's a mouthful -- but public safety to measure is a [2:09:51 PM] radical systems approach to the protection of life, health, or property whereby that system -- think of a computer -- so whereby that system is a unit, totally dependent on each component, resulting in the [indiscernible] Of danger to the public, and resulting in the restorative community healing required to undo institutional racism. So that means going beyond enforcement, so public safety is foundational to American society. It happens by the people, for the people. It's based in partnership between the public and the institutions, institutions, as mutual stakeholders in maintaining a safe and functional community, or communities. I'll talk a little bit more about why I make [2:10:51 PM] that plural. And so defining a performance measure is also really important for measure as we kind of think through this work. And so I was inspired by this woman, an Australian, years ago, and her name is Stacey Barr, one of the most forward thinking people when it comes to performance measure creation. As you know in Australia, they think very lean, and I love her approach and I actually applied that to the way we do work, measure, back in 2015. So according to her, a performance measure is a quantification that provides objective evidence to the degree to which a performance result is occurring over time. And so again, we -- so thinking through that framework, this is sort of the way we've come up with some of these ideas I'll present to you [2:11:52 PM] today. Council's decision to approve resolution 50 really sets a new mandate for the city of Austin to develop a transformative approach to public safety, just like that -- you know, that definition that I gave a minute ago. So measure believes that all systems of systems of public safety must communicate with one another -- with one another, I'm sorry, in order for those goals to be reached. But for this brief today, I'll just focus on how APD's matrix should be reflective of this transformation. So as you all know, and for those that are attending that don't know, June 11th, the city council established policy goals for the safety outcome of strategic direction 2023. Zero racial disparities in motor vehicle stops. Zero racial disparities in citations and [2:13:00 PM] arresting by 2023. Zero death at the hands of APD officers by 2023. I love measures like that. And so measure recommends local government leaders strategically align these long-term -- 2023, that's kind of relatively long-term, but community impact goals to Austin police department's current performance metrics. As a result, the city could receive data informed -- a balance by using APD's metrics to create sustainable and resilient communities in Austin. And so we also believe that the lived experience of people who live in Austin, that, you know, they have expressed concern about it just being one -- about it not just being one community, and that there's several communities in Austin -- right? -- Depending on where you live. And so measure recommends [2:14:02 PM] data and metrics always -- bycity area just to gain a more equity driven insight. Now, after really digesting this, I realize that aligning the goals that are set in resolution 50 will actually be impossible without a radical overhaul to the current performance measures captured by APD. Goals provided in that resolution call for a dramatically different approach to public safety than current operations. So since the goals in resolution 50 are centered around eradicating racial disparate by 2023, then metrics captured by APD will need to align to measure these outcomes strategically. [2:15:02 PM] And so I stayed up last night doing some brief analysis -- brief analysis on just a few of the metrics on APD's performance measure website. And many of them point to possible inconsistencies in data captured, and they point to opportunities to tell a better story through professional measure development. And so as another recommendation, we recommend that more analysis and research be conducted by an outside organization to fully assess the current metrics. And of course involve the community in the process. So just a very quick, short list of a couple that I pulled out. The first one was traffic enforcement. It was under the traffic enforcement metric, and it measures two different things. There was a couple that two of them really stood out. The first one was the number of dwi arrests, and then there was another one way or another, the rate of serious injury producing [2:16:04 PM] crashes per 1,000 population. Those should be measured to correlate. Instead of measuring the rate of serious injury -- sorry, you should measure the rate of serious injury producing crashes as a result of a person driving under the influence of alcohol. And so that would produce your ability to really assess this as a public safety issue. Another one was under the traffic enforcement metric and was the number of citation violations issued by APD. And so this one, again, aligning to those goals, should report this metric with data that shared the demographic composition of those who received the citation, and which district they -- that citation was given. Those kind of maps really help us to understand equity. And then another was under the patrol metric. This was the enough [2:17:04 PM] arrests by APD. This only reports data from 2019. So while the department says on the website that this is a new metric, I do believe that historical data should be permitted to be included for the purpose of providing comparison data, understanding some benchmarks. In addition, APD should also report this with aggregated data that shows demographic composition of those who were arrested and again which city council district that that arrest took place. Community partnerships, I've been -- I think I started my work around the community partnerships data back in 2015. And so measuring community satisfaction rate is so complex. And it should be approached like that as well. And so there's several variables that measure recommends be considered when determining community approval. The methodology of how to [2:18:05 PM] data was collected, who contributed to the dataset, the demographics of those who were surveyed, what district they live in, and more should be really tracked with this indicator, who got the survey, who didn't get the survey, in order to get to that number of, you know, over X amount percent approved of APD's operations. And then lastly, the data comprising -- this is under special operations, and the data comprising the percent of critical incidents responded to by special operations that results in no injuries or that resulted in no injuries to officers, hostages, or the public. That one needs to be reassessed. It could be accurate, I'm not sure, but currently APD is reporting 100 for each year, with a target [2:19:07 PM] of 2020 being 102. So you'll see 2017, 100. 2018, 100. 2019, 100. Target for 2020, 100. So I'm just not sure, I'm just adding that one as one that needs to be -- that needs to be reassessed. And so back in 2018, measure did provide a recommendation to -- we actually brought forth a resolution that would require APD to publish required -- regular, sorry, use of force data, that was disaggregated. But unfortunately this was largely not enforced. So, to ensure that this does not happen to resolution 50, measure seeks to incorporate additional crucial measures, again, to tell a more accurate sorry of the department's performance and to assess a desired community [2:20:08 PM] policing outcomes. I'm not going to say them all because, again, this was a resolution that was passed and voted and we thought was going to be implemented in a way that it was not. Some of our measures that we did provide have been implemented, and I'll mention those ones too, but we're really trying to understand, number one, like the percent reduction in overall use of force and deadly force disaggregated by demographic information. Again, this aligns directly with resolution 50, percent and number of interactions leading to critical instances, like shootings or serious bodily injury, aggregated by demographic information. Again, you know, leads to the goals of resolution 50. Several more. Percent of suspensions for misconduct where suspension is not overturned or reduced upon appeal. There's one that was -- that was provided, and it looks like has been adopted from the website, [2:21:08 PM] from the kpi website for APD, and that's the percent case clearance rates by type of events. And so -- and then another one was the number of resident complaints and the number of those complaints investigated. It's not clear -- honestly, I think that we would need more information to compare this data against the office of the police monitor's data to be sure if this data is accurate and up to date. Some other ones are, just again, resident satisfaction, consistent annual survey parole is really important, and then having that information disaggregated by city district and demographic characteristics. Socioeconomic status, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, zip code. And we really want to understand police officer and staff job satisfaction. It's really important that we are being cognizant of those that [2:22:10 PM] are on the front lines so that we understand how they are feeling about being supported and feeling about doing their jobs every day. And so in this presentation, I'll end with this, measure has presented a theoretical framework. Its priority to the community comprising of all people impacted and working to eliminate danger in Austin, Texas. We've called this framework the systems of systems of public safety. We've presented a definition that reacts to the call to reimagine politician and public safety, incorporating the vital need to think differently, to think holistically and to think with healing at the center, to achieve a more just and less racist system of public safety. And so, you know, [2:23:11 PM] effective transformation involves measuring the impact of programs and policies that are to work for the people. It should involve the people. Especially pertinent to this discussion, measure recognizes that metric development has traditionally left out the role of the community. So in considering the need to fix the current metric system at APD and align them with resolution 50's goals, measure suggests, again, that an outside consultant work with the department, incorporating the community to redevelop kpi's that reflect the before mentioned suggestions. So with that, I'll tell you all thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak and to address you all, and it's really great to see everybody in person again. >> Flannigan: Thank you for joining us. I think assistant city manager -- you wanted to be able to talk about what's happening on the staff side, then we'll take questions. [2:24:11 PM] >> Thank you, chair Flannigan. Can you hear me, first of all? >> Flannigan: Yes, sound good. >> Thank you for this opportunity to provide an overview of what's really an early start to the direction provided in resolution 050, as I would refer to it. Ms. Styles did refer to some of the points of direction that are in there with regards to the metrics that are desired to be put in place. I'll just broadly say that the meetings are in progress, in order to figure out, first, how to put these metrics, the ones that are clearly identified in the resolution, into our strategic directions dashboard. There's also additional work that needs to be done in order to derive a number of the metrics, some of which Ms. Styles is mentioning, and that network is happening between performance management, police department, as well as the office of police oversight and the innovations office. I think I just wanted to [2:25:13 PM] provide those broad comments and see if there are other questions and really be responsive to the questions that the committee may have. So with that, I'll go ahead and we have a group of people here from the different departments that are ready to respond to questions you may have. >> Flannigan: Mayor pro tem Garza. >> Garza: Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Styles. You beautifully summarized the goals of item -- of item 50. And also, rightfully explained how, because of not only maybe the item that measure had in 2018, but many times as councilmembers we put forward resolutions, and it unfortunately doesn't -- things we don't see the results that we would like from [2:26:13 PM] there. And so with that in mind, I'm curious to why opm was picked to take the lead. While they were part of the resolution in -- you know, and we laid out departments which should be involved in this, which include innovation, equity, opo. Because -- I guess I'm a little concerned about -- we want some actionable recommendations, and I like -- I liked the -- the recommendation of an outside consultant. And so two questions. I just want to make sure that the intent is clear that -- about wanting actionable recommendations, not just a dashboard, not just a regurgitation, so to speak, of data that we already have, this is wanting to take a whole new look and thinking about public safety in a different way that's not driven by reporting just crimes and how we respond [2:27:15 PM] to them, but, like, the examples that Ms. Styles gave are perfect, like, you know, where we asking the right questions, are we asking for the right data in the right kind of context. So I guess first question, why did we choose opm to lead? >> So if I may, mayor pro tem, I think it was kind of too logical choice for office of performance management since it has the overall responsibility of orchestrating changes and updates to the strategic directions dashboard or overall framework. However, I would say that certainly there's a significant amount of responsibility with regards to the police department, as well as the office of police oversight and innovations office and equity office, to make sure that the things that we're doing really fall in under and address those components of the resolution. It certainly is more than just identifying what the metrics are that are currently identified and/or metrics that might [2:28:17 PM] be further developed. And clearly, that's going to be the work of the departments other than the office of performance management. So while opm is identified potentially as the lead department, clearly the other debts that I just mentioned are going to be taking lead in developing the metrics. There's significant work effort around identifying -- let's see here -- implementing remedial strategies to achieve revised policy goals. And clearly that's going to be the work that the police department is going to be doing in conjunction with the other three offices that are involved. >> Garza: Okay. I just want to make sure we're not putting ourselves in a position that when we -- when we are policing ourselves, so to speak, there are, like, concessions given. Right? There's -- if -- if one of our departments thinks -- it's like we think within this box [2:29:19 PM] because we're trying to be -- and I understand it, you know, trying to understand this is what the department -- let's say this is what Apa can do, we don't want to ask too much, we want to be good partners. I just want to be sure we're thinking outside the box. I'm not convinced right now -- I appreciate the explanation -- that -- that the process we have set forth at this point -- and that's what this whole discussion is about; right? Understanding this item and how we get the results that we want. At this point right now, I'm not 100% sure that's the path we're heading down but I certainly hope it is because I want us to think big and dream big and not be limited by, well, what is a reasonable request of the -- of APD? What is a reasonable -- you know, and if that is going to take any kind of outside independent person, I'd be happy to [2:30:20 PM] look at what we can do in the budget to get that, to get that person. And then I had one -- I think that's my main concern right now. I'm sure there are other questions. >> And if I might just respond briefly, I think it's pretty clear to all of us that are embarking upon this journey that we are looking outside of the box. I think from my perspective of my colleagues at innovation office, office of police oversight and equity office, are going to do a job, as well as the community is going to do a pretty good job of making us think outside the box. >> Flannigan: More questions? Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Yeah, just to follow up in a little bit more detail about the presentation, I had an opportunity to talk today with the city manager about leadership team and [2:31:21 PM] the work that it's doing with regard to our community partners. Can you just let us know whether part of that work will include looking at the metrics? Is that something that the community, slash, city leadership has identified, of exploration I think Ms. Styles commented on the needs that are -- >> What I'll say is that we haven't necessarily talked about specific metrics and so forth. However, as we have these conversations with the public safety committee, certainly, and we get these different ideas, one of the things that we're doing is looking at what particular advisory working groups may make sense. Some of that work, identifying what those groups might be is going to involve a listening session that's going to include the joint [2:32:22 PM] inclusion commission, the public safety commission, and our quality of life commissions, that will expand out to a number of other opportunities to listen to how the community is feeling about public safety. With this conversation, certainly we'll take a look at how metrics might be an area for us to explore in more depth. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Flannigan: Council member alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I'm wondering, ray, if you can share with us how these performance metrics may tie back to some of the things we included in the December resolution about creating performance measures for leadership that were based on how things were doing. I know these are kind of more broader macro measures and there are some more macro measures that are specific, but I think that as we talk about these measurements, we have to also think [2:33:23 PM] about the accountability, and I think we've already set in motion a couple of things, and I just wanted to understand how those things might fit together. >> And so, let's see, I'm trying to remember exactly what some of those directions were from the December resolution. I would broadly say that, clearly, with the direction that's most recently in the June resolution that talks about the city manager putting in place accountability measures for the team, that those are certainly thanks we're going to do. I think it's a little -- right now it's a little early to see how specifically that might be put in place, but certainly we'll have that conversation with the city manager. >> Alter: So in December, I had added an amendment, you know, thinking ahead to outcomes that we were going to be building into the accountability structure for leadership, how they were addressing with diverse -- there was a whole bunch of things that we might want in there and I just wanted [2:34:23 PM] to kind of connect the dots. I know we're still making sure we have the right performance measures, and in light of the additional goals that were placed there, I think that they're important. And then for chair, I just wanted to flag for a potential topic for a future meeting, if we want to get into data, in item 96, we had an amendment that extended how we were looking at some of the ways that we were coming up with measuring at-risk officers, which is a different kind of data than the overall performance. But I think that these two things, if we're going to effect the performance indicators that we've been talking about today, we have to be making sure that our measures that are getting us to identify those at-risk officers are working properly. And what we did in 96 was, you know, say, you know, engaged folks and made sure to do that. [2:35:24 PM] I think these are all interconnected and I just wanted to flag it in case we can think about how that would be incorporated into a future meeting. Because at the end of the day, we get all of these great performance measurements, but if we're not aligning incentives all the way through the system, we aren't going to get the changes on those metrics once we get them right, that we want. So I think we have to have that full gamut of a conversation. >> Flannigan: Thank you, council member. I think that's a good idea. I would assume that at-risk officer metrics would live in the office of police oversight more than it would live in office of performance management. Bureaucratic nonsense notwithstanding. Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: Thank you. I have two questions. I joined a little late, so thank you, Ms. Styles. Is -- I don't know if there was a particular report that you're referring to. I thought that the -- that the suggestions you [2:36:26 PM] were making and the specific measures you were providing us as examples was really very helpful and very much on point, and also showed a level of depth in terms of our analysis where that we can actually get closer to causation, so to speak, or directly linking measures where they may be linked. So my question is, have you -- I may have just missed it -- have you produced a document for us that kind of lists those recommendations? And I apologize if I have missed it. >> No, it's totally fine. Thank you for asking that question. So I have to be completely honest with you, I went ahead and wrote a report last night with the analysis. So I will go ahead -- I'm going to send it through our communications team to make sure that I don't have any -- too big, crazy errors in it, then I will go ahead and send that to you, hopefully by end of day today or early [2:37:28 PM] in the morning tomorrow. And again [indiscernible] -- >> Kitchen: That's great because itself furiously taking notes and then I thought, well, I'm going to miss something. >> You're going to get all this, yeah, in your box, definitely. >> Kitchen: Okay. And then the second question is just to -- >> Flannigan: Before we go on, I just want to note, I'll have my staff post that report to the council message board so if members of the public want to track it down, Austin council forum.org. >> Kitchen: Okay. The second question is just a comment that with all of these programs across the board, there will be a need to really -- what's the right word? -- To really up our game in terms of our analysis. And that also means that we need to make sure that we have the right systems in place to collect the data and to produce the data in a way that we need that. So -- and so, for example, the mental health issues, one aspect [2:38:30 PM] of that is the first response for mental health calls. And so I'm going to want to make sure that we put in place a method for both collecting call data in the way that we need to collect those data elements, as well as linking them to results for that program. So I understand that there are dollars in the proposed budget that relate to the systems, the technology systems at the -- at the department, and so I'm going to want to understand in more detail -- I'm not suggesting we have to do it right now, chair, but I'm going to want to understand in more detail how those system -- how the dollars for improvements in our systems make sure that we have the functionality that we need to collect the measures that we need, and then -- both collect and provide the data in a way that we can analyze results. [2:39:30 PM] So that may be a follow-up for you, ray. Chair, I don't know if you're going to get into that in this committee or not. I just wanted to filling -- wantedto flag that as something that probably needs some discussion somewhere. >> Flannigan: Well, we're going to dig into budget, not at that level today, we'll talk about budget once we're moved from this item. Other questions for Ms. Styles or for ray on metrics? Council member Casar. >> Casar: Just one note and something that I would hope that we look at in this budget and then in future budgets is that I remember from last year's budget, that many of the investments made by the city manager were supposed to move a certain metric, were supposed to produce a certain outcome. The extra police officers line did not come with an outcome that it was intended to produce. And so while I think we should measure new things, I really want to not if we're trying to reduce violence or reduce [2:40:32 PM] harm, I want to know that our dollars being invested are moving an outcome metric the most that we can because we're trying to move away from saying we want a response time to go down by X or we want X staff per thousand, we're trying to get to actually a change in outcomes in the community. And I really want to make sure that we're applying that to every single part of the work that we -- that we do. >> Flannigan: Mayor pro tem. >> Garza: Yeah, I totally agree with council member Casar. One example we thought of when we were talking about how we measure -- about new metrics was, like -- and maybe this metric exists already, but how many incidences were successfully deescalated, and soggy showing [2:41:33 PM] that by part of town I think provides us a metric to -- you know, we want that number to go up. We want deescalations to go up. One more question, I think for chief Manley. I've heard a theme not only in these kinds of discussions, but as well when we were dealing with the advocates who were -- in our municipal court conversations, in trying to get data and how hard that has been and, you know, them asking us to get the data because they can't get it. I guess my question is, chief, are we committed, are you committed to providing, you know, the data that these organizations often tell us that they have trouble getting? >> Absolutely. I think that we have opened data portals, we've put our information out on the web. You will recall we were one of the first and I think maybe the first major police department to join the police data initiative on the national level. So I think we have a history of sharing data [2:42:33 PM] and we will continue to share the data that we have. You're right, sometimes it is difficult to pull data together. Sometimes the requests are very specific and our systems don't very easily produce that type of data. And that, too, is one of the focus areas as we look at reinvesting in technology for the police department that we need to ensure that the new developments in police records management systems and other areas should allow us to more easily and readily pull these types of data requests together. >> Garza: Okay. That's good to hear because I think -- you know, I think we all want to get to the same place, less violence for everybody, you know, and I think -- and I've heard that just over and over again from different advocates, that it's been -- it's really hard to get certain types of data. So whatever we can do on the council side, please let us know, to make that data more accessible and readily available as we continue to of these conversations. Thanks. >> Certainly, mayor pro [2:43:35 PM] tem. >> Flannigan: And I would just add to that, you know, having a web development technology background, you know, we have to be concerned about the garbage in, garbage out problem, where the source of the data itself, if we're asking officers to also be data entry experts in the middle of calls, or any of our future first responder entities to make those data entries, and I think we learned a little bit about that on sexual assault where there was maybe one code when there should have been multiple codes to differentiate between different outcomes. So not just the technology solution, but I'm also very interested in understanding the burden the data entry piece places. One of the ideas that I have brought up before is officers or any first responder being able to read their report into a body cam, and then allow a professional data entry person to code accordingly. And that may be one way to free up officers or folks whoever out in the field and have data entry folks giving us the [2:44:36 PM] cleanest source of data as possible. Any other questions before we move on to budget? Council member harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: That mute button is giving me a hard time. I just wanted to say what my colleagues have said, I with wholeheartedly agree with and the sentiment speaks to me. There were a couple of things that weren't mentioned, and I think this is probably -- it kind of piggybacks on what mayor pro tem said about specific data as it pertains to -- give me just a second. I pulled up the resolution because I was thinking, I think we already have that in there. It was a data point that was talking about specific data on use of force in a certain part of town. And so I'm looking at some of the -- item [2:45:36 PM] number 66, be it further resolved clauses. And these are some things that I just wanted to make sure to highlight as well. So obviously the training materials and cadet information, all of the things that are included in that audit are top in mind for me. Especially I'm certain everybody on the line received an email that I did also; it was a report by Sarah Villanueva leading an academy rubrics and an additional report by Michael Ferguson issued on June 19th that addresses some of the concerns, original concerns that we had in some of this -- under bullet number 2, training materials course section, descriptions, and duration. One of the things that's in here that I just want to make certain that we spend some time focusing on as it pertains to academy is the components that are speaking specifically to the diversity of the people [2:46:39 PM] teaching diversity. And so, Ms. Styles, I'm not sure if that's something that specifically is on your radar, but it's certainly one of the things that's top of mind for me as we go through the academy-specific elements. And I just wondered if -- you know, just from your initial glance, are there any other academy- specific considerations that you have that, you know, you may need some direction from council or for us to be paying some specific attention to? >> You know, I haven't really thought about that. I definitely can spend some time in deep thought, by just you raising the idea already kind of sparks a couple of things. I know, you know, even working on the board, the local board, I kind of jotted down some ideas and saw even some progress happen -- happening, like, within gender and making sure that we have enough female representation, you know, where -- especially when they're talking about, like, [2:47:40 PM] who's teaching diversity. If you guys remember back in the day when measure was not really kind of focusing on evidence-based metrics, we were more so focusing on just metrics -- right? -- We were asking for implicit bias training, for 100% of officers to be trained in implicit bias training, and we brought in an expert but not so sure, but without any tracking methodology after that, like how do we even know that some of the training that we're doing is actually working? A lot of it is based on pseudoscience without any real evidence or real, you know, outcome metrics about if that training is even working. So, personally, you know, putting on that hat, I would say that there are a lot of questions that can be asked and a lot of opportunities, ebb in -- especially in Austin because we're so data-driven. I did hear that Austin [2:48:42 PM] police department -- chief, if you can respond to this -- brought on a new CEO, another request of measure for the last several years has been, you know, bringing on a chief data officer that really focuses in on data and outcomes and evidence-based policing, that we could really seriously address some of those issues together. >> And maybe I will respond to that. He actually started today. Today was his first day. I had the opportunity to meet with him and was very pleased to explain and talk with him about the importance of his position and of the role that he will play, especially now, as we're in the middle of evaluating policing here in Austin, and the only way we can do that is with accurate data. This was day one for him. >> Awesome. That's super hopeful, like when it comes to us needing data, needing accurate information, having access to that -- to that person within [2:49:42 PM] the -- within the department, but again, to your point, council member Madison -- harper-madison, is just really is that person going to focus in on evidence-based policing. We've created -- I know measure has created a fantastic partnership with the American society of evidence-based placing, some of the most academically sound and ready researchers that are also cops, led by a cop researcher, Renee Mitchell. Are we going to move in that direction? That would be my question for, you know -- as that person takes that seat. And then, secondly, just to, again, especially to assistant city manager rey Arellano, you know, a lot of times metrics are -- come -- you know, are part of the conversation we end. Right? Like we have all these big, beautiful ideas. And we have all these solutions that we think might work. [2:50:43 PM] A lot of anecdotal, flowery ideas. But metrics need to come first. Right? So those goals in resolution 50 paint a picture of a wonderful Austin. But I've got to tell you, people like me who don't really see gray all the time, I take those literally. I took those literally when I saw that. Like how do we get to this? What metrics, what input metrics and output metrics will we need in order to get to this state in Austin. And so just really, you know, want to hammer that in, like make sure that you start with the end first, and that metrics come first, and again, measure is always here to support the city in achieving those goals. >> Flannigan: All right. I think we should probably move on to our next item unless there are any pressing final [2:51:44 PM] comments or questions. >> Harper-madison: No. I was just going to say thank you. >> Flannigan: All right. Thank you, Ms. Styles, for joining us in our committee meeting today. A lot of great work to do on metrics. A lot of great work overall. Glad to have you as community experts joining this conversation. I think most of the councilmembers who are part of the meeting have spoke. I forgot to do the list of names but I will add the mayor has joined our meeting, council member alter is here, in addition to councilmembers who have spoken up and asked questions. Okay. Let's dig into the budget. If you'll bear with me, I will transition out our staff attendees for this portion of the meeting. [2:52:53 PM] Okay. I think we will start with a staff presentation from Mr. Van eenoo. Ed, are you there? >> I am here. >> Flannigan: Okay. I have the presentation. If you will -- the last time I did this my laptop crashed, so we'll see how this works this time. [Laughing]. You all see the presentation? >> I can see it. >> Flannigan: Great. >> Yes. All right. Well, want me to jump in, council member? >> Flannigan: Take it away, Ed. >> Yeah, I'll jump in. We put together, I think, about nine or ten slides here, just to give you a high-level overview of what we call our public safety department, first in Austin we have our safety outcome that also includes save drinking water, it includes flood mitigation risks, so safety is broader than [2:53:54 PM] just our public safety department, but here today for the public safety committee, we're focusing on the five departments that we -- that fit under our public safety umbrella. That's Austin code, municipal court, emergency medical services, the fire department, and the police department. This is really a high- level picture of the budgets for each of these five departments. Go kind of like a layer lower for the police department because we anticipated there would be a lot of interest in that, and of course we'd have staff on the line to help me out with questions. But just for the sake of time, I'm going to -- and to avoid having to bounce around between a bunch of presenters, I'll just walk through the high-level presentation. Go to the second slide, council member. Thank you. So first, Austin code, you can see for 21, the proposed budget is $26.9 million, that's a slight drop from the fiscal year 2020 level, which is the result of moving some one-time [2:54:54 PM] budget items that had been included in the code department for fiscal year 2020. So across the board, you're going to see departments for fiscal year 21 typically having a little bit higher budget because of wage increases and other built-in cost drivers. But in this case, those cost drivers are being offset by a production in one time program expenditures by the fy 21 budget. The department is proposing three new administrative positions. Their total revenue for fiscal year 21 is $25.4 million. You can see over in that -- that third column over, sources. Almost 90% funded almost from the community fee. When we get away from code compliance, which is set up as an enterprise department and recovers its costs through the fees it charges, when we get into the general fund department, you're going to see a much larger portion of the funding for the department coming [2:55:55 PM] from taxes. In regards to code operations, nearly 50%, a little bit more than 50% of their budget is allocated specifically to code investigations, compliance, and endorsement activities. Transfers and other support services, I'll spend a little more time with them on this slide because you're going to see the program named across all departments, and you'll see these program names in all city departments. Let me just explain what they are. Support services is where we budget across all of our departments, generally where we budget our administrative expenses, you know, H.R. Support, financial support, I.T. Support, I.T. People, but also the managerial team for the department go into support services. For code, this piece of the pie is a little bit bigger than what you'll see in most other departments because this is also where we include the funding for the administrative hearing process that the code department has to try to [2:56:56 PM] avoid court cases. So that's why their support services is large here. Transfers and other requirements generally is where all those citywide cost allocations go. So we have citywide functions, mayor and council is one of those citywide functions, part of our support services fund, the budget office and other financial service programs, I.T. And human resources, those are all corporate functions that get allocated out through all of the [indiscernible] Departments. That's what goes into transfers and other requirements. Again, compared to some of the general fund departments you're going to see, it's higher here than it is for other departments because for the code compliance, part of their costs come from the Austin energy customer care and paying their fair share of the customer care fee, which is how they get their bills out to their customers and collect their revenue. So you'll see those support services, transfers and other requirements, across the [2:57:57 PM] department. I just want to give you a little context of why those are a little higher in Austin code than what you'll see in the other departments. Can we go to the next slide? So the next one is for the municipal court, with a proposed budget of $34.5 million, largely just a base cost driver budget, one and a half million dollars to pay for wage increases, so people can get a wage increase, being the largest driver there. You'll see under sources as I promised for this department, nearly 77% of their budget comes through tax support or basically non-fee revenue. This department does generate quite a bit of fee revenue through the fines that they collect, but it's not nearly enough to fully fund their operation. So 77% of their budget is funded through tax-supported revenue sources. Their revenue continues a downward trend, in 2021 we're projecting an [2:58:58 PM] $800,000 reduction in their revenue collections. That is part of a long-term trend over the last five years. We've seen significant drops in the number of citations that are coming through the municipal court, and we've seen about a $5.5 million drop in revenue over the last five years. Part of what's happening this year, though, is also as a result of covid, the court has extended the due dates for some of the fines and citations. That's part of what's playing into the revenue drop this year, and it's really more of a timing issue. The largest program in the municipal court is actually the downtown community court at 28% of the budget. That includes a significant amount of funding for homelessness services in the downtown court, part of the wraparound network of services for that community. Municipal court operations is next at 25%, and one other thing I'd mention on this slide [2:59:58 PM] is that the support services portion of this slide -- actually the Orange slice -- I noticed this, too, there is something to describe that Orange slice, that should be support services, and I think it's around 18, maybe 20% of the budget, but it's acting -- it shows up on this one, on the screen I'm looking at, it doesn't show up, so 20% of the budget is support services, and that's also a little bit higher than what you're going to see in our other departments because the least cost for their new facility is part of the support service costs here. We'll go on to emergency medical services. >> Flannigan: Let me jump in and say -- I know we're going to spend a lot of time on police so, councilmembers, if you have questions on these other departments, let's go ahead and do them now we did code. Municipal court. One point to clarify, Ed, I know folks in the public who sometimes believe the fees charged for tickets and other things are a source of revenue for the city, [3:00:59 PM] while technically correct, it doesn't actually cost-recover because you can see that even the municipal court is more than 75% subsidized by property taxes and sales taxes. Right? >> Cost recovery court services, let alone [indiscernible], no, it doesn't even come close. >> Flannigan: Common urban myth. >> Casar: Cheer on that point. How many millions of dollars did you say in the last five years did you say we've reduced that cost to people? >> Yeah, it's -- I'd have to do the math here -- I guess it was 13.4 million five years ago. So, yeah, 5.5 million drop to the current level of 7.9 million. Taking another look at it, people that think we have some kind of quotes or are writing citations to balance our budget, compared to a 1.1 billion-dollar general fund budget, it's not one of our major revenue [3:02:00 PM] sources. >> Flannigan: I've seen reports that's true in smaller towns, it's just not true here. All right. We're going to move on? >> Yeah, we can move on to ems. >> Flannigan: Ems. >> This is one of our larger general fund budgets, just short of a hundred million dollars, $96.9 million increase, $3.8 million, of course wage increases called for by the contract, as well as civilians as part of that increase. But also we're proposing to add 19 new paramedics in fiscal year 2021. 12 of those are needed for the opening of the Travis country fire ems station. You're going to see some firefighters in the budget also for that planned opening of the Travis country station in July of 2021. But here it's 12 positions, and then seven positions are for the additional community health care medics necessary, part of our Austin police department [3:03:00 PM] budget real indications as we are reducing the budget amount in police, this is one of the areas that we had proposed to increase funding, was for the community health paramedics to provide additional mental health first response services. Here you can see their tax support is a little bit lower, definitely lower than what you're going to see for fire and ems at 60.7% because they do generate a lot of revenue through fees that are assessed through their services, largely paid by insurance collection, but Travis county has to pay for part of that 37.7%, revenue offset. We notice over on the revenue line item a $2.9 million rubrics that has to do with what's called the federal uncompensated care program so when people can't pay their bills, there's a federal support funding which has been going downward for [3:04:03 PM] several years. Operation, which is our first responders, paramedics going out to emergency medical calls, 65% of the budget. Emergency communications is down there, the purple slice is roughly 7% of the budget. I won't reiterate that support services and other requirements. Building services, collecting -- sending the bills out and collecting the revenue from insurance companies, about 2% of our ems you budget. Any questions on this one? We'll move to fire whenever people are ready. >> Flannigan: Council member alter? >> Alter: So this isn't so much of a question, although if there's movement on it, I'd welcome staff's comments. I wanted to just flag for my colleagues that, you know, as I'm thinking about reimagining public safety, for me that also goes much beyond police, and I think we have some opportunities to make [3:05:04 PM] sure that we are delivering the best quality services to our community. I am working on a potential amendment that would create a chief medical officer, so that right now we have our local health authority and we have our medical officer, kind of merging that so that you have a chief medical officer that is over clinical reporting for a broader set of folks. That would then be coupled with a proposal that has been proposed by the office of the medical director for, I think, three years now but never been brought to the attention of council, which would be adding staff. And these two things combined have the potential for us to be able to really rethink the ability of our existing medical personnel to help us to do some preventative [3:06:04 PM] care, help us to deal with that $50, you know, in-grown toenail without sending an ambulance. Now that we have we imagined what telehealth looks like, I think this is something that is very doable this year. In addition, there's some changes under foot at the federal level that would allow us to be able to be billing on some of this stuff. Signed my current estimates are for about a million dollars, we could do this, and there may be opportunities to do this from fees not general fund. So I just wanted to flag that, if there are others who are interested in thinking about that. And then the other thing that I wanted to flag is that there are some concerns about access to ambulances in central Austin and some of the shortages that we've been experiencing, which again are somewhat a function of extending wrong instrument out. [3:07:05 PM] And this proposal would help address that. But there are also issues where we probably may need to think about more ambulances or some on had of demand ambulances to address a situation in central Austin that's pulling ambulances from everywhere else. So I'm going to be looking at that as well. >> Flannigan: Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: One of the things that I'm interested in seeing if there's a route for this and I know that others are looking into this, too, so I'd like to collaborate with other efforts on this, and that is the addition of -- the addition of chips, community health paramedics, that can particularly be of assistance with homeless individuals through the host or some other kind of program like that. I think that that's [3:08:05 PM] important, that we need additional emphasis in that area. And I also see the ability for additional chips, community health paramedics, to also be available and to help with the mental health diversion program, the first response. I think that what's in the proposed budget is really good for the first response, but I want us to be sure that if we find -- I mean, there's some concern that we may need additional community health paramedics for that program, and so I'll get to think about a route towards that, as well as chips that can assist with homelessness, and there may be some synergies across that. So I put that out there just to say for my colleagues, if there are others working on programs for additional community health paramedics in the ems budget, I'd be happy to [3:09:06 PM] have a conversation about that. >> Flannigan: Council member Casar? >> Casar: We know a lot of our city staff are on the front line and working really hard during the pandemic, probably almost more than anyone are our medics are on the front line of this. Do we have things we're putting into this budget to immediately start alleviating some portion of that workload or expanding the amount of time we can put out there to deal with not just covid-19 but paramedics having to deal with everything going on plus covid-19? >> Nothing beyond -- we have ems people on the line and they could maybe respond to that too, but nothing beyond what's to this slide and the 19 new positions for the community health paramedics and opening of the new Travis country station, which will include a 24-hour fire unit. But beyond that, nothing I can -- >> Casar: Some portion of -- do you have which portion of those 19 we actually intend on hiring [3:10:07 PM] anytime within the next few months? >> Well, the 12 for Travis country, that's not supposed to open until July, so -- some of it's going to depend, too, on the timing of the cadet classes and when they graduate, unless there's somebody from ems online who knows the timing of those classes, I'm going to have to get back to you on that. >> Casar: It sounds like something for us to keep thinking about, given bringing people on next July and what they're dealing with now, something for us to be discussing in the budget. >> Flannigan: Jasper, did you want to add to that real quick? >> Only to say that this year we'll be opening up the del valle station, the ftes weren't available until June, but we still staffed the station on the day it was opened. The 12 medics, boat clinical specialists and medics, we hire in the next cadet class usually after a station opening. [3:11:07 PM] >> Casar: And so do we know when that would be for those 12? >> Opening in July of '21, we probably would do August or September academy for those positions, and depending on our overall position needs, it could be in July also. It just depends what the needs are at that moment in time with our openings. >> Casar: So you mean you could start a class this year in order to hire those people next year in the summer. So you mentioned some months, but I lost track of which months those were. >> I'm sorry. For next year, if those positions are approved, we would hire those in July or August of '21, but we would staff the station with existing personnel come July, as soon as these stations open and we can be inside it. >> Casar: That's really helpful. I think the point then holds that as we think about what council amendments are appropriate in the [3:12:08 PM] budget, finding ways to make sure that we have enough ambulances and medics, given the current surge, if we aren't bringing new staff or new resources to the table soon, I think that's just a conversation we should have with ems and with the dais and the community. Thanks, chair. >> Flannigan: Council member harper-madison, did you have something to add for that? >> Harper- madison: Yes, I really appreciate getting chewed up in that way. I think the last two councilmembers who expressed councilmembers and concerns, I have the exact same concern, so much so that I really do full like after hearing some of the direct accounts of medics, that we are in an emergent situation, if we find ourselves in a situation where we just don't have enough ambulances to respond in an appropriate amount of time, like council member alter said, you know, public safety definitely goes well beyond our law enforcement considerations, you know, response times are of the utmost importance when we're talking about [3:13:08 PM] medics, being able to respond. I heard a tale of a medic who had to drive 21 miles a couple of weeks ago to respond to a call, which I'm not an ems professional, but I'm assuming that is absolutely inappropriate and unacceptable. And if there's something that we need to do prior to the adoption of this budget to make that happen faster, then I'd like very much for this committee and the folks on the line who represent ems to have a longer, more emergent conversation. Along those lines, though, I wanted to ask about hazard pay. And to determine whether or not this is something we need to address with this budget, something we need to address prebudget, recognizing that our first responders aren't receiving hazard pay troubles me. [3:14:10 PM] >> So, council member, if I might just respond and say certainly that's a conversation to be had with the city manager in that regard. I know that we've certainly been seeing the feedback from certain council, as well as the community, and the association. So we are having a follow-up meeting with the association presidents and certainly would welcome your comments with the city manager. >> Harper- madison: I'd like very much to be included in those conversations and we kept abreast of movement transpiring. I think most of my colleagues would probably degree. One other question or concern I'd like to daylight is back when Dr. Escott was exclusively our medical director, I've been seeing other departments across the nation have similar conversations about disparities in dispatch, including, you know, like my colleague brought up earlier, deploying the wrong [3:15:11 PM] resource for various calls, and so I just wonder if there's -- I don't see any consideration here specifically, or explicitly, rather, about dispatch, about us needing to really dig deep and overhaul our dispatch systems. So where would that fall in this pie chart? Operations? >> So, council member, it's a combination of operations here within the ems department, as well as with the office of medical direction with Dr. Escott involved. I'll say that council did provide us with funding in the current year to conduct a dispatch equity and optimization study. It has taken, admittedly, some time to get a request for proposals on the street for a consultant to help us with that study. But that's where it would be occurring. And I will say that along the way, Dr. Escott, as well as with chief Rodriguez and the -- andthe ems department have [3:16:16 PM] looked at how they can better approve dispatch as far as how the calls come in and so forth. >> Harper- madison: Real quick, in the interest of time, I don't want to belabor the issue, but I'm trying to figure out, when you say it has taken quite a bit of time, what's the delay? >> So it took us some time to put together the scope of work. We had a good group of stakeholders that included [indiscernible] Presidents, as well as some members from the public safety commission, to finalize that worker, and then it then became an issue in response to covid-19. It has taken a little while to get responses in, but we do have those responses now, and we're in the process of evaluating proposals. >> Harper-madison: Any idea about when we can expect some resolution there? >> I'd be glad to follow up on that question. I'm not sure where they are [3:17:17 PM] in the evaluation of proposals. >> Harper-madison: Okay. I'd appreciate that very much. Thank you. And one last question. You may not be able to speak for the city manager directly, but have you, yourself, or do you know whether or not the city manager is meeting directly with the ems folks, the union folks specifically? >> I know that the request has come to the city manager for that, to meet with -- associations to meet with the manager and me, and so we're setting up that meeting. I'm not sure when it's scheduled for, but I'm certain it's going to be pretty soon. >> Harper-madison: Okay. I can imagine you also share my concerns about that being something that needs to happen sooner than later. >> Flannigan: Council member alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I just wanted to kind of underscore council member harper-madison's comments and council member Casar's, which raised [3:18:19 PM] earlier. I am concerned about whether we are doing everything we can to make adjustments to meet the needs of our ems personnel who are bei asked to do a tremendous job at this point in time with covid. We spoke last week, we're speaking again today. I do have some ideas on that score of things that we can do, and I'm hopeful that the city manager's office will seriously consider those, and if not, I will likely try and bring the resolution forward to address some of -- some of the issues that we're seeing. I think there's some easy fixes. I think we have -- for once, we have -- while there's challenges from covid, there are changes afoot at the federal level in terms of funding opportunities that may allow us to make some changes I think that would address multiple [3:19:20 PM] goals that we have at once, and I'd like to see us be creative and take advantage of this opportunity and recognize the need to take some action for our medics and also to make sure that we're delivering the kind of service that our community expects in terms of ambulance availability, et cetera. So I look forward to continuing those conversations. >> Flannigan: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Yeah, thank you. I think that is really important conversation around availability of ambulances, and I appreciate those who have raised this issue and made us aware of some of the challenges, especially in recent weeks. But this isn't a new issue, really, and I want to ask, Mr. Arellano, we're working on submitting some questions that would really help us understand -- understand what the -- what the data shows us. Likely, there are some situations where ambulances are being [3:20:21 PM] deployed and may not be the resource that needs to go out, but we also were made aware a while back of some information that shows the shifts that take place with some regulator which get to the point that council member alter started with, that often downtown and central Austin, there are needs down there that require the shifting of ambulances from other areas. And so, again, we're working on pulling together some questions for the Q and a that would help us understand that. But I think that's the challenge that we don't always see in the data. We don't necessarily see how often those shifts are necessary to really need the needs, especially of downtown, and how often ambulances from other areas are coming downtown to manage the substantial caseload down there. >> Flannigan: Council member Ellis. >> Ellis: Thank you. I appreciate council member alter bringing up [3:21:22 PM] the situation about number of ambulances, and my office will reach out to yours to see if you still have subquorum space to talk about that. As someone who represents the Travis country area, we're very excited to of a new fire and ems station because of the slow response rates. Oftentimes ambulances are lent into central Austin and then they don't come back to southwest. So that's part of the agreement, is particularly useful, because we want to make sure everybody has a quick response time. So we're certainly talking to the association and trying to make sure that they not only have the personnel that's needed to make sure that ems professionals can have a mental health day if they need it, especially during covid, have the ambulance and equipment that they need, and also the ppe, the protective equipment, we're trying to make sure that they have enough equipment to make sure that they are protecting themselves through this time especially. So I wanted to make sure that you knew that my office was working on [3:22:23 PM] that as well so that anyone who needs an extra partner in this, we're happy to lend an extra voice and some eleven to try to sort through these issues and get the proper supplies and materials that ems is asking for at this time. >> Flannigan: So I think a lot of us are interested in seeing some changes in the ems portion of this budget, and, ray, I hope that you take this as a way to work with council offices on this. Many of us are having parallel conversations, and it would probably be less effective if we all -- if three or four of us brought different ideas. So if we can find a way to facilitate collaboration on how to move this forward, I think that would be valuable. And I do want to reiterate council member alter's point about changes at the federal level, and we've certainly talked to congressman Doggett's office to try to push through some of those changes that would increase the revenue side [3:23:24 PM] of ems. And council member tovo talked about ambulances being sent to things that may not need to be ambulances. I'm very interested in our next slide that we're sending, fire devices to things that maybe you could send an ambulance to, since you can't get a fire device reimbursed in a revenue sense. Any other questions on the ems slide before we move on? Ray -- oh, then the last thing, I think the Travis country station is one that's pretty -- pretty on the edge, it's -- is it in the etj? Or is it right just inside? >> No, it's off of 290 and mopac. >> Flannigan: Okay. So I'm thinking of a different station then? >> Likely. I know there's one in oak hill. There may be another one beyond that. But there's stations off of 360 that are just outside of the city of Austin and a couple others ems might be able to comment on particular -- >> Flannigan: I don't even know that we need to distract this conversation too much longer, but I have concerns about the agreement being inequitable on Austin [3:24:24 PM] taxpayers since we can no longer annex, I think that disparate only increases over time. Something to consider maybe in the future. Go ahead, chair. >> This is chief brown. We don't have an autoaid agreement. We have an Ila with Travis county that they pay for ambulances in the county, but those ambulances are used throughout the system. They travel into Austin. There's no restriction on where they go. >> Flannigan: When is the Ila renewed? >> This fall. In October it'll come before council. >> Flannigan: All right. So let's plan some early year conversations about the content of that Ila before it shows up on a council meeting, if we could, please. Let's move on to fire. >> Yes, sir. Fire, we proposed a budget with the fire department, $14.2 million increase for fiscal year 2021. I think that comes to 6.6%. Nearly half of that has to do with 6.5 million of [3:25:25 PM] that has to do with a true-up to personnel costs, based upon a new costing model that the budget office has collaborated on with the fire department. We also brought the fire association into that discussion, and I think we have a much better model for projecting personnel costs. But we have had some problems in recent years. Kind of goes back to fiscal year '19 where the department had estimated some savings that ultimately were not realized, which effected the fy20 budget and is causing shortfalls in the current budget. So we really need to get on top of this, make sure that we don't continue to of that problem. And I think we're there. I think with the new model we've developed and working closely with everybody at the table, I think we have a more robust model that's going to allow us to do a better job with this in the future. In order to true the personnel costs up from where it is to where it needs to be, we have [3:26:28 PM] included six and a half million dollars in the budget for that. The cost increases, the wage increase is the single biggest cost driver. You can see over on the staffing side, 21 positions, 16 of those positions are for the [indiscernible] Sifted there was country station which will be open in July. That leaves another five. Those other five positions, along with the six civilians, the combined eleven positions are for the [indiscernible], that will be going into place in the fiscal year 21 budget. There are costs to that, net costs to those positions initially in the fiscal year 21 budget, but as we look further down the road and that program fully gets rolling, we do anticipate that it'll be fully or at least largely offset by revenue that's for the code inspection fees. We can see under the sources, not a big surprise, the fire department charging fees for services, 94.5% of their revenue comes from [3:27:29 PM] tax support. Only $11.8 million in revenue total, with that largely coming on the inspection side, the various permits and inspections they do. That's $2.3 million higher this year, and that is partly being driven by the new code inspection program, implementation of that code. For people that don't know, I apologize, it's a reliable supervise code. Wui, or wui. Any questions for fire before we go on to police? >> No, but I love hearing Ed say wui. >> Flannigan: (Laughing) Council member alter, did you have -- >> Alter: Yeah, I'll probably have more to say when I've had a chance to dig deeper into this budget. I'm pleased to see the wui code included, and implementation. I think that's an important step. There are some additional [3:28:30 PM] elements that we had asked them to do when we passed the wui code that may require some budgeting. I'm a little frustrated that they put that report off so we get the information three days before budget, and perhaps we can expedite that information so that if we need to make further adjustments on their responses, we -- we, you know, could do that. And there was that -- I do want to point out for my colleagues that I think that there's some -- this budget for fire is somewhat frustrating because they have known about problems with overtime for quite some time. We are only seeing this on our agenda for the first time in July, and we're being asked for, I think, a $5 million amendment to address, that's five million dollars we can't spend on other things. And there's a lot of back story here and a lot of [3:29:32 PM] other things, but I do think that we need to be more forthcoming with council when there are decisions and choices that need to be made. This overage was identified back in, like, December and it is now July. And I have spoken privately with the city manager and others, but I think, you know, as we're approaching this budget amendment on the agenda, et cetera, I think that we do need better accountability and more details on what happened and how it's being prevented from happening again. >> Council member, if I may -- and again, council member alter, you and I have had some conversations on this as well, and I appreciate the need for increased transparency, and to give a heads-up, certainly in a more formal way to council as we start to approach these -- these limits, so to speak. There will be a memo that [3:30:32 PM] does provide more detail in terms of what occurred since December, and that should be coming out in the next day or so. >> Flannigan: Council member alter. >> Alter: And I appreciate that that's coming out in the next day or so, but I've been asking about this for months and have been told this memo was coming and coming, and, you know, we are responsible for a budget, and that transparency is really important, and I don't think this was handled in the most transparent way. And it concerns me greatly. >> Flannigan: There's a lot of work, I think, to do on fire, and myself and a few others, council member alter, have worked a lot trying to dig into the details on fire, to initiate the efficiency study with ems. We just have some public safety resources built that no longer match the types of public safety needs that the community [3:31:34 PM] has. And there are some good reasons to that, but a lot of work to dig into here. If there aren't in I -- aren't anyfurther questions on fire, I think we can move into police. There's a lot to dig into, obviously, on the police budget. And I also want the public to know that, you know, how we work through this between now and budget adoption in August is not the entirety of the work. I'm certainly willing to do more than what is in the manager's proposed budget, but I am also not looking at this as an annual debate. I think we're going to -- we need to figure out beyond the details we dig into today, we need to figure out, ray, if you want to engage with Spencer in this conversation, what is the series of budget amendments we can plan moving forward, so we can -- as much as we can get done in August, it would be great for us and the public to know that we're going to come back in November and we're [3:32:35 PM] going to do motorcycles -- do more,and come back in February and do more. Some of the stuff we'll daylight is doable fast, some will require more work to roll up, but I don't think it's something to punt into the next budget cycle, it's going to be something that council is going to want to continue working through. So I just wanted to set that up before Ed gives us the high-level view, and then on police, we've got additional slides as we get into the details. Ed, why don't you take it away. >> All right. So we're on the police slide here, and $434.3 million budget proposed for fiscal year 21, which is a $200,000 reduction from fiscal year '20. I'm going to pause because before this meeting I had a conversation with council member harper-madison, I'm going to try to explain this number and how it relates to the numbers that maybe you've [3:33:35 PM] heard, put something together in writing to make it easy to track. When we GOP a budget, we start with the fiscal year 20 budget, then we have to add things to that for the wage increase. The page increase for a large department like police alone, the 2% wage increase was a little more than 5 and a half million. The $6 million range. On top of that, as part of the police staffing, we anticipated adding 30 officers. So those two things, that's the primary cost driver. There are also some small fluctuations. But budget increases doing nothing different, just taking the fiscal year '20 budget in plating it for wages and cost drivers was $7.9 million more. It was at that point, from that base cost budget when council passed a resolution on June 11th that said, hey, we want to make some changes to the police department budget, we don't want to add those 30 positions that were part of the base budget and we want you to eliminate positions that can't be filled and we [3:34:35 PM] want you to delay the July cadet academy. So those three actions pulled 11.3 million. So we started with a budget that went up 7.9, then from there we cut out 11.3 million based upon council's direction. Then as we were looking, okay, we just cut 11.3 million out of the department's budget, when we were looking for places to put those dollars based upon the resolution, two of the areas we're recommending is $2.3 million to start the replacement of the department's antiquated record management system. We've already heard some records issues here and we're -- our belief is that a big part of that problem is the 15-year-old very limited in its capability record management system. So that would be part of it. Then $900,000, the resolution specifically called out doing more racial and cultural sensitivity training, more informed response training, and training on the use and distribution [3:35:36 PM] of [indiscernible] For drug overdoses. So we put $900,000 in the budget to allow those additional trainings to occur, that was back in the police department budget. So that was a total -- we started with 7.9 million increase, cut 11.3 million from that, and following some of the recommendations of the resolution and other reports, proposed putting 3.2 million back into the police department budget, albeit for very different purposes. So that's the map on how you get to a $200,000 reduction. We'll put that in writing just to make it clear to everybody in the community who's looking at some of these numbers and scratching their head on it. You can see under the positions that the 70 positions is a reduction from the fiscal year '20 budget. So, again, think about fy22 we added more positions to it based on the police staffing plan, so normally, but for the council resolutions and all the testimony we heard from the community calling for change, that [3:36:37 PM] would have been additional, so a hundred from what we were going to add to the number that we actually cut. And, again, that's the number that we estimate cannot reasonably be filled. We currently have, I believe, 170 sworn positions, you know, and giving the timing of cadet classes and et cetera, we're predicting 70 positions won't be filled at the end of the fiscal year so that's what we put out in the budget. Almost totally tax-supported department, 97.4% supported through non-fee revenues. And you can see there a small down tick in there being driven by fewer alarm permits. The bulk of their budgets, 48.5%, just shy of 50%, is for the neighborhood-based policing. Essentially any next slides, I just drill down into these pie pieces a little bit so I won't belabor it too much. But 48.5, you can see the neighborhood-based [3:37:37 PM] politician, that's 200, and $10.6 million, that's predominantly for patrol activities and patrol support, including regional patrol downtown and airport police as part of that activity. Just for the sake of time, I'm not going to read it all, it's there as a resource for you, but I would highlight this is where the specialized control and planning, park police, lake control, mounted control, we've heard some questions coming from councilmembers about these specialized patrol, if the police department is the best place for them or if they should be in the department they're providing services to. So just wanted to highlight that one for you here. And we'll go through the next three and go to questions. But for the operation support activity, total budget here of -- program, we call this a program, $64.7 million, the biggest piece there includes the strategic support activity, which includes record management, crime [3:38:37 PM] analysis, their booking services are here, communications is the 911 call-takers, providing services to all three public safety departments, the individuals that dispatch police officers as part of communications. You can see the forensics lab here, part of special operations, swat team, k-9 units, victims services, a really important function. Here there are almost 5% of the total $64.7 million support, but these individuals provide the psychological and emotional needs not only for victims and families in the community that have been traumatized, but also for our first responders to those events. Then finally our air operations, our helicopter unit is based off the op support. Go on to investigations. There's only two here, [3:39:37 PM] that kind of speaks for itself, 62.6 million for our investigation unit, which, you know, we've got some specialized areas, we've got a homicide unit, domestic violence unit, sex crimes, child abuse, robbery, and then other smaller units. So our investigations, organized crime focuses on work related to narcotics, gang suppression activities, firearms, human trafficking are done out of our organized crime unit. Then finally dinged this is my last real slide -- $8.8 million for professional standards, which is where training and internal affairs and recruiting activities are. I didn't drill down on support services and transfers and other requirements, it's essentially the same types of things that I talked about in the other departments. Maybe we could just put the last slide up, council member, just because it's not a website on it that if there's anybody in the community who wants additional information, you can go to our [3:40:41 PM] speakupaustin.org website, get access to the budget and more information on how to participate in the process as we head towards budget adoption on August 12th, 13th, and 14th. >> Flannigan: Great. So thank you, Ed. So I've got the slides here. If councilmembers ask questions, I can jump back and forth back and forth to different slides if you want them pulled up. This was a chart in the Austin monitor that shows the year that we, as an accounting measure, went to this transfers category. I've seen some community conversation about why did the police budget jump up so much in fy15. It wasn't that there was a huge additional investment in police, it was basically how departments were being accounted for as a budget measure. So this was in the monitor recently, and I think it's a good sign to show there was not some big investment in police [3:41:42 PM] in 2015, it was just about accounting and how dollars were allocated. But I wanted to show that. Councilmembers, do you have questions? Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: Ed, you mentioned the 7.9 was -- >> Garza: Ed, you mentioned 7.9 was cost drivers. Is that purely sworn stuff because of contracts or is it a mix of contracts -- excuse me -- and the proposed increase for non-sworn and -- what exactly is that 7.9? >> That's a mix. The 7.9 was partly the cost of those 30 officers that we were going to add and didn't add, but it's also the 2% per contract for officers and the 2% that staff is proposing for civilians, then there's other provisions in the contract like step increases that cost additional money every budget. So it's basically those three things, the vast majority of that 7.9 million, base budget [3:42:43 PM] increase. >> Garza: But it's purely personnel. It's wages; right? >> I won't say purely, but say 95%, yes, ma'am. >> Garza: Okay. And with regards to the records management -- and please correct me, anybody, if I'm wrong about the -- I think that's in response to the report about the documents going missing. I thought, and I could be wrong, that was about more like an H.R. Kind of function, like -- I guess if somebody had been reprimanded for something -- or maybe I'm totally off, but -- >> Yeah, maybe I can turn to the chief on that, I want to provide some context. I know when I was briefing all the councilmembers and talking about the record management system I'm kind of understanding now the record management system is not in conflict with the Tatum report but there's other reasons for the record management system and other limitations that we really do feel we need to [3:43:44 PM] replace it for Alamo better transparency and more quality records. I think I misspoke a bit when I was speaking to councilmembers and saying it had to do with the report. >> Mayor pro tem I'll jump in for just a moment on that one. Yes, the records management system is the core function where we write all of the offense reports for all of the calls that officers respond to, and then it's the repository for all of that data, such as who was involved, when did it happen, where did it happen, that allows us to do all of that analysis. The Tatum report was more hitting on how we were storing documents, mostly related to internal affairs investigations. So so it's difference from the icmu database which is separate from our management system. What this is is we've got a system that is roughly 15 years old and over the years they've put out patches and updates and improvements, but we're at the point now to where we need to look at the system itself because there's so much new technology out there that [3:44:44 PM] will afford us so many more opportunities to analyze our data to really dig into some of the issues that we're talking about when we talk about disparities and disproportion national outcomes and a lot of the data that is not captured in the current system that limits our abilities at times to do that deeper analysis. >> Okay. So that is different than what I guess -- how that was explained to us before. But it is important for us to be able to -- [inaudible]. I'm supportive of that, but I'm still concerned about the -- how we have an overall reduced -- have reduced APD's budget. Those the questions that -- point that you made, chair Flannigan, about showing a path to reduction that it may not all happen. I guess I'm more on the side [3:45:46 PM] of seeing a dramatic reduction and then having check-ins along the way just to hold our feet to the fire as we're moving forward. That's what I -- that's the side I would prefer to be on is more significant -- seeing more significant cuts and then assessing as we move down the road into the year. >> Thanks, mayor pro tem. I think we're roughly on the same place with that. Just you're using slightly different words is the only difference. Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: There's been a conversation for some time now about moving forensics out of the APD and making it its own independent operation. Did we end up getting a final recommendation on that? And what would be the -- what would be the challenges or benefits associated with getting that done in this budget? [3:46:47 PM] >> So councilmember, if I can take a swing at that. As you know, we were take -- there's a group taking a look at the DNA lab specifically, which is a part of the forensics science bureau. We're almost at the end of the that process, having gone through the working group and now poised to do a briefing for the civilian advisory working group that council put in place and after which we will bring to the council that final report and be positioned to have a briefing for the public safety committee. So I think there certainly is an interest in at least for the lab itself to be separate as we've heard if are the womb we've been talking about on this working group and would be applied to the forensic bureau in total. I think it's something that needs to be looked at in a thoughtful way. Certainly you could say here it is today and there it is tomorrow, but that doesn't necessarily address how are those connections made? [3:47:48 PM] Where do we need to be thoughtful about making those changes. So the certainly there's also a change management perspective. Even something as potential as hr management, hr expertise within APD requires some thoughtful review before you make a change so certainly this is an area and the forensic science bureau, to take a look at that is an opportunity potentially for the mid -- a mid-year budget change to effectuate that kind of a change. That's where I would say that particular initiative S. >> Casar: And when are you planning on bringing that report to council? You named about three steps. When were those timelines in? >> So we're scheduling -- in the process of scheduling the advisory panel briefing. It's likely going to be at this juncture in August. Once that is done, then we'll make a -- we'll release a report to council [3:48:49 PM] in its entirety and then schedule the public safety meeting so that would be August, potentially septemberish depending on the public safety committee's agenda. >> Casar: Sounds good. And then as it relates to internal affairs. It's again something that's been discussed. I know there might be legal challenges. So the we looked at whether internal affairs appropriately fits within the police department or if it could fit outside of it? Do we know if there are legal barriers associated with that? >> Again, these are areas, and particularly for the internal affairs, where we need to really take a comprehensive look at what might be involved. We were mentioning potentially legal challenges that might have limitations as well. So that would be a longer lead item, I dare say. What our intent is as we -- the core leadership team, as we look at how we might get to that path that I think the path is talking about, what are the things that we can consider early on that [3:49:52 PM] we can bring forward and what are some of the other things potentially like in internal affairs that might require a little bit more in-depth study before we make a recommendation? >> Casar: Sounds good. This isn't a question, but maybe a request for folks. If we could get the budget number of what the impact would be if we didn't hire patrol positions in the same way that we are hiring lots of civilian positions right now and we're in a budget freeze on those, it would be really helpful to know what the impact to budget of that would be? Do you have that worked up? It's okay if you haven't. Just wanted to check. >> No, we have not run those numbers yet. I think it's a a little different on police because of how the cadet academy works. If the we're going to recruit for a position and hire it two months later. Based on the cadet class, and chief Manley might be [3:50:54 PM] able to help me with this. I think we're delaying the July cadet class, the next one is November, March of 2021 and maybe another one in July of 2021. So it's really a matter of are we going to do those cadet classes or not and a seven month process to graduate roughly 65 individuals. It's not the same as a hiring freeze. It's a little different because we have to make a decision in mass if we're going to hire the cadet class enhas. If we're going to do it we need to do that. >> It would be useful to know the cost of those three classes. >> >> I believe off the cuff, the cadet class costs us two million dollars to run for the wages of the cadets and the cost of the training associated with that and of course once they graduate it's roughly $100,000 per new officer. [3:51:55 PM] >> Flannigan: So Ed, you're very good at providing information to council offices and you've shared with my office kind of a line item from fiscal year '20. I'm looking forward to seeing it for the proposed budget. It provides additional level of detail beyond a powerpoint slide. Some of the areas that I'm interested in -- I want to start with this. We know that there are state laws that require sworn staff to be managed by sworn department heads. So -- but I don't think those state laws require the budgets to be managed by the sworn leadership. I think you can have different leadership in charge of the budget than you have in charge of the operations as defined in state law. And again the governor has made it very clear we should be seek outing every loophole that we should find in state law to the benefit of our community so I am taking that it to heart. So there are some things that we can change that I [3:52:57 PM] think are incredibly substantive and then I think there are budget changes kind of to the mayor pro tem's point, budget changes we can make now that shift which civilian leadership is in charge of moving that area forward. And it would be a budget change we could make now. The areas that jump out to me would be traffic enforcement. We have a transportation department and it would be interesting to -- it would be possible for the council to just amend the budget and mover the traffic enforcement line item over to the transportation department while also acknowledging that the management of sworn staff have to be done by sworn leadership. That's fine. That's two different things. There are line items for park police and lake patrol. When I look at line items related to communications -- these are significant, right? Like the traffic enforcement in the fy20 budget was almost 20 million. [3:53:58 PM] The communications are almost 20 million when you add up all the communications parts. And it doesn't seem that much of the communications is sworn. It seems like most of it is civilian. So what would it look like to have a -- could that be moved over say to ctm or should there be a separate department, a department of emergency communications that is part homeland security, that is part fire and ems communications that might be better positioned to work in a regional level. I sit on the capcog board, which is also the regional emergency communications district if I have the name right, which allocates the fees that people see on their phone bills to 911 communications. We don't have a single department that does 911. It's spread across multiple departments. So what would it mean to shift those around into an emergency communications department that could then have metrics specifically focused on changes to dispatch. Just moving traffic enforcement over to the transportation department might also change the metrics that we're using to measure the staff that [3:54:58 PM] operate under that line item where I feel like what we're seeing and what the community is saying and what I think we're repeating is that we want to shift from punitive enforcement to protect, support and comply. And there are ideas that can shift how we manage safety on our roads that might benefit from the transportation department being a partner in that conversation in a way they aren't now. Those are an idea that I think are doable in an August budget because injury just essentially adding a different department head to the internal staff conversation and by the time you add all those things up you really are coming up on 100 million. Kind of sooner than you think. That's the type of stuff that I'm looking for, that I'm looking to offer as budget amendments. So when we see the fy21 line [3:55:59 PM] item version, which I'm sure the public will also want to see, so staff you can decide if you want to publish that or if you want me to publish that on the message board. >> We've been asked to provide that through a budget question and that will be done in the next day or two. >> Flannigan: Beautiful. So I think there's some really good stuff in there. And then there are parts of that line item that I wonder how we might have the conversation about efficacy, like mounted patrol. We're hearing a lot of community conversation on mounted patrol and the role that it plays. There was an item on an agenda previously that we postponed about spending additional dollars for mounted patrol support. I'm wondering if that's a necessary expenditure. You start -- I'm curious, air support is two million. I'm wondering if that is the type of operation that needs to be done just through APD or maybe we could be looking at a regional partnership through capcog with other jurisdictions that might [3:57:00 PM] like to use air support in the few times that it's necessary. So I'm hopeful that we can use the budget amendment process to shift in more civilian leadership over budgets areas, like traffic enforcement and communications, that will shift the significant portion of this budget over while there's also a lot of work to be done on the patrol part of the budget, this 48.5% neighborhood policing where in the line item brings it out by region, breaks it out by command area and you can see the numbers get kind of small by comparison. I can look at region 2 Adam, which is even bringer than my council district. My council district is smaller than region 2 Adam. And all of the line item for region 2 Adam in the fiscal year 20 budget was just 14 million. So when you start breaking it down by parts of town you start to see that it's not [3:58:01 PM] 434 million of officers patrolling the community, it gets more complicated. And there might be areas that I'm looking at increasing like -- what was the the one? I lost my place. Investigations. Where there might be value in increased resources for investigations. Certainly on sexual assault, which many of my colleagues have worked on, but maybe in other areas. We are a growing city. That means that some of these incidents of crime are going to increase and we may want more investigation. So that's kind of where my head is at. All right. So I want to get all the community members first and move on -- committee members first and we'll move on. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I think you may have answered this. I just want to confirm. So the three cadet classes that you mentioned, the budget -- current proposed budget includes both the cost of those three classes plus the personnel that would be included to go [3:59:02 PM] through those three classes, is that correct? And those classes were in the fall and in the spring and next summer. Is that correct? >> Yes. The budget would include the funding to run those cadet passes and then to the extent that the cadet would be graduating to officer during the year, we would include the funding to allow that to happen. But I would defer to chief Manley and chief gay if I have it right that that is when the cadet classes would be planned -- >> That's a good estimation, Ed. What we look to do is about every four months start that next class. So assuming we get one started in November, your timeline was correct. >> Kitchen: I think that councilmember Casar already asked for this, but I would like the dollar amounts associated with each of those classes, both the class part of it and the staffing part of it. [4:00:08 PM] >> I think chair Flannigan, you asked my other question, which was really related to dispatch. And there was some conversation about that earlier. I hear you talking about perhaps a department of emergency communications, which would put all that in togeer. Which I think is something of interest going forward. So that answers my other question except that I was a bit confused because there was some conversation earlier, rey, about -- maybe I was misunderstanding it about some analysis. I thought that was related to dispatch, but maybe I was misunderstanding. >> I think you heard it correctly. Again, based on the proposal the manager made in current year fy20 we're looking to take a closer look at dispatch equity and optimization and so we're just in the process -- I got an update that the proposal is going to be evaluated on the 31st of July. >> And when you say [4:01:09 PM] dispatch, maybe I'm lumping two things together. Is dispatch different than the call center and the call takers? >> It is not. I'm using a generic term in terms of dispatch that includes call taking as well. And this is really to look at fire and ems dispatch and call taking. >> So it's not looking at police, fire and ems. >> No. This is to look at fire and ems. >> Kitchen: Okay. So I would be interested in -- I actually see this as -- I see this as an opportunity to put these together because I see that in particular from a call take perspective that when someone calls in that we need to be talking about police, fire, ems or mental health. Depending on what is needed. So the taller has the options of all four. So truly from my perspective it argues for some consolidation or coordination of those. So I like the concept that [4:02:12 PM] you were suggest, councilmember Flannigan. I'll follow up with you. Rey, if we're going to get information about dispatch just for fire and ems, I would like to think about how that is expand understand terms of what analysis needs to be done for police. >> Flannigan: Other questions? Well, I think there's a lot of work to be done here. And this is an important question that the community has made some very specific requests. But I think we're also acknowledging that we can -- we can do more than what the manager's budget proposed because I think the coupe is more willing to use the budget as a leading indicator for change as opposed to wait until you've developed the full solution and then change the budget. I think we have to do it the [4:03:12 PM] other way around. But I understand why the manager and the staff would do it the way they did it. Also, Ed, would you verify this slide that we have up where it says sworn with the minus 70. I know you said it, but I want to put a kind of period on the end of a sentence. That's not firing 70 officers. Right? >> No, sir. Those are currently vacant positions. >> Flannigan: Right. And even reducing by 70 there are still how many vacant positions in the proposed budget. >> In the neighborhood of [indiscernible] In the cadet classes that we're talking about. >> Flannigan: Right. I'm also interested in maybe rethinking how we treat vacant positions, and rather than having vacant positions be sallied that then get [4:04:12 PM] spent in overtime, which I remember correctly that's generally how it's done or I'm remembering it wrong? It's different in different departments. I can't remember. >> It's different in different departments. An important thing to consider is that we do also budget what we call a vacant say savings amount. So as council looks at the vacant positions and maybe guide you want to reduce more vacant positions you have to keep in mind that we have budgeted in excess of $12 million, somewhere in that neighborhood, $12 million of vacancy savings. That's a negative number. We actually budget a negative dollar amount for vacancy savings because we know they have a lot of vacant positions and that they won't fully expend those dollars during the year. So that's just part of the calculus that you will need to be prepared for that some of these further reductions in vacancies, if that's where you wanted to go, won't have the same savings that you might expect because of that vacancy savings dynamic that we [4:05:12 PM] essentially already try to budget for. >> Flannigan: I find that the vacancies are less the issue because they're more a factor of how quickly and effectively we can recruit and train. What I'm hearing from the community is we need to be investing in alternative solutions. So the public doesn't even see that part of the sausage making where we're independently authorizing the number of sworn and the dollar numbers. So you get into this accounting line items situation. Councilmember kitchen? >> Kitchen: So you said that the vacancy savings amount is haven'ted at 12 million, but there's only -- is estimated at 12 million, but there's only 100 vacant positions. So that's 10 million, right? So would the vacancy savings amount be some percentage of the vacant amount? Is that the way it works? >> Well, the thing you have [4:06:14 PM] to understand, councilmember, is that on top of the 100 vacant positions the department attights about seven positions a month. So even during a cadet class the number will continue to grow and the cadet class will graduate and it will be a reduction of about 65 people and it starts growing again. So it's not just the 100 now, it's additional positions that will go vacant during the year. >> Kitchen: So what is the 12 million based on based on the estimate of the vacant positions? >> It's based on historical analysis, kind of like looking attra designation national attrition rates and vacancy levels. Not just the police department. We do it for all departments to see generally what kind of vacancy rates do they run at? What savings does it amount to? What savings are in the department. Some departments like the fire department we need to use all those savings [indiscernible] On an overtime basis which really is no savings. So those are just kind of [4:07:14 PM] things that go into it. And really it's a complicated analysis in a very vital department. >> Kitchen: I'll ask offline so as not to use the time of the committee. I want to know how many positions the 12 million is based on. >> I've although asked for an analysis of attrition and the impact of the budget. We have to factor in pension impacts as well because we're also having -- and councilmember alter who chairs that committee knows that we're having a separate discussion about pension issues so I want to make sure that we're taking that into account. >> Kitchen: So councilmember Flannigan, I'm sure that will be shared for all of us? >> >> Flannigan: Absolutely. And my last question and then we'll go to the 911 analysis. I don't want to be indelicate, but the -- there have been some calls from the police association to not respond to calls they've been responding to. [4:08:15 PM] So I'm not sure if, chief, this is a question for you or if it's a question for Ed, but if officers are going to respond to fewer calls, do we expect to see that reflected understand a savings in overtime? Or an increase in uncommitted time? How will we track whether or not that's actually occurring and how might we account for that in next year's budget? >> Well, I'll go first. And that is I have no expectation that officers will respond to fewer calls unless we make changes to our operations, and that's the direction that's given. I don't see this as necessarily an impact to overtime. In other words, officers responding to calls, they're doing that on their regular duty time. That's not a driver for overtime costs. Now, if you bring up uncommitted time, if we were to, through organizational or operational changes reduce the calls direct -- reduce the calls that they respond to, then that would [4:09:15 PM] create additional uncommitted time potentially depending upon what we see in call growth. Being the growing city that we are, knowing that as the population increases the calls for service will increase, it's where is that offset. But there would not be any immediate reduction in over time that I would see officers writing citations do get called into municipal court, but we have I think really done a good job, municipal court has, in ensuring that the vast majority of those officers, those tickets are scheduled if there is a trial, during their on duty time. So again, not something that's hitting that overtime budget. >> Flannigan: That might be a good way to enter into our 911 conversation unless the council or committee members have additional questions on budget. So that every knows our next public safety meeting is August 6. Weaver going to continue 911 there as well and we'll continue our budget conversation so this won't [4:10:16 PM] be the last time even in committee that we talk about this. Ed, thank you so much for your hard work. I'm going to see if I can unshare. There we do. Ed, thanks for your hard work on that. I'm looking forward to seeing the line item version of the proposed budget. >> You're welcome, councilmember. My quick thanks to will mix son from budget office who worked over the weekend on these slides. Thank you, will. >> >> Flannigan: Okay. So now we're going to transition into our final item. We're doing great, by the way. We're right on schedule, even a little ahead of schedule. Good job, everybody. I'm going to bring in one speaker, maybe two speakers if he's here, from -- let's see here. [4:11:19 PM] All right. That may be who we need. So this is our last item for today. Before we get to our future items and close out. We're going to talk about an analysis of 911 calls, and we have a speaker who is joining us, and then I will let staff speak to the work they're planning to do. And then we will take questions. Chief, do you want me to bring in -- let me make sure they're here. I think I brought in Mr. Guajardo and you want me to bring in Ken Murphy. >> Thank you. >> Ben, why don't you introduce yourself while I bring up your presentation? >> Hi, everybody. Thank you very much for having me. My name is Ben Horowitz. I'm one of the co-founders of ah data lit ticks. My previous background for creating the firm is I was a director of analytics for the New York police department and have a long [4:12:19 PM] history in data analysis and information systems. My colleague and I completed an analysis of calls for service data for the Austin police department, and I know we're -- we want to respect your time so I want to jump into the presentation and try to get doing. Just a little bit about ah datalytics, which is on the second slide here is we're an organization that strives to provide [indiscernible] Analytics to a variety of stakeholders and clients. We work with a variety of departments -- >> Excuse me, one second, Ben. I'm having a tough time hearing Ben. I wonder if there's anything we can do to make his audio less muscled? -- Less muffled. >> Is this better? >> That's much better. Thank you. >> Okay, wonderful. I had a little bit of internet trouble early on with with the presentation, so to be safe I was trying [4:13:20 PM] to [indiscernible]. So now I'm over the computer. So ah datalytics helps organizations in the public good and we typically work with criminal justice organizations. On the second slide it's a few smattering of some of the departments or cities we've worked with, Arlington, Texas in y'all's state, Ferguson, Missouri or where we're from, we worked with the city council in new Orleans. Just a few brief examples of the type of work. We've worked along the criminal justice spectrum providing data products and visualization to support criminal justice work, criminal justice support work and have done a variety of reports such as an assessment on release on reso long in a Sans and other criminal justice issues. Our article in the "New York Times" on how do police really spend their time released about a month ago really contributed to the discussion around what do police spend time on and how should we have an informed discussion when we discuss police budgeting issues as you guys so eloquently [4:14:22 PM] showed, demonstrated. Moving to the fourth slide I want to talk briefly about the methodology and provide a few of the findings and then obviously leave ample time for discussion. We received 18 months of calls for service data for the Austin police department, we did remove out the administration code -- the administrative code. Some of them are secondary employment, some are assignment related codes. And from there we grouped the calls for service into seven buckets. And this is aligned with what we did in the article and have done with some other departments. Just going down the line here, alphabetically the first bucket is medical. These typically involve mental health, suicide, death incidents. One note about the mental health calls, we are just strictly looking for all of these analyses based on the problem code or the call type or classification depending on your wording, [4:15:23 PM] and so we were just looking at ones that were explicitly labeled as mental health. We did receive a supplementary dataset which had the mental health flag added to them. We can talk a little bit about that in more detail. We did not have the requisite information to connect the two datasets, but it illustrates that a multitude of different call signals make up calls of people experiencing mental health issues or experiencing moments of crisis. So we can talk about what those different signal types are. Responsive are calls that are not initiated by the officer. They may or may not be criminal in nature. May include everything from assisting other agencies, disturbances, complaints, burglar alarms. Then you have your non-ucr crime. These are crimes -- incidents that are criminal in nature, but they don't match the FBI's uniform crime reporting for part one categories. It's everything from a city ordinance violation to kidnapping and everything in [4:16:24 PM] between. Proactive are incidents initiated by the officer that take place during discretionary time, follow-up investigations, investigating suspicious persons and routine patrol activities like areas checked. Then you have property crime, which matches the FBI definition of auto theft, burglary and theft. Traffic, which is responding to traffic accidents and enforcing traffic laws and directing traffic and violent crime, criminal homicide, rape be, robbery and aggravated assaults. So moving to the findings and once again we can of course go back through any of this as you all have questions. But a plurality of the calls for service were in that responsive category. You can see that really makes up the largest amount. One of the other things worth noting is that violent crime and property crime together represent no more than five percent of all calls for services that come out for the Austin police department. And this is similar to many police departments, right? [4:17:26 PM] So the findings kind of remain consistent and you can see how the calls for service break down for some of these other types. The next slide, however, will show not just how the calls come out, but how much time is spent. Surely time spent on the scene of a homicide is different than time spent on the scene for a false alarm. So if you take the time spent you get this break down. And what you find is that while violent crime and property crime now it increase to 10% of all time spent, you have these really large buckets of responsive, non-ucr crime traffic and proactive that make up nearly 90%. And then finally we've got the -- have to look at weekends in the report. With the -- at what ends in the report, with the overacting idea here is that calls in the report indicate that there's additional work to be done. So the most obvious point you would think, right, the majority of violent crime and property crime calls for [4:18:27 PM] service and in the report as one would expect, whereas traffic calls don't end in an [indiscernible] Report most of the time they'll end in a traffic citation and that's a different type of disposition. And things like burglar alarms, nearly all of them are false alarms. There's a small percentage that have a report. And then you can -- I've provided a sampling so you can see how that goes, a generic complaint call about 15% end in a report, a generic disturbance call is about 30% whereas a robbery, again, a violent crime, about two-thirds and then a report. Those somewhere of the large findings, the paper study was -- is available online. It's got detailed breakdowns, more by type, but talking about the council and we want to make sure we leave ample time for questions and discussions. And for those who want to see what my partner looks like it's on the left side who was unfortunately unable [4:19:28 PM] to make it today with all the various childcare arrangements we have to make now in the new era. >> Flannigan: All right. Any initial questions for Ben from council before we let staff? All right, staff, do you want to jump in? >> I'll make a few comments having had the opportunity to do a real quick run-through with the datalytics report and I think some of the methodological issues here, just to make note, violent crime does not include from what I just heard, assault, and we consider assaults violent crimes. It sounds like it only includes the aggravated assault category. So that was one thing. And then I think Mr. Horowitz a question for you, did you have the ability to weight the data? In other words, we would send multiple officers to [4:20:28 PM] those more violent crimes and those crimes that tend to take longer to investigate. So although the number of incidents may be distributed in the manner you just described, the time officers spend I don't think was accounted for in that there's many, many more hours spent on some of these calls because we have multiple officers there. If we're truly talking about how officers spend their time I don't think that's captured there. And let me pause there because that was a question. >> You're absolutely right, chief. >> Flannigan: I just want to say, councilmembers, check your inboxes, we're having staff send you the presentation. So since I've taken it down from the shared screen. >> My apologies, councilmember. Yes, you're absolutely right, chief. The number of officers on scene would be ideal to weight or even specific data for the officers. That data was unavailable for use of the analysis. As you point out that would make for a much more thorough and robust and that's the type of analyses [4:21:30 PM] that shuttle should be done for an in-depth staff study which this is not intended to replicate. And for your point about violent crime, while each jurisdiction might define them that way within their code, the typical approach we try to use it to adhere to the FBI definition so that we can make sure that our analyses are consistent from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. That doesn't necessarily mean that within jurisdictions there may be other reasons to localize the methodology as you state. I should also note that one of the other pieces that we mentioned not having the mental health slide. We didn't also have one way or the other a call was self-initiated or not. So we simply had to use kind of assumptions based on the call type when we grouped them in the responding and the proactive category. But certainly an officer may see something and self-initiate out that might land in one of the other categories. >> And the other thing that we noted when we were discussing this is trying to [4:22:30 PM] take our cad data and convert that over to ucr data. In cad it might show up as a disturbance, but if the officer didn't recode that call you don't know if that disturbance was an aggrevateassault or just a regular assault and it might feed differently into the analysis that you did. So we just have concerns with the accuracy of some of those conversions of cad data over to when you tried to plug it into ucr data because we're now a nibors department in the first place, some of the may have been lost in that translation as well. >> Sure, that's absolutely one of the potentials is not having the crosswalk between cad and the rms and that's always a challenge to deal with to know how it's coded and to know whether or not the officer recoded the cad type or just the cad type the same along with the charge on the rms, within the rms system. But our experience has been [4:23:31 PM] that even accounting for those type of things when we can, that it doesn't change the big picture. It might change it from the point 6% especially for just looking at aggravated assault, but if you're looking at-- even if you double that or triple that, it's still violent crime itself is a very small percentage. It's a very serious, very important piece, but towards informing the conversation of mow the time gets allocated which we find is very important. That's not to say that the other actions aren't necessarily uses of law enforcement, but those certainly are useful for the council to discuss. >> Certainly, my only final report is when we talk about violent crime, we consider aggravated assault a violent crime and I don't know what other things might not fall in your analysis in that same area. I think those are probably my initial comments and I appreciate you engaging with me, Mr. Horowitz and chair, thank you for giving me a few moments to address some [4:24:31 PM] of the data. We have internally, are working with our data from 2019 as well. We've got 516,623 calls that we responded to and we've broken those down into every single type call that we respond to and we're doing additional analysis on that as well because that is an interest area for us also. With that, chair, I'll turn it back to you over. Thank you. >> Flannigan: Thank you, Brian. Rey, when I spoke to our deputy city manager who I don't think is signed in to the call today, she explained to me that the 911 analysis that you all will be doing is happening outside of the police department? That there are other staff that are going to do that? Am I remembering that correctly? >> You are remembering it correctly. And I think Carey o'connor is on the panel here that may be able to talk to that. >> Carey, are you there? >> Yes, I'm here. >> Flannigan: Excellent. Can you give us the ten-cent [4:25:36 PM] version of what you are about to start up? And I thought you were done. >> No, I'm not done. I was looking at the dataset provided by APD. As the chief was explaining, I can't do an apples to apple comparison with aged datalytics. Overall I think their report is very helpful at this stage of work. This did a conscientious job that shows their expertise and experience. Looking at the initial comparison, we concur with the first recommendation that we need a better categorization of calls for service and the six recommendation to make signals clearer and all of the conversations about technology modernization, obviously we'll we'd like to make that work easier on all involved. Without those steps it's going to be difficult to accomplish sort of like things like the fourth recommendation which is on everyone's top of mind, which is identifying non-police responses to mental health crisis. [4:26:38 PM] One of the things to note that the innovation office, we structure our research in terms of future oriented as opposed to an analysis of the current state. So we would very much be looking into the data for patterns and to investigate how those patterns might play out through various choices and options that everyone is discussing here today. So for example, if you're looking at key word traffic in all of the calls for service data, you've got 14% of calls for service include the key word traffic. You start from there. You tease out traffic stop, that's 7.8% of calls for 2019. It's an officer-initiated stop. So that is a more proactive rather than responsive. So we might look then at patterning that data to see what would happen, what might happen, what would it look like if we looked at atd or someone else engaging [4:27:39 PM] in those. For that kind of analysis you would want to go a little bit deeper into context. You want to look at what brought that call forward? What is the cad data saying more qualitatively about how that call was coded? And so that kind of analysis can take a little bit more time. So that's just an example of some of the things that we're doing to look at this calls for service data. >> Flannigan: All right. Questions from councilmembers? Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: So just to back up for a little bit. So the presentation we just saw what was the dataset that we looked at? Is it the same dataset that Carey is looking at? I understand the conversation that we just had between the chief and Carey and in terms of looking at those datas, how you look at those dataset [4:28:39 PM] and analyze it, but I missed the first part of the presentation. What is the dataset that the ah analytics looked at? Is it different datasets. >> We looked at all of 2019 and the first six months of 2020. >> And councilmember, the data that I'm looking at is only for 2019. So just 12 months. >> Kitchen: Okay, thank you. >> Casar: I think I lost it in the back and forth. Mr. Horowitz, where is assaults, but non-aggravated assaults categorized in your report? >> They would be in the non-ucr crime bucket. So they would still be in the crime bucket, but not -- we're just trying to keep the violent and property crimes aligned with ucr for keep with consistency as we apply the methodology from [4:29:41 PM] the "New York Times" paper. >> And the non-ucr crime bucket remind me what percentage of police time and 911 calls that was? >> That represented about 17% of all the calls received. And about 24% of all of police time, but as chief noted that's just based on an arrival and closed, not able to discern the number of officers that as you mentioned surely more officers going respond to more serious crime than say a false alarm. So the weighting is not applied. >> That makes sense. And speaking of the alarms, I remember we had a presentation on that several years ago. Do we know which percentage -- how much time either chief or Mr. Horowitz, I don't know if this was in your study, we spent responding to commercial particular alarms? >> We were unable to distinguish between commercial or residential so [4:30:42 PM] I'll defer. >> And councilmember, I don't have that data here today. I'm not sure that we could segment it out that way. But that's something that we can look at. >> Casar: Yeah because I think I remember under chief Acevedo we had that presentation. I recall there was both a residential and commercial category in what we were shown, but I could be bronc. I look forward to what the city's own numbers show. I really appreciatehat you brought, Mr. Horowitz, because I think that all members of the council and community are interested both in investigating who commits violence, but also in preventing it and in reducing it. And in my own district we had two people killed since Thursday. Ms. Henson in Windsor park and Mr. Harris behind dobie middle school. Just a few weeks before that Mr. Ruiz needlessly killed in my district and then two [4:31:42 PM] people killed in car accidents that seemed from the information that I've seen very avoidable. And it's important and I don't think anybody is debating that we need to investigate deaths and investigate violence. My district being so he Havely affected by that very important to me. Nobody is saying that's not important. When we do look at the data it seems like only a small portion of the police budget goes to investigating it. And frankly very little to the prevention efforts that this council has been talking about for years. So I think allocating dollars to try to not just investigate why somebody died in an accident or why someone and who killed someone, but also actually preventing those things from happening in the first place is really important and that's where I hope some of this reallocation goes to [4:32:42 PM] because we have failed many times at preventing some of the needless harm in the community. So I appreciate you raising the fact that we actually don't dedicate that much of our time to holding people accountable and investigating violence, much less preventing it in the first place. >> I know the alarm fees went up in the last number of years. My recollection is that it was a right sizing to the amount of false alarms so that portion might be something we're cost recovering with fees, but we want to confirm that with Ed. Additional questions? Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Yeah, thank you. [Echo on the line]. >> Flannigan: Uh-oh. [4:33:43 PM] Anybody want to go first? Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I think this might be a question for -- [echo on the line]. It might be for legal. I'm wondering for the traffic are there legal constraints where it has to be an officer who stops someone who ran a stop sign or who doesn't have a tail light or other kinds of things? Or that has to respond at a crash scene in order to write a citation for insurance or are there legal restrictions that require it to be a sworn officer under legal circumstances? >> I don't believe we have legal on the line, but yes some of this is statutorily directed as far as the requirement that police officers be dispatched to crashes that require tow tow trucks and things of the like. The other point would be that traffic stops are some of the most dangerous encounters that officers have short of some of the [4:34:43 PM] disturbance calls they go to and we only need to go to the officer down memorial page to see how many police officers have been killed during traffic stops this year alone. I know there's a community in California, Berkeley, that has changed their approach to that and that is very concerning for us to those in the police profession because we know the inherent dangers of traffic stops. I would just preface any conversation we're going to have as a community on that topic. >> Alter: I would be interested in any other information you have on that. I mean, I think the area that I hear very often from my constituents that they want more of is traffic enforcement. And I know that -- so I would love to understand better the reservations and understand any opportunities you see there for us to be able to be more responsive, but particularly if there are, I have an inclination that there were some dangers [4:35:43 PM] there that might not be there on the surface, but would love to know to more of those details. >> Certainly. And then of course traffic enforcement is something that officers do when they're not responding to calls for service. So reduction in the number of calls to officers will reduce the time available to actually conduct that traffic enforcement that we know the community very much wants. >> Alter: Thank you, chief. Were there any other things that have been brought up that you feel like there are safety issues that we need to keep in mind or history that is useful for us to know? >> I think as we go into -- as we go into these discussions of transitioning work potentially, there are some civil service requirements about getting work that was done by a certified peace officer to a civilian that again I don't want to get too far over my skis on legal issues here, but there are specific requirements. Citizens don't have the authorities that police officers have to detain and [4:36:44 PM] to arrest. And then of course just those inherent dangers that come with some of the things police officers are asked to respond to, and that's why the response has been as it's been for so many years. Not that we can't find ways to hopefully get things that have to do with mental health calls where we can make that work, but there are some things that just by the inherent danger or by the required authorities they cannot be given off to anybody other than your local police agency. >> Thank you, chief. Mr. Arrellano, perhaps you could ask legal to give us a memo about some of those things about when -- sorry, thee's noise here at my house. When we -- some kind of legal memo that would help us to understand when we have to have a sworn officer and which circumstances. I don't know if you have to have a sworn officer go to a burglary alarm, for instance, as well as a traffic stop. [4:37:44 PM] There are bunch of -- there are a lot of ideas floating around that it would be helpful if we had further legal insight and maybe in a memo to council or something. >> I'll be sure to follow up on that. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Flannigan: And I think that's a really great point, councilmember alter. Ben, if your presentation where you talked about calls for service, that third column says percent with a report. And it shows that at least in your analysis which I'm looking forward again to seeing city staff take their level of data and go deeper, but it shows that at least in Ben's study it shows only 12 expense of responsive calls had a report. Does that in your analysis, Ben, does that mean from what you could see from the data only 12% of those 324,000 calls result in an action that required it to be sworn? >> So from what we can tell [4:38:45 PM] it seems like there's certainly the complaint and disturbances category and those are going to be much more lik to end in a report as compared to the other ones. Those complaints were only 15% ended in report for disturbances, 30%. But check on welfares, burglar alarms is really the biggest one where 0.5% ended in a report. And then there's assisting other agencies which is -- always unclear because the other agency might be the one taking the lead on some of those. And then when you look at disturbances and complaints there's a lot of composition of what those calls can look like. And how they end. And as the mental health calls show that when we did the analysis of the calls for service with the mental health flag that we couldn't match up to the main dataset, we were able to look at the types of calls that these represented. And we found that these really capture everything [4:39:46 PM] from complaints and disturbances all the way to violate crime potentially. So mental health might be present on a lot of these type of calls even if they don't end in a report, those can certainly be alternative methods of handling those type of calls. >> Flannigan: I bring it up to say that there's really a lot of nuance and detail and it's always hard when it rolls up to eight rows in a table to really define that level of duplexity. I -- of complexity. I remember seeing the story about Berkeley and my recollection is that like many of the stories we're seeing out of other cities, there being reporters having been done when I just passed a resolution. And we all know that passing the resolution doesn't actually do it. Doing comes later. So there's been a lot of reporting that says city X suddenly made a dramatic change to their policing in a certain way when really their council signaled some intent to do it because they haven't worked out the details and the challenges yet. So I'm glad that we're not [4:40:47 PM] continue to go repeat that. We did our big solutions and now we're doing the work so I'm glad we're continuing to do that. And I don't think anyone is saying that we would take any action that would reduce safety. In fact, what we're trying to do is improve safety. As we get into the details we'll find out where that's harder or easier based on what we're learning. Councilmember tovo, let's see if your tech is working. You sound good. >> Tovo: Good. Thank you. So slide five I want to be sure I'm understanding the back and forth between chief mainland consultant. So as I understand slide five, which talks about how calls of service time was used, the violent crime figure here, the three percent, did not include violent crimes that would fall within the non-ucr crime category. And those would change in assault, as chief Manley mentioned. I also saw an indication earlier that I didn't [4:41:48 PM] understand related to kidnapping. I guess the first question is for non-ucr crime there's a description, a definition that talks about instances that are -- incidents that are criminal in nature, but do not fit within the ucr category from noise ordinance to kidnapping to everything in between. It is not clear to me whether they are included within part one or are excluded from part one? I assume it's the latter, but wanted to verify. >> Correct. They're exclude from the violent or property crime definitions as set forth by the FBI. And again the primary reason for that is comparability from geographies to have a consistent set of systems. >> Tovo: But as we look at slide five we need to take into account as to the calls of service, calls for service,, the violent crime category here, that's three percent, does not include assault. We know it may not include [4:42:51 PM] kidnapping, may not include some other things that our jurisdiction and probably a lot of our community would regard as violent crime. >> Right. What it's using is the standard FBI definition for violent crime that those are pros and cons of the standardized definition allowed for comparison across communities. The downside is it's been a very standardized approach that's been used for decades, which again helps you understand longevity of crime statistics, but doesn't get into that hyper nuance as you understand things. Even things like theft by fraud isn't considered to be a property crime of theft. When we think of identity theft and things of those nature are not quite at the scale that they are today. So those are things that should be considered. That's why we have the non-crime -- non-ucr crime category as well. >> Tovo: I see that. I think ma many people [4:43:51 PM] looking at this won't understand what is contained within ucr crime. I don't myself. I would ask that -- perhaps this can be handled through a budget q&a. It would be useful to see what is included within the FBI's definition -- descriptions of ucr crime especially as we engage with constituents around this information. It would be useful to know what is in that non-ucr crime category and where it fits within some of those other categories of crime, property crime, violent crime, etcetera. And then I just wanted to point out there was a conversation a little bit earlier about particular alarms. And I do think that we got that data as part of the q&a in previous year's budget question and answer. So that kind of leads me to the point I was hoping to make during the conversation that was more focused on budget conversation. At that point I was just listen ags a participant and didn't have ability to speak. So I know my office [4:44:53 PM] submitted several questions on Friday regarding APD's budget, including the one that Ed referenced about asking for the spreadsheet information for fiscal year -- as has been proposed for fiscal year 2021. We also received it for fiscal year 20 and asked that be added to the budget q&a. And to the extent our individual offices are related for information related to APD's budget or percent of the budget that relates to salaries and other things along the lines of what we've talked about here today, if we could do that through the budget q&a that's super especially-ful. That way all of our offices aren't asking for this information independently and we have it for future years. That's a request that we all submit our questions that way so we can all see the information and the public can see the information as well. And then just a suggestion, I think, I may be wrong about this, but I do think we have that burglar alarm information and data possibly in one [indiscernible]. So thanks. Very as well as conversation. I did miss the timeline of when our city analysis of [4:45:56 PM] the 2019 data were finished? >> Rey or Carey? >> Councilmember tovo, I don't currently have a date for you just yet. We're still working with the city manager's office on structuring all of the work that is to ask which questions we're going to be asking of the data so as soon as we have that scope I'll let you know and we can work on it pretty quickly. >> Great. Thank you very much. >> Flannigan: I will say at least for staff's part, they were willing to let us say it was going to be done by the 6th since that's the next public safety committee, and we were scheduled to go over their work. So Carey, if that's changing please let me know sooner rather than later. >> I will do my best. >> Okay. >> Flannigan: Just as a time check, councilmembers, we're down to our last 15 minutes. Councilmember alter. [4:46:56 PM] >> Alter: Thank you. My thoughts may be scattered. I apologize. One, I appreciate the response of this -- the importance of this data and understanding it. I want to underscore that one of the things we saw with sexual assault was that only 10% of women were reporting. And there are various reasons why they're not reporting. Some of which may have to do with our ability to respond appropriately. And we may -- it may be that to promote safety we have to make additional investments. Councilmember Flannigan alluded to this earlier with investigations and other kinds of things. I wanted to flag that. I also on a broader level want to flag that I'm very concerned about moving victim services out of APD. We really have to ask if any sort of moves benefit the survivors and while I'm open to a conversation on that, I've not yet heard a good [4:47:58 PM] rationale for that and will be -- any conversations to that effect I'll be trying to understand what kind of benefits they deliver to the survivors. The last thing I wanted to do was ask chief Manley if you could speak to any thoughts on the nuances that we should be thinking about when we talk about park patrol is something that can move because I know that was moved to not that long ago and it was obviously a rational at that point which I'm not fully familiar with, but it's sort of boomeranging back and forth. I would like us to have the lessons learned. I don't know if that's anything that we can share now or if -- ray, if you have also any documentation you can share about when those choices were made to move park patrol into APD or to move the airport patrol [4:49:00 PM] into APD because plumebly there was rationals at that point in time. So maybe if there's broader information you can get that to us, rey, and chief Manley if you wanted to speak to any thoughts you might have on that or chief gay. >> Certainly. So as a community we went through what was called consolidation at the time. We used to have the public safety emergency management department. And it was the three other law enforcement agencies at that time, airport police was a separate entity standalone with its own structure as was the city marshals. And the park police as you just mentioned. And in an effort to professionalize how everything was being done and to unify our approach to public safety here in Austin, the decision was made to bring everybody into APD so that we have one law enforcement agency, one policy manual, one criteria for training, all of the reasons that you would think you want to consolidate [4:50:01 PM] those types of operations. I think there's economies of scale there as well as you don't need full administrations for each of these other standalone entities as we did back then when they were their own entities. And so there was a lot that went into bringing everyone together to ensure that our law enforcement efforts were uniform here in the city. And so anything that we would do to step away from that would be going back to the way it used to be structured and as commissioned police officers, again they can only report to commissioned police officers. So I don't know what that structure would look like. Moving the budget is one thing, but trying to move the duties and the responsibilities is another. So having parked within APD allows us to fold them into everything we do, many of our special events occur in some of the larger parks here in Austin. And so we're able to kind of fold them into our large [4:51:02 PM] operational plans much easier because they're a component of APD. So we will look back and get the documents or information from back when these decisions were made, but that's just my initial comments to the question. >> [Indiscernible]. >> Flannigan: Were you done, Alison? >> Alter: Can you hear me? I lost you for a second. I've got an unstable connection today. Thank you, chief, for that. Acm Arrellano if it's possible to get history on that, I think that would be really important to understand what went into that and where the savings were. My understanding is it would end up costing a lot more. But I don't know how you unpack that and what the implications are of that. >> I'd be glad to follow up on it. [4:52:03 PM] >> I am interested in that analysis too. It sounded like what was explained used to occur were different chains of command of sworn officers. Which makes it sound like we might be able to do that again. Am I misinterpreting that, chief Manley? >> So there was a -- a message like another police chief basically who operated the psem. He was actually a former APD deputy chief who then became the chief over those operations. So again, because you have to report to a commissioned -- a commissioned person now, there was different levels of certification that they had. Part of the reason the cost structure was what it was is because there were very different pay scales at the time too. So when everybody joined into APD, the pay scales had to adjust as well. [4:53:05 PM] >> Flannigan: Okay. So in theory, we don't -- you can have -- as long as the sworn person is the department head, which I think is the phrase of what state law says is department head, you can have multiple departments. >> Correct. >> Flannigan: I find that very fascinating. Other questions? Councilmember Casar. >> I wanted to speak to one of councilmember alter's points. Because I do think that as you raised, especially in sexual assault cases, very few people report their case. Some national studies that I've seen show that a majority of survivors of serious violence choose not to report what happened to them, a majority of them. And that often times that -- many of those studies find that when those folks are interviewed, either, one, they don't think that anything is going to [4:54:05 PM] actually be done to address their safety or two, that it's often times based on people's perception of the police. And so I agree with you that we should be really thoughtful about victim services and other services that are for survivors. I would say that based both on what I've heard here locally and on national data we are very behind. I think our whole country is far behind on actually reporting. If something isn't working as well as we want it too we should look at it really closely. Whether that means it was within APD or at some point meets out or whether we should have the function inside arrested outside, I think we should engage in that conversation because clearly not enough people feel comfortable reporting what is happening. >> Flannigan: Five minutes. Mayor pro tem. >> Garza: So I understand the numbers at the data [4:55:12 PM] analytics guy gave. And chief, you're saying it's not an apples to apples comparison. So I was wondering if you can provide us some statistics on the number of -- you mentioned that assault is not included in the assault category that they had. As we token have these discussions -- as we continue to have these discussions I think it would be helpful -- according to your numbers and how they're categorized by APD, what percentage are those violent crimes and how, you know, those different kind of crimes are defined? And then also when -- so I guess would you be able to provide that? >> To that question I think some of that will fall under the work that Carey o'connor and her team are doing. And to where that work doesn't address that issue we can again just from the count on the number of offenses, we could very easily replicate what data analytics did and include things that we believe are violent crimes here in our community. [4:56:12 PM] The part that's harder to capture and that requires a much more in-depth analysis would be that if we're trying to say how much time do officers spend as a percentage of all time available on certain types of crime, you really have to know that we send four officers to this call, one left after 45 minutes, the other after an hour and 15 minutes and the other two stayed for three hours and finished. So that level of analysis is very, very detailed, but that's the only way you can truly say where police officers are spending their time and how much time they actually are spending on violent crime versus others as a percentage of their total time. >> Garza: Okay. If we could have a general idea that would be helpful. And then why certain things are categorized. And then don't -- isn't that part of the triage process in dispatch. Like does the person have a [4:57:13 PM] weapon? Are you afraid for your safety? Aren't those questions that get asked during dispatch? >> Yes, we have a very specific script and protocol for approaching these and then they code it. Codingsare more general so they can get coded and sent to the officer and get the officer dispatched. As they're asking all the follow-up questions and getting all of that additional information they're providing updates to the responding officer. So it's likely not going to change how it was initially categorized, but they want to get it initially categorized is it's a disturbance, let's get officers in route. And as they ask follow-up questions they will be passing that information along to the responding officers, are there people involved, are there weapons involved? Are there people injured? Things like that. That's why I was talking about what was initially coded as a disturbance on the cad might be something very different in our rms system. It might actually be an aggravated assault. So the two systems are not comparable. >> Okay. [4:58:17 PM] And then you mentioned the question about traffic stops. When you say that those are the most dangerous, are those -- it would be nice if when we're having this conversations because we're all learning here, if there's a way to provide context to where is that all traffic stops? And any traffic stop they're the most dangerous call police officers make? Or are they more like dwa traffic stops or, you know, a person fleeing a traffic stop? Like is it -- it would be nice to have a context of what exactly kind of traffic stop we're talking about. And then just lastly, as we're trying to have very candid conversations about how we rethink our response, I guess I just ask you to -- the question was asked about the traffic stops and you said if we stop this then we can't do this. If we tell these people to stop -- if we have another four to so speak that does traffic stops we can't have [4:59:17 PM] the people who do the traffic enforcement. And I guess I hope we can -- those two don't have to go together. Like we can solve for both is what I'm saying. I think we're all trying to get there is yes, we still want -- maybe those who still are interested in speed management we need that and that's what constituents do especially in neighborhoods. It doesn't mean we can't rethink how we do that as well. So I'd ask you to help us get to a place. I know we don't know where we're going but we need to try to get to something -- I understand that's the difficulty is we don't know, but these are good conversations to brainstorm these. >> And please don't think the comments I make as resistance. I want the same thing to make well educated and informed decisions. And I do see it as my role and audiology mfi peers on this call as well to throw all that information out there. So yes, traffic stops I said [5:00:18 PM] they are one of the most dangerous. It varies year by year. And we can look to see if there's been any studies as far as whether one type of stop is more dangerous than another. But we've unfortunately seen those horrific outcomes across the board whether it's a subject fleeing or whether it was what was an innocuous traffic stop for a minor violation. But I am not trying to throw up roadblocks. I'm just trying to make sure that these decisions are as informed as possible with the information we have as with our public safety backgrounds and then of course as we delve into talking about the park police and things like that. I do think it's important that we come from a perspective of history of why we did it in the first place. So the thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. >> Flannigan: We are at 5:00. We can stick around and take a few more questions, but if any councilmembers need to leave or if Mr. Horowitz, if it you need to leave, that's good too, but take some more questions. Councilmember [5:01:21 PM] harper-madison? >> Harper-madison: Thank you, chair and to everybody who has presented today and been able to answer some of these very important questions. It's very helpful. So I just wonder if something we can add to the purview of the citizen body that's doing some of the audit work and doing some of the assessment around cadet classes, as chief was speaking to of having one vehicle being the pass listen through for all points of consideration and as we're thinking about moving certain departments around, I just want to make -- I want to offer the opportunity for folks who are doing these assessments and conducting the audits to determine whether or not that perspective of efficacy is as valuable as having multiple points of accountability? I can't help but wonder if [5:02:21 PM] what we're saying at the end of the day we have so many points of consideration with the department at varying levels and things that need to change substantially in order for us to have what it is that the community and many of us are demanding, I don't see how that same department can be the tool by which all the things continue to flow through. So I have some questions about what that looks like for us to continue along the path. So councilmember Flannigan and chair, I appreciate your line of questioning and I'd like for there to be some conversation where we elaborate on that. The benefit, the potential benefit of having multiple points of accountability. >> Flannigan: Yeah, chief, I think what you laid out, and rey to extent you pulled the stuff that came from the past, I think there might even be some stuff we can look to and compare to that could be very interesting in [5:03:22 PM] how we move forward in a way that provides even more safety targeted to the needs of the community for a city that is much bigger now than it was then. And we might be able to scale in a way that the call volume is as such in a way you couldn't before when you had to have officers to serve five or six functions. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I don't have an answer for this, but I hope we also consider technology for some of these things. There may be opportunities to use technology in way that we haven't been able to use in the past. At least with regard to traffic issues. I hope that we have that conversation as part of this also. >> Flannigan: That's great. So we're past, unless there are any additional pressing questions for today. [5:04:23 PM] Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: Because I assume that [indiscernible] If you go to the appendix of Mr. Horowitz' report because I assume you would have brought this up. You can actually pull out the assault category that was being discussed earlier in the meeting. I'm looking at it. It looks like it's 4.7% of time is the standard all the. There he is. So maybe I'm speaking out of turn. Tell me if I'm wrong here. So that would add up in his report to about 7.5% of APD time? Which is still pretty surprising to me smaller percentage of time than I would have guessed. Even if it were weighted, I'd say it was double weighted, that might be 15%. Or triple weighted at 22%. So still a smaller chunk of the time than other activities. Is that generally right, Mr. Horowitz? >> Yeah, I would concur with that. For those interested, the full report has got a detail of those subcategories with [5:05:25 PM] all that data and a fuller breakdown and methodology that we just tried to provide in brief. But that's exactly it, the general trend should relatively hold. >> Flannigan: All right P. >> Tovo: Can I ask where the report is, the full report? I know we were sent out the powerpoint? Is the full report linked to the committee? >> Flannigan: We'll make that the full report gets sent out. I think it was sent to us by the Austin justice coalition so it might show up in your external email folders, but we'll make sure that that gets sent as well. >> Tovo: Thanks. >> Flannigan: Any final comments? All right. Thanks, everybody. This was I think another great committee meeting. Mr. Horowitz thanks for spending some virtual time with us today. And thanks to all of the staff who came in and out of this meeting throughout the day. A lot of great work. Hopefully for us on the council, hopefully this helped reduce the amount of this we'll have to repeat during our budget work sessions as we move through the rest of the week. [5:06:25 PM] Chief, did you want to add something? >> No, I was just going to tell everybody good-bye. That's why I took my mic off. >> Flannigan: I'm watching. I'm watching the whole time! >> You're good. >> Flannigan: Thanks, everybody. It is 5:06 P.M. And with that we adjourn this meeting of the public safety committee. [11:57:03 PM] Other opportunities to listen to how the community is feeling about public safety. With this conversation, certainly we'll take a look at how metrics might be an area for us to explore in more depth. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Flannigan: Council member alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I'm wondering, ray, if you can share with us how these performance metrics may tie back to some of the things we included in the December resolution about creating performance measures for leadership that were based on how things were doing. I know these are kind of more broader macro measures and there are some more macro measures that are specific, but I think that as we talk about these measurements, we have to also think about the accountability, and I think we've already set in motion a couple of things, and I just wanted to understand how those [11:58:04 PM] things might fit together. >> And so, let's see, I'm trying to remember exactly what some of those directions were from the December resolution. I would broadly say that, clearly, with the direction that's most recently in the June resolution that talks about the city manager putting in place accountability measures for the team, that those are certainly thanks we're going to do. I think it's a little -- right now it's a little early to see how specifically that might be put in place, but certainly we'll have that conversation with the city manager. >> Alter: So in December, I had added an amendment, you know, thinking ahead to outcomes that we were going to be building into the accountability structure for leadership, how they were addressing with diverse -- there was a whole bunch of things that we might want in there and I just wanted to kind of connect the dots. I know we're still making sure we have the right performance measures, and in light of the [11:59:04 PM] additional goals that were placed there, I think that they're important. And then for chair, I just wanted to flag for a potential topic for a future meeting, if we want to get into data, in item 96, we had an amendment that extended how we were looking at some of the ways that we were coming up with measuring at-risk officers, which is a different kind of data than the overall performance. But I think that these two things, if we're going to effect the performance indicators that we've been talking about today, we have to be making sure that our measures that are getting us to identify those at-risk officers are working properly. And what we did in 96 was, you know, say, you know, engaged folks and made sure to do that. I think these are all interconnected and I just wanted to flag it in case we can think about how that would be [12:00:04 AM] incorporated into a future meeting. Because at the end of the day, we get all of these great performance measurements, but if we're not aligning incentives all the way through the system, we aren't going to get the changes on those metrics once we get them right, that we want. So I think we have to have that full gamut of a conversation. >> Flannigan: Thank you, council member. I think that's a good idea. I would assume that at-risk officer metrics would live in the office of police oversight more than it would live in office of performance management. Bureaucratic nonsense notwithstanding. Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: Thank you. I have two questions. I joined a little late, so thank you, Ms. Styles. Is -- I don't know if there was a particular report that you're referring to. I thought that the -- that the suggestions you were making and the specific measures you were providing us as [12:01:04 AM] examples was really very helpful and very much on point, and also showed a level of depth in terms of our analysis where that we can actually get closer to causation, so to speak, or directly linking measures where they may be linked. So my question is, have you -- I may have just missed it -- have you produced a document for us that kind of lists those recommendations? And I apologize if I have missed it. >> No, it's totally fine. Thank you for asking that question. So I have to be completely honest with you, I went ahead and wrote a report last night with the analysis. So I will go ahead -- I'm going to send through our communications team to make sure that I don't have any -- too big, crazy errors in it, then I will go ahead and send that to you, hopefully by end of day today or early in the morning tomorrow. [12:02:06 AM] And again [indiscernible] -- >> Kitchen: That's great because itself furiously taking notes and then I thought, well, I'm going to miss something. >> You're going to get all this, yeah, in your box, definitely. >> Kitchen: Okay. And then the second question is just to -- >> Flannigan: Before we go on, I just want to note, I'll have my staff post that report to the council message board so if members of the public want to track it down, Austin council forum.org. >> Kitchen: Okay. The second question is just a comment that with all of these programs across the board, there will be a need to really -- what's the right word? -- To really up our game in terms of our analysis. And that also means that we need to make sure that we have the right systems in place to collect the data and to produce the data in a way that we need that. So -- and so, for example, the mental health issues, one aspect of that is the first [12:03:07 AM] response for mental health calls. And so I'm going to want to make sure that we put in place a method for both collecting call data in the way that we need to collect those data elements, as well as linking them to results for that program. So I understand that there are dollars in the proposed budget that relate to the systems, the technology systems at the -- at the department, and so I'm going to want to understand in more detail -- I'm not suggesting we have to do it right now, chair, but I'm going to want to understand in more detail how those system -- how the dollars for improvements in our systems make sure that we have the functionality that we need to collect the measures that we need, and then - - both collect and provide the data in a way that we can analyze results. So that may be a follow-up for you, ray. [12:04:08 AM] Chair, I don't know if you're going to get into that in this committee or not. I just wanted to filling -- wantedto flag that as something that probably needs some discussion somewhere. >> Flannigan: Well, we're going to dig into budget, not at that level today, we'll talk about budget once we're moved from this item. Other questions for Ms. Styles or for ray on metrics? Council member Casar. >> Casar: Just one note and something that I would hope that we look at in this budget and then in future budgets is that I remember from last year's budget, that many of the investments made by the city manager were supposed to move a certain metric, were supposed to produce a certain outcome. The extra police officers line did not come with an outcome that it was intended to produce. And so while I think we should measure new things, I really want to not if we're trying to reduce violence or reduce harm, I want to know that [12:05:09 AM] our dollars being invested are moving an outcome metric the most that we can because we're trying to move away from saying we want a response time to go down by X or we want X staff per thousand, we're trying to get to actually a change in outcomes in the community. And I really want to make sure that we're applying that to every single part of the work that we -- that we do. >> Flannigan: Mayor pro tem. >> Garza: Yeah, I totally agree with council member Casar. One example we thought of when we were talking about how we measure -- about new metrics was, like -- and maybe this metric exists already, but how many incidences were successfully deescalated, and soggy showing that by part of town I [12:06:10 AM] think provides us a metric to -- you know, we want that number to go up. We want deescalations to go up. One more question, I think for chief Manley. I've heard a theme not only in these kinds of discussions, but as well when we were dealing with the advocates who were -- in our municipal court conversations, in trying to get data and how hard that has been and, you know, them asking us to get the data because they can't get it. I guess my question is, chief, are we committed, are you committed to providing, you know, the data that these organizations often tell us that they have trouble getting? >> Absolutely. I think that we have opened data portals, we've put our information out on the web. You will recall we were one of the first and I think maybe the first major police department to join the police data initiative on the national level. So I think we have a history of sharing data and we will continue to share the data that we [12:07:11 AM] have. You're right, sometimes it is difficult to pull data together. Sometimes the requests are very specific and our systems don't very easily produce that type of data. And that, too, is one of the focus areas as we look at reinvesting in technology for the police department that we need to ensure that the new developments in police records management systems and other areas should allow us to more easily and readily pull these types of data requests together. >> Garza: Okay. That's good to hear because I think -- you know, I think we all want to get to the same place, less violence for everybody, you know, and I think -- and I've heard that just over and over again from different advocates, that it's been -- it's really hard to get certain types of data. So whatever we can do on the council side, please let us know, to make that data more accessible and readily available as we continue to of these conversations. Thanks. >> Certainly, mayor pro tem. >> Flannigan: And I would just add to that, you [12:08:12 AM] know, having a web development technology background, you know, we have to be concerned about the garbage in, garbage out problem, where the source of the data itself, if we're asking officers to also be data entry experts in the middle of calls, or any of our future first responder entities to make those data entries, and I think we learned a little bit about that on sexual assault where there was maybe one code when there should have been multiple codes to differentiate between different outcomes. So not just the technology solution, but I'm also very interested in understanding the burden the data entry piece places. One of the ideas that I have brought up before is officers or any first responder being able to read their report into a body cam, and then allow a professional data entry person to code accordingly. And that may be one way to free up officers or folks whoever out in the field and have data entry folks giving us the cleanest source of data [12:09:12 AM] as possible. Any other questions before we move on to budget? Council member harper-madison. >> Harper-madison: That mute button is giving me a hard time. I just wanted to say what my colleagues have said, I with wholeheartedly agree with and the sentiment speaks to me. There were a couple of things that weren't mentioned, and I think this is probably -- it kind of piggybacks on what mayor pro tem said about specific data as it pertains to -- give me just a second. I pulled up the resolution because I was thinking, I think we already have that in there. It was a data point that was talking about specific data on use of force in a certain part of town. And so I'm looking at some of the -- item number 66, be it further [12:10:13 AM] resolved clauses. And these are some things that I just wanted to make sure to highlight as well. So obviously the training materials and cadet information, all of the things that are included in that audit are top in mind for me. Especially I'm certain everybody on the line received an email that I did also; it was a report by Sarah Villanueva leading an academy rubrics and an additional report by Michael Ferguson issued on June 19th that addresses some of the concerns, original concerns that we had in some of this -- under bullet number 2, training materials course section, descriptions, and duration. One of the things that's in here that I just want to make certain that we spend some time focusing on as it pertains to academy is the components that are speaking specifically to the diversity of the people [12:11:14 AM] teaching diversity. And so, Ms. Styles, I'm not sure if that's something that specifically is on your radar, but it's certainly one of the things that's top of mind for me as we go through the academy-specific elements. And I just wondered if -- you know, just from your initial glance, are there any other academy- specific considerations that you have that, you know, you may need some direction from council or for us to be paying some specific attention to? >> You know, I haven't really thought about that. I definitely can spend some time in deep thought, by just you raising the idea already kind of sparks a couple of things. I know, you know, even working on the board, the local board, I kind of jotted down some ideas and saw even some progress happen -- happening, like, within gender and making sure that we have enough female representation, you know, where -- especially when they're talking about, like, [12:12:15 AM] who's teaching diversity. If you guys remember back in the day when measure was not really kind of focusing on evidence-based metrics, we were more so focusing on just metrics -- right? -- We were asking for implicit bias training, for 100% of officers to be trained in implicit bias training, and we brought in an expert but not so sure, but without any tracking methodology after that, like how do we even know that some of the training that we're doing is actually working? A lot of it is based on pseudoscience without any real evidence or real, you know, outcome metrics about if that training is even working. So, personally, you know, putting on that hat, I would say that there are a lot of questions that can be asked and a lot of opportunities, ebb in -- especially in Austin because we're so data-driven. I did hear that Austin [12:13:16 AM] police department -- chief, if you can respond to this -- brought on a new CEO, another request of measure for the last several years has been, you know, bringing on a chief data officer that really focuses in on data and outcomes and evidence-based policing, that we could really seriously address some of those issues together. >> And maybe I will respond to that. He actually started today. Today was his first day. I had the opportunity to meet with him and was very pleased to explain and talk with him about the importance of his position and of the role that he will play, especially now, as we're in the middle of evaluating policing here in Austin, and the only way we can do that is with accurate data. This was day one for him. >> Awesome. That's super hopeful, like when it comes to us needing data, needing accurate information, having access to that -- to that person within [12:14:17 AM] the -- within the department, but again, to your point, council member Madison -- harper-madison, is just really is that person going to focus in on evidence-based policing. We've created -- I know measure has created a fantastic partnership with the American society of evidence-based placing, some of the most academically sound and ready researchers that are also cops, led by a cop researcher, Renee Mitchell. Are we going to move in that direction? That would be my question for, you know -- as that person takes that seat. And then, secondly, just to, again, especially to assistant city manager rey Arellano, you know, a lot of times metrics are -- come -- you know, are part of the conversation we end. Right? Like we have all these big, beautiful ideas. And we have all these solutions that we think might work. [12:15:18 AM] A lot of anecdotal, flowery ideas. But metrics need to come first. Right? So those goals in resolution 50 paint a picture of a wonderful Austin. But I've got to tell you, people like me who don't really see gray all the time, I take those literally. I took those literally when I saw that. Like how do we get to this? What metrics, what input metrics and output metrics will we need in order to get to this state in Austin. And so just really, you know, want to hammer that in, like make sure that you start with the end first, and that metrics come first, and again, measure is always here to support the city in achieving those goals. >> Flannigan: All right. I think we should probably move on to our next item unless there are any pressing final [12:16:19 AM] comments or questions. >> Harper-madison: No. I was just going to say thank you. >> Flannigan: All right. Thank you, Ms. Styles, for joining us in our committee meeting today. A lot of great work to do on metrics. A lot of great work overall. Glad to have you as community experts joining this conversation. I think most of the councilmembers who are part of the meeting have spoke. I forgot to do the list of names but I will add the mayor has joined our meeting, council member alter is here, in addition to councilmembers who have spoken up and asked questions. Okay. Let's dig into the budget. If you'll bear with me, I will transition out our staff attendees for this portion of the meeting. [12:17:28 AM] Okay. I think we will start with a staff presentation from Mr. Van eenoo. Ed, are you there? >> I am here. >> Flannigan: Okay. I have the presentation. If you will -- the last time I did this my laptop crashed, so we'll see how this works this time. [Laughing]. You all see the presentation? >> I can see it. >> Flannigan: Great. >> Yes. All right. Well, want me to jump in, council member? >> Flannigan: Take it away, Ed. >> Yeah, I'll jump in. We put together, I think, about nine or ten slides here, just to give you a high-level overview of what we call our public safety department, first in Austin we have our safety outcome that also includes save drinking water, it includes flood mitigation risks, so safety is broader than [12:18:29 AM] just our public safety department, but here today for the public safety committee, we're focusing on the five departments that we -- that fit under our public safety umbrella. That's Austin code, municipal court, emergency medical services, the fire department, and the police department. This is really a high- level picture of the budgets for each of these five departments. Go kind of like a layer lower for the police department because we anticipated there would be a lot of interest in that, and of course we'd have staff on the line to help me out with questions. But just for the sake of time, I'm going to -- and to avoid having to bounce around between a bunch of presenters, I'll just walk through the high-level presentation. Go to the second slide, council member. Thank you. So first, Austin code, you can see for 21, the proposed budget is $26.9 million, that's a slight drop from the fiscal year 2020 level, which is the result of moving some one-time [12:19:30 AM] budget items that had been included in the code department for fiscal year 2020. So across the board, you're going to see departments for fiscal year 21 typically having a little bit higher budget because of wage increases and other built-in cost drivers. But in this case, those cost drivers are being offset by a production in one time program expenditures by the fy 21 budget. The department is proposing three new administrative positions. Their total revenue for fiscal year 21 is $25.4 million. You can see over in that -- that third column over, sources. Almost 90% funded almost from the community fee. When we get away from code compliance, which is set up as an enterprise department and recovers its costs through the fees it charges, when we get into the general fund department, you're going to see a much larger portion of the funding for the department coming [12:20:30 AM] from taxes. In regards to code operations, nearly 50%, a little bit more than 50% of their budget is allocated specifically to code investigations, compliance, and endorsement activities. Transfers and other support services, I'll spend a little more time with them on this slide because you're going to see the program named across all departments, and you'll see these program names in all city departments. Let me just explain what they are. Support services is where we budget across all of our departments, generally where we budget our administrative expenses, you know, H.R. Support, financial support, I.T. Support, I.T. People, but also the managerial team for the department go into support services. For code, this piece of the pie is a little bit bigger than what you'll see in most other departments because this is also where we include the funding for the administrative hearing process that the code department has to try to [12:21:31 AM] avoid court cases. So that's why their support services is large here. Transfers and other requirements generally is where all those citywide cost allocations go. So we have citywide functions, mayor and council is one of those citywide functions, part of our support services fund, the budget office and other financial service programs, I.T. And human resources, those are all corporate functions that get allocated out through all of the [indiscernible] Departments. That's what goes into transfers and other requirements. Again, compared to some of the general fund departments you're going to see, it's higher here than it is for other departments because for the code compliance, part of their costs come from the Austin energy customer care and paying their fair share of the customer care fee, which is how they get their bills out to their customers and collect their revenue. So you'll see those support services, transfers and other requirements, across the [12:22:32 AM] department. I just want to give you a little context of why those are a little higher in Austin code than what you'll see in the other departments. Can we go to the next slide? So the next one is for the municipal court, with a proposed budget of $34.5 million, largely just a base cost driver budget, one and a half million dollars to pay for wage increases, so people can get a wage increase, being the largest driver there. You'll see under sources as I promised for this department, nearly 77% of their budget comes through tax support or basically non-fee revenue. This department does generate quite a bit of fee revenue through the fines that they collect, but it's not nearly enough to fully fund their operation. So 77% of their budget is funded through tax-supported revenue sources. Their revenue continues a downward trend, in 2021 we're projecting an [12:23:33 AM] $800,000 reduction in their revenue collections. That is part of a long-term trend over the last five years. We've seen significant drops in the number of citations that are coming through the municipal court, and we've seen about a $5.5 million drop in revenue over the last five years. Part of what's happening this year, though, is also as a result of covid, the court has extended the due dates for some of the fines and citations. That's part of what's playing into the revenue drop this year, and it's really more of a timing issue. The largest program in the municipal court is actually the downtown community court at 28% of the budget. That includes a significant amount of funding for homelessness services in the downtown court, part of the wraparound network of services for that community. Municipal court operations is next at 25%, and one other thing I'd mention on this slide [12:24:33 AM] is that the support services portion of this slide -- actually the Orange slice -- I noticed this, too, there is something to describe that Orange slice, that should be support services, and I think it's around 18, maybe 20% of the budget, but it's acting -- it shows up on this one, on the screen I'm looking at, it doesn't show up, so 20% of the budget is support services, and that's also a little bit higher than what you're going to see in our other departments because the least cost for their new facility is part of the support service costs here. We'll go on to emergency medical services. >> Flannigan: Let me jump in and say -- I know we're going to spend a lot of time on police so, councilmembers, if you have questions on these other departments, let's go ahead and do them now we did code. Municipal court. One point to clarify, Ed, I know folks in the public who sometimes believe the fees charged for tickets and other things are a source of revenue for the city, [12:25:34 AM] while technically correct, it doesn't actually cost-recover because you can see that even the municipal court is more than 75% subsidized by property taxes and sales taxes. Right? >> Cost recovery court services, let alone [indiscernible], no, it doesn't even come close. >> Flannigan: Common urban myth. >> Casar: Cheer on that point. How many millions of dollars did you say in the last five years did you say we've reduced that cost to people? >> Yeah, it's -- I'd have to do the math here -- I guess it was 13.4 million five years ago. So, yeah, 5.5 million drop to the current level of 7.9 million. Taking another look at it, people that think we have some kind of quotes or are writing citations to balance our budget, compared to a 1.1 billion-dollar general fund budget, it's not one of our major revenue [12:26:35 AM] sources. >> Flannigan: I've seen reports that's true in smaller towns, it's just not true here. All right. We're going to move on? >> Yeah, we can move on to ems. >> Flannigan: Ems. >> This is one of our larger general fund budgets, just short of a hundred million dollars, $96.9 million increase, $3.8 million, of course wage increases called for by the contract, as well as civilians as part of that increase. But also we're proposing to add 19 new paramedics in fiscal year 2021. 12 of those are needed for the opening of the Travis country fire ems station. You're going to see some firefighters in the budget also for that planned opening of the Travis country station in July of 2021. But here it's 12 positions, and then seven positions are for the additional community health care medics necessary, part of our Austin police department [12:27:35 AM] budget real indications as we are reducing the budget amount in police, this is one of the areas that we had proposed to increase funding, was for the community health paramedics to provide additional mental health first response services. Here you can see their tax support is a little bit lower, definitely lower than what you're going to see for fire and ems at 60.7% because they do generate a lot of revenue through fees that are assessed through their services, largely paid by insurance collection, but Travis county has to pay for part of that 37.7%, revenue offset. We notice over on the revenue line item a $2.9 million rubrics that has to do with what's called the federal uncompensated care program so when people can't pay their bills, there's a federal support funding which has been going downward for [12:28:38 AM] several years. Operation, which is our first responders, paramedics going out to emergency medical calls, 65% of the budget. Emergency communications is down there, the purple slice is roughly 7% of the budget. I won't reiterate that support services and other requirements. Building services, collecting -- sending the bills out and collecting the revenue from insurance companies, about 2% of our ems you budget. Any questions on this one? We'll move to fire whenever people are ready. >> Flannigan: Council member alter? >> Alter: So this isn't so much of a question, although if there's movement on it, I'd welcome staff's comments. I wanted to just flag for my colleagues that, you know, as I'm thinking about reimagining public safety, for me that also goes much beyond police, and I think we have some opportunities to make [12:29:39 AM] sure that we are delivering the best quality services to our community. I am working on a potential amendment that would create a chief medical officer, so that right now we have our local health authority and we have our medical officer, kind of merging that so that you have a chief medical officer that is over clinical reporting for a broader set of folks. That would then be coupled with a proposal that has been proposed by the office of the medical director for, I think, three years now but never been brought to the attention of council, which would be adding staff. And these two things combined have the potential for us to be able to really rethink the ability of our existing medical personnel to help us to do some preventative [12:30:39 AM] care, help us to deal with that $50, you know, in-grown toenail without sending an ambulance. Now that we have we imagined what telehealth looks like, I think this is something that is very doable this year. In addition, there's some changes under foot at the federal level that would allow us to be able to be billing on some of this stuff. Signed my current estimates are for about a million dollars, we could do this, and there may be opportunities to do this from fees not general fund. So I just wanted to flag that, if there are others who are interested in thinking about that. And then the other thing that I wanted to flag is that there are some concerns about access to ambulances in central Austin and some of the shortages that we've been experiencing, which again are somewhat a function of extending wrong instrument out. [12:31:39 AM] And this proposal would help address that. But there are also issues where we probably may need to think about more ambulances or some on had of demand ambulances to address a situation in central Austin that's pulling ambulances from everywhere else. So I'm going to be looking at that as well. >> Flannigan: Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: One of the things that I'm interested in seeing if there's a route for this and I know that others are looking into this, too, so I'd like to collaborate with other efforts on this, and that is the addition of -- the addition of chips, community health paramedics, that can particularly be of assistance with homeless individuals through the host or some other kind of program like that. I think that that's [12:32:40 AM] important, that we need additional emphasis in that area. And I also see the ability for additional chips, community health paramedics, to also be available and to help with the mental health diversion program, the first response. I think that what's in the proposed budget is really good for the first response, but I want us to be sure that if we find -- I mean, there's some concern that we may need additional community health paramedics for that program, and so I'll get to think about a route towards that, as well as chips that can assist with homelessness, and there may be some synergies across that. So I put that out there just to say for my colleagues, if there are others working on programs for additional community health paramedics in the ems budget, I'd be happy to [12:33:41 AM] have a conversation about that. >> Flannigan: Council member Casar? >> Casar: We know a lot of our city staff are on the front line and working really hard during the pandemic, probably almost more than anyone are our medics are on the front line of this. Do we have things we're putting into this budget to immediately start alleviating some portion of that workload or expanding the amount of time we can put out there to deal with not just covid-19 but paramedics having to deal with everything going on plus covid-19? >> Nothing beyond -- we have ems people on the line and they could maybe respond to that too, but nothing beyond what's to this slide and the 19 new positions for the community health paramedics and opening of the new Travis country station, which will include a 24-hour fire unit. But beyond that, nothing I can -- >> Casar: Some portion of -- do you have which portion of those 19 we actually intend on hiring [12:34:42 AM] anytime within the next few months? >> Well, the 12 for Travis country, that's not supposed to open until July, so -- some of it's going to depend, too, on the timing of the cadet classes and when they graduate, unless there's somebody from ems online who knows the timing of those classes, I'm going to have to get back to you on that. >> Casar: It sounds like something for us to keep thinking about, given bringing people on next July and what they're dealing with now, something for us to be discussing in the budget. >> Flannigan: Jasper, did you want to add to that real quick? >> Only to say that this year we'll be opening up the del valle station, the ftes weren't available until June, but we still staffed the station on the day it was opened. The 12 medics, boat clinical specialists and medics, we hire in the next cadet class usually after a station opening. [12:35:43 AM] >> Casar: And so do we know when that would be for those 12? >> Opening in July of '21, we probably would do August or September academy for those positions, and depending on our overall position needs, it could be in July also. It just depends what the needs are at that moment in time with our openings. >> Casar: So you mean you could start a class this year in order to hire those people next year in the summer. So you mentioned some months, but I lost track of which months those were. >> I'm sorry. For next year, if those positions are approved, we would hire those in July or August of '21, but we would staff the station with existing personnel come July, as soon as these stations open and we can be inside it. >> Casar: That's really helpful. I think the point then holds that as we think about what council amendments are appropriate in the [12:36:43 AM] budget, finding ways to make sure that we have enough ambulances and medics, given the current surge, if we aren't bringing new staff or new resources to the table soon, I think that's just a conversation we should have with ems and with the dais and the community. Thanks, chair. >> Flannigan: Council member harper-madison, did you have something to add for that? >> Harper- madison: Yes, I really appreciate getting chewed up in that way. I think the last two councilmembers who expressed councilmembers and concerns, I have the exact same concern, so much so that I really do full like after hearing some of the direct accounts of medics, that we are in an emergent situation, if we find ourselves in a situation where we just don't have enough ambulances to respond in an appropriate amount of time, like council member alter said, you know, public safety definitely goes well beyond our law enforcement considerations, you know, response times are of the utmost importance when we're talking about [12:37:43 AM] medics, being able to respond. I heard a tale of a medic who had to drive 21 miles a couple of weeks ago to respond to a call, which I'm not an ems professional, but I'm assuming that is absolutely inappropriate and unacceptable. And if there's something that we need to do prior to the adoption of this budget to make that happen faster, then I'd like very much for this committee and the folks on the line who represent ems to have a longer, more emergent conversation. Along those lines, though, I wanted to ask about hazard pay. And to determine whether or not this is something we need to address with this budget, something we need to address prebudget, recognizing that our first responders aren't receiving hazard pay troubles me. [12:38:45 AM] >> So, council member, if I might just respond and say certainly that's a conversation to be had with the city manager in that regard. I know that we've certainly been seeing the feedback from certain council, as well as the community, and the association. So we are having a follow-up meeting with the association presidents and certainly would welcome your comments with the city manager. >> Harper- madison: I'd like very much to be included in those conversations and we kept abreast of movement transpiring. I think most of my colleagues would probably degree. One other question or concern I'd like to daylight is back when Dr. Escott was exclusively our medical director, I've been seeing other departments across the nation have similar conversations about disparities in dispatch, including, you know, like my colleague brought up earlier, deploying the wrong [12:39:46 AM] resource for various calls, and so I just wonder if there's -- I don't see any consideration here specifically, or explicitly, rather, about dispatch, about us needing to really dig deep and overhaul our dispatch systems. So where would that fall in this pie chart? Operations? >> So, council member, it's a combination of operations here within the ems department, as well as with the office of medical direction with Dr. Escott involved. I'll say that council did provide us with funding in the current year to conduct a dispatch equity and optimization study. It has taken, admittedly, some time to get a request for proposals on the street for a consultant to help us with that study. But that's where it would be occurring. And I will say that along the way, Dr. Escott, as well as with chief Rodriguez and the -- andthe ems department have [12:40:51 AM] looked at how they can better approve dispatch as far as how the calls come in and so forth. >> Harper- madison: Real quick, in the interest of time, I don't want to belabor the issue, but I'm trying to figure out, when you say it has taken quite a bit of time, what's the delay? >> So it took us some time to put together the scope of work. We had a good group of stakeholders that included [indiscernible] Presidents, as well as some members from the public safety commission, to finalize that worker, and then it then became an issue in response to covid-19. It has taken a little while to get responses in, but we do have those responses now, and we're in the process of evaluating proposals. >> Harper-madison: Any idea about when we can expect some resolution there? >> I'd be glad to follow up on that question. I'm not sure where they are [12:41:52 AM] in the evaluation of proposals. >> Harper-madison: Okay. I'd appreciate that very much. Thank you. And one last question. You may not be able to speak for the city manager directly, but have you, yourself, or do you know whether or not the city manager is meeting directly with the ems folks, the union folks specifically? >> I know that the request has come to the city manager for that, to meet with -- associations to meet with the manager and me, and so we're setting up that meeting. I'm not sure when it's scheduled for, but I'm certain it's going to be pretty soon. >> Harper-madison: Okay. I can imagine you also share my concerns about that being something that needs to happen sooner than later. >> Flannigan: Council member alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I just wanted to kind of underscore council member harper-madison's comments and council member Casar's, which raised [12:42:54 AM] earlier. I am concerned about whether we are doing everything we can to make adjustments to meet the needs of our ems personnel who are being asked to do a tremendous job at this point in time with covid. We spoke last week, we're speaking again today. I do have some ideas on that score of things that we can do, and I'm hopeful that the city manager's office will seriously consider those, and if not, I will likely try and bring the resolution forward to address some of -- some of the issues that we're seeing. I think there's some easy fixes. I think we have -- for once, we have -- while there's challenges from covid, there are changes afoot at the federal level in terms of funding opportunities that may allow us to make some changes I think that would address multiple [12:43:55 AM] goals that we have at once, and I'd like to see us be creative and take advantage of this opportunity and recognize the need to take some action for our medics and also to make sure that we're delivering the kind of service that our community expects in terms of ambulance availability, et cetera. So I look forward to continuing those conversations. >> Flannigan: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Yeah, thank you. I think that is really important conversation around availability of ambulances, and I appreciate those who have raised this issue and made us aware of some of the challenges, especially in recent weeks. But this isn't a new issue, really, and I want to ask, Mr. Arellano, we're working on submitting some questions that would really help us understand -- understand what the -- what the data shows us. Likely, there are some situations where ambulances are being [12:44:55 AM] deployed and may not be the resource that needs to go out, but we also were made aware a while back of some information that shows the shifts that take place with some regulator which get to the point that council member alter started with, that often downtown and central Austin, there are needs down there that require the shifting of ambulances from other areas. And so, again, we're working on pulling together some questions for the Q and a that would help us understand that. But I think that's the challenge that we don't always see in the data. We don't necessarily see how often those shifts are necessary to really need the needs, especially of downtown, and how often ambulances from other areas are coming downtown to manage the substantial caseload down there. >> Flannigan: Council member Ellis. >> Ellis: Thank you. I appreciate council member alter bringing up [12:45:57 AM] the situation about number of ambulances, and my office will reach out to yours to see if you still have subquorum space to talk about that. As someone who represents the Travis country area, we're very excited to of a new fire and ems station because of the slow response rates. Oftentimes ambulances are lent into central Austin and then they don't come back to southwest. So that's part of the agreement, is particularly useful, because we want to make sure everybody has a quick response time. So we're certainly talking to the association and trying to make sure that they not only have the personnel that's needed to make sure that ems professionals can have a mental health day if they need it, especially during covid, have the ambulance and equipment that they need, and also the ppe, the protective equipment, we're trying to make sure that they have enough equipment to make sure that they are protecting themselves through this time especially. So I wanted to make sure that you knew that my office was working on [12:46:58 AM] that as well so that anyone who needs an extra partner in this, we're happy to lend an extra voice and some eleven to try to sort through these issues and get the proper supplies and materials that ems is asking for at this time. >> Flannigan: So I think a lot of us are interested in seeing some changes in the ems portion of this budget, and, ray, I hope that you take this as a way to work with council offices on this. Many of us are having parallel conversations, and it would probably be less effective if we all -- if three or four of us brought different ideas. So if we can find a way to facilitate collaboration on how to move this forward, I think that would be valuable. And I do want to reiterate council member alter's point about changes at the federal level, and we've certainly talked to congressman Doggett's office to try to push through some of those changes that would increase the revenue side [12:47:59 AM] of ems. And council member tovo talked about ambulances being sent to things that may not need to be ambulances. I'm very interested in our next slide that we're sending, fire devices to things that maybe you could send an ambulance to, since you can't get a fire device reimbursed in a revenue sense. Any other questions on the ems slide before we move on? Ray -- oh, then the last thing, I think the Travis country station is one that's pretty -- pretty on the edge, it's -- is it in the etj? Or is it right just inside? >> No, it's off of 290 and mopac. >> Flannigan: Okay. So I'm thinking of a different station tn? >> Likely. I know there's one in oak hill. There may be another one beyond that. But there's stations off of 360 that are just outside of the city of Austin and a couple others ems might be able to comment on particular -- >> Flannigan: I don't even know that we need to distract this conversation too much longer, but I have concerns about the agreement being inequitable on Austin [12:48:59 AM] taxpayers since we can no longer annex, I think that disparate only increases over time. Something to consider maybe in the future. Go ahead, chair. >> This is chief brown. We don't have an autoaid agreement. We have an Ila with Travis county that they pay for ambulances in the county, but those ambulances are used throughout the system. They travel into Austin. There's no restriction on where they go. >> Flannigan: When is the Ila renewed? >> This fall. In October it'll come before council. >> Flannigan: All right. So let's plan some early year conversations about the content of that Ila before it shows up on a council meeting, if we could, please. Let's move on to fire. >> Yes, sir. Fire, we proposed a budget with the fire department, $14.2 million increase for fiscal year 2021. I think that comes to 6.6%. Nearly half of that has to do with 6.5 million of [12:50:00 AM] that has to do with a true-up to personnel costs, based upon a new costing model that the budget office has collaborated on with the fire department. We also brought the fire association into that discussion, and I think we have a much better model for projecting personnel costs. But we have had some problems in recent years. Kind of goes back to fiscal year '19 where the department had estimated some savings that ultimately were not realized, which effected the fy20 budget and is causing shortfalls in the current budget. So we really need to get on top of this, make sure that we don't continue to of that problem. And I think we're there. I think with the new model we've developed and working closely with everybody at the table, I think we have a more robust model that's going to allow us to do a better job with this in the future. In order to true the personnel costs up from where it is to where it needs to be, we have [12:51:03 AM] included six and a half million dollars in the budget for that. The cost increases, the wage increase is the single biggest cost driver. You can see over on the staffing side, 21 positions, 16 of those positions are for the [indiscernible] Sifted there was country station which will be open in July. That leaves another five. Those other five positions, along with the six civilians, the combined eleven positions are for the [indiscernible], that will be going into place in the fiscal year 21 budget. There are costs to that, net costs to those positions initially in the fiscal year 21 budget, but as we look further down the road and that program fully gets rolling, we do anticipate that it'll be fully or at least largely offset by revenue that's for the code inspection fees. We can see under the sources, not a big surprise, the fire department charging fees for services, 94.5% of their revenue comes from [12:52:05 AM] tax support. Only $11.8 million in revenue total, with that largely coming on the inspection side, the various permits and inspections they do. That's $2.3 million higher this year, and that is partly being driven by the new code inspection program, implementation of that code. For people that don't know, I apologize, it's a reliable supervise code. Wui, or wui. Any questions for fire before we go on to police? >> No, but I love hearing Ed say wui. >> Flannigan: (Laughing) Council member alter, did you have -- >> Alter: Yeah, I'll probably have more to say when I've had a chance to dig deeper into this budget. I'm pleased to see the wui code included, and implementation. I think that's an important step. There are some additional [12:53:05 AM] elements that we had asked them to do when we passed the wui code that may require some budgeting. I'm a little frustrated that they put that report off so we get the information three days before budget, and perhaps we can expedite that information so that if we need to make further adjustments on their responses, we -- we, you know, could do that. And there was that -- I do want to point out for my colleagues that I think that there's some -- this budget for fire is somewhat frustrating because they have known about problems with overtime for quite some time. We are only seeing this on our agenda for the first time in July, and we're being asked for, I think, a $5 million amendment to address, that's five million dollars we can't spend on other things. And there's a lot of back [12:54:05 AM] story here and a lot of other things, but I do think that we need to be more forthcoming with council when there are decisions and choices that need to be made. This overage was identified back in, like, December and it is now July. And I have spoken privately with the city manager and others, but I think, you know, as we're approaching this budget amendment on the agenda, et cetera, I think that we do need better accountability and more details on what happened and how it's being prevented from happening again. >> Council member, if I may -- and again, council member alter, you and I have had some conversations on this as well, and I appreciate the need for increased transparency, and to give a heads-up, certainly in a more formal way to council as we start to approach these -- these [12:55:05 AM] limits, so to speak. There will be a memo that does provide more detail in terms of what occurred since December, and that should be coming out in the next day or so. >> Flannigan: Council member alter. >> Alter: And I appreciate that that's coming out in the next day or so, but I've been asking about this for months and have been told this memo was coming and coming, and, you know, we are responsible for a budget, and that transparency is really important, and I don't think this was handled in the most transparent way. And it concerns me greatly. >> Flannigan: There's a lot of work, I think, to do on fire, and myself and a few others, council member alter, have worked a lot trying to dig into the details on fire, to initiate the efficiency study with ems. We just have some public safety resources built that no longer match the [12:56:05 AM] types of public safety needs that the community has. And there are some good reasons to that, but a lot of work to dig into here. If there aren't in I -- aren't anyfurther questions on fire, I think we can move into police. There's a lot to dig into, obviously, on the police budget. And I also want the public to know that, you know, how we work through this between now and budget adoption in August is not the entirety of the work. I'm certainly willing to do more than what is in the manager's proposed budget, but I am also not looking at this as an annual debate. I think we're going to -- we need to figure out beyond the details we dig into today, we need to figure out, ray, if you want to engage with Spencer in this conversation, what is the series of budget amendments we can plan moving forward, so we can -- as much as we can get done in August, it [12:57:06 AM] would be great for us and the public to know that we're going to come back in November and we're going to do motorcycles -- do more,and come back in February and do more. Some of the stuff we'll daylight is doable fast, some will require more work to roll up, but I don't think it's something to punt into the next budget cycle, it's going to be something that council is going to want to continue working through. So I just wanted to set that up before Ed gives us the high-level view, and then on police, we've got additional slides as we get into the details. Ed, why don't you take it away. >> All right. So we're on the police slide here, and $434.3 million budget proposed for fiscal year 21, which is a $200,000 reduction from fiscal year '20. I'm going to pause because before this meeting I had a conversation with council member harper-madison, I'm going to try to explain this number and [12:58:07 AM] how it relates to the numbers that maybe you've heard, put something together in writing to make it easy to track. When we GOP a budget, we start with the fiscal year 20 budget, then we have to add things to that for the wage increase. The page increase for a large department like police alone, the 2% wage increase was a little more than 5 and a half million. The $6 million range. On top of that, as part of the police staffing, we anticipated adding 30 officers. So those two things, that's the primary cost driver. There are also some small fluctuations. But budget increases doing nothing different, just taking the fiscal year '20 budget in plating it for wages and cost drivers was $7.9 million more. It was at that point, from that base cost budget when council passed a resolution on June 11th that said, hey, we want to make some changes to the police department budget, we don't want to add those 30 positions that were part of the base budget [12:59:07 AM] and we want you to eliminate positions that can't be filled and we want you to delay the July cadet academy. So those three actions pulled 11.3 million. So we started with a budget that went up 7.9, then from there we cut out 11.3 million based upon council's direction. Then as we were looking, okay, we just cut 11.3 million out of the department's budget, when we were looking for places to put those dollars based upon the resolution, two of the areas we're recommending is $2.3 million to start the replacement of the department's antiquated record management system. We've already heard some records issues here and we're -- our belief is that a big part of that problem is the 15-year-old very limited in its capability record management system. So that would be part of it. Then $900,000, the resolution specifically called out doing more racial and cultural sensitivity training, more informed response training, and training on [1:00:09 AM] the use and distribution of [indiscernible] For drug overdoses. So we put $900,000 in the budget to allow those additional trainings to occur, that was back in the police department budget. So that was a total -- we started with 7.9 million increase, cut 11.3 million from that, and following some of the recommendations of the resolution and other reports, proposed putting 3.2 million back into the police department budget, albeit for very different purposes. So that's the map on how you get to a $200,000 reduction. We'll put that in writing just to make it clear to everybody in the community who's looking at some of these numbers and scratching their head on it. You can see under the positions that the 70 positions is a reduction from the fiscal year '20 budget. So, again, think about fy22 we added more positions to it based on the police staffing plan, so normally, but for the council resolutions and all the testimony we heard from the community calling for change, that [1:01:11 AM] would have been additional, so a hundred from what we were going to add to the number that we actually cut. And, again, that's the number that we estimate cannot reasonably be filled. We currently have, I believe, 170 sworn positions, you know, and giving the timing of cadet classes and et cetera, we're predicting 70 positions won't be filled at the end of the fiscal year so that's what we put out in the budget. Almost totally tax-supported department, 97.4% supported through non-fee revenues. And you can see there a small down tick in there being driven by fewer alarm permits. The bulk of their budgets, 48.5%, just shy of 50%, is for the neighborhood-based policing. Essentially any next slides, I just drill down into these pie pieces a little bit so I won't belabor it too much. But 48.5, you can see the neighborhood-based [1:02:11 AM] politician, that's 200, and $10.6 million, that's predominantly for patrol activities and patrol support, including regional patrol downtown and airport police as part of that activity. Just for the sake of time, I'm not going to read it all, it's there as a resource for you, but I would highlight this is where the specialized control and planning, park police, lake control, mounted control, we've heard some questions coming from councilmembers about these specialized patrol, if the police department is the best place for them or if they should be in the department they're providing services to. So just wanted to highlight that one for you here. And we'll go through the next three and go to questions. But for the operation support activity, total budget here of -- program, we call this a program, $64.7 million, the biggest piece there includes the strategic support activity, which includes record management, crime [1:03:12 AM] analysis, their booking services are here, communications is the 911 call-takers, providing services to all three public safety departments, the individuals that dispatch police officers as part of communications. You can see the forensics lab here, part of special operations, swat team, k-9 units, victims services, a really important function. Here there are almost 5% of the total $64.7 million support, but these individuals provide the psychological and emotional needs not only for victims and families in the community that have been traumatized, but also for our first responders to those events. Then finally our air operations, our helicopter unit is based off the op support. Go on to investigations. There's only two here, [1:04:12 AM] that kind of speaks for itself, 62.6 million for our investigation unit, which, you know, we've got some specialized areas, we've got a homicide unit, domestic violence unit, sex crimes, child abuse, robbery, and then other smaller units. So our investigations, organized crime focuses on work related to narcotics, gang suppression activities, firearms, human trafficking are done out of our organized crime unit. Then finally dinged this is my last real slide -- $8.8 million for professional standards, which is where training and internal affairs and recruiting activities are. I didn't drill down on support services and transfers and other requirements, it's essentially the same types of things that I talked about in the other departments. Maybe we could just put the last slide up, council member, just because it's not a website on it that if there's anybody in the community who wants additional information, you can go to our [1:05:16 AM] speakupaustin.org website, get access to the budget and more information on how to participate in the process as we head towards budget adoption on August 12th, 13th, and 14th. >> Flannigan: Great. So thank you, Ed. So I've got the slides here. If councilmembers ask questions, I can jump back and forth back and forth to different slides if you want them pulled up. This was a chart in the Austin monitor that shows the year that we, as an accounting measure, went to this transfers category. I've seen some community conversation about why did the police budget jump up so much in fy15. It wasn't that there was a huge additional investment in police, it was basically how departments were being accounted for as a budget measure. So this was in the monitor recently, and I think it's a good sign to show there was not some big investment in police [1:06:17 AM] in 2015, it was just about accounting and how dollars were allocated. But I wanted to show that. Councilmembers, do you have questions? Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: Ed, you mentioned the 7.9 was -- >> Garza: Ed, you mentioned 7.9 was cost drivers. Is that purely sworn stuff because of contracts or is it a mix of contracts -- excuse me -- and the proposed increase for non-sworn and -- what exactly is that 7.9? >> That's a mix. The 7.9 was partly the cost of those 30 officers that we were going to add and didn't add, but it's also the 2% per contract for officers and the 2% that staff is proposing for civilians, then there's other provisions in the contract like step increases that cost additional money every budget. So it's basically those three things, the vast majority of that 7.9 million, base budget [1:07:18 AM] increase. >> Garza: But it's purely personnel. It's wages; right? >> I won't say purely, but say 95%, yes, ma'am. >> Garza: Okay. And with regards to the records management -- and please correct me, anybody, if I'm wrong about the -- I think that's in response to the report about the documents going missing. I thought, and I could be wrong, that was about more like an H.R. Kind of function, like -- I guess if somebody had been reprimanded for something -- or maybe I'm totally off, but -- >> Yeah, maybe I can turn to the chief on that, I want to provide some context. I know when I was briefing all the councilmembers and talking about the record management system I'm kind of understanding now the record management system is not in conflict with the Tatum report but there's other reasons for the record management system and other limitations that we really do feel we need to [1:08:19 AM] replace it for Alamo better transparency and more quality records. I think I misspoke a bit when I was speaking to councilmembers and saying it had to do with the report. >> Mayor pro tem I'll jump in for just a moment on that one. Yes, the records management system is the core function where we write all of the offense reports for all of the calls that officers respond to, and then it's the repository for all of that data, such as who was involved, when did it happen, where did it happen, that allows us to do all of that analysis. The Tatum report was more hitting on how we were storing documents, mostly related to internal affairs investigations. So so it's difference from the icmu database which is separate from our management system. What this is is we've got a system that is roughly 15 years old and over the years they've put out patches and updates and improvements, but we're at the point now to where we need to look at the system itself because there's so much new technology out there that [1:09:19 AM] will afford us so many more opportunities to analyze our data to really dig into some of the issues that we're talking about when we talk about disparities and disproportion national outcomes and a lot of the data that is not captured in the current system that limits our abilities at times to do that deeper analysis. >> Okay. So that is different than what I guess -- how that was explained to us before. But it is important for us to be able to -- [inaudible]. I'm supportive of that, but I'm still concerned about the -- how we have an overall reduced -- have reduced APD's budget. Those the questions that -- point that you made, chair Flannigan, about showing a path to reduction that it may not all happen. I guess I'm more on the side [1:10:21 AM] of seeing a dramatic reduction and then having check-ins along the way just to hold our feet to the fire as we're moving forward. That's what I -- that's the side I would prefer to be on is more significant -- seeing more significant cuts and then assessing as we move down the road into the year. >> Thanks, mayor pro tem. I think we're roughly on the same place with that. Just you're using slightly different words is the only difference. Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: There's been a conversation for some time now about moving forensics out of the APD and making it its own independent operation. Did we end up getting a final recommendation on that? And what would be the -- what would be the challenges or benefits associated with getting that done in this budget? [1:11:22 AM] >> So councilmember, if I can take a swing at that. As you know, we were take -- there's a group taking a look at the DNA lab specifically, which is a part of the forensics science bureau. We're almost at the end of the that process, having gone through the working group and now poised to do a briefing for the civilian advisory working group that council put in place and after which we will bring to the council that final report and be positioned to have a briefing for the public safety committee. So I think there certainly is an interest in at least for the lab itself to be separate as we've heard if are the womb we've been talking about on this working group and would be applied to the forensic bureau in total. I think it's something that needs to be looked at in a thoughtful way. Certainly you could say here it is today and there it is tomorrow, but that doesn't necessarily address how are those connections made? [1:12:23 AM] Where do we need to be thoughtful about making those changes. So the certainly there's also a change management perspective. Even something as potential as hr management, hr expertise within APD requires some thoughtful review before you make a change so certainly this is an area and the forensic science bureau, to take a look at that is an opportunity potentially for the mid -- a mid-year budget change to effectuate that kind of a change. That's where I would say that particular initiative S. >> Casar: And when are you planning on bringing that report to council? You named about three steps. When were those timelines in? >> So we're scheduling -- in the process of scheduling the advisory panel briefing. It's likely going to be at this juncture in August. Once that is done, then we'll make a -- we'll release a report to council [1:13:24 AM] in its entirety and then schedule the public safety meeting so that would be August, potentially septemberish depending on the public safety committee's agenda. >> Casar: Sounds good. And then as it relates to internal affairs. It's again something that's been discussed. I know there might be legal challenges. So the we looked at whether internal affairs appropriately fits within the police department or if it could fit outside of it? Do we know if there are legal barriers associated with that? >> Again, these are areas, and particularly for the internal affairs, where we need to really take a comprehensive look at what might be involved. We were mentioning potentially legal challenges that might have limitations as well. So that would be a longer lead item, I dare say. What our intent is as we -- the core leadership team, as we look at how we might get to that path that I think the path is talking about, what are the things that we can consider early on that [1:14:27 AM] we can bring forward and what are some of the other things potentially like in internal affairs that might require a little bit more in-depth study before we make a recommendation? >> Casar: Sounds good. This isn't a question, but maybe a request for folks. If we could get the budget number of what the impact would be if we didn't hire patrol positions in the same way that we are hiring lots of civilian positions right now and we're in a budget freeze on those, it would be really helpful to know what the impact to budget of that would be? Do you have that worked up? It's okay if you haven't. Just wanted to check. >> No, we have not run those numbers yet. I think it's a a little different on police because of how the cadet academy works. If the we're going to recruit for a position and hire it two months later. Based on the cadet class, and chief Manley might be [1:15:29 AM] able to help me with this. I think we're delaying the July cadet class, the next one is November, March of 2021 and maybe another one in July of 2021. So it's really a matter of are we going to do those cadet classes or not and a seven month process to graduate roughly 65 individuals. It's not the same as a hiring freeze. It's a little different because we have to make a decision in mass if we're going to hire the cadet class enhas. If we're going to do it we need to do that. >> It would be useful to know the cost of those three classes. >> >> I believe off the cuff, the cadet class costs us two million dollars to run for the wages of the cadets and the cost of the training associated with that and of course once they graduate it's roughly $100,000 per new officer. [1:16:29 AM] >> Flannigan: So Ed, you're very good at providing information to council offices and you've shared with my office kind of a line item from fiscal year '20. I'm looking forward to seeing it for the proposed budget. It provides additional level of detail beyond a powerpoint slide. Some of the areas that I'm interested in -- I want to start with this. We know that there are state laws that require sworn staff to be managed by sworn department heads. So -- but I don't think those state laws require the budgets to be managed by the sworn leadership. I think you can have different leadership in charge of the budget than you have in charge of the operations as defined in state law. And again the governor has made it very clear we should be seek outing every loophole that we should find in state law to the benefit of our community so I am taking that it to heart. So there are some things that we can change that I [1:17:32 AM] think are incredibly substantive and then I think there are budget changes kind of to the mayor pro tem's point, budget changes we can make now that shift which civilian leadership is in charge of moving that area forward. And it would be a budget change we could make now. The areas that jump out to me would be traffic enforcement. We have a transportation department and it would be interesting to -- it would be possible for the council to just amend the budget and mover the traffic enforcement line item over to the transportation department while also acknowledging that the management of sworn staff have to be done by sworn leadership. That's fine. That's two different things. There are line items for park police and lake patrol. When I look at line items related to communications -- these are significant, right? Like the traffic enforcement in the fy20 budget was almost 20 million. [1:18:32 AM] The communications are almost 20 million when you add up all the communications parts. And it doesn't seem that much of the communications is sworn. It seems like most of it is civilian. So what would it look like to have a -- could that be moved over say to ctm or should there be a separate department, a department of emergency communications that is part homeland security, that is part fire and ems communications that might be better positioned to work in a regional level. I sit on the capcog board, which is also the regional emergency communications district if I have the name right, which allocates the fees that people see on their phone bills to 911 communications. We don't have a single department that does 911. It's spread across multiple departments. So what would it mean to shift those around into an emergency communications department that could then have metrics specifically focused on changes to dispatch. Just moving traffic enforcement over to the transportation department might also change the metrics that we're using to measure the staff that [1:19:32 AM] operate under that line item where I feel like what we're seeing and what the community is saying and what I think we're repeating is that we want to shift from punitive enforcement to protect, support and comply. And there are ideas that can shift how we manage safety on our roads that might benefit from the transportation department being a partner in that conversation in a way they aren't now. Those are an idea that I think are doable in an August budget because injury just essentially adding a different department head to the internal staff conversation and by the time you add all those things up you really are coming up on 100 million. Kind of sooner than you think. That's the type of stuff that I'm looking for, that I'm looking to offer as budget amendments. So when we see the fy21 line [1:20:34 AM] item version, which I'm sure the public will also want to see, so staff you can decide if you want to publish that or if you want me to publish that on the message board. >> We've been asked to provide that through a budget question and that will be done in the next day or two. >> Flannigan: Beautiful. So I think there's some really good stuff in there. And then there are parts of that line item that I wonder how we might have the conversation about efficacy, like mounted patrol. We're hearing a lot of community conversation on mounted patrol and the role that it plays. There was an item on an agenda previously that we postponed about spending additional dollars for mounted patrol support. I'm wondering if that's a necessary expenditure. You start -- I'm curious, air support is two million. I'm wondering if that is the type of operation that needs to be done just through APD or maybe we could be looking at a regional partnership through capcog with other jurisdictions that might [1:21:35 AM] like to use air support in the few times that it's necessary. So I'm hopeful that we can use the budget amendment process to shift in more civilian leadership over budgets areas, like traffic enforcement and communications, that will shift the significant portion of this budget over while there's also a lot of work to be done on the patrol part of the budget, this 48.5% neighborhood policing where in the line item brings it out by region, breaks it out by command area and you can see the numbers get kind of small by comparison. I can look at region 2 Adam, which is even bringer than my council district. My council district is smaller than region 2 Adam. And all of the line item for region 2 Adam in the fiscal year 20 budget was just 14 million. So when you start breaking it down by parts of town you start to see that it's not [1:22:36 AM] 434 million of officers patrolling the community, it gets more complicated. And there might be areas that I'm looking at increasing like -- what was the the one? I lost my place. Investigations. Where there might be value in increased resources for investigations. Certainly on sexual assault, which many of my colleagues have worked on, but maybe in other areas. We are a growing city. That means that some of these incidents of crime are going to increase and we may want more investigation. So that's kind of where my head is at. All right. So I want to get all the community members first and move on -- committee members first and we'll move on. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I think you may have answered this. I just want to confirm. So the three cadet classes that you mentioned, the budget -- current proposed budget includes both the cost of those three classes plus the personnel that would be included to go [1:23:37 AM] through those three classes, is that correct? And those classes were in the fall and in the spring and next summer. Is that correct? >> Yes. The budget would include the funding to run those cadet passes and then to the extent that the cadet would be graduating to officer during the year, we would include the funding to allow that to happen. But I would defer to chief Manley and chief gay if I have it right that that is when the cadet classes would be planned -- >> That's a good estimation, Ed. What we look to do is about every four months start that next class. So assuming we get one started in November, your timeline was correct. >> Kitchen: I think that councilmember Casar already asked for this, but I would like the dollar amounts associated with each of those classes, both the class part of it and the staffing part of it. [1:24:43 AM] >> I think chair Flannigan, you asked my other question, which was really related to dispatch. And there was some conversation about that earlier. I hear you talking about perhaps a department of emergency communications, which would put all that in together. Which I think is something of interest going forward. So that answers my other question except that I was a bit confused because there was some conversation earlier, rey, about -- maybe I was misunderstanding it about some analysis. I thought that was related to dispatch, but maybe I was misunderstanding. >> I think you heard it correctly. Again, based on the proposal the manager made in current year fy20 we're looking to take a closer look at dispatch equity and optimization and so we're just in the process -- I got an update that the proposal is going to be evaluated on the 31st of July. >> And when you say [1:25:44 AM] dispatch, maybe I'm lumping two things together. Is dispatch different than the call center and the call takers? >> It is not. I'm using a generic term in terms of dispatch that includes call taking as well. And this is really to look at fire and ems dispatch and call taking. >> So it's not looking at police, fire and ems. >> No. This is to look at fire and ems. >> Kitchen: Okay. So I would be interested in -- I actually see this as -- I see this as an opportunity to put these together because I see that in particular from a call take perspective that when someone calls in that we need to be talking about police, fire, ems or mental health. Depending on what is needed. So the taller has the options of all four. So truly from my perspective it argues for some consolidation or coordination of those. So I like the concept that [1:26:47 AM] you were suggest, councilmember Flannigan. I'll follow up with you. Rey, if we're going to get information about dispatch just for fire and ems, I would like to think about how that is expand understand terms of what analysis needs to be done for police. >> Flannigan: Other questions? Well, I think there's a lot of work to be done here. And this is an important question that the community has made some very specific requests. But I think we're also acknowledging that we can -- we can do more than what the manager's budget proposed because I think the coupe is more willing to use the budget as a leading indicator for change as opposed to wait until you've developed the full solution and then change the budget. I think we have to do it the other way around. [1:27:48 AM] But I understand why the manager and the staff would do it the way they did it. Also, Ed, would you verify this slide that we have up where it says sworn with the minus 70. I know you said it, but I want to put a kind of period on the end of a sentence. That's not firing 70 officers. Right? >> No, sir. Those are currently vacant positions. >> Flannigan: Right. And even reducing by 70 there are still how many vacant positions in the proposed budget. >> In the neighborhood of [indiscernible] In the cadet classes that we're talking about. >> Flannigan: Right. I'm also interested in maybe rethinking how we treat vacant positions, and rather than having vacant positions be sallied that then get spent in overtime, which I [1:28:49 AM] remember correctly that's generally how it's done or I'm remembering it wrong? It's different in different departments. I can't remember. >> It's different in different departments. An important thing to consider is that we do also budget what we call a vacant say savings amount. So as council looks at the vacant positions and maybe guide you want to reduce more vacant positions you have to keep in mind that we have budgeted in excess of $12 million, somewhere in that neighborhood, $12 million of vacancy savings. That's a negative number. We actually budget a negative dollar amount for vacancy savings because we know they have a lot of vacant positions and that they won't fully expend those dollars during the year. So that's just part of the calculus that you will need to be prepared for that some of these further reductions in vacancies, if that's where you wanted to go, won't have the same savings that you might expect because of that vacancy savings dynamic that we essentially already try to budget for. >> Flannigan: I find that [1:29:50 AM] the vacancies are less the issue because they're more a factor of how quickly and effectively we can recruit and train. What I'm hearing from the community is we need to be investing in alternative solutions. So the public doesn't even see that part of the sausage making where we're independently authorizing the number of sworn and the dollar numbers. So you get into this accounting line items situation. Councilmember kitchen? >> Kitchen: So you said that the vacancy savings amount is haven'ted at 12 million, but there's only -- is estimated at 12 million, but there's only 100 vacant positions. So that's 10 million, right? So would the vacancy savings amount be some percentage of the vacant amount? Is that the way it works? >> Well, the thing you have to understand, councilmember, is that on top of the 100 vacant [1:30:55 AM] positions the department attights about seven positions a month. So even during a cadet class the number will continue to grow and the cadet class will graduate and it will be a reduction of about 65 people and it starts growing again. So it's not just the 100 now, it's additional positions that will go vacant during the year. >> Kitchen: So what is the 12 million based on based on the estimate of the vacant positions? >> It's based on historical analysis, kind of like looking attra designation national attrition rates and vacancy levels. Not just the police department. We do it for all departments to see generally what kind of vacancy rates do they run at? What savings does it amount to? What savings are in the department. Some departments like the fire department we need to use all those savings [indiscernible] On an overtime basis which really is no savings. So those are just kind of things that go into it. And really it's a complicated analysis in a very vital department. [1:31:56 AM] >> Kitchen: I'll ask offline so as not to use the time of the committee. I want to know how many positions the 12 million is based on. >> I've although asked for an analysis of attrition and the impact of the budget. We have to factor in pension impacts as well because we're also having -- and councilmember alter who chairs that committee knows that we're having a separate discussion about pension issues so I want to make sure that we're taking that into account. >> Kitchen: So councilmember Flannigan, I'm sure that will be shared for all of us? >> >> Flannigan: Absolutely. And my last question and then we'll go to the 911 analysis. I don't want to be indelicate, but the -- there have been some calls from the police association to not respond to calls they've been responding to. So I'm not sure if, chief, this is a question for you or if it's a question for [1:32:56 AM] Ed, but if officers are going to respond to fewer calls, do we expect to see that reflected understand a savings in overtime? Or an increase in uncommitted time? How will we track whether or not that's actually occurring and how might we account for that in next year's budget? >> Well, I'll go first. And that is I have no expectation that officers will respond to fewer calls unless we make changes to our operations, and that's the direction that's given. I don't see this as necessarily an impact to overtime. In other words, officers responding to calls, they're doing that on their regular duty time. That's not a driver for overtime costs. Now, if you bring up uncommitted time, if we were to, through organizational or operational changes reduce the calls direct -- reduce the calls that they respond to, then that would create additional uncommitted time potentially depending upon what we see in call growth. [1:33:57 AM] Being the growing city that we are, knowing that as the population increases the calls for service will increase, it's where is that offset. But there would not be any immediate reduction in over time that I would see officers writing citations do get called into municipal court, but we have I think really done a good job, municipal court has, in ensuring that the vast majority of those officers, those tickets are scheduled if there is a trial, during their on duty time. So again, not something that's hitting that overtime budget. >> Flannigan: That might be a good way to enter into our 911 conversation unless the council or committee members have additional questions on budget. So that every knows our next public safety meeting is August 6. Weaver going to continue 911 there as well and we'll continue our budget conversation so this won't be the last time even in committee that we talk about this. Ed, thank you so much for your hard work. [1:34:57 AM] I'm going to see if I can unshare. There we do. Ed, thanks for your hard work on that. I'm looking forward to seeing the line item version of the proposed budget. >> You're welcome, councilmember. My quick thanks to will mix son from budget office who worked over the weekend on these slides. Thank you, will. >> >> Flannigan: Okay. So now we're going to transition into our final item. We're doing great, by the way. We're right on schedule, even a little ahead of schedule. Good job, everybody. I'm going to bring in one speaker, maybe two speakers if he's here, from -- let's see here. All right. That may be who we need. [1:35:57 AM] So this is our last item for today. Before we get to our future items and close out. We're going to talk about an analysis of 911 calls, and we have a speaker who is joining us, and then I will let staff speak to the work they're planning to do. And then we will take questions. Chief, do you want me to bring in -- let me make sure they're here. I think I brought in Mr. Guajardo and you want me to bring in Ken Murphy. >> Thank you. >> Ben, why don't you introduce yourself while I bring up your presentation? >> Hi, everybody. Thank you very much for having me. My name is Ben Horowitz. I'm one of the co-founders of ah data lit ticks. My previous background for creating the firm is I was a director of analytics for the New York police department and have a long history in data analysis and information systems. My colleague and I completed an analysis of calls for [1:36:58 AM] service data for the Austin police department, and I know we're -- we want to respect your time so I want to jump into the presentation and try to get doing. Just a little bit about ah datalytics, which is on the second slide here is we're an organization that strives to provide [indiscernible] Analytics to a variety of stakeholders and clients. We work with a variety of departments -- >> Excuse me, one second, Ben. I'm having a tough time hearing Ben. I wonder if there's anything we can do to make his audio less muscled? -- Less muffled. >> Is this better? >> That's much better. Thank you. >> Okay, wonderful. I had a little bit of internet trouble early on with with the presentation, so to be safe I was trying to [indiscernible]. So now I'm over the computer. [1:37:59 AM] So ah datalytics helps organizations in the public good and we typically work with criminal justice organizations. On the second slide it's a few smattering of some of the departments or cities we've worked with, Arlington, Texas in y'all's state, Ferguson, Missouri or where we're from, we worked with the city council in new Orleans. Just a few brief examples of the type of work. We've worked along the criminal justice spectrum providing data products and visualization to support criminal justice work, criminal justice support work and have done a variety of reports such as an assessment on release on reso long in a Sans and other criminal justice issues. Our article in the "New York Times" on how do police really spend their time released about a month ago really contributed to the discussion around what do police spend time on and how should we have an informed discussion when we discuss police budgeting issues as you guys so eloquently showed, demonstrated. Moving to the fourth slide I [1:39:00 AM] want to talk briefly about the methodology and provide a few of the findings and then obviously leave ample time for discussion. We received 18 months of calls for service data for the Austin police department, we did remove out the administration code -- the administrative code. Some of them are secondary employment, some are assignment related codes. And from there we grouped the calls for service into seven buckets. And this is aligned with what we did in the article and have done with some other departments. Just going down the line here, alphabetically the first bucket is medical. These typically involve mental health, suicide, death incidents. One note about the mental health calls, we are just strictly looking for all of these analyses based on the problem code or the call type or classification depending on your wording, and so we were just looking at ones that were explicitly [1:40:01 AM] labeled as mental health. We did receive a supplementary dataset which had the mental health flag added to them. We can talk a little bit about that in more detail. We did not have the requisite information to connect the two datasets, but it illustrates that a multitude of different call signals make up calls of people experiencing mental health issues or experiencing moments of crisis. So we can talk about what those different signal types are. Responsive are calls that are not initiated by the officer. They may or may not be criminal in nature. May include everything from assisting other agencies, disturbances, complaints, burglar alarms. Then you have your non-ucr crime. These are crimes -- incidents that are criminal in nature, but they don't match the FBI's uniform crime reporting for part one categories. It's everything from a city ordinance violation to kidnapping and everything in between. Proactive are incidents [1:41:03 AM] initiated by the officer that take place during discretionary time, follow-up investigations, investigating suspicious persons and routine patrol activities like areas checked. Then you have property crime, which matches the FBI definition of auto theft, burglary and theft. Traffic, which is responding to traffic accidents and enforcing traffic laws and directing traffic and violent crime, criminal homicide, rape be, robbery and aggravated assaults. So moving to the findings and once again we can of course go back through any of this as you all have questions. But a plurality of the calls for service were in that responsive category. You can see that really makes up the largest amount. One of the other things worth noting is that violent crime and property crime together represent no more than five percent of all calls for services that come out for the Austin police department. And this is similar to many police departments, right? So the findings kind of [1:42:03 AM] remain consistent and you can see how the calls for service break down for some of these other types. The next slide, however, will show not just how the calls come out, but how much time is spent. Surely time spent on the scene of a homicide is different than time spent on the scene for a false alarm. So if you take the time spent you get this break down. And what you find is that while violent crime and property crime now it increase to 10% of all time spent, you have these really large buckets of responsive, non-ucr crime traffic and proactive that make up nearly 90%. And then finally we've got the - - have to look at weekends in the report. With the -- at what ends in the report, with the overacting idea here is that calls in the report indicate that there's additional work to be done. So the most obvious point you would think, right, the majority of violent crime and property crime calls for service and in the report as [1:43:04 AM] one would expect, whereas traffic calls don't end in an [indiscernible] Report most of the time they'll end in a traffic citation and that's a different type of disposition. And things like burglar alarms, nearly all of them are false alarms. There's a small percentage that have a report. And then you can -- I've provided a sampling so you can see how that goes, a generic complaint call about 15% end in a report, a generic disturbance call is about 30% whereas a robbery, again, a violent crime, about two-thirds and then a report. Those somewhere of the large findings, the paper study was -- is available online. It's got detailed breakdowns, more by type, but talking about the council and we want to make sure we leave ample time for questions and discussions. And for those who want to see what my partner looks like it's on the left side who was unfortunately unable to make it today with all [1:44:05 AM] the various childcare arrangements we have to make now in the new era. >> Flannigan: All right. Any initial questions for Ben from council before we let staff? All right, staff, do you want to jump in? >> I'll make a few comments having had the opportunity to do a real quick run-through with the datalytics report and I think some of the methodological issues here, just to make note, violent crime does not include from what I just heard, assault, and we consider assaults violent crimes. It sounds like it only includes the aggravated assault category. So that was one thing. And then I think Mr. Horowitz a question for you, did you have the ability to weight the data? In other words, we would send multiple officers to those more violent crimes and those crimes that tend [1:45:05 AM] to take longer to investigate. So although the number of incidents may be distributed in the manner you just described, the time officers spend I don't think was accounted for in that there's many, many more hours spent on some of these calls because we have multiple officers there. If we're truly talking about how officers spend their time I don't think that's captured there. And let me pause there because that was a question. >> You're absolutely right, chief. >> Flannigan: I just want to say, councilmembers, check your inboxes, we're having staff send you the presentation. So since I've taken it down from the shared screen. >> My apologies, councilmember. Yes, you're absolutely right, chief. The number of officers on scene would be ideal to weight or even specific data for the officers. That data was unavailable for use of the analysis. As you point out that would make for a much more thorough and robust and that's the type of analyses [1:46:05 AM] that shuttle should be done for an in-depth staff study which this is not intended to replicate. And for your point about violent crime, while each jurisdiction might define them that way within their code, the typical approach we try to use it to adhere to the FBI definition so that we can make sure that our analyses are consistent from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. That doesn't necessarily mean that within jurisdictions there may be other reasons to localize the methodology as you state. I should also note that one of the other pieces that we mentioned not having the mental health slide. We didn't also have one way or the other a call was self-initiated or not. So we simply had to use kind of assumptions based on the call type when we grouped them in the responding and the proactive category. But certainly an officer may see something and self-initiate out that might land in one of the other categories. >> And the other thing that we noted when we were discussing this is trying to take our cad data and [1:47:07 AM] convert that over to ucr data. In cad it might show up as a disturbance, but if the officer didn't recode that call you don't know if that disturbance was an aggrevateassault or just a regular assault and it might feed differently into the analysis that you did. So we just have concerns with the accuracy of some of those conversions of cad data over to when you tried to plug it into ucr data because we're now a nibors department in the first place, some of the may have been lost in that translation as well. >> Sure, that's absolutely one of the potentials is not having the crosswalk between cad and the rms and that's always a challenge to deal with to know how it's coded and to know whether or not the officer recoded the cad type or just the cad type the same along with the charge on the rms, within the rms system. But our experience has been that even accounting for [1:48:07 AM] those type of things when we can, that it doesn't change the big picture. It might change it from the point 6% especially for just looking at aggravated assault, but if you're looking at-- even if you double that or triple that, it's still violent crime itself is a very small percentage. It's a very serious, very important piece, but towards informing the conversation of mow the time gets allocated which we find is very important. That's not to say that the other actions aren't necessarily uses of law enforcement, but those certainly are useful for the council to discuss. >> Certainly, my only final report is when we talk about violent crime, we consider aggravated assault a violent crime and I don't know what other things might not fall in your analysis in that same area. I think those are probably my initial comments and I appreciate you engaging with me, Mr. Horowitz and chair, thank you for giving me a few moments to address some of the data. [1:49:07 AM] We have internally, are working with our data from 2019 as well. We've got 516,623 calls that we responded to and we've broken those down into every single type call that we respond to and we're doing additional analysis on that as well because that is an interest area for us also. With that, chair, I'll turn it back to you over. Thank you. >> Flannigan: Thank you, Brian. Rey, when I spoke to our deputy city manager who I don't think is signed in to the call today, she explained to me that the 911 analysis that you all will be doing is happening outside of the police department? That there are other staff that are going to do that? Am I remembering that correctly? >> You are remembering it correctly. And I think Carey o'connor is on the panel here that may be able to talk to that. >> Carey, are you there? >> Yes, I'm here. >> Flannigan: Excellent. Can you give us the ten-cent [1:50:10 AM] version of what you are about to start up? And I thought you were done. >> No, I'm not done. I was looking at the dataset provided by APD. As the chief was explaining, I can't do an apples to apple comparison with aged datalytics. Overall I think their report is very helpful at this stage of work. This did a conscientious job that shows their expertise and experience. Looking at the initial comparison, we concur with the first recommendation that we need a better categorization of calls for service and the six recommendation to make signals clearer and all of the conversations about technology modernization, obviously we'll we'd like to make that work easier on all involved. Without those steps it's going to be difficult to accomplish sort of like things like the fourth recommendation which is on everyone's top of mind, which is identifying non-police responses to mental health crisis. [1:51:12 AM] One of the things to note that the innovation office, we structure our research in terms of future oriented as opposed to an analysis of the current state. So we would very much be looking into the data for patterns and to investigate how those patterns might play out through various choices and options that everyone is discussing here today. So for example, if you're looking at key word traffic in all of the calls for service data, you've got 14% of calls for service include the key word traffic. You start from there. You tease out traffic stop, that's 7.8% of calls for 2019. It's an officer-initiated stop. So that is a more proactive rather than responsive. So we might look then at patterning that data to see what would happen, what might happen, what would it look like if we looked at atd or someone else engaging [1:52:13 AM] in those. For that kind of analysis you would want to go a little bit deeper into context. You want to look at what brought that call forward? What is the cad data saying more qualitatively about how that call was coded? And so that kind of analysis can take a little bit more time. So that's just an example of some of the things that we're doing to look at this calls for service data. >> Flannigan: All right. Questions fro councilmembers? Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: So just to back up for a little bit. So the presentation we just saw what was the dataset that we looked at? Is it the same dataset that Carey is looking at? I understand the conversation that we just had between the chief and Carey and in terms of looking at those datas, how you look at those dataset [1:53:14 AM] and analyze it, but I missed the first part of the presentation. What is the dataset that the ah analytics looked at? Is it different datasets. >> We looked at all of 2019 and the first six months of 2020. >> And councilmember, the data that I'm looking at is only for 2019. So just 12 months. >> Kitchen: Okay, thank you. >> Casar: I think I lost it in the back and forth. Mr. Horowitz, where is assaults, but non-aggravated assaults categorized in your report? >> They would be in the non-ucr crime bucket. So they would still be in the crime bucket, but not -- we're just trying to keep the violent and property crimes aligned with ucr for keep with consistency as we apply the methodology from [1:54:16 AM] the "New York Times" paper. >> And the non-ucr crime bucket remind me what percentage of police time and 911 calls that was? >> That represented about 17% of all the calls received. And about 24% of all of police time, but as chief noted that's just based on an arrival and closed, not able to discern the number of officers that as you mentioned surely more officers going respond to more serious crime than say a false alarm. So the weighting is not applied. >> That makes sense. And speaking of the alarms, I remember we had a presentation on that several years ago. Do we know which percentage -- how much time either chief or Mr. Horowitz, I don't know if this was in your study, we spent responding to commercial particular alarms? >> We were unable to distinguish between commercial or residential so [1:55:17 AM] I'll defer. >> And councilmember, I don't have that data here today. I'm not sure that we could segment it out that way. But that's something that we can look at. >> Casar: Yeah because I think I remember under chief Acevedo we had that presentation. I recall there was both a residential and commercial category in what we were shown, but I could be bronc. I look forward to what the city's own numbers show. I really appreciate what you brought, Mr. Horowitz, because I think that all members of the council and community are interested both in investigating who commits violence, but also in preventing it and in reducing it. And in my own district we had two people killed since Thursday. Ms. Henson in Windsor park and Mr. Harris behind dobie middle school. Just a few weeks before that Mr. Ruiz needlessly killed in my district and then two [1:56:17 AM] people killed in car accidents that seemed from the information that I've seen very avoidable. And it's important and I don't think anybody is debating that we need to investigate deaths and investigate violence. My district being so he Havely affected by that very important to me. Nobody is saying that's not important. When we do look at the data it seems like only a small portion of the police budget goes to investigating it. And frankly very little to the prevention efforts that this council has been talking about for years. So I think allocating dollars to try to not just investigate why somebody died in an accident or why someone and who killed someone, but also actually preventing those things from happening in the first place is really important and that's where I hope some of this reallocation goes to [1:57:17 AM] because we have failed many times at preventing some of the needless harm in the community. So I appreciate you raising the fact that we actually don't dedicate that much of our time to holding people accountable and investigating violence, much less preventing it in the first place. >> I know the alarm fees went up in the last number of years. My recollection is that it was a right sizing to the amount of false alarms so that portion might be something we're cost recovering with fees, but we want to confirm that with Ed. Additional questions? Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Yeah, thank you. [Echo on the line]. >> Flannigan: Uh-oh. [1:58:18 AM] Anybody want to go first? Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I think this might be a question for -- [echo on the line]. It might be for legal. I'm wondering for the traffic are there legal constraints where it has to be an officer who stops someone who ran a stop sign or who doesn't have a tail light or other kinds of things? Or that has to respond at a crash scene in order to write a citation for insurance or are there legal restrictions that require it to be a sworn officer under legal circumstances? >> I don't believe we have legal on the line, but yes some of this is statutorily directed as far as the requirement that police officers be dispatched to crashes that require tow tow trucks and things of the like. The other point would be that traffic stops are some of the most dangerous encounters that officers have short of some of the [1:59:18 AM] disturbance calls they go to and we only need to go to the officer down memorial page to see how many police officers have been killed during traffic stops this year alone. I know there's a community in California, Berkeley, that has changed their approach to that and that is very concerning for us to those in the police profession because we know the inherent dangers of traffic stops. I would just preface any conversation we're going to have as a community on that topic. >> Alter: I would be interested in any other information you have on that. I mean, I think the area that I hear very often from my constituents that they want more of is traffic enforcement. And I know that -- so I would love to understand better the reservations and understand any opportunities you see there for us to be able to be more responsive, but particularly if there are, I have an inclination that there were some dangers [2:00:18 AM] there that might not be there on the surface, but would love to know to more of those details. >> Certainly. And then of course traffic enforcement is something that officers do when they're not responding to calls for service. So reduction in the number of calls to officers will reduce the time available to actually conduct that traffic enforcement that we know the community very much wants. >> Alter: Thank you, chief. Were there any other things that have been brought up that you feel like there are safety issues that we need to keep in mind or history that is useful for us to know? >> I think as we go into -- as we go into these discussions of transitioning work potentially, there are some civil service requirements about getting work that was done by a certified peace officer to a civilian that again I don't want to get too far over my skis on legal issues here, but there are specific requirements. Citizens don't have the authorities that police officers have to detain and [2:01:19 AM] to arrest. And then of course just those inherent dangers that come with some of the things police officers are asked to respond to, and that's why the response has been as it's been for so many years. Not that we can't find ways to hopefully get things that have to do with mental health calls where we can make that work, but there are some things that just by the inherent danger or by the required authorities they cannot be given off to anybody other than your local police agency. >> Thank you, chief. Mr. Arrellano, perhaps you could ask legal to give us a memo about some of those things about when -- sorry, thee's noise here at my house. When we -- some kind of legal memo that would help us to understand when we have to have a sworn officer and which circumstances. I don't know if you have to have a sworn officer go to a burglary alarm, for instance, as well as a traffic stop. [2:02:19 AM] There are bunch of -- there are a lot of ideas floating around that it would be helpful if we had further legal insight and maybe in a memo to council or something. >> I'll be sure to follow up on that. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Flannigan: And I think that's a really great point, councilmember alter. Ben, if your presentation where you talked about calls for service, that third column says percent with a report. And it shows that at least in your analysis which I'm looking forward again to seeing city staff take their level of data and go deeper, but it shows that at least in Ben's study it shows only 12 expense of responsive calls had a report. Does that in your analysis, Ben, does that mean from what you could see from the data only 12% of those 324,000 calls result in an action that required it to be sworn? >> So from what we can tell [2:03:19 AM] it seems like there's certainly the complaint and disturbances category and those are going to be much more like to end in a report as compared to the other ones. Those complaints were only 15% ended in report for disturbances, 30%. But check on welfares, burglar alarms is really the biggest one where 0.5% ended in a report. And then there's assisting other agencies which is -- always unclear because the other agency might be the one taking the lead on some of those. And then when you look at disturbances and complaints there's a lot of composition of what those calls can look like. And how they end. And as the mental health calls show that when we did the analysis of the calls for service with the mental health flag that we couldn't match up to the main dataset, we were able to look at the types of calls that these represented. And we found that these really capture everything [2:04:21 AM] from complaints and disturbances all the way to violate crime potentially. So mental health might be present on a lot of these type of calls even if they don't end in a report, those can certainly be alternative methods of handling those type of calls. >> Flannigan: I bring it up to say that there's really a lot of nuance and detail and it's always hard when it rolls up to eight rows in a table to really define that level of duplexity. I -- of complexity. I remember seeing the story about Berkeley and my recollection is that like many of the stories we're seeing out of other cities, there being reporters having been done when I just passed a resolution. And we all know that passing the resolution doesn't actually do it. Doing comes later. So there's been a lot of reporting that says city X suddenly made a dramatic change to their policing in a certain way when really their council signaled some intent to do it because they haven't worked out the details and the challenges yet. So I'm glad that we're not [2:05:22 AM] continue to go repeat that. We did our big solutions and now we're doing the work so I'm glad we're continuing to do that. And I don't think anyone is saying that we would take any action that would reduce safety. In fact, what we're trying to do is improve safety. As we get into the details we'll find out where that's harder or easier based on what we're learning. Councilmember tovo, let's see if your tech is working. You sound good. >> Tovo: Good. Thank you. So slide five I want to be sure I'm understanding the back and forth between chief mainland consultant. So as I understand slide five, which talks about how calls of service time was used, the violent crime figure here, the three percent, did not include violent crimes that would fall within the non-ucr crime category. And those would change in assault, as chief Manley mentioned. I also saw an indication earlier that I didn't [2:06:23 AM] understand related to kidnapping. I guess the first question is for non-ucr crime there's a description, a definition that talks about instances that are -- incidents that are criminal in nature, but do not fit within the ucr category from noise ordinance to kidnapping to everything in between. It is not clear to me whether they are included within part one or are excluded from part one? I assume it's the latter, but wanted to verify. >> Correct. They're exclude from the violent or property crime definitions as set forth by the FBI. And again the primary reason for that is comparability from geographies to have a consistent set of systems. >> Tovo: But as we look at slide five we need to take into account as to the calls of service, calls for service,, the violent crime category here, that's three percent, does not include assault. We know it may not include [2:07:25 AM] kidnapping, may not include some other things that our jurisdiction and probably a lot of our community would regard as violent crime. >> Right. What it's using is the standard FBI definition for violent crime that those are pros and cons of the standardized definition allowed for comparison across communities. The downside is it's been a very standardized approach that's been used for decades, which again helps you understand longevity of crime statistics, but doesn't get into that hyper nuance as you understand things. Even things like theft by fraud isn't considered to be a property crime of theft. When we think of identity theft and things of those nature are not quite at the scale that they are today. So those are things that should be considered. That's why we have the non-crime -- non-ucr crime category as well. >> Tovo: I see that. I think ma many people [2:08:26 AM] looking at this won't understand what is contained within ucr crime. I don't myself. I would ask that -- perhaps this can be handled through a budget q&a. It would be useful to see what is included within the FBI's definition -- descriptions of ucr crime especially as we engage with constituents around this information. It would be useful to know what is in that non-ucr crime category and where it fits within some of those other categories of crime, property crime, violent crime, etcetera. And then I just wanted to point out there was a conversation a little bit earlier about particular alarms. And I do think that we got that data as part of the q&a in previous year's budget question and answer. So that kind of leads me to the point I was hoping to make during the conversation that was more focused on budget conversation. At that point I was just listen ags a participant and didn't have ability to speak. So I know my office [2:09:28 AM] submitted several questions on Friday regarding APD's budget, including the one that Ed referenced about asking for the spreadsheet information for fiscal year -- as has been proposed for fiscal year 2021. We also received it for fiscal year 20 and asked that be added to the budget q&a. And to the extent our individual offices are related for information related to APD's budget or percent of the budget that relates to salaries and other things along the lines of what we've talked about here today, if we could do that through the budget q&a that's super especially-ful. That way all of our offices aren't asking for this information independently and we have it for future years. That's a request that we all submit our questions that way so we can all see the information and the public can see the information as well. And then just a suggestion, I think, I may be wrong about this, but I do think we have that burglar alarm information and data possibly in one [indiscernible]. So thanks. Very as well as conversation. I did miss the timeline of when our city analysis of [2:10:31 AM] the 2019 data were finished? >> Rey or Carey? >> Councilmember tovo, I don't currently have a date for you just yet. We're still working with the city manager's office on structuring all of the work that is to ask which questions we're going to be asking of the data so as soon as we have that scope I'll let you know and we can work on it pretty quickly. >> Great. Thank you very much. >> Flannigan: I will say at least for staff's part, they were willing to let us say it was going to be done by the 6th since that's the next public safety committee, and we were scheduled to go over their work. So Carey, if that's changing please let me know sooner rather than later. >> I will do my best. >> Okay. >> Flannigan: Just as a time check, councilmembers, we're down to our last 15 minutes. Councilmember alter. [2:11:31 AM] >> Alter: Thank you. My thoughts may be scattered. I apologize. One, I appreciate the response of this -- the importance of this data and understanding it. I want to underscore that one of the things we saw with sexual assault was that only 10% of women were reporting. And there are various reasons why they're not reporting. Some of which may have to do with our ability to respond appropriately. And we may -- it may be that to promote safety we have to make additional investments. Councilmember Flannigan alluded to this earlier with investigations and other kinds of things. I wanted to flag that. I also on a broader level want to flag that I'm very concerned about moving victim services out of APD. We really have to ask if any sort of moves benefit the survivors and while I'm open to a conversation on that, I've not yet heard a good [2:12:32 AM] rationale for that and will be -- any conversations to that effect I'll be trying to understand what kind of benefits they deliver to the survivors. The last thing I wanted to do was ask chief Manley if you could speak to any thoughts on the nuances that we should be thinking about when we talk about park patrol is something that can move because I know that was moved to not that long ago and it was obviously a rational at that point which I'm not fully familiar with, but it's sort of boomeranging back and forth. I would like us to have the lessons learned. I don't know if that's anything that we can share now or if -- ray, if you have also any documentation you can share about when those choices were made to move park patrol into APD or to move the airport patrol [2:13:35 AM] into APD because plumebly there was rationals at that point in time. So maybe if there's broader information you can get that to us, rey, and chief Manley if you wanted to speak to any thoughts you might have on that or chief gay. >> Certainly. So as a community we went through what was called consolidation at the time. We used to have the public safety emergency management department. And it was the three other law enforcement agencies at that time, airport police was a separate entity standalone with its own structure as was the city marshals. And the park police as you just mentioned. And in an effort to professionalize how everything was being done and to unify our approach to public safety here in Austin, the decision was made to bring everybody into APD so that we have one law enforcement agency, one policy manual, one criteria for training, all of the reasons that you would think you want to consolidate [2:14:35 AM] those types of operations. I think there's economies of scale there as well as you don't need full administrations for each of these other standalone entities as we did back then when they were their own entities. And so there was a lot that went into bringing everyone together to ensure that our law enforcement efforts were uniform here in the city. And so anything that we would do to step away from that would be going back to the way it used to be structured and as commissioned police officers, again they can only report to commissioned police officers. So I don't know what that structure would look like. Moving the budget is one thing, but trying to move the duties and the responsibilities is another. So having parked within APD allows us to fold them into everything we do, many of our special events occur in some of the larger parks here in Austin. And so we're able to kind of fold them into our large [2:15:37 AM] operational plans much easier because they're a component of APD. So we will look back and get the documents or information from back when these decisions were made, but that's just my initial comments to the question. >> [Indiscernible]. >> Flannigan: Were you done, Alison? >> Alter: Can you hear me? I lost you for a second. I've got an unstable connection today. Thank you, chief, for that. Acm Arrellano if it's possible to get history on that, I think that would be really important to understand what went into that and where the savings were. My understanding is it would end up costing a lot more. But I don't know how you unpack that and what the implications are of that. >> I'd be glad to follow up on it. [2:16:38 AM] >> I am interested in that analysis too. It sounded like what was explained used to occur were different chains of command of sworn officers. Which makes it sound like we might be able to do that again. Am I misinterpreting that, chief Manley? >> So there was a -- a message like another police chief basically who operated the psem. He was actually a former APD deputy chief who then became the chief over those operations. So again, because you have to report to a commissioned -- a commissioned person now, there was different levels of certification that they had. Part of the reason the cost structure was what it was is because there were very different pay scales at the time too. So when everybody joined into APD, the pay scales had to adjust as well. [2:17:40 AM] >> Flannigan: Okay. So in theory, we don't -- you can have -- as long as the sworn person is the department head, which I think is the phrase of what state law says is department head, you can have multiple departments. >> Correct. >> Flannigan: I find that very fascinating. Other questions? Councilmember Casar. >> I wanted to speak to one of councilmember alter's points. Because I do think that as you raised, especially in sexual assault cases, very few people report their case. Some national studies that I've seen show that a majority of survivors of serious violence choose not to report what happened to them, a majority of them. And that often times that -- many of those studies find that when those folks are interviewed, either, one, they don't think that anything is going to [2:18:40 AM] actually be done to address their safety or two, that it's often times based on people's perception of the police. And so I agree with you that we should be really thoughtful about victim services and other services that are for survivors. I would say that based both on what I've heard here locally and on national data we are very behind. I think our whole country is far behind on actually reporting. If something isn't working as well as we want it too we should look at it really closely. Whether that means it was within APD or at some point meets out or whether we should have the function inside arrested outside, I think we should engage in that conversation because clearly not enough people feel comfortable reporting what is happening. >> Flannigan: Five minutes. Mayor pro tem. >> Garza: So I understand the numbers at the data [2:19:47 AM] analytics guy gave. And chief, you're saying it's not an apples to apples comparison. So I was wondering if you can provide us some statistics on the number of -- you mentioned that assault is not included in the assault category that they had. As we token have these discussions -- as we continue to have these discussions I think it would be helpful -- according to your numbers and how they're categorized by APD, what percentage are those violent crimes and how, you know, those different kind of crimes are defined? And then also when -- so I guess would you be able to provide that? >> To that question I think some of that will fall under the work that Carey o'connor and her team are doing. And to where that work doesn't address that issue we can again just from the count on the number of offenses, we could very easily replicate what data analytics did and include things that we believe are violent crimes here in our community. [2:20:47 AM] The part that's harder to capture and that requires a much more in-depth analysis would be that if we're trying to say how much time do officers spend as a percentage of all time available on certain types of crime, you really have to know that we send four officers to this call, one left after 45 minutes, the other after an hour and 15 minutes and the other two stayed for three hours and finished. So that level of analysis is very, very detailed, but that's the only way you can truly say where police officers are spending their time and how much time they actually are spending on violent crime versus others as a percentage of their total time. >> Garza: Okay. If we could have a general idea that would be helpful. And then why certain things are categorized. And then don't -- isn't that part of the triage process in dispatch. Like does the person have a [2:21:48 AM] weapon? Are you afraid for your safety? Aren't those questions that get asked during dispatch? >> Yes, we have a very specific script and protocol for approaching these and then they code it. Codingsare more general so they can get coded and sent to the officer and get the officer dispatched. As they're asking all the follow-up questions and getting all of that additional information they're providing updates to the responding officer. So it's likely not going to change how it was initially categorized, but they want to get it initially categorized is it's a disturbance, let's get officers in route. And as they ask follow-up questions they will be passing that information along to the responding officers, are there people involved, are there weapons involved? Are there people injured? Things like that. That's why I was talking about what was initially coded as a disturbance on the cad might be something very different in our rms system. It might actually be an aggravated assault. So the two systems are not comparable. [2:22:48 AM] >> Okay. And then you mentioned the question about traffic stops. When you say that those are the most dangerous, are those -- it would be nice if when we're having this conversations because we're all learning here, if there's a way to provide context to where is that all traffic stops? And any traffic stop they're the most dangerous call police officers make? Or are they more like dwa traffic stops or, you know, a person fleeing a traffic stop? Like is it -- it would be nice to have a context of what exactly kind of traffic stop we're talking about. And then just lastly, as we're trying to have very candid conversations about how we rethink our response, I guess I just ask you to -- the question was asked about the traffic stops and you said if we stop this then we can't do this. If we tell these people to [2:23:48 AM] stop -- if we have another four to so speak that does traffic stops we can't have the people who do the traffic enforcement. And I guess I hope we can -- those two don't have to go together. Like we can solve for both is what I'm saying. I think we're all trying to get there is yes, we still want -- maybe those who still are interested in speed management we need that and that's what constituents do especially in neighborhoods. It doesn't mean we can't rethink how we do that as well. So I'd ask you to help us get to a place. I know we don't know where we're going but we need to try to get to something -- I understand that's the difficulty is we don't know, but these are good conversations to brainstorm these. >> And please don't think the comments I make as resistance. I want the same thing to make well educated and informed decisions. And I do see it as my role and audiology mfi peers on [2:24:49 AM] this call as well to throw all that information out there. So yes, traffic stops I said they are one of the most dangerous. It varies year by year. And we can look to see if there's been any studies as far as whether one type of stop is more dangerous than another. But we've unfortunately seen those horrific outcomes across the board whether it's a subject fleeing or whether it was what was an innocuous traffic stop for a minor violation. But I am not trying to throw up roadblocks. I'm just trying to make sure that these decisions are as informed as possible with the information we have as with our public safety backgrounds and then of course as we delve into talking about the park police and things like that. I do think it's important that we come from a perspective of history of why we did it in the first place. So the thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. >> Flannigan: We are at 5:00. We can stick around and take a few more questions, but if any councilmembers need to leave or if Mr. Horowitz, if [2:25:49 AM] it you need to leave, that's good too, but take some more questions. Councilmember harper-madison? >> Harper-madison: Thank you, chair and to everybody who has presented today and been able to answer some of these very important questions. It's very helpful. So I just wonder if something we can add to the purview of the citizen body that's doing some of the audit work and doing some of the assessment around cadet classes, as chief was speaking to of having one vehicle being the pass listen through for all points of consideration and as we're thinking about moving certain departments around, I just want to make -- I want to offer the opportunity for folks who are doing these assessments and conducting the audits to determine whether or not that perspective of efficacy [2:26:50 AM] is as valuable as having multiple points of accountability? I can't help but wonder if what we're saying at the end of the day we have so many points of consideration with the department at varying levels and things that need to change substantially in order for us to have what it is that the community and many of us are demanding, I don't see how that same department can be the tool by which all the things continue to flow through. So I have some questions about what that looks like for us to continue along the path. So councilmember Flannigan and chair, I appreciate your line of questioning and I'd like for there to be some conversation where we elaborate on that. The benefit, the potential benefit of having multiple points of accountability. >> Flannigan: Yeah, chief, I think what you laid out, and rey to extent you pulled the stuff that came from the past, I think there might [2:27:51 AM] even be some stuff we can look to and compare to that could be very interesting in how we move forward in a way that provides even more safety targeted to the needs of the community for a city that is much bigger now than it was then. And we might be able to scale in a way that the call volume is as such in a way you couldn't before when you had to have officers to serve five or six functions. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I don't have an answer for this, but I hope we also consider technology for some of these things. There may be opportunities to use technology in way that we haven't been able to use in the past. At least with regard to traffic issues. I hope that we have that conversation as part of this also. >> Flannigan: That's [2:28:52 AM] great. So we're past, unless there are any additional pressing questions for today. Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: Because I assume that [indiscernible] If you go to the appendix of Mr. Horowitz' report because I assume you would have brought this up. You can actually pull out the assault category that was being discussed earlier in the meeting. I'm looking at it. It looks like it's 4.7% of time is the standard all the. There he is. So maybe I'm speaking out of turn. Tell me if I'm wrong here. So that would add up in his report to about 7.5% of APD time? Which is still pretty surprising to me smaller percentage of time than I would have guessed. Even if it were weighted, I'd say it was double weighted, that might be 15%. Or triple weighted at 22%. So still a smaller chunk of the time than other activities. Is that generally right, [2:29:52 AM] Mr. Horowitz? >> Yeah, I would concur with that. For those interested, the full report has got a detail of those subcategories with all that data and a fuller breakdown and methodology that we just tried to provide in brief. But that's exactly it, the general trend should relatively hold. >> Flannigan: All right P. >> Tovo: Can I ask where the report is, the full report? I know we were sent out the powerpoint? Is the full report linked to the committee? >> Flannigan: We'll make that the full report gets sent out. I think it was sent to us by the Austin justice coalition so it might show up in your external email folders, but we'll make sure that that gets sent as well. >> Tovo: Thanks. >> Flannigan: Any final comments? All right. Thanks, everybody. This was I think another great committee meeting. Mr. Horowitz thanks for spending some virtual time with us today. And thanks to all of the staff who came in and out of this meeting throughout the day. A lot of great work. Hopefully for us on the [2:30:52 AM] council, hopefully this helped reduce the amount of this we'll have to repeat during our budget work sessions as we move through the rest of the week. Chief, did you want to add something? >> No, I was just going to tell everybody good-bye. That's why I took my mic off. >> Flannigan: I'm watching. I'm watching the whole time! >> You're good. >> Flannigan: Thanks, everybody. It is 5:06 P.M. And with that we adjourn this meeting of the public safety committee.