Public Safety Committee (PSC) Special Called Meeting Transcript - 3/31/2025 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 3/31/2025 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 3/31/2025 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. [2:00:34 PM] Good afternoon. I will now call the public safety committee meeting to order. It is March 31st, 2025 at still 2 P.M. This is a special called meeting of the public safety committee. We are here at city hall, located at 301 west second street, Austin, Texas. And we have a quorum present. Our first item will be public communication. I believe we don't have any speakers signed up. >> That's correct sir. No speakers. >> All righty. Item number one will be our approval of minutes. The first action will be to approve the committee meeting. Committee meeting minutes from October 14th, 2024. I will now accept a motion to approve those minutes. Moved by council member qadri. Second motion made by the mayor. Any discussion? All right. Without objection, the minutes are approved. The committee will now take up item number two and approve the dates for the public safety committee meeting. Committee calendar 2025. I will accept a motion to approve the minutes. Motion made by council member qadri. Seconded by council member [2:01:36 PM] Seconded by council member duchen. Any discussion? >> I just want to say I want to congratulate councilmember Velasquez for chairing his first committee. >> Let's get through it first. Let's see if I don't screw it up at some point. But let's get through it first. >> But, you know, much like the kindness you showed me when I chaired the economic opportunity committee, really excited to see you chair this committee and excited for the year ahead. >> I appreciate you, brother. So without objection, the dates are approved. And our third item also members. We have a number of presentations. So I'll ask that we keep our questions till after each presentation so we can run a little bit more smoothly and let our presenters cook a little bit. We will have a we'll have briefings. The committee will not take up. Item number three, briefing on the state of public safety. We will open, like I said, we will open it to discussion after each briefing. And our first presenter is our chief of police, miss chief Lisa Davis. >> Chair, real quick, if I could [2:02:41 PM] >> Chair, real quick, if I could just tee this up for us real fast. One of the things, as in our discussions with regards to this being the first public safety committee meeting. Eddie Garcia. >> I was about to say, sir, if you can please give your name for the record. >> Eddie Garcia is the city manager for public safety. >> Everybody trying to break all the rules just because I'm up here. >> Anyway, so in having these discussions, I thought. We thought that and felt that it would be a good time to really give a sense of what the state of public safety is in the city. Obviously, I'm coming up on six months here. And I will tell you, perceptions and reality are two different things. When it comes here. The sky is not falling when it comes to public safety here in the city of Austin. I'm very proud of the work that all of our directors are doing. They're going to have discussions about things that are going well. Things that we need to work on. And the things that we're proud of and accomplishments. And so I know that I feel that you'll be as proud of them as I have been. And obviously, I'm I'm really excited to have this group with me. So with that, I'll turn it over to chief. Thanks. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, thank you. [2:03:42 PM] >> Thank you, thank you. Chairman. All right. Ready to go? Oh, I have the clicker. Sorry. All right, so starting with our department structure. As you can see, we have well over 300 sworn police officer vacancies at the APD. The recruiting unit is doing a phenomenal job, and we've seen an impressive number of applications submitted to our police cadet positions over the last several hiring cycles. Now that we are back under contract, it is helping significantly with both recruiting and retention. The contract also allows us to continue recruiting and testing applicants nonstop. To our upcoming cadet classes. Whereas when we were out of contract, we had to abide by the civil service hiring rules, which requires one exam per hiring cycle only. So we're holding three cadet classes per year with a maximum of 104 seats per class. So we should continue seeing progress in filling those police officer vacancies. And if we have three classes a year with a minimum of 60 officers, by the end of the year 2027, we will only be 40 officers short. [2:04:42 PM] will only be 40 officers short. So we are we are closing the gap here and making fantastic progress. All right. Here's the org chart. I recently made some changes to our organizational structure that I feel helped the department increase efficiency of operations and ultimately improve customer service. Some of the changes I'd like to highlight include the consolidation of three of those investigative bureaus into two, the development of a specialized unit, including the downtown Austin rapid response team, the gun crime intelligence unit, vice, and the focus deterrent unit. Moving all of patrol under one assistant chief, and that allows for consistent support and transparency. And the newly created chief of strategic initiatives position, which oversees the office of evidence based policing. Technical difficulties. There we go. Service area. APD covers a very large and densely populated service area with nine patrol sectors across the city. This map indicates where our police headquarters and substations are located. You'll see headquarters [2:05:43 PM] located. You'll see headquarters downtown and our north, central and south substations identified here. Our patrol officers respond to nine one calls for service, while our district representatives provide strategic, short and long term solutions to quality of life issues. Again, 326mi S within Travis, Williamson and hays county. Nine sector areas. And again, those important district representatives, which we have. The district representatives were cut when we were doing staffing issues. But again, that is one thing that I definitely want to rebuild because everyone talks about the value. And I know personally the value of those having those district representatives. So that is a priority for sure. All right. Call volume and patrol staffing. APD has a high volume of calls for service across the Austin community. And because we are still experiencing experiencing staffing challenges, our patrol officers do have a lot of uncommitted time between calls. As we see improvements to our staffing numbers, we'll see percentages of uncommitted time increase, which means our officers will have more time to engage with the community, more time to act on problem solving initiatives. Patrol response. We've seen increases in our [2:06:47 PM] We've seen increases in our average response times from priority zero, and priority one calls for service, which is demonstrated in this chart that compares last year's average to the prior two years. These increase increases can be attributed to several causes, including our staffing numbers on patrol and the increased growth and resulting infrastructure changes throughout the city itself. We're continuing to utilize the backfill process. So backfill process is that everyone outside of patrol, all of those in those investigative units, will spend five days within nine. They'll have five days that they have to pick, that they have to go back to patrol and do a ten hour shift. So five days within 90 days. And that's helps helps us fill those gaps of where we're missing in patrol. And again, my goal is to eliminate backfill requirements by the end of this calendar year. And we'll get through that with some graduation of an academy class. Emergency communications response. We've made significant improvements in our emergency communications center, and I'm proud to report that in 2024, our percentage of calls answered within 15 seconds was at 93%, a jump from 74.7% the year prior. [2:07:49 PM] jump from 74.7% the year prior. Our staff worked with city leadership and the human resources division to develop a career progression plan for our call takers and dispatchers, and in March of 2023, we had over 60 call takers and dispatcher vacancies. And as of this month, we're down to 18 vacant positions. So we're doing fantastic there. All right. Crime. All right. Comparing yearly data between 23 and 24, we have seen a reduction of approximately 8.33% in our numbers of violent crime. And this has been seen across the country. And this is specifically to murder, rape, aggravated assault and robberies. This is our number violent crime victims per year. If you can look at our assaults in the year 24, we're down significantly to 3020. You look at those eight assaults, that's your shootings, your stabbings, your more serious assaults where a bone was broken. That counts [2:08:50 PM] a bone was broken. That counts as aggravated assault. So that's the for this year. But we are down in that. We are up slightly in rape offenses. But when you talk about rape, rape is such an underreported offense anyway across the country. And when you see numbers rising, I count that to just the great work that our victim services are doing to get people to report those crimes. And then this is something we're very proud of, our APD homicide, solvency rate, the best practices across the country, I believe, is 64 to 65% is what most big cities do as far as reducing or their homicide closure rate. We are at 94% for 2024, and in 2023 we were 99%. And that will, I think, very soon be 100%. All right. So APD is highly focused on improving safety and reducing violent crime citywide. But we recognize that the downtown entertainment district has historically been a large contributor to this violent crime. The sixth street entertainment district is unique in that it has regular concentration of visitors coming together to experience Austin's nightlife in a crowded [2:09:51 PM] nightlife in a crowded environment, with the streets regularly shut down and encouraged a party atmosphere, and was a perfect breeding ground for arguments and physical altercations among groups of people. To address the violent crime, the heightened use of force and officer injuries in this sector, we worked with city partners and leadership to establish a traffic plan that would open sixth street to vehicular traffic. This began as a pilot program, but we are moving forward with permanent solutions to keep the road open. And these are the preliminary results. Preliminary results have shown that opening sixth street to vehicular traffic resulted in fewer arrests, fewer instances of officers using force, fewer officer injuries. And we are encouraged by these initial results and hope to continue to see improvement. But again, we recognize that there is still work to do and we are working hard. As APD began opening sixth street to vehicular traffic in December, and we measured our numbers of arrests between January and February 11th to assess preliminary impacts of the initiative when compared to the numbers of arrests in 2024, we saw decreases both across the downtown sector and also specifically on sixth street. So [2:10:52 PM] specifically on sixth street. So you can look at those. Those are large numbers. Friday and Saturday nights typically produce larger crowds in the downtown entertainment district. When comparing the same time frame of January to February 11th, and strictly comparing Friday and Saturday nights between 10 P.M. And 6 A.M, we still saw a reduction in the number of arrests this year as compared to 2024, both across downtown and specifically on sixth street. So these are the challenges when we talk about what challenges we have technology, recruiting and staffing. Some of our top challenges of APD include technology projects and system upgrades, recruiting skilled candidates for police cadet positions, and hiring and retaining enough new police officers to fully staff our department. We're starting to see increases in the application number, but again, we are a long way from becoming fully staffed. This is partly due to the length of our police academy of eight months and the space constraints of public safety training center, which is shared as a shared facility with fire and ems. We're holding three cadet classes per year, with a maximum of 104 trainers per class. In [2:11:52 PM] of 104 trainers per class. In addition to staffing, we're also reviewing several technology contracts to find solutions that will better streamline our systems and optimize performance. I've talked about sixth street recruiting and retention, and our efforts to reduce violent crime through strategic initiatives and specialized teams. Another focus areas are data. I want to make sure that our community and our city leadership all have access to reliable and timely data that informs how our department is doing and how it's making Austin safer. We're contracting with several experts and researchers throughout the country to review our systems and collection practices, to ensure that we're in alignment with industry standards and are producing accurate and timely reports for the public. Other areas of focus include employee wellness training, community relationships, and assessment of organizational functions through a third party reviewer. The wellness of my staff is paramount to providing quality service to the Austin community, and I need my sworn and professional staff to feel encouraged, safe, respected, and cared for so they can come to work each day ready to make a difference. We are fortunate to have an internal wellness [2:12:54 PM] have an internal wellness program and resources at the public safety wellness center, available to all APD employees. Additionally, we recently revamped our organizational leadership program, and we're constantly seeking out new opportunities to provide cutting edge training and encourage professional development. The city has also contracted with a company known as brydan to assist APD's organizational function and workflow analysis. What we hope to accomplish with this assessment and their recommendations is to optimize APD's organizational capacity, ultimately making it easier for employees to successfully do their jobs as public servants. And lastly, we're continuing to update community programing by finding new ways to engage with and listen to our community. We all have a shared goal of keeping Austin safe, and we want to ensure that our community is engaged in this work. Our sworn professional staff regularly engage with our community through a variety of planned programs and adults and youth. We have staff at our office of community liaison who conduct outreach to specific segments of the community, including those with limited or no English, which allows us to establish deeper connections and tailor our programing to their specific needs. We also do a lot of youth [2:13:55 PM] needs. We also do a lot of youth engagement, police activity leagues, all of those, and I do think we can do better with this. This is one of the things community policing is an important step in building relationship and building that police legitimacy throughout the communities. So it's important for us to start reengaging. You could talk about times between calls and the amount of calls that our officers are taking. But if we can develop, you know, where we're having a few minutes to, to take either at a, at a run or at a call or to stop and check in with businesses that you get that legitimacy and you get that equity, you start building within that community. And here's some things. Ride with an officer. We want to start encouraging our community members to sign up and come ride with a police officer. They can do that. Through that qr code or APD, ride along. And then our social media. We have an APD, Facebook and espanol. Went to a on Saturday to a town hall hosted by univision. Spoke about this again, a very concerned [2:14:55 PM] this again, a very concerned group of citizens. And, you know, just talking about what what's available and the resources that we have, I think is extremely important. So our social media is very important to what APD does. >> All right. Do we have any questions. Thank you chief. >> Oh sorry. >> Can we take I'm sorry. >> It's not. >> We taking. We taking questions from. >> Yeah. Not so much questions. I just appreciate all the work you've done since you've, you know, been here in Austin, especially in the downtown area. I think the numbers kind of speak for themselves. I appreciate you working with our office and just always kind of thinking outside of the box. And then also just want to, you know, you talk about like community policing and getting to know the folks on the ground. I really want to thank APD for their work. I know during the jewish holidays, we had requests from the hillel on west campus to have a patrol. You guys were out there. Appreciate it. And I know during the month of Ramadan, the Muslim community had asked for some help. I think [2:15:56 PM] had asked for some help. I think you guys got some pizza or some sort of food that they were supposed to send the other day. So I really appreciate y'all just just being there. >> Well, thank you again. Sixth street is a it's a big lift and it's going to involve a lot of city partners. But we're very proud of the work that we've done and continue to do on a lot of places in downtown sixth street specifically. >> Chief, I had one you you mentioned the 316 vacancies and the 60 members that you're expecting to roll out. Is that per class? Is that is that from cadet to sworn officers? >> Yes. So if we continue to have three classes a year at minimum of 60 each, now the goal is to get at least 104 in there. If we keep those numbers by the end of 2027, we will only be. And that's keeping an account. Attrition of those who can leave will be short 40 officers. >> And what is a what is a normal graduating class usually look like? >> Well, it just depends. We just had one of 31 and we've had one of 57. It seems to be normal to start with about 70. And then we started trading some people [2:16:57 PM] we started trading some people unfortunately through that process because it does there's standards to stay there, just like there are standards to get in. So the goal is again, if we can keep this 60 above 60, we'll be doing well in our numbers. >> Perfect. And you were saying the date we would be looking at would probably be sometime in 2027. >> I think the end of 27. Yes. >> Thank you chief. Next we have doctor Dana Carvey. Am I pronouncing that right? I apologize from our forensic science department. Thank you. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council. I'm doctor Dana kadavy, director of the forensic science department. Thank you for your time. And we're relatively new. Department officially became a department on October 1st, 2022. So basically I'm just going to spend a few minutes telling you what we do there, because I feel like not everybody knows who we are and what we do. So our tagline is truth through science. We are a bunch of forensic scientists, technicians and specialists. Our forensic [2:17:58 PM] and specialists. Our forensic laboratory is located at 812 Springdale. You'll see we operate in those two floors of that building. And our mission is to provide accurate and impartial scientific analysis and support services to the criminal justice system, while maintaining the highest level of quality and professionalism. Thank you. So like I said, we're made up of a bunch of scientists and technicians and specialists. We have 89 full time equivalents, and we have five accredited section disciplines and five support disciplines. I'm just going to highlight the bulk of those and tell you a little bit about what they all do to give you a sense of the services. We're basically span the whole continuum of forensic science services for the city, starting with crime scene. We were one of the first crime scene units in the state, actually, I believe the first crime scene unit in the state to achieve an iso accreditation. And those folks [2:19:01 PM] accreditation. And those folks provide 24 over seven field response services. So they get dispatched to major crimes where they go, and they will collect all the video and photographic evidence, and they will manage the documentation collection chain of custody of the evidence. They'll bring all that back to the laboratory, and they'll do some pre-processing of the evidence, for example, maybe processing a latent print from a firearm or swabbing it for DNA, all those things that they didn't do in the field, but require a little bit of pre-processing so that those can be properly packaged and provided to the next level of discipline that a detective may be requesting firearms, DNA, what have you. So those folks work really hard and they go and do all those things at major crimes, so that law enforcement doesn't have to. Firearms and tool marks is another discipline that's made up of firearms examiners. Primarily. What they do is physical comparison of tool marks. So for example, if [2:20:02 PM] tool marks. So for example, if there's a spent gun shell casing or a bullet fragment that's found at a murder scene and an officer seizes a firearm from a potential suspect, what they really do is they compare those two things to determine, did these fragments potentially come, or could they have come from this firearm. So that's primarily what they do. They also will restore obliterated serial numbers and that sort of thing from firearms. They also maintain a 24 over seven on call status should their services be needed for particular crimes. If they need to remove fragments from vehicles, for example, or structures something that's a bit more complex. They support the crime scene unit. We have an accredited latent print section. Those folks are really just performing physical print comparisons. So crime scene will process the latent prints, make them viewable, and then the latent print examiners will actually compare those to knowns and they will manage an individual characteristic [2:21:02 PM] individual characteristic database which holds tons of data at the local, state and federal level so that they can compare a latent print to known and hopefully identify potential leads. We have a seized drug section, which is very well equipped with state of the art instrumentation. These are analytical chemists who primarily perform identification and confirmation of controlled substances, or determining if an item seized by APD or other law enforcement is indeed a controlled substance. They also do quantitation of those that will inform appropriate charges. Thank you. We also have a toxicology section and also an accredited section. They primarily perform blood alcohol concentration testing. So blood draws from DUI cases for example. They're in the process of developing and validating drug screening and confirmation [2:22:03 PM] drug screening and confirmation of those same types of samples to sort of augment that service and reduce the time to answer right now that we have to send that out, and that can take a long period of time. So we're trying to provide better customer service with that. We also have a case management group that's a very important group. They manage all of our DNA analysis and outsourcing services. And we have a combination of interlocal agreements and contracts to ensure that we have the depth and breadth of DNA services that we need to address. Sexual assault kits and other DNA analysis requests for the city of Austin. They also perform life cycle case management consultation with detectives. They're experts in their own right, and they can talk to them about what might be the most best course of action for that evidence, what might be most probative. And they move the items throughout the system to ensure integrity. But as I said, we are a, you know, civilianized [2:23:05 PM] we are a, you know, civilianized organization. But for our one customer liaison, which is a sworn sergeant on loan to us from APD, highly valuable because we need the decoder ring from police officer to science geek speak, that helps us bridge the gap and provide better customer service we can understand needs a little bit better. We have an evidence control section. They manage over 1.4 million items of evidence. The long term storage, control and maintenance of those items at our east mlk and airport location. They maintain chain of custody, they provide a unique service and that they will transport items to and from the evidence warehouse to all the substations, main headquarters and the laboratories to free up the forensic scientists and law enforcement officers from having to do that. So they're really saving a lot of time, and they're experts in this [2:24:05 PM] they're experts in this transport and maintaining the security of those items. They also are charged with the legal and authorized disposition of items. Quality assurance is a huge part of what we do. Other we have an amazing quality assurance manager and program. They're in charge of keeping us honest proficiency, demonstration of competency method validations, continuous improvement cycle. So a couple of opportunities. I like to call them opportunities instead of challenges. Really is forensic workforce. This is not an issue that's unique to Austin Texas. It's international. Well it's probably international. It's definitely in the United States where we just lack available workforce with any type of forensic experience. So they don't have the training, they don't have the experience. They come to us with wonderful degrees. But then after we get [2:25:07 PM] degrees. But then after we get them, we spend 1 to 3 years training them in-house prior to them even being able to touch casework. This is a huge cost to the city and it's critically important. These folks also have to be licensed by the Texas forensic science commission. We're lucky to have a commission in Texas that's rare in the United States. However, it adds lots of layers of additional requirements to what we do. So in order for them to testify in court, which is a large portion of our work, they have to be licensed. And so where we find ourselves is we have insufficient depth at the bench to meet demand and recover from any turnover event. Another thing is administrative support. When we became our own department, we transferred all operational ftes but no support services. So then we kind of have to beg, borrow and steal from APD to get those services and or absorb some of them ourselves and some of those things that we have, like what our peers to most departments, [2:26:09 PM] our peers to most departments, we see a lot of discovery requests, subpoenas. Those are complex, time sensitive and really require some expertise. And so we really want to focus our forensic expert on doing the work that they're really trained to do, and hopefully get some additional administrative support. So that's kind of challenging us. But mostly dynamic requirements, ever changing bull's eye with our accrediting bodies. Regulatory compliance, one of our providers of recommendations is the osac. And they have 152 published standards and 73 in the queue to be published. There's local, state and federal laws that we have to comply with, and they're just ever changing, as are our customer needs. Like you see, crime rate changes as APD raises the number of officers they have in the field. That will increase the requests that we get for analyzes case complexities. We're at the mercy of the courts [2:27:11 PM] We're at the mercy of the courts with regard to schedules and when we need to come and testify. All these things are requirements that we don't control. They're lovers. We don't control, but we have to be able to pivot to. So sometimes those can be a challenge. But the highlights and some things I want to brag about, we have great people really. That's our highlight. We have great experts. We have 54 folks that hold certifications across all the disciplines they hold Texas forensic science commission licenses. They are well educated and continue their education throughout their tenure here. We have an amazing quality assurance program. I've listed the various accreditations that we have. We're accredited iso 1702 five, R 3125, the Texas forensic science commission and I mentioned the organization of scientific area committees for forensic science, or osac. They're the ones that are really say, these are the best of the best forensic standards. We were [2:28:13 PM] best forensic standards. We were an early implementer of those registry standards, and we want to be able to keep up with that. And we do, and we're very proud of that as we are science geeks. We're really into technology and automation. And one area I just want to highlight that we've been able to do this year is procure 3D virtual microscopy. This system will change the game for firearms and physical comparisons. Whereas we used to have to fiddle around with lighting and focusing and all of that, which takes a lot of time and expertise to do. This new system will literally take a 3D topography scan of those fragments of those gun shell casings, and they'll give you just such voluminous data in great detail. And it's going to vastly improve this particular discipline, because not only is it giving you better data, but it's applying a score to that data so that you have an expert saying, yes, I do believe this meets the criteria for [2:29:14 PM] this meets the criteria for being a like this could have come from this firearm, but it's also going to apply a confidence statement to that. So that's additional transparency and confidence that what we're putting in there is a result is actually backed by science. So I'll just end with our customer service as a highlight. We're really proud that we've been able to process all sexual assault kits that were received in 2024, with an average turnaround time of 51 days. Our goal is 60 days, state requirement is 90 days, and we've been able to prevent a sexual assault kit backlog for the sixth consecutive year, and we will continue to maintain that status. We've responded to well over 2000 major crime calls with our crime scene unit. We've produced 7500 forensic reports and processed 25,000 evidentiary items through the laboratory disciplines. And then our evidence group has done a great job of disposition of 140,000 eligible items, including [2:30:16 PM] eligible items, including keeping over 9000 seized drugs and over a thousand firearms from potentially recirculating in our community. So thank you for allowing me to give you that little snapshot of who we are and what we do, and happy to answer any questions. >> Thank you, doctor kadavy I did have one statement and one question. The with the thank you for all the work that y'all have done around the sacs and getting that backlog for the sixth consecutive year. Not not having a backlog, but is it also accurate that we've also helped out other municipalities with their backlogs that they've had around the sacs? >> That is true. We recently helped Fort Worth pd with some of their CODIS reviews. They were having a challenge, and we happened to have a little bit of availability. So we were able to perform those and those have been completed. >> Amazing amazing work. Does anybody have any questions? Mayor. >> I'm interested in the science geek part of this whole thing. [2:31:16 PM] geek part of this whole thing. What sorts of degrees when you talk about the number of folks that come in, what what kind of degree science degrees translate well into this work? >> Well, it's interesting, mayor. The Texas forensic science commission licensing actually requires specific degrees and specific coursework per discipline of forensics. So it leaves nothing to the imagination. And we're trying to educate institutes of higher education on knowing what those are. And when I go speak to colleges, we try to push them towards that. So most of the degrees are like a hard science. Bachelor's of science in chemistry, biology, biochemistry. Some folks come with like a criminal justice degree. That's really translatable to crime scene, maybe not so much some of the drug chemistry or toxicology disciplines. So it depends. But we get a lot of bachelor's of science and those natural sciences and master's degrees. [2:32:17 PM] sciences and master's degrees. >> That's that's cool. And then did I hear you say that you beg, borrow and steal from APD? >> I should. >> Probably not. That seems like a risky proposition. >> Chief Davis is going to keep me honest. Don't worry. They're very generous with providing those services to us. But it's a drain on them. And it's. And it's a drain on us to. >> Appreciate your work. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. >> Council member duchen. >> First, thanks for your report and your work you're doing. I have just a question about if there's a parallel between what I understand is happening with APD, where they are often having to invest in training cadets, but then losing those cadets over a period of a couple of years to some of the other local departments that are in the region. Is that something you guys experience? Also, maybe not with local departments in the region, but with other cities like Fort Worth, perhaps that are trying to attract similar talent? >> Yeah, we had a really hard time with that for a while, sort of lining up with the great [2:33:18 PM] of lining up with the great resignation that happened after covid. We're really killed us is we were down like 50%. Staff in both the crime scene section and the evidence section, and crime scene is our largest unit, and that was really challenging. We have, I believe, successfully recovered from that. And we did go from like, you know, maintaining a tenure of three years of, you know, closer to 70%. And now we're kind of dipping we dipped down over the last couple of years, but we did just implement, thanks to the city for approving it, a career progression plan and job title kind of Wright fitting that I think is really attracting new talent now. As of today, I believe we only have two vacancies, which is a miracle. We're still training people, so we won't quite see the benefit of that for another few months. [2:34:19 PM] of that for another few months. But that's been amazing and I will say we get very few candidates with experience for jobs and usually get about 12 to 15 candidates for open firearms examiner position. This last one we got 90 candidates and some of them actually came with experience. So I think that has helped us. And we'll see how that trend continues if it does continue. But we're hopeful at this point. >> Thank you so much. That sounds very encouraging. One last question, which is I noticed that when the pd gave their presentation, they were having some technology challenges in the technology space. It sounds like you have had the opposite experience. Is that a resource issue? What do you think is happening there, or is it just two entirely separate set of challenges? And with technology. >> Ours is a little easier because we have 89 people and each discipline we do have technology and software that spans the entire organization. [2:35:20 PM] spans the entire organization. But a lot of the technology I'm talking about is very specific to a discipline. And we get grant funds to purchase those. Sometimes we're very good about very successful about receiving grant funds for those technology purposes. And they're sort of set aside for that type of thing. So I feel like that makes it a little bit easier for us not only to get, but then to transfer. So I think it might be more of an apples to Oranges comparison. >> Thank you. >> Thank you doctor academy. >> Thank you. >> Next, colleagues, we'll have a presentation from Austin fire department chief Joel baker. >> Again. My name is Joel baker, fire chief for the city of Austin fire department. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Mayor, committee members, first of all, I'd like to bring you greetings from all [2:36:20 PM] to bring you greetings from all of the heroic, brave women and men of the Austin fire department. Those men and women, they come to work every single day and give 100% and put themselves in harm's way. And for that, myself and the citizens of Austin were very grateful and appreciate it for them. Simply, the mission of the Austin fire department is basically to create a safe and resilient community through prevention, preparedness and effective emergency response. It's important to keep in mind the prevention, preparedness, as well as the effective emergency response. Throughout this presentation, our vision is simply to set the standards among public safety agencies, our department said we have approximately 1300 sworn firefighters, close to 150 civilian personnel, 54 fire [2:37:22 PM] civilian personnel, 54 fire stations that are strategically placed throughout the city of Austin, and various facilities. As you can see up there and our apparatus are 15 engine underlined, 13 areas. We're going to talk more about the 13 areas and other pieces of equipment we have in our response readiness, preparedness. The service area for the city of Austin, as you see there. We also have a contract service for sunset valley, esd for and shady hollow. We respond to those areas for our contract to help us to meet our needs. Our growing needs of emergency response. We have an automatic aid agreement with surrounding esd's to help us make the response call, for example. Esd sits up in the north side of town that sometimes lake Travis [2:38:22 PM] town that sometimes lake Travis can meet can respond within the city of Austin much quicker than we can. Sometimes we can respond to lake Travis area and other esd's the same way. So it's a great working relationship. We have established with our esd part to meet the meet the demand and make sure our residents and citizens and key stakeholders are safe when they come visiting. Stay the city of Austin. Our key performance indicators are. As such, our goal is to respond from the time we received the alarm to get to Mr. And miss citizen home within eight minutes. That's the goal. According to nfpa 1710, the national fire prevention association, in fiscal year 16, we was meeting that goal 83% of the time. Fiscal year 17, we meet at 84% of the time. Let's jump to fiscal year 24. We are meeting that goal. 69% of the [2:39:23 PM] meeting that goal. 69% of the time, 69% of the time when that alarm bell ring, we're able to lead the fire station and get to that emergency incident, that fire call within eight minutes. 69% of the time, the goal is 90%, and we're not able to meet that goal. So while we're not able to meet that goal, I'm glad you asked that question before you ask that question. The city of Austin is outgrowing the pace of the fire department. The city of Austin is outgrowing the pace of the fire department. The city is growing rapidly and we're doing our best to keep up. We just built five fire station. We're going to talk about here shortly, but we are putting things in place to help meet some of these goals. The call volume is increasing. For example, for fiscal year 24, the top five incidents codes. You got outside burning over a [2:40:23 PM] got outside burning over a thousand calls and got building fires, 560 plus calls. And the building fire doesn't necessarily mean we had a working fire in that building, but we did have a call to fire in those buildings, Dunston and other fires. Over 400 calls. Vehicle fires, three, 300, almost 400 calls. And the people experienced homeless camp 233 calls from people experiencing homeless camp. Excuse me? For fiscal year 24. Now the response, performance breakdown and looking at the fire calls over 5000 fire incidents. And we met the response time within eight minutes while we responded 80%, 90% at nine minutes. The goal is eight minutes. The medical cost is over ten minutes. That's 57,000 medical [2:41:24 PM] minutes. That's 57,000 medical calls. And we made it within ten minutes and 39 seconds. I'm going to jump down to the other calls over 1200 calls. Those other calls can be anywhere from checking advise smoking in area, trees down, wires down, child stuck in the car, things of those nature. And we got that. Almost took us almost 11 minutes. So overall out the 65,000 emergency incidents that the Austin fire department went on, it took us 10 minutes to 32 minutes on average to get to those calls. Our standards of coverage. Green is good. Green means go, green is good. Everything else is bad. Medium. Let's get to work on. As you see, in 2016 we had a lot of green up there. We also in 2016, the city was not as populous. We had less traffic, we had less high rise and mid-rise [2:42:24 PM] high rise and mid-rise buildings. We had less residential construction going on in 2016. But now you look at 2024, we got a lot of purple. Purple is bad. We are not able to meet those response times within eight minutes in the purple areas. And some of that due to the units being out of service, going on other calls, because that some of it is traffic related, trying to get to those areas. And there's other, many other factors that go along with that. But we are working on our strategic plan to try to address those areas. How can we get back to the green space we need to get in on our standards of coverage? The fire department at a glance. In fiscal year 24, we responded to over 110,000 incidents. In other words, every apparatus, if you add up all the response from all the apparatus with the engine and rescue unit and the fire truck, etc, it's over 110,000 calls, dispatch center, dispatch, over 210. Those alone [2:43:25 PM] dispatch, over 210. Those alone were dispatching our esd's partners. 67% of our medical calls, 33% are fire, are hazmats or other related calls. We was able, even with that decreased response time, we was able to confine the fire to his original origin, to that one bedroom, that closet, whatever the fire took place in the kitchen, the garage, 75% of the time, we had 217 arson related calls when the arson had to go out and investigate, installed over 800 smoke alarms. Thanks to our aggressive wildfire division. Through their hard work through mitigation, home hardness, public information, education, we were able to assist with over 5000 buildings to reduce their fire risk through educating them and doing some wildfire prevention and mitigation things of that nature. 31 plus thousand inspections, 28 hydrants [2:44:30 PM] inspections, 28 hydrants inspection, which is good. Make sure we have working hydrants, especially with some of the concerns that have taken place out in Los Angeles. Our firefighters will go out and inspect high to make sure we have a working hydrants in our community. Over 7000 fitness intervention. Make sure our firefighters are physically fit and close to 700 on the job injuries. Our organization priorities are human resources, emergency response readiness. Let me slow down for a second, because in human resources, we got to make sure not only do we recruit and retain the best person, but we got to make sure that there are mental and physical fit, and we hire the best people we can possibly hire. Our second priority is emergency response readiness. So once we train, once we hire the best in class people we can hire, now it's time for them to go out and provide those emergency response services. We provide professional development. We focus on our [2:45:30 PM] development. We focus on our facilities, equipment, supplies and technology. Our fifth priority is customer service, internal as well as external. And our sixth priority is our peer program. Public education, public information and public relations. So this look at priority number one up close we talk about human resources our number one priority. So next once we hire those firefighters what are we doing for them. Well cancer is one of the leading causes of death or illness for firefighters all across the country. And cancer has hit the Austin fire department. We have some cancer survivors working currently in the Austin fire department. We have one known death cancer related. And now our gear that we use to protect us in fighting fires have believed to have some cancer causing agent that we're working on removing our bunker gear or turnout gear, ppe. And then we [2:46:30 PM] turnout gear, ppe. And then we have behavioral health challenges for our member members have experienced PTSD, suicide and alcohol addiction since I've been the fire chief here in Austin fire department, I've known of at least three, maybe four, but at least three active members who have committed suicide as they serve with the Austin fire department. And I wish I knew how we can catch this early and resolve that and solve these challenges our members have. But I don't have the answer at this point. But I know our wellness center, along with ems and police wellness center team members, are working hard to try to work on these challenges that our members are having. And then we have those physical injuries that I was talking about, over 700 or 693. I think it was the workman's comp program. Processes is working very hard to make sure that our members are able to return back to work. They have partnered with a company called ready rebound to help us reach these doctors. To [2:47:31 PM] help us reach these doctors. To get these members in the appointments, they need to get them back at 100%. And then we have an excellent team of doctors and nurses at our wellness center, one, I think, one of the best wellness centers in the country, to make sure our members get the physical and mental help that they need. Then our number two priority again, is emergency response readiness. Again, the city is growing rapidly. We're doing our best to keep up with it. We have mid-rise apartment as part of the housing solution, but yet again, our the Austin fire department, we have not staffed. We have purchased new area trucks, area ladders. But we do not have we have not staffed new areas in over 30 years. An example of that, in 1995, I believe, amused that date. For example, my numbers may be a little off, but in 1995 the city of Austin had approximately 75 high rise buildings, 75 high rise buildings with 13 areas. [2:48:33 PM] rise buildings with 13 areas. Truck. Today we have over 230 high rise buildings, and now we're considering single staircase mid rise. And we still have 13 area trucks. So the goal is to increase the staffing of the area trucks so we can continue to meet the need of our emergency respond readiness. Again our wellness center, one, one of the few in the city of this size and the country this side of the city we have we have 17 full time funded employee by fire, ems and police, which is not enough because we continue to increase our sworn staffing, but we're not increasing our support staff and wellness to meet the need of those challenges I talked about earlier, but one of the things we're doing with our other public safety partners, we are visiting Dallas, San Diego, Louisville, Kentucky and other [2:49:34 PM] Louisville, Kentucky and other places to check out what the best practice. How can we reduce cancer in the fire service? How can we reduce mental illness? How can we address substance abuse and things of that nature? For example, the last time we did a behavior check, it shows that 16% of firefighter reported symptoms of depression, 10% reported some type of anxiety, 99.5 at a medium to high risk of alcohol use, and 14% said they tested positive for post-traumatic stress disorder. We got to get on top of our wellness, our mental health, for our firefighters again, back to the area area units quickly. Our area trucks, of course, are the big trucks with the ladders, Kerri ladders and specialized equipment to help us with roof access and rescue operation. They are able to reach areas [2:50:35 PM] They are able to reach areas that we normally cannot reach. The crews are normally staffed with senior members with the most experience. We are assigned two area trucks to a fire incident and three to a mid rise or high rise incident. I want to reflect back again and talk again one more time about the 13 areas trucks we have. If we have a high rise fire, we're going to send three area trucks to a high rise fire. And at the same time, if we have a house fire, we're going to send two area trucks. So now we got five area trucks on a high rise fire. We leave us eight. If we call a second alarm, which is likely on a working high rise fire, we're going to send three more area trucks to that high rise fire. Now we want to have five in reserve, which is not acceptable. The letters the leaders in the fire service. Priority three professional [2:51:36 PM] Priority three professional development. We give our members the opportunity to go to the national fire academy. They go to Texas A&M to go to emergency management, to go to the Texas fire chiefs association training. We really do our best to make sure our members leadership and firefighters are professional development facilities. We just completed five new stations over the last seven years. We did several station renovation. We worked very hard on providing the best in class internal and external customer service. Our public information education relationship program. We're working on accreditation. I'm going to talk about quickly here in a second. And our wildfire messaging. Those are the list of the five stations that we just recently completed, along with several station renovation we're looking at in the future for public safety headquarters that we'll be sharing, of course, with our ems and police partners here. We're looking forward to that coming up here soon. We hope. And then as far as [2:52:37 PM] hope. And then as far as accreditation concern, are we doing what we say we're doing? Are we the best in class and we meet the needs of our community? So we are working on a begin accredited to see are we in alignment with the community needs? How can we identify our strengths and weaknesses? How can we make sure we do our process improvement? How can we improve our response time? Are we making the best decision or do we have the data we need to support that? So we'll be going through the accreditation process. We hired an accreditation manager to assist us with that. Our public information, as far as wildfire outreach is concerned, we have amped up our public information officer team. That is, we're getting the message out. We work very hard on our prevention of material. Matter of fact, each council member, you should have received some newsletters that we sent to your office so you can send out to your community about wildfire preparedness. We want to celebrate our involvement with the 21 firewise communities in Austin, which is [2:53:37 PM] communities in Austin, which is 20% of all firewise community and tested. That's a big number. It may seem small here, but 20% of firewise communities in Texas, that's a big number considering the size of Texas. And so our AFD staff, along with the firewise volunteer, they go out into the community and educate the community on how they can harden their home, to make their place a much safer place for the entire city. And those are the apps you can connect to and get more information. And I thank you for your time. I see it for any questions. >> Do we have any questions? Thank you chief. Thank you. Next colleagues, we're going to have a presentation from the austin-travis county emergency medical services chief, Robert Luckritz. >> Good afternoon. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, council members, for the opportunity to speak to you today about what I [2:54:39 PM] speak to you today about what I believe is truly one of the best ems services in the country. Rob Luckritz, chief of austin-travis county ems, just briefly want to give you a little bit of an overview on the structure of our department. We were founded in 1976. That makes us we're going to be turning 50 years old as of January 1st, 2026. Very much looking forward to that celebration. We serve both the city of Austin as well as Travis county, through an interlocal agreement between the city and the county, meaning that in total, we serve not just the 300 some odd square miles of the city of Austin, but in reality the full 1100 or so square miles of Travis county, which presents some interesting operational challenges for us as we look to deploy our resources as a third service or an independent ems system, we are solely focused on emergency medical services. And as I mentioned, our founding in 1976, I'll also highlight that in 2012, the voters voted to make Austin Travis county ems the only independent ems system in the country to be fully sworn and subject to the rules of [2:55:40 PM] and subject to the rules of section 143. We are dual accredited. We've been accredited for more than a decade by the commission on accreditation of ambulance services, as well as the international academy of emergency dispatch. Our current authorized strength is 714. I'll slight correction here. We have 48 total ambulances across the county, 44 of which are 24 hours a day and four of which are 12 hours a day. A spanning across seven command districts. In addition to the traditional ambulance response, we have numerous specialty resources which some of you are familiar with, including community health paramedics, mental health paramedics, telehealth resources and other items. We break the sworn area of our department up into three strategic areas. The first, and the one that is probably most familiar to everyone is operations. That is the largest area of the department and includes all of the ambulances and district commanders and whatnot that are deployed on a day to day basis. It also includes our special operations division, which includes things like emergency preparedness, specialized teams, as well as our special events resources, which handle the more than 200 plus special events in [2:56:41 PM] than 200 plus special events in the city each and every year. I'll also highlight, from an emergency preparedness standpoint, the given the nature of the central Texas area, with Austin being the by far the dominant operation here in our world, both as a city resource as well as a county resource, presents unique challenges for us as we not only are preparing the city of Austin for whatever may come, but also the greater central Texas area. Second area that we focus in on is integrated services, and that area is really what many of you have heard about over the last few years, which includes our focus not only on emergency response, but on things like how it is that we prevent the overutilization of the nine-one-one system. So in addition to our dispatch center, which many of you will be familiar with, that includes things such as clinical navigation, which is our triage line, in order to prevent the unnecessary dispatch of ambulances for calls that may have better resources that are available to them. Our community health paramedics, which are working again on prevention in a number of areas, our mental health responders and our [2:57:42 PM] health responders and our airport paramedics. This also includes our fleet and facilities area. Finally, in this area we also have an employee development, wellness and clinical services section which oversees employee development, including our ems academy. Very excited! As many of you know, we had 39 cadets that graduated on Friday, bringing our total vacancies down to 88 to the lowest it's been in a number of years. This also includes our paramedic training program for both pre and post higher promotional education, as well as our annual continuing education program. As chief baker alluded to, we also participate in the public safety wellness center, and we also work with our medical director, doctor Escott, who'll be joining us up here in just a few minutes. On the oversight of performance improvement, provider credentialing and clinical supervision. On the non-sworn side, we do have an administrative side that includes the individuals with unique skill sets to support the sworn services. It's about 99 civilian employees. One unique area for us that is probably a little bit different from our other public safety colleagues, is we do have a large revenue [2:58:43 PM] is we do have a large revenue cycle department, so we drive more than $50 million into the general fund every year from a revenue standpoint, both from patient billing as well as other contributions through state and federal resources and partnerships with other entities such as Travis county and central health. This revenue primarily comes from billing for transport, charity care, funding, and the interlocal agreements that I mentioned. We also have a compliance officer to ensure our compliance with medicare and medicaid, and we oversee the private ambulance franchises here in the city of Austin. We work with them in terms of managing the non-emergency transport to and from nursing facilities, medical facilities, as well as to and from or between hospital systems and of course, the human resources staff. This year is just kind of a quick highlight of our strategic goals as the department. Our mission as a department is to foster our community's health and safety through inspired solutions. We updated our mission about two years ago, and it really does reflect the growing mission of our emergency medical services department. These three areas I won't read them one by one, but really looking for us to be an [2:59:45 PM] really looking for us to be an adaptive and innovation innovative department. We believe that it is through innovation and through adaptation to the current circumstances that are what's going to set us apart as an ems department and allow us to be successful moving forward. Of course, from a core mission perspective, the collaborative, the service oriented and the comprehensive care to the community is critical for us. And then lastly, as I mentioned, the real focus on our workforce the thriving, empowered and resilient workforce through an emphasis and investment in our public safety wellness center, as well as, as I mentioned, focusing on our academies, bringing in individuals recruitment, retention, which is all of the things that have helped bring us to where we are from our vacancy standpoint, to be at the lowest vacancy rate that we've had since before the pandemic. Some select operational statistics for you, as you can see here, our call volume 137,242 incidents. The volume here in the city of Austin over the past few years has plateaued a little bit, but we do see a continuing increase in the county, which I think is reflective of the more recent [3:00:46 PM] reflective of the more recent population growth that we've seen here in Travis county. Few average response times for you, eight minutes and 29 seconds for our priority one calls in 2024. And you can see that over the past year or so, we've put a real effort into reducing that number. Still a lot of work to be done there as we recognize the changes and complexities of our ems response here in the county and in the city, the changing dynamic and mission profile that we'll talk about here in just a second of the calls that we go on, about 51.8%, about 52% of the calls result in a transport. And so it begs the question, as we think through what the future of our department looks like, which is what does the other 50% truly need from a resource? And of those calls, the total calls that we go in, only about 2% of our patients are transported lights and sirens. And so trying to identify how it is that we can make sure that those individuals that most critically need an ambulance are getting those resources as quickly as possible and making sure that those resources continue to be available for those calls while reprioritizing and identifying better ways that we can utilize our resources, both [3:01:47 PM] our resources, both operationally, being financially efficient and appropriate for rail staffing, or excuse me, for real challenges that we continue to have here as a department. And I think they're reflective of what many of the other departments across the city are seeing. Number one is the city and county growth. As we see the city growing, as we see the county continuing to grow, how is it that we continue to grow our resources, to increase the resource availability, to ensure that we meet the needs and the expectations of the community? That, again, doesn't just mean our resources from an ambulance perspective, but also what is the most efficient and most cost effective way for us to grow in a way that is responsible, given the complex financial realities that we live in today? In addition, our department growth does produce a challenge for us. We've worked, as I mentioned earlier, we've worked very hard over the past few years in order to reduce that vacancy rate that we've been talking about for, for, for several years now, again, at our lowest rate ever, 88 open positions, we are down to almost to single digit [3:02:48 PM] to almost to single digit openings at our paramedic level. But that brings new challenges when our department has grown and added 250 new individuals to the department from both a cultural standpoint, from a training and education standpoint, ensuring that we maintain the same standards that we've had for a number of years and ensuring that overall, as an organization, we don't lose the identity that we've had. That truly makes the organization the premier agency that it is today. Our changing mission profile is something that I've talked extensively to you all about recognition that what happened a number of years ago where folks called 901 for the most critical emergencies, and it was as simple as getting them to the hospital has really dramatically changed the efforts that we've had to encourage folks to utilize the 911 system. And as a place of last resort for problems that they may have, has really transformed what we see as our mission profile, which is a recognition that we have to have appropriate resources and appropriate tools that adapt to whatever that person may be calling 911 for while while still staying true to our core [3:03:48 PM] still staying true to our core mission of ensuring that life threatening emergencies get the resources that they need in a timely manner. And so we've been working very hard over the past few years to identify other resources such as telehealth, mental health responders, and others. And then finally, similar to our department growth is our staffing concerns. We've made significant inroads here, but it does continue to pose a challenge for us as we look at what our recruitment and retention rates are. Ems is an industry where we do see high turnover. I'm very proud to say that our agency is a much lower turnover than just about any other, I would say, than any other ems agency that I'm truly familiar with. But that doesn't mean that we don't have to address those needs. And so growth for us is not just about the short term growth in order to get to the needs of the current staffing. But it's also how do we project out and ensure that we are able to grow from a long term sustainability, recognizing that the unique nature of our of our industry, where folks are less likely to make a long term, 30 or 40 year commitment to ems, as some may go on to be doctors, nurses or other types of things, how do we [3:04:49 PM] other types of things, how do we find that balance and ensure that we're we're positioning ourselves well for the future? I have said extensively that our organization is recognized internationally as one of the truly best ems agencies in the world, and certainly in the country. I was involved in some work last year. The an organization out of out of the United Kingdom was looking to do a, a, a ride along and kind of a take a look at what things were like here in the United States when they reached out to several professional organizations. I was very humbled that they were told by one of the professional associations that the jewel in the crown of ems in the united States is austin-travis county ems. And if they want to see what true ems looks like in the United States, they should be coming to Austin. And they did spend an extensive time with us doing ride outs and understanding what that looks like. Again, the true mission of what we do is, is ems, and that's somewhat unique from some of our other colleagues, which is what drives really, from a [3:05:50 PM] is what drives really, from a recruiting standpoint, recognition that more than 50% of our new cadets come from out of state. And that's quite a bit different from our public safety colleagues. To acknowledge that folks see this as a destination, they see this as a beacon, and it's something that we need to work through. And they're we're very proud of the one piece. I will say here, this public safety, this ems triangle, some of you may have heard me say this before, that ems is like a triangle. It's one part healthcare, one part public safety, and one part public health. And that's why austin-travis county ems is so well positioned is because we have the capacity and the ability and staff that speak all of those languages. Our providers speak healthcare, which makes it easier for our providers to interface with physicians and other medical professionals. But at the same time, our our staff also speak public safety. And so they're able to interface well with law enforcement and our fire service colleagues. And they also speak public health and understand things like epidemiology and epidemics and the other things that have come along. And our ability to have those three resources all positioned together allows us to really [3:06:50 PM] together allows us to really become like a translator, if you will, between those different entities, to be able to help pair and bring folks together to focus on collaborative approaches, to be able to handle these issues. We thank everyone for their continued community investment and support, our extensive clinical protocols and so on and so forth that I won't go into too deeply here. But needless to say that a lot of effort going on here to continue to push the envelope from an innovation standpoint, some of the true gems, some of the true things to highlight here is, number one is our nationally recognized community health program. We have 24 over seven specialized mental health response here in the city. We now have four mental health responders that are responding to more than 6000 calls per year. And we believe that number can continue to increase. We'll be coming back to talk more extensively about what that mental health response looks like, but it is cutting edge, and it is really allowing us to bring the right resources, which are not necessarily an ambulance and a slightly different skill set to these individuals, and really drive them to be able to stay home and stay out of the hospital. We're fully integrated [3:07:51 PM] hospital. We're fully integrated with the substance abuse process here in the city and in the county. We work closely with the austin-travis county sobering center. We have a robust narcan outreach program that many of you heard about last year when we had that that brief epidemic on that one day with an extensive number of overdoses across south Austin, as well as our ability to put folks into bridge programs, to try to not just give them narcan to stop overdoses, but also get them the long term help and support that they need. And, of course, our proactive outreach to the vulnerable populations. We work extensively with our colleagues in the homeless strategy office and all of the departments across the city of Austin to identify how it is that ems can provide them support to these individuals. Our staff interact with individuals on a day to day basis, and in historical years had found challenges in terms of navigation and knowing what these individuals needed, but not being able to place them. And so through our our pop up, our pop up resource clinics that some of you have joined to just regular outreach and being able to navigate these individuals into the types of tools and resources that will, again, ultimately reduce unnecessary [3:08:52 PM] ultimately reduce unnecessary 911 calls and utilization of the ems system, which is the whole cornerstone of our community health paramedic program. Our mental health paramedics. A few statistics here. 89% of our mental health paramedic responses do not require an ambulance transport. So those are ambulances that are freed up again for other resources. Some statistics on our outreach to the most vulnerable. 18 pop up resource clinics across Travis county. More than 1400 narcan kits distributed over 2024. 227 patients enrolled in our bridge program to try to get them into substance abuse care. And so we truly believe that we're making a difference, not just in the emergency realm, but also in preventing unnecessary 901 calls. Much like our colleagues in the fire service have their fire prevention bureau that has done such a phenomenal job over the past decades at reducing fires across communities. And lastly, here is our excuse me, our our clinical navigation program. This is our collaborative care communications center, or c4 line, as we transition to 24 over seven operations in this budget year, through the budget [3:09:52 PM] budget year, through the budget rider that came through, as well as our transition of our all of our lowest priority calls to this navigation center, we're screening more than 20,000 calls projected annually, with what ultimately becomes about 16,000%, 16,000 of those that do not require a transport. So of those 20,000 calls per se, if we continue on the trend that we've been on, with 43.5% of those resolved, not even with the ambulance dispatch, but but in total 63% resolved without a transport. And ultimately, from a safety perspective, with less than half less than 1%, about half of a percent ultimately requiring emergency transport. Those are numbers that are being looked at from across the country, and we do that through mental health paramedics, paramedic practitioners, physicians, telehealth, licensed professional counselors through the Escott program, and so on. And finally, as I conclude here, when we think about what the future of austin-travis county ems look like, someone once said to me right after I joined here that they look very closely where at austin-travis county ems is, because where Austin is today is where the industry will be in five years, and we want to [3:10:53 PM] be in five years, and we want to continue to be on the forefront of what it means to be a top notch ems system in, in, across the United States and continue to provide the best possible services to the residents and visitors of Austin and Travis county. We're going to do that. And I have up here you'll see this pocket knife, because I believe that that's the answer to our question. Historically, we had the ambulance and that was our kitchen knife. But if we're going to be successful, we need to flush that out into a full on pocket knife, where each of those tools on that pocket knife are reflective of the different things that we can do, from mental health response to homelessness to opiates, to reducing unnecessary 901 calls and all sorts of spheres, and we believe that we're well on our way to do that as we overcome some of those those challenges that we shared with you earlier. And with that, I'll answer any questions you might have. >> Thank you. Chief colleagues, do we have any questions? Councilmember duchen. >> Thank you for your presentation. Chief, I have really just one question. You mentioned it. You alluded to it a number of times during the presentation, including at the very end there about trying to find the best way to adapt to the future and maximize the [3:11:55 PM] the future and maximize the service you can get and the resources based on different acuity, types of calls, etc. I mentioned this at the audit and finance committee last week. It sounds like you've got a fair amount of reporting already about the number of calls that you're already being able to look at without having to dispatch an ambulance. What I'm curious about is if you've quantified any of that in terms of the costs involved, and is that a place where you might see some value? >> Yeah, absolutely. And I we certainly can pull some of those numbers together. And we've looked at what those, those costs and those values are, you know, as the city grows, you know, adding additional advanced life support, ambulances are going to be the highest cost drivers for us. But the reality is that as a community grows, that tends to be the direction that we go. I can't stand here definitively and say that we won't, and or that we don't currently need additional ambulances to meet the current needs. But what I can say is that as we grow and we look at those numbers, we have to have a real serious conversation about, [3:12:56 PM] real serious conversation about, is one ambulance better or two mental health responders better, right, at a relatively same cost. And we need to look at all of those different types of calls and make sure that we're we're being realistic about it. You know, our deployment model is really focused on a couple different things. And it's volume and it's geography. And at the underlying core of it, we want to make sure that we have adequate geographic coverage so that when someone's having a heart attack, that we can get those resources on scene in a timely manner. But from a volume perspective, when you add ambulances to address volume, that's where you need to break that down and say if, if from that perspective, how much of that volume truly needs ambulances and how much of it can be can be sourced with things like mental health responders, paramedic practitioners, telehealth and other resources. And so our goal is to really look at that efficiency and have that be a driver, rather than just adding more resources. >> So my question is, how far along in that process are you in analyzing all of that and quantifying it in a dollar value, and not just a calls volume? >> I think that some of it is [3:13:57 PM] >> I think that some of it is completed. I'm happy to connect with you offline and walk you through some of the dollars we've walked through on some of the pieces. I think as we pull some of the call volume off. To these other resources, we're we probably have a little bit more work to do to truly identify. And we're going through an exercise right now with doctor Escott and his team to say, which of these calls are we more comfortable with, kind of shifting over to some of these resources? And which of these calls do we still want to send an ambulance? And then I think that, like many communities, that's a repetitive process. And so if you send an ambulance to a call and you identify that that type of call, say 5% of the time needs an ambulance, then it's a kind of a weight weighing process to say is, what's the what's the best value for that? And is it actually an urgent call or did they just need a ride? In which case could we use a lower cost ambulance. Right. And so I think there's still some work to be done. I think we've kind of got a better understanding of what the [3:14:58 PM] understanding of what the varying costs of the resources we are, we are at, but it's going to take a little bit more time for us to truly take that hundred and 30,000 calls and say, which of those truly need an ambulance and which of those could be could ultimately be plugged into one of these other buckets. >> Okay, I appreciate that. I look forward to following up on this with you. Thank you chief. >> All right colleagues, now we're going to get a presentation from our chief medical officer, doctor Marc Escott. >> Good afternoon. >> Mr. Chairman. Council members, doctor Marc Escott of the chief medical officer for the city of Austin. And I have the pleasure of also serving as the ems system medical director for the city. Let me. So I'm going to start with a little bit of background in terms of how this all works. So in Texas, ems is a medical practice under the state. It is supervised by a physician myself as well as my [3:15:58 PM] physician myself as well as my colleagues. And then we basically delegate our authority to practice medicine to all the people who are doing the work in the city of Austin, Travis county, and some other locations. So when they are doing the medicine, they are doing so as an agent of me and, you know, there's 2000 of them, which is a heavy lift. So ultimately we're the state statutes and rules give us responsibly for the medically related operations of the system. That includes things like establishing standards for performance, establishing clinical training expectations and standards, ensuring that we have clinical guidelines or protocols for folks to utilize when sorting out what to do for individual patients. It involves how we transport, how we, you know, do things like extrication or rescue and so forth. There's also some additional roles with me serving [3:16:58 PM] additional roles with me serving as the liaison between the healthcare system and the administration, in addition to those administrative responsibilities, myself and my team of physicians also provide online medical control 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The crews can call us to talk about cases, provide advice, telehealth sometimes, but we also provide emergency response in person to certain emergencies to both provide direct care to patients, but also to supervise, to mentor and to help support our crews both on the ems and fire side. So this is what the medical practice looks like. You know, the two major components for the city is Austin, Travis county ems and the Austin fire department. Hms has about 700 folks who are credentialed. Austin fire about 1300 individuals. In addition to that, we have a city of Austin [3:17:59 PM] that, we have a city of Austin first responder organization. We provide oversight for the austin-travis county sobering center, sobriety center, and through interlocal agreement, we also provide medical direction services to the Texas department of public safety, who has about 125 state troopers, Texas rangers, special agents who are emts and paramedics as well. We provide similar services to health and human services commission, university of Texas, as well as the Texas comptroller of public accounts. So that is the medical practice in a nutshell. I did forget to include on here. We also provide a service to the Austin police department, who we've been working with to develop an APD blood draw program. So we supervise that component as well. So again, we have about 2000 individuals credentialed under the medical practice. You know, as you heard from chief [3:19:01 PM] know, as you heard from chief baker and chief Luckritz earlier, there's well over 100,000 patient encounters each year. The oversight is provided by myself, as well as three other full time physicians who are board certified in emergency medicine, as well as emergency medical services, which is a subspecialty. And then we have two part time ems physicians. In addition to those, we also host a fellowship ems fellowship, which provides one year of training for those who've completed emergency medicine residency training. They're fully qualified. They spend an extra year or to become subspecialty qualified in ems. So we do that with Dell medical school, us acute care solutions and ascension Seton system. In addition to the docs, we have five full time paramedic practitioners. As a reminder, those are individuals who are both paramedics as well as physician assistants or nurse practitioners who can provide services including things like writing prescriptions, suturing [3:20:01 PM] writing prescriptions, suturing wounds, doing other sorts of things to try to keep people out of the er, that that don't need to be there, that, that we can disposition safely on a scene. So one of the challenges that we have, and that I think most ems systems have, is this outcomes based equity, you know, as it, as it pertains to, to various service lines. So historically ems systems look at, you know, the macro view of how we're doing. How are we doing as a city, how are we doing as a county. How are we doing as a jurisdiction? But certainly the what we are trying to push is disaggregating that data to look more specifically on how we're doing based on different factors like race and ethnicity, geography, etc. This is some data. This is related to cardiac arrest. And I use cardiac arrest because it is the most time sensitive emergency that we [3:21:01 PM] sensitive emergency that we respond to, and we lose about 7 to 10% chance of survival. For every one minute that passes, from the time somebody collapses to the time that that we can get there and, and shock the heart. Things like cpr will will help improve those numbers a bit. But what what we're looking at here is some of the, the disparities associated with the incidents of cardiac arrest in our community. As you can see, most things are well matched with the exception of African American individuals in our community, which represent about 9.1% of the population, but 17% of the cardiac cardiac arrest experienced that we respond to as a system. There is a you can see a difference also for native hawaiian and pacific islanders all over the N is two, which makes that difficult to really be useful for us. So, you know, we're aware of the fact that there's disproportionate impact in our communities of color in terms of the incidence of cardiac arrest. But what we've [3:22:02 PM] cardiac arrest. But what we've also done is identified the areas of our jurisdiction that is not getting bystander cpr. Again, when somebody gets cpr from someone who's calling 911 or somebody who witnesses the collapse, it doubles their chances of survival. So the dots you see there are areas or individuals who did not have bystander cpr. And, you know, we have a low rate of bystander aed use, which is the defibrillators that you see at airports and in public buildings. So we know where those where those individuals are and they tend to be in the same areas where we see the higher proportion of African American individuals in communities of color that aren't having the bystander cpr and aed. So this slide is looking at the survival by race and ethnicity. And as you can see, those are not equivalent either with blacks or African Americans surviving less than hispanics or [3:23:03 PM] surviving less than hispanics or Latino and white non-hispanic individuals. So again, this is a concern for us. But as I said before, it's not a concern just for us. This is a paper that I published with some colleagues regarding the outcomes across races and ethnicities in Texas. And not surprisingly, we found disparities all across Texas in terms of rates of cardiac arrest, experienced bystander cpr, aed use, and ultimately survival. So these are one of the things that we're able to start to, to take a crack at, given the funding that's been provided by council related to data analytics related to investing in, in research individuals as well as expanding our our oversight capabilities so that we can try to identify strategies in order to better meet the needs and ultimately create equitable outcomes, not [3:24:04 PM] create equitable outcomes, not just equitable response times or other process measures. One of the things that that was discussed earlier by chief Luckritz is, is how we've changed the design of the ems system, and I call it a medical practice model. You go into a hospital, you've got lots of different people that do lots of different things. Historically, when someone calls 911, in a community like this, there are two options. They get an ambulance or they get an ambulance and fire truck. These numbers are a little bit old, but the unit, our cost for an ambulance in the city is somewhere around 1250 to 13, $350, so per call. That's what it costs us to run. We add a fire truck that adds another 2000 to $2200. And, you know, the average bill for an er in Texas is about $2,318. The challenge is that while some people need an ambulance and some people need an ambulance and fire truck, not everybody [3:25:04 PM] and fire truck, not everybody does. In fact, there's a significant percentage of people who don't need either one of those things because they have a problem that can be taken care of without that expense, and certainly without the expense associated with the er bill. So what we've done, and this is a simplified model of additional options. There are many options, as chief Luckritz talked about earlier. But now with the navigation somebody calls 911, they can get an ambulance or they can get a pa or an ems physician. One of my staff, for about $290 per unit. Our cost that can be in person or that can be telehealth, but it's a much less expensive tool to use to disposition people. And again, that is the end of the road. They don't they don't need a transport to the hospital. So it's saving them money as well. Again, we still have folks who need both, but our goal is to introduce these other options, which saves the city money by not overinvesting in more expensive resources, but it also [3:26:06 PM] expensive resources, but it also saves payers money that includes insurance companies as well as the people that we're caring for. Again, there are other pieces. Chief Luckritz described mental health responders, community health paramedics. Those are single unit responders, so they're going to be more similar to the 290 because they're responding an SUV similar to our physicians and P.A.S. So again, part of this is to meet the needs of the community. And part of it is to utilize more effective resources in order to meet the goals of responding to 911 calls. And with that, I will be happy to take some questions. >> Thank you. Doctor. Colleagues, do you have any questions? Thanks again. >> Thank you colleagues. >> Next we have a presentation by our labor from our labor relations office, miss Sarah griffin. >> Good afternoon. My name is Roxanna Stephens. I'm the deputy. It's okay. I'm the deputy chief labor relations [3:27:06 PM] deputy chief labor relations officer. Sitting in on behalf of chief labor relations officer Sarah griffin. I appreciate the time today to just kind of give you an overview of what our office does here for the city of Austin and the public safety departments that it supports. The first slide I'm going to show you is what the mission is, which explains what the labor relations office is. It was created in 2009, and it's to successfully negotiate and administer public safety labor contracts for the city of Austin with its various public safety employee unions, in a fiscally responsible manner, at the direction of the city manager. The labor relations office also provides municipal civil service, alternative dispute resolution services, and serves as a resource to assist other city departments with special projects such as investigations and mediations. One of the key components that we do, as the labor relations office, is to negotiate the public safety [3:28:07 PM] negotiate the public safety labor agreements for fire, ems and police. The city of Austin, through its citizens, have elected to adopt chapter 143 civil service statutes for all of the public safety departments, ems, fire and police. And it has also. The city of Austin has also adopted, through an election of its citizens to do, meet and confer agreements with ems and the police, and a collective bargaining with fire. So because we have those adopted, the labor relations office stands in that stead to negotiate those public safety labor agreements. We serve as the lead negotiator for the city in bargaining with the public, with the public safety contracts and with the unions. The Austin fire association, the police, the Austin police association and the Austin ems association. And once we once we negotiate those public safety [3:29:10 PM] negotiate those public safety contracts with the under the authority of the city manager, we then bring them to the city council for consideration and approval. Those contracts are not valid until they are approved and ratified by not only the city council, but by the respective public safety unions that we're bargaining with. We also assist the police, fire and ems departments and the public safety unions in administering the public safety contracts to and maintain contract compliance. A lot of that has to do with the interpretation of the labor agreements components and overseeing the initiation of new procedures and policies as needed. Once we negotiate a contract, one of the first things that we do after ratification is hold implementation meetings with all the relevant people within the city department, within the city of Austin, to make sure that there is immediate compliance with deadlines and all components of the contract. That would include D budget, the police administration, the fire [3:30:11 PM] police administration, the fire administration, the ems administration as needed. Throughout the administration of the contracts and through. While they are effective, we also do audit compliance within the components of the labor agreements and we assist the departments to understand those components and determine training needs to make sure that those things are followed through with and implemented. We also assist in with the departments and the unions to resolve any kind of issues that may come up in trying to be compliant with the contracts. And we do so at an early stage. We maintain we like to maintain open communication with the departments as well as the public safety unions, in order to make sure that we have that we have an open line of communication to try and resolve disputes before they have to go into a grievance procedure. We also and through that, we build and foster relationships with those unions. The current public [3:31:11 PM] those unions. The current public safety labor agreements are effective as of to date, are the agreement with the city of Austin and the Austin ems association, which we first negotiated and was effective October 1st, 2023 through September 30th, 2027. We actually amended it effective July 18th, 2024, to include the integration of the office of the chief medical officer into the ems department and what what that negotiation is, negotiation was we had to reopen the contract to address the contract issues that were affected by that. One of the key components was that the paramedic practitioners at doctor Escott spoke about before, now became actually sworn, sworn ems personnel. We also have the agreement between the city of Austin and the Austin police association, which was just recently ratified, and that is effective October 29th, 2024 [3:32:11 PM] effective October 29th, 2024 through September 30th, 2029. For fire, we have the collective bargaining agreement that was a result of a an arbitration award between the city of Austin and the Austin firefighters association. Local 975, September 8th, 2023. Arbitration award effective through September 30th, 2025. We are currently, since that is set to expire on September 30th, 2025, we are preparing to negotiate a new fire contract with the Austin fire association. One of the other components that our office provides is an alternative dispute resolution process. And what that means is for all the other non- sworn employees, they fall under the municipal service civil service rules that are given to them. It's a set of rules that tells you how you hire fire. Et cetera. Discipline. And when there is an action and it is [3:33:11 PM] there is an action and it is appealed, there is a there is an option which is voluntary and informal, that you can check when you file your appeal as an employee to participate in this alternative dispute resolution process. And what we do is we administer this voluntary and informal process to assist and try to resolve the issue on a personal action, which would include disciplinary probations, disciplinary suspensions, demotions, discharges and denials of promotion. And again, this process is specifically for the non-sworn employees of the city. We provide an ombudsman who is a neutral and is responsible to coordinate the adr process, and the adr process includes mediation, mediated communications, facilitation and information sharing. On this process. The ombudsman, it's at the election of how they want to do that through this informal process. But the ombudsman is available to act as a neutral or in some cases they actually get [3:34:12 PM] in some cases they actually get another neutral. And that is just an overview of the labor relations office. And I will I'm here for any questions that you may have. >> Thank you. Colleagues, do we have any questions. Thank you so much. >> Thank you very much. And I'll pass it over to the homeland security and emergency management. >> Mr. Chairman, members of council. >> My name. >> Is Jim Reddick, and I have the privilege of serving. As Austin's new. Director of homeland security and emergency management. So since. >> I just started last month, I thought it would be good to introduce myself and kind of give you some background of where I came from. And I can tell you, the 20 years of local government experience that I've had. One of the things I learned when presenting to members of council is to be brief and be gone, and answer any questions or concerns you might have. So [3:35:14 PM] or concerns you might have. So I'll do my best to stay within my ten minute limit, but certainly address any concerns or questions. I have served in the cities of Hampton, Virginia Beach, and most recently, Norfolk, where I was the director of emergency preparedness and response. I've had opportunities to serve on councils and commissions at the state and federal level. I do speak to the mayor's question earlier. I have a degree in organizational leadership and management and public administration, which I think is ideal in working with local governments so you can understand all the different capabilities and concerns in order to establish that team effort to maximize capabilities and resources. And I just have a servant's heart. I bring a passion and compassion to the to the community, and I'm looking forward to working with the community moving forward. Our mission. Let me tell you what it's not. First of all, and I know there's been some questions [3:36:14 PM] know there's been some questions before throughout the community, when you see homeland security and emergency management, I can assure you that we do know law enforcement related activities. We don't surveil anybody. We don't collect intelligence. What we do is build up the team, build up the capacity, build up the capabilities. So our role is to make sure that we can operate and respond to, not react, but respond to any incidents, natural or man made with the coordination among public, private, not for profit, higher education and military and the faith community. So it's establishing that one team, one fight approach, making sure that everyone stays informed throughout the process. So that includes information sharing, a common operational picture. But really the relationship building prior to the incident even occurring. We understand that people operate at the speed of trust, and that's what we try to do again with all of our partner agencies, but also the community. I know that kudos to the team for the plan that they [3:37:15 PM] the team for the plan that they got. Imap accredited emergency management assistance or I'm sorry, accreditation program, but I'm I know that there's more that we can do to make sure that the plan is more realistic in terms of addressing ground truth, facts and issues and making sure that resources are pre-staged and deployed where they're needed the most. And so we take that approach of doing the research of the community, talking with community members, having them really challenge our plans because I don't want to plan for the community without the community. I want them to really challenge and make sure that what we think is good is, in fact, something that we all, as a community, buy into. And then, of course, we go through a process of not only planning, but then training and exercises, rinse and repeat. There's always things that we can do to increase our odds of success. And we will do that one thing. And then there's always one more thing that we can do, but we do have a long way to go. And so our mission is to establish that [3:38:17 PM] our mission is to establish that team approach, to respond to any incidents that come our way, natural or man made. I'm sure you're very aware that there have been challenges with adhesome, whether they were winter storms or uri. There's after action reports that I reviewed prior to coming here. There was a peer to peer report that came up with 80 plus recommendations. From an organizational standpoint. And there's just things that we can do that have been documented as areas of opportunity but haven't been completed yet. So using those things as a roadmap to identify what the department's goals, objectives and tactics are, we are building that team. We're investing in our staff that that we're very well resourced and really trying to figure out what the highest priorities are, what low hanging fruit exists, and then again, what we can do to make sure that all of our plans are are not only comprehensive and complete, but accessible and available to everybody. I'm a big believer [3:39:18 PM] everybody. I'm a big believer that if we want folks to respond to emergencies the way we hope, then they should have access to the plan and at the same time, they should have the ability to contribute towards the plan. So making sure that from an organizational standpoint, we are well adequately resourced in terms of maximizing the staff that we have, being clear in their roles and responsibilities as was outlined in the staff satisfaction survey, providing more leadership and management training. I think we have some great managers, but understanding there is a big difference between leadership and management. We're looking at things that we can do to set them up with the tools they need to be successful, and also talking with my colleagues, the other directors in in the departments so they understand what what heesom does and what their roles are as well. It's all about managing resources, expectations, leveraging and maximizing what capabilities exist, and then also have the process to bring additional [3:40:18 PM] process to bring additional resources in. We're in the process of making sure that our budget is good to go for the next year, addressing burnout issues in terms of frequent eoc activations, I know covid folks are still reeling from that, but there's a lot of special events too. So we're looking at ways to augment staff in terms of partnering with other localities who don't typically have some significant special events that we have. So maybe, you know, many hands make light work and give other localities experiences that they otherwise wouldn't get. And again, building those partnerships, building those relationships and trust. And I know that if we do all of this, which we're already moving in the right direction, morale will continue to improve. So moving forward, as my colleagues behind me have said, we have great staff. I know that they are looking for direction and we are working with that now. We have fantastic partners from other sectors and other other, excuse me, other levels of government. So it's a matter of collaborating and [3:41:19 PM] of collaborating and coordinating with them to make sure we have realistic expectations and we can operate according to plan. I can tell you, one of the top plans that our focus is on right now is the wildfire evacuation plan. And I think that's going to be a great springboard to make sure that we can address all other issues the same as we would in terms of what what we're going to do before, during and after a wildfire evacuation incident. We are well resourced at the department level and at the city level, and we're also blessed with leadership support at your level and the mayor. So I think we're we're well positioned to do some amazing things from the emergency management standpoint, but also, again, through our plans, articulating to the community what we would need them to do as well. So again, being being inclusive in the planning process and giving them actionable information, letting them know exactly what we would hope they would do during different disasters, using data [3:42:20 PM] different disasters, using data and technology through research to make sure that our plans are well informed. Marketing the storm meaning getting out to the community, hearing what their concerns are. And again, one team, one fight for one community. I put Primus enterprises in there because borrowing that from Israel and they say first among equals, we are no bigger or better than any other department, nor do we have any authority over any other department. But we are committed to doing the research, bringing folks to the table, breaking down silos of excellence to ensure that we have that one team, one fight approach through the collaboration and coordination as one one enterprise. And with that, I open to any questions you might have. >> Thank you. Director colleagues. Have any questions? Thank you director. >> Thank you. >> First, I want to extend a thank you to all of our organizations that came to present today. Thank you for your service. Thank you and your teams for your service to the city of Austin. It is greatly [3:43:20 PM] city of Austin. It is greatly appreciated. Members with no further business to come before the public safety committee of the city of Austin. Without objection, we will adjourn this meeting at 3:43 P.M.