Public Safety Committee (PSC) Meeting Transcript - 4/7/2025 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 4/7/2025 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 4/7/2025 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. [2:00:40 PM] Folks, it's 2:00. Good afternoon. I will call the public safety committee to order. It is April 7th, 2025, and it is exactly 2 P.M. We're here at city hall, located at 301 west second street, Austin, Texas. And we have a quorum present. And our welcome. First welcome, everybody. Our first item is the approval of minutes from March 31st, 2025. I will accept a motion to approve these minutes made by council member duchen, seconded by and the second by by council member qadri. Do we have any discussion? >> What's so funny? >> I'll tell you later. I'll tell you later. It doesn't need to be on record. Without objections. The minute the minutes are approved. Colleagues, we have a couple of briefings today hoping not to keep us too long, though I'm not rushing anybody that's going to be making these briefings. Item number one, we have a briefing on wildfire issues and the activities of the Austin fire department wildfire division, and we'd like to welcome them up. Thank you all for being [2:01:40 PM] up. Thank you all for being here. >> Thank you. Hello. Good afternoon. I'm Carrie Stewart. I'm the division chief for the wildfire division for AFD. And I'm going to go over a presentation that we delivered several years ago to this same committee. Just a little bit of new information within it. And for this first slide, you'll see pictures from each of the parts of the national cohesive wildland fire management strategy, which is how we organize the wildfire division office. So on the very left is a picture from some wildfire response we made a couple of years ago that was out in hays county. So that's our effective firefighting. In the middle is a presentation for firewise status to one of our neighborhoods. So that's our fire adapted communities work. And then on the right is a picture from one of our prescribed burns that we do with our partners here in the city. So that's some of our fire resilient landscape work. Next slide please. And this is another look at that national cohesive strategy. So again it's [2:02:41 PM] cohesive strategy. So again it's fire adapted communities fire resilient landscapes and effective fire response. And we want balance between all three of those sections within our office and across the city. So you'll see a lot of different documents surrounding that. Our 2017 evacuation plan, some operational guidelines, heesom and homeland security and emergency management special operations plans, and our community wildfire protection plan, which is going to be updated this next year. So throughout the city, when we generate documents, we want to make sure that they have wildfire mitigation and wildfire response integrated into those policies and procedures for all of our departments across the city. And as we go through each of these steps, we can kind of think of this in terms of how we prepare and how we would respond to a wildfire event. So first, we can do risk assessments. Those can be across the city, across city departments, across neighborhoods, or with individual homeowners. So we might do a structure ignition [2:03:42 PM] might do a structure ignition zone evaluation with an individual homeowner. As we develop our Erp, we will do risk assessments for each of our city departments. We're working very closely with heesom and our other city departments right now on evacuation planning. So those are all part of that risk assessment that we may do across the city. Then building ready and defendable communities, that's some of our fire adapted communities work. So whether it's establishing a firewise neighborhood or doing those individual structure ignition zone assessments with individual homeowners or property owners, we want to build defendable communities. We don't expect for our work to avoid or completely keep us from having a wildfire event, but we do want to be able to recover from those events as easily and as readily as possible when they do happen. Leveraging that mitigation into operational advantages that can look like if a if a homeowner goes out and hardens their home against wildfire in advance, that those are steps that our our response crews, our first responders don't have to do in [2:04:42 PM] responders don't have to do in the middle of an event. So if someone has cleaned their gutters, made sure that their property is going to be resistant against embers and other events or other happenings during a wildfire event, then that's more. That's more work that's done on the front end that our first responders don't have to do. So those become operational advantages for our firefighters maintaining situational awareness. So again, making sure that all of our first responder agencies understand how they are going to respond and incorporate into a wildfire event. We're working on a situational awareness tool and platform to help provide that situational awareness across all of our public safety agencies, and then doing training and pre-planning for dynamic wildfires and wui response. So again, this evacuation work that we're doing, pre-planning those events as much as we can, doing training within the fire department as well, and also training our community members what their actions will be during an evacuation or during a wildfire event so that they are educated on the front end as [2:05:44 PM] educated on the front end as well. Priority driven response. Our incident priorities are always the same life safety first, then incident stabilization and then property conservation. And this also factors into the expectations that we should have as a community. So if incident, if life safety is always our first incident priority, that means if we're doing evacuations, we may not engage in firefighting until all of the life safety concerns are taken care of. So if we have a large area to evacuate, we want that to be very smooth and very efficient so that we can get people out, make sure they're safe, so that we can then engage in the firefighting. And again, realistic expectations of outcome and recovery. What should we expect as a community during one of these events? And I'll give you a little example. We've had a lot of questions lately about our water supply in the city after Los Angeles happened. And our response to that has been, if we have a large, devastating event like this, so think tornado, think wildfire, we should expect to have challenges [2:06:45 PM] should expect to have challenges with our infrastructure. A more specific example is if you're familiar with the Marshall fire that happened in Colorado several years ago, they had a grass fire 80 mile an hour winds, had a large ember cast into the middle of town, and it started burning down homes, Costcos lots of different structures. As those buildings burned, the pvc pipes melted and they had lots of leaks within their their infrastructure for their water supply. It's no one's fault. But they couldn't maintain pressure because they had lots of leaks, just because they had structures burning and leaks in their system, so something they couldn't foresee. They're trying to handle that as they rebuild, but we should expect to have challenges and understand what those might be and how we would respond to those. Next slide. This is a picture from 2011, the bastrop fires as seen from the city of Austin. And if you'll click one more time for me and this is what we should expect locally for our Austin's wildfire [2:07:46 PM] for our Austin's wildfire threat, we would expect multiple simultaneous starts when we have conditions that are receptive for wildfire, that being low fuel moistures, low humidities, high temperatures, extended periods of drought. We will expect to see it. We will see multiple simultaneous starts. So all of those little red dots, there are the 2011 fires and the number of incidents we had over a two day period when steiner ranch, the bastrop complex, and the pinnacle fire happened. So we know they're going to be happening everywhere because those conditions won't be receptive in just one area. It will be many different areas. We expect these to be relatively small wildfires. So compared to what we see on the west coast or in the western states, think 100 acres or less. For us, that will be a relatively small fire comparatively, but that will be a pretty big fire for the city of Austin with relatively large losses. So even if we compare to the pinnacle fire, we lost 12 homes that day in 2011. That was a big deal for us. That was a lot of losses for us, and we also expect more exposures than [2:08:48 PM] also expect more exposures than available resources, so we know we will be overwhelmed as a city and as a department. If we have all of those little red dots going on again or when we do. So that's why we maintain our mutual aid, automatic aid, partnerships, good relationships with Texas forest service so that we can receive that outside aid, just like we provide it to California and other areas around the state when they need it from us. Next slide. Again, we are doing a lot of work with all of our public safety agencies for evacuations. We do have a current in place 2017 evacuation plan, written when a lot of people who are no longer here were in place. So we are updating that plan now to make sure everyone understands their roles and responsibilities and how they will integrate to this plan. One of our failures previously, just as a as a city, as a community, was that we didn't really make sure that we developed internal policies and procedures for all of the players in this plan so that they knew exactly what they were going to do to implement their role within it. We all know that traffic on a blue sky day Tuesday in Austin is [2:09:49 PM] Tuesday in Austin is challenging. So when we have evacuation events, we expect for there to be a lot of congestion. We want to be able to preplan that as much as possible, to the point that if we can preplan how many law enforcement officers at a given intersection where we know we have one way in or one way out of a larger community, we want to preplan to that degree. So for AFD's role, we expect to be the ones downrange knocking on doors, initiating evacuations, getting people out so that we can start that firefighting process. And then we've also done a after the 2011 fires in steiner ranch, they did an evacuation simulation. What we learned from that is that you can't put people on the road to practice evacuations. It tends to get hectic. People run into each other in their vehicles, things like that. So it's hard to know exactly what to expect. But we have identified our areas in the city with 30 homes or more, with one way in and one way out. We want to start with those communities because we know we're going to have congestion problems and ingress [2:10:50 PM] congestion problems and ingress and egress issues, so move forward with those. This map on the right is an example of the community education that we want to do, particularly in those areas where we know we have one way in and one way out so that our homeowners, our community members, know what their options are during these events, and we can coach them and educate them in advance as well for our effective response. Again, we can think of that national cohesive strategy as a three legged stool, and we want balance between all three legs of that stool. So fire adapted communities, fire resilient landscapes and effective response. All of our firefighters are trained to what is called one 3190. It is a basic wildland firefighting certification through the national wildfire coordinating group. We also have a wildfire battalion. Or you might hear it called battalion five. So that is recently expanded. It was started three years ago. It is now eight stations that bracket the city with ten front line apparatus and brush trucks. At all of those stations. We do participate in deployments both [2:11:50 PM] participate in deployments both regionally in the state of Texas and nationally. We did have folks that responded to la to help with the palisades fire. We've also done responding to the interface training. So that is a hybrid course that's designed to teach structural firefighters how to work with their current tools and equipment and apparatus in that urban interface environment. We are the largest municipality that has put their entire department through that in the United States. So it was a two year effort, but we have now trained all of AFD's frontline personnel, and we also incorporated that into our cadet training as well. Moving forward, then also with our partnerships with other esds primarily, and then we also have partnerships with our land owning partners in the city. Think pard, Austin energy. We do have a prescribed fire permitting process. We use those as a training opportunity so that we can be involved, watch fire behavior in a controlled setting, and get some training out of those prescribed burns as [2:12:51 PM] out of those prescribed burns as well. And if you'll go one more, one thing that we have been focusing on with the public is home hardening, or those structure ignition zone evaluations. Often when people are concerned about wildfire mitigation, they're talking about what's happening on the other side of the fence. So what's happening in the greenbelt? What's happening on the bcp, what's happening on pard land? And we really want to bring this back to our homeowners so that they can focus on their home hardening. So this is an example of some mechanical mitigation work. So this is creating a shaded fuel break. You see a before and after there. This is really expensive work though. We have 650 miles of interface within the city of Austin. So just for a visual that would stretch from here to New Orleans. So it's a lot of a lot of trail around the city for our, our wui. It's also expensive to do this. So if you do the math on $51 per linear foot at 650 miles, it comes out to millions of dollars. So it's [2:13:53 PM] to millions of dollars. So it's very expensive to do this. What we also know is that this isn't the only fuel that we have in the city. So if you'll go one more slide, please. We also have to consider our homes as fuel in an urban interface environment. Or if you think Los Angeles, where we have structure to structure ignition and that urban conflagration. So that is the kind of environment we want to avoid. So we have to consider our homes fuel as well. And if you look at this slide here, it's showing us that 90% of structure ignitions from a wildland event are from the ember cast. They are not from direct flame impingement. So from the fire front itself, they are not from radiant heat, 90% are from that ember cast, which is why we focus on the wui code and why we focus on that structure. Ignition zone evaluation and home hardening. So if we understand that most of our the vast majority of our ignitions are going to be from ember cast, it does emphasize home hardening the wui code and making sure our community [2:14:55 PM] making sure our community members are doing their part to harden their homes, and that we have the structure to help them when they can't do it on their own, to make sure that that home hardening happens, because 90% of our ignitions are going to be from the ember cast, not the not the fire front itself. Okay. And this is another look kind of thinking holistically about that national cohesive strategy. So a fire adapted community would mean, if we're thinking in terms of our community wildfire protection plan, that all of these different groups are considering wildfire mitigation and wildfire preparedness and their internal policies and procedures. So from cooperative fire agreements that we might have with tfs to our land managers, pard, Austin energy, Austin water taking wildfire mitigation into into account with their land management plans. Our codes and ordinances like the wui code, the ready, set, go program that we educate our community members in forest [2:15:55 PM] our community members in forest management, fuel reduction and our firewise community. So we lead the state in the number of firewise neighborhoods in the city. We're always trying to expand that number. We have 24 now, and we're very proud of that number. But there's still work to do. That's 24 neighborhoods. So we can identify more areas across the city where we can expand that firewise information. And this is to pitch our hub. If you haven't been to the hub, it's at wildfire hub. We are updating that this year. There you'll find all of this information fire adapted communities, fire resilient landscapes, effective fire response. And you can sign up for that structure ignition zone evaluation there. There's a qr code there. You can call 311 to sign up that for that or email us at fire wildfire at Austin, texas.gov. There's also information about our Austin area firewise alliance there and they have their own website as well. So that's leaders from all [2:16:55 PM] well. So that's leaders from all of our firewise neighborhoods. We meet quarterly to discuss their challenges, educating their populations and their different neighborhoods and how we can spread that word. We also have the Austin Travis county wildfire coalition. That's kind of the mothership for updating the cw this year. So that's a joint venture between the city of Austin and Travis county to make sure, again, that we are considering wildfire preparedness in all of our policies and procedures across the city and to the county. And this is, again, another look at that national cohesive strategy. All of these different groups are going to play into having that truly fire adapted community, not meaning that we are removing our risk, but that when we have a wildfire event, we are able to recover from that as well as possible. Now this slide is again from the presentation we did several years ago. We had some next steps, things that we were working on. If you see something crossed out, that means we've achieved it. If it's still red, that means we're not quite there [2:17:55 PM] that means we're not quite there yet. And the blue are new things that we want to achieve. So some of the things we're still working on, the evacuation planning with the community. So going back to educating our especially areas where we know we're going to have ingress and egress problems, educating them on their options and what we will want them to do. Day of. We have that situational awareness tool that we want to implement and complete. Part of that will have a public facing view so that we can help educate our communities, our we have what we can call a local Erp. So those firewise communities, they will have a risk assessment done, making sure that they've implemented that and then also updating our current bwp. We expect that work to happen over the next 9 to 12 months. One of the things that we've done in the wildfire division is moved from doing mechanical mitigation ourselves. We used to have an internal fuels crew that did those shaded fuel breaks. We've now moved to using those personnel to educate our private landowners on what they can do to harden their property. So think of an hoa that owns private property. We can go give [2:18:57 PM] private property. We can go give them a risk assessment and steps that they can do to mitigate those properties for wildfire preparedness. And then we're still working with our esd partners on operational readiness. We have a new operational guideline for the city and county to make sure that we're all operating on the same sheet of music, on every wildfire response that we go to together. Anymore. And at this point, I can take any questions that you have. But again, this is just we all have a role in that fire adapted community. And creating a fire adapted community throughout the city of Austin and Travis county, and just making sure that everyone knows what their role is. And a lot of that will be brought into the update of that awp this year as well. >> Thank you. Colleagues, do we have any questions, Mr. Mayor? >> Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for this presentation. Recently, I had the occasion to bump into one of our Austin firefighters in the middle of a wildfire. Actually, it was not. The wildfire was [2:19:57 PM] it was not. The wildfire was over, pretty much, but at least 60% contained at the time. And when we got to talking, I was asking questions about training and that sort of thing and how beneficial being able to be in a wildfire and helps with the training are. We are there things that we could be doing different as a city to help with that training, putting people in those situations where they're getting the hands on training. So for. >> Our for our deployment. So it's Texas interstate fire mutual aid system. >> So that's that's that's what it was. But I couldn't remember it. That's why I didn't act like I did. So say that again. >> Tifmas Texas intrastate fire mutual aid system. >> Right. That's what he was referring to. >> So it is a great opportunity for us to train. Right? We're and especially to be able to make those responses in Texas. It's one thing to go to California, but it's different topography. It's different fuel [2:20:57 PM] topography. It's different fuel packages if we can if we also. >> Same county. >> Right. That's pretty close to home. Yeah. So it is very beneficial for us. One thing that happens there is that we front load the money from the fire department to pay for those deployments. So am I good? >> Yeah, we're working on a process to streamline that reimbursement part as well, to make sure we stay within our budget come the end of the fiscal year. Okay. So I'm not sure I get that, but I'm not sure. Is there something we ought to be doing differently that you're not already doing so that we can maximize that? >> As far as the mechanism to deploy? That's pretty that's pretty streamlined for us. >> Straightforward, yes. >> So tifmas helps organize that. There's kind of a network across the state. And when like when they pre- position the folks that made the fire in the in that territory, we already had teams that were pre- positioned around the state, per tfs. So when we have the conditions that are receptive for wildfire, tfs is paying attention to that [2:21:58 PM] is paying attention to that across the state, and they'll pre-position strike teams so that they are prepared to respond just based based on local fuel moistures drought and receptivity to wildfire. >> And within Travis county, we've also got an auto aid agreement with all of our esd partners. So whenever you see on the news for a wildfire that maybe is out towards Maner or elsewhere, that is all of our units going. So okay, duty crews on those days are getting are part of that process. So they're they're helping to mitigate things here in our local area and also getting the training. On those deployments. Great. So let me ask another question about that. And this again, this is just an ignorance on my part. But in situations like that and this is very, very practical technical thing, I've now learned about the use of dozers for purposes of creating breaks, things of that nature. How do we train for that independent of something like that? [2:23:01 PM] something like that? >> Trained for, working with? >> Yeah, for know for example, if we're fire, if, if we were to have a wildfire in Travis county in Austin and we wanted to we wanted to do firebreaks where like I say, I've now have a very specific instance where I think it made probably all the difference in the world, at least in, in this area. How do we how do we train for that and how do we prepare for that? Because either somebody got really, really lucky in the way they did what they did, or they were brilliant and well trained. And I think it's probably more of the latter. >> So again, tfs stages those resources, including dozers across the state. When we have those periods, like we had several weeks ago, where we had red flag days, extreme fire danger ratings, they are providing a situation, a sitrep to us to know where those resources are staged, and then our crews out in the field for [2:24:01 PM] our crews out in the field for AFD are trained on how to request those resources so they know how to call tfs. They know how to provide the information that we need to display to get prioritized for those resources as well. Evacuations being one of those, if we were evacuating people, then you kind of jump to the top of the list if it includes if it would affect people. But our our crews are trained on how to request those resources, primarily battalion five, they're probably going to be the ones that that clue into the need for those resources quicker. But our crews are trained how to contact tfs to request those. >> And that's already kind of pre-planned. Yes, sir. With people with expertise. >> Yes. >> And one of our ISD partners also has a dozer that they've purchased. So for something that's maybe a lower level call or maybe initial response through that auto aid partnership, there is a smaller dozer available here in our local area. So but but the training has occurred and then we're then we train in how to make sure you get those [2:25:02 PM] make sure you get those resources available. Yes okay. Let me ask about the ready set go program and that what else could we be doing other than and I want to what else can we be doing so that neighborhoods and homeowners associations and groups that I know the rest of the my colleagues are also hearing from, that we can up the ante, say up the ante, but up the number of people that we're getting in front of to help them in hardening and that sort of thing. What can we do to put that on steroids? >> We do need help getting the message out. We've just to give you some numbers. Those structure ignition zone evaluations, we did 150 of those last year. In 2024, we've had over 500 response requests for those since. Since Los Angeles happened since the beginning or middle of January. But we need help amplifying that message. So [2:26:03 PM] help amplifying that message. So the more you can include in your communication to your constituents that we have these free services like a structure ignition zone evaluation, we could use help there. Not everywhere in Austin is covered by a neighborhood or an hoa. So getting points of contact in the community. >> They are for zoning case pops up. >> Sure, sure, yes. Not always helpful for neighborhood presentations, but. >> Don't don't don't cause any fires. Don't. >> Yes, but identifying just community leaders, even if it's not an officially organized community, who who could give some some credibility to the message that we could work with. We would love to have those contacts out in the community. And but the more you can amplify with constituents some of the free services that we offer to help, you know, it's great if we can get one homeowner to do it, but if they can then talk to their neighbors, talk to their street, and then and then we're we're making we're making a lot [2:27:04 PM] we're making we're making a lot of headway. So if we can get into some of these areas where we haven't, haven't quite figured out how to break down the door, then we can keep the ball rolling that way. But getting just getting community leaders who would be influential to their neighbors would be that would be a huge help. >> Good. Okay. And then this is a weird question, but. Cell towers do you know, we have we have a question about a cell tower that's near a preserve. Do you know what the ability is to stop a cell tower near a preserve, or does it require legislation? >> It would require legislation at this point. And some of the research that we've been sent on, that particular case differs from some of the language that we're hearing about it. So we have read some of the research and it's minimal occurrence across the country on an annual basis. So some of some of the claims don't really support the research that's out there. >> Very good. Thank you. Thank [2:28:05 PM] >> Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And let me just say thank you, thank you, thank you for what you all do. And I'm very appreciative. I know everybody is. And so we appreciate that. >> Thank you. Council member Lee. >> Yes, thank you so much for working on this. It's certainly not easy. So I'm wondering it seems like the home hardening work is a very it must succeed in order for our strategy to succeed. So what information do we have about where we have gotten that accomplished versus not accomplished? And relative to where the fire risk is highest? Is this actually succeeding. >> For where we're doing the assessments? Yeah we do. I don't have them with me, but we do have some maps of kind of where we're making contact around the city and I, and we're also breaking it down by council district. We're hoping y'all will have a little internal competition for who can get the most size requests. So but we're breaking it down by council district as well, so that y'all [2:29:05 PM] district as well, so that y'all can get an idea of where we might need to do a little bit more outreach, or maybe help us spread the message about that. I can get those maps to you. I just don't have them on me right now. >> Okay. I'm wondering in part because, for example, you mentioned that 150 evaluations were done last year, but just this year, 500 more requests have come in. How is there a wait? How long a wait is there? >> There is. We're scheduled out through June right now. So there is a wait. We are utilizing some of our community members. So that firewise alliance that I mentioned, when we get requests in those neighborhoods who already have a firewise community established, we have trained people in those neighborhoods to go do those assessments for their neighbors. So we've been able to leverage some of our community members to do those for each other. So that has been a help. We're also going to be expanding that into battalion five this year. So it'll be kind of an in-service inspection that they do. But we are looking for ways that we can have force multipliers for those. We have maybe six people in the office that are doing those currently, but we do have [2:30:07 PM] those currently, but we do have a little bit of a waitlist, but we're looking for more ways to have other folks do those with us. Yeah. >> So I, I am looking at the wildfire risk map that's on your hub, and I see a lot of Orange and red in six areas, six and ten, a district six and ten. And in areas that are either impacted by the preserve or it's kind of a rural residential or there's no neighborhood association or hoa that's very active in that area. Can you speak a little bit about what the strategy is there? I mean, there's so much risk and very few of these individual neighborhoods or neighborhood associations or hoas. >> We do have we tend to have more engaged communities on the west side where we have more topography. The more hoa development, if you will. So we do need help kind of getting [2:31:08 PM] do need help kind of getting into the eastern crescent of the city. We have different fire problems on different sides of the city. So on the west side it would be a slower moving fire, but more intense just because of the topography and the fuel package that we have there. On the east side, we've got more grasslands, so we would expect those to be less intense, but they're going to be faster moving. Those present different challenges to us for response. So despite the different colors there on the risk map and understanding that 90% of our ignitions are going to be from the ember cast, which can travel miles. So if we have think about the winds we had over the last couple of months, that big wind day with an ember cast, it doesn't necessarily mean that those areas that are more Orange or more red are going to be the ones affected, right? That marshal fire that I referenced earlierwas a grass fire with high winds, developed an ember cast and two miles in any, you know, any direction downwind. It's hard to say what area is [2:32:08 PM] It's hard to say what area is going to be impacted. So we do want to spread the message around the city as a whole. But again, it goes back to breaking into some of those communities where we don't have necessarily the same organization and getting in touch with community leaders that we can we can kind of break that door with. >> Well, I'll definitely look forward to seeing where you have already covered and where there are gaps. One of the concerns I have is with that preserve taking up so much area and that space, and I think that's more of the red area. But where there are lots and lots of houses, right? I don't understand, I just don't understand what's what will help us with the large wooded areas when they get close to the houses. I mean, because you mentioned that you're not doing fuel breaks as much anymore. Well, shifting. Is not okay. >> That doesn't mean that the bcp or whoever manages that land is not doing shade. It just means that we're not doing the work ourselves. >> Okay? [2:33:08 PM] >> Okay? >> And I will. >> Say that the best way for me to find out about what is happening. >> So we can talk to Austin water, they manage a lot of that bcp land. So and they and one of the things that we've highlighted we don't have a good mechanism right now to understand all of the work that's happening across the city for mitigation. So if we think of what part is doing what Austin water, Austin energy, all of those organizations, we need a better way to collect that information so that we do have a good idea of what's happening across the city. >> Yeah, that's exactly one of the concerns I have because I've seen like the part analysis of the area, but that's just a little speck of it. And then you've got the wild lands and you've got a lot of pec as well as Austin energy, and not just cell towers, but also power lines running across. Right. And then we also have Williamson county up there and some of the areas that are just shown as black is because it's Williamson county, but the surrounding [2:34:11 PM] county, but the surrounding areas are Orange. Like, what's the collaboration like with Williamson county versus Travis county? >> I'd say more limited with Williamson county, and certainly there's going to be a gap there to understand what kind of mitigation they work. They've done as well. But I would like to speak to risk just for a second. I'm going to compare it to our our wui risk, our urban interface risk compared to a risk of having a house fire. So we have risk of having a house fire because we burn candles, we cook inside, we have fireplaces, all of those things. Right. So that risk is what it is. One thing that we do for safety for a house fire is we put smoke detectors in your house. Right? So if I took smoke detectors and I covered every available surface in your home. Have I decreased your risk of having a house fire? What do you think? No, I haven't decrease your risk. What I've done is bought you time, right? I've alerted you faster so that you can get out. But I haven't done anything to the risk. The risk is what it [2:35:12 PM] to the risk. The risk is what it is for a house fire. So for that urban interface event, the risk is what it is. We're never going to be able to eliminate that risk. So the bcp has done a great job. They put in a lot of shaded fuel breaks, especially up close to our neighborhoods. What we hope that does is buy you time, right. We want that shaded fuel break. That's 60 to 100ft to slow that fire down and give our folks a chance to evacuate and maybe decrease the intensity as it gets close to homes. But the biggest thing that is going to save our homes is that home hardening is implementing those steps in the wui code that's cleaning your gutters, making sure your decks are in good repair, making sure that your vent openings into your attic are covered. 90% of our ignitions are going to be from that ember cast, not the direct flame impingement. So we worry about a lot about what's happening in the greenbelt and the bcp. Right. It is a it's a big concern and it scares people. But we want them to focus on their homes. It's that [2:36:12 PM] focus on their homes. It's that three legged stool. We want balance. But the research shows us and there's a lot of research that the us forest service has done that what matters is whether that home is ignitable. So have you taken the steps to make sure that your home is hardened? It doesn't matter so much. It's not a wildland like a land management strategy problem. It's a home ignition problem. And there's a lot of research that I can share on that from the us forest service as well. >> It'll be really interesting to see where you've penetrated already. Since I'm fairly new and where I can help spread the word in those areas. >> I can get you the research, and we're still working on collecting all of it, but I can put you in contact with. >> I don't necessarily need the research. I'm just talking about which neighbor have you been successful in in this area? Because there are quite a few that don't have very active neighborhood associations or any at all. I would. >> I just kind of a heat map to show. Yes. Okay. >> That would be amazing. >> Something else that we do to help mitigate that risk with the embers going downwind is operationally, we put a patrol in place in the neighborhoods where those embers may be going. [2:37:14 PM] where those embers may be going. So it's not that we wait for houses to catch fire. We are trying to be more proactive about seeing where something's- going on and addressing it before the whole house goes up in flames. >> And then I also have a question on evacuation routes, and I know you're working on that. And we'll probably eventually see where the areas of greatest concern. But I am pretty concerned about 620, which is a traffic nightmare on a good day, has a ton of the Orange and red areas, has multiple subdivisions that only have one or maybe two ways out for a very large proportion of houses, and the canyonland terrain makes it very challenging for there to be other routes. Can you speak to that concern for me however you'd like to? >> Unfortunately, and a lot of neighborhoods want us to be able to tell them where to go in advance, and we're never going to be able to do that. Right. What we have identified, and [2:38:15 PM] What we have identified, and this is going to be part of that community education piece that we want to partner with ccim on, is we've identified temporary assembly points. So when we tell people to leave, we want to tell them where to go and how to get there. So a temporary assembly point is somewhere we want all of our evacuees to check in just so that we can get some accountability for them. During that check in, we'll identify if they need shelter or not, and if they have somewhere else to go like grandma's house or friend's house, they are free to go. We just want them to check in so that we can understand that they're okay. And then the other part of that community education is just identifying all of the potential routes out of neighborhoods. Like if there's a back gate that we can understood, could be used for emergencies only, that's some of the pre-planning that we still want to do. And then for areas like city park road, maybe we need to think about a water evacuation potential so that we may need to get creative with some of our options and some of our ideas. So I can't say that we have there's a lot of considerations that we're building into that plan right now. >> And when did you say that the [2:39:17 PM] >> And when did you say that the evacuation route information will be available? >> It would be great if it's available by the end of this year. >> Okay. >> But I'm. >> Looking back at the. >> System. >> Right now to help with that. They're helping to manage that. >> We left a meeting today working on evacuation management to come here. So it is happening as we speak okay. >> Thank you. >> Councilmember duchen, thank you so much for this presentation and the answers. Chief tour chief fires. I had a couple of questions I want to follow up with one that you were just talking about, which is the evacuation strategy you mentioned in the presentation. By some accounts, we've got well over 300 communities that are single point of entry and exit. >> 30, 35. >> I've heard different numbers. >> I'm sorry. We've identified homes with 30 homes or more, neighborhoods with 30 homes or more that only have one way in or one way out. >> Okay, well, I've heard different numbers from different people, but I know that there is a number of my community, and I think it probably depends on how [2:40:17 PM] think it probably depends on how you measure. I know jester, for instance, and, and riverplace sometimes call themselves single point of entry exit, but technically speaking, have back ways through courtyard and through Lakewood respectfully. But I've also got like long canyon 400 homes that really does have one point of entry exit. And I know they've come to me and said, you know, we've got a dirt road that connects to bcp land. How do we get permission to use that or incorporate that as part of our evacuation strategy? Are those the sort of things that you all and hessam are working on right now? So I should be patient and wait for the evacuation plan that he is going to produce before I go back to long canyon hoa and say it's being worked on or what would you advise here? >> That is some of the work that that's some of the items that we want to preplan and some of that we've started bringing in transportation and public works to say, if we opened up this back gate, can we support or how many homes or what area of the neighborhood could we support evacuating that way with the infrastructure that's already there? Another thing that we're building into those evacuation plans is that we want them to be phased evacuations. Steiner [2:41:18 PM] phased evacuations. Steiner ranch if you see some of the pictures from 2011, they dumped the entirety of steiner ranch onto the road and it was a traffic nightmare. We don't want to do that again. So we want to train our folks to phase those evacuations and only initiate evacuation orders for the areas that really need it. They're going to be impacted first so that we can start closest to fire impact, and then work our way into that neighborhood so that we can hopefully mitigate some of those traffic jams. >> Okay, then it sounds like my best strategy for the time being is wait to be patient for Heathman's plan, and I was previously advised it might be ready this summer, and now it seems like it might be later than that. >> So the plan itself. We have a June 1st deadline for the plan, realistically, for the community education part of that to develop after that plan and then sorry, get it out to the community so that everyone's aware. I think realistically by the end of this year. >> Okay, so we're still on for summer to see the plan and then work with the communities after [2:42:19 PM] work with the communities after that to educate them. So one thing that you were able to share with us a while back, and you mentioned today was the situational tool that you all are developing. I was curious because we met with the ctec folks on Friday, and particularly with doctor stoner, and we were really excited about the awareness tool, and we brought it up to him and he's like, yeah, I'm not sure if that's the right way to implement this particular tool. >> We're we're working with director stoner on that to figure out what's the best way he's committed to taking care of us and our operational needs. My words at this moment, and to see what might be a permanent platform moving forward, whether it's when we currently have or migrating to something else. So we're in lockstep with them on that. Any changes that we make today are also done from the inception with ktm's involvement, so that we're [2:43:20 PM] involvement, so that we're setting everyone else up for success as that moves forward. >> Okay. So we can expect that the incarnation of that platform to continue in some fashion with his and ktm's help, it just may not be developed in-house by the wildfire division or correct. Okay. Correct. I was also curious about just other just to build on this point. You know, I'm excited. There's pannaway I'm excited that there's your situational tool. I know that there's we talked about geofencing for emergency notice. What other opportunities for technology are you all exploring or thinking about right now? As far as all the things we talked about home hardening, evacuations, anything really that might make a difference. And I'm saying this also in light of just general efficiencies that might be created in this space relative to what could be a challenging financial future for the city and how technology and [2:44:21 PM] and how technology and efficiencies could potentially help in in that regard. >> Two main things come to mind. One is they have a Wu Huy conference every year. We've had some contacts that we made a couple weeks ago. One is for fire modeling. So we've made contact with some folks that are doing some really good fire modeling and have been able to replicate the palisades fire and the lahaina fire very well. So we're in talks with them and to the point that maybe we can talk with pard and Abu and some of our land owning partners about some of the feedback they're getting from the community about concerned areas that folks are concerned about. And could we model fires to understand how they would move through an area? The other is modeling traffic. So that's something that we've wanted to integrate into the situational awareness tool. And when we were looking for a product to buy, we wanted it to have traffic modeling as well. That's a little bit harder to come by, but it's something that we're continuously looking for. So I'd say fire modeling and traffic modeling the fire. We're hoping we're also going to have [2:45:21 PM] hoping we're also going to have a wui or a wildland conference here in November. We're kind of co- hosting it, and we expect to see some other technology presented at that conference in November as well. >> Okay. Thank you. That's very exciting. I'm looking forward to that. And November, one last question, which is you touched on the local cbp's. I know that there's language in there from the first version from ten years ago. What can we do differently this time, given that Austin does have different risk factors, different topography, different wind, etc, that might make sense for us to build out those local this go around. >> I know that awu is working on updating some research that was done years ago through doctor white and the Baylor university. I think incorporating as much new research into our our current fuel packages. That research was done over ten years ago. So being able to incorporate anything that we [2:46:22 PM] incorporate anything that we learn out of that, those new efforts to understand how how has our topography changed, how has our fuel package changed so that we have the most accurate version in our as possible? >> Great. Thank you so much. >> Any other questions? Colleagues? Thank you so much for the presentation. Thank you. Colleagues. Next item number three, we'll have a briefing on Austin police department's community outreach and the activities of the Austin police department office of community liaison. And we're welcoming our chief and a couple of other folks. >> Good afternoon. >> Hi. Mayor, chairman, committee members. Yes. So this is our office of community liaison, but I'm going to open it up before they get started to kind of talk about, you know, when I first came here, I set three goals, three priorities. One was crime prevention, morale and recruitment. And community policing certainly goes under there. Crime prevention. And that's how important it is to me, truly getting at a grassroots level of what we do, reaching people through [2:47:23 PM] reaching people through community. And that's what this group does, and it's going to be changing. We've got some things in the works. One of the things and I believe in what was it 2022 is when we the doctors, was it 2020 after 2020, I believe we originally had 36 doctors, the district representatives. Who do you guys everyone up here knows that the tremendous amount of work that they do within the communities went down. It went from 36 to, I believe, 12. And so you feel that and I think that's what's happening right now is and you have zero. Is that what. Yeah. So that's the problem and that's unacceptable. And so when we start looking at how we move forward, certainly when we get people back into the sectors, we're going to go back to districts and have district representatives in these sectors. That is so important and is certainly my priority. So I just wanted to open with that before this group comes up and talks about all the fantastic initiatives and things that we're we're doing, I want you to know that I know where we are [2:48:23 PM] know that I know where we are lacking and where we have to get those bodies. We need to get those district representatives there to deal with real problems. And it would be great. And we're heading in a direction where every officer will be a doctor. Every officer is about community policing, and we can say that, but we need designated people who can truly work on problems in these neighborhoods. So I want you to know that that I truly understand that. Okay. >> Colleagues, real quick before they make presentations, I, I just wanted to touch on one thing, chief, that when we're talking about community policing, and I think you and I have discussed this before, lieutenant Rodriguez is hands down one of the best when it comes to that. I, I've had I speak with him at least once a month, a lot more than that. But I meet with him at least once a month. And every time that he's at, we've been out in the community. I told him at one point I was like, if they could clone, if the police department can clone him and create 50 more of him, I'd be all for that because we have been in some very tense situations together, [2:49:24 PM] very tense situations together, talking to the community and his ability to deescalate those situations and bring folks on board to what we're talking about is, is unmatched. And the other thing that I'll say is that I want to thank him for his service. But also, officer Scanlon, I don't know if officer Scanlon remembers me, but she had the misfortune of being the director of the citizens police academy when they had a president named Jose Velasquez or elected a president named Jose Velasquez. And so I want to thank you both for your service. And I really, really appreciate the premium that y'all put on community policing. >> And I and I know that with this guy, I'm very lucky to have have them both for sure. All right. Thank you. Thank you chairman. >> Thank you so. >> Much for saying that. Those kind words and mayor council members, I think I'll. >> Still take that $50 you promised me for that after this. >> Later. Yeah. Parking lot. Yeah. We'll we'll settle up. No, I so my name is foster Rodriguez. I'm one of the executive lieutenants for the Austin police department. And I wanted to start by telling a really quick story about some of the work that the office of community liaison does. So two weeks ago, we were at a town [2:50:27 PM] weeks ago, we were at a town hall at dobie middle school. It was hosted by univision council member. Vela was there. Chief Davis was there. The Mexican consulate myself, the office of community liaison and as well as victim services was there. So we had about 100 folks there, and it was on immigrant rights. So as the town hall wrapped up, I was approached by David Magana, who is one of the liaisons at the office of community liaison. And so he pulled me aside and he said, hey, there's a woman here. I think she needs help. And so we went over and we spoke with the with the woman, and turns out she was a victim of a crime. She was currently being victimized. And as she's going through and telling her story and telling us about it, she just she kept saying, tengo miedo, tengo miedo miedo, which which means it's just that I'm [2:51:30 PM] which means it's just that I'm scared. I'm just really scared. I said, you're scared of about what happened or about what took place or. And she said, well, yes, but I'm scared to even be talking to you right now. I'm scared to be talking to an officer. And so we eventually we got her info, we got her the help that she needed. But this ultimately tells me two things. One, we have more work to do as a department when we know there's underreporting, particularly in in specific communities when folks feel like they cannot come to us when they are victims of a crime. So we have more work to do on that end. Two had it not been for the office of community liaison being present, visible and engaged, they're on scene, pulling me aside and saying, hey, I think this woman needs some help. This woman would have never gotten the help that she [2:52:32 PM] never gotten the help that she needed. This woman had been victimized for weeks on end. And so we finally got her, got her some help. And so I wanted to publicly say thank you to the office of community liaison for those particular stories that they're doing day in and day out. It's important it is needed. We need more of that. And thank you so much for retired officer Sade Scanlon and the current acl manager who's going to come up and give this presentation. So with that said, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, sure. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council. And also I do remember you of course. How could how could I forget. So thank you for having us, having me come and talk to you a little bit about the office of community liaison. I am the manager for acl and just wanted to do I use this? Okay. Thank you. Just briefly overview the mission of the acl, [2:53:36 PM] overview the mission of the acl, the office of community liaisons mission is to carry out community engagement by fostering a sense of shared responsibility and inclusiveness throughout our Austin community through education, awareness, and law enforcement accessibility. And this is just an overview of our organizational structure. You see, chief Davis, we have Ana sabana as the communications strategic communications marketing manager, myself. And then we have a total of ten neighborhood liaison positions. Four of them are currently filled and six are open. And then we have an administrative specialist. A little bit about some of the focuses. For each of our liaisons. We have the lgbtq community. So acl collaborates with city of Austin lgbtq plus quality of life advisory [2:54:36 PM] quality of life advisory commission. We also provide educational outreach and resources, outreach and resources to community members, and we foster engagement between opportunities, between the lgbtq plus community and APD. We also participate in the pride month parade. We have something called safe place program. I hope all of you are familiar with that program. We coordinate that. It's a free and voluntary partnership program that serves a critical role in assisting victims of hate crimes in our community, and we currently have over 100 community members. Partnerships with local businesses, faith leaders, local government and nonprofit organizations. We also have a multi-ethnic outreach, and the acl addresses public safety stigmas within different communities to build trust and understanding. We participate in cultural and religious events that are organized by community [2:55:37 PM] that are organized by community members, and we collaborate with, again, the quality of life advisory commissions and other community stakeholders. The univision town hall is an example that just recently occurred with one of these outreach events. And then we have the immigration and refugee outreach. We foster trust and rapport between APD and our immigrant community, providing education about local law enforcement practices, promoting awareness of laws and regulations, and APD policies. And we connect our sworn officers with the consulate's office, pro-immigration nonprofits and organizations, and we coordinate educational community events. Again, the town hall is a good example of that. Crime prevention outreach oco works with community partners and APD resources, our internal partners, to create crime prevention opportunities. We assist our district representatives with conducting [2:56:40 PM] representatives with conducting security surveys at businesses and residences, and we provide training for creating neighborhood watch programs and other safety prevention or, I'm sorry, safety tips and crime prevention meetings that may take place at neighborhood association meetings. And just special groups, especially apartment complexes, will reach out and ask us to host some sort of a meeting to provide safety tips regarding whatever crime may be escalating in their particular community, apartment community. And then we have national night out. We coordinate the multi-agency partnership for national night out annually, and that event promotes crime prevention and provides an opportunity for the neighbors to get to know one another and, importantly, to get to know first responders throughout Austin. We also have our senior and law enforcement together program, and we work to make law enforcement APD resources accessible to our [2:57:40 PM] resources accessible to our aging community members by providing, again, awareness and education to seniors on scam prevention tips, making a police report, and other public safety services that are available. And we also host and attend several local events for senior communities and organize a salt fair. Actually, we will be organizing several throughout the city. I know that these are some very specific programs that I've focused on, but the acl also provides community service daily. I'm sorry, customer service daily to our community. We help to resolve issues and concerns that are brought to our attention. People will call, they'll email. They don't know how to find a solution. Maybe it's navigating the website or even just having some concerns or fear in reaching out to law enforcement directly. And the liaisons are able to walk through those instances with them, provide them resources, [2:58:41 PM] them, provide them resources, even if it's not within a wheelhouse. We are learning. We know the city, and we provide those resources and get them connected with the right people. Especially when it comes to our officers. And that may be the district representatives. But I want to say that we've also paid close attention to reaching out to our patrol officers and our investigative units as well, making sure that there's a wide variety. And our community understands just how many resources are available within APD and the acl team. We also work on collecting data for our sworn partners so that we can provide them with impacts and feedback about how well the engagement is going, where we may need to focus a little bit more on and just allow our community to provide that feedback and have a voice. Some of the unit's challenges. Acl is [2:59:45 PM] of the unit's challenges. Acl is located at 4101 industrial drive. I'm not sure if you all are familiar with it. It's in the warehouse district in Franck sector. Our operations locations of blue Santa. I'm sorry, the we're there primarily in office there. The professional staff has office there for blue Santa program. That's fine when we're working on blue Santa, but it really is not accessible or centralized or welcoming to our community to be able to engage with us. And it does not allow for our community to have gatherings there and other engagement opportunities. Another challenge is that professional staff performs warehouse tasks like our forklift operations, boxing and inventory of packages. And for the operation blue Santa program. It is, like I said before, it is year round and these tasks take the liaisons away from focusing on developing and maintaining the community [3:00:47 PM] and maintaining the community engagement, events and outreach that we are doing with our sworn partners and for our community. And then another challenge, a final one right now is the spawns availability. And chief spoke about that a little bit, just in that we've had a continued staffing challenges, and our sworn partners are not always available for community engagement opportunities. And our community truly wants to see our officers present at all the different events. When schools call us and they ask us to bring out a car and an officer, they don't just want resources for parents at tabling and which would be the liaison. They also they want the officers in uniform. They want to hear from them. So it's again, we've been reaching out beyond our district representatives to our officers to get more officers involved in this opportunity. But at times it can be challenging, and we really do aim to be able to attend almost 100% of the [3:01:49 PM] attend almost 100% of the requests that we receive, that where law enforcement is a nexus there, like we can actually do outreach and provide accessibility to APD. This is just a brief stat. We had 65 events in the first quarter, and those may have been hosted or collaborated with. And then we have our safe place initiative that we certified five new businesses through the safe place training program that, again, our liaisons train different businesses to be a part of that program. And the liaison for this particular program has made hundreds of contacts in the last actually about two months, the first quarter, for sure, and the team is going to be working on training all 26 libraries of their frontline employees on safe place. So all the libraries, based on a resolution [3:02:49 PM] libraries, based on a resolution that was passed by council in 24, will be trained. The goal is by June and certified, and they should all be displaying that safe place sticker or decal at the front of those libraries. And we have asl education and awareness, and these are just a few examples of those opportunities that we provide the community. Recently, the district representatives, the north team did have begun a pilot program for APD's crime free multi-housing program. We assisted that team with the development and the coordination of the training for multi-housing communities in Austin. I believe there were about 40 different apartment complexes that were represented there, and not only did we help develop coordinate that program, but the liaisons also took that [3:03:51 PM] but the liaisons also took that program so that they could be a part of continual work with those complexes. Cecile provides training to Austin businesses who want to participate. We've already covered that. But the safe place initiative and partner partnering against hate crimes. We also provide business crime prevention training to Austin businesses. How to make a report, what kind of information is needed, how to better secure their their building, and how to keep themselves and their employees safe. We do the same thing for community and residential meetings. We'll have crime prevention training and also do surveys for individuals homes, providing them tips on how to keep their homes safe and deter crime and also prevent it. We have also collaborated with. This is just an example of one of our units. Mounted patrol needed some assistance with training their officers and the horses on crowd management, and we were able to reach out to [3:04:52 PM] we were able to reach out to volunteers, coordinate that effort and get the right folks in there to help with that training of our sworn. It was a great engagement opportunity and they all had a great time, and so did our so did our liaisons with with engaging with those community members. And then, of course, we will table at events and at each event we bring the resources that are needed for that particular event to reach out to the community members that are there, whether that's on how to make a report or if it is immigration information, safety prevention tips and more. So we strive to always have a sworn partner with us, as I said, and for the visibility and relationship building. And we have also participated ourselves in professional development throughout the last quarter and late last year. And some of those are listed there. Ocl partners, we have an internal [3:05:58 PM] partners, we have an internal collaboration with and we support all of internal APD partners, just to name a few. We work with our district representatives. We work with victim services closely. All of the specialized units patrol and also our public information office. We work to keep the department informed about issues and concerns that we are hearing from our community partners, and to create collaborative opportunities for problem solving. That's really the key with engagement, community engagement is being able to problem solve together, whether it's with our businesses or community members finding solutions. So the acl works with a vast number of community stakeholders, and some of those include the Mexican consulate's office, the north Austin civic association, rundberg alliance, Esposito, Rutland housing for homeless, the lgbt Q chamber of commerce, downtown Austin [3:06:58 PM] commerce, downtown Austin alliance, and age of central Texas. We've also supported and partnered with several of our Austin departments, city departments we've attended and shared APD resources and educational materials. Most of those are going to be that we're there as liaisons of vending or tabling with resources. And in most of these cases, we probably we have not had sworn with us, but it does allow us to at least provide outreach materials we supported in the town hall series, the city manager's town hall series. We partner with our language access. We tabled at the we all belong to party last year, and we connect with the quality of life commission's monthly to support any request or need that they may have. For information from the Austin police department. We have some. I feel like exciting upcoming projects. We are currently [3:08:00 PM] projects. We are currently working on the autism awareness and acceptance event that will be held may 3rd, and that's open to all disabilities, and it's a great event to bring awareness and education again about law enforcement and persons with disabilities. We also have a forage corps academy, and that consists of about 40 students from central Texas. They will be coming for a career academy, law enforcement career academy for the day and visiting our public safety training campus, the acl. We provided the same type of program to central Texas crime stoppers last year, and it was very successful and impactful for the youth. We're looking forward to beginning a safety and awareness series with our aging austinites through our parks and recreation department, and also our Asian American resource center. And as I mentioned before, we also will be doing completing the training with our 26 libraries. We're [3:09:01 PM] with our 26 libraries. We're working on a child safety event program. Also just kind of doing a series of that to promote education and awareness and really trying to hone in on car seat safety. And then we're also collaborating with internal partners to promote awareness and education about domestic violence. And so we have ongoing education and awareness. We collaborate with sworn partners to host trainings and complete crime prevention property surveys. I touched on that a little bit before, and also with our residential crime prevention surveys. Some of these include like the neighborhood watch programs, also property crime prevention and safety tips. And then we have coffee with the cop. Those are hosted regularly throughout all several sectors. And acl provides educational [3:10:04 PM] And acl provides educational materials there again and is there with the officers just to provide resources and help make that connection. Coffee with cop brings our police officers in the community together, and it just allows for people to freely talk about issues, bring up concerns and ask questions of our officers. Without a formal forum. And then we also work with our public information office, our commanders and district representatives, representatives in the planning for the community connect meetings. That is a forum usually done by our commanders speaking to the region's issues, concerns that they are hearing from, and we're hearing from community members and what they'd like to discuss. And so that meeting allows community members to express concerns, ask questions, and discuss ways of how to collaborate for a safer city. And so two major community [3:11:05 PM] city. And so two major community wide programs that the office of community liaison works on and coordinates is going to be the operation blue Santa program. We serve more than 5000 families annually with this program, we give to about 14,000 children each holiday season, and there's approximately 60,000 toys that are purchased and or donated by the 500 and 1c3, and community businesses and members. This year will be the 52nd year of the Austin police operation blue Santa and then national night out. National night out is a multi-agency partnership which is held on the first Tuesday in October throughout much of central Texas. Acl is responsible for the registration of national night out and all the parties that go that sign up to have visits from public safety members, first responders. We also host a [3:12:07 PM] responders. We also host a kickoff event in late September for businesses, neighborhood associations and neighbors so that they can come on out and gather resources and swag from several different city agencies, departments and also local community stakeholders that they give those that information to their they take it to their parties, and they are able to disseminate it there for awareness to their parties. And then, as I said, first responders will make appearances at these parties and start to build on the relationships and the rapport with community members there as well. Last year, we had about 197 neighborhood parties and about 200 people attended our national night out kickoff party, and there were roughly 56 city stakeholders present at the national night out kickoff, national night out kickoff party. And so, in closing, this was just a summation of the [3:13:15 PM] was just a summation of the amazing work that our acl does and is doing in partnership with our community and sworn partners. And acl initiates conversations and ideas to promote civic participation. We collaborate with sworn partners, community stakeholders and city agencies, and we promote education by fostering awareness and making law enforcement resources accessible. Thank you for your time. Are there any questions? >> Council. >> Thank you. Chair. >> Well, first comment, I really do appreciate the lgbtq. Liaison group that you all have. We talk a lot with folks on fourth street, the businesses and the really do appreciate them. I was wondering when it comes to different like minority religions, I think of the, you know, Ramadan descended. So I think of the Muslim community. I represent the UT area. So deal a lot with nueces, mosque and then [3:14:17 PM] lot with nueces, mosque and then the hillel on west campus. Do you all have specific officers that deal with like religious minorities, whether it be the two groups I mentioned or otherwise? >> We have a liaison that would be the outreach person, but as for sworn, we would work with the sworn partners that are assigned to that area. So if that's baker, those are the officers that we would reach out to and also the district representative team, we would probably reach out to first and then bring our other sworn partners from patrol and. >> Got it. >> And we if I can, we also have an auxiliary program that we're starting up of officers throughout the city that would be on duty, that would respond to particular incidents, such as something like you mentioned. Yeah. Great. >> So thank you. Thank you. >> Colleagues. Councilmember duchen. >> Thank you so much for your work on this. Officer. I, I'm [3:15:17 PM] work on this. Officer. I, I'm curious because a lot of our council districts span multiple police sectors, like I get great information from officer lake about baker sector, but I don't get anything from Adams sector. And I my fear is that if I'm not getting anything from Adams sector, which I think is officer Pruitt, then the people in my residents in Adams sector might also not be getting the information or vice versa. People are getting different information from different folks that they may need help from. So my question is, really, how do we make sure that folks are getting the right information? How do I make sure that I'm connected with all the different sectors I need? And I think there's a related question there. So which is like baker sector always does a great job of quarterly meetings. But I don't know if Adams sector is having those meetings either. And I know I've talked to commander griffin about it, and I know there are some issues with space and some other challenges that she's got that maybe we don't have in baker [3:16:19 PM] maybe we don't have in baker sector, but how do we make sure that all the things are happening and all the sectors that we need to happen from the public information to the quarterly meetings to the people connecting with the right liaisons. >> Thank you. That is something that we are currently working on centralizing, more, centralizing our community engagement overall so that we're on the same page throughout the department. And regions aren't operating separately. So that is something that we are currently tackling right now internally in reference to knowing what is going on or having communications. We work very closely with our public information office, and every event that we do put out, whether we're hosting it or collaborating with an internal partner, is going to be found on our website, APD's website. We also do social media, and there's one other place where [3:17:19 PM] there's one other place where those events are listed. Yep. No, that's going to be it. I'm sorry. The website and then also our social media. So all of those campaigns get pushed out through our Pio. On the liaison side of things, we have hundreds and hundreds of contacts from stakeholders and community members that we've made contact with over time at meetings also that have reached out to us working like with NASCAR. And they push out to all of their members. So it really is a matter of just adding somebody to our distribution list. We also use nextdoor through, again, our public information office. In the event that I mean, I feel like this sounds like something we need to look at a little bit closer and see what other type of campaign we could do to reach out to more community. We just make sure that everybody knows how to contact us. We do ask the libraries folks to share our information as we are doing [3:18:20 PM] information as we are doing different events and collaborating with them, but we can probably do a little bit better job so that we're not missing missing people. And they know that we are there as a resource for them. >> And in terms of the best way for either myself or for constituents to connect with the appropriate liaison, what would you advise there. >> If they would just reach out to us by email, which is community liaison at Austin, Texas gov. We will connect them to their correct liaison to assist them. Our community members don't have to know which liaison. We're happy to see what how we can assist them and get them connected to the right person. And that's really another reason that our liaison team is there as well as sometimes people find it a little bit easier to approach another non-sworn person or partner, and we can make that connection for our sworn or with [3:19:22 PM] connection for our sworn or with our sworn partners and point them in the right direction, and even just stay a part of the conversation if needed. >> Thank you. And then one last question, which is I think you mentioned a lot of the partners you work with, and I thought I heard that we all belong campaign folks. Is that correct? >> So we collaborated. We were here at that party on the front porch of city hall, tabling with resources from APD at that last party. Yes, sir. >> Okay. I'm just trying to figure out I think there's a data we're looking for we all belong in the hate crimes task force. It sounds like, though, that I don't know if that's police data, APD data, or could be FBI data, but some of that data hasn't been updated for a year. So I'm just trying to figure out who's the right person I need to go visit with. >> Lieutenant Chris Davis on the APD side, I think. Or maybe it's Audrey sitting in the audience. Cpio. >> Yeah. >> Take an action and look at the data that's being passed to it. The source data comes from [3:20:23 PM] it. The source data comes from the Austin police department, but they do have to pass it to the lead all day long campaign website. Okay. Hi, ozzie. >> If a public information officer speaks and no one hears, are they really speaking? >> Well, I'm just a data person. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> So we do post the hate crimes that are reviewed by the hate crime committee on the Austin police department website, the open data portal, resolution hub. I do recognize that sepio, who's the owner of the we all belong, is responsible for taking that data from the open data portal and then pushing that into their data set stories. So I have some tangential understanding of what they're doing, and I can take an action to make sure that there isn't anything on our side that needs to be addressed. Do you have any additional questions about that? [3:21:24 PM] about that? >> No. That's helpful. I can follow up offline to try and sort it out. Thank you. >> Cool. Thank you. >> Thank you. Anything else that I can assist with sir. >> Thank you. No I appreciate all your help with that. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Council member. >> Lee. >> How do you determine which communities need additional support or outreach? >> Some of it is going to be based on data. Also, what our officers bring to us and what they're seeing, some of the concerns that are being shared by community members. Obviously, when we have new bills or laws that are being passed that are going to affect our community. And so it's really about being responsive to do you want to answer that? >> Well, I'm just an addition okay. You're doing fine. It's just when we're looking at crime as well. So we can look at the data and see where we're having crime sprees, where things are happening. And certainly our outreach needs to start where we're noticing that. And so if we're noticing crime trends, we need to get our community, we [3:22:24 PM] need to get our community, we get our team there to start reaching out and talking to people. >> From the liaisons standpoint will take all of that. And then how can we collaborate, create events and opportunities, bringing, you know, our community out together with our sworn partners to be impactful and not, you know, to be more rooted. That's that's been a goal, to be rooted and to really make a difference with the type of education and awareness that we're bringing to the community. >> I'm thinking of, you know, some of what was mentioned about different religious groups, and we certainly know there have been tensions along that, whether geographical reach, you know, is happening. You know, if we say we pinpoint the Asian community and we're working through the Asian American resource center, which a lot of the Asian community is pretty far from there. Those are just some of the reasons why I'm asking. But thank you for sharing that. >> If I can just add to that. Also, we provide awareness [3:23:24 PM] Also, we provide awareness through the commissions as well. So when there is information that needs to be shared that's specific to a particular culture or segment of the community, we're making sure to share that with not only the resource centers that are out in the community, but with also the quality of life commission, so that they they have quite an extended reach as well and are able to further the information that we have and we're providing. >> Okay. I noticed child safety first, domestic violence awareness, safe place initiative, various kind of violence prevention services and spreading the information about those. Do you do any looking or can you give me any information about how how effectively you've reached the entire city? If there are parts of the city that are you evaluating whether you're getting strong reach across the whole city? >> We are starting to keep those measures so that we have a good look and we're able to assess how many events we've had or [3:24:27 PM] how many events we've had or outreach opportunities in different sectors. Yes, that is something that we are. >> Can I point to that too? It is important because you have to have measurable goals. And so I went to a community meeting in dove springs, and they started talking about all of the abandoned cars they have there, how we have all these abandoned cars, they're not getting towed. And so that next week was spent on a two day spree of getting cars towed. And so you're able those are real tangible numbers. You can come back and say, these are things we've done. So the amount of outreach they're doing is fantastic. But yes, how have we measured that. And that's what we're going to be looking at going forward as well. >> Okay. If there's any kind of a map of outreach events that comes out of that work, I would certainly enjoy seeing. >> And I think to what we're developing, also for my benefit is a calendar of events. I would like each district to have a calendar event so we can choose, you know, if we're available on one night to go to a meeting that's there, we need to have that available. So we're working on a calendar as well. And we'll certainly share that with the council members as well. Thank you colleagues. [3:25:27 PM] you colleagues. >> Anybody else. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Colleagues. With no further business to come before the public safety committee of the Austin city council. Without objection, this meeting is adjourned at 325. Thank you everyone.