Budget Committee October 22, 2024   10/22/2024

Good morning, my name is Aisha Chugtai and I'm the chair of the Budget Committee.

I'm going to call to order our adjourned committee meeting for Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024.

Before we begin the meeting, I want to offer a friendly reminder to all members, staff, and the public that these meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation.

These broadcasts include real-time captioning as a further method to increase the accessibility of our proceedings to the community.

Therefore, all speakers need to be mindful of the rate of their speech so that our captioners can fully capture and transcribe all comments for the broadcast.

We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their comments.

Councilmember Payne.

Present.

Rainville.

Present.

Ellison.

absent.

Osman absent.

Cashman present.

Jenkins absent.

Chavez present.

Chowdhury present.

Palmisano present.

Vice Chair Koski present.

Chair Chuktai present.

Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.

I'll also remind my colleagues that we're using speaker management today, so please make sure you sign in.

We have two presentations on the agenda today from the Fire Department and from the Neighborhood Safety Department.

We will begin by welcoming a presentation from the Fire Department.

I will invite Chief Tyner to join us and begin this presentation.

There we go.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Chigtai and members of the Budget Committee.

This is our Minneapolis Fire Department budget overview.

And I will try to make it as painless as possible.

In front of you is an org chart that shows how we are organized.

Basically, we are organized in two sections, Operations and Administration, and then we have a third section under our Finance Director, Luke Scardelli.

We have a total authorized FTEs of 442.

That includes 419 sworn personnel, which are paid for through the budget process, an additional 15 which are currently being paid for through a federal SAFER grant,

and 8 civilians.

Right now our vacancy rate is none.

We do have one position, the Health and Wellness Coordinator person retired here recently that we are filling here in the near future.

Chief Tyner?

Yes.

I'm really sorry to interrupt.

We are having some issues with our captioners right now so we're going to need to recess this meeting.

We'll pick it back up.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I'm going to make sure you have the right to say what you want to say.

No?

Alright.

I don't know what that is.

Oh wow.

I'm going to talk about some of the artist work that has been done in the past.

Do you know some of the other artists?

Hey!

What's wrong?

I'm going to call back to order and reconvene our Budget Committee meeting today.

Council Member Payne.

Present.

Council Member Rainville.

Present.

Council Member Ellison.

Here.

Council Member Osment is absent.

Council Member Jenkins is absent.

Council Member Chavez.

Present.

Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.

Colleagues again we have two budget presentations that we will be receiving today and the first one is going to be from the Fire Department.

For that I will welcome up Fire Chief Brian Tyner to begin his presentation.

Thank you Chair, Chuck Tye, and Chuck Tye, and thank you members of the committee.

The following is our fire department budget review, overview.

This first slide shows how we are organized.

It is an org chart of the Minneapolis Fire Department.

The Minneapolis Fire Department is basically broken up into two divisions, one being operations and one being administration.

We do have a third smaller division, the finance department, which is led by our finance director, Luke Scardelli.

We currently have 442 FTEs and that includes 419 sworn FTEs covered in our budget, another 15 which are covered by a federal safer grant currently, and 8 civilian positions covered in the budget.

The mission of the Minneapolis Fire Department is that employees of the Minneapolis Fire Department are thoroughly trained and ready to protect lives, property and the environment by rapidly responding to emergencies and hazardous situations.

We are committed to prevention by proactively working with the community to reduce risks to life, property and the environment.

Our priority objectives for this year and the upcoming budget year is to continue to increase the diversity of the Minneapolis Fire Department to better reflect the community that we serve.

We will ensure that we have the resources required to keep up with the increasing demands for service that we are experiencing for the people who live, work, and play in the city of Minneapolis.

We're placing a focus and a priority on the continued physical and mental health and wellness of the members of the department.

And lastly, we are putting in priority on reducing preventable injuries, fires and deaths in the community through the delivery of high quality fire prevention and community risk reduction education.

Our management objectives

Excuse me.

The management decisions that we have made to maximize our existing budget to accomplish the mayor's and the city's goals and the department priorities included the following here in the prior year.

We introduced mental health programs, one being PAR 360 and an application, the Quotico app, to assist with mental resilience and mental health interventions for firefighters and their family members.

we also introduced ready rebound injury concierge service to help injured firefighters receive high quality medical assessment and treatment faster which results in quicker recovery times and them getting back to work quicker which reduces our next point our overtime expenditures which are still very high

and we were able to recommission Fire Engine 10 in the downtown corridor to help relieve some of the stresses of the increased incident loads that we are experiencing there.

It's the busiest part of the city and we have aggressively pursued grant opportunities to offset budget constraints.

The objectives that we identified in the Outcomes Minneapolis framework were three.

One was to ensure that the Minneapolis Fire Department has the capacity to rapidly respond to all emergencies and hazards with the appropriate combination of staffing and equipment and establish a standard of response that is equitable across the entire population.

We created an objective to reduce preventable injuries, fires, and deaths

in the community through the delivery of high-quality fire prevention and community risk reduction education.

And a third was to ensure that all of our firefighters, 100%, have completed the mandatory training necessary to skillfully mitigate all hazards in compliance with the Minnesota Firefighter Licensing Requirements and EMT certification requirements.

and in addition to that to ensure that firefighters receive the opportunity to engage in ongoing training above and beyond those minimum training requirements.

We believe in lifelong learning and continued improvement.

Some of the achievements and risks that we experienced here in the last two years in the last budget cycles.

So some of our achievements is that we launched the SafeStations Opioid Peer Recovery Program.

That has been really successful and we've recently engaged in talks with our partners to expand the program.

So we're going to expand that program in 2025 to Fire Station 7.

is our next location, located right off of Franklin and Cedar Avenue South.

We continued the improvement of the Employee Assistance Program through the addition of Part 360, which I just mentioned, resilience training and mental health services, designed specifically for first responders, which is what makes this program special.

And we put them in the palm of members' hands through the launch of the MFD Cortical Act.

So that includes Part 360, that includes the Ready Rebound injury concierge services, and also other schools to help with resiliency and other things all in the palm of their hand.

So that has worked out very well for us.

We were able to secure the state contract to serve as a Minnesota

State Hazardous Materials Chemical Assessment Team.

That contract came with funding that has helped us to increase our training, increase our equipment cash, and increase our reach in terms of responding to hazardous materials emergencies.

We not only cover the city of Minneapolis, but we also go north and west as far as Isanti.

We updated the incident reporting software, or I should say we're updating the incident reporting software that project is still in process.

We put in service and additional fire engine company in the downtown corridor, Engine 10, which we just talked about.

We secured state funding to expand our Emergency Operations Training Facility through the addition of specialized rescue props for specialized rescues.

And lastly, and you guys have heard about this a lot because we were providing updates on it all throughout the last two years, but we completed the training and the exercise activities associated in response to the recommendations of the Hillard-Hines Report.

Some of the risks that we're looking at moving forward, mental health and PTSD is a big risk.

And we're starting to see more and more claims in that area.

And even though we are adding resources and trying to fight that, I think it's going to get better before it gets worse.

I mean, excuse me, I think it's going to get worse before it gets better is what I'm trying to say.

I think the reason for that is that people are seeking help.

In the past, there was a stigma associated with it, but now more and more people are seeking the help that they need, seeking counseling, and so that's actually a good thing.

I think it will result in us having a healthier workforce in the future, but right now those claims are going up.

Recruitment and retention.

We just did another civil service list.

We got 688 applicants this time, which is way more than we're going to need for the next two years.

But it still signals a downward trend over the last probably 20 years of applications, each application cycle that we receive.

And so that's really a fire service nationwide kind of trend that they're seeing.

It is a downward trend and we're hoping to kind of reverse that.

Retention is starting to kind of become a problem.

As many of our suburban neighbors are starting to go from volunteer departments to full-time departments, they are looking to hire away some of the members of the Minneapolis Fire Department.

They generally offer more pay for less work, you know, in terms of incident load and so that's become

We are hoping to acquire the first precinct, the current first precinct on 4th Avenue and 4th Street Facility maintenance and upkeep

Facilities are, you know, our fire stations are getting old, some of them, and so that's always a challenge and something that we need to keep on top of.

Fleet.

We actually have a great fleet replacement plan, but we're experiencing delays in actually receiving those orders due to supply chain issues.

If I order a new fire engine or a fire truck today, I probably won't receive it until about this time in 2026.

It's taken about two years.

to receive a new apparatus now.

And that also goes with replacement parts.

There's also delays.

They're not that big of a delay, but when you need a replacement part, you need it now.

So any delay is not good.

Software and hardware replacement.

We have softwares that still need replacing.

We're working through that.

We do have a

to our work primarily exists in the need for increased staffing and health and wellness initiatives, particularly mental health and cancer reduction which both we're seeing increases in.

and I think the lessons that we've learned from the past year is that our department remains resilient but that there are cracks in the proverbial armor that are starting to show.

This next slide shows our

programming and staffing summary and kind of how that's broken up amongst the three different program areas.

It isn't a dollar for dollar.

We kind of split our budget across all three program areas to make sure that everything has what it needs.

So let's get into program updates and some of the objectives, activities, and new budget proposals.

Our first program area, we have three.

The first one is our best known.

It's Fire Suppression, EMS, and Technical Rescues.

The goals of this program are to respond effectively to all emergencies and hazards, to meet the national response standards contained in NFPA 1710, and to ensure that the most appropriate and efficient responsive rigs, equipment, and personnel are responding to each different incident type.

The rates equity impacts of this program are neutral.

We respond to everyone who calls no matter who they are or what their situation is.

We don't care about any of that.

The NFPA standard requires that the first rig on scene should arrive in five minutes or less

at least 90% of the time.

We were only able to meet this standard 62% of the time in 2023 and again you'll see in one of the upcoming slides there's kind of a downward trend there.

Our overall average response time though, I guess the good news in that is 534 as measured from phone call to arrival.

So we're about 34 seconds off of that standard.

Some of the accomplishments in this area is that we were able to use a 3-year, $4.6 million FEMA SAFER grant to increase our staffing by 15 firefighters at no cost to the city thus far.

This grant will expire in March of 2026.

We were able to use a $149,000 assistance to firefighters grant from FEMA towards firefighter mental health and launched a peer fitness training program in the department.

That's how we were able to pay for the PAR 360 service.

and we are awarded a $2,500 Center Point Energy Community Safety Grant which we use to purchase glucometer kits for each MFD apparatus so that we can measure people's blood sugar and have a better idea as to what might be causing their illness.

This one talks about call volumes for fire suppression, EMS, and technical rescue.

As you can see on this graph, our call volumes have been steadily increasing.

There was a slight dip in 2020 when COVID was going on and everybody was at home, but other than that it's been a steady climb.

The blue represents the rescue and EMS incidents.

The green represents the total number of incidents.

So as you can see, the blue represents about 70 to 80 percent of our incidents in a given year.

This one shows our response time of five minutes or less on all priority one calls, which are your lights and sirens, you know, true emergency type of calls.

The NFPA standard is 90 percent.

As you can see, we were 74 percent in 2018 and 19, and then it's kind of been a slow decline since then.

We do have a number of things in place including the addition of a station alerting system that we are hoping to add that we think will help turn this around.

But right now we are seeing a steady decline as our incidents increase, our response time is going down because we have to move things around.

A second program area is training and recruitment, and the function of the training and recruitment program is to ensure that all of our firefighters are trained and capable leaders and supervisors through the pursuit of excellence in high professional standards.

We accomplish this by providing skills training, by instilling a value of lifelong learning and the development of leadership traits, ensuring a focus on wellness, health, and safety.

Some of our accomplishments in this program is we completed the process of redeveloping and expanding the MFD's Employee Assistance Program to include emotional trauma and mental health services.

And this went to the mayor's goal of public safety and public health and the SRE goal of public safety.

We created a formal peer support program in partnership with MenFire We completed the process of staffing recovery after COVID We launched the MFD Leadership Development Curriculum which also met those same goals in which we actually bring in trainers and it's a 12 week course in which we develop the current and future leadership of the Minneapolis Fire Department We have two cohorts, one for captains and one for chief officers

Again, we have satisfied the requirement that 100% of our firefighters have the 72 hours over 3 years of mandatory fire training necessary to maintain the Minnesota State Firefighters License and also that 100% of them have the 80 hours of mandatory emergency medical training over 2 years necessary to maintain the emergency

Medical Technician Certification.

We actually require many more hours than that in the Minneapolis Fire Department.

We do pretty much about 100 hours a year, so meeting these requirements are well within our

wheelhouse.

Community Risk Reduction and Outreach is our third and last program area and the function of that program is to reduce preventable fires, fire-related injuries and deaths in the community.

The program is tasked with reaching out to Minneapolis residents and businesses with fire safety and prevention information.

Some of the programs that we offer through this area is a youth fire center intervention program for youth who

starting to go down the wrong path and setting fires where they shouldn't school-age outreach and education adult and aging adult outreach differently abled outreach immigrant and non-speaking persons outreach and we also offer smoke and carbon monoxide alarm distribution free of charge to citizens of residents of Minneapolis

Some of our accomplishments is we actually expanded that program and added an additional staff to that, a staff captain.

We instituted year-round sustained recruitment efforts to help offset some of our recruitment challenges and we provided fire safety and community risk reduction information and materials to residents across the city in addition to those free smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.

All right, so our recommended budget proposal, the part everybody's been waiting for.

We are asking for $1,675,901 ongoing from the General Fund to cover the 15 FTEs that are currently being

of the city.

That grant increased our sworn strength to 434, and that's a requirement that we keep that number in order to keep receiving grants, which we hope to get another one here in the near future.

Upon expiration in 2026, the city would need to begin paying for these firefighters out of the city's general fund.

The funding amount

for that would just cover nine months in 2026.

It would need to cover the entire year in future years.

And that would bring our sworn strength into the department or keep it at 434 firefighters and enable us to better serve the residents of the city as we see our call volumes continue a steady climb.

That is our one and only proposal.

Thank you for that presentation, Chief.

Colleagues, are there any questions or discussion related to the Fire Department's presentation?

Chair, Chief, thank you for saying out loud the vision of converting the first precinct into returning it to station 10.

A goal that we have is increasing more residents and more housing in downtown, specifically that warehouse district, which would fit right in with putting a station there.

So I know it's still farther down the road, but you have to say it out loud first, so thank you for saying that out loud.

and also thank you to bring up the PTSD, the mental health issue.

Firefighters see horrific things and it affects them.

I was fortunate enough to go out of high school, grow up with a lot of firefighters and it's tough when they see some of the calls that they go on.

So thank you for that as well.

I do have a question though about your proposal for more money in 26.

So would that help with our response times, kind of keep it the same?

yes so it would help in the sense in that if we don't receive that money we would actually have to lay off those fifteen firefighters and go back to four nineteen so it would actually keep us on par with where we are right now uh... in the grand scheme of things we actually need more people than that uh... but in this budget cycle we're just asking to you know start paying for those firefighters so uh... yes it will help uh... i think we will see a bigger decline

If we don't do it, but we have we have needs over and above that Which we will be addressing in future budget cycles.

through the Chair Chuck Todd through Council Member Payne.

So it really depends on the part.

So one part that we really found an issue with was a filter that is part of the rigs that is part of the system where we regenerate and burn off all of the contaminants out of the exhaust system.

We found that we had an inordinate delay to get those.

They were starting to kind of go down.

We were able to find a workaround where we were able to

Council,

If there is any budgetary needs around that definitely open to hearing them so that we can make sure that your team has what you need to get the job done.

Thank you.

And then my second question is around how we're thinking about comprehensive safety and of course the safe and thriving community breaks it down into

and the City Council.

and I'm trying to think through from a structural perspective how we should be approaching that.

Obviously BCR is a contract with Canopy Roots but I could envision us expanding other first responses just growing the scope of the fire department versus contracting a new first response and I'm wondering if you've put any thought into that

Right, so I think I have thought about this a little bit.

First of all, I always joke that if there's not a department in place to handle an emergency, they send a fire department.

So we go to a lot of things that we don't necessarily

uh... weren't designed uh... to do but to get your point i don't think we're trained to really provide that service uh... i think if you talk about maybe embedding the service with the fire department uh... that might be something that that you know might be impossibility going down the line uh... i will say that uh...

We have a great relationship with Canopy Roots and the BCR team.

We do appreciate what they bring.

So I think it is working.

We've seen it.

For us, a lot of times we respond to people who are having mental health challenges, but we don't know that that's what is going on until we get there.

So BCR has been a great resource for us.

If you're talking about embedding, that may be a possibility in the future.

Yeah, I think that's worth maybe a follow-up conversation.

Obviously it's not going to be an action that we take through the budget process to try to build a whole new capability within MFD, but I think this is like a long-term conversation that I'd love to engage with you on.

Next I will recognize Vice Chair Koski.

Thank you Madam Vice President.

Thank you Chief Tyner for being here and thank you for the thorough presentation and just a huge shout out to your team and all the firefighters.

You know we just in the last two weeks had a pretty tragic fire in Ward 11 and it's

unreal to think about the damage that occurred to these buildings, but to only have two firefighters that had minor injuries and one other individual.

So the act of heroism that you and your firefighters put forward every day is unfathomable and I'm just so grateful.

I do have a couple questions about the response times.

Yes, so I think the biggest factor is the increase in population, the increase in incidence, but we're responding with the same level of response and the same rigs that we've had for probably 30 years.

So while our demand for services have increased, our capacity to deliver those services have not.

I think that's the biggest thing.

yes I can see that pretty clearly on these visuals and so it does it feels like we are playing like major catch-up and even this 434 makes it feel like we're just treading water and kind of sinking at times

and I feel like this is putting a lot of pressure on our current firefighters, their mental health and I'm grateful to hear about all the work that we're doing.

I believe we need a minimum of 479, 480 to have four people on a rig.

Even then that's really just getting us fully staffed with the rigs we are on.

So that's not even increasing the number of rigs.

In order to increase more rigs we probably have to build more stations and I think we're a long way away from there.

Okay, so right now in the short term we've got this 434 number and the midterm would be looking at to get to 480 and then the long term would be to add more houses.

Yes.

I do.

I'm hoping through the use of the SAFER grant and the budget process, my goal is to get to the 479 within the next five years and start looking in the future

Okay.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Chief, for this presentation.

I really appreciate the clear delineation of your priority objectives and the outcomes Minneapolis.

Report back, that's helpful.

I don't want to underestimate the risks that you outline on slide 8 as to the value of mental health in our firefighters.

One of those aspects

is about the fire alerting system.

You know that we're passionate about that up here and I'm confident that we'll get that across the finish line once and for all some way or other.

But Chief, could you describe to us the increased capacity that the 15 positions in the SAFER grant allow for MFD?

Because what I heard you just say was that first you would add positions to get four on a rig and then only after that would you increase

through the Chair to Councilmember Palmisano.

The first 15 that we got we actually used to open Engine 10.

Most of those positions went towards the addition of Engine 10 to the downtown corridor.

The remaining, and we're talking about probably one per shift, went towards having the four on a brick.

One of the other, I should have talked about this too, one of the other

challenges that we're seeing is that about 10% of our workforce right now is off on some type of long-term leave, whether that's for the mental health leave, whether that's for injury on duty, whether that's medical leave, long-term military leave, not even talking about the weekends, or the parental leave, which is a great benefit but still leaves me without

people for quite some time.

So we've been using a lot of overtime to kind of backfill those positions.

I feel like if we can start getting people back to work quicker and reduce that 10% is kind of really what we are experiencing during the height of COVID.

And now we're experiencing that same number for other reasons.

We did an exercise a few years ago with emergency management.

We do little exercises, tabletop exercises every year.

And I remember that one of the exercises was, okay, now you're missing 10% of your staffing.

What do you do?

And we joked every day.

But now it really is every day.

So it's something that we're having to deal with through the use of increased overtime, which increases stress on the firefighters and

I think it's kind of a vicious circle.

That's the simple answer is that we were able to put in service another engine which increased our capacity in downtown and lowered those response times probably just a little bit but there's we have a long way to go.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Chief, for the presentation.

It's always nice when you come before us.

You're such a humble person, and you always bring really good news and good ideas, so thank you so much.

You know, Council Member Koski was talking about the call times, and I know, like, our Fire Station 20, I think, is the number that's across the Humboldt Yards.

That's like the worst call times, and it's because of the Canadian Pacific train, like how the proximity to the

the railroad tracks and just the timing of the train coming through and it's been really helpful to have you supporting the project to get some type of infrastructure in place where those emergency vehicles there.

in particular can get to the south side of the railroad tracks.

But I'm just wondering about if there's other things that we could be doing to help out with those call times in that particular area.

That is true, and it is because of the rail line.

Osceola Road, thank you.

They were doing a lot of roadwork on Osceola Road, so that was two of our major thoroughfares that were

So, um,

I think the best answer would be putting together some type of bridge over the railroad tracks.

I think that would be the best short answer so that at least we have a few more options to get across those tracks.

But outside of that, and I know fighting the railroad can be tricky, it's a bear.

Well that's good to know.

Also, have you thought about maybe, I know you said the person has retired that was in charge of the wellness program.

Have you thought about exploring having more than one person that facilitates the wellness program?

Well, we actually do have more than one person.

We have the civilian that kind of coordinates all the claims and things.

And then we have a staff captain that kind of helps navigate people to the services they need.

And then we have Part 360, which kind of expands beyond that.

So it's not one person doing everything.

Thank you.

And then the last thing is the vending machine.

It's been working good.

I haven't had any complaints about it.

We've been able to keep up with the stocking.

It seems to be used regularly and so it's actually going really well and they were already in talks to put another one somewhere too.

And then I had some questions for you Chief.

Thank you for your presentation I had the pleasure of spending an evening last week at Station 6 doing a ride along with the incredible firefighters that serve our community I learned a lot in my brief time there

In your presentation, you referenced NFPA 1710, which is the, if I'm understanding correctly, that's the National Fire Protection Association.

They're the experts on your industry.

I really appreciated that you highlighted the response time standards, five minutes versus where we're at right now at five minutes and 34 seconds.

However, as I was reviewing some of the other standards that are outlined by the National Fire Protection Association, NFPA, and what caught my attention was their standards on safe staffing, which say that based on science and research,

it says fire engines and ladders should always each have a minimum of four firefighters.

Now based on what I saw in my ride along, our department does not meet that safe staffing standard.

There are usually three firefighters per engine or ladder.

But perhaps my limited experience was an anomaly.

And you are correct and no, we don't.

But that is what I was referring to with trying to garner the additional 45 positions so that we can meet that 1710 standard.

All of our SOPs, everything we do is kind of based on having four people on a rig.

So when you have three people on an engine, that means you have less people having to do the work of four in the same amount of time.

The fire doesn't care, you know, if you've got three or four people.

The fire is going to

you know grow at the rate it grows and so in order for us to be effective we still have to complete the tasks that we have to complete in you know a short amount of time so having four on every engine and every truck would assist us greatly with that it wouldn't shorten our response times and getting there but it would make us much more effective when we arrive and so

I appreciate

the remainder are not.

or did I get that wrong?

So I have 15 that are currently being paid for on the SAFER grant.

I have them, but the city's not paying for them.

And actually what my budget request is that the city will start paying for those once the SAFER grant expires.

So I actually have 434 now.

Got it.

So the increase by 45 in the next five years.

Obviously there's no increase in 2025.

There is the transitioning of how we're paying for those 15 FTEs that are moving from grant funding to general fund sourcing.

That's in 2026.

Oh, again?

Yes.

And then kind of like an installment program.

Got it, got it.

Okay.

That's really helpful.

Thank you for sharing some insight into that.

I'm not seeing any further questions or discussion, so thank you so much for coming to present your recommended budget today.

With that, our next presentation today is from the Neighborhood Safety Department.

I will note that we've been joined in this committee by Councilmember Jenkins.

So with that, I will invite the Director of Neighborhood Safety, Luanna Nelson Brown, to join us and begin that presentation.

Thank you Chair Chiktai and good morning Council members.

Luana Nelson Brown, Director of the Neighborhood Safety Department and all of my notes seem to be falling right now.

Right.

I'm going to start out with a quick overview of our staffing.

As everyone knows, we are fairly newly been moved from the health department to our own standalone department.

which has caused us to lose some infrastructure that was previously present so it was necessary for us to realign and restructure positions within the department so that we can meet some of these gaps.

This was also noted in the Safe and Thriving Communities report as a need, especially as we look forward to determining how successful programs are, in essence.

and services are, which the Safe and Thriving Communities report notes as quality improvement, CQI.

So as we move forward into 2025, we'll definitely be having a focus on continuous quality improvement.

both fiscally and programmatically to determine both how money is spent and how successful programs are and then also determining those gaps in service areas so that we can have good coverage across the city.

In order to do that, we needed to restructure our leadership structure

and we've effectively done that.

We now have a structure where we have a deputy director, three associate directors and then staff underneath which gives us a better leadership structure so that we can start to do that continuous quality improvement.

Our mission and core values are preventing violence, intervening in the cycles of violence, supporting victims, and healing from violence.

So preventing violence merely refers to addressing violence before it starts and at the first sign of risk.

intervening in the cycles of violence.

This is where we use our outreach teams to de-escalate situations.

They also use their relationships to change community norms.

And we're putting a little bit stronger focus on supporting victims, which the Safe and Thriving Communities report notes that typically this is the area that is overlooked in this work.

and we are moving forward in 2025 to put a stronger focus on supporting victims.

One of the things that we do is work with hospitals to provide immediate bedside support for victims of violence and then recently we also released the Community Trauma Response RFP to provide immediate support to victims after crime.

and then also healing from violence are some of the activities that we do by promoting community healing through activities like awareness building, community gatherings and peace walks.

Our achievements, risks and lessons learned.

This has been quite the interesting year for us and these notes are going to drive me nuts if they keep

There we go.

You know what?

Let's do this.

Thank you, Chief Tyner.

Thank you.

I'm going to sit over here.

No, no, thank you though.

See, the cross-departmental collaboration is also something that we actually have on our achievements list as we strengthen our relationships internally.

We actually, I'll start from the bottom on achievements since I mentioned that we actually have put some things in place over the last year where we are working very strongly with some of our fellow partners internally.

One of those things is, as you saw, Chief Tyner always comes to the rescue, both at the dais as well as in the street.

And I really love that Council Member Payne mentioned the possibility of embedding BCR into fire.

I think that's an innovative approach that we really should talk about doing.

because that response category as you'll see in a later slide is one that we really can double down on and one of our focuses as well as we move into 2025.

I think one of the smartest things for us to do is to capitalize on the success of the BCR program.

and the thought of embedding in fire, especially since they've grown such a strong relationship, I think is an excellent idea.

So that would be one of the cross departmental collaborations that we're looking at moving forward.

Also, as we've strengthened our compliance in the office, we have now started working very closely with the City Attorney's Office as well as the Finance Department and the Procurement Office to release and structure our RFPs.

So as we start to notice those service gaps geographically,

we inevitably will start to have new initiatives that we want to bring forward to address those service gaps and as we do that that's going to require us to release more RFPs and as we do that we want to make sure that we are collaborating across departments so that we cover all of our bases and make sure we can track funding efficiently as well as track outcome data efficiently.

Building capacity and infrastructure is another thing that we focus heavily on and in a couple slides from now we'll talk about the vacancies which we are almost fully staffed by the end of the year we will be.

I don't know about you but I want to jump up and down and do a dance right now.

But I'll get into that a little bit more in the next slide.

Another thing that we've done is we've started collaborating more with our national partners as well as our local partners We have several contracts right now with Cure Violence as well as NOVP

as well as NNSC, all of which provide technical assistance to our service providers so that we can ensure that we're working in the evidence-based models that we chose to use.

I think as we grow those contracts and those relationships, we'll get a much better picture of success.

and also be able to determine which initiatives work best for our city.

Also collaborating with local partners, we're now having a bi-weekly meeting with Metro Transit, the County, Probation, as well as several of our service providers.

so that we can start to talk to each other about the services that we're offering and do a little bit better job on maximizing our resources collaboratively.

So that's one of the things that we will continue moving into 2025.

There was another one that I forgot, but that's okay.

Moving over to the risks.

There are some risks that we definitely are going to have to keep a close eye on as we move into 2025.

Of course always, staffing is always a risk.

It's going to continue to be a risk as we upstaff our department, turning it into a fully functional department.

We do have a plan to add additional staff in phases as we go and so this is something that we're just going to have to keep an ongoing eye on as we move forward.

and especially as demand for services increases.

We've noted already that there are some gaps across the city where there is not an alternative response and so this is one of the risk areas as those demands increase we have to make sure that we have the capacity to respond.

Another key risk comes from the ending of ARPA funds.

ARPA funds were a little bit more flexible in what they allowed us to pay for.

As we move off of ARPA funds and on to general funds, there are some key services that our service providers provide that may be unallowable.

This is going to be something that I think Council is going to have to really pay attention to and we're going to have to have ongoing discussions about

because some of those services are services that really are what's shown to be effective in alternative response and we want to make sure that we don't lose those.

So we're going to have to start looking at sustainable funding sources.

It may be that we have to have a greater reach with our philanthropic partners.

There are several strategies that we can do but it's time to start thinking about it now

as ARPA funds start to go away.

Oh, lessons learned.

Sorry, I almost missed that.

So there have been some amazing lessons learned this year, especially as we are navigating with our service providers about the ending of ARPA.

One of the lessons I learned is that our community is extremely resilient.

So we haven't been strategizing alone.

Our vendors have been working really closely with us.

and have come up with some amazing ideas including developing more community-based resources like food shelves and clothing closets and then sharing resources with each other in order to mitigate what may not be able to be paid for with general funds.

Also, all of the risks have been our lessons learned, right?

We're learning that we need to think creatively about our resources, creatively about funding, and creatively about staffing to make sure we have the capacity not only in our department, but also our vendors have the capacity and resources they need as well.

A program and staffing summary.

So the mayor's recommended budget in 2025 is 16.5 million, which is a 9% decrease from 2024.

The main reason for that decrease is because of the transfer of the 10 community navigators to MPD, as well as the removal of one-time funding.

There are 15 authorized FTEs in the 2025 recommended budget.

I do believe that the biannual personnel report listed 11 vacancies.

We are actually currently at five.

I believe that as we reclassified some of those vacancies were listed and they were actually reclassified and filled.

but as it stands as of today we are at five actually let me rephrase that we are at four because we had a position start yesterday of those four another position starts in two weeks we're in final interviews for a third and then the final two are about to be posted so

We're moving very, very quickly to bring our department up to current staff and that's going to enable us to better determine the capacity needs moving forward as we phase in and obviously we'll be coming back to Council to request additional FTEs as we move along and assess our capacity.

So far this year we've spent 77.6% of our budget and we're projected to spend 95.4% of our budget by year-end.

Program updates, objectives, activities.

So this slide kind of gives an overview of how we have adjusted the department to align with the Safe and Thriving Communities report.

Anything that we do moving forward we're categorizing and focusing on our three core areas which are prevention, response, and restoration.

We also have recognized that as we move forward in this work we have to, as I mentioned before, rely on our technical assistance providers to provide us some guidance, particularly as we start to identify gaps in services and gaps in geographical areas.

So right now there is about 83% of the budget that goes to contracted services and 17% of the budget that goes to staffing.

This slide does not have my numbers in it.

One second.

So when my notes fell, they all went apart.

I don't know where that is now.

If there are questions around those percentages, I'll be able to look for those notes.

I don't want to take up more time looking.

So about 83% is what we contract out, and 17% goes for personnel and operating expenses.

Prevention of that 83% prevention is about 30% of the budget, response about 30%, and restoration about 17%.

So obviously we're going to start looking a little bit more closely at the restoration area and then beef up the response area so that the response is not all on one initiative, but I think that there's opportunity for us to grow in both of those areas.

Our strategic priorities for 2025, we will be redefining our mission, vision and values so that we can better align with the Safe and Thriving Communities report and align with the new positioning of our department outside of the health department and now to where we sit.

One of the important priorities for 2025 will be the Cure Violence Certification which is our goal to move toward with violence interrupters and I'll be giving a presentation a little bit later in the year in response to a legislative directive speaking specifically about the violence interruption program

One of the things that we haven't had previously was the certification of the industry standard model of Cure Violence.

Now that we have a contract with Cure Violence, we'll be moving toward getting that certification.

The reason this is helpful is because

We want to make sure we're adhering to the model as we deploy violence interrupters so they don't necessarily dispatch like police do they use their relationships in the areas where they are to deter violence so if we are looking at our geographical gaps then we could be looking at additional RFPs for more team members

or we can assess the capacity of current team members, but it's important that we don't lose the integrity of the program, which is to build on relationships that people currently have in their areas.

So that certification is going to help us more clearly define this and help us as we look forward to covering, making sure we have coverage across the city.

Another priority is going to be funding initiatives in gap areas.

So as we start to collaborate both with council and with our partners across the city we'll need to look at how we fund any new initiatives and how we cover across the city.

Another huge focus for 2025 is going to be on messaging and education.

As we move forward as a new department, there is a lot of lack of knowledge around how the programs work.

So Council will be seeing me more often throughout the year as I update the public and update Council on exactly how these programs work.

and then we'll have to work collaboratively to make sure that we are maximizing our resources as much as possible.

So having focus on messaging and education, ensuring sustainability, funding and programming,

a continuing focus on compliance and infrastructure and a simplification of data collection.

So that compliance and infrastructure is two-fold over the last several years there has been

litigation faced by the office turned department mostly around two core areas.

One, tracking expenses and fiscal accountability of vendors, and two, the selection of vendors.

So we have, over the last year, focused heavily on putting protocols in place to ensure that we can track every penny.

That, of course, then feeds into our

staffing needs because it's quite labor intensive.

And then the other thing we've done is we have put brand new RFP protocols in place so that we have a fair and equitable process, educating our reviewers as we bring them on to review our RFP proposals.

to ensure that we're addressing potential biases and ensure that we're increasing access for the small business owner and particularly the business owner from marginalized communities that provide services to marginalized communities.

Another of the things that we're doing to align with the Safe and Thriving Communities Report is we are piloting a way to simplify our process to collect data to measure success.

So we are streamlining across all programs a data collection tool that is going to align with the Safe and Thriving Communities Report in three areas, trauma and healing services

Justice and Reentry Services and Resilience Oriented Services which is strengthening community capacity.

In this way we'll be able to have a better picture of success across the city and across programs and we are also right now looking at additional software and working with IT with software that we can potentially purchase to make this reporting easier for our vendors.

Thank you for that presentation, Director.

I'll note that the slide deck you presented on is different from what we have updated in LIMS, so our clerks are working with your team to get what you presented on today to be reflected in the LIMS file.

Thank you.

I'll first recognize

Most recent meeting in AO, I believe on October 7th, you mentioned that you were actually planning to hire a deputy director or the deputy director was slated to come on soon.

So I did want to know if this role would help

to ensure NSD have consistent and regular presence at those meetings that you're talking about with Metro Transit and other key agencies.

Absolutely, that is one of the best things about having that role filled.

And that is actually the staff that started yesterday.

They're currently in training with HR, so I will be bringing them around to meet you all here in this next week.

And that is one of the key priorities for that role, thank you.

because I'm one person and can't be everywhere all at once, now we'll have leadership that is able to help so that we can divide and conquer and be more present, have a greater presence.

Also some of the additional

that we have to fill, like the two that are about to be released, that will bring a greater staff presence to both community meetings as well as council meetings and our biweekly meetings.

That's awesome to hear and I'm interested how this like frees up your capacity as well.

I know we've had some directors come forward and mention that director or deputy director position helps depending on how they decide to orientate it.

Either they can have that deputy director focus inward as opposed to outward but that allows the directors to do more strategic planning so I just want to get a sense of how this helps your capacity because yeah I definitely have heard about

Yeah, thank you for that question, Chair Wonsley.

Yes, absolutely.

There is a high demand, a lot of questions and a lot of collaboration that needs to happen with this work in particular.

And as one person, it has been very challenging to meet all of those demands within, you know, a 24 hour period.

So I do see the Deputy Director focusing more inwardly so that I can take more of a birds-eye view and start that high-level strategic planning.

We will be dividing and conquering as far as attendance at collaborations and meetings, but I do think that I will be more public-facing

while that Deputy Director will be more inward facing.

But we'll also obviously assess as we go, right?

So we both have differing skills that I believe complement each other very well.

So as we move forward we will flesh it out based on both of our strengths.

So we want to move in a strength-based way.

but no doubt about it, this addition to this position is going to definitely help us out a lot as well as will the addition of the Associate Director of Finance position

which starts in two weeks, I'm happy to say, will also allow a lot more supervision internally so that the deputy director and I can do more strategic planning and goal setting as, you know, collaboratively.

yes yes we will begin top of the year with our with our new strategic plan so our plans right now are to focus on mission vision and values and update those as you should do regularly start meeting with council to try to determine where those gaps and services are because

As we start to look at MPD data that we're looking at biweekly, we're definitely noticing some gaps in services across the city.

And so those gaps and those mission, vision and core values are definitely going to streamline the way, like highlight our path forward in our strategic plan.

Okay and just clarification or making sure I sum this up correctly.

So the director or deputy director will be doing more internal interfacing work.

I think you shared initially that they will be charged with being at these external meetings to make sure that NSC has a consistent and frequent

Yeah, like for instance tomorrow I'll be presenting at a senior fair so public interfacing like community events and calls we get lots of calls to come and do education and messaging about the department and so that will be a large part of my role but I will also need to step in to you know do some of our collaborative meetings alongside of the deputy director

Yeah, it helps to see how you're doing the delegation of work and getting a little bit more clarity about what you're doing as a director.

Another question I had, only because this just also came up, and it's come up a couple of times now, I'm interested in knowing the resources or financial resources you advocated for

in the 2025 budget.

I'm saying this because of course we just considered a contract brought forward by NSD and AEO yesterday to outsource some of that financial compliance work and we had a really robust conversation around the need to do more development of that in-house infrastructure as opposed to just continuing to

Thank you for that question, Chair Wonsley.

We have maximized resources as best we can.

What you saw on the org chart, I can go back to that really quickly, well I guess I can't, never mind, oh yes I can, is what we are looking at for this year.

There are definitely some gaps, but we have discussed a plan to phase in some additional staff as we move forward.

But as of looking forward into the next year, the org chart looks like this.

Okay, and I'm interested, and I was excited to see, at least on slide 8, that you all are looking at revamping or reassessing some of your contract processes and are launching a pilot.

I know you've mentioned in prior presentations that some of our vendors have struggled with providing information or correct information for invoicing, but I also do know a number of our vendors who've been

I've been in partnership with NSD or OVP prior to your tenure, never had struggles before and they have access to procurement support I'm just thinking of BCR for example, they actually gave a presentation to PHS where they named NSD was in need of some support in this area

because they were struggling with getting paid on time and getting the professional supports that they needed.

Yes, thank you.

We should be rolling that out top of next year and I expect to at our quarterly updates give updates quarterly on what that looks like and then end of year give a comprehensive overall view at the end of the year and Oh gosh, there was something else that you said There was something else

My understanding is that it's up to the department to give those results back PMI has been really helpful in developing metrics but it's been on the department to determine the collection method as well as analysis and report out

So unless PMI comes and tells me differently, I'd be happy to turn it over to them.

Unless they tell me differently, that's actually going to fall on the department to have to do so.

that also plays into and that is one of actually the areas of need next as far as staffing is there's a whole other side of the organization chart that I believe we should be building out as we move forward and that would be around data collection and training and education.

Okay, awesome.

I also want to know if there were any resources, and I know I have a legislative directive coming back on this, but if there were any resources that were proposing your budget around professional development, either for yourself or your staff, just knowing that there's a number of key convenings and forums that NSD or OVP leadership has

So I just want to make sure we have resources that are being allocated in our budget to make sure our staff and leadership are, you know, kept abreast on like key best practices.

Yes, thank you Councilmember Wisely for the question.

Yes, there actually are resources in the budget for both of those things as well as the regional NOVP convenings.

The last one for our region was in Indianapolis, but I was here presenting.

to Council, so I miss that.

But now with the additional staff, we have definitely budgeted out some of those professional development as well as some individual visits to different cities outside of the NOVP convenings.

Recently I took a trip to Albuquerque.

I would also like our department to take a trip to Baltimore, Denver, and Detroit.

as they have some interesting initiatives I think that may be helpful for us to learn from.

And that came from guidance from NOVP leadership.

We are also looking at an additional contract with NOVP, so we get regular resources as a membership city.

But they do also provide some assistance outside of what you get as a normal member.

So we are putting into our budget potential, working with them to help do some things like become reviewers on RFPs, come and train staff directly, take a broad overview of the department and help us assess gaps

in services and give us strategies on how to address those gaps within our capacity or if we need to come back and ask for increased resources.

So that is something that we're starting now with NOVP and I'm really happy that they've been so accommodating to us.

and with the additional staff now, this will be the Deputy Director and I dividing and conquering if we need to.

Where if I need to be at a convening and I have to present here, then the Deputy Director would present here, I'd be at the convening.

So that's good to hear.

So the combination of having a deputy director and then there is allocated resources for this.

Our partners should be seeing, for instance, a representation from NSD at the upcoming White House gathering for some of these forums that we have not been representing at.

Good to hear and just want to know too how many opportunities are being leveraged from the TA providers.

As we move forward, we'll be able to increase our capacity to host or participate in local trainings.

Our national providers, particularly Cure Violence, has a plan to be very heavily involved locally.

so they have already actually helped us craft the new RFP which will be released quarter one of next year well it will be released end of this year and will be awarding

quarter one of next year.

We've already been working very closely with them and they helped us craft that RFP to ensure that it is in alignment with the model.

They will also be here to be reviewers with us for the selection of those awards and then they'll be providing extensive training here locally both to the community and to our selected vendors as well as to our staff.

So right now we're starting with the Cure Violence model because that is such a high demand service so that we are making sure we are moving the model forward here locally.

We are also talking with our local providers like the Blueprint Institute facilitator has some very creative ideas on how to expand that program as well.

and we may include a community training component on that as well.

And then we have some other technical assistance providers nationally that will be coming to help us here locally.

So moving forward into 2025, we will definitely be expanding our capacity to expand our reach locally.

That's good and I know there's a number of folks in queue so I will just share with the clerks.

I'll have some questions to be followed up through a staffing memo.

One is continuing around technical support.

There was a mentioning of the National Office of Violence Prevention and I know we had them come to committee in August.

I would like to know when we should be anticipating a formal contract to

and then also I wanted to know, and I'll email these over to you all too, but I'm just saying for the public record, how are we leveraging our TA providers to assess the community trauma response grant to make sure we're partnering with organizations that align with the violence prevention framework and best practices based off of

a report that we got from AO yesterday where there seems to be some discrepancy around that.

Also, last is programming.

Do we have a line item budget for Violence Prevention Week?

It wasn't clear if we actually did one this year or if it was, it didn't seem to be advertised very

Well, so want to get a sense of what was the turnout from that event and if we are attending to fund it for 2025.

Thank you.

Wonderful, thank you.

Thank you so much Councilmember Wonsley.

Thank you, Madam Vice President.

Thank you, Director, for the presentation.

I just have one question.

Thank you for the question, Council Member Koski.

Sorry, my words are...

Yes, the next program is our hospitalization-based services.

And I think I mentioned in one of the slides that they provide immediate response bedside to survivors of crime and high-risk individuals.

That program has been going extremely well.

We did do an increase in 2024 to their budget.

I don't have the budget numbers in front of me, but I can get you those later.

Thank you so much Director Nelson Brown for the presentation.

I think it's been over a year now that you've been here with us and I expected your transition to maybe not be an easy one since you lost your entire team when you got here.

The person who brought you on left maybe like within days of you being here so I expected some growing pains and definitely

expected the transition to not be easy for everyone, but I really do appreciate your service and how much you've communicated with me.

We don't always agree on the way the department functions, but I really do appreciate how well you communicate your vision and sometimes things that don't happen

and what I believe the timeline is, how well you do to figure things out and to take me on that journey with you for your timeline and what fits for you and your team and how you're trying to build a team up.

So I appreciate that.

More than anything, I appreciate how you stepped up this summer for my ward.

I have some very unique challenges and I took

lots of city staff out on tours to look at those challenges in real time to see what the different areas that I have challenges in.

I invited city staff out with me.

You were one of those people and you sprung into action right away.

And I really, really do appreciate that because the three problematic areas suffer from three different things.

You saw that right away and you approached those

in that way.

You really did.

You found groups of folks to help us out for those unique situations and you supported the people in those areas with grace and those trauma grants really are a big deal to those areas.

Everything is not about policing and everything is not about

you know the resources that some people believe should be there and you figured out some things and neighbors have seen relief in those areas so I appreciate that.

One of the things that we've had conversations about going back and forth is GVI.

I'm really looking forward to understanding how GVI moves forward.

I've met with

some of

Yes, thank you Councilmember Vitoff for the question and the compliments as well.

Yes, GVI is one of our programs that is nationally shown to create great success and as we start to collect data here, I believe we will see the same thing here.

It requires a large amount of collaboration and partnership There are lots of intricacies that go into GVI The National Network for Safe Communities is one of our technical assistance providers around GVI

and I believe it is November 7th, we'll actually, don't quote me, let me not give a date, early November, we'll be here to provide some training both to staff as well as our partners and community.

I think that is a strong first step in mending some of the relationships that have had ongoing challenges both before I got here and continuing forward.

So the plan at this point is to lean very heavily on NNSC to come and give us a refresher and an update especially since we've had staff turnover and some of our partners have also had turnover to definitely ground us and root us in the core values and initiatives

and strategies of GBI and give us that flow the way that it should go which has when GBI stalled out and then we had staff turnover that created complications.

So moving forward in GBI, I believe that we will be able to do this.

We will also be collaborating more heavily with the county as the county also does a diversion GVI program and so we're trying to maximize that relationship as well.

NNSC is a technical assistance provider to both of us and will help us mitigate those relationships as we move forward.

I think that's the big picture stuff and it's fine because I want to hear about that too, but I also want to make sure we address a lot of the concerns I've heard around program expenses.

One of the things I want to

make sure we move forward with is having some sort of a standard around invoicing that goes out for everybody not like a okay you submit an invoice and then I'm gonna have a conversation with you about this particular invoice

but really just about a standard that is a legal standard that fits the department as a whole, right?

So when someone comes back to me and says, I did this before but I'm being told I can't do it now, I can say, okay, I understand that was before but here is the standard, right?

We can't do that now and we stick to that, right?

I think that's a concern in GVI is like expenses that facilitators feel like they need to run the program.

And if we can't provide that financial assistance, who do we partner with?

How do we receive grants?

Or is this the county portion of it?

Yes, and that is, as I'm talking about enhancing compliance, that is exactly the focus that I'm talking about.

And when I mentioned the risks,

Those expenses especially for GVI and community trauma response is also gonna have this challenge Those are some of the risks that we have to start paying attention to because Previously they some of these expenses were covered with ARPA funds but as ARPA funds end we're hearing now from the city attorney's office and

and the procurement and finance departments that some of the key services are not going to be allowable with general funds.

So we're right now at a place where city attorneys are digging in a little bit deeper to determine what are the legal parameters around that.

and we are waiting for policy in their office to be written so that we can align our policy with theirs.

So over the last, I'll be honest, over the last several months I've heard a lot of the policy is being written.

So as I'm trying to move forward and set the standards I want to make sure I'm in alignment with both city attorneys procurement and finance So it's been a collaborative effort as we move forward, but the goal is to have standardized What am I looking for standardized rules guidelines

all the way across all of our programming because there is a difference between data collection for success and financial accountability and so the financial accountability is where over the last several years there's been a weakness that is the area that we have seen multiple litigation in

and it is the area that from day one since I walked in the door that I've been focused on.

Some of the protocols I've already put in place allowed us to actually enter into a settlement agreement with this previous litigation.

and so the goal is to continue in that manner, standardize across all programs as well as provide assistance and education to our vendors because this is new for them.

We previously didn't ask for that accountability in the way that we're asking for it now and as we shift funding streams that's going to become even more evident if that makes sense.

I do believe all of the things that you mentioned as possible opportunities are all going to come into play so I do think we're going to have to look to some of our philanthropic partners to fill the gaps in areas where

you know we just can't get past general funds funding some of those key services.

I also believe that we can start to talk about some micro enterprising opportunities for some of our organizations so that they can raise funds better.

And I also believe that we're gonna have to have the discussion and get some clear direction around exactly what the general funds do support Because that is a discussion that's still up in the air right now and one of our biggest challenges Yeah, but the priority is on fiscal accountability and responsibility and our vendors actually want that and

Absolutely, and actually as of yesterday, it's now four.

And yes, and second will be filled, well the offer has been made, they start in two weeks.

The third we are in final interviews right now, and then the other two are about to be released.

Oh, thank you.

Yes, thank you for that question.

I actually meant to address that in my presentation, so that's a point that I missed.

Yes, so right now, let me give a picture of what it looked like when I came on to what it looks like now.

When I came on, we had one contract manager.

That contract manager was the sole person to receive all invoices, review all invoices

Pay out all invoices, as well as doing all of the contracting, writing all of the exhibits, as well as writing all of the RFPs.

In the 2024 budget, we were allotted an additional contract manager position.

We filled that position, so now we have two people.

The original contract manager is out on medical leave and upon their departure I have had to detail several staff in and it has taken about three and a half people to replace that original contract manager.

So as they return from medical leave, I want to make sure that we don't overburden that position with a ton of work.

So we are restructuring the resources that we have right now, the addition of the Associate Director of Finance,

will also provide assistance as well as the new Associate Director of Compliance so that we do have a team, because previously we did not have a team, so that we do have a team to review those invoices.

I know it's been tough, but I really do want to thank you.

You know, you're one of those people who we never see on the news or who talks about but you really played a big role in activating the support for downtown with a lot of the violence prevention

groups getting down there and I appreciate that.

I must say I was a little jealous and I really think about when I have issues like that in Ward 4 how much I would love for multiple teams to gather and come to Ward 4 and fix it like they do downtown.

I got over it, right?

I'm thankful for the work that you did completely behind the scenes to make sure that those groups were coordinated, that they got the funding they needed because that was not the money that was put into their original grants.

You found a way

to get those groups paid and to get them out and activate it downtown after that stuff happened and I really do appreciate that and how quick you responded and like I said the areas in my ward I really do appreciate how you took that serious and really came up with the plan right away

to make sure that the summer was just a little bit better, but the work continues.

So I really do appreciate your commitment to my ward in particular and listening to me and the people of Ward 4 and hearing their specific needs and activating and getting other folks activated around public safety relief that does not include policing.

Thank you.

I am taking over as chair as Madam Vice President had to move to another meeting here.

Thank you Councilmember Koski.

Just a quick question.

I was maybe pleasantly surprised but definitely surprised to hear about the discussion about moving BCR into fire.

I know that

Commissioner Barnett probably I know I've annoyed you for the past year about this, you know suggesting this And others have had this this conversation With with staff and my experience so far has been that everyone, you know that I've talked to has been pretty resistant So I was a little surprised to hear this is something on the table This is something we've been discussing and just kind of wondering like how have those discussions been?

Council.

When I looked at the mission and goals slide, they were all about violence prevention as they should be.

And they were about victim services as they should be.

BCR doesn't fit into any of those missions and goals.

and I've known that, I think a lot of us have known that for the better part of a year.

It's, and while it is a contract and we want to make sure we're treating all our contractors fair, this is probably the first, this is the first 911 integrated service that we've put into 911 in I don't know how long, right?

911 is three services, now it's four in the city of Minneapolis.

That's a huge deal.

I don't think we can afford to treat this contract like a normal contract.

It's almost like a miniature department, a new department.

I get

Thank you Councilmember Ellison for that question.

So, two things that I heard.

One, the mission and values.

I'm going to start there really quick and then move into the longer question.

You're absolutely right, which is why one of our key priorities moving forward is to redefine these missions and core values to make sure that we are aligning with all three of our core priority areas.

Because response will still fall into some form of response will still fall into our department So we need to that is a gap that we need to address and that is part of our plan Moving forward into the next year.

So thank you for that The second so you're a little bit ahead of us These conversations brought it up

Right, right.

Right, exactly, exactly.

We have been thinking about it.

For our department at NSD, we're anticipating there may be some direction coming from the, what's it called?

The, oh gosh, the feds.

Yes, thank you.

The consent decree.

I've been standing too long, my shoes are expiring.

From the consent decree that I think we may have an opportunity to start talking about exactly that.

So we're really in the creative phase right now.

I haven't even had this conversation with Canopy yet, so I'm sure my phone is going to ring as soon as I leave here.

I'm going to direct them to call you.

Council,

today in the meeting, so apologies to them.

But yeah, and I'm happy to be a part of those conversations.

It's something that I've had a vision for, which again doesn't mean it's my idea, but it's something that I feel like if we're wondering how we're going to make a transition and what that means this way or that way, what that means in terms of capacity needs, whether in BCR or FIRE,

Let's have those conversations ahead of time.

Let's talk to council ahead of time.

Let's not make a move and then say, oh man, there were some things we didn't think of.

Thank you, and I think we should also prioritize community input as well.

So as we're rolling out our new data collection, that will be, thank you for mentioning that because now I will make a note to make sure that we incorporate that as well because we don't want to make any moves without the input of the community also.

Thank you, Council Member Ellison.

Thank you Chair, and thank you Director Nelson Brown.

It's really time to celebrate your success because you have the most difficult job in public safety.

Don't leave.

Well, as Councilmember Ellison has said so many times in the past, the Fire Department and Police Department have had over a hundred years to organize themselves and to move forward.

And you're literally building an airplane as you're flying, so thank you for your great success.

And thank you for your help with filling one of the geographic gaps in the system, which is along the riverfront in Dinkytown.

And you did that by working so well

with the Somali elders and Somali youth link.

So that's a tremendous success and I just appreciate all the hard work you've done.

All right, I am not seeing any further questions or comments from colleagues, and so I'll ask the Clerk to file that presentation.

And for all your hard work.

Next, I wanted to just remind everyone about the next budget meeting, which is Thursday, October 24th at 10 a.m. We will be hearing from NPRB, Emergency Communication Center, otherwise known as 911, and police.

And so with that we've concluded all business to come before the committee this morning and without objection we are now adjourned until our next meeting on October 24th.