2026-10-12 - Finance & Personnel Committee

Chairwoman here joined by my vice chairman Alderman Peter Bergellis. Alderman Scott Spiker is here. Alderman Malay Lake Hoggs as well as Alderman Charlotte Moore. That provides us a quorum to conduct

our meeting today on Monday, October 12, 2026. We are continuing our third week of budget hearings. This is a full week and we have a full day ahead of us. So with item number one, it is 26001

communication from the mayor relating to the proposed 2027 budget. We have four areas to cover today and we're joined by our budget department comptroller's office. We want to thank our legislative

reference bureau and of course we have to now in the middle of this all thank Mr. Chrisley who's been keeping us on task. So thank you so much. Before I get down to the business a few announcements

please join us this Saturday at 9 30. Perhaps people will be out participating in the no kings events. That'll likely be after our budget hearing and that is at 9 30 at the Mitchell Street Library 9

30 to 11. You can join us in person or virtually because we do want to make sure every voice is heard. Four departments will be up today beginning now we'll begin with police department. Department of

emergency communications will follow then we'll possibly break slightly or just continue through if need be. Around 1 p.m. we'll begin with the fire department and we'll conclude with the fire and

police commission. With that I'll now call on the police department. Good morning to you all. Please come on up and we'll get started. We always get started with the budget director first they give a

brief presentation then we go to you but please join us and with that we'll go to director Nick Kovach. Good morning Madam Chair committee members Nick Kovach director of the budget management

division. I'll be turning it over to Tyler Caligaro who will be giving you his thoughts on the Packers and Bruce games this weekend and then it's got a few slides on the police department. Oh yeah and

much more material on that but Tyler Caligaro budget management division here today to present to you the 2027 Milwaukee police department proposed budget. I'm going to start off here with the 27

budget summary as you can see there was a about 34 million dollar increase across the board expenditures and 27 proposed budget that's an 11 percent increase. I'll go over the details of that in the

following slides but as you can see they are all salary and fringe benefit related. Moving on into salaries and positions as I just stated there's a 24 million dollar increase in salaries that has to

do with for the most part the contract the new contract that was passed last year that wasn't in the last budget but it is in this one. On top of that there was the three percent COLA that was applied

to civilian positions. As you can see there's some FTE and position changes there for the most part the positions changes 50 of those 59 are police officers that are attached to the 25 cops grant.

There are a few other positions such as attic six forensic print examiners to name a few. Moving on to operating equipment overall there was a decrease in both these this year as you can see there's a

large decrease in equipment 63 percent. A big portion of that is because a big portion of our anticipated radio replacement costs have been taken care of by a grant so that's great news and great work

by MPD for getting that. Moving on to special funds special funds for the most part are going unchanged except for the safety and civics commission there was 50,000 given to that last year but none in

this proposed budget. Quickly going through budget by service you know it's broken down by four different segments providing leadership responding and preventing criminal activity conducting city-wide

investigations and overseeing the daily operations of the department. Then moving into revenues revenues are up by one point about 1.3 million about 15 percent as salaries are increasing

reimbursements for charges for service also increase and then capital expenses police facilities maintenance fund at just a little over 2.1 million and then police vehicles are staying flat from last

year's budget of 2 million dollars and at that point at this point I'd like to hand over the presentation to the chief and the Milwaukee Police Department. Okay good morning Chief Norman how are you

doing? Good good yourself. Good happy to have you here the floor is yours. Well thank you and good morning to everyone here I definitely appreciate the opportunity to present and answer your questions

and concerns you may have. Before I start just one point to two slides in regards to just I know they don't want to cover the entire presentation but just want to point out some highlights in regards

to you know impacts and looking ahead in the future. As many of the items on this particular slide represents things that we're all familiar with staffing workforce capacity hiring pipeline challenges

just want to highlight the external events under the service delivery impacts knowing that we have been dealing with a number of different of natural and unfortunate man-made challenges floods you

know you have a different type of protests we always are trying to balance in regards to the cost for service deliveries but also understanding that we have to be navigable or fluid for anything that

may come before that particular city. So that's always a reminder in regards that as we're you know again continue to lean into the services that you all desire and want there are those challenges of

juggling multiple situations at once under 2026 challenges I always like to point out regards to the mental health imperative and the political polarization we've seen a four percent increase in

mental health costs for service in our community which is definitely a again a challenge but also in regards to our own staff a three percent increase in regards to using mental health services

wellness to be more exact and so we're continuing to navigate those particular challenges especially in regards to that is a you know cost for service load but also ensuring that we are leaning into

investing and taking care of our own people the particular services come at a cost. Political polarization I think speaks for itself with some of the challenges especially from the federal government

understanding that there is always something different that comes down a pipeline that we need to navigate in regards to whether it's immigration or you're dealing with again some of the issues that

surround you know elections whatnot and so we're always leaning in and conversating with not only our political leaders but also ensuring that we are all conversing with our residents and community

based organizations we also see that there is a introduction of language and within our grants we do rely on grants within the organization quite heavily understand that there are certain requirements

that are being placed within our grants that we're going to have to be able to navigate in the future especially in regards to immigration going to the next slide just to really quickly go over you

know we do also ensure that we are continuing to lean in as the division of mission democracy department deepening community partnerships engagement we understand that it's not just a one-hit wonder

it's a continue you know requirement for this administration for a department to lean in and make sure that we're not only nurturing those relationships but also finding those new relations out there

to expand our again points of contact and understand that public safety is a community-wide lift not just a one particular entity and just want to close out know that we do have some topics or items

in regards to strengthening digital trust through clear and consistent messaging and communication we do understand that we do still have a lot of work to go on in regards to ensuring that we are

being as communicative as possible with our community being as transparent as possible being open and receptive to feedback we are always embracing that and understand that we can always do better in

regards to that looking also to use technology to help us in regards to how we are delivering our services but again knowing that that two points intertwine each other in regards to making sure that

we're communicating our community but also leaning into the technology that will help us closing out as we all know that recruitment and staffing is still a challenge for us working with our Friday

police commission who is the main point of contact for recruitment but we do understand that we do have a role in that to help with our staffing challenges and to ensure that we're leaning in as best

we can to maintain the act 12 requirement there so those are just some of the highlights i just want to put a little bit of context and communication on and we'll open it up or leave it to the chair

in regards to opening the question and answer part okay did you have a couple more slides or well we do have um our traditional presentation that we made but we understand that you wanted a reduced

universe this year to allow for you to ask um questions so we can go over our service delivery model we can go over some of the other requirements or requests that you had made but we wanted to really

focus on those highlights and challenges um that you had asked us yes focus i truly appreciate that um but you were so efficient which i appreciate that you technically have about 10 more minutes um

would you want to some not that i'm counting but i am um but would you want would would you want to summarize what you have left in about 10 minutes i'm happy that'd be helpful for you okay sure but i

appreciate it though no problem um so real quickly um we wanted to provide um the public and this committee with a service delivery model as you know we uh are we have a multitude of bureaus um so our

resources we provided to the public safety and health of staffing communication file a few weeks back um where we talked about how uh where all of our sworn members go 153 sworn are housed in the

administration bureau this is the anchor um it includes things like property control internal affairs budget it open records etc um our patrol bureau has 1045 sworn members um and they are housed

within our districts and also two other divisions the specialized patrol division um that includes tsu little shout out to my monta patrol teu motorcycles um and we've added now this year the

community resource division that is inclusive of sros and our cart team so when we have mental health crises they're specialized team staffed with a clinician that goes out to respond to those calls

um criminal investigation bureau they're the ones that investigate all of our major crimes homicides shootings sensitive crimes etc uh we have about 200 or 285 sworn as of august 2026 in that bureau

if you refer back to our public safety health communication we broke that down even further and talked about how many of those were limited duty um supervisors etc and then for the chief of staff

that's myself i have 19 sworn i oversee our pio team our omap um liu community engagement and risk management um as well uh real quickly our department and city priorities are community safety

obviously that's number one um but we partner or just equal to that is strategic community engagement this year we brought on board maritza ugarte from uh the fbc and formerly from safe and sound

who's our new community engagement manager we're really excited with what she's bringing to the table including more programming with m pal or um the police athletic league as well as reaching out to

the community to get us in places and spaces that we haven't traditionally been she's been tasked with um building partnerships and relationships um with different communities like um the mung

community that is rich and vibrant in milwaukee um the muslim community and the lgbtq um plus community um and fair and partial policing is uh at the forefront of all that we do and that includes

constitutional policing so everything that we do we ensure we have reasonable suspicion and objective articulable all of the things that are required of colin's but beyond colin's um we have

implemented a number of different things to ensure that everything we do is fair and impartial um being an efficient department we know we are stewards of the taxpayer's funds and so everything that

we do we ensure that we are doing it in the most efficient and budget friendly manner possible employee health and wellness is very big as the chief discussed we've seen a significant increase in our

employees utilizing those services and needs um and you know the the stress is real we have a number of individuals who i mean a lot of our individuals are very taxed with um the hours the overtime um

all of the requirements um of policing and you know the struggle with getting more staff on board to assist in those efforts is something that we priority prioritize all the time equity and inclusion

we still have a robust 30 by 30 program where we're attempting to recruit 30 female sworn by the year 2030 being environmentally responsible and then obviously recruitment and retention for a robust

future and community safety um we provided a slide on demographics um here you can take a look at those numbers uh breaks down male female um race and residency what we'd like to highlight is civilian

personnel are at 72 percent residency um in the city of milwaukee some of the things i already discussed is our continuous commitment to community engagement one thing i want to highlight that we

added this year is a strategic and robust community engagement effort from our criminal investigation bureau community engagement isn't just for patrol it isn't just for the chief it is for every

single member of our department so we have tasked everyone with building out new events new ways to connect with the milwaukee community donuts with detectives with something that happened in

september is one of many ways the criminal investigation bureau has adapted community engagement programs it was well received we intend to continue that work and we intend to grow in this space as

well community engagement isn't just having fun with the community it builds connection it builds trust it allows us to talk to one another and have dialogue about real issues including how we operate

and what the concerns of the community are as well our continuous commitment to collaboration includes being a good partner with other departments and other institutions and other organizations so we

began tracking a couple years back all of the referrals that we make in the work that we do and this slide provides a snapshot for this time period of the referrals that we have made in working with

our partners community policing involves not just police it involves interdepartmental partners coming together to find the appropriate solutions in these cases we worked with these agencies you can

see from child protective services to milwaukee public schools on a variety of different issues just note that the nps piece is not inclusive of the work that our sro's do that is separate and those

referrals aren't really documented here but i know that we did an sro presentation to the council recently to provide an update and we are doing one upcoming for the fbc we're happy to give this body

any updates on that sro program as you wish the two slides that the chief covered and then what we also included that we will not go into is all of our crime statistics for the year but generally

speaking you will see our crime is trending in the right direction we have a lot of significant increases in part or decreases excuse me in part one crime from 25 to 26 and if you take a look at a

more full picture for the last five years there are even more significant decreases in part one crime okay great that was perfect here yes anything else then for now you're good okay fantastic i know

it's a lot of information to cover i'm just doing a quick scan to uh also welcome our colleagues alderwoman lorisa taylor and alderwoman andrea pratt we like to welcome all members we'll now begin

with a couple of rounds of member questioning we'll start with the finance and personnel committee and then we'll move to our colleagues we are starting today with alderwoman mille cogs just for

purposes mostly because it's easier for me to remember is we flow this way and then it's like a wave going back and forth and so i'll have because this is our largest department in the budget there's

always a few extra questions and members will go between two and three questions per member and then kind of flow back sound like a good plan okay with that we'll begin with alderwoman mille lake hogs

thank you madam chair um i wanted to earlier slides um for the budget office um the safety and civic the safety and civic committee was on there and it said 50 000 um previously but not uh this year

um so i guess i was i was interested in knowing of the 50 000 i was allocated for last year has it been um has any of it been expended or expected to be expended um and are you just carrying over the

fifth yeah you're right about the general concept tyler has the numbers uh yeah so so far throughout this year through only 3000 has been spent how often have they met that i do not know if we can

find out that'd be great um and what the 3000 was spent on okay and is there are there any intent um expenditures anticipated expenditures throughout 26 the rest of 26 not that i'm aware of okay thank

you um there there may have been one slide the npd produced i saw quickly about trauma and the referrals and stuff i know years ago i think it was uh you director heather why don't you have a seat

right here that way you don't have to keep moving around it might be how we can get to this yeah let's just kind of get that okay that we started a program of um referrals initially i think it was

intended for like youth that witnessed violent crimes um for um officers who are first on the scene to do uh referrals for the children and their families um mainly for therapeutic purposes or

whatever i know that in years since then has grown and the referrals is more than just therapy is whatever the families may need and that kind of thing i guess i just wanted to know was the referral

sheet that you show was that a result of that program or is something totally different it's something totally different in regards to how we use our partners and government services in regards to

again a holistic approach to issues and concerns within the community so we just want to tally that up in regards to that type of process to understand just how much we're doing and what is the

particular resources that we're using but with that said we do still have a robust engagement with our community partners office of community wellness and safety ensuring that we are leaning into

those referrals to our youth and those families who are unfortunately have been subjected to trauma i know that we have two victim witness specialists that work with our particular criminal

investigation bureau knowing that those are sometimes the more um the felony type of situations but they are a resource to our entire department and so we do have a pretty good robust engagement with

our partners for that particular work and i just want to add alderwoman that we have not forgotten about your 2024 footnote for those victim witness advocates to have a survey of how the community

that they serve feels about what they're providing i double checked on that they actually won't hit a year until january so we intend to do that work once they hit that one year mark so there is like

a trauma informed care program i know that the city partners with a county and county partners with you all um to have those um i don't know if it's the same as the victim witness of folks but it is

to i guess therapists on staff um nick do you remember the program i'm talking about we tried to inform care yeah witnesses about child witnesses of violent crime yeah do um i just wanted to know the

numbers currently like how many referrals you all have done and how many people have accepted the referrals or pursued the services good good morning uh paul alan assistant chief of the criminal

investigation bureau i don't have the exact numbers of how many refer uh there is a representative from that group that attends our weekly public safety review and they do get referrals for child

witnesses i think between the ages of seven and 17 uh that come up in our non-fatal shootings that's something i can get back to you on the numbers that we make for those because they do partner with

uh like the chiefs brought up our victim witness uh people uh specialists that we did or uh hired this year so that they'll work congruently as a team yeah uh yes if you could please give me um give

me those numbers um i would ask you about cameras and all of that but i'm sure some of my other comments um are prime and ready to do that so at this time um chairwoman i would uh give to other

members for questions thank you so much all the women and we will come back to you um now we'll move on to alderman peter bergellis thank you very much and just to echo or just uh continue the

conversation about cart um do you have any data on how often or how many calls for service cart response to and we can we can um if you don't have it regularly available we can take that information

request later um and then i'm also looking for the response time is that something that's dispatched immediately or is it something that's within 24 hours like the shooting for a cart respond so those

actually we will dispatch our normal a call comes in and the normal district squad will respond to it and then they will make the assessment on if it would be appropriate for cart to also be uh come

on scene um so that dispatching is a little bit different in that it's not the first responder it is a resource that's called in once a response is made but the expectation is that cart shows up

immediately not the next day or the next week correct okay great and then um there's plenty of coordination with the department of community wellness and safety with that excellent um in your slides

that um we all uh reviewed over the weekend uh calls for um calls for reckless driving were down 12 but citations are down 37 year to year um is that because specialized patrol isn't enforcing as much

or that's that's a pretty big disparity so in regards to the motor vehicle enforcement we still have the traffic safety unit and in fact those numbers are up in regards to citations issue um i don't

know if we have drilled down to what is the cause for reckless driving citations being down i will hope because people are behaving themselves a little bit more well uh so so the if we can go to the

slide 20 slide 22 in the presentation so reckless driving calls for service are down 12 and reckless driving citations are down 37 percent so we're so we have a few fewer calls but a whole lot fewer

citations another factor is we just change our pursuit policy as well so oftentimes if somebody's driving recklessly or driving away from us recklessly it's because we're pursuing them for something

else so when we make the stop uh it is a targeted stop and reckless driving may not be the outcome a citation may not be an outcome for reckless driving it might be drugs or guns or something else

that's more egregious in the behavior that's causing the reckless driving so there's a number of factors in the decrease in citations there's the ability um to tow there um is you know other crimes

that may be charged that you can't quantify that reduction in tickets to officers not doing what they're supposed to be doing in those situations in district six which includes the 11th aldermanic

district police district six includes the 11th aldermanic district specialized patrol has been there quite a bit but most of the specialized patrols in this that the district takes care of are for

caravan escorts for heavy truck traffic through bay view um five to ten of these caravans per day how much does that specialized patrol impact the ability for that department to be on the road

enforcing traffic laws speeding signs making our roadway safer i'm sure there is an impact to quantify it we have to look a bit a little bit more and drill down like i said the traffic safety unit is

part of our specialized patrol division and as we report out in regards to even though those numbers of officers have been reduced over the course of time is up in regards to citation enforcement um

yes and that's again sometimes the difficulty of dealing with multiple responsibilities and ensuring how do we have those particular type of uh envoys um you know taking through the city safely but

also knowing that you know we do have events we do have again enforcement um and staffing does have an issue in regards to that being able to do everything at all times but we still do have a robust

response districts are still engaging in traffic enforcing themselves but uh in regards to that to quantify i can go back to the team and see what we can do to figure out if there's any way to

quantify that particular type of uh challenge that you just saw certainly we want to support industries that are employing hard-working residents but we also need to make sure that we're not

overstretching our officers if this is over time there's a limit on how much over time an officer can reasonably safely perform and if it's not happening during overtime then it's taking away from

patrol and that's something that i'm very concerned about because i have very limited visibility in my older manic district so that brings me to slide number 26 where calls for service by aldermanic

district for the first few months of the first nine months of the year uh three percent of all calls for service came from the 11th aldermanic district but the next slide 27 shows that that number is

has increased by 10 from the previous year when you have so many more calls for service where in one aldermanic district which is one squad zone squad 23 the calls for service increased by 10 how has

the department been able to respond and increase staffing for that to respond to those higher calls for service so as you can see in that particular slide there is an increase in your colleagues uh

particular aldermanic district as well um there is always expectation in regards to our district commanders to understand how to deploy their resources we do not dictate our respective commanders in

regards to what is those particular resources for their district but there is inter-district dispatching um i always say that as much as we do have a you know again specified particular district for

our officers they all work for the city of Milwaukee in any given time when there are those particular type of calls or service or concerns especially we talk about party one party two it's wherever

squad is available who will respond um yes i said it in the slide in regards to 2026 challenges and 2027 challenges staffing is a concern uh the you know retirements and uh some some forces sometimes

those who look for another employment or have to look for another employment because they've been terminated has been challenging in regards to our particular way to operate we use other particular

resources technology helps us to be a little bit more efficient effective but in the end we look for every resource we can to ensure that there is a proper coverage and response to those particular

automatic concerns and so there is there's been a challenge in regards to your increase but as you can see in regards to the other automatic districts you know uh ottoman ottoman uh stamper ottoman

cobs i mean we see increases in their particular district as well so those are challenges that we're really um taking note of and uh ensuring that we can deploy our resources that have adequate

resources for you well all right so you said adequate resources proper coverage and concerns in district six per uh full-time equivalent for all staffing sworn and unsworn district six has one

employee for every 1700 residents which is almost double or we'll call it almost half the coverage of any other police district in the city is that adequate for the residents that are protected by

district six so we always look into ensure that there is the level of robust resources again said in regards to the 2026 challenges stephen is a concern there is you know leaning into the recruitment

assisting the fire police commission for that uh you know we had a recent graduating class they're not gradually at the size that we normally are used to seeing but the investment especially in

district number six out of that particular recruit class we gave them more than what other districts we see in regards to the particular recruit officers in light of in spite of that you know again

you see the increase in cost for service in all your colleagues particular district but i always continue to say that no one is left alone there is again a interdistricting requirement in regards to

those particular costs for service the supplement just as you had alluded to in regards to the special patrol division being able to assist those are all layer approach in regards to ensuring that

there is the particular type of response particular type of services until we can have the staffing that you know when i came on the job 30 years ago uh was there and so the challenge is real and i

look at it from the standpoint that we lean into it and we ensure that there is the type of coverage you expect and response that you expect so so i asked is one employee for 17 000 residents proper

coverage you're telling me yes i'm telling you that we have officers working every day in regards to ensuring that you get the response that you need and i just want to add one thing even if milwaukee

police department suddenly doubled in size and we gave another officer for every spot there is that would be two in 1700 patrolling so uh the real the reality is we allocate our resources as

appropriately as we can throughout the city um and just the x just want everyone to understand that officers can and will be pulled from other districts to provide the level of service that's needed

for a particular area my biggest concern is visibility in the district because when my constituents call me they say oh yeah i see squads all the time i see west alice patrolling in the district i see

greenfield i don't see the city of milwaukee i did a ride along on friday last week for four hours and we we weren't equipped with radar with speed radar we just stopped and watched a few stop signs

that i've gotten a lot of complaints from and it was like shooting fish in a barrel um at uh we watched we didn't sit at one particular intersection we didn't sit more than 30 seconds until we watched

a car sometimes two at a time run the stop sign at the exact same time we watched a school bus run through the stop the four-way controlled intersection without even blinking without touching a brake

there is a lack of enforcement there's a lack of visibility there's a lack of patrol in my aldermanic district i have one squad squad 23 from district six that patrols more than my aldermanic district

it's not enough there's no visit there's not enough visibility one employee for 17 000 residents in a 23 square mile district is insufficient my residents are demanding that i do something about it

what can i do what what what levers does the common council have to ensure that our residents have that minimal level of protection that their tax dollars pay for so when it comes down to the

allocation of the steve johnson the assistant chief of the patrol bureau um at least three to four times a year when it comes down to allocating um the resources across all seven districts and which

obviously encompass all the 15 automatic districts at the beginning of the year when it comes down to removing our night resources to days that is a deep dive that all of my districts look at when it

comes down to moving someone from nights to days because that at nights i have more flexibility of what hours i can assign my members once i put them days that they're just days shift i can't change

their hours so i we take a deep dive during that period right there and then if we have the three uh recruit classes a year there's another dive for each time that those are oit's we have that

graduation my commanders my inspectors we do another dive to see where have we lost gang um personnel throughout whenever that period is when we're getting ready to do that allocation so i just want

to ensure all of you that throughout the year there is a uh my eyes are on it ensuring that where we what was the recommended staffing numbers for each of my districts saying where we lost how do we

allocate those new bodies listening to my commanders if they want instead of getting new bodies if they want to change trade officers with the other uh get senior officers to come to their location so

we take all of that into consideration so i just want all of you to know that there's a a robust eyes on this situation regarding where we are at the beginning of the year and where we end end for the

next year so i just want to uh just echo the chief's point we understand the staffing challenges we understand the recruiting set challenges but also we are allocating resources appropriately across

all seven districts to answer the question about what the common council can do any assistance in recruiting i think that there is we'll talk about the fire and police commission this afternoon oh i'm

just answering your question sorry and so it is uh imperative that is not a one-hit wonder continue to go to those who are you know sometimes we might think unorthodox in regards to where can we go

beyond just the colleges and military to recruit i know that is still a challenge in regards to those who want to enter into our profession um and that anything that can help message that communicate

that i know you have your own particular outreach and resources just as uh you know we do our own social media and assisting the fire police commission in that effort whatever that you all can do to

assist in that we'll be extremely grateful and helpful um my concern is not about my concern right here for this question is not about staffing levels but the concern is allocation yes right one squad

west of 27th street on the south side is insufficient thank you very much madam chair thank you and we'll be coming back on that excuse me i'd like to um kind of add on to that with okay what slide is

this well it's hard for me to see here but it's the slide on the median response times to dispatch calls for services could you um help me a little bit there 24 okay i don't know why i can't see the

number here so what i'm hearing in my district um well the dashboard um is reflective of a of a overall decrease in part one crimes um my district in particular which is obviously in police district

six um is reporting a and i i guess i just don't see it here a high amount of i think they're two or three i'm a civilian so i don't i don't know the priority levels but um what would be uh property

theft and car break-ins so certainly not a one um and i brought this up before um and i've spoken directly to my captain about it and we're trying to figure this out but it ends up being this cycle

and i think it's affecting the data and it's certainly affecting um relationships kind of like a dis uh inadvertent dis disenchantment which then perpetuates disenfranchising and what i'm going with

that is that people aren't calling anymore and they'll say to me though for some reason they'll call me um and say you know my car's been broken into three times it's not even worth calling anymore um

and then they'll add on some extra um additional feedback about um how much property taxes they're paying etc and so chief how can we reconcile that um and i'm trying to look at these phone calls here

so are you saying on like a i don't not sure what priority that would be but like a priority five is that 40 minutes to arrive on the scene is that what that is so i can understand that so eight so

just walk me through that eight minutes is what it takes from the call to be placed and then an officer to arrive to a priority one is that what yeah that's actually saying how long it took for the

dispatch for the officer so eight minutes okay at the time was dispatch for the officer to arrive okay so i know that for the priority ones and twos that we are um ahead of the national average i do

understand that there are some challenges in regards to three fours and fives because of the nature of the you know type of call that it is um and that goes back to some of the early conversation with

regards to staffing i know that there is always that challenge of how do you balance being there for all the different calls for service out there uh while you are also expected to be immediate on

scene for what a party one could be a shooting you know a death and stabbing and so it is important for us especially if you're hearing that i just heard you talk about something chronic i believe

that takes a little bit more drilling down what is and why is it chronic in regards to you know the uh particular uh is it a uh what we call a target rich area where you know vehicles are left uh you

know with items in their vehicles where people you know find that this is a you know block with a lot of cars they can go through 30 seconds it takes to go through a car how do we involve our you know

community liaison officers are you know those trying to do a little bit more what we call septet you know crime prevention through environmental is it do we need more lightening that block is it going

to be you know is it too much brush that has you know the you can hide you know people who want to commit crimes and so i really ask for that engagement that i heard you already have with you know

captain leiskey of how we can work together being more on the prevention side than the reactive side because once the incident happens just as you already said you know someone feels you know violated

right there comes that kind of slippery slope and so really having more of that robust conversation and say okay what is it we can do from a collaborative effort with our community resources of our

residents to ensure that there is less of those opportunities for those who are you know committing those what we call part two crimes the property thefts you know the um things that you're saying in

regards to that you know really affects a person well-being and feeling like you know definitely why am i you know being paying property taxes when i'm seeing this repeated repeated and so i asked

from those particular situations how we can collaborate between you as an auditor and us from a law enforcement standpoint but also utilizing other resources that can help again target hardening or do

a little bit more preventive work in regards to making sure that those particular issues are just not being chronic um we are trying to also utilize other particular resources i know that we have

online reporting so that we can keep our officers more available for those particular lower level calls i know that doesn't help in regards saying that it's going to help stop but at least helps free

up our officers for to be able to be responsive to have that little visibility i was just mentioned earlier fry you know opener and so we're really looking at all different type of uh you know

solutions to be able to you know again get ahead of this and we're always willing to work with you all and you know take the feedback of how we can do better thank you um i do think we still have

challenges with the non emergency um wait times i think is that an opportunity where we can use different types of responses for service i still i'm not sure um depending on where it is um but for a

car break-in that had already happened or property theft there's nobody on the scene you know does that need to be a fully sworn officer um is that an opportunity for different types of methods or

civilian interaction and where i'm going with that chief is i was looking at the um number of cso's um budgeted for but then so many are vacant i believe 27 positions are vacant um are we having

trouble recruiting new police officers and cso as well and and what can we do differently it's a great question madam chair craig sarno assistant chief of police for the administration bureau i would

just like to just go back um a little bit to this first and then i'll answer your question so per it doesn't even have on here call priority number zero zero one through two requires immediate

dispatch now what this doesn't reflect and what may affect the time is that you may get a squad sent from let's say district three into district number six to handle that type of call so going from

one side of the city to the other although it's an immediate dispatch it may affect the response time for a priority call zero one through two when you get into three fours and fives the um the

response time has to be in 15 minutes or less so with you see that you're getting into 20 minutes 21 yes we still have some work to do and then beyond that you're talking into the the lower priority

calls the sixes the sevens and eights 45 minutes up to an hour which again um in some of those cases there's still some work that needs to be done to answer your question about cso's there once was a

time when we were funded for 60 um and we had i believe at the most we've ever had total cso's in the history department was 17 currently we have three we're funded for five we asked uh we initially

were going to put um request a total of 14 so two per district but in the course of our budget reduction we would we that was one those were positions that we ultimately reduced to get to the number

of seven uh there hasn't been an active recruitment um i can't remember when in a long time because the focus has been on police officers followed by police aids and now lateral transfer police

officers which the fire and police commission is going to be doing twice a year so the focus has been on sworn and not non-sworn um and i would just like to also add though that sometimes not all

calls are created equal a property damage where no weapons are observed could easily turn into when they arrive on scene there are weapons and there's physical fighting going on so those are all

things we have to take into consideration when we're deciding which calls we're going to dispatch cso's to right i can understand that um thank you my last question and then i'll move it along because

we're trying to do a couple per person in a couple rounds um chief in the last finance hearing that was like the actual not the budget hearing last week we allocated additional funds to settlements of

litigation with that involved the police department um i see director kovak coming in we're doing a larger analysis of the last couple years but it does seem to be on the trajectory that it's one of

our largest amount of payouts ever which is millions and millions of dollars that put quite a strain on our already strained budget um what what can you enact um and we want to work with you um we we

talked about some ideas of even having someone within the police department or whatnot um but we've got to get this number down there's such a huge amount of millions of dollars in um litigation uh

payouts um and again it seems larger than the normal maybe it's been a few that have been really huge but as the chief of this department um what can we what can we do differently and how can we

partner with you so thank you for that um equally as concerned uh understanding that this is you know money coming from taxpayer dollars uh the challenge for our department especially looking at from

the eye from just being a lawyer uh settlements are out of in our wheelhouse that is something that is within the ec attorney's office in regards to why things are settled what is being settled for

and the reasons for it um i will say that we do take risk management very seriously we do have you know james louis who is part of our risk management in regards to looking at you know again audits

inspections of what we're required to do on our particular department but um i am just as perplexed sometimes in regards to seeing some of the outcomes for uh cases but uh i'm not in that particular

conversation of why things are settled for what reasons and i do understand that you know there is a lot of other factors that go into play when we look at and drill down about these elements well can

i just add before you go um i understand that and um i do think that the biggest uh way to abate some of that risk is we do need some behavioral changes i mean these do start with like judicial fine

found a judicial finding that there was a wrongdoing or behavior um many of these do and so not all but um is that an opportunity for some retraining some of these have been quite outrageous so sure

so just a couple of things to know we're in constant communication with the city attorney's office on all cases that um are related to our membership and so when there is a concern that there may be

some liability attached to officers and how they've conducted uh whatever they've conducted they relay that information directly to our risk manager that information does get back to the department

and it is then addressed there are a multitude of factors however that go into settlements including the amount of a settlement that are out of our control and are not attached to that liability of

our officer did a wrong thing this is the appropriate dollar amount outcome that unfortunately to tie mpd behavior to a settlement amount isn't necessarily a way to to measure our liability the only

true way we could do that is if we took every case to trial and a jury said yeah we found this thing and here is how much that is worth um so so there are a number of different factors we're in

constant communication with the city attorney's office um before every case after they get the uh you know settlement approval from the council even during james lewis is part of that conversation and

that information is relayed directly back to the police department and messaging and training as appropriate is conducted i'm very sensitive in regards to anything that we can improve on bringing the

training or even bringing accountability that will happen i believe that it's important for us to continue to re-examine and to drill down if there is anything that is can be a takeaway i really do

believe in regards to making sure that our members are trained and being supported to be the best versions themselves but also that if they're not able to stand up or step into that role to be the

best version themselves they would not have a home with the marketplace department and so i do not take training behavior lightly uh it's i was a discipline you can see and not to say that that's

something i focused on because i will say this the large majority of men and women walking police department is doing a fine job but we do have those examples of individuals who understand don't

understand the requirement the expectation of the level of service that we deserve and expect it from this administration have you has your department considered some additional training opportunities

when dealing with domestic violence and harmed women sexual sexual assault those have been some that have risen to a higher profile and i there is some concern in the community absolutely and i know

that we work closely with a lot of community based organizations and regards to ensuring that we are getting the most relevant and up-to-date training and that again from a standpoint some sometimes

it is about accountability in regards to that those who after the training uh still exude behavior that's unacceptable um this administration have taken it very seriously in regards to the outcomes of

this is not going to be tolerated and this is going to be examples of what happens when you you cross that line i'll i'll end here and leave that for fire and police commission but some of those

atrocious events um when victims uh haven't been treated to the standard that we all hold the i'm what i'm finding in the community is like that part of the story you know it gets held up in court and

the proceedings and i understand that's part of the process but being held accountable it looks to the public that someone's just kind of back on the job and and they're not there's a disconnect there

as to you know when there was a severe breach of trust in your most vulnerable woman moment as a woman um when you finally seek help especially as a victim of domestic violence um the public isn't

seeing i think sometimes because those things take long it's just we have to be honest about it that that justice was served that that was a wrongdoing and and yes i know often you take swift action

and even um fire someone if it's within your um you know if it's within your jurisdiction but again that final part of the story um i think needs to to come to light least i'm hearing that anecdotally

so you're asking for feedback so i'm i wanted to give a little bit of that feedback as well yeah because there's a disconnect and then we're out there every day in a different way than you all um and

we get that information so and i think that it's not something that you can always see in a dashboard because what you can see in a dashboard is the people who were afraid to call or afraid to come um

to a precinct no dashboard can show that because they're they're suffering in silence so i appreciate the feedback and part of that conversation we do have items of discipline that we put quarterly on

our website and that is something that my team can reach out to all you in regards to continue to make sure that that communication is there to show the level of accountability and what happens when

that line has been crossed so that helps you know again um give some reassurance that these particular situations are taken seriously and that uh you know we really lean into expecting excellence from

our men and women okay to that point i would just like to remind this body that we did take fifty thousand dollars two years ago for what would have been two soft interview rooms and turned it into

seven across all of our work locations because that first initial counter encounter when they come into that station is important that's right so we did do that we've even gone we've gone down the

road of some additional training not trauma informed care trauma informed policing it's different than trauma informed care trauma informed care is for health care professionals trauma informed

policing is very specific to officers and those types of interactions and those types of calls when they get them in the field right yep i do remember that it was a council amendment that put that

forward and then you all um added on to that so let's keep that that flowing thank you i'm now going to move on to alderman scott spiker followed by alderwoman charlotte more uh thank you madam chair

uh i guess first uh my colleague alderman bergales pointed out something that struck me too with the reckless driving citations decrease the 37 decrease so i know it was said that this might be

because uh when they catch up to the person they're pursuing for reckless driving there might be bigger issues and so a bigger ticket but there was a very public statement by by you chief and by the

city attorney and the da's office saying we're going to prioritize these things we're going to write these tickets when we can so i would like to see after this committee a little bit of a deeper dive

to see what is accounting for the drop-in citations um and making sure that mpd is writing those um where possible where appropriate um because the city attorney seems like they're getting some

traction in muni court getting that first ticket through so that then a second time would be a criminal um charge and the da has said he would uh he's been doing that so um so moving on uh the tsu uh

they have been responsive in my district uh we have a new school on oklahoma avenue and some traffic calming that has kind of backed that up and then morgan avenue uh between you know sixth and 27th

is having some work done so howard avenue has been a bit of a racetrack and tsu has been responsive to that and i'm very much appreciate it um with respect to the hours of tsu uh traditionally they

don't work late at night um we have you know racing issues all summer on latin avenue other places um has there been any thought to whether it would be able to go later with the tsu has it been hard

staffing tsu i know last year at this time we're having major staffing issues with the tsu so briefly how is the tsu doing and is there are there any plans to expand it to kind of nighttime coverage

so currently there is no plans for expanding that always open to look at you know what the opportunities are i know that we don't have the robust staffing of the tsu traffic safety unit like we had

initially had rolled out but as you can see and i do know that we do have numbers in regards to the and um the activity has still been steady or even increased compared to last year um but in those

instances that you talk about in regards to the again racing those issues of you know street takeovers we do still have what we consider a directed patrol uh particular mission of having officers who

are identified within the particular respective districts across the city to come together this operation night rider that you know, responds and able to have that This is not all everyday but we do

understand we see what the trends are but as we're looking at the increase in staffing we can see what the opportunities are unfortunately right now because we have so many different competing

priorities having that commitment there is important but trying to balance in regards to ensuring that there's those officers at the districts you know fulfilling you know school resource officers

fulfilling a lot of different other you know mandated priorities that we have to you know take care of on a daily basis. Okay so it would be good to have staffing updates for the TSU and kind of how

that has trended over time that's an important and when you talk about shooting fish in a barrel that is a group you know even if they're pulling over people just going over 20 miles an hour and keep

writing tickets all day. With respect to recruiting I know there's the 30 by 30 effort for ensuring representation by women in the police force we'll ask a host of questions I'm sure of FPC when

they're up here on recruiting but has there been any change in attitude of the department towards recruiting given the changing characteristics of a younger officer and what they're seeking from

employment and how the willingness to as it were pay your dues and work have very unfortunate hours for a long period of time maybe doesn't appeal to people the way it did has there been any change in

that respect to deal with with what a younger would-be officer is looking for out of a job. So culture is a very big topic in regards to our department and understanding that doing things just because

we do it all the time but that's the way it is is unacceptable. Understanding that especially our new officers are looking for a lot of different opportunities work-life balance again having

opportunities to move up to experience different type of job responsibilities duties and so we really do lean in into ensuring that we are not only you know finding ways to be able to address that

working with the unions in regards to that but also ensuring that there's expectation from our leadership to again support our officers and to be there wellness is another thing that we really put it

you know a emphasis in regards to not only the commitment of having you know support therapy dogs or you know a robust peer support system and use of technology also help out in regards to ensuring

that we are not only taking care of the physical but also the mental you know there is things within our department that our career opportunities changes that wasn't available for us as officers our

journal first responder this is something that is again technology is a big thing with our younger generation so having opportunities to challenge themselves and to be able to be part of things that

are you know speaks to them in regards to their particular desires we really use you know the social media aspect that's another opportunity with our particular younger generation officers being

involved in that activity within a respective districts or within the department we do have another couple of opportunities with you know the civilian side you know the forensic investigators the

crime analysts those are things that draw off you know the younger generation into the particular department I don't know if you have something to add to that. So we're constantly thinking of creative

ways to enhance recruitment and retention efforts we participate regularly in a recruitment and retention work group that has citywide leadership including a little shout out to all the women more

here who's on it to figure out ways to tap into nontraditional populations for recruitment and then also retention purposes I get like working nights and a younger generation not appealing to that one

of the things I know we are doing is targeted recruitment to older recruits people who may be out of their 20s 30s I think we have a recruit in their 50s even am I correct? So 60s so really trying to

target an additional audience where those hours and things like that may be more appealing to somebody who's looking for longevity in a steady career some things unfortunately like when you start you

got to work nights can't be changed because we're bound by CBA and union agreements and that's all based on seniority however we do have discussions about ways that we can supplement what's we're

bound by by those union agreements to enhance those career experiences for new recruits. Yeah and again we'll ask more questions of FPC on recruiting but it would be good to have a graph showing

retirements and attrition people leaving the force moving on to other things versus our classes and seeing that trend line which I know budget must be watching closely as well but I mean whatever we

say and all the things we promising ideas we have the final metric is these classes we're having that are not going up that are not increasing in size and you know we've hired an external consultant

and tried all sorts of things so anyway we'll get into that more with FPC but I know you guys play a role as well. We added just one last point Halderman Spiker we added one additional person to our

recruiting unit to just help manage the workload and the engagement load that they go out because they supplement what the fire and police commission does but even further than that our budget this

year we're asking for five more police aides and I've spoken about that before getting people in the organization educating them to what the job is about moving them around every six months allowing

them to get formally educated on duty time because that's what the program allows has been really a force multiplier for us because we have a hundred percent retention rate with police aides in other

words and we've even we worked with fire and police commission to get some of their rules change to you have to at least have one year of service as a police aide and reach the age of 21 to get

consideration for the following academy class so we're doing everything we can to maximize you know that to get people in the organization as a matter of fact this December class has a crime analyst

leaving the Office of Management Analysis and Planning and has joined in their police academy so it kind of works both ways sometimes so between police aides and internships getting younger people

into the organization to see what we do to see what we're about and bode well for us on this sworn and professional staff side okay and reaching near the end of my questions here is and this is for

budget I thought the department said seven CSOs were asked for funding if you look in the green book it looks like there's four per district that are funded yeah that's correct I mean and we talked

about this a little bit at the last finance meeting there are 30 positions but they're backed out via the PCA so there's seven funded positions which is an increase from 26 budget of five funded

positions I think there may only be three currently so given the PCA these if somebody just looks at the booklet it looks like they're funded for 30 but in actuality it's correct yeah I think we

talked about this a couple years ago when they were all on one line item now they're split between districts and frankly long term it's a discussion we maybe should have about whether there should be

four per district long term I mean generally you don't want to go down and come up but yeah the funded level is way beneath the authority level okay and then my last I will have an AI question later

so don't worry about that about the use of AI in the department and the young staff you're bringing aboard in the training with that with OMAP license investigation unit but for the last question I

guess since the flack and facial recognition hasn't been brought up there is so earlier this year facial recognition was kind of backed off by the department at a somewhat contentious foreign police

commission hearing flock has been in the news lately an outside observer might see a trend where the department has something they think is helpful going to help them with with crime fighting but then

there is a backlash in the community that one might think might have been foreseen but was not and then this tool either gets shelved entirely like facial recognition or builds up a sort of massive

distrust that then with with flack and helpers that then is hard to see how we're going to move beyond so just wondering in general with some of these I guess you might think of them as surveillance

tools with MPD is there anything are there any lessons learned here for how we might move forward so I know we could talk about flack all day but are there lessons learned in terms of how the

department uses these technologies and how they kind of try to message to the public and put in guardrails before adopting these kind of powerful tools so thank you for the question I know that

there's always a how we can improve review in regards to all the things that we do within our department but there are lessons to be learned that as much as we can communicate and work with you all

work with our community to ensure that we're being transparent and also receiving the feedback it is important for the trust and also for the support and being open that you know as technology keeps

on evolving learning again what is that evolution and is that something that we as a group can sign off on or we have to you know re-examine and say okay what we're doing here the biggest takeaway I

believe is just more communication engagement that was part of the 2027 goals you know when we talk about facial recognition technology that was something that again this administration inherited

where we didn't have any rules or any engagement over just how we were going to operate this administration brought this forward to the public in regards to once it was revealed this is the

conversation that was it wasn't like it was an aha moment that somebody had brought out it was us bringing to the forefront and making sure that we were not being to be transparent but also to again

get the feedback and to have that level of engagement in regards to the current situation with the Alper situation or license out on made license plate readers this again something we use over 20

years and knowing and seeing just the outcomes of what is available or able to accomplish with the particular technology is why there is little bit more being intentional and being thoughtful about

how to navigate this so I know that this is always everything we do is always a consistent conversation to ensure that we're here in all spaces and as especially the executive over the department

being intentional meaningful and thoughtful reflective and introspective rather than any particular type of knee jerk reaction but I do appreciate the feedback from the community I appreciate the

feedback from the leaders and you know navigate as carefully and as again inclusive as possible in regards to our technology technology is a challenging conversation because it's a just as we had the

pursuit conversation you darn if you do darn if you don't we know that those who wanted to do harm to our community uses it I know that we are again when you talk about staffing issues being able to

navigate it where we are using it in a way that's efficient effective for the department but we need to be responsible with it just as you said you know safeguards guardrails again improve it upon

that reviewing it as we know we do have an Alper SOP that's being updated it's being reviewed so it is important to make sure that we are continuously being mindful and assessing you know where we're

at with our technology and you know being responsible with it yep and I guess my lesson learned suggestion is just if some technology has a chance of right racing to salience make sure those

guardrails are out in front of the public immediately once the facial recognition thing devolved it was only a matter of time for the Alper thing which is a familiar technology to race to be risen to

salience so I know there's a bunch of guardrails that just got brought in but they're you know having it established earlier once the trust is broken I'm sure you know put in all the guardrails you

want you just don't gain that back so anyway I have more but I'm happy to pass on thank you madam chair thank you alderman we'll now move on to alderwoman charlin more thank you so much I'll probably

touch on a few things from some of the things that my colleagues shared and then try not to be have asked too many questions for the first round chief you talked about we've had about we've been using

automated license plate readers for the last twenty years has it been with the same contractor over those last twenty years or are there different contractors I'm trying to understand what's different

now so we have multiple contractors are using I know that we do have axon involved in this flock and also Genetank and so those are license plate readers that we have you know squad cars some in fixed

areas but yes there's a wide variety of different vendors being utilized thank you it was overwhelming that a lot of the folks residents that attended the budget hearing talked about the contract with

flock I'm sure many of us are still getting those emails to discontinue the contract can you talk a little bit about or whomever talk a little bit about what are the plans moving forward with that

particular contract because I believe it's due to be renewed in January so we have put extensive guardrails on flock and that vendor and so for us it makes budgetary and sense to continue with the

vendor we already have the least equipment installed and the permitting in place and all the things to switch vendors that would require the removal of that the installation of new devices etcetera

but most importantly and most importantly for this public it would require us to build that robust auditing function on a brand new system and so what we've put in place we stand behind we're

confident I'll have James talk about that but for a number of reasons just weighing you know what the vendors are out there what we have the ability to do the decision is you know we're going to move

forward in that renewal yeah thanks James Lewis police risk manager good morning and I think that part of your question older woman more kind of goes back to what alderman spiker just asked which is

best practices and so the response that our department has had to this salient issue is to put the professional staff in a position to really triage what has happened what we needed to do to build

institutions of accountability around that specific product and then going from there is like the touch points of doing routine audit and so you know the decision to go with a contractor you have to

understand the vendors that supply this technology have not necessarily done the deep dive that our professional staff has done into what that looks like traditionally when they have these products

they will say it has audit features or it has some sort of history of the audit trail what we've built around our Alper system is a pretty comprehensive system independent of the vendor that we could

replicate for other vendors it would just be a matter of time and so from the efficiency standpoint January will be here before we know it you know we've seen other communities go to different vendors

and they've signed long term contracts with them I think every those discussions are all pretty nuanced but because the institutions that we've built have been specific for this vendor I think that

contributes to the decision that we have to make about you know are we going to onboard a new vendor and kind of go through the same motions with them at a delay which could result in you know either

not having the oversight we need or a gap in service delivery or do we keep with the institution and the foundation we've built you know just to make a point on it it kind of feels like you know the

foundation's built and now do we abandon that foundation or do we keep building on it and so that that has been part of those discussions thank you and let me say thank you all for allowing us time

myself and alderman spiker had the opportunity to come over get a really oh gosh I'm sorry the Bergales yes yes yes alderman spiker was there as well but me and alderman Bergales thank you had an

opportunity to come over and get a little bit of a deep dive in it answered quite a few questions that we have if I say the statement getting rid of flock does that does that get rid of automated

license plate readers is that a would that be a true statement if we got rid of flock does that get rid of automatic license plate readers okay and also really quick in regards to the because there

was another complexity here as well in regards to the bids some bids have invested dollars into this sort of technology as well can you talk a little bit about just how that how that works yeah so we

have seen some of our business improvement districts want to contribute to the Alper system that we've built they dedicated funds from their bids and the bids really are independent we don't tell them

what they must buy or how they must do it it's really an option or a choice to participate in that system or not they have they've made considerable investments in a network of cameras that feed into

our system those cameras have been helpful in addressing I think what the bid is after which is public safety within the bid they've also contributed to public safety just generally in the city but

there is a large investment that that they have made and one of the challenges with that too is if you were to change vendors it's like going from iPhone to Samsung and if everybody bought iPhones but

now we're saying hey it's actually a Samsung now you have a choice to make which is to not participate or to reinvest those same dollars in at the expense of something else you know so you and I don't

know what those bid contracts are I doubt that they would expire at the same time that ours would I don't know the answer to that but that would be something too if you know at different times they're

starting contracts with this vendor and so if you no longer had that vendor you may be having a bid who's paying money into a system that the police department is supposed to use and can't even access

interesting okay let me sort of switch gears a little bit when we talk about severe sort of breach of public safety when or severe breach of trust from our constituents just recently there was an

incident with MPD where there was a gentleman I think it was multiple particular gentleman that was cuffed and he was looks like from just the video looks like he was assaulted while while being

cuffed how do we address these you know and again let me preface it by saying there's a lot of work that has gone on in our department to move us in the direction where where we're doing sort of fair

policing and doing things that is within standard within reason when these sorts of incident happen is it important for our leadership MPD leadership to get in front of it and share back with our

community that you know these will be investigated you know these sorts of things we don't want these sorts of things to happen what is sort of the rule of thumb chief when it comes to these sorts of

incidents again happening fewer and far between so that says a lot right but when they do occur what is the message that we need to send back to the community so when thank you for bringing this up

and this is something I know I think believe occurred over the weekend and whatnot and so one of the things that I will say is always important to understand we take all these particular type of

situations seriously we look and investigate quickly I know that we have to drill down to ensure that this is again get the get the full scope of what happened what going on who's involved I will

always say that we are never shy about reporting out what our investigations outcomes are again like I said we put our items of discipline on public display but when we do have those inquiries we

immediately respond and look and get to the bottom of it as always I've said this in many different particular venues I would not tolerate it can unprofessional unconstitutional inhumane behavior I

always said that and I never studied I say that during the promotions I say that in regards to you know we have graduations now stand by that and so it is important that you know we take complaints

seriously we were brought to the this to our attention I haven't seen the items just as of yet but I was briefed on it and I'm aware of it I'm always concerned to hear anything that has the you know

again the allegations of you know unprofessional or inhumane behavior but we do take these particular complaints seriously and we look into it immediately thank you thank you for that as we're looking

at last year it was shared with us a data point around probably about roughly 50% of our officers have been on the job for about five years if I remember that stat correctly so there's you know

there's a new batch of folks coming in can you talk a little bit about like what is like the average number of folks that are retiring so we have folks that are coming in and we have folks that are

also going out are we talking to folks to extend retirements just to support our numbers what does that sort of average looks like we try to make our again retention is important in regards to our

particular men and women having the type of culture that people want to extend their time is important I know that there's a number of people just start off with our executive command staff we work

past our retirement and so I believe that there is still that level of you know want to continue to do the work is being done but I will have to admit that the environment is tough there has been a

change in some of the narratives out there in regards to law enforcement or public safety but I will say not enough I believe that there is still some opportunity for us to support and however we can

do to retain a lot of times you know money is one factor but you know again opportunities is another factor creating opportunities for our members ensuring that there is that mobility I mean being a

large department we do have the ability to promote and so those things are very instrumental in helping keep retention there but AC sorrow can talk about my guys what the numbers look like and you

know what the future looks like for that yeah I believe the LRB document that was provided also shows total of separations versus additions versus subtractions we shared some data with public safety

and health in September but this is something that the chief and the executive command staff we look at every six months so beginning of this year we had members from the rank of from the chief all

the way on down that could have retired from 2025 and prior years and that number was 82 in 2026 we had three classes that were eligible to retire so these are the classes that would have came on in

2001 right around either before or after 9/11 and that number was 91 when you look at the end of the year so a total of 173 individuals members could have were either eligible to retire or would be

eligible after this year and right now as it stands through pay period 20 we're at 134 so we've had members from previous years leave as well as when we get to these anniversaries these 25th

anniversaries we have people leaving a lot of those in a lot of the ranks that we see typically involve police officers that are still in patrol duties frontline frontline roles when they reach that

point in their career they're looking to transition out of that and there could be any number of reasons why that could be some of the discussions I've had with just you know in the elevator from my

office all the way down is because I asked those questions and it's I don't want to you know god forbid something happens to me and I don't want to pull my wife or my family through that or they have

other things beyond this job that they want to explore so we do see individuals retire and after a period of time come back to work for the department though in a civilian capacity they just have that

time space that separation then they do come back and we're able to transition them into a role here provided we have the funding and the position available under what's called the police service

specialist investigator position I think that's what the acronym is yeah so we do have the ability to bring them back in a professional sense but not a sworn sense anymore so what does a retention

look like for those folks that have been here for about five years I'd have to do a little bit more analysis on that I would I would be curious to know how many of because you know I know Heather

talked about sort of this work life balance right getting into the job is far different from you know actually you know being in the thick of things is very different you know from you know this

notion of what you might encounter right and so I'm curious to know what that retention rate is like for those folks that have been with us for about five years or so because again I think it all

boils down to it's a hard job I mean at the at the end of at the end of the day policing is just it's it's it's complicated it has all you know it has its nuances we're still learning to do things

better you know that sort of thing and so I would just be curious in that in that data point to be fair we've also had a number of people who would have left in that five to ten year you know range

that have since applied to come back as be a reinstatement because they've discovered that the grass isn't always greener on the other side and this department offers more opportunities for

development more opportunities for growth more opportunities in a lot of these smaller jurisdictions what we see is that there may only be a select number of detectives a select number of sergeants or

lieutenants or so on here we have a high number of those positions that you know assuming you test well enough you can get promoted into a position like that whereas you may not have those

opportunities elsewhere so we do see and I believe I shared that with PSH on back in September how many reinstatements we had here today in 2026 perfect thank you I'm really quick I'm a talk a little

bit about going back to what my colleague was sharing about risk management you all came in recently to public safety we talked about the swatting incident and one of the things that I was trying to

really get to was the correlation of when we have things that we can learn from does it trigger policy policy change so that it doesn't happen again right because again a lot of it is wait a second we

might be missing these pieces or you know how do we do better at you know looking at these particular incidents and making sure that we're learning from them and that they don't happen again

especially to the magnitude that we saw in reference to this recent incident can you all talk a little bit about you know as we talk about risk management just the correlation of incidents that we get

sued and I'm not worried about dollar amounts but we do get we do get sued we lose those lawsuits right or we settle etcetera how do we learn from those incidents and how does it trigger my main thing

is how does it trigger policy yeah so that's there is a nuance to that question but the general way that we address those are once a claim goes into a lawsuit posture the city attorney's office takes

over the the entire claim and through the process of representing the city I work directly with the city attorneys who are on that case and we go through the facts of the case and we go through what

our policies are and what our training has been and if they find a deficiency they do point those things out in in the scope of their representation sometimes it's it's something like hey you just

don't have policy on this or you do have policy on it and the individual did not live up to the letter or spirit of that policy and and we need either individual training or group training on that

they have made recommendations in the past but when we bring those items to the council that is a frequent question members who may have seen me at the judiciary and legislative committee are frequent

I'm frequently asked you know what are we doing with this particular officer after this specific case and the answers are really fact dependent but it is something we certainly monitor we look to

address our policies proactively as well too so part of my job is to monitor things that are going on with with civil rights in the city constitutional policing in the city far before it gets to a

position where it would be a lawsuit and so at those points right we're trying to find what the best practices are and and then either we need to change some sort of policy or change how we're

teaching it so I work directly with the training academy as well I work with doing in service curriculum so every year we get a constitutional policing curriculum to the officers it's a refresher in

most cases but we have added new concepts we've talked about best practices we've tried to incorporate more specific Milwaukee cases using our body cams to show officers you know here's what we're not

talking about a hypothetical let's talk about an actual and so there are certainly levers that we can pull to make those outcomes better it's something we monitor daily and work with our partners at

the city attorney's office to even on cases where we may win you know they may say to me here's what I'd like to see the next time can we work on that and so we take that feedback so to put a caps on

it this is a continuous process it's not one hit and we're done that's one of the main things especially within this administration meaning the executive administration that we do on a daily basis

we're looking at the training we're looking at the state operating procedures we're also looking at character though you know some things might not need a change in the SOP or training might be a

change in this in person this particular person's occupation and so it is a holistic review to ensure that if there is something that can fill a gap that we can approve on because we should be

providing the resource and train to our you know people capturing what we expect directives in the SOP but also that's where accountability comes in in regards to those who have crossed the line for

those certain instances when we see a particular you know judicial case where there is a character flaw that needs to be addressed as well so it's definitely something that we take seriously I take

very very seriously especially in regards to that is our responsibility especially at the executive level to provide the leadership the type of expectations meaning the SOPs are the training so that

you can have the best version themselves delivering those services or accountability when they are not following those SOPs or expectations in the training thank you thank you so much for that chief

and and this round with one more question we see the calls for services that they you know perhaps the top five or six districts that have those calls on pretty regularly please know that I understand

systemic issues right that Milwaukee is very segregated we have areas that are have a lot of blight have a I mean and we know where those areas are like DNS was here last week and we looked at the

heat map and exactly where the calls for services are on here is exactly where that heat map relies on right so please allow me to say I understand that this isn't all a policing issue okay we can't

police away our way out of impoverished neighborhoods however we can make sure that we build up those neighborhoods to have adequate housing opportunities right like young people children shouldn't be

walking past homes that every other house is you know dilapidated or vacant right or just empty lots like we know a lot of that is centered in particular communities with that my question centers

around knowing that we have those issues is it just customary we have seven districts is it customary for those districts to and I'm just I'm using an I'm gonna use an arbitrary number like okay each

district will have a hundred officers you know in them or is it more centered around you know what we have some needs in these particular areas so we'll have more numbers in these particular areas

versus in other areas but it also goes back to what my colleague Alderman Bergales was saying in reference to one officer per X number of constituents how do we deal with that because we're going to

continue these issues are going to continue to permeate so one of the things especially our professional team does examination and again P.C. Johnson bringing a little bit more conversation is but

cost of service is a huge part of that deployment of how many officers in the respective districts understanding that there is that immediate need that needs to be addressed especially regards to

those cops who's coming in but we do take in consideration I mean you know I mean there's a number of different factors in regards to that because service is one of the bigger ones and you can see

from the different districts where we have a huge number from the district three seven or fives this is the unfortunate before I turn it over to him but I do absolutely and you've seen me out there

understand the underlying causes of what we see for these behaviors and as we show that one particular side referrals that is our understanding of utilizing our partners and our neighborhood services

DCD to be able to say that we might not have a direct responsibility in that particular type of issue but we can have a part of helping be the other set of eyes and ears you can ask my assistant

cheese just today I saw a boat that was dumped out behind an abandoned you know closed store you know I'm calling consistently in regards to these particular light issues these particular type of

issues my team or our team understands our responsibility of being a part of that conversation and to be assistive in regards to how do we all share this multi you know complicated you know

responsibility of utilizing our services for the betterment of our community so there is a real focus on those particular type of you can say quality of life issues but it is as we are working towards

having healthier you know neighborhoods it's part of the vision and mission of the market police department we understand our role of being able to work with our partners and to work with our

residents to ensure that we're doing our part as well do you want to say anything else so regarding the allocation of when you look at comparing like district seven or to a district six or two not

only are we looking at those calls for services but what are those actual calls that we are receiving so we look at one of those factors we look at the part one crimes so the part one crimes are those

you know most egregious crimes where it is the priority ones zeros that we respond to so when it comes down to the allocation of those resources taking that that into consideration not only what those

calls for services coming in amongst our districts and then the part one crimes so now our OMAP staff prepares that document every year in January that's just tell me hey this is this is what will be

the recommended staffing for each of my locations so taking that into consideration and one thing about my the patrol bureau it is constant change it's the largest number of sworn officers within my

bureau but it also the one that's one thing that is constant is change yeah so with retirements promotions people are coming in and out throughout the year so that's why we have to look at the

staffing not only at the beginning of the year but where we at throughout the whole year so you take a number district seven and that spans multiple automatic districts but that district has the

highest number calls for service within the city of Milwaukee so when it comes down to allocating resources so we try to take all that into consideration then what are those type of calls so of course

when I'm when we are now trying to deviate divvy up our OITs upon graduation right we're taking all that in consideration I asked my commanders you know throughout the year when we're trying to

allocate these resources what were your additions subtractions throughout the year so my team my inspectors and I we can now drill down on all right this district gets two OITs or five OITs or or you

tell me what have you lost what in the OIT class fires the span train females or whatever those other specialties attributes that OITs may possess that then we try to allocate those resources

throughout the year so that's that's something that like I said we do at least three to four times a year so we just kind of put a capsule on that the decisions are mindful they're actually you know

data-based it's not just a you know throw a dart on the wall and taking consideration the needs of our respective districts even in light of as you know AC Johnson alluded to they give us

recommendations we have gone above and beyond what those recommendations are based on we understand the needs and understand the desires for the particular type of staffing that you weigh in respect

of automatic districts thank you thank you for that Johnson and chief I appreciate that I'm trying to figure out how we can again continue to work with our community partners shout out you just have

to do a shout out to we work very heavily with near West Side partners that have oh my gosh amazing team over there as well as we've done some work with safe and sound as well I saw based on the data

that you know currently right now the Department of Community Wellness and Safety has only had one referral compared to the following year what would be attributed to I mean again a department that is

supposed to be really instrumental in supporting our community what would be the cause of the lack of those referrals I'm not aware of that I definitely know that they are a robust partner with the

work that we do we have what's called the weekly public safety reviews they are part of the VR fast that we are involved in beyond that the respective districts and the criminal investigation bureau

have constant communication with the staff so I don't know if there's any light on that and the referrals there's a distinction between referrals and working in partnership with an agency on

addressing an issue so a referral is truly a warm handoff where the information came to us and we're like you know what we this this really isn't our wheelhouse we need to give this to another partner

versus this issue comes in and we're all working together on that issue so the distinction between a referral and the work that we do is is not reflective in these numbers these are true referrals

where we're we shouldn't be the lead on this this is really not a policing issue this is a something else issue but we got it so that that doesn't reflect our partnership with the Department of

Community Wellness and Safety because we do have many different scenarios where we're working together to figure out those solutions you know a multitude of different places and spaces across the city

and when incidents occur so I don't for any of those agencies it's not a number that reflects all of those times when we're working together these are just those incidents where it ain't us it it

really should belong to somebody else interesting and I'll in my round you know by just giving a shout out to under the leadership of Captain Bratchett the team Kelly O'Neill with the community

prosecutors division officer King Sanders Cruz and our my bike officers love them O'Zellie and ten Haken ten Haken thank you I just you know I value and appreciate the support that they continuously

you know provide and I'm just you know grateful to work with a good team of folks that see just the best in community and communicates out when you know when they're issues so I'll yield there and

pass it on for the next round thank you so much all the women will now do our second round here and we'll make them a little more efficient so we're trying to get to two questions here we'll start

with all the women Millie Lee Cox it's gonna be a little more than two I just want to prepare you that's okay I stayed it out there that we try the cause for services I heard the description that was

provided is there a way to break down those numbers in so that it is more reflective of what was stated to hear us what was stated to us here today meaning yes it's a whatever percent increase but

those increase were level seven you get what I'm saying where is where we can see apples to apples in what those decreases or increases might have been part district is there a way to break on that

down by the numbers priority call one two three four you know I'm saying as far as the priorities I don't have it broken down by the priorities but I do have like the call for services that was broken

down by each location and each shift but then at the end the aggregate is of you know what was those total overall call for services for throughout the year so you know we have I have what those

percentages broken down by day early and leach you is it possible to be able to break it down by party the part of the debate I think we all want we all want the most possible coverage we can get with

quality good officers with good care and we all have constituents that want more I want to see police officers more whatever and you all have a limited number of officers to deal with and you have to

make decisions as to where they go but if I gotta choose between you going to someone as a priority seven or you having enough officers to show up for priority one I think I'm gonna choose priority

one so I think it would help and maybe it's impossible to do but it would help even when you show that but the by district numbers and a percentage increases or decreases and all that kind of stuff

that it shows the categories yeah so just to clarify because I believe this is a project OMAC has done in the past even for the determination of where we send our patrol resources you want the level

of priority call broken down by district with this information about the response times yeah yeah and for me broke down with the priority thing is it's less about the response time but I think that's

critically important to you but just more about yes it's an increase like in my district was an increase of I think 4% was an increase in priority ones or was that increase in priority seven yeah so

that's that's one the risk manager you know for years we tried to handle this whole risk management thing I just would police department for a period with the lawsuits that we receive and some of the

biggest lawsuits that we get in settlements that we have to do is with the police department and it feels like we're continuing to chase the issue and we've created positions and we've done a whole

bunch of stuff through the years um with you with your position um and I heard the stuff that you explained and I've been at jail and I heard you and it even asked the questions about what happens in

office I guess I'm looking for do you have a recommendation for how the reporting out of adjustments made as a result of those lawsuits as a result of those settlements and things that both you all

internally as well as the city attorney may be advising you all could change or improve or have changed or improve for the future to help to at least try to prevent such settlements and such lawsuits

in the future some better reporting out than if someone randomly acts you a jet lag do you think there's a better way that based on the information you have that that could come forward to us I think

that that's it's one of the conversations I've had ongoing with the city attorney Evan Goikey um his staff has seen some changes in the leadership there and it's but it's one of the commitments you

know we try to meet regularly have meetings and have an open dialogue um so I think that that's something that we're building towards um I think as far as like a specific report out to council to be

more proactive that's something I'd have to balance um with Evan just because of the nature of some of those cases it it is the fact that you know until it gets to that point there are things that are

privileged like attorney-client privilege that we don't want um to breach the privilege while we're litigating the case um and so it may I I do respect that it may feel that way that it only comes up

in um when I'm specifically asked it could be any of the cases that have already been settled already been adjudicated I think that that's something that we can certainly give some uh some effort to

um just so that you can see from from your all side of the table uh what is it that we did when we say hey we did the work um to show the work so um that's like a point well taken I think and um

certainly something that I will bring up to Evan as well as um you know when we are past the point of triage and uh privilege and into the point where we can say something about it what should that

look like and where should it happen to whom and what's the cadence and just so you know similar stuff was brought up to the city attorney's office and made a similar commitment to you know work with

us on that I'll just be honest with you so you know I will be putting in a footnote with a resolution a direct thing you ought to do some kind of annual report to us I would love to have guidance from

you and a city attorney to what that could realistically look like but whether it's there or not it will be a footnote um in this budget um for it but thank you um there are is it three classes in the

budget for at least yeah and how many officers total is that uh 195 right I'm sorry 195 three five what do you plan to do if all things go well and you get a whole 195 um officers what are your

priorities and how to use them well it's always about staffing and it's always going to be again how do we utilize what we have received to have the most robust staffing at the district level I

believe that that's going to be always the first concern of ensuring those particular type of um members are available for the needs of your respective districts so that will be the first priority in

regards to seeing how we can have that type of robust injection into the districts when the academy classes come out we are always putting them to the districts um and being mindful even the team as

they want to do promotions because that comes from the districts I don't do one for one and they know that I mean if 30 comes out I might do 15 promotions maybe even less depending on what it is so it

is a constant um scrutiny and review of what our district staffing looks like and how do we can make sure that there is that level of additional members to help out for the work um for the budget

office for the CSO as you said although it looks like 30 and three I already feel you're really not funding it for the full authority because it's already been taken out of what'd you say the PCA yeah

the PCA yeah well what level is it funded seven it was five and 26 proposed for seven and 27 so it's only funded for seven oh correct so if you wanted to add or if you wanted to add a CSO we probably

would reduce the PCA or vice versa okay for your vehicles I know every year there is discussion about um where you all are at on your uh your cycle of replacement and all that kind of thing I know I

saw that it was funded at the same level as funded last year where do you all sit on your vehicle uh replacement plan or whatever you can add I mean we're never in the spot that's recommended I mean

we have more older vehicles out there than we uh by industry standard but uh those vehicles normally the bulk goes to patrol but uh a CSO can shed a little bit light on that yeah so our funding uh for

this year is two million dollars uh two million dollars gets us and that includes the upfitting of these vehicles and we buy them under the state contract it is just that it's a vehicle it's not a

squad car so it costs about forty five thousand dollars to get the car under the state contract it costs another thirty five thousand to up fit it so in the end we're looking at twenty two to twenty

four cars is what we can get for two million dollars of the ford uh police interceptor utility hybrid vehicles and what is the average age of your fleet now I'd have to I don't have that readily in

front of me I can get back to you on that yeah if you could and um what the kind of best practice is for the age of fleet nationally if you can give me that as well all right thank you um I think my

last question um is about overtime where are we projected to be sitting at the end of twenty six and where is that in relationship to what we funded and my apologies if you already spoke on this no I

don't know if we did in detail I mean over time is well it moved like all the other storylines because the twenty six budget didn't have the new you know it's based on the old contract so if you're

you're going to see movement I don't think you're seeing much movement in hours of overtime right no so same project but I don't know how are we looking for twenty six do you think um I would have to

look into that and get you the specific numbers on overtime I can get you the overall fund list Laura has some more detail good morning Laura and again in the luck of this department the level of

funding in twenty twenty six we had for overtime kept the number of hours consistent with twenty twenty five because MPA and MPSO hadn't settled at that point in time the rate for overtime in the

current budget was at all rates of pay so what we did for twenty twenty seven is proposed the same level of resource commitment the same number of hours that we've had in the last two years but tried

to fund them at the new rates of pay we anticipate that we will be within our allocated hours in twenty twenty six um if you look at the line item in the twenty six budget we will be above that and

that just is simply because those rates were at the old rates of pay thank you so hopefully the WSF will cover or there'll be others either though first we'll do other savings and please if they exist

then we'll go to WSF to close out twenty six but yeah we do expect it if they do the number of overtime hours they projected they'll be over budget because it was the old rates of pay but that's what

the WSF is for last thing on the overtime um I know I did footnotes years ago um that I hope just became a regular thing and I was just continuously looking at ways that overtime might be able to be

um eliminated or lessened is that something that you continue to do absolutely um we do regular reviews and regards to our budget there is the accountability measures that I expect from my commanders

to ensure that they are having proper oversight um and that we utilize again so many of the different resources and tools that help minimize how much you know a actual service member needs to be

working I mean you know using say technology helps in regards to the efficiency of not having to have workers doing certain type of uh services and so it is a top of the mind to ensure that uh you

know beyond even that you know the fiduciary you know responsibility you don't want to have your offices overworked either and so that is a thing that we have to be keep in mind as well that helps

with the wellness you know what you said wellness and I'm sorry I know I said in my last but you said wellness and it made me think I did hear that small increase in um staff accessing the well You

know, on one hand, I think it's a great thing. On the other hand, I guess I'm wondering do you all think it's a great thing? Do you think? What do you think is driving that? It's a double-edged sword.

You want our members to embrace wellness. Obviously, you don't want to have someone who is dealing with mental challenges or, you know, physical challenges in the community dealing with, you know,

services that can be a challenge. On the flip side, though, you're absolutely right, you know, drilling down, what are these stressors? I know, and it's only anecdotal, but, you know, between working

conditions and hours, I mean, you know, we had a couple of officers shot, you know, in line of duty, you know, we are dealing with some challenging narratives out there. So then you still have to keep

in mind that they're human beings, so they have home lives and other stressors out there. And so it is important for us to provide the resources, but it does come at a cost and believe me, and you

can, as they see starting, I'm always challenging in regards to what are those deliverables, knowing that we do have a pretty healthy, you know, medical program. We do have services to the city, the

EAP, the place this is program, but we do understand that, you know, we do have critical incidents. We do have a number of different, you know, you're talking about some of the job assignments, you

know, where there's a sense of crimes homicide, you're seeing some speakable things. And so I'm proud that we have come a long way with wellness and that is being embraced a little bit more without

feeling like there is going to be a label, but also shows you just how much we need it. And, you know, definitely it does come with its respective challenges and cost. Thank you. That's all I have.

Thank you so much. All the women cogs will now move on to Alderman Bergales. Thanks. I'll copy or continue from all the women cogs question about fleet three and a half million was was spent in twenty

twenty five two million budgeted for this year and two million proposed for for next year from the previous budget. There was a reallocation of the council did for an E.V. pilot for E.V. squad cars,

some support vehicles, some infrastructure at district locations. How is that pilot going? It's probably two. We haven't gotten a report on a formal report in public safety yet because I don't think

we've had enough time. But is it positive? Is it not? You have something prepared. Great. I do know Captain Lasky loves it. Yeah, senior social media. I know you love it. No, yes. So we we consider

the official start date of January of this year because, as you know, we had some it takes time. Challenges getting the infrastructure in place, which we had to put in nine level three chargers across

the all of our district stations and facilities. And then we have the three Chevy Blazers and then the one Ford Mustang Machi, which we use as a short run vehicle down at the police administration

building. So anybody can take that out and use it. It depends who you ask. We've gotten feedback from as it's at TSU District six and PIO forgot what the other work location is. SRO school resource

officers use it. So we have we've kind of received a lot of different feedback from depending on where it's at. For general patrol operations, one of the cons is there just isn't it's a lot smaller.

They don't seem to have enough room to put people in the back. There's no room for like a rifle rack and room for equipment that was necessary to keep our officers safe and to keep the community safe.

For those that use it as kind of a one shift and done to allow it to charge, the feedback has been a little bit different, a little bit better. I do believe that and again, I was going to generate a

report for you for this like as we get closer to the end of the year where this looks to be going at this point in time. Is that we would still primarily fund the hybrid vehicles to get rid of some of

the older Ford Crown Vicks, which we have. You still have Crown Vicks? We do. We have 48 Crown Vicks. So that's the priority is to transition those out and then supplement EVs over time with some of

those district stations for CLO, CPU and those functions where it's a one shift and done to allow the ability for it to charge adequately between shifts. And then that presumably that end of your

report will also talk about maintenance and fuel costs. Correct, nodding heads behind you. Great. Thank you for that. Looking back at PCA, if anyone's following along at home, it's page 300.18.5. In

2025, it was the actual PCA from Director Kovac was $30 million.3, $26 is budgeted was $19 million.6 and $27's proposed budget has it at $28.2. That's a pretty big swing, $10 million back in '26. Was

the '26 budget number accurate or was that how did we get such a big swing? The swing from '25 to '26 had to do with reducing the total number, what you call before the paper cops. Oh, that was the

spiker that called the paper police. We're all getting too confused today, I guess. But that was, you know, we reduced the total funded level, I think, down to $17.25. It had been higher and then, or,

I'm sorry, that's position authority. Funded level was lower than that, but whatever it was, basically there was a higher funded level, but then we kept backing it out and we decided to reduce both

numbers. So that was the big change from '25 to '26. The big change from this year, '26 to '27, some of it is wages because it's personnel cost adjustments based on actual. So if wages go up, the

adjustment goes up too and there were a couple other factors to it. Yeah, and also with police, it's based on how many vacancies they have, so that number is going to change. And then a big chunk of

it is, I had mentioned there was 50 police officers added because of the cops grant. So that 4.7 is in the salaries, but it's also then taken out through the PCA. Because it's covered by the grant?

Yeah. Okay, but the vacancies, the paper police problem continues, though. We have 61 police aides budgeted, that's page 317.14 for $1.6 million, but we don't have any expectation that we're going to

have 61 police aides for 12 months of the year next year. And then the same thing with the community service officers, 90% vacancy on that line item now. We don't have any expectation that we're going

to hire 27 people January 1st. Correct. I think that, again, Laura, again, Milwaukee Police Department, I think some of the issue to clarify is, again, we fund salaries based upon experience and any

sort of policy change that had occurred between the last couple budgets. So, for example, when we start our estimate for 2027, we're looking at 2025 actual expenses. And then we'll adjust for any sort

of position changes or wage changes that happened before that time. We do, if you recall, in 2025, I believe we did switch the number of community service officers and police aides. Because police

aides are recognized as a really good tool for us to help recruit and increase our staffing levels for police. So what you're seeing at the department level then is the division level is a movement of

the CSOs to the actual patrol districts. Each of those patrol districts has four. Ultimately, the goal would be to have those four. But right now, we're at a point of being able to add each year to

that number. So last year we started -- >> Well, I want to be careful not to confuse police aides and community service officers. >> Right, so I just want to focus on the community service officers,

again, four per district. But our goal is to get there. But this year, funding, we've moved to seven. So we still would have a vacancy of three per district that are not funded. We would want to

retain that position authority so that in the future, funding becomes available. And that becomes a priority that we'd have the ability to actually hire those individuals. And you would see that

through additional resources being added in future budgets to fund those additional positions. >> Because when I looked at the budget, I looked at District 6 and said, oh, wow, we're getting four

community service officers. What a wonderful asset to the district. But that's not accurate if I'm looking at the budget trying to understand what the staffing is going to look like. >> Right, the

budget provides for total position authority and then the actual experience that we see in the department. That is reflected in that personal cost adjustment that will back out the vacancies related

to positions. >> Is there, maybe I missed it, is there a breakdown on what PCA line items affect PCA? >> Not within that budget document. But when we put the budget together, we do try to look at

that. We could certainly provide you some information about our estimate. >> I think the committee would also like to look at that. And that should be something available to the public so that we can

better understand where our position authority is, where our budget dollars are actually going, a $30 million swing, I get it. It's a very big budget. This is the public document that shows the public

where those resources are being allocated. And if there needs to be an adjustment to it, then that adjustment should be public as well. >> I think another piece of information that's helpful is in the

budget summary document that the mayor creates. This year you'll see a detailed listing of position changes, and that will really help you see and track what sorts of changes happen each year as part

of that budget process. >> Okay. And then page one of the presentation showed the department's presentation, page one. >> Oh. >> It had a great photo of smiling faces with 14 police aides. We don't

have 14 police aides. Is that photo old or did we have 14 of one point? Or not police aides, community service -- I'm sorry, not police aides, community service officers. But now we only have -- >> We

have three community service officers. That's 14 police aides that just graduated. >> Those are the police aides. >> Yeah, those are the police aides. >> And they all went to the academy? >> They all

have to go through a three-week course at the academy before then they get assigned to a work location. >> How are those work locations determined? >> They're determined by the training academy who

oversees the police aid program. And then every six months those positions are looked at and rotated. >> And then these are presumably -- these are young people. >> Correct. >> Right. And then the

expectations that they go onto the academy? >> Yes. The expectation is what we've seen is that they do go onto the academy when they are eligible. Again, which you -- >> You have to be 18? >> You have

to be 18 and become a police aide, but you have to be 21 to be a police officer. So we work with the FPC to change that rule where they have at least one year of experience on as a police aide and be

the age of 21. >> Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. >> Thank you. Okay. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Before I -- >> Okay. >> I couldn't read my scribbles. Special duty contracts in this

will likely be a very quick question, very quick answer. Special duty contracts don't -- previously did not include a pension adjustment for or a direct pension contribution in the contract. More and

more of our officers that are assigned special duty or that take special duty assignments on overtime are now part of WRS. And their overtime wages are subject to a pension -- are subject to our

pensionable earnings. >> Uh-huh. >> Since these special duty contracts are not tax levy supported, but the tax levy will have to support those ongoing pension needs. We've had some discussion in the

past about -- in the recent past about having a pensionable contribution in every special duty contract. Has that started yet? When's that expectation coming? I know the comptroller's office has

worked on that quite a bit as well. >> We did a report on -- did that report come to this committee, the analysis where you looked at? >> It did. And it said it's not worth it yet. >> That's what I

was going to say. Okay. So my question is, is it worth it yet? >> I think that that is certainly something to look at as we develop future contracts for special duty pay. We're actually in that

process right now looking forward to 2027. So it's something that we could keep, you know, our attention on as we develop those new agreements. >> Right. And I think it's very important to have that

direct pension -- have a direct pension contribution so that taxpayers aren't paying for all of the private overtime that police officers are doing. And by having a direct pension contribution, that

is a much different -- that's a much different revenue stream than having just an adjustment or an administrative percentage adjustment to the total contract cost. It shouldn't go to the department.

It shouldn't go anywhere other than a direct contribution to the pension fund. Thank you, Madam Chair. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Community liaison officers, does that remain that strategy?

It's kind of hard for me to tell with the different position authority the same. Is there an increase to status quo for 2027? Like the amount and where they're deployed? >> Yes. Every district has two

assigned. But again, that's a -- that's their focus. But everyone is suspected to be a community liaison officer in regards to the engagement being out there in a, again, connecting capacity. But from

an assignment, the commitment is to per district. >> If you had to kind of -- I don't want to guess, but an educated guess, how often are they being pulled off of their proactive kind of community-

oriented patrols or duties? I mean, is it like 50/50? Like, I guess another way of phrasing that, are they often able to commit the majority of their time to those community liaison activities,

meaning they're not responding to, you know, an active call? It appears that way, but I also realize that my district is different than other districts. >> Just historically, when it comes down to

those units, they are part of -- when it comes to DEC, they are not one of those units that is recommended for dispatch type assignment. But it doesn't preclude them from -- they hear something that

they will dispatch and go to those type assignments. But how we have it set up that they're not one of those recommended squads that respond to the initial calls that may come in. So that leaves us --

you know, I have a district commander here, but when it comes down to those units, they are able to handle those type assignments that they are. Like, the meetings that we, you know, as a former

district captain, my CLO, CPU, because it's a CLO and then as a community partnership unit, those officers make up that unit as a whole. But historically, how we have it set up now that they are not

one of those squads, that's recommended for -- if you hear that call come over. >> Right. But if there's an emergency, all hands. >> Exactly. >> Especially if they happen to be close to it, I can

understand. >> Yes. >> I know sometimes in my district, they also do really important wellness checks, which are life-saving as well. I do have one question specifically on the automated license plate

readers. Specifically, the part that I have been trying to understand through my research, I realize that you all have said that you're going to renew it for 2027. My question is with what funding

source. So it's historically -- and we have a memo that we've been given today. I just got it like an hour ago. It's been through grant funding. And I think while those funds are likely clearly

appropriate for this use, we have lost a little extra layer of transparency. I don't think it's intentional. But it's, you know, rarely has it actually come to a vote then to the common council. And

it's not about the council. It's about the people we represent. And so we do want to shed a little bit more light on that process and give people that opportunity to opine. It's not okay to just have

four hours of a public hearing the other night and say, "Well, there's not much that we can do about it." So we are trying to include that process. And I mean, when trust has been abused and you want

to rebuild it, that is a step forward. And you all are beginning to continue to make your case. I also went to go see the presentation as well. So using this grant funding and what has been kind of a

waiver process, etc., has not allowed a council scrutinizing or vote on this matter. So I guess my specific question is, which grant funding, or are you using grant funding in 2027? Or are you using

tax levy? Is it in the budget? That is my specific question. The funding source that will be used in 2027, because historically, it's been grant funding. Correct. The funding that we anticipate in

2027 would be, again, through the justice assistant grant program. And that's a three-year funding cycle, but we would envision using our 2027 allocation to pay for that cost as we have in the past

several years. So when specifically on that, when was the last time that the council voted to accept that grant was a number of years ago, correct? So that is typically an annual grant. And we did

just recently, maybe a month or so ago, was before the committee for acceptance to apply, accept, and fund that grant. We'll be back to consider JAG 25 due to some changes in language. And then we're

in the process right now of submitting our JAG request for JAG 2026. So when we hear that if that's been approved, then we'll be back before the council on the JAG 26. I would have to follow up on

just the contract renewals that occur in the summary documents that are provided for that renewal. If it's not clear in what do a purchasing provides in terms of the funding source, we could certainly

suggest that that also be added to clarify that that funding source for that contract would be through grant funds. Okay, I think you can see the combination of these items when the grants are coming

kind of in a grouping. And I think at one point a few years ago, it said like cameras were in a different moment now. I don't even know if years ago they were as AI amplified and nationally part of a

larger network. We are, like the chief said, we're in a moment. We can't keep up with some of these technologies. But when you combine that grant funding and then what has historically been kind of a

waiver process, which means that the council doesn't vote on it, it comes to us symbolically. Again, you can see the situation that's presenting challenges to the community. Do you see anything

different? Are you going to pursue a waiver again? Or would you be bringing that in front of the common council for an open vote? So that contract actually does have that annual extension opportunity.

And that's what we will be pursuing as part of that process. The city purchasing director does report to the finance committee on those contracts. When it comes to the actual grant award, we do in the

budget document that's attached to the file, try to provide a breakdown of some of the things that the particular grant funds. We can certainly provide much more detail if that's of interest. You

could look to see what we've provided in the past to see if that meets the test. But we're happy to provide that information and make sure that that whole process is transparent to the council. Okay.

With all due respect, the report is different than a public discussion and vote. We're not allowed a vote when it's reported to us. And I know that's not a process that you set up. So you're using the

process that's in front of you. And this is where we've had a bit of a challenge. So with full disclosure, I want to put out there what I'm asking for. I have submitted a charter change to have the

ALPR type mass surveillance come before the people of the city of Milwaukee so that can be discussed. And at that time, benefits can be discussed as well as challenges. You know, just to put a fine

point on this, I do think that the audit has made significant changes. I saw that with my own eyes. But there's still a very large part of this population that doesn't want to be surveilled 24/7. And

it's bigger than anybody in this room. It's an existential question. And I think that's not something that we're going to personally solve today. But I just wanted to speak it into the record because

when people say, oh, well, the audit made many changes, it did. In fact, I was able to see the difference between pre-audit and post-audit. And it was very different. In fact, before the audit

controls and dashboard, it's very unsettling how it was before. But then we made changes. So I think there just needs to be more public input. And we only have so many ways to do that. How else do we

do it? You know, when I'm being asked, well, how did you vote on it? Or how will you discuss it? How will you change it? And I don't have the opportunity, not your intention, but the process. Then my

next ability to do anything is to change the process. So we'll see what happens. But that's out there. I only wanted to provide the transparency that I'm asking for, too, so that you know what we're

looking at. I don't know what's going to happen with that. But it's actually a way to discuss it. Whether it will be an up or down vote, who knows? But the ability to discuss it and look at the

contracting and where the money is being spent and how we're involved in it, I think is really important. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to Alderman Scott-Spiker. Don't get too far away, Laura. Just as

long as we're on the JEG and JEG 26 grant. So I try to be maximally transparent. In my committee, I don't want any members to ever feel like I'm trying to hide something. So if there is something that

formerly was uncontroversial years and years, we passed it. But there is a funding source for something that has become controversial. I would want that highlighted so that we can have a discussion at

committee. And then when we refer, if we refer to F&P, to make sure that's highlighted there. Otherwise, what happens is then the committee gets very suspicious of all these things. And then we

approve nothing or it goes very slowly. So that would be an ask. With respect in this, I guess is for the budget office building on Aldor Bergales' question. So the CSOs, if you just looked at the

budget, so a couple of years ago, there was a big block of CSO positions and then money associated with it. And we're like, well, I was like, well, we never come close to that. So we'll take some of

that money and do a budget amendment. And we did great and wonderful things with that as usual. Social media for FPC and things like that. But what we're doing now by splitting it up is it still looks

like the money's there. And I'm not saying this, but for transparency, for members, and certainly for the public, we need a way to be able to see when something like that is going on. Otherwise, well,

first of all, it's just we can't do oversight if we don't know unless we have the PCA broken up by position. So is there a way, and not asking you to resolve this here, but is there a way going

forward, we could have some sort of flagging of when something like that is happening or it presented in a more transparent way in the budget book. So that's a bigger ask. I think it's a very

reasonable request. And Laura already mentioned she can get you a little bit of a breakdown on the PCA, which, you know, she works with Tyler on that. And now we do kind of mush it all together a

little bit. You look at historical actuals. So to actually get it by position and translate that to a PCA might-- I'm not sure we could be that precise. But we could certainly get you more

information. And I get there-- it's a very reasonable request to say, hey, are there really 60-- was it 60 before? And now it's-- you know, there's way more positions that appear to be funded than

really are. And that's not as transparent as we normally strive to be. So I agree we could improve the way this is presented. Yeah, and not just with the police department, but with departments in

general. That would be very helpful. So thank you. I guess I have a few questions for the Chief and Assistant Chief Johnson relating to patrol. It was stated, so when we look at metrics for how the

department's doing, we look at part one crime and see whether that's gone up or down. We never contextualize it in saying whether this is part of a nationwide trend. So then you run the risk of

saying, well, it went down because we were part of a nationwide wave. And we want credit for that. But then when it goes up because we're part of a nationwide trend, we don't want to blame for that.

And I want to be realistic. Of course, MPD is not in control of crime in the city, which some might find a staggering thought. But if our metric relates to part one crime, I guess it would be good to

know where we stand relative to other cities. So I'm not asking for that now, but just generally when we present that, without that contextualization, the data point seems not so meaningful to me. So

that's, I guess, one ask I have moving forward is that contextualization. The question for MPD with regard to allocation of resources, all of us will want to say we need more, perhaps in our district.

I tell my constituents the more serious violent crimes get an allocation to deal with that. But of course, what many of us sitting at the table face is telling our constituents who can vote with their

feet that if you have these quality of life crimes that are not, you feel like aren't being responded to and so you don't want to report them anymore, then people eventually say, well, why am I paying

taxes to live in Milwaukee? I should move to Greenfield or somewhere like that. So that's just a note. Now, lastly, arriving at my question, when we decide to allocate resources, we look at part one

crimes and their distribution throughout the city, among other things. Do we have any take on MPD's ability to influence some part one crimes rather than others? So what crimes are you just reacting

reactively and not having a deterrent effect versus ones that you feel like you have more of a sway over whether they're going to occur? So when you assign staff based on part one crime distribution

throughout the city, is any thought given to, well, these are the part one crimes we kind of can move the needle on. And these are the ones that are a little stickier and so harder for additional

staff to have an impact on, except retroactively. Is that too weird a question? - That was pretty deep. I will say a couple things just to address. While there are national trends in regards to what

we see across the nation about crime, there are still some uniqueness in regards to what we deal with in regards to our particular city. And if you can recall, even when we had a reduction of

homicides a year prior, we did not see that reflected in regards to our community, in regards to the challenges that we've seen about homicides. Thankfully, we're seeing a different trend now. But

when it comes to even power crimes, we do look at our part two crimes as well. We look at any partnership, prevention, working within our respective spaces for the VR fast, the public safety review

PSR. We are involved in very drilling down, looking at the causes, how can we prevent working closely with our partnerships to make the violence another space, being a part of the Mexican high-risk

teams, understanding that these contributions can have the overall impact in regards to our part one crimes, knowing that we use technology in a way to help us, again, address some of our part one

crimes. And so it is, yes, the sworn officer, the human aspect of response investigations, absolutely necessary. But we do look at how we can impact public safety holistically, looking at from a

standpoint beyond just we know we can't arrest, we cannot cite our way out. How do we address, again, some of those chronic systemic situations of being part of those conversations, because it's not

for us to own as we're the solution to that. Robust interactions with the officers of community while there's a safety, robust interaction with the safe and silos of the world, the other community-

based organizations, you know, Family Peace Center, (mumbles) Family Peace Center. And so we do understand that we do have a active role, but the biggest impact that I've seen is our positive

interaction with our community. When we see that people within our community are reporting upon their loved ones to us about things that they have seen impact in our community, tells me that there is

a level of trust there that we're gonna do the right thing in regards to handling those particular type of reporting, you know, mothers turning in there, you know, well, reporting their children.

These are items that I feel is a anecdotal but barometer that we're in a better space than we have been before in regards to us versus them. And so being intentional, you know, I don't know how we

could really emphasize how impactful to see what the CIB is doing from Investigation Bureau. That particular engagement and detection with donors that will happen in your district, ma'am, was

phenomenal. Having that level of engagement beyond just our expectation of uniform officers interacting with our public, hearing the conversation beyond just that it was, you know, I'm just a

detective talking about hospital responses or investigations, how things, you know, transpire. That is truly that connective tissue that helps us be a better interaction of, you know, between our

department and our public, which I believe transposes into seeing higher clearance rates. We have a above the board for non-fatal clearance rate that is, I will say, not duplicated by almost any

department in this nation. You know, the CS over 50% for non-fatal which is phenomenal that, you know, in my day it was like, you know, low 16, 15, you know, maybe 20, you know, that speaks volumes in

regards to the connection, the level of building trust. Granted, it is always meant to be nurtured but those are the activities that help us really move the needle in regards to having not only the

impact on public safety but consistent sustainable impact. Yep, and I know Chief, since you've come in, that's been a serious point of emphasis for you of rebuilding that trust and building it. It

would be helpful, I guess, if the team could pull together anything like a metric on, so we get the impression that folks are maybe more likely to work with police on solving crimes. If we see

anywhere where there's been a sustained effort by MPD in a community and you notice a greater evidence of reporting things, that would be great to highlight. Otherwise, we are kind of left with

anecdotes. So I don't know if that's something that we could pull out but maybe something worth looking at. Briefly, I'll get to a conclusion here. When we're allocating resources of police officers

across district, what sort of effort is placed on both language and cultural competence throughout the districts, depending on the different ethnicities involved there. As you know, I've mentioned

multiple times, have the Islamic Center in my district have a very strong Rohingya population. We've had issues at some points with some of the use in the community and some issues there where we've

engaged elder folks but there's often language barriers and cultural competence barriers. So what sort of emphasis is put on that? Obviously, not just with Rohingya and Hispanic speaking, Spanish

speaking officers and things like that. So each recruit class upon, before the graduation, each of my commanders send up what is their request. Is it a Rohingya or Karen or Spanish female? What are

those attributes you're seeking for your district? So if that exists in that current academy class, then we try to match those requests for what the commanders are seeking. So each academy class,

those steps are taken to ensure that the OITs are assigned to those respective districts. And then a last question is civilianization post-act 12. We've had a version of this conversation of public

safety and health. So there's, I think, 789 authorized positions that are civilian, 315 vacant. We've discussed issues with the community service officers. Chief of Staff Huff was doing a report after

the matrix study came through about how implementing the civilianization of that was going. Is civilianization basically something that we, I know you're going to say we want to do it. We are striving

to do it. But in reality, is it something that we're able to do any more post-act 12 and given the emphasis on hit our maintenance of effort numbers for sworn. Is a careful understanding that there is

the requirement of act 12 to have the emphasis on the sworn officer. We do keep in mind that there's still those opportunities. For instance, the investigators is one of those where you see a really

robust recruiting. I mean, for only a number of different positions, you have over 300 who are, you know, applying. So we keep in mind that there is still some of those opportunities for being very

careful in regards to not to lose focus of what act 12 expects out of us knowing that we do have the maintenance of efforts requirements. But we don't keep those examinations reviews off the table as

well in regards to how we can still lean into the civilian employees, which, you know, they are just, as I always say, is important to me and the staff and this team in regards to the work that you do

with their crime analysts. They're individuals who are doing other work that has a level of social expertise. So it's a balancing act, but we are mindful in regards to what our requirements are under

the new legislation. And is there a vision for what CSOs should be doing? I know their numbers are so small. It's not like you have a fleet of them that you can then deploy for a specific purpose or

they more like set up in this budget. You just envision having a sprinkle here and a sprinkle there in police districts and they just, you know, help out where it's needed, but there's no overall

thing that you want them to tackle. So as a former district commander, former shift commander, I do understand and appreciate the work that the community service officers bring to the table. Again,

that's not off the table of what those opportunities are, knowing that it does help with those costs for service, but they do have a pretty robust assignment of work that they do that those that we do

have with us. Again, just being mindful in regards to what those staffing numbers are, what the budget can allow. I would love to have a fully 60, 70, you know, CSO officers. I believe that there is a

space for them, but also I am mindful in regards to the different parties and ensuring that again, as we are, you know, expect to have a maintenance of effort that we cannot lose sight of what that

impact would mean if we don't maintain or continue to work towards that. Now last question, I'll save, I have a Collins question, but I'll save that for later if we come back for a third round. The AI

question, so has the office, is there anybody leading points on AI and its incorporation as police department? I know we have to, Mr. Point, is we, you know, it can be something as simple as like

turning a PA 33 into a summary, doing two seconds, putting in gov QA and then curate back and make sure it's accurate. But our OMAP, I would imagine would be one place where there's potential there.

So is there, are there sufficient tools in place right now that we all feel comfortable using given that you're, some of the data is public, but some is not. Are there thoughts about one hiring staff

that is competent in this area into looking at maybe some sort of enterprise resource software that we might need to go to and that maybe other departments have used successfully are dipping their

toes in that water? Yeah, so since the last time we were here last year, you know, as you know, Alderman Spiker, we have created our Generative Artificial Intelligence, SOP. Within that policy

reflects, or within the policy reflects that there's a generative AI committee that's composed of department members of different ranks that come together under the chair of the committee, which is

our IT director, Larson. There's a number of things that we've had looked at already. The things that have come up by the committee and it's all scored under this, under a rubric that the director

created, focus on data interpretation, case analysis, interview and interrogation support policy, and SOP management and assisted report writing among others. We're very cognizant of the language you

put in the letter you gave us last year, encouraging us to look at our existing technology portfolio and balance that against the National League of Cities, as well as city ITMDs recommendations as

well. We do look at those things. We have a number of recommendations that we have to present to the chief as of yet to see what direction this is going to go. One of the areas that I am personally

supportive of is assisted report writing. So I do think that there's a place for that. It's just a matter of just trying to figure out the cost that's going to be associated with that. It would most

likely have to be put out for an RFP because of the cost associated with it. And then that wouldn't just be an us pilot program. That would have to include discussions with the district attorney's

office because these are, again, artificial intelligence is creating these reports from bodyboard camera, for example. But we do know that other cities have used this technology and have had a great

success. Even if you just limit it to investigations where there's no known suspect involved. In addition to the efficiency part of it, there's a wellness part to it as well. Imagine being an officer

coming in at the end of your tour and having three or four of these reports to do. It would be a lot easier and more efficient to just be able to have this technology available to do something as

simple as that. I think the only-- Over time, if you're at the end of your shift and have to stick around or some of the Collins documentation required for the sergeants, there's a lot of room there.

I think the last thing we're here, the only application we've added to our portfolio has been the acquisition of case guard to our open records section. We average around 2,400 open records requests a

month. And I'll give you August for an example. We had a little over 2,400. We fulfilled 2,300 for a group of 15 department members to do this. That's a lot of work because there are certain things

that obviously have to be redacted because of Wisconsin public records law. Having a platform like case guard available to us which can greatly assist in the redaction of that is a huge lift for both

the workload as well as the morale of a 15 person unit. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Alderman Speicher. Alderman Moore. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Is it round two? Oh, yeah,

this is still round two. All right, we're getting through this. Yes, it's round two. First, let me say I forgot one of my officers and I would be remissed by saying, Officer Lewis, I have to give him

a shout as well. He's an incredible part of the team. And I also want to say I've seen when I've gone to events, just our police aides, it's been really cool. Get, you know, meeting them, getting to

know them, really incredible young people. So, you know, y'all know I love young people. So it's been awesome seeing them at different events. And me and those police aides were forward police cadets.

Yeah, that shows a connection that keeps on going from cadet volunteers, high school students, to police aid, to police officer from our community. Yeah, I love it. I absolutely love it. Okay, this

question is probably for our budget director. So we saw that salaries has increased by about 25, roughly about $25 million. Would you think this is going to be the trend moving forward? Well, the main

adjustment for salaries was the, was it? It was a four-year contract for '23 through '26. And it was, I think, three and a half percent per year. The total was 14 percent. So you got, I mean, you're

multiplying the, you know, that's the MPA contract. MPSO was similar. So you're multiplying all those numbers by over 10 percent. If you're asking me, and then, you know, obviously, we're still

negotiating for '27 now. So that was a span over multiple years. That was, yeah, which included some retroactive pay. I gotcha. The retroactive pay wouldn't be a factor in the '27 budget. But the

overall lift of those four years of increases is the, that's what's changing it from the '26 to the '27 budget. And if there's a new contract, which I expect there will be, since it's about to expire

before the '28 budget, I would expect you to see an increase in salary costs proportionate to that contract increase. Got it. But we wouldn't be looking at it over a course of multiple years. Well, I

mean, I hope that was an unusual situation, having a contract as expired as it was last year. Okay. But yeah, so normally you just have like, this is an ongoing thing because these contracts do often

expire before they're settled. You know, deadlines have a way of motivating negotiations, of course. But the fact that the one from last year was so, I think they had to do with Act 12, frankly. Yep.

This is why that one dragged on so long. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you for the insight. Will we get to a place where it's going, the police budget is going to become challenging if we continue to

have very significant increases on our bottom line? Well, the overall budget is challenging. That's been the theme that, you know, we've had 100, even post Act 12, now we've had roughly $100 million

gaps three straight years. Yeah. The police department's a big factor in that, but I don't know. So I wouldn't, for me, yeah, the fact that we, Act 12 requires us to maintain an increased sworn

levels, and we have to, per Act 10, continue to negotiate and pay negotiated wage rates of those means that the police department and the fire department budgets will probably increase more than the

other budgets. And they're the two biggest general city purposes departments. Got it. Okay, thank you. Thank you for that. Really quick, when we talk about just being proactive versus reactive, a lot

of when we, you know, again, quality of life has come up multiple times. When we talk about, how do we do a better job of, because, you know, when residents reach out to us, you know, we ask, hey, did

you, you know, MPD uses data to move officers from one area to another. And again, going back to a lot of times, our constituents are not calling in these incidents. So when we reach out and ask you

all for the data, you know, you're like, well, nobody has ever called. How do we do a better job really explaining to our constituents that the department is heavily data driven. So if they're not

calling in incidents, it's really difficult to say, well, wait a second. We've gotten over the course of two weeks or whatever. We've gotten multiple calls in this particular area. We need to beef up

patrol, whatnot. How do we do a better job in explaining that or getting that message out to constituents? So we're always willing to assist. I know this has been a constant refrain or, you know,

challenge about the years, especially during the time of my district commander time. I always say that if there's an opportunity for them to get more explanation, crime and safety meetings or

community engagement, particular type of events, you know, even that time where we had the detectives over in your district, those are those opportunities where, you know, look onto our outreach

website, I mean, community outreach website, looking for those opportunities to engage, get to know your respective, you know, again, resources in your district. I know that there was a time we used

to give out, you know, like question and answer cards to our, you know, our residents, you know, utilizing the community liaison officers to help come explain your town halls, whatnot, because that

has always been a challenge, especially in regards to people sometimes think just calling and telling their friend or calling you will put a dot on the map and it does not. And so however that we can

be in those spaces and, you know, again, be that point of contact and be able to explain that's what we're here for, it's always welcomed. And so pulling us into those spaces, refer them to our

website to kind of get those explanations will help in regards to people have a better understanding. One thing I'd like to add, because this is really important, one of the pieces we put in the

materials was our community and problem oriented policing report is that it's not an either or. So we encourage residents don't just call, also show up to your crime and safety. Also talk to your

elders, talk to different people about the problems you're experiencing, but make sure you do both. So I think one of the problems with messaging is people think, well, if I do it this way, then, you

know, it precludes this as well. It's a it's a conversation in both spaces. It's that call and it's also the follow up on the resident to say, hey, let's talk further about this. How can we think of

some long term solutions to these issues? So, you know, we try to message that in all of the spaces the chief referred to, we ask, you know, and our authors are really good about being involved in

those crime and safety meetings and conversations we have in community to just encourage residents to do both. Thank you for that. And speaking of crime and safety meetings, Captain Bratchett, tell

folks I'll be back in a little bit. I try to make as much of them as I as I can. Do you feel that those are effective spaces? And I don't know what the attendance is like. I know what it's like for,

you know, particular district three. I've gone to also district seven when I can and they do a good job to moving it around, you know, to different parts of the community. So shout out district seven.

Their CLOs are great as well. As far as like attendance with our different crime, you know, because I think it's something that happens or should happen monthly, right? Is attendance pretty, you know,

robust or decent with individuals, you know, that participate monthly? It's dependent on the district. We have, you know, really robust community organizations that can activate people and bring them

to the crime and safety meetings better in some areas than others. And oftentimes, just like with, you know, you see FPC and even town hall meetings, you kind of get the people that are already

engaged there. And so it's always been a challenge and we do our best to promote and market to individuals who aren't coming into those spaces because we would always like to see them grow across the

city. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. I think that concludes my line of question for now, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much. Round three. And appreciate that. I will go back to floc. And, you

know, law enforcement has a lot of different tools that they use to perform their duties. Be it a squad car, handcuffs, a firearm. And we have rules on how to properly use those tools in the course of

your employment with the Milwaukee Police Department. What we've seen happen with floc is it was something very new. And there are two very meaningful breaches of the public's trust from members in

the department regarding that tool that they were trusted to use in the course of their employment with the police department. I appreciate a lot of the changes, all of the changes that the police

department has instituted since that all came about. And those problems were uncovered. What has the department done already? And what is the department planning to do to help restore the public's

trust in floc cameras or any kind of other new technology that the department is currently considering or will consider in the future? We saw that there was a drone hive or a couple of drone hives

that were requested in the budget. The mayor did not include those in the proposed budget. But that's also new technology that without any kind of community rollout could also be a concern for

residents. What has the department learned? What are we going to do before the end of the year? Before these contracts expire? What's the plan? So it's important to understand that, you know, as much

as we lean into communication, we always can communicate more. And utilizing you all in your respective roles to help us engage and to connect is truly important. One of the takeaways and, you know,

I'm glad you brought up in regards to the hives is part of our drone first responder program, where we did do some pretty robust engagement, you know, doing examples and showing the public, especially

the elected leaders, the depth and breadth of what the program is, you know, corporate and social media media. And so we continue to build off of those lessons of, as we are looking at other

opportunities or expanding or changing, how we can continue to engage and make sure that we are able to be in all those spaces. I believe that auto women more alluded to, you know, is kind of safety

effective. Yes, but to a point, because you have that as a space, but there's so many more spaces out there. And I always say there's a lot of spaces that we don't know that we should know. And that's

why it's important for us to engage. And so as we continue to look at those technology opportunities, you know, as AC Sarno talked about, there are some things being consideration using what we did

for the DFR rollout and using, you know, this feedback that we're getting for a lot of our technology will help this administration understand, you know, how do we can be more robust, more

communicative in regards to our particular desires and to be transparent, you know, leaning into just right now in regards to the whole license or output world, you know, putting out a having a

transparency platform of how many deployments where, you know, that's the same thing with the DFR using that type of, you know, again, outreach to help our public understand what we're using these

tools for is how much, but also the feedback of what else they need to see or what they want. Feedback from you all being part of your town halls. I don't know if there's anything you want to add.

Yeah, so for sure, absolutely, when we see something on the horizon and anticipate this department wanting to acquire that to be utilized as a public safety tool, lessons learned across the board

here. There is a distinction. So we rolled out drones and we rolled out like our AI policy, very different. That's because we rolled out anticipating this is something we were going to acquire drones.

We did a very public, hey, this is what we want to acquire. This is what our policy we wanted to look like. And we had robust discussions. And I think that went without controversy. The same thing for

AI. Before we even got AI, we said, oh, we need a policy here. Some of the challenges we have is outbursts technology is one we've had a policy as a mainstay for many, many years. And as much as we

try to predict things, we certainly did not predict all of the things that have occurred in the last few months that have made this a big controversy. And facial rec is another piece where this

administration had kind of inherited this organically growing type of technology that people started to use across the board, not just for police departments, but I can Google that type of technology

on my phone and be able to use it as a person. So we want to be intentional 100%. And we want to be more anticipatory. And lessons learned absolutely here. You know, the risk manager, I think, can

attest to the fact that he's taking a look at this technology in an entirely different lens from that auditing perspective to audit to prevent some of the issues that have occurred. Some of these have

been out of our control. Alpers, for instance, wasn't as controversial in the Biden administration as it is today. And you've seen that with a lot of changes in policy at the federal level for

immigration and other types of issues. And so to the extent we can, we are committed to always being better and always finding those ways to proactively prevent issues from arising. But some things,

you know, we just all need to have that dialogue ongoing to see what we need to be looking at to make sure that we're providing public safety in the best, most transparent, safe way internally to the

public that we serve. James? Yeah, and I think that there is sort of the internal controls of what you can do as far as risk tolerances and setting where we ought to be using or not using a certain

tool within our own policy. And then there's like the current of case law, which as technology is evolving, case law is too, but it's delayed. And so specifically with the drone program, we just

finished up an in-service specifically for drone operators, really setting a risk tolerance for them that says don't become the use case that gets us into the lawsuit. We want you to be deploying

these drones in issues where it's an officer safety issue. We want the plastic to go before the people and we don't want to compromise the use of the technology by doing something that doesn't meet

our public's expectations. And so you can look just in the current of case law, but you also have to look in the current of public opinion, public feedback, and engaging in many different spaces to

sort of set where that risk tolerance should be and understanding what some of the pushback or feedback from detractors might be. I think that we've seen it especially in this year alone. Police

technology has become part of the ethos of our community and it becomes something that really drives the conversation of public safety more than almost any other one thing. Violent crime happens to be

down. Technology happens to be coming to an intersection where people are getting aware of it and we're navigating those spaces. And so we want to do work internally to get our people up to speed with

what the expectations are. But then there's this external messaging which becomes a really difficult conversation as you talk about victims rights and privacy. How do you explain to the public here's

exactly what this technology is without. We're really pulling them into a space where that's sensitive law enforcement information that includes victim identification and we don't want to be doing

that and so it's something that we talk about every week. We're talking about how can we message this, how can we tell this story, what do we want to be able to share with the public and I think it's

always a room for improvement and that public conversation continues to drive how we talk about things internally. So you're -- are you planning any external messaging forums or presentations to the

public? Yeah, so actually we've had -- we've been providing the -- come in, take a look at how flocking Alpers works for the department to any council member and we've been ongoing discussions about

could there be a community space to share that information. The challenge is what exactly can we share without giving away investigative details. There was a presentation made to a member of the press

too, right? Yes, yes. So can something like that still be shared publicly if the community is asking for direct answers and I hear the answers you're giving us, but I'm not a public information

officer for the police department and I don't speak on behalf of the department. There are opportunities and we are exploring those for sure. So to nail you down, you're planning some sort of public

information forum or presentation to the public before the end of the year? Yes, we are. I know we've been talking with older women more, especially after we met, but how do we get this out there? So

we still need to sort of curtail where that's going to be, when it's going to be and, you know, what is the forum for it, but it's certainly something that after having those discussions has been sort

of the clear through line of this is you do need to show it. You have to show the work and that's something that we want to do and something we've committed to doing. And I won't speak for the chair

of the public safety and health committee, but the committee can always hold a public hearing or a public meeting that would invite the public and the department to. Mr. Chair, just really quick,

because it's just on this point before James takes his seat, I didn't want the piece that you shared about to be remissed where if we get rid of our current system, because I just recently attended

the league of municipalities conference and you know, folks are like, yeah, we're, you know, we got rid of flock, but we got ax on and it was just like, oh, okay. And based on some of our

conversation, just even with that particular technology, it also has its chat. It also has its challenges. And so I guess the direct question is would we be trading one system for something else that

we still would then have to go back through and, you know, put in those guardrails and relearn, I'm just trying to figure out. I think that the, the, the through line with public safety technology is

that internal control of the product needs to outweigh the vendors promises of what audit and robust oversight looks like. The work that a department does for themselves about their own use is the

work that needs to guide that conversation and kind of offshoring it to a vendor who might promise one thing or another, which, you know, can't speak for other departments, but that's not the

direction that we're trying to go. It is something that the vendors have tried to sell as an additional buy on. Hey, you can get more oversight. And we are, we've decided that we want to be able to do

that ourselves and build the institution ourselves so that we understand it. We're not just relying on a vendor to say, this is what you ought to care about. Well, and a vendor frankly has zero

accountability to the public. Correct. This department in front of us today has full responsibility and accountability to the public. And that's going to be no matter what vendor into the council.

Yes. Anything else older woman more? No, thank you very much. I wanted to pass the third round back to older woman Cox. I will say this too. I think a lot of times people wrap into one, the

conversation that really should be broken to many. And I think the conversation about the cameras, I think there's the larger philosophical question, which the chairwoman kind of spoke to earlier.

There are some people who just don't want to be surveilled period, don't believe in a technology period. That is a conversation in itself. I think there are with the cameras as with any technology,

there are multiple companies that do it. Whether or not we as a city should be doing business with a specific company based on their past behaviors and other municipalities is a question separate and

apart from whether or not we should be using this technology. And if we are to use the technology, what are the guardrails that we should have in a place? I think those are all like subjects for a

conversation. I think too often people bundle them all together. And I think that flock has also become in law school. They taught us a case about a thermos and how thermos is really a brand for an

item that cools and heats and keeps stuff. But that it had done such a great job of branding itself that people began to call all items like that a thermos. And I think that's what's starting to

happen with flock. They are a company that provides a service. Other companies provide the same. And whether or not we should be doing business with them is a question. But to alderwoman Moore's

point, if we drop them and go to another company, some of those same people who may have philosophically just had an issue period, that's not really solving the issue they wanted. Some of whom may

have an issue with flock company and some of the things that they've done across the country, maybe it sounds bad. But then you have to investigate the new companies and what are their issues. So I

think it's multilayered. And I think we, even though people sometimes perceive it like that, we should always keep in mind all those layers and we should be exploring those layers fully. And to the

chairwoman's point, the more conversation publicly about this, I think the more opportunity we'll have to pull off those layers and really dissect each part. And I'm glad to hear about your

willingness to find ways for the public to come in and see the technology as it is so that we can also have more informed conversation about what Milwaukee itself should specifically do as it relates

to this issue. Lastly, for the seven CSOs that we are funded for, what is the funding wise and departmentally, when do you expect to actually hire? And when are we funded to hire? What pay period are

we expected that once they're recruited and all that kind of stuff, it should be by this date. So then I want to know from a budgeting standpoint, what date have they been budgeted from? I believe

they're budgeted for the whole year, correct? January. So we actually built in six month of funding for the two positions knowing that there'd be some transition for recruitment. Six, you said for the

two positions? Six months, yep, for the two positions. I thought it was seven. Two additional year, two additional, we added funding for two additional positions this year. I thought it was three

currently. We currently have three, they're funded for five and they're adding funding for two more, but that'll be six months in. So last year we were funded for five, this year we're funded for

seven, we only have three bodies. So last year we were funded for five, but we only have three. So what's happening with last year's funding? For the additional two? So the 2027 budget adds funding

for two positions, but because of recruitment those two positions are funded at half time, essentially half of their salary. So six months worth of funding for each of them. Okay, but what happened to

the other two that we didn't have this year? So they were funded, it's just with turnover some of those people have left those positions. Are you asking for the savings this year? Yeah. Well, it's

wrapped into, I mean we'll know at the end of the year and there might be. We have Brian Rinder's budget management division. It'll just be part of their 2026 budget since the NPA contract was adopted

after the 26 budget. It'll help with that. Their salary is going to require a significant transfer of the way to supplement fund. This will help reduce that amount. What other two are only funded for

half the year? The new positions, just to reflect the reality of when they will actually come on board. Thank you. Thank you for that clarity. That's my last question. Anything else, Alderman? Okay. I

will be passing, so no more questions for me. Now we'll be moving on to Alderman Scott Spiker and Alderman Moore. These will be our final questions. So if you kind of think of anything outstanding

that we haven't covered, please, Alderman Spiker. Just briefly two things, kind of queuing up further discussions in the afternoon, but I want to hear what MPD is thinking on this. The non-emergency

number, the number that we tell folks to call when their vehicle's been broken into and needed to be reported so it can show up in the CAD and the captain can allocate resources based on it. My

understanding that 414-933-4444 is a police administrative number. It doesn't pipe directly into the DEC. And so then when DEC is looking at adopting the Motorola 911 system, there's talk of maybe

them coming up with their own number. So one, do you know anything about that? If not, we'll... No, we would ask that that question be posed to the DEC. Okay. Well, MPD's take of it is if something

like that were in the works and I'll ask them to, we've spent all these years messaging out the 933-444 number. Do you feel like that number has gotten enough traction in the public that that would be

a loss if suddenly that number was not the number to report non-emergency crimes? Well, we'd have to go through the whole campaign of changing that number and all of our forms that it's on. So there

would be that. But in the end, I think what is most paramount for the department is just that people know what the number is and are actually going to use it and call it. Yep. And broader question

here is how has coordination with DEC, the Department of Emergency Communications gone since basically the Technical Communications Division wing of MPD stopped doing the work that now DEC is doing?

What have been the challenges hiccups? What have been, I can say the good things too. But what and most importantly, what mechanisms are in place to make sure that from the top down, you're saying

like, let's work with DEC. These are our partners. This isn't bad feelings over them, like taking something that was ours or something like that. So what have been the efforts there on communication

and smoothing things over with the transition? Yeah, communication is very, it's very good between us, between MPD and the DEC. I'll go back to something in the more recent past about leading up to

the 4th of July and what our deployment strategy would be for fireworks. We had those discussions well in advance. So the DEC knew what our rules of engagement are going to be for responding to those,

you know, those calls and what priority they were going to be. So that's just one of many conversations that we have. Either they happen between myself and the deputy director or the director himself.

And in some cases, the chief Johnson and the patrol bureau also contacted directly about any number of other things that directly affect operations. Whereas I, the assistant chief of the admin bureau,

focus on more IT and facilities related issues. Okay. And then a last question. This relates to the Collins settlement. So I guess Mr. Lewis and team with what, so I'll ask more questions of FPC about

the Collins settlement, but where are we currently? What are the prospects moving forward given that we have a new consultant on board and just kind of very brief update for the committee? Yeah, we

anticipate a annual report will be coming out before the end of the year. I think it will come out sometime in November. I don't have an exact date. However, that annual report is really going to give

us a nice snapshot of where we're at. We've had a couple of years now where we have not had an annual report given the consultant turnover. Um, you know, however, without the consultant, we didn't

stop the work. We've continued to do all of the institutions that we built with the old consultant and vetted those through the new consultant. Um, they've been looking at them as sort of

opportunities. Uh, you know, what, what has been working? What could use improvement? How do we get, um, to the conclusion of this case while still maintaining all the institutions that we built? Um,

so the conversations that the new consultant that we hired did, uh, come in with an attitude towards, well, we're not starting over. You've already built a great deal here. Let's, let's help you build

upon what you've already started. Um, and so I don't have a great, here's where we're at snapshot wise, but we've continued to do our cursory reviews. And so we've got internal audits and we've been

making sure that we are, uh, you know, reviewing what we have and the numbers for those have looked positive. Um, we've hit compliant metrics for this entire year in our cursory review. Um, some

months are up or down, given, given certain situations, but, um, overall those numbers accumulated. Um, we have seen compliance in our fourth amendment stop and frisk policies, uh, and, and auditing

those things. So internally we're still looking at those things. Um, the rest of the case has, you know, a lot of layers to it, but of what we can control as the police department, our fourth

amendment policies, practices, and reviews, uh, we've continued to have our foot on the gas with that. Very good. Can continue some of these conversations that public safety and health in the months

ahead. So thank you. Okay. All the room and more. Any concluding questions? Uh, my colleague has already asked questions that I was thinking. So I will pass up there. You're good in the police

department for questions. Okay. Any outstanding questions from committee members? All members, anything else on the police department? Just going to do a quick check with Alderwoman Taylor or Pratt.

We have time for one question. If you have anything on the police department to my colleagues. No. Okay. Thank you. All right. With that, then we are going to conclude, um, the police department. We

thank you so much. Thank you for your service. Thank you for being here. Thanks for answering all of our questions and have a wonderful day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Next up is

department of emergency communications. Thank you. Have a nice day. We'll see you soon. Thank you. Goodbye everybody. Thank you. We need one more. Okay. All right. Um, just want to let everybody know

too, we, we are as of right now, not planning to recess. So you may see members coming and going just to take natural breaks, but please know that we're all here and listening. We're just trying to

keep the show going here. Okay. Department of emergency communications. We'll first go to budget director Nick Kovach and then we'll hear briefly from the department and then go to questions. Okay.

Good afternoon. Can we be happy? Game two of the nationally championship series day. Uh, the Kovach director of the budget and management division, Brian Reiners will present the slides for a

department of emergency communications and then introduce their team compliment on the, on the brewers gear. Yeah, that's nice. Thank you, uh, director Kovach. Thank you. All the men and a chair for

the notice of the brewers tie the 2027 proposed budget for the department of emergency communications, Brian Reiner's budget management division probably should have slept with that. Anyways, we have

$25.8 million in the 27 proposed budget for the department of emergency communications. That is actually a reduction of 1.4 million from the 26 adopted or 5.2%. That reduction is because of the, uh,

changes in the salary budget. The department, uh, want to give them credit in their budget request. They did some right sizing of their budget salary budget and was able to identify reductions of

$850,000. And then the 27 proposed budget does, uh, defund previously funded but vacant, uh, emergency communication operator positions, a total of 10 of those are unfunded in the 27 proposed budget.

That was a further reduction of 610,000. So the 27 proposed budget for salaries is down 1.4, 5, 2 million or 8.4%. That is offset by an increase in the operating expenditures of 2.6 million. Uh,

that's an increase of $665,000 and that increases for, um, supporting the 911 phone system. And they do have a small equipment budget in 20, $27,000, $40,000. That's for office, uh, chairs, uh,

computer monitors. And remember, this is a 24/7, 365 shop, so they do need some regular replacements for those, uh, particular piece of equipment. Uh, my final slide before turning over to Director

Bueno is the budget by service table. Again, $25.8 million and the vast majority of that cost is for call taking and dispatching at $18.7 million. And that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to turn

it over to the Director, uh, Tony Bueno. Okay. Good afternoon, Director Bueno. Good afternoon. I'd like to, uh, toss it over to Deputy Director Dunmert. Uh, and we'll tag team some of the slides and-

Okay. -top through this. Okay. Great. Welcome. We're ready for you. Good afternoon, everyone. Um, obviously this is at first. We are on 911 Center, so we take 911 calls. I don't think, uh, anyone here

needs any more explanation on that. As far as emergency communications, um, this is something that was created, uh, with Ryan Zollikofer at emergency management. There is a text number that people

could sign up for. They would get text messages regarding, uh, incidents in the Milwaukee area. For example, um, say the flooding, any tornado warnings, things like that, that we want mass

notifications where we're able to send those from our center. Emergency dispatch, we dispatch for police fire and EMS. So any citizen that calls and needs assistance with those, we can help.

Interagency coordination, um, as it was mentioned already, a big event like the national championship here with the brewers. That's a very large, well attended event and there's a lot of moving parts,

but we are in the midst of that. Working with police and fire to make sure that everything is handled correctly. Summerfest has a huge attendance as well. We also have meetings with many city entities

regarding a cold weather plan. If, if we have more flooding, we obviously need plans for things like that. So we'll, uh, we also work with the health department. We take after hours calls for, for

their employees and then we refer them to the correct employees so they are able to stay aware of what's going on in the community. And lastly, we are maintaining quality and professional standards

and these are standards that we adhere to that are national standards. It's not just something that we make up. On the next slide, service highlights. I just pointed out one of the benchmarks that we

consistently meet and should as a PSAP is our NINA standards. Those are benchmarks, established benchmarks of call answer time percentages. So 90% of emergency calls should be answered within 15

seconds and 95% within 20 seconds. The DEC has met that standard since 2024, mid 24. So I'm, I'm very happy with that and it's all due to the hard work of the professionals at the DEC. Call volumes

were at about three quarters of a million calls. We handle, the DEC handles on average 2,000 calls per day. Our emergency and non-emergency calls alike. And in fact, back to the answer times, we are

meeting, if you apply the same standard for 911 calls, we're actually giving our non-emergency calls the same level of service. I'm happy about that. Call answering time is important, but as a

performance indicator, but it merely tracks one component of the emergency communications. What time it's answered. If you go to the next slide, our key performance indicators, obviously we just

talked about that. We're meeting NFPA standards, but we want to track additional metrics. We want to make sure that we're creating those calls in a timely fashion, that we're getting those calls

dispatched out of the center rapidly. And the quality assurance that we police our, the quality of the service we provide and a measure of that, not only is in meeting KPIs, but in again, meeting

accreditation standards. We have a very strong desire to achieve accreditation in multiple disciplines and in EMD performance, that is one of our goals to achieve. And we're in the process of doing

that. We did, one of the KPIs I wanted to achieve this year was to achieve a 10% reduction in overtime. And that's something that we haven't been able to achieve this year. It's something that we will

continue to strive for. One of the factors contributing to that is a significant amount of hours that we have to backfill for FMLA usage. About $300,000 in our overtime budget is to cover FMLA related

absences. We're always incorporating best practices, certification compliance. We're making sure that our workforce has their CDEs, their continuing dispatch education, that they receive professional

development opportunities. And the other, the last KPI4 under our training is after action review implementations, after major incidents. We are in the process of establishing a practice protocol that

we will implement to do a postmortem on those incidents to find out what we can learn and to implement those changes as they arise. Regarding our major updates, we are going to modernize our phone

system and we're going with Motorola Vesta. The reason I'm most excited about this is 60% of the 911 centers in the United States also use this. So it's easy for a salesperson to say how great their

product is, but what I want to hear is how is it being used by the people who actually need this and to hear that 60% of the 911 centers are already using this and it's running very well for them and

they would never move away from it to me is a great endorsement. As far as standardizing, we've mentioned accreditation here before and we intend on being CLIA accredited next year and CLIA is Center

for Accreditation for Law Enforcement agencies and they also do 911 centers. It's my understanding we would be the second 911 center in Wisconsin to be accredited so there aren't many that have that

here. The APCO training program certification, APCO is Association of Police Communication Officers and that's an international 911 agency and they have standards that they have for what a training

program should look for a 911 center. We already have attained most of these but that is a certification that we're intending on completing next year. ACE is Accredited Center of Excellence. It's

issued by the International Academies for Emergency Dispatch who provides our EMD protocol. And that's just another standard, you know, we want to say, look, we are adhering to all of these. We are

doing the best. We want to serve the citizens in the best way possible and having outside agencies saying, yes, you are doing everything that you should be doing as a 911 center would be a great

accomplishment and then this also continues just towards our quality assurance. We are following anything that Calia and ACE would also require for that. Improving our workflow, there's always room

for improvement. As Tony mentioned though, our answer times are great but we want to make sure that continues and we can't do that without constantly checking our workflows and staffing. Developing

our workforce, that is a big goal of both of ours. We want to create future leaders from our current people, you know, someone who's a 911 call taker right now could be the next director in ten years.

So we are offering -- we've had people from NINA which is national emergency number association come in and offer classes on how to further your career and we also plan on having some homegrown

instruction on explaining to people how processes work, how to get promoted, how to create a resume that makes you the best candidate for each of our processes and we also have dispatch comes in and

we'll provide another refresher regarding emergency medical dispatching. I think it's a good idea to hear it from the software company directly. That's not something we could instruct. And lastly,

connecting with the community. Once we have Vesta installed which will be early next year, we would also be able to have text to 911. I'm sure you've heard that other communities have this and the

idea behind texting to 911 is call when you can but text when you can't. I think we can all envision a circumstance where someone cannot call 911 but they could text and that's what we want to offer

to our callers. Lastly, our demographics. The thing that I'm most proud of is that the majority of our employees are members of the community that they already serve and that gives them a personal

connection to the neighborhoods and the residents that they are providing these important services to. So I think that speaks volumes to where their hearts are. >> I want to go back briefly before we

answer any questions you may have that as Ann Marie stated our goal is to move towards and achieve accreditation in a number of areas. That independent evaluation of the services we provide, of the

protocols we adhere to, of the training standards that we have is I believe critical. It's not just the director of a department saying we're doing the best we can. It's an endorsement, unbiased third

party saying that. The other thing I want to just leave with this committee is the recognition that the department has achieved or received. We haven't touted this recently but the DEC this year has

been awarded two particularly significant awards from APCO, the Association of Public Safety Communications Officers. We received an award for our advancements in technology and leadership in

technology for a large agency. NICE is a vendor that provides our long term voice recording. They actually have awarded the DEC PSAP of the year award. Obviously those are nominations that are put

forward but it's an independent committee of the industry professionals who sort through all of the details and all of the noise and fluff to look at the actual operations and then make those awards.

I'm very proud of those awards and it speaks to the professionalism and hard work of the department and the staff there. With that I yield and entertain questions. Thank you. >> Thank you very much.

We will start to the left for you guys. We'll start with Alderman Scott Spiker. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. So in the budget there's a loss of 11.75 FTEs. The vacancies I see on the LRB write up are 47

in number. What has been the plan with respect to vacancies? I know we increased pay a number of years ago now. It was helping a lot with recruitment and retention. It's still a difficult job. Now

there's the move to expecting everybody to have universal call taker status by the end of '26. Is that the goal? >> Yes. We actually have finished phase one of the UCT project. All of our police call

takers are UCT certified. >> So then the question is what have you seen and do you have data to reflect how vacancy rates have fluctuated with this transition to a more, I guess, more variable, more

varied skill set to be able to do UCT work? Is that putting pressure on vacancies? Fewer people want to take on all that or fewer more seasoned employees want to stay around if that's what's expected

of them. Are we seeing any trends here? >> If Anne Marie has additional information, I'd be happy to have her share that. There are a couple of ways to answer that question. First of all, the number

and the number of ECOs that we have was determined, I don't know, initially by just the combined number of the police and fire call takers that existed at the time of this consolidation. I know that

the consultant at that time endorsed the number that was provided. We've had another consultant come in and do a similar evaluation of our call center, of Milwaukee county's call center and both

evaluations pegged to our ideal staffing between 131 and 141 ECO positions. We are taking -- >> How many do you have? >> 141 and actually we're taking it down to the 131 baseline. So we're still in a

very good staffing situation where we've applied all of the calculations that go into making this. There's a science behind it but I feel comfortable that we're doing that and we've achieved all of

the success that I've mentioned with the existing staffing. Now in the PSAP space, the retention level or at least the churn of employees is very high and as is the vacancy rate among call centers and

we are affected just like all of the others with high turnover and high vacancy rate. But even with that we've continued to achieve some significant milestones. >> Just briefly, how do we compare with

our churn versus analogous cities? Is that something we've looked at or is it something you could like moving forward to see whether or where? Because it seems like a difficult job no matter where

you're at but I just wonder if we're an outlier compared to others either for good or for bad. >> Good afternoon. Samantha Mejia, finance manager. I believe and you've talked about this in previous

trainings that statistically nationwide people last at a call center I think it was three to five years and our agency has -- we exceed that. Many of our employees stay multiple years. I don't have

the exact statistics but this has come up multiple times in the past couple years how well we are -- our retention is better than the national average that people stay at our center for many years. We

have many employees who have been there for ten plus years. >> Yeah, would you mind -- I mean maybe this is a request for LRB to help you look at this and -- or for you to help them look at it and

just see where we are at both with respect to attrition and that's one metric is how long people are staying but the number of people as a percentage of your staff that's turning over to that would be

just interesting to see. >> I believe last -- so our vacancy rate is about 20% right now but year to date I think our turnover is about 13%, 2025 we are at I think 22% around there. >> The national

average is about a 25% vacancy rate in ECCs and we are as Sam mentioned low 20s and the churn is higher among other centers our churn has been about that 13%. >> And the loss of -- I mean it sounds

hard to say to the public we are going to lose 11.75 FTEs. Well, it sounds hard to say that to the public if you translate it into English but do you feel confident that you are going to be able to

hit these national numbers? Is that going to compromise your ability to put in the supervisory structure that you want to have in place? Is that going to put added stress on the folks who are left?

And the motivation was budgetary, right? There was one -- our former consultant maybe pushed us towards a number that was higher than needed to budget pressures require us to right size things and so

we are going to do that but are you confident that that won't have an impact on your staff that makes it any wise pound foolish? >> For the -- as far as performance I'm confident that we can meet and

continue to meet the service level that we have outlined. If there is a risk it would be in the answer times for non-emergency calls which can obviously exceed that three second answer time. They are

fine going into queue for a little while. In past experience we have not hit that now which will be in 27, the 131 level. We haven't even hit that since I've been here. We have a class of 15 new hires

that started at the first of the month so we are still aggressively pursuing, you know, attracting, recruiting and retaining those employees so that we can spread the workload. Yes, the workload gets

a little bit heavy when we don't have enough staff but typically that has been as a result of absences of permanent employees whether through FMLA or other leaves that we've had to absorb and incur a

significant amount of overtime costs. >> Briefly shifting gears for the new 911 system and stuff there was discussion I think we had about whether there might need to be a new non-emergency number. I

didn't understand until very recently that the 93344 non-emergency number wasn't going to you all exactly unless somebody just let's it ring. That some of those calls get funneled to the districts

which is the exact opposite of what we want to happen because then it doesn't show up in CAD report. So has there been how serious are we about exploring a separate non-emergency number for DC

directly and then would we keep both numbers and then message them both out confusingly. I know this is a discussion that has to take place with the police department too but is there a discussion

about having a new direct to DEC non-emergency number to bring on board with the new 911 system? >> That was our intent to bring in a phone number that rings directly into the DEC as you might I

believe you've experienced this where a citizen will raise a complaint that they tried to reach the DEC or they did reach the DEC and the phone just kept ringing or they tried to get help in a

district and they just couldn't get an answer. We investigated that and this is how we learned about the problems that those phone calls were never ever touching the DEC and we couldn't verify that

that person actually called because it was going to the administrative line for the MPD. There are mechanisms and like I said the phone tree allows them to select transfer to a district or if they

remain in the line they're advised that they'll be transferred to the call center and they can create a report. The non-emergency phone number is just as I view it would just be in addition to and

over time I would hope that we would message out the new phone number and make that the single point of contact for non-emergency calls going forward while also retaining the legacy piece of the 4444

so the people who have those instructions there are a number of apartments in the city that have placards for non-emergency call the 4444 number. I'm not proposing that we go door to door and change

all of that I think that those can remain in place but I think that messaging going forward should include a direct to the DEC call center non-emergency phone line and we do still have some

conversations to have with MPD. Yeah MPD just was here and they just said we got all this material we've been messaging out at every crime meeting I go to they make sure to dial 933-4444 so I do

wonder whether we'll be undoing that or what sort of coordination would need to happen with MPD because if you keep two non-emergency numbers I do think that will court confusion but I don't know

about sunsetting a number that we've had forever can is there a way for you to grab their number then to give gifted to you I guess would be one question worth exploring. Last question I have others

but don't want to hug things the so not long after I came in the ICAD hexagon debacle happened we still are using ICAD which is hexagons not 2.0 not the on call 2.0 that we had intended to buy but

kind of what was going to be a stopgap to get us through the RNC and then into the future well we're now into the future a few years do we have any plans to go to on call I know I think we have till

2028 but has that been stood up successfully at any other city of our size and needs and if we're not looking at going to on call are we just going to stay on ICAD till we encounter the very same

problem that led us to look at on call in the first place. I'll try to be concise. More concise than my question. February 28 is the deadline for us to opt in or at least advise hexagon that we want

to go with the on call product to retain a significant discount in that product so half a million dollars roughly that we would say we have been tracking the on call product and to date they do not

have a city or a center of our size and complexity with multiple disciplines with the population that we have with call volume we have and they have not onboarded a center of this size and because of

that I wouldn't today recommend that we go with on call quite honestly I've been and there's something else that I'll mention in just a moment but I believe that the path forward for us is to look at

a different vendor to put together an RFP to look at this again. Please mute yourself. And there are a bunch of different ways to do that. There will be a significant expense, millions of dollars

again and I understand that the common council has poured millions into this endeavor already. I believe that we have some opportunities that we've been discussing that may allow us to reap the

benefits of some state funding through grant dollars that could offset the cost of CAD system. Those are in early discussions and I hope to share more with the council at well not a later date but an

upcoming opportunity. And iCAD is in danger of being unsupported or dying tomorrow or anything like that? We will continue to pay our maintenance fees and have that available to us to support iCAD.

The main obstacle and the main challenge with iCAD is that it lacks that NG911 functionality. We're not getting the benefits of first closest fastest unit because it doesn't support that. So it's less

that it's falling apart it's more the opportunity cost of what we're missing by not having an X generation system. We will have a great phone system that will pinpoint where people are but it won't

translate into a CAD being able to actually maximize on that. Okay thank you Mr. Chair. We need to go back to Aldermen Moore next if you have any questions. I do but if we can. Yeah no you started. I

know I'm sorry I'm just getting myself acquainted just come back if we if we could just put me back in the queue for round one that would be amazing. One hand it back and then I'll hand it back. Okay

perfect good flow. Okay Aldermen Peter Bergellis. Thank you very much so previously your department was part of the police department and did the fire and police commission hire and recruit candidates

for your department in the in the police department previously? Yes. And then is the Department of Employee Relations handling that now for you? They're not it's actually a hybrid process the our

professional staff anybody who is not an ECO call take or a dispatcher emergency communications officer a call take or a dispatcher that recruitment is entirely handled by the FPC for anybody in a

lead position or above the DER does that for the FPC so we have our HR group has to communicate with with multiple parties in relation to our personnel. Is that efficient or effective? I'm I've

initiated conversations with the FPC and Director Todd about about streamlining because I'm looking at the I'm looking at the fire and police commission website now I don't see any recruiting done for

emergency communications officers I would like to to do more recruiting you have 20% vacancy rate right correct that we should have regular this is 20% 20% vacancy rate would put that into the

category of chronic vacancies even though the national standards more this is a critical likely heard 24/7 365 department and position we have a 20% vacancy rate that puts additional stresses on the

people that are that do show up right and if this and if there's confusion or ambiguity between the fire and police commission that might be hiring might not be hiring in the Department of Employee

Relations that has capacity to help we'd want to see that chronic vacant positions are prioritized that taxpayers get the value that they're expecting let me let me try a different answer here I have

a good relationship with the FPC and they they do a great job in in helping us recruit I believe that the solution is is we're gonna go back to the drawing board maybe I believe that we can increase

the amount of minimum qualification minimum standards minimum qualifications for for a call taker we can do a number of things during the COVID era those standards were relaxed significantly and and

that bar was very low I think that with staffing improving with the response that we've gotten from previous recruitments show that the workforce is is there and wanting to to to join Waukesha County

is in the process of increasing their basic qualifications for a call taker applicant and I believe that we should follow suit we had over 500 applicants for the current recruitment and out of those

we we ended up with a an eligible list of 54 candidates so 10% of the candidates who applied were left available now I believe that that's there are a number of contributing factors there's the the

background checks the number of people fail to pass there's a critical test test for your ability to multitask there's the length of time that the recruitment lasts I believe that we lose and I don't

have the data to back this up but I believe that we lose talented people because they the good workers the people are out there might get picked up sooner so it's not to disparage the people that we

do hire there we have absolute gems that have come through the same process but I think that we it's it's worth another look to see if we can improve that process scale down the time frame and turn

this around more more turn this around quicker and get a better result how long is a training class and how many of those do you have the training classes eight weeks of classroom and then they have

approximately five weeks up on the job and 13 14 week process and I would say on average we have two classes a year two classes and the classroom the the training is is a multi-phase so there we do

have our own trainers come in we have contracted trainers come in to do our EMD which is a week we bring in others sorry emergency medical dispatch people who take the medical calls that has to be

provided by that that company and we bring them in to do that we have other local talent that come in and offer some resources we had some great great diversity training that was offered in multiple

classes it's it's it is a thing during the training though the candidates have to achieve or pass practical examinations they have to pass written examinations with a must achieve score in all of

those and especially with regard to the EMD certification they if they score if they don't pass that test as long as they were within striking distance they can retake that test but if they're there

Delta is I believe it's 15 points different than they have to retake the whole class so it's it's very strange do we hire lateral communicators or dispatchers we or does anyone even if you have

experience somewhere else you still have to go through the full class that is a an opportunity that we'll be discussing with the FPC because I believe that there are a number of opportunities there

lots of opportunities with the fire and police commission we'll hear more from them later this afternoon all right thank you very much thank you manager okay thank you and we did skip over all the

room and more so the floor is yours and then we'll go to all the room and Cox thank you so much Madam Chair first let me just pay homage to the staff that take these calls day in and day out I

couldn't do it and so I am grateful for those folks that can sit on the phone and support individuals our constituents during their some of their worst hours they're their worst times so I have to

just put that out there that this is not an easy job by far so our staff that are sitting on the front lines and taking those calls thank you I wanted to go back to because I realized that the

incident the swatting incident I called an MPD and just it didn't dawn on me to have had you all come to the table as well because all they're responsible for is responding you know to those to those

calls based on the incident is now past based on the those incidents that have happened as again very small I mean they're very small percentage of like these very you know really egregious you know

cases that has happened within the city with that what were there are there any protocols or shifts that happened as a result of you know the settlement of that lawsuit if the question is it were

there any protocol changes or SOP changes that's what I'm looking for yes no there have not been and Anne Marie can correct me if I'm wrong we have and continue to abide by a pre-existing procedure

outlined by MPD a number of their SOPs we simply continued after the consolidation after we even took control of the department and management responsibilities there are protocols in place one of the

questions that arose during that hearing I believe was with regard to hazard notations and noting in a flag of an address the DEC does those daily regularly and we're going to document or at least

formalize and memorialize that process but it's it's a relatively simple task of two people communicating but we should we should document that and formalize that but those hazards did not change

hands the process has been relatively the same in fact Deputy Director Dohmerat is the point person on that too to make sure that there's a consistent way to get the information into the DEC that so

that she can verify that that has happened and and at that level in the executive level that we we manage that effectively I appreciate that I think you know what was really challenging for me because

you know I know that you all take calls of individuals that call pretty regularly right individuals with that need mental health support and so they call they regularly right called 911 I had the

chance when I had the opportunity I can't remember if it was when I came with the students last summer or if it was when I did the call center on my on my own and incredible experience by the way I

don't think any of us should be making you know decisions about funding especially when we have not had opportunities to really really connect with the departments and really see what you all do so I

had the chance to to sit down and you know the the call taker mentioned oh this is one of our regulars right they they knew everything it was documented it was you know pretty outlined what I'm hoping

for in reference to again I know that these cases are you know far and few in between that we have some appropriate policies in place because you know my heart goes out to that couple that this

incident continued to happen time and time and time again and figuring out well there has to be some sort of protocol that has to be put in place from the call taker because once it gets to NPD

they're just simply responding to what you all you know are are sending are sending out so I'm hoping you know it's not necessarily a question it's just more so a statement that I'm really hoping that

we use these opportunities to just simply learn and figure out how we can just whether it's documentation I understand that you know a lot of times they have to respond I think there's a way to go

about doing that but I hope that we can figure out in these you know peculiar situations how we addressed issues such as that madam chair I'm going to pass my round pass on and then jump in in the

next round okay alderwoman alderwoman me Lele Cox thank you just following on that lessons learned piece I know this year I believe there was a incident of a elderly woman in her nineties there being

a call made for emergency services and the police not arriving to two and a half hours later the call not being categorized right dispatched properly the whole bit I think from what the news reports I

read that the person was let go but have there been any internal changes as a result of that particular incident I'm going to I'm going to answer as best they can recognizing there's pending

litigation but we have a rigorous quality assurance program we've we're using artificial intelligence assisted quality assurance to to flag those kinds of incidents and to to to be able to act upon

them we are always looking for ways to improve the services we have in this this incident and others will will factor into that I don't want to wholesale make changes to operating policies based on a

single tragic We're going to look at the trends, we're going to look at the service we provide, whether or not there are problems with a particular protocol or a particular call type, and use that

information in its totality before we make significant operational changes. Thank you. There's a significant number of vacancies for emergency communication officers. Are we offering a competitive

right of pay? We are, and I'm going to defer this question to Deputy Director Drummer. We have looked at local PSAPs and we pay more than most of the area PSAPs. Right now, starting for a Milwaukee

resident is $60,000, so I think that's very competitive. Are current vacancy levels causing any issues in times of response times? No, not in response times. In fact, there's a couple of different

measures that we use. We have answer times that we report on. We have call creation times, and we have times to dispatch. Those are the metrics that we need to report on. When it comes to the staffing

at the DEC, everything up to the call creation time is within our control. How fast that response gets there is out of our control. Once we hand it off to the field units, how fast they get there is

something that we are not able to affect. That answers the question for the response time, but does the vacancies create any issues as it relates to backfield coverage, overtime, burnout? I think

that's a very good question. Actually, the city's survey, the employee survey, highlighted a couple of issues in that. Work-life balance and burnout, quite frankly. I think that the vacancies may

contribute to that because we do have to fill the seats. We try not to mandate, and we have people who come in on overtime to do that, but after a while, it's not sustainable. We have programs in

place. We talk to people who appear to be taking on a significant load of overtime hours about moderating that number. But that is potentially a contributing factor, so our management responses could

include limiting the number of overtime hours that employees could take. How are your retention levels? I don't have vacancies at the 20%, but how are your retention levels from those you do? I think

that the most recent statistic was the 13% attrition. This year, our turnover rate is at 13%. I know Alderman Speicher had asked about retention and also compared to other PSAPs, which I will have to

get back to you. How quickly do you expect to hire the level of vacancies you have? What is your next class? Our next class would be in the late spring or early fall at the soonest. We haven't set a

date for that. Quite honestly, one of the things that has caused me to reach out to the FPC about a recruiting strategy is related to this current recruitment. So I would ask that we -- let me get

back to you on that. What are your current probationary period? What is it now? It's a 12-month probationary period. It had been between 12 and 18, depending on what part of the organization you were

hired into, but I standardized that at 12 months. How does that work? It's working well. We've had to extend a number of people and their probationary periods because of either performance or more

commonly due to their leave and they're not getting the number of training hours that are required. With the $40,000 that's currently budgeted for workstation equipment, do you think that that's

sufficient to deal with all the malfunctioning equipment time? Absolutely not. No, that will just keep things from being a hazard. We do have lost time due to employees suffering injury because of a

fallen console or a door that came loose. So this equipment is old. Just the console equipment is 24/7, 365. What did you want, request? So for the equipment request, that's for chairs and for

computer monitors. Yeah, now it was approved. What did you request? That was a request and it's the bare minimum to keep things functional. $40,000. Yeah. It doesn't yet at all tackle the consoles and

the wiring within the consoles, which is part of a capital request that we've continued to submit. I believe it was this summer when it was really hot. There were several days that your location did

not have air. Has that been rectified or is that a problem we're going to see again this summer? It's in the process of being rectified. It's actually a facilities issue with District 3's building.

They are in the process of some remodeling and included in that is all of the HVA systems for all floors there and MPD is budgeted for that and are taking steps now to do that. I think they're working

on the third floor as we speak. So by next summer, the air shouldn't be an issue for the staff over there. Okay, one last question. When people do leave, do you all do an exit interview? Yes. What

have the results of the exit interviews this year been? I would have to get back to you. I'll talk to our HR administrator. Yeah, our HR department handles that. Please do. I'm sorry, I said one last

word actually. So the motor, just so I understand, so the Motorola stuff, is that to replace the Commco stuff or is that totally different technology? It's different. So the Motorola Vesta will be a

replacement to the Solicom phone system. And there are a number of reasons that we're doing that, the fact that the Solicom did not live up to their commitments with us and I lost confidence in their

ability to do the job. We are not on the as in as many of the cities and PSAPs around the state have been. We're one of the last to be cut over. A lot of that delay was due to Solicom and their

inability to get us the correct software version, update for us to be able to move forward, a series of issues. So this is a replacement for that Solicom phone system. It also includes some other

pieces, including the text to 911 and inline translation and transcription, which will help our call takers as well. Thank you. That's all, Madam Chair. Thank you so much. About how many of those type

of like life alert calls do we get? I think that's kind of like your that's a great metaphor you had earlier. I think there's other names that it goes by, but those like medical alert systems like you

were saying with the thermos. So that's the only one that I can think of. But is that a common call that we get? Not that I'm aware of it, but I could get back to you with the exact. I'd be surprised.

Isn't that the whole point of it is that it does call your service. There's different levels because it's something that I've been looking in for family members. Sometimes it calls the family member.

I mean, they're getting smarter and smarter, right? And the whole idea was that it doesn't always call directly to 911 because there could be something that could be solved. You know, there's like an

intermediary, but I am interested to know how many of those specific, I guess, emergency medical devices. There's probably a proper name for them that we respond to. And I'm assuming I don't know if

there's an SOP for that or how do we handle that? And do we have the band of chair? Do we have the mechanism to actually gather that data? Like, you know what I mean? It seems to me that it's kind of

like a checkbox to say, oh, this is a medical call because it's not the person directly, right? You go ahead. You're the expert. So there are a number of factors here. And the big question is, what do

we do with an automated alert, an electronic alert where there's no contact with a victim, or a patient, or something? It's just an electronically generated alert. Right. Like alarm companies. Alarm

companies, correct. And we've dealt with this in those situations, too. And my phone, if I fall over, it's going to call. If I get in a crash, it's probably going to call. Which I think is a good

thing to get to be ready for it. The problem is that within city ordinance, as I understand it, if we receive an electronic notification of a situation, whether that's a life alert or a burglary, that

without verification from a person, that we cannot respond to those. Okay. Well, we need to change that. I think that sounds like that needs to be changed or looked at because that's like the whole

point of it. I've had this conversation recently with the attorney's office. There's more conversations to be had there because their opinion was that we might be reading it too narrowly. But I

believe it's very clear, and that's been the practice of the MPD and now the DEC. So clarity would be wonderful. We're obviously not going to solve it in this budget hearing. But I do recall, I feel

like I've been around long enough, that yes, you cannot -- you don't want to overcorrect, for lack of a better word, because I remember with police alarms, we got to a point in City Hall where the

alarm companies, these corporations, were making so many mistakes that it was then overburdening our system. So I want you to know that I'm aware of that. But I do think we should be open-minded. As

we just had this talk with the police department, technology evolves. We need to evolve as well. Absolutely. And it does appear to me that these devices are getting even smarter. And if people, our

constituents, are purchasing these devices and counting on a certain type of response, that is something that we need to fill in the gap. Obviously, in between there are corporations and whatnot. But

we need to have a clear communication and stated goal, especially when we're talking about either elderly, frail, or anyone. And really, it could actually happen to anybody. And you're right now about

the ability of watches and whatnot. So I really am going to ask for us to examine that, understand it. I don't want to make a reactionary change. I want to be thoughtful. But if there's an expectation

and we may not be meaning that, that is really tough for those involved purchasing those family members, et cetera. So I know you've got to follow what's on the books. But then sometimes you need to

reopen the book. Whatever we can help or offer to help navigate that, we'd love to be able to be a part of that. There's opportunities for panic alarms that we have. We could put them in the city

offices and in the reception areas. But again, we come into the situation where it's just a button. It's an electronic. I'm speaking about the frail list of the frail. Correct. Because the moment that

a family member decides to engage with one of those devices, you've made a decision that there may be an emergency situation and then you have an expectation. And so I want to make sure that we're

mirroring that in every way possible in a way that's sustainable and a good use of taxpayer dollars. Along that same line with accessibility is I want to bring up, I'm a little bit nervous about the

fact that we continue to have a vacancy, seems like, because I see the vacancy report each month. Excuse me. We notice when there's frequent flyers on there. Walk me through. I've been asked this by

constituents and I haven't been able to adequately respond bilingual. So do we compensate higher for bilingual ECOs, number one? And then number two, please walk me through the experience if a non-

English speaker calls what type of service they're going to encounter. I believe that we've allocated a total of eight. And we had to designate particular positions as bilingual Spanish in our

process. We had, I believe, five, we're down to four, three or four right now, which is insufficient. And they're on 24/7, right? Well, they're not, actually, because the pool is not great enough. The

process that we have to do, we have to give up an ECO position that is Spanish-speaking only, so it restricts our applicant pool. It would be, well, there are things that we can maybe look at, but

that's the city process is to do that. Instead of just maybe designating them or giving them a paycode that they are Spanish-speaking ECO, we have to take that out of the general pool and put it into

the ECO Spanish pool. That's a bureaucratic thing, a bureaucracy thing that we need to navigate. We have not done specifically a recruitment for Spanish-speaking ECOs. And we need to work with the FPC

to do that. Can I interrupt, Director Bueno? Please. Because I don't want to lose that train of thought. I cannot recall. I remember we talked about this with FPC police officers. Does the same hiring

requirements, I don't know if it's the same for a police officer, ECO, but could it be someone who was not born in the United States or someone who was in a different type of status? I know it's

different for the police department, but are you open to all statuses? Do you know that rule? I guess I'm not familiar with the rule or maybe I'm not understanding it, but I'm open to anything. If I'm

understanding correctly, I don't believe, so I know for, I think, to be a police officer, you have to be a United States citizen. For ECOs, I believe you can be a legal permanent resident. I think you

have to have a plea authorization to work in the United States. I think people might be confused on the two, and I believe we might be missing out on a pool of really diverse registrants that this

could be an amazing opportunity for them. There are a couple of other nuances, and I'll just throw these out very quickly. We cannot hire an ECO Spanish-speaking telecommunicator from a general

recruitment. It needs to be a specific recruitment for the bilingual position, so we need to do that. And they should be compensated higher. This council, this city has made great progress in finally

getting bilingual folks the extra compensation they're doing all languages because that is not an easy job for anyone who is bilingual in any language. Okay, so I still wanted to walk through lastly.

Spanish is obviously a dominant language. I happen to have a really fast-growing Rohingya population, and there's every language in between. So what is it that happens? Is it a simultaneous

translation? How does that work? We obviously only have seconds or minutes to make a decision sometimes. I wanted to go back and clarify something else, but it'll come to me. That's okay. Let's go

with this. The standard is that if it's a Spanish speaker, they'll indicate that they don't speak English or that they want a Spanish-speaking caller. That's typically what happens. Okay. No haberling

glass. Do you speak English or do you speak Spanish? No, we don't. In that initial few seconds, we determine that there's not an English speaker on the phone and what language they do speak, and then

we conference in an interpreter. If it's a Spanish-language ECO, they just handle it. Right. And it's great. We actually have the EMD process in the Spanish-speaking cards to assist them through that

in a different language, so it's actually kind of unique. Once an English speaker conferences in the language line, then the communication, the call-taking process, extends because of that

translation, and the call-taker simply asks the question directly of the caller with the interpreter interjecting translations in English and in Spanish. What about the other languages? I can't

remember how many languages are available through language line with their significant number. Many. Okay. I believe it's over 100, ma'am. Yeah. Okay. It must be like a national standard that they use

that company. Okay. It's through AT&T, and we pay our Spanish-speaking employees $2 an hour more. Great. Okay. That answers my questions. I just want to make sure I make it very crystal clear, and

with Legislative Reference Bureau here, I will be seeking some sort of change or policy focus. I don't know if it'll be amendment, but on that emergency medical device life alert situation, I want to

understand what's on the books. What could change? Obviously, we need to work hand-in-hand with you all if there even needs to be a change, but it seems to me that there's a little bit of a gap of

expectation there that I'm pretty concerned about. So just one of the things I've asked members to do is, we can't assume everybody can read our minds, so to be explicit about some of the things we

want to work on so that we can work on them hand-in-hand and try to be really clear about it. If I could offer one other thing, the technology is evolving, and one of the things that we're going to

get with our Motorola Vesta is, I mentioned, translation and transcription in line. So in the future, when this comes online in Q1, the call taker will get that call, and if the caller is speaking in

Spanish, that translation will appear on their screen. They'll be able to see that. They'll be able to get the English equivalent of that, so that will help in determining the language that's needed.

So that's one opportunity. There are many more options where you can actually have an AI translate for you. We haven't explored those yet. We're still evaluating a lot of those opportunities. That

technology sounds great, and I'm sorry to repeat it, but I feel like we should have similar technology on the medical alerts. There's got to be a way than a human having to verify that. So, okay,

we'll work together on that. Absolutely. Sometimes we just got to find a way to work together. Okay. I believe we are coming back this way, right? Alderman Spiker, then more. We're kind of getting to

our concluding questions here. Just briefly, do you have the same sort of issues with supervisor and attrition, or once they reach the supervisor stage, are they pretty solidly with you thereafter?

And I know you've increased ladders of opportunity for moving up for somebody who's been an eco for a while. There's an opportunity to move up. That is correct. Now they have a career path, as before

they didn't. To this point, we have not lost any supervisors or managers. Okay. And with respect, I know you briefly touched on the AI component. I know you have the AI training component. Are there

any other things that you all are looking at in the years ahead? Or do you have a pathway for looking at what other call centers around the country are trying out? Yes. So, we do have ComsCoach.

ComsCoach is an AI assisted quality assurance platform. It's sandboxed. It's not available on the internet. You can't go in and tweak it. It doesn't learn from other centers. It's all what we put in.

It's what it retains. We are still looking at other AI pieces. There's numerous software companies that offer services to handle our non-emergency calls. They interact with the AI, and the AI routes

them to a particular department. It could be about polls. They go to Public Works, to the impounds. They go to the lot. It also, if there is an actual emergency on a non-emergency line, it will ship

them through to the 911 queue so that that call is triaged. We're evaluating all of those. That would be a cost, but we need to crunch the numbers to see if there's a benefit. With the change in

staffing numbers and FTEs, that may make more sense if we start seeing our call time or call queue times go up significantly on non-emergency lines. It might make sense to bring in the software to

offset that, but we're still evaluating those. Okay. And, of course, Aldrich Cox touched on the incident that happened in my district. I know we had a long closed session about it. I asked a bunch of

questions, and they were advised by the City of Truman not to explore in greater detail in a public venue some of that. So just wanted to note that, not that I've forgotten about it, but we're

somewhat restricted in our public discussion of it. So thank you. Thank you. Alderman Moore? Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I don't necessarily have any additional questions. I just want to reiterate

what the requests from the Chair, you know, I think about, you know, when my -- he's still functional. But when my dad gets to that point, right, where, you know, there may be services that we may

have to, you know, have for him that we, you know, know that it would work, right? That's the point in all of this. So I'm looking forward to a more robust conversation, particularly just learning

what those -- how they work, you know, when calls come in, just some information for us on what does that look like just so that we have an opportunity to better understand the overall sort of system.

Just to be clear, I want to make sure that I state unequivocally that I look forward to this. Whatever we can do to improve the response time or improve the services to our community, I think we need

to look at that and take out the roadblocks that may exist or may be perceived if we can clarify that. So I'm completely on board with finding our way through this. For sure. I appreciate that. Thank

you. Thank you, Director. Any outstanding questions for the emergency communications? Anything at all from members? Madam Chair? Yes, Alderman Speicher? I just wanted to -- I saw an LRB write up the

implementation of the UCT, the Unified Call Taker Program, is stated to perhaps be the driving force behind a 23-second reduction in time to dispatch response for medical calls. Yeah, and so we've

done year-over-year comparisons through the course of this UCT transition, and for the people who go through the UCT training, we consistently see between 23 and 32nd improvement from in-call creation

time. So the sooner it's created, the sooner it's dispatched. And that 23-second to 32nd has been very consistent throughout the training, so. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Last call for questions from

members on emergency communications. Okay, I don't see any colleagues on the board. Any outstanding questions or comments? We thank you for your work and your service to City of Milwaukee. Have a

wonderful day. Thank you. And we're moving on to Fire Department. Come on down. You are next on "The Budget is Right." [ Laughter ] Let's have the Chief spin the big wheel. Chief, we were told that,

you know, you need to spin the big wheel. That what? We're actually only a half an hour off schedule, by the way. I'm going to go ahead and cheers myself to that. We're only 30 minutes off schedule.

That's not bad. That's not bad. Really? That's it? That's why I'm over here, cheersing myself. Okay. It's fun. Okay, one more minute. Chief, I just want to let everybody get situated. I think that

window is closed. Oh, that's the one. That's the Brewers music together in the vibe. Yes. [ Laughter ] Nice. Okay. Well, with that, welcome, Milwaukee Fire Department. Thank you so much for being

here. And per usual, we'll begin with the Budget Director. We'll hear the report from the analysts and then go to you, Chief. So, please. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the committee. There

have been three lineup changes announced for today's game. Oh, really? Yellich is batting third. He doesn't anything instead of on. And Hamilton and Freelich are in instead of Laura and Ortiz. Oh. So,

that'll be starting in two and a half hours. Okay. Right when these two hearings end. Yes. And with no further ado, Angelique Pettigrew will now present the Fire Department's live. It pays to have the

guy with the podcast here, right? [ Laughter ] Okay. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and committee members. Angelique Pettigrew here with the Chief, Lipsky, and his team to give you an

overview of the 2027 Executive Proposed Budget. We will look directly at the budget summary. There is a primary -- for 20 -- I'm sorry. Excuse me. Let's start already. For 2027, the total proposed

operating budget is 172.9 million, representing an increase of 7.5 million or roughly 5%. This change is primarily driven by targeted personnel growth and a 13% increase in direct operating

expenditures, which were partially balanced by a 5% reduction in equipment spending. Total authorized staffing across all funding sources is set at 1,064 FTEs, which is a net increase of 19 FTEs over

the 2026 adopted level. Moving on to positions. Total salaries and wage are up by 3.8 million, bringing the baseline payroll budget to just over 99 million. When you add and fringe benefits, the total

personnel increase is by 5%. This structural shift reflects the department's commitment to expanding critical frontline capacity and targeted funding for training that we will discuss in the next

slide. Total authorized positions are 984 plus 18 positions, and total funded capacity, again, is 1,064 FTEs, 19 FTEs. The department's total position count increases by 18, while the actual funded

capacity expands by 19 FTEs. The slight difference is simply due to the standard payroll accounting for part-time apprentices. Looking further at these changes, the department's operational structure

shifts dramatically. First, we are adding 15 field positions, specifically one captain, three lieutenants, nine firefighters, and three heavy equipment operators to support daily emergency response

capabilities and increase daily staffing to 211. Second, we are formalizing two mid-year youth carpenter apprentice positions and adding one lieutenant to support the training division. Finally, we

achieved a smart fiscal pivot by shifting four Maury positions out of the local tax-funded budgets and onto external opioid litigation settlement funds, preserving local dollars while maintaining

vital outreach services. Next, we turn to non-personnel costs. Operating expenses increase by 1.5 million of 13 percent, driven by facility rental escalations, energy utility rate shifts, and the

rising cost of building maintenance and equipment upkeep. While equipment budget decreases by roughly 86K or 5 percent, as the department defers a select number of new equipment purchases to keep

overall costs down. For special funds, we are adding 100K to our technical infrastructure, split evenly 50K more for computer replacements and 50K for radio replacement program to secure clear

emergency lines. Additionally, basic life support subsidy payments increase by 3 percent to maintain critical emergency transport agreements in regional partnership frameworks. I should also note that

the department doesn't have any separate special purpose accounts. The old collection account we used to maintain was fully absorbed into the regular operating budget. Because those annual collection

amounts are relatively small, keeping a stand-alone account just creates unnecessary paperwork. Merging these streams tracking without changing operations one bit. Now we will have an overview of the

budget by service. When you look at this budget, through the services the department actually provide, over 85 percent of total staff are deployed directly to frontline field operations. Fire

suppression and emergency medical response remains the largest division making up 80 percent of the operating budget and supporting 912 FTEs. This breakdown ensures that our tax dollars are being put

right where they matter most on the streets, saving lives. Turning to the department's revenue, we projected total collections to increase by 1 million or 11 percent, bringing total revenue estimation

to 10.5 million. This positive shift arises entirely from improved cost recovery volumes and better tracking within the department's emergency transport billing systems. I want to highlight there are

no fee increases for residents in 2027 as standard license and permit fees remain unchanged. Now we get to capital. I'll briefly address the department's infrastructure needs with a 3 million capital

allocation funded through new borrowing. Two million of this allocation will go to facility maintenance to cover urgent structural needs. Two roof replacements, two boiler replacements, and handling

major concrete overhauls at four fire stations. The remaining 1 million is dedicated to the department's critical station floor replacement program, allowing the department to build out up to three

floors in 2027 while moving forward with an engineering study to evaluate 12 additional stations down the road. These vital funds support the department's 40 facilities, which the leadership team can

expand on. This concludes my overview of the fire department's 2027 proposed budget. I'll now turn the floor over to Chief Lipsky to continue unless you have questions for me. Thank you. Thank you.

Any questions for Angelique? Okay, we might have some, but we'll go to the presentation next. Thank you for your work on that. Chief Lipsky, please begin and introduce anyone you'd like. Of course,

thank you. Chief Lipsky, Milwaukee Fire Department with me is our business finance manager, Amanda Lewis, and a whole bunch of folks in the back wearing white shirts who can fill in gaps on a whole

bunch of different stuff. As you come up, if you're answering a question, then just introduce yourself at that time, please. Thank you for being here. Sounds good. So thanks for hearing us today. I'll

be real brief here on each slide. I'm not going to read them all to you, but you can see that on our opioid mortality reduction, we are holding steady and increasing on each one of our metrics for

reaching out and/or making direct contact with overdose survivors. Then we are maintaining the public safety through a better response rate year over year through increased daily staffing, smoke alarm

installation, and certainly public education and fire prevention activities. You can see that our emergency response platform then increases to a total of 211 daily. The intent is to reopen the fire

station at Franklin and Brady, Engine Company 6, and that is we're able to do that because of money allocated by the mayor's office a year and a half or two years ago when we started to have that

apparatus floor collapse underneath our feet, and so that has been repaired, and we're able to actually plug in a fire engine there, and that is the intent to reopen that fire station. You can see, I

don't belabor the point, but since about the year 2013, all of those companies in red have been disbanded, decommissioned, defunded, and they remain closed, and so we still have some pretty big gaps

in the city. We provide a wide variety of special operations capabilities for the city. Those are listed there. Some of the ones you would expect coming off summertime, the dive rescue team, our boat

rescue team, hazardous material, heavy urban rescue team, fire investigation unit, incident command post, tactical emergency medical services, and mobile integrated health, so I just said I wasn't

going to read the slide, and I just read the slide. And then prevention and risk reduction. We've got all the activities that you see there, all the heavy hitters that we continue to turn up the

volume on year over year. And then certainly community health and preparedness. We discussed the Maury water safe MKE continues to expand at a dramatic pace, largely with private funding and/or

funding that is utilized from grants for Riverwalk expansion, et cetera. So you probably are starting to see these bright orange plastic clamshell cases bolted to bridges or along pathways by the

river. That's water safe MKE. With it is an entire back end for increasing people's ability to swim, swim lessons, is a fancy way to say it. So that continues. And then certainly CPR, Narcan, and stop

the bleed training. Annual run totals and rigs in service, top right, you can see the run totals all told, slightly dipped from 24 to 25, as did the private provider run totals, and then the engines,

trucks, and paramedic units stayed flat. We did not add any heavy apparatus last year. The response times, as you can see, trend at least flat and possibly, well, coming down for ALS type responses

and coming down for that fireful first in. And the first in means when we have a building on fire, we're sending a number of fire engines, a number of ladder trucks, just because that's what it takes.

And what we track on the left is the time it takes to get that very first fire apparatus to the scene. And that's respectable. It's a good time. It's just hovering right around three minutes there,

which is a very, very good response time. But one fire engine with four people on it, we used to have five. Now we've just got four. They are limited in what they can do. And so we bring in more

engines. We bring in more ladder trucks. Ladder trucks used to have five also. They only have four. So they become single purpose instead of being able to split and attack multiple tactics

simultaneously. So the chart on the right, the fire full, that is the rest of the complement. That's that whole complement of apparatus we would send for a building fire. And as you can see, that is

actually starting to trend downward from the all time high. And it's like right around 2022 where we are starting to get all of those support services to the fire so that the fire attack and the

rescue and the lifesaving can occur. That's a good thing. So everything I just said, that's actually a good thing. We're starting to see the impacts of the budgetary decisions. Let me jump to the next

one, please. Got some other metrics here. We've been looking very close at fire morbidity, mortality, and then the number of displaced persons. And obviously you can see in 2025 we had a heck of a

year. 2025 we had the Mother's Day fire on 27th and Highland. We had a number of other very large apartment fires with dozens and dozens displaced. The idea being if we can get into these fires

earlier and contain them in smaller locations, smaller spread, we can decrease the amount of human life exposed to the smoke and fire, but we can also preserve more property. Tax base remains able to

be reoccupied sooner. People are not displaced as long. And then the Maury outcome measures, you can see we discussed some of those just discussion wise a few slides ago. But you can see 2026 we're

plugging along, still moving our Maury contacts, meaning the human people that we go and track down post resuscitation from an overdose. Those people that we are actually making contact with, that

number is increasing. Anytime we can make contact with a person, it offers another opportunity at life, another opportunity at recovery for that person. So I've got members of the Maury team here,

they've been just doing a fantastic job. We are doing all of our paramedic unit purchasing and those are about a quarter million a pop nowadays to fully outfit. We haven't put that on the tax levy for

a couple years here because of state of Wisconsin EMS funding assistance program that we worked very hard at the state level to get dramatically increased. It had been annual maybe 80, $90,000 a year

coming in. We now have it up to 1.5 million. So we have not had to have a single paramedic unit on the tax levy. We've got six coming by year end. Got two ladder trucks arriving in Q1 of 2027. Those

were ordered in June of 2025 so you can see that that lag is real. RFP scoring, just speak about it generically because we very literally just wrapped a lot of that up this morning with our fleet and

facilities people and city procurement and anywhere between two and three years for any of those items to arrive. That's after we actually have a signed contract. Facility conditions and capacities,

we had been housing our community relations division at engine six on Franklin and Brady just to make use of the space as things were shifting around. We've moved them over to engine three which was

shuttered in 2018. That's on first in Virginia so that they have a space to call home base. A repair shop lease extension and then also versus purchase and build, we have largely moved all of our

automotive and apparatus repair out of first in Virginia because of a number of structural failures and size limitations. It was built for horses and steamers and much smaller vehicles, model A

forwards and such. Obviously does not work anymore so we're leasing a building over on about 19th and February. It's working out very, very well but it's a limited term lease and at some point we are

going to just need to decide if we're still going to have a repair shop or if we're going to vend it out because that lease will run out and we're going to need serious capital funds to assist with

that. Our fire training tower at our fire academy is requiring more and more money every year and fairly big ticket money just to repair it. You've got your normal freeze and thaw and what that does

to masonry but we're also necessarily burning in these buildings and throwing water around in the buildings and you add all this together and this building requires a ton of work. It has to be

certified to meet national fire protection association standards so that we're not at risk. If something would go wrong we've got that building in tip top shape. We've been seeking other means of

getting that funded to include dealing with our federal partners to see if we can't get something earmarked and it only ever makes it so far. So we'll have to decide if we're going to continue

training our firefighters before we put them into the field or if we're going to job that out somewhere else because that tower has a very limited lifespan. We are presently welding large metal connex

containers together to substitute for our regular burn tower or at least to augment it. Other major updates, we are working very, very hard trying to get ourselves up to snuff so that we are ready for

when we have a major shipboard fire. We are ecstatic that Port Milwaukee has broken records this year for the number of disembarkments and that they're adding major capital port facilities. Much of

this is done before we're involved and so we're catching up with that. You'll recall in New Jersey two firefighters, we call them land-based firefighters, that's us because we're on land. Maritime

firefighting is much different and so when you commit land-based firefighters with no additional training or expertise or equipment to maritime firefighting, you're on the risk of killing two

firefighters like they did in New Jersey. It is a far different environment than going into a building. So we've been as fast as we can spreading to the four corners of the nation trying to get the

best training and learn what we're supposed to be doing there. We also have been very, very busy with the electric vehicle and the lithium-ion battery response and just generally a task force for how

to incorporate these things into our environment. They are causing very real problems across the nation, across the world, around the world actually. And my mission working closely with Eric

Shamburger at Eco is how can we do two things at once, I guess, is the question. Can we incorporate these things but can we do it safely? Us not being a home-ruled city or a home-ruled state, we can't

make any codes or ordinances, building codes, fire codes, etc. that are more restrictive than what the state has. The state is so far behind on their codes, as you might imagine, lithium-ion and EVs

aren't really prominent in their codes. So there's a lot of gaps. We're just trying to come up with sensible ways to direct folks. The firefighting on these things is absolutely bonkers. But we've

absolutely flooded the market and they're in everything from cell phones to micromobility devices to automobiles. They're being bolted inside of very weakly engineered homes as energy storage systems

so that people can store during low peak and use during high peak and save some money on their bill. But there's no standardization as to where these things should be placed, how we're notified. And

the smoke and the toxins and the chemicals coming off of these things when they burn are so bad as to be incalculable. I'm very involved with the Metro Fire Chiefs and the International Association of

Fire Chiefs. And we have done a ton of research to try to get our arms around this. And the answers are not promising, but we're doing everything we can. The goal is to make it work, but to be

sensible and safe about it instead of just saying, "No, this is what we're going to do," and then figuring it out later. So I thank Eric Schamburger and his team, Nathan Cole, for -- we've really,

really had some robust discussions because it can get -- oddly enough, it can get to be a heated topic, no pun intended. But we're just trying to make it work. There's our org chart. If you're having

trouble sleeping, you can study that closely tonight. Good for the next one then. After the Brewers win. After the Brewers win, that's right. Local -- we've got our department demographics. We broke

them down by local 215. That would be the general sworn membership. We've got command staff on the top right. That would be folks in the white shirts, folks that are not in the union but are sworn,

and then the civilian demographics. We've got that there for you to see. And I do believe we turned a far more granular chart into LRB as well. And that's what we have. I think I fit. Yes. Perfect. It

really helps for us to kind of maximize our question asking. Well, thank you, Chief. Thank you to everybody. We will now begin the members of finance questioning. And we're due to start with Alderman

Melele Cox. Thank you, Madam Chair. You said the station on Brady is the one that you will -- that is budgeted in this budget to reopen for 2027. Correct. That's what we're proposing. What are the

criteria that you looked at when deciding which station to reopen? That's a great question. So we have only the existing infrastructure we can work with. We haven't built a new fire station in over 30

years. Our oldest station being 154 years old and a whole bunch of them not far off. So we have what we have. So current stations that we could choose from -- I'll take you through the exercise if

that's right. Engine three on first in Virginia. Station five on 13th and reservoir. We used to have two engines running out of seventh and Wells, the Alonzo Robinson MFD headquarters. That was

considered necessary for high-rise firefighting potential. But it was not a separate station. And then engine 25 on 84th and O'Connor just north of State Fair Park. So we've got realistic options here

include engine three first in Virginia, engine six, which is what we're proposing. Engine five on 13th and reservoir and engine 25 on 84th and O'Connor. So we've got really four choices of where we

can plug an engine in. The engine 25 on 84th and O'Connor is among the slowest response areas that we -- just about that we've ever had. So the run totals aren't great. The geography is a bit

problematic because we're coming from actually TOSAs in our station at engine 35, covering from about 64th and just south of Blue Mound Road. So they've got to go west and cover that. Engine five at

13th and reservoir is seeing heavy usage right now as a community outreach and a health and wellness station for us. We've got it outfitted with gym equipment. We have Andre Lee Ellis' cage runs out

of there with the garden to the west, and he runs a number of community groups out of that actual building. And when we had engine 30 in your area on Tetonia Locust, we had that apparatus floor

collapse under a fire truck once. This is four-ish years ago. So we had to move the companies out while we had that structurally repaired. And we put engine 30 at engine five. And we thought, well,

this is just going to be just this incredibly busy engine. It's already busy. We thought it would be even busier because it's covering five's area, which hasn't had anything in it in a while. And it

was covering its own area, but not from its own station. And the data from that period of time showed that it pretty much went dormant. So its location right now just doesn't scream out as like you

absolutely need to have another fire engine right here. And then the other location on first in Virginia, one of the smallest geographical areas that we could respond to. Things that keep your fire

chief up at night are that a ton of conversions are occurring in the area of these old mill buildings being turned into condos and apartments. So it has an increasing residential population. But then

we have to look at engine six. Why did we end up at engine six on Franklin and Brady? We've had a number of fatal high rise fires in unsprinkled high rises, which are all up and down far well in

prospect and in some of the neighborhoods off those main streets. And it is an increasingly difficult area to get into just based on traffic and congestion. And the response times into those

situations absolutely demand and given that target hazard are the heights of these buildings. That's why we chose engine six. So if I did a side by side of all of the options, the five options you

said, it would be clear that Brady is the greatest in need right now. It's clear to me. Help me out. Like I heard everything you explain. But instead of saying specifics, which I've seen before,

previous budgets, previous conversations, our response time is this or this time is this. We could eliminate that over here if we put this here and comparatively this is going to have this much

greater. That's not what I'm hearing. So what I'm asking you is if you did break it down like that, like it has been in previous years, it will be clear by those numbers that Brady is the is the way

to go. If you're only looking at response times, I don't know that I could prove one over the other just on response times. I can pull that together for you. Yeah, I don't have it at this meeting, but

I don't think it would be negligible between one and the other or one and the others, to be fair. But I have to look at the experience of the area as well. And we've had two high rise fires. That's

two high rise fires with fatal's. We've had a number of other high rise fires that just didn't result in fatal's. Yeah, I 100 percent get your point on being a bit theoretical in my explanation. I

will get you some hard data on the numbers. OK, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Have you all and I know with your deputy chief, I've had this conversation in past years and you kind of explained it in

your last answer about, you know, everything from floor is given into just how much repair so many of the stations are needing. What have you what are you all doing for long term planning for for

these stations? Like at some point, I think as a city, we're going to have to decide is it worth the financial investment in these spaces or might it be worth us looking at new new spaces that we

invest in? I'll give you an example similar to I've been on a library board for 18 years when I before I came on, it was all about which library we're going to cut this year because finances were so

bad. But in projecting, you know, where the need is, how much repairs don't cost on certain places or whatever, whatever the thought was then put out there about other options on how to do this. And

it was brought to the public and all of that. And director like, you know, this because you're on the library with me, the public show support for the mixed use model. So we tried it. And since then,

I think it's worked pretty pretty well as an option. I'm not saying you all have to do that. But what I'm saying is, are you looking at best practices across the country? What are others doing? I'm

sure many people are dealing with aging builders or whatever. And might there be some other options we should be exploring? Are you all looking at that long term? That's not just for you, chief, but

it's also for the budget director as well, because I would think this stuff is expensive and it's happening at almost all the stations. And are there are we looking at pivoting potentially or

discussing options for the future as opposed to just closing a place down like we know we need the service over here. But maybe we just need a different space to do it. And what's the most financially

realistic way that we can get it done? You know what I mean? So you're singing my song because we have discussed this internally. We brought it into the mayor's office as a suggestion. And, you know,

we even looked at next year. which which has occurred around the nation not it's not sweeping the nation but there are very good examples which sounds odd but people actually are I think the old trope

about like oh it's so crazy living near a fire station people actually like living near a fire station yeah right and it just provides a measure of safety and comfort that the help is right there so

we we we have pitched and proposed and we've requested money to do studies so that we could figure out what would what would it cost to do this what would be the the return on investment and so yes we

have we have made that attempt yeah we the chief and his team he showed us you know other cities I think Toronto comes to mind was it Toronto Calgary pardon me somewhere in Canada they were they've

done the fire station in the basement of a high-rise and all the mccoggs I think you summarized it well I think the mixed use libraries which we're about to do is in our fifth or sixth one have been

successful incredibly are you rubbing it in why they've been successful in terms of community impact and I think that I think all the neighborhoods that got them were really excited but they are they

were always not free and they're getting that much more expensive so my I mean I'm just I'm always the bearer of bad news but it's not that we're unwilling to plan it's that we're gonna what's the

point of spending million dollars on a plan if you don't then have the tens of million dollars to execute plan remind me for the library thing was there was there a million dollar plan no not that I

can remember although to be fair with well it's different yeah it's I don't I mean I'm not enough of an expert on space planning to know whether you needed a plan for five mixed use libraries versus

thirty firehouses first I mean there's this and when you're looking at a service model and the kind of response time day I mean the library also looks at you know outreach and zip codes and addresses

so I shouldn't be comparing the two but generally I think the idea of whether or not to do the plan I think it was an analogy I'll make to what some comment the city clerk made about the record

management system he said well if you're gonna spend the money on the plan you better do the whole thing so that and you know there's some argument to that so but it's so if you're gonna commit to an

expensive plan it better it ought to be because you have an expectation that you'll have significant money in the coming years to execute plan otherwise it's you know you've just done a plan that's by

design almost by fiscal design wind up on the shelf so it is a real challenge you know the chief outlined the burn tower issue the repair shop issue obviously I'm sure we're gonna talk about trucks

and then we got stations to now the stations we've gotten the somewhat of a good hand lot of the chief mentioned we did some cash financing in 2025 and got four or five stations with their roofs and

their floors stabilized but yeah long term should we be building new the answer is maybe we should be but until unless there's resources available realistically like in all departments with the

exception of the library lately and then with the exception of Public Works to be fair so we did we did do a study not with taxpayer dollars you know the instant young study and they did come back and

say and I think that's been shared with the committee because this came up during public well came up during the capital presentation and we'll talk I'm sure we'll talk about it more on Thursday with

them with Public Works given the condition of the municipal services building on canal that was identified as the priority and I mean it's the fire repair shop of a victim of having a successful lease

that's working out for now I don't know if I want to look at it that way right if I mean ultimately we've got to do this municipal services building we've committed to doing the new Midtown Library

every year we're committed to matching federal grants and trying to fix local roads and dealing with fleet across all departments police fire and DPW and then do we also and then at what point will we

be able to have money within a sustainably sized capital borrowing budget to also make some of these other major investments because even though the library's gotten a few new mixed use buildings when

the library comes are they coming tomorrow they're gonna tell you Central Library needs a lot of money you know so I don't want to I'm not trying to say there's there's you know that misery loves

company or there's joy in all being in this together but there are if you look at it objectively from the perspective of a consultant who you'd pay to do a study they're all gonna tell you about a

number of needs and probably most especially in the fire department which we've discussed the burn tower the repair shop fleet certainly and then and then these stations the strategy we've gone with

so far is to take these 30 and 130 year old stations most of they're all somewhere in between those two 30 and 130 and fix the roofs fix the floors and keep using them that's likely the with the

current state of financing that's the only approach that there's likely room for in the capital budget I do think and I'm not suggesting that it be this year but I do think at some point we're gonna

have to change that approach and I just want to just push that also I think outside the box we got an innovation person people do RF eyes so that you can hear from people who develop stuff what they

think might be a good idea it's a million ways that don't cost us a whole lot to at least begin to explore and I know there's been some work by the department has my conversations about about this as

well so I just think I'd rather be prepared and not prepared when it happens because I know when I got the call about the floor at the station in my district that kind of blew me away but then when I

heard that that's not an uncommon problem so if we know that these huge costs are gonna come up then maybe there will come a time where it's like do we keep putting a band-aid on it or do we do

something else I think that at some point we should probably look at what those something else options might be I do hear you loud and clear though about being real about how much money we have to do

it but I think if you were to ask 18 years ago if we really had the money for new libraries people would have said no but we still have the conversations and our ways were figured out 25 years ago if

we could afford to keep City Hall where it is if we knew it was gonna cost over a hundred million we probably would have said no I was just talking to somebody about that if we knew how much it would

cost would we have made a different decision because it started at 40 then 70 then another 50 for the basement just kept creeping but I do think the conversation needs to be had at some point and

efforts need to be made at least explore just because I'd rather have us explore ahead of time then then we're forced in a position to make some harder decisions that may end up costing us more that's

all with that I have one last question and that is you showed the demographics of the other staffing so far as gender and I think race what about what percentage lives in the city and doesn't and I'm

sorry if I missed that no that you did not miss it I did not include it I will say we'll get you the numbers but it ain't great you know this already it's we're probably at 60 or over 60 percent of

our sworn live outside the city and I think we're at or very near 50 percent civilians but civilians have always tracked more in the city than not I think we're getting close on that one too I will

get you the exact numbers but that's where we are thank you okay wait so police was 37 percent residency so you're thinking yours maybe slightly right around that flipped around and also we're

probably around 40 in 40 resident in residency 60 percent out okay the last numbers we got for the last finance thing I think is 58 percent of sworn fire live outside the city and then 62 percent of

MPD sworn all right I'll take the 58 percent all right we'll get that yeah thank you very much okay alderman burguelos I'll have a few and we'll keep moving along here so all the member guys thank you

very much for the budget office first you mentioned dealing with fleet across all departments I think there's something missing from page 9 on the on the proposal page 9 talks about capital for the

department there's a line that we saw in that slide last year that is omitted do we forget to include it for the 2027 proposed budget I only included what was requested or proposed for this year well

there was something requested for fleet we're not it yeah it didn't make the chart but yes we're not hiding from the fact that last year I mean historically there have been you know not not much put

into not enough put into fire fleet for sustainable levels I think it had been at one or two million for several years the mayor proposed two million last year council up that to ten and then chief

gave an update that you know there's that's in process there's an RFP it was scored this morning that's news to me right so yeah the answer is because there was ten million there we we encouraged the

department because there were some delays or I don't know why I don't delays the right word there were some issues getting manufacturers to turn in appropriate I don't want to I don't want to get into

that yet but I want to reference the omission from the report that the department requested twenty six point eight five million dollars in equipment and that's not present in the mayor's proposed

budget right we don't normally put the requests on these slides so that's not I apologize if you want if you wanted that as a footnote last year's last year's adopted budget should have been shown

here with a proposed budget of zero that's fair enough we probably should have done that that's fair okay so the the slide there so clearly there's nothing in the fleet budget for fire this year in

total the fire department requested just under sixty one million dollars in capital and got three million dollars in capital in the proposed budget for for everything that's the fuel islands heavy

equipment the fire maintenance facility great yeah there was planning was half the capital budget yeah planning an assessment so when the when the city's goal is that we're going to deal with fleet

across all departments how can we justify allocating zero for the fire department when the goal is to have the goal is to quote deal with fleet across all departments yeah what how are we dealing with

the fire department answer whenever you're happy to answer when you're okay guys I understand your position on this I understand we have the discussion last year last year the mayor proposed to you

were the lead sponsor on amendment that changed two into ten there were some timing challenges with getting that ten spent early on in the year I'm very glad to hear today that there may be progress

on buying trucks with that ten million in the meantime I believe some of that money earlier this year was being dedicated to refurbishing trucks which the fire department had requested as part of

their operating budget to spend I think it's 750 to get an existing truck refurbished and you get another ten years out of it but we did not we did find room in the budget to add 15 well overall 19

but 15 FTEs that'll count towards act 12 daily minimum staffing to reopen what turns out to be the Brady Street firehouse we did not find money given the hundred million dollar gap on the operating

side haven't even gotten a capital yet in this explanation to give them the operating money for the aerial for the refurbishment we encourage them to use their existing borrowing authority in a way

that could get trucks on the ground as soon as possible there is a long-term issue and the chart you know we're not disputing the information you shared last year about the long-term issue of needing

of the average age of the fire trucks increasing if we don't start spending more than one or two million dollars a year on fire trucks which had been historical for like it for a decade or more we

know that we had a real problem that was that's developing the question is what's the timing and the scale of the remedy to that so given that there's ten million there and that's in process we didn't

feel comfortable I'm talking now just about the 27 budget certainly not suggesting that we're zeroing out the fire fleet budget indefinitely we're not but given that we went from two to ten and that

there might be some timing or some issues in getting that money fully out the door in 26 we thought that ten could cover 26 and seven and we'll have another conversation in 28 we'll get updates on how

this RFP process is going and certainly we need to find a way to commit to sustainable funding levels both from a from a interest cost perspective that the city can afford and from a deferred

maintenance cost and deferred maintenance costs are real because if you just wait for the trucks to stop working but you still hire people and tell them to drive you're gonna have a problem that's

true for police it's true for fire it's certainly true for Department of Public Works they're all out there every day using really important equipment really expensive equipment so we're doing our

best we're not we wish we had more money to deal with it but that's the context we went from two to ten to zero averages out to an overall increase over the last couple of years and we're gonna have

to have a continued conversation about how much we borrow in 28 29 and 30 what we're you know what the facilities are our needs are across all departments and what's an acceptable level of funding for

major and local roads because happy you know I mentioned that the fire department request would have been half of the entire levy supported general obligation budget half the actual proposed is DPW

like it is every year you know half of the capital budget is DPW every year but that's between you know mostly its roads but also DPW facilities so it's a real challenge and I don't have a great

answer for you I uh but you know the answer we've talked about this ten times in the last month so I'm happy to have the conversation again just would hope you'd respect that we've had the

conversation already right I think it's important to not have bring light to conversations we have privately that are of the public in public's interest of the two ladder trucks that are arriving in

q1 2027 they were ordered in 2025 so the expectation would be that trucks from last year's budget or trucks or heavy equipment from the 2026 budget sounds like it's gonna take at least two years to

arrive what do we do two years from 2027 when we have nothing coming by skip by skipping well I think I understand your point and there's a staging issue here because I mean the chief could talk to

you more about they're scoring an RFP on October 12th I don't know when that order is gonna go in is that order gonna go in in October November December January I don't know but yeah there's gonna be

I mean there is if you look at I don't understand what that matters okay but he's asking if there'll be any trucks ordered in 27 I'm saying it there may based on the scaling out this 10 million there

may be some trucks ordered in 27 with the 26 borrowing authority and certainly we proposed the budget that was our understanding now and I'm actually heartened to hear that there's been progress in

the RFP negotiations or whatever you want to call them so yeah there there is an issue of I get what you're saying if you have a zero as a create a hole that in three years now there's a hole but

overall I would say a ten million dollar allocation even over a two-year budget cycle is still a more than doubling of what the prior trend had been if you look at 26 and 27 together 4.8 million was

kind of the average but the fleet not just for fleet know that would be forever facilities maintenance and fleet the requirement or the need from the fleet study that we had from last year was

anywhere between six and eight million per year correct ten divided by two is in six to eight million it's it's here how here's all I can put it it's more than we had been doing still not nearly

enough also another way to summarize it is more than we can afford and it's also still not enough and that's true and throughout the capital budget okay chief you've gotten new FTEs to reopen a fire

station we talked touched on a little bit how you decided to pick that one as opposed to other ones when's the last time that there's been a facilities plan or a reallocate or independent evaluation

of what the needs are city wide and what the resources are that you have available and where future planning should be has there been a facility study since 1852 so you might recall the study that was

done maybe 2009 and that one was acted on instantaneously because it suggested shutting down a bunch of fire stations and losing a bunch of fire cover boom that was lightning in this case we're

reopening so 2009 is the last comprehensive study that I can recall we we would be in full support of an allocation study to determine where you know we're we are trapped in the unfortunate loop of we

can't get funding because we don't have a plan because we can't get funding because we don't have a plan because we can't get funding after you see this trick enough times you understand where you lie

right the the fire department has a marine unit a boat is that located at a fire station on on a waterway negative our fire boat the fire boat itself is staged at Discovery World we cross staff so

that company runs out of it's this company that protects City Hall engine one on Broadway and Wells and they're cross staffed so if we have a fire boat run the engine goes we lost our only engine east

of the river in downtown if they're working on land we don't have a fire boat available same is true for our dive team same is true for our hazmat team so that would be something that a facility study

could address oh yeah and then in the requester budget you had you requested two million dollars for a fire facilities planning and assessment was that an RFP is that the going rate for something or

is that was that a budgeted estimate estimated guess we had worked with a number of local developers and planners who gratis just helped us start putting a plan together along the lines that all the

Roman cogs had mentioned and what we would have loved to have had at that moment in time was something that you can put on paper to say this is the direction this is a direction even if it's a

direction we decide against when it all comes out in the wash that's fine we we are doing the best we can't you'll recall that the library I think they were given an FTE specifically for this purpose

for planning oh they still have one so maybe we can borrow that person you know we're we we need we need some help here if we run a word count from this meeting alone the amount of time we have talked

about departments other than the fire department while talking about the fire department's budget I represent the fire department I'm not here to advocate for all the other fire departments I get it I

get it I get that there's only so much to go around but I'm here to advocate for the fire department and I don't take it lightly and it's not just a matter of I'm sure we're talking about apparatus

absolutely we are okay how are you planning on so you're we're reopening we're gonna reopen a fire station that will be a great media event with a ribbon cutting is there going to be any equipment for

that there's nothing there's nothing in the budget for new equipment for the for the reopen firehouse how are how are you planning on providing equipment for that so we'll slide on the abacus of

frontline and reserve apparatus for fire engines will slide one from reserve status to frontline apparatus or frontline status so we're presently sitting at about nine or ten well no cuz engine 17 got

totaled by a head-on drunk driver and started on fire so we don't have that anymore so we've got about nine frontline reserve fire engines so one of those will just be slid across I do I do want to

point out a fundamental difference in what is going on is the efficiency is gained at the new shop site just the space not having to play Tetris with the apparatus having all of it in one spot

including the reserve fleet allows them to get way more regular attention and we have been able to start keeping more and more of them in service we were we were not doing too hot last year we had

just a perfect storm of events that just brought our reserve fleet down to zero at times we're borrowing borrowing from our neighboring fire departments like you're about to expect my next question

how many times have we been down to zero or down to one recently and have we had to borrow cut a haze 30 year old fire engine or fire truck for we we have not had to borrow in since I believe right

around this time last last year we were out of ladder trucks for certain we were borrowing a wawatosa ladder truck and one other one I don't remember from who I can get you the exact numbers we track

it very closely I'm sorry I'm sorry I didn't bring that specific metric here okay is our eight reserve engines enough you're reshuffling the shops more more efficient you're using some of the fleet

replacement budget to extend the life of these engines that was that's a side discussion I'd rather not have here okay we're looking at the most efficient ways we can use the existing budget we're

finding out about new opportunities every day okay thank you very much for now thank you madam chair okay thank you if you'll turn to page 17 I have questions about it says l 215 demographics and then

the universe is civilian the blue and yellow are like so low there are they just slightly above zero I'm trying to understand what number that is for females so it is they're both above zero that

first the scale of that is zero to 100 okay so I'm like I know we got more than one but yeah yeah it's it's more than one but it's there we go okay so yes so when we're looking at the yellow line

representing white female and the blue line the two your question the blue line then is non white female so we've got at present 65 women and 723 men in the sworn category for local 215 okay and then

over to command where it actually dips below there around if that's on the same sheet yeah so that now that scale is 0 to 5 for that first line so that was one it dipped down to 0 for a bit and now

we're back up to 1 for within our command staff okay anything we can do to continue to change that and I guess what are we how do we compare to departments nationwide like are we I don't know if it

just depends city by city but just wondering how do we compare with that ratio or have you looked at that nationwide yeah we brought we brought in two separate entities to study the department from

this standpoint specifically and we're double the national average hmm I went over this last year and then you told me that's ridiculous or miserable I forget the word you used well we're moving

forward and actually I have the floor now so I mean I'm sorry just so well okay we we get it we don't we don't like need to be clobbered over the head we get it and we are we are working our tails off

to change the culture in the Milwaukee Fire Department I'll tell you what I can do to promote people into a command staff position is have a testing process that I'm not in control of produce more

viable candidates okay and we have worked side by side with the fire and police commission and we are seeing that change looking at this on a static page it's a now problem and it's a historical

problem it is we have been cultivating and nurturing and growing I wish I could hit a fast-forward button and show you what a couple years from now because we have a ton of outstanding viable

candidates just perched right now waiting for that next step and that's why I ask and I actually ask this in a different type of demographic with East emergency communications because I'm also putting

it on us it's a collective us we're all on the same team here what can we do what can is there some sort of human resource barrier that we can try to help out with or you know any recruitment or

anything like that like we need to know with the emergency responders we were we were similarly asking you know does do we have to if the markets not producing something sometimes we have to agitate

the market or make changes so that's why I was asking that okay moving on perhaps to a lighter note I don't see anything in here so I'm assuming everything is the same but I've got to ask are we

continuing with the same level or more of our survive a live education and training like survive a live house I feel like I didn't see it so unless I stepped out for a moment and maybe maybe I didn't

oh here's survival I didn't give you a matrix okay but yes but no very much continuing no okay great in fact I would I would put forth we've gotten more aggressive with the mobile survival life

portion of that yes and I'd encourage as of you know unless it's tied up somewhere else already if you're having a neighborhood party or whatever give us a call it is a huge huge value add I would

love to you it's good education yeah don't ask me because I will definitely do it and we already appreciate you know when you do bring the engines like we had the big trucks we had it in Bayview

seeing the young people light up and see future career and understand that that's just such a great investment okay I think that's wonderful I didn't necessarily understand the dynamic so the mobile

one and I'm interested in that okay on the metrics of the Narcan and Hope kits it looked like 25 was kind of 2025 was a bit of a outlier in that there were if I understood it right more Narcan more

Hope kits handed out in 25 than 26 maybe that's also because we're not totally through 26 but I just wanted to learn about that yeah absolutely there is some variability to that we first off we hand

them out to whoever asked for so if someone rings a doorbell at a fire station they see us out you know training or something hey could I get some of that we'll just give it to them so some of it is

demand-based and some of it is just environmental-based and we're on a run and we're in an environment that kind of jumps out at you like maybe they would benefit from this we'll offer it of course if

you'd like I can get you a more granular answer from my okay I think that's okay I guess my only other question that might be related with your brings bringing someone up from Maury then I have one

last question after that is so you're saying that we are following through after we have like that Maury contact and I realize public safety I think has gone over this a couple times but should be a

fairly quick question we're monitoring the contacts but then the follow-through what does that look like so after we've encountered someone I guess that would be maybe even administering Narcan etc

there's the like you get the personal data you follow up and then is that do we stick with them or is that become a case just walk me through that now that the Maury is being funded I see with the

opiate lawsuit absolutely so once we get the person to either medically assisted treatment or into counseling or both we are not privy to their records past that point okay the closest we could come

throw something at me if I'm off but the closest we could come is if we see a recidivism or relapse I guess is the word I'm looking for and we encounter the same person again so we're looking at much

much wider numbers we're looking at total overdoses fatal overdoses and and the number of people we can get hands on who agree and we'll go take that step to try to get get cleaned up okay the Brady

Street fire house and I always make a mistake when I do this as a civilian will it also have paramedic because I know that's directly attached to the type of equipment that it has and the rig please

walk me through that sure so every one of our rigs is equipped to be able to have a paramedic on it they don't all have a paramedic assigned as far as one of the workers every day since it will just

be a fire engine it won't have an ambulance in it it's a pretty small bay there right so it'll just be a fire engine there's not a there's not a plan to make that a mandatory paramedic rig every day

but there will probably be many days where it is okay that's very helpful last but not least on the burn tower and repair shop I I appreciate that you're kind of asking you know at some point we have

to figure out what our future is here you know you kind of even suggested is that something that we may privatize I'm not I'm not really sure about that could those strange question I've been to both

I believe can those be like in the same space couldn't they be in the same area because I was thinking you know that might be an option as well absolutely yeah we've we've kind of war game yeah that

and a number of other things in the same space just to maximize the fact that we'd get some bricks right like let's make use of that okay and one other kind of random idea is is there any

collaboration that we could have with Milwaukee public schools you know they're divesting from many of their buildings they're literally talking about five or six schools right now obviously I'm a lot

of things I'm not an engineer knowing of the building but I mean could be some some interesting uses and these are the city has a role in it right like because they come to us and so sometimes when

it's in our hands I would love to see if there was any potential partnership there especially because they're so strategically located and wanted to see if you could consider that as well so yes we've

been talking with them currently and back when I ran the repair shop we went and vetted out a whole bunch of their existing vacant properties as potential shop sites and for a variety of reasons those

that we looked at just weren't gonna work space wise the the demolition on some of these is extremely expensive they just have a much newer strategic plan they're out in the community right now and

you know it is obviously not a done deal but they're looking at closing buildings condensing so yeah maybe other opportunities I personally would love to see them use for a public use if possible so I

also am very interested in the apartments with the fire uses too I've seen them and seems like it'd be really innovative and I let's formally make sure we send that to otherwise I can to the

innovation office I'll move on now to alderman scotspicker thank you madam chair with respect to the shift in funding of the moray program from levy sales tax I guess to opioid settlement funds I

guess first for the budget office does that impact the numbers whether they count towards the number years of the daily staffing under act 12 I don't think moray counselors daily room staff right they

were yeah they work a different schedule and the chief can explain but yeah they don't count for the towards 211 they didn't before and they don't now correct and then chief could you just say a

little bit more about what that funding source is allowing you to do moving forward what your plans are for upping the program in the next year sure the the short version is we'll be able to add a car

or cars and personnel to staff those cars depending which exact shift we're talking about it'll push us into evening hours as well as weekend hours because none of this happens on a nine to five forty

hour schedule and the end goal then I guess the the pie in the sky is it'll allow us to reach more people that's the very high aim of it yep pretty extensive discussions at public safety but just

think it's important to bring out that there's gonna be an increase in service there thank you um with respect to I guess the gender staffing question was asked and I had a really good conversation

with a Greenfield EMT paramedic at I think investiture of local 215 officers at one time a year or two ago and was interesting to hear about her experiences in the department and coming up have you

had conversations with the women who are your employees about ideas for either making the culture or the onboarding process or what have you is there any sort of formal process that y'all engage in to

consult your your female employees about what would make this may be more attractive to future recruits so I don't have a formal procedure based process for doing that but I can tell you some of the

things we've done and I would like to credit local 215 president Eric Dawn and the unions leadership in this because they have an entire human resources section in the International Association of

Firefighters that has provided a ton of material what does that allowed us to do thus far it's allowed us to update our pregnancy and lactation policy if we want women to work in the fire service then

we have to take care of women we can't try to make them be something they're not and so if we want women to come in and be firefighters we shouldn't be asking them and this was happening we weren't

asking them to be fair but we shouldn't create a set of conditions that make them choose between having children or being on the Milwaukee Fire Department and that that did de facto happen so we have

changed that we now have a perfectly coherent workable solid pregnancy policy and lactation policy that so that mothers or potential mothers can kind of guide their own fate instead of feeling an

unwritten pressure we have also engaged a tremendous amount internally with just general cultural improvement on in an atmosphere in an environment that says you're welcome here you are truly welcome

here we're not checking a box we're not you know doing it because someone's oh you got to go do this thing we actually are creating an environment we also have and credit to I'm gonna butcher up I'll

come back to it the the firefighting equipment that women were wearing since the women came on the fire department was just off-size men's firefighting gear and if we're going to welcome women to the

fire service we've got to actually have equipment that fits and so we now are at the cutting edge of new improved equipment that is designed around the realities of a woman's body so that they're not

wearing pants that are three times too big in the waist just so they're shorter like these weird combinations that leave gaps in the protection from fire and so we've been doing that for a couple of

years here now where we're actually now not all of it's even available in the fire service yet but we're working on it we're pushing so I don't have a formal program but I but we are we are taking

some substantial steps to improve the conditions and you mentioned chief Lipsky that there's some things with the testing that may be posing impediments did I hear that right the FPC procedures for

well we we look very very closely at every step along the way from and this may sound comedic it's not intended to be but all the way back to a grade school African-American girl looking at a fire

truck drive by what is their understanding as that fire truck drives by of their ability to one day be on that fire truck and that's real and then we fast forward now to where we're starting to ramp

up real recruitment efforts if we are not going where people are they're not gonna see us that that that proximity grows affinity grows ideally a welcoming environment then we get to the actual tests

to get on the job and much credit to our Academy staff and to assistant chief Parrish for having invested themselves in this all the way back to 2012 when he rewrote the cadet program we've got to

create ways where we're testing what we actually need to be testing not just regurgitating last year's tests that didn't really prove whether a person is going to excel in the role of firefighting or

firefighting paramedic and so we've been I guess the best I can put it is at each one of the necessarily I can't hire 12,000 people who want to be a fire I don't have that capacity so we have to make

a list at some point but at every time that we narrow that list down all the way from the recruitment process the how do I get my name on the mailing list to the how do I sign up for the written how

do I take that written do I pass certain every one of those things you should see a proportionate decrease across the demographics not all the way through in one case and barely any through in the

other case so at each one of those gateways we've we've been eliminating snags and it's I'm happy to say that it is starting to show the impact albeit not in stunning fashion we are starting to see

some change there okay just want to make sure I didn't hear anything specific about there being some bottleneck or something in the testing procedures in place that are ruling out female employees

fair question I'm sorry if I sent that energy across the table it's it's I just don't control it if I control it I could just like snip-snap make some change you know I could do whatever I wanted of

course we control some things too and we can't have conversations with a PC so I just want to encourage if there are impediments that arise that are outside your ability feel free to you know talk

across the table always happy to help appreciate to the extent we can the BLS subsidies so that the director Quebec might be able to remind me I think it came in at 5 million during the ARPA times

when we yes it's going up class yeah it's gonna be around 8 now but it seems to have kind of leveled a bit do we expect that's reflective of any sort of trends are we are we seeing it has an automatic

inflationary adjustment per run but then it's also per run so a big question how many BLS runs are they going to the trends there and that is the salient point is yes there's a percentage built in but

there is also an increase reflected between 24 and 25 I think yeah and I I think I saw a table for runs but maybe I asked this for this last year but I see it in response times being broken down to

ALS BLS fire responses it would be good to have the runs broken out that way at some point if that could be passed on and then maybe incorporated next year into a slide burger and then two more super

quick things last year I think I asked about AI usage and you had replied something about students digging into deployment models via AI I can't I didn't write good enough notes there but is that

something other fire departments have used is you know dr. Madison and team been looking at that is that something for future study so I guess it wouldn't take away from your decision as chief about

which fire station to reopen but it would be a tool I guess to get a bunch of data into a more manageable more you could see it in one view kind of what your decision points are there yes I am

admittedly just me personally a bit of a technology like slow adopter I just drag until something comes along that grabs me and so we have been experimenting and surprise we're about to kick off a

complete rewrite of all of our standard operating guidelines that is going to rely heavily on the ability of AI to pull in and not just take our own stuff and regurgitate it but to ensure that we are

aligned with all of the different standard-bearing agencies because we can dump it all into one thing and it can summarize we still have to crossjack of course but we are about to embark on that we

that's that's what we are planning to do we're starting with the command staff because I have to get out of my own way on this a little bit it can be daunting to log on to these things and do

something other than make a meme and so what we're trying to do is to find the spots we can make use of them I can tell you across the United States fire service they are beginning to use this and

I'll let the EC speak to it but they are beginning to use this during 911 calls coming in and also it is starting to be used to capture radio transmissions and it can draw information and data from

that and push it right to reports and or have there be triggers for instance if a firefighter was falls through a floor and screams out Mayday and it makes it to its radio to the radio that could be

captured and actually set in motion a series of things instead of waiting on another human to capture it and send it those those seconds and and or minutes can can be the difference okay very good

half waiting for the assistant chief Parrish has already got three reports on this he is submitting them after a committee but last question is relating to shared service not getting into details here

but we're still reliant on our good friends in the burbs for him for medical assistance on runs I take it and they're still pretty reliant on us for big things that go bad with fires in their neck of

the woods is added to blunt of an assessment is that relationship still it's if you looked at everything since the beginning the beginning of us sharing services that general concept would stand true

when you look at it in a tighter interval of a month or a year or even two years it's it's it's more dynamic than just we go there for huge stuff and they just help for medical because our own medical

system has stabilized quite a bit with the subsidy that we're not drawing them in at the excessive paces that we were okay that's enough questions from me for now thank you madam chair thank you thank

you all the woman more and then we'll probably have time for maybe one more question each member if you need I do not so I'm out of the mix all the women more thank you so much madam chair so many of

my colleagues that's really really great questions and I just have a few to follow up on particularly the location at 19th and free brands we're currently leasing that location when do we get to

because I know the lease is coming up do you know completing soon when do we make a decision around either purchasing I think that space you know as you share chief worked really well for the needs

and you know the needs of the department when do we get to the point where do we continue leasing do we purchase when is that decision when does that decision need to be need to be made so I I fear

that we're probably past that point okay all right so we're gonna whatever it is it's gonna be a scramble because in order first off it's not for sale which would be the easy button we badly wish it

was yeah it's a lovely building it's actually a beat-up building but it suits our purposes very well yeah I don't want to sell it as some kind of Shangri-La but and so when you look at what it takes

to find land by the land develop the land have all the planning for all of the above done all of the designing and all the building you know I think we're on a four-year lease with an you know one

year options beyond that and I think in the four-year portion of this were one and a half to two years in so we're not like right at the end but we're getting close I mean every estimate we've

received from industry experts in development and construction of these sorts of buildings tells us that we're already late you know if we're actually gonna pull this off so that's that's why I

perhaps sound a bit fatalistic about it is it it's a huge priority for us and I'm not a hundred percent certain what happens after the lease got it okay thank you for that thank you maybe we can get

the state to give us the space on 27th and Wisconsin that big old empty space all right by the school by Wisconsin where the leprechaun lawn juice to be yes yes how you know about the leprechaun I

digress I digress that was my first engine company we spent a lot of time on EMS runs they're too funny can you talk a little bit about so on page 11 you talk a little bit about water and drowning

prevention efforts this is really you know sort of meaningful to me because you know we used to have a lot of YMCA's in our community that taught lessons swim lessons in addition to a lot of our

county parks had pools actual pools that you can swim in and you know learn how to swim a lot of those are non-existence anymore can you talk a little bit about what MFD is doing to support that area

absolutely so if you pop onto the website which is water safe mke.org you can see both the locations of the physical life-saving equipment but it also pulls together every possible swimming lesson in

the area or every agency that provides swimming lessons so it's one-stop shopping we are also I don't want to jinx anything but we are really really really considering on par with our fire cadet

program something to help augment lifeguards and and perhaps using that as our own pipeline in because those can be younger folks right they don't they can be teenagers in high school and you can be a

lifeguard but in order to do that obviously we need we need to have somewhere to go with them we need to have some control over that portion of things so we are I don't let any cats out of the bag but

we're looking at a whole bunch of grant opportunities that would help us kickstart something like that what we need to be doing is getting getting swim lessons back into a regular part of a curriculum

in a school system yeah it is it's terrible the drownings we're having every year yeah thank you thank you for sharing that two really quick questions and I had a chance to participate in the fire

detection sound the alarm which was oh my gosh awesome what are you all seeing now as far as residents having access or those sorts of staples fire alarms and smoked it or smoke detectors excuse me

and there's another one carbon monoxide detectors but mostly smoke detectors I know that you all install what are you all seeing as far as the need throughout our community so it's everywhere we tell

people you know daylight savings you know spring and fall like always check or on your birthday check change your battery we we are seeing a slight increase in the longevity of the things well them

being left in place because we now have 10 year lithium ion sealed batteries so people don't have to change a battery or they're not they actually can't it's all sealed up they can't pull it out and

then forget to put it back in if they burn toast or something and they also come with a little hush button so you press the hush button it shuts it up for 15 minutes so you don't have to keep

listening to a chirping at you but you don't have to take it down so that has improved things we have absolutely been flooding the community with these things and I would say the need is still there

yeah but people are becoming far wiser and what we need to start shifting into his carbon monoxide alarms as well we don't have them yet we're working on it a lot of hazards in the home yeah thank you

thank you for sharing that and the last question it's sort of an arbitrary question but I know we were actually flying back from Madison no Milwaukee night in DC and I asked you about I got word that

DNS ended up actually closing I think it was two properties based on a fire and I want to say if I remember correctly it was fire related as far as regulation that the landlord didn't take care of

what it was what they were supposed to do and opposed to a huge just issue my question is does is DNS required because it's fire related are they required to seek I don't know input from you all

before making that sort of decision or is it they just they just have the authority to close what you know again based on the the the notion that it was specifically around fire or fire related do

they have the the power to just close you know closed or do what they need to do to keep residents safe so I think one or both of those buildings referenced it was related to either smoke detection or

an alarm system or suppression system something that they would test they don't have to check with me about anything I'm the fire chief of the largest city in the state of Wisconsin I have zero

statutory authority as a fire marshal unlike the vast majority of other municipalities in the state that was taken away in 1967 when the entire apparatus of our fire inspection bureau was picked up

lock stock and barrel and handed off to what I think was at the time building in bridges and all of the statutory authority of a fire marshal which is a official designation for such things was

transferred to what is now Department of Neighborhood Services let me say this after what I just said sounds like I'm griping we have an absolutely fantastic relationship everybody at Department of

Neighborhood Services and we have worked very hard to not function in a vacuum from one another and so we are we are in conversation on these things but I just want to be real clear I I don't get to

just call and go no that's it's not an option for me interesting you talk about the fire if you could have your way just because you brought it up in regards to the the statutory regulations in

regards to the fire marshal if you had your way would that come back fall back under you would that make sense I guess right now it wouldn't need to change because Commissioner Oreo Vega and I we

talked very regularly on all of these things whether we're at a major fire and we see a bunch of displacements or we observe something in a building that we just happen to be in on a medical run I can

fast that fast track that to her and she handles it yeah here's the problem with that arrangement is they have the code and the letter of the law expertise we have the operational expertise and we are

out in the city all day every day in all these different structures if the fire chief and the DNS Commissioner just decide they don't like each other that can all stop which is good for nobody it is

extremely confusing to developers and folks who might invest money in the city of Milwaukee because every one of the state forms for such things says fire chief must sign off and I'm not allowed to

sign I can't side of no authority to sign off and so we've got like a bat phone that we worked out so that I can shunt those people to them but it's super confusing yeah it's interesting because and

the and I'll wrap it up here the only reason why I brought it up is because we gave residents 30 minutes to grab their belongings because it was deemed that it was a dangerous situation and to do that

with a I think that each unit was probably four or five or you know it was multiple levels in this particular building with elders with people that were wheelchair bound it was just it was a really

unfortunate you know situation again no fault of the city this goes back to our landlords not taking care of what they're supposed to be taking care of but when it comes to just regulation right on

providing that level of opportunity for constituents to be able to have enough time to grab their belongings it was just it was really really chaotic and I just wanted to understand like well how does

this work you know do we talk to the chief do we you know what I mean how do we figure out you know what those protocols are in place that sort of thing so I'm still looking to you know learn a lot

more but I appreciate you and thank you for your leadership thank you yeah thank you madam chair that I conclude thank you all the room more are being the last one of the wave here so I understand we

are in our concluding and outstanding questions I do not have any more all the Roman cogs does not have any more at this moment calling for last ones Alderman Bergales had one alderman spiker do you

have one but oh you're good okay so alderman Bergales and then we will wrap it up here thank you two short questions is DCD working on a facilities plan for the fire department already I mean there's

been some discussions but not I would not anything like a plan no discussions have started but nothing and then years back we've talked about an accident recovery fee as a additional source of revenue

that every other municipality in Milwaukee County uses has that had any further discussions so every other municipality does not use it almost every I don't think that's accurate sir there's probably

three or four other fire departments throughout Milwaukee County that have this in process And unless they've recently added it, we have looked at it. We can't even find a vendor to build the program

for us. It works great if you go onto a car accident a day. We can't find somebody to actually build it where it won't be so top-heavy and expensive and acrimonious and time-consuming. Operationally,

if I send a fire engine to a fender bender out here and there's some oil leaking on the ground and we clean it up, theoretically, we could charge for that. But we have never, as the Milwaukee Fire

Department, concerned ourself with who owns the vehicle, because we're there for patient care and just mitigating whatever the emergency is. As it turns out, we've tried building a back-end

relationship with law enforcement so that we could grab the owner's information from what they have. That hasn't even worked cleanly. So we have pretty much put it to bed. I don't think it's going to

be feasible here. OK, thank you very much. Thank you. Any outstanding questions, feedback, comments for the Fire Department? No colleagues are on the board. Seeing and hearing no further questions for

the Fire Department, thank you for your service to City of Milwaukee. And do you have a concluding remark? Yeah. Do you mind if I-- very briefly? You know, much has been made about the fire apparatus,

and it's very, very real. I do want to add-- maybe it's an edit that doesn't need to be made. But when we talk about that we're going to miss a year that we're going to zero out a year, it's actually

more expensive than that, because we're missing a year at whatever contracted prices we come to for this RFP. That's why these are three years long. That's how capital budgets work, because nothing

moves that fast. So of course we're here in this environment, struggling to make all this work. We are now going to take that year and plug it in on some subsequent contract at much higher prices. So

that is the cost. OK. On that note, thank you, Chief. Thank you for your advocacy. Thank you for your service to each and every one of you. We didn't get to meet all of you, but we do thank you and

we'll see you out there. We thank you for your work. Have a great afternoon. Thank you. Go Bursch. That concludes. Now we're up to Fire and Police Commission. Thank you. All right. Try to throw a

little extra energy there. Fire and Police Commission. Nobody? 20 minutes of presentation, 20 minutes of questions. I will give you like a two minute presentation. Everyone's getting real serious now,

right? Your ratings are about to plummet into 15 minutes. [INTERPOSING VOICES] He's at the ballpark. Yeah, he's going to patch in from Section 3-2. Yeah, right. The awkward standing room only virtual.

Oh, man. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Nick Kovach, Director of Budget Management Division. Brian Reiners will present the Fire and Police Commission slots. Thank you, Brian Reiners, Budget Management

Division. The 2027 proposed budget for the Fire and Police Commission is $6.1 million. That's an increase of $646,000 or nearly 12%. The salaries have increased by $198,000 or 8.3% to reflect actual

wage rates in 2026 carrying forward in 2027. No changes to positions. The operating account is up about $178,000 or 13%. And that reflects increased costs for promotional exams as well as for police

officer recruiting, special funds are up a total of $182,000 or 26.9%. The pre-employment screening is driving the increase here. And that's up by $286,000 or nearly 52%. And that's for the increased

cost of medical and psychological exams based on our new contracted rates. The operational efficiency study that you see has a zero. That's basically your police satisfaction study that's done every

other year. So it's in 2026. And then it will be budget again in 2028. Budget by service, like I said, the Fire and Police Commission's proposed budget is 6.1 million. And with that, I'll turn it over

to Director Todd. - Okay, all right. - 90 seconds. - Lee, please move that close to you. Okay, you see the roll we're on, so good afternoon. - Good afternoon, Madam Chair, committee members, Leon

Todd, Executive Director of the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission. I'm joined to my right by FPC audit manager, Sean Rechlaw. And I will move on to the first slide. So our core services, I think as

most of you know, FPC is broadly separated into two different hats. Our oversight and accountability side of the aisle. And then on the other side, our testing, hiring, and recruiting. Within our

oversight and monitoring side, we have our audit and compliance unit, research and policy, and also our investigation section, which handles our citizen complaint program. We also, and then on the

other side of the aisle, we have our staffing services unit, which again deals with testing, hiring, and recruiting. We have our administrative services unit, which provides administration services to

all our units. And then last but not least, our emergency management office, which as you know, is currently an office of one. Moving on to service highlights. So I do wanna spend some time talking

about police officer recruitment. This is one of the, if not the top priority for the Fire and Police Commission. That said, it has been a challenging undertaking. That's true not only in Milwaukee,

but nationwide. Our ultimate goal is to hire three classes each year, each of 65 officers. So since approximately 2024, classes have been ranging from about 30 recruits to 45 recruits, so somewhere in

the neighborhood of 50 to 70% full. Obviously we wanna push that up. These numbers are occurring despite the fact that we moved to a continuous recruitment model. We added a second recruiter position.

We moved to online testing. We increased our advertising budget. I do think that there are some reasons to be optimistic that we're seeing some improvements. The first is with respect to recruiting.

Our application numbers have continued to grow. In 2025, we had a total of 1,800 police officer applications that met the minimum requirements. That was an increase of 500 from the previous year in

2024. And really starting last fall, our application numbers have increased by, they've roughly doubled and they're now averaging about 50 per week as of October 6th of this year. We'd already

received 1,893 applications. We still have about two and a half months to go. So I anticipate that we'll end the year well over 2,000 applications. In addition to that, we've implemented a number of

hiring initiatives. We've moved to an express exam for the initial written test. We've implemented a new bifurcated PRT approach. We have hired a new psych vendor. We have a new private background

vendor as well. And currently, I think we are on track or on pace to see a class for December of about between 54 and 59 new recruit officers for class three of 2026, which is a substantial

improvement. Another one of our service highlights is our audit unit. Not only do they handle the audits that are required by the Collins Settlement Agreement, but they also do additional audits like

on topics such as drones, animals, Alper or flock license plate cameras, MPD and MFD resources and dispatch services. Those are some of the non Collins audits that we are handling this year. All

right, this slide is our key performance indicators. I'm not gonna go over all of these numbers in detail. That said, I do wanna draw your attention to the number of recruitment events. You can see

that that's decreased from about 180 in 25 to 120 this year and as well as that's what we project next year. That is intentional. In 2025, we did a significantly higher number of recruitment events to

see what would work, what wouldn't work and we think that this is a reasonable number that's a good use of our recruiters' time. All right, moving to the next slide. So major updates. We have been

working since fall of last year with a recruitment consultant, Safeguard Recruiting and again, since they have stepped in, our application numbers have nearly doubled. We were working with DER also to

conduct a new employment, employee engagement survey this year and I'm hoping that that can help with retention and morale at the police department. Collins Settlement Agreement is another one of our

major projects. We continue to work towards meeting compliance. That's true for both Fire and Police and the police department and then we're continuing to work with MPD and the Community

Collaborative Commission on developing a community-oriented and problem-oriented policing plan. I mentioned previously our Office of Emergency Management. They have done, or Director Zolikofer had

done a number of disaster response annexes. Prior to departing, he completed 15 out of 16 targeted annexes this year and he's also secured funding through the UASI grant for two additional staff

members for the Office of Emergency Management which I think will be a major help for him. Then finally, the last slide, you can see our department demographics and I think those speak for themselves.

So with that, I'm happy to answer questions. - Thank you so much. - How did I do on time, Madam Chair? - Fantastic, everyone's doing great. So far, everyone's actually at A plus, but you know, I'm

kind of, I'm easy with the grading, so all right, Alderwoman Charlin Moore. - Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Thank you, Lee, for that presentation. Quick question. In regards to, I think it was slide

number five, the change in regards to the contract, the pre-employment screening contract went up by about 286K. - Yes. - Can you talk a little bit about what attributed to that significant increase?

- So we have a new psych vendor that is, it was secured through an RFP process. They are more expensive than our previous vendor. I do anticipate that we'll see, we'll have a higher quality service

and part of the reason for selecting that particular vendor is that they were one of the first, I think the first actually police psychological vendor in the country that had done a disparate impact

analysis on their psychological exams and they found that they did not have a disparate impact in terms of race or gender. I think that they will also, and this still needs to be assessed, they

anticipate that they're gonna have a more screen out approach rather than screen in. And by that I mean they're looking to see, are you from a psychological standpoint unfit to be a police officer and

if so, screen you out rather than say, hey, are you the kind of person that we think meets our psychological criteria and our behavioral criteria such that we're gonna screen you in. I think that is a

more appropriate method when we're talking about psychological fitness. It is an area that is, so to speak, an art, more of an art than a hard science or having hard rules and people still have to

pass all these other examinations and including a background examination. So that that vendor was more expensive but I think that it is worth the cost. We're also now doing background investigations

where we have a private vendor for that which significantly increases the speed at which we can conduct those exams. So those are part of the reasons for the primary reasons for the increase for our

pre-employment screening budget. - Got it, thank you so much for that. So I see here that we're looking at, which is exciting, looking at about 54 to 59 new recruits for the class three for 2026.

That's the one that'll start in December. Can you talk a little bit about what has gotten us to that point to get to just numbers that are exceeding 50? - Yeah, and I do wanna just add the caveat that

that is an improvement which is good but it's ultimately not where we wanna be. We wanna be at three classes of 65 with a handful of contingents for each class. That would be the ideal. Again, I think

there's a combination of factors. I think safeguard recruiting has really gotten us more applicants. Now with that said, and this was true particularly for the first testing cohort. Even though we got

more applicants, our higher rate went down. And that's to be expected somewhat but it was a little bit higher or it went down a little bit more than we would have liked to have seen. Again, we've done

some things to try to stabilize or increase the hiring rate moving to this express exam. So instead of taking, and I'm gonna give estimates here, I think two to three hours, the express exam only

takes like an hour to an hour and a half or maybe even less. And you can do it on your phone. It doesn't have to be proctored. You can just go online and do it very quickly. I think that reduces a

good amount of friction in the testing process. We actually got that idea from the Denver Police Department which had used it to great success or at least moderate success. Another thing that we're

doing which I think is a good initiative is our bifurcated PRT approach. So we had previously asked the law enforcement standards board to give us a waiver where we could have this tiered system which

was a little bit more forgiving for the physical readiness test. With the idea that, and that being just for the entrance, the test for the entrance to the academy, individuals would have still had to

pass the exit standards to graduate from the academy. So we weren't really lowering standards. Ultimately and unfortunately I think LESB denied that request. But we still thought the idea had some

merit so we kind of pivoted and what we are doing now is we're taking the same tiered system that's a little bit modified and anyone who passes the regular criteria moves forward to pre-employment

just like before for people that may not pass all of those standards but still hit a threshold that we think is, that shows that they are reasonably fit. They will also move on on a contingent basis

through the pre-employment process with the understanding that they'll have to go to fit camps and PD can work with them on the area specifically where they did not pass and they'll have to pass the

test shortly before entering the academy. So we have about four or five of those that are moving through the process now. We started with eight. But if we can add four or five candidates to each

class, that's not nothing. It's not a silver bullet but it's one thing. And then we're also doing what we call MKE badge bound which is a month or so out before the academy. We have this kind of

celebratory event to celebrate their completion of all the testing process. We've gotten the mayor to come. Some of the commissioners give speeches. We give them this certificate that they're badge

bound. They sign a pledge to the Milwaukee Police Department. It's not binding or anything but it does help, I think, just get people committed, get them in front of the mayor and some of the MPD

academy. And we've had really good retention after that. We barely lost any people going from that point in time a month out to the academy over the next month or so for the last few classes. So all

these things together, I think we are, unfortunately there's no silver bullet for any of this but just finding the right combination of recruitment and retention initiatives through the testing

process. I think we're hopefully, oh my. (laughing) I think AIO is trying to help me here. (chattering) Again, just finding the right combination of initiatives and we've had these work group meetings

where we're kind of hashing some of this out and I think that is boosting things up. And again, I'm hopeful that we can see continued improvement. - I love that. Thank you, thank you for sharing that.

And really quick, the partnerships that you all talk about I think during with the KPIs. Are these new partnerships every year? Are these? - Yes. - So okay. So really quick in reference to what are

some of the partners that you all are, I mean we have so many organizations that are here in the city, finding more and more every single year could be just challenging but. - I do apologize, I don't

have that information at my fingertips. - No worries. - That's not something I prepared for but I can certainly get that to you and shoot you an email on that. - No, I appreciate that, yeah. - Madam

Chair, I'll pass it on. Thank you so much, Lee. - Okay, and if you're willing, you can also send that to Chris Lee and then he can send it to all of us. - Absolutely. - Usually we'd like to all see

it. - Perfect. - Okay, we'll move it on now. Thank you, Alderman Alderman, Scott Speicher. - Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess to the projection of 54 to 59 new recruits for the third class of this

year. That compares with graduation last week during budget or was it? - Yeah, there were 28 entry level and five laterals. - So that's a pretty huge increase. So how confident are we in that recruit

number sitting a month and a half out? You said maybe within a month out. That number's pretty solid but just how rosy is this projection and what is it based on? - So it is based on the fact that we

have 59 people remaining who have passed every testing component including psychological and background. They do need to pass still the drug screen. That's normally done very shortly before, like a

month or so before the academy. But really we only see maybe one usually zero fails on that. I've also accounted for, you know, we have, I think there's two or three people we may lose from the

contingent PRT and then maybe a handful of withdrawals so I'm estimating 54 to 59. - So when you, the contingent physical readiness test, so how many, when do you test? So right now you can get in the

academy if you go to this additional camp to help get you ready. How, are there a host of people in that condition right now or just relatively few? - There's three or four. - Three or four, that's

the three or four you referenced. Okay, so then you are pretty confident in this number. - Okay, I'm hoping we get, you know, at least one or two of those, so. - Yep, okay, well that would be a big

increase. And the items you just answered in respect to Alderman Moore's question, you think all those things contributed together. Was Safeguard a big game changer? It sounds like in terms of number

of applications they made a difference. - Absolutely. - And then the new testing model that you borrowed or saw Denver put into. - Yep, I should say there's one other thing, there's a minor tweak

we're gonna be making or have made. For the last few years we've done continuous recruitment throughout the year so applications have been open year round. We're gonna move to a more, a regular

recruitment model I would say where it's gonna be three months on, one month off. So applications will be open for three months. Closed for one month, reopened for three months. There'll be three of

those that'll correspond to future recruit classes. We think that that will help people with their commitment to following through. We're also gonna do a preference point incentive for people that

take the initial written test early to encourage that and I think it'll provide a little bit of clarity too as to if I apply during this window I'm going to this class. If I don't follow through I'll

have to apply again for the next class. - I see, so it's an improvement over continuous recruitment by recruiting less frequently but on a more-- - Slightly less. - Recognizable cadence. - And it will

build up some interest during the off month. We think that this will help a little bit. - Okay, with respect to the audit since you have the audit team here, it looks like the Alper audit is

forthcoming. - Yes sir, that's coming on this Thursday, October 15th, 5.30 p.m. It's gonna be agenda item number six. - Yep, and Ms. Bridget was kind enough to supply the information and the link for

that. With respect to, so what do you hope, I guess for items you're deciding to audit, what's, how are you selecting them? How are you trying to get ahead of issues instead of seeing an issue arise?

The Alper one was one that I think once facial recognition hit its snags, I guess I foresaw there might be some difficulty there. Drones, even though they came in with great fanfare, there could be

issues there as well. How is FPC selecting, how's the board selecting what they wanna have, is that a decision made I guess by you, Executive Director Todd and your team or with input from the chair

or the board or how is that selection process? - It's a combination, we meet as a team with the audit unit and throw some ideas out. We do some recommendations to the board about possible audits in

fall or later in the year for the preceding year and we welcome their input and then we get the final audit plan usually squared away in December or January. - Okay, I think you have a new policy or,

yeah, a new Barbara Cooley. - Yes, we do. - Do you have any change to the scope of work you're expecting this new person to do or are there any changes there in what you're looking to tackle? - I

think that we'll have a greater capacity with the new research and policy analysts to do more statistical analysis, do a deeper data dive on certain issues so I'm excited about that. - You just wanted

to make me happy, didn't you? (laughing) That's good, okay, great to hear. And then lastly with respect to the Collins stuff I touched on briefly with MPD. How are we looking there? Are we feeling

good about the new consultants? 21CP or something? - Yep. - Okay, where do things stand there and where does your optimism or pessimism stand with respect to progress there? - So I think that the new

consultant is very good. I'm very happy with, well at least happy so far, I guess I'll wait and see until their first annual report comes out but I have been very impressed thus far with their level

of professionalism, their level of experience. They have a lot of individuals who are, you could say refugees from the Federal Department of Justice who have a broad experience base and a knowledge

base with consent decrees and similar settlement agreements. I think that they will be helpful in pushing us towards compliance and getting a resolution eventually with this agreement. The FPC audit

unit continues to audit or do the audits required by the Collins settlement agreement supply our recommendations to MPD. We also, MPD has approximately 100 paragraphs or 100 rows that they're

responsible for. The FPC only has 20 that we're directly responsible for. So far we are compliant with 18 of those in process for two of them although it's my humble opinion and unbiased opinion that

we are actually compliant with those two and I hope to see that in the next annual report. - Okay and last question for now, we recently lost our Office of Emergency Management in the form of Ryan's

helicopter. - Yep. - Years past I flirted with budget amendments that would have given him some staffing to help out there. Do you feel, I don't know the circumstances under which he left but do you

feel that's something worth revisiting or is it an Office of one that can last even if we have another giant flood or even if something else horrible befalls the city? - So I do think that we wanna

get somebody in there. As soon as reasonably possible I have a stack of resumes to go through right now. We have some good candidates. We wanna get that position filled. Beyond that I do think the

Office could use support. We do have this upcoming UASI grant where we can hire an emergency planner and grants coordinator and also a training coordinator to assist the director. So when the new

director comes on they can make these additional hires assuming the grant is approved and the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted and I'm excited to have a new director come in that can build out

that office a little bit. - Was that the grant you kinda teased me with last year when I was thinking about adding it and it's still nothing has materialized. - Well it has been awarded but we wanna

get the new director in. - Oh you guys want it? - Yes they have it and that's my understanding and then I want the new director to make the hires so that they can pick their team. - Understood and

then how important is the office that we can suffer a gap in its occupation and not important enough that we wanna have anybody in place. Can those roles be farmed out to other people while the office

sits vacant or is the maybe cue you up for an answer. Is the goal more strategic? So in that case day to day gaps are okay but you wouldn't want it to extend beyond like one or two months or three

months. - I think we wanna get the position filled as soon as reasonably possible. It is I would say more of an important position to fill than an urgent position although there is some urgency there

obviously but I think a small gap is okay. We have a strong fire chief and police chief that can step in and fill in the gap at least to a certain extent and I know they will do so. - Okay that's it

for me, thank you. - Thank you, I have no questions so Alderman Peter Bergales. - Thank you Madam Chair. Talk to us a little bit about how you prioritize high vacancy positions. So we heard earlier

from Department of Emergency Communications that FPC and DER coordinate for that department depending on the position but emergency communicators are at about a 20 or they said low 20s in the vacancy

rate. How is the department helping prioritize those, that recruitment? - So I would say this obviously our number one priority is recruiting for police officers given the challenges and the-- -

That's also a high vacancy position. - Yeah, yes. Well I'm just explaining how we prioritize and triage this. That is police officer recruitments, the number one priority. That said both for the fire

department, for the Department of Emergency Communications, those are high priorities as well. We're gonna do two classes next year for the fire department at least. I anticipate also two classes for

the Department of Emergency Communications. So we just did a recruitment this year that led to a class that started at the end of September. There's 15 call takers that were hired into that class. We

also had five contingents that are good to go already that could go, that are ready to be hired but DEC only has a certain capacity that they can train at one time. We also have another 25 or so-- -

I'm sorry. - Candidates on the eligible list that we can put through pre-employment. - I'm sorry, so we had 20 eligible people and only made offers to 15 because we didn't have room for five more? -

My understanding is that that's their training capacity currently is to take classes of 15 at a time. So that's why we started a class of 15. - Even though there's a 22% vacancy rate, we're still

keeping the capacity of the class at 15. - Well that would be a DEC question but yes, and my understanding is from watching their budget presentation and prior discussions with Director Bueno that

they don't necessarily, I mean they have 140 or so and they wanna have somewhere between 130 and 145 I think they said as the optimal staffing. Did I not hear that? - Can you say that? - Yeah. - Okay,

all right, so talking about your number one priority police capacity, we have a goal in a few years to increase the number of sworn officers in the city. 2034 will be here before we know it. In the

meantime, how have you tracked our progress to that goal of 1,725 sworn? How are we doing on that? How many vacant positions, grant funded positions, retired officers, are we going to impact and how

many people do we have to have in each recruiting class to make sure we meet that metric? - Sure, so the goal is 65 per class, three classes a year. We have between four and 4.5 FTE is the attrition

rate per pay period that we're working with. That comes to about between 110 and 120 per year. So we want to be hiring classes that are if not 65, at least 50 so that we can have reasonable

sustainable growth year to year. - I'm sorry, 4.5 is the attrition per pay period, 26 pay periods a year? - There's 26 pay periods and it's between four and 4.5, is that fair? At least that's my

working assumption as I run my numbers and analyze things. - So we lose about 100 a year. - 100 to 115. - Well that's a big swing. - Well it's, there are some modest swings. - Okay, so 4.5 times 26. -

It's 117. - I'm sorry, 117, thank you. - That'd be on the high end. - That would be on the high end. - That'd be at the 100. So let's call it 110, 105, or just 100. This year we'll have just over

that. 100 and how many graduating, the academy? - So we hired 40 for class one, 28 graduated. We hired 30 for class two, 28 graduated. We also hired five laterals who have graduated and again we're

gonna hire 54 to 59 for the December class. - And that total is? - Was it 38 plus 28 plus five plus 57? - 38, 28 plus 50, 127. - Depending on the range. So we're trending ahead by a net positive of

about 27 this year. - Well I don't know that, it might be slightly less than that because if we hire say 55 in December I would imagine it would be about 85% that would graduate depending on the year.

- But we're somewhere north of 117. - I don't think we're in danger of not meeting our MOE for this year if that's the question. - Okay, so we're reaching it this year but barely by less than 10 new

police officers. - Yes, but if we can start consistently seeing classes of 50 plus every year then we will be on a path of not just maintaining but reasonable growth. - And it's great to see that you

have that coming in for the last class in 2026. Do you have confidence that you'll be able to continue that in 27, 28? I know we're budgeting for 165 times three, 195 new people in the classes but are

we realistically going to get to that 65 or like you said that 50 average per class? - The numbers for the March class coming out of the oral examination are roughly equivalent to what they were for

the December class and then we are actively recruiting for the next class that'll start in August. - Excellent, so you're expecting to be at 150 for the year next year? - That is the hope. - The

number of recruiting events and prep sessions held in 25 was 183. This year you're down to 120. Is that as a result of the change in strategy for with a new vendor to help with recruitment? Are you

finding that you're more precise and focusing on successful and effective recruiting outreach, targeted outreach as opposed to a broad net across the city? - Yes, so we wanna focus on the types of

recruitment events where we're gonna get more attendance. So the ones that the attendance was not great, we've eliminated, we've focused on the ones that we think are the most effective and from data

that we have received from applicants and new hires, we get a much higher proportion, that self-report at least, that they saw us through social media versus from in-person recruitment events. So we

wanna use our recruiters' time as efficiently and as effectively as possible. I do think recruitment events are important but we don't wanna overdo that at the same time if that's not the most

effective use of their time as opposed to social media outreach. - All right, we brought in a new referral fund for, and that fund, do you have any records on how many referrals were made, how many

were ultimately successful? The budget this year was zeroed out, but-- - Yeah, I know that, but we have remaining funds for that. I know that we have at least-- - I'm sorry. - A handful, I would like

to see more. I think one thing that would be-- - Sorry, page five in the special purpose account. - Yeah. - It's still a five dollar. - Yeah, we didn't zero that out. - Oh, I'm sorry. - You were

looking at the JV. - Late in the day. - Yeah. - All right. - Oh, zero used. - My apologies, zero used, or zero changed. - Yeah, got it. - But do you know what the number of referrals was? - I don't

have that, if I can get it to you. It's not as-- - I was looking at the Dodgers score, if that was a zero. - I would like to see more. I know we've had at least a handful. I don't have the exact

number. I think one thing that would help is right now, in order to be eligible for the referral, the person has to, or the candidate has to complete half of their probation post academy, which really

means the person is not, the referring person is not gonna see the bonus or the incentive for over a year after they're hired. I think if we shorten that to after a month of the academy, because

that's really when we lose, in the first couple weeks is normally when we see a significant amount of people that say, this is just not for me, and they drop out. So if they can complete a month in

the academy, and we can shorten up the time until they get their incentive, I think that that might be helpful. I also think we could add police aids to the referral program. It's more of a long-term

investment, because they gotta go through the police aid program for a year or two. But I say the more referrals we get, the better. - And we heard earlier today that 100% of the police aids moved on

to the academy. So that's a pretty good indicator. - So if I could, can I follow up with you? And we can just talk about tweaking some of those things. I just don't-- - Would that require council

action to change the term and when that gets paid out? - It would not for when it gets paid out, as long, I would want, there's language in the description which is not binding, but I would want your

approval before I went against that, because it was the understanding. We can make a file, and then adding police aids, that would require council action. - Yeah, something told me this question might

be asked today, but Director Todd's explanation on the timing makes sense, 'cause as of today, there are no expenditures in that account in 2026. - Thank you very much. - Okay, Alderwoman Charlin

Moore had one more question. - Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Lee, quick question. How many candidates typically appeal, and how long is that process? - Appeal, so there's two types of appeals that

we have. There are appeals from the background examination and the appeals from the psychological evaluation, and for those, we do a second evaluation with an independent clinical psychologist. How

long are the appeals, they take, I mean, they have to schedule the appointment with the other clinical psychologist that takes, I would say about a month throughout to meet, get the report, have the

appeal hearing. - Would this take them out of the schedule process, waiting for that appeal? So for example, if everything works out well, would they still be able to start with the class, or does

this typically move them into a different class timeframe? - No, we account for that in the testing schedule. So for example, for the December class, the appeals are done, they're all ready to go. -

Got it, okay, thank you. - Thank you, Mr. Chair. - Thank you, Alderwoman Moore. Just wanna check with Alderwoman Coggs, who's participating virtually, if you have any questions for the departments. -

No questions. - All right, having no other questions, we will wrap the department up and wrap up our meeting for today. heartfelt thank you to the Fire and Police Commission and the Budget Office,

Comptroller LRB, and Chris Lee, our staff assistant for the diligent work today. Join us tomorrow, tomorrow afternoon, after the brewers went. At one o'clock, we'll hear from the Milwaukee Public

Library and the Department of Employee Relations, having no other business before us today. Alderwoman Moore moves to hold item 260001 to the call of the chair, hearing no objection, so ordered, this

meeting is adjourned.