After doing everyone, this is a special meeting of the Pasadena City Council. Today is June 7, 2021. And I will begin in the meeting by asking Councilmember Kennedy to lead us in the flood I have a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a of America. To the public for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. And neglected to ask where we call the roles so we should probably. I could do that Mayor. Council Member Hampton is not yet with us absent. So Councilmember Kennedy Councilmember Madison is absent Councilmember Moussuda. Yeah Councilmember Revis Councilmember Williams Vice Mayor Wilson Mayor Gordo. Here. So I would note that there's a quorum of the council and of the finance committee. So you can proceed. I'm on as well now. Oh, Mr. Madison. Hello. Hello. Mr. Madison's here. Thank you. Welcome. So this is as I mentioned, this is a special meeting of the City Council and the Finance Committee, this allows members of the Council are able to participate in the Finance Committee deliberations to do so. We have before us a number of departments that will be presenting as part of the presentation. This is an opportunity to hear from the departments, their budgetary status to ask questions. I would say that our budget is pretty much a status quo budget. As we look to see what resources will be coming to us and what purposes from other parts of our government state, federal government in particular. And I would also add that we have to see where we end up with revenues in the coming months and in the coming year before we make any dramatic adjustments to any of the departments. In large part because we're very hopeful and all indicators show that the economy is coming back very strong. But it's a smart thing to be cautious with the dollars that we do have that we can't account on and we know we can count on at the moment. And if things go well in the coming months, we can always re-affest, we can always adjust the budget and prepare ourselves into the next year as well. So City Manager has given his opening comments at a previous council meeting, and I'll hand it over to Mr. Mermell, and he can launch us into the discussion under new business. I'm assuming Mr. City Clerk that there are no public comment cards limited to this agenda. Mayor, we do. We have agenda. Mayor, we do we have five. We do. Okay. So why don't we do those first and then we'll ask the city management to begin the discussion. Okay. Sonia Burnt, if you will please go ahead Go ahead, you have three minutes. Welcome, Mr. President. Good afternoon. I submitted a detailed letter to you today, which expresses my concerns about the proposed police operating budget for fiscal year 2022. The PD operating budget simply cannot be allowed to continue to exhaust our general fund, leaving insufficient crumbs for other departments, particularly those that serve our most vulnerable residents. The proposed PPD budget is exorbitant, less transparency, and it precludes our city from protecting its most vulnerable residents. The recommended fiscal year 2022 operating budget shows the following funding from the general fund police department 8.4.5 million housing department 1.475 million public health and department zero any justification of huge disparity and funding my stating that the housing and public health departments receive non city grants funding rings hollow for a very simple reason. Non-local funding of our housing and public health departments receive is far short of what our city actually needs to provide critical services to our most vulnerable residents. The PPD has an exorbitant salary, over time, and pension costs. A recent study of personnel costs in the Pasadena Police Department found that in years 2015 to 2019, PPD overtime pay increased by 43%. Further, the authors reported that in year 2019, overtime spending for PPD was higher than that of Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and the LAPD. Just look at the chart prepared by the authors of the study, which shows salaries for five police officers. Those police officers each received far more pay in 2019 than Dr. Goh, who oversees an entire department with 100.6 FTEs in 2020. In my letter, I cite several examples of the PPD budgets lack of transparency and clear need for explanation. Just one of those examples shows PPD receiving $1.58 million dollars for- You have one minute remaining? For fiscal year 2021, New Year's Day event expenses when we did not even have a rose parade or rose bowl. Finally, the Meeger Funds, the PPD offers to fund a second port team is disingenuous. Port is not a PPD program, nor should it be. We need safe, effective crisis intervention for persons suffering from mental illness and or substance use disorder and take police officers out of those situations. While port is doing great work with our persons experiencing homeless. You have 30 seconds. Adding three or four more persons to port will not enable it to handle the potentially thousands of calls that can be diverted from police to mental health professionals and homeless outreach workers. We need to create a coo's type model of crisis intervention. This will save money by decreasing the number of sworn officers for the city and may allow us to take advantage of federal reimbursement through the American rescue Plan Act. Thank you. Next we have Vincent D. Stefano. You may you have three minutes which will start when you begin speaking. All righty the City of Pasadena is currently facing two grave crises. The first is the pandemic, which puts all our health at risk, not only in Pasadena but around the world. That risk, although lower than it was at its worst, is still looming here and in the rest of the world. The second is housing. More than half of Pasadena residents or renters and the majority of them are currently rent insecure. The first crisis has only made the second crisis exponentially worse. The moratorium in Viction is a set to end on June 30th. Once that occurs, many of our fellow residents would be facing evictions with no place to go and no way to pay. Why is it then necessary the time when climbers are falling in the city that we are choosing to spend more of our tax dollars on the already bloated police much the current proposal before the Council is prepared to spend more than 92 million dollars of general health during an epidemic. That zero dollars spent at our health is during the worstemic epidemic in the last hundred years. This is a dereliction of duty at the highest order. I know that public health has provided grants but those grants come with restrictions, spring detached, on just how the money can be spent. More importantly those grants are not fixed, it'd be law after any time. Unlike the police budget, which is set in stone with the one exception that it increases almost every year. On top of that, we'll be spending more than 57% of our general fund dollars on police. More than we spend on housing needs. This is not just wrong. It is cruel and unconscionable. Therefore, I respectfully call in my elected officials to consider long and hard what our necessities are in this time of double crisis. Are they? Is we as a progressive city carrying city, choosing to spend even more in an obscenely inflated police budget? Are we going to use our general funds to breadth the need? You have one minute. Stuggling in this time of multiple crisis. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Mr. DiBono. Next speaker. Mayor, next we have Jane Ward. If you can begin speaking, you have three minutes, which will begin when you start speaking. Welcome, Ms. Ward. Yes, hello. I'm speaking today because the city of Pasadena is out of sync with the National Movement for racial justice and community investment. And I know that we can do better. Unfortunately, Pasadena's current status quo budget is Mayor Victor Gordo just described it. Prioritizes policing and punishing our community over everything else. The city spends five times more on law enforcement than it does on public health, four times more on policing than community services. The community is not fooled by the Pasadena Police Department's attempts to use some of its bloated budgets for community outreach and unarmed crisis response. Unless these funds are diverted from Pasadena PD, they are still controlled by and belong to the police. We need a city that directly funds the community with focus on non-violent projects that are effective, trusted, and community-based. One place to start is with Kahoot, a 911 diversion program that's proven to be wildly successful in city health and medical professionals rather than armed and untrained police to respond to nonviolent crisis calls and mental health crisis calls. Many of us in Pasadena both organizations and individuals will be asking the city to follow other Southern California cities in adopting a Kahoot style community-based public safety response. So you will continue to hear from us. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ms. Ward. Next speaker. Next we have Brett Justice. You are next. If you have three minutes, which will begin when you start speaking. Good afternoon. Three justice members humbly request that you approach the budget differently this fiscal year. Rethink the way we spend our money investing in actual community needs over the status quo. Some council members and PPD recently harness the power of fear of the catastrophic emergency striking to inflict a false sense of urgency for funding PD's new $2.3 million high-tech once mobile coffee shop now essential to safety mobile command center. Council members 2020 was an actual catastrophic emergency. COVID-19 ravaged our lives and our well-being. Our city managed to survive without expensive new police projects and PPDDS reported to have saved $2.3 million in operating budget expenses. PPDS ability to underspend by $2.3 million in 2021 illustrates the non-essential nature of these funds,.475 million to the entire housing department budget. Despite non-local funding, they're over 500 unhoused Pasadena. In 2019, 32% of people arrested by PPD were unhoused. We stand with our community members calling for a Kahoot style program POOTS-style program in Pasadena, which could save our city $8.5 million annually and cost just $2.1 million annually. That's not even taken into account the up to 85% of cost that could be eligible for reimbursement if certain criteria were met under the American Rescue Plan Act. In 2019, 28% of Pasadena's arrest were black. Despite black people making up only 9% of the population, the statistic is unacceptable and supports many black community members' anxieties surrounding police interactions. Yang and gun violence are often used to stoke fear and increase police department funding. But what if we invested in non-police affiliated alternative? You have one minute. This is a issue. A Berkeley Public Health study showed that the California Gun Violence Program advanced piece, which employs formerly incarcerated community members to engage with residents of gun-traveled neighborhoods, to stop crime, actually reduces violence, saves lives, and saves taxpayers millions of dollars. The project costs less than a million dollars over two years and save the city of stock than at least $42.3 million. You have 30 seconds. From PPD's $92 million operating budget. Using some of those funds, Pasadena could employ non-police affiliated public health programs like Advanced Peace and Cahoots that studies show saved millions of dollars annually, reduce unnecessary police officer altercation, reduce crime and empower communities. We urge the City Council to shift proposed operating budget funds at least the 2.3 million. Your time is expired. Aiding from the police department to public health department. House advance piece and go through small programs that benefit the community. Pro community is not anti police. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you. It's just next speaker. May we have Victoria Taylor McKinley who is not signed in. Who's not checked in. Victoria Taylor, can you if you can email me your public comment. Okay. That concludes the speaker cards. Thank you, Laura. We'll move on to our new business beginning with item one. Mr. City Manager. Thank you, Mayor. And appreciate the comments you made at the outset. As a reminder to the Council Finance Committee and the public watching two weeks ago. I did provide the general overview of the recommended operating budget. As the mayor indicated, our approach to the budget, which we start to formulate, before the end of the last calendar year, was largely status quo, as there's still a lot of uncertainty in the economy. We weren't quite sure what level of support would be coming from the federal government. Things are beginning to look better. The economy appears to be rebounding. We did receive our first payment of approximately $26 million from the federal government. But there's some rumors in Washington that maybe the second half will get clawed back as the president and the Republicans try to work out an infrastructure plan. So we continue to monitor that and we're developing plans to bring forward to the Council through the Finance Committee on accessing the federal relief. So as we get into the department budgets and you hear today from four of our departments and two of our operating companies. I've asked each department director to focus primarily on key accomplishments and their major work plan items for the coming year. We know that this affords the Council and opportunity to ask a variety of questions about the operations of our departments. Of course, the focus is fundamentally on the budget, without the budget none of the services that the city provides are possible. And then for today's lineup, I'll just mention we have the police department, parks, recreation and community services, library and information services, the Pasina Center operating company, the Pasina Community Access company, the Pasina Community Access Corporation and the Transportation Department. We have this special meeting and the departments and operating companies that we don't get to during this special meeting. It would be our expectation that the council would be able to pick those up at our regular meeting beginning at 4.30. So with that and with no further ado mayor, let me please turn it over to our police chief, John Perez to provide an overview of the department's operating budget for next fiscal year. Talk about some of the major accomplishments, the major work plan efforts. And I would turn it over to the chief. Thank you. City manager in the city clerk just really quickly. I guess Cape pass doesn't have the feed of the meeting online It's just it's black so people from the public can't see it Council member Williams. Let me run that down with the clerk in the meantime. Let me turn it over to you And the first slide that we're going to be seeing here, it comes up. Here we go. All right. So again, thank you for allowing me to be here today and present the budget once again. And hopefully I could answer many of your questions that you would have. The first slide is really a snapshot of the budget over the last couple of years. And it introduces our current recommended 2022 budget. The FTEs for the organization have remained the same at 375.25. One of the advantages that we've had over the last year and a half to two years is our recruitment and retention efforts have improved. We are down to a handful of vacancies in the department. However over the next six months as I talked to police personnel, we're probably looking at close to another dozen retirements. So that'll be likely have to go through maybe about a thousand different applicants just to find those that 12. So the difficult journey with that. The budget here is in fact flat. They are increases in personnel and increases in liability insurances. And as you can see, it falls into these categories. We'll go to slide number two. What do three I should say? Our compil- our compilipsions last year were about the reorganization. And we're still in the middle of looking at fine tuning it, tweaking it where we can, and adjusting it. Again, the goal was, as the council and the city manager allowed the police department to really try to hire personnel and not ask for more personnel and increase the budget, but look at what we could be doing better around the police department. And so our community reinvesting grant has provided us asset forfeiture funds of $25,000 that will continue for our community. We did discover many of our nonprofits are in need of assistance with these grants. Sometimes we could be overwhelming. So for us to ensure that we are getting the money to the right places, we'll continue to work with them and help them out and filling out the applications. I am looking at my I may need some social political assistance, but we're looking at the ability to expand the $25,000, maybe up to $100,000. I think that would help our community in much more ways for youth intervention and prevention. All our donations as I made a comment last year at the Foundation Breakfast that all monies donated to police departments which last year was into 30, 40,000 plus computers and other things that were donated to us all went to youth education. Everything we do into the future, I think the city of this decade should focus on youth and all money should be going in that direction until we end this decade to see what we could be at the end of this until our schools, that need assistance, nonprofits, and need assistance, and activities in our community to really give our young people an opportunity to do better, make better decisions. And when you have more prevention, I said it before, we have less policing, and that should be our goal here over the decade. Our community relations innovation continues. We have a community policing plan that is now back in the play. We lost almost 18 months of engaging the community. When you look at how many officers we've hired in those 18 months, nearly 45% of our frontline officers have been hired since 2018. And so when you look at the fact that we've lost 18 months of development skill sets, learning how to communicate, all those things, we've lost 18 months of development skill sets, learning how to communicate all those things. We've lost a lot of a lot of space. And we're trying to regain and gap that up with our community relations programs. We had a program that would be a practice past week, will be at Robinson Park this coming week. And we're also looking at virtual programs that we use during the pandemic. However, we need to focus on the opportunity to deal with the old confidence inencing long term. We were able to use this to tutor hundreds of young people who are used as the use this zooming ability and video conferencing to stand contact with business owners and the business district along with residents. Many of our meetings should continue in that format as much as possible or at least give people an option of each one should continue in that format as much as possible or at least give people an option of each one. I believe that people are more likely to attend community meetings. Maybe they'll do it for more or on the way home they could listen, but it gets some more involved than have to be physically be there. So I'm hoping that the City Tix advantage of that approach. Our neighborhood community policing initiative is continuing. Our CAT RMS project. I hope that in the springtime next year will be in place. That project is also coming with a new service area policing model. In essence, what we will see is an area called Northwest Pasadena, disappearing to what we hope is just north Pasadena. We will in fact rebound our trope boundaries and we will see the areas cut where you will see you know a more balanced approach to calls for service and so all areas of the beats it will sprinkle on the resources with officers I think that's very important for us in the long term as well and also we are looking at a propagation database do it's been fantastic in tracking our chronic problems and those areas in which we have a high number of repeat calls for service. We have a high percentage of people who repeat, or career criminals, or really commit the same crimes over and over again and at times it becomes frustrating for us, for us to have the ability to focus on those areas and on people who could actually reduce many of our calls for service, which I'm hoping is between three and five percent per year over the next few years. So I hope that continues. Crime trends, violent crime is our focus, unfortunately, during the pandemic. The, you know, epidemic of violent crime was air over the last two years. we probably see somewhere about 450 guns that have been seized roughly. And so the majority of those have been done cooperatively between the officers and people in the community who have guns on your waistband or in the car or in some other places. But more is needed there when it comes to gun violence. We went through a regional trend in which we had a half a dozen murders and probably in closer to 10 and about 30 shootings right here in the immediate area where passing the gangs were responsible for these events. We've arrested the majority of these individuals. We hope to make more arrests. And unfortunately, as I say before, when our prevention and intervention fail, it leaves us nothing but enforcement to take action and stop the crime. So that's unfortunate. The Holmes Project Committee, as you heard about from the comment earlier, that this is one of the most important projects we have long term as well. The Holmes Project Committee was part of the reorganization in which we in fact created a new section of the police department called the neighborhood services section and we brought together our bicycle team, our hope team working with the poor team as well as our park safety specialists and they now have a mission focused effort with a manager and supervised team leader to make sure the work is consistent every single day. We're able to create that unit without a budget or adding any more personnel to the department. With that two years ago, prior to the pandemic, we began a citywide committee with homeless, and we also created an additional project thanks to the City Manager and bringing together nonprofits under his leadership. We're able to have a series of meetings until the pandemic hit when we adjusted about six months later to video conferencing. But we have been able to examine, experiment, and really as a team, and what I would call a co-hoots model, but with own nonprofits creating a system that defer calls. The spectrum news channel was here a couple weeks ago and they're very interested in what we're doing as well as the local people with the Passman Health Red Guardical this morning. So our goal with the Holmes Project Committee is try to outreach to more people. It's very difficult times for people to accept the outreach for various reasons, but we want to increase the chances for them to accept it. As well, we have to focus on the homeless community having a quality of life. People are a little bit amazing when you say that, but they deserve to be crying free and victim free in the streets when they're living there. And we do have a high degree of drugs being sold, individuals trying to take advantage of that situation. So we in fact have focused on reducing chronic calls and problem locations, and we are focused in that area, and we continue to do work to make sure this makes a difference in our community. So I'll move to the next slide, and as I have questions. Gee, apparently we're having some problems with the KSB 12. Would you want me to start over? No, no, just give the clerk an opportunity to, I think it's a good place to maybe stop and give the clerk an opportunity to report back to us. Yes, sir. Mayor, we are live on the city's website, and we are live on Zoom. So members of the public do have access to the meeting. It is true that KPAS is trying to fix a broken link, and they are in the process of repairing that, and they should be up hopefully soon. Okay. I will, if you give me two minutes, I'll report back to, to let you know if we should proceed or not. Hold on one second. TV timeout? Yeah, I think we're just taking a pause. So, Mayor, I will say to you that we are live on the broadcast for K-PASS through the cable channels. It's just the website for K-PASS is not working. There's a K-PASS outage at their website. So I think it's if the Council and the Council feels comfortable, we can continue with the meeting. As there are three ways to watch the city's website, the broadcast and via Zoom. This K-PASS able to put a message up in the interim, direct in people to Zoom or the website. If they are able to do that, that would be all. Yes, I will ask. I will make that request. Okay. Okay. Let's proceed. Thank you. Chiefs. First comes from Chief. I'll continue here at this point. The Department of Realization update. I've talked a bit about this on the last slide. But we have focused on bringing in civilian positions in the organization from the top with the executive administrator that oversees 125 civilian or professional work staff. It's very important that we return back to that model and one of the only police departments in the region to have that. That was very important. We've also moved from a sergeant in our training unit and we're opening it up for a professional staff. What people would refer to as a civilian and that is on its way as well. And we've also created with the resources that we do have grant writer to pursue many of the federal grants that are out there again without asking for additional money. And so it's very important for us to do that. We've increased the number of officers in patrol. Obviously, we're hampered by that. Getting officers off training and out of the academy is really what makes a difference here. But we've added another dozen police officers to patrol. We've had some of those already hit the ground running and our response to priority one calls is that at three minutes and 30 seconds there's one of the lowest time responses I've seen in my career. So I give it to the officers and the people responding out there and our dispatch center, we're able to take on that workload. Dispanding our model, the 35 year old gang model, as you know, received a lot of attention from local media, some regional media, local police departments as well, trying to figure out what we were doing. Unfortunately, we did that during the pandemic and the social justice movement. So it was a little bit, the timing wasn't all there, however, at the end of what we're seeing now with our detective section, doing a fantastic job, with our criminal investigations unit, we are seeing this model take off. I think this is the future when it comes to intelligence led policing and the way we use data, trends, talking with community residents, business districts, and really understanding who's committing crimes, who's responsible and ways for us to get at that. So the special enforcement section at this point is not needed to return back. As you know, the reason for that was over the years for dropping the violent crime in our city was a positive force behind it. However, the trauma that came with that, as we went through our neighborhood in our city, we have 100% of gang activity as either African-American or Latino. So the officers would go through neighborhoods and areas with healthy shootings and the incidents. And as we stop individuals to conduct field investigations, you can create trauma in our neighborhood over the decades. So I think it's important for us to realize and try to do better at what we're doing, even though that model worked well during its time. So we'll move forward with that. And I talked about the criminal investigations unit as an intelligence led crime prevention intervention system that I think is going to work well into the future as well. The neighborhood service section, I just talked about that in the previous slide. Once again, that group of people is probably going to handle somewhere around 30, 40,000 calls for service per year between our parks, which is about 13,000. Park Safety is about 6,000. And I hope to take some probably about 2,000, 3,000 calls along with the assist they give control that I believe this unit also will be the future policing over the the years and pass it you know. In all this provides a better service to our community by reducing the response time, reducing violent crime and increasing and improving our community engagement in the way that we do that. We'll just slide five key issues and strategies. This is important to note over the last three years, we've hired 45% of our officer rank and over 30% of all employees. So we have been on a hiring frenzy and I appreciate just a city manager's office, but also the city councils group that we are the place to come to right now. I have stopped recruitment. We don't go to colleges. We don't go I have stopped recruitment. We don't go to colleges, we don't go to the group in centers, we don't go anywhere. I believe that the time three years ago that our people were the best recruiters and in fact that is proven to be true as we have one of the lowest vacancy rates anywhere in L.A. County. I would bet and so I give that to our employees and all that they're doing out in the field to become models and our organization to get that done. Next, the high quality crime prevention service delivery has been positive or reorganization of our community relations section. It's very, very important. It has a big history in our city over the last five decades. I think it's important to bring it back and it's what it used to do. Over the years, it got very busy and became more into programming than it was about engagement. And we've kind of had a balance, a better balance of the two in trying to figure out how we could do both the engagement portion as well as a programming for the youth that we do in our community. And we are looking over the next six months to a year, crime prevention through environmental design, really trying to train up our personnel. This is more the prevention method. When we look at how you design buildings and entryways, main posts, and business districts, this could really reduce crime without hiring more police officers are looking for more spending on enforcement measures. It is a longer-term project the city would have to undertake but we believe that crime prevention through environmental design is the future. Some of us have been trained in the police department and the years past we have been certified and we're looking to certify more personnel in our department and expanded to our 100 volunteers as well that could do many of these in residential areas and business districts that would leave the offices free to respond to calls for service. So we are continuing with our immersive and cognitive training. As I talked about public safety, we brought in a psychologist to really do some that's very difficult and bring implicit bias training into immersive training. And that means basically when we're doing filled scenarios of the police range that we're using some of these scientific approaches to try to have officers understand situations and separate biases and try to act objectively and understand human nature and how it works. So it's just started with it. I can't report back as of yet, but we'll see what it goes into the future. And our ongoing implicit procedural justice courses, those will continue into the police department last week we had the Museum of Tolonance in all week and will continue with those type of courses for our police department to understand community culture, awareness, behaviors, and what our role is. And at some point we'd like to push these out to the community. So the training is balanced on both sides. And we'll continue as well with our online programming, which I believe is very important to keep our neighborhood watch meetings and the crime prevention training via the Zoom, as we touch thousands of residents through this process. as we touch thousands of residents through this process. Next slide, we're focused on reducing violent crime. The nation went through its greatest increase in violent crime since that has been kept. Even though the overall crime is still at record low historically, the increase went up by 30%. That's not a good increase and that's not a sustainable increase. The country or any one city can handle over two, three of period. So we have to ensure that we focus on the gang activity, the gun seizures, and trying to reduce our property crime. It is a challenge with the new district attorney's policies, but we're finding balance in some of those where chief prosecutors and we're coming across that and keeping data as we need to. Our youth violence prevention program is one area, but I believe that needs a lot of attention as well, is young people are coming back out of their homes in the park, police and places, and out to the parks. It is always a measure for a local police department or a city to really go through their parks on a regular basis to ensure that we have people using our parks and we're not, we have to ask ourselves why not. Why isn't that happening? As one of the best ways for us to ensure that quality of life for all residents continues to improve for people. So we have to ensure that the police department is connected to these and we're doing a very good job right now coming back and working with the different community centers with baseball, leagues and other places. So we'll continue with that as well. The increase in the quality of life from Pasadena and reducing cough for services is also going to be essential going forward as we work on this over the past year with the reorganization. Part of what are nonprofits establishing the second port team which we blew some of our budgetary money to support the secondary port team through vehicle and personnel. I think that's going to be very important. And we are concerned this year with the natural emergencies that are coming. As you talk with the fire chief, it will tell you that this is predicted to the second half of the year. Probably towards the end of the year we will see the impact of the drought, wild fires, and the concerns for the earthquake we have in the past. So, when these things happen, we look back and think why didn't we have the things that we need? And at times, I believe it's up to the City Manager and the public safety directors to really provide that path because it's a difficult path. Much of us who have home or your car is trying to do preventative maintenance at times is very, very expensive. You don't like to spend that money, but at times when something goes wrong, you wish you had to. So that's something the city will have to grapple with over the years to come. So we continue with our, as I said, youth engagement and increasing our number of officers in patrol and increase in our prevention in the city. It's a fast-moving system that every week the command staff reviews what we're doing how we're doing it, what our monthly leadership meetings with our tenants and getting the information to our personnel to make adjustments as we listen to them for the things that we're doing. Next, streamlining of training and hiring of personnel, we have had issues in this area problem for 23 years that I could look back on. And we've been able to resolve some of these issues by using technology. The answer to much of our investigative efforts sits with technology. Technology has never been answered to any one thing. It's just a free way in which we travel on to get to their quicker. And we have to decide ourselves how fast we want to get there. And when we look at the technology we use for investigations, it's hugely important that we use the legal processes to continue to have the right equipment. As well, we've adjusted with some software programming for our training, which has really increased the ability for the chief of police to really get all the candidates at one time to increase diversity all by just using better software for hiring as well as a training. We've resolved many of our age-old problems with tracking and ensuring people are receiving the right training. And now by computerized system, we have really fixed these problems. I think long term finally, after almost three decades of just mistake after mistakes. So I think that's good for us. So overall, the better use of technology is something that we have to get used to. Sometimes we buy a piece of technology, and we don't use it as we should. And it sits somewhere and doesn't get used, and people don't want to use it when we need it. So those are management issues and leadership issues that we have to push on to make sure we keep that going. This is the final slide, I believe, if it is. And so we will continue to try to work with our community and find solutions to our homeless issues. They're multiple. They want them because outreach is the crime. So they have a quality of life that's important. And third is really organizing our nonprofits to work together so we can start deferring more calls to our nonprofits. I think over a period of time we have the ability to probably defer a hundred guests between 15 to 25,000 calls per year of a hundred and twenty-one hundred and fifty thousand calls that we receive. Calls for service, I should say, $2,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, different type of equipment out in the field and we're careful with it and we really evaluate its use to try to reduce injury to anybody as much as we can. If you go back to the 2017 use of 4 stats compared to the day, our use of force continues to drop by I believe 30% 35% this year for having 80,000 calls for service I believe so far we have about 12 uses of force. And most of those are low level uses of force. One, we just can't use cooperation or we can't use control holds to try to get what we want in the situation. So I believe that we can continue with that. I don't really try to reduce use of force. That's a difficult thing to try to do. But we just want to increase the chance of de-escalation and two of the problems in the past was one we even though we have about six or seven thousand homeless calls that we that we track on the computer system I'm going to guess the number is a lot higher than that as we do our monthly crime stats I'm in this 30 35% of all the calls for service involves some type of homeless person, and some kind of an act. And so we've used a different radial code now, so we're able to track more of these, and we start this last summer. So I think over the next year or two, we will have a better understanding of how many real calls for service will be the transients are out there, and that's gonna be important. Same with de-escalation. We really had a difficult time in the past years tracking de-escalation to last year. We created a system on the radio again to track it and less in the year, 11 months. We have about 1000 de-escalated events that we could use for training for officers to try to improve their skill sets, their communication and all the things the community would want for us to try to have a safer and better community. Not always easy, but it's what we're at. On the newest addition to what we're doing, again without asking for budget increases, was the wellness program. We do have the newest sergeant, Sergeant Domino Scott Jackson, and she will be all well in this program officer out of community relations. It's very important you look at the science of wellness. You will see that you can reduce complaints, reduce your supports. We are having a national issue with public safety fire and police. What happened over the last year in the amount of calls that we've been going to working with our own families, working with the calls for service, someone's not going home for long periods of time because of the protests or the events that were happening, that it has a toll. And we're seeing an increase in alcohol usage and we're seeing an increase in painkillers and mental health issues across the country. And we just saw that come up recently with the LA County Fire Department and the tragic incidents that occurred. But it's not unique. It's happening a little bit more often that we see. So we have the responsibility of evaluating these events, getting help for our employees, and the wellness is the start of that. Much like the military has done the years past, that took them a while to catch up. I think we're now catching up with public safety with fire and police across California and other states that talk to chiefs in different parts of the country. So I think that should continue as well. And lastly, we are developing our police based training, continued professional development. That is something that I want to report back to here at Public Safety every month to ensure the community and the city and the council members that we are in fact focused on professional development which means that we are teaching our officers about communication, about ways to do better, about how many issues that come up in our organization, police departments have always had challenges in trying to keep a certain temple and trying to respond to the control situations. And the only way to get better from that is really by training because after the fact, we are all stuck with the events that happen sometimes there, very tragic, and so it's a port for us to have a platform in which we could pursue the long term. That concludes the formal part of the presentation. I could answer any questions from the council. Thank you, Mr. Masuda. First question. Thanks, Chief Res. We're being here and reporting to us. I have a few questions on homelessness. How does the whole team and the port team work together with a difficult homeless person? What's the process? Well I'll begin with the fact that LAPD did a report last year that showed the majority, well I don't know those their report, it showed the majority of calls for service didn't require a police officer to be at the scene. However, my experience in looking at data and reading reports and being out there myself, that you will learn that almost every call for service has the initial aggression, a hint of aggression, potential violence, or actual violence. So many times, our social workers and nonprofits will tell us that they're not going to respond to that and tell the police department get in there and are able to ensure that they could be safe. Our hope team is able to provide some of those services on their own. However, when it comes to housing, homeless person, and it comes to providing the services they need, it's a handoff from our hope team to our port team, and our port team is really the answer to our homeless issues in this city and any city that it's not really the hope team who does a great job on their end, but it's the port team when they take off that handoff that are able to house people, get them the medical treatment they need, and really have the access to information needed to help out the homeless person. At times, the police department doesn't have access to that. We have access to different type of information. So we're limited and it becomes a barrier being able to have the fire department. We're able to open up that arena and they're able to roam it all the way through. And they've had some really good successes. You know, homeless success is much like what we do with reintegration. The percentage amount is less than 5 or 10% of people that actually get that help. But it's meaningful, it makes a difference, and when you compound that rate over time, you'll see a huge difference. Thank you, Chief. One more question, Chief. You mentioned violent crime. What is the status of violent crime with the youth? So when you talk about youth, we have to define it. Some people look at it that being juveniles, 17 years and under, but youth is all the way the age of 25 years old. And these days, some parents might argue it's probably closer to 30. I don't know. But what we have is people that don't have really opportunities or education or the ability to go find another purpose other than just hanging out. And so what we have over the next probably two, three years, we're going to have a challenge. If we don't create community services out in our different cities in Pasadena, our young people are not going to have direction. They're not going to be able to find a platform and we could get into a situation where our gang membership could grow. Gang membership of all youth only sits at probably 1%. Much like criminals, you're only talking 2%, 3%. But look at all the monies and resources we spend on that. And so when we look at this, we are doing okay right now, council member, because many people were quarantined, but as they get out of quarantine, and we see what's happening in the schools, with behavior, mental health, there's hitting some high schools, very, very hard right now. It's tragic what's going on, and so I believe there's a lot of problems coming our way that we're either gonna have to be ready for, or we're just gonna have to try to take care of it, it's coming and that's never good. So right now we're doing all right just okay. But I worry for the future and the recent amount of gang members that we arrested was was tragic. I wanted from the crimes they committed but it's tragedy again when you have to arrest these young people at their homes and impacts the families and their brothers and sisters and it's just so much trauma that comes with it. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Masuda. Questions or comments for you, President? You have, oh, nice, my little. Yeah, hi, Chief. Thanks for the report. I had one question on your presentation. And I appreciate all the creativity you're using to serve our community and kind of keep our cost of public safety as reasonable as possible. You mentioned something about 45% of officers and 30% of employees. It was on slide five. Was that were recently hired, were referrals, it was unclear what you were saying. Since 2018, we have 200 and with the defunded positions, 239 or 234 with the active officers of those we have 156 officers And we have hired about, I mean, this week I have two more probably, about 75. And so you're looking by a high number of frontline officer ranks. And when you look at that, that's only one part of it. This is why we're bringing in outside trainers, people from the community, to help our officers understand our community. A lot of them have connection to Pasadena. That's one of the questions I ask when the interview is tell me your connection to Pasadena. What is it I want to hear about it? But when you look at our corp rolls, this next rank up, we've promoted more than half of them in those same three years. More than half to sergeants, almost all the lieutenants and the entire command staff has been brand new and including the rookie chief. And so those kind of things, we have a lot of professional development that's needed to ensure that we're learning at a fast rate to make sure we're trying to avoid some of the mistakes that can happen out there. To have a patrol rank that has between five to ten years of experience is where you want to be. We are nowhere near them. Same with supervisors, you want supervisor in their rank for at least five years and we're nowhere near that point either. So we have to learn on the job and provide the training that we can. So that's the statistic with the amount of new personnel in each of those categories since beginning of 2018. that proper understanding. That's correct. Wow. As you suggest, you know, obviously I think your presentation put that in favorable light that we have a new generation of people on our force, but there is experience and connectivity and knowledge of the community. I think we've potentially lost with the turnover in our police department. Is that what you're saying as well? Yeah, one of the things I've suffered through my entire career has been better lately. So I thank the council for that. His retention. Retention comes in a lot of different forms. And so over the years, every five to 10 years, we would lose anywhere from 10 to 15% of our personnel to other agencies locally. And in 2015, we saw 20-25% leave us. And that has not been the case. We have the equipment. We have people recruiting one another from the ranks. We have a large community support throughout the city. I think that we're doing all the right things to become the police department where we're gonna have the same amount of personnel. So five years from now, my goal wasn't that somebody has to go out and rehire another 70 police officers. We don't want that in our community. We want long-term police officers that could do their years here and make sure they're part of the community. So is your extent just to that could do their years here and make sure they're part of the community. So, do you expect this to probe in a little bit? Obviously, the average 10-year of someone on the force has dropped pretty dramatically in that period. Is that, sounds like I know we had a fair amount of attrition in the New Zealand or 2015 earlier. More recently, is that being driven by retirements? What's happening with them? Yeah, absolutely. What we've seen is the retirements over the last three years have been the driving force. Last year there was 15 or 20, probably 12 this year. Some people are leaving earlier than expected and they have the years in and really it's been a tough year for those of us that have been around for a while and so I think the younger officers are accepting the work much easier the training that's coming on that's required with the technologies they are into it and it's really working out well if you've been on patrol for you know 15, 20, 25 years or close to 30 you ask yourself how much of that do you want to relearn or learn for the first time. And so for some people, it has been really an issue for them. Even last year when we were asking our officers who didn't have a day off for I believe close to 60 days, a lot of them decided to say, hey, this is enough for me. And this is happening across the country. And so that's why the vacancy rate across the country has been very, very high. And we are doing great right now. Again, we have a handful and that number will probably be two or three here by the end of the week. But I have to wait for them to get out of the academy. I have to wait for them to get out of training. And some are have injuries and that might take up to a year with those as well. So those become very difficult at times, but it's a journey that we do every single day every week with the management team that we keep focused on these issues. Thank you and I would ask, you know, Mayor Gorda who also shares public safety that I assume looking at turnover and attrition and recruitment or kind of topics of regular review. And I'm glad to hear that we're fully staffed. As close as we can be right now. Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate that clarification. Very important. Yes, sir. Let's see. I think it was Council Member Kennedy followed by this ordinance. Put up my hand, Mayor. So maybe Councilwoman Felicia Williams with our e. It couldn't tell it was a problem. We're all good. I'll wait. Okay. The school is. Thank you, Council Member Kennedy. So just a question about the port and hope teams again in the funding side. So my understanding we went and visited the port team. I think the port team is funded through a grant that ends in 2022 through the public health department. Correct. So now it seems like there's sort of some crossover there. So I'm wondering what is the short-term funding, but then what is the longer-term funding to help sustain both of these teams so they can sort of continue to be dispatched through the same non-emergency line and have that distinguishment between the two teams. What's the longer term financing? Understood. Councilmember Williams, Steve jumping in here. So as you rightly point out, the first port team was funded by a grant that came through the public health department, and then we assigned a firefighter to work as part of the team. Knowing that this year's budget was again, uncertain, and I wanted to stand up a second port team because our first port team has met with terrific success. Earlier when the chief was talking about in response to Councilmember Masuda's question, oftentimes the hope team will go out and get a call because someone will see a homeless person acting oddly, perhaps having an issue, but then they'll hand them off to the port team that will spend more time working with them. Often people have medical issues that need to be attended to, so having a firefighter, a paramedic assigned is helpful. And then they can work with them to meet their long-term housing needs So having a firefighter, a paramedic assigned is helpful. And then they can work with them to meet their long-term housing needs through some of the various resources that the city has available to them. So wanting to build on that, we wanted to stand up a second port team, and rather than ask for an additional appropriation out of the general fund, I asked the chief to reallocate some funding from his budget to fund that. And now with the American rescue money coming forward, it does appear to be an eligible expense. And so there's a high likelihood that we can not only charge the second port team to that, but also the first one once the grant runs out. Now the federal relief, many is only good until 2024. So ultimately it will come back when need to have a sustainable funding model to maintain those programs as we build them out that will probably largely fall in the general fund. But I think the way that we're approaching it is mindful from a financial point of view. We want to get to a place where we can redirect calls for service from the police department to an emergency response that's more appropriate for the need and build that out. But that new service course in order to be sustainable will cost. And so I'm hopeful we can rebalance a little bit. But in the near term for the next couple of years, it seems we're okay with the benefit of the federal funding, both the grant and the relief package. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. That was a very good explanation for that. And just to clarify, are we expanding the number of members on the port team, or are we expanding it beyond? Because I think the port team is only 9 to 5 during the week, right? So at some point, are we going to expand the hours as well? I think the hope team is the same way because, you know, crises happen 24 hours a day. So is there an opportunity to extend it to a 24 hour operation? Right, our plan is to add a second team. So it's replicating. So if you will, it's 100% increase in the size of the resources. We haven't gotten so far as to look at what their scheduling would be. I think ultimately the idea is eventually you have a 24-7 crisis response team that's able to respond appropriately to the types of incidences that sadly we've all had to become acclimated to. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Kennedy. Thank you, Mayor. Chief, can you elaborate on what we meant by we used to go out to different colleges and campuses and community events. We do the community events for engagement now, which I think is much better. But I learned as you look at the data from all those, we never hired anybody for many of those recruitments. And so we spent a lot of people going on a lot of planes to a lot of places and we just I think it might have been one or two over the If I go back 20 years So I believe that we were we were better focused on local recruitment local people Talking to local people and we've actually Improved our diversity by doing that as well as you've seen from the people are introduced at public safety Alone when you look at our female ratio across the country was one by doing that as well as you've seen from the people are introduced at public safety. Alone when you look at our female racial across the country, it was 114, our female officers, and we were 115, I believe. We are sitting here in the last two years at 1 in 7. And so I think that's a great increase in our diversity. And so we had hired an African American female in probably 10 to 12 years. And we've hired three over the last year and a half. I think we are looking at a game changer here by really focusing locally on community. Same with Latinos. We had not hired a Latino in probably a decade. And that's changed as well as we've hired a number of them. And so we have to really look at our diversity when the chief of police has a great recruitment pool to look at and when everybody is the best and that's when diversity is the best. And I think that's what we focused on, sir. Thank you, Chief. For the record, I just would like to say two things. One, my personal preference is that we hire not laterals, but laterals as a last resort in that we definitely hire young people who have demonstrated a clear interest in this field and go through our internal process to get the very best to place them into the academy or our academies. However, that exactly works. I want to applaud you for the commitment you have demonstrated not by word but by deed related to hiring women. And so the more that we can hire women like in most cases the better the organization will be and hats off to what I've seen as a relates to Latina and African-American women. I know we're moving looks like in the right direction and I'd just like to say if there's a way to appropriately speed that up without any diminishing and quality and expertise, I hope that you would do so. Thanks, Chief. Absolutely. We talked to that point for a moment on Laterals. They are very, very careful with Laterals. They are a quick resolution for organizations to bring Laterals in. You have to be careful how many you hire and why. We put them through a little bit extra training programming for the police department. So it's not like a normal hiring that would come in a young person. They're going to get that in the academy. They're gonna get that on training. So with the laterals who might go through a training program quicker, we are introducing them to what we have. And I have to tell you and talking with some of them, they're absolutely amazed at what's happening inside the police department with wellness and training and things they would have wished they would have had at their own police departments to have kept them there. So I'm not looking to recruit people out from other organizations, but if it happens organically, then we'll accept it. Thank you. Mr. Madden. Thanks, Mayor. And thank you Chief. I really appreciate the report. I had just a couple of questions. One is, I believe we need more motor officers. So I wonder if you could speak to what this coming year's budget portans for the motor officer presence. I don't have the number in front of me. I believe it's 10 motors with our lieutenant and the sergeant and the corporal. That's down from the 17 or 18 they had at one point many, many years ago. And so what we're doing now is we are recruiting and training what we call collateral writers. That means we have individuals that are willing to write on a part-time basis with our experienced motor officers. So as you would refer to as a force multiplier, without having to come back here and asking for another five or ten more officers to go out there and just work on traffic. So at some point if our calls for service begin to diminish this reorganization has the ability to move people from patrol and expand the number of traffic officers. As you know we have a dozen more patrol officers and that's been very helpful for the safety of the city. A training patrol officers in the area of traffic enforcement is always difficult as well. People are always concerned about patrol officers doing too many traffic stops and what could happen from some of these as we recover many guns. But the traffic officers are able to focus on problem areas, the locations, and over the next few months we'll have to take a look, Council Member, at how we're coming out of the pandemic. If Pasadena is going to be the place to be, and the nightlife in South Lake and Old Pass and other people, and other places I'm sorry, are taking on more vehicles and more problems, that might be a reason to readjust our reorganization and move people from patrol to the motor unit. That's possible. So we have to track that. And we're set up for that. So I wouldn't take another budget review next year to make that happen. Well, I am one that believes that our numbers are down from where they were, you know, many years ago. The part of the Great Recession. And our population has increased and our multifamily housing has increased and I think the challenges of our policing have become great or not less. So obviously everything is a choice in terms of limited resources. Absolutely. Are you anticipating a material impact on the budget from the new police commission and IPA? As I look and study police commissions I think over time it will require staff work. It'll be the increase of how that's going to look. It's too early to tell, but it's possible some of the work may require more research, more personnel, additional hours on specific projects. I don't mean hiring more personnel, but just more people on the project that requires data review, bringing presentations out for a commission, much like we do with public safety. There are times we go up and down with public safety over the years will require myself to bring in a couple of people to help me out and doing research and bring a project forward. I believe we'll be seeing the same thing with the police commission and the difference is that the public safety committee are very well versed in policing over the years and kind of know where to ask the right questions. I think with the police commission a lot of it will be new in the beginning and that might require an uploading or a surge of work for the education and the materials that they may need. So it will cause more, but it's hard to say what that's going to look like at this point. Okay, thank you Chief. I would just one comment. I thought it was ironic that one of the speakers commented on the police budget and being continuing to be you know a very important part of the general fund While crime is going down and I think the recognition has to be that if we have a strong community-based police department we will have less crime. And I think you're too credited for much of that chief as the department. Now overall crime last year, and this far this year is the lowest crime we've seen in the last two or three decades. Absolutely the lowest. The challenge for us is the surging of the violent crime when it comes up. If you don't have the resources, it could worsen, it could multiply, it could end up being a problem where you're calling outside resources and federal agencies to come in and help you out. So it's a very, very odd place to be in a very careful place that one has to look at the type of crime and how it's going up or how it's going down, where the type of crime and looking at some historical data as well. So all that takes, it's an equation, like a mad scientist kind of thing. But for now it's working with what we have, but again we just have to be careful with it. Well it certainly doesn't help when a judge likens AR-15s to a Swiss Army knife and invalidates a law that the Republican governor signed in to affect, you know, some 25 or more years ago. There are just way too many guns. I can tell you that it's the prevention, the task, the community prevention task force is the way we want to go, a youth task force to really get at these issues Because when the prevention is going to fail you once again. I'll say it. It leaves me no alternative But to put more officers out on enforcement and it's only a matter of odds of so much enforcement Before an incident happens that we don't want to see and we're dealt with it as a community So it's a careful careful place place again what we can get into. Okay, thank you, Chief. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Revis. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Chief, your presentation. You mentioned that you saw or the department saw a decrease in the use of force by about 24%. I was curious, have you also seen a reduction in the number of complaints, claims, losses? Maybe soon to tell and that may be a question better suited for the city manager and to be attorney but I would hope it also leads to a reduction in legal exposure. It has. With our officer involved shootings over the years, last three years, the number of them have not created any lawsuits. That's unheard of. Our use of forces do not create lawsuits. We do have the one from last August, which is very important for all of us. And so there are times they will come up for the most part. They have not. There's two anomalies there. I think since the social justice movement, more complaints are being submitted as lawsuits for all cities everywhere. Not much we could do. That's a measurement that depends how far those submissions go. If we're in court over and over, settlement over and over, I think those are going to be some issues that we have to look at seriously, but we're not quite there. And so I think it's important for us to just monitor that. When it comes to complaints, it's unusual. I believe middle of 2019, I went ahead and began to accept all complaints. We have not done that historically. If somebody walked in and said they had killed an officer and the officer is still alive in the department, we didn't file that as a complaint. Today we are still going to file that as a complaint and see what the individuals' concerns are making such a violent statement and see if they need outreach or other things that might happen. So in short, we are receiving all complaints from the public and we submit those to track them. And that's increased the number of complaints they've dropped a tad but they're still higher than they have been in the years past. So I believe it was important to receive all complaints but it's thrown off the whole system a little bit historically. Thank you. That's helpful. I just had another comment no more questions. I just wanted to commend the department on reallocating funds to establish a second port team. I think that's definitely a step in the right direction. It acknowledges something I've produced that say many times before that, you know, there are some issues that law enforcement just aren't as well equipped to handle, but that are social workers and mental health professionals, you know, are better equipped to handle. So I just want to, I know this is status quo budget this year, but I'd want to say I'd like to see more of that moving forward. Kind of taking that broad perspective and collaborating with our other departments. We'll make sure we do that. Thank you, ma'am. We will. Thank you, Ms. Reva. I think that completes the first round. She's, I just had a couple of questions related to the parks. As you know, there was tremendous concern. There remains tremendous concern about taking in our parks and the neighborhoods in the realm of parks. You've heard me argue for more civilian presence including park rangers in the parks. What are we up to in terms of park Rangers staff? Fully staffed at six. Historically we've had nine about seven or eight years ago, but we never got to the number nine. We've always had one or two vacancies, so that maybe the most we ever hired might have been seven or eight over the last few years. But now that we've created the neighborhood services section, what I do like about that approach mayor is that you have the hope team working with them and you have the bicycle team working with them as well. So we've expanded them as well as having a permanent lieutenant sergeant and a corporal to help them out. I think it really has made a difference with two sergeants and every day they have a mission plan. They're able to go out and handle. The parks have yearly, about 13,000 calls. Park Safety Specialist handle about 6,000. Half of those are self-initiated by either the officers or the Park Safety Specialist. And so they do a great job of what they have. And so we're always looking to try to expand them. However, at this point, I want to give the neighborhood services section a little bit more time to see if that's going to solve the problem that you need when it comes to the parks and the type of problems that we have inside of it. Again, with the pandemic, the parks have been empty for the most part. And so we have to take a look at how this is going to expand. Having the parks busy is a great thing. We just don't want to busy in the wrong ways, usually after 10 pm at night. So those are the things we have to pay attention to and have some sort of strategy for. Yeah, the civilian presence of park rangers, I think very, has proven to be very effective. Agreed. I'm really agree. We really encourage us to continue to look at that, particularly in parts of P.A. a lot of activity because we want to ensure that people feel welcome, that, you know, work for, we encourage you. the participation together with the part, I call them part ranges, but I need a community reminded the term community service specialist is that they're collecting. Yes, correct. a good way for people to meet members of the passing police department for these employees to get to meet the public and welcome to the park and answer any questions, but at the same time providing the security presence that's sometimes needed. I noticed in the city I noticed in the city manages weekly letter, June Burke, chief, I don't know if he just sees that. But we recently have increased the number of private security firms in the participation of private security firms in and around city facilities. And I would what's what's the role of the passive police department in coordinating with these private security firms as they interact with the public as they provide security services, but I believe it should be provided by our Rangers, for example. How do you coordinate with the chief? So we do it. There's a couple of things that happen. Number one, when you, now just talk about the neighborhood security companies that are out there separately for a moment. We are in touch with the people who run those companies. We talk to them almost weekly. We look at their deployments. We'll talk about what they're doing and how they're doing it to make sure we have a relationship with them. I have a relationship with them as well. And when it comes to our facilities, security, our patrol officers do a very good job of knowing who they are for the most part. It's a skill set. We want to teach our newer officers to check in with security personnel facilities, but it's another, it's another as we have less security personnel that our police officers have to be directed to go to some locations to do footbeat, to walk them themselves or just be more visible. So one of the things we've been using over the past, I would say year year and a half now, from the start of the pandemic, is trying to deploy police cars with an officer at certain locations for a while, and seeing if we could improve the quality of living for people around there, and also improve the safety levels. So it's something that we don't get too often, but as we come out with our problem location database and the ability to do this, you'll see more of that. So really it's about just the connection between a patrol officer and our field security you that we're using more and more security because I go to the where I was going. I'm June 3rd City Manager's letter, weekly letter to the council highlighted that select patrol for example has a 30% turnover rate since 2019 percent turnover rate since 2019 and you know from a security and a lease department perspective is that a number of concerns you? A security personnel change often. I do meet with security leaders in our community who have companies and they will tell you that oftentimes they do promote out or get hired as police officers or look for other jobs or in fact then make it as security guards. So that turnover rate is probably pretty standard. You know, it seems to me that I'm talking with many of these owners. They lose a lot of their personnel. I'm often being asked if I know young people that could apply for those jobs. So it's not uncommon at all. The role of security is going to grow over the next decade. And it's probably going to start pretty quick as we reopen up. A lot of people are concerned. I've received many calls over the past year of restaurants and places having problems with patrons and really not wanting to call the police and reaching out to private security firms. But we're going to see, I do see an expansion of neighborhood securities in our city. Companies are expanding their services as people could afford it. So we see that as well. And so with the active shooter concerns and the fact that the FBI report is looking at international terrorism coming back again with the events that we have at the Rose Bowl, the parade, everywhere else. I keep track with FBI and our local federal agencies to make sure I know what's going on, but I think you're going to see an increase of private security around our city and something that over the next decade we're going to have to get used to. I think we'll just see that from neighborhoods to businesses. Well, I'm concerned that when we hire a civilian employee, or a sworn employee, we do extensive background, we do extensive training, and I'm just concerned that we're relying more and more on private firms as a city to interact with the public. We did it city facilities or parks or libraries or community centers, wherever it may be. I'm concerned that we have such a high-turned-of-the-weight in the private sector. We don't have a level of training. We don't have the, what I would consider to be, the global service spirit and dedication of wanting to stay with one employer for 10 to 20, 30 years, 35 years and 36 years in your face. And, you know, I think that's important to have people who are dedicated to this community, providing that kind of service and interacting with the public. And so I challenge you and the city manager to, yeah, look at taking some of these resources and looking at ways to hire young people in our community to work as part safety specialists, to work as part branches, to work as community service officers in the parks, at community centers, who are going to be in it for a long term. And that just coming through for a year to getting some training and moving on. You know, I applaud the people who are doing that and I understand why they're doing it because in the private sector it's just not a well-concerned state. Correct. But I think we can focus more on local people, dedicated people who are going to be here in the long term, and dedicated to this community when it comes to the type of service. That was a great point, Samar. And so I think we ought to revisit these, or again, this is a status quo budget, but I'm going to be meeting with the city manager to talk to about reviewing of some of these issues that were highlighting at the moment, but I think we've got to come back to them, either over the course of the summer or in the fall to have more in-depth discussions and I would use resources such as security and police resources. I'll be open to that, sir. Thank you, Chief. Absolutely. I was trying to follow up on the statement that the chief made around a scenario where a city, local city business may prefer to hire private security than place a call for service. I guess I would like a little bit more explanation higher private security than place of call for service. I guess I would like a little bit more explanation is to why they would see that to be more favorable way to respond to some sort of situation. In talking with some of the residents that the few times that it occurs, it's just more of the fact that they believe it hasn't reached that level for a police officer to come out and I remind them them that in fact it can be. And so it's just a matter of having the conversation. Many people might text you instead of call the police at times. Not saying that's ever happened. But if it has, then you would know it does occur because I get those texts. And I got to remind them to call into the dispatch center or get an officer out to where they're needed. So I think people tend to believe at time they don't want to bother the police with something that might be lower grade. Without realizing that is, in fact, our job number one, but number two, it helps us grab the data for trending issues and neighborhoods to make sure it's not a transient issue or some other type of crime concern that requires a larger resources to come in. Okay, I just wanted to make sure it was some reflection of lack of, I know, our response times are better, lack of confidence in our officers to take appropriate action. I guess our response, our response to emergencies are fantastic. Sometimes the priority two or three calls They might take a little bit longer and those are the times you might see somebody decide to call They're local security companies. They have a new neighborhood that they're there. That might be one of those type of situations Be issued. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. I appreciate that That be issues I understand is She's gonna That's the issues I understand that chief and vice mayor Wilson is So more level quality of what called that restaurant for small business. Right Absolutely Next uh, well, I think that completes uh Next, well, I think that completes questions and comments. I can't see anyone's handrails. So thank you Chief and we'll look forward to further further discussions with you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it Dr. Hawksworth You manage Thank you, Mayor next up is Brenda Harvey Williams presenting the budget and the work plan for parks recreation and community services department. Sorry, Harvey Williams welcome. Thank you Mayor. Good afternoon. I am as the city manager said, I'm Brenda Harvey Williams and I have the pleasure to serve as the parks recreation and community services director and to present to you are recommended fiscal year 22 operating budget. So before you is a budget is our budget at a glance, you can see that our revised budget increased from fiscal year 21 or during fiscal year 21 by about three and a half million dollars and then it concurrently decreases in fiscal year 22. This large increase is a result of COVID feeding programs that were added to our budget, including great plates, the Pasadena Unified School District Weekend Lunch Program, and food pantries. And these totaled, as I mentioned, about $3.5 million during fiscal year 21. When you remove that, you can see we pretty much have a status quo budget for fiscal year 22 as compared to fiscal year 21. And we received one additional FTE during fiscal year 21 and I'll talk about that in a moment. So overall I do want to impress upon the council that as the parks recreation and community services department, as you know we spend a lot of time out in the community. We do a lot of public contact and we will continue to work collaboratively with the public health officials, local agencies, and other professional organizations to stay current with public health COVID-19 guidelines as we begin to open up and add new programs and, well, return our programs and services. I wanted to talk about new initiatives that our department will be taking on in fiscal year 22. And the first is that FTE increase that I mentioned that occurred during fiscal year 21 and it has to do with the parks. So one of our new initiatives or continuing initiatives is that we will continue to integrate park maintenance into our newly formed department including consolidating management of the Aeroio Seiko under a new park superintendent position which is the increased position that we received. And some of the duties of this park superintendent will include maintenance and overseeing of the entire Oroyo Seiko. This person will oversee all of the use agreements with various users in the Oroyo, such as Rose Bowl riders, the Roving Arches, Mach 1, etc. They will handle rentals in the Arroyo and also be the point of contact for external entities. Also we will moving on from that be purchasing new scheduling software for our Community Services Division so that we can schedule those appointments more accurately and also generate better reports. And finally, the Playhouse Village Park will come online towards the end of fiscal year 22, which will allow us to add another park to our city's park inventory as you are well aware. However, it will require maintenance, which our park maintenance staff will begin doing, but it's also the opportunity for us to have another location for recreation programming, and we're very excited about that. And as you can see, just showing a couple of pictures here of the proposed, soon to be 1.6 acre park, soon to be 1.6 acre park, again scheduled to open at the end of fiscal year 22. But continuing with new initiatives, we are looking forward to initiating programming at a newly remodeled Lapenta Reska park, which will include drop-in and structured activities for all ages. In this particular park remodeling project that's going on right now, being done by our Public Works Department of Schedule to be completed, probably at the beginning of the new fiscal year. We are also looking forward to re-engaging teens after their long absence due to COVID restrictions. And finally, we will administer, continue to administer the CDBG-funded food pantry program. So as I mentioned before, during COVID, we did initiate a number of food programs. And one of those will continue and is continuing and being funded with CDBG dollars and being overseen by our department. and being funded with CDBD dollars and being overseen by our department. I wanted to take a minute to talk a little bit about teen and young adult programs. So we have our Rose program this fiscal year and next we will be hiring 165 interns, young people between the ages of 14 and 24 and we received 220 applications in April of this year for our 165 slots, but we found that a number of those were duplicate, so we will be able to place all of the eligible teams, sorry, not just teams, but teens and young adults who applied for this program. Some of the people who applied were not, they didn't qualify. But everybody who qualified will be able to be placed or will be able to be a part of our program. We may not be able to place them all this summer due to some nonprofits not fully being open and able to accept interns, but throughout the course of the entire fiscal year, we are confident that we will be able to place each of them. Also, I have here, we've funded eight agencies. As part of our fiscal year 21 budget, the City Council allocated a additional $500,000 to the Rose Program, and we called that the expanded Rose Program, where we've been able to award grants to local nonprofits to provide job training for the same age demographic 14 to 24 year olds and of that 500,000 to date we have funded eight agencies for about $231,000 and the remaining 269 are continuing to be funded. Some will finish funding in fiscal year 21 and the remainder will happen in fiscal year 22. We have our ambassador program, which is an amazing program for high school students and we have 34 slots. We just lost, I believe it was 16 of them to graduation, but we are in the process of replacing them. And finally we have our La Pinteresca teen center where teenagers are able to come for drop-in and structured programming. And again, as I mentioned, we look forward to re-engaging them and for them participating in large numbers once again. Also as a department parks recreation community services we so look forward to returning to normalcy and we are taking efforts to activate and repopulate our parks. Starting this summer, we are lowering recreation program fees for children and youth, the age is 17 and below, and this applies to PUSD students if they live outside of the city. And we're looking forward to our community centers being a place for older adults and other customers to come for recreation and socialization. One thing that we've done is drastically reduce our fees for summer and fall for these young people. Most of our offerings for the summer, I call it the summer of 10. We have a theme. Most things cost $10. Our summer camp is $10 per week at three of our camps. Two of our camps are free of charge and one camp charge is $25 per week. And because of that our camp we have about nine slots left in camp. Camp will begin on June 14th. Our swim lessons this summer, the summer of 10. Their $10 per session. A session is four lessons throughout a week. And finally to participate in our sports leagues for the summer and for the fall. Again, the cost is $10. And that will be basketball and soccer and volleyball this summer. soccer and volleyball this summer. Also, I fail to mention boxing is also available and that will be free. We have a boxing program that is free for young people and we will be doing a summer boxing camp that will also be free. As we continue to return to normalcy, we look forward to issuing facility permits again for both indoor and outdoor spaces. We have began the gun taking reservations for outdoor locations and indoor locations. We will start taking reservations for as well for events to be held after, oh, the first of, beginning the July, beginning July 1st. Community events. Parks and recreation folks were, really had our hands tied during COVID, but we were able to do some virtual and alternative events. But again, we look forward to being able to return with our cultural and community events such as Latino Heritage and Black History Parades and festivals, our FALF Festival, AIGBOL, and the tree lighting ceremonies that we have. Coming this summer, I'd like to take a moment to do a little commercial. Coming this summer in addition to all the activities I've already mentioned, we have parks after dark, which are three summer recreation activities we hold in our parks and they roughly begin around 6 p.m. And this summer in the parks as part of Park after Parks after Dark, which will kick off July 7th and run through August 7th. We will be having movies in the park, fitness classes, pickleball clinics, basketball and soccer tournaments. And those will be in person events. We also will have some virtual events, some stretching and some art classes that will be virtual. And we look forward to the community coming out or staying home and participating in those events at parks after dark in the summer. And that concludes my budget presentation for fiscal year 21-22. Excuse me. presentation for fiscal year 21-22. Excuse me. Mayor. Mr. Hampton. Right. Perfect. Ms. Harvey Williams, thank you so much for the presentation. I have to say that I'm very grateful for your department and you guys are doing, especially when it comes to releasing those fees. And of course, you know that we are going to probably, oh, I was probably going to ask you, why can we hire all of the students this year? So it's really good to hear that they will eventually all get hired, or they have all been accepted to be hired, but maybe not over the summer. I did have a follow-up question. What did not make a student qualified? Was it, like, if you give me a couple of examples? There are a couple who did not live in Pasadena so they didn't meet our residency requirement, but the majority, their household income was too high. In order to participate in the Rose Program participants must be according to HUD guidelines, moderate or low income, and some of the households were above that. Okay, and then if they don't live in this city, I thought that if you were a PUSD, if you lived in PUSD boundaries, you could, is that not correct? For Rose, it is just Pasadena residents. Oh, okay. Well, thank you so much for that. Then I had another question about the food program that you're putting on. Does the PUSD have a summer food program? So, PUSD does have a summer food program. The food programs that I was mentioning were ones that we were operating on an emergency basis because of COVID. The one program that does continue is the city is funding with CDBG dollars for food banks and food pantries. So that's the one that continues. The others have been already concluded because they were emergency programs during COVID. Yes, so one with the CDBG dollars, I was wondering, does that overlap with the USD, with QSDB offering? No, it does not. PUSD, as I understand, their summer food program actually provides breakfast and lunch at different locations. And I will add that actually for any, I believe it's 17 and younger participants. They can go to any of the locations where PUSD is distributing food and receive a meal. And as part of our summer camp, actually, PUSD does provide the breakfast and the lunch that we serve. And at those locations, other young people can come who aren't a part of our camp, but they can come and get the breakfast and lunch meals. Okay, thank you. And then to my next question is, so your department now handles the maintenance of the parks correct? Correct. I just have to say that, you know, before I make my comments, I do have to say that I think that the parks are well up to wherever our guys are. But the areas that the contractors handle, I cannot say that I am happy with how the contractors are handling out their happy with how the contractors are handling out their, out their contracts. Are we riding up contractors now? So then I know for, I mean, you knew it to the position, but I've asked this before and I think they were supposed to start riding up some of these contractors, but the contractors that handle some of the auxiliary areas that are adjacent to the parks that our park personnel doesn't handle have kind of this let those areas go unless it's complaint. I'm sorry unless there's a complaint. And Councilmember Hampton I apologize I'm not exactly sure what what specific positions What specifics positions you're talking about? I know that we do. I'm on maintenance contractors as far as weed abatement. Okay. Got it. Sorry for not clarifying that. Right. So we do supervise or manage those contracts for weed abatement throughout the Eroio. We have not written up, so to speak, any of those during my tenure. I'm not aware of any major complaints that we have received, but we are in terms of weed abatement in the Eroio utilizing not only contractors, but we have also just recently began a partnership with Outward Bound and they are doing some weed abatement for us. And I. Is that new? The Outward Bound counter? That is new. That is new. That started probably about a month and a half ago. OK, so that's new. So OK, so that's so then I guess maybe I'll wait a little while and see how that rolls out and I will offline some of you just about some of the areas that I have concerns about that. I think right now it is, I forget the name of the contractor, but it's a large company. A bright view maybe it's a bright view that we contract with. I think it may be a bright view, but they're not they're not maintaining the area unless unless I make the issue out of it and then they go out and they maintain the areas regularly so but it seems like I have to send the email for it to get maintained. Councilmember we certainly want to enforce our contracts and have our contractors live up to the scope of work. So if you can please send me the specifics on that, I can work with Brenda and we can make sure we take, put some attention to it. Okay, thank you. And then, my next question is, as we're bringing young people back that have been working virtually through this pandemic, are we partnering with LA County Public Health or Pasadena Public Health for any services that our children may need when it comes to, you know, just talking about their experiences. Currently, we aren't contracting with LA County. We do consult with our own health department, but this is one area that we are focusing on at the La Pinteresca Team Center, because there we, that is a safe place for teenagers to come, and we are shifting our focus and our services and for them to be able to address some of their issues and problems that they have encountered during COVID. So we are trying we're we're slowly being able to bring them back and increase the numbers that we can have at the teen center and we look forward to the summer where we're going to be even outside with some of them and increasing the numbers so we can help address issues that they face due to distance learning. Are our team members trained in just I guess noticing these type of things. Is there any training that is given to our team members that staff are heart facilities, whether it be the team center or any other recreational center that a staff member could actually recognize maybe this child needs to have someone else to them or maybe I need to reach out to them? Well, we do provide training for all of our recreation leaders which would be those who work with whether it be the kids at summer camp or in our sports leagues and same with the teen center. So they are trained to look for things and to offer assistance or try to offer assistance when possible. Perfect and then since the parks are in your peer view and we just have an conversation with the police department and I know that there is a movement to, I don't wanna say, it's not to bring other resources in other places so that it's not always a police response. Since your team and staff is always in the parts, have they, let me ask this question in a different way. Have you been looking at any ways to secure facilities so that people feel comfortable coming to certain parks. Through your department, I know that that's typically a conversation we have with the police, but maybe it's something that all parks and rec staff should be looking at as well. Well, we do work closely with the police department and take their advice, but overall, one of the things we found is that the best way to make a park safe is to activate the park. And that's one of the reasons why as we enter summer, we were so very interested in having as many people in our parks as possible, as many kids and other age groups, which is why we lower, one of the reasons why we quite frankly we lowered the price. We knew that for kids to participate because we knew that that would fill up all of our programs quite quickly and I will add that it did. And so that's one of the things that we do. We also work closely, more closely with the park safety specialists when we do find problems. But while we have been closed quite frankly, there are a couple of areas where problems have arisen and we have been working with really cross departmental teams to address. Teams are staff from not just the police department, but the health department and the housing department trying to make sure that we have our facilities ready to go and they're inviting and welcoming to the public. Well thank you for that response but I do think it's something that maybe the park staff should look at a little bit more instead of letting the police leave that discussion because your staff is in the parks regularly. Maybe it's a discussion where it's more of a discussion where you guys are telling them what the police, what your expectations are within your park. And it's great to program a park, and I'm all for that. I want to program all the parks, but you can have all the programs in the world at a park, but if people don't feel comfortable only to that park, right? We've got to start with getting them comfortable to come to the part. Then we could acclimate in, you know, those, those programs. So I've talked to the, you know, I still think that this is something that needs to come to public safety as well. Mayor, to have that discussion, as you were mentioning, the parts safety officers, as you were mentioning, the parts safety officers, or maybe you didn't mean a loot to security teams, maybe not the best option, but as right now, I think it's based on what I'm saying, our security teams are doing a good job where they're at. And so if it's not an armed person, that's an avenue. I just may or warm asking is just to have this discussion and public taking because I think that the approach that we've always looked at it with the police heavy approach is not the approach that is working and it's not anything against the police. It's that they're used to doing one type of thing. And this is not their forte and at least doesn't seem to be it. And that's it. That's just of my comments. But I do also to who closes the park. So I mean, I guess that's the police, right? I mean, is that back to the police? Or is it your department, Brenda, that manages at 10 o'clock to park its clothes? So that is managed by my department. Specifically, our park maintenance division manages it. However, it is done by private security company. They are responsible for actually closing, locking each of our parks at night. And when people are ordering in the parks do our, I'm the world that stay after the hours that they're, that hours of business are they, do they report back? Do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, do they report back to you, when we lock a park, it is still possible for people to get in the park. So they're responsible for making sure that all of the parking lots are closed and the restrooms are closed and locked. When there are cars remaining in the parking lots, sometimes they will try to find if they can see the person, the people and let them know, hey, we're locking up, come move your car out. There are times where they've had to lock the cars in. And in those instances, we do get a notification about that. And they will contact a number to have vehicles towed, if necessary. And then just for that, as you look into next year's budget, I think we do a survey with our young people that are kind of the young people that are kind of the young people that are at the park that may or may not be doing the right of we're talking to them to what their needs are. I mean because I've talked to some people that are kind of hanging out at the park and what I did find that interest from all of them and the conversations there was no scientific survey but they were all musicians or some whatever musician and so I was wondering have we thought about a music studio for some of our young people so that you know that gives them that outlet instead of hanging out and drinking or whatever they're doing in the park. Or we're just, whatever they're doing in the park, but instead of doing that, we're giving them creative outlets. And I just wanted to know that was something that your team has thought about or are you guys thinking about other avenues. I know that film is also really big. And so maybe that's two other initiatives or programs that we could put together to figure that out for an outlet for them. Well, specifically, Councilmember Hampton at LePenteursque Park, we had done a bit of a needs assessment prior to COVID, and we were really excited about launching the program, and then we weren't able to. So when we are able to, and when the construction is complete, I can share with you some of the classes and activities we do have planned to initiate a low-pinteresca park, and one of them is actually a piano class that would be taught on portable keyboards. We have planned, they're also drop-in board games and Zumba classes and get fit. A sports and fitness class, also a cooking class. And various other one-time activities throughout the year that we hope to become year round or annual events that we have at that park, including an art day and a summer music jam that we're calling it, a winter refresher in resource day, a Halloween film festival. So specifically for La Pinteresca Park because we were given an additional half of an FTE in our fiscal year 21 budget, we were planning all of these wonderful things that we didn't get to do. So as soon as the opportunity arises and we're hopeful, we'll be able to kick off when the park has completed this summer initiating these new programs and really be able to provide activities and programs that the young people and people at this particular park have expressed an interest in. Okay and so thank you for that answer but one one of the, like I said, I talked to at least 25 people there that day. The last time I was there, at least 25 and a recording studio would be something that would really activate them and get them from, you know, I mean, give them a purpose, I'm not saying give them a purpose. Yeah, you're really giving them something to do. And so, just food for thousands of something to think about or even maybe there's a writing class on how to write lyrics or, but I do appreciate the work that your team has already put in for. And I know that COVID kind of threw a wrench in what the original plan is where to see how they rolled out, but I know that things change. So we've got that opportunity to make that bounce back. So I appreciate you. Brenda, thank you so much. Thank you. points. I like the need to have a comprehensive discussion on public safety at our parks, but includes programming. And, you know, I get here, this Harvey Williams, your staff is working on programs, but I do think we need to take a step back and then a step forward. You know, when I hear board games, I ask myself how many of the kids that I know would attend one of our community centers or parks and be attractive inside to play board games. And I can't think of many. I think Mr. Hampton's point that maybe we look at the type of programming that we're providing to share that, you know, it's a program that's going to attract young people that's going to interest them, and either artistically or musically performance, whatever it may be, but it is also current to the times and also utilizing some of the more current technology. That may be happening, but I'd like to hear about it. It is, if it isn't, then we should have that discussion so that I know the council can understand that it will require a level of investment. But I think we need to do it. So the point is made by Mr. Hampton or well taken and I think this is a conversation that we need to have. Again, as we start to look at departments more closely, one of the questions we should ask ourselves is what have we been doing just because we've done it this way for decades. And should we keep doing it? Maybe working? There's the value added or should we change the way we think things and how we provide services and the type of services that we provide. So thank you Mr. Hampton. Anyone else? Mr. Kennedy-Folk by Mr. Bessuda? I'm going to go to the other other other other other other other other other other other other other other other other other other other other other other Kenny, there's a total of four departments and two operating companies. As we discussed at the outset, we were going to go as far as we could until 430 when we switched to the council meeting and those that we didn't don't get to before the council meeting will pick up this evening. So our intent is to stay on track to adopt a budget on the 21st. And so we will continue through all six today if at all possible. I expect that some of them will go a little bit quicker. We new police and of course parks are a lot of interest and so those tend to be the longer items. We recall the security that our last meeting we had to defer the discussion on some of these departments or a little bit behind but we have record parks that are before us next will be the PCOC then the PCAC and the transportation. I apologize libraries next or six mayor? One two departments and two operating systems. Okay. My question thank you mayor and thank you city manager Murmel. My question I think I've already teed up with Brenda. I want to get clarity that we're not going to eliminate the book reading club at JRC. And that's the first question and an interest of moving us forward. I'll give you the second one as well. I want to know what the actual number of students in our Rose program happens to be related to those who are not selected. from your presentation, I took away that all 160 plus are in fact going to be hired and so that represents all of the applicants who are eligible. So those are my two questions. I just like that quick clarification, anything else I can send you a note offline. That's correct, Councilmember. Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Both points. Okay. Mr. Visuda. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Brenda, for your report. What's been a long time problem in my district is Hamilton Park and recently I met with staff. I believe your staff was there, the water and power because we have the reservoir below the Hamilton Park. It's not the upkeep. It's the gopher that is our constant problem and you know it's difficult to maintain because there's a reservoir below and when we met what came up was a couple ideas an owl box which I've never heard before but owls that will use it and take care of some of the maintenance of getting rid of some gophers but a net a netting material that can be placed under the grass and that was an idea that came up that I think that that's probably going by your office and water and power. I was wondering where that was because the little league has been hounding our office about getting a response. So that's what I wanted to run by you. Sorry. No worries. So in terms of the owl box, we've actually already installed two owl boxes. We did have that big meeting out there and one of the things we learned is that owls can get the little furry friends, we'll call gofers. And so two owles have been installed. I'm not sure of how well those are working. Another option that was identified at that meeting was the use of a carbon monoxide machine that would put carbon monoxide in the tunnels and hopefully kill the little critters underground. We did get the authorization from the water and power department to go ahead and and and that well we got the authorization that it was safe and it wouldn't harm the reservoir. So we have been using that and have been experiencing some success with a slight reduction in the gofers. We are in the process of or we recently have we still getting some quotes on the netting, but it looks like the netting is going to be at a price point where we look to put that in the city's CIP budget. Once we get all of the information we need about the netting, but we're hopeful that a combination of these things will work because frankly, it is dangerous there at Hamilton with all of the go-for-holes and the potential for someone, especially one of the kids playing Little League Baseball to twist an ankle or something. So we are, you know, we're trying really hard. It's been an ongoing problem, but that reservoir does make the go for mitigation efforts a little bit more difficult than they might otherwise be. But we will keep in touch with you in terms of these efforts that we've already implemented. And once we get our final prices on the netting, we'll let you know about that as well. Thank you, Brenda. Appreciate it. All right, we're going to move the cat- movie catty check over the weekend for more ideas. Next. That was really funny. Anyone else? Okay. With that, that complete discussion, thank you Ms. Harvey Williams, and we'll move on to the next presentation. Thank you. Thank you Mayor. The next presentation is the library. And again, as I mentioned earlier, we start to put the budget together really late in the prior calendar year. And so the operating budget for the library department was put together before we knew about the status of the central library. And so today, Michelle Pereira, our director of libraries, will quickly walk through the library's budget, but also talk to you about how we continue to provide services to our community, given the situation we have with the library. And while it kind of spills over into the capital budget, I'm happy to talk about some of the long-term planning. So let me turn it over to Michelle to talk about how we're maintaining services levels, service levels for our next year. Thank you Thank you, Mr. Murmall Michelle Pereira director of libraries and information services Mayor members of the city council. I'm happy here to be here today to present our Budget and talk a little bit about what's gonna be happening next and when it comes to Central Library and the continuity of operations on this first next slide. Please. On this first budget slide here, we have an overview of our budget. As you can see, it is a status quo budget from last year. You'll notice that the actuals for 2020, and in fact, the actuals for 2021 will be significantly lower than our proposed budget due to some unfilled positions during the pandemic and also no in-person programming. Obviously, what's the libraries were closed. But the 2022 recommended budget is a rollover with no significant changes to the previous years budget. So I thought I would focus on what's going to happen next when it comes to the closure of central library since that seems to be, you know all we think about, and what we're working on that's right in front of us right now. As you know, central library closed down about a month ago, and we've been focusing on continuity of operations ever since. And we've got a few things that we'd like to talk to you about. First of all, obviously our main focus is to make our services available to the community. A big part of that is obviously a location. So we have been looking for alternate locations and have toured a few in the last couple of weeks. A couple of them that I'll mention, we have looked at one of the elementary schools that's closed as a potential satellite location. We've also looked at a large warehouse that would be able to accommodate the entire collection that's at Central Library. When we think of the materials at Central Library, it's not just the books. There's a lot of other archival materials that we would need to relocate. Just the books alone, we're looking at about 350,000 items. So we do need a significant space that can house that. A big piece of that really is to make sure that that collection is accessible. It might not be accessible, strictly to the public going in and picking which book they want, but it could be available through our catalog, and we could certainly float the collections in and out of the branches. Like I said, really important for us to make the collection available. As we're looking at the alternate locations, we know we're not going to find another central library. That's a one-size-fits-all. So we're really are trying to deconstruct the services that we offer at central library and find locations that could accommodate those services. We're also looking at type of storefront or retail space that's not in use in District 3 that might be able to give us an outlet in District 3 since that is where Central Library is located. And really as we look at what our options are we need something that is going to be a longer term option more than you know just a few months obviously. We need to figure out where we can go and offer some service a little bit longer. As we look at a place like a school obviously it's very different than what central library looks like. So our goal there is to look at how we how we provide our library services instead of one big room or multiple rooms. Really a school is a very different type of location. But it would afford us an opportunity to do some things we've been wanting to do, like expand our innovation lab and have a STEM lab dedicated to programming. We've been wanting to do an art room, a multimedia lab. So using the school could really provide to some very different opportunities. We also need to identify a large programming space. As many of you know, you've been to a lot of the programs at Central Library and we, you know, in the DRW, you will have maybe 150 to 175 people attend. Sometimes when we do programs in the Great Hall, we'll have 400 people or 500 people attend. So So finding a venue that will allow us to do some large programming is also really higher on our list, especially as we start to come out of this pandemic and we'll be able to get together and do some larger events in person. And not just the events we provide, I think it's also important to note that the spaces that we use in the library are not only used by staff for the programs that we offer, but also the community as a rental space for them to have events like recitals and symphonies and plays and new name it. So as we look at optional spaces for us for programming, we are keeping that in mind as well. We're also obviously need to relocate our library administration offices since we were all displaced as well. So that is something we're trying to find as well. And as many of you know, we have a very significant local history materials and archives collection. And this is, you know, I think underestimated in terms of how much we have and the value of it in terms of we get so many questions about the history of an event. Why was the street named this way? What happened in 1906 in a certain fire that happened. So we really are that place for research and we go into those archives and those things do take a long time to really research. So it's important that we make sure that our Pasadena History Collection, a lot of which is digitized, I will say, but what isn't, that's a central library, is also remains accessible. And then it's also really important for us to make sure we have a computer space and access to Wi-Fi. Obviously our branches all have computers and Wi-Fi, but we had a rather big computer lab at the Central Library that was used very often for those that don't have computers at home or don't have good broadband at home. A lot of our homeless population and vulnerable communities really did rely on that. So we need to make sure that we find a space where we can offer that. Some of that could be through lending programs of laptops, some that could be through hotspots, but also really a space where we can come and use them. So some of what we're looking at for like immediate needs for people who have been displaced by central library's closure. We've already started reopening our branches. We just opened central when we had to close and that was the one we spent most of our time focusing on trying to get reopened because it was such a huge, huge building but the practices that we put in place at central really did overflow into the branches so at the moment Hastings, La Manda, Sandy Catalina, La Pinteresca, Linda Vista and San Rafael are all open. Hill is serving, Hill and Alondale are serving as curbside pickup. Only Hill is really serving as a satellite for all the central library materials that people have requested and are coming to pick up. Allendale, we've waited on opening only because there's a roofing project that's imminent. However, it looks like it won't be till the end of summer. So we'll be pushing on getting Allendale reopened up earlier. And Villa Park, we will align with the community center reopening, which should be towards the end of the month. I will also mention that as we proceed here with reopening the branches, it really is important for us to keep the materials that we have. New materials coming into the library and flowing throughout the branches. We know there's a huge demand for new books and we want to make sure that they're available. So we are planning on placing two large trailers in the back parking lot at the central library that will serve as the materials handling space where materials can flow through and go come in and then go out to the branches. That will allow us to not do that at the hill library and get hill reopened. So stay tuned, hopefully for that soon. And then also whether central library closed or not, we have been looking at really what the future of services are in the library in terms of, you know, post pandemic. Obviously, we pivoted as soon as the pandemic hit to mostly, if not all, virtual services and with the exception of the collection, of course. Those virtual services, we did not think it was as popular as they were, but they certainly have been. So as we move forward, we're really looking at more of a hybrid model versus solely in person or solely virtual. You know, as we look at the programs that we've been offering virtually, it has been really remarkable how the community has responded to them. Just in the first three quarters of this fiscal year, we had 50,000 people attend our programs for trophy. That's a lot of people coming to programs on Zoom or on social media or, you know, through Facebook, Instagram Live. We've been using a variety of formats and whether it's a LEGO program or book clubs or author visits, we've done mental health programs for a mental health month. We've done a series of cultural programs for Black History Month, Asian Pacific Islander Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and of course all of our story time. So we really did migrate everything we were doing in person to online and so really as we move forward we'll be looking at what programs are more suited to in person, what are more suited to online and what could be a hybrid and be both because I do think there's definitely some interest in that. We'll also review our curbside model. I don't know about all of you, but when when everyone started introducing curbside at every store, every restaurant, I just love it. I hope it never goes away. And our patrons have definitely mentioned to us how much they like curbside pickups. So I think there is a place for curbside, it might not be at every single location, but there is a benefit especially to some of our senior community for not having to try and find a place to park and walk into the library to get something, but to be able to drive through and pick it up pretty easily. And then also as we look at our hybrid service looking at developing a more robust library outreach team, as outreach visits will start to become more available in the next months to years. We are working on that. And, you know, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about some of, and this is a short list of a lot of very unique services that are obviously offered through the central library. And as we kind of move through the process of short-term mid-term and long-term plans for working on what happens, you know, now that central library is closed, one of the, one thing we will look at is how we relocate the office of the young child that is currently based out of the central library. We created a space for it. At Central, it used to be in an office on the third floor and we created more public space where people could actually come and speak to the coordinator there and have meetings and be more visible. So we will look to that. We have already spoken with our public health department about housing the office of the young child staff person and they have been open to that. So we're thrilled that that should happen shortly. But long term we will continue to look for a space that we can call the office of the young child that will be public facing as well. As you know, we also have a friends of the library bookstore that is operates out of the central library and the group of volunteers that run that volunteer their time solely to raise money for library programs and services. So as we explore spaces for that could work for us, we are also keeping them in mind for a space that they could utilize. As you know, we also have a care navigator. That is a staff person that the library pays for, but it's actually a public health department employee. And they spend 80% of their work week at a library helping with working with our homeless communities and our vulnerable communities trying to help them with resources and housing. So we'll look to see how this new equilibrium works out with the branches being open longer days longer hours and weekends and not central and where that need is going to be and we'll start moving the care navigator to the branches that need it the most. We also have a law library section of the central library that in partnership with the LA law library that we need to relocate and at the moment a lot of those materials will be housed out of the Hastings branch. And I've mentioned our access to local history materials and just how important it is to make sure those are available. I could go on in what we have at the Central Library and finding a spot for them, but I'll leave that to questions if you have any more. I think really the bottom line here is, anymore. I think, you know, really the bottom line here is we were in shock when we had to close central library and we really had to try and pivot again and try and figure out a new way to offer the services we have traditionally offered at central. But this really is a good opportunity for us to rethink what we do and look at it in a different way. And that's what our team has been doing in the last, I can't believe it's only been a month. So that's, before I conclude completely, I will just also do a quick shameless plug for a couple of summer things. This is, we have our one city, one story, summer edition coming up and I'm gonna hold up this book. We've only Footprints and it's all about national parks and that's coming up at the end of this month and we will make sure to get a copy to all the City Council and our summer reading program has just started and I should note this is the 100th year of our summer reading program So I hope you will join in with us on that. And with that, I will turn it over for questions. Thank you, Mayor. What's that? Senator Hampton? It was. Talk. And Senator Hampton? I'll be very mindful. Sorry about the less comments, everybody. I just realized we have that many departments moving the books out of the central library. Who moves? Do we have the higher company for that or are city employees going to move books in and out of the library. There are moving companies, Council Member Hampton, that actually can, that move libraries, that's all they do. And they're very quick and very expedient. I've moved a library before, and we were able to get about 150,000 items out within about two or three days. The reason I ask is, so the building is condemned. No, I mean, well, I guess in a way it is can do. Do we necessarily have to move everything as long as it's not an earthquake. So it's not red tagged. It's not on the verge of collapse or anything like that. But we just can't have people in there all the time because of course no one knows when there's going to be an incident. And so our goal is to move a fair amount of the collection out to some different areas as Ms. Perrard indicated. We have a large city owned property on Raymond and then possibly utilizing a school property. We've been in contact with our partners at P.S.D. So we would expect to move a fair amount of the material out so it's readily accessible. There's probably some items that we would still leave in the building, things that are not accessed as much. We also have some things in there that we just ought to move just anyway. Ultimately, when it comes time to do construction on the building, it will be easier if we have fewer materials in there. So the reason I ask that question is because if we could actually be in the building, is it necessary that we move things out of the building and not just do the kerbside pick up and put a computer live in the parking lot? Well again it's generally not the building official has ordered that people do not occupy the building. And so the most appropriate thing for us to do is to move things out of the building and make them accessible in other areas. Okay. And then the books that are in high circulation and in high demand are the ones that we're planning on pulling out of the building, not the things that are not. We are pulling out the items that are in the highest demand already to make sure those are moving right away. There are a lot of other materials that people use that might not be in high demand today, but because there's a movie out or a holiday that comes up will be in high demand a month from now. So that we're looking at just the best sellers that we've tried to pull out right away, but longer term, we're looking for that kind of warehouse space where we can get the entire collection there. So we can make sure it's all accessible to the community through their local branch. How many of these books are, what is our library of books that are in percentage located online? Gosh, we have, we have a couple of different online platforms. We have about in our own collection about 15 to 20,000 items that are solely online. No, I'm saying based on the books that we have in stock, right now in the library, how many of those books by percentage and how many of them are the high value books that are actually online. Like do we actually need a physical presence of that book and could we just order a whole bunch of tablets and let people loan those tablets out and then they can get the book on a tablet. Now that I'm trying to push away from people using looks. Sure. But I'm just trying to think about cost of what is the most cost effective way of doing this without having to occur another cost to, you know, some more space. Sure. The cost for us to buy an ebook versus a physical book is three to four times the cost of the retail value of a physical book. So for us to replace what we have in an online version would cost way more than the actual collection is worth. I'm sorry, maybe you didn't understand my question. We already have online books. We do. And we partner with other branches in the purchasing of their online books. Is that correct or is that not right? We buy all of our own ebooks. However, with the platform that we subscribe to, our users have access to ebooks from some other libraries. Just one thing to keep in mind, not every book is in ebook format. Right. not every book is in ebook format. Right, and so that's what I was wondering, what is that crosses over that we don't need to pull out of the library and just tell people that there's an ebook option? We would need to look at that with 350,000 items. I don't know the exact percentage of those that would be available online. I will say that even during the pandemic, there were about half a million items that were checked out last year or this fiscal year that people came through and picked up through curbside pickups. So there's still a big demand for those print materials. That's because people that have anything else to do. It's true. It's true. So picking up actual work made a lot of the sense, but you know if we already have these subscriptions and we already have a subscription base and instead of hiring this major company to do all this moving out and renting space from PUSD and whatnot. Maybe the footprint could be smaller and we offer the offerings that we already have. Right, and if someone asks for a book that we have, then I guess someone has to go onto the library and get it. But if someone takes a book out once every 10 years, then what is the likely ability if someone actually has to keep on going in and out of that library. I'm just trying to think of ways to still give our offerings, but without having to move everything out of library and occur that cost. And then is there a cost savings with the library being closed by the way? Because it seems like it would be a cost savings with the library being closed by the way? So it seems like it would be a cost savings with this library being closed. Councilmember, there are likely some savings certainly in the area of utilities. There's house keeping. They won't have to be done. If we transition to a new location, then there'll be utilities there and there'll be some housekeeping there. So it may end up being a wash. We're just now digging into it, but certainly there's some cost that for the interim period won't be incurred at the central library, but may be incurred elsewhere. Okay, that was just my question. I just, you know, when I'm thinking about the cost of all this, and you know, knowing that we have to go in retrofit this library anyhow, and there's still access to the books and the things that people need. You know, just being mindful of, well, I understand that we're not going to be able to offer people this central library. I mean, I just got, I have to just be realistic. We're not going to be able to offer that service. I'm not going to be able to offer that building, that beautiful building. I mean, people go to that library for the structure, for the building, for the experience of that beautiful resource that we have in our city. And move it all to bungalows, just like that. It's not gonna have the same feel appeal, but maybe more people are gonna start going to their neighborhood branches. I only mention this because I'm just thinking, cost-wise, there's a make a lot of sense for us to put a lot of money into moving all of the books out? If there are libraries, I mean, the central libraries are fantastic library, but looking at our map of libraries, this library is everywhere in Pasadena. We're very blessed. I'm investing in a half such great resources of libraries. And it may be an opportunity for people to see other libraries, or maybe even our parking lot, we set up a computer library, because it seems like the computers, according to the presentation I was given, is really important. Have the access to internet and things like that. That seems like that's really, really important. You know, having access to internet and things like that. That seems like that. That's really, really important. Maybe there's a way to do that. To bungalows in the parking lot at central library, since we've already used to using or going to that location. Or maybe there's another local, another area to do that in. But I'm just trying to think about, I just don't see this needing to pull all of those books out, especially if we have online offerings and other branches have those things I look. So, those are my comments. Thank you, Councilmember. You raised a number of considerations that we're going to be working through. And obviously, as we come to big decisions, we'll be returning to the Council as appropriate for decisions. It's still very early in what will likely be a multiple year process. Thank you. Ms. Williams. Just two budget and general fund related questions. If you could remind us city manager, what is the general fund transfer required for the library tax to cover the library and how did we, how did that change this year and sitting to that budget? And then secondly, the, how is the office of the young child funded on the short and the long-term basis. The general terms the general fund provides 80% of the operating budget for the library department. The library special tax generates about 20%. I suspect it's actually a little bit less than 20%. 2.8 million. You're about 2.8 million against a budget of about 15 and a half million. And then the office of the young child is budgeted in the library fund, but again 80% of that is the general fund. Isn't there a grant funding for the office of the young child? Is it all general fund? It in the past, Michelle can speak to this. It has been successful in obtaining grants. But in the first instance, the position is not grant funded. Correct, Michelle? Correct. The position itself is within the library budget. And as Steve mentioned, that's 80% general fund. We have received several grants over the years. This year specifically, we're working on two grants, one from first five. That is focus more on the early development instrument and kindergarten readiness. And the other grant is a California State Library grant that's about $250,000 that will actually, that's paying for a public health nurse to provide support to the hub sites through growing together Pasadena. So it pays for us to do the work, it does not pay for the staff person to do it. Okay, thank you. And City Manager, City Manager, the transfer, we reduced the transfer of the general fund to the library. This year, what is assumed in the budget for next year in terms of the transfer to the library from the general fund. I'll ask Tim Park to find that number in the budget book for us. I'll explain, I'll give you an explanation while he finds the exact figure. And you did at the same level. That's just my question. Is it the same level as previously or is it on a reduced basis like we reduced for this year? We'll verify that. Okay. Thanks. It's $11.8 million in the recommended budget and the way that the library special tax is set up is the contribution from the general fund maybe offset by many in the library services fund is carrying a fund balance, obviously because in the end of the day the general fund covers everything, the notion was you can reduce the contribution and take a credit for the library services fund. So the transfer is the amount I said, 11-8 I think, and we are likely utilizing some of the fund balance and the library services fund as designed. Okay, so we do we not expect to reduce the general fund transfer by the balance and the library fund because we already did that this year or do we expect to do that again next year? I see Matt Hawksworth is joined us. He's Matt, I think you can tell us. I can't recall whether we were taking an offset against fund balance or not for the recommended budget. Thank you. Matt Hawksworth, Director of Finance, yes, they're proposed operating budget that's soon to $500,000 draw or reduction on the general fund transfer offset by available fund balance and the library. Perfect, Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Michelle, I know we're dealing with the un-ind dissipated complexity of the status of the central library. I'm obviously surprising if you use it, we have both, there's two libraries in District 7 and correct both the Hill and Alendale Library are not available for people to visit right now. That is correct. They're both open for curbside pickup Monday through Saturday, but not for in person. As soon as the trailers land at Central Library, which should be within the next couple of weeks, we should be able to look at an opening day for Hill. Allendale, we could open. We were holding because we thought there would be a roofing project in June, and we didn't want to open for two weeks and then close it. That roofing project now is slated for August so we will be getting Alondil open right away. I'm sorry did you say besides the central library that the other libraries are open? Correct. So the two that you're this doesn't seem like in terms of providing library access across the city to select two libraries in the same district. Can you explain why you did that? Certainly. When it came to, like I said with Alondale, we kept it a curbside only just because we were going to have to close it for a roofing project. But that is not the case anymore, so that one will get open. With Hill, it was the one actually that worked the best for our curbside location to move central library materials. It was just an easy pick up for people to drive through and get those materials, because it was so centrally located in the city. OK. But I do agree with you. You know, I'm glad that we're going to be able to restore those sooner rather later, but I would ask when we have these situation that we're mindful about closing down all the libraries and one of the districts. Thank you. Thank you, guys, Mayor. Anyone else? Mr. Kimney? Be quick, Mayor. Always a pleasure to see the leader at the library services. I'd like to know, have anyone already looked at the possibility of the North, West corner of Euclid in Walnut for any use related to the library. We have looked at that. The one directly next door to Central Library. I think you're referring to. Yes. Yes. Yes. We've looked at that space, not we haven't been inside. It is a very high rent space. So it would cost us quite a bit to actually use that space. In terms of it being vacant, seemingly for a number of years, would we have, would our negotiators have some leverage or are they such a landlord possibly owned by a union, for example, that they don't necessarily need income on that property? Councilmember Kennedy, we're working with our real estate person for the city to identify the most cost effective locations for us so I couldn't speak specifically to that one and who the owner is. Okay so Mr. Mermell at least give some consideration with other members of staff that if they're in a position, if they're not in a good position that there may be a substantial reduction in the possibility. And Michelle, I would simply say that you can continue to do extraordinary work even in times of crisis. And this for me is a time of crisis related to our library system. So I applaud you. And thank you very much Mayor. Thank you Mr. Kennedy. Anyone else? Okay. Spare, thank you very much for your presentation. Okay. Spare, thank you very much for your presentation. You've got concludes the library department's presentation at this point. Thank you. We have about 12 minutes until 4.30. I'm thinking rather than take up a PCOC, I'm not sure how long PCA seat would take, but if it's not under five minutes, it's probably not going to allow for a break. And so maybe we just take the next 10 minutes and allow people to stretch their legs and come back to Fort Worth. Thank you, Matt.