Hi, good morning everyone. Like to call this meeting to order. This is Elimita County Board of Supervisors Public Protection Committee meeting. Can we please start with a roll call? Supervisor Miley, excused. Supervisor Marquez. Present. Thank you. And if the clerk could please make the announcement for individuals to participate remotely or in person. For in-person participation, the meeting site is open to the public. If you'd like to speak on an item, you can fill out a speaker's card in the front of the room and hand it to the clerk or remote participation. Teleconferencing guidelines are available at www.acgov.org teleconferencing guidelines. Public protection. If you'd like to speak on an item remotely, please use the raised-your-hand function at the appropriate time. Thank you. Want to welcome everyone. I apologize for the delay. We are having some technical difficulties with one of the PowerPoint presentations. So just for the public's information, we're actually going to one item out of order. I appreciate everyone's flexibility. We're actually gonna hear item number three. This is an informational item regarding 2025 Centered Jail Program Survey for incarcerated female population. The presenter is Priscilla Silva. Excuse me, presenter is Priscilla Silva, Sergeant with Elimita County Sheriff's Office. And for those that are listening online, you can actually follow along with this PowerPoint presentation. There is a link attached to the agenda for item number three for individuals that are here in person. We do have hard copies. So again, welcome Sergeant Priscilla Silva. Thank you you ma'am. I appreciate it. I want to thank supervisor Marquez for having us today. We appreciate it and I want to thank Alameda County Fire for letting us go first. I really appreciate that. So first I wanted to say that I provided everybody a copy of a survey that was conducted at the beginning of 2025 in January of our female population within the jail. I provided that copy so if you ever wanted to reference it, it's in front of you. However in the presentation today I'm only highlighting the summary of the big things that these female inmates wanted to see from the Sheriff's Office. So in November of 2024, I was here while the Sheriff's Office was doing a presentation on the status of Santa Rated Jail. And I heard from the community and board members that we needed to provide more programs and vocational educational incentives for our female population. And so being a newly appointed programs director of the reentry and support services, I immediately met with our partner of five keys in Shabot College to see what we could do to offer more services and programs and educational vocational services for our female population. We'll briefly I want wanna go over some of the big points in the survey that we took. 85% of the participants that took the survey incarcerated at Santa Rita Jail, the females expressed interest in participating in educational and vocational programs. The preferred method of learning that they wanted, 77% of them stated they wanted in-person learning. Even though we do offer distance learning through online programs such as Adovo, we realize that the females wanted in-person education and vocational opportunities. what they seemed to be interested in the most when it came to healthy and safety certifications was first aid in CPR, serve safe, OSHA, and workplace safety. When it came to creative and media arts, they really wanted something with cosmetology, music production, and art and painting. We also found that they had a high interest in culinary and hospitality services, which includes culinary arts and food preparation. And 44% of them were interested in some type of entrepreneurship and small business course. When it came to health and wellness, the majority of them were interested in fitness and exercise and mental health awareness. Those were our top takeaways from the survey. We also wanted to pay close attention to the barriers that they were experiencing. Some of those barriers included them not being in our custody for long periods of time. They also felt as their classification while incarcerated with us was a barrier to get them these opportunities and their mental health. Some of the participants that participated in this survey have experienced high levels of stress and anxiety. And we needed to make sure that come 2025, we prepared to address some of these barriers, which I believe we have. So a part of reviewing the survey and hearing what the board and community members had to say in November of 2024, I immediately met with one of our partners of Five Key School, which is the principal Melanie Fukuhara, which I will introduce here shortly. One of the things that I did is met with all of our educational institutes, which includes Shippo College and Five Keyes, to see what they were currently offering. And over the past few years, they have offered entrepreneurship job readiness and gardening, which made me feel better as a programs director knowing at least we had something from the survey that these females were asking for. We just needed to grow and improve on our efforts. So as of right now I'm going to call up our five keys principal, Melanie Foucajara, to talk about our commitment to action as a result of this survey. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Sergeant Silva. So based on the feedback that we received and our commitment to action, we're excited to introduce the following courses tailored specifically to their needs. Yoga. This course introduces participants to the practice of yoga, focusing on physical postures, breathing techniques, and mindfulness. Students will explore how yoga can improve their flexibility, strength, and mental clarity while reducing stress and promoting overall well-being. Meditation. In this course, our students will learn the foundational practices of meditation, including techniques for cultivating mindfulness, focus, and relaxation. Participants will explore different styles of meditation, such as guided meditation, breath awareness, and loving kindness meditation, to help quite the mind, increase self-awareness and reduce stress. Healing in trauma is another course we'll be starting, and this course addresses the impact of trauma on the mind and body and explores various healing modalities such as somatic practices, emotional processing and mindfulness. Our students will also learn how trauma affects the nervous system and develop tools to create safety, self-regulation and healing. Art for healing. Art for healing is a creative course that uses artistic expression as a tool for emotional release and self-discovery. Our students will engage in various forms of art, including painting, drawing, and mixed media to explore their feelings and experiences. This course emphasizes the therapeutic benefits of art, encouraging individuals to process emotions, enhance self-awareness, and find healing through creative expression. And lastly, seven habits of highly effective people. And this is based on Steven Covey's best selling book. This course offers a practical framework for personal and professional effectiveness. Our students will explore the seven habits that can help individuals achieve their goals, improve their relationships, and enhance their leadership skills. Through interactive exercises and discussions, our students will learn how to implement these habits in their own lives for greater success and fulfillment. I'm really thrilled to bring these courses to our students. And as an educator and administrator, I believe that school is no longer about earning a high school diploma in GED. It's also about breaking down both educational and personal barriers that stand in the way of our students creating the future that they want, rather than accepting the one that they feel is predetermined for them. And through this holistic approach and a call to action for what our students have been asking for, we're addressing not only academic challenges that they may be that may be preventing them from moving forward in their education or employment, but also the deeply rooted personal struggles that contribute to the cycles of behavior leading them back to incarceration. Can I ask a clarifying question? Yes. Are these programs online already or they're anticipated to start in the new future? They will be starting in March. In March? Yes. Okay. Thank you. So one other thing that Melanie and I spoke about was not only what classes we were going to add to the curriculum of what Shibou and five keys has to offer, but what other separate programs can we bring to the females? And Melanie and five keys school came to us and they came to us with a project called Music Heels' Us in conjunction and partnership with Juilliard Music, phenomenal music establishment. So I'm going to have Mel talk to you a little bit about Juilliard and what the program was about. Project Music Heels' Us is a very special program. It's a nonprofit that brings live music, performances, and interactive experiences to individuals and isolation, including those in hospitals, nursing homes, and correctional facilities. Their mission is to use music as a tool for healing, connection, and emotional support, which immediately resonated with me. And when I first learned about their work, I thought, this is exactly what our students need here at Santa Rita. So what initially felt like a disting dream became a reality because in January, we ACSO and five keys partnered with Project Music heals us in the Juilliard School of Music to launch music for the future, which is a five day intensive course where students learned the the fundamentals of songwriting and singing throughout the program are participants engaged in daily vocal exercises, explored musical composition in daily and collaborated to write their own songs. So beyond the music the program instilled essential life skills like teamwork, open communication and learning to work with others, even those they might not typically connect with. At the end of this five day intensive, students performed their original songs in a live concert showcasing not only their musical talents, but also their personal growth and resilience. And I was all about this program. However, I wanted to pay attention to the barriers we talked about in the survey. And the barriers were the amount of time that they were in custody, their classification, and their mental health. So to me, a five day residency was a perfect way to break this barrier. In addition, we've done something we've never done in Santa Rita before, was we provided a mixed classification course. So we had women that were in minimum, medium, and maximum security all in this class together for the first time. It took a lot of work to ensure the safety that we tried to provide in this space. This was the first time these females attended a four-hour class every morning for five days that's never occurred. And then having mixed classifications of up to 35 students in one room for four hours. Although it was very nerve-racking for us, there was a lot of conversations with our female population about the expectations we had regarding safety. What the protocol in response would be if they felt unsafe and then really just knowing this was the first time we were getting past these barriers to offer this. And they did a phenomenal job. We did not have one problem during the five day course. We saw students interacting with each other with different mixed classifications, even students that had keep separates from each other that signed a waiver saying they would get along for these five days and they did a phenomenal job. I would like to show the video to everyone so they can see. My name is Priscilla Sildoy and the sergeant of the programs director of the reentry and support services. I would welcome everybody. Thank you for coming. For the past five days, this is an incredible opportunity for our female hazard population, one that's never been done before. And Project Music heals us, Julia Artis here. This is a nonprofit organization which exists to provide encouragement, education, and healing through bringing high quality, live music performances, and interactive programming. With the focus on rehabilitating, it's been incarcerated in the Lewis populations. This was a five-day residency where our students worked with a street quartet from Juliard and teaching artists learning to keep those music. The fact that we had an opportunity to have Juliard here to spend some time with all of you, for all of you to get created, for all of you to develop a mechanism to have some wellness in a therapeutic way. Hopefully this is something that was good for you while you're here, but also something you can take with you when you leave this place. Dear Project Music Hills us, I'm extremely glad we were presented this opportunity to participate in your program. This week has pushed us beyond our comfort zones and gave us a sense of encouragement. So once again thank you for having us and bringing us peace. So as you can see with our first special programming for the year, I was so proud of these students and how they behaved and they also knew we had a lot more programs coming their way for the year. So I'm not going to delay. I'm going to get started this week on 225. The Airmark Food Certification and Management Certificate course started. We partnered with Airmark who currently works with Insanererated Jail and we came up with this food certification program. The women started this week. It will be a four week course for the food certification in which N2U work program, which is provided by AirMark, provides internship opportunities, scholarship opportunities and job placement as soon as they are released. So I'm very excited for the females again who have dedicated their time to attend this class. This is a mixed classification course as well. If after the four weeks they obtain their food certification, I'm encouraging them to continue on for another two weeks to get their management certification course. And Aremark is doing a phenomenal job. The female students are ready this week are very excited. They're taking their books back to their housing units. They're giving up pod time to study for weekly tests. So I'm very proud of them. And again, this course is going to last about six weeks total. What's the participation rate for that course? We have 32 currently taking the class. We do have to separate two courses, 15 and 16, but so far it's going really, really well. So that's going to be going on for four to six weeks. And that's a class that happens from 8 in the morning to about 11 30 in the morning. Right after that we are introducing a program called Freedom Braders. March 24th would be the first start date for them which we're projecting and I'll have Melanie who we are partnering with five keys to make this program happen. This is another groundbreaking initiative we're launching. Freedom Braders is a program that equips women with braiding skills, essential business knowledge, and cognitive behavioral tools, and reentry planning strategies. Through hands-on learning, journaling, and post-release referrals, our participants will gain pathways to economic, independent, and personal transformation. Freedom Breakers is more than just a vocational program. It's a movement designed to break cycles of economically-driven crimes, disrupt generational patterns of incarceration, and empower women to build sustainable futures. And our hope is that this initiative will not only provide our students with valuable skills, but also inspire them to start their own businesses and reclaim control over their lives. And again, due to the survey, the highest percentage was cosmology. So we wanted to bring freedom breeders to these females as soon as possible. So what the day will look like for them is going to class at eight o'clock in the morning, having a break from 11 to one and then freedom breeders is coming in from 1 to 4 30 p.m. three days a week. So they are excited about staying busy. They're excited about being out of their cell, out of their houses and actually actually working together groups of female. We are also speaking with the housing units to allow these female students to have study time when it comes to testing for these certification courses. We are excited to bring freedom Raiders in particularly because their instructors, some of them have been formally incarcerated before and can attest to what they've experienced, not only while they are in custody, but what they've done for their own self, their own business to share with the students while they are instructing them. And then in April, April 14, we're inviting Julie R. Back to Santa Rita Jail. And this is going to be a nine week course. it's going to start off with the five day residency followed by nine weeks of online learning in which they will compose their own music, they will be recording their own music and then that will be played at the Lincoln Center in New York in June. So we are really excited about the program being as long as they is. It is and also possibly hearing some of our recording artists from Alameda County being able to express themselves at the Lincoln Center come June. And at the very beginning of July, we have a first-aid CPR course that we'll be providing for our female population as well. This is a one-day course, so again, it breaks down the barriers that we had discussed with time and mixed classification. I continue to plan on providing these courses to mixed classifications so that as many females can participate in this as possible. And as you can see with the last slide of the PowerPoint, you can see what myself, our reentry and support services unit, five keys and Shippo have done within the first six months for just the female population. So they are staying busy, they are motivated, and I'm so proud of how they've come along with these next, and they just keep asking us for more. When is this gonna start? When is this gonna start? And I just love their dedication. So thank you very much. Do you have any questions? Thank you, Sergeant Silva. I just want to commend you for the tremendous lift. This is really impressive. I could see your heart and passion in this work that you're doing. So thank you for caring. Thank you for thinking outside the box. And it's not lost on me that many of these programs are going live in March, which is Women's History Month. So just what a great time to just celebrate all women, no matter what their circumstances are. Couple questions. What is the current population of the female population in Santa Maria? So we have, it fluctuates from 92 to about 108. And again, that's for the whole entire population, not every single classification. Does that include federal inmates? Yes, it includes US marshals. And again, they have been included in our classes, including THI inmates, therapeutic housing inmates as well. And to go to what you're saying is, well, five keys should go and myself can come up with all these programs. But if it wasn't for my lieutenant, my captain and the commander allowing me to think out box and taking the risk of having a misclassification course and all the safety concerns that come in with that, I wouldn't have been able to do it without their support and just really allow me to provide these programs to the females population. And then help me understand the pre-work that goes into launching a program because I heard you mentioned waivers. It sounds like there was discussion with the women like these are the expectations. Can you give a little bit of background to how you got to that place? Yes, so again, being the newly appointed programs director, I've never, I've never been in this position before. I've done a lot of community work. However, I wanted to sit down with every single female and I interviewed every single female that attended the class and talked about what we had in the works for them, how successful we wanted to be in these programs and that everything would depend on their participation and behavior. And so, Julia was the first test of it. And you could tell due to, I think it was smart for me to go in there with expectations. I also was trying to mentor them every day when I popped into their classes to see how they were doing. Continue to have them study, work together, and also reach out to housing units if they needed additional time to work on a project or a performance. And I just believe the females want this so bad that I think it makes my job easy. The interviews that had to happen had to do a lot with safety and security. I had to have the females agree to being around other mixed classifications, especially the ones with keep separates. And keep separates are females that have had conflict while they're incarcerated, whether it be a physical conflict or assault on another inmate or possible staff. So I had the classification unit come out and we spoke with every single inmate that was participating in the class and basically said, this is our expectation regarding safety and do you feel safe being in a learning environment with somebody you had conflict with before? We did not have one female student say no and we did not have one call for service as far as a fight and argument, none of that happened. So I was very, very proud of our female students and you could tell the drive is we want more. Congratulations. And for taking the time to do that extra above and beyond due diligence and just the one on one time, I think it's key just connecting with them as an individual. So thank you for putting in that work. With respect to measuring success, how are you measuring success? So currently right now five keys in Shibou we are completing surveys after every semester of instruction and we completed a survey after every program. So obviously we got high rankings for Juilliard and as much as I want to praise ourselves for that, to me we still have a lot of work to do and a lot to learn. So there were just a couple of things we wanted to improve on. So when Juilliard comes back, it might be the classroom size, it might be the amount of people we have. Those are just small little changes we are making. But as far as tracking, it's the attendance who's attended. And then in addition, just this week, we sent out packages for every single student that attended Juilliard with certificates from the Board of Supervisors, certificates from five keys, photos of themselves with their certificates and the concert and a link to the video they could share with their family, which they were so excited about. That's amazing. What is the participation rate? So I heard you 35, 31, I don't know if it's duplication. So out of all the programs that you're launching, would you say 60, 70% are participating? Do you know those statistics? So I will say about 80%. We are clearing the female deputies inside the house or so happy we are taking their population away from them. I will say this, you know, we would take half the house away from them where they're really just focusing on maybe the restrictive housing and mates for their appointments and follow-ups and resources and we're taking on maximum minimum and medium which is the majority of the population I would say it's about 80 to 85% of the population that is now attending class. Okay, that's great. Okay, Okay, as you mentioned, Aremark providing support with job placement. Are there any other programs that you foresee that you could track post release to see how we're reducing recidivism, setting people up for success? Yes, so that's currently happening with our certification program with Aremark. Being able to track who was taking our class and then learning from AeroMark what resources are you providing as soon as they're released. We even had a female on the first day of class say I'm supposed to be released in three weeks this program is four weeks can I ask my lawyer to stay for the fourth week just so I can get my certification. And the amount of post-rally support that they're getting, same thing that happened with Juilliard was giving them access to the Juilliard. Instructors, the website sharing information, airmark is going to be providing them locations around the Alameda County in which they can apply with their certification. And freedom breeders, there's no certification there. However, due to the want of cosmetology, I know that there is a lot of money to be had for these female students to go out and become entrepreneurs and open their own business. And if they take this side-by- side with an entrepreneurship class provided by five keys or Shabot, I know that when they get out, they have a better opportunity of succeeding in something they actually enjoy and love doing. Do you foresee any barriers? Do you need additional support from the Board of Supervisors? What do you need to continue to help facilitate these programs? Currently the barriers, some of these programs, they are asking for money to either for supplies or their rate of pay. I'm just so lucky we have five keys that we're partnering with. For instance, Freedom Braders, we wanted to bring this program to the jail. However there's a startup cost and supply cost to all of everything they're going to need to make this successful and five keys did a phenomenal job of putting the salaries under their contract but we're responsible for the supplies and so luckily I was able to go to my captain lieutenant and say there's $4,000 worth of supplies that they're asking for in addition when we're trying to ask for 25 30 40 females to be a part of this to give them all an opportunity Well the price of a mannequin head and gel and combs it just keeps growing so I think those would be the only barriers is not really being able to offer it to as many people as we can because of the cost. And I'm doing, I think I've done my best with our team to create more classroom space, bigger classroom space, but that would be the only barrier I see is minimizing the amount of participants we could have when each program is present due to money or the space to allow that to happen. Thank you again for the tremendous work you're doing. Thank you to five keys and all of the leadership that are this making these programs possible. I definitely want to see an annual update. My team will connect with the Sheriff's team to find out, do we couple it with other presentations or have a standalone, but really excited to see the work that you're doing and love the fact that you're documenting it. It's so important for people to see themselves doing great things. So congratulations and thank you. Thank you so much and we'll be inviting all of you to these graduations of all of these programs. So thank you so much for your support. Thank you. And let me ask if there's public comment on this before I move along to the next item. I have no speakers for item one. Okay. I think I've been three. I'm sorry. Thank you. This is item number three. And so now we're gonna go back to item number one and wanna thank Fire Chief and his team for his flexibility. Item number one is also an informational item. This is a presentation of Alameda County Fire Department Strategic Business Plan. Presenter today is Chief Willie McDonald with Alameda County Fire. Welcome and thank you for your patience. Thank you, Chair Mark, Mark is a wonderful opportunity to be here today to present the Alameda County Fire Department's strategic business plan. I'm Willie McDonald, the Alameda County Fire Chief. I have with me today Deputy Chief Derek Thomas in the audience as well as Division Chief, Paige Bui. We set out to develop a strategic business plan back in 2022, utilizing what we consider to be a very interactive process. We agreed with Alameda County firefighters, local 55, to develop the plan as a partnership between the department and our firefighters. We organized a strategic plan committee on that really included the fire department senior staff and a local 55 executive board. We contracted with city gate to provide the developmental process as well as managed the task. And we engage in significant stakeholder outreach and involvement in method to ensure the plan. provide the developmental process as well as manage the task. And then we engage in significant stakeholder outreach and involvement in method to ensure the plan would be really inclusive, would capture the interest of the communities and the residents we serve, and would really assist in obtaining a full view of it, Alameda County Fire Department and the desired service requirements. I think I one to pass, or maybe I missed a slide. Yeah, that was our strategic plan committee, members of the department, and all those members of the executive board for the fire for a local 55. And so our external stakeholders, we conducted interviews and received comments and input from many external stakeholders, including board supervisors, our county administrator, many of our mayors and our city council members from the site, five cities that we provide services to, our fire advisory commissioners and all of our city managers participated in providing comments and input to the strategic plan. And then we hosted multiple opportunities for our employees to provide their interest, input and comments through structured questions and guided discussions and interactive sessions with our consultant team. So, the plan is organized and we came together with the development of agreement of five overarching goals. And that was based on a consensus strategic plan committee members. Those five goals are fiscal sustainability, an organization that closely aligns with our community's values, needs, and service expectations, services, and resources to meet our mission and sustained organizational vitality and viability and improved organizational systems and processes. Within those five goals are also strategies, 20 strategies that help really put a theme on the goal that we're trying to accomplish. So in terms of the organizational plan, as I mentioned mentioned there are strategies within each of the goals. Some examples might be strategy 1A fiscal planning or strategy 3A appropriate operational response support and administrative services and staffing capacity strategy 4B adaptable organization open to change innovation and continuous improvement and strategy 4B, adaptable organization, open to change, innovation and continuous improvement, and strategy 4C, organizational focus on employee health and wellness. So what that does is really kind of groups, some of the objectives that are contained within each one of the goals to really focus our efforts in those directions. We've assigned branch champions, that's one of our deputy chiefs or as administrative services director to oversee and provide guidance and assistance of each one of our five goals. We've assigned an objective to each of our program managers. That's our division chiefs and our managers. And that is their responsibility to bring those objective forwards. And the program managers have placed their objectives in their work plans in the incorporate budget request. So as I say, we ask each one of our division chiefs and our program managers to select one or two of the objectives contained within the plan. This is in terms of implementing our strategic plan and they would select one or two objectives initially to focus their attention on. They develop detailed action plans to accomplish the objective. They'd incorporate it into their personal work plan for the year. And if there was budget that was needed, they would include that in the budget development process. And we report on the progress of those objectives, how we're doing on those that are monthly meetings, excuse me, at every six months, we have a meeting of all of our program managers. So they report out by monthly on those meetings. In terms of tracking, we have an internal tracking process, shared database that we can include all the information about the progress on each of the objectives, provide updates on our progress twice a year, and as you see, we have branch managers or branch champions that oversee the progress and provide guidance. I have a placed strategic plan on your diester supervisor, Mark is and would ask that in this in terms of today's presentation, that it be just informational that that you would receive in and accept the strategic plan and offer your support for full board adoption. Our next steps are to continue the implementation and complete additional objectives within our goals. Assign additional objectives to our program managers, update the plan and bring an update to the Public Protection Committee at some time point in the future. And as I say, we'd like to bring the plan forward to the full board for adoption. That really is all of the information that I wanted to share with you and I want to say again say that it's a great opportunity to be able to present our strategic plan to you. A lot of effort and work from all many members of the department went into it. And I really appreciate the input that we receive from our external stakeholders in our employees. And so, thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation. Just have a couple questions. Is this the first time presenting the plan to public protection committee? Yes. Okay. And then the request is to come every two years. I'm sorry. Every two years, you want to return or annually? I'd like to return annually. Anually. Okay. Make sure that we're focused in that we keep having progress on the plan. And then the request is eventually to bring it to the full board for adoption. Yes. Okay, do you have a sense of when that will be? I was hoping to be built in the next month or two. I bring it forward to the board. Okay. So it is an informational item. and when it's just one committee member, we can't get a recommendation. A formal recommendation, or not a quorum of the committee, but definitely we'll take this into consideration as you know President Halbert is our new board chair and does the agenda setting. So our office will coordinate with his office to see when we could get it on an agenda for the full board. Okay, very good. Thank you very much. And then a couple of questions. Since you've developed the plan, do you see any specific changes, modifications that need to be made or do you continue to be pleased with the five areas that have been identified to basically have the fire department focus on? I think I'm pleased with the five goals, but I do think some observation and revision needs to be done on some of the strategies and objectives as we move forward and have more information on the ability to succeed in some of those areas. So I think our plan needs to have periodic revisions built in that really includes some of the additional information we know or the progress that we've made on those particular objectives. Okay. And then you mentioned monthly meetings to kind of gauge the progress being done, the progress within the strategic plan, who is a part of those monthly meetings? Who attends those? So I misspoke, it's actually every other month we have all of our project managers, our program managers, which is our division chiefs, our finance manager, our general services manager, and in our dispatch manager. We meet every other month and we go through place to year, we take the progress or we evaluate the progress of the objectives that each of the project managers have taken on to determine if there's some additional assistance needed or if there's some corrections need to be made. Okay. And then also just wanted to acknowledge your department, your team. I know you provided mutual aid to our community members down in Southern California. So just thank you for doing that and just you could just provide an update to the public. Is everyone safe? Were there any just glad that you were able to provide support, but just want to ensure that everyone did return home safely? Everyone did return home safely. We sent a five engines about 27 members of the department responded down to Southern California. On about I think January 8th, the fires broke out on the morning of the seventh. The largest of those was the Palisades fire and the Eaton fire. So we responded our crews down there. We also sent a couple of Italian chiefs as strike team leaders and staff officers, safety officers and rescue specialists. They were there for about two and a half weeks, maybe three weeks. They returned, everybody returned safely on the 27. I'm glad to hear that. Just a couple more questions on this item. Can you identify in your professional opinion what are the top priorities for the next one to three years in this plan? I think the top priority is for us to be able to make sure that we are providing the services that our community desires. And so that we make a really strong connection with our community and ensure that Alameda County Fire is meeting their interest on the services that they want and desire. And they weren't providing them in a way that is desirable to the community that we serve. We also have a, I think, a strong focus on employee health and wellness within our strategic plan. And really, I think we need to make as many efforts as we can on bringing assistance, guidance, counsel to our folks to improve the wellness and the mental health of our individuals and whatever services that they might need. So that's a very strong, I think, goal that we need to really be focused on. Absolutely, no, you and I have had lots of conversations about individuals, mental health and well-being and just glad to see your leadership and identifying additional programming and services. So please let us know any additional support that's needed. Any closing remarks on this item before we move on to the next one? I would just like to say it's a pleasure to be able to present to you and I'm very proud of the work that's been done by our organization, by all the folks, the engagement they all took and the commitment they made in bringing able to bring this strategic plan forward and then the investment that we're making on bringing it to life. And so I just want to say thank you. Thank you, McDonald. I really appreciate you being here. And now we're going to open up public comment on this item. We're still on item number one. Are there any public speakers for item number one? I have no speakers for item one. Okay thank you. We're going to move on to item number two. This is also an informational item. This is an update on Alameda County Fire Department alternative response unit program and presenting is going to be division chief page Bowie. Welcome and thank you also for your flexibility this morning. And I believe we have a PowerPoint presentation. I don't think we have any issues with this one. So public should be able to view this online. Welcome. Thank you, Chair Markins. Good morning. Thank you for having me. Very pleased to be here this morning to talk about Alameda County's alternative response unit and segueing from what the community is wanting and needing and also mental health. I think this unit touches both of those. So we'll start off talking about some background and how we developed the program. And then I will end by talking about our first three months in service. So, these are just the highlights of the background of how this came to be. So the alternative response unit is a mental health first response unit in the city of San Landro. It's a pilot program. It really started back in 2020, but really got moving more in 2021 when city staff presented some options to Council for consideration. Then in March of 2022, San Lander was created, and that's basically the partnership between San Lander Police Department, Alameda County Fire, and the city's Human Services Department. It was formally integrated into the city work plan and Alameda County Fire was asked to take the lead on developing this project and we were happy to do so. We were able to select a mental health provider in Cardea Health in February of 2024 and then we launched the program officially on November 4th but we did not do an official public launch until January 15th. All right. So, as I mentioned earlier, it was a collaborative pilot program. And we really wanted to try to better meet the needs, behavior and mental health needs of the citizens of San Leandro. The unit staffed with unarmed responders trained to de-escalate crisis situations. And one of the main goals was reducing over reliance on traditional law enforcement and EMS responders by instead dispatching really trained professionals with the tools necessary to help resolve these crises that we were facing out on the street. We wanted first responders to be able to focus their limited resources on the things they were trained to do, more pressing public safety concerns and medical emergencies. We had four goals. First goal was to reduce police response and I-11 calls related to behavioral health requests. Just as important to deliver an appropriate and timely response to behavioral health calls that meet the individual's needs. We were also looking to decrease the number of unnecessary ER visits and then bridge and facilitate service connections with our clients. So the details, as I mentioned, this is an 18-month pilot. We're based out of San Leandro, Alameda County Fire Station 10, is where the unit operates out of. It's on a 40-hour week schedule, so 10 hours a day, Monday through Thursday. Staffing consists of one Alameda County firefighter, one nurse practitioner, and two commanding health workers. And a real key point to this program is we have access to two medically supported emergency shelter beds at Eddie's place, which is run by our partner, Cardià Health. A big part of this project was the work that we did pre-launch the program with Sanland or PD. The unique thing I think about our ARU is that it can respond without a police presence. And to do that we have to to train up the police dispatchers, as well as have a really good relationship with the patrol officer on the street. So we did extensive research and gathered two years worth of data from Sanland or PD to see what type of types of calls we could respond on. And we ended up identifying about 12 different call types that we thought the mental health unit would be fit to respond to. So I'm getting ahead of myself here. The initial plan and what we rely mostly on is that calls come in through 911 and they go to the primary peace app, the primary dispatch center, which is San Leandro, and then they triage and screen the calls. So calls that meet the criteria for the ARU are screen for safety, and if they meet that, they will then be forwarded to our dispatch center, the secondary peace app, ACRAC, which just batches the unit. So this is, as you might think, quite a few steps, but we thought it is necessary for safety. However, I will say, as the program is evolving, we are learning and adjusting that we can allow some direct calls to the unit itself for dispatch. So I'll go over here in the next few slides kind of eligible and ineligible scenarios. So eligible, individual experiencing suicidal thoughts, thinking of harming themselves, anyone in emotional distress or family members or neighbors arguing in a need of mediation. Strong suspicion of hallucinization, psychosis or other mental health issues, any type of behavior that might be getting the attention of others out on the street, suspicion of substance use, mental health issues, etc. So exclusionary criteria, an obvious medical emergency, unknown or non-present subject, whereas this is if the person calling 911 is not actually on scene with the person they're calling about. There's any sort of gun or weapon on the premise, excuse me, or physical threat made. continued here, current are known history of physical violence, property destruction, current self-harm, current suicide attempt, or threatening suicide with a plan. So these can get pretty nuanced and this dives into what the dispatchers are triaging for every day. So that background work went into everything. We did training with the dispatchers, did algorithms, and we launched then in November. And now I'll go into a summary kind of our first three months in operation. So in the first three months, we answered 35911 calls, initiated 90 follow-up visits and had approximately 50 on-view calls, and that's where the unit's driving around and see somebody they might be able to assist. The vast majority of these were solo responses. There is a strong trend towards increasing the number of calls where we can respond with PD, because as we're discovering, there are quite a few calls coming in that get kind of tagged as an ARU type call, but maybe because of safety, we're not necessarily going or going first. So this is just a matter of building that relationship and trust with SLPD, which is actually happening. And you'll see there the number of 911 calls in January compared to November. They're dispatching us much, much more. Average ARU response time is 10 minutes in the city. The team is averaging about eight to nine calls a day at this point, which is actually approaching maximum. And I would say 25% of those calls, they're on scene with somebody else when they get another call coming in. And then average time on scene is approximately 30 minutes. And you'll notice the table on the right there, the co-responsive sub-gonna up, which is a good thing. Backup by SLPD, I did not include what the asterisk means. And that was, I believe all seven of those were 5150 calls. And the unit does not do those, so we were calling PD to do the 5150. So back to the types of calls. PD has a call type called ascertain wellness, and that was, we knew early on, that would be a really high call volume for the ARU, and sure enough, it's turned out to be that way. Other call types, especially this person, homeless and campment, et cetera. Kind of like a welfare check type thing. Yeah, even though they have, I think welfare check might be a different one, but similar. Okay. Yes. And then summary of services, we have a general support, which is a lot of times because our folks are trained so well in in de escalation and crisis intervention The team is called on basically to do that and so they will resolve a situation then and there that hasn't been able to be resolved otherwise And that's generally what that category means Referrals or we refer somebody to another service hand out necessities transport hand out literature or refer people with given the phone number. So, those are pretty bad buckets. This unit does honestly dozens and dozens of things. We were trying hard to narrow it down. Destination type, broken it down to shelter, therapy, legal services. They did courtesy transportation, various behavioral health, other referrals and senior services, and I'll talk about the shelters a little bit more here in this next slide. So in the first quarter, as you can see, there's a summary of some of the places we've taken to people, some churches, Eddie's Place, which is our medically supported shelter beds. So 13 clients transported there in the first three months. And I will say just to break that down further because that's such a key metric for us. 10 of those were clients and there were three living caregivers who went with them. So of those 10, five have now been transferred into some sort of other long-term treatment or care. So 50% success rate in terms of a more long-term solution for some of these clients, which may sound small, but I read that is actually a pretty big number. It's also limited by the fact that we can only pain for two beds per day. Those beds are not cheap. And if we could afford more beds, I think those numbers would just exponentially rise. But that's what we're at at this point. It's a key component of this program. We've also been to get folks into hotel vouchers. So I want to go back to their encampments and we take them where they want to go. Safe parking sites and also maybe to their home, as you see in the last bar graph there. Do you know how many safe parking sites sell the under has? Just one and it's the county site on the fairmont complex. They're looking into other sites but right now there aren't any. I wanted to talk briefly about one of the broader missions of the unit which is progressive engagement. This unit, I call them compassionately aggressive. They really, really get out there and follow up with their clients. So many folks take multiple interactions to really get them to accept services and then unit understands that. So they'll respond on somebody and then follow up by trying to get them referred to other services. They'll text with them, make phone calls, emails, visit them multiple times, and not all of that rewards a full incident report, but we are tracking that. And what you see here is those are the unique clients that they contacted 10 or more times in a given month. And so of those clients, that's how many interactions they had, which is pretty high number. But we're learning that's what it takes really to get people eventually to accept some of these services. So emergency department diversion is another one of our goals. However, it's really turning out to be not quite as critical as the other ones. This unit is dispatched by the police dispatch center. So medical type emergency department diversion isn't high on what we're ultimately doing. Although you will see we're requested by fire in EMS eight times. They are very grateful to have the unit out there in the city of San Leandro and they know about it and they do call on the unit if by chance a medical comes through and gets all the way as a medical 911. Our fire unit arrives on scene and realizes, oh, the ARU would be great for this and they dispatch the unit. So it can be requested multiple different ways. I do imagine that some of the 911 calls that this team is now going to would have ultimately been dispatched to fire and then it would have been in ER transport, we really can't track that. And lastly, we just wanted to point out we have a webpage where anyone can go on, take a look at what the program is all about. We do have some statistics up there, answer some frequently answered, ask questions, and you can leave a comment or ask a question. But as far as next steps, we hope to continue these numbers through the 18 months. I'm very curious to see where our call volume lands since I think we're already at max and then we'll be looking for longer term funding to sustain the program with the city of San Landra. Thank you. Thank you so much just have a couple of questions with respect to referral and tracking, whose managing that system is at the fire department, all this data that's using software that is internal to track all these different calls and the referrals and basically everything you provided us that's in-house tracking. Vassam Majority, Car Day Health is tracking any clients that we refer to Eddie's place. Okay. And then the Fire Department is also tracking the data and managing it, providing the reports. And then what are the touch points to the City of Sallie-Andra? How often do you have to provide this information to them? Great question. A quarterly. We're just finishing up our first quarterly report. Okay. more much more a little bit bigger and beefier detail version of what I just presented. We actually identified 49 metrics, so we'll report out on all those. That's a good city. And the reporting to San Leandro, is that done to the full council or do they have like a committee that vets these items? We're still determining that right now. We're going to see when the human services in the city manager. OK, got it. And then in terms of community outreach and awareness, what models are being used so that the public is aware that this program has launched just other than the website, how are they getting the information out? Sure. When did the official launch in January? We did a big public push through all the social media outlets and avenues of that San Leandro utilizes as well as the San Leandro Improvement Association, which is the business district. We reached out to dozens of the places where we refer clients to. So building futures, Davis Street, Resource Center, Amber House, et cetera. So all of those folks we did outreach ahead of time to let them know we were launching and what we were about and what we could all do to work together. So there was a lot of pre-outreach, but after that it was mainly social media, print media, city council, to let them know we were in service. Okay, and I know there are surrounding cities that have similar models like Hayward, Framont, Oakland, was their coordination communication with those cities just to find out best practices. What are the recommendations, what has worked, what hasn't? Yes, there was outreach to Hayward, Alameda City, Oakland, the cat team here in the county. And I want to say thank you to them. They were very helpful best practices. We also had a technical assistance grant from Harvard's government performance lab for one year. When we were building up to launch this and they proved to be very helpful because they gave us best practices from other programs around the country that were successful including a lot of the work we did with PDE and the type of data and metrics we wanted to gather. And then what's the coordination with Alameda County behavioral health? I'm presuming some of these individuals that you're interfacing with are also clients of the county system. Where's the linkage and the coordination around ensuring that that individuals need their being met? Blinking on the name right now. We have access to, it's through Epic. There's a system. We can look up clients that's, theyAA approved where we can see clients' history. And that's been the coordinate. And we definitely worked with them beforehand before launch, and they offered their assistance. But having access to the CHR, excuse me, the Community Health Report, that tracks all the patients that are in the system. And we can see, for instance, if they've been to Johns George two days ago, or where they might be if they're in the system, That's been one of the ways of coordinating. Additionally, I failed to mention, we do have two clients who are in the Care Act court right now, so we're going through that process and working with backs with that as well. We're learning with everyone else on that one. There's a lot of programs, a lot of services. Yeah. I'm glad to hear that. You're have people that are going through that process. That's good to hear. This is kind of a unique question, and if you can't answer it's completely fine, but I'm just curious. Really appreciate the partnership, the communication, the infrastructure, everything that is gone to launch this program. I think one piece of criticism we hear from people not necessarily from the county. There seems to be this belief that people are coming here from services and they're not truly our own community members. Can you speak to like getting to know some of these individuals in your experience? Are you finding that these are people that are truly from Sally Andrew to struggling or like kind of if you could just add any insights into what you're learning about the people that you're interfacing, I would say the people that you have frequent interactions with. Sure, a great question. I would say they are from San Leandro because they don't want to leave San Leandro. I'm learning that a big part of this, even maybe getting somebody to Eddie's place, which is in Oakland Sometimes is a barrier because they would rather be taken somewhere that's within their home city And the unit does respond to a lot of homes for 911 callers that are having mental health issues, you know in their houses We've had relative sitting outside of a brother's apartment complex We're you know brothers worried about getting ev evicted because... So I venture to say that most are pretty local. Okay. And then are we asking people that were interfacing with routinely, I would say, are we getting into like, what is the barrier? Are we asking them, what do you need to be stable? Yes. That is one of the questions we're asking. We ask them if they're willing to go to shelter. Even if we don't have a bed available, we ask that question just to see those barriers. Are you asking what their responses are? Just in general, like what you're hearing is cost-deliving, lack of access to mental health support. I'm just curious. Oh, like why they're maybe having issues. Yeah, that not not so much necessarily. I think if I were to talk to our team they could give you some more answers on that. Mental I would say mental health and substance use a bit. Use or a big part of okay on the majority of the clients okay great let's see you said there's going to be an update coming to Sally and O'Claire Council in the short period of time are you guys course correcting what seeing? Some barriers, challenges, I know it's early on, but any insight you could share that might shed light as to how we could continue to evolve and improve the program. I think we're still working on, it's funny I say we're approaching max capacity, but I think if we, funding was an issue and we could run units 24-7, it would still be about building that relationship with the dispatchers and the patrol officers about appropriate calls to send the unit on. There are more calls there. We're tracking what San Lando Tags is an ARU type call, even when we're not in service. And it's clear why we're trying to hit most of those with our 40 hours. If we ran more often, we would definitely have more clients. And right now it's Monday through Thursday. Is that correct? Yes. Are we tracking the data to see if we could possibly pivot? I don't know if there's more of a need, let's say, Wednesday through Sunday. Yeah. Are we tracking to see if the data is going to be fixed? We are. Okay. We're watching that. it in the numbers would probably stay the same, but it wouldn't be changed by much. Okay. At this point, what else? Give it. Yeah, the relationship part there. I think everyone's looking for more funding. I think that it really is a key component that we're able to go without PD. That seems to be, people are grateful to hear that and see that. And then having those medically supported shelter beds, those, they fill up so fast when they're available because they will take somebody with substance abuse, mental health. They'll take somebody with their dog. Those are often the barriers we get for shelter and the fact that there's a facility that does that is I think a key point of this success of this program but it comes at a cost so that's what I think everyone's facing. Okay thank you so much for being here I really appreciate the great work that's being done and excited to see the strong partnership with the City of Celiandro and looking forward to future discussions. Maybe we could bring all the different cities that have a similar program so we could learn from one another and also Courtney, right, with behavioral health services, with our housing providers or shelters. What are the gaps that we're missing in the community because all of you are seeing firsthand the unmet needs. But thank you so much for the great work that you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any public comments on this item? I have no speakers on this item. Okay. We will move on to the last part of the agenda, which is public comment. This is for items under the purview of public protection committee but not on the agenda. Do we have any members of the public that would like to speak under public comment? I have no speakers for public comment. Okay. The meeting will be adjourned shortly and our next meeting will be on Thursday, March 27, 2025. I want to thank my team for coordinating these amazing presenters today and please continue to follow our platforms on social media where we always put out good information about this committee and thank you to our clerk. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you.