APPRO-2023-28 : Fiscal 2024 Operating Budget in the amount of $101,173,341 (one hundred and one million, one hundred seventy-three thousand, three hundred forty-one dollars and 00/100 cents)

Transcript (~41 min @ 5:48)

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▶ 5:41 Leila Migliorelli: Okay. Motion to hold, um, on the agenda. Seconded. Made by President Grega. Seconded by Council Williams. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. This order will be held. Um, next up is the continuation of our annual budget hearings with appropriation 2023 dash 28, fiscal 2024 operating budget in the amount of $101,173,341 and 0 cents. Tonight we have the police department, fire department in emergency man management with us. So first up is the police department with Chief Faller.

▶ 6:33 Speaker 2: Welcome. Good evening.

▶ 6:40 Speaker 2: Shall I begin? Yes. Okay. Um, well, thank you for having us. Obviously, it's my first budget hearing, so, um, as you're aware, we sent a memo out from my office, uh, I think about a week ago. So I'm sure you had a chance to read it. And, and we welcome any questions. I would just like to, uh, start the process of, start our presentation just to highlight a few things from, uh, this current fiscal year, the one that's ending. Um, we had three, uh, four sworn offices, including myself, uh, leave during, uh, the year. And one, uh, civilian administrative assistant. All those positions are currently being filled, are, uh, filled. So we're, we're, we're doing well with that. We have two new recruits that, uh, should be starting the academy in July. And we have one that's gonna be starting the street probably in a few weeks in June. Uh, thus sort of filling all those open positions, which is great. And the mayor's office, uh, the auditor's office, human resources have been really good as far as strategic planning, rather than waiting till they, uh, leave to fill because as you may know or may not know, it takes the, uh, police department well over 12 months to actually fill an opening. Um, between background investigations, the academy and field training takes a long time. So I'm, I'm fortunate enough, uh, so far in my short tenor tenure here, uh, that we're moving, I think, in the right direction of filling openings, getting them approved and getting them into academy. So we're doing well with that. And some of the other highlights, I think that we accomplished, uh, moving into this year we're creating, created some new positions with which go hand in hand with the positions that were subsequently filled. Um, professional standard supervisory position, which is responsible strictly for post compliance, internal affairs grant funding, any citizen complaint investigations. So, um, that's, that's, that's a new position. We also created a new mental health substance abuse detective full-time position, um, which is strictly responsible for follow up on our mental health and substance abuse calls, working in conjunction with our on staff clinician that we have through a grant through Elliot. Um, and then lastly, uh, not lastly, but, uh, one of the more important things I think we're able to accomplish was to create a community engagement unit and a social media team to get the police department more visible and, uh, more involved in, in the community. Uh, we sent supervisors to FBI leader, um, training this year. We just started that. And next year, uh, sort of goes hand in hand with our training budget request. Um, my goal is to have every single supervisor sent to FBI leader training, which is Law Enforcement Executive Development Association, uh, which basically teaches the best practices and supervision. Um, and that's pretty much it as far as you know, where we are and, you know, where, where, where we hope we can go in 2024 with, of course, the approval of the budget that's proposed. So we would, and and next to me is Kim Upton, which is our office manager. She may be, uh, to, may be able to answer some questions that I may not as, as far as, uh, you know, some of the math and, and, uh, figures that you may ask, but we're certainly open to any questions.

▶ 9:46 Speaker 3: Thank you, chief. You're welcome. Questions from the council.

▶ 9:52 Speaker 3: Council Gepe.

▶ 9:55 Mark Garipay: Thank you. Thank you ma'am. Chair. Um, thank you for being here, chief. Uh, just a couple of questions. One is regarding overtime. I see that we're, um, we're over by quite a bit. I don't think it's uncommon. See kind of an annual thing and, and how are we gonna address the funding on that and how will we, uh, if we historically tend to go over it and it's not, we tend to underfund it. Um, what is the goal to fund that this year and in the future, would you say?

▶ 10:28 Speaker 2: Sure. So I, I know last year I came in literally halfway through the fiscal year, I believe. So I came in in December and actually at that time, I said to Kim, I said, we're already over the overtime budget and we're, we have six months to go. Um, why I, I can't speak for the previous chief, but I can, I know that, uh, there was a lot, there was staffing issues, so they were, they, we were well understaffed. So huge, huge overtime. Backfills, military backfills, which will, will happen all the time. And then just minimum manning staffing, which is required by the, you know, the, the various unions, which I'm okay with. Cuz you, you need staffing out there. We, quite frankly, we could use more out there. So, you know, the number is, is, is, is probably not enough, again, to be quite honest with you, to get us through what we're gonna need to do because they were so, so short staffed Right before I came on, they put, we put five in the academy, but then we just lost three in the last, uh, five months. So that net five is now down to net two. You take the special mental health, uh, uh, detective position, which is a, you know, a patrolman taking off the street serves a great purpose. I'm not giving that up, but now you're really sort of net one on, on the, the patrol staffing levels. And then you have vacations, you have, you know, your injuries, you're gonna have your sick time. Um, so you, you compile that all together and, and you know, that number is, is, is, is probably gonna be low again in fiscal year 24.

▶ 12:01 Mark Garipay: So right now we're about, what, 200, 201,000 over what the revised budget, um, is the goal to use free cash this year? Have you had a, been able to talk to the CFO about that?

▶ 12:14 Speaker 2: Yes. Uh, Kim might be able to answer that a little more, but that, but that's correct. Yes.

▶ 12:18 Speaker 4: Yes. We, I just, uh, submitted a projection to, to, uh, the auditor's office that, you know, after using everything in the sales, uh, salary and wages line, we're still gonna be negative 60, about 63 to $65,000 that we're gonna need from free cash in order to, to, uh, zero out the, you know, our, our deficit under the salary and wages category. Okay.

▶ 12:47 Speaker 2: If I could just add to counselors, so the, the overtime is not just that I, I forgot the training. So we, we might be able to discuss that a little bit, but the, the, we're all required, including myself, to do 40 hours of men mandatory training to keep our certification to through m ptc. So if you break that down, that's 40 extra hours and it's usually you have to take the person off the shift. So there's usually backfill that might go with that. And or if that office is on a, on a day off and has to go to that training, there's, there's more overtime there. We broke it down, I think it was roughly, and don't quote me if it's exact, but it was around $186,000 just for mandatory training, which includes academic training, legal updates, c p and then we also do 16 hours of, of firearms training, and then we do an additional six or so hours on active shooter training. See that's 40 plus 16 plus six. Add that all up. You take the average overtime rate of patrol officer, you're already talking at $200,000 that comes out of our overtime budget. That's really just training that doesn't account for your vacations, your sick, your back fill your minimum manning. So you put all that together. That's why you're looking at six, $700,000 there. And

▶ 14:00 Speaker 4: Plus, at the first part of the, of the fiscal year, we were also coming out of the, of our, uh, military backfill time where we had one supervisor, uh, who was still in active duty. So all of those backfills, and that, of course, is at a higher overtime rate.

▶ 14:19 Mark Garipay: Okay. Um, do you know if the CFO currently has a placeholder for police overtime in, in free cash in his formula he uses every year? Is he expecting the, the reason why I'm asking is we're, we are promising free cash across the board for next year, and I want to make sure that all, all the community, all the services are taken care of within the community. So,

▶ 14:42 Speaker 4: Well, I can tell you that, um, all I can tell you is that every year we always ask for free cash, uh, at the end of the year to cover overtime deficits. And we've always received it. Okay. At the end of the day.

▶ 14:59 Mark Garipay: All right. Thank you. Um, thank you for that. And then, um, regarding

▶ 15:05 Speaker 1: the hospital, um, do we,

▶ 15:07 Mark Garipay: there's a lot of the overtime or a lot of the calls, um, we've heard that in the past that it, it does cost us a lot of money. Right. Um, and I know at least that being in my ward, it's been a lot of struggle with the neighborhood. We've dealt with a lot of complaints. Uh, we, um, that they've been engaged with us at all and trying to resolve some of the issues in around, um, you know, we we're up there a lot. It's costing us money. It's a great service, it's great having 'em there, but we do have an ordinance in town that we do bill for nuisance properties. And I know we've looked at that when we're up there, a lot handling issues, um, in the neighborhood. But we been able to look into that anymore.

▶ 15:49 Speaker 2: You know, it's, it's, it's sometimes it's tough to tell what we should, should be going there for. And, you know, certainly we, uh, you know, that's what we get paid to do, is to be partners with the community and they're one of our partners and we we're here to help them. But, um, I think it was two or three months into the, my position here. I I, I met with, I had, I had a meeting with them because I thought we were going up there too much. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, where I came from, we had the Lawrence Memorial Hospital forever in Metford, and we set pretty strict rules on what police officers should be going to and what staffing and security and their own professionals should be handling. And, you know, I, I just felt that maybe they were calling us too soon, but I don't wanna, I don't wanna, uh, make a final judgment yet because we did have a meeting with staff security, but I feel like I should be meeting with, um, maybe more administrative staff and, and find out what their training is because they may not be trained to handle certain calls where they think it's a police response, when really it isn't. And I worry about two things. I worry about my office's safety and I worry about the liability to the city, the liability to the offices, especially now with post and use of force and mental health. We shouldn't be going hands on with mental health po patients inside hospitals in inpatient areas, which they were calling us a few times for us. So I, it's just sort of like anything in life and anything else, you have to sit down with the people in charge and make sure that they're trained and know when to call us and when not to they call us, we're going to go. I mean, that's the bottom line, but it's just a matter of when we get there to sort of educate them on, Hey, listen, this isn't a police response. We've had to put hands on people. Um, actually strike that. I've, I, I read a report and I was very proud of the officer he wrote, I, it was he, he or she, I believe it was one of our male offices, wrote that he actually had to, to tell one of their staff to take their hands off of the person because where their sort of hands on were going to the neck or whatever. And that's not what anyone should be doing. That's certainly not what's, you know, we would be doing. So you have that whole duty to intervene now with po the post commission, and to see one of our office proactively intervene and say, do not do that and move their hands away to a more safer area. A more safe area was, uh, was, was quite impressive. But again, it just goes down to training internally there and, and externally to them, to us. And I, I don't want just make it clear, I don't wanna be passing judgment because I don't know exactly what their training is, but we have to have these conversations for sure, because we are there all the time and it takes up a lot of manpower.

▶ 18:29 Mark Garipay: Um, thank you, um, for that. And then I know Chief Lyle in the past has, um, mentioned, uh, details, um, and money owed to us by utility companies and actually some other city departments. Um, how are we doing on,

▶ 18:48 Speaker 1: on getting paid on those? Sure, sure. Yep.

▶ 18:50 Speaker 4: Um, one of our one, one, we worked really hard this past year working with D P W to come up with a, a way to kind of pay, pay down their, their deficit. And, um, they've done, they've done really well and there are, there are some very old details that are still sitting out there from 20 16 20 17 that haven't been paid. And at this point, we, we can chase 'em all we want, and I think we just have to write them off. And so I'm working with the auditor's office to say, you know, I, I can't send out any more notices, but we've, we've done really well, but we're also really high on, on our details right now. So, um, we need to get ourselves into a, we need to do another whole sweep. So we kind of do it on a quarterly basis. We bill, we bill, we bill, and then we, you know, we're doing really well. And then we have to do a whole collections thing and go through a good month of that. But I gotta get through June right now. I just got,

▶ 19:56 Mark Garipay: So all the collections goes through your department, not the, not the treasurer's

▶ 19:59 Speaker 4: Department. No, they don't. No, they have to. There used to be someone I heard before I was here, there used to be someone that was in charge of, of, we could pass collections onto them. That position no longer exists, I believe.

▶ 20:14 Mark Garipay: When you get that revenue in, does that go into your department or does it go to the general, general fund or

▶ 20:20 Speaker 4: It, it goes back to the general ledger. Yeah, back to the general. Back to the general fund. So

▶ 20:25 Speaker 1: Doing all the work, but you don't see the, see the results? Nope. Okay.

▶ 20:28 Speaker 2: Alright. In, in a consult, there's, there's one of the new programs that's in this memo, um, for dhq, it's a short for digital headquarters. One of the new programs that we bought is one of the major, um, benefits of it is invoicing and detailing and billing and overtime management. And it's built in that if they're delinquent it, it'll send a, uh, like a don't hire, don't, they can't work type thing where, you know, working just through paper and pen. And if Kim's off, the officer might know who's taking the thing that they're delinquent, they're not paying our bills. At least this might help us. I think that like if someone's calling for a detail and we try to enter them, if they haven't paid after so and so, it'll just be like, like a equivalent to like, it'll block them, it'll block 'em. Like, and then, you know, then that's when they call me and they say, what are we gonna do? We gotta let them work. Are we gonna not let them work? But it's a good, it's an extra sort of financial oversight like to make, to keep track of who's, who's paying us and who's not

▶ 21:27 Mark Garipay: The utility com, is it mostly the utility companies or some of the smaller contractors that are doing

▶ 21:32 Speaker 4: The utility companies do do really well. They, for on, on the whole, um, on the whole, sometimes net grid can get a little bit behind, but, um, for the most part it, it's the smaller, it's the smaller independent companies that sometimes are a little delayed. So we have to send them love notes.

▶ 21:54 Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Thanks a lot.

▶ 21:56 Speaker 3: Um, counselor Caram Cheaty. Hi. Thank you so much for being here.

▶ 21:59 Manjula Karamcheti: First through the chair, I wanted to say thank you to Counselor Gepe for asking about the hospital because that is definitely one of the questions that I had as well. Um, have a lot of concerns about the police resources that are being used up there. Um, given you've mentioned a lot about the need for training and the variety of training needing, I just have a question regarding the training line item, because it's a place where there's been a reduction in funds pretty significantly, so I just wanted to ask about that.

▶ 22:32 Speaker 2: Sure. Um, so we, we, we used to have just, uh, the training line item and it was $75,000 and that would theoretically pay for out-of-pocket training. So if we went to private vendors, uh, outside of Mptc, which is generally free minus the backfill of overtime. But if we had to see, so I have a few guys go into crime scene photography school in July, that's a, it's a private vendor we have to pay, say's, I think it's $400 in office. So historically that $75,000 line item would pay for that, but also pay for all the overtime created because of training, which I'll reference back to the, uh, 40 hours, um, firearms, um, C P i all that would also get paid out of that one line item. And as you can see, $75,000 isn't gonna cover $200,000. Right. Minimum mandatory training. So I thought it would be a little bit easier to understand to now move some of that, that line up to the salary and wages item to, so it would be a specific line item for overtime that's a result of training, whether it's back filling a position or the offices on a day off. So at least we can keep track of what is, what are we spending actually on, on training over for overtime. And then the reduction that you see there from 75 to 25, that 25 for next fiscal year, that's just strictly used for out-of-pocket training fees. So if I fees paying, the instructors paying, uh, if they have to go to seminars, um, that won't be used for like overtime. So the 75 was sort of moved over there. It's a little bit of shifting, but I think to me, and it's just better accounting.

▶ 24:17 Manjula Karamcheti: Great. Thank you so much. That explains it. Okay. Um, and then, you know, just given the issues with mental health and, you know, policing and just that it's getting I think difficult and more complicated, could you just share a little bit about the types of trainings and how Melrose Police are being supported with that,

▶ 24:40 Speaker 4: given the type of calls that you have to answer and

▶ 24:42 Speaker 2: Yeah, sure. I mean, obviously the, the, again, I'll go back to the mandated training that e every single year when we do mandated training, it always, always will involve mental health, um, responses, critical incident training, all that stuff that's mandated training. But we are, you know, moving forward I wanna send more offices to extra training to learn how to deal with the mentally ill, uh, dementia. I know myself, um, the union president went, um, at some dementia training down at the Milano Center, uh, my first month or two on. And, which is great because then we can sort of bring that back. Uh, how does the frontline officer deal with that? Because we have offices that have personal connections to dementia, as does probably people in this room. So it not only helps professionally, but it helps, you know, in your personal life. But training, training is huge to me. And as far as mental health goes, it's, the majority of it is the majority of the calls that we deal with every day. So I'm always looking for training. I'm on a billion chief emails that come out on what's kind of out there to send people to. So again, it goes back to funding, you know, so if we have that $25,000 a start, we'll probably blow through it. But it's, it's how you get there. Because if it's not free, I can't, it's hard to send them to it. Right, right. They're not gonna, they're not gonna go just for free. I mean, that'd be nice, but, uh, it's a real world and, and a cost to certain training. I'd love to do more in service training on our own, like teach our own, cuz we have people, I'm a certified instructor and, and certain topics, other offices are. Um, but it's difficult, and I won't go off in a tangent, but we don't have a training room. We don't have a, we don't have the facilities to do it, but there's always ways to think out of the box. We could use City Hall as we could use a couple different areas, but, um, I don't know if that answers your question, but Yeah, it does. You know, it sort of lumps it all in with the training on the mental health and the training for everything else is all, is all very important.

▶ 26:37 Speaker 4: Great. Thank you so much. Sure. All set, um, counts. Vice chair, Jamal Ladine.

▶ 26:40 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Thank you for being with us today and thank you for all the great work that you are doing for the community. Um, based on my experience working at the hospital and still working for the organization, I can tell you that we don't get any, you know, actually we do get training to call the police when we find ourselves in an unsafe situation, but that unsafe situation is left for individual to decide and to measure. So it would be great to get some kind of training from your department, uh, for the hospital, of course staff. Um,

▶ 27:24 Maya Jamaleddine: my question on the mental health issues as well, and thank you for both counselors for, um, asking, um, what kind of, um, you said you mentioned that you're gonna post, uh, a new in the process of hiring new officer for mental health. Um, so what is the description in a way? Or what, what's the qualification?

▶ 27:47 Speaker 2: Sure. So the, this particular, um, office is Detective Dan ridden, he's already in the position. Okay. I believe he started probably two months ago. It, uh, so, so, um, put it out for bid, not bid, but put it out for anyone who's interested in it. They had to send me a, you know, a resume ish, well basically was a athletic listing, all their qualifications, why they want to be, uh, why they want to get the position. Uh, it's a specialty position, wasn't, um, you know, automatically seniority. So the officer had to have the will, a good clean record, um, the ability to handle these type of calls. And, uh, we ended up choosing, you know, after consult him with the command staff, detective Ri, and, and, and he's been great at it, but he's new at it. Right. So we, we've already sent him with to a few in-service trainings. He's got a lot of help from, uh, our clinician, Ms. Faun that we share, um, through Stoneham. So they've been now fortunate enough to work together on a lot of follow up, but they do, they've done some co responses now, which is great. Which is actually sort of the mantra that they want us to do is not only just sit and do follow-ups, but actually if we have a call that comes in for someone that's mentally ill to actually go out together and respond and, and handling handle it at that level. Mm-hmm. Um, and whether or not it results in a section or just sort of you're okay and we'll follow up with you. Um, we've seen sort of both. I, I know, um, there's gonna be a story that we're working on to share a little bit more of that and you might hopefully see that in, you know, either on social media or in the local paper that will describe more what Detective Riddens job is, what, uh, clinician's job is, and how we are going to handle that moving forward. Because she's, she's on a grant and we share her with, uh, Stoneham, she's housed in Stoneham for probably four fifths of the, of the week. Mm-hmm. And she'll come to us, uh, one day of the week, but she's always available for us if we need her. We just don't have the physical space in our building to sort of her to set up an office.

▶ 29:43 Maya Jamaleddine: That's great. And how many, do you know, like how many calls do we receive?

▶ 29:51 Speaker 3: I would say a week.

▶ 29:52 Speaker 4: We, we do know, but, um, I, and I can get you, I can get you how many calls for service we have, uh, that are under the category of, um, it's a mental health call. Mm-hmm. It's, it's high and I'll be happy to, to send it as a follow up and give you that number.

▶ 30:09 Maya Jamaleddine: Okay. So I'm, I I, the reason for my question is I just wanna make sure that, you know, um, residents in MES are aware that they can reach out. We do have that resource and that support, uh, from your department. And if there is any way that we can support in the outreach or, you know, advertise about this resource, we'll be more than happy to help with that. Um, my last question is, um, you mentioned about the deficit that it's been every year,

▶ 30:39 Speaker 4: The overtime.

▶ 30:40 Maya Jamaleddine: Yeah. Right. Um, is there, is this something that we should consider including in the budget? Or is it something that we cannot

▶ 30:50 Speaker 4: It's, it's, it's really hard to, um, project, uh, and, and to put a number to it. I, I, I try to take, you know, past year's history and, and come up with a number. But, um, again, you know how many people get sick and then you have to backfill them h then military, you never know if someone's gonna get called for, you know, a military active duty. You don't get, it's such an unknown, unpredictable area of overtime. However, um, yeah, I, you know, yeah. I always feel like we're underfunded un overtime.

▶ 31:30 Speaker 2: Yeah. In, in short, I didn't mean to interrupt you, Kim, but in, in short, short of having someone approaching mandatory retirement age where you know you're gonna be losing them in that fiscal year, uh, next year, I don't think we have any, but, you know, in my first six months we had two offices retire, uh, one retired and one left to go to another agency. But those were unpredicted openings that bam, right away those openings cause overtime. So to Kim's point, it's sometimes hard to predict unless someone's reaching a time and age that you could lose a few officers mm-hmm. In between. And then their openings generally because of the staffing levels we have now sort of almost automatically create an overtime in that shift. How do you solve that? More police officers will help. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, if I had four, five more officers, I, I'm just kind of throwing that number out there. I can spread them out into different shifts and equally sort of balance it. Where now you have that cushion of, well that vacation that we granted isn't gonna cause an overtime and you still have minimum staffing. And it also creates the ability for me to maybe create more specialty positions somewhere out of patrol, um, records division. We need, we, I'd love to have a sworn officer on the records, on public records request, um, walk-in reports, all that stuff. Um, and they, it's great for someone that's qualified or, but it's great for an older officer or someone that's worked the street for 25, 30 years and has something to like maybe, you know, come off the street and do something different. Um, and that, that does affect overtime. And I'm not here to say I'm an overtime killer because, you know, the, the guys in the, the people that work for me, I gonna want to hear that. But you, you, you have to sort of balance where you put your people and if I don't have enough, it's gonna create all the time. Yeah.

▶ 33:18 Maya Jamaleddine: Well, thank you so much. I mean, with the work that you are providing and the service that you're providing, not only as a policing, but also as support for mental health and for all the other, you know, different services that you're providing for our community. I, I totally appreciate your work and I thank you. I joined my voice two years.

▶ 33:43 Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you. Uh, counselor Williams.

▶ 33:44 Ryan Williams: Thank you. Um, so Counselor Chetty asked a part of one of my questions, which was to notice that you had created the overtime training line and moved about $75,000 up there, which seems like an overall increase, right? In the training funds, because you had asked, excuse me, you had budgeted, um, 25 75, you budgeted 75 and you wound up moving that 75 up into the new line, but then you got another 25, so you kind of got a hundred, but you asked for 200 in the training line item, which now just includes like fees. Is that correct? Yes. So what was in those, I mean, that's a big number. What was

▶ 34:25 Speaker 2: Was the 200? The, the 200 that we asked for original was before we came up with that sort of decision to split. Ah, I see. So the 200,000 really wasn't even gonna cut it either way. So the 200,000 was based on the 40 hours minimum mandatory overtime, the 16 hours of firearms and another six or so hours of active shooter. If you took that say 80 to 90% of the offices would all be on overtime for that, that was about $186,000.

▶ 34:50 Speaker 1: So that was all salary

▶ 34:52 Speaker 2: Yes. Request. It was all set. All, yes. Correct. Okay.

▶ 34:54 Ryan Williams: All right. That makes sense. Um, and,

▶ 34:55 Speaker 4: And don't forget the, because the two contracts settled this year, all of those overtime rates just bumped up. So when I recalculated what everybody did for, I think I averaged out at 48 hours per person across the board. That also bumped that number up as well.

▶ 35:13 Ryan Williams: Okay. Um, and then I just feel like I'm, I'm gonna just ask you about a couple of line items that piqued my interest. Um, leaps What's leaps.

▶ 35:25 Speaker 4: There's a, there's a system that, um, covers all of the, all of the radar trailers and all of the other systems that we have that we have to do up upgrades every year. We just pay an annual fee mm-hmm. To, to get all those upgrades. Um, I mean, it's not much,

▶ 35:47 Speaker 4: it's just Yeah. It's an annual fee. Yeah.

▶ 35:49 Ryan Williams: So if, so that's the radar trailers. What's the radar line?

▶ 35:52 Speaker 4: Um, the, the, the LEAPS is like the software and then the radar trailer itself has to have up upgrades and improvements. So it's almost like equipment versus the Sure. The software itself.

▶ 36:07 Ryan Williams: Contract. Yeah. I get it. Yeah. Um, do you use film supplies?

▶ 36:13 Speaker 4: Do I use what? Film supplies? Yeah. You know, we used to, we used to use it a lot more. Um, um, camera, camera films and all that kind of stuff. Now it's kind of, um, I use it as when they need new SD drives for their new cameras and all of the fancy things that they have to have for the detective cameras. Yeah. Yeah. I use that line to pay for that kind of stuff. It probably should be renamed because we really don't have film anymore. Makes

▶ 36:44 Ryan Williams: Sense. Um, for community engagement, are you, are you paying some of the social media team out of community engagement or is this just hard costs for events or what's in there?

▶ 36:53 Speaker 2: The goal with that is hard costs. Mm-hmm. Um, uh, equipment merchandising, um, Uh, you know, like canopies, tents, all that sort of banner stuff that you bring. And then addition to, um, it could be anything, t-shirts, water bottles, uh, pens, little things. We go to these events. We went to the D P W the other day, which was a great job that they did. Uh, we had, we had a table with nothing like, you know, so I, I told the guys, I said, you know, we have a line item that I think is hopefully gonna get approved. So when we do these events and we're invited to to go, we have stuff to give out to the kids and just whoever

▶ 37:30 Ryan Williams: Have you thought about, have you thought about incentives, gift cards, things like this? We used to have a program. It was kinda like a cot being good thing for kids on their bikes. If they were wearing their helmet Sure. Officers would spot 'em and give them like a $5 gift card. We

▶ 37:42 Speaker 2: Do, we do have that coming up. Um, uh, I don't wanna speak out of term, but I know the Patrolman's Union or the Merrills Police Foundation, one of them, uh, actually no, there's been superior officer involved too. They, they're doing that with, uh, ice cream. Ice cream cut, like free ice creams and stuff. And I think that might be part of the Junior Police Academy. But, uh, they had, they got cooperation from a few of the, the businesses in town. Nice. Uh, to, to do that. If you see a kid doing like, I think it's exactly that, wearing his helmet or you pull parrot over and the kid's, you know, here's a free ice cream.

▶ 38:14 Ryan Williams: Nice. Nice. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, that's a big, it's a big good. I actually got, somebody asked me about that. Is it coming back? It's coming back. Um, awesome. All right. Thank you very much for being here. Appreciate your time. That's it. Thank you

▶ 38:22 Speaker 3: President Greg Reis.

▶ 38:24 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you Madame Chair. Thank you both for being here tonight. Um, I did just wanna take a moment to thank you Chief and Officer Mann for staying here a few months ago with us until about 9:30 PM to train us, um, in the school committee. We really appreciated you all taking the time and just highlights how important training is both for your officers and then also that you bring it back to the community. Um, I just wanted to pick up on Counselor Gee's, questions around free cash, which we use to fund a lot of things. Um, I noticed in historically in the police budget, there's never a line for vehicle maintenance. Um, and so I just wanted to confirm that that's something that we solely rely on. Free cash for

▶ 39:05 Speaker 4: N uh, no, actually fleet maintenance is the, it should be a line is a line not item. I don't know if it's specifically stated that way. Under D P W D, they are totally, it's merged Into D P W. Yes. Okay. Completely responsible for fleet maintenance. However, uh, that's one of the things that we do use our revolving fund for. And that is, um, before, uh, officer Brown left, I mean we did, he did a, we purchased a lot of things that he wanted to standardize across all the, uh, all the cruisers. And so we, you know, made sure we got everybody, um, a snow, snow Joe to clean off all their individual cars cuz they were all using their jackets or, you know, we got, um, standardized key rings with numbers on 'em so that all the, all the officers, when they went to go pick up the, the, the keys in the morning for whatever cruised it, they knew which one. It wasn't like a oh you got mine, I got your, you know, so it was little things like that that we, that we will use for the fleet. And sometimes he went to Napa Auto Parts to buy something and then I would pay for it out of, out of that revolving fund as well. Okay.

▶ 40:22 Speaker 2: The, uh, council DPW has been really good with us. And one of the things that we implemented, um, when I came on was every Friday the offices have to go to the D PW for fluid checks and weekly maintenance, which wasn't being done cuz preventative maintenance will save catastrophic failures. And, and, and I give credit to the D B W director and Jim and Jim Troupe and all the, the, the crew down there, the mechanic to say, yeah, you can do that because I, you know, they could have said, no, we don't have the time for that. So every Friday around one around one o'clock, every officer that's working has to bring their cruiser down and check all the major stuff Okay. To avoid, you know, problems. Okay. And that's the plan.

▶ 41:03 Jen Grigoraitis: Great. Um, my last question was just around public records. It was up and I saw your face. Um, I, I just, if you can approximate what percentage of of your time is spent responding to those? I know, you know, we've seen a huge uptick in departments across the city. I, in my role at the state in criminal justice, we've seen massive upticks and records requests to those agencies. Yeah. Never even if you just ballpark it never ending. Um, we're probably averaging

▶ 41:34 Speaker 4: on any given week, it can be from 30 to 45 records requests. Okay. And, um, that, and that is another reason why, uh, the overtime, um, I mean, it's not a big hit, but we just get so inundated. I, I literally can't hit that 10 day mark. And so I've asked the chief if I can get an overtime, a supervisor overtime to help with the records request. Cuz sometimes they just build and they build and they build and then I'm just like, oh my goodness. So yeah, it's a lot. And we, we do need, we need help. Uh, I mean, just two weeks ago we were, we were at that point again and we needed to, to ask for a supervisor to come in and help with the records request. Okay. Thank you. I know it's a lot to manage. It's really helpful to know how much time it's taking. Thank you for that. Yeah. Thank you.

▶ 42:32 Speaker 3: Thank you. Anyone else? Council Gepe?

▶ 42:35 Mark Garipay: Yeah. And just one quick question. Um, president Grigoraitis iis mentioned the fleet. How is the fleet and do you anticipate needing any new equipment in the next year or so? Um, is it agent pretty good fleet aging or?

▶ 42:49 Speaker 2: Well, we, right before I came on, well, that's another thing, sort of similar to, um, hiring a personnel. So before I came on in December of 2022, chief Lyle ordered four new cruises in May of 2022. And we haven't gone up them all yet. So I mean, that's 14. Where are we? May, so it's a year and, and it, it takes a long time to get them. So we may be okay now, but I've, I've been asking because even if I ask now, I might not get those three or four cruises for a whole nother year, which could be fiscal year 25 at that point. So yeah, it, it goes down to strategic planning. The, the fleet is getting by, and again, I'll give the D p w credit, they're doing a great job. Um, we have a bunch of 2017 cars in the fleet front line cruises. And that might not seem old for people like us, like general people, but that's old for a cruiser, that's six years of 24 7 being run all the time. So, you know, I cross my fingers and hope that we don't, we don't go down because when they go down, we lose 'em. And we, we have some relatively new hybrids and I'll take the moment to say that those are giving us problems. Uh, you know, I'm all for sort of the environment and helping. But, you know, the, the, we have one cruiser that's been down for six or seven months and it's got, what, 200 miles on it needed a brand new transmission. So the fleet is, is getting by. Uh, I'll say that. Uh, but we can, you know, I'm not an expert in this, but you know, my theory is that cruiser purchases or cruisers should be sort of a budgetary item, not a, probably not a free cash or probably not an opera funding type thing where if you have it, yeah, you can get it. I feel it. We should be getting one or two cruises every year and just kind of rolling them, rolling them around. And then when you don't use 'em anymore, you either auction 'em off or you put 'em in detectives. You know, there's other ways you can use mocked cruises when they hit or sort sort of hit their life, if that makes sense.

▶ 44:52 Mark Garipay: Those four cruises that are on, on order now, I'm assuming that the price hasn't been knowing what's going on in the industry. There's surcharges every year, so I'm assuming we're gonna see a another increase Or Maybe even a return for funding to finalize payment on those four.

▶ 45:09 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, I think we're good. Is that I think we've, we've, we, those are, those are paid for and accounted for. We have three out of the four had come in. Okay. We just got two this month, last month, and then the, the last one came, but it was, it was wrong. They didn't have the specs. Right. So we didn't take it. We sent it back. But, um, what I was looking into putting in a request for, you know, on the capital improvement or free cash, I forget which one it was. Those same exact cars from last year are $10,000 more this year. Same exact everything I said, just gimme a quote. Exactly what the chief ordered last time. I wanna see what, and it was $10,000 more. So you're right. They, they just keep going up. Thank You. You're welcome.

▶ 45:54 Speaker 3: Anyone else? President gr Reyes.

▶ 45:55 Speaker 4: Motion to move the bottom line on. Oh, I lost my face. Sorry.

▶ 46:01 Speaker 4: Two 11. Two 11 mm-hmm.

▶ 46:05 Leila Migliorelli: Second motion to move the bottom line made by President Greg Reyes. Seconded by, um, counselor Eccles. Anyone on discussion?

▶ 46:14 Speaker 3: Mr. Clerk, will you please call the roll

▶ 46:16 Speaker 1: Vice chair Jamine? Yes. Councilor Sin? Yes. Counselor Eccles? Yes. Council Garrette? Yes. Council Che? Yes. Council Williams? Yes. President Greg? Yes. And chair? Yes. That's eight. Yes. Unanimous.

▶ 46:32 Leila Migliorelli: Thank you both. Um, thank you also for the memo was incredibly helpful. I didn't get a moment to say that before, but it was nice to see it broken down with exactly the descriptions on all of the increases and changes. So really appreciate that clarity of welcome our presentation. Thank you. Thank you.