Business meeting.

I'm going to call this meeting to order.

And if you'd all be so kind, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance, remain standing for Council Member Pittman's invocation.

Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States.

And do the rip.

One nation.

Underground.

Individual.

Liberty.

Gracious God, as we gather here tonight as your servants to our community, grant us wisdom and guidance that we may be the voice of the people we represent.

We ask for your protection and love for those who are serving in harm's way.

Grant them courage and their families strength as they service us on all levels, from our first responders to our armed forces.

May Almighty God bless us and keep us.

May the Lord make his face shine upon us and be gracious unto us and keep us safe from all harm.

May the road rise up to meet us.

May the winds always be at our back.

May the sun shine warm upon our face, and the rains fall soft upon our fields.

And may God hold us in the palm of his hand.

Amen.

Amen.

Councilmember Shaw.

Here.

Nicholson.

Here.

Niece.

Present.

Pitman.

Here.

Aguirre.

Here.

Kennedy.

Excused.

Aspenlighter.

Lindley.

Here.

Boyette.

O'Donnell.

Here by Zoom.

Mayor Nelson.

Thank you.

All right.

It brings up the minutes.

Um the council have changes, comments, or a motion to approve the minutes.

Councilmember Boyette.

Thank you, Mayor.

I move that we approve the February 23rd, 2026 minutes as read.

Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded to approve the minutes.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

That passes unanimously.

Any council courtesies?

Councilmember Shaw.

Councilmember Astonlighter.

Not even close.

I threw a dart.

So I just want to recognize a big proponent of youth athletics in our community.

I think it it's the foundation of a healthy healthy youth in a healthy community.

So two big things here.

The Montana State women's basketball team won the GNAC tournament, knocking off the three seed, the two seed, and the one seed, going into the tournament as a sixth seed, barely making the tournament, and won the GNAC.

So our women yellow jackets basketball team is the GNAC champions.

Uh they play this week in the regional tournament.

Nobody gave them a shot, but that's a great team coached by a great guy, Coach Wooden.

And he has built a team with a bunch of Montana kids and some Billings kids, mind you.

So congrats to MSUB and a series sweep by the Yellow Jackets baseball team this weekend.

So great things going on at MSUB.

Uh we're fortunate to have MSUB in our community and their success is success for our community.

So just wanted to give props to the athletes of MSUB this week.

Thank you, sir.

Any other council courtesies?

So I have one.

Volunteers in service to America, the AmeriCorps Vista group.

I hear we have uh some folks here.

Could you come up and introduce yourselves?

Yeah, just step up to the microphone.

Say hi.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

My name is Carly Collins.

I'm a program coordinator with the community development division.

Um so yes, we have the AmeriCorps Vista members here tonight.

We have five that are serving in billings at various nonprofits.

Uh so they'll introduce themselves and give you a little information about their projects.

Um, and then afterwards, if we could snap a quick photo with all of you, we'd be really grateful for that.

Okay, thank you.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Clark Thomas.

I'm from Los Angeles, California, and I have an undergrad degree from San Diego State in Economics.

So I'm serving with Alternatives Inc., the re-entry program, and I'm working specifically on a Department of Tennessee Sustaining Services.

And what I essentially do is just help find affordable housing for the disadvantaged offenders that we're working with.

And we also work with the community partnerships like Yellowstone United Way.

And I just essentially communicate between them and uh local landlords and property management companies in the area to hopefully find affordable housing units for the disadvantaged offenders to relieve recidivism.

Hi everyone.

My name is Genesee Hott, and I'm from Washington State.

I have a degree in communications from Eastern Washington University.

And I am serving with Eagle Mount Billings, helping low-income youth in the Billings Public Schools, Better Access Equal Mount Services.

So yeah.

My name is Conloch Tesfa.

I'm from Charlotte, North Carolina.

And I went to UNC Charlotte and got a degree in political science.

I'm serving with Lutheran Family Services, Rocky Minds for the Economic Empowerment Program for English Language Learners.

Good evening.

Good evening.

My name is Jonah Cassell.

I'm originally from Washington State as well.

College was quite a bit a long time ago for me, but uh my original undergrad degree was in uh to computer science, and I am serving uh with AmeriCorps serving at Native American Development Corporation in downtown, um, where we work with um leveraging economic development and economic empowerment for Native Americans, small business entrepreneurs, and I specifically work with uh improving financial access and financial education for uh our native artists, entrepreneurs, and creative entrepreneurs.

Um yeah, it's been honestly an honor and a joy to work with that organization and an honor and joy to work with you all as I name is Melanie Phelps, and I'm also from Washington State.

I got my degree in political science from Carroll College, and I am serving with MSUB, um, specifically working to help non-traditional students um through their pathways in life, going from anywhere to accommodations to employment plans, um, how to file taxes, things like that.

Yeah.

Cool, thanks.

Welcome everybody.

Would you like to somebody?

Okay.

Will you get in the mean?

Yes.

Thanks, everybody, for your service.

Thank you.

Any other council courtesies?

That moves us on to proclamations.

And coincidentally, there are three tonight.

We'll start with the first one.

Whereas in 1963, President John F.

Kennedy envisioned a national service corps to help provide urgently needed service in poverty areas.

Less than two years later, President Johnson made Kennedy's dream a reality by launching the war on poverty and welcoming the first group of Vista volunteers after signing the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.

And the City of Billings is required to implement anti-poverty initiatives to reduce the number of families experiencing poverty as a recipient as a recipient of community development block grant funding.

In 2009, the City of Billings was chosen as an established site for the Billings Metro Vista Project by the Corporation for National and Community Service to aid in poverty impact initiatives.

And whereas the Billings Metro Vista Project has hosted 290 members who have volunteered to impact poverty through activities designed to enhance economic opportunity, education, healthy futures, and services for veterans and military families at 63 organizations.

Members have generated over $5.6 million in funding, and the value of human resources brings a total project to over 12.9 million dollars.

And Billings Metro Vista Project members are valuable contributors to the city's economy and have expended over $2.7 million locally to procure housing, provisions, and retail services.

32 members are originally from Montana and other members have moved to Billings from 43 different states, including the District of Columbia.

Nearly 40% of full year members have chosen to reside, work, and pay taxes in Billings following their volunteer service.

And the City of Billings, Montana welcomes this opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to the AmeriCorps Vista program and its talented members and alumni as a continue as they continue to work toward breaking the cycle of poverty in the Billings area.

Now, therefore, I, Mike Nelson, mayor of the City of Billings, do hereby proclaim March 8th through March 14th as AmeriCorps week.

Congratulations, you guys.

Thanks for coming.

I have two other proclamations I'd like to read.

Whereas one of the basic rights of children, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1948, is their right to basic nutrition.

Caring for the children must be our nation's first priority.

And whereas, since the inception of the child and adult care food program in 1968, it has granted our children the best possible foundation in life and benefited many adults, which is vital to our state's long-term health.

And the two fundamental goals of the CACFP are that children serviced by this program will be well nourished during their crucial early years while concurrently learning healthy eating behaviors that will last their lifetimes.

Nutritious diets are foundational for emotional, mental, and physical health.

And whereas we acknowledge the child and adult care providers, nutrition educators, program specialists and staff, state and federal professionals, and parents who contribute to the success of this outstanding program, and the CAFCP community will continue its commitment to the benefits of nutritious eating for children and adults.

Together as Americans, we can make a difference in the lives of our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.

Now, therefore, I, Mike Nelson, mayor of the City of Billings, Montana, do hereby proclaim the week of March 15th through the 21st of 2026 to be the National Child and Adult Care Food Program Week.

And finally, our third proclamation, whereas colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States among women and men combined.

Colorectal cancer is one of the few cancers that can be prevented with timely screening, but one in three eligible Americans are not up to date on that screening.

Whereas colorectal cancer is expected to be the number one cancer killer for those ages 20 to 49 by the year 2030.

And between 27 and 2020 2017 and 2021, 2,539 Montanans were diagnosed with colorectal cancer.

Whereas observing colorectal cancer awareness month during the month of March would provide a special opportunity to increase awareness and offer education on the importance of early detection and screening of colorectal cancer.

Now, therefore, I, Mike Nelson, mayor of the City of Billings, Montana, do hereby declare the month of March 2026 as colorectal cancer awareness month in Billings and encourage all citizens to get screened for this disease, which can often be treated when detected early or prevented altogether.

All right.

Well, it just so happens that I have one.

Um the council operations committee uh have met uh a week ago Monday, and we reviewed uh section 200 of the city code, and uh uh we began reviewing that and set a schedule for completion of that and bringing it back to the full council with recommendations.

Um that's gonna be a long project, everybody.

So get ready to hear about it for a long time.

And then uh we also met and decided on a process for uh receiving the reports from the committee on committees.

And that was the end of our meeting.

Any other council reports?

All right, city administrator report, Mr.

Kokulski, Mayor and Council.

So just a handful of things first on your consent agenda item one v1.

The staff memo, we did have a correction to reflect that reflected an error with uh the non-compliant bid.

I think that's all information you guys received.

Reminder that we've got a couple special meetings coming up.

So, including tonight, we got four meetings in the next seven days tonight's a couple of special work sessions focused on the 2045 plan and that process.

Uh the first one is this Thursday, March 12th, noon in this room.

Second one will be uh on the 16th, also at noon here.

Uh no ex parte communication, and then kind of getting things.

I don't want to steal any thunder from the annual reports, but I do want to highlight some exciting things.

So over the weekend, uh our police department gave out its awards to uh members of the department who've really excelled for this past year.

So, first uh was uh the Alex Mavity Award.

That's an award for respect for law enforcement or for the law that was uh given to Detective Hunter Cook.

Those of you who may not recognize uh Officer Mavity, he was unfortunately he was our last officer killed in the line of duty.

So there's a memorial for him out in front of City Hall.

Uh, but annually there's an award given and recognition of officer Mavity, and this year it was uh Detective Hunter Cook.

On the civilian side, Jesus OCA received the civilian employee uh of the year award.

Uh Jesus just got promoted, he was our uh volunteer coordinator.

Now he's on the record side of the house for us.

Um dedicated service award uh went to Stephen Murkey in the department.

We have uh supervisor of the year, Sergeant Garrett Peterson, and then the officer of the year is Officer David Woody.

So those five individuals, parts of uh the team there in the police department, all recognized for their work uh over this past 12 months.

So with that, mayor and council, that's the end of my report.

Thank you, Mr.

Kakulski.

Good job.

And uh congratulations to all you award winners out there.

We're proud of you.

All right, that leads us to the public comment section of our agenda.

This is regarding items one and four only.

Speaker sign in as required.

If they're uh if you have comment, please sign in the back there.

Come upstairs.

I'm sorry, come up to the podium, tell us your name and uh your address.

It could be upstairs.

You'll have three minutes to comment.

Is there any public comment?

I'll ask again any public comment, last chance.

All right, I'll close the public comment portion of our meeting, and that moves us to the consent agenda.

Are there any separations tonight?

Oh, councilmember Nees.

No, I'm making a motion.

I move to approve the items of the consent agenda as submitted.

Second.

We have a motion and a second to accept and approve the consent agenda as presented.

Is there any discussion?

Mr.

Boyet.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Um, I've always been the one and others that we want to recognize people who can give donations to the city of Billings.

The first one is a donation to the Billings Police Department from the Morris Mason Moore Foundation for a thermal pole camera.

If you want to look at that, that's pretty interesting.

Next, we received a donation from the Homeland Security for a Rook armored vehicle for about 495,000.

Next, we received a donation from the National Drug Control Policy for 226,000.

That'll be used for a variety of things.

And finally, to honor our people from Vista, Americorps Vista, uh was an application for a grant for 75,000.

So I just want to say thank you for those people who are supporting billings.

And thank you, thank you, thank you.

I did oh, I agree.

Any other discussion regarding the consent agenda?

Mayor.

Just Mr.

Boyette.

I I see that uh Mac is here.

Mac, just one quick question.

Uh we've seen a lot of bids in the last I've seen a lot of bids in the last seven years, but their bid for the CC TV for the stormwater ranged from 120 to almost a million dollars.

Did we miss something?

I mean, was the was the bid correct, or did you see a problem with this?

Uh councilmember Boyette, uh Mayor and Council.

Uh great question.

And uh that that caught our attention as well.

Um, so we looked at the we looked at the bids, and you'll and you'll see, and we talked about in the memo a little bit.

Uh there's a group of local firms that bid on that project.

They're kind of lumped in uh in a certain range.

And then we had a couple of uh out of state firms, uh, one of which I believe was Clairback East.

Uh, and those were the ones with the large numbers.

Uh so we don't we don't see any issues there.

Uh local firms came in kind of right where we considered.

Uh the good news is we're seeing this service sort of year over year decreasing in price, believe it or not.

Uh so nothing nothing strange out of the ordinary other than the out-of-state firm numbers.

Thank you.

Anything else regarding the consent agenda?

Seeing nothing, let's move to a vote.

All those in favor of the uh of the motion, please indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

And all those opposed.

That motion passes unanimously.

Move on to our regular agenda items number two.

Uh, will the deputy clerk please read item number two?

Public hearing and resolution assessing weed abatements.

Staff recommends approval.

Good evening, sir.

You ready?

Mayor and council.

Good afternoon.

I mean, I have no PowerPoint presentation for you on either of these items tonight.

Um, wanted to give you newer council members, maybe a little more background than what you would see normally, but uh twice a year.

We bring to you a weed abatement resolution.

These are uh code enforcement complaints where the parks department goes out and cuts noncompliant properties, tall weeds.

Uh, if the properties don't pay or the property owners don't pay, uh, we'll assess it onto their taxes.

Uh, and that's why we do it twice a year as tax bills are twice a year or due twice a year.

Um so this first item has seven properties, a total of just under $1,500 for cutting weeds at their property.

Um I think uh that's all I have on that one.

Um you'll see it again this fall.

Usually it's a longer list after the summer has largely occurred.

All right.

Thanks.

Is there anybody else here to talk on the motion?

Or uh on the item.

All right, we'll move to a public hearing regarding this item.

Is there anybody uh who wants to speak to item number two?

Is there any public hearing regarding item number two?

All right, seeing none, I would entertain a motion.

Uh Councilmember Nees.

Mayor, having conducted a public hearing considered written and spoken public testimony.

I move to approve a resolution assessing weed abatements as recommended by staff.

We have a second.

Councilmember Lindley.

Is there any discussion regarding the motion?

So we'll move to a vote regarding the motion on item number two to approve it.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, please say no.

The motion passes unanimously.

Item number three on the agenda.

Public hearing and resolution assessing nuisance property abatements.

Staff recommends approval.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Good evening.

However, uh I have been informed of a needed correction on the resolution.

We uh referenced an incorrect uh citation to our municipal code.

Gina has the correction for you before I turn it over to her.

Uh similar to weed abatement here, these are nuisance property abatement.

Usually the most common ones you'll see are open storage.

Uh again, driven by a code enforcement complaint.

They go out uh after receiving a judgment in municipal court and it I think always and uh then clean the property.

The property owner has opportunity to pay it.

If they don't, we put it on the tax bill.

These two remain uh unpaid.

That's all I have on that.

And I'll turn it to Gina on the citation correction.

Thanks, Andy.

Uh Mayor and Council.

There's just a typo on page two, paragraph three.

Um citing the city code section.

It says pursuant to section 18-305 sub-6 sub-K.

That's that should be 18-305 subsection seven.

And if you could just incorporate that into your motion or Andy can just recommend that and then the motion can just be as recommended by staff.

Oh, I'll I'll take this moment then to recommend that the resolution be corrected to reflect the citation Gina mentioned.

Thank you.

And we'll make that if it's approved.

All right, thank you.

Are there any other uh presenters on uh on the item?

Okay, so then we shall move to a public hearing on item number three.

You'll have three minutes to speak on this item only.

Is there anybody who'd like to talk about this?

Is there anybody like public comment on item number three on the agenda tonight?

All right, seeing none, we'll move to accepting a motion with uh Mr.

Mayor.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Uh uh I think the public would be interested in knowing uh if they have any uh uh reports of uh weed abatement uh situations or the outside storage.

Uh how would they contact how would they file a notice to the city?

Thank you, Councilmember O'Donnell.

Do we have somebody who wants to even Mayor and Council?

Um Councilmember O'Donnell, you can direct them to the city website.

There are online complaint forms as well as they can call our office, email us, we will take a complaint anonymously, um, and then we would go out and verify that there's a code violation.

Very again.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Uh Mr.

Mayor, one other thing.

That is that the uh even though there was no PowerPoint, uh, we did have photographs of the uh the offenders here, and they were incredibly egregious.

This is not some minor uh uh picky type of thing.

These were astounding uh uh violations of public order.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

O'Donnell.

Ms.

Shaw and Mr.

Nees.

Having conducted a public hearing considered written and spoken public testimony.

I move to approve a resolution assessing nuisance property abatements as recommended by staff.

Second.

Okay, thank you, Councilmember Nees.

Any discussion regarding the motion?

Mayor.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, I would just say I would like to thank Code Enforcement Tina.

Your team does a great job.

I think I thank you every time you guys come up here because you do an awesome job for the city.

When we first got on council, we had lists of properties and things just weren't getting done.

You guys have done a tremendous job.

Thank you.

And the least lists are shorter.

I know it's winter time, but it it is.

You guys do a really good job to helping people uh take care of their property before they have to come to us.

So thank you.

Nice job.

Thank you, Mr.

Nees.

Um, any other discussion of motion.

Seeing none, let's move to a vote.

All those in favor of the motion, uh, please indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, please say no.

That motion passes unanimously.

That moves us to the annual report section of our agenda.

It says police and fire department.

So I guess we'll go in whatever order you guys would like to go.

Mayor, looks like we've got Chief Hoppel up first.

So uh just as they're pulling up the PowerPoint.

Obviously, public safety and the improvement of safety and billings has been our number one priority for the past six years at least.

Thought it would be certainly appropriate.

So the annual report has been out and you've been able to read it.

Felt it was important to take a few minutes here this evening to highlight some of the great work that's going on.

Answer your questions, and really that's the purpose here tonight.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Chief Hoppel.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

And uh it's a pleasure to be here tonight to talk about our 2025 annual report for the fire department.

Um, as you know, I I came on to the apartment a little bit into this year, so I took over the helm for Chief Valdez, and uh so I will give him credit for some of the work that we've done this past year and uh moving forward.

So I I'm probably gonna give him credit now that I just saw that opening slide with the curtains because I think he used that last year.

That's not me.

So I keep them pretty simple.

So if there's some curtains in between this, it's not me.

But uh we'll get moving here and in keeping to council first and Aspen Lighter, you said I could have up to a half hour.

All right.

If we're gonna move at all, I did all.

I'm done.

Thank you.

There we go.

All right.

So just to start things off, obviously the fire department is uh very data-driven.

All of our decisions are based on a lot of data that we bring into the uh all of our records, everything that we do.

It's been a challenging year this year, so we're gonna ask you guys to be a little bit patient as we transition into nationwide.

The fire service has trans transitioned into a new uh fire records management system.

It's called NIRAS.

It was a grant-funded federal uh action that took place, and we were required for everybody to come on board.

We use a all use a little bit different records management systems to use NERAS, but it's a much it's into the 21st century for the data that we're using.

It's real-time data in our old ways that we used to do things, it was almost impossible to pull data out of infers, is what we called it, and really understand the data that's coming out of it.

So, this is a real-time dashboard that we can watch daily.

Hot spots move around, you know, where our problem areas are.

Um, was a little troublesome because everything got archived into the past in the old system.

So we had to pull some data out of the old system and we'll be using the new system going forward.

So, just a point of reference there.

And as you looked at one of the maps that you saw in the beginning of the annual report, you see our different uh areas within the city.

Obviously, you see station nine on there.

The reason that's on there, and it's the reason it's attached to data, is we're gathering data for that area.

So when we eventually get to the point where we're gonna construct that station and staff that station, we want to have the data that should have stationed been at where they had proposed it.

We're gonna be able to pull up the data immediately and show we would have had 1,500 calls in that area, and the calls would have been lessened in five's area in sevens area.

So that's why you see that map in there.

It's not because we have a station built out there, it's just that we're collecting data there.

Um, obviously, tracking going into the future and just to increase the efficiency of operations and and what the impact is as we receive calls in these areas, what the impact is to the other areas.

So maps are very important to everything that we do.

So just leading right into call volume as you look the last five years, our call volume, it looks like it's decreasing.

It is.

Uh so from 2021, where we started out with 18,777 calls for service.

Uh went up a little bit in 2022, back down in 23.

And then in 24, you see 18,206.

If you were to look up last year's annual report, you would have seen 19,342.

That's attributed to the old records management system.

It doubled up one of our numbers.

So I just wanted to clarify that the actual number for 2024 was 18,206.

This new system brought that to light.

So I just wanted to make that correction.

And then going into 2025, you see, we're at 17,914.

So call volumes going down, that's attributed to a lot of different things, but mainly the protocols you hear us talking about within dispatch, power dispatching units, uh, appropriate units, uh, sending ambulance only calls, stuff like that.

So it is making an impact as numbers come down.

I do want to clarify though, um, as far as unit utilization.

So, what does that mean?

You see this chart, and obviously it looks like we're pretty level.

You 2021 was a big year again.

The way we collected data, that number probably wasn't as accurate as it should have been.

But as we moved into 2022 through 2025, you see that that number stay pretty consistent.

What is that?

Why is it 22,939 this year?

So as we get more complexity within this system, as we start to clean up some of these protocols, we are also dispatching the appropriate units to some of the higher acuity calls.

So some of the high-speed corridors that we've identified within the city, some of the areas that we know we're gonna need more than one resource that we didn't dispatch in the past, we now dispatch more units to that call.

It's not more calls, but it does mean that we do dispatch more units.

We are trying to stay consistent, and that number is decreasing as well.

So we are getting better at identifying, okay, that's not a high speed corridor.

It's not a problem for us, so we adjust it then.

So uh probably the lowest year yet, with the exception of last year, and again, back to the data.

We probably would have seen more of a plateau through the last four years of the way we use our units.

Um of these graphs here, I just wanted to bring out call volume by station area.

So where's our busy stations?

Uh, nothing surprising to us.

If you look at station five being our busiest station, they are taking up a majority of the calls in that station nine area.

So that's why you see that area come up.

So the yellow is 2024, the red is 2025.

You see that the call volume did drop for station five in 2025, but where did it go back up?

In station seven's area.

So they're starting to share that territory out there that we call station nine's area.

So there you'll start to see them ebb and flow throughout the year.

You look at station eight, that's where our one of our MRTs is stationed.

Also station five, that's a reason for that high call volume as well.

We have a uh MRT at station five and one at station eight.

You see that we had partial data for the first year, and then we're up to 1,400 calls a year in 2025 in that SUV, the smaller vehicle that we're using.

So it's doing good work.

It's keeping some of that call volume down in the heights where that pumper doesn't have to go to.

So it's nice to see that number that things are working.

Time of day, I think we see that typically every year.

That doesn't change much.

Our busy time is obviously later in the afternoon, early evening.

That's where our highest call volumes happen.

Uh and that's been uh pretty much throughout my entire career that we see that middle of the night from till 4 a.m.

is probably some of the slowest times that we have.

Um, some of the incident breakdowns.

So this is always confusing sometimes as we look at this.

So we look at EMS, 10,517 of the calls.

Just keep in mind as you see that big piece of the pie chart, that doesn't mean the type of call where an ambulance is needed.

It's a medical patient, and that's all it is.

There's a bunch of stuff lumped into EMS.

So if it's a car wreck that involves injuries, that's that involves more units.

So we just don't like to say that these are just EMS calls.

That some of them can be very complicated, and some of them we can turn around and be back home in minutes.

Um rescues, same thing.

Uh we end up on the rims a lot.

We end up in the river a lot.

Uh those are most of our rescues.

Fires are up a little bit, 352 fire a day, if we can want to look at it that way.

We don't like to say that, but uh, we did have a busy early year this year.

Hazmat, and that's anything hazmat.

So anytime uh you heard of an incident this weekend, that would be coded as a hazmat.

We went and dealt with uh trying to keep uh water out of the river with an unknown source that gets into some of our streams.

So we have a lot of hazmat calls, and some of those may be a regional hazmat call.

We do house it, regional hazmat team in billings that does go out.

And then other on the side there, I you know what what falls under other?

That's pretty much anything.

Good intent calls, people call us, didn't need us.

We have the false alarms, both residential and commercial, weather related stuff.

One of the days we had 165 calls just because of wind, uh, as that starts to pick up.

Citizen complaints, all of our investigations, some of the unknowns, people just call in, don't know what's going on.

I got smoke in the area.

Somebody just lit up their fireplace, and we go and do an investigation on that.

You know, we have to go out and do our due diligence to make sure it's nothing.

Fire inspections, crew responses all fall under that.

Law enforcement assists anytime we go out and assist law enforcement in any capacity, they would fall under that.

And and drone response and some of our other special teams that we go out on, that all falls under other.

So I just wanted to talk about when we talk about call volume, and I'm gonna spend a short time on this because I don't want to overcomplicate it, but feel free to reach out and I can answer more of these questions.

If you look in our annual report and you look station by station, you'll see our average call times, and it ranges anywhere from five minutes to eight minutes depending on whatever the station is.

We don't like to use the word average because it's really a skewed number.

Anything can skew that number to pretty detrimental to where, say we have a call that's 30 seconds long as we were canceled going out the door, and then we had a call that was 10 minutes long.

Now it's an average and it looks like we're doing good.

So the fire service uses what we call 90th percentile.

Both of the studies we've done recently, one in 2018 that was done by ESCI, and one in 2021 that was done by CPSM likes to work use the word 90th percentile.

And basically what that means is we are meeting that standard 90% of the time.

And that's what most of the fire service uses as a gauge of how we're how well we're doing.

So if you look at the difference on that on the left hand side, you look at the average response times, and you look at the travel times, total response times, those numbers in that third column would kind of line up with what we're doing.

We're doing better.

You see those average times come down.

But if you actually go over to the 90th percentile, those numbers go up dramatically because 90% of the time, that's the real number when we when we get to a call.

So we're always working on that.

So as we talk about fire stations, locations, how we dispatch, we want to focus on that 90th percentile.

That is what's used to grade the fire service and how we respond to calls.

And uh so as we go forward, I will provide you guys a more comprehensive report when we're able to pull 90% data and get and get that to you guys.

So looking where we are when it comes to the 90th percent, the line there represents uh what the industry standard is.

The dotted line would be for EMS calls.

They are gauged a little bit different than fire calls.

So I'm sorry, the orange line is EMS, the blue line is is uh fire calls, and then obviously the the the big bars there are how we're performing.

So we are working on it.

If you look at the first two, dispatch and turnout, those are being addressed by the protocols.

So the dispatch times are the time that when the call comes in to the time it gets dispatched to us, we want to lower that number to you know within that one minute mark is about where it lays.

And uh again, these numbers here aren't with our new data extrication.

So I think as we pull better data, you're gonna see that number go down because we are doing way better at station notification and turnout time.

So the turnout time is when the crew is notified and they head out the door.

So, how long does it take them to get out the door after they're notified?

So, those are the two things that are 100% within our control.

That's some of the stuff that's not is our travel time.

So obviously, station location is critical to where they are, and travel time is on the street, it's not as the bird flies.

So if to be in our ISO rating of two, you have to be within five road miles or of any fire station to meet that rating.

So we're always working on that, and then total response time.

Obviously, we want that to come down.

Um, what why does that mean?

Something for when it comes to fires, this is a kind of a complicated but very simple graph.

So if you look at the bottom axis, it talks about zero to 10 minutes.

The side axis is the growth of fires.

The fires that we fought when I came on the job are completely different.

We had 30 minutes to get out the door, get to the fire, take care of the fire, possibly rescue some people, and go home.

Today's fires, if you look at it now, we're at flash over in non-survivable conditions in four minutes.

So it is critical that we get to these calls as fast as we can.

Um, it does have some sprinkler stuff on there, that those do make a big difference, but at legislative level, we're not able to control any of that at this point to require any of that with sprinklers.

So just very important that the overall outcome of what we do, response times, travel times are critical with the types of situations that we're running into.

Uh response time strategic outlook.

This is just what I talked about a little bit earlier.

It supports future staffing, future station placement.

The purple and green graph there is your everything in green is an ISO of two.

ISO is very important.

It's insurance services office.

That's what determines insurance rates.

Not all insurance companies use it, but for the most part, they use that travel distance.

So there are some areas very minimal in the city, what we cover, city limits that are not fall under a two, but you'll see some of the buffs of that we serve does fall in that ISO of 10.

So pretty much you don't have a fire department, and that's what it falls under if you're outside that five miles.

The other two were just part of a studies that we'd done, and it shows where we should put stations, and that we obviously we have station eight exactly where it needs to be.

And station nine, we are still looking in that area.

Uh the stuff in yellow by putting station nine in would pretty much cover our entire fire service area to be a two.

And then obviously in the heights, uh, it covers that area as well.

So it's pretty significant what happens when we start to put stations in the correct locations.

Uh EMS by the numbers, lots of EMS calls I talked about, 10,517, about 25 calls a day, just EMS related.

We have 437 firefighter write-ins.

What that is is when the ambulance shows up and it's a critical call.

It takes more than one person in the back of the ambulance to take care of that person.

Or if a basic life support ambulance shows up, we would put an ALS uh provider on that ambulance to take care of the patient.

We do and have made an agreement this year with AMR to charge them for those services.

So we do they we do charge them for firefighter write-ins as we go along.

They also pay a fee to us uh to cover part of our assistant chief of EMS's wages.

Uh he is on the call tonight if you guys have any questions for that.

Uh Jason Banfield.

170, 106 overdoses, and that doesn't count what the police department may do with Narcan, but we we actually transport 160, 106 overdose, 123 CPRs.

We stay pretty active with people that have cardiac arrest.

Delivered eight babies.

That's pretty uh pretty neat thing when we when we that allows us to happen.

And then uh 14 return spontaneous circulation.

14 of the 123.

I was told once a while back that that's not a very good record if you were going for the Super Bowl, but I'll take 40, 14 people still alive to this day out of the 123 that we went to.

Some of our training, we have lots of programs going throughout the year that keeps our training division busy, officer development program that prepares our people to be officers, or we call them captains.

Uh recruit academy, 560 hours.

We had 10 graduates this year.

Battalion chief development, same thing.

We have programs to get them ready for the next step.

Engineers, people that drive the trucks, same thing.

Special teams, hazmat, SWAT medics, National Guard, Rescue.

And then regularly, every one of our members have to has to attend 200 plus hours of training a year to meet that ISO recommendation.

So lots of stuff happening in the training world.

Um, never a dull moment there.

Fire prevention staying very busy.

Uh, some of the stuff they do on their stuff, fire investigations.

We had 68 full-on investigations this year.

Uh that's you saw how many fires we have.

That doesn't match that number.

They aren't dispatched on every single fire.

If there's no reason or nothing to suspect on a fire, they aren't dispatched, but we do have that.

Um, they do a lot with commercial fire protection systems, business and building inspections, electronic plan reviews.

So there's a lot of plans that come through our office on how buildings are laid out that they approve.

And then the false alarm ordinance that you see there, uh, big spike in that we're really tracking those, and the commercial user that is the violator of that does get fined.

And we will probably be coming to you later this year to increase that fee because it's not making any impact on those utilizers that we go to over and over.

It's easier to pay than to actually address the problem.

So we're going to ask for an increase in that moving forward.

Crisis response unit, pretty hot topic, is like what is going on with that.

Just wanted to let you know.

Obviously, we lost our uh mental health provider partner with that.

We are staying very busy with the one EMT that we still have on staff.

We are trying to keep it afloat while until we can find that relationship again or what we want to do.

Um, they support by just responding to select calls throughout the community, high utilizers we like to call them.

So when I talk about a hybrid system that we're using, the difference that this one EMT is making, our our captains would will report in that hey, we've been on this person three times tonight.

So I just took one person, 131 calls for 2025 to one address one person, would have generated 131 responses from either an MRT or an engine company.

That person was able to go out and get that person help, steer them in a direction to get people involved, and that let that person left the system.

We we can we we may see them come back from time to time, but they they are critically getting out there and making a difference.

We're looking at some other stuff, trying to partner with the hospitals.

We've got congestive heart failure patients that are out in the community that also create a high call volume for us, working with the clinics to help go see some of these people so they don't call the ambulance and just make sure they're okay, taking their medications.

It's more of what we look at the community paramedicine, which was one of our CPSM recommendations.

We want to kind of explore it a little bit while we can where there's no cost to us.

We got a person to do it, see that it works and potentially it could bring some income into the city should we go that route.

We are also exploring nurse navigation.

This is brand new.

We got a demo of it last week.

And what that is is when somebody calls 911, and this is something that AMR provides.

The dispatcher through their algorithm, if they see that this probably doesn't warrant a call, would route that call to a nurse that's employed by AMR to decide, talk to that person and figure out does this person need an ambulance or not?

And it's been working nationwide.

So we are we are beta testing that right now.

No cost to the city.

It's something that they do and could potentially help us save in that area as well.

So we call it nurse navigation, more to report on that as we we come forward.

We just got the demo last week.

Obviously, that this has been going on for a couple of years.

Our National Guard and SWAT Medic programs, the SWAT Medic program was launched in 2024, or and it's just a partnership between Billings Police Department and ourselves to provide medical care to them in these incidents that we're having to respond to now as we get more into these active shooter situations, active assailant situations.

It's nice to have somebody medically trained with them as they go through that can treat them, get them out of the out of the hot zone, and get quick treatment to them.

So it there's a great benefit to law enforcement.

It's nothing new that's been being done across the nation, but we have the resources.

It doesn't happen all the time, but they do call us, and we have a couple medics that involve with them, train with them, they're trained to the same level as SWAT and uh go out and provide assistance to them.

The one that is still uh in the works, obviously, is the Montana Army National Guard.

We've been pretty busy with them, but uh we wanted that to be a mutual benefit.

And as you see that facility get finished out up on the hill, we're gonna see dividends out of that.

Our relationship started with them on a call that we had on the river.

We had no way to get to a patient that was on the river.

We had no helicopter from Billings Flying Service at the time.

We had no way.

And all of a sudden, the National Guard was training in Laurel, and the colonel called us up and said, Can we help you out?

And that's where our relationship started with them.

So they do not carry paramedics on their black hawks up here.

So we've agreed to, when they go on a mission that's local here, we will have a medic come on, get on board with them, uh, understanding that we want to see mutual benefit back to billing.

So anytime we would need it in this area, readily readily available, no charge to us.

So that's the partnership we're trying to build.

They have a big piece of land up there that could potentially benefit us for our training.

So uh looking for as that program grows, and it's nice to see that they finally have a structure up there and not living out of trailer houses.

Drone program, this has been really big in both police and fire.

Uh it was established here in 2000, but uh obviously that I think that's a typo.

But uh something that the Homeland Security gave us with our hazmat team.

We acquired some drones this past year.

We've gone to 18 calls and logged about 75 flight hours.

The two pictures you see there of how we use them.

Do you see a structure fire?

We put a trone in the air, we can kind of see where the hot spots are, get to where we need to be in those structures as soon as we can, see where the problem areas are because we're always usually looking at a blind situation and just going in and trying to find things.

They're great help to us there.

They're a help to us investigations where things are unstable.

We can send a drone inside and uh obviously go and figure out what we can do inside without putting somebody inside there.

So lots of different uses for that.

We just used it this weekend for the oil that ended up in the water or the sheen that ended up in the water.

We put a drone in the air to try to figure out and make sure that it wasn't getting to any critical infrastructure.

So very benefit is beneficial to us.

Same thing I just said.

So this one I just want to show real quick.

So the river rescues are probably one of our biggest challenges.

So this is if this will work.

So this was a river rescue that we did, middle of the night, very hard to navigate.

We had some people stranded.

You see a dark spot there.

We that's where we had some people stranded.

For that, for the sheriff's boat to actually find that, be pretty difficult at night because of just the lighting situation.

You're gonna see what it looks like to them.

That's what it looks like to them going down the river.

This is that actual boat coming to that call.

There it is with our drone footage after we fire the drone up.

And now we can start to communicate with them as they get on the river and guide us down the river to where these people are located, uh, stranded in the middle of the night, pretty cold night.

And uh, so you just see the benefit in many different situations, rescue situations.

I I won't go through the whole video in essence of time, but just goes back and forth and just shows you the challenges we used to have.

We don't launch our jet skis in the middle of the night for obvious reasons.

They don't have the lighting that the sheriff's boat has, but you can see how much the lighting really doesn't do.

And they get to the victims here, and you're gonna see they're trying to shine spotlights, figure where they are, and uh as soon as they turn to drone footage, it's pretty easy to see.

We do have a Billings Fire Department rescue swimmer onboard boat.

So there they are, scoop the boat into the side.

The rescue rescue swimmer will get off, get their victim and get on the boat.

So pretty incredible what these things can do and help us out in our operations.

All right, 911 dispatch.

Obviously, the dispatch center falls under the fire department.

So just some numbers for you and the amount of work that they do over there.

Obviously, they dispatch for everything Yellowstone County with the exception of Laurel.

So all law enforcement, fire, EMS services are dispatched out of them, and some additional phone calls that come in.

But we do have a new manager, Justin Jaggers, is actually retired from the Polynesians Police Department.

He's been a huge asset to us, understands the system, understands the needs, and has been working with us tirelessly to improve efficiencies in that center.

They took 2,039, 239,000 calls last year, phone calls, 656 average phone calls a day, 31 phone calls an hour.

So they are busy.

If you've ever gone in there when they're taking calls, it's pretty impressive what they deal with.

20% of them being an emergency, 76% of them being non-emergency.

So that is where our protocols are critical.

So when we make that call and they get good information, they can dispatch the appropriate resources.

So we're not sending everybody everywhere.

They created 146,000 incidents system wide, and then uh 239,000 assets, city county were dispatched.

Again, that's that call difference.

146,000 calls, but actually 239,000 different pieces of apparatus that they managed over the radio.

A lot of public records requests, that's pretty normal.

Uh, lawsuits, stuff that's happening, uh, just people needing information.

They they do all of that.

We did upgrade our Vesta 911 system and a nice dispatch recorder.

Those are two critical pieces.

That's that the enhanced 911 system, and then we we weren't able to record every every radio console, every phone line that came in.

That's about a $2 million project that was funded through the 911 grant.

It didn't come out of it, it comes through a 911 grant, basically funded by our cell phones.

So that's what built that center as well.

And then obviously, obviously ongoing protocol refinement uh critical piece that they've been helping us out with.

Facilities, big year for us, station five remodel.

We have about a half a million dollars into that station now.

It ended up being a way bigger project than than it was in the beginning, but fortunately, Lowe's came forward and gave us 280,000 of that money.

Uh big partner with us, and we've got that station.

I, if you can get out there and take a look at what we did and what it used to be, I encourage you to.

We have Fire Station 2 boiler.

We're trying to keep Fire Station 2 hot.

So that is in this year's budget.

We had the boilers here, and we anticipate finishing it by the end of this fiscal year.

Going into this next year, we do have fire station one on the uh capital improvement plan, big project there.

We got about a million dollars that needs to go into that station.

Nothing's been done with it since 1972.

And then continuous refining of the overall state of the facilities.

We want to have a good grasp on everything of our facilities or facilities department has been crucial in making that happen.

But just one little piece I want to throw in.

I'm not gonna read the paragraph, but just the work that they are doing, the facilities department is doing, and that preventative maintenance that's in my budget.

We used to have about two to three failures a month on overhead doors.

Since we brought this this facility's maintenance in, and we've we've done preventative maintenance.

It's very rare that we have a call when we have a problem with overhead doors.

Believe it or not, in the fire service, overhead doors are the biggest problems, where we hit them or they stop working.

But uh routinely has as has done due to due diligence in that in that area to where we rarely have an overhead door problem because of that maintenance.

So, in summary, I'll wrap this up.

I hope I'm under the half hour, but obviously, challenge with funding due to the property tax association.

We were we're getting through that, and we'll see where we end up with that.

We're exploring alternative revenue for the fire department.

Um data-driven decision making, making sure we have good data to make those decisions, uh decreased overall call volume, but again, that increased complexity that comes with them, the hybrid crew program that we're working on, that continued partnership with BPD and the Army National Guard, enhanced prevention efforts, specifically community risk reduction.

We want to be out there seeing what we can do with stuff before we actually have to go to it.

So making sure we find those high risk areas in the city, identify them and take care of them.

All the software upgrades within the 911 center, the enhanced facilities, preventative maintenance, and then preparing for growth going into the future.

Any questions?

Nice job, Chief.

Yeah, two thumbs up.

Any questions for our chief?

Thanks, boss.

Yeah.

Was that a no or is that a yes?

Okay.

Sorry.

So the vast majority is EMS.

Do you think you'd be coming back to us at some point saying I need some more little red SUVs at all?

And what impact would that do for you?

Great, great question, Councilperson Boyette.

Um, absolutely.

Those things are doing great for us.

We we just want to make sure we identify where they would need to be, appropriate timing, and just once we get a better grasp on our numbers and and really the impact that they're making, I would expect to see me back to to see adding another unit within the city just because of the dividends they've been paying so far.

Anything else for the chief?

All right.

Oh, geez.

Uh you mentioned congestive heart failure.

Uh how many patients and how many calls?

This is brand new.

So um billings uh actually, Chief Banfield, would you?

The question was uh as far as congestive heart failure and the and that program that we're starting to get into, maybe expand on that just a tiny bit and and let them know what we've done so far.

Maybe it's not there.

I I can do my best to try to answer you, but it's it's been going for you know a little less than a month.

But um, Josh, who is our EMT has been going out pretty much daily, probably sees one to three congestive heart failure patients uh a day.

He's not treating them, he's not doing anything to do any treatment in the field.

All he's doing is the the either one of the hospitals will let him know we have this patient in the community.

Would you make sure they're doing okay?

Make sure they don't they have the medications they need.

And if there's any problem when he arrives there, telehealth becomes involved, they take over care.

He is just there as wheels on the ground to prevent them from calling 911.

Mr.

Mayor?

Yes, sir.

There he is.

Councilmember O'Donnell.

Thank you.

Uh I'm interested in one of the uh pictures.

It seemed to me that there were uh firemen outside of like a railroad tanker.

Uh can you explain what happens when uh there is a railroad uh uh emergency uh cooperative uh uh relationships?

Absolutely great question, Councilperson O'Donnell.

Um so the railroad has their own hazmat team, but it's very small locally here.

They they they do initial assessment of what they have.

We would respond to that call if it's in our jurisdiction if we have an overturned tanker.

We would also respond to that call if it falls within our regional response area.

So we work directly with the railroad on that situation.

We plan what we train with the railroad, they do bring resources down here annually.

We train with them.

We do not mitigate, we don't clean stuff up, but we get there and make sure stuff stops happening.

So that's a big piece of it.

We'd like to get there, make sure the threats no longer there, and then call in the appropriate people that that would clean up that mess that happens when that, you know, the last one in Reed Point, probably one of the bigger ones that happened.

But we are fully capable of getting stuff in place to try to minimize the threat to any of our critical infrastructure within the city or our residents.

Mr.

Mayor, a follow-up perfectly, please.

Go ahead.

Uh is there how quickly can you determine if if a car is overturned, what's in it?

Councilperson O'Donnell, if I'm understanding, are you are talking any car or ones that are transporting the bad stuff?

Well, that's a good point.

Transporting bad stuff is that uh I I'm certain that somebody has some type of inventory of what's in each car and what the uh the hazmat uh uh criteria are for that, as we see on on uh uh trucks that uh go around.

Uh how soon can you get information on what you're dealing with?

If there's a uh uh catastrophe uh dealing with a uh railroad car.

In a perfect world, it would be immediate.

Um, as far as passenger cars, that's an unknown.

But any time that we have any but any for-profit organization that is transporting goods, they carry all of the documents with them within the truck.

They are the truck should also be placarded, so we should be able to roll up, look at the truck and determine what is in that vehicle, uh, whether it's a closed box van or an open tanker.

We should be as long as they're following federal regulations, we should be identify immediately what is in that vehicle.

The problem sometimes would be if a driver of that vehicle is incapacitated and can't get us that information quickly.

It's generally in a uh normal area within the truck that we would go look for it, but a lot of the times we can't get to it.

So we reply on those placards that are on the side of the truck or the company.

If we see a company, we call that company's line and they have a direct communication as far as what they're hauling.

Any fixed facilities within the city of Billings.

We have a tier tier reporting system that we turn to.

Uh, we should, as long as they report it, know what is within any of our buildings within the city of buildings that could cause harm.

Thank you, Chief.

Thanks, Chief.

Great report.

Thank you.

Mayor, council members, assistant chief Sean Mayo, police department, will be helping fill in tonight's annual report.

So thank you for letting me be here.

Okay.

Thank you.

So uh trusting that you all had a chance to read the annual report in its entirety.

Tonight's uh presentation will be a clips of certain aspects that we thought were very important to share and to highlight.

So we'll jump right into it.

First thing that the chief likes to do is get the bottom line right up front.

And uh crime is down in categories that affect our people the most, right?

Our investigation unit is working hard, solved major crimes in this community that's have the biggest impact.

Most of that is uh dealing with patrol facing uh unknown crimes as they come in and investigations dealing with very complex crimes that they solve to help keep people safe.

And uh the other thing that's also super important to us is keeping our professional standards up to date and keeping our professional standards unit transparent and able to ask questions and be accountable to the citizens.

If you look at the uh the slide, we have a property crimes, and as in continuing uh slides you'll see as well as the annual report, property crimes down by approximately 21%, and well as crimes against society or quality of life crimes are down about 21% also are annual violent crimes against persons trending down, but only about 3%.

Our special units this year did a little significant amount of work like they always do, but they really targeted the removal of guns, fentanyl, and repeat offenders.

Overall reports for key wins is these are the most impactful uh outcomes for the year.

They were reflected a strong targeted enforcement of certain things that we wanted to put emphasis on.

And that uh was really realized through hard investigative work and very proactive policing on the patrol side.

Overall, uh incidence reports are down by seven percent.

Property crime again down uh significantly, and homicides down 60 percent from 2024.

Um remember in 2024, we jumped up to approximately 15, and I believe we're down to five this year.

So significant reduction there.

Uh a significant amount of adult arrests this year, and there's a couple things that go into that, as well as hiring 17 new police officers due to retirements and uh seven retirements and then two resignations.

We have a net gain of eight.

So we are still trending forward in our goals to get up to that 177, which has been set by council.

81,180 calls for service this year, as you can see on the next chart or in the chart that's in your uh folder there that uh medium and priority one calls were our highest call for service, followed by our high priority calls uh 24 and 22,000 respectively.

Um those calls were reflected in the the highest amount of our arrests in those categories.

The others are uh significantly lower as what's seen in our our uh arrest graphs.

Um these calls are determined primarily by the dispatch center when the calls come in by the priority-based dispatching, which has been a significant improvement over the year.

When we first implemented it a little while back, it took a little bit of a rough spot.

We had to round out some few things, and it took significant amount of work from our people as well as dispatch to make sure those protocols were getting the meat of what we needed in order to get the specific the specific response out correctly.

Um the increase in adult uh in custody arrests has also gone up, and that is attributed to a couple things.

One uh communication with uh YCDF to just say, look, there's some people we're gonna have to put in, period.

We need help with that, as well as the uh opening of the short-term detention facility has had a big increase as well.

So between those two factors, it's gone up for us.

All right.

So our crime trends for the last five years, uh we saw that property crime was the biggest improvement, and crimes against people remain relatively consistent.

The uh, which is consistent with national trends at this point.

Um, if you look at the quality of life, you know, we're dropping about 14% from just 2021 to 2025.

It did have an uptick a little bit in there, so that's why we had a bigger drop last year.

Um, property crimes again down 42% overall in crimes against persons stable, about that 1% decrease.

So, talking about violent crimes and investigations, we've had 530 new major cases.

349 of those have been cleared at a 66% rate.

Um, that's a significant amount of those.

And of those 66% that were cleared, 20% of those are uh resulted in rest or arrest warrants being issued.

So we are uh moving along fairly well in that category.

That's significant.

Um vehicle homicides uh do have an impact in in our numbers.

If you will look at um the number of uh homicides that came in, we had four that were deliberate homicides that were charged, and then we had one that was a vehicular uh homicide that was also charged.

That brought us up to our fifth.

Uh lots of work done from the crime side uh as well as investigations and our evidence facilities.

Um, digital media, just for an example, 40 are 4500 plus items of digital media tagged into evidence last year, and that's for anything from our body cam videos to our car videos to witness statements on scene to video that we collect from uh the sus are the uh victim businesses or just businesses that people see or ring camps.

So anything like that all gets tagged in for the the case to go forward to the attorneys.

Moving into domestic violence, uh this continues to be one of our most serious um challenges, and it does require significant investigative as well as victim support resources.

Um, there is you'll notice a downturn on the physical assaults in the domestic violence and an upturn on the reasonable apprehension arrests.

Uh it's too early yet to say that that is direct correlation.

However, with our domestic violence unit and uh their their diligent work of working through follow-up specifically with victims after the original crimes have taken place.

We believe that that has had an influence in making those arrests and those further follow-on charges so that more physical assaults do not happen.

Like I said, that's our our uh belief at this point.

However, further follow-on further years information will help glean that out a little bit.

So our task force activities, we're talking specifically here about our uh drug unit and our uh street crimes uh unit.

They're uh basically a very heavy force multiplier for us as we have patrol doing their standard work and going about their day and doing as much as they can.

We have these units that work outside of the dispatched call log, so they can target specific areas and go to where the high call volumes are and try to traffic or try to stop specific events before they become a bigger issue.

Um, I'm sure you've seen uh different pictures in the paper over the year uh as those things take place, or you have been around some of those units.

Uh those of you that got to come out to the police facility the way uh was it two weeks ago.

Uh you got to see some of that specialized equipment, those special teams use.

Very important for us.

Um, included in this uh also is our canines.

They've had 596 deployments uh during this time.

But what's really important is when we look at the numbers up there for the fentanyl that's been seized.

77,000, almost almost 78,000 pills seized this last year between those two units.

That's an amazing amount of drugs to come in and well as to pick up.

So the work is six is significant.

What is also very concerning about that is the number of uh 166 firearms seized uh in the commissions of those those crimes that they were investigating, as well as just street level crimes.

A lot of those are stolen, uh, not all of them, but uh they are a significant factor for safety for our citizens and our officers, as well as the suspects who are being arrested.

Um looking at uh street crimes specifically, 499 arrests made by the street crimes unit this year.

And then if you look at the drug unit, uh they don't have the the numbers quite there.

They're at 215, but keep in mind we look at the drug unit itself, that unit is designed to go after and make large scale cases that can be tracked back to bigger organizations in order to dismantle drug trafficking organizations.

And that's where that number of 60 federal indictments comes in there.

That's a significant amount of work.

Um, and they're they're doing a very good job at it.

Traffic safety, traffic collisions.

Uh, if you had a chance to look at your uh your your uh information there, you'll notice that uh Shiloh and King are King West specifically are very good places to stay away from.

They have uh a high incidence of uh of accidents.

Um I know the chief has mentioned this in the past, but the uh the um implementation of the roundabouts have been very effective in reducing the seriousness of those collisions because it takes it off a right angle collision and makes it more of an angled thing.

So even though there are still active accidents there and they are serious, we have to respond to them, and then they do take resources and some people do get injured.

Uh the fact that because of the design of the intersection, it does reduce the amount of of velocity into uh the vehicles when they hit.

So that's important to say.

We do have about a 25% injury rate on accidents that we respond to.

So that's a significant deal.

Um that's where our uh reliance upon our fire department comes in to make sure we get good uh medical assistance to people as soon as possible.

Um DUIs still actively engaged there.

Uh we have a DUI task force that works uh a lot of overtime details for us.

We have a specific DUI car that runs uh as her main function.

And uh this year we had uh 405 arrests in that area.

So a significant number of of uh offenders being put uh off the street in that category.

All right, accountability.

So we're talking about our professional standards department here.

If uh one thing that needs to be very clear is that the citizens have to hold us to a higher standard, and we hold ourselves to that high standard as well.

And we try to make sure that we are doing what we can to make sure that we don't get caught flat-footed, we're proactive and looking for for problems so that we can take them up and make sure they are dealt with before they become big.

And when those problems come in, that we're actively looked at.

Um it is functioning well.

The uh, if you look at the total number of uh complaints up there, we had 130 last year.

71 of those were citizen-generated complaints, and about 15% of those were sustained.

Um internally, the complaints that we found that we we saw and picked up, took care of were 59.

And of those 85 were just 85% are sustained.

So, what that means is we're seeing things that pop up, and when we see it and we know it's wrong, we're dealing with it and we're making sure that it doesn't pop up again.

That's the goal of the professional standards unit.

Uh, and to keep in mind this uh division, so to speak, is headed by one captain.

So he does an extremely significant amount of work to make sure that those things are done.

He has augmented by the lieutenants of the sergeants when they have small problems that they can pick those up and work through them, but he does the vast majority of the bigger uh investigations.

All right, community engagement.

So public safety is a partnership.

We all know that.

We all not, but it's not just between fire and AMR and BPD.

It's this community as a whole.

And we have uh a couple things that really help us out in that.

One is our community service officers and our volunteers for the police department.

They do a significant amount of work and expand our capabilities for time for things that need to be done, but don't necessarily need a sworn officer or a cop at that time.

Sometimes that's just picking up something after the fact that's been maybe a day or two before the business is able to get it to us.

And then we have one of those elements go get it.

Saves us a lot of time and effort, helps us out significantly.

Last year, our uh our uh public safety or a public uh um engagement uh group had 29 business presentations and 14 active shooter tree uh trainings.

So community events that is such that you guys will sometimes pass along to us, those are also uh vectored into there.

So those are uh another incidence or another option for us to uh have that citizen contact for positive outcomes.

Umficers had 8,500 calls last year where they were used, which is uh a 31% increase over 2024.

We are at full staff on there, and that is that you that group is running well.

And I should say we were at full staff on there because this is a great element for us to use as a training module to build up to hire officers.

We just hired two of our uh community services officers who are uh displaying outstanding uh just work ethic as well as capability, and they are now going to be sworn in soon.

And so we're gonna have to hire two more CSOs.

So we'll be looking for that to open up very quickly.

Volunteers generated over three uh three thousand six hundred and sixty-six hours of volunteer service last week and over thirty thousand dollars of revenue generated.

Um mostly that's through fingerprints and other small things that that add up to that.

And then uh they are also the ones who do the bulk of the work when it comes to our abandoned vehicle problem and getting things moved off the streets.

So they do they do a lot of work.

Budget-wise, uh, we had uh our budget set again at 36.5.

Um again, that 70% of that is in personnel.

Um we continue to be as good stewards as much as we can on that money because we know that we have to be accountable to the public, right?

That's part of our job.

We also have to balance that as much as we can with doing the most that we can do for the money.

And sometimes that gets to be difficult.

So we have to try to find is stretch it or find other ways to get it.

One of the ways that we help with that is we've attained nearly three million in grants to support critical functions.

And a lot of that is in the realm of the drug activity in order to keep that stamp down as much as possible.

Um as previously mentioned, uh part of our uh our personnel costs and everything else uh was the um the fact that we hired 17 and then had seven retirements and two resignations.

So looking ahead, one of our main focuses is still going to be transparency and accountability as well as continuous improvement for the department as a whole.

Uh we appreciate the council support as well as the uh direction that you give to us as much as we can get so that we can move forward with what we believe and what you have been told is our community priorities.

Um we try to do this through a good solid recruitment and retention as well as using technology and modernization to be as effective as possible as possible, using data to target areas that need more attention than other areas, help us focus our attention and therefore have uh greater return for our investment.

Uh data-driven deployment is huge.

We have some new data stuff coming online, new technology coming up, which is very important.

Um we will need to be doing some upgrades to our RMS system, which is going to be a pro it's gonna be a lift.

I won't lie to you, but it's absolutely necessary because that's what gives us the data going forward and keeps track of all of our records.

Um as always, we need to continue strengthening our community partnerships, and that will uh be reflective, not just our work, but the work that you can help with us as well as your uh your connections and engagements.

So I tried to give you a down and down and dirty there on the uh annual report that we had.

Um if you have questions, I'll be happy to take those.

Thank you.

Uh uh Council person Aspenlighter was first in line, and I got your name right this time.

Got it.

Thanks.

Um appreciate the summary and and the data.

The report was very good.

I thought um the way you guys are tracking data, I think has improved just in the two years that I've been on council and and I appreciate that.

Um question I have specifically is around property crimes.

I mean, one of the things that we've heard over the last at least I've I've heard from the business community is it we got to a point years ago where with the jail being full and and no place to you know, no place at the end uh for the offenders that businesses just got tired of calling because nothing happened and there was no place to to put offenders.

So businesses just quit calling and just kind of accepted the fact that this is a part of doing business anymore.

How do we re-engage the commercial property owners and and the those folks?

Because that's generally where it comes from is business owners and commercial property owners.

How do we get those folks re-engaged now that we have the short-term hold facility?

That's been a wild success by the numbers and by the statistics.

How do we re-engage the community that circumstances are changing?

I mean, how do we get that message back out to the business community and and to commercial property owners?

So that we make sure that the data that we have, it no question that that's what gets called in.

My fear is that we're not getting a lot of the calls because they have just accepted that this is what it is.

Uh Councilmember Ashwire, thank you for the question.

Um I and I hope that part of that question is already being answered as we speak and is reflective of these numbers.

With the fact that we've been able to come and exceed last year's arrest numbers, a lot of those were for those quality of life crimes that went to the short-term detention facilities.

So, like when we have our uh downtown business officers and they rove around and they deal with uh usually the problem, which is the quality of life issues, they're they're taking those off.

So I think the businesses are seeing that happen more firsthand.

Now, could we always engage more?

Yeah, we can get with the business, the downtown people through the DBA and let them specifically know that we have now more options to go.

Uh last time I talked, I checked with the jail, we were averaging about uh uh 12-ish a night at kind of the high side was was more of the 12, probably around eight was probably the average.

Um, but they have room for for a significant number of people in that facility.

Even on the first floor, I want to say is 33.

So if if that number continues to bump up a little bit because we're having more businesses start calling in, I think we'll be able to roll with that.

Follow up.

Um I I appreciate that.

And and I appreciate the the plug.

The two comments, I guess, on on this.

I think these statistics also are very indicative of of the success of the short-term hold facility.

The chief has been very definitive about that as he's talked at in multiple areas.

That short-term hold facility has has been working.

It's getting people into the system, it's getting them through the arraignment court, it's getting them in the process.

All of the all of the data around people appearing, uh appearing to court and and getting in the system, getting on GPS monitoring.

That's all been been tracking very well.

I think that's that was a great investment by the city of Billings and partnering with the county.

Um I think it's also indicative of of the situation that we're in with the jail.

I mean, we we have got to address the the actual jail capacity problem in this city.

And um the short-term hold facility is a good indicator of what a jail expansion would do for public safety in the long term in the in this community.

The the short-term hold has not taken violent criminals off of the streets.

It has helped get them into the system, but it is not um dealt with the violent crimes.

It's it's certainly helped with quality of life issues and and arrests and and that system, but we we are in desperate need of a a jail expansion.

So I'm I'm excited to to be working with the county on the jail bond that's going to be coming forward here.

I I think the commission votes on it tomorrow uh to put that mill out.

The second one that I would comment on is the numbers, I I think it's still a little early to be indicative of the family justice center as it relates to domestic violence, partner family member assaults and and family member crime.

Um you indicated in your comments that we are we are getting better and increased numbers of our participation with victims in in that, I think is what I heard you say.

Is that right?

I I would I'm optimistic that that correlation is holding true.

We only have one year of that data.

Right.

So we'll need subsequent years to see if that trend continues.

Yeah.

And and that's where I'm going.

I I think the the early data is good.

It's not enough to make definitive correlations, but our investments in the family justice center and and continued investments in the family justice center are exactly what that crime prevention fund was was intended to do.

And and I'm hopeful that as we continue forward with whatever format that looks like, that that that will help um some of the most vulnerable people in our community um experiencing family member assaults and family violence, and more so the kids that are experiencing those things amongst their parents.

That is the purest version of early intervention and breaking that generational crime streak.

And so we'll have some hard conversations coming up about the Family Justice Center and what we're doing there.

But from my position as a council member, I am I am firmly in the camp that that is those are the best dollars we can invest in crime prevention in in the community.

And I'm I'm looking forward to that conversation as we go forward.

So thanks, Assistant Chief Mail for the presentation and keep up the good work.

All right.

Then council member Boyette.

Thank you.

Um my question is specifically about domestic violence.

I've worked with uh survivors for over 15 years, and you know, there's the policy or the law that says somebody has to be arrested when the police are reporting to the scene.

Um far too often the women who are the victims are being identified as the assailant, and she's the one who has to go to jail and get the record on get that on her record and lose her housing, lose her job, lose custody of her kids.

Um, because the the abuser is so savvy and usually controls all the money, so she doesn't have any way to get it representation.

So where I'm going with that is can you help me understand um what kind of what training looks like for your officers in terms of identifying um domestic violence in on a call?

Yes, council member Geary.

The uh the amount of training that we get is is directly proportional sometimes to the problems that we see.

We have a mandatory minimum of four hours a year.

That's that's a mandatory minimum.

And then that is also fluctuated up and down depending upon more needs that that become uh specifically obvious.

Mike coming through?

Specifically obvious uh in trends.

So if that's the case, then uh Katie Nash or um uh Christy Punk will look at what's going on, they'll bring us a concern to us, say, hey, we're having problems in this area.

Uh we need to specifically address X, Y, or Z.

So we're gonna do that by these actions.

So we'll then take that input and we'll implement it into briefing trainings or a specific extra chunk of training if we need to.

A lot of that stuff is put through a briefing trainings specifically so that it can be passed very quickly, passed very quickly and efficiently so that we don't have to wait for a training block to come open down the road, we can get that out faster.

Does that answer your question?

For the most part, I just was curious.

Is it um like training modules like on the internet or is it in-person training?

Um yes, to continue on.

Most of it is in-person training with one of those two people.

Yeah.

We do have the ability to go to what we have a training um source that's called Police One Academy, where we can access training modules nationwide and and use those as as a training.

Okay.

Um there any time we respond to a call where it's called in as a domestic, we are required to write a report, period.

If they're if the the reason for an arrest is is there, then the arrest should be made.

If the arrest is not made, they have to specifically document the reasons why an arrest was not made.

So it's they know very well that they are not doing any less or any more.

It's the amount of paperwork is the amount of paperwork, the way the call should be handled, should be handled consistently each time.

So if we see something that's trending one way or the other for whatever reason, then we get on those as soon as we know about it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Mr.

O'Donnell.

Thank you.

Uh excellent presentation, Chief.

Uh in your answer to your question to uh uh council member Ashman Literary, you mentioned the word, the word trends.

I'm interested in that uh we have seen uh a lot of increase uh nationally in activities by cartels and and uh multi-jurisdictional uh uh gangs.

Uh has that changed the nature of policing and the the uh in billings and the the threats to uh public safety in uh billings, and how are you handling that?

Uh thank you, Councilmember O'Donnell.

As far as the gangs uh influence into Montana and into Billings, um although we are a big state and we are obviously the hub in Billings, we are not isolated.

Um the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Task Force uh are or HIDA is what our drug unit is technically called.

And they work with uh cross section of federal, local law enforcement um to make sure that we have the best resources available to combat drugs cartels or gangs or anything else that comes in.

If it tends to be gang related only, it's not cartel related, um, then that kind of falls to our street crime guys.

They're they're going to take the lead on that.

But if it's specifically a drug trafficking organization or slash cartel type of activity, that will mostly be handled by the by the drug unit.

And because of the fact that they do have the federal, state and local uh partnerships with uh those different agencies, then we have the ability to go outside of our specific area.

It's not uncommon for our drug units to leave the city, leave the county, leave the state when they're on a case and follow it as far as they can and get resources on the way as a as appropriate.

So it's it's not just local, although it's housed local.

Does that answer your question, sir?

Uh largely, yes.

Um I'm interested in uh is the your job in fighting crime, is it getting to be the criminals are getting more sophisticated, or is it just is the uh by and large, it's just the regular, you know, uh uh run of the mill uh family assault property crimes, uh graffiti uh that uh you know automobile accidents, uh that type of thing.

Well, none of uh council member uh O'Donnell, none of these crimes stand alone by themselves, or very few of them do.

Almost everything is intertwined in some fashion, whether the domestic violence is fueled by drug or alcohol addictions, or whether the theft is due to trying to get money to buy more drugs or do something else.

So it would be irresponsible for me to say that we can totally separate them because they all have an element of of being intertwined.

However, our biggest problems most of the time come down to violence against people as well as um the substance abuse and the mental health in our in our in our county and specifically our city.

If you look at your your misdemeanor level of that, then you're looking at um your PFMAs, your your your DUIs, those types of things that are manifest and obvious at that.

Um as far as us being able to say we're gonna target this one area and it's gonna have the most impact over all of them, that would be difficult to do in its in in isolation.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Boyet.

Thank you.

Uh Chief, I'll give you a softball here.

I was looking at one of your slides, which is intriguing.

And for the first time in many years, you're releasing more evidence than you're bringing in.

What happened there?

I've never seen that in all my years.

So you are correct.

And that would that made me smile, honestly.

Uh the um the the crew at evidence has been working very hard and uh pushing, pushing the attorneys and the judges and everybody else that they have contact with on old cases so that they're not waiting and waiting and waiting for the orders to come down to can they finally release something?

They're actively on them.

And so they're they're doing, in my opinion, a much more proactive job in keeping up to date on when things could be finished and could be finalized, and they're setting out those requests to get it back faster.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lindley.

Thanks, Mayor.

Thanks for the presentation.

I thought it was fantastic.

Um I had a question about the complaints.

So class one versus class two complaints.

Can you can you just briefly um explain the difference between those two?

In its yes, council member uh um Lindley, in its in its basic form, if you look at the it's page um 13.

The class one complaints are basically complaints that would rise to a criminal nature.

That's the easiest way to kind of break it down.

Your class two complaints are usually things that are uh levels of um uh problems with service, uh uh either a citizen or a commander saw something and thought it was not appropriate uh as far as um in interaction with the citizen, or maybe they um messed up their paperwork, maybe they didn't do as much as they should have on a case, or um something that's procedural, a policy violation.

So your policy violations would be your class two reports and your actual very serious charges of uh if an officer was accused of theft, that would be a class one.

If they were accused of excessive force, that would be a class one.

Something that would result in a criminal charge is is kind of quickly put in the class one category.

Okay, thanks.

Quick follow-up, Mayor.

Go ahead.

Um so I just wanted to point out that out of the eight class one complaints, seven came from the department.

And I just think that speaks to the professionalism of the department.

I I've always found my interactions with anybody on the force to just be fantastic, and I think that just you know really stands out that you guys are holding yourselves accountable, and I just thank you for that.

Thank you.

Anything else for assistant chief mail?

Councilmember Shaw.

Um, I want to echo that and say I actually had the experience this year of having a citizen bring forward a complaint.

I gave it to an administration.

It went back through the process, and I have nothing but compliments for the process it went through.

And I'm not going to get into the details of it, but the citizen was also felt heard, felt like they were able to put their complaint out there.

I think it was not sustained or how whatever terminology you use.

But um anyway, it it really I was very impressed at how well done it was because I'd never walked through that process with anybody before.

So kudos to the way you handled that.

Thank you, Councilmember.

I'll pass it on to Captain Grivets.

Thank you, assistant chief.

You did great.

Not a problem.

Thank you.

And you run a great department too, by the way.

A lot of good people.

All right.

That leads us to public comment on non-agenda items.

Remember, speakers sign in is required.

Please step up and see give us your name and address and uh take your three minutes.

Hello, my name is Lane Dorsey.

I'm with the Billings Alliance for Immigrant Rights.

I live in Ward Five.

Um, the Billings Alliance for Immigrant Rights recently, this weekend had a rally celebrating International Women's Day.

Um we were standing with immigrant women, demanding justice for Renee Good, demanding justice for Linda Davis, and saying no ice in billings.

And I'm here to reiter reiterate those things.

Um we've heard the stories and and it's it's been dozens of stories from immigrant women who've been detained by ICE, that they have been forced to have surgeries regarding the reproductive rights hysterectomies in these ICE detention facilities against their will and without informed consent.

Also there have been complaints of ICE agents sexually assaulting women in ICE detention facilities.

One ICE agent even uh essentially using it as a as a bartering chip for a woman to see her her children, which is absolutely disgusting.

Um the thought of something like that happening in this city sickens me.

I do not want uh the city of Billings to cooperate with ICE in any capacity, uh particularly Billings PD should not sign on to a 287G agreement.

We do not want the bodily autonomy of women, whether they're immigrants or citizens to be violated in our city or in our country.

And it's it's really disgusting and hypocritical for a country that is currently bombing um another country, Iran right now, under the guise of liberation of women, but they're bombing women, they're bombing children.

They killed over a hundred school girls a little over a week ago.

And yet those very things, right?

Though the acts of sexual violence and uh separating families, it's not just happening in Iran, right?

Where US military intervention is happening.

It's happening right here.

So uh for the US to continue to claim to stand for the liberation of women anywhere is shameful.

And you should stand with the women of billings, no matter if they're a citizen or an immigrant or what their legal uh immigration status is.

Because we do not want that kind of violence in our city.

No 287G.

Take a stance against ICE.

Seriously.

We do not want that kind of violence in our city.

Hey there.

My name is uh just Humphrey.

Um I live at 632 Avenue B.

Um Good evening.

Just want to say uh thanks for being here.

Um I wanted to put a uh face with a name.

Uh Mr.

Humphrey.

Yeah.

Could you could you adjust the microphone so we can see that better?

Thank you.

So I just want to put a face with a name.

So uh I've been a resident here for 25 years, uh, been a nurse in town for 23 years.

Um I am the sole owner of Apex property management um that was uh formed specifically for acquisition.

It's pretty standard for um business practice for um uh for real estate investment and and projects to do that.

Um, but I am it's it's based here in Billings.

It is me, it's only me, solely me.

Um we put in an offer for 555,000 for the colonial apartments um for the uh purchase and full rehabilitation of the colonial apartments um and preserving 20 to 30 units of housing in Billings' South Side.

Um the vision of Apex and my vision is to restore 107 year old building um for a fraction of the cost that it would take to rebuild a building by itself um to generate tax revenue um for you guys uh also working with the city to bring the building back into code.

Um and then also uh working on the housing shortage that is on the south side, and actually in Billings has a pretty big housing shortage as I'm sure we're all aware.

Um you guys that have any questions, concerns, um, please reach out to me.

I would be more than glad to reach out individually if you have questions and concerns about this, as I'm sure you probably do.

Um, and then just to let you guys know that I'm like fully committed to this project from start to finish.

Um I'm committed to billings, and I'm also committed to uh the South Side.

So I just appreciate your time.

Thank you.

And I just wanted to put a face with a name.

Thank you.

Uh good evening, Mayor and City Council.

My name's Ken Ard.

I live at 313 South 36th Street on the South Side.

Uh, I'm here to weigh in kind of uh and express my displeasure with the uh refuge island that was installed by the city on State Avenue in Jackson, Fourth Avenue.

It was one of those safe routes to school projects, buried in a plan uh that's full of tens of hundreds of projects.

Um I just think that was uh just a bad use of funds.

It closed off a route, uh yeah, a driving route that that goes to the neighborhood.

And who better to weigh in on this than somebody who actually lives blocks away from that uh intersection?

Um, where my kids also use that intersection.

Uh went to school at Orchard.

Uh we also they went to school at Riverside.

Fourth Avenue.

I just don't think enough consideration was given to what that area is.

Uh Fourth Avenue is like a main route going to uh churches and gas station and schools and uh dollar store and you know it gets used by a lot of people.

Um it's like a main collector going in in the neighborhood.

Uh it's a bus route.

Um today.

Uh people are still taking a left-hand turn.

It's been hit multiple times.

They plowed over those delineators and all signs already.

It hasn't even been installed that long.

Um there's been no intersections there or uh accidents at the intersection.

Uh some of the just something you can control.

This thing was uh what upsets me the most is this thing was uh people didn't get a chance to weigh in on closing a route.

Okay, I can I'm not against safe routes.

I can get on board with the flashing marker or the flashing lights, the corner ADA ramps, a good upgrade.

A lot of these things are a good improvements, but when you go to close off a route to a neighborhood, a little more consideration.

Uh um allowing people to weigh in on something like that, I think needs to be given.

And a little more scrutiny on some of these plans needs to be given.

These things are buried with a ton of projects, uh, lots going on.

Uh some of the projects are done, some are some of them aren't.

And some of them are good plans and some of them are not good plans.

And I think a little more also maybe a little more scrutiny on some of these plans would do us some justice as well.

So anyway, thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

Mayor, City Council, Paul Clark, South Side, Sixth Avenue, and South 32nd.

The man here just before me.

Brought back a memory, sad memory.

Uh on the railroad tracks on Sixth Avenue State and uh Washington.

I've lost two friends there on that railroad crossing.

Thank you, uh, probably 40 years ago.

They closed it off.

And maybe that's my what we need there on Fourth Avenue.

He said he didn't get any notice.

Listen, I come here a lot.

You guys notice a lot of people.

There are continuous notice.

So he might have missed it.

I'll give him that.

Anyway, blessings and hopefully nobody loses their life like they did my two friends back in the 70s.

Um I also did a report on how many street lamps are out on the south side in that corridor, the triangle.

And I would like to say with a big smile on my face, thank you to whoever else wrote letters to Northwest Energy besides me, to anyone else who shook hands with anyone at Northwest Energy and addressed the problem.

Thank you.

Also, the lady, customer service representative, Shay.

I will when I go and pay my bill in person tomorrow, I will make sure to thank her also.

Those lights, in my astonishment, were all on.

And I'm talking every one of them lights, including the ones that we have problems with the police officers with our crime areas.

I won't say any names, but Third Avenue North and North 20 and South 29th Street, okay?

That's four blocks from your northern hotel, Mr.

Mayor.

Be aware that crime doesn't care what street you're on.

I'll get off of that.

I got a minute and 14.

I still got five more issues.

Western Sugar Oil Company.

Oh, there's an oil sheen on Yagan Crick.

I wonder how that happened.

We just completed the turnaround, the cleanup at Western Sugar Company, and they pressure wash, high pressure wash the water and the grime and the cleaning solvents.

And where does it go?

It goes to the manhole.

Where's the manhole goals?

Straight to the river.

Now he said that there was a drone that went up in the air to see if there's any hazard material.

Listen, I walked in there.

I violated some trespassing, but I wanted to see the intake.

Maybe the statue of libertation might be gone by now.

But but anyway, there's a sheen there, and it touches the river.

You guys, that's the let me say it again.

The Yellowstone River.

When you talk to somebody from out of state and they say, Where are you from?

Oh, I'm right in there next to Yellowstone River.

Oh, it's beautiful.

Yeah.

Don't drink the water.

Okay, there's a grime to it.

Uh, 12 seconds.

A huge shout out to the family services people and the what are they?

Eagle Cliff Elementary kids.

I'm a senior citizen.

I get a senior citizen's box.

I call it the old man box.

And they put these nice little envelopes.

Thank yous from first graders, second graders.

And I just want to let you guys know it doesn't go unnoticed.

God bless.

I'll be back.

Good evening.

Thank you for your service.

I'm Ann Clancy, 11 Wyoming.

So I'm here speaking on behalf of the Buildings Alliance for Immigrant Rights.

I'm asking that the Billing City Council and Billings Police Department not enter into a 287G agreement with ICE and to avoid assisting ICE customs and border protection and homeland security in these operations.

We've seen already what has happened in Minneapolis and other cities.

It's a government agency that comes in really seeking to dominate the community.

In our community, Billings, I've been here for over 40 years.

We've been engaged overall in very much a partnership approach of cooperation, mutual respect between city government and residents.

And that includes police.

We've heard the accolades of how much community engagement that they're doing, sheriff's office, fire department, etc.

So this will change dramatically if they are associated with ICE.

So sadly, the current administration has embraced a very domination control model of dealing with state and municipal governments and U.S.

citizens, funding ill-trained ICE agents to attack people, and resulting in deaths.

But there is a difference between a government that seeks to control and dominate and a government that seeks to partner and collaborate.

So ICE and this administration is seeking to normalize a domination rule, authoritarian, top-down.

Males over females, gender roles, rigid.

Anything associated with being feminine, like caring, caregiving, nonviolence is devalued.

Abuse and violence range from child and wife beating to lynchings, executions, warfare.

There's always hierarchy of dominations, man over woman, man over man, race over race, religion over religion, nation over nation.

What we are seeing now in the Mideast.

So people are literally taught in this domination rule that relations of dominance and submission are inevitable, normal, and moral.

And that is not correct.

But that is what our current government and immigration officials would like us to believe.

Instead, a partnership society is based on democracy, equality.

They are the norm in the family and the state.

It's power with, not power over.

Equal partnership between men and women with value on qualities such as nonviolence, nurturing, and caregiving.

Abuse and violence are not culturally accepted or idealized.

They may occur, but it's not built into the social system as with domination, like we are currently seeing.

So beliefs about human nature support, empathic, mutually respectful relations, insensitivity, cruelty, and violence are recognizes human possibilities, but they are not inevitable, normal or moral.

So I, as a citizen of Billings, would like to maintain this partnership approach that we've had and not let ice come in.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members, and a special shout out to the person on Zoom.

My name is Jeff Kettles and I live in the fifth ward of Billings.

Um recently I attended the home front uh board meeting, which has been was previously known as the housing authority of Billings.

Um I'm very happy to report that they had their um audit done on their organization.

Government audits ensures integrity, transparent, transparency, and professionalism.

But most importantly, it also protects the public from fraud and theft.

I want to raise my hat to a great organization, home front, because their audit came back absolutely spotless.

We should recognize that.

Now, if we talk about the good, we also have to talk about the bad.

And the bad that I want to talk to you about tonight is the downtown Billings Improvement District.

The downtown Billings Improvement District was notified by Montana, the government service bureau that they did not file to do an audit for for year ending 23 and 24.

That notice came out in last November.

Currently, right now, they're in the process of doing an audit.

We should all sit up on our chairs and go, wait a second, why wasn't that done?

If you want to tell me that I didn't know, or I should have known, that's not an excuse.

That's not an excuse.

If you want to, you know, some people could say maybe we didn't protect the public from fraud and theft.

Let me make it very clear.

I'm not accusing them of doing anything.

But what I am accusing them of is terrible management.

If we look, if if we look at this issue and we also compare them to our other tax districts, the return on investment is absolutely terrible.

This was quite obvious at the last billings improvement district board meeting when Kathy Schneider put a proposal before the board to vote on something that God, Shade and Shea stood up and said, wait a second.

This financial stuff is terrible.

It's basically a million-dollar giveaway to a quit pro, maybe a quit pro thing.

You know, the devil's always in the details.

Because of the mismanagement, because of the failed leadership, because I don't, I don't have trust in her.

Thank you very much.

Hello, everybody.

I'm Mindy Nielsen.

I live in the Heights.

And um I want to start out saying I really appreciate your um being public servants.

This I could not do this.

I had, uh, like I've said the last time I was here, I had 34 years in the post office, and that was enough of oh my gosh, I couldn't do all you guys do.

Um I've I'm here with um Billings Alliance for immigrant rights.

Um that's who I'm kind of getting to learn more about that topic with right now.

But what got me going and coming out from under a rock that I've been under for about eight years is May Day Strong.

Um I don't know if any of you any of you remember of May Day.

I do from um being again raised in northeastern Montana, the very uh Northeast County.

We used to give Mayday baskets and share that and go, and it's so it's a fertility thing.

I I know a little bit about the history in 1886 that um uh some of the protesters it was part of a Mayday event, and you had some people that were hung after a bomb went off, and there's a there's a history you can look up about that.

So there's a couple of couple of things about May Day.

Mayday um uh just came out with some pointers.

They are for no ice, no war, workers over billionaires.

They have um they have demanded that companies side with the people of the constitution, not the regime waging illegal war.

So places like Target and Home Depot are just a couple of the companies that they are focusing on.

And May Day is going to be May 1st.

I wanted you all to know about it, so you're not surprised.

It will be a day of no work, no school, no shopping, no commerce.

And if it goes beyond that, that's great because that's what it has to come down to.

It's um replicating things like the bus boycott that was in the 1960s.

The economics won over good faith because they didn't do it just for good faith.

They they stopped harassing black people and what have you, making them ride in the back of the bus because of the economics of that boycott.

Um, I would like to somebody to distinguish for me back to bear uh immigrants.

The difference between a distinct uh please distinguish between a legal per person in the U.S.

Is it because they're going to be from Mexico, they have dark skin, they have light skin.

Um there's some there's uh the administration, Trump administration wants to make those people illegal.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Kevin Elson 4235, Bruce Avenue at the last meeting.

I talked to you about some of the work session items, and after the meeting uh I said that I had a thought and I didn't it didn't come to me.

And so, but the thought was is that I was concerned that your work sessions are turning into business meetings.

And so what I'd like to maybe take Mr.

Pittman's direction and maybe look at possibly that issue there because last I mean you're you're taking votes, you're having discussion, uh, you're changing policy, and uh they're really they're actually business meetings, uh or not all the items, but some of the items are actually business meeting items.

Um the thing that I came the night for was back at the Sabora meeting the other night, you had the advisory board, then you had the Sabura meeting.

And I was present when the Sabura was incorporated as a 501c6.

And it served this the community well, uh neutral, administrative and compliant.

But as soon as this council even merely mentioned that there may be some consolidation, maybe look at efficiency and TIFF administration at the Sabura meeting last week.

The first item they did is they approved a change from a C6 to a C4, a political charge organization.

The next item, they hired City Blue Productions.

That's a lot as a lobbyist.

He's gonna come down and lobby you on how good these TIFF district currently administration is.

So they're using our tax dollars to lobby you.

Now, under the I how they're getting around this is, and you got to look at it in your budget.

There's you go, hey, we're gonna give them 175,000, how you spend it, you know, don't get too crazy with it, but here it is.

So they go spend it without authority.

So they've gone and hired a lobbyist, really without anyone even knowing, because you've allocated that money to them.

So they're claiming I'll just use it however the hell I want.

And that's wrong.

And you need to take a look at it.

That money sets in a separate city buildings account, but they went out and seeked legal advice from their own attorney to say, no, that's our money and we're going to administer it.

Who's representing the advisory board except the Sabura's own taxpayer funded private attorney?

That needs to be looked at.

Any other further any other public comment?

All right, seeing none, we will move to council initiatives.

Are there any council initiatives?

Councilman O'Donnell, I can't see you on the okay.

Seeing none, we are adjourned.