Good evening, everybody.

I am calling the meeting to order.

It is 6 30 p.m.

here on Tuesday, 28th of April 2026.

This is the City Council ad hoc committee for the amendment to ordinances section 22-19 through 22-30, which is the police department eligibility ordinance.

I'm Joe Britton.

I'm the chairman of this ad hoc.

I have full attendance from my committee, Councilman Holly and Councilman Henry.

We'll just go around the room so the mic picks you up.

So we'll start at the table.

If you could just give your name and your title so the camera picks you up.

Mike Sturvant, Deputy Chief of Police.

Patrick Ridenhauer, police chief.

Taylor O'Brien, Chief of Staff.

Tracy Now R Sisting Corporation Council.

Peter Bazet, Council for She's pension AC City Council.

We draw down our city council, ward seven.

And we have Mayor Alves with us as well.

Okay, so the agenda for tonight is to go over the proposed changes to the police ordinance.

This was presented and discussed the last city council meeting as I understand it.

What we are doing is we are changing our local ordinance to make it in line with the uh recommendation and directive from the police officer standards and training council, um, which would allow eligibility to extend um and waive the citizenship requirement and extend eligibility for appointment to a position of probationary candidate in a law enforcement unit to permanent legal residents.

Um that be and DACA recipients as well.

Um so that being said, um we'll go in the committee, we'll ask questions.

Um we'll go to exficia.

You can ask questions as well.

We have um police department here as well, and the mayor's office.

Um they can have their opportunity to present to um before I get to questions.

I'll defer uh to the mayor and tailor if you guys want to start it off, or if we want to field questions first.

Yeah, please feel questions.

Okay, so we'll start with the committee.

Any questions from the committee?

No real questions, I guess just an observation.

It seems like we're adopting the post standards, but also making some revisions to some like semantics in the ordinance to changing letters to from uppercase to lowercase and then uh removing any kind of uh gender language to make sure they're gender inclusive language, like they, them, that type of thing, which I am a big fan of.

Uh no other questions.

But I would like to hear from the police chief on some information about uh what went behind this and why it's a good fit for Danbury.

That's a question, but you want to frame it as a question.

The floor is yours, councilman.

But I'll pass it over to it.

Okay.

That's what I'm saying.

Councilman, if um whoever in the room wants to explain the DACA recipient eligibility or the what actually DACA recipient is.

They're eligible.

I mean, what's the specific question on eligibility to the chair?

So the specifics of being a DOCA recipient.

Well, I don't think anybody here's the migration expert.

What we understand is the federal government uh gives out things like green cards, which is permanent residents or craze people citizens, and then there's another uh status that is a DACA recipient, uh quote unquote.

You may have heard it's dreamers.

Uh it is a federal government designation.

Um they would have identification or some kind of documentation showing that there are DACA recipients, just like a green card holder would just like we do when we show our our IDs.

In fact, better than local ID because it'd be something federal.

Follow-up is so explaining looking at what DACA includes.

Um, when we're hiring somebody, is DACA a U.S.

citizen?

Is DACA a permanent resident, or do they have a guaranteed legal status, or they must and they have to reapply every two years for the eligibility?

So I I could ask for those individuals if you like.

Is DOC a U.S.

citizen?

Uh no, it is a designation of a status.

Are DAC a permanent residents?

Uh no, they are DACA recipients.