All right, I'd like to go ahead and uh call to order our uh finance committee.

Uh first up, actually, the only item that we have on our agenda is uh questions for our public safety uh budget.

Is there a presentation or we'll give a couple of minutes for situation Miranda?

I hand it over.

Yeah, good evening.

Uh thank you, Chair Renner.

Um thank you for working with us to determine what these presentations would be most helpful.

So uh today uh director Becker and Chief Spence will go over the 2026 priorities for the division of police, and then we'll be happy to answer any questions following.

Uh thank you uh this evening.

Um the uh attached are our uh priorities for 26.

Uh obviously uh 825 and our transition, both uh uh operationally um which is a big part of uh what we've been working through 20 in 2025 um is is gonna be at the forefront of 2026.

Uh not only um you know the the technology or our comm center move, but also just the various operations uh in spaces that we've really not had before.

Uh and that kind of goes along with our uh accreditation.

We've we've uh about ready to jump through that hurdle uh here in the next week or so, uh hopefully coming back with that accreditation.

But that also means uh certain standards that we did were unable to meet because our facility did not meet those, such as our detention standards, uh things to do with our property and evidence handling.

All those are are cured with our our move to 825.

Second, uh training.

Uh certainly we want to make maximum use of our uh training spaces that are part of 825.

We've already had some some internal meetings, uh layering in the uh the range space, uh the classroom areas, uh, and then uh all of that working internally with how we do our in-service training, which is uh once a quarter, expanding that to uh roll call trainings and and again making maximum use of the 825 facility.

Uh continued focus on employee wellness initiatives, our mental health response through our uh committee liaison officers uh through to our mental health uh liaison position, continue to expand that.

By the way, we do have uh another mental health fair coming up in the next couple of couple of weeks.

Um that also is uh working internally uh with our peer assistance team.

Also, uh as you we mentioned uh last year, uh we do have uh resiliency reboot uh sessions uh that are managed by Lieutenant Kohagan behind me uh for our Sworn and uh communication staff in terms of making making sure that uh any uh situations they may encounter, any stress uh is is handled and that we look out for their mental wellness.

Um again, uh speaking of community engagement, the committee liaison working through our school resource officers, uh continuing to expand those programs and availability, uh trying to reach other segments of the community, uh continuing with our block watch program, expand expanding block watch.

Uh we've got a number of uh other programs that we launched this year, including our uh handle with care program at the school level and middle school uh middle school program.

So we've uh we've rolled that out uh this uh this last quarter.

So continuing those engagement uh uh touch points.

Finally, uh in our operating budget, expanding our flock uh uh footprint, looking at uh adding cameras in areas where we found uh gaps in coverage, uh specifically in some of our neighborhoods to the northeast, uh making sure that that uh uh with the increased traffic on Tech Center Drive, the the development that's happened on the the southern end of the city, and certainly putting in uh sense of infrastructure like 825.

Uh we are uh asking in our operating budget to expand uh the number of cameras we have in operation.

That's really uh Miranda did touch on our staffing asks, those staffing asks uh were were covered.

If there are any questions regarding staffing or the operational side, I am going to turn it over to the safety director in case I missed anything in that brief.

We have a lot of great stuff going on in public safety, we're really excited about as Chief already mentioned, and all of that is only able to happen with your support.

We're very grateful for your support.

Um when I hired new people, which we still have some a few vacancies to fill that are already authorized.

One of the things that's a selling point.

I joked recently that uh Deputy Chief Lawless was attracting his picture was attracting people from Vegas to come here, but the reality is uh the great culture, the great leadership, and the the city leadership is attracting people to come here.

Police officers know when there's support from their council, from their mayor, and they know they have that here, and while we may take that for granted here, it really is somewhat uncommon the last five years across the United States, which has driven a lot of people away from this career field.

So we've been able to attract some really good people because they know when they come here that they have a great organization that's very well supported.

So I'd like to thank you for that.

Okay, thank you.

Uh colleagues, any questions?

Yes, Ms.

Jones.

Yeah, I do have one, and apologies, didn't submit this um before, just was rereading it.

When um in the budget book was referencing the I think the mental health liaison and converting that to a city employee.

Can you just look what does that mean exactly?

So that position was originally funded uh as a city employee.

We uh you know you know, a lot of changes in that space over the last few years.

Uh we found uh difficult to recruit for it.

We changed that uh last year asking for a contracted services uh to contract.

We contracted with Centero.

Um we had uh a contracted uh employee working for us through Sintero.

Uh she moved uh out of out of the region uh and it gave us an opportunity.

She was with us about six or seven months.

It kind of gave us an opportunity to uh again.

We were rolling out some phases of our community liaison uh program who they work hand in hand with the community paramedic.

Uh you know, they're doing a lot of touch points with the officers.

Uh, but we were able to kind of evaluate how well that worked.

And uh we believe that it best would best be serviced by an employee because there's some things that as you work through uh like our response, you know, you get into what can a contracted employee do in terms of a response.

Are they covered by whose insurance and those types of things, especially in that uh you know that that type of space where you're dealing with um you know mental health?