So it'll come up in here in a second.

I don't know if you're gonna change or not.

We didn't know how much you're just changing back.

One year that's uh that's that's that's very similar.

We'll go ahead and call this meeting to order.

This is uh open meeting of the Grand Island City Council.

The Grand Island City uh abides by the open meetings act in conducting business.

A copy of the open meeting act is displayed in the back of the boardroom as required by state law.

Next, we'll proceed with our Pledge of Allegiance.

One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Next, we'll have the city clerk perform roll call.

Councilmember Sheeridan.

Present.

Council Member Stel.

Present.

Councilmember Conley.

Present.

Councilmember Nickerson.

Present.

Council Member Brown.

Present.

Council President O'Neill.

Present.

Councilmember Hazi.

Present.

Councilmember Mendoza.

Present.

Councilmember Pollock will be absent.

Councilmember Lanfier.

Present.

And Mayor Still will be absent.

A sign-up sheet was available in the lobby for individuals wishing to provide input on any of tonight's agenda items.

If you did not sign up to speak on agenda item, please come forward, state your name and the agenda topic in which you'll be speaking.

None have come forward.

So we'll proceed.

And just a quick note we do have another meeting after this at 7 p.m.

So probably to stop just a couple minutes early, but just want to give you a heads up.

But Chief Denny, the floor is yours for the budget proposal.

I can promise you my presentation will be less than an hour.

I don't know how about the questions and everything.

Thank you, Council President and Council.

I just wanted to go over initially some of the accomplishments that we've had uh with the police department real quickly.

Uh mainly our job one was staffing, uh return to staffing and recruitment.

And we are now at 94 sworn.

That's on the books, so that includes a few uh that are in the training process and a few that we've given conditional offers to as well.

So we're 92 authorized with the plus three overhire that you all uh authorized a year ago, and we're uh just short right now officially on paper of the 95 uh total.

So we're looking pretty good on police officers, sworn police officers, and like I said, we do have a few in training, they'll be getting cut loose over the next six to eight months.

Uh we also have 25 and a half non-sworn FTE.

We are at full capacity when it comes to the non-sworn component.

That includes code enforcement officers, property and evidence, uh, victims assistance, clerks, etc.

Uh some of the crime highlights for the last three years, crime overall in all three categories is down 22 percent.

Uh that's a big number.

And I'd like to also say that for the through the first six months of this year compared to the first six months of last year, uh, overall crime is down almost four percent.

So it's looking pretty good there.

Along with uh last year, as you know, we had a big decrease in the accident rate uh so far the first six months of this year compared to the first six months of last year, accident rates are down, which equates to about 50 less accidents.

So we're looking pretty good on all fronts right now.

Recruitment, um, our leadership capacity, organizational structure, uh, our main mission, which is driving crime down and the accident rate as well.

Just to kind of give you an overview.

This is um a schematic of uh what our police department looks like right now, the roster.

Um the main thing that I want to draw to draw your attention to is that you have myself and you have three direct reports.

So you have two division chiefs and you have the office manager, and that'll come into play in a little bit, but you can see kind of how we uh balance it out as much as possible.

Uh the two division chiefs uh generally over the sworn component.

So we have one division chief Elliott over our administrators, our administrative and our investigation component along with code enforcement, and then we have our division chief uh during who's over our uniform component, our patrol officers, and our special operations group, which includes the SWAT team, and then uh our office manager is over the non-sworn component, which is uh all IBEW employees.

Start off with uh personnel request.

We are requesting that we reclass the office manager to a support services administrator.

This was one last year that came up.

It was the only one that didn't make the reclass last year, and that's why we're requesting it again this year.

That's probably the highest priority that I have as far as a personnel request goes.

Additionally, we want to add one lieutenant, and I'll talk about each one of these in depth here in just a second.

Add an admin assistant.

We do not have any admin assistants in the police department, and the three police officers, FTEs.

So to go into more detail about the personnel requests, the support services administrators position.

This is in progressive departments, some in Nebraska, a lot of outside the state, several in the DFW area where I came from.

This is a common thing to civilize a chain of command that that does not supervise sworn components.

So there's no sworn police officers that this position would supervise.

Mainly it puts the all in the chain of command, the IBEW union.

It also takes it cleans up some of the areas from the other two division chiefs.

So it does eliminate asking for higher paying positions, number one, such as lieutenants or another division chief.

And those positions I might say don't have the technical expertise that this civilian position would have, does have.

So it supervises 12, like I said, 12 IBEW employees, including four direct reports.

What they some of the things that this position is over now, and that's why we uh discussed uh where it it moved from an office manager position and became much more complicated and took under more job tasks.

It's a system administrator for records management.

Um it's the agency link and the uh CGIS officer.

It changes our statutes on a monthly basis when they come out.

It's a liaison to county attorney on almost a daily basis, and uh it's also a police data integrity and compliance manager, mainly Spillman Records, and it works with our IT department and the county ID department.

It's also does a lot of open request open records requests.

I get routed on these open record requests, and we do at least five to eight a week.

I think last week we probably did 15.

Uh we got hit by a bot and it just blew us up.

Uh also, and it's a final police payroll oversight.

So it filters a lot of the payroll issues that the police department has and then pushes them over to city payroll.

Uh finally, that's where this would plug in as uh one of my direct reports.

The administrative assistant that we're going to talk about here in a minute would also plug in under that uh chain of command.

For the FTE's officers, uh, one is gonna would be to backfill the lieutenant position, and then two would be to uh form a traffic unit.

The main thing about the traffic unit, you think about just you know uh officers stopping cars and stuff, there's a lot more to it than that.

Uh what we're looking at doing is getting uh education out there to the 15, 16-year-old drivers that are in school and bringing uh driver education out to all the schools to hopefully help them avoid accidents.

Uh I've got four girls, and one of them just started driving, and I was terrified for the first two hours of that driving experience.

But if we push out to the schools uh some education on driving, uh that's what this unit would do.

They would also conduct traffic enforcement in uh high accident areas in school zones and things like that.

They are visible deterrent for crime as well because they'll be out there on the streets uh stopping traffic, and when you see a marked squad car out there, you're less likely to commit some type of crime or even run a red light in front of them.

They'll be involved in uh special events, and uh again, this is since I've been here for three and a half years, probably the biggest complaint I've heard in Grand Island is uh we wish we would do something about traffic, and that includes accidents and speeders and road rage issues and things like that.

The professional standards lieutenant would be the reclass for the lieutenant.

This is the final request for supervisor that I would have for foreseeable years, three to five years out.

Um this position here is uh strictly a liability reduction.

It also would be involved in a three-year mission to bring in a third-party accreditation process to the police department that's kind of a feather in our cap when it comes to meeting a certain accreditation process from an exterior, an expert exterior component.

It would improve the oversight and compliance of a department training.

It would supervise a sergeant and an officer initially, probably eventually two officers.

And again, what we've been trying to do over the last year and a half is to standardize and centralize uh the internal investigations.

And so far, uh over the last 18 months, we've had about 10 internal investigations.

Some of them have been fairly minor uh in in scope, some of them have been pretty major.

So we've had 10 in 18 months, and when you have a department of about 100 people, 100 officers, that's not too unusual, especially when a lot of them we brought in are really young and learning how to be police officers and stuff.

So these are part of the more major complaints.

The minor complaints the sergeants are dealing with and lieutenants are dealing with.

I think it is five five explorers and two Tahoes.

And it also includes the auto pound renovations, which we didn't get to this year, but we'll get to next fiscal year, and the in-car computer replacement schedule.

So some of the things that we have done and we are going to do shortly includes the West substation collaboration with the public works.

So that increases our presence over there.

And it also keeps our big ticket items, our big vehicles, out of the weather from at the LEC.

So it's just it's a win-win.

I can't say enough good things about it.

And it was definitely the right way to go, especially for the cost, because the cost ended up being about 1.2, 1.25 million for a much bigger space that we got compared to if we would try to have built our own building.

Both the South Gate and the North Gate are being completely replaced with sliding gates.

Those should be more reliable, and they'll keep the backside of the law enforcement center more secure, especially in the evening and night hours.

The law enforcement range right now, the collaboration with Heartland shooting range, shooting park is on hold.

We're gonna look at that once we square the other priorities out of out of here, which is the next priority is the auto pound upgrade.

And so after the auto pound upgrade, we'll look at seeing what we can do for the law enforcement range.

But going into the fall and the spring, the auto pound upgrade is going to be great because uh we'll be able to move code enforcement out there to their new office space.

We'll be able to expand the hours of operation for uh code enforcement out there, hopefully, and there'll be people there to deal with customers and and tow trucks coming in and things like that.

So that's their base of operations anyway, and right now we're sending them from the law enforcement center out there on an as-needed basis, and it's not as efficient as it could be.

So if we give them their own place to work out of, uh, that's gonna be a win for them and for the community, the customers that that we deal with, uh, along with freeing up some office space in the law enforcement center.

So we'll have a few uh extra places in law enforcement center, and we won't have need for at least in the foreseeable future, uh, adding office space anywhere else.

I think we're doing pretty good now that we have the West Substation and some office space out there.

We have the auto pound with some we will have the auto panel with some office space.

So we're looking pretty good as far as the expansion goes incrementally.

Again, all of these things that we talked about have uh a positive impact on the quality of life for the citizens of Grand Island.

Uh, like I mentioned, they improve our customer service.

Um, they do make things more efficient, they increase the service life of our vehicles, especially the big vehicles since they're in uh in an enclosed area now.

Um the West Substation does have a classroom portion where we can train people, we can bring people either internally over there to train uh, or we can bring in people from other agencies and do collaborative training and bring in classes that we might not otherwise have, and then right next to that um there's also an area for defensive tactics, and so that's really that's a win-win because it takes a lot of pressure off of our community uh meeting room over at the law enforcement center.

And again, that all brings us better collaboration with our partner agency.

So the sheriff's office, HSI, FBI, NSP, uh, we're able to collaborate more with them through the training through the interaction, and that's a win-win because when a crisis happens in our community, uh, it's not just us showing up, it's NSP or it's the sheriff's department.

We're all we're all in.

And so when we know each other and we know how each other works and operates tactically, uh that's a win.

Again, west uh increased visibility on the west side of the city.

Uh and I'll speak to this for just a second, the increased retention, uh recruitment and retention.

So when we have people that are prospective officers in our community that will come out and do a ride-along with one of our officers, and they see the rebranding that we have on the vehicles, they see the good equipment that you guys have granted us, they see um the communication and leadership that we have in our police department.

That's something that's attractive because when they look at another city, we're competing with them.

And I don't want them the people from this city from this community to go to another city if we can help it.

I want to show them the best product we can.

And for the last four years, y'all have given us uh the resources to bring the best product, and we're doing that.

We have the best leadership, we had the best police officers.

Most of them have come from this community.

We have more female officers than ever before.

We have more uh bilingual Spanish speaking police officers than ever before, and they represent our community.

We're at we're we've been able to intentionally reach out to them and attract them because of the stuff that we have and because of the the people that we are in our police department, the culture that we have, and that also leads to retention.

So when you talk about recruiting from your neighborhood in your community, you're keeping people, they take ownership of being a police officer.

They're probably not gonna go somewhere else during their career, so that means we retain them and we reduce costs overall over a period of years because we're not can constantly churning to hire new people.

So just over where we're going over the next three years, uh, just to kind of give you an idea.

Um, the traffic safety safety initiative is a big deal with a dedicated traffic unit.

We will be dealing with traffic specifically.

We'll be looking at where there are hot spots where we can do education, where we can do special events and reach out to kids.

That means elementary, middle school, and high school.

Uh we're gonna develop, and I put in the packet our current five-year strategic plan.

We're gonna develop a new five-year strategic plan, uh, which will I will say is gonna reduce asks a lot.

We are on top of the curve almost right now, going into this next year.

We'll be on top of the curve.

So when it comes to radio replacements, when it comes to pistol, long guns, all those things, um, we're gonna be adding those incrementally and not in chunks of 50 or 25 and things like that.

So we're gonna reduce our ask uh over this next five-year strategic plan.

There may be some increases in in some other things.

Technology is gonna be one of them, but technology ultimately is gonna allow us to solve crimes better and faster and reduce our overall FTE ask because a camera can be there 24-7, whereas the police officer is just there for eight or twelve hours.

We're gonna continue to focus on violent crime in Grand Island, and over the last uh six months, violent crime so far is down 9.4%.

Uh, we have been focusing on that for the last several years.

It has been decreasing, it continues to decrease, and we're gonna focus on it into the future.

Uh that's a that's a big deal in my mind of of us attracting the kind of demographic that we want to this to this community.

We're also going to work on drug-related crimes, those are two big things: violent crimes and drug-related crimes.

And we're gonna work on uh whatever community engagement initiatives we can.

Uh, we have one community engagement police officer right now, Sean Cook, he does a great job.

Um, he's very busy, and we'll probably end up adding another officer to that to dedicate to special events, community engagement, business engagement, things like that, and leadership development and succession planning because we've all got a limited time.

Hopefully, I have a few more years, but uh I'd like for you guys to have a good option for the next police chief.

Um I haven't done my job if I haven't provided you with a decent internal uh option uh for police chief.

And that's it.

That was pretty good time-wise, Mr.

Hazi.

Thank you, Ryan.

So thank you, Chief, for the presentation.

You know, I want to know, I want to say a first couple things is that I think that the community outreach level of what our police department is doing is better than I've ever seen.

You know, so kudos for that.

I think our staffing level is awesome because I think when you came on board, that was one of the major concerns of the council is our staffing level and the burden we were putting on those that were still working and working a lot of overtime.

So I think the staffing level improvement is just is is great.

Um a couple of questions.

Uh, one of the ones, some of this your top priority on your support service administrator.

I got a couple things I want to ask or point out at this point.

Um, some of them might be Aaron's and not yours.

So I mean, if if if the question needs to go to Aaron, we'll we'll do that.

One of the things in the job description, you know, because we just went through this last year, and then the the mayor formed a three-person committee, and that three-person committee just finished here a couple months ago.

And you know, and unfortunately, all everything that we did and our recommendations from that committee to the mayor didn't make it in the packet, and so I don't I'm assuming you have seen our recommendations.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

So on the job descriptions, one of the things that I think is interesting, probably a bit surprising, and I I don't, it's talking about doing employ employee payroll, purchasing accounts receivable, accounts payable.

There's all kinds of things that we're already doing, including payroll.

You know, I thought our payroll system was pretty well automated, and we did payroll improvements.

I don't know if every department has somebody who organizes payroll for them, and so maybe your department might be different than others.

We don't, as far as I know, we don't have other people in other departments doing payroll outside of finance.

I don't I don't want to speak for Chelsea, but I think we have some people in some departments that filter that.

Is that right?

For Mickey?

Yeah.

Yeah, it is my understanding that there's someone in each department that at least reviews time cards.

But yeah, we have a liaison in each department, but the actual payroll is done in payroll.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, I I came from a company of a couple thousand people, and and it was all automated.

Even our expense reports are all automated, and we never needed a third party.

You know, when I turned in my expense reports, I didn't need to hand it to somebody to do my expense report or plan my travel.

It was all automated.

And so I think there's some automation features that I would love to see the city engage in if they're not already.

But some of the other stuff with the accounts payable, accounts receivable, training, you know, doing the travel and training, those kind of things I I'm a little bit surprised that we have a person that helps coordinate that with us.

So I so I think there's things in the job descriptions which I'd like to maybe it's a different conversation.

There's things in there that I don't know we need to have at that level.

Maybe we do.

Uh on the wage setting.

When I looked at the wage setting, one of the comments that I saw is that well, we when we looked at the wage last time, we tagged it on the supervisor, the uh police record supervisor.

Well, the reason because that would that job was easy to match.

There was in our array of I don't know how many, ten people, we had 10 matches.

Everybody does that.

And so it was an easy match.

But in the office manager one, when we were looking at it again, we only had two matches.

That's why under the Nebraska CIR, we have to have a minimum of three.

And the reason that we don't set our wages on two, and in this case, it is set on two, or at least the recommendation is to set it on two.

We have a match in Ames, Iowa at a in this position uh pays 154,000 and a match in Rapid City that pays 107.

Well, that's a big discrepancy.

When and so when you only get two, your your middle is 131,000.

And so I that's why we don't do two, and that's why we don't base it on two.

Ames isn't even a match.

In our committee, we went through and we looked at Ames.

Ames has four police records clerks and 13 911 dispatchers.

And so this is a mix between Ames is a mix between John Rosenlin and his dispatch and his supervisory dispatch person and a police records clerk.

And so we don't have that organization.

So Ames isn't a match because we don't meet the CIR requirement of a 70 to 80% job match.

So we have 70% that doesn't even do police work.

I mean, in our case, it happens to be in John Rosenlin's department.

So I don't think Ames is a match.

So I I don't like using one match or two, you know.

And so I think that the wage setting matches need to be reviewed.

And they were reviewed a couple of months ago, and now we've got different ones today, and so I I want to go through that, but I want to know, want you to know why two matches doesn't cut it.

You know, and the one that does lead the pack on wage setting is 154,000 a year of Ames isn't a match at all.

The second the third thing I thought on that was the internal equity.

What I thought from Aaron's comments that I from what I read is is he was looking at internal equity from inside the department, making you know, because she is an important part of this uh executive team.

Okay, the the difference is from our perspective, all of our payroll plans in the past have had internal equity features, but it's internal equity across 550 plus employees.

It's not against a hundred and some plus employees in the police department.

So it's citywide and not department wide.

And so I think from what I've seen so far, the internal equity piece, which was a big problem in a year ago, has only been again reduced to department wide internal equity, and I think it's missing the bigger need to analyze citywide.

So I think those pieces are still missing, you know, for me to support it.

And then I um the last thing I did want to talk about the humane society.

I know that's a missing piece, and it's a problem piece.

Uh you know, and we have a lot, we have you have new people, we have new people.

So under the state law, 16206 really gives us the authority to do animal control and to set our own licensing and and literally the authority to destroy animals.

And I think the destruction of an animal is what terms they use in the state law.

Now we have a humane society, which is uh not a city function, but it's over here.

Um so I want to we have what it does in the state law is it tells us to go and create all the fine details in city code.

You know, so 5-34 talks us about animals running at large, and we have a bill on our schedule of bills in the next meeting, you know, and there's uh the the bill started off for the June uh kenneling at 19,000 and change.

And so when I was looking at that, one of the things that we are we are picking up every animal at large.

So it's not only nine, it's not only 19,000, that's just the kenneling bill.

I imagine there's another 30,000, because these were all ACO pickup and taken out there.

So we're talking about we're spending probably 50,000 in a month just to go pick up animals running at large and taking them out to the Humane Society.

So 5-36 in the city code talks about dangerous animals, and we absolutely want to pick up dangerous animals and remove those so people in the community don't get hurt.

But I think there's room under 5-34 for animals running at large where our city code says may be impounded.

And so I think that there's room that we don't have to take every animal and create this large kenneling bill and things for the code, the ACOs to do, the animal control officers.

They're running out, and and in tonight's there, there's like two rabbits.

We picked up a rabbit, we picked up another rabbit, we picked up two chickens, we picked up a guinea pig.

Some of those things, I don't think, and each one of those, the chicken and the rabbit and the guinea pig, each one cost us 135 dollars for kenneling.

And nobody came and picked them up.

They're they're not a danger to the community.

Humane society may want to do something with them, may not want to do something with them.

That's kind of like their call.

I think that what we need to do is we need to fine-tune what is important in the police laws to try to make sure our community is safe.

But picking up every stray chicken is probably not an important priority for me for an ACO to do, although I want to make sure that all of our dangerous animals are picked up, and you know, so we want to do the job, but I don't need I think we overdo it.

And so I think that we can it makes it so complex right now.

We've been talking about this for six months, you know, and we've not reached a resolution apparently from what I can see.

We need to make it simpler.

And so I hope as we talk about where the Humane Society kenneling fits into our role, and I appreciate everything you've done to because when they had a problem, we came on board.

That was a great effort on your department's half and on your behalf, and so I appreciate all of that.

But now we need to fine-tune what we really need to be doing, and there's a difference between what the humane society, what their mission in life is, and what the city's role in this process is.

So I think we really need to fine-tune that.

And I and I want I want to make sure that our city code doesn't require that we impound every animal running at large.

It doesn't require it.

And so maybe that's where we need to start looking at that component.

So those are my comments for now.

Thank you, Chief Denny.

If um on the Humane Society and animal control, um, I'm more than happy to do the bidding of the council with regard to what exactly you'd like to do, and we can always hammer something out and be more specific about that.

You know, we're we're police officers uh and the animal control officers are very similar.

So if we have strict uh guidelines that we will or won't pick up, because for the council it's kind of the political hot potato as well.

And so you're gonna get some some feedback from your constituents.

And so as long as the council um sets the tone for what we will and won't pick up, I'm fine with that.

I don't, you know.

I've had two car two dogs dropped off at my house just in the last couple of months, one by the postman.

And uh so I had to uh we have to find uh uh the owner of those of those animals or put them in the shelter.

So no, I'm uh I think the police department is more than happy to do anything that the council deems that they have the temperament for based on the feel of the community.

Yeah, and I I've asked to sit in on these meetings, and no one's invited me to a meeting.

You've invited me to another meeting, not the one that we need to to have for this, but I've asked to be a part of that, and I have not been a part of any formal discussion with you or other people about this contract, but I'd love to, because it was a no-bid contract for 36 months plus a couple months.

You know, I it it needs to be bid out.

I I think there's all kinds of issues with it, and I'd love to be a part of this a positive solution, so we're all on the same board.

Um the other one is we went out to the lazy bee motel on the bill tonight, and and there was like seven kittens, and and it was a 945 dollars that the taxpayers are paying to haul those not those nine kittens to the uh no as seven kittens to haul the seven kittens, nine hundred and forty-five dollars is in the bill tonight that the city taxpayers are paying.

Again, we don't pick up feral cats.

Uh this is all one haul on one location, and I just think it's too much.

I I think that what we're doing is good, but I think we need to find a fine-tune where what is important for the community, what is important for the for your ACOs to be doing, and it's not picking up every rabbit or chicken or you know, that's out there running at large.

And even though the humane society, I would say that people who pick up a stray cat or something stray and they bring it out there, that the humane society should still function as a humane society without regard to the kenneling contract with the city.

I and I I don't disagree with you.

I will say that we have looked at any other option besides the humane society as a repository for some of the animals, and there is not an option out there.

Um but again, um the police department's more than happy to carry out the edicts of the council, whatever the appetite is there for repercussions from the community, you know, positive or negative.

So we're more than happy to do that and follow out those orders.

Um I will say for the support services administrator position.

Um we did ask for it last year.

It is a cutting-edge position, but it is something that reduces costs overall, and it allows us not to have a lieutenant or division chief added to our budget number one.

That wouldn't that wouldn't solve the problem because this position, and it's about the position, not a person from uh office manager to support service administrator.

This is a position that reduces our cost overall, it centralizes command structure over the non-sworn component.

It's something that's done if it's not done but a couple places in our in our array.

Um, I can't help that, but it is done in a lot of places that I've looked at academically, and I've been a part of as well.

And this place, this this I feel so strong about this position.

I'm talking to the whole council here, that last year I offered to to give up my step raise or reduce me step raises to fund this.

I'll do the same thing this time coming up.

That's how strong I feel about this position.

Well, I think one of the things, Chief, is that all city employees, all 550 plus of us, we use the same wage study.

What I want the wage study to be, it's not the position the wages are are incorrectly set.

The wage study needs to be accurate and done like we're doing for every city employee and not have a unique way of setting this person's wages.

So my issue is about using a correct wage study to set the salary.

Position or not.

I'm not necessarily for or against the issues against it, or as you say, evidence it's not under a civilian in any other cities in our array.

That's what we found when we did the same survey a couple months ago.

It's not done in our array.

So it's not a common thing.

It might be something the right thing to do, but it's just not common.

So my point is I want to make sure that the salary array, if that's the organization you want in the council wants, that the salary setting component of this is the same for all 550 plus people and not uniquely different for one.

That's that's my issue.

And it has been and is today in front of us.

It's uniquely different for one because we don't do it this way for anybody else.

I understand that.

We did put this up last year, uh, and I thought we had come to a conclusion, at least an understanding of of this position at this point this year.

Mr.

Stelk has a question as well.

Thank you.

Mr.

President.

Um driving around the community is there's a lot of uh abandoned vehicles, vehicles that don't run that are sitting in driveways four or five deep.

You go around the back and they're they're back behind a fence in that.

And years ago, we used to have a community cleanup day, and they get rid of those vehicles, but I guess I'd like to see a little bit more attention put to uh vehicles that don't run.

How long are how long can they keep them on their lot?

It's just it's kind of distressing, and it kind of brings down a value of the neighborhood and and that if if there's a bunch of vehicles on a on a lot.

Um I like the speed traps that you're doing.

It's um they're not speed traps.

Yeah, well, the radio.

Yeah.

I I guess I watch too many cop shows on TV.

But the radar you're doing and that I do a lot of walking at the cemetery, and and I I like to see that going on.

Uh you know, the other night there was a guy going 100 miles an hour down Stally Park, and that's dangerous.

But you know, we need to get some of these kids under control and maybe jerk their license if that's the way they're gonna drive, because it it scares you, and it scares me.

I agree with you, and um, you know, uh driving uh traffic is a lot like crime uh when you raise the temperature when you see more police vehicles when you know you might have a good chance of getting stopped or in crime side of things, getting arrested.

Um, you're gonna avoid that location.

And and the goal is to raise the temperature in Grand Island to where whether it's somebody coming into Grand Island thinking they're gonna commit a crime or somebody coming in to speed through the city, they're gonna think twice about doing that.

And that's that's the goal of all of this is raising that visibility uh and focusing on the things, quality of life issues, cars parked uh outside locations like that, junk cars uh speeding through areas and the crime.

So we're we're working on all of that.

I would uh see if uh division chief elliott has anything to say about the cars that are uh junk cars because we we have been working on those, but those that's a process, and that takes a little bit of time.

Yeah, that that definitely takes time.

Uh some of it's public public education as well.

So if we get a complaint of a uh of a residence or an address that we go and look at city code identifies how long they are able to leave their abandoned or their inoperable vehicles, unlicensed, unregistered vehicles on their property.

Um as far as putting them behind a fenced yard, um, unfortunately, we're not allowed to go on the neighbor's property or anything like that to see what's back there.

If we can see it from the street or from the uh the alleyway, if we're able to drive through the alley, uh we can see it and we can identify vehicles.

Then usually it's uh 72 hours, contact the owner, make sure that they're aware, give them maybe five or ten days to uh improve the property, or we start towing them.

And we have done that, and I think there is one address in particular.

I think we towed five vehicles one day from their uh from either out front or in the out of their driveway just because of that exact reason.

Now, the vehicles that were behind the fence because they weren't visible to us, um, it doesn't meet city code for us to enforce that.

And and my intent is not to pick on people.

My intent is I like a beautiful city, and and I want a clean city, and and I like what you're doing, but um sometimes it gets a little frustrating when you guys are we have uh citizens out there that are abusing the law and hiding vehicles and and not moving them and they don't run.

They just need to bite the bullet and take it to Kramer's.

Absolutely.

And we get a lot of complaints on those type of things.

We get complaints from the city councilmen themselves that have uh reached out to us or reached out to the online complaint system and filed those complaints, and we look into them, identify if there is a problem, identify what the city code is that it relates to, and again try and solve that problem, whether it be through public education with that citizen or enforcement action uh with citations or removal of the property altogether.

Um, as far as cleanup day and stuff like that, that costs money.

Uh we don't have necessarily uh budget line item for those type of things.

We just went and cleaned up a property with an abandoned trailer where a homeless person was, and it happened to be one of those pieces of property that nobody's owned.

We talked to Chad.

Chad said nobody's owned that property since the 1800s when the city was formed.

Um, but they so they kind of found that loophole, but we went and had to clean it up to the tune of about 20,000.

So it's cleaned up and it's and it's uh uh not an ISOR anymore, but again, it's a uh it's a big ticket item if you don't have the funds set aside for it.

The other thing, Chief, is I I really like the recruitment that you're doing.

You're bringing some really sharp people on your staff, and and I commend you and I commend all the officers.

Um I'm really impressed of the call quality of the people that are coming to Grand Island.

And uh as far as your office position goes, uh I support you on that.

I think you need a manager there.

So thank you.

Thank you.

I'm proud of the officers that we brought on.

They're they're a good group.

Mr.

Nickerson.

Thank you, Chief, for a very good report.

Like Mark, I agree that we need to see what we can do to help this to have this support service administrator work through all those details, but it looks like it is very important to you, and I think we need to come together and try to find the the right way to make that happen.

You got such a good report and a lot to be proud of, not only from your leadership, from the division chiefs, and then you've got your lieutenants and your sergeants.

And I looked at that org chart, and I thought, holy cow, that is a lot of stuff going on.

And every one of those sergeants has five or six people reporting to them, and it just goes through the whole system.

So that's that's our police department.

That we don't we don't see that.

We see the patrol car running around, but that is what keeps this community safe, and every aspect of it, you know, from the detective side to everything that goes, all the nuances here, the records keeping, that is it.

And that's huge when you take a look at that.

And I appreciate so much everything that we're doing, the culture, the perceptions, all the things I think have been good over the years that I've been here.

They've even improved more over the last several years because that's where the focus has been, and that's because of the direction starts with you, you know that, and it it just filters through the entire organization.

So that's that's very commendable, and thank you for all that because I know that's very important to you and everyone behind you.

Thank you.

When we take a look at the ask that you have tonight as we go into the budget time, I mean, obviously, you have a lot of things that are very important to you.

And for me, I'm gonna be a broken record and say once again that when we take a look at the needs of not just the police department but every department in this city, we want to make sure that we're able to sustain those requests.

And we're not to that point yet, but I we got to start with something.

We've got to start with the request and sort through that because going off the council here in four months.

The worst thing that I could do, worst thing that any of us could do, is to create a situation where we staff the government in a way that we have to start looking at ways to get rid of people in a year or two.

We have to take a look at that five-year to six-year picture and say, how's our decisions today going to affect year three, four, and five?

Because I don't want you to bring on three or four or five people, and next year saying, How are we going to reduce by that many?

We we need a the same way we've been doing it over the last four years as you've talked about.

It's been very structured, deliberate, affordable, sustainable, and that's the path we have to have.

I don't know what those answers are tonight, but we know where the requests are starting.

And you kind of hedged that at the beginning, saying, you know, of all the staffing, the most important thing to me right now is this support service administrator.

That's really at the top of my list, and maybe we'll have to take a look at some of those others.

But one of the things I also want to check with Patrick while you were presenting was, you know, how are we doing on our vacancy savings?

Because that's always been a that's kind of a way of knowing how we're doing on staffing.

And very good improvement there, which tells me that we are seeing more consistency in people that are staying.

We don't we're not seeing the turnover.

You're starting to see those those new recruits come in and stay.

In 2025, he he shared with me that we had about 840,000 in vacancy savings from that year.

So we, I mean, those were positions that hadn't been filled, people have left.

And this year we're only projected to be maybe about 280,000.

So when you see that number shrinking, uh to me, that's a very positive sign that stability is there, that people are sticking around longer, and that's that's the progress that I like to see as a as uh kind of a barometer of how things are going.

I think that's a very good snapshot there.

So thank you for that.

Again, you talked about the quality of the recruits, and we want to continue to build on that.

But I just want to make sure that even those that are behind you understand that when we have to make decisions for the entire city, we have to make sure that we're able to afford that two years from now, three years from now, four years from now.

And we aren't at a spot where I know we're bred on that yet, but that will be in the next few weeks.

We're gonna have a very good idea where that is.

But I can't say enough about the good things that are going on.

I served with Sergeant Wood on the Animal Advisory Committee.

He has also been involved in some discussions on some code updates that they may be presenting to us in time uh for animal control and those type of things.

So that'll be interesting to see how that all pans out.

So very good people.

Thank you for the work you're doing.

I wish I could say you ask, you get it.

I don't know.

We don't know yet, but we're gonna do our best.

I thought that's how it was.

Yeah, that's the we're gonna do our best.

I appreciate that.

And um, you know, I know we operate under a larger city umbrella.

You all have to make tough decisions on when it comes to cutting and stuff.

We're speaking plainly here.

Um I can get along when if it comes down to it without the two extra police officers.

Um, with the plus overhire that we have built in place right now.

Um it would be more difficult to get along functionally because it takes time to get these people in their place and trained, for example, without the lieutenant or the support services administrator.

I just want to leave you all with that idea that you know the extra two police officers that's great.

I want that for a traffic unit.

Um, can we function and carry out the mission without that necessarily based on the needs of the whole city?

Yes.

All righty, I appreciate that too.

Thank you.

Mr.

Sheard.

Thank you.

Uh I was gonna say, I'm not gonna repeat everything they said, but you're doing a great job.

So all the things you said, that's fantastic.

One of the things that I look at, I don't get on social media much anymore, and I don't read the comments.

So I don't know what's about to happen here later.

I don't know why so many people are here.

Uh one of the things I do see occasionally is someone badmouthing Grand Island who used to live here.

When they see a story, they'll say, Well, there's Grand Island for you.

So glad I got out of there.

Crime, crime, crime, crime, crime.

I would like them to say, gee, I wish I could come back, because the crime's down 22%.

But they don't tell that story.

Uh, but we sure as hell need to, because it's fantastic.

Um we have lower crime, that's one less thing for people to complain about.

Yep, and it's better, yep.

But when people outside know about it and start to talk about it, uh, it's probably as important to people wanting to come here as anything else.

And you're playing such a big factor in that.

I just want to make sure we're leveraging that and telling our story, trying to change that reputation that is out there for whatever reason.

Uh I have two questions.

One, Pat.

Actually, Pat, you're probably gonna answer both these questions.

Uh can we set up, as Chuck was talking about, and Chief was talking about, can we set up a meeting, a small group meeting with the Humane Society soon to review.

I know the last time we met with them that I was a part of it, they weren't happy.

There was some confusion on the contract that they felt was not accurate.

I kind of just talking about the things we're talking about.

Can you set up a meeting uh that we can address that?

I don't know if it's a study session with everybody, maybe everybody wants to be a part of that.

So I believe it was Monday we got formal written notice that they're terminating the contract.

Well, I then I suppose we better have a meeting.

Right.

So I don't you really can't have that with humane society, can you?

I mean, that's kind of a legal question.

Can we?

Um it'll kick through the procurement process and all the rules.

The purchasing agent will have to run that here eventually.

So yes, but not right now.

Um we'll have to go through formal procurement on a replacement contract.

So would that be a appropriate time now for us to have a conversation as a counsel?

Not tonight, but a conversation as counsel to decide what we, as Chuck was saying, what we deem important, so that we can start.

I mean, if that seems faster than I thought, maybe.

If the decision is to issue an RFP or do something else, absolutely.

So maybe it's just a topic to out of scope or agenda right now, but for us to figure out something that we can have that conversation to hear from the community and hear from counsel on that topic.

I'll work on it and send something out to council.

More related to this, uh is as Chuck mentioned, uh his issues with the salary comparison to Ames and having the two.

Uh is Aaron here, can he speak to how the salary, what he was a part of, how this salary came to be?

He's not here right now.

No.

But do you know the process or why it was done the way that the other one is?

I do not know Aaron's process.

So in the packet, as you can see, we have uh the director who who uh puts in the request for a reclass, then it goes HR, then the finance, then into administration.

So each of those gives their opinion on that reclass.

I if I could add on that, I know that Aaron could I think it's a 16-page report or whatever that he that he gave.

Um he did do a comparison, not specifically of title to title, but also who is over those positions, um, who is over like property evidence, victims, um, clerical staff, dispatch, whatever.

A lot of those used to be traditionally uh a sworn component.

So ultimately you had a sergeant or lieutenant or a captain or something over those over those areas that don't have a an understanding of what those jobs do because they probably didn't didn't do them, and so they don't have an understanding that from coming up through that through that chain of command what those jobs entail.

It wasn't really the best way to manage, and it's not financially the best way to manage either.

So when you have a support services administrator, for example, um, that does the job of what a lieutenant does in Bellevue or whatever, for example, um, it's a lower cost, and it's a higher skill set because they know what they're doing.

Most likely they've done that job for a long time.

I can tell you that the sworn officers here, if you made us do something like be an administrator over spillman or the the payroll, it would be messed up.

That's not our lane.

Chief, I don't think I'll speak for me, and I for Chuck say it, and I think I heard uh two others that say it.

I don't think we have a problem with the position.

I just want to make sure we're all comfortable on how we got to the salary and that we're comfortable with approving it or adjusting it if it needed to be, but uh getting this passed without friction.

Right.

That's that's where I'm at.

Um because I do I you know 100% agree with the position and everything you've said.

Point made, love it.

The issue that this title might have a similar situation or similar title with other departments, that's where we have to be careful to make sure that we're not stepping out of bounds.

And I just wanted to, you know, touch on that or just see here what the ripple effect would be, or if there's a study that needs to be done on this for other departments.

I don't want extra work.

I just want to make sure that we're clean on this so we can approve it without friction.

I think it would be more uh analytics on the full entire organization in that position, that role.

Um, because we have a lot of administrative assistance support people in different departments that are just as important in those departments as as what Kevin is talking about.

So are we gonna have equity?

I don't know the answer to that.

Uh Aaron's just not here.

So yes, we need to look at that and make sure there's equity there.

And is you know, as as Kevin's describing it, I'm sorry, I do not know all the titles across the city, the 500 titles we have or whatever.

Uh so I don't know if the other people in these other positions would be supervising or having the same responsibilities or doing the exact same things, or if this is the title that's available, but maybe not the right title.

I don't I don't know.

Um I know that this seems like a really good idea.

We just gotta figure out how to how to get past the hump.

I think there's a little misnomer too when we use the word admin assistant.

This has this like a it's like comparing a division chief with a office intern.

That is this has nothing to do with admin assistant at all.

And so when when somebody would look internal equity, when somebody looks at what this job description entails, um, I would challenge anybody internally in this city to try to do some of the jobs that this job description covers.

Um it is unique to some degree in Nebraska, it is not unique nationwide.

It's it's a cost reduction.

Is this the title it would is it the right title?

Yeah, uh, I looked at that.

Uh that's a good question.

And Lincoln, for instance, has a support services administrator position, which does a lot of this stuff.

It's fairly close, but Lincoln's a much bigger town, and so we really couldn't use that as a um comparison necessarily.

But they do it this way, they overlook it's basically modeled.

Yeah, Lincoln Lincoln is one of those more progressive departments that puts a lot of the civilian uh structure under civilian component for cost effectiveness and for skill skill sets.

Um, and there's um obviously from the Dallas Fort Worth area, there's plenty of Dallas uh um departments in the Dallas Fort Worth area that do that as well.

Yeah, well, I know I know Ryan, we're getting close to when you wanted to call it, but I appreciate hearing this.

I I like the plan.

Uh I'm hoping we can get through this.

Thanks for educating us.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um I know we're getting closer.

Chuck, did you have something real quick?

Real quick.

Okay.

Yeah, uh, Chief Denny, you had said that there was no alternatives other than the Humane Society for the kenneling.

You know, I I have had like within the last year, uh, a comment with other kennels, somebody who owns other kennels in Grand Island, and the comment is is they don't want to step on the toes of the humane society again.

So they're gonna be respectful and and not bid because the humane society wants it.

And so I think there's political parts to this contract.

I don't, you know, again, this one was a no-bid contract, but I think there are others that would be interested if the humane society has in fact put in a I don't want to do this anymore.

I think there are absolutely others that would be interested, and so I wouldn't want to close the door that there's no other alternatives as you said.

So one thing I might cut in here too.

So um there'll be another review of all the the positions on the 18th of August as well.

So there will be continued conversation.

I know there's been a lot.

Um we have uh quite a crowd out here as well.

I don't think any of us uh want to delay them all getting in here either.

Um I might just ask a I don't want to I want to avoid redundancy, might just have two real quick questions.

Okay, um but on the auto pound.

Um you said the hours would increase if you did that renovation there with code enforcement.

Like how late in the day do you think that would be that they would open?

How are they today?

How late would they stay open um if they moved over there?

Yeah, we right now we was since we're fully staffed, we've now had the opportunity to get more ACOs to include some weekend coverage for calls for service, and uh um if we move once we move out there, we will look to maybe even stay open till 4 or 4 30, but they still have to come to the police department first to pay all that stuff.

So um there's no sense in staying open if the police department's closed to pay.

Okay, just a quick question.

Um, so with that's all I have, and I think we'll we'll go ahead and conclude our agenda and we have to get to the other meeting here at seven, but we'll be back to talk about uh more budget stuff in a later meeting.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

All right.