Okay.

Uh appreciate.

Let's get right to it.

HPD, the biggest budget of the city, and the last budget workshop.

I apologize, I'm going to have to be stepping out.

Um my vice chair will be taking over here in a little while.

Um, but just want to take this opportunity before I go to thank all of my colleagues for all of your participation in the workshops.

I do want to welcome Council Member Salinas who came in during the last workshop.

And uh mostly I want to thank my staff, Katie and Jordan and Helen who really do all the heavy lifting for these workshops.

Um, very, very grateful for your support.

And with that, uh Chief, the floor is yours.

Good morning.

Because you're okay.

There you go.

Good morning.

Uh I'm here along with the interim deputy director Joanne Trent, and uh we're here today to present the Houston Police Department FY 2027 proposed budget, which includes a general fund allocation of just over 1.2 billion dollars.

I'm honored to be here on behalf of Chief Diaz to represent the hardworking classified officers and civilian professionals who serve the residents of Houston every day.

Under the leadership of Chief Diaz, HPD continues to focus on accountability, fiscal responsibility, and above all service.

We continue to reinforce the foundation of this department by building new initiatives that are designed to improve efficiency, support our officers, and better serve the people of Houston.

I'm proud to report that crime is down in the city of Houston across all NIVERS categories.

Response times are down across all categories, and crashes are down across all categories as well.

Some areas of progress that I'll touch on at the end for accomplishments are recruitment and retention, operational changes in patrol that improved officer wellness, decreased response times, and decrease overtime spending, the addition of operational support division and the patrol support unit, which we're very proud of.

And as we move into the specifics of the proposed budget, I just want to sincerely thank the mayor and city council and all of you here for your continued partnership and commitment to public safety.

Your support has allowed the department to continue to improve and meet the needs of citizens of Houston, and we greatly appreciate you all.

Next slide.

Next slide.

So here we have the HPD org chart.

The significant change here from last year is if you look at the very top right, the yellow box to the right of chief of staff is operational support division.

And like I said, I'll touch on that toward the end.

Next slide.

Okay, HPD at a glance.

So the numbers as of April 30th, 2026, you see in front of you, the ones I'd like to highlight.

So our uh breakdown by gender, the department as a whole, 76% male, 24% female.

If you look at our classified workforce or our police officers, we're 81% male, 19% female.

If you look at our cadets right now in the academy, it's 79% male, 21% female.

So hopefully in seven or eight months, our numbers will increase on female officers.

And then if you look at our ethnicity, we are a majority minority department.

So we are broken up classified Hispanic officers, 36%, white officers or 34%, African American officers, 21%, Asian 8%, and then other or mixed makes up one percent of the department.

We serve an incredibly diverse city, and we are very fortunate and blessed to have a police department that represents the community we serve.

And there was efforts made a very long time ago to increase those numbers, but the fact is today that the city of Houston is so diverse, and the citizens that live in our city and the ones that have a desire to serve, we have to do very little to ensure that uh the diversity of our applicants is maintained.

We have a lot of people in the city with a heart for service, and and the applications and the ethnicity breakdown of our applicants showed that.

Next slide.

Strategic guidance alignment.

So here discussing the alignment to the mayor's defined priorities initiatives and the way our budget breaks down.

So as you can imagine, 95% of ours goes in public safety, and then a little bit of quality of life and government that works.

Next slide.

Okay, plans to eliminate the gap.

We've outlined HPD's $8.9 million dollar budget reductions by program.

So as we look to try to make reductions to better align our operations and our staffing levels with the city's current needs and our current organizational needs, along with prioritizing prioritizing services to the community.

We cut 8.9 million dollars out of this budget, and we made up for it in two ways, or we accounted for in two ways.

Number one, a million and a half dollars came from our EPRO system, which is our program allowing retired officers to come back and work on a part-time basis for an hourly wage to help with a whole variety of things.

As of July 1 of 27, that program will be eliminated for now.

So that makes up for or that accounts for 1.5 million.

Another 7.4 million comes from 91 FTs or full-time equivalent civilian positions that we are freezing for this budget year.

Um classified or our civilian workforce at the Houston Police Department is absolutely invaluable to us.

We hate to be at this point, but when we look at the services we need to provide to the citizens of Houston, this is the spot where the two spots we felt like we could make the cuts right now with the least amount of impact to response times, investigations, and so forth.

I would note that this year, you know, we'll touch on this in a minute, but this year our overtime spending is down twenty-two percent as opposed to last year by dollar, but it's down twenty-seven percent by hours work.

As you guys know, we had a contract, a contract that gave us um a much needed raise, which is also helped with recruiting and retention, which I'll discuss in a little while.

But with those contract obligations come raises, and with those raises, the overtime rates go go up by hour.

So it's not just the financial amount that's important, but it's the number of hours work that accounts for that financial amount as well.