Welcome everyone to the July 7th regular city council meeting or city council work session meeting.

The time is 602.

I'll turn the time of city secretary for roll calling certification on point.

Mayor Scott Bradley?

Here.

Mayor Pro 10 W.

Scott Smith?

Here.

Deputy Mayor P10 Ken Otman?

Here.

Councilmember Elizabeth Abraham?

Here.

Councilmember Debbie Ison?

Here.

Councilmember Kevin Collie?

Here.

Councilmember Jenny Butler.

All right, I certify a form.

Thank you, Brian.

Alright.

With that, we'll move on to public comments.

Public comments at the time we set aside on the agenda, allow residents to uh address council item not on the agenda this evening.

Would anyone like to address council item not on the agenda this evening?

Okay.

Good, good, good, good, good.

All right.

With that, I'll turn it over to item four, individual consideration, consider interact and resolution authorize the city manager, execute a construction contract with N ANA site construction, LLC, the amount of six million five hundred and seventy thousand four hundred and ninety-one dollars and fifty cents for water service line replacement.

Okay, final mayor, members of council.

Most of y'all are very familiar with this project.

It's simple, it's a simple project to replace about 5300 uh copper service lines with HDP lines.

We took this project to or we opened it on this project the first time in April, those bids pay in a little bit on that and just over 10 million dollars, which is about two million dollars over budget.

We came to council in May and asked if we could recommend it to you to reject those bids and allow us time to work with our engineers to uh make some tweaks that would allow us to get a similar product but make it uh uh much more affordable.

Uh y'all rejected those bids.

We worked with our engineer.

We reopened bids on in June.

Uh low bid was A site construction, the contract you had in front of you, which was six million five hundred and seventy thousand dollars uh four hundred and ninety-one dollars and fifty cents.

That's a difference of about three point five million dollars uh from the previous low bid.

Uh the uh engineer of record BHC has vetted the contractor.

They found him to be excellent, had great references.

Uh we feel that you're gonna get a uh a quality product even with the changes that we made.

And uh we recommend that uh we uh council approves this award or approves this contract.

I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

What was the original uh estimate again?

Original estimate was right at 8 million.

Eight million.

So that's where our budget was.

We're coming about 1.5 under the original estimate.

Yes.

That's good because we tend to flow our estimate sometimes.

Anyone else have any questions?

Can I ask what the change like what did we reduce?

Are we reducing something that is really necessary to no absolutely not?

We we wouldn't, I wouldn't allow that.

But the things that changed were one, we went from a 12-month contract to an eight eighteen month contract, which allows those the contractors to work you know more economically.

The second change was we took out a lot of materials.

When I say materials, I mean the original contract had all the meter boxes being replaced, all the meter lids being replaced, replacing all the curb stops, also all the uh tapping saddles.

Uh that saved a lot of money just in materials.

And then the final thing, probably the biggest thing is is when you're not tapping the line, actually physically having to go in and put a new tap in, which is how that contract was originally written.

Um you look you reduce your labor quite a bit.

So what they're doing is using the old tapping saddle, just pulling the line just like we do, just like our guys do when we go with this elite, they're doing the same thing.

So you're saving a lot of money on materials, a lot of money in labor, and you're extending that time, which is what brought it down.

You kind of started it, but can you explain what the workflow is for each line?

What are they doing?

So when you when you pull the services leaking, um depending on whether it's short side or long side.

Either way, you're gonna have to explain you have to uh dig up the main and find the main, expose that tapping saddle, remove the tap, and then put a new one in, or actually just tie on to it and pull the whole line through to the other side.

And when you do that, you're bringing in another line with it, the HDP line, and you put that line in, tie it down with compression nut over your valve, and your water services are stored.

So you cut one line on both sides, you attach the AP HPV, and then you run it through.

So let's do let's assume my house is on the long side.

Uh my assumption is is that the main is running underneath the sidewalk across the street, right?

Right, correct.

Uh and so uh are you going to have to dig a hole in uh at each home or at each connection, right?

For both sides of the street, you're gonna have to dig a hole down to where it connects, right?

Physically dig that hole, get down to that connection, then go over to my uh meter, disconnect there, uh disconnect from the uh from the line from the from the source line from the from the main, pull your new composite uh feed line under the street, do the connections on both sides, and then you fill the hole.

You got it, essentially that's it.

Back to the hole, like put side in and move to the next one.

Okay, no cement.

There may be some cement.

I mean, they have to take out a couple kind of sidewalks, right?

You can't uh you can't make an island without breaking a few eggs, so yeah, unfortunately, we would probably have some sidewalk here and there, or some there will fix it.

That's in the contract.

And they will be putting down uh new new side, or they'll be cutting out the side setting aside and putting the side back.

We have a line item for side, but I'm sure they will try to save what they can.

It just makes sense for them.

And how big of a hole do they end up digging at the at the meter?

I would say the ones that I've seen here are usually four foot wide in between the curve and the uh in the sidewalk.

Um maybe in depth depends on how how deep the line is, but it could be up to four foot deep.

Up to four foot deep.

I mean, is that representative of the depth of my meter?

Because I my meter is really only about 18 inches beneath the surface.

You know, the line will be the line's typically deeper than your meter, and that's part of that is for breeding detection, that is just to give a little movement for ground, you know, little uh safety for ground movement.

Uh you know, that's typically four foot is all right.

Donald, one thing uh heard you said uh I want to make sure I heard it correctly.

You said that in the cost savings, we expanded the time just a little bit.

Six months.

Six months, okay.

Okay.

That's all right.

All right, very good.

Any other questions for the council?

All right, I'll take a motion.

May I move that we uh approve uh agenda item 4A as presented?

Second.

I have a motion second, all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passes your hands.

Thank you.

I appreciate the education.

Uh presentations.

Uh item 5A, presentation, e-bike usage, and Murphy.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

So uh at the request of council, we're bringing this uh discussion back and uh talking about e-bike and e-moto usage in the city of Murphy.

So we just kind of want to go over classifications, what our current ordinances are, um, what is the real issue that we have, and the different approaches that we can uh possibly uh go forward with.

So there are three classes of e-bikes.

There are class one, two, and three.

Uh class one and two both have a max speed of twenty miles an hour.

Class three has a max speed of twenty eight miles an hour.

Um according to state law, they have the same rights as bicycles.

So on bike paths, sidewalks, bike lanes, they have the same uh rights as a bicycle as a bicycle.

They're all considered less than so less than or equal to 750 watts an hour.

So if it goes above that, it's no longer considered an e-bike.

Um that's where we get into the e-motos, which is the electric dirt bikes that we're seeing in a lot of places, and the one thing about that is is they are illegal to use anywhere except on private property because they have speeds of 40 to 60 miles an hour, and they're supposed to be off-road only.

So in our park ordinances, we have two ordinances that talk about bicycles and motorized vehicles in parks.

160204 number three to ride, drive, or go at a rate of speed faster than the posted speed limit upon any bicycle, motorcycle, inline skates, automobile, or any other vehicle whatsoever in any parking lot, area, road, or street in a in any park.

Bicycle, skateboards, inland skates, and non-motorized scooters are allowed in parks.

And then to ride, drive, or park any motorcycle, automobile, motorized scooter, or other motorized vehicle plot over any across any curb, uh grass lawn, hiking or jogging trail or parkland, except authorized city vehicles unless authorized by the parks and rec director.

And then state law that governs bicycles is the Texas Transportation Code, Chapter 551 that lines out all the requirements for bicycle usage and what's legal and what's not.

So we don't specifically talk about any kind of a electric scooter, anything like that being allowed in a park.

So that's kind of where the line is a little bit blurred on the current ordinances.

So on the left, you have the e-bike.

On the right, you have the electric dirt bike, which is the electric dirt bikes we're seeing more and more in the city.

Um seeing them driving on sidewalks, on streets, um, all kinds of things.

And so we're trying to figure out if the real issue is the e-bikes or if it's the electric dirt bikes that we're seeing more of in the city.

The dirt bikes are definitely the ones doing the damage in the parks and things like that.

So we kind of wanted to come to council and get direction on which uh if we want to do an education campaign to do social media between parks and wrecking police, do signage in the parks.

This sign here is an example of what Richardson is doing in their parks, um, just trying to educate more people about the electric dirt bikes not being allowed in parks.

Um, and then PD when they have a chance, engaging with the users to let them know.

Um because we think a lot of what's happening is parents are not aware that what they're buying their children is not an e-bike.

So the kids are saying, I want this, and the parents are saying, Okay, cool, we'll value that, and then what they're buying them is not actually legal to use on the streets and things.

Um if we decide to go for a regulation standpoint, um ordinance updates for parks to include electric scooters and things like that to make sure that we line it out more specifically.

Um kind of following Texas um transportation code put in a clause for reasonable and prudent speed.

So even if we put in a speed limit of 15 miles an hour, but if you see somebody who's going eight miles an hour who's weaving in and out of everybody on the trails, there's still some enforcement for that and then update the wording for motorized vehicles.

Or we could do some you know, hybrid of the two.

Um kind of what we're thinking at this point is to do the education route and then go from there to see if it helps the problem or if it exacerbates the problem.

So really we just wanted to have a discussion uh since council brought this to see where the thoughts were from council and what complaints you were hearing specifically that we not we might not be hearing.

So Matt, could you go back a couple slides too that would show that one?

So not being familiar with these.

So the one on the left has pedals, correct?

Yes.

You can pedal that one or electric drive, Chris.

What about the one on the right?

Right has no pedals.

So really the difference in the two uh just by visually looking with these pedals, right?

Okay.

Would that be something that um that's easy to distinguish between it may be something that's easy to um I obviously I would not be in favor of having one on the rod in any park, but uh one at the left I think is okay.

I mean, it's really just a motorized bicycle.

And is Texas law require there is a helmet required on these for kids or not?

It's under 18, yes.

Uh under 18 for motorized vehicles.

Yes.

So motorcycles and the one on the right.

Yes.

And so and the other part is we can be the other one.

No more no helmet.

It's a bicycle, it's considered a bicycle.

Yeah, okay.

And so we can be more restrictive than state law, obviously.

And there are a lot of cities around us who have decided to do that.

Our peer, our pure cities have pretty much gone with the we follow Texas state law.

Um University Park has outlawed them in parks completely.

You can't have one, and if you have it in the city, you have to register it with the police department, have it inspected, do all that different stuff.

And so, and there are a few other cities who have done that as well, but um I don't think that's the route we're looking at currently.

My big thing is I don't want you know, I don't want trail bikes running through you know grasslands and and you know tearing things up.

And a lot of these new electric, you know, trail bikes, that's how that's what they're designed to do, right?

Um I also, you know, we do have some nature trails, but also don't want to run them through there either, right?

Because people walk through there, and it's very easily too easy to come around a corner and just it's too fast.

So I I don't like those at all in a residential area.

Yes.

Um, but we're gonna see these e-bikes, uh, these pedal assisted more and more and more often.

Um I think they're gonna become pretty ubiquitous.

Yeah, I don't do things.

Yeah, I you know, kids used to get a 10-speed when they turn 16, now they're getting this when they turn 16.

13 or whatever they should.

Yeah, well what I see that's to me disturbing in addition to what the mayor is talking about.

Because I'll be on the Timbers Trailway, and you know, the the bike on the road, the motorized bicep bike on the right, you know, these kids are just blowing blowing down the paved the paved portion, you know, where you have walkers and joggers and whatnot, and completely different than the electric assisted bicycle, you know, which can go pretty fast too, but it's just a different it's a different tone when you're blowing through there and then one of these other types of bikes.

I agree.

It's it's one of the reasons why I really do like the the trail that's on the encore because it's got a walking side and uh bicycle side.

Um, you know, but love to do more of that as we change things out.

Uh but yeah, so from my understanding, the trail bike, the electric trail bike isn't allowed anywhere.

No, it's already illegal.

It's already illegal.

The biggest thing is is that from conversations with PD, chasing anyone on that is a problem.

And so that's that's where we come into the biggest issue is that we the enforcement side of it is difficult, and so um it is illegal, and the education I think is a bigger part of it to let people know that it's not allowable.

So we we have done social media releases, but one thing that I feel is beneficial is that if we start having HOA meetings and doing presentations with them, if your direction is the educational component, we could at least start there.

We did one, it was received very well.

Uh and we can we can do more robust approach to that and and see if we can get some voluntary compliance.

Uh the enforcement component for us is gonna be very challenging.

It's it's gonna be difficult, and we're not gonna self-inflict more danger associated with trying to stop one of these individuals.

Yeah, look.

I I don't need a kit getting hit by a car because they're running from the cops, right?

So do we already have signs posted?

So we do not have anything posted currently.

Um we're working on a design for something that's more simplistic, like what Richardson's put out, because there was a like what we've worked, what we've seen and put out on social media so far is a lot of information, and so something that's more simplistic just to you know any electric dirt bike, strictly prohibited, and if we decide to go uh with ordinances, then we'll have to have park signs redone, the rule signs and things like that because currently they only address motorized vehicles, and so this is kind of a hybrid between the two.

So I think the signs would be effective.

I think most young kids riding the one on the rock is probably has no clue that it's illegal, they're just gutted for Christmas or something, and yeah, outriding, they don't know that they're not supposed to be in obviously they're gonna claim ignorance.

So uh I think a sign would be pretty effective.

Let me let me ask this question.

Do we, Chief?

Are you seeing um are you seeing a significant number of these vehicles on the streets right now, or is or is it limited, but you're concerned about the growth of it.

There's been a significant amount of complaints.

We just can't ever catch them.

So it could be that same kit.

I I certainly feel like it's something that that we should probably address.

The the signs work for for Richardson.

Yeah, um, there's also some enforcement components that we can do.

We can put officers out on the trail.

I don't have any problems with that, and we have the ability to take our our golf cart and put them out there as well.

But I really believe the first step would be Matt and I discuss the signage.

And the other is doing education with we are we have so many HOAs within our community that we can get in front of, and I think that's going to have a huge impact.

At least it's a great starting point.

And I think there's confusion about what's allowed and what's not.

The one on the left, I see it of they don't follow traffic rules, they don't wear helmets, they don't write, and so it's all getting lumped in together as those e-bikes, and it's they're talking about two different things.

And for clarity, when you're riding a uh a bike on a on a roadway, you have to follow traffic rules.

You have to stop at the appropriate stop signs.

Yeah, I think education it will go a long way.

Um I just wanted to so I agree with the HOA meetings, um, the signs, social media, as far as education, but the people riding those bikes are not going to be listening in those meetings.

That's right.

And so there's got to be another way to be able to communicate with the ones that do ride those.

Some of the ways is through the school.

The school.

Probably the youth academy that you all put up, the police academy, and other ways that you've got to communicate with those that would be breaking those laws as far as using the wrong bikes, because we can talk to the parents, we can talk to the HOAs, but that message may not be communicated down to whoever's going to break the rules.

The SROs are a fantastic idea, and we're about they're about to go back to school here in a couple weeks, so we can we can devise some type of educational program where they can get in front of the kiddos.

The the middle school is going to be the biggest uh area that that I would I would I would hit first.

But there are some still high schoolers that run bikes to school, but the SROs are a great opportunity as well.

We can hit it from a number of different directions, but uh we feel like the the education is more important than the enforcement.

Uh because these people I don't I can't give you a percentage, but there's a high percentage that literally just don't know.

And I agree and they sell them in the stores, and they're not telling you that these are illegal to ride on the one.

Maybe some of May stays too.

There's a there's a big population that attends that, so maybe that would be there's a way to do a little small.

I don't know.

We'll put a banner and fly with the drone.

Perfect.

Awesome.

The irony of me sitting here when I was uh 12 years old with a YZ80 running through the neighborhood.

Times are a little different, sir.

A lot different, much different neighborhood.

Not that my father didn't get a few complaints.

Any other questions first?

Very good.

If it gets really bad, I don't want to go here, but you know, the reason municipalities start requiring registration of vehicles, you know, whether it's the um uh the golf carts or you know the e-bikes is to make sure that the communication of what's appropriate, what's allowed, yeah, the inspection process happens, right?

Yeah, and um I don't think we're there yet, but it's certainly uh certainly an option on the table if we start seeing this become a bigger and bigger issue.

Then these on the right, they don't have to be registered, right?

They don't have a license plate, they don't have anything, right?

Yeah, but they're not allowed on public streets at all.

Right.

Right.

So yeah, that's meant for driving through the woods.

Well not the public woods, not the template.

Private part of the show.

All right.

Very good.

Any other questions?

All right, then we'll go on to item 5B presentation, police department.

All right, mayor and council.

Um tonight we're gonna give you a presentation over the police department.

I'm gonna give you a bit of context before we jump in.

So back in May, I heard some concerns from council regarding the police department, specifically around operations and employee morale.

So this prompted me to coordinate with the um human resources division of our administrative services department to take the opportunity to do a full kind of scale assessment of the police department.

I wanted to look at this more from a holistic approach as opposed to just trying to chase down specific questions or concerns.

I wanted to see if there was more of a widespread issue or concern and to just take some time to do a pulse check.

So that's what we did.

And so the intention for tonight's meeting is to kind of be transparent about what we found, some of the actions that we're scaring as we move forward, and then to talk about some pieces that really do involve some policy discussion from council.

So that's what we'll do.

What we're not here to do is to defend any existing practices, right?

This is a discussion for us to talk about those practices, why they happen, and maybe if we need to explore different routes.

During this conversation, I'll be presenting mostly, but the police chief will jump in sometimes.

He can kind of give uh often more context around some of our data numbers, and so we'll kind of be ping-ponging back and forth at certain points during the presentation.

All right, with that, we will jump in and get started.

Before I start, does anybody have any questions?

Anything?

Okay.

Here we go.

All right, so tonight's discussion points.

We're going to talk about the take-home vehicle practice that we currently use and some options moving forward.

We're going to talk about that departmental pulse check that I just mentioned briefly.

Um, and from that, we will start talking about staffing, equipment, and training.

All right, so let's start with take-home vehicle practice.

So the purpose of this really is to review the following regarding CID take-home vehicles.

This is one of the specific issues that came up.

So this is one of the few specific questions that I'm addressing tonight.

Everything else kind of comes out of that pulse check as wide sweeping themes as opposed to specific questions.

So we'll discuss the operational purpose, the financial impacts, the peer agency practices, and policy options for council to consider.

Oh, and I'm sorry, I don't know why that's down there.

All right.

Why do detectives have take-home vehicles?

Because they respond to after hour issues.

That's it in short.

They respond after hours without first reporting to headquarters, and then they also in those vehicles they carry specialized equipment and evidence collection supplies that they wouldn't carry in their normal vehicles.

What's our current practice?

So currently we have uh four folks who are taking vehicles home who are not a part of our admin, and that fourth one is recent.

That's the administrative sergeant.

For the purposes of the numbers that you'll see tonight, we're talking about the three folks who have been employing this practice over the past year.

So currently we have three detectives who are assigned unmarked take-home vehicles.

Our detectives do participate in an on-call rotation.

The vehicles are used for after-hours call outs and normal duty.

They are not used for personal use.

There, we currently have no residency radius.

Um, this is a mistake that I forgot to fix on that last bullet.

We do have a response time requirement.

It's not a citywide policy.

Our city policy says people need to live within a reasonable time radius.

However, the police department for the life of this practice being in place over the last year has required a one-hour response time from folks who take home vehicles to get back into the city.

What are the operational benefits of the take-home vehicle practice?

Faster responses to major incidents, it reduces a delay in evidence collection, uh direct response to crime scenes again as opposed to having going back having to come back to City Hall first to get a vehicle and then go back out to the crime scene.

It supports after hours investigations and it improves operational readiness.

So, what is the financial impact of this practice?

For the three detectives, which is what specifically came up as the concern, um, that cost impact is $5,225 and 90 cents over the past year.

These are using June 25 to June 26 numbers, but what I wanted to do is expand outward for you to show you the entire department because it's more than the detectives that take home vehicles, but for the question on the table for our CID unit, it's a $5,000 impact.

In addition to the maintenance fee is $900, was $903 over the past year.

Now keep in mind that these fuel costs do vary on what type of vehicles are being driven.

Any questions on this slide?

There's some numbers here, so I don't want to move past this too quickly.

Sure.

I want to uh point out my fuel cost and give you some uh additional information on that.

So I don't fly to any trainings.

I drive to all of our trainings or conferences, and I am the only one that does that.

Everybody else flies.

Our minimum hour is three, so if it's past three hours, the uh team member will fly.

That is not captured here, it's captured under travel and training.

So my numbers are a little bit higher because I don't uh participate in something that leaves the ground and goes into the air.

But I I want to make it, I I want to make sure that you were clear as to why my numbers are higher.

All right.

Well, I have a quick question.

Um on the take-home policies, and I guess on the CID with the three detectives.

Was it just started?

Just so my knowledge.

Did it just start January 2026 that all three just started taking the cars home in January?

Started in June of 25.

Started June 25, that's okay.

That's why it's so you have a full full 12 months.

Okay, cool.

Yes, okay.

All right.

And I've got a question on back to the take-home cars.

I don't I don't know if we're questioning as we go or if you're waiting to get the infrastructure.

That's okay.

So on the take-home cars, the three find the last five years, the three detectives.

Are they on a rotation or do they each do they take home a car every night?

They take home a car every night.

Are they on call or all three on call every night?

Only one is on call.

So all the other two taking a car.

Because that's the human agreement that we had, because when you look at the call outs, so in 2025, we had four.

Out of those four, uh, three are required more than two, and one only required one.

Out of the three that we have had this year, out of uh two of them require two or more, only one was required on the third one because we had accident investigators responding to that uh particular scene.

So it's uh essentially a force multiplier, and I don't have to pay on call pay because they understand the benefit of being able to take that car home that they could be they can be called back.

If they can't be called back, they don't take the car home.

How long has this policy been in place?

Just a year.

So this take home policy is 12 months old.

Yes, sir.

Well, let me let me back up.

We've already had a take-home vehicle policy for on call.

That is that has been citywide.

Uh specific to what we're talking about right here, it's only been since June of 25.

Okay.

So how many take-home vehicles do we have?

CID three.

When you talk about admin, you have the chief, you have two lieutenants, you have um right currently you have an admin sergeant, so that's four, and then you have the three detectives.

That's seven.

So seven total take home vehicles.

Yes.

Our patrol does not take home squat cars.

I've got one other question.

You finished?

Okay.

I've got one other question.

So there is no residency radius for take home, correct?

But we're how are we defining reasonable time if every as one hour?

It's city policy is reasonable.

Our policy, our policy is specific to one hour.

So everyone that takes home a car, detective can be back in Mercury in one hour.

Yes, sir.

Now we're talking about this is an hour for them to come back when they're called in.

That's what I mean.

This isn't an hour for them to be able to do that.

So once the once the call has been made to recall beyond calling detective.

The expectation is they're back checked, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

I'll insane with that.

Yes.

One other thing, I'm sorry, I got a lot of questions.

No, this is the time.

It says the cars are used for uh so the cars that are taken home are used for for do on duty, I mean not for personal use, is that correct?

That's correct.

Okay, is there any way are we trucking?

Do we know if the cars are being used, or would we have any way to know if the cars are being used for personal use?

I mean, is there any mileage track on it or anything that we're doing to uh we track mileage by the by our fuel guards?

So when you fill up the vehicle, the the the mileage is put in there.

Uh but in terms of separating work uh the the daily duty versus uh the commutes, no, we do not.

In short, we're not in we're not investigating to see if people are doing that, right?

There is uh policy, you are not to use it for personal use if it is found that they are using it for personal use through however we find that out and validate it, then there would be consequences for that because it's a policy violation.

And that was my question.

Yeah, how yeah, uh, so that's that's an interesting policy because I would just human nature, right?

I'm leaving work, I'm gonna swing by you know the grocery store to pick something up on the way to work.

Is that considered for personal use, or is that considered um in uh in transit activity?

There's a reasonableness factor, so if they're driving home and they want to stop by the cleaners to pick up their pick up their kids at the daycare, right?

There is there's reasonableness, right?

But we're not talking about you're going on family vacation because once they get home, they should be getting in their own personal car and doing things over the weekend, whatever they're doing.

Yes, right.

Have they had to respond to any code three to the did they have all the equipment on their personal car?

They're fully rigged out, yes.

We had any code three calls, well, almost all the call-outs are that that's just like I said, the residency requirement.

That's kind of one of my concerns is you and I know that code three calls are dangerous to drive, right?

That's when accidents become high, and these are city vehicles.

So something happens, which I hope nothing ever happens to any of our officers.

Um who sues who the city always gets sued, obviously, right?

Because they're not going to sue the driver, they're gonna sue the city.

So the more that those cars are being driven, and the farther they're being driven, the higher risk that we have that something could happen.

So that's just kind of like my concern, like the mayor said, you know, personal use cars tracking mileage, you know.

I just want to make sure we're accountable that you know we are being positive that they're not using it for personal use, they're you know uh not gonna get caught in any kind of liability, you know, because like I said, the farther we are, the more liable we need.

But I think uh and let me let me let me jump on top of that because I think they go that's an interesting question because before this policy started in June of 2025, this is an expansion of an existing policy, right?

So the chief uh and the sergeants always had take-home chief and lieutenants a year ago they were lieutenant, well, chief and lieutenants always had take-home vehicles, and the on-call detective always took his home, right?

The only change to this was the staff, the detectives and CID who are not on call started taking a permanent take-home car.

That is correct.

That was the change.

That is correct, right?

All right, and so that's been in place for decades.

Yes.

Uh yes, as as as long as I go.

Do you any other questions?

Comments?

So I wanted to add to that because we've got more than 12 months of experience in this, right?

So what's the protocol for our other cities around us?

Well, let's get to it, shall we?

All right, so um the police department actually polled 28 agencies throughout North Texas, and I've highlighted here um our 10 comparative cities that we use for compensation and other best practices that we usually um compare to just to show you the list.

So of those 28, 88 percent provide detective take-home vehicles.

A vast majority provide command staff take home vehicles as well.

66% use a weekly on-call detective rotation, 21% have dedicated crime scene units.

We do not um 29% have no distance radius requirement for the agencies that do radius requirements vary between 15 and 40 miles from city limits or from the county line.

Twenty-nine percent had no response time requirement for the agencies that do response time requirements vary between 30 and 60 minutes.

May I jump it or of course.

So I want to give you a little history.

We uh we had some uh positional alignment that took place about four years ago.

Is that is that correct?

For when it can leave four or five years ago.

Four or five years ago.

And when that positional alignment took place, we lost our predicated crime scene technician.

And so what we did was we certified all of our detectives as crime scene processors so they can crime scene.

However, when responding to and generally speaking, bad things happen between 12 and 4, and that's 12 midnight and 4 a.m.

And that's when we have our crisis calls.

So if we have a crime scene, one of those detectives is dedicated to working the crime scene.

Therefore, we need another detective to work the investigation.

One detective can't do it all.

And so when we looked at the rationale behind this, we knew that 98, 99% of the time when we had a call out, it was going to require two human beings.

Well, if we look at history, it's even requiring more because the complexity of the call that we're going to.

Uh, which I go back to the human agreement that we made was this is an option for us to do without putting uh multiple people on call because statutorily when we put them on call, we are required to compensate them.

So just giving you a little history of thegencies that that don't have crime scene units, they they participate similar to what we do, or they have an MOU and fund county response to take care of it.

Let me ask let me ask this question.

Um how many days is a detective the on-call detective one week?

For one week.

For one week.

Yes.

And so assume that I'm the on-call detective.

Let's go back to the old policy, right?

And assume I'm the on-call detective.

Uh and uh, you know, I start start my my on-call on Monday, I end it the following Sunday.

So I get in my POV, personally owned vehicle, uh, and I drive to the city, and I get into my uh get in, get into the city car.

I'm now on call.

Now I drive that city car back home, right?

And my privately owned vehicle is sitting here in the city parking lot.

And now I've got all week I'm commuting back and forth from home using the city vehicle until Sunday.

Um, and then I come back uh and I turn my turn the city-owned car in and I take my privately owned car home.

This is the old policy.

It's the way the old policy happened.

And so we have a policy where a police officer is not allowed to use a vehicle for private use, but because of the way the policy is designed, unless I force my wife to drive me to work that week, my privately owned vehicles sitting at the city.

So unless I have uh two cars or three cars, an extra car at the house, um my expectation is that the not used for private business during that time period was was loosely followed.

And under the new policy, since you have a pri a permanent take-home vehicle, you're always driving back and home from the city uh using the city vehicle.

And your privately owned vehicle stays at your home if you have one.

If you have one.

If you have one, I mean, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, if you have one.

Um and uh, you know, and then you have that opportunity.

So I it would be interesting.

I I don't suspect that there is any statistics, but I think uh I think uh just my personal expectations would be the uh the policy of not using for private use uh would be easier to follow today under today's rules than it was under the previous rules because my personal vehicle I didn't have it, right?

Right.

One question just for clarity after hearing what he was saying.

So are there three detectives that are always on call, or is this a rotation of detectives?

Okay there's only one on call.

No, I'm sorry, I let me rephrase that.

I mean that are that take these cars home every night, or the three detectives that are assigned these cars, it's their car.

That is correct.

Oh, so they're oh, I didn't know what the total number of detectives, if this was a rotation of detectives that you're on one week and you're off a week, but these three cars that take home go to the same person takes home every day.

That is correct.

Okay, yes.

That's what I was on clear of.

Okay, we've had we've had people go from you know, uh go from patrol to detective roles and they stay in those roles for a couple years, and then they migrate out of the detective role and go back in.

Uh Officer Ash uh Ashby Ashmore, thank you.

Uh is a great example of that in Corporal Morton.

He just transferred from patrol to CID.

Right.

All right.

So I want to be clear tonight.

I'm not asking you to take any action, but there is an opportunity to have policy discussion.

Um you can provide direction tonight, or you can decide to mull it over and come back and you know we can bring it back later at a later time.

This is all good new information.

I want to give council an opportunity to really kind of trust it.

Absolutely.

So here are some options that I think are before you to maintain the current practice, and we have some pros and cons here, and I'll let you read those.

Option two to establish a residency radius, and there are pros and cons for that.

Option three to establish a response time requirement.

I thought we had one hour.

We do, we do.

I should say keep it or modify it.

Yeah, we validate it.

Okay.

Option four, you can direct us to return return with something completely different, or you all can return with something completely different.

So those are some options.

I'd love to hear discussion on where your head is at if you want to talk about that now.

If you don't and you want to talk about it in a future meeting, we can do that as well.

No, yes.

So as you progress through your decision making process, I think it's fair that you understand some of the challenges that I face in where we're located.

So there are two cities that I specifically use because they present the challenge.

Uh the city of Wiley issues take home cars to everybody within the police department.

That includes SROs, that includes patrol, and that includes admin and CID.

Now there's a caveat to patrol.

They're only issued their vehicle when they are working, and they work the same patrol shift we do.

So two on three off three on.

So when they are on shift, they take their car home.

Uh CID and Saxie takes their car home, and they are evaluating a more robust take-home car policy, very similar to Wiley.

That is one of the challenges that I face as we look at remaining comparable, uh remaining competitive, but but the service model in the limited resources that we have, and we have seen that this has been a benefit for us.

Yes, our our call outs are not atrocious, thank the Lord.

But when we do have those crisis situations, and it's one or two o'clock in the morning, I can assure you a patrol officer is singing their praises when cavalry arrives in a reasonable imprudent amount of time, because now it releases those patrol officers to go back out and answer calls for service and allows patrol supervision to also go back out and be responsible for those 901 calls and any other calls that come in.

But when we talk about force multipliers, it is so critical, especially especially with us and our limited limited resources.

Um but I I felt it was very, very important that you understand the uh what our competitors are doing right next door.

Do we respond to like Parker as well with the same?

Like if there's something that we need to do over there with the detectives, no?

We uh just patrol Parker a lot, but uh I don't not in my four years have we responded to a crime scene situation.

Yeah, they could call us to direct traffic, but they're not gonna call us to use our detectives.

I believe correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they have an MOE of crime scene with Colin.

Yeah, calling sorry with uh all right.

I don't hear anything, so we'll move forward.

Is that okay?

Uh yeah, well, just is there anything else?

Anybody any other questions?

Um we are gonna call out another uh we've we've got a mini retreat coming up, right?

As soon as you all give Candy your uh availability, she sent that out to you all a couple of times.

I don't know where she is on that.

Okay, and and the purpose of that mini retreat is bond bond.

Bond.

But we can you have another one, you have an actual retreat coming up in January or February, January, January, and that's where we'll talk about more.

We can either do another work session or the additive to the retreat.

Absolutely.

The chief on Richardson PD, what is their um structure in terms of like you just explained with Wiley P who has a vehicle?

Do you know what Richardson looks like?

No, ma'am, I don't, but I I will certainly follow.

I mean, just because they're close and proximity to Murphy.

I just wanted to I was very larger department, but I will certainly follow back.

Okay.

All right.

Let's move into the first check.

So just kind of a recap what we did.

Um again, in collaboration with our HR division from administrative services.

I interviewed approximately 40 employees across all divisions in the police department except for our crossing guards.

Um, and I also interviewed anyone, even if they're not in police, but if they're housed in the building with police.

I wanted to interview everyone to get again a holistic view of the landscape.

I reviewed some recurring themes that came out of those meetings, and those meetings just wrapped up last week, by the way.

Um we begun validating some of the operational concerns that I heard and developing action plans.

Both of those are ongoing.

What we heard.

So experiences varied, of course, but there were kind of four areas that kept coming up over and over, and those were policy decisions, staffing, equipment, and training.

But I always asked a question on I hear you telling me what's going wrong.

Is anything worth saving?

Is anything good over there?

And so these are some of the things.

There's strong camaraderie.

People really enjoy working alongside their colleagues.

We have dedicated frontline supervisors and pride and commitment in the city in serving the city of Murphy.

All right, so just a little synopsis on each of these areas, and then we'll dive a bit deeper in a minute.

So on the policy, um, the concerns that came up really had uh this one really had not much to do with the police department specifically, but more a policy um that came out of the city manager's office, which was a change to hours worked, um, which we've talked about that um I want to say back in January sometime we or March we had a conversation about that, and I'll dive into that and remind you what that means uh in a minute.

And then lack of compensation incentives.

This goes back to the hours worked um and to managing overtime.

Employees, their overtime is being managed a lot more aggressively than it was in the past.

Um, and now that they don't get hours worked or hours work, leave is not counted as hours worked anymore.

There's it's more difficult for them to say take a vacation day and then come in and work overtime and get that overtime.

Instead of getting that overtime, we say, well, you you know, you didn't work, you didn't actually work overtime.

You took a vacation day.

So instead of putting in a full eight hours, if you came and worked four hours for somebody else, now you put four hours back in your vacation bank and you only use four hours of vacation, and that gets you to not triggering overtime.

A lot of folks don't like that.

Umitably, you all I'm sure are aware in the industries that you in that you're in, people often become they come to rely on overtime as a part of their salary.

Um, and it's just not a sustainable process, and we'll talk more about hours worked in a minute.

But again, the policy piece was really more about stuff that came out of City Hall and not necessarily what came out of PD.

From the staffing side, staffing levels or structures don't always adequately support training needs.

So people are saying they're being denied for training because um they can't get shift coverage or it will trigger too much overtime.

Um leave requests came up in operational demands.

Equipment, there are concerns um regarding the suitability of certain patrol vehicles, which we'll get into in a minute, uh certain firearms, and then our less than lethal equipment options on the training side.

Again, there were some concerns about limited um opportunities, but I do have some numbers to provide some context on that.

Um again, some of the perception is it's due to funding and shift coverage limitations.

All right, so let's talk hours worked.

So, what changed?

I came to you guys effectively um March 7th.

The city no longer counts lead um any lead as time as hours worked for the purposes of calculating overtime.

If you didn't actually work it, it's it's not counted as overtime.

Why the change?

Overtime costs exceeded all previous projections.

We did not expect this benefit change to jack up our overtime budget as much as it did.

And you can see here in FY23, this is prior to implementing that um all leave counted as hours worked except for sick.

We were sitting around 482,000.

When it was just partially implemented, because we did it kind of mid-year, we went up almost 600,000.

After a full year of it being in practice, we almost hit $800,000 in overtime.

In FY26, in the three months that we've made the change, we're at about $220,000 in overtime.

So we're already trending downward.

It's still higher than I would like.

I'm still working with departments to actively manage that overtime so that we can get it down as much as possible.

But I just cannot justify with the needs that we have in this organization that we sustain nearly $800,000 in overtime annually.

So that's why the change was made.

So employees, specifically my public safety personnel, are not happy with it because they're the ones who are most impacted.

Parks and public works are impacted to a much smaller degree.

Um, but public safety is in dispatch, they're really impact it more.

So they're not happy about it.

Um I have told most of them that brought it up that it won't be changing.

Um we just implemented it, and if I do look to review it, it will be a couple years down the line when I can see that overtime is being more properly managed.

Now 220,000 524 for a quarter.

You've had May's days.

Time four.

Okay.

I got you.

I got times four is eight hundred and eighty-two thousand.

So that's more.

Right.

So I think what I think is happening is we're a little more lopsided right now.

That's good.

We're we're gonna level out, and we'll bring these numbers back.

Yeah.

Right, we'll bring the numbers back when we have another full year with the policy change.

But I I don't I we're we're trending much better than we were when this policy was in place.

So you have certain times of the year where it jumps up and then it levels off.

No, I get it.

Just depending on what's going on.

I get it.

Um yeah, I'd be I do think uh, and and this is uh that's double from 23 to 26, right?

It's not sustainable.

Right, right.

Uh if you know if we're gonna be at 1.6 million in 2029, I need to know that now, right?

Well, I needed to know it yesterday.

That was right.

So that's what the but that's what the T Lees were saying.

So right, and so I really need to.

I really need to, yeah.

I I'd love to see some trend lines on this and say, okay.

We made a policy change.

Uh and yeah, there's a lot of things that are front loaded, right?

We have about some of those things, so that makes perfect sense.

But I would like to see a trend line and say, okay, the policy changes we made, and here's how we're trending that down.

As well as a decision on what is a healthy overtime budget for a you know normal year, what should we be targeting?

I do expect the number to go up because inflation goes up, right?

We go up three, four percent every year.

So I would expect to the uh and this is by definition a uh a human capital expense, so we know that the it's gonna cost more every year.

Um but the trend should be along that line, not it shouldn't be growing otherwise, unless unless we've made changes.

Unless there's something significantly changes within the market.

So I'd love to see those trend lines.

I'm sorry.

You do expect it to go up.

I mean one question for you before we move on from this.

Um you have to break the date the data for this to break down.

Uh I would like to see for this the first three months of this year or the first quarter, the two hundred or twenty thousand.

What that's for and uh then I would walk to compare that to the previous for 25, 24.

Is there areas that were really grown that are overtime and really high in some areas that maybe needs to be controlled or I mean 220,000 dollars doesn't tell me a lot.

It doesn't tell me what it's used for.

I would like to see a breakdown of that.

No, we can do that.

Right, and then comparable to previous years to see where yeah, it and the the problem when you're talking about just overtime is that you also have to mix that within staffing, right?

If let's say we're down three FTEs, so and overtime in order to cover the time, but but that'll show that.

I mean, it showed it should but there should be an offset, right?

So yeah.

You can look at this by department, right?

Yes, we have our own time.

Yeah, that's what I'll have to say.

Yeah, yeah.

Our overtime comes from public safety and parks.

That's where it comes from.

All right.

Oh, this isn't just PD.

This is the organization total, the total organization.

It's just the total organization.

That's good to know.

Thank you.

However, I would love to have a 220 overtime.

No.

Never gonna have to hang my head on that.

Well, $10,000 expense.

And that's the reason why we came and said, hey, can we front load one of these two police officers, right?

Because we overtime was going up because we have two people out on military leave.

So yeah, you always want to kind of see is it time to get an additional FTE?

Or are we going to continue to pay people 1.5?

So does this seem that included event over time?

I believe it's it's all in the we're spending 80,000 a year in event over time.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That and that's percentage of last year's numbers.

Right.

Okay.

All right.

So again, why the change?

It was difficulty forecasting, just looking forward with the projection and how it was growing, it wasn't going to be sustainable.

There was also a new federal mandate, if you all uh remember in the beautiful bill, um, where there was an employee benefit added to where um overtime could be deducted on your taxes.

However, the federal government states that any of that overtime that's deducted has to be hours worked.

They don't play the game of we can count as hours worked.

And so what it was going to do as well was trigger kind of an administrative nightmare for our finance department to peel away what we considered ours worked versus what the federal government considers ours worked, because we have to give the employee a tax form that they use to file their taxes to get that benefit.

Um so that also went into the decision, and then again, just to go to our long-term financial sustainability.

Um, and I did put a note down here.

Federal law does not require that leave time count as hours work.

That was an additional benefit that the city put in place as just kind of a retention tool as something to incentivize over time, but it's not something that was ever legally required.

Do other cities do it?

Some cities do.

Yeah.

All right, we're gonna move on to the personnel, the staffing side.

So in the conversations, um, as I mentioned, I I spoke with more than just police officers.

I spoke with dispatch and I spoke with code enforcement, and something that um came up with the dispatch side that I quickly recognized was that we have a staffing structure issue there.

Um we have one supervisor in that department who is actually her her FTE herself is counted as a part of the minimum staffing that is required for a shift.

However, she's also pulled into management meetings, she's expected to kind of act as a manager and really run that division, but that's hard to do when you also have to be on the floor answering calls because you're counted in the amount of staffing that has to be there.

So one of the things that I'm proposing is that we reclassify that position to a telecommunications manager because she's always already kind of doing that work, um, and then take one of our regular telecommunicators and reclassify them to a senior, and they would kind of take her role on the floor, that second senior.

The way the dispatch and you can jump in if you want to, Chief, but the way that the dispatch um staffing structure works is they have kind of a beginning of the week and an end of the week to have full coverage, and right now we only have one senior at one end of the week, and we have that supervisor at another.

Again, that requires her to be on the floor, that requires her to be taking calls all the time.

This way she has more room to do some of those supervisory and management duties that currently she's having to do a balancing act on.

And when she's called off the floor, there are oftentimes where one person is left answering our display dispatch calls, and that's just not a position that I'm comfortable with us being in.

So that's why I'm making the recommendation.

Feel free to not answer this question because there's a lot of reasons why I wouldn't.

Uh is this um maintaining the current footprint of individuals and just changing titles, or is this adding additional uh FTEs?

Or is this adding additional FTEs?

This is maintaining the footprint that's in place.

We're not adding FTEs.

This is just restructuring it.

Adding that second senior puts someone else in an in an in a supervisory-ish position on the other end of the week where she won't have to be there for that.

So the total cost impact on that is roughly $20,000.

My assumption is that that's already happening informally about that.

No, it well, because the titles aren't there, no, it's not happening.

The supervisor is being pulled across the entire week, triggering overtime and other issues that I don't feel comfortable getting into an open meeting.

Sure.

This also follows a strategic plan that Miss Adams and I talked about.

We're accelerating that plan for a lot of different reasons.

But one of one of the reasons that is is very critical is we're busy.

And our calls for service in the communication center is much more active than it's ever been.

And when we talk about minimum staffing requirements, that's real.

And we're not going to allow, even though we have a phenomenal relationship with Saxie, and there are backup to 901, and then the third is Wiley.

This was truly part of a strategic plan.

We just I'm requesting that we move forward with it quicker than what the plan revealed for those reasons.

And I will say, I mean, Chief had advocated for this.

I want to say it was last year, and I said no.

Um I didn't think it would financially just wasn't the time.

But sitting down and talking to these individuals directly and kind of digging into it myself directly with them on some of the issues, it was very compelling.

So that's why I'm bringing it forward.

Alright.

The second piece uh that came up was kind of a point of consternation.

Um, and it was on shift differential pay.

And so this kind of went in combination with some of the some of the complaints about the hours worked being changed, right?

Is we're not incentivized to come in and work overtime because you know they'll make us flex our time and we won't get that overtime pay.

Um and then we're forced to work night shift.

So the police department has a policy where I think it's every six months, is it every six months?

They switch the staff over.

So if you're daytime, you have to go to night shift.

If you're night shift, you go to daytime.

So we don't have a department where you know you you get hired as night shift and you stay night shift forever, or you get hired as day shift and you stay day shift forever.

Every it has to be equitable.

And so, because of that, I think this is some pretty low-hanging fruit where we can kind of provide a benefit.

If you have to work nights, we know that's kind of a downer, right?

It causes mental health issues, the rhythm of your life.

So I'm proposing that we implement shift differential pay.

The total impact is about 22500, and let me kind of get into that for you.

So there are some cities that do it.

Our comparator cities had not responded to us in time, but HR did poll multiple cities and got some uh feedback.

What we're oh well, I thought I had another slide in here.

What we're proposing is to do a hundred dollars uh per month per per employee as opposed to doing a percentage of pay.

I think just a flat fee, it's not a lot of money.

Um, it's about 16 people any given time of the year that are on night shift between dispatch and police officers.

And I just think it's an easy benefit to give them since we've taken away that incentive of hours worked.

So that's my proposal.

So the two of these things total control, right?

I mean, patrol is the only one that dispatch and dispatch, yeah, and dispatch, but yeah, so it it's it's patrol and dispatch, yeah.

Um so the total cost impact for both of these changes would be uh just over 40,000.

All right, continuing on the staffing discussion.

Uh we did talk earlier in the year about uh a recommendation that I had to reclassify lieutenants to captains.

I do want to place that request on hold.

Um I'm digging further just based off some of the things that I heard and some of the things that I deduced myself from those conversations I had that I I want to do some further um exploration on the structure of our police department and how our staffing is structured.

So that request is on hold and will not show back up during this budget cycle.

All right, so some decision points for you to consider.

So option one, maintain current operations and staffing classifications, um, and you'll see the pros and cons there.

There's no additional fiscal impact if we stick to that.

Um, but I do feel there would be a leadership capacity deficit and staffing constraints within the current structure.

Option two, implement the staffing reclassifications as I've requested.

Um, removing division leadership from core staffing model, it increases promotional opportunity within the division, benefitting uh recruitment and retention, and then the cons, it is a $20,000 impact to the FY27 budget.

It is not a comprehensive solution.

Um there is still there's still probably one to two staffing people off from having an ideal staffing model in dispatch, but this gets us a step closer at a much more reasonable cost.

And then option three, you can direct us to come back with a revised option that's not depicted up here.

I think for me, there's a couple of things that are competing in my mind.

Um I think this is more broad than PD, is because this goes over to other staff and other overtime.

Um if we're coming up, you know, closing on a million dollars in overtime, and um there you know, just structures we're never gonna get to zero, we're not trying to.

That isn't what it makes sense, makes sense to do.

The model doesn't support that.

But um we should be looking at saying, okay, what is the supply and demand curve look like FTEs per overtime?

And we'll say, okay, we can save you know 50% of that million dollars.

We can save $500,000 by hiring uh three new staff members, right?

And even if the cost is a wash, right, this it's a more sustainable organization.

Um I know you've got you know two uh FTE requests over in lease, and I think you've got two in public works, two in public works.

So we've got four FTEs kind of in play, plus a re restructure of one in communications.

I'd love to see, you know, on a commitment, say, okay, if we fund these four positions, and you can carve out uh events.

You can say events cost you know $100,000 a year, so we're gonna take that $100,000 and we're just set that aside because that's that's programmed.

And then you can say, okay, for the the remaining, you know, seven, eight hundred thousand dollars.

Uh uh we can reduce over time by sixty percent for uh for for such and such a cost savings uh at a certain expense.

Right, where that is that is the employee staff.

And you know, even if the bottom line is a little bit uh in there's a there's a little bit more of an expense growth on there, it's still healthier organization than the growth.

And I'm really concerned, uh I know you say you've made some changes, my calculator disagrees, but I know you've made some changes, and uh, you know, if that we can't continue with a trend line, we've doubled since 2003 in over time, uh 2003 to 2006.

We can't double again from 2006 to 20 uh so I think I think we really need to do that analysis.

What's the supply and demand, supply of resources versus demand for time?

Uh and you know, uh and you know, you've got some good asks that you know every time staff asks for more staff, or you know, you know, council gets a little nervous, but this is a great story, but then we're also gonna hold it to it to say, okay, you know, instead of hitting 880 or 900,000 in overtime this year, we're gonna target 500,000 in overtime this year and try to bring that down and what can we do it by plussing up these organizations, and I'd like to have that conversation.

Uh and there's a cost, right?

Because I don't think we can bring in you know four employees for a million dollars.

I think they cost more than that, but still, but but maybe they don't.

No, and I I think it is a great conversation to have, and we can definitely crunch the numbers and add a value to those.

Understanding though, that not every FTE request is for the purpose of reducing overtime.

Understood.

Sometimes it's a it's a service delivery issue.

Um, but there should still be a value that we can attach.

Yeah, and and as I said, there we are service organization, right?

That's what we do.

We provide services and we provide service and we provide services by using human capital in order to provide those services.

Um we are never going to be at a zero uh uh overtime.

That's why yanking you know uh event staff off of this overtime list that you know that's not problematic.

We're not trying to fix that.

We know that exists, that's part of the calculation of doing of doing the events we plan for it.

But um, but again, we went from 420 to 880.

Then I have to ask, you know, it's gonna be cheaper for me to hire four or five new employees than to continue to pay.

Or change in hours works policy, which are or there are policies absolutely.

I understand.

Yeah, yeah.

No, that's a that's great.

We will do that.

I'll get with Finance Lab.

All right.

A quick quick question regarding events and event staff.

Do it's been a while since we've gone through this for me.

So the community development sales tax portion.

Are we does any of that when we because part of that funds the events, right?

And funds the overtime.

And the overtime.

And so that is it that's coming from a portion of that's coming from sales tax, not property tax.

Yes.

Right, but MCDC funds the event and funds the related overtime.

Yeah, I I would say that's why I was asking if it was included in that because I want to drag it out.

Which is why I want to drag it on.

You need to understand that 10% of that cost is programmed in and I'm really interested in seeing that, and I think it makes a great argument for resources.

So all right, any other comments?

So here's the thing.

Your your mini retreat is not until September-ish time frame, whenever you guys give your availability.

We will be back to you with the final budget recommendation on August 4th.

This is something that would impact the FY27 budget.

So I would like you to have a little bit of conversation about direction.

Is this something that we can put into that final budget recommendation?

Do we need to hold off and wait mid-year because you want to have more of a conversation?

I just want to hear a little bit more on this because we do need to move on this if council is in favor of it.

So no pressure.

I can't make this decision for you guys.

You guys are gonna have that.

Why don't we circle back?

We'll keep going, and at the end, we'll come back to our decision points.

All right, so the next decision point is on the differential pay, and this is kind of similar, right?

This would impact the FY27 budget.

Um, and you have here kind of the options that we put before you maintain the current policy that is to do nothing different at all, do not implement a shift uh differential pay, or implement the differential pay at the $100 flat monthly um benefit, or direct us to come back with a different option.

And we can circle back at the end on this one as well.

So uh do me a favor uh differential pay.

Give me the two-second description of differential pay.

You work night shift, you get an extra hundred dollars a month.

See, exactly.

That's exactly what I was hoping for.

So, Chief, let me ask you, so that is not a voluntary.

I mean, everyone has to do that.

So if someone refers and wants to work not shift, someone wants you don't okay, I didn't know what they were doing.

And and I don't because there's statistical data for the mental health component associated with it.

Now, there are challenges that keep someone on nights, but they can't be on nights for more than a year.

Okay, and that is staffing challenges.

So we have a volunteer that wants to work for that year, but they cannot work past 12 or 4 months.

They have to go back to some day a lot.

And we do we offer a differential pay today?

No, that's this would this would be a new implementation.

Okay.

So patrol vehicles was a major recurring theme of concern that just come kept coming up.

And it was specifically about the Teslas.

However, by the end of all of my conversations, I did notice one thing.

So we have two Teslas.

Right now we only have one in operation because a driver hit us.

But for the sake of this conversation, we have two Teslas.

And so each Tesla has two drivers: a day shift driver, a night shift driver.

So there are four drivers.

Of the four drivers, two of them hate the Teslas, and two of them love the Teslas.

So while I heard lots of complaints about the Teslas from the Tesla drivers, it was a 50-50.

So that was kind of compelling to me.

That I heard complaints from folks who hadn't hadn't driven them.

Now there are some concerns that came up.

I think with any new piece of equipment or programming that you put in place, there is always going to be opportunity for lessons learned and things that you should look at and do differently the next time you have the opportunity to.

So some of those things we heard was the size of the Tesla.

It's a little too tight for the equipment belt that they wear, that the the um the prisoner cage in the back is a bit too small and uncomfortable.

There have been some technology challenges with it, people not knowing how to get it open, and you know, things like that.

So there are some lessons learned from that.

So the action plan to address the concerns I put up here based on the employee feedback and just the operational experience of the vehicle being in rotation.

Um staff just doesn't I don't I don't anticipate recommending that we get another Tesla, at least not that kind.

Um I don't want to, though, and I don't want to even give you the impression that I want to abandon EV exploration.

The cost savings that we have seen just in the short time that we've had them is astronomical.

Um and so I think that we stand to truly financially benefit from having EVs in our fleet.

We just need to look at different types of EVs, ones that just make more practical operational sense.

Um, and so that's what we will do.

The existing Teslas, um, the plan is if officers want to drive them, they can, uh, but we will not force anyone to drive them.

And if we have one that is left over, say we have two drivers, because right now we have two drivers that like them.

Say we have two drivers that like them, but we have that second one that nobody really wants to drive, then we will look at transitioning that to another role in the department, whether that's one of those CID take-home vehicles or something else.

Um, so we'll look at that.

So that's the action plan forward on that.

Continuing with equipment, rifles.

Um, there were several concerns raised about our rifles, the age of our rifles.

Um, I will tell you I learned a lot in these conversations.

I did not realize that firearms had expiration dates, um, but apparently they do, depending on how often you shoot them and you know, all these other stuff.

Um so there are some concerns with that.

The action plan on that, because rifles are expensive, to outfit them completely and have them operational is about 1500 per unit.

We would need about 34 for our agency, so there is a significant cost to that.

What I um what we are going to begin exploring is a rifle reimbursement program, and I'll dig into that here for you guys.

So, how that works, the city would purchase the rifles.

This would be a voluntary program for officers.

Um we have a specific type of rifle that we purchase, we would upfront the cost, and then a specific portion for the cost of that would come out of each paycheck until it's completely paid off by the officer.

It would be their personally owned rifle, but they would use it on duty, they would use it for their qualification shooting tests if they wanted to do that.

Um, but we would make them enter into some agreement, right?

That they couldn't sell it as soon as I I implemented this program in a previous city I was in, and we had some issues where officers paid it off and immediately sold it.

And uh, yeah, I know crazy.

And so we would have to put something in place here that said that has them sign something that say maybe for two years after it's paid off, you cannot sell the rifle.

Um if it's involved in an officer involved shooting, it will be confiscated, you know, those types of things.

The um again, minimum retention requirement, officer involved shooting, and then a participation agreement that we will work with legal to craft to have them sign.

So the benefits again, it provides officers with a high high quality piece of equipment.

Um the cost to the city is just one that is up front, but we would be fully reimbursed by the officer.

We would only buy what uh the gauge based off the interest that's gauged.

Um so we wouldn't buy the whole 34 if not all 34 people wanted to participate in the program.

We do have rifles in our inventory.

We will continue to let folks use those if they don't want to buy a new one.

So let me let me ask this question.

Yeah.

How many do we have right now?

30?

How many do we have in inventory right now?

34.

34, yeah.

Um were they all purchased at the same time 20 years ago?

Because I remember this budget item.

No.

So out of those 34, five are held back, five rifles and five pistols are held in inventory in the event an officer is involved in a situation where the rangers take their weapon, we have that.

Or we have a mouth the weapon malfunction, and we can immediately replace their weapons.

So 2025, we bought two new rifles.

2026, we bought two new rifles.

Back in 23 and 24, we replaced all of our handguns.

The rotation cycle for handguns is five years.

Rotation cycle on rifles is seven years.

But I want to be very clear with that.

The average round through the barrel is five to ten thousand rounds.

And the and the reason why that variation occurs is because the environment to which the rifle is kept in.

So on average, eight to ten thousand rounds goes through that barrel before that barrel is deemed unsafe.

Theoretically, a seven-year window has been put on there by the manufacturer and saying this is a safe, or what we have looked at through training that five, ten thousand rounds have been put through those rifles.

Our rifles do not see five to ten thousand rounds.

So the the purchase date versus the expiration date are are not the same.

However, two years ago, we started implementing quarterly firearms training, so there's a lot more rounds going through that weapon, and we were very intentional because of the cost.

We were very intentional about starting that process and taking smaller bites of that bigger problem.

And when we do that, we're not required to replace everything at one time.

So it's certainly more affordable as we so let me let me ask this.

So I'm so pretty familiar with rifles and handguns.

Um you know in the military, we were shooting a lot.

I remember my first uh 45.

If it wasn't built in 1911, it wasn't much after, and it certainly was carried in Vietnam when it was when it was finally issued to me.

We weren't replacing them every five years, and we were rapid deployment strategic forces.

We were all over the world.

So I every five years replacing uh a handgun uh I get it, but uh that seems awful rapid uh for weapons.

I would think that like we do a lot of replacements, you could say, okay, we're gonna do thirds every year, right?

Over the next three years, we're gonna replace uh you know uh ten of the rifles until we've replaced them all.

And then set a replacement cycle of every 10 years, right?

Then 10 years from the first batch, you buy another ton, ten years out, second batch, buy another ton.

Uh and that way, would you say you we were paying for a kit at out one fifteen to eight hundred?

That's with optics.

So 1500, yes, it's 15,000 a year for the next three years, and we have resi or upcycled uh, you know, the bulk of ours.

I think this you know, treating guns like cell phones.

Uh I I struggle with that.

I I understand the option, but I struggle with it.

Um I I think you know, if it's a department gun.

Um do our officers own their own pistols or sorry, so it's all supplies.

All of all of the equipment that they wear.

What's what's Dallas do?

Are they do they do the officers own their own guns or yes and no?

They they're issued just like Murphy, but you have the option to buy your own gun, so you don't have to use a city issue, but it has to be within a certain spec spec.

Okay.

But everybody's issued.

Then they have the option, they're always issued.

Sitting in the question.

Sit in a box at home.

Yeah.

We're quite we do allow officers to purchase their own optics for their long gun, provided it's approved by the range master.

Right.

Right.

That was gonna be my question.

So you say they short they shoot the rifles every quarter, I guess they zero in every quarter.

Um does the armor, I guess you have a certain the armor actually check, just make sure that's being maintained.

That is correct.

Everything's to get the lifespan longer.

So they check it.

Okay.

Yeah, they have to the officers break the weapon down, they have to go through a checklist, the armor checks it.

Um if it's not cleaned, they they clean it right there.

Okay, but we we qual and in zero once a year, and then everything else is skills-based uh transitions, a lot of stuff that we have never done before up until two years ago.

You just answered my question.

That was the same thing.

Are they are they the officers taking these rifles home?

They are assigned the weapon.

They are assigned all just like their pistols.

Yes, sir.

I again I would rather just do that.

I'd let rather just bracket these.

Yeah, they're not all 20 years old.

Um, and so you can just say, okay, what's our worst tent?

Yeah, just over the next three years we're going to do.

I think that's the best.

All right.

Any more discussion on this?

All right.

Oh.

So we're gonna move on to the less than lethal option.

There were lots of concerns and complaints about um the policy decision to move from tasers to burnas.

Um for those who don't know what a burna is, I'm just gonna skip forward and I'll go back.

Um so the taser fires two bar probes connected by wires that deliver an electrical charge and kind of incapacitates a person.

Um a burner fires a kinetic or chemical projectile powered by CO2.

Uh the the goal is to stop the threat from a safe distance, right?

Um there seems to be a lot of concern um from the officers about their own personal safety using a burner versus a taser.

So we just implemented these uh burnas in October of 2025.

So they haven't been in place for even a year.

Um prior to we had the tasers, I mean, for I guess five years.

Um for five years.

What the action plan going forward for me is I I do value the feedback and I totally understand the concern.

However, what I want to do is wait until our next budget cycle, which would give us about 18 months of data with the burnas, so that we can really have uh a true comparative analysis on the burners versus the tasers, not from a worldwide or or nationwide perspective, but from a city of Murphy perspective.

Um to keep those in place and then at the next budget cycle, when we're talking about FY28, we can bring that data back and we can talk about you know what?

Maybe we do need to go back to the tasers looking at what we're seeing.

Um we'll have that conversation.

There is a significant cost difference between the tasers and the burno's.

That's not the entirety of the recommendation uh that came from the police department when they approached me about making this change.

Um it was a lot more than just a financial component, but the financial component was a part of the conversation as well.

It's about a hundred thousand dollars over five years to have burns for the department versus I'm sorry, tasers for the department versus the burners, which I think were like 7,800 apiece or no, 700.

700 apiece.

What where did I get okay?

Um so the point is it's a significant um difference.

So that's the action plan for just out of morbid curiosity.

Um what's the average number of times we deploy say uh in the past because these are new uh tasers?

I really appreciate you asking that question because five years is incorrect.

We've had tasers for a lot longer, right?

Our analysis, so I apologize.

Our analysis based upon our decision making process and our rationale was based upon five years.

And in a five year period, we had three deployments.

One of which two of which help me out.

Two of which were successful, not successful.

Correct.

One was successful one was successful, two of which were not.

So when I look at the analytics of this, I look at is this our best option?

There are multiple agencies throughout the state that have what's called a use of force continuum, and that is a stair step use of force where you have to do A before you can do B and so on and so forth.

And tasers for some have been listed in the same category as a lethal weapon.

And one of those cities is very, very close to us.

So when you look at the when you look at those analytics, it made me consider are we doing the doing what's right?

And that was part of the rationale to look at other options.

I think for me, the the beauty of a taser is you get both a distance um uh uh a distance uh uh deployment and a close in, right?

For most tasers, I don't know about ours, but the when when I was trained on tasers, we had the ability to deploy our taser right there.

I could just push it into them, and and I could I could deploy the taser right there hand in hand.

Um you'll get a shot, but but it but but you can do that uh uh as well as at a distance of seven to seven twenty with the so the problem you've got why uh why I always hated the chemical is uh uh it it always got everywhere, it was always on my uniform.

It was I I carry a can of it and it was leaking all the time, and yeah, I I hated the coming.

Never used a burner, never been uh been in a kit that when I was still in uniform.

Um do you not see it the the the three times is telling it's what I would expect, right?

But I don't think you get much of a close uh uh you still you still have your distance requirement with distance you get yeah, yeah.

So you're dealing with pain compliance versus neuromuscular interruption, which is what the taser does, uh, versus it hurts so bad I'm gonna stop what I'm doing, which is the chemical component.

Um but when we looked at the rationale behind this, uh we presented the facts, a committee was formed.

They tested three different platforms, and the recommendation that came out of that committee was was burn it.

Now, you had mentioned area contamination.

That doesn't occur with burning, it's specific to your targeted subject, so officers can go hands-on immediately after the strike, but no doubt that's a pain compliance tool.

Um versus again, neuromuscular interruption.

So we don't really have the the I I hate to give up something that a lot of people invested their time and energy in in evaluating.

Uh but I will tell you, I'm a huge taser fan.

We just weren't using them.

So if we need to go back to them, uh what's the what's the what's the life span of a taser?

We were talking about the lifespan of a gun.

And there's multiple components of the taser, right?

There's the cartridge, uh, and then there's the physical um uh device.

A taser is a computer.

Right.

So it changes frequently.

Technology changes frequently.

On on average, I don't I don't want to give you a number, but I'll tell you that I started teaching taser when it was the Glock, the N series.

We went to the X series, now we're on the Z series.

Um I don't know what it is right now.

I've a decade removed.

But there is a number of uh technology advancements that have taken place with that weapon system.

We don't always have to chase technology though.

Well, but they become invalid, and that's the problem.

Uh they they're you you can't buy either batteries for them, uh they can't they they just end a lot.

What I'm trying to get into my head is you know, like anything, you've got the initial purchase price, right?

You got the maintenance price, and you have the life cycle.

And you have the qualification and then you have the qualifications.

Okay.

So the tasers, right?

That that leans heavily heavily now, but I don't know anything about the burnout.

How long does the burner last?

Well, the platform itself will last uh uh until it's run over or dropped uh because it's cartridge driven with the specific projectile, whether you have a a glass uh uh a OC or CS or a blend or a uh no or a um uh break and rake round or rubber ball, yes, right.

Yeah.

Look, I I really kind of consider this a department level decision.

I don't you know uh I go to what's the cost, right?

What are you asking me to fund?

Um there's no policy decision for you here.

This is just informational.

Yeah, I it's you uh you know I don't decide whether you guys use taser or burn.

That's that's up to you.

Now you're gonna ask me for money for one or the other, then I'm interested in that conversation.

Have we used the burnout?

We have had no active deployments since operation.

Now keep in mind it's only been October.

Yeah, we as soon as we pull over a kid in one of those uh bikes, we'll start it just being clear enough for you to put it.

I've only got two things quickly.

Um we have to and and you don't have to answer because I'm just curious how we're gonna measure in 18 months to make a decision other than a monitor to monetize this, how we're making a decision to move from one to the other.

Uh I know so for uh 18 months uh to the next budget socket, we're gonna evaluate.

I would be curious that measure to see why we're gonna go from one to the other.

Secondly, I guess concern a little bit is officers walking around with something on their side that they're not comfortable with.

Uh that that is a concern for me.

Um and and that is the first line of of a non-lethal defense, and if they're not comfortable using it, then that creates a concern for me.

Well, the the same theory was practiced with the taser.

And uh so I'm faced with the challenge of where do you find the balance?

Because one of the reasons that we transferred to this platform was in an effort for them to use it to de-escalate an unlawful situation without having to go hands on.

Uh because anytime you go hands on, there is a high probability of an officer injury.

Um so I don't know what that balance is.

I thought we were making a good decision, maybe we did, or if we didn't, I own that.

But I do want you to understand the rationale behind, we just didn't make a command decision, if you will.

There was a lot of thought and process that went into it with a multitude of individuals involved, and I don't know that 18 months is enough.

Maybe it's not.

Uh, but we felt like that was a reasonable amount of time to at least evaluate this asset or perhaps just an investment.

I I'll I'll give you my rationale on the 18 months and why this is a part of my action plan.

So on the 18 months, I I do want to have another check-in on are you still uncomfortable?

Because I share the same concern you share.

If someone doesn't feel comfortable using one of their only non-lethal choices, my mind goes to so what are you what are you gonna pull out, right?

And that's not a headline or a situation any of us want to be involved in.

So it's a concern for me.

But because this only came into play in October, I want to give an opportunity for one emotions to cool, and for to see how does this actually fit in in Murphy.

Are you just looking at what the nation is doing or what another department is doing, or are we going to look at what is happening in Murphy?

I want to see are people are people using it as a de-escalation tool?

Are they pulling it out?

I want to be able to ask those questions.

Right now, I feel like it is a it it is a an emotional, we hate it, we'll never use it.

I don't know if that's true because they haven't been in a situation where they had a choice to make.

And so maybe in 18 months they still wouldn't have been in a situation.

I hope they they're not, right?

I hope we're so great.

But I want to give it time.

To me, it feels premature to reverse course before having just gotten this in October.

We haven't gone through even one fiscal year.

I I think what I think what concerns me uh about any platform, we've deployed in the last five years, deployed taser three times.

And when you tell me that one time successful, that does not surprise me.

When you have a platform that has that has that limited use, the majority of the officers on the on the force have never deployed this outside of training scenario, right?

Um and that's gonna be the same for the burno.

And so the the if I were doing this assessment, and again, I it's it's kind of outside what I think my my decision points are.

But if I were gonna make this decision for a community where this is this is not something that gets deployed.

If we start deploying a lot, then this conversation changes.

But if you know the burna is gonna get deployed three times over the next five years versus the taser, which is the easier to develop muscle memory around that it's a it's a it's something that can be effectively deployed, right?

Because the only time they're ever they're ever using this, and I don't know what your training schedule is and how often they're using it, or they're shooting each other with tasers.

Um but uh if uh it if it's something that never gets used in the course of a day, and once a quarter you run through a training cycle and you and you you're asked to pull it out when it really comes to the point of being having to operationalize a platform like a taser, like a burnout, like your pistol.

Yes, you don't have the muscle memory there that's available uh in order to in order to do that without having the taking the time making the decision, how am I how am I dealing with this?

So I would start to ask which platform is easier to deploy, right?

Which platform has less malfunction, right?

Which platform is uh is uh is it you know yeah, it more effective to be my right, yeah.

So again, that's a decision I can't make, and it's a decision that it doesn't belong on this side of the diet.

That's a decision that you guys are gonna have to make.

Um we may you may ask to see that assessment, but look, three times in five years, I you know, uh we have officers saying, I'm not gonna use this versus that, or I'm not gonna you never use the other one, right?

And the three times that you use it, two of them were unsuccessful.

Two of them were unsuccessful, right?

So we're not going into cobble.

Anyway, that's my councilman.

Smith, did you have you were I thought you were saying something.

Okay.

Well, my my only concern as a resident on this, I get the three times that's awesome that we don't use it that often because obviously we don't want it can happen, or you know, we want to save community.

The issue I have is when I look at this, it's just the taser is a tool that most agencies use, and we're preparing the officers to use it for the unknown.

And it could anything could happen tomorrow, right?

Whether we use it three times in the last five years, it's tomorrow that matters, that we don't know what's gonna happen.

And my concerns with the Burma as a guy who has a taser right now in this car, right, is that pain compliance doesn't always work.

And that's what concerns me is if we have someone, because we are a commuting city too, so it's not just the residents, we have people who come through here and we're growing, is that if we get someone in here who's drug-induced, excited delirium, or people with mental health issues, that pain compliance device is not gonna do that.

And I mean you you you know that.

Um that's where the taser comes in because it locks up their muscles, it brings them down, and we're able to, you know, you're able to successfully handcuff them most of the time.

I get two out of the three components uh were probably deployed, and there's a lot of reasons for that.

They're lose clothing, you know, there's different things from that.

They're moving around, they made more, you know, tech matter fact that do taser got now shoot six prods now, so you can hopefully get a connecting point.

But that's just my concern with the Burma is I just would hate to have a resident that has a child, for example, who's mentally ill, pain compliance doesn't work, and we have to either go in physically, which looks horrible on the news, or someone gets really hurt because I don't want the officers hurt either, or you have a device that's been proven that actually immobilizes them safely, and then officers able to handcuff everyone's safe.

That that's my concern with the Burma is I get the cost of it, and I agree with the mayor that you know we only control the you know the cost stuff, and that's your decision, then that's just you know, I just think sometimes when it comes to costs when it comes to the officer's safety, there's no limit on the cost when we're protecting the officers and the residents in my opinion and firemen, everyone.

That if that's a tool that's gonna protect our residents, I would be behind 100%.

So that's my concern with the Burma on that.

Any more discussion on this item?

So we're gonna jump into training.

So there was some concern is that this thing is so big.

Um there was as I mentioned earlier, there was uh a lot of discussion in my meetings about training and folks saying that they had been denied training, they didn't feel like they were getting all the training they needed.

Um so the police department, I asked them to pull exactly what has been our training over the past couple of years, so that I could get a clearer picture on whether or not this is a a perception issue, a real reality issue, or what was going on.

Um so I'm gonna let Chief walk through some of this information.

So let me identify some acronyms for you.

Uh a PID is identified as a personal identification number, and it's set forth by the state.

So everybody, all the numbers you see up here with PIDs consist of law enforcement personnel and uh telecommunicators.

And the only comparison that you have is from each city, all three cities, are sworn law enforcement officers and telecommunicators.

So for the city of Murphy, we have 39, Saxe has 46, and Wiley has 83.

So I took, we took a two-year comparison and looked at all three cities.

Now, in the there's another reason I use Saxie and Wiley too.

We are a training provider, and what that means is we can submit to the state of Texas training hours for law enforcement agencies, so we can host classes, but Wiley and Saxe cannot.

So when they do training classes, they have to submit their hours to us to submit to the state.

So these are these are two cities that rely on us heavily to do that, and I thought it was it was a good help me help me understand that again.

So we're not providing the the training for them.

We can provide it, and we do provide it quite often.

So, how long have we been a training center?

Three years.

Huh?

I it's been learning that I've been here three.

It's four years, right when I came on.

Yeah, four years.

Uh so no, I'm not done with it.

So, why has Saxie and Wiley decided not to be they can't?

Why?

Because it's re it's regionally directed.

So one of the agreements with the city of Murphy and the state of Texas is that we would take care of those other agencies.

So the closest one to us is Plano.

They do not hand them out to every organization.

So they look at it from a geographical location and specify the the agency wishing because there is a significant amount of compliance uh components that go into it.

So we get audited every year, and then it's uh much different than a non-training provider.

And is this a service that we provide to Saxie and Wiley for free?

Yes.

Cheapskates, but it was the agreement we made with the state at the time.

So if Wiley would have done it, they would have had made the agreement with the state that they had provided us.

Um, and I got us completely off track, but I thought it was important.

No, no, and I did not deal with that.

Yeah.

So in the two years, we completed 7,327 hours for the same time period.

Saxie trained 3,125 hours, and for the same time period, Wiley trained uh 1,200 hours.

Now, if you break that down per PID, we're training our PID individuals on average 187.5 hours.

Now, that number is actually a little lower, and here's the reason why.

We have 39 pits, but only 38 count because one's in the academy and has not been uh given any training hours.

So that number is actually a little bit higher.

But you you get the point.

Uh average for Saxie is 125 hours, and then the average for Wiley is 17.32.

But uh what what I what I think is very very important is this next slide and how it breaks down in how we predicate the percentages of training hours to the police department.

So out of that 7,327 hours, 68% of that went to patrol with 49 over 4900 hours.

Uh 16% went to CID with a uh almost 1,200, and then 11 uh percent went to communications with 852.

The only division that you don't see up here, and it's simply uh because of statics, I couldn't get it on the slide was administration.

Administration had 300 hours coming in at 4.02%.

How's your training structured?

Is uh do you have uh uh online self-directed training?

Do you uh or is this is this classroom it's all the above so we host a lot of classes uh which we we can report we open those classes also up to all law enforcement agencies that want to come in.

We send our officers to training uh they can do online classes.

We have really moved away from online classes post COVID now because there's so much more learning potential and and in a in a classroom and or uh through through through live training.

There is some online training that we will do as it applies to active this year, but uh we're we're we're much more in person now.

So uh of the number of hours, I know that's probably including the standard 40 hours T call training, right?

That's it.

That is directly from their PSR, yeah.

Yeah, so but uh I'm just kind of curious on the specialized training.

What kind of how many hours for like specialized trainings like uh for example like DREs?

Do we have any DREs and we do not have any DREs, and I didn't break break it down, but we're across the board with the exception of uh DREs.

So we have uh we've had DWI training, uh uh accident reconstructionist, uh advanced accident reconstructionist, um it is literally across the board advanced or uh firearms instructor, um I can certainly break it down for you, but it is it is a very diverse uh amount of hours or amount of training classes, okay.

Why are we I gets go back a slide?

Why are we so uh uh out of why are we so out of line?

We train a lot, right?

Well, I could see that, right?

So you're telling me don't drive through Wiley?

Which I don't do another Wiley is a an incredibly collaborative partner of ours across the board.

The other joke, the other joke I had was do we pay overtime for training?

You still have to staff.

Sometimes there's overtime to work.

Well, you know, it's all it's all together.

No, I I I think I think in general, training is good.

Uh so I'm not gonna, you know, one just looks at that and says, Wow, there that's a significant difference.

Right.

Is it age of staff?

Is it age of, you know, is the is our police department younger than the police department in Wiley or Saxon?

I think it's this is a philosophy decision.

That's what it boils down to.

Um it just what what is the direction the organization wants to go?

Well and and there's also what I you know simply because we are a training center, right?

Or training facilitator, um ability capacity uh tenants to actually document all of our training, I suspect is higher.

I bet if you went out to Wiley, they're getting more than 17.3 hours.

Well, and keep in mind, look at your day.

So you do lose six months of the year.

I they're definitely doing the statutory requirement because everybody's compliant, which is 40 hours a year.

Right.

But uh when you break it down in those two years, and we just try to follow the same date pattern as everything else.

So yeah, I I suspect there's something skewed here a little bit.

But ours would be much higher as well, because we lose six months.

Right, right.

I'm just saying that I don't think that Wiley is is averaging 17.32.

They're higher uh per PID.

And the re and whether that's that the way they formally document their training is different than the way we do, but I just question that.

But not I I don't care, that's Wiley.

So they can do what they want to do.

Um I think the important piece here is to show for for us aside from comparison, exactly how much training is happening, and it's not concentrated in one division of the department, but it's spread across the department with the majority of it being where I think it should be, which is with patrol, the folks who are on the street every day.

Um but this these numbers also don't take away from the perception that I heard in the room over and over of my training's being denied, and so that is I I'd still take that seriously despite the numbers, right?

And so that is I I'd still take that seriously despite the numbers, right?

Because it doesn't, you can get a lot of training, but if you don't feel like that training that you're receiving is valuable or adequate, then we we still have an issue that needs to be addressed, right?

And I think that that's the right question.

Why is there a perception from staff that they're not getting enough training, right?

Is it not the right training?

Uh is it every officer doesn't think he's not getting enough training, so that's just a common you know concern?

Uh I I guess I'd be really interested to find out why they feel like they're not getting from some of the comments, some of it because they can't they haven't been able to go to all of the trainings that they're interested in.

Uh-huh.

So they're getting they're getting all of the required training that they need to have, but sometimes they want more than just to go for their intermediate license training.

They want to do some of these specialized niche things that they're interested in doing because they're not getting that on the street.

Right.

Right.

They're never going to do it in Murphy.

Or they don't get it in day-to-day operations in Murphy.

So they want to go off and get training.

So that was some of it.

Right.

That was actually that recurred that that comment kind of recurred quite often.

So it really comes down to a balancing act.

So the action plan going forward for this is to have PD concentrate their training program.

Right now, the training program, if if an officer is interested in something, they kind of come up and they say, hey, I want to go to this training, and they're told yes or no.

I have spoken with the chief and said this really needs to be linked to department-wide goals.

Right.

Right.

This shouldn't just be a, well, I like DWIs or I like robberies, or you know, it should really be what has the department faced over the last year or two years.

What do we think is on the horizon as far as trends and crime or or police work?

And manage this and concentrate it in a more centralized way than leaving it on the officers to determine.

So that's the action plan forward that we're going to implement.

Yeah.

And that that provides predictability for the officers.

So when you're told no, you know that there's training on the horizon for you, and it's for this reason and for this purpose.

And look, I get it.

Uh there are two reasons to train career development and train for the mission, right?

From a PD perspective, training for the mission.

What do we do to what what is our role within the community?

Uh, how do we make sure that our officers, staff across the board, right?

This same for water, right?

There's all kinds of training that happens in there.

How do we make sure they get all the training they need in order to be effective in the job that exists here?

That's 7,327 hours.

Uh uh IED uh diffusing class uh out of uh Vegas that somebody wants to take.

Probably not very proud.

Probably probably not a great investment for the sure.

Right.

I don't know how much that is, but and but I also get for a police officer who's looking at saying, I want to be able to advance my career.

I want to be able to take this next level.

I want to build a skill that is markable uh for uh for for my next uh you know goal that I have, and I completely get that as well.

Um, but that's not the mission that that should be available, but that's not the mission for the system.

Could it also be because of the number of staff per department?

Because, like, for instance, communications.

I'm sure there's lots of training that they can do, but if there's a limited staff and they can't take the time off to do training, that absolutely because they're gonna be short of staff.

That could also be because you you mentioned like here, 850.

What's missing out of here is like how many people work in this department where it justifies maybe why there's less training going on.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Oh, and they're a much smaller, much smaller division.

They're a division of 10.

Yeah, that's right.

As opposed to, you know, 25, 26 officers on the city.

Which is maybe the reason why you're getting it.

Okay, I'm not getting this the training.

Oh, yeah, the reason why I'm not able to do the training, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah, being denied for staffing concerns is absolutely one of the reasons that I I heard continuously.

Uh so this concludes the four recurring themes that I heard throughout this.

Uh, just to kind of give you guys some inside information.

Um, I'm going to circle back with the department.

I'm gonna do uh two kind of large shift meetings, one in the morning next week and one in the evening, so that I can recapture all of the employees and close the loop for them.

Let them know what I heard them say in total and let them know what the action plan is so that they can understand that they were heard.

We might not fall in the same position on everything.

We might not agree with everything that they said, but I do want to give them some additional context in how we're moving forward and why we're moving forward the way that I'm proposing that we do.

So that I will wrap that up next week.

So that concludes those those four areas.

I do want to go back to because not everything here tonight is a policy decision for you all.

Um but I do appreciate the feedback and I I love just the conversation around this because it really helps us understand where your position is, right?

We don't want to make these decisions in a vacuum either, despite them being policy decisions.

But there are a couple of specific policy decisions for you that I do want to circle back to and see if you want to provide direction.

And so it was on the differential pay and the reclassification.

Again, um the reason that I am bringing this up is because this will have a FY27 budgetary impact if this is something that you agree with, if this is a direction that you agree we should go in.

If not, that's fine too.

Can I ask on option two here at the con?

So it's $20,000 impact to next year's budget.

It's not a comprehensive solution, but rather a temporary fix.

So it's $20,000 plus head count.

So the the comprehensive fix really is two additional staff people.

The two additional staff people will make sure that no matter what, that manager is not pulled into being on the floor, right?

And that's the ultimate goal is letting that manager be a manager to run that department, letting those seniors run the floor, and having the telecommunicators on the calls.

Um so there might be a situation where if you have a couple of call outs, that manager is still going to be pulled.

But this takes her out of that day-to-day rotation of being on the floor.

So I say it's not a comprehensive solution, but it is a step towards the comprehensive solution.

We provide, we still provide uh um parkers.

Yes, sir.

How many are on the how many are on is it currently a shift?

There's two.

So there's two during the day and two for the not shift, two dispatchers.

So what this is saying one is so if there's two people there, one is the supervisor, correct?

And the other is going to be now reclassified as well.

So there will be reclassified one per shift.

So one part of the week you have a supervisor, and you should have two, right?

But you have call-ins and all that.

So she ends up being one of the people on the floor.

She gets pulled off, then you have one person on the floor.

On the other part of the week, you have a senior person.

So what this does is on both ends of the week, instead of having the supervisor in that number, you have two seniors.

And that way you have two people who can run that floor, and she's not needed to be pulled in there unless it's just a dire situation where there are you know people who can't make it in, or there's there's some kind of emergency going on.

Does that make sense?

Do you understand that what I'm saying?

Maybe not.

So one of my comments on this one.

And I hate to talk about it because we have I know we have some of the best employees that there are and our dispatch.

I know these are fantastic people that work hard, and we always want to make sure that we're paying, you know, compensating our employees the best that we can.

And sometimes, sometimes, like the cynic in me looks at this and says, Well, this is just a great employee, and this is a way of giving them a raise more than we've already given them.

You know, I mean I'm just saying that out loud.

And I'm not saying that these these people aren't the most deserving people in the world, but as the stewards, you know, of the fiscal side, we I have to ask these questions, you know what I've done for sure.

And we have to put our trust in the city staff to make sure that they're making um the right fiscal decisions as well.

So that's just my comment out loud.

I don't know if there's really a discussion about it or not.

But I'm not in the business of just giving people raises just because I like them or think they do a fantastic job, right?

Um, what this truly for the manager reclassification, this truly aligns what she is doing with her job title.

Right now she's being she's a part of uh PD's kind of management team, right?

She's pulled into their management meetings with all of their division heads because she is she's over a division, and we just call her a supervisor.

That's not customary across cities, across markets.

It's typically over a division is a manager.

Um so she's operating as that, but she's not she's not called that, she's not classified as that, and she's not paid as that, but she's doing that job.

So that's a concern for me.

And at the same time, it addresses a structural staffing issue, where this supervisor who acts as a manager is also being asked to act to act as frontline staff on a regular basis, not on an emergency basis, on an everyday basis, and that poses all kinds of concerns for me because I heard far too many times that well it's really only one person on the floor because she she has to go do this, or she has to do a management thing and she can't do this, and that's a real concern for me when you have calls coming in, and sometimes they're high, sometimes they're low, but to think of having one person on the floor.

I mean, even when I was doing these interviews, when people would come talk to me, they were leaving one person on the floor.

And this kind of gets to that a little closer than where we are right now.

I do have an ask.

I I'd like to see the call volume.

I like the number of people on staff at that time.

Okay.

Just to see that this, you know, I I want to see the whole picture versus part.

Absolutely.

And that varies, so that's fine.

It can get they'll pull all times of the day, so you can see you can have a that way.

Anything else?

I will give you a uh an estimated.

We average over 35,000 calls a year.

And in fact, uh so a thousand a day?

No.

Um, sixty.

Oh, okay.

You're right.

100 calls.

100 calls.

100 calls.

And 2025, we averaged a little over the three.

I knew there was a thousand calls.

I'm sorry, Chief.

35,000 in 2025.

Yeah, 100%.

Golly, what's happening in Murphy?

That there's a thousand calls.

It's part of Parker.

It's part of it.

That's a joke on the record.

That's all right.

All right, so really, really, guys, what I need to know is are we headed in the wrong direction if I bring this back in the final budget on August 4th?

For me, I don't think that we're headed in the wrong direction with you know with this.

I think that it's um, I think it's certainly a lot to our with what we need to do for the uh with a dispatching office or to I'm not opposed to it.

And if it's something where this person could go to a neighboring city and get this because they're already doing the work, right?

We hope she never leaves.

She was great, she's been here forever.

Um I don't hear any opposition.

I I don't hear consistent consensus on moving forward, but if you all want to shoot it down on August 4th, we can talk about it again then.

I mean, I'm I'm fine with with option two.

I mean, yeah, I'm okay with option.

Okay.

Wonderful.

So I'll move on to shift differential pay, which again, this is an added benefit.

This is not um, this is not a crisis situation.

I don't feel as strongly about this one as I did the other one, but I do think I mean it's something that I heard that recurred where people feel like it's just unfair, right?

That they have to go on nights and that there's no, you know, it's so disruptive and they they don't see any difference um from people who are on days, and I understand that.

Um and it's not an uncommon practice, as we showed you, cities do this.

I think by keeping it to a hundred dollars flat, it's not fluctuating, it's not a percentage of their pay.

I think it's um from an accounting perspective, it's easy to manage.

Um, and I think it's something that we can build in pretty sustainably.

So, how many officers are on per evening?

It's about 16, and it's not just officers, it's it this is across officers and dispatch, it's 16 at any given time throughout the year.

So we've got 16 times 360 is an extra cost 362.

16 times 100.

It's 100 per month, though.

Per month.

Yes, per month.

So we're talking about if they're on, so we're talking about an officer, this would be an additional six hundred dollars if they're on for six months or not.

So that's right.

It's not favorable.

Starbucks.

I mean that's what I say.

Is that for the month?

I mean, I like the idea of the shift differential.

I think it's a great recruiting tool, too.

It's just is the hundred dollars a month really gonna be uh that big of an index.

I that's that's as high as I'm comfortable with going as we crunch the numbers.

There are some cities that do a hundred, do 150, do 200.

Some of them do like five percent of your pay.

Um, I don't want to get into an accounting nightmare.

I think when I when I talk about sustainability and looking to the future, I don't want to implement something else that I have to roll back.

Yeah, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna lose sleep over 10 days in your well it it shakes out to about 20 because for the year for you for the year.

Just want to be clear 10k for the rest of this year, and then yeah, right.

So 20,000.

Yeah, maybe I guess this will take effect October 1.

I got you.

So oh, yeah, I'm not gonna lose sleep over 20K.

Um other feedback on that from I hear the mayor, but I'm fine with uh cut the overtime button.

Okay, yeah, uh it and especially since we are talking about implementing and looking at the overtime and trying to figure out how we bottle that.

I think this this is this is a good offset, right?

So yes, all right.

All right, so that takes us to the end.

Are there any other discussions that you all want to have?

All right, well, thank you for the time.

And I do um want to say thank you to PE PD for being good sports, um, as I've been interviewing all of Chiefs employees um for the last three weeks.

It's not always easy because you don't know what they're gonna walk in the room and say, um, but it's been a really um I think beneficial process for the both the department um and for me as the manager of this organization.

It's been really great just to hear directly from these folks what they perceive to be issues um and how we can address them together moving forward.

So very good.

Thank you guys.

All right, is the other room open?

Because we're gonna go into accessible.

It is if you go on the hours on the left side, I've left those on the left side.

Yes, if you're facing chambers, all right.

So we're gonna we're gonna go into executive session.

Council, we're going to head over into the executive meeting.

We will come back out here to close because we have to formally close the meeting.

So item six executive session in accordance with Texas Government Code Chapter 551, sub chapter D, City Council will now recess into an executive session to discuss the following.

Uh paragraph 551.074 deliberation regarding the appointment, employment, evaluation, resignation, duties, discipline, or dismissal of public officer employee, city manager Aretha Adams.

The time is 820.

So with that, uh City Council will reconvene in regular sessions, uh pursuant to the proposed chapter 551, subject D Texas government vote take any action necessary regarding our debate 551.074 deliberation regarding the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer employee.

City manager Aretha Adams time is 926.

Uh there was no action taken in exec.

I will take a motion coming out of executive session.

Mayor, I move to make a motion to reconsider the amendments to the city manager's contract as adopted on June 16th, 2026, and a secondary motion to withdraw the amendments and restore the contract.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passed unanimously.

The time is 9 26.

We're adjourned.