And currently we're finding ourselves right at that uh uh I guess uh what would you call it basically the crossroads um where we're starting to become more of a reactive department uh rather than proactive.

So we're gonna talk a little bit further as we get into the slides uh where our current staffing is and where if this levy were to pass, where we would be, and if the levy doesn't pass, what uh some of the cuts and some of the changes that we would have to make.

Um we've already started to make a few adjustments in our response plan that's been going on for the last couple of years, and we're getting to a point right now in our response plan where we're not the type of police department we want to be.

We want when you call 911 or you call dispatch, we shouldn't have to be making a choice whether we'll send an officer out or an online report.

We want to be responsive to the needs of our community.

And without more staff, we're gonna have to evaluate our overall response, again, making additional adjustments, and again, we'll get into that a little bit later, what those adjustments are.

But uh I think that that's you know gonna shock some people and some of the things that we're looking at uh potentially have to do.

Um, I'm gonna turn uh some of this is gonna be uh through me and then also through a deputy chief Kurt Schenkel.

Um, I'll hit this next slide.

So, what is being proposed to retain our existing police and public safety personnel?

What we're finding ourselves in at the city of Napa is uh departments around the Treasure Valley were not keeping up with uh the wages and our benefits.

So in this levy, there's roughly a one-time four percent cost of living uh that would go to our uh police personnel.

That wouldn't completely close the gap uh between us and these other agencies, but it but it would it would do enough of the gap closure that I'm calling confident

as chief that we would be able to uh keep our current personnel

there.

I

think it's important that people understand

uh if we lose a police officer to another agency, um, yes, there's still a police officer in the treasure alley, but it's costing the city of Napa taxpayers roughly 140,000 uh for that first year that we hire, we train, and we get an officer ready to go to the road just to see uh, you know, within a year or two, then we'll go to another agency, which is basically making Napa a stepping stone department, and quite frankly, that is something we've never been, and that's something we never want to be.

We don't want to be training officers for other departments.

Uh we want uh other officers quite frankly to train them in the work coming to get them.

Um recruiting

train

uh 24 police officers.

Uh, that's probably the most important thing uh that this levy uh has right now.

So our patrol division is understaffed,

or

our whole department um could use more officers, but this levy

addresses only for our patrol division.

Currently, our patrol division has uh eight teams with an average of seven officers on a team.

To put that in perspective, when I started the Nampa Police Department 33 years ago, a patrol shift had six police officers on it.

Roughly 30,000 people lived in the city of Napa back then.

We're roughly 130,000 now, so 100,000 more people, and we've gained one more officer per ship for patrol.

Uh, we're a busy department.

We handle between 250 and 350 calls for service a day.

And uh, we're at a point right now that uh with all of our specialty units, our narcotics division, our traffic division, our school resource officers, and and so on, and our specialty units we've had to start pulling some of those people back into patrol because uh again, our uh number one goal when somebody calls Napa police, we have to have a uniformed officer in a patrol car to respond to that call.

And so what we're starting to suffer is these specialty units.

Uh, let's

take SROs, for example.

We need SROs in our schools, and I have 16 school resource officers to police 38 schools in the Napa school district, and that's obviously not enough for full coverage all the time in those schools, but I'm gonna have to start pulling some of those resource officers back to answer uh patrol calls.

Uh, for the recruiting and the hiring of the officers, again, that one-time uh colour four percent would help us recruit officers.

What worries me is the chief in a couple of uh months um if this levy fails that we won't see those applications, they won't come to the city of Napa because they're gonna look and they could hire you know get hired on uh east of us for 10 or 15 dollars an hour or more, and those applications aren't even gonna be uh showing up to Napa PV.

So that's a real concern for

me.

And then um also uh building Napa Police Department's first training facility.

Currently, Napa Police uh trains with the city of Meridian um over at their facility in Meridian.

Um 80% of our recruits time, whether you're an AMP officer or a uh meridian officer, you'll be training in Meridian at their facility.

Well, Meridians like us, they're a

growing

city and a growing community, and they're starting to get at capacity too.

And I don't want to be reliant on the city of Meridian when we set academies, how many folks we can put through there.

We're a big enough city now and a big enough community that we need to have our own training facility.

We have a great Hugh Nichols public safety building, and that was built in 2012,

and

that was a 30-year building.

Well, everybody knows what happened between 2012 and now Napa has exploded with growth.

So we're we're out of room.

I have no room um to train our new officers.

And again, I think it's important that the community knows that we're fiscally conservative

community.

Uh the city is uh very fiscally conservative, and the money that we're asking for, it doesn't go lightly.