So we're gonna go ahead and begin.

The time is now 2 24 p.m.

and public safety committee is called to order.

Madam Clerk, could you please call the role?

Councilmember McKee Rodriguez.

She might have Councilmember Castillo City, Councilmember Spears.

Chair Corps?

Here we have a quorum.

Okay, awesome.

All right.

So the first item on the agenda is um minutes from January 20th, 2026 public safety committee meeting.

Are there any adjustments that need to be made?

If not, I'll take a motion.

You know a second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Okay, motion carries three-o.

All right.

So we're gonna go ahead and take items five first, which is the inwall care services metrics that we were just looking at.

The point of this is just to be able to show data on a quarterly basis for all of our public safety organizations that do work in the community.

So we just thought um we did SCPDs in a memo this form last time.

We'll do these every month with the different departments, so next month will be fire.

But for ACS, I'd just like for my colleagues to give any feedback.

John is here in case we have any um questions for him to uh to answer, but we just wanted feedback on is there a specific item with statistics that you have questions about or that you would want to do a deeper dive in for the next uh public safety meeting.

Maria, anything you want to add?

No, councilwoman.

Okay any feedback from my colleague on it?

Go ahead, Councilman Castillo.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh thank you, John, um, for your work with animal care service as well as Rita and Karen uh for serving on the board.

I did have a couple of questions in terms of the vacancies.

Uh for example, um, we see the decrease in the compliance rate due to vacancies, but we've also increased um dangerous dog investigations team from two to four.

Uh are all four of those roles currently filled, or are there uh any vacancies out of the four?

Uh no, ma'am.

The uh there's actually two vacancies of the four right now.

Um, and um that that's that's the big issue of the problem.

Not to mention that the number of dangerous cases have doubled.

So when we when we went from two officers to four officers when we initially that we only were taking were doing about 300 affidavits a year, we went from two to four to so we could cover 300, but now we're getting 600, so it's definitely impacting their ability.

And in terms of addressing those vacancies, do you all intend to hire from within the animal care service department or are you all uh currently exploring uh candidates for those vacancies?

Typically they're they're hired from within uh for the because those are lead positions and typically that it's a promotional, although I mean occasionally we do have to go outside if we don't have anyone internally that qualifies.

Yeah, and to your point, right, in terms of the the actuals from 2025 to this year, um, in terms of seeing the increase of dogs surrendered to animal care service and the increase of animals reported, uh, you all are faring pretty well in terms of increasing the live release rate, uh, ensuring that there's uh more adoptions and then of course transferring to uh rescue partners.

So just wanted to highlight those key pieces uh in terms of what to see moving forward.

I think uh in terms of helping us understand uh well one, right?

I'd like to, I'm sure we all like to see the vacancies um filled um to ensure that we're having the greatest impact.

Um, but also an understanding of the bike cases, uh how they're separate from the dangerous dog investigations and can you remind me of that split uh of the dangerous dogs investigations uh and then the bite cases as separate?

Yeah, um dangerous dogs don't necessarily involve a bite, they could just involve an attack, and if even if the person was able to defend themselves well enough where they didn't actually get bid, it could still qualify as dangerous.

So not every bike ends up at dangerous.

The other thing is there's there's eight officers that buy officers that will initially work the by call if the bye meets the definition of a dangerous, then that person is offered an affidavit to then to move forward with dangerous at that point.

So it starts off with our bite officers most of the time, and then get switched to the dangerous team if they file the affidavit.

I believe it's like a 94%.

Uh and I can't imagine with those new officers out on the field, right, to see that number continue to increase again, as you mentioned, seeing an increase uh in calls for need of supportive animal care service.

So just uh thank you and your team for all the work you are doing, and I look forward to receiving these updates.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilman Castillo.

And I realized um we had a public comment signed up for this item, so I'm gonna allow her to speak first, and then we can go to Councilmember McKee Riggers if he has anything.

Vicki Steerman, are you here?