Okay, the time is now 143 p.m.

and calling public theory to order.

Madam Clerk, could you please call roll?

Councilmember McKee Rodriguez.

Present.

Councilmember Castillo?

Here.

Councilmember Spears.

Here.

Councilmember White.

Chair Corps?

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

First item on the agenda's approval of minutes from March 17, 2026.

Any corrections?

The motion?

Motion.

Second.

Second.

Motion and a second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay, motion carries.

All right.

The second item on the agenda is a briefing on the fire department key performance metrics and fire dashboard, which I'm really excited to share.

So, Maria, do you want to say anything or pass it over?

All right, Chief Ross, your stage is yours.

Is the mic is her mic on the now?

It is.

Thank you.

Today's presentation focuses on the areas the committee asked us to expand on during our last meeting.

Uh so we'll be covering top incident types, trends over time, response performance, and an update on the needs assessment.

I'll highlight key takeaways and what those mean operationally.

On this next slide, we have the top incident types citywide.

Our system is driven by medical calls.

Uh, those being sick person falls and breathing problems make up the bulk of our calls, as you can see.

And on the non-medical side, it's lift assists and fire alarms.

This is the environment we are currently operating in.

Here we have the medical call types by district, and this is for calendar year 2025.

This is consistent across every district.

The same call types, different volumes as you can see.

Some areas are carrying more of that demand, and that matters as we look at deployment strategies.

On the next slide here, you see the medical call types by district.

These are the top 10 broken out by council district.

No change in 2026, same pattern and same demand drivers as you can see, the sick person MVC.

Um, so this is very steady.

What you'll notice across every district is that there's consistency.

Sick person is the number one call everywhere, and that tells us it isn't isolated, it's system-wide demand.

And what does change is the volume?

Some districts are carrying a heavier share of that demand, which becomes important as we look at deployment and future station planning as well.

Here you'll see the non-medical call types broken out by council district, and this is covering calendar year 2025.

Lift assists and fire alarms continue to lead across the board.

Lift assist leading citywide tells us we're seeing more calls tied to aging populations and mobility issues.

They're not high acuity calls, but they are very resource intensive where they require a full complement response and impact availability of units.

On this next slide, you'll see non-medical call types broken out by council district again, and this is for year-to-date calendar year 2016.

Same story and uh no shift, just continued volume on those particular call types.

So MIH program.

Uh, this is one of the programs, the ways that we are managing that demand.

The MIH program is doing exactly what it was designed to do, targeting high utilizers, connecting them to the right care, and reducing repeat 911 calls.

You can see the the growth and contacts year over year, and that's intentional.

It reflects both demand and our ability to reach more people proactively.

MIH is one of the key tools we have to manage system demand without adding emergency response units.

And the other one would be clinical dispatcher that has significantly reduced call volume as well.

Here you'll see the post-COVID demand response, which remains elevated post-COVID.

Key point here is demand did not come down after COVID, it reset, but at a much higher level.

So in terms of the monthly incident volume, here we have comparison from pre-COVID 2019 to COVID, and also overview of 2025.

Every month in 2025 exceeded pre-COVID levels, and this is not seasonal, it's it's been sustained.

This line graph illustrates the monthly demand holds steady throughout the year, no drop off.

This is our new baseline.

Same here on the non-medical call types for calendar year 2025.

The system is consistently active.

For structure fires, calendar year 2025, you'll see the fires broken out by structure type and the occupied versus vacant fires by type.

When we do see fires, most of those are residential fires.

We also see a number of those involved vacant structures, which increases risk to our firefighters.

The key message is residential fires dominate.

Most of our structure fires occur in residences, and that's where our risk to life is highest.

We're also seeing a notable percentage, as you can see in vacant structures, and that's where there's a higher risk to firefighters.

And most fires are accidental.

Electrical, human factors, and smoking materials remain the leading causes, and a lot of these are preventable, which is where our prevention efforts are focused.

There are districts, as you can see, with consistently higher fire activity, and this helps us understand where risk is concentrated, not just volume, but fire risk specifically.

So you'll see some districts are much higher than than others.

And then we have some key observations noted off to the side.

This is something that we see year over year.

Residential fires, common accidental causes, and then the seasonal trends.

Efforts include targeted community outreach, focus outreach in areas where we see higher incident or call volume, working directly in those communities to address the risk.

We adjust messaging based on when the risk is highest.

So you'll see winter heating messages in those you know, winter months, summer wildfire conditions.

We also you know note which are red flag days, and during the holidays, you know, obviously we'll post and make sure that we push public education on seasonal hazards.

That includes you know, the ongoing education, cooking safety, electrical hazards, and and seasonal risks.

Also on the wildland side, you'll see a lot of initiatives that are ongoing, and um, those are really designed to build awareness of the fire risks, you know, where there's development that is directly adjacent to heavily wooded areas, and um again, those risks increase during certain times of the year.

We are uh always coordinating with other city departments to address broader issues tied to fire risk, whether that's vacant structures, code compliance, or overall community safety.

The goal is pretty straightforward to reduce preventable incidents and focus our resources where they're needed the most.

So here you'll see the department response times for this year as well as 2024 and 2025.

This is broken out by incident type as well as unit type.

When we talk about response times, we're talking about the total time from when a cause received to when the first unit arrives on scene.

And the key takeaway is that despite increased demand, our response times have remained relatively stable.

We are slightly above target, particularly on the EMS side.

And this is exactly where the needs assessment is designed to address, making sure our staffing, station locations, and resources are aligned with this demand that we have been seeing.

And an update on our needs assessment.

We are fully funded in FY26.

We're focused on staffing stations, equipment, aligning with national standards and our actual demand.

The RFP has closed.

We're in the evaluation phase right now.

We expect to bring forward a vendor recommendation in April with council consideration in May.

And this will give us a clear path moving forward.

So in closing, I just want to say what this data shows is system under sustained demand, largely driven by medical calls that have not returned to pre-COVID levels.

We've maintained performance, but the trend is clearer.

And this is exactly why the needs assessment is critical.

I'm happy that it was a recommendation from councilman.

Yes, and to ensure that we stay ahead of this because right now we uh we are sustaining, but you know, for how long?

And that is all I have for now.

Unless you have any questions, I believe uh after me, I'll be introducing Maria Vargas on the dashboard.

Yes, ma'am.

Good afternoon, Maria Vargas, Director of Integrated Community Safety.

And in the back is Misty Garcia, my data analytics manager.

She will be driving our dashboard and doing a live interaction with this product.

And she also created this dashboard, so much kudos to Misty for her hard work.

And she worked in close collaboration with the fire department to get this data and understand it and visualize it so that the public can derive some really interesting value on fire department activity in the city.

So this dashboard is the second in our public safety dashboard series, the first being the police response dashboard, which was published approximately one year ago.

So this will be aptly named the public safety dashboard fire response.

It will be hosted on SA.gov on the SAFD website in their about page, and there will be some companion information, FAQ links to other helpful documentation about the data for this dashboard.

The data fueling this product will also be available for download by the public on opendata.gov, just like with the police response dashboard.

So anybody in the community can also download the data that is used in these visuals and graphs and do whatever kind of manipulations or visualizations they would like to do with this information.

Right now, the data here in the product is from January 1st, 2024, and it goes year to date, with year to date for this dashboard being the last day of the previous month.

So we're pulling in full months' worth of data every single month.

This product will refresh and bring in the previous month's worth of data to add to this data set.

So you will see those months continuing to build throughout calendar year 2026.

Additionally, you can filter the data with the date filters at the top of every single page.

So you can do a particular month.

And everything on this dashboard you can click on and it'll interact with the other visuals and filter.

So you can do some very interesting slices and filterings just by clicking on any of the graphs and the tables in the dashboard.

You won't break it, and it's a lot of fun.

You can hit control and click on multiple things and see how the data changes.

And at the bottom of every single one of these pages, there will also be that email address for the ICSO that anyone in the public can use to reach out to us if they have questions about how to use this dashboard, how to understand it, the data behind it, and anything technical on the product.

This data for incidents is derived from the CAD, the computer aided dispatch.

And this talks about fire incidents for the time frame in question within the city limits of San Antonio specifically.

You can see that the incidents are broken into three major categories fire rescue, medical, and other.

And in the table, you can look at the specific problem types within those different categories.

We also have total unit response or vehicle response for every incident.

One incident can have more than one vehicle responding to it, so that is why that number is typically larger than your number of incidents.

We also have helpful definitions if you hover over the bars on various graphs to explain what that particular item is.

And there's additional definition information available on the website where this dashboard will be hosted.

Clicking on the home button, we will now quickly go through fire incidents.

And it just dives into specifically fire incidents from the CAD that the fire department has been handling in city limits again within the time frame that you see featured at the top of the page.

Hovering over those shapes will tell you that council district and the number of incidents associated with it, and you can click on that shape and it'll change the dashboard to show you what's happening for that particular district or zip code, depending on which map you have selected.

Going back to the home page, same thing for medical incidents.

It's looking specifically at medical EMS incidents from the fire department.

And one of the more interesting specific graphs here is transportation to hospital, and so it'll tell you if an incident resulted in an individual being transported to the hospital by the fire department for that incident.

We also have median response time as a card on both the fire and the medical incident pages.

Again, that is median, not average.

It handles outliers better for time, and so that's why it's something that we use on both the police dashboard and this fire dashboard.

Going back to the home page.

We also have a page for arson investigations.

This data is derived from Mark 43.

And this is for incidents that required an arson investigation by the fire department arson unit.

We have total investigations, and then beneath that is a separate card that describes the NIBERS designated arson cases.

And so NIBERS has a very specific definition for arson, and these are those cases that fit that definition.

You can see the status of these cases, and for cases that are closed, you can see the case result.

And again, clicking on any one of these bars filters the data, hovering over different bars shows you different definitions as well.

And if you click on something and you filter and you want to take it away, just click in the white space anywhere off of the graph, and it'll take that filter away.

Going back to the home page, we have a fire prevention inspections page.

This data is from a CELA, and it talks about the fire prevention inspections that department has done again within the selected time frame.

These have very technical definitions, and again, you can hover over the bars for the inspection type, and under the results, you can also hover over those bars to understand what the results mean.

And it's a little bit difficult to hover over these smaller bars.

And so on the web page will be a link to the code and the inspection code manual, which has all these definitions available in them that I'm sure is very exciting that the public can read about the codes.

And this is by zip code for this particular data set because the council district data is not available on this particular data set for inspections at this time.

Going back to the home page, the final thing I'd like to show is a year-to-year page.

All of those year-to-year pages will look like this incident page that we're about to show you right here.

It is a line graph that shows 2024, 2025, and again 2026 year to date by month over time.

And you can hover over any particular month, and it'll show you the top three incidents for that particular month, comparing them year over year.

We also have a response time button that you can click to see how response times change month by month, year over year.

Those lines look uh pretty big, but they're actually only a couple of seconds different.

If you look at that Y axis, you can see it goes from eight minutes to eight minutes and 30 seconds at its maximum, but everything's hovering very tightly, very close to each other year over year for those response times.

And so the other in the other pages for year over year look just like this.

They just focus on a particular uh subset of incident like fire or medical.

And Chief Frausto and her team and my team are here to answer any questions that you might have about the data or the dashboard, and we're really excited about this product, and thank you very much to the fire department for all their help in making this.

Thank you so much, Maria.

Okay, we'll start off with council discussion.

Councilmember McKee, would you guys?

For sure.

I'll I'll be brief on the on as relates to the dashboard.

Uh one, I'm so grateful that uh the department exists and uh happy that uh ICSO is doing a lot of this important work uh with different with each of our public safety departments.

Um yeah, beautiful, beautiful dashboard.

Uh as it relates to the previous presentation on metrics and the needs assessment.

Uh I am wondering how many responses did we get for the solicitation?

Uh councilman, as you know, that we have to go through the process and we'll we can't say the number, just yes.

Yes, okay.

So um we'll provide that information when we come back to the council next month in April.

I'm sorry, in May.

Do we anticipate it'll be early next month?

Probably the second week in May.

We're doing the evaluations pretty soon coming up pretty soon.

It'll be an A session.

Oh, wonderful.

Okay.

And then do we how do we anticipate that some of this data will inform investments or recommendations in the fiscal year 27 budget uh and even in the fiscal year 27 or the 27 barned?

Really it really uh depends on when the information, when the study or report comes, you know, to fruition, but hopefully we'll um be able to I guess you know wrap that into the decisions that are made.

Uh I I mean the data that you've shown today.

Oh uh I I do hope that the um that the need assessment is uh done in a way in a as quickly as possible so that it can inform the 27 bond, but I mostly mean for the data that you presented today and some of the trends that we're seeing.

Oh, I see.

Um well actually we are you know have bolstered the MIH programs, the clinical dispatch.

So programs such as you know the ones I mentioned are um very helpful for I guess trying to determine which calls and trying to be better about the units that are dispatched and to ensure that the units are available for the uh purpose that they're intended to, such as the motors and the or the uh fire trucks, those heavy apparatus have been um readily available and their response times have improved over time, just with the incorporation of squad units, you know, across the city and the strategic placement of those units.

So our planning division is very good about monitoring you know those trends, and um we use that information, you know, to to make decisions about placement and deployment.

I appreciate that.

Can we go to slide 19?

It seems as though um the eight-minute mark is just is a strong response time.

What is the if we had I know it's gonna be challenging to give an answer to this, but what does it look like to what would be a record speed?

What would it be if we're looking at structure fire?

What makes those what makes it easier faster to respond to those versus medical and the others?

It comes down to unit availability.

Um as I mentioned with the squad units.

Now the uh heavy apparatus are in the station and available to respond to those uh structure fires, and I think that has had a tremendous impact on the response time, you know, reduction for as far as structural fires and and medical calls.

Um so we've seen a significant improvement in that respect.

Is there I don't quite know how to ask this question, but I'm going to do my best.

Um is there a point in which I don't want to call it the success.

The six I guess the success of a response is I imagine there is a pretty big difference in the end result of a call that takes five minutes and forty seconds to get to versus 20 minutes.

What is the difference as we get lower in our response time?

Is there a is there a strong strategic goal we should be achieving that is significant, or do or do the um end results all kind of are they similar if you're looking at a four-minute response versus five minutes and 40 seconds?

Hmm.

Well the easiest way to explain it is that seconds really do matter.

So um that that's a great question.

in our response time is there a is there a strong strategic goal we should be achieving that is significant or do or do the um end results all kind of are they similar if you're looking at a four minute response versus five minutes and 40 seconds hmm well the easiest way to explain it is that seconds really do matter so um that that's a great question um but all of this the response times are based on nationally recognized standards which fall between eight minutes and nine minutes um and that's nationwide so we are tracking and you know our number is 837 so we're on the the lower end and oftentimes we get there well well ahead of that because again the response time is based on the first arriving unit um so I think we're you know tracking um spot on as far as you know our fast response times and I hope hopefully that answers your question because I mean we we base this on not only the accreditation which is you know 90th percentile um but also the NFPA standard 1910 is another you know item that is taken into consideration and those are the same standards that are used um uh across fire departments all across the nation so um I think we're we're tracking you know very well considering the increased call demand since 2020 I guess my takeaway from that answer as it relates to my question would be that if we were wanting the you know strong outcomes and the rock solid response time it would be between that eight to nine minute mark and that we're solidly on the lower end of that which means that we're above average above average.

Yes.

I think what I would want for my the root of my question would probably be much more significant data about outcomes at different time increments.

And so if eight to nine is solid what would the difference between an eight to nine minute response be versus a six to seven or a four to five minute response and so I don't know what it looks like to get that data and if it means that maybe our standards change as it relates to how many fire stations how much equipment do we have available in order to achieve that versus where we're at because where we're at is really strong how do we do even better and what do we need to do that and I hope that it's I hope it's possible to get that sort of response out of the needs assessment.

I agree and that's that's a really good question.

We will look into that because now I'm I'm understanding what you're saying that if you shave off even 30 seconds to a minute what is how do the outcomes differ from the uh higher absolute yes okay thank you thank you and thank you chair thank you council member white thank you chair um chief thank you for the presentation I guess at the outset since you've been the chief um now for what a while right yes since uh November 2024 so about a year and a half and time flies doesn't it does fly um what do you think the three top needs are of the department right now well right now we have been focused on the needs assessment and I think um yeah without even having to go back I go back but that's the safest bet because that would um be a very comprehensive study so we're very much looking forward to you know seeing that report um because that's that's gonna be the the tell all um that's the way I see it.

So no no take so far without seeing it on if it's staffing facilities and equipment well we we take a lot of time you know assessing the response times the call types and I think we've done a very very good job um sustaining you know considering the the increased call volume and we will continue doing that you know and that you know what has that meant um recently it's been the addition of squads which we you know did this last fiscal year we will be asking for additional squads this this next year um so things like that um it's really comes down to our strategy and um you know again we're we're hitting it from all angles from fire prevention clinical dispatch uh we're very fortunate you know to have the paramedics at the dispatch center assessing the calls and uh just being smarter about the way we dispatch um so I'm I think we've made tremendous progress.

Well along those lines it looks like call volume is 15 to 20 plus percent above pre-COVID levels doesn't see any sign of it leveling off.

So at what point will call volume sort of outpace the department's ability um to respond in a timely fashion is is that on the horizon?

And so those pockets, we recognize where where those pockets are, and we're placing additional units to give not only um you know to get better response times, but also to give some relief to the firefighters.

So you'd say we're reaching a critical juncture uh in terms of getting your department the resources it needs to be able to um respond to these calls in in a in a uh an appropriate fashion.

I do believe so, yes.

Okay.

Councilman.

If I may, I think one of the things that we do all the time and will continue to do as part of this assessment, is the growth in the number of calls that we get, it's important to study what those calls are.

So there's some initiatives like the chief mentioned that we can address with the use of technology with education to be able to reduce a workload coming to the department.

So as the department continues to do that and and with the needs assessment, we'll continue to evaluate that to ensure that we use our resources in a more effect effective and efficient way.

Well, it's like you're you're looking at my notes here, Maria.

Um because sick person looked like the the number one call up there, and you know, what percentage of those are genuinely fire department calls versus something that could be handled by by a different responder.

Exactly.

I actually have some uh numbers on clinical dispatch, and the runs saved in 2024 amount to 7,077 in 2025, 17,723.

So again, that takes a lot of the workload and allows the units to be available for um more critical calls.

Yeah.

Well, so again, I mean, I I think what we've heard from the chief today, we all need to really listen to.

Um, and that is that we are reaching um a critical juncture here in in you know, the calls are are high, and we are getting to a point where we may not have the resources to be able to to respond to these as effectively and as quickly as we can.

And so we need to we need to sort of heed this warning.

Um is that not?

Is that did I misinterpret that?

Uh no, you did not.

Uh okay.

I I didn't misinterpret that.

And so we need to make sure that when we're looking at budgeting, um, again, public safety should be at the top of our list and getting the fire department what they need to handle these this uh large amount of um of work, I think should be right at the top of the list.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, council member.

Another thing that it that I saw in the slides, and I'll I'll go to my other council colleagues in a second, but is the structure fire list?

So if you go to slide um 16, and you look at the amount of structure fires by council district, you'll notice that there's things that we can do as a city that could help support the fire department if we focus in on other areas, i.e.

she mentioned one of the biggest threats to the lives of our uh fire officers is vacant structures, and we can do so much more, I think in our vacant program vacant structure program.

I know Councilman Castillo talks about this a lot, but you'll see how heavily this hits our districts and why we're so focused on how do we make sure our code offices are getting out there.

I'm glad that that program is now with code, but how do we continue to double down on efforts there?

Because if we reduce this, we could be reducing not only risk to our our uh fire fire folks, but also reducing the amount of calls that they are taking.

Um, and so the more money you put into Metro Health and supporting community health, the decrease in the amount of calls that you might see from sick people.

So it's a uh back to like public safety has to be considered as a both in solution where we're trying to reduce the calls that we're getting and not just trying to um obviously taking care adequately at the rates that you guys already have, but making sure we're considering both sides.

Okay, I'll come back to the rest of my comments, but um Council Megasia or council councilman?

Karen, thank you, Chief, for the presentation.

Seeing that 78% of the calls are medical related, when we look at how 4.8 million Texans are uninsured, we understand why so many individuals rely on EMS as their primary care um to get their vitals checked out and then potentially transported to hospital.

But then when we also look at individuals who are insured, but the co-pay and/or the deductibles too high, it's the same trend in which folks will rely on EMS to check their vitals and then get transported to university or Brady Green or whatever the case may be.

I think the opportunity there is now with the re-establishment of the IGR committee.

How can we identify bills that are being submitted or identify someone within our local delegation that has prioritized health care to go support that bill for Medicare Medicaid expansion?

Because again, right, this isn't just something that provides care for children, but for our seniors as well.

And I'm grateful to see AARP here as well, because the trend with uh the falls and the lift minor settings that's that like someone's fallen and they need assistance getting up, correct?

Yes.

Uh and there's uh those uh delegate agencies and folks that provide uh whether it's the the handlebars to help our seniors lift themselves up or walk safely, um, but I just wanted to add to the point that the chair mentioned in terms of public safety being a this end, right?

And that's investing in the delegate agencies that provide that care that reduce risk uh in our community.

Uh and I would add, right?

It's why short-term invest in metro health and long term and the neighborhood and housing services department for the land banking model community land trust, because these vacant structures create risks for our first responders, but the neighboring property um uh occupants as well.

Um, so I think in terms of reducing that call call load, it's also investing in DHS, uh NHSD and Metro Health.

Um, but in terms of the MIH program, uh with the amount of call volume that that team has uh for every call or that the dispatcher identifies to go to MIH, is there a crew available to respond to that call, or are there oftentimes that EMS goes in response uh to a specific call?

Well, are you talking about the the calls that come through the 911 system?

Yes.

Um, what what happens is for the um callers that are identified as uh repeated, or you know, I there's no way really to refer to them as, but they're identified by the MIH team, and the MIH team will create a file on that individual and go out and make contact and place them, um get them connected with the appropriate resources because like you mentioned, oftentimes it's it's just repeated, you know, um, units that are dispatched for for falls for lift assist.

And um, so they'll get them connected and get the um fall prevention, you know, items installed in their homes, and then we have fire department go out and give them a home safety check.

So it's little things like that that um they really do make an impact on on the call volume little by little.

And I'm curious.

Uh the San Antonio Express News reported that with Laurel Ridge in particular, the federal government will no longer be subsidizing care through Medicaid or Medicare.

Um so I'm curious if there's going to be a trend in which folks that are that typically go to Laurel Ridge for care are now going to be calling EMS and to find alternative uh placement.

Um so I'm I'm curious if that's something that we will see and if that will be tracked.

Uh I also wanted to go back to the vacant structure conversation.

I know in district five, we have a couple of uh structures and I I forget how y'all tag them.

Essentially, if there's a fire, no firefighter will go into that building because it's marked dangerous.

Is it the dangerous structure?

It's uh that's terminology used by DSD.

We refer to them as unsafe structures, and we will placard them as such with the the white sign with the red X.

And with those unsafe structures, I'm curious in terms of with the enforcement piece.

Um I understand what some of these uh properties, they are larger scale, right?

I'm thinking of them start grateful that now there's new ownership and a lot of movement in terms of keeping that property secure and keeping the nearby community safe.

Um, but with the others, uh it it there tends to be a trend in terms of like getting them into compliance, and uh there's not necessarily, and correct me if I'm wrong, there's not necessarily any enforcement in terms of come into compliance with activating this property versus like it's deemed unsafe and that's that, right?

But I know community typically uh they're eager for some type of accountability and movement on the property.

So I don't know if that's a larger policy conversation uh or maybe an incentive conversation with some of these large-scale dangerous properties.

Uh yes, a separate conversation, councilwoman, and we can figure out with the chair that's something we can bring to this committee or a different committee to have that this broader discussion.

Okay, thank you, Maria.

Those are my comments.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman.

Councilman Spears.

Thank you, Chair.

Well, thank you for the presentation.

Um I may start with Maria and Misty.

Uh, y'all did a great job on the dashboard.

And so I was thinking about about that dashboard.

As it being a tool for us to can you use it on the back end for us to do a more deeper assessment as to what we're seeing.

I mean, this would be the forward-facing side of it, right?

Right.

This is public facing, it's aggregated in a way that makes it easier for the public to understand.

And so this is a tip of the iceberg, if you will, of the data that we have available in the CAD and in the other systems pertaining to fire.

So where I'm going with it is I'm thinking as we do the needs and risk assessment, if we can use this dashboard to then see how well we execute the plan and evaluate from there the things that we identify as those risks and the things that we need to address for our fire department and EMS.

Maybe the back end.

Okay.

I was I'm impressed with it.

I think it looks really icky.

Thank you.

Um Chief Frasto, I had a few questions too for you.

I guess I wanted to go to slide eight.

Um, I'm looking at the numbers.

Do you feel like our post-intensive care coordination is helping to reduce those 911 calls?

I mean, it's a significant it went up and then down.

What or do you do you have any assessment of that?

Which one in particular?

The pick, the post-intensive care.

I yes, as a matter of fact, I do.

Um there have been um a lot of positive outcome uh cases that I'm familiar with, and I think it's you know, um, an initiative that we continue to push, and we're constantly trying to expand all of those programs.

Okay, because I was gonna ask you too about the OPCR, the overdose prevention community response.

If that helps reduce repeat calls, I would imagine it does.

Yes, are we tracking that kind of information?

Repeat calls or repeat.

Not customers, what do you what's the word?

I think of we call them um high use or high utilizers of our 911 system.

So the department does track those individuals that constantly call the 911 system, primarily for medical reasons, and that's how they make an assessment of which ones will be uh included within the MIH, any of the MIH programs.

Okay.

Um then also on slide eight, we show the C Antonio community outreach and resilience effort, the SA core.

Do you feel it's most effective in the fire department, or should it fall more with homeless services to serve people long term?

That is definitely a collaboration, and it requires the involvement of all participants as it currently is designed.

So it feels okay to have it under your purview?

Yes, okay.

Alright, a question too about our response times, because when I was looking at the um National Fire Protection Association, what is their recommendation for response time?

Their recommendation is anywhere between eight and nine minutes.

Eight and nine.

I was pulling up less than eight, but is there a world where you see us getting under eight?

Anything's possible with the right resources, that's right.

Yeah, so I think it really is just a matter of fine-tuning the system.

Well, and I think a holistic approach is smart, right?

To councilwoman Castilla's point, we have to be really looking at what's happening in each district, communicating to our residents when we identify things that are prevalent in your district that we can prevent or or speak to or encourage or redirect, maybe, and um so I'm I'm I want to see that kind of data cut moving forward and also during our risk assessment as well.

Um just seeing what's causing that.

I I also during this risk assessment, are we going to be looking to at our assets, their condition, how it's impacting response times, or even the firefighters as they're trying to just do their job, we're gonna be looking at that.

Plus, you know, firefighters have a hard job, and EMS has a hard job too.

And I want to make sure we're assessing their morale and you know, circadian rhythms are a real a real thing right for y'all, and and I just want to make sure those are part of the assessment too.

So, councilwoman, the assessment is going to be looking at a staffing uh needs of the department, um, looking at different models that are available across the country.

Um it would also be looking at the assets that we have, and that includes our equipment, our our vehicles, and then finally our fire stations and other facilities that are owned by the by the fire department.

Um we hope to have uh this some of the recommendations related to staffing, hopefully in the July time frame uh in time for potential recommendation as part of the budget process.

We'll see once the grant the I'm sorry, the contract is awarded.

The facilities assessment, we anticipate that's gonna take longer because we have um 54 fire stations plus training academy, et cetera.

So likely that that may not be completed in time for for a uh bond program, depending on when the council decides to have that bond program.

So just wanted to provide that uh preliminary timeline.

I think that's good.

Okay.

I just I you know we've we've got a back y'all up and everything that you need.

It and so you'll have the full support of district nine for sure.

Um, and I also wanted to point out that we have the best DMS across the nation.

That's why they're more highly trained than other um emergency service providers, and they get there very quickly and save a lot of lives, and uh we're very grateful for that.

And um, one more thing.

Are we bringing in?

I mean, do you all have y'all have a lot of mental health calls, right?

We do, yes.

Yes, are we?

We could get you some data on that if you'd like.

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great.

And how we can meet those needs too, because to what councilwoman Castillo is talking about too, maybe with Strac and how we're working with those other entities that we have access to and to better serve the firefighters as you're like actively working those calls, like how to be supportive in that what in that space, maybe in other ways where we hadn't thought about before.

But right, this is really good, and um thank you for all your time and effort on this.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I'll just uh Sarah, thank you for providing us this detailed presentation.

I think it's really helpful to be able to see the numbers because then we're able to better understand where issues are most prev prevalent to ensure that when we do things like the fire needs assessment, the response that we get back addresses where those needs are the highest, right?

So back to the um comment that I was making earlier on slide 16, knowing that structure fires are higher in certain areas, are those fire departments uh staffed up at the right space?

Are there is there a need for more uh departments in that area or more staff in that area to help address?

So those are some of the things I think about that if we continue to equitably um or sorry, if we continue to equally fund all across the city, we're never gonna really address the areas that have the most need.

And from the data earlier where you were showing, like, hey, call it times um we're getting more calls and demand is increased and we're still remaining solid.

I uh think that's great, and that's a wonderful highlight on what you all are doing, but also where are those areas where we can reduce some of that stress off the department so that they can get a full night's rest and don't have to, you know, get called at three in the morning.

What are those things that we can do to support that to keep them to keep them mentally and you know uh willing and ready to do the work, which I know they all are, but just as much support as we can provide.

Um, just a couple of questions that I had from the fire alarm question from the fire alarm stat, I was expecting that to go down because of the um new policy that we implemented on increasing the fines for um not fake, I guess fake fire alarms or how do you call that?

False alarms.

False alarms.

Yes.

False alarms.

I was expecting that to go down, but it doesn't seem like it is very much.

Have you guys it it will probably take some time for us to see the impact of um that initiative?

But uh and we're also looking at various ways that we can you know better manage the um compliance piece because oftentimes it's you know system issues that they're having.

Um so we need to raise awareness of that and improve the communication between uh property owners and the fire department.

Okay.

And then on slide four, um, you notice that while sick person is the highest, our districts don't aren't equally using the fire department, right?

Like districts one to five, as we have seen the trend for today, are more likely to call for a sick person.

And I wonder if that is correlated to our um what councilman Castillo is saying was our uninsured rates or what else that is contributing to.

Because if you look at our district demographics, our senior population is actually really similar.

Um, and my office was shocked that we don't have the highest senior population because of the constituent service calls that we get.

But I just wonder what uh what else is like and I I know Maria, I wanted to thank you for your presentation.

I don't know if there's a way to overlay uninsured rates over our calls to see what that correlation would be.

I don't know, Maria, if you want to say anything to that.

Uh we can certainly look at the different insurance data that we have available for the city and what it's geographically sliced at and see what can we get produced.

So I can't give you an exact answer because I'd have to see what that insurance data looks like.

And we can talk about this offline, but what I'm thinking about is like EMS calls overlaid like metro health supports that are being provided and like uninsured rates to see if those correlate in some kind of way.

Um and so I I again I just think that there are so many uh are we providing enough supports for metro health in the areas that we see the majority of these calls, and um is there anything we could do additionally to help those stations?

Because everyone knows that you get assigned a certain station, you're like, oh, I'm at that station today, it's gonna be a busy day, right?

And so, how do we um create some more level so that it's not so some stations aren't feeling the true 24 hour shifts while others are are a little bit you know what they say easier to work at?

Sure, and one thing you requested uh chair, and we we had too many slides at this point, but we'll do it in a follow-up memo.

You had requested the um number of calls or incidents by fire station, so we can do that as well, so you can see this is just by council district, but how they spread out by the different stations or different units.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you for the presentation that I had, and Maria, great job on the dashboard.

I'm excited to be able to use it.

Oh, go ahead, council.

Sure.

Maria, do you have a media kit for that dashboard?

So we can push it out.

Uh we're collaborating with fire PIO, and there'll be some some news coverage, and we'll do a press release.

Okay, because we'll share it on socials and stuff like that.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Councilmember McCurry Drees?

Thank you.

I guess yeah, once once more, thanks for the presentation.

Uh, and while we're on the slide, um when I authored the CCR for the fire department needs needs assessment, uh, it was with the goal that we would be able to ideally make some um some pretty fast.

I know it would it was that it was always gonna take a little bit of time, um, and that maybe the bond was pushing it or a budget cycle was pushing it.

But uh my hope is that we look at data like this, and then you know, we recognize it's great to have data and it's great to have numbers and dashboards and whatnot and to see it, but we have to actually do something about that.

And so, you know, how do we use this data and how do we use the needs assessment to um inform any of you know acquisitions or uh purchases of equipment?

Um how do we prepare for new fire stations?

What does that look like?

And is it that districts one, two, and five are in need?

Like what does it what is this information tell us about that?

And so I think that's I wish we could get a little, I wish we could get a little bit more, but um I just want to know how will because I don't know that I got a sufficient answer for this.

I want to know how is this data gonna inform the 27 budget?

Sure.

And I'm gonna answer the the the bond program first.

What I'm thinking is what we can do is where the consultant is, we can ask them to prioritize the growth uh versus the assessment of the existing facilities.

I anticipate that the recommendations are gonna be twofold.

Uh they are fire stations that need to be replaced, and we know what those are now.

So we could make those recommendations as part of the 20 um uh seven bond program.

Uh we could also, as a consultant, to give us some preliminary assessment of where we need new fire stations in our system.

For purposes of the 27 bond program, I'm sorry, the 27 uh budget process.

I anticipate that we would have some recommendations in terms of staffing, maybe technology.

They may be uh preliminary again.

Uh but again, some of this plans will be, I think we landed on 15 years to implement some of the recommendations.

But I understand your point, uh councilman, and as we go through that selection process, we'll make sure to prioritize to be able to address some perhaps short-term needs in the immediate future, which is a 27 budget and the 27 bond program.

I appreciate that.

And is there any way to um begin collecting any feedback uh through engagement with you know the firefighters themselves and uh maybe the union to because yes, I would want them to be able, I would want them to start looking immediately at where would new fire stations need to go, but I do think it's important that we get any data that we can as it relates to the existing stations, and I wouldn't want folks to feel like we're entirely negating or delaying that.

And so if there's any baseline information that we could get from those on the ground, I think that would be helpful as well.

Sure, and we have that data already because we had identified the um facilities that needed to be addressed.

We couldn't do them all in the 20 uh two bond program.

Uh we actually added replacements in the as part of the budget process.

So we have a total of five replacements uh Rhino that are happening, but we have identified a list of facilities that we could recommend for purposes of the 27 bond programs, so we don't have to wait uh if if the council chooses to do that.

So we're prepared to make recommendations on the uh next group of fire stations.

That's good news.

Thank you all again.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

All right, our next item on the agenda is briefing and possible action on the cryptocurrency kiosk.

We have Chief Salome and Sheriff Salazar here, and we just got majority of this presentation at the last A session, so I'm sure we can breeze through the beginning slides and get through the ordinance recommendation.

Thanks, Chief.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh members of the public safety committee, uh, assistant chief Jesse Salome.

We're gonna speed walk through this presentation, but before I begin, I want to acknowledge uh that Bear County Sheriff Javi Ars Alazar is present along with our friends at AARP, Miss Lisa Rodriguez, who's the associate state director, and Mr.

Isaac Carrera.

I'm sorry, Mr.

Isaac Herrera, who's the associate state director, and Lisa Lisa Rodriguez, who's the uh AARP Texas Director.

And um, as we talk about this presentation today, I do want to give a shout out to Team COSA, DHS, City Attorney's Office, CNE, and uh DSD have been partners in this thing throughout the whole uh throughout this process.

So we're looking forward to talking presenting today.

Uh again, we'll talk about the background and we'll get to our recommendations.

Uh on April 2nd, we presented a list of recommendations to this uh to the full council.

And they included the legislative strategies, which we'll talk about, the public awareness campaign, enforcement strategies, and the draft city ordinance, which we will make available to you a little bit later, uh, if not today, tomorrow.

Just a quick update on the records.

Uh, when we presented previously, we had 625 reports.

Um, the last time in the roughly two months since we pulled the data, that is up to 660 reports.

So we've had 35 additional reports within the last two months.

The demographics uh and some of the losses.

This will again we'll keep talking about this because it's really important, so come as no surprise to any of you.

37, almost 38% of the victims were age 66 and above.

Um 88% of the cases reported uh were within a within the financial loss range of less than 50,000.

So we're talking about a significant number of losses, and we've had four cases over a million dollars, which involved investment scams.

That tracks with the national data that the FBI is also track in regards to the type of fraud and the people that are most impacted.

Uh what we've already done, we've met with all of our stakeholders, uh everybody that identified earlier.

We're talking about what our engagement and awareness strategies would look like.

We're uh conducting some training that started today that I'll tell you a little bit about later.

Uh, and that's uh we've got Secret Service that has come to headquarters and they are there now doing uh training with SAPD, Bear County Sheriff, FBI, and a number of our our uh law enforcement partners uh within the surrounding areas, and with the help of the city or the city attorney developed a draft city ordinance to address this for council consideration.

Uh we talked about this before, 193 areas were identified.

Our team with the Secret Service and our task force officers with SAPD have been to every one of those locations.

The overwhelming majority, with the exception of a handful of them, agreed to put up those signs already with prior to the implementation of the ordinance, and we'll talk about why that's important later.

Let's talk about our legislative agenda.

So we're working with GPA to map out a strategy that will be most effective for us.

What we would propose as a legislative priority for us as SAPD would be to make uh cryptocurrency a as a consumer protection, and that would require that the kiosk have the electronic uh messaging on the screen talking about the potential for fraud.

We would like to uh propose limiting transaction amounts for first-time users and putting 14-day transaction holds for first-time users.

This will allow the banks and the family members uh to uh possibly recover this money if the prevention efforts fail up front.

Uh according to my friends at ARP with their data, there's 30 states that have introduced bills related to crypto.

Twenty of those states have passed laws uh along the lines of what we're talking about here, so it can be done.

Talking about our plan timeline with SAPD and communication, uh SCNE developed this together.

This is a coordinated step-by-step plan to launch, expand, and measure a citywide uh and to include the county scam awareness campaign.

That has begun now with a structured phased rollout that's going to include message development to the launch, committee engagement, and then finally we're going to evaluate and see how successful we are being.

And so we're going to try to combine the digital outreach, that on-the-ground engagement that I'll talk about in the next slide, and media efforts to really maximize the reach that we have.

And again, we will be targeting our most impacted groups, which is our seniors, but we're also going to be talk looking at the business community and the broader community, folks that uh know seniors that can also be reporting agents for us as well.

This is something that we're working with uh DHS on, another coordinated partner-driven effort to protect our older adults through education outreach and early intervention.

And this coordinated outreach and resource will include a senior focus guide that DHS is currently working on, ongoing education at our senior centers, and we are going to be doing targeted prevention and early intervention.

That is our focus, ensuring that the seniors and those who support them have the tools to recognize and report these scams.

I think this is a big one for us that collaboration that is so important between agencies, whether that's the police and the sheriff's office, but our federal partners, and that training that we're doing today is really giving us that cyber readiness to understand how much the complexity of this crime and how much these things have changed and allowing us to really learn exactly what those issues are, how to walk a search warrant, or how to get a search warrant, how to identify these perpetrators when prevention efforts fail.

And the other big piece of that is we are really gonna be honing in on sharing data to identify trends, not just per for repeat offenders, but repeat victims and hotspot locations.

If we can start narrowing those down, we we can predict where that might happen next, and we can do something about it.

I'm gonna spend a little bit of time on this, but this is the draft city ordinance, and the ordinance will require the signage that is uh developed and issued by SAPD.

And this is gonna be the ADA compliance signage that's designed for accessibility for those folks in our community that have uh any visual impairment or or other kind of disabilities that would prevent them from seeing that it's the high contrast colors in the simple fonts.

Um the locations with the kiosk will be required to post this sign at all of the kiosks to be compliant with the ordinance.

And we're gonna talk about the administrative enforcement approach.

Uh that will be best handled by code enforcement, not SAPD.

And I'll tell you that citations from code can be issued to the owner or the manager, not the frontline, not the frontline employee like the store clerk.

And if the responsible party is not on site, code can make sure that the citation is mailed using verified property ownership records.

Uh each citation will include a scheduled administrative hearing that will be processed through the administrative court.

And we believe that this enforcement, this administrative enforcement approach will be the better um the better model for us because it will target the individuals that have the authority to fix the issue, which will include which will improve compliance.

It'll avoid penalizing clerks who have no control over store operations or signage, and it's the most efficient and practical way for achieving citywide compliance.

And to us, this is the fair and equitable approach to prevent situations where a clerk could face escalating consequences like a warrant or a fine for something that is outside of their control.

And that is a sign in Spanish.

And it's got uh both of the uh both the city and the county uh police logo on there, and we're encouraging folks to call 911.

We'll talk about that here next.

The purpose of this draft ordinance, I think we've got two goals, right?

The first one is going to be the public safety response.

That's gonna be SAPD.

That sign directing folks to call 911 will allow officers to respond and intervene, hopefully, before the money is sent.

Officers on on arrival will document the incident, gather the key details, and start the investigation to try to hold the perpetrators accountable.

On the other side of that uh of that ordinance, and the other uh purpose of it will be the compliance and accountability that code enforcement will ensure that all signages posted and maintained at all kiosks, and they will issue citations when it's necessary.

Uh, this two-part approach will combine the immediate intervention with the long-term compliance while ensuring that the ordinance is applied in the in the most effective way.

All right, Chair, how do we measure success?

Right?

That's the thing.

So the this is going to track whether the ordinance here is actually changing behavior and reducing harm.

So we'll start with the reporting.

I I think that an increase in reported scams is going to be expected, especially early on, and that's gonna tell us that people are seeing the messaging and taking the action by calling 911.

More reporting means more opportunities to intervene and investigate, which is a positive signal of French up front.

When we talk about community engagement, we will measure how well the message is getting out through social media and outreach events with our partners in SAFE and DHS.

That growth and engagement and shares will tell us the information is resonating and reaching the right audience, especially those at risk.

And then lastly, the reduction in financial losses.

That's ultimately our long-term goal is to drop the total losses from these crypto scams.

So we'll compare the pre- and post-campaign data to show whether the ordinance and outreach is actually preventing people from losing money.

And that concludes my presentation.

We would request that the public safety committee move forward the draft ordinance to an A session in May, and I'm available for any questions if you have any.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Chief.

Um, Sheriff Salazar, I wanted to give you a moment to if you'd like to share anything.

You don't have to, but just giving you since you I just really appreciate the the attention that's been given to this effort uh since we brought it to everyone's attention.

Everybody's just been doing great working together.

Uh as we speak, uh, as we speak, as as uh Chief Salome mentioned, uh Secret Services hosting that training.

We're ecstatic to have people at that training as well, and we look forward to continuing to work this partnership uh as it goes.

Awesome.

Thank you for the collaboration.

Um, and I don't know if ARP, do you guys have anything to add that you'd like to?

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, thank you, and thank you to our partners at SAPD and the sheriff's department.

On behalf of our 200,000 members in Bear County and 155,000 here in San Antonio, we can certainly help with the community outreach component, but we do know that our 60 plusers are definitely being targeted, and particularly for the kiosk uh crypto kiosk um uh scam.

So I just want to say that I I commend all of y'all uh for your activism and then also for considering older adults as everybody's aware, and I heard uh fire speak a little bit about it, but as everybody's aware, San Antonio, a third of San Antonians are 50 plus, so that's over 500,000 citizens.

And so we here at ARP, uh, we position ourselves to be a trusted a trusted source for older Americans, and so anything we can do to be helpful.

We know there's tremendous loss nationally, just in 2025, 333 million dollars were lost again.

That those are just cases that we know of.

Um, in addition to that, ARP has a national program, the fraudwatch network, through the fraudwatch network, it's extremely sophisticated.

We make that available to every citizen here in San Antonio and would love to share those resources.

Again, it is a sophisticated.

We can map what kind of scams are going on here locally with the help of our partners.

So thank you again, and thank you for giving us an opportunity.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much for those words.

Well, I know my council colleagues brought this, so what we would can someone offer a motion so we can start discussion.

We have a motion and a second, all right.

Let's start discussion, Councilmember White.

Councilman Council Castro.

Councilman Castillo.

Uh thank you, Chair, and thank you, uh Chief Salami and Sheriff Salazar for uh y'all's collaboration on this uh initiative.

And what stood out to me in the documents that you submitted is that when a similar ordinance was passed in the city of Omaha, uh the sheriff's office reported an 80% reduction in financial losses from cryptocurrency, which is a huge impact.

Uh, and I'm hopeful that with this initiative alongside the legislative recommendations that we will also see um uh that impact here as well.

But just wanted to also highlight Chief Salami and uh city staff and their collaboration and demonstrating what staff has been doing and SAP have been doing in terms of of uh these fraudulent cases, but also just with this recommendation.

I'm comfortable with what you all proposed as a solution.

I appreciate the emphasis that it won't be the clerk that will get penalized uh if there's an issue, and I see uh Amin here as well with the uh development services.

So uh as this moves along, and if we do see increased calls, I'm I'd be interested to see if there's a need for more support for code enforcement and what that looks like.

So appreciative of y'all's collaboration and leadership of uh both uh chief and sheriff, uh, and I look forward to supporting this item uh at a session.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilman Councilmember White.

Yeah, thanks to Councilwoman Castillo for bringing this forward.

Um Chief Salazar and of course um our RSAPD folks as well.

Thank you for uh uh for being involved and working on this together.

I mean, we've been talking now for three years about having more uh city-county collaboration on things, and I think this is a good example where we can all get together um and and do something that's that's good for the community and and protect our folks, uh specifically our seniors.

So I'm glad we're moving this along and um definitely gonna be supportive.

Thank you.

Um any other discussion?

Councilmember McKee, would you guess?

Yeah, thank you.

Uh Sheriff Salazar and uh Chief Salome for the collaboration, and of course, for your leadership and for sharing uh this action item uh with council, and um I look forward to moving this forward.

I'll be supportive today.

Sorry, I did not want to do that to the microphone.

Uh as it relates to the legislative agenda and the items that you uh propose.

Um, my what I anticipate is that we'll have a B session with council where um we'll get an update from Sally and Jeff on last session and what they anticipate for the upcoming session and hear council feedback on uh their priorities for the upcoming federal and state legislative sessions, and then we'll uh then have our first meeting of IGR where we'll continue to move forward.

So just because uh IGR was mentioned several times today, I wanted to lay out that that was likely going to be the path forward.

But thank you.

Well, when it comes to IGR, I'm sure that it'll get support.

Um Councilmember Spears.

Well, I want to echo a lot of what's been said.

I do want to thank um Councilwoman Castillo for for leading on this.

And yes, I love that we're collaborating.

Sheriff Salazar, thank you for bringing this to our attention and your willingness to work together on it.

And um, Chief Salome and Chief McManus, thank you for being also so willing and thorough.

This is very thorough.

I had all these questions and you answered them before I could ask.

So um, I'm I'm glad to see how seriously we're taking it because it does affect so much of our senior population.

And my problem with with that so much is that it's scary for them in a way that we can't understand till we're seniors, and it's incumbent upon us to protect them, and they can't replace that money.

It's not like they can go earn more money.

So anything we can do to help our seniors, I think we just this was a no-brainer for us and um to uh councilman McKee Rodriguez's point.

Yes, at the IGR, this will be top of mind for sure.

So thank y'all for all your hard work on it and expediting it and um taking it so seriously.

Thanks.

Thank you.

A couple quick questions.

Um, for the 660 reports that we have so far on slide eight with the map.

Can we associate those reports with any of the ATMs that have already been identified?

The additional ones from the ones we talked about last time, I'm sorry?

No, like so you the reports like just in general, right?

So the 660 reports, do we know where they're coming from?

No, we don't quite know that yet.

Some of them are just mentioning crypto, and so that's another thing within the system that we're trying to identify.

So when you said you were doing that data investigation, that's what we're gonna start doing now.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, yeah, I'd be interested to see where those hot spots are because when it comes to our um, I don't know how quickly we can identify that, but I know that July is the targeted outreach event.

So you know, depending upon where those hot spots are, to be able to do more senior events, there are more um partnerships with our nonprofits would be helpful to be able to see.

And then the reports that we do have, I know that you said 88% are reported less than 50,000, and then for what do we know what the total loss is?

So the total reported loss from January 2024 to April 13th is when we pulled the data, is estimated at 39 million dollars.

39 million.

So I don't know if this, you know, um councilwoman Castillo mentioned a statistic about the number of the percentage of like loss that decreased, and because you brought metrics, and I love that we do have metrics.

Maybe we set a target for if it's 39 million now in a year, it's dropped down to 20 or cut in half or something like that.

Might be good to set a target for us.

Um just aggressive goal.

Uh thank you so much for your efforts.

Thank you, Sheriff.

Thank you guys for everything that y'all are doing, and I'm excited to see all of these up.

I know that our community supports when we do ordinances like this, like the domestic violence signs are literally everywhere.

So I'm sure that all of our um I'm positively thinking that everybody's gonna put these signs up.

Okay, uh, motion to we have a motion and a second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay, motion carries.

All right, the next item on the agenda is a briefing on our city's electronic and paper citation process.

Good afternoon.

Chairman Core, Counsel, Kate Kinerson, Chief Innovation Officer.

Um, I just want to point out that we have quite a few departments that collaborated on this here today.

We have the ITSD department, we have municipal court, we have SAPD code and ACS.

I'm gonna try to go through this quickly in the interest of your time, and we'll leave time for questions.

Um, so first, the goals of the study were first to understand how electronic citations improve customer experience, and second, how it can improve time savings and cost savings.

Um, and to go over that, we'll look at the citation process, um, the short-term and long-term opportunities, the industry landscape, the solicitation approach, and the next steps.

So, for this study, we started with a universe of 217,542 violations, but each ticket can have up to three violations, so that's why you're gonna see there that it was scoped down to a total of 181 tickets, slightly less than the violations, and of those 97,000, 324 were electronic, and 84,465 were paper.

Um, and I forgot to say this is FY25 data.

Um, so that's close to 54% electronic citations.

And to understand how much time paper was taking, we did workflow, which is process mapping and time studies for both SAPD and municipal court.

So, how long it was taking municipal court once they got the paper to enter them, and that told us uh where we had process efficiency opportunities, quality improvement, less error, less loss tickets, um, and where we could improve customer experience and time savings.

So for this slide, it's just giving you the universe by department.

There's a total of seven departments that are issuing citations, but you'll see the majority of them are SAPD, C C D O, ACS, DSD.

C C DO is almost completely electronic at this point.

ACS and DSD do have electronic tracking systems, but from the residents' perspective, they're still receiving a paper ticket, and from municipal court's perspective, they're still receiving a paper ticket.

So there's still quite a bit of opportunity there.

Um, and then for the scope of SAPD and municipal court, that gray box on the left uh excuse me, the right is showing you um the breakdown of the 118 for SAPD, you have um 28,776 traffic tickets, and then 16,013 parking tickets.

That was the scope of the study.

We did not look at the third area.

And here we just want to point out to you, because um while initially ACS and code enforcement were not a part of the scope, when we realized that there was an opportunity for efficiency, we did start to look at that, and there are some recommendations related to this.

So this is walking you through kind of the four on the left-hand side from a ticket creation to a ticket entry.

So where the ticket creation is um in electronic system, uh, Excel is what's being used by code and AC ACS is using chameleon, but from steps two to four, it becomes paper-based, and so that's where the opportunity exists.

And ITSD is planning to work with ACS and DSD and municipal court to develop an electronic exchange to enter these tickets.

So there's already movement happening in that space.

So now this is really the side where the findings come.

SAPD uh found that over 22,000 paper tickets could be converted to electronic.

This would create improvements in an estimated 736 hours, which equ uh traffic stops, which equates to 0.35 FTE or roughly 51,000 annual savings.

And then it also mitigates the chance for lost tickets.

On the municipal court side, there's quite a few improvements here that we list.

The time study determined that data entry for municipal court staff was on average four minutes and 48 seconds per ticket.

We're reducing this time with e-citation leads to a conservative estimate of 1,746 hours saved annually, equating to 0.84 FTE, and that's for a court clerk, which is roughly 60,800 annually saved.

And there's also an opportunity to reduce time for the resident, residents receiving e-citations resolve their cases in almost half the time than those receiving paper tickets from 73 days on average to on the paper side to 38 days on average on the electronic side.

And then finally, um, there's also an opportunity to increase the payment rates.

So paper, we're seeing the data from FY25 showed us a 38% pay payment rate, whereas electronic was a 63% payment rate, which equates to roughly 300 to 500,000 annual savings.

So to summarize kind of where we are today, the SAPD process and time study did make the business case for enterprise wide ticketing solution e-ticketing solution.

This is beneficial not only for SAPD, but also for ACS and DSD, and of course the municipal court staff and the residents.

So the long-term goal here is to reduce paper tickets as much as much as possible, up to 100%.

Obviously, there's things we don't know right now, and this might not be possible, but we think we can get pretty close.

Um, but it will require process process to solicit vendors, which takes us to the next two slides.

So the industry is changing.

We've learned so far our research has identified five vendors that have e-citation solutions, but there may be more out there.

The e-citation market has matured in the last year or so, digit going from simply digitizing ticketing to shifting towards QR-based and completely paperless delivery and better use of data to provide insights and improve outcomes.

Because there are multiple vendors in a quickly developing landscape, a solicitation is recommended to gather more insight into how the technology can complement what we already have, it can integrate with what we have and support data-driven decision making.

This is tentative, it is depending on an allocation of budget, and it is dependent on how difficult implementation and integration will be.

But an enterprise-wide solution could be as early as October 2027.

And so this is the last slide.

Um the next steps are ITSD is already working to procure the 60 new e-citation devices for SAPD because they already have the licenses for the software, and they had already budgeted 227,000 in their budget for this year.

They'd anticipated uh buying more e-citation devices.

Um, they're gonna review the electronic integration of tickets from ACS and DSD into Tyler ENCODE, which is uh municipal court system of record, and then the third is prepare for the solicitation, potential solicitation and FY27.

And that concludes my presentation.

Happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you so much.

Um I'll just start off by saying uh thank you for sharing the business case.

I think that's really important.

And I apologize, Maria and I were just clarifying a little bit because one of the questions that I had was I'm grateful that we're purchasing.

Well, I was wondering whether purchasing the new e-citation devices right now would still make a business case if we are doing uh RFP for this fall to be able to implement.

And I understand now it's gonna take quite a bit of time to implement because of the integration of the different softwares that are using, and so we thought it might have been done faster, but I understand that it would take a full almost year and a half from today to be able to implement that.

Does anybody want to comment on a little bit of how much money we could still capture with like is the investment in these 60 new e citation devices going to still make a business case in the next 18 months before we implement a new system?

Does that make sense kind of how yes?

So we haven't done the business case.

If we were to automate all of the paper tickets that we have out there, we focus primarily on the short-term solutions of doing about 22,000 more, um, converting 22,000.

And the definitely increased revenue is important, reducing the time to our municipal court clerks and our police officers out on the field, um, but also improving the customer experience.

Uh, we have got in residents that have approached us where they're ready to pay their ticket or their citation, but the ticket is not in the system yet.

So this will greatly improve um for those 22,000 tickets, but there's opportunity to do more.

Going to slide six, this is only for the short-term 60 per purchasing of the current uh 60 new uh e-citation systems.

That's what would be able to capture for the 22,000.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

All right.

I just wanted to make that to clarify that.

Um the only other thing I'll say is I think from the feedback I've heard from constituents that on slide nine for the long-term plan that the tickets on the go seems to be to me the digital with flexible delivery, the one that I hear the most positive on, just because for QR codes, you are isolating folk some some folks, and so I would want there to be separ uh several options and then a print option if absolutely necessary, if someone's like, no, I want something in my hand.

So I think that would be my um uh from what I've heard from constituents at least, and I'd welcome my colleagues to share if they have a perspective on that industry landscape, and also if you have a perspective on doing a long-term solution to consolidate and completely digitize our ticketing system.

So I support the this uh moving forward, and um hopefully we can do a solicitation in in the fall.

Um councilmember white.

Yeah, thanks, Chair.

Um some of my questions are are are the exact same.

Like we're gonna spend the money on these machines, I guess, but moving forward, we we may arrive in a in a spot where where we don't need um these devices, right?

So my questions are the same in terms of um how wise it is to make this purchase now, but I guess if we're gonna need them for the next 18 months, then then that is what it is, right?

Do you have the cost of the machines?

Yes, so the 60 additional devices is roughly about 220,000.

And um just on the revenue alone that we anticipate to generate is three to five hundred thousand, so it'll pay for itself.

Um three to five hundred thousand that that we'll gain that we wouldn't otherwise gain without the machines.

That is correct.

So we anticipate the machines to be in place by the end of July.

Um, and um the the estimate of three to five hundred thousand is over twelve months.

So by the time if we move forward with a new system, we would have recovered the cost of the investment.

Okay, and let's talk about a potential new system where we don't need these machines and we're completely paperless.

Um there are there are groups that want to do this, and I think, and perhaps we could run pilot programs and things like that.

Where are we on uh investigating um a solution like that?

Sure.

So uh we CD staff have been approached by at least a couple of vendors who are interested in us trying their products, uh, given the fact that there's more products out there.

Uh recommendation is to do a go through a process, a solicitation process to be fair to all of those vendors who have similar solutions, they offer different um alternatives as the councilwoman mentioned.

Some of them have QR codes, uh, some of them continue to issue a paper ticket.

So we want to be able to test that and develop a process to be able to get also some feedback from the community in terms of what that experience would look like as well from a community perspective.

And going completely paperless, is that something we've talked with our SAPD about and um you know ACS code enforcement, because I think we would want to do this across the board, right?

So is this something that that our our police forks our police folks have have have looked at and would be comfortable with, or do we know?

Um we haven't done focus groups with our um traffic team or police officers.

Uh that is something that we would do as part of this process.

Um, and we haven't done that either with code and ACS.

So that'll be part of our process.

Okay.

Well, you know, it seems to me that I guess we we do need these machines for the immediate future, right?

And because we've still got some time to go, and and I guess they'll pay for them by you know what you well, what you what you laid out earlier, they'll pay for themselves.

Um, but I do think that we know that we're losing money as it is with these paper tickets.

We we know that we have increased staff time, court time, etc.

Uh, we with the paper tickets.

So moving to a paperless system, um, if our folks are SAPD and ACS and everybody's comfortable with it, um, I think makes makes a lot of sense.

I think it's gonna save us money long term.

Uh, I do agree with the councilwoman that we should probably have an option for people to get a paper ticket if um if that's what they would like, or if they don't have a phone or other means to to get a uh a paperless ticket, but I'm glad that we're looking at that.

I'd be supportive of some sort of pilot program in the near future to look at it, and uh it seems to me that we're headed that way, so as soon as we can get there, uh the better.

Thanks, Chair.

Thank you.

Councilmember Spears.

Thanks, Chair.

Um so on the legal side, when we went from paper to electronic, there was a lot of mixed feelings about this.

I was actually part of the um test market to do that, and there was a lot of reluctance and when working on moving uh court systems over to electronic means.

It was it was a it was felt so difficult at the time, but now I can't imagine life without that.

Like it changed the landscape of how the legal um the court systems, how attorneys everything works now, right, Liz.

It's like totally changed everything.

But it took us pushing everyone there, like there's a lot of people that just said, I will never do that.

But I think it's a total buy-in, and and it really really improved everything and made it made it made litigation so so much easier.

And um, I'm super supportive of a pilot program too, because that was something I was part of, and it does help work out the kinks, it does help you understand what's unique to your um Metroplex or your uh city that you need to pay attention to.

And again, you're right about how still needing to have someone some way to access some paper, but um, I would ask too on the solicitation.

Are we gonna have a local um I'm just gonna say I have a one of these vendors in my district, so I'm proud of it, and I think it'd be great if it was a homegrown company.

So um trusted driver is right down the street, and and I think that'd be great to have them support local business.

And I um I'm all for this.

I think it's great.

It's it's a little painful, I understand, but but it in the end it just feels so much better.

And when you get everyone involved in how we deploy this, it really you get a better buy-in.

So um thanks for your presentation on it, and um yeah, I'm looking forward to this actually.

This is gonna be a good cost savings for our city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

One quick question on the difference between the paper and electronic, 38% to 62% is wild.

Um is that are our electric devices right now in a specific part of the city or are they spread across randomly?

So the traffic division of the police department is 100% uh using those devices, and then we have some devices across the substations.

Not all of the patrol officers um have them, nor we think we would recommend that that would be too expensive.

That said, this devices that we're adding will be allocated across the substations to be able to provide those resources to to our patrol.

And to parking, right?

So parking, um the parking division of C C DO, they are 100% electronic.

So we're targeting the police department with this.

When patrol gives a parking ticket, they don't have okay, correct.

All right.

Um, Councilmember Key Rodriguez.

Thank you.

I guess what was the impetus for this?

Is this uh just routine modernization or what what got us here today?

Sure.

So um actually it was some um calls that I received from residents being frustrated um going to the court and not finding their tickets.

So I started working with the police department to find out how many paper tickets we were issuing in a way to be able to um use one of the electronic devices.

So that's how we started this uh process.

We had had conversations in the past uh with a uh previous public safety committee um about maybe adding it to patrol.

Um however, we felt that that wouldn't be uh the best um use of our dollars because the number of patrols that we have and their focus is not writing this type of citations.

Also, we were approached by a couple of vendors who were interested in uh entering this landscape.

So we we were already doing the analysis, so we felt it would be beneficial to bring it to public safety committee so the committee knew what what is it that we were working on and some of the steps that we were taking.

Gotcha.

No, that's helpful, thank you.

Um I wonder just so the path that we're on.

I think I'm good with purchasing the machines and that while we're doing the the larger conversion.

I wonder after the after where we no longer need the um the equipment, is it possible to resell them or could we resell them to another municipality for a yeah we can evaluate it?

I mean, the this at I don't know today how many other municipalities use this type of product, but we can definitely explore that.

For sure.

Okay.

Well, that's good.

I like is there action on this right now, or is this just an update?

Easy peasy, thank you.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Kate, for the presentation.

In terms of efficiency, it makes sense in terms of the amount of time it's going to save on traffic stops and then the ticket data entry.

Uh and it makes me think of the municipal court visit that we did in which when we went uh and went over like the municipal courts rule and then potentially like the G and walking over the physical documentation uh and how it's just more efficient in terms of having everything digitized.

In terms of the vendor, I made the mistake of Googling ownership of some of them.

But uh I think what's important to say in terms of and like who are the investors as well.

Um in terms of uh selecting a vendor, I think there's value in seeing what is Bear County currently have, right?

In terms of if there's opportunity with the data sharing as we talk about uh diversion and other alternative models.

Uh, I know they use Tyler solutions, and there may be opportunity in terms of having the same dashboard there, uh, and just making sure that we have working from the same data and data sharing if necessary.

Um, but again, this just uh it's looking at the improvements for both both municipal courts and SAPD, uh it makes sense, so I'd be supportive of this.

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks, Councilman Castillo.

And um, just going back to some of the conversations we've had previously, that is a worry of the community with electronics, so making sure we have, and I don't know that they would be able to take I don't know, I shouldn't say that.

We should make sure that the data cannot be um given to anybody without permission and ensure some of those things are true in the RFP and that we are doing some diligence as to other cities that use them and maybe asking for feedback from other cities to ensure that.

Um Judge of Lates in the audience, thank you for being here and um all the rest of the folks that are supporting.

Um anything, any other comments on feedback on this item.

Okay, sounds good.

Thank you for the efficiency.

Um last quick thing.

So I know Councilmember White is newer to public safety, but the way that we do uh statistics is we just kind of scroll through them, put them on this put them on the screen for public to see, and I we may have some copies in the back, and um, if anybody has any questions or comments, they're able to share.

And if anybody wants to dive into a specific statistic in an upcoming public safety meeting, you can share that as well.

So they're gonna go ahead and put the agenda memo up.

Thank you, Chair.

And I would just say that overall our crime is down um 10.2 percent for calendar year 2026.

So we are providing this memorandum before you that has the breakout um in the different categories of crime, crimes against uh people, property, and society, both uh crimes against uh people and property are down.

Our crimes against society is up, and the reason for that is um this represents the proactive work of the police department uh when it comes to crimes against society.

We also provided the breakout of the crime statistics by council district.

So as the chair mentioned, um this will be an opportunity for members of the committee to let us know which statistics they would like like for us to get into more detail in the May meeting next month.

Uh just a quick clarifying question for drug and narcotic enforcement.

That's against society.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

Councilmember McKee, would you guess?

Thank you.

Just a math question.

On the um is a second page, the fourth page.

There's a discrepancy.

And I think it's just because of the the point that was used in crimes against property, 20.990 versus 20,990 that made the minus seven and minus 136 into something else.

I think it's still 20,000 something.

But I just want to understand I think that was it.

I don't yeah, I think that was it.

Yes, I see that we'll make that correction.

But the rest of it is accurate.

That's the only piece that's wrong.

Yes, you're absolutely right.

Councilmember Spears.

I just have to say, I see this.

But the number of calls I've had this week about theft in Stone Oak and actual breaking in in their homes has hit a all-time high.

They are terrified right now.

So I I see these numbers, and I am I mean we're trying to figure out in our office how we're gonna sit down and tackle this with SAPD, but theft and actual breaking in of their homes videos being sent to me over the past day and a half.

I mean, it's heart racing.

So I don't know.

Um I just have to bring it up right now because it is just so rampant.

And and Stone Oak is is on high alert.

They're freaking out at the HOAs.

Um target, the stores all around there are reaching out to the congressional leaders because they're so concerned and they're meeting with us about it.

We just I see these numbers and I hear it, and I understand.

I guess I don't understand.

I guess I don't understand.

I don't I I I'm getting these calls, and then I see the numbers and I go, but that's not what I'm hearing.

So I'm just struggling here with this because I wish you could hear the panic and the and the fear from these people and their voices, and and then I I can't even comfort them.

So I I need some guidance and direction on what to do with.

I mean, I see the numbers, but that is not the reality of what's happening in my office.

Sure, and and I appreciate that comment, uh, council member.

But I can tell you that our property crimes task force is working on a few of these burglaries, I think, specifically in the Champions Way neighborhood.

So that's fresh.

That just happened, these are high dollar sophisticated, and we are got a number of detectives that are assigned so we can work on that, and then if if there's a meeting that needs to be had, I think we can also provide some awareness, uh, maybe some security tips and just some reassurance that we're working on.

I feel very confident that we'll come up with a suspect.

Thank you so so so much.

Because it that gives that helps a ton because right now they're you know not sure that that's all happening, and of course, we don't want to like impede your investigations, right?

So appreciate that, and we'll take you up on that for sure.

That's right.

And remember, this is about the statistics.

Yeah, um, yeah, I can't wait to talk about these.

Um the cr crime going down, I guess overall, right?

And so I've I've talked with our with our SAPD folks, and we actually now and Maria, maybe it's a question for you or or for for chief, but we actually have more officers on the streets now than we did two or three years ago.

Is isn't that true?

Yes, sir.

Right, and Maria, you and I talked um the other week about you know how we're trying to move to this 60-40 ratio of officers on patrol.

We were at, I guess 40-60 when we started this new hiring plan, and now we're at about 50-50, right?

Yes, councilman, that's correct.

Right.

So it's about 10 percent more officers on the streets on patrol.

I would have to follow up on that in terms of the number of additional officers that we have.

Well, if we were at 4060 and now we're at 5050.

That's the time on call in terms of the call versus patrol.

Yes, sir.

So, in in terms of the number of officers on the street, we'll get that number for you.

Correct.

Right, but there's definitely more today than there was in 2023.

Yes, yeah.

And crime is going down, and so I would again say to my colleagues that um officers visible on patrol on the streets.

That is probably one of the reasons, maybe if not the main reason that we do see crime going down and why we need to stick to our plan to uh as quickly as possible get the other 170 officers that we told the public we were gonna hire, get them hired.

And so I look forward to our budget discussions coming up and funding as many officers as we can because more officers on the street help us deter crime.

I think these numbers show it.

Thanks, Chair.

We're gonna have a full discussion on this in May.

So don't you worry, it'll be on the agenda.

Does anybody else have anything that they would like to add?

Go ahead, Councilman Gastie.

And thank you, Chief.

Uh I'm I'm looking at the crimes against society and um the trend for pornography and upsea material has continued to rise from 152 in 2024, 166 in 25, and 191 in 2026.

Uh, in terms of the breakdown, it can you like what is that uh child pornography and consensual photographs, like in terms of that 15%, what what is that?

Probably a little bit of all the above different things.

So there uh the pornography statute is very specific in terms of what constitutes that and now there are state and federal charges as well.

And so I can certainly look in and get you a better breakdown of kind of what exactly is constituting that.

Yeah, because I think uh to your point, there was a federal bill passed because there's a lot of like AI photos uh that are being like couldn't like created of individuals and then circulated.

Um so there's protections against that.

But I'm curious like if a public education campaign in terms of like what is illegal and what are these bills and the impact, uh if that would potentially deter this increase that we're seeing, because I don't think that crime um so that's one that we continue to see on the rise.

So I think if it's public education, and or when I know you all or you all do a good job in terms of the perp walk, like laying out um like what horrendous things individuals have done, especially when it comes to children.

Um, but I think just laying out like the consequences, what are the laws, and I I think that's one that continues to rise.

And if there's ways that we can minimize that one, I I I think we should explore.

Yes, ma'am, we will do.

Let me do a deeper deeper dive on the info and then figure out how we want to look at that.

All right, thank you, Chief.

Thank you, Chair.

The only the only one other thing I would add to look at the ones that have the biggest decrease, right?

So like the larceny theft offenses, those have a pretty significant increase in 3,000, which is the percentage is 12%, but it's a higher number of cases than we're usually than the rest of them.

So like you see a 56% decrease in arson, which is great, but we only have 50 cases of arson a year.

So um curious about how the larceny theft offenses have been addressed, and if there's a you know, um last year we saw the motor vehicle decrease, and now we're seeing it even more.

So thankfully the Kia TikTok or KIA has upped their game.

But what are the other reasons for some of those that we see decreases in would be helpful for us in our next meeting as we discuss what are the true correlating factors?

Absolutely.

Okay, cool.

All right, uh it's 3 31.

We did it.

All right, time is now 3 31.

Public safety committee meeting is adjourned.

Oh, yes.