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Gracias.

Thank you, back to you.

All right, thank you very much.

We're gonna call this meeting to order at 9.02.

Uh can the Secretary please call roll.

Good morning.

Cheryl Krepke.

Here.

Member Stock.

Here.

A member Fleming.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Alright, thank you very much.

Item two, no remote participation because everybody's here in person.

Thank you.

Uh number three is announcements.

Uh I don't have any announcements, any announcements from staff.

Seeing none, we'll move on to item 4.1, approval of the October 28th minutes.

Sure.

Okay.

We can go ahead and um.

We can or go ahead and do announcements.

Uh, go back to announcements.

You have something you'd like to announce.

I just wanted to um make a request of the chief for um updates to the public safety subcommittee or council at your discretion around um the massage parlors and when you have a chance that would be great.

I think the community would love to hear where we are with the enforcement of that ordinance.

Absolutely.

We've been working really closely with planning and economic development on that as teams, and we've had some great progress, but we'll work on a development uh an update for the council.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Chief and Council Member Fleming.

Uh we'll move to 4.1 uh October 28th minutes.

Any adjustments to the minutes?

All right, seeing none, we will adopt those as submitted, and we move on to number five.

Public comment on non-agenda matters.

This is the time for the public to speak on any uh item under the purview of the public safety subcommittee that is not agendized.

Is there anybody in the public that would like to speak on anything not agendized?

You would like to?

Okay, you can go up to the podium right there and uh we'll give you three minutes.

I don't think this will take three minutes.

I am here on behalf of a SRJC student who could not be here today because she has to work.

Um she asked me to ask the committee two questions regarding agendas 8.1 and 8.2.

Do you have training procedures in place for responding to ICE activity?

Is question number one?

And do you plan on cooperating or aiding ICE in their operations?

Those are concerns for SRJC students.

So that's that's she's throwing that out, I think for several students.

And that's it.

Thank you very much.

We cannot get into a back and forth because we're restricted by the Brown Act.

Um, however, I think it's important enough of a subject to say that uh this a week from today at the council meeting, there are uh multiple items uh regarding ICE and the city's relationship with them, and uh those will be discussed.

So that'll that'd be a great time.

Um, probably start around four o'clock.

Does that sound right?

Is the report item okay, three o'clock.

Um, but the agenda is available online if you'd like to look it up.

Thank you very much.

Anybody else?

Seeing nobody else move, we will close public comment and move on to new business and item six point one, uh regional police training center uh presentation.

Chief.

Thank you very much, Chair Krepke.

I'm John Kriegan, our chief of police, and I'm joined today by Sergeant James Vicker, who runs our training division, and uh this has been a momentous uh last 18 months for us where we added two full-time training officers to this team to make sure that we're having consistent and elevating the training of our department, and they've certainly delivered on this.

So I'll turn it over to uh Sergeant James Vickers for our presentation today.

Good morning.

Uh, just wanted to say thank you very much for having me.

And uh my name is James Vickers.

I've been with the Santa Rosa Police Department for just about 15 years.

I'm currently a sergeant.

I've held positions on the SWAT team, on the gang enforcement team, as well as the violent crimes team before I promoted and then uh moved into training.

Real quick, sorry to interrupt Sergeant Akers.

We have some broadcasting issues, if you don't mind pausing, so we can make sure that the public's gonna be able to see your presentation in full.

Yes, Vice Mayor.

All right, thank you very much.

I think we need one of those technical difficulties placeholders like TV stations had in the fifties.

All right, perfect.

Proceed at your at your leisure.

Yes, sir.

Um so I I'm just here to uh talk about training, talk about come some of our uh shortfalls and some of the things uh that we do well.

Uh happy to answer any questions uh at any point in time during the presentation.

Uh so I thought I'd start the presentation just by talking about uh what we feel is the current problem.

Um frankly, SRP does not have a dedicated training facility uh capable of supporting uh modern law enforcement requirements.

Uh that would be training in firearms, pursuit tri pursuit driving, defensive tactics, uh obviously de-escalation, and then finally the last piece would be uh scenario-based training.

So as a result, uh we work with seven plus uh external facilities, and we'll cover kind of the distances that we have to cover and the uh planning considerations that we make.

Uh overall, we spend about 10 to 30 percent of our training days just driving to the different facilities and moving back and forth.

And then uh obviously we we spent more money uh moving to facilities uh than we do on the facilities themselves.

And we'll talk about kind of the distances that we cover and the rate uh by which I calculate that.

And one of the biggest um problems that we have is that those facilities that we use are oftentimes owned by outside agencies, and so uh in the beginning of uh of a year, we'll kind of shotgun book uh a bunch of different agencies, and they will actually cancel uh days on us.

And so for us, moving 200 officers uh through one facility, it takes us eight weeks to move the entire department through a training block.

And so if they cancel one of our days, oftentimes we're out of range, we have to move facilities or try to find a facility, or we're kind of constantly playing catch-up, trying to meet our requirements.

And that's where I get to this last point is training is frequently split shortened or diluted.

I think if the analogy that I would give you is uh I coached my son's baseball team, and in those practices, in the beginning of practice, we work on technical skills or individual skills, how to do something specific.

And then at the end of practice, we always move to scenario-based training, or we have like, you know, we're just gonna have a scrimmage, or something in which they have to use those skills that you just taught them in a dynamic environment, and that is really what we're missing.

We're able to practice individual skills with officers, but we what we lack is an ability to put all those skills uh into one scenario or fluid environment.

It's like teaching someone to swim in the ocean in a lap pool.

There are variables that you just cannot account for uh unless you you have a place to do these, and you you have a way to feed into this kind of dynamic training environment.

Um so I'll go to the next slide and we'll kind of talk about a little bit of the background.

So I've been in the training sergeant position for about three and a half years.

Uh I think that's pretty unique for our department.

It's something that I'm uh passionate about, so I apologize in advance if some of that passion comes out uh when I'm talking about uh the topic.

But in 2020, uh California passes uh AB 392 and PCA 35A, which essentially changes how uh the courts look at use of force and how we judge our officers uh when they make decisions, split-second decisions.

And so instead of just looking at that moment that the officer has to decide to use their firearm or use whatever force they deem appropriate, um the jury uh and the public can look at everything from the time that they were dispatched uh to the moment that force was used.

And so what we're really talking about here is the use of tactics, the use of resources and how the officer employs those tactics and those resources in this dynamic scenario to uh either de-escalate the situation or come to whatever outcome uh is determined at the end.

Uh and so we move to 2021 and we talk about SB 2 and SP 230.

So this actually mandates holistic use of force training uh to include de-escalation, crisis intervention, duty to intercede.

Uh, it mandates that we use uh deadly and non-deadly scenarios when we practice with officers.

And so instead of uh the old model where we're just practicing individual skills, right?

We're practicing firearms, we're practicing uh de-escalation, they want to see officers' decision making uh practiced all in one environment where perhaps what starts as a problem that involves a firearm, switches to a problem that involves a taser, switches to a problem where the officer needs to speak with someone and talk them down.

Uh and so what is really challenging for us is we don't we one, we don't have the facilities to do that, so we oftentimes have to be very creative in the places that we do this in the manner in which we do it, but just finding the places to go uh shortens our time, and we'll get into that a little bit more.

Uh so a little more background.

I do work uh directly with the Office of Independent Review, that's our independent oversight board, and uh they oftentimes will review uses a force and they'll give me a call and we'll kind of talk through our training and what we think the officers did well or what we can improve on.

But there's a general theme in those reports and the feedback that they give us that is consistent to training and better training.

And in 2023, they talk about emphasizing instead of just looking at an incident and saying, Well, it it was in within law and within policy, uh, we should really be looking at all these incidents that involve force specifically.

That that's where my realm and saying how could we do this better?

What resources could we have that could improve the outcome?

Even if the outcome was totally legal and totally within policy, how can we have this model of continuous improvement and constantly getting better?

Just like a professional sports team.

Um, but based on those last two uh years' worth of reports, training is a theme.

And so we talk about looking at ways to improve improve uh performance.

We talk about emphasizing uh the chaining training cadre, which I I have here uh behind me, and uh specifically, they took aim at Pitt and pursued training and um that's uh near and dear to the to the chief's heart as well as mine.

It's a super something that's very dangerous uh and something that we uh basically lack the facilities to do really, really well to kind of the standard that that we want to be at.

Alright, so now we're gonna talk about post-mandates, and I'm gonna go through kind of all the different mandated training that we're allotted to hit before I talk about the facilities that we do use.

So, California Post, this is our mandatory minimums.

Uh officers must go through these topics uh in uh once every two years to maintain minimum standards.

So we talk about tactical firearms, arrest control, driver training and awareness, uh, use of force, and strategic communications.

Use of force is new.

It was added specifically uh based on SB2 and SB230, and that is a decision-making class.

That's where we work through scenarios, we talk about case law, uh, we talk about what absolute absolutely qualifies as an imminent threat, what does not resources available to the officers.

So, use of force is that block where we try to teach the officers decision making, and we try to teach them about all the tools that are available to them and how to use them.

So, on top of post mandates, we also have legislative mandates.

So these are not mandated by our our post-governing authority, but these are mandated by law.

So you have uh CPR first aid.

Uh, we're required every year to do a one-hour refresher at minimum on pursuit guidelines and policy.

We do an eight-hour block every year.

I think we triple the minimum.

Uh bloodborne pathogens, human trafficking, elder abuse.

Uh, I think the the point that I'm trying to convey here is that uh while most people refer to these standards, uh there's actually about four levels of standards.

So you have California Post, you have your legislative mandates that you see here, and then we have our tools and equipment call qualifications.

These are all the tools that officers have to help solve those dynamic problems that they respond to on a daily basis.

And these are things that we have to train them on in addition to post mandates, in addition to legal mandates.

Uh, and we're watching uh we review every use of force in the training cadre, and we're always watching to maybe make sure that uh there's not something that's missing, not something that needs to be retrained, and so uh it grows in complexity.

And so we move on to tactics, techniques, and procedures.

So we talk about basic patrol response and containment.

Um this picture is of a high-risk vehicle stop, a multi-agency high risk vehicle stop.

This was on 101 southbound.

I think it was two years ago.

Uh active shooter response, we talk about crowd control, and we talk about de-escalation.

These are overarching scenario-based themes uh that we have to try to find room for in uh 60 hours of training per year, in 30% of which we spend driving to locations.

Total training hours.

So on average, we uh the department sits around 26 to 28,000.

Uh, this was last year, uh, about 11,340 hours were in service, and about 15,640 were us supporting outside training.

So that would be detectives, maybe going to a conference, uh narcotics detectives, uh, going to specific training, de-escalation training.

I think we've we hosted approximately 21 different training classes within the department uh last year, and so we try to send as many officers as we can to those.

So I think um the main thing that we do when we're messaging to officers in the department and when we talk about budget is just people look at those post-minimums and they don't see it's post minimums plus legislative mandates, plus common tactics, techniques, and procedures, uh, plus the movement to those facilities, paying for those facilities, and everything that goes into kind of moving a 200 person organization through these kind of uh standards that we hold ourselves to.

Um so uh this is it.

This is this is the the this is our currently uh this is our training facility that we have.

This is the department is what we use.

Uh oftentimes we uh can meet some of those requirements here, but uh for the most part I like to keep the officers outside.

I like to keep them active.

I don't like uh sitting them in a classroom for more than four hours if I if I don't have to.

Um I like to kind of get the briefing done, get the points across, and then move into fine motor skills and then into scenario-based training.

So when we're talking about moving officers, and we want them to really uh understand a topic, I I want to see them as the head trainer.

I want to see them uh do it in a dynamic environment and kind of get the abstract principles and apply it.

Uh so uh obviously, you know, this is a little bit of passion uh coming out, so uh sorry.

But this is what we have.

This is this is the one facility I can control.

All right, so let's talk about our regional training facilities.

Uh, this is our bread and butter, this is what we use, and this is the distance to each facility.

Uh so Ukaya Gun Club at the top, um, I have it on there.

We can use that.

We cannot use that for the department.

We're simply too big.

Uh moving, we can't move 200 people through there.

They don't have a range big enough, or they can't give us uh I need a one day a week for eight weeks to move the entire department through it, and uh they just can't handle that volume.

Uh the next one that we use is Fairfield PD.

That's 57 miles, so we budget an hour and a half each way.

Um they uh actually did well.

We'll cover their training center, but they have a they built a uh a training center in one of their industrial areas that has a range, a mat room, a classroom, as well as simulators, uh, and so it really is kind of a great place for us to go if we want to move multiple topics uh through the officers through multiple topics.

Uh Barbier Security is a private security company in Novato.

They're about 33.6 miles away.

As a private security company, they turn the bottom half of their corporate uh headquarters into a simulations house, which just means that we can um that you can add smoke, you can add crowd crowd noise, uh, you can throw flashbangs in there, you can put gas in there if you want to.

It allows you to really run these like fully immersive scenarios where you can really drill down into the officers' decision making and see what they're doing.

Uh Richmond Rodden Gun Club, uh, that is our other bread and butter place where we go to shoot.

Uh it's about 50 miles, uh, about an hour away.

And that's about it just on the cheaper side, $350 a day, but we'll talk about some hidden costs.

Uh San Pablo PD is building a training center.

They're getting a new department, and inside that department they're putting a range in a mat room.

Um they bought an old library and turned it into a training center.

They put a mat room in a classroom, uh, and we pay to use that.

And the reason that we pay to use that is because um I don't even like officers, uh, there's it's not necessary for them to shoot uh their their weapon systems for eight hours a day.

I would rather move them through, you know, two hours of refresher training on the weapon systems to make sure they understand how to use them and move them to defensive tactics and then move them to scenarios where they learn to move between the different things depending on what the situation is.

Um, and then you have the San Quentin does have a range, it's 41 miles away.

We don't use it, they cannot handle our volume.

Um, and so just a couple asterisks when you when you look at this and when we talk about overall costs.

Uh I'll give you an example.

So Richmond, Rodden Gun Club, that's 350 bucks for me to book uh a range.

Um but it's out of county and over 50 miles.

We have a side letter with the POA.

We're technically supposed to pay our officers per diem uh if they go out of county or over 50 miles.

And we have we actually have a side letter with them, uh kind of an unofficial agreement that we don't pay them.

So that saves us, I think the the total I did real quick is uh 3,600 bucks per block that we save by not paying them uh their per diem.

The only the other cost that we have here that doesn't show up in what I'm building, I think the government rate I looked up is about 72 cents per mile.

So we take 10 vehicles uh to move the officers each team down to Richmond.

Uh so it costs us about uh $725 a day just in vehicle expenses to move them to the range and back.

Uh so I think when we talk about like what comes out of my budget line number versus what it actually costs the city, uh I think there's some movement there, some hidden costs that maybe aren't aren't calculated.

All right, uh, these are the training facilities that we have local to us.

We do have the SRJC Academy, they have range a range, a mat room, uh they have a smaller EVOC course.

Um the problem again is just the volume.

Um their range is uh uses what's called frangible ammunition that's very specific.

It has to be uh purchased specifically to to use at their range.

Um and we cannot I can't book eight uh weeks there, so I can't I can use it for one-offs, but I can't I can't run 200 people there over eight weeks, so oftentimes uh they just can't handle our volume.

We do use the Sonoma County track uh at the airport.

It works well for Evoch.

We just don't maintain uh any pit cars and uh things of that nature, but it's uh it's doable.

The fire training tower, so the fire department has actually allowed us to use one of their classrooms regularly.

We've turned it into a small mat room uh where we can practice defensive tactics, we can do remedial training for officers that uh need improvement.

Um, but it that that mat room doesn't hold more than more than 10, so we can't actually use it for in-service training because we're working with 20 to 30 officers uh per in-service training block.

And then finally, the SO does have a range out at Los Gilicos, it is a um, I I think it's 15 yards and 10 lanes.

Again, one they won't let us use it uh for whatever reason, insurance purposes or something else, and uh second, um they uh it just again wouldn't wouldn't be able to handle our volume.

So we uh that's just kind of where we stand with with facilities.

I'm being a dead horse here, I feel like.

But all right, so let's talk about um training facilities costs overall.

Uh as with everything, uh costs have gone up.

They continue to go up.

Um, and while that number might not seem uh significant to all, I understand that.

I think for me, you know, my overall budget is around 352,000, and that has to cover in-service training for 200 officers.

Uh, that has to cover SWAT training, mobile field force training, canine training, uh motors training.

Uh so when we're talking about um how this eats away at our budget and our time, it can get fairly complicated.

And so we just did a rough estimate uh of how much time of our allotted 60 hours for the last three years that we've spent driving.

So we generally will lose one day, uh one training day per year driving, just moving to the facilities and moving back.

If you're we go by facility and then how much time we have to budget.

So here is kind of based on our experience uh what we think uh is needed for the future.

So obviously I'm here because I think we need a dedicated uh training facility.

I think we would uh gain from the efficiencies not only as a department but as a region, uh, removing the travel setup and the administrative costs uh for for myself and my team just juggling the different uh locations and being able to instead of isolating one training topic uh help officers move through training top topics and make better decisions.

Uh capacity is a is a big deal for us.

Um we are the biggest department north of San Francisco, uh, and so oftentimes like we are going to be the biggest game in town to any facility that we use.

Uh and so while it's easier for smaller departments to maneuver through some of the facilities, it's just not not easy for us.

And we we've talked about this briefly, uh, linked training spaces.

We are big believers on working as many different topics into a day as we can, uh, and doing that over time.

Um, and so we're looking for spaces that are linked where we can move from a classroom to a firearms range to a mat room and to a scenario space where we can work in de-escalation to everything that we do and work on officer decision making.

I will say we do do um feedback surveys to officers at the end of each AOT block, and the common denominator with them is they want training in tactics and with teams.

And so oftentimes they'll ask us, hey, we want to do a scenario in which you know four officers show up to a DV call where there's a uh you know a suspect and a victim in a house, and we have to employ those tactics and those resources that you've trained us on.

Um the other one is they want bigger scenarios with like team whole patrol team tactics, whether whether it's uh uh uh I'm sorry, a vehicle pursuit to a foot bail to a perimeter, and so we're just at this point not able to give them those scenarios that they're asking us for because we we just don't have a place to do that.

Uh and a regional asset.

So when we talk about those uh standardized tactics, when we talked about de-escalation and crowd control, and we talked about uh vehicle pursuits and active shooter, you know, to me, those are responses that really should be standardized across the region.

Um, and you know, whether we like it or not, you know, I think Santa Rosa PD and the city of Santa Rosa is a leader in the region, and I think uh a regional training center is a place where we can help standardize those tactics, not only for our department, but throughout the region, and so uh when we do have another crowd control situation, and those those other agencies send officers to help us, uh they absolutely know our tactics, techniques, and procedures, and how to best operate in the city of Santa Rosa.

Um I was here for uh the George Floyd protest, the Andy Lopez protests, and I uh have just kind of lived through all that chaos and kind of all that learning uh that goes into when you have uh mutual aid requests and and those other agencies don't necessarily understand the expectations of of the city of Santa Rosa and how we do things, and so getting on a common playing field I think is an advantage.

So the next few slides, I just want to do some case studies about different training facilities, what their uh kind of outlook was, uh whether they run what their budget effect is if they run neutral, positive or negative, and uh and what they do.

So this is Fairfield PD.

Uh they built this site on three acres for 12 million dollars in 2012.

Uh it has a classroom, mat rooms, and a range.

It does not have a scenario area, and it does not have a driving area.

It's it's pretty um, it gets the job done, but it's basically like kind of the minimum of what you're looking for.

And they were able to do it on three acres.

Their budget effect is neutral, so I think they have to they've they've uh I think completed their bond measure.

Their responsibility was to pay half their bond, and I think that was around $300,000 a year.

Uh and they ran budget neutral, so they made $300,000 a year.

Something unique about this is it's 24 hours.

Uh so officers who are working union team or or the overnight shift can go there and and do actual in-service training and meet those needs, but they are absolutely booked out.

Uh they have a training calendar.

Uh we tried to, we have a firearms transition that's coming up, and we tried to book this, and we could get um three days of the eight days we asked for.

Uh so they charge fifteen hundred dollars a day for their range by itself.

Uh oftentimes when we go, we get the range, the Matt Ruben in the classroom, which runs us about $2,500 a day.

This is San Mateo Sheriff.

Uh their budget effect is positive.

Um they did this on eight acres at a park, uh, cost them about eleven million dollars.

It was more of a refit.

Um that large uh that large area is a hundred-yard rifle range.

The building with a white uh roof is actually a 50 yard indoor tactical range, and the building above that is a uh brown roof, is a scenario house.

Um so they are budget effect positive, they charge $2,000 a day for their range, and it's booked out for the entire year.

Um I think if if we were to go back to that regional training center slide, it's almost like a market analysis.

Uh there's just nothing in the region that uh can compete with this, and the same would go for them.

There's just no other range in the region, so they're completely booked out.

And this is Fresno PD.

Um they built this on 80 acres for 15 million.

Um this is kind of you know, they're a large department, I think they're about 1,200 officers.

Uh they have classrooms, mat rooms, they have seven ranges, uh, they have a driving area, a very extensive driving area with a skid pad that they can wet, and they have a huge scenario area.

Um I put an asterisk next to their budget effect being negative for two reasons.

Um, their pricing model, uh, the example I'll give you is when we go to Richmond, we book the range.

Um when an agency comes to them and and wants to book a range, they just charge them per officer and they get the range for the day.

So the what they told me is they have uh agencies that'll send four per day at $30 per head, which is they'll pay $120 uh for a range uh for the entire day, whereas a larger agency that fills that range with with officers is gonna pay um pay more, and they didn't really like that cost structure.

The second one is um they're not allowed to pursue agencies who don't pay them.

So uh their city council is kind of okay with uh agencies who don't pay their bill, they just see themselves as a regional asset, and they're okay with kind of um fronting those costs, I guess, for the regional agencies.

So just to kind of briefly wrap this up, um, the department vision we want to build a local regional training center.

We're really looking to enhance the training of staff.

Uh we want better service to our community through training.

Um we want reduced liability for the city.

Uh, we want to ensure we're doing uh constitutional policing, we want to reduce officer injuries and I think uh enhance recruiting.

I think officers nowadays are gonna look at organizations and see how seriously do you take preparing your officers for the environment that they're in, and I and I think that is a recruiting tool uh by itself.

And I think the biggest thing for me is uh we want to be a regional partner.

I think we're we're the biggest game in town.

I uh when we talk to other training managers, they absolutely want us to pursue this.

They're struggling just like we are, whether it's with their budget or with finding facilities.

I know Petaluma is also driving to Fairfields, Bastopol.

Uh so it's uh it's something that's needed in the region.

Um how to move forward.

Um, so we are looking to uh start a baby step, and the baby step would simply be um designating some land or doing a site visa feasibility analysis, and then um I can't give you cost ranges of what I think it would cost, but there are firms that we could hire that could do an analysis that say based on your organization and your needs, here's what we think you would need, and it allows us to give you a more realistic approach to what we think this would cost.

Chief, I think of it.

Yes, and thanks so much, Sergeant Vickers, for the thorough presentation, and just to kind of summarize this.

It's so important for me as chief to look at how are we actually training our officers and like enhancing the level of service that we have.

And for me, it's it's approaching 27 years in this career, and what I've said a lot as a chief is I think an issue in law enforcement across the country is a failure to kind of self-critique what we're doing in law enforcement, and to then after self-critiquing, make changes so we don't repeat that same behavior again with it.

So that's something that I'm passionate about, Chief.

About that we don't do here at the Santa Rosa Police Department.

Some of the things we've done is in the last 18 months, we we expanded our training team that we talked about of having those consistent officers here and elevating our level of training.

But one thing that we really worked with our independent police auditor with is creating our major incident review board.

So this is uh any significant use of force that we have the Santa Rosa Police Department, including any with officer using baton or taser where it results in injury or significant injuries, any canine deployment, certainly any officer involved shooting or in custody death.

And lastly, at the discretion of the chief, we bring together this major incident review board, and we come together and sit there and we watch the body worn cameras, we watch the fleet cameras, we dissect exactly what was doing, and then we start looking at were there any improvements that we could have done?

Are there things that we could be doing better training in our organization?

Uh if there were mishaps, or sometimes we see some incredible police work, and we're able to highlight that and say, really great job.

We look at the supervision, we look at the equipment, we look at each one of those things, and that's where we're starting.

But right now, sometimes we identify training issues, but we're capped with our ability to be able to handle some of these things.

So I want to be able to continue to elevate the level of training on our organization, and I want the Santa Rosa community to see that we're different here at the Santa Rosa Police Department, how we operate in our community, how we focus on de-escalation, all these things we're doing, but quite frankly, we need the tools to be able to do this.

Congressman Mike Thompson has been a fierce advocate for us here in Santa Rosa, and certainly at the Santa Rosa Police Department.

We've received several federal, several federal earmarks that we've been able to do.

So I've been working with him over the last couple years about seeking federal earmark dollars for a regional training center.

We applied for one two years ago, and we didn't get it.

And the feedback was you have an idea, but you're not shovel ready.

You need to have more the property.

The main advice we have is you need to secure the property, you need to do the site assessment and have at least a plan.

Then we could work toward getting the federal funding for this and then seek the 20 million dollars, 25 million dollars, whatever it may be, through federal assets.

And a lot of the advice we got too is making it the regional training center.

Then it's available to the whole region here, so it's not just supporting the Santa Rosa Police Department, but the North Bay uh with it.

I'm pleased to sit as a position in the California Police Chiefs Association, our board of directors, and I represent the North Bay here with the five counties of Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Lake, and Mendocino counties with it.

I've met with each one of the chiefs talking about this idea, strong enthusiasm.

If we were to build this, they will come to Santa Rosa.

And we believe by us doing the proper pricing model with it, using our elevated training team that we could serve as that resource, not only for the police department, but for our region, get the federal funds to help build it, and then use our outside funding of these other departments to keep it sustainable at no cost to the city.

And at the end of the day, we're gonna have a police department that really sets itself apart.

So thanks so much for being able to uh address this important issue, or happy to take any questions.

Thank you both very much.

Really appreciate the presentation.

Any questions?

Miss Fleming.

Yes, thank you.

Um, what a what an idea.

This is um really interesting.

Thank you for taking the time um to give us such a thorough and thoughtful presentation.

And I think your passion is an asset, not a uh detriment to your service to us here at the city.

I'm just curious to know um how I assume that the second large if we're the largest force north of the Golden Gate, that the second largest is the sheriff, the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department.

Yes, that's accurate.

We're the the largest municipal police agency.

The sheriff's department does have just over that, they have 204 sworn compared to our 175 sworn.

Yeah, so I was just wondering like from a logistical perspective how they solve these problems.

I mean, you mentioned that they have a range at a low scalicose that's not large enough to accommodate us, so it would follow that it's not large enough to accommodate them.

Yeah, so they do at least have a dedicated range.

It is aging.

I I used it for the police academy 27 years ago, and it was old then uh with it too.

So uh ultimately it's also about that we that our focus is being the regional asset and making sure it's available to others.

The sheriff for a variety of reasons, and this is for multiple sheriffs, uh, has not elected to allow any other local law enforcement agency to use uh their range uh with it too.

So it's not an asset to the region uh with it too, and they're able to do it because um it's just their agency, it's smaller, but even the sh the sheriff's department realizes the limitations uh of their existing uh range to it.

And we've rebroached that topic multiple times of being able to at least do some training uh out there too, but it is um because of the aging infrastructure and a variety of reasons, it's just not gonna be available asset for us.

Right.

But we would certainly work too once we build our regional training center uh one day to make it an asset if we're including the sheriff's department in any agency in the Bay Area.

Yeah, I think that that's really the key there is that um the residents of Santa Rosa are really looking for a well-trained and effective force, and if this is something that gets us there, that's that's really important.

The other piece is that um, you know, personally, I would want it to be revenue positive.

I would want to support the region and have good tactics across the region employed on all of the officers for all the people in Sonoma County and all of the five northern counties to be well trained.

Um, and I'd like, you know, we have, as you know, really serious budget problems here and and there may be a nexus between this and some economic development or support around, especially if officers are coming away and need to need to stay here for their training for whatever reason.

So I think that it has the potential to be really good.

A couple of thoughts is that around the siting of the location is gonna be really important both for the efficacy of of the site, but also for the community to be brought along to this because I think that this is has the potential to be um polarizing where it doesn't need to be.

I think that this could just be you know a nuts and bolts.

We we train officers and we train them well here in Santa Rosa.

But I think that's uh further discussions.

I'd be really interested to hear proposals around sighting and location, and I and I think that you've got the start of a really promising idea.

Thank you.

And you bring up an important point about that this tying into several council goals.

One is uh just on the economic viability for our city.

That now not only were we keeping Santa Rosa officers staying here, having lunch in Santa Rosa, but we're bringing officers throughout the region who will be staying here even overnight for hotels from and this will be broader than Mendocino County, uh, with it of officers coming here, having on a regular basis uh Marin, Napa, uh Lake and Mendo officers who are here, and then they're going to lunch and uh Santa Rosa, they're going to dinner as teams after with it.

Another thing is just talking about some of our climate neutral goals of council of right now of sending on eight weeks every day that we're sending once a week of sending uh 10, 15 police vehicles traveling to San Pablo, Pavin or Richmond, Fairfield.

So those are another things really about like really putting like our money where our mouth is on some of the climate things, and that's this is such a doable task.

So that's another option uh with it too.

But at the end of the day, to your point, we want to have the best trained officers who are treating our community with respect and dignity when we're having whether it be protest or other dynamic incidents here in Santa Rosa, we want to make sure we're prepared.

And uh quite frankly, we've had stumbles in the past of things that we want to do and make sure that we're not gonna repeat some of those mistakes uh with it, and that's why us having that like introspective look, looking at the constructive criticism, but not just identifying the issues.

I want to do something about the issues, and I want to make sure that we're training and we really have worked on the core principles of hiring the right people, having incredible supervisor, being willing to uh hold people accountable if we make mistakes, but the fourth pillar is a focus on training to make sure that we have the best prepared resources that are going out into our community.

That makes sense.

The last thought I'll leave you with is this is that because these things take a long time to just keep an eye on market conditions that we want to have the facility be the right size to be at least revenue neutral if not positive, right?

And so if someone else in our region comes into this space to adjust the plan accordingly, so that it is the case that when we build it, they will come.

Yes, absolutely, and we're working.

I I met with even uh Warder uh director Jennifer Burke yesterday that we have property out there by our municipal services yard out there uh off of uh Stony Point and West College area with it out there to Lano Treatment Center.

There's a lot of variables we have to go through about doing site assessment, looking at some of the environmental impacts, looking at some of the conservation easements that are on some of those properties.

So there are a lot of barriers, but we're gonna look not only at in some existing city property, uh property that we could potentially purchase from the water enterprise fund, but then also work with Jill Scott, our city uh realtor, to look at are there other sites?

But that's what we're gonna need.

And quite frankly, this has been a project that um Chief Schwedholm 15 years ago uh worked on.

Chief Hank Treeter took it up uh with it too uh with it, and and here we are today, still trying to carry continue the same banter.

So I really would like during my time uh as chief for us to be able to have a vision of being able to accomplish this, but it's gonna take us moving forward with the two key areas of securing the property and working on the site assessments, and then me and my team will work on seeking the federal and state dollars to help build what we need by not further adding to the city's uh structural deficit.

Thank you very much.

Mr.

Stapp.

Thank you both.

Um, after hearing this, even in my short time on council, I've heard this idea percolating for a few years.

Has this ever in the past reached the uh the stage of feasibility analysis?

It hasn't, it's mostly focused on looking at potentially some of this existing city property uh out there by our municipal services yard with it, and uh, but it kind of constantly runs into the barriers of this the cost uh with it to uh navigating any other concerns with that too.

So, what I really wanted, and I think we have the right people in the right positions right now, not only on our council, uh, but with our other directors across the city uh that we can form out a partnership and find the property and be able to move forward.

But we've never actually done a site assessment uh with it.

It's just been kind of a project that's been discussed over the decades.

What are the cost?

Well, what are the costs to do the formal pre-planning and the site feasibility analysis?

Are there significant costs to either of those stages?

For the site assessment, it's lower uh with it.

Now, obviously, any cost could change.

I had met with uh assistant city manager Jason Nutt on this last year.

We were looking at some of the things, and the initial estimate he has got more expertise in this area was around $50,000 for initial site assessment.

If we were to look at some of the property out there, existing uh water property and look at like, well, first, is it even feasible to build there with some of the environmental concerns uh with it too with it?

And then once we have that, then we look at actually doing like a design of the building.

I think that could end up in the several hundred thousands uh range, but the site assessment of kind of looking at first, and then we could work on what would the estimate be to purchase that property with it, and then third would be building our plan and bringing in a group of consultant to kind of build of like this is what it's gonna take, and that's where we would be that shovel ready to be able to present to our federal partners to be able to say we have a plan here in Santa Rosa.

What we need is the partnership and the financial backing uh from our state and federal partners.

Understood, and we need to figure out what our options are.

It's such a low barrier.

Um, and finally, you've I'm I'm sure that you've had conversations with Petaluma and Roner Park and some of the other cities in the county.

They're interested conceptually.

Um, have any of them are are any of them seriously interested enough that they that they would want to jump in at this early stage?

Or are they waiting to see what we do?

They're very interested in utilizing our facility.

They're not planning to they'll contribute to paying the two thousand twenty-five hundred dollars a day, whatever we build.

Uh Petaluma Police Department's building a new public safe facility right now, so that's what they're building a new police department that's under construction right now.

So that's their focus has been on that.

But they would love to participate by uh paying the funds to come and contribute uh to our the daily fee that we charge.

And we have the infrastructure and the the capacity with our team to be able to manage this with it, and that's another benefit of having the dedicated training team is that we would be able to manage uh the day-to-day operations uh of our regional training center, and we would really price it uh as we talked about, not only to be cost neutral, but in a perfect world to be cost positive uh with this, so we can make sure that we cover and keep it sustainable for the years to come.

All right, thank you.

Uh well, in so many ways the county and our city are are starting to act like the uh the big and leading areas that we are.

This would be another part of that.

Thank you for bringing this forward.

Absolutely.

Yeah, thank you.

Um I just have one question.

Um, so you've mentioned three different facilities uh as examples, Fresno being uh net negative.

Is that outside of those three?

Is Fresno kind of a standard or is it an anomaly?

I think um being net negative, I think is an anomaly.

I think uh when we looked at all three facilities, though those that were priced accordingly and kind of always up to date on the market and how things needed to be were uh neutral to mostly positive, sir.

All right, thank you very much.

That's my only question for right now.

So we'll move to public comment on this item.

If you would like to speak on this item, uh please move to carefully to one of the podiums and uh you will have your three minutes.

Janice, when you're ready.

Thank you.

Uh Janice Carmen here.

Uh thank you for the presentation.

And um, I just wanted to say that uh when the uh Rangers regional park rangers were losing their uh law enforcement training, uh, and not being uh in the same uh law enforcement uh category that they were at the parks.

I was told by a ranger, because I was an advocate for them, hoping they weren't going to lose their uh arms.

And uh I was told that um the sheriff wanted to build uh an academy uh in Windsor.

Now I never followed up on that.

I don't know what the sheriff's situation is right now, but uh I recently uh heard a uh very good uh talk by um Susan and I can't remember her last name off the top of my head, but it's called First Responder uh Resilience, and this is an organization that's a nonprofit, it's it's all her thing, but it's amazing.

And she has uh already uh secured a property in Qatati.

Now, the where I'm going with this, because often I kind of come around a big loop, is that I would like to see some uh because property is very expensive, development of a property is even worse, to see it uh in uh partnership with uh another uh organization, so that all of the organizations contribute to it and uh are involved in it uh locally, whether it's sheriff and police or the first responder resiliency with uh both departments, whatever, but I would like to see a conversation around that because they all need the same facilities to develop what they're they're doing, uh, and then maybe it could all be built at one time and we would have an entire facility, but also the property is scarcer here in Sonoma County, and it's very expensive.

So I just wanted to say that thank you.

Thank you.

Anybody else would like this that would like to speak on this?

Seeing none, we will close public comment.

Uh come back for final comments.

No, just thank you again, and count me is very interested in pursuing this.

I mean, and we at least in investigation into the feasibility of this.

Yeah, I think for me, first of all, don't apologize for your passion.

Um, I mean it in something like this, it's good to have a passion to be to better yourself uh and better and better your colleagues.

You know, at some learning institutions, definitely not at the Harvard of the Southwest that I attended.

There's a comment, there's a saying of Cs get degrees, right?

Which kind of means, you know, you do the bare minimum, you still qualify for whatever you need.

Um, I think in our conversations with OIR, it has been uh said numerous times that that is not the attitude of the Santa Rosa Police Department that we hold ourselves to higher standards.

I say ourselves, that our department holds themselves to higher standards than um a lot of their agencies in the in the region and throughout the state.

And um, these are all self-imposed standards, right?

This is the we want to be the best of the best in Santa Rosa in a very variety of uh of aspects, and our police department reflects that in the standards they hold themselves to, and I and so I think this is a is a um key piece of that.

One of the things that I think we talked about two years ago ish when we started looking at the budget um was that if we're gonna spend money, we've got to have an ROI return on investment, right?

We're not just gonna throw cash out there to see what happens on uh random ideas, but the fact that we can see here that if we invest a certain amount of money, we can get a lot more money back from the federal government to institute something that not only betters our department but also betters the people around us, the departments around us, as well as brings in some money to us, which would be, you know, I I don't think anybody would be against that.

Um so I uh, you know, I I'm in full support of this.

I'd like to see this come forward to the full council at some point um to get the full feedback of the council to to move forward.

I am definitely in favor of of trying to work this in to uh be able to fund the feasibility study and and get to a point where we can um petition the federal government to give us money to make ourselves better.

So thank you for that.

Um is there anything you want to say in closing or all right?

We will go ahead and close this item out then.

Um we'll move on to the next item.

Uh, we're gonna kind of move it around.

Um there's no matters held in committee, but Chief Krieg can go ahead and stay there.

You're there already, so we'll just switch it around and we'll go to the police department report.

Um, we'll give Chief Westrope some time to answer some more emails up there uh while you give your presentation.

All right, good morning.

We'll continue, and this is just gonna be a brief update, and we're gonna be doing uh a quick overview of some of the tw the calendar year 2025 police stats uh with it and the amazing progress of our team.

So uh quickly we saw just over 179,000 calls came into our 911 dispatch center.

So our 23 dispatchers answered 179,000 calls last year uh that came in.

Our police officers, our uh filled evidence uh technicians, and our one community service officer responded to actually responded out into filled to just over 11,000 calls per year, where they focused on contacting communities and providing uh our level of service to our community uh out of those.

We've been tracking it's uh been uh a lot of community discussion on this, and so we track what we call homeless-related incidents.

Uh, out of those, uh just over 11,000 calls, just over 11,000 of those were homeless-related incidents that uh we saw in the city that was up just about six percent uh from last year.

On those a hundred and eleven thousand calls, our officers made just over 6,600 arrests uh that we made uh last year throughout the community for a wide variety of offenses.

Traffic enforcement has been a key area uh for us and one of the top community concerns that that I hear uh from our community with it.

Unfortunately, we investigated eight fatal collisions uh last year.

We had a ninth uh fatal collision uh with it, but determined that it was actually uh a medical uh that caused that before that, so it didn't count as a uh fatal collision uh with that.

We investigated 684 uh injury collisions.

Uh uh unfortunately, due to staffing, we no longer wrote a non-injury collision uh calls uh with it.

Uh, but we did investigate the 684 actual injury collisions, conducted with not only each one of our police officers but our incredible traffic team, uh almost 20,000 traffic stops uh last year and issued uh citations over on uh just over 10,000 of those were issued uh traffic citations.

We continue to make a department-wide focus on getting dangerous DUI and impaired drivers off our streets, uh, not only through uh patrols on a daily effort with it, our traffic team going out there, but a series of DUI checkpoints throughout the year, and 615 DUI offenders were taken off of our streets with it.

Firearm incidents uh continues to be a key area that we focus on, and not only with our patrol officers, but with our dedicated uh special enforcement team, our gang crimes team, and and all of our investigative teams really working together uh on this area.

We responded to 184 reports of shootings uh in our community.

This was a rough year for us for homicides that we saw our homicide rate uh go up tremendously with uh 12 homicides last year, and looking at some of the trends, nine of those involved, uh firearm, four of those uh were involved domestic violence incidents uh with it too.

So that's certainly something that we're continuing to work with our partners.

What I am very proud of is our violent crimes investigations team solved and made arrest in all 12 of those homicides.

That's a highly unusual to have a hundred percent clearance rate.

And actually, going back uh over the years uh with it, since 2022, we've had 37 homicides, and there's only one homicide where they haven't identified a suspect in it.

That's incredible work, not only for our investigations teams with it, but our responding patrol officers, our supervisors who were able to quickly manage those scenes and bring in leads, and also with our relationship with our community, that we're we're able to build that trust where witnesses feel safe and feel like they can come to our police officers and provide statements uh implicating who may be responsible for violent crimes in our community.

We see 321 uh firearms off the streets of Santa Rosa.

That was down from a high of last year of 390 illegal firearms we see off the streets with it.

107 of those 321 were the illegal, privately manufactured firearms or uh more commonly known in the community as ghost guns.

That still continues to be a significant issue with it.

And working with some of our local legislators here, assembly members Chris Rogers has been a fierce advocate in this area for us, working uh with the California Police Chiefs Association as well to be able to pass some new legislation in our state to uh fill some of the legislative loopholes where it's still so easy to sell these firearms to manufacture them these firearms in the state of California.

So we hope to see progress with that.

And and uh when I start dissecting, okay.

So we saw a reduction in the legal firearms and the ghost gun sees.

We had 124 ghost guns uh the year before.

Some of it is actually the fruit of when I meet with our special enforcement team and our gang crimes team, they're saying it's because word is out there in Santa Rosa of our cops are looking for these guns and getting them off the street.

So you're seeing less people carrying ghost guns in our streets.

So I think that's a success.

Some you is gonna be contributed to uh some of the budget cuts we saw, but I think overall it's because you're having less people carrying ghost guns in the streets of Santa Rosa due to the hard work that our officers and working really closely also with our violence prevention partnership and looking more holistically at the root causes of why our youth want to carry ghost guns on the streets.

So I think that's really been a collaborative effort uh between our departments.

Community engagement is equally as important for us.

Uh, we hosted 78 organized community events last year.

So that doesn't count just officers who are going out.

Well, we build into our culture of going out in the parks and passing out stickers, but 78 events where our to our department engineered set up at a community event with that, and that's so important for me.

The enforcement part is so is critical, but also engaging with our community, building that trust.

Really had a focus this year on visible foot patrols, downtown, Railroad Square, Santa Rosa Plaza, parks across our community, shopping centers across our community, and really making it in uh and one thing that's important to me: community engagement can't be three or four officers that are part of a community engagement team.

Community engagement is the 249 employees of the Santa Rosa Police Department.

From the 911 dispatcher who's answering the call to the officer, our civilian member who's surrounding out to those calls with it, and that's what we're building the culture of our organization to uh make sure that we're engaging with our community.

The objectives that we have from IR department, and we call them our operational objectives, violence reduction of getting these homicides down, the shootings down, the traffic safety and enforcement uh with it.

And for us, the and you've heard this before the three E's of traffic enforcement, enforcement are traffic safety, enforcement is one of them, education of getting out there and working with our youth about some of the dangers uh of driving recklessly or certainly impaired with it, and then also engineering and working with transportation and public works.

Dan Hennessy's uh done so much to be able to work closely with us about using some of the engineering resources to make our streets safer here in the city of Santa Rosa.

Our quality of life crimes and our mental health uh resources, that's certainly a priority of addressing not only our unsheltered uh population.

Our in response team responded to just under 6,000 calls this year.

So the highest we've ever had 6,000 calls in lieu of a police officer responding to those in a mental health crisis, and we're so proud of the team and what they're doing internally, really working on organizational wellness to make sure the men and women of the police department, those who responded to the 184 shootings, those who responded to the 12 homicides, the eight fatal collisions, that we give them the resources they need to kind of unpack some of the trauma of this job and continue to provide the best level of service, and then lastly, our community engagement efforts, and we track that the same as we do with guns, with everything else, because I want officers to know that it's something that I see uh see and that I desire to have them engaging out in our community with it.

So that's the quick high level uh update for 2025.

Thank you very much, Chief.

Mr.

Statt.

I I will just note that I have no questions because you do not you do a nice job, Chief, of uh keeping us in the loop.

So there are no surprises in this presentation uh and on the community engagement front in particular.

We're just we're thankful for the work that you do, not only on the community, but also here on council keeping us in the loop.

Yeah, no questions for me either.

So we'll go to public comment before we come back for final comments.

Anyone want to talk on?

Nope, nobody is moving, so we will bring it back and close public comment.

Do you have any final comments?

I think the one thing I appreciate this, this is you know, you were always a data driven guy.

Um I appreciate that, but I I I do want to take a second as we look back at 2025 that some of these uh some of these crimes that you covered and solved um and investigated um in 2025 were some of the uh some of a very difficult nature um that your team investigated in, or some incidents that your team was a part of, and um the professionalism and the uh the um the mental toll that I can take.

I just want to take a second to recognize that that those are some difficult situations that they were in, and I really do appreciate the men and women of your department that step up and do those kinds of things.

So um thank you on that.

Please.

Apologies.

I did have an addition.

So in your slide deck, why are we not bragging about the uh the Colombian theft gang and theft ring, rather, and then the uh the Asian theft ring?

Those are two, those are pretty two big like regional uh regional crimes that that this department was pivotal to solving.

And and that's a great one.

That are we have a dedicated property crimes team of five detectives and the unbelievable amount of cases that come to their desk with it.

We're able to focus on those where we're seeing targeted acts uh with it.

Another one that we could spend a whole presentation on is what they've done on organized retail theft here in Santa Rosa of the stores that are happening on so many on Lululemon, REI, so many of those where you're seeing just mass uh the way we had one that kind of went viral this year, too, of uh a Lego uh theft where they're stealing high-end Legos in mass volumes throughout Santa Rosa with it, and our and our team was able to address that too.

So, really making a difference with that and helping to make it more uh financially stable for our uh businesses here in Santa Rosa, whether they be large businesses or small mom and pop businesses.

We want to make sure they have the resource, and the Sonoma County District Attorney's also been a really a key partner with uh on that one as well.

So we're proud of their collaboration.

Thank you, Chief.

And if someone with a with a 10-year-old child that likes Legos and has seen the secondary market for Lego kits um online, that is you would be shocked at the price that they they get for some of these Lego kits.

It's pretty insane.

So uh good work on all of those as well.

And again, thank you to your team for all they've done this past year.

Um, and with that, we will close out this item and move on to our fire department report.

Thank you, Chief.

Great, thank you so much for all your support chief Westrope thank you when you when you're ready please thank you Chair Okrepke uh Mayor Stepp Scott Westrope Fire Chief City of Santa Rosa um I too will be going through a uh brief update on the fire department and just for the mayor being your first public safety subcommittee I kind of handle this in a different fashion I kind of look at the three things that we need to run a fire department the people the facilities and the apparatus so um my presentation's a little bit different um but kind of the same goal at the end of it.

So as far as staffing goes we have a current position control list number of 174 FTEs and one thing I want to call out here in this slide is that outside of the general fund um we look at every opportunity we can for outside funding sources.

In this regard we're talking about safer which is our squads which is 12 personnel which is a federal grant we have measure H, which is a countywide sales tax measure which we currently have 14 employees vouching to measure H.

And then we obviously has have PSAP, which we have 10 point two five FTEs coming out of PSAP.

So we look in a lot of different areas trying to not impact the general fund yet grow the fire department.

In the operations bureau we graduated seven firefighter paramedics in December of 2025 they're on the streets and doing well and then we're working through all the promotional and backfill processes that we have to to fill all the the vacancies that we have to get to constant staffing so I just want to make it clear that we're not trying to overhire or underfill or overfill we are just trying to meet our minimum daily staffing to keep our fire engines with the in fire trucks with the appropriate number of people on them on a day to day basis.

We currently have three vacant positions that are on hold and in response and then moving into fire prevention we have some measure H positions so we moved limited term fire inspectors over to Measure H FTEs which those two employees were extremely happy to be able to have secured FTE positions that created vacancies in the limited term position we've been able to move one into that and then we've had some other movement so that's that's still where we're at but there's been some movement of actual people and we currently have a vacant community outreach specialist which we're holding is vacant and our small yet mighty admin team is at full staffing talking about fire stations um you're aware of most of this but fire station five in fountain grove opened in November of 2025 still working through some minor issues just like when you move into a new house you find little things here and there.

But the team's doing a great job finishing that out it's operating very very well and and the crews are really happy with it.

Fire station eight in Roseland the groundbreaking was in November of 2025 as well and we anticipate that being completed in the summer of 2027.

Fire station nine which we're looking in the southeast area to put service down in the South each which I've referenced this before we have plans going back to 1996 um showing that we need a fire station in the southeast but we're working with the real estate team somewhere in the area of Santa Rosa Avenue and Elsa Court Street somewhere down there on we're focusing on buying a building and retrofitting it versus building from the ground up to expedite the timeline and to save costs but things are going and moving along very well in that regard and sort of a new one here I'm not sure if I've talked about it with this subcommittee but fire station 11 which is our fire station the junior college district they are currently we own the property it's across from sort of the safeway area there.

We've owned the property since 2007 there's currently a triple-wide mobile home that was supposed to be a five-year temporary station on that property.

And we have concept plans on there were supposed to be a full-time permanent station built on the front of the property.

So we've never been able to get any movement on that.

So we opened a CIP account for it, and we're starting to feed that account with CFF funds.

And then we're also, we with the debt service payment that just fell off of station five, the old station five out of PSAP, we're looking to augment that money going into the CIP account.

We're working with finance on the possibility of funding permanent fire station 11 construction sometime in the future, if if it if it pencils out if the numbers work.

As far as fleet goes, we have a lot on order.

I'm not going to go through this in great detail.

You've approved all of these as part of council.

What I will flag for you here is what we've seen, and we've may have talked about it in some regard, but what we're seeing as a fire service industry is that on the apparatus front, private equity has bought up all of the fire apparatus manufacturing companies.

And what that's done is it's increased the price twofold in about two years.

So the engines that we just took delivery of that we bought about three years ago, the price is now doubled.

And just as important, the timeline's gone from about a year to build a fire engine to four to five years to build a fire engine.

So it's really impacting the fire service.

As the city, we started bringing this up to our state and federal lobbying teams.

They hadn't really heard about it.

Now it is very prevalent, and the the private equity firms are going in front of congressional oversight to start answering these questions because it really what highlighted it was the Palisades and Eaton fire in the picture on the front of the LA Times of the apparatus that were sitting in LA's fleet.

So hopefully we can get some movement there.

It's at the federal level, but it's certainly frustrating for fire chiefs across the state of California and certainly for us.

Some of the things I'll be bringing forward to this subcommittee in the near future, our updated deployment analysis and community risk reduction plan.

I actually just received the final draft yesterday, but I'll be bringing that to the next public safety subcommittee as a high-level overview of what our current deployment analysis and community risk reduction plan looks like.

We're working on different, as I stated before, we're always looking for different revenue streams to continue to grow the fire department, but not impact the general funds.

So as we gain traction and ground and move it through the city process on those, we'll bring those forward.

We should have an update.

We will have an update on the surge ambulance project at the next public safety subcommittee meeting.

We have the physical assets, we're just working through negotiations with our partner on that.

So I should have something for you at our next meeting.

And then as far as the wooy map adoption goes, you know, it's a it's a big issue in the community, and we're continuing to work with ongoing community education through our fire prevention bureau on the wooy map adoption process.

And as always, I like to kind of end this on a high note.

You know, I've I've referenced our canines before, but I want to talk real quick about um Nathan Dilley.

Um he will be our he is our firefighter of the year for 2025, and he'll be honored at the rotary meeting, which I received an email that I was reading up there.

May 27th of this year, it looks like is gonna be the rotary meeting and also through the American Legion with the police department and the sheriff's office.

But um Nathan's being honored for a rescue that um that he conducted, and what the picture on the right is actually a car that is involved in fire.

You can see by the flame pattern, it's a it's a gas fire.

So this person was involved in a non-injury accident, ran over a center median, ruptured the fuel tank, and the fuel tank ignited.

It was a very benign call.

Um they showed up, everything was static, and quote-unquote, out of like out of the movies, the car burst into flames.

And so Nathan, they deployed hose lines, and Nathan heard the occupant screaming for help inside, jumped through that fireball, opened the door, lifted the person out, and jumped back out through the fireball with the occupant in his arms.

Um, because of that, um, she only received minor burns and was released from the hospital that night.

He was uninjured.

Um so I just want to highlight Nathan.

That is the smile that he has every day.

He that's literally our it's literally our recruiting poster picture.

He is the poster child.

But to talk a little bit more about Nathan, after he he works at the station that is attached to our office, and I went over and told him he was firefighter of the year.

Um he was a little dumbfounded and didn't quite, I could tell he wasn't quite wrapping his head around it.

About a half hour later, there's a knock at my office door, and he comes in and says, Chief, I appreciate what you just told me, but I'm really uncomfortable with this because I'm part of a team, and it was an entire team process.

I just happen to be the one to make that decision and do it.

But the whole team needs to be honored, which says a lot about Nathan's character and the character of the people that we hire here.

So I just want to highlight that.

I'll certainly reference that at Rotary.

But just wanted to end this with some good news and and uh mention Nathan's name in person in public.

Sorry.

And with that, over to you for any questions or comments.

Much appreciated, Chief Westrope.

That's really incredible.

Questions.

No, as as Chief Krieger knows, you keep us in the loop.

So nothing here was a uh it caught me off guard.

Um and I was there at the meeting with our lobbyists when you mentioned the issue with the um with the fire engines.

So that's a thank you for um publicizing that that issue, and I'm glad our lawmakers are looking into it.

Uh and then finally, thank you for um for highlighting Nathan Dilly at the end.

I wasn't aware of that story, and that photo really says it all.

So thank you for uh yeah, thank you for making us aware.

Thank you.

Uh just two quick questions for me.

Um goals and priorities with revenue streams is interfacility transfer part of that.

It is still part of the conversation.

Um, I think it's a much longer term goal than we initially um had discussed, but um it's something that's still on our radar.

Um, our EMS team of two is working through a lot of different things right now.

So um as we prioritize our work and our goals and priorities, um, it's something that's definitely still on the radar.

It's just something that we have to get through a lot of other stuff before we start investigating because that's gonna be a very intensive process.

But yes, it still is.

I appreciate that.

Then with fire stations, um, if I recall correctly, there was also I don't know what you want to call it, the Eastide split slash relocation.

Um, is there an update on that or is there a do you have an idea of what that process looks like going forward timeline wise?

Is is this in regard to the measure H original measure H plan?

Yeah.

So the original measure H plan that we had was to build three new fire stations and add three new fire companies, and the from when we originally appropriate not appropriated the funds, we initially built a financial plan.

Um fire stations were much less expensive expensive to build, and so things have changed, and while it's still in the plan, it's not gonna be any time soon that we'll we'll see engine six moving further east and station 12 being built.

Um, we had to look at it from a level of funding and then priority, and and obviously the the need for an e a southeast fire station is the priority, so that's where the funding is going immediately, but certainly that is the plan down the road, and with this new deployment analysis, we'll see if they came up with anything different that shows that you know maybe we can get it down to one station or you know, co-locate resources, whatever the case may be, but um it's still part of the plan, it's just a matter of we had to build a 10-year financial plan that did impact the general fund, and that eliminated the ability to build three fire stations.

Okay, I appreciate that.

Thank you.

That's all my questions for right now.

So we'll go to public comment on this item.

There's only one person here.

Janice, this is your time, three minutes when you're ready.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Uh Janice Carman.

And I just wanted to thank uh Chief Westro for uh such a positive um report this morning, and to speak about uh a summary of the number of fire stations that have either been opened or have had work on them, and uh that makes the citizen feel uh much more secure uh here in Sonoma County with the fires because when you talk to people about the fires, especially the older people.

They're shaking in their boots already, and there's nothing that even is suggesting that there's going to be one immediately, but they feel like it.

And so it was a really good um opening about uh the fire stations, and it ended on such a positive note with um Nathan.

So thank you very much for that.

Thank you, Janice.

Seeing as out of there is nobody else here, we will close public comment.

Do you have any final comments, Mr Staff?

No.

I'll just say um two quick things.

One, I just rained a lot of praise on the police department for what they do.

And I don't want to I would be remiss if I didn't mention um the the fire department and everything that they do.

Sometimes I don't feel the need to because the police department doesn't have the marketing team that our firefighters have on social media.

They are very good at summising uh summarizing what they do on a regular basis and how how truly great they really are but I do want to make sure to to um to give them their their due as to how great they are um from the top down.

And I think that's evident when you look at the d the twenty twenty five recap that we started our year as a fire department sending mutual aid down to Los Angeles for those fires not just with firefighters but with administration city staff providing our expertise and then we ended our year by sending mutual aid to Seattle um with our Swiss water rescue certified firefighters to go up there to help during the floods.

That is how important our teams are to our side of the country is that we can we can supply that expertise from from the top of the from the Canadian border you know to the Mexican border and that's how good we are and that's how that speaks to not only you but your training team and then the everyday frontline firefighters and you know all of our public safety that you know I'd it's it's cliche and it's an old adage but you know I think when you look at what uh Chief uh Cregan just presented and what you just presented that um especially when it comes to firefighter Dilly that it is very important we'd realize that how good our teams are that when we're running away from danger our teams that are running towards danger are that damn good.

So I appreciate all you did in 2025.

So we will go ahead and close this item out.

Uh thank you very much and with that we will adjourn at 1019.

Thank you.