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Claudia, will you please restate this in Spanish?

What is the Satos?

Uh interpretacion in Espanol para esta junta para las personas que se acaban de unir interpretación in vivo start disponible orgullo in Spaniel.

Thank you very much.

Back to you.

All right, good morning.

It is 901 AM, and we will bring this meeting to order.

Um we will start with uh roll call.

Mayor stop.

Councilmember Fleming is absent.

Vice Mayor Krepki.

Here.

Let the record reflect all subcommittee members are present with the exception of Council Member Fleming.

All right, thank you very much.

We'll move on to remote participation.

I do not believe we have any.

Um no announcements.

Uh item four is approval of minutes.

Any addition to the minutes?

Neither do I.

So we will show those adopted as presented.

We will move on to public comment on non-agenda items.

There is no public to comment on public comment.

So we will close that out and move on to item six, six point one, the response to the independent police auditors 2025 annual report.

So uh if we could please have uh the chief come down.

We will move into that item.

Thank you.

When you're ready.

But the past year they've done fifty-five personal in uh personnel investigations they reviewed with us.

Um and really with each of these investigations, um, there's constant communication with OIR, especially from the professional standards sergeant and myself.

Um so we talk to them about investigations that come up, our thoughts on them.

So we consult with them on a kind of a real-time basis.

Um and in June, they presented their recommendations city council, and there were seven of them.

The first one was that we need to keep um passing on investigations to our patrol sergeants, basically was the recommendation.

Rather than Sergeant Cogbill handling every um complaint or investigation that comes in to keep pushing some down to our first line supervisors so that they can continue to grow and continue to get better with their skills.

And we actually definitely concur with this.

It is one of the things that we uh pride ourselves in is continuing to train, mentor, and develop our employees through all levels of the organization.

It's something that the chief is very passionate about, and so we are very cognizant of that.

So we want to make sure that we're always giving them the tools they can to succeed.

And given that some of these investigations are so important and they're impactful on the community as well as our officers and the organization as a whole, we want to make sure that we're doing the best job that we can on them.

So giving them investigations, providing them with training, giving them the tools they need to get better at these and to continue improving their investigative skills is something that we definitely concur with, and we always want to make our supervisors better.

So this recommendation we concur with, and we're constantly striving to improve our ability to investigate these.

Number two, um again, explore additional ways to prepare new supervisors.

So this it just they're kind of two both of these recommendations are kind of the same, and so some of the answer will be the same.

But two of the things we did uh recently, um, one is we noticed that in our training of new sergeants, we just had a couple new sergeants get promoted.

Well, we have one that's promoted, one that will be promoted very soon.

We realized that there was no one-on-one training time with our professional standards unit to show them okay, here's what an investigation looks like.

This is what acts on standards, which is our software that we use for all of our complaints and investigations, and then this is the process, this is how you go, this is um everything that we'll do through the investigative process.

So we recently added that block to the new training sergeants and uh Sergeant Cogbill has been going back and making sure that he touches all of our current supervisors.

He's also available whenever they need him, so they can call him, text him, email him, or just come up to his office as well as myself.

And then I also added on here that within one year of being promoted, all supervisors go to uh internal affairs investigation school.

So it's those those are some of the ways that we're continuing to try to better our employees.

Um addressing investigative thoroughness.

Uh, this came about because we had several complaints related to uh lack of follow-up, um officers not getting all the way through, or investigations lagging.

One of them was due to an officer um being injured.

But um, this is directly from our um strategic plan is excellence and quality in all that we do.

It's something that we have noticed ourselves that we need to continue to improve our investigative skills.

And um speaking with one of our captains recently, talking about um holdover forms and just making sure that every supervisor is aware of what officers have at all the time.

So if they have a case that they need to hold over to the next day, okay, what is why are you holding it over?

What are we doing for follow-up and when do you expect to complete it?

Just having a full checklist of everything that we do and then making sure that people know, respond to your emails, check your voicemail, do all of those regular things that it's becomes harder for officers given uh how busy they are, staffing levels obviously always affect that, but just making sure that we are constantly striving to be get better in all of these areas.

The major incident review board.

This recommendation here, we created this last year.

Um it's been very valuable to us as an organization.

It's really designed for major use of force or major incidents infecting the police department and the community.

What we see the most um canine deployments, use of force with significant injuries, and obviously our officer-involved shootings all go through this process.

One of the recommendations from OIR is well, there might be other cases that OIR would like to see us review through the major incident review board, and the policy is anything that the chief of police decides is something that needs to go through the major incident review board, or MERB as we call it.

Um the chief can decide any case, doesn't matter what the case is, what the circumstances are.

If the chief of police decides we need to, or if someone decides there's a case we have, I think we should do it, they can bring it to the chief, and the chief can say, yes, I think that should go through there.

So it is a very good tool for reviewing these.

It looks at every incident from top to bottom.

Even if the incident is great, well, there could still be things we could have done better, or equipment we needed, or policies we need to review.

So we um like to put anything through the major incident review board that we can.

This one here, uh, we were just talking about this uh, and I will go to the next uh so making sure everything gets completed.

That's where Axon Standards comes in.

Um anything that comes through the major incident review board, we uh sign it to a specific person, whether it be a captain, lieutenant, sergeant, uh the training division, the professional standards team, whoever it is that that would fall under, we assign it to them, and just as an example, here's what an action item looks like.

So some of it's blacked out because it's information that is uh private, but this is we identified that CHP 187.

What that is is a pursuit form.

So every pursuit that we have, our policy states that we have to fill out a CHP 187, which is just a form that talks about where the pursuit happened, how far it went, um, different um avenues, and we realized I think in this one, we just wanted to verify the 187 was not attached to the report at the time that this case was reviewed in the MERB.

So we looked at it and said we need to make sure that that's happening.

Uh James Vickers is my training sergeant, so he was assigned to this to make sure that we're following appropriate procedures, and then looking into the policy, who is supposed to fill it out, why didn't it get filled out, and do we need to change anything about filling it out?

So we this every bullet point that we create, every recommendation out of any MERB has this exact format where it's what's the problem, who's assigned to it, how do we fix it, and when does it get completed?

So you can't, we don't we can't close any MERB until every action item is completed.

So it gets assigned directly to a supervisor to be completed.

Pardon me.

Um the back end process for a MERB.

In our recent, we've had two officer involved shootings recently.

And as uh some are aware, some might not be.

We don't the when an officer involved shooting happens with the Sonoma County protocol, major incident protocol gets enacted, the sheriff's department or another agency and the district attorney's office get the first crack at it.

They're gonna do the criminal investigation.

From the Santa Rosa PD side, we're only gonna do the administrative investigation involving this.

So we kind of take a back seat while they do the interviews, they do the initial review of the evidence, they do the crime scene, all of that.

So we kind of take a back seat, but we don't want to miss opportunities that we where we could have been better as an organization.

So we put this, these cases close in time into a major incident review board.

And Steve uh Connolly from OIR group was present for the first one that we did, and his this is what came out of it.

He would just want to say, okay, but what are we doing with this information afterwards?

Like when it's all said and done, what is the process going to look like when you get the criminal report from the district attorney's office from the sheriff's office?

And so that's where this recommendation came from.

And I was just speaking with uh my training sergeant and professional standards sergeant today.

We're working on the first one, and it's basically gonna go through a review for administrative policy, anything we could have done better administratively.

Do we need to re-interview uh witnesses?

Like, what do we need to do now that the criminal case is over?

Is there anything administratively that we need to do?

So that'll go through that review.

Once that review is done, it then goes to the training team, they're gonna look at it from equipment tactics, training, are there things we could have done better or things that we need to change based on what we're seeing?

And then when those two things are done, it'll then come to me who will write a final summary report, and then obviously if there's any action items that come out of that, we will continue to move forward and address those as needed.

So we have not gotten all the way through this process yet, but I'm hoping that OIR will uh like the process once we are finished with the first one, which we're doing right now.

Look for ways to replicate the success of PFAP.

So what PFAB is is pointing a firearm at a person, which we um when initially some of the laws changed, and we have use of force reviews.

Not every time that a firearm was getting pointed at someone where we capturing that data.

Um we realized that it's something we probably need to capture.

So we introduced the process that any time an officer points a firearm at a person, we consider it a use of force, and we have them take a report on that.

Um it's in Axon standards.

Um, and then we also have the MERBs through Axon Standards.

Axon standard has kind of um we switched from another process that was called Blue Team into Axon Standard.

Now everything is in one place.

And so it's it standardizes how we review all use of forces.

It had creates action items.

There's a section for officer feedback, so good or bad.

We provide feedback to the officers on how they did, um, what it was like, what we thought about um their tactics, um, and then it got it has to go through the chain of command.

So a sergeant will go out, take the initial lieutenant will then look at that, review it, make a policy finding, and then provide feedback to the officer and the sergeant on what we could have done better, what we did right, um did uh and then close the loop so that we make sure that all of our use of forces are investigated in the same manner and up to the standard that we expect at the Santa Rosa Police Department.

That is all of the recommendations.

Questions.

I think just one important thing to note in there is that all seven of these recommendations are very administrative, kind of fine-tuning things.

And I think I think it speaks for the quality of the work that the men and women of the Santa Rosa Police Department are doing, and really of our also our our great working relationship that we've had with our police auditor.

And what really we've talked before with council, what sets us apart from any other law enforcement agency in the region, is that our auditor is in real time auditing our steps.

So within 24 hours of us receiving the complaint, is aware of the complaint, has the same access to our body warn camera system as me, but most importantly, is consulting with our professional standards team and ultimately with me before any disciplined decisions are made.

So therefore there still is time to make changes, as opposed to what you see across the state with many auditors is once the investigation is completed, once the discipline is already imposed and can no longer be changed, then the auditor is providing some input, which is more performative than it really is substantive at that rate.

So really excited for the work that we're doing.

Um I think some of the steps that we've talked about in this last year of the creation of the major incident review board and also the creation of our dedicated training team.

And our training team is really focused on looking at all complaints we receive, any legal actions against the city of Santa Rosa, especially from the police department, and we're dissecting each one of those, going, all right, maybe there wasn't a policy violation, or maybe there wasn't a violation of law, but man, there were training areas that we can improve to make sure that we don't see some of the future liability, or we don't see these complaints.

And those are two things that I think that really moved us forward as an organization tremendously.

But we're still looking for ways that we can incorporate all seven of these recommendations as we continue our work into 2026.

I'll turn it back over to Chair Krupke for any questions.

All right, thank you.

Any questions?

Thank you both for the presentation.

And it's been interesting on council to watch this develop over the past few years.

Uh and Chief Kriegen, to your point, I mean, the fact that we're fine-tuning to this level, it's it's really impressive.

Um, and does provide a lot of a lot of confidence at the council level.

My question is, uh, especially for the rank and file, to what extent has this process over the last four years become um come to be perceived as something that's organic and internal as opposed to something that's imposed from the outside?

What is the what's the what's the response to this um this multi-year OIR effort within the force?

I think our officers have come to embrace it and and our model is different of having our auditor have the ability to be present during the interviews to ask the officers questions directly.

And that's something we worked very closely with our police officers association with the rank and file of the membership to be able to see this as our goal is to not get people in a got you moment, but to be able to make sure that we're shining light for our community on what are the things that we're doing, are there improvements?

And our biggest style that we've talked about is like let's lean into constructive criticism because we all get better as human beings no matter what position you work uh here in the world by being able to reflect upon could we have done anything better?

And so our officers have embraced that, and I think that we're seeing the fruits of that in the day-to-day operations.

All right, thank you.

Um with OIR recommendation for the major incident review board, one thing you said was um policy allows the chief of police to send anything through the through the MERB outside of the one in officer involved shootings and canine deployments and use of force.

Could you give me an example, either real or conceptual about what something like that would be where the chief you would take your your executive privilege to send something through the MERB?

I think an example could be the most obvious ones is Lieutenant Philip talked about are those significant uses of force, even as a use of force that results in in injury of any significant kind, but one that may be uh of maybe it was a smaller use of force, but results in some type of uh viral video or our community concerns.

So that's one that we're we may be, you know what, let's take a deeper look at this.

And for every complaint, we're able to evaluate it.

But the MERB is really looking at like piece by piece analyzing, and we talked about some of the training implications.

Are there any policy changes?

We look at the supervision and say, like, all right, maybe the officer did a good job, but there were areas that we could have improved the supervision of this incident.

The communication, we have a one in there that one of the elements we talk about is also community.

Are there any like community healing needs to be done in this that we need to maybe set a community meeting over this?

And one that we've really seen is like, are there any equipment needs?

And we've seen, like, man, maybe if we would have had this equipment available to us, we could have defused this in a in a in a safer manner.

So those are each one of those.

But the perfect example would be maybe it wasn't a truly significant use of force, but there were strong community concerns, and that was one that we would enact the major incident review board and make sure that we're holistically looking at it and making sure that we learn from it.

Our city attorney is also a part of that process, so I think that's another element for to have another lens of another eye from another city department, but looking holistically at some of the legal challenges that we see in some of these incidents.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Um I recall when OIR was here.

Uh, I don't know if it was an official recommendation or maybe it was just not put in here because it's it's uh it was a continue to pursue recommendation, which was the regional training center.

Um can you I know we've touched on the need before uh to have one uh closer uh to to our city so that our officers can train on a regular basis, but can you sort of touch on that just very briefly and then go into like why that needs to be continued on because of what what that process looks like to get to to having one?

Obviously, there's financial constraints as always, but like what what are the major hurdles in getting to that and why that needs to be continued on?

The need is is very clear as as we work toward our dedicated training team of the firearms training and de-escalation and the biggest obstacle that we have with so many issues uh across city and across government is just the overwhelming cost.

And the biggest thing that we're looking for is like, would there be existing city property that we would be able to build upon our uh purchase uh property from the water department?

So the biggest thing is is identifying a site and then being able to do that site assessment, and then the ultimate goal because to overcome some of our financial challenges is to apply for federal funding, whether it be a federal ear mark or other grants that are available, especially if you regionalize it, because then now it's opening it up to other agencies across our region, and the need is equal at our other allied law enforcement agencies.

So, really our obstacles right now is looking toward identifying some possible property, identifying some funds for a site assessment, and then really working through the competitive landscape of a federal grant to be able to pay for what would hopefully be the majority of that uh project.

Great, thanks so much.

That's all for my questions.

We'll move to public comment on this item.

Um, this is the opportunity for any of the public to speak on the uh Office of Independent Reviews recommendations and the response from the police department.

Seeing nobody wanting to speak, we will close public comment and come back to final comments from the committee.

Just continued thanks.

Uh, this really is this is a um an excellent process the city has created and that you have put in place uh again from the council perspective.

This provides uh a lot of a lot of confidence and a lot of information that's valuable.

So thank you.

Yeah, uh agree on all on all uh fronts with that, and thank you so much for the presentation.

Um it is always reassuring to hear the openness of our department uh to be have someone outside the organization be critical, um whether positive or negative, but you know, take a second look at how things should operate and be open and willing to adapt to those.

And it's also really nice on a regular basis to hear OIR say that we are one of the uh top organizations that they work with in terms of availability, accessibility um, and uh uh interaction.

So uh appreciate your the the culture you're creating here with accountability and and uh reviewing of these um recommendations.

With that, we will close this item and move on to the next one.

We have no matters held in committee, so we will move on to item eight, which is the police department update.

All right, thank you very much.

So, this we're gonna provide a brief update.

If we go to the next slide, and we're gonna talk about a couple significant community events that the police department have.

The first one is upcoming.

We're part of the it's a nationwide uh movement called National Night Out, and this is gonna be hosted on Tuesday, August 4th.

So coming up just in a few weeks from 5 p.m.

to 8 p.m.

in the front parking lot of Dick Sporting Good on Cleveland Avenue at Cottingtown Mall.

This is a fun event where we have 25 to 30 booths uh involving local law enforcement, but we're also we really partner to bring in our schools and local uh nonprofits and others, the violence partnership, our city's communication team, our community engagement team of all coming together to provide like a night of resources to our community.

We're gonna have some fun games, we're gonna have pizza and some drinks out there.

So, really just want to get the word out there for our community to come join us for this special night and be able to meet with some of our police officers.

We'll have our SWAT officers, our K9 team, our motorcycle officers, and others that our community be able to connect with, and we want to spread the word on that.

Our next slide.

This was another equally important one.

We're having a lot of community uh feedback regarding our flock ALPR cameras.

Uh, we have through two separate grants, uh, the city of Santa Rosa, we have 133 flock ALPR cameras that are spread uh geographically across the 42 square miles of the city of Santa Rosa.

Nationally, there's certainly been questions.

Uh there's been uh feedback on how we can make improvements with our program.

What I've really seen as chief of police, it really just comes down to education of sitting down and having open conversations with our community about what is our flock program that we have here in the city of Santa Rosa, what are the robust policies that we have between our dedicated ALPR policy, our public surveillance camera policy, our real-time crime center policy, and what are some of the training that we're doing to make sure that our officers aren't making some of the mistakes that perhaps you've seen across the country.

Last week I spoke at the uh city's uh community advisory board.

We had quite a few people who came out and uh voiced uh their public opinion on the matter.

But because this is such a huge community issue, we're gonna hold a dedicated community meeting.

And we've talked a little bit before council, but it's gonna be on September 17th, uh, from 6 p.m.

till 7 30 at the utilities-filled operations office, which is located at 35 Stony Point Road here in Santa Rosa.

And I'm gonna provide an overview and and provide.

I'll talk about the the exact cameras that we have and the models and go over our policies and go over the training.

And ultimately, what I want to do is I want to make this an opportunity for me as chief to hear more specific feedback from our community.

And uh, we're working uh potentially breaking out into some small groups and being able to hear that feedback.

But my promise to the community is I'm gonna hear the feedback.

I'm gonna be able to look at our policies, look at our programs, look at our training, see if there are things that we could be doing to improve our operations to make sure ultimately that we meet the needs of our community.

So we're gonna be putting out a lot more information on this through Civic Ready through our social media platforms, uh both at the police department and through the city platforms as well.

So just wanted tonight to make sure this was on everyone's uh radar as an upcoming really important community conversation.

Next slide.

Another one, we've talked a lot before council of that we've seen such a significant increase in uh illegal firearm cease off the streets of Santa Rosa and with gun violence in our community.

Last year we had 12 homicides in the city of Santa Rosa, nine of those involved uh firearm.

Uh, those are troubling to me and looking for different creative ways.

I've known for many years as working as a gang detective and throughout my career at the police department, that we're not gonna just gonna arrest our way out of these issues, and it needs to be more than just making firearms arrests.

And so we really are focused with a partnership with our violence venture partnership, getting to some of the root causes of the violence, but also this is another creative way that we can be able to do one more thing that we can do in our pillar uh being able to reduce gun violence on the streets of Santa Rosa.

We're partnering with uh Santa Rosa Police Foundation, which is an independent 501c3 in Santa Rosa, and we're gonna be hosting our second uh annual uh gun buyback program on Saturday, October 3rd from 9 a.m.

And we're gonna be hosting our second uh annual uh gun buyback program on Saturday, October 3rd from 9 a.m.

till 1 p.m.

This year we're gonna do it at the Veterans Memorial Building out in the parking lot, and we're gonna be able to come in there.

Uh no city funds are gonna be used.

This all the funds are gonna be raised independently through the Santa Rosa Police Foundation.

And it's gonna be a day.

We did one in October of 2022 was the first one when my first year when I stepped into the role of chief.

And we had actually, I believe it was 436 firearms that we were able to take off the streets, including six ghost guns and a host of assault weapons that we were able to take off our streets.

So we're gonna be uh putting out this information, and we're this is important to understand that there's no questions asked.

You can just bring the gun in there, and then we're able to take these guns off the streets.

And ultimately, what this is doing is reducing guns that maybe someone inherited or maybe someone uh secured over time, and they're just leaving them under a bed or in a closet, and they're able to get these firearms off the streets and make less firearms available that could be able to use in some type of violent assault across our community.

Next slide.

Here's some of the pictures from our one in October of 2022, as you see, just as some of the firearms, the piles of rifles and shotguns and handguns there.

The next slide has uh hundreds of them, uh, like I said, 436 firearms that were seized, including you see some assault weapons right on the very top of those, and those are ones that it is important for me to be able to work creatively to get some of these off the streets of Santa Rosa and help our streets be safer.

Here are some of you see just the the huge increase, and you see, and this is specifically talking about ghost guns or more technically known as a privately manufactured firearm, and these are non-serialized firearms.

And you see, in just 10 years ago with zero cease in the city of Santa Rosa, and you just see, and this is marked across the state of California, but you see such a significant increase going all the way up to 124 uh in 2024 and 107 this year.

Some of it was from one large seizure.

We have over 200 already that we've seized just so far in 2026.

So we're we're on record pace to be able to uh triple, if not more, the number of ghost guns that were seized off the streets of Santa Rosa.

Next slide just talks about total firearms, so these are all farms, including ghost guns and others.

So you saw the high of 390 in 2024, and this year, like I said, we're we're hovering almost the 400 already this year of total firearms seized off the streets of Santa Rosa.

Next slide.

The last thing to kind of end on some positive news, uh, we're really actively recruiting at the police department.

We actually have 14 officers in training right now.

So we have two different academies that are in progress.

We have uh one academy that graduates in August, the end of August with four new police officers, new academy that just started in July, and they graduate in December, so 10 actively in the academy, and four have already graduated from the academy and are part of our field training program right now.

And that's uh there are for us, it's 21 weeks at a state-run academy, and then another 23 weeks internal of our field uh training program before after 44 weeks, they're ready to be a solo patrol officer out serving the city of Santa Rosa.

One of the four who are in the program now is a lateral officer.

After our budget uh cuts over the last couple years, we have not seen many ladder officers.

So this is encouraging to have a lateral officer uh coming back.

We actually have some other lateral officers who are in the process with us right now.

So I think we're at a turning point with some of the recruitment, so I'm excited to be able to see that.

But equally important for our community to see that we're actually recruiting for multiple civilian positions as well, our field and evidence technicians, which respond to all significant crime scenes and process the crime scenes, process DNA, fingerprints, and other evidence, and testify as experts in court on the collection of that evidence is open.

Dispatcher is a continual recruitment.

We actually are gonna be having three dispatch positions open.

Our senior admin assistant and also police technician, which works in our records team.

All those are active recruitments right now, so we really encourage anyone who's interested to be able to apply.

And then we're ramping up our hiring right now for the January of 2027 police academy, where we hope to send as many as 10 police officers to that.

So now's the time if you want to be hired by the Santa Rosa Police Department to apply and be able to get you through these processes.

And that's it for just a quick update of some of the community events that are coming at the police department.

Turn it back over to Chair Krupke.

Thank you so much.

Any questions?

I just have a couple quick questions.

Um on the flock community meeting, you said you were gonna discuss the um surveillance um uh what's uh uh policy, the flock uh the AOPR policy as well as the real-time crime center policy.

Is that are those aggregated anywhere for the public to access fairly easily online?

Yeah, so for us, if you just go to the Santa Rosa Police Department website, right on the key page has all of our policies.

So all of our policies, including all three of those policies, are there uh and you can read them online, be able to see them, and then we'll certainly I'll have some handouts of the policy that night for the community meeting, and we'll be going through some of the other concerns.

And we'll be going through some of the other concerns, and there's there's questions that talk about is this a violation of the fourth amendment, and we'll go through some of the actual law on these things.

And hope my hope is to make it an educational night where I'm able to shine some light from our community, but also make it an equally educational night for me and for our city council members who will be listening to be able to see are there changes that we need to make.

And for me, it's uh as chief, I'm trying to balance the two.

Make sure that we have a safe community.

As last year we talked about the 12 homicides, we had 184 shootings, but at the same time making sure that we're able to police and use technology that meets the trust and the needs of our community here in the city of Santa Rosa.

Great, thank you.

And then on the gun buyback program, I think it's worth repeating no questions asked, correct?

No info collected.

Absolutely.

So you don't need an ID, you don't need anything, and and the process is going to be similar to we had last time that the gun should be unloaded and the trunk of the car so it's safely.

You simply pull up to a line, you never have to get out of your car.

You pop the trunk, the police officer will grab the gun, be able to write out a receipt.

The police foundation handles all the funds, and then they'll pay cash directly with no questions asked, no ID.

And our ultimate goal is just to be able to get guns off the streets of Santa Rosa.

Last time we had several stolen firearms that were turned into us.

That was great.

We're able to recover those firearms and get them off the streets of Santa Rosa.

And then all firearms, unless it's a stolen firearm that has a rightful owner, then that will go through the process of return.

All other firearms are destroyed.

So the police department does not retain those firearms, certainly doesn't resell those firearms.

We have a process actually where we bring them to a facility in the East Bay, they're uh transported by our team, and they're actually melted down in front of us while we view and they're and the metal is made into manhole covers.

Uh so that's what happens with all of our firearms.

Uh so that's another pledge of completely confidential and the the promises every single one of those will be destroyed.

Thank you.

One more question on that.

Is there an opportunity for ammunition disposal at that as well?

We're not gonna do ammunition disposal of that because we're trying to like bifurcate ammo from the firearms.

But at any time that we have a process that you can turn in ammo to the Santa Rosa Police Department.

And if you pull up into the front lobby and just let us know that you have ammo and an officer will come out and meet you, and we have a process for free and confidential to be able to uh dispose of that ammunition.

Great, thank you very much.

That's the end of my questions.

We'll move on to public comment on this item.

Uh, if you would like to speak on the police department's report, um this is your opportunity.

Seeing none, we will close public comment on this item and move on to item 8.2.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you.

Uh 8.2 is the fire department update.

Chief Westrope, when you are ready.

I can't find the cursor.

Lieutenant Phillip was obviously messing with the fire department.

Uh good morning, Vice Mayor and Mayor Scott Westrope, Fire Chief City of Santa Rosa.

Um today I just have a very brief department update for you to let you know what we're working on currently and kind of focusing on the three key areas that uh we view as the strategic positions we need to be in to run the fire department.

So starting with staffing, there's actually also, you know, just like Chief Kriegan mentioned, there's a lot of good news in here.

We do have some deficiencies, but um our current position control list as of this fiscal year is 160 FTE.

Um and then I like to highlight that 20 with 21 of those employees um reside in measure H, which is the countywide fire service sales tax measure, and 10.25 employees uh reside within uh our own PSAP.

Um in operations and the suppression division, um, we currently only have two firefighter vacancies.

Um, as you recall, and I'll talk about a little bit later is after coming into this budget year, we shifted uh positions around with safer and measure H and the general fund, and we were able to fill six vacancies with the elimination of the safer squads, which brought us to full staffing, and then we had an employee leave to go to a uh department closer to his home in Southern California, and then um released an employee off probation.

So we currently have those two vacancies, and we're intentionally holding them for the in-response employees that may have interest in coming over to the suppression division out of in response.

So there is an internal process going on right now for um in response employees who want to come to the fire side where they essentially are going through what HR is calling a promotional process to come over to suppression.

So we're working with them on that, but they could be fulfilled very soon with internal candidates.

Um in fire prevention.

We recently just uh in fact it was last Thursday was Krista Butts last day.

She's our community outreach specialist.

Um she went back to her passion of uh dispatching with the city of Roanor Park.

Um so we have one FTE vacant community outreach specialist that is uh vegetation management program funded, so it's not a general fund position per se.

Um and so we're we're currently evaluating if that is the best fit for that funding.

Um reason being is in the next line talking about administration with uh Sarah Roberts departure and having the vacancy and the admin analyst role.

We currently only have three um admin staff that are running the entire business of the organization.

So there's there's a lot of help that's needed, and we're trying to figure out where the best fit is with the limited funding that we have.

We're expediting with uh HR, the recruitment for an admin analyst.

Uh they just closed that list, and last I heard there was upwards of 80 applicants for the admin analyst throughout the city.

It's a citywide position.

Um so we should get somebody on board soon.

But um we're just trying to figure out how to fit the round peg into the square hole and and figure out the best funding for what we need to get our admin team some much needed support.

As far as fire stations go, um, I don't know if you've been by recently.

Um I intended on getting some pictures for this uh presentation and didn't make it down there, but uh framing is well underway on Fire Station 8 in Roseland.

Um so if you drive down Hearn Avenue, you will see the uh the skeletal um stand up of Fire Station 8 and the library.

Um we're still slated to complete that project next summer, um, but it's moving along and it's it's pretty impressive to um see it actually happening um after waiting a very very long time.

So I'm excited about that project.

Um Fire Station 9, which is will be the new fire station in the southeast.

Um, as you know, we bought the Mancini Sleep World building on Santa Rosa Avenue and Court Street.

Um while this may not seem terribly impressive, but actually creating a capital improvement project fund for it is really the first step.

So that's been created, and then we are starting the process of the design build phase of that and and what it's going to take to retrofit that building into an operating fire station.

So our team and uh the TPW team CIP team is working really hard on that and excited about the progress on Fire Station 9.

And this just to keep it on your radar.

Um, I know I've talked about it before, but Fire Station 11, which is the junior college district fire station on Lewis Road.

Um, we opened a CIP account for that station, and we're funding it via two paths, both out of CFF and uh measure or PSAP funds.

So it's getting double fed.

So once we show a year worth of revenue going to that account, then we can go into debt service on building a permanent fire station 11 here in the in the future.

The good news about that one, as I've said before, is we own the property.

It's flat, graded sequid.

Um, all there's a lot of front-end work that's already done and having a temporary facility there, temporary being it was built in 2007.

Um so there's a lot of front-end work there that um we can really expand on, hopefully save some costs and get a full-time fire station there.

On our fleet, um, we just received um the five engines that we ordered in fiscal year 22.

Um, three of them are in service, two are going through their uh post-delivery inspection and and retrofitting, so we have to do some minor uh tweaking on the cabinets to fit our um ensemble.

Um, but all five will be in service here very quick.

So we finally do have those that will fall off the list.

Um the other orders we have in place right now is we still have a ladder truck um on order that council approved in April of 2024, but we won't see that until at least 2028.

And we have four additional type one fire engines on order with a three-year build time, um, and those were ordered just this year.

So uh moving along well with Fleet, um our team and the TPW team are doing a great job of uh keeping our resources in service, um, even though they are more fragile and brittle than they have been in the past, and uh and really working through the capital fleet replacement program, even if even in its new form to keep our apparatus in in tip top shape.

And lastly, I just want to highlight um I always try to end this with something positive, and I think this is this is good news, and and you're well aware of where we're at, but just to um highlight that we have operationalized the plan um that we put together in the fiscal year with the change of removing the safer squads from service um but then augmenting our service um on the other side of the coin with measure H resources.

So, as you recall, that entailed taking um one of the squads out of service taking the squads out of service from the standpoint of where they're funded in safer.

So we've uh took those 12 positions.

Six went to the general fund to fill vacancies, which is giving us the only two vacancies now, and six were moved into measure H.

Um, with that, we were able to stand up rescue one by moving the engine nine personnel over to rescue one, and then putting the squad back in service as a measure H resource.

So uh both units are in service.

Um, they're fully staffed as to where they need to be staffed, part of our minimum daily staffing.

And as you recall, one of the things that our team did a really, really good job of building is this rescue task force concept where it's a moderate to large scale event, the squad and the rescue respond together.

It's a force multiplier and having five people arrive with a full complement of uh rescue tools.

Um, and so that's been implemented.

It actually got pushed into service on its first structure fire on the first night that it was in service.

So uh with the commercial structure fire.

So it's already been utilized.

Um the crews are very, very happy with it, and we'll continue to expand that process.

And one of the one of the things with now Santa Rosa having a ta a rescue task force and a staffed heavy rescue is we're working with our operational area to expand that and make it a regional uh meet regional approach approach to heavy rescue.

So we have a regional um hazmat, or I'm sorry, rescue task force um throughout the region that we would be the leaders of.

I say hazmat because we're doing the same thing on the hazmat side of the house.

So um anyway, very exciting stuff, and uh really happy that we got this across the finish line.

I thank council, the city manager, and uh labor group and all of all of command staff for getting this done.

It was a huge lift, and um the the results have been um very impressive so far, and it's something that we've never seen in the city of Santa Rosa, and we have the only staff to be rescue um from San Francisco to probably the Seattle area.

So pretty impressive stuff that we are able to accomplish.

And with that, I will turn it over to you for any questions or comments.

Thank you very much for that presentation.

Any questions?

No questions.

Uh just a quick uh thanks for all of the creativity on the on the operational side with all the funding challenges and on the construction side too, with with two fire stations that are being put into service uh faster and cheaper than they might otherwise be, thanks to the creativity on your side.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

And I'll give all the credit to my team.

Um they're the ones that are working with leaders in tent and and they get it done.

So appreciate that, and I'll pass it along.

Great.

I just have one question.

In regards to fleet, I know we've talked about it before, but can you speak a little bit to why there is such a bottleneck and then some of the recent uh changes that are going on to try to impact that bottleneck?

Yeah, absolutely.

So um the bottleneck with fleet isn't a Santa Rosa-centric problem.

Um, it's not even really a statewide problem.

It's it's throughout the country.

Um, and so what happened was um all the fire engine manufacturers um throughout the United States got started getting up by bought up by private equity firms, and those private equity firms then in turn went to um try to consolidate and find efficiencies in their operations by closing plants.

So while the supply was still very high and growing, um the or the demand was the supply wasn't there.

Um and what we've seen on the apparatus side is fire apparatus just don't hold up like they used to.

Um, you know, when I started it was there was really no electronics, and it was Detroit diesels, and you know, they ran forever, and it was American steel that um lasted and survived the the beatings that we put these things through.

But um now that the supply chain has changed, and really we saw a major change in COVID, and the technology is advanced and everything's much more electronic, and the materials that we're building with are cheaper.

Um, we're not seeing the lifespan that we used to have of fire engines across the United States.

So the the demand is actually higher while the supply kept diminishing.

Um one of the examples I've used, and I believe I've shared it with you, is we had a type six engine, which is our wildland engine being built in uh Waco, Texas, and midway through the build, they shut that plant and trucked everything and all the parts up to Wisconsin to finish the build in Wisconsin.

So it put a you know six to eight month delay on our delivery time.

So what we're seeing is a a major increase in delivery time, but we're also seeing a major increase in cost.

The engines that we purchased in 2022 were around $850,000.

The ones we just purchased this year were $1.2 million.

So that is a major increase of almost reaching 100% in the matter of four years.

So we started as a city, we started rattling the cages of our lobbyists, both at the state and federal level, and they really hadn't heard about it.

Um I was working with my Cal Chiefs counterparts doing the same thing of like, hey, this is this is becoming a major issue.

Well, we you know, to some degree have the ability to absorb those costs.

You look at smaller agencies that surround us, you know, a hundred percent increase or an eighty percent increase on a fire apparatus in a four or five year bill time is just it's not something they can absorb.

So, and then you look at bigger agencies and us like LA that are ordering 50 or 100 engines at a time, um, you know, it's it's a compounded problem.

So the the lobbyists really took it to the legislature.

Um the New York Times did a highlighted article coming out of the pair uh the Palisades fire um on LA City, and so now it's being taken up by the federal government with uh um congressional oversight.

Um there is um litigation occurring um towards the private equity firms, and so that's something that uh we as a city are exploring.

Um, but we're trying everything we can as a fire service to hold the private equity firms accountable and bring the cost within reason and the delivery times within reason.

So there's a lot happening behind the scenes, but um, you know, we're fighting an uphill battle, but we're gonna continue to fight the fight.

I appreciate that detail.

And um, yeah, I think it's important to understand that uh um we have a lot of uh a lot of funds obligated and no control over the delivery time.

So I appreciate that.

Yeah.

Um no more questions from me.

So we go to public comment.

There is no public, we'll come back.

Any final thoughts?

Uh thank you so much for the presentation.

Uh really really appreciate it.

Also, really do appreciate that you're holding those positions for the in-response paramedics um being you know true to those that we've already employed and and not just sending them on their way and in in this world.

So appreciate that.

No problem.

We've really city manager nuts support, we've really been um deliberate in how we handle these employees and making sure that they have a um a safe landing spot and that we're able to help them in any way that we possibly can.

And um human resources and city manager nut have certainly been uh pivotal in that and not just um handing me a pink slip and watching them walk out the door, we're we're trying to make sure we support them in any way that we can, and we're we're we're being very successful.

Unfortunately, it's only three, so it's really it's a manageable number, but um really appreciate the support on that.

All right, thank you.

Uh with that, um, our agenda is finished, so we will adjourn at 9 53 a.m.

Thank you.