I'm the chair of the uh public safety and health committee.

Um so I would now call the meeting.

Uh this is the first meeting of the 32nd Stanford Board of Representatives, Public Health and Safety Committee.

Um it is now 6:32, and I'll start the meeting.

Uh like to quickly take attendance.

I'll start with committee members, uh, then other board members who have joined the call, uh, and then our invited guest.

So uh first representative Terry Adams, Vice Chair, District Three.

Uh not present.

If you are present, just sound off with present.

Representative David Blank from District 12.

Present.

Thank you.

Uh Representative Matthew Delott from District 16.

Present.

Yes, thanks, Matt.

Uh Representative Michael Field from District 18.

Present.

Thank you.

Um Representative Kara Gildenbride, District 11.

Absent.

Representative Santa Graham, District 3.

Not present.

Representative Eric Morrison, District 13 I'm here.

And Representative Kendra Walston from District 9.

Oh.

Um, I did see Karen Camparelli there.

Um are there any other members of the board of representatives who are on the call that are not committee members.

All right.

Um, and then of course, we've got uh Christina and uh Sammy on uh as support, so thank you very much.

Uh at this time I'd um like to introduce our guest speaker for this evening, Mr.

Lou De Rebus.

It is he is the director of the public safety and health and welfare um for the city of Stanford.

Uh Mr.

De Ribis is a member of the mayor's staff and is a veteran of the Stanford uh fire or assume police department in his role as the director of public safety, health and welfare of the city of Stanford.

Uh he is the head of the Office of Public Safety Health Welfare and is responsible for the administration, supervision, performance of all municipal functions related to police, fire, health, social service, rescue, medical emergency service, uh, and emergency management, and unless otherwise provided by the state or federal law is responsible for oversight of all municipal functions related to the abatement and management of environmental contamination.

In doing so, the director of public safety health and welfare is responsible for supervision of the activities of the chief of police, the fire chief, and unless otherwise prohibited by state law is responsible for the functions of the fire department and the office of emergency management.

As the director of public safety, health and welfare, he is to the extent permitted by state law also responsible for the supervision of the activities of the health director.

So all members of the uh public safety and health committee should have received a copy of Mr.

De Rubis's um presentation earlier today from Sheila Hughes uh to their Stanford email address.

Uh if you have not received that, please uh raise your hand and I will forward it to you.

Um the uh intent of the meeting today is to introduce Mr.

Rivas to all of us, uh allow him to explain his roles and responsibilities and the functions of his office uh to all the members of the of the um public safety and health committee.

Uh and for timeliness, let's hold off on questions until he has finished his presentation, uh, and then I will open the meeting uh to discussion.

Uh so at this time I'd like to entertain a motion for Mr.

De Rebus to proceed with his presentation.

Second.

Thank you.

It is second, so moved, seconded.

Uh now turn the presentation uh over to Mr.

De Rebus.

Uh thank you very much.

Well, thank you very much, uh Chair, for that introduction, and welcome everyone to the public safety um and health committee with the board of representatives.

I know some of you are familiar faces, other are new to this role.

So welcome and I look forward to working with each and every one of you.

Um Chair, would it be possible to pull up the presentation?

And I could kind of use that as a guide to subscribe to the excellent idea.

And if I knew how to do that, I would.

I think Christina could probably assist.

Can you figure that out for us?

Or Sammy.

There we go.

Wow, that was fast.

Thank you very much.

Kind of kind of makes it a little easier.

Welcome.

Thanks, Christina.

So again, thank you, everyone.

As the chair stated, my name is Lou DeRubis.

And welcome again to the Board of Representatives, Public Safety Health Commission.

Just a little about me before I get into the actual role of director of public safety health and welfare.

I come into this role with 26 years of law enforcement experience.

I kind of rose up through the ranks there.

I was a sergeant for 13 years, a lieutenant for several years.

And then ultimately prior to jumping over to this role, I retired as the assistant chief.

Throughout my uh years, like 26 years on the Stanford Police Department, I had a wonderful opportunity and so many wonderful people that I was exposed to and experiences that that role uh really kind of left me humbled.

Um, a majority of my career I had spent um 16 years exactly uh with the FBI Homeland Security JTTF task force, and I was on the Stanford Police Bomb Squad for 16 years, and out of those 16 years, 14, I was the bomb squad commander.

So that was kind of where my specialty lied in the police department.

It was very technical oriented and geared around homeland security.

Um of the other things I'd like to mention, uh, because it'll be one of the themes in this presentation, is as a lieutenant, I was tasked with leading the Stanford Police Department in the accreditation process, which if any of you on this call have ever uh been through an accreditation process is very tedious, very detail-oriented.

Um, and I had the honor of leading that uh process for the Stanford Police Department.

And I am happy to report that they did get accredited uh after I had left, but uh I was happy to be a part of that initial foundation and laying the groundwork making that happen.

Uh I've been in this current role uh as a director of public safety for just over three years, like a little shy of three and a half years.

Uh as a director of public safety, I report directly to the mayor.

I'm a member of her cabinet.

Um, and I and I I report to her on all public safety and health related issues uh throughout the city.

Um my main roles are are obviously as Tom kind of laid out earlier, is my direct reports uh are the department heads, which are fall under Department of Uh Public Safety and Health.

And I basically work very closely with all the department heads and making sure that I get I'm sorry, can everybody uh mute their microphone, please?

Thank you.

No worries.

Uh just work very closely with all the department heads uh along with the mayor, making sure that her goals and her vision for the city as far as public safety is related, are met and obtained and actually exceeded, as I like to always say.

Um I also work very closely in addition to the mayor and our leadership team here in 888 uh with the department heads, but also with with all of you.

Um border reps uh our community representatives, so you're a very important part of the community, and we like to get input and work with you to get um accomplishments done and obtained uh in a way that we enhance lives for our residents and people visiting the city.

Uh we also work very closely with elected officials, community partners, uh, and the residents themselves quite often.

Um so without further ado, uh next slide, please get kind of right into this.

I kind of put together a little agenda.

Um go back one slide, please.

Uh I kind of hit on the introduction.

Um I'm gonna hit on the mission statement real quick, which is our formal mission statement for Department of Public Safety.

Uh, just kind of give an overview of how the organizational chart works for the Office of Public Safety.

Um, touch on some highlights, and then lastly, we'll wrap up with some of our goals going into 2026 and some of the priorities that we're going to be focusing on.

Uh, next slide, please.

So you all have the presentation.

I'm not going to sit here and read to you and insult your intelligence.

Proactively, proactively is the key to this mission statement as far as I'm concerned, because I know through all my years of experience in working with all the public safety and health departments in the city that we are extremely equipped, trained, and we have excellent personnel to deal with any emergency situation that arises.

So you could take the time to read that mission statement.

But what I wanted to just highlight in this slide is that we try and be very proactive as it pertains to the Office of Public Safety, Health and Welfare in the City of Stanford.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so the organizational chart for the Office of Public Safety, Health and Welfare, to break it down.

If you look at the Director of Public Safety, if you follow the first line on the left-hand side, that'll you'll follow it down to the six departments that fall under our Office of Public Safety, Health, and Welfare.

And those six departments are the police department, our 911 communication center, which is also referred to as our emergency communication center.

So those two terms you'll you'll hear synonymously, either ECC or 911 communications, our fire department, our emergency management team, our health and human services team, and then lastly our Stanford EMS team.

Just really quickly, our public safety budget for all of these departments is approximately 113 million dollars.

And we have approximately 800 personnel assigned to the Office of Public Safety Health and Welfare for the City of Stanford.

If you follow that second line down, uh the middle line where it says director of public safety, it goes and follow that to your left.

This is something that uh we've been spending a lot of time on in restructuring.

Uh we feel like there was a need to restructure that department, and we did.

It was it was a long effort, and we're finalizing that uh this year with all the personnel that was involved in that.

And what we did is uh we used to have a sergeant assigned to a police sergeant assigned to our 911 as a 911 supervisor, but what we did is we civilianized um five supervisor positions.

Uh so now there is no longer a police presence in our 911 communication center.

Uh, we have five civilian uh telecommunicator supervisors who oversee the operations when it comes to our dispatchers.

Uh and not only are they there to supervise the dispatchers, uh, but they're also telecommunicators themselves, which is something that was lacking with the police supervisors being in that role.

Um they were acting as a supervisor, but it was something that they weren't technically or certified, uh, a job that they were technically not technically or certified to do uh to be a 911 communicator.

So that's why we felt that there was a uh a gap there that we needed to make sure that we addressed, and we did just that.

Um the 911 director uh reports up to me.

Uh he has five civilian dispatchers that report to him, and then the new structure in which we added, we added two additional positions.

The mayor was able to uh to advocate for that, and we have a total of 33 dispatchers.

Um, and we added a dispatcher two.

So we have a dispatcher one and then a dispatcher two.

So these are two different levels.

And the difference in the two levels is a dispatcher two has a little bit more training and experience, and they would be able to fill in as the role of dispatch supervisor when uh that need arose.

And then also part of that staff, they have an administrative quality control and training coordinator.

Um, that is a key component to everything we do down there.

A lot of the things coming in and out of the communication center.

That's really the hub of all of our emergency communications.

All emergency um calls for service go into that center, and then our resources are dispatched out of that center.

So we do do a lot of quality control and making sure that we're we're performing out of that department at an extremely high level and a consistent level.

If you follow that middle line down from the director of public safety, it goes to the emergency medical services, which is our Stanford EMS team.

They are not actually city employees.

They are a private entity, but they're a contracted service that we hire as a municipality to provide our emergency medical services.

We work extremely closely with them.

And they're a tremendous partner, and we're really fortunate to have them, especially when we start getting into some of those highlights.

So they're doing a tremendous job.

They've been able to grow as the city uh population grows and the need for medical services grow.

They've been able to adapt, and uh I'll get into that in a little bit.

If you continue to follow that uh middle line to the right now, you'll see we have a public safety statistician who reports in directly to me.

Uh, that's Frank Lego.

He's such a tremendous resource for all of our departments.

Um he provides any kind of data that we're looking for and making sure uh to support the directors and and our staff with any kind of uh information that we need to make sure that we're responding accordingly and in an efficient fashion.

Um the work that I'll be providing in a little bit was all done by him.

And as we evolve in our relationship, if there's any um questions or data that you folks are looking for, um he's the guy that we go to and rely heavily on for that.

If you follow that line down, um the chief enforcement officer, that's Jennifer Pinto.

Uh basically she is in charge of all quality of life issues.

Um primarily uh dealing with a lot of illegal dumping, um, leaf violations, block sidewalks, the enforcement of city ordinances and things like that.

And she has a staff of two part-time employees.

Um they really they really are out there, and um, we've gotten a lot of positive feedback and their their product productivity as of uh the last few years, they're really engaged in and addressing complaints of quality of life issues in our community.

And then right to the right, the last line there out of director of public safety is administrative officer.

That's Kathy Ruth Ruther.

She works directly with me.

She's my assistant.

Um she really is uh uh a true asset.

She comes with so much institutional knowledge.

She's been in the Department of Public Safety for quite a bit of time now.

And she she's um she's really a force to be reckoned with with knowledge in regards to public safety operations.

So we're we're glad to have her on our team as well.

Um next slide, please.

All right, so I wanted to uh transition now that we kind of hit the mission statement and touched upon our structure in the Office of Public Safety.

I wanted to talk about some of the highlights of uh some of our departments.

Um and talking with the chair, I know in the next couple months uh we'll be having the department heads themselves come in to do presentations to kind of highlight uh and discuss some of the issues and things that are going on in their departments.

But I thought it'd be a good way to kind of just give you guys some insight into some of the things that our departments are are currently working on.

Um, so as I stated, our our ECC or 911 center, um one of the highlights of that center is we continually uh for especially for our size jurisdiction, um, we continually exceed the state standard.

And the state has a standard that uh a minimum of 90% of all 911 calls has to be answered in 10 seconds or less.

Uh that's the state standard.

And consistently, uh, especially since I've been in this role, we've always been able to exceed that standard.

We were always hovering around 90, 92 percent of our calls for 911 services being answered in less than 10 seconds.

In the last year, um I'm really excited to report that that number where we thought we were sitting uh pretty and doing a great job compared to other municipalities with that 91, 92 percent.

We we've kind of we kind of blew a new record um and we're hovering around 96, 97% of our 911 calls being answered in less than 10 seconds.

So that's something that we really uh should be proud of.

Um and should put the residents here in Stanford at ease.

When you call 911, know that your call will be answered promptly, and you're going to be getting the highest level of service.

But I want you to look over to the right side of that slide.

This call, when I said it it's it's our main communication hub.

We have over 168,000 calls going into that center.

Um 47,031 emergency calls to date in 2025, and then 121,857 non-emergency calls into that center.

So they're very busy, they're extremely busy, um, and they're doing a great job, and really the dividends are already paying off on our restructure by civilianizing that department because again, their their metrics have gone up, and it's something that I'm very pleased with.

Uh when you go down to the next um department there, police department, some of their highlights.

Um, we're happy to report that the mayor uh two years ago supported um the construction of our own Stanford Police Academy, which is located right in the um Stanford Police Department.

And since then, in less than one year since it's been completed, we've been able to put through two recruit classes, and this is very important because by having our police uh our own police academy right here in Stanford, we're really um we're really refreshing a grassroots campaign to keep our recruiting efforts local.

So we're getting people who ordinarily wouldn't be willing to take a six-month uh period of their life and go relocate up in Meriden for the state academy or to commute several hours to one of the other regional academies.

Now we kind of have this resource right here in our community, and we have our officers um teaching our new recruits the way we want to do things here in Stanford, which is a very high standard.

So that's that's a great uh highlight for the police department is that uh in less than a year they were able to do two uh police recruit crap classes, which is very important.

Um also uh fusion center.

Um the police department has up uh and opened a fusion center right in the police department.

It's small, but it's been very effective, and we've been getting a lot of positive feedback.

And the technology that's um coming together in the fusion center really helps us coordinate our emergency responses and share information in a really timely fashion.

Uh the last highlight is our, you know, we're really an anomaly here in Stanford, uh, but it's not by mistake.

We have the second largest population in the state, but we're consistently the safest city in the state.

Uh currently we're number one, and we've held that position for some time now in overall crime.

And then from the New England with comparison comparison city sizes of cities our size, we come in at number two with overall crime.

So that's really something to be proud of, and that's has a lot to do with the efforts of our our uh our police department.

Um as you can see on the right, they're also up five percent uh call volume.

We have 98,000 10 calls for service to date.

So they're they're also very busy.

Um next up, fire departments.

We were able to um we were able to negotiate a reorganization of a fire structure here in Stanford.

Um, it was something that was long overdue.

So now instead of having one deputy chief cover the whole city, which is a lot to ask when they have over 50 firefighters working per shift.

Um, we now have two.

So this allows for several things.

Most importantly, it cuts down our response times.

If there's something happening um further north in the city, uh they're not responding out of headquarters, which some some of the even going lights and sirens, that's a 15-minute uh drive in some parts of our city.

So we've really kind of tightened up our command fire structure by adding these four deputy chief positions and aids.

Um, and not only is that strengthening our leadership um in the fire command structure, but it's also putting in us putting us in a much better position because now we have the capability with the 50 fire personnel to move to operate two major incidents at once because we have two deputy chiefs working.

Um so that puts us in a great position from a fire standpoint.

Uh their calls for service is also increased.

They're hovering around 14,000 calls annually, which is a lot of which is a lot of runs for those fire officers, and they continue to do a great job for us.

And one thing that Ed Brown, their chief, had done he stated they needed to add a new ambulance.

So we now instead of having five medics running throughout the city during the day, they added a 6-1 to handle peak hours from 12 noon to 12 a.m.

And that's really paid dividends as well so far.

Because the one thing we want is to make sure when somebody calls within a medical emergency that we have the proper personnel, the proper resources assigned to get there quickly and to do what they have to do to save lives.

Next up is our health and human services.

So many different things.

So I can't say enough about our health department and the leadership of Jody Bishop and all the work that they do out in our community.

Lastly, the citation enforcement program.

I kind of kind of hit on that already, but just to give you an idea, they're out there.

We've had 1,720 requests that they've went out and handled uh reactively.

Um and then another in addition of a thousand illegal dumping calls and over 200 leaf violation calls.

So they're out there, and really the goal of that citation program is not to be a punitive punishment, um, but it's out there, they're they're really their goal is to get out there and educate the community to the ordinances and laws that are out there so people could comply.

What we find is quite often when people are explained the process and how things are done and what's allowed and what's not allowed, they do comply.

So that's the goal.

And if they do not, then there's a progression, and which could ultimately result in a citation being issued, which is a punitive in nature.

Um as I round it out here, the next slide, please.

So our as we move into 2026, um, from a public safety goals and initiative standpoint, we're gonna continue to evolve and adapt to what's going on around us and the needs of our community and expand our public safety goals and initiatives.

And and that all starts with focusing on the three main objectives that I have on this slide here.

Um public safety services.

Uh I mentioned the police department being accredited.

Uh yes, they are accredited.

Our health department is in the process of being accredited, that we just did the final meeting a couple weeks ago.

So hopefully they're gonna be accredited.

Um, our SIMS medical service is an accredited agency and our 911 center as well, just started the accreditation process.

So, what better way to enhance our public safety services than to make sure that our departments are following um best practices and are standardized with industry best standards and uh and practices throughout the country.

So one thing that the mayor and I have been really pleased with and adamant about is making sure that our public safety departments uh work towards accreditation, and they have been, and we're making tremendous progress on that.

Um so when I say public safety services, emergency and non-emergency, I already stated my opinion on that, and it's actually fact that we're very, very good at handling emergency situations.

One thing that I've really kind of tried to focus on in this role and working with the department heads is making sure that we put as much of an emphasis on our non-emergency calls for service, because we as a community have to make sure when somebody um calls our public safety departments and is asking for service, that they get a high level of service.

Um it's not just under an emergency situation, it's the non-emergency stuff too.

And what I mean by that is if somebody gets in an accident, that might be their only contact with a police officer in their life.

And for an officer who's jumping accident to accident to accident, and that's kind of their job and their routine.

Um, they need to understand the impact that that accident may have on the people involved's lives.

So those are the kind of things that we're trying to kind of get in the weeds and making sure that we have a high level of training and our under and our officers have that insight into what we have as an expectation as a community, and that goes back to the training our officers in-house in Stanford.

Uh, we we've made tremendous process on uh progress on that.

Um staffing levels, you know.

We, as I stated, I use Sims as an example, but as our city continues to grow and evolve, um, my office is right downtown, and you look around uh at some of these buildings, it's our population is growing, but so is the infrastructure.

So we really have to make sure that we're putting our public safety departments in our community in the best position possible to grow with the city so that we're not playing catch up.

We need to stay ahead of the curve, not behind it.

Um, so some of the things that we're working on is uh as far as staffing levels.

Uh in a couple weeks, we have um a proposal in front of the Board of Finance for adding 13 additional officers to our police department that would increase our staff from 287 to 300.

Um there's been a lot of back and forth.

Uh, I understand the you know, the Board of Finance is designed to save the city money and to be fiscally responsible.

And it's our jobs uh, you know, from public safety standpoint, public safety professionals, the chief's job to assess what other jurisdictions are doing, what are industry practices, what are the needs of our city, and put together um a plan to police the city as effectively as possible.

And we truly believe that those 13 officers uh would put more officers out in the street so that they can do more traffic enforcement, uh, have more cops in the schools, and have more cops walking beats down in our throughout our communities because that's what our community is asking for.

These are a lot of the complaints and the requests that we're getting from community members.

So we're making sure that that aligns with what our plans are for our public safety departments.

Um facilities and infrastructure.

Um we have a lot of projects trying to uh get off the ground to keep up with the growing city.

Uh, one involves uh a new public safety complex, um, which I'm not going to get into in this particular uh forum, but you'll be hearing more about that, which is a large uh a large infrastructure project for public safety.

Um we've done um our emergency communications and our EOC upgrades with technology, and we've implemented some new platforms to try and make our responses and our operation more efficient.

Um then our SIMS, we added a location to address the high volume of calls south of the highway in the south end uh to address that.

And we're also doing an infrastructure improvement project up on Vine Road.

Um, the facilities up there was in dire need of improvement.

Um I have their public safety equipment and vehicles.

And then again, we have to prepare the city not based on the data necessarily that we have a low crime rate.

We need to prepare our departments to be able to rise to any threat or emergency situation that arises in this community.

Period.

That's our goal.

That's our mission.

That's our job.

And an example of that is the situation that occurred on Oaklawn a couple of weeks back, in which we had numerous rounds fired in one of our neighborhoods at the law enforcement officers, the officers returned fire.

There was improvised devices in the house.

So we can't take the approach of saying it's not going to happen here.

We prepare and plan and train to make sure that our officers and our first responders could handle any type of situation that arises in our community.

And I'm very confident in that, and we're going to continue down that path so that we could be successful.

Technology initiatives, this is huge.

We've really been trying to maximize some of the things we're doing with technology.

One currently located south side of Stanford, and one located north side of Stanford.

And with the press of a button, if a call meets a certain threshold, our 911 supervisors would deploy that drone and that drone would self-deploy so that we can get some reconnaissance on that emergency situation so we could address and adjust our emergency responders that are responding there and they could prepare accordingly.

And I really see that program continuing to evolve and expand at a quick pace because it's really a useful tool for our public safety operations.

Citywide critical infrastructure, sensitive location camera, and blue light camera.

We're really trying to focus on critical infrastructure and our sensitive locations and use cameras as a force multiplier.

The EOC upgrades.

Also collaboration with private and uh nonprofit and clergy partnerships.

Uh I I can't say again, the community is important, our departments are important, but our our our nonprofit and clergy partners are also extremely important.

Um if it wasn't for Stanford Hospital, Building One Community, uh Pacific House, Inspiroca, Liberation House, just to name a few, all of these private partners work so closely with our departments and provide such valuable resources and throughout our community, it's imperative that we continue to strengthen those.

Um, and that's that's part of our main goal as we go into 2026 is to kind of improve and to continue to grow uh in these three areas in the area of public safety.

Um so I know I feel like I kind of threw a lot at you in a short period of time.

We'll have a lot more opportunities to discuss some of these things, and you'll get into the weeds with some of the department heads when they present their depart on their departments and they they touch on some of these issues.

But at this point, um, Tom, is there any questions or any anything that any of the members wanted to kind of dive deeper into?

Uh sure.

Thank thanks a lot, Luke.

That's excellent.

Uh uh presentation was very thorough.

Uh so at this point, I'd uh entertain a motion to open up uh the forum for questions.

Second.

Uh second and approved.

Um so first question was that you, Michael?

Yeah, I have a nice.

Thank you.

I have uh two questions.

Lewis, thank you so much for such an in-depth review so we can get on board.

Um, this might be basic, but again, I'm just trying to wrap my head around it.

Where can the board be most helpful to your office and the departments you oversee?

Sure.

Um you know, we we're always looking for partnerships and for insight from the community, and that's exactly what the board of reps are, are an extension of the community.

They're part of the community.

So really, um, you know, when you hear something or you see something in your community, don't hesitate to reach out to me with questions or how could we address this?

How can we make something uh improve on a situation or an issue that arises through one of your constituents?

Um, reach out to me, and then I'm sure once you get exposed to the department heads, um, they're they're all willing to kind of partner and get involved as much as they they they can.

Um one thing I will say, and it really now that I think back on it, didn't come through um through the highlights because I was pressed for time, but all of our departments are so focused on outreach and getting the community involved.

Um, so there's always ways for you to get involved yourself.

Uh, I encourage all the members of this committee to um sign up for our next CERT or MRC class, whichever you would feel more comfortable with, and and get involved and get the word out to your constituents and people in the community that you know public safety really um doesn't just fall on the city's responsibility, it's all of our responsibility.

Right.

Uh, and we all really have to do our part.

So um a direct response to your question is is to just get in involved um and bring as much stuff as possible to myself or the department heads that you feel could could benefit our communities when it comes to public safety.

And and my second question, thank you very much.

That's great to know, and and I appreciate that.

My second question is um, I mean, I'm I'm blown away by the stat you mentioned 96 to 97% of 911 calls are answered within 10 seconds.

Yeah.

And this is just a curiosity, not a judgment.

Like I think that's amazing.

For the four to three to four percent that aren't answered in 10 seconds, what are the reasons?

So it could be a number of things.

Um, you know, as public safety and our city grows and our public safety operations evolve with that growing environment, um, we're seeing pretty much right from when the call comes in to when the officers are or fire personnel or medical personnel respond, is that calls are taking longer.

It's taking longer to work through some of these things.

So a lot of times it could be that multiple calls are coming in at one time.

Where you know, and we and out of that situation, we ended up putting out an education uh campaign on our public safety website that when multiple calls come in at one time, say a major incident happens and we start getting bombarded.

Um it'll keep ringing until somebody picks up.

So we put out to inform the public.

Don't hang up if you're calling 911.

Let it keep ringing because if you hang up and then go to call back again, you're gonna fall to the back of the queue.

Um and you know, when you're dealing with staffing, we've increased our staffing in our 911 center for call takers and dispatchers.

However, there's always going to be a limit where like you can only handle so much, and then it's going to go to overflow, which is a process for that.

So I don't want anybody to to panic.

But you know, there's a a lot of different scenarios where a call might not get picked up.

Um, and the first one that's coming to mind is a lot of times the dispatchers are um you know, they're taking what like for instance, they're doing medical dispatching now.

So if a dispatcher takes a medical dispatch and call, that's very time consuming.

So instead of taking the information, passing it along to the dispatcher and dispatching the call, that dispatcher might be tied up now for you know several minutes.

And if more calls are coming in, the next dispatcher will pick up the call and down the line.

But at some point, you know, it's gonna happen where that call is gonna keep ringing until somebody picks it up.

So, you know, though those are some of the examples that I could give, Michael, off the top of my head.

That's fantastic.

Again, I I really appreciate your uh time and information.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Michael.

Uh any other questions.

Yeah, I got a got a root one real quick.

How are you doing?

Go ahead, Mike.

Hey Matt, how are you?

I'm doing well, man.

I see those patches back there.

I'm gonna have to stop by.

I'll bring some.

We can trade a couple.

Um I know.

Yeah, and I got a few questions I'll probably stop by with.

I don't want to uh spend too much time.

But actually, following up on that about the you know, the emergency dispatch.

Do you have anything planned with the EOC for like pre-alerts for those calls where they are sitting with you know doing typing up that emergency medical dispatch?

You know, so for the fire and the EMS guys getting out the door a little bit quicker and doing pre-alerts when they're spending 30 seconds or so typing up on those calls, those dispatchers.

So you know, I I don't want to get into all the details of it in this forum, but we do uh you're you're a volunteer, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, so they do have I know the fire department is so the um the fire department implemented a software, I think it's called Purvis, where it's automated dispatch, which really kind of cut their call time in half.

And as you know, our fire department are our medical first responders per se.

So that's a fire department goes out on all medical runs along with EMS.

Um, so that if if that is that what you're kind of referring to, Matt, where they they have utilized technology and software to take some time off of that that uh that delay from the call taker taking the call to it getting pushed over to the dispatcher and then put out over the air.

Now it automatically, once the call taker gets it, it automatically gets dispatched in the firehouses.

Which is really and the fire fire chiefs and um director Fawn and from uh our 911 center, they can give you the data on that because that's what that's what Frank does for us, and like the improvement in response times and and cutting of that that that time where we're taking the call is really impressive when you see uh pre-per uh purbus and then after purbus, what what the the transition times have been.

Totally.

I'll send you an email.

I think we'll have to I'll have to stop by.

Yeah, for sure.

And you know, I'm I forgot to mention it early on that um, you know, uh that's something in the first few months uh going into the new year.

I definitely want to schedule uh one-on-one time with all the reps.

I think that goes a long way because um it kind of puts a name with a face, but you kind of get to hear the issues um that are going on and in your districts and you hear some of the things that are going on uh more detailed through public safety.

I think that goes a long way because um it kind of puts a name with a face, but you kind of get to hear the issues um that are going on in your districts, and you hear some of the things that are going on uh more detailed through public safety, so we kind of establish that that connection, and I think it's been very helpful with the last board by setting those appointments with the the individual reps.

So we'll definitely be setting something up.

Great, thanks a lot.

Uh any of the questions.

All right, I really do appreciate the.

I'm sorry, I have I have a quick question.

Go ahead, Rick.

My deepest apologies to the to the members of the board um and and to uh our invited guests.

Thank you so much for going over that public safety stuff.

Um I have one question um related explicitly to um road safety um as it relates to, and I'm going to bring this up with the board uh as a as a as uh an agenda item, but um, and I apologize if I'm blindsiding anybody.

Uh there's a lot of electric bikes out there, um, delivery, especially.

Um, and they do not meet the state mandate for required safety issues.

Um, how can we address that?

So we've been working on that.

Obviously, that issue is uh is a very big issue, not just for Stanford, but across the nation.

E bikes really kind of took everybody by storm.

Um the the last few fatalities that we've had here in town were e-bike related or or you know um moped related.

So the legislator legislation really put out um some new laws and some new guidelines for our police officers, but enforcement is just one component.

Um of the things that we're looking to do, David, which came up in a public uh our health commission meeting last month when I was on there doing a presentation was um Sergeant Booth from the police department, he's in charge of our traffic enforcement unit.

He did our uh overview presentation on the new laws uh regarding e-bikes to kind of educate them because they had asked for that.

Um, and on the call was somebody from the Board of Education, and we kind of came up with the idea that we were gonna put together a partnership and work with them, police department, public safety, and the board of ed to put together a campaign for education to educate um not just a lot of the youth that are the ones operating these things, but even more importantly, we felt it was the parents that um need to be educated on the dangers and the hazards and the laws associated with these type of of you know bikes because a lot of times we're we're going into we're in the holiday season, a lot of times parents think they're doing their their children um you know a nice deed by getting them an e-bike.

Oh, you know, it's fun, you can go drive around, but they don't realize that some of these things are going up to 40, 50 miles an hour.

And if you're not doing your due diligence by wearing the helmet, you know, and and and following the rules uh of that have been established for those, you're gonna get yourself seriously seriously injured, potentially killed, or injure or kill someone else.

So it's something that um it is a big issue, and I appreciate you bringing that up.

Um, and I just wanted to put that out there that that is something the education campaign, um, along with the enforcement campaign with the police department is something that we uh started to discuss last month, and we're probably gonna follow up on it going into January, and I can make sure that you're involved in that.

Yeah, I appreciate that, but but also my focus is and and as much as I appreciate the education for the younger crowd and the parents.

Adults too, because they're a adults too, because they take it for granted.

Yeah, no, my my focus at this point is not about um kids as much as I'm focused on the delivery uh group of people.

Um, a lot of places, like I I've been to Europe a couple of times, specifically England.

Um, they have requirements for uh vests and the uh delivery box itself be um reflective so that you can see these things.

Like I drove down the street today, coming down my road, and there's a guy on a bike, but he has a headlight and a tail light, but he's wearing black clothes.

Now come on.

I you know, one little light ain't gonna stop me from running this guy over.

No, not that I'm going to do that, but he's hard to see.

He makes a turn in broadside, nobody can see him.

No, it's an issue of visibility, right?

And there are laws already on the state books for these things, but nobody's enforcing them.

So I'm not saying we write a new law because there's no point to that.

But I think enforcement of the existing laws or re-education or something that you know, they gather in places like they gathered down by the McDonald's on Bedford Street.

They gather in certain zones.

An opportunity exists for us to educate and create a safer environment by walking over as with you know, we're part of the Stanford Police Department, but we're also trying to keep you safe.

Please invest in a you know, even offer to.

I don't know how we would do it.

Again, I'm not you, okay.

I'm not out there on the street.

I'd be glad to be there.

But you know, here are vests.

Here are something, you know, here's here's some stickers to put on your on your boxes for delivery.

Something that highlights and safe make creates a safer environment for everybody on the street.

Like you said, the last couple of unfortunate incidents occurred because of bikes or motorpeds, and you know, a lot of these guys are delivery guys who don't know any better and should and should.

So my point being that creating an environment in which you know we all end up being safer because of it, is what we should be all about.

David, I totally agree with you, and I think there's a lot of opportunity there.

I just gave the um the board of ed partnership for education as one example, but we could definitely continue to uh you know that's something that we'll we'll definitely get the police department involved in, and as you know, the city has our vision zero uh initiative, which pedestrian safety is is a huge huge priority um for the mayor and for all of us.

Um, so we could definitely bring this topic up and in and explore different options uh to how to make things safer as it pertains to those type of delivery drivers and stuff because you are right.

Like, I'm not sure if they're required to wear a reflective vest when they're on those bikes, but that's something that we could kind of uh you know explore what our options are.

All right, thank you for the question, Dave.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

I I I appreciate your time on that.

Thank you for listening.

No worries at all.

All right, last call.

Any further questions?

And I would encourage uh committee members.

Uh, I don't want to overwhelm Lou, but um, he certainly made himself available.

And if you have the time to drop by and schedule an appointment with him, um please do.

Uh it's to all of our benefit.

Uh so at this time, uh, can I get a motion to adjourn the meeting?

Motion to adjourn.

Motion.

Second, appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you, everyone.

Motion accepted.

Uh and uh pay attention to your calendars for our next meeting.

Thank you very much, everyone.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lou.

Appreciate it.

I'm coming.