On August 11, 2026, the Syracuse Common Council met with the Syracuse Police Department to discuss several capital and grant requests, including a $1.75 million mobile command post, fleet vehicle replacements, and multiple law enforcement grants. Council members raised concerns about cost, operational necessity, and the city's transition to hybrid vehicles, while police officials emphasized the tactical and community engagement benefits of the command post and outlined obstacles to electrifying the fleet.
Um the only assurance we have is the city is uh actively working on the grant from a man. I know the grant was already issued to the county and it was said previously that the county will have one million dollar grant and the city will also get one million dollar grant. So I don't have a definitive answer to say we're definitely getting it. I believe we are getting it. Um but I can't definitively say that. The way it works, though, is we'll have to budget and spend the money in the grant is in the form of a reimbursement. So that's what we have to ask for the additional one million dollars, and then once it's spent, um, we'll be in reimbursed. And the 1.7. So my understanding is when we did budget for the command post, it was we were going to allocate the cost over two years for a capital project for command post. So we initially asked for 750, and we were going to ask for an additional amount, and that brings us to the 1.7. If the grant comes through, potentially, depending on what the cost is, and that's not to say that we're going to land on the 1.7. That just gives us um it's gonna go through the RFP process, it's or be on state contract. So as we speak with vendors and we get quotes on how much it costs, it won't exceed the 1.7. Won't exceed it, okay. So one of my other questions, um, Marty, let me know if you have any questions. Yes. Is um, you know, deputy chief um said that one of the issues was uh that he brought up the rifle incident, right? Um so I guess my question is we had the FBI there, we had the state police there. Do they have command centers that they could bring to a scene? It just seems like why are we replicating um things that are already out there at a time when our city budget is at a crunch? Like why are we replicating what another agency may be able to allow us to use? Our answer is I have never in my 16, 17 years here, I've never seen the FBI um bring a command post out. They usually come to our command post. They don't have a large presence here in the city of Syracuse. They have a small contingent to deal with the FBI related incidents, and same with the state police, they've never brought in their command post to our area. Now they do have tools that we have used on different occasions, such as the Rook, but those are operational tools. The command posts serves as the central hub for everyone, and if it's our incident, we should bring our equipment to the incident. And sometimes we don't have the opportunity to delay so we can get our um command post there within 20 minutes, 30 minutes, just to get someone to the command post and get it on scene. Whereas if the state police bring theirs or any other entity, it could be ours, and that's if it's even available. We have no control over if there's another critical incident in the area where state police may be using their equipment and it's unavailable to us, and then we're left without having um counselor Caldwell and Councillor Um Erin Wright, we're talking right now about the command posts before we get into the vehicles. Um how many times do you foresee us using this um piece of equipment? Like we've I mean, I've only ever heard of it being used once, and that was recently, but how often do we actually use a command post? We use it pretty regularly. Um a lot of the festivals we'll bring it down and have it set up in case there is a critical incident at a festival, it's already set up and we have a presence there, as well as any time there's a barricaded person where we have to activate our SWAT team, we'll have the command post um available. So I don't have the exact numbers on an annual basis, but I can absolutely get that. No, that's okay. Just I was just curious if it to use more than once a year. You have a question. Thank you, madam chair. Um I had a question about so um my understanding now is that this command post was always gonna cost 1.8 million dollars. That's the top limit of it. That's the top, yeah. But if we approve this amount, it would be at 1.75. So where are you getting the rest of it? Well, I don't know where the 1.8 comes from. There's a 1.75, and that's a top limit. There's also we were just talking about um the manion grant, right? So our intention was to utilize the grant to cover the million dollars of it, and then we would fund the remaining um difference. So what's the stipulation in terms of that? We're still in the process of getting the grant.