Budget Committee October 03, 2025   10/3/2025

At this time, I'll ask the Clerk to call the roll so we can verify the presence of a quorum.

Wonsley?

Present.

Rainville?

Present.

Vita?

Present.

Cashman is absent Jenkins absent Chavez present Choudry present Palmisano present Vice Chair Koski present Chair Choctaw present That is eight members present

I will also remind my colleagues that we will be using speaker management today, so please make sure to sign in.

Welcome.

Happy to answer any questions.

I'll first recognize Councilmember Wonsley.

So just in the sense of the increase, you mentioned it was related to fringe, but it's showing on these slides that it's tied to operating costs, so would like to get a little bit more context of what's driving specifically the increase.

Okay, great.

Chair chug time it was the committee Jane descends a budget director so that is related to the actuarial report that drives the liability internal service charges and so There was more litigation directed at the city as a whole and it was sort of parked in the mayor's office as a central holding place and So another alternative would be to disperse those charges across more departments but the overall dollar amount that we're budgeting for liability would remain the same and

Ms. Walts, thank you for your presentation.

Thank you.

Welcome, Director.

I stand ready for questions.

Looks like we have Councilmember Cashman.

Under your, what you hope to achieve with it now under your leadership.

Thanks, look forward to hearing more about that in the future.

Why do you think that they're in NSD versus being in the health department since they are hospital based and or mental health based?

Okay, thank you so much.

Okay, and can you remind me which programs specifically are supported under that grant?

We are planning on continuing those services and being able to absorb that cost but just like many departments we'll have to make some tough decisions about where that funding comes from.

Which year is it up?

The end of 2025.

So there will technically go into 2026 somewhat of a maybe a 2.5 million dollar gap or that you all will have to figure out how to absorb.

So the impact isn't quite as dramatic, but yes, we will be absorbing that.

So that's why I'm also surprised that if it was two years, do anyone from finance or contract management know what year did that grant start?

That grant started in 2024, Councilmember Wonsley, and ends at the end of this year, so it was like a year and a half to two years of time that we had with that grant.

You also mentioned another program, specifically the Safety Ambassadors, just clarity on that, you said that's also about what's the figure amount tied to that, because it's one-time funding, is that one million?

This is just forecasting that if this program is successful, as you know it's a pilot, we would need ongoing funding to continue if not expand that program in the future.

three million was just for that and it's for different geographies also so different sites has it okay so absorbing that and that would be around potentially still a three million dollar figure if we want to just keep it at its current service level not including expansion

And so there's some forecasting that we need to do to see how far that three million will stretch.

In terms of metrics, and I know you all just did your quarterly presentation, I don't think that was part of A&PHS, but looking into 2026, do you have a sense of, in terms of expansion, development, like other sites that you're looking to pursue going into 2026, or the number?

I've always said that we need at least six months of data first on the two pilot sites to make that determination, but I know folks in community and people on this body are very hopeful that it will be successful, but just for the sake of managing it well, we think expansion to two sites is reasonable.

Have there been conversations with philanthropic partners who are interested in supporting this work?

how we can message that request.

And it seems just clarity that started October 9th of 2024 or 2025.

So correct and the October date that you were mentioning is when It was accepted.

Thank you.

Director Harrington, could you explain briefly the Coppola settlement?

ensuring that there is accountability with our invoices and reimbursements and it also tracked with how that we are strengthening the request for proposal process and evaluation of those proposals to make sure it is fair and transparent.

Could you just explain what those earmarks did briefly?

I'm not suggesting we need more earmarks just to be clear.

Thank you.

And next we have Councilmember Pamisano.

Or is that being able to cover everything in the parameters as you are defining it, as your department is defining it, do you consider that to be all done and sorted?

It just might take us a little longer to negotiate with a new organization.

Thank you.

some of the contractors find that confusing and challenging to work through and so I just wanted to point out that additional piece of complexity.

and if that total will be reflected in the public dashboard as well.

Vice Chair Koski, Council Member Wonsley, I don't believe we have a dashboard that actually shows the total number of contracts that neighborhood safety oversees.

Will those also be publicized?

So that's why the numbers might seem a little low, given that yes, we do have significantly more contracts than six or 16, but we are going to work toward 100% dashboard compliance in the future.

So what is that estimate now?

I would estimate we have about 60 active contracts at this time.

Okay.

All right, we have Councilmember Chavez.

Thank you.

I was just wondering, can you just clarify what the Burns grant, I'm just not familiar with it as much, what has it funded, what programs?

That is what we applied for, to use it for, and that is what we have been using it for.

Okay, just strictly for that.

Strictly for the violence interrupter program, correct.

Is the budget staying the same, remaining the same as it was in 2025 for 2026?

Yes, Vice Chair Koski.

Could you just talk a little bit about what you see that role doing for the department now as it's moving over to you and will it stay as a senior project manager or will it be a different title?

continue to support and hopefully amplify the work that she has been doing.

Thank you.

I was wondering if you could just kind of speak to what the timeline is on the master contract for the areas Longfellow, Whittier, Hiawatha that were marked for that getting out into community.

Great, thank you so much.

different livability and safety issues and I make no apologies for taking that seriously and working on it and I hope it rolls over into the next year and we can see some significant changes and we can be resilient because there's still a lot more work to do and many more challenges ahead.

Welcome, Chief Tyner.

So with that, I think that concludes my presentation.

I see we have Councilmember Rita in queue for questions.

How do we train diverse folks and make sure we meet the community's needs for this?

And the staff captains that are in community risk reduction, they also lead those recruiting efforts.

Like how I as a council member, how I need to look at what investments we need to make to ensure that we get to that number.

But my plan was to add 15 more FTEs every two years until we got to the additional 45 that we need.

So we still need an additional 45 now?

Yes, okay, so which incidentally is about what we're paying in overtime to maintain minimum staffing this year so we're kind of at that tipping point.

That funding is not available to us

Thank you.

If these do remain removed from the budget, what's the plan to ensure that staff have access to comparable support going forward?

which means that we're spending more overtime to cover those shoes.

Basically the question was how will the canceling of these programs increase overtime costs and have those costs of potential overtime been analyzed and what would those numbers look like?

They have, we've seen, if I recall in the last report that we looked at, we were looking at about a two to one, even closer to three to one return on investment.

It had been vacant for

So it had really only been vacant for maybe four months I think at the most when the decision was made to let it go.

And what's the effect of losing that role then?

So the workload of that person is going to be pretty significantly increased.

Yes, so as I had explained when talking about response time, that response time is measured from the time 911 picks up the call to the time that we arrive at the incident.

We already were approved, moving through approval for CLIC for another million dollars next year, and then there's another million dollars stated for 2027.

Have we ever been at that 90%?

Not in my recollection.

I was just curious about that.

Not since they created the standard.

Councilmember Rita asked the ones around recruitment and how we could

Thank you Vice Chair Koski, thank you Chief Tyner I saw that one of your 2025 achievements was incorporating the VCR program so thank you for that I wanted to ask which budget expense type or program that bucket of work falls into

So that biggest program area is contracted through that area.

And then for expense category, is it contractual services or salaries and wages?

It would be contractual.

Okay thanks, and then I saw some of your metrics performance measures for this year and I'm wondering if you have a performance measure for BCR or intending to add a performance measure to BCR and how you would quantify the success of that program.

Adding into that the safe and thriving community report and what they require as well as the consent decree agreement.

I would agree.

The city doesn't get the patient data.

It's very difficult to climb a rickety building like that to get to the four story and help someone escape and I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

It goes through March 31st of 2026.

So we are still using the SAFER grant now and we have a few more months left.

So technically we have until March of next year.

So no, we didn't apply this year.

So after March of next year, will we essentially be absorbing the full cost of those 15 additional FTEs that were subsidized through this grant?

If we applied for a new grant, it would be to hire a new 15 people not to subsidize the 15 that have been subsidized for the last three years.

maybe Vice Chair Koski, again IGR, I will follow up offline but it's good to get clarity about the Safer Grant at least.

And I see we have Director DeCenza is here if you would like to comment on that too and then we can also do a follow up as well so just to get some clarity right now and then do a follow up with anything additional if you don't mind.

Vice Chair Koski, I just wanted to comment that the SAFER grant was part of the biennial budget discussions last year, so we've long been planning.

to add these 15 FTEs into the general fund.

Sure, yeah.

So unlike some other departments that are highly dependent on federal grants, the fire department is not.

Okay, awesome.

And I also feel a lot of empathy for the fact that that's a lot of extra work for the individuals that have to take that up which is seen by about 4.5 million in overtime.

We're projecting it.

Obviously a tough one.

We were given a dollar figure that we had to cut and looking at the contracts that we had, which we don't have many, those were the ones that fit that dollar amount that we thought we could most easily get by without.

Do you know how many members of the fire department have used the rebound program since it was created and when was it created?

I believe we started the Ready Rebound program near the beginning of last year maybe toward the end of the year before so it's probably been close to two years now it was grant funded the first year and then we actually paid for it out of our budget this year

Has that been something that's been well utilized and members have relied on or is it just kind of like here's another app that we have on the phone?

I would only want to guess.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your presentation and I look forward to the continued conversation as we help plan out for future staffing needs.

Thank you, thank you for having me.

Thank you so much.