City Council - workshop

so so so so so so Thank you. Thank you. so so so so Thank you. so so Thank you. so so so so so so

We are here to do the prelim review of the police budget for 2027, knowing that the numbers that we see before us aren't final and that this is just giving us all time to start really going over and looking at this, knowing that in two weeks we'll be with PFM, and so there'll be other recommendations that will come from there. But with that, I'll go ahead and mic pass over to Will.

Okay, we have a very brief... brief.

Just first, we have just some of our first half criminal DATA SET COMPARISONS, THIS IS THE CRIME STATS. THE THIRD QUARTER CRIME STATS COME OUT OCTOBER 1ST, SO WE'RE JUST OFF OF THAT, BUT THIS IS MID-YEAR. OBVIOUSLY YOU CAN SEE HOMICIDES, OBVIOUSLY WE HAD THE TRAGEDY OF THE THREE JUVENILES IN THE HOUSE. HOMICIDES ARE OVERALL, WE'RE TRENDING DOWN. SHOTS FIRED AND PEOPLE SHOT ARE BOTH TRENDING DOWN. WE HAVE OBVIOUSLY 2022 NUMBERS HERE ALL THE WAY TO 2026. 145 people shot, which was a terrible number, down to 31. And people shot 29 and then three so far in the first half. Recovered and stolen firearms. Stolen firearms are down and recovered stolen firearms are up. So that's actually a stat that we do like to use, that we are recovering more stolen firearms. Aggravated assaults and robberies are both down. It's been trending down for some time. Next page, we have burglary, theft from motor vehicles, thefts, motor vehicle thefts, fraud, and forgery. Everything has been trending down since 2022. Sexual cases, sex offenses. Unfortunately, like you said, we do still have work to do. Sex offenses are trending up. We're at 139 this year so far, as opposed to 117 and 81. Rapes are trending down, though, and have been trending down for some time. ARSENS ARE TRENDING DOWN, BUT, UNFORTUNATELY, DUIs ARE TRENDING UP. NEXT, IN MAY OF THIS YEAR, WE REIMAGINED AND RESTARTED OUR NARCOTICS UNIT. IT'S THE SPECIAL TACTICS INTELLIGENCE AND NARCOTICS GROUP. THIS IS A DATA-DRIVEN APPROACH TO Narcotics intelligence and narcotics work. I just wanted to let you know what these guys have done since May. They have seized 8.88 pounds of methamphetamine with a low street value of $63,000 up to $300,000 worth of meth. They've seized 5.136 pounds of cocaine. You can see the street values there. Fentanyl, this is the one to take a real close look at. They've seized 18 pounds of fentanyl. almost up to a million, million and a half dollars worth of fentanyl off the street. Marijuana, they've 19.29 pounds. So a total of 51.45 pounds. The red lettering is what I want to draw your attention to. According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, that 18.144 pounds of fentanyl has the potential to generate 4.165 million overdoses. These guys have hit the ground running. They've got the drug dealers in the city running scared right now. This is since May. This is a new group of officers that we have on this unit, and they are doing outstanding work. They've seized $50,000 in currency. They've recovered 16 stolen firearms. They've made 23 felony arrests and four misdemeanor arrests since May. So they are making a difference on the streets.

Chief, if I may ask, do we get to keep that $50,000?

So we do. Unfortunately, it takes years to get that back. It's tagged as evidence. It's used in the cases, statute of limitations. So we do. I just put some seizure money back into our seizure account from 2005. So it doesn't always take that long. It doesn't always take that long. And we will eventually get that seizure money. We also split seizure money with, it depends upon who we're working with, if we're working with the Eagle Task Force. Obviously, there's other agencies that are working with us. If we're working with the Attorney General's Office, there's a difference between federal seizure money and state seizure money as well. There are some limits as to what we can spend that money on as well. We have to be careful. There's federal limits on what we can use that federal seizure money on and state limits as well. But we do get it back. Unfortunately, it's kind of slow.

Dr. Titus, I just wanted to say before the chief goes on, when we talked about how to present the numbers for you tonight, you know, it's rare that he and his command staff get an opportunity to just kind of come up and tell you what they're doing. So I hope you find it helpful. We thought good to tell you kind of we're going to talk in a minute about money, so good for you to see kind of what the money goes to and how we are measuring some of our outcomes. So that's why we did want to start with some of that data tonight.

I think it is really important, especially when we're looking at some of the things that we're starting to see trend upward. And so as you're making decisions around the budget, I think it's important for us to know. So I appreciate it.

And so that's what we're really going towards is intelligence-based, data-based policing. Where are we seeing the numbers? Where are we seeing the crimes committed? Where are we seeing crimes trend and using the data approach instead of just going out and saturating an area and hoping that we fall upon this stuff? So it's a lot of data-driven approach that we're doing. Next slide is one of the things that I tasked my command staff with was finding, I felt like we weren't being reimbursed correctly from some of our state, federal, and local agencies, and I thought that there were some overtime concerns. some bloat that we would be able to get rid of, the unneeded things that we were doing. And so I can show you here in 2023, celebrate Erie overtime. $104,000 we spent in overtime during that time. 2024, we spent $96,000. 2025, $88,000, which I thought last year we did a great job. This year, we were able to take that down using some other funding down to $43,978. So we were able to take $100,000 in 2023 on silvery. This year, we spent $43,000 on overtime. What other funding? So what we're able to do is sometimes if we have grant funding that has to do with, let's say, community policing or gun violence, obviously we've had, you know, we're able to show there's unfortunate events. I'm not sure if it was two years ago where there was a shooting, a shots fired right at the main stage. We can use that data and then use funds for gun violence to combat that into overtime on things like Celebrate Erie. So it's stuff like that.

Are there opportunities to access or even apply for opium settlement money with the county? Could that be used in a drug interaction and offset some costs somewhere?

Yeah, that's a good question. That's something that we would do if we're able to show that there's drug use. at Celebrate Erie. I mean, I'm sure that's a pretty easy thing to prove, that we would be able to use something like that.

And not just in regards to Celebrate Erie, but... The county's like 80% grant funded, and so it's...

Right. And I know that there is settlement money... There is. ...out there. Our grant department is aware of it. Our narcotics unit is aware of it. I'm not sure yet if that has been...

It might be worth a conversation with the director of DNA over at the county.

Absolutely.

Even it might even be some... Well, we can talk offline. I don't want to get off track.

And so this was even just as simple as, you know, we used to keep guys till midnight. Well, we found they were standing around for two hours. And we're clearing out much earlier. So there's no reason to pay officers, 40 officers, to stand around for two more hours just in case we have a compliment on the street. We leave behind enough people that are going to make it safe. So it was just things like that. I tasked my command staff with finding where can we cut, not safety, but where can we cut costs where it makes sense.

Yeah, that was going to be my follow-up question, was because I can see the difference in the years as it's gone down. And then this past year was completely different from any of the years that I've experienced. So that was my question, was did we actually reduce the labor, or did we just find more avenues to fund the labor?

We did reduce the labor a little, a little. I think you saw the officers that we had there. We were covered. I generally thought that we had enough officers working and we did reduce the labor a little, but we were also able to reduce the hours just because some of the hours didn't make sense. And like I said, we are closing Celebrate Erie a little bit earlier now and the bands are ending a little bit earlier. Couple that with we were able to find some funding that fit that footprint that we could use outside funding for, you know, I think maybe half of the night or something along those lines. So it was a combination of those things. I just I challenged my command staff to let's let's clean this up. Let's make this a reasonable, you know, a reasonable amount of money that we would spend on this.

Chief. Do you get reimbursed from cafe at all? Okay, I wasn't sure if they had a line item in there for... What's that?

Oh, so we do, I would say, I call it subcontract. We do subcontract the Sheriff's Department, and we had, I think, two Mill Creek officers each night as well that came in, and I believe they were through Cafe.

Okay, so that's not coming from our budget. Correct. Okay.

Yeah, so we had, and normally the state police also send. They did not send this year because they're in the middle of moving to their new offices. So they will normally send down, and they don't charge us. They actually just send usually five to ten officers a night because this is also their jurisdiction as well.

Just a quick sidebar since you mentioned state police. I see them patrolling on the east side more frequently. Is there some type of... task force or some type of operation going on because I'm getting residents asking me.

That's a great question. I know that like through PennDOT they do the aggressive driving campaign. We do that as well and that's also funding that we receive from the state. I'm not sure if that's going on right now and that's what the state police are doing. Obviously they serve on multiple task force with us. But, yeah, I have actually seen some posts of them more in here. I'd have to get back to you on that and see. It might be the aggressive driving campaign. It might be a click it or tick it. I'm not sure.

Right, because, I mean, if they are these notified citizens or something, we should do an education campaign here, too, because I know sometimes the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but where we're at as a community, it seems to be stoking.

more fears or more concerns and so we maybe we can have some dialogue about it absolutely that just leads us uh to to to this year's overtime budget so right now um this is as of 8 28 the next cycle is next week the running total percent of our overtime that we've used is 45.82 we've used you know about five percent under half of our budget this year so far um Compared to last year, the exact same time, we were at 64.46%. So again, I tasked my command staff with finding ways, finding this, and this includes reimbursements. Are we not being reimbursed correctly? We did find a lot of clerical errors that we weren't being reimbursed correctly, wasteful overtime that we don't need to do, maybe hours that aren't doing anything. RUNNING 20% UNDER RIGHT NOW. I WILL CAUTION YOU THAT DECEMBER AND NOVEMBER ARE VERY HIGH OVERTIME COST MONTHS FOR WHATEVER REASON. IT MUST BE THE HOLIDAY SEASON, BUT IT IS. DECEMBER IS THE HIGHEST OVERTIME MONTH. YOU WOULD THINK IT WOULD BE A SUMMER, JUNE, JULY, OR AUGUST. IT'S NOT. IT'S DECEMBER. DECEMBER IS OUR HIGHEST, SO THAT IS, YOU THINK YOU'RE FINISHING WELL. then december comes around but i mean we are tracking to come under our overtime budget again that's surprising to me to hear because i just would have just assumed with all of the festivals and all that we have going on that summer overtime would be and it probably has to do with vacations are held until the end of the year and guys are using up vacation and when guys use vacation we have to obviously you know put put the right amount of guys on the streets so um That might have an impact, but it's a holiday season.

20% is 20%, Chief. We'll take it.

Yeah.

And we'll take it.

Good job. So that's what we're tracking right now.

And I just want to say, when we all met in April when PFM was here and we talked about the budget situation, I told you that we were telling our departments that everybody had to look for savings. I think this slide is important to show you that every department, and we recognize, right, we understand the concerns, we know the size of the police budget, but I just need to say that the chief and the command staff took that very seriously and have done real work to keep that number down. So I think it's good for you to see that what we said was happening really was, and it bears out in the numbers you're seeing now.

Well, since I've had five budgets presented to me, I'm very happy to see the difference in the overtime. Even if it's minor differences, I've always thought that the overtime was a little bit out of hand. But when you need people on the streets because of summertime and the festivals that we do, it's kind of hard to justify those cuts. So I'm happy that you guys are trying to find somewhere to mitigate the expense.

to be fair you know over the last few years we've had burnout on on the guys that are working in overtime and asking a lot of them uh so you know kind of trying to mitigate that as well the burnout and making sure that these overtime hours are are are useful and and being used correctly and not just having guys to have guys and and and burning everybody out because it doesn't it doesn't do anybody a good doesn't the officers any good it doesn't do the public any good so These guys are still getting the overtime, and they're willing to work it, but over the last few years, these guys have really, some of them have started to burn out on multiple shifts, so that's just something that we're cognizant of.

Well, I appreciate that, not only as a legislator, but as a taxpayer, because being busy doesn't always equal productivity, and if you're just there... We don't always see that level of financial management at this level. So I'm really, really grateful for that, and I hope that trend continues.

Chief, Michelle Obama is coming in October. How many extra officers do you use for someone like her?

It really depends on whether or not they have Secret Service protection. what the state police will be providing. It really, it has to do with if they're, you know, obviously, I'm assuming that she has Secret Service protection. So that will be more than normal. But I don't know specifically. We basically come and we ask, what do you need from us? And between us, the state police, you know, we'll give them that.

Do we have any of you... The cost incurred by this crazy storm, which, by the way, you guys did a great job. I toured that whole area. I mean, I'm getting the world someplace.

Yeah, that's, I don't, as far as the police department, it was minimal, but.

Yeah, we're tracking all of it and working with Lisa so that, and. we will be submitting to the, we did, we did, we did incur overtime.

I mean, obviously, you know, we, we, we talked with public works and we talked with fire department and, uh, I put extra officers, um, on the street for all those days that for directing traffic. And there was a lot of traffic lights down. So we did have, Extra officers out. I think we had two or four a shift for three or four days But really in the broad aspect of it. It wasn't it wasn't a massive for the police department the city Yes, but the police department wasn't wasn't a terrible Yeah public works was Okay, now we go to Erie Police Grant Fund of Positions. I just wanted to talk real quickly about this. We have 25 officers on the COPS Hiring Grant. That comes up in 2029. We have six officers as the Quebec unit. That's the Housing Authority. This really auto-renews every two years. We've been with the Housing Authority for 36 years or something along those lines. So that auto-renews every two years. They pay for six officers. Three of our PAL officers, that grant runs out next year. Two officers, auto theft detectives, those typically auto renew as well. We've never had a problem reapplying for those grants, and we've had them for many, many years. Cold case detectives, same thing. We do typically get that renewed. Insurance fraud detective, one officer, that's up in 2027. That's been renewed for probably 20 years now, so it auto-renews every two years. We also give police equipment and training. So another challenge that I made to the Command Staff was to find as many grants that we could offset salaries with. And so these are pre-existing salaries. Our complement's 194. So we have 36 or something like that. I think 36 positions that we have, either full or partial grant-funded positions. If we can get it up to 40, you know, if we can continue to do that, if we can continue to find grants to fund already positions here of our 194, we're not adding extra. This is just finding grants to fund already existing officers' salaries.

I think it's great that you make that distinction because when you start adding officers to it, then you – The whole thing adds up. Right. The wages and bennies and all of that. You are somebody who's 22 next year. He's married with two children. And so I think it's important that everyone understands that he's not saying he's bringing on funding, looking for funding for new positions. He's looking for funding to fund existing positions.

All 36 of these officers are... positions that we already have. They are funded positions that we're not adding to our complement.

No, and we talked about at our last conversation, we talked about the PALS position, and they're partial funded, and it was kind of really minimum what we put in to offset three officers. All of that stuff will come back up too.

We're going to try to offset that again. Like I said, I just want to reiterate, those PALS officers, those are all positions that we already had. I just reallocated. For example, when we go through a bad shooting spree or something like that, I might take two juvenile detectives and I might move them to major crimes for six months or a year. I'm just moving the chips that we already have in place. These PAL officers were just moved They were already funded positions. We just moved them into the community policing aspect and pals of that because we had a grant specifically for that to pay for that. And we'll try to find another grant for that community policing aspect again.

One question I do have. Just looking at the federal trends that we're seeing right now where money is being pulled and it's not being issued. I know that in 2020 where the housing authority typically has an auto renewal. That would probably be the one that would probably be the biggest flag for me because the federal funds just with the housing authority in general are being really cut. And so that might be one that I think we should really watch. And especially around the insurance fraud one too. Those ones just immediately, like what we're seeing happen in all the other areas of funding. Because that's seven officer positions right there. Hopefully it's good. I mean, we're out in 2028, but

Yeah, we just signed a contract for until 2028 with the housing authority. And like I said, we've been with them for 36 years. The nice thing about the insurance fraud and the auto theft is those are authorities. So we're actually these is the insurance fraud authority. So it's not actually a state or local. It's an authority in itself that funds that position. So I don't know that.

I would be curious as their funding supplies shift, just if they will be able to continue to meet those demands.

We certainly will. Listen, we've had a partnership with the Housing Authority for 36 years, and that's something that we really want to keep because we're going to have officers in the Housing Authority regardless.

And I think if anything, where they lost federal dollars, that would probably be one of the last they'd want to get rid of.

They also purchased a vehicle in that contract, so we'll be getting a new housing authority vehicle, and we take their old vehicle, we put it into our fleet, because we take that right in.

I would say out of the many authorities, I think that's one of the more productive ones, relationships that we have. Relationships are important, and as the liaison, this year anyway, to the housing authority, every time I come through there or any event that's out there, it's always supported. By the board, the residents, whether it's the Baltimore picnic or the summer camps, what used to be the YMCA. I think it's one of the best relationships the city has ever had, dating all the way back to John Horan. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

It's a very important relationship. relationship that we have.

My comment wasn't so much that it's not an important relationship. It's more so that the funding, we're an upside down world right now. And things have shifted so much that that one, it just makes me nervous as their funding streams shift. they'll be able to continue to. Certainly we're dependent.

We're dependent on, we're dependent on them.

Well, it doesn't make me nervous at all because 2029 is like a whole, that could be like light years from now to where the world is changing. And so I'm in a right now situation and certainly a three year projection. It's on the horizon. You've noted it. And so as we get closer, then maybe, yeah, it might cause me something then. Uh, but right now I think it's a great relationship. Uh, If it's available to them, it seems to be like it's going to be available to us.

Does that, like the contract say, like some of the policing has to be directly in the housing authority? Is that a part of that?

Yeah, they're primarily based in all the housing authority properties. The nice thing for us is that the housing authority is everywhere now. It's on the west side, it's on the east side, it's on the upper east, it's on the upper west, so It gives them the freedom and the ability to back up officers, but they are primarily focused on housing authority properties. They are the first responders to any housing authority call. The only way that another officer would take that is if they're already on another call, and then our guys would go in. But they also do reports for the housing authority, and they report to them and do monthly meetings with the housing authority.

It's probably the best in Erie County anyway, in the city of Erie for sure. It's probably the best example of what community policing looks like and that the residents actually have relationships with the officers from the youngest to the oldest from every generation. And if we could somehow put that in a bottle and splash it all over the rest of the city, we'd be on to something.

Well, that's the segue to our next one.

I remember when it was an open drug market before the gates and the fences went up. Absolutely.

Before we go to community policing, just quickly before we leave the grant-funded positions, I do want to clarify, because we've done some internal work on this. So the 25 officers that you see hired under the COPS hiring grant, we talk about this a lot, right? So originally, those were hired with ARP dollars, and then there was a COPS grant, so we were able to use those funds. First of all, as noted here, Those funds will be gone in 2028, and we are required to keep those officers on through 2029 through the terms of the grant. What I want to be very, very clear to you is, like I said, we've done a lot of digging in this. The grant requires that we keep the full complement of officers that we had at the time that we used the grant dollars to hire. So we have 194 officers right now, correct? Yes. That is full complement, and that is written into the grant as an outcome of the grant. So if we sat here today and you said to us, go back to the drawing board, we don't like your numbers, we want you to cut 10 officers, I would tell you we are not able to do that because of the terms of this grant. Now, that won't always exist, and as noted here, we will hope to apply for those funds again in the future. But for now, we are not able to cut from the complement because we would then be in significant trouble with the Department of Justice who funded that grant. So I just want to say that and be very clear and upfront because I know these 25 officers, this is always a conversation. And again, we've done a lot of work to clarify with the DOJ where we are with that number.

Just to expand on that a little bit, we would then be required, hypothetically, to pay it all back.

I'm not sure if we would be required to pay it all back. I mean, I think we'd have to pay something back. The other thing we've been told is The Department of Justice is being very cautious right now. We have a lot of grants, and we are really under a lot of scrutiny. So in addition to jeopardizing those past funds, I think we would also jeopardize future funds from the Department of Justice. So in addition to a payback, I think we'd also get ourselves in some hot water with the DOJ for future funding, which I don't think we want.

One of the other big things that we're doing really well, because we have the manpower to do the things that we didn't get to before we had these people.

Yeah, the manpower where it's at right now, we do have those units that we were able to bring back the juvenile unit. We were able to bring back the crisis unit, which deals with mental health and domestic violence. Those are two pretty major units that we've brought back in the mix. And obviously, it's a 2029 discussion, but unfortunately, those would be the first that would have to go.

Yeah, and I'm glad that Mayor Devlin brought that up because every budget, it's a discussion, and those points need to be clarified, that there are rules to the grant process and things that actually kick in. And we're going to look at that again when we talk about the Home Rule Charter, some of the rules and regulations. In this specific incident, again, it doesn't cause me pause because we're in a right now situation. And so that's almost like another lifetime away. But I'm glad you said that in case anyone here or any of the citizens have that idea of, well, okay, we're talking austerity and everybody should have skin in the game. They need to understand the rules of the game first.

Chief, where would the saturation unit fit in with this? They're the ones, I think, that go to the neighborhood watch meetings.

I mean, they've been specialized units. You talk about if we had to cut back in 2029. I mean, specialized units are usually where you would start. Because obviously, our main focus is patrol, responding to calls, safety. Unfortunately, specialized units Would would be the 1st, but you know there's extra units that we've we've made since doing this. Like I said, the crisis unit, we brought that back. That's 9 officers. Juvenile unit that's juvenile detective unit that went away. That's 4 officers.

It's almost a good. place to go right into the budget. I know there are a couple more slides.

Just one more, and it's very quickly. It's just this is the community policing. This is what we're doing. Obviously, we have the PALS program. We have the COP program, the Mayor's Council on the Community Safety and Trust, our ride-along coordination and internships. We will be relaunching the Citizen of Police Academy this year. Stay tuned. Our police explorer program is back for the first time in five or six years. Community engagement at city events, actually National Night Out, Celebrate Erie. We've got Coffee with a Cop coming up. And our recruitment is obviously we have Captain Lennox going out with his recruitment. And with that, that is it for the slideshow.

I have a question. I brought this up before when it comes to policing, I guess, especially with juveniles, I guess. So would it be possible if we had like a list of community people Let's say some of our officers see some juveniles that they think are up to something. and you had like a list of 10 people from the community that the community respects, the kids know, like the officers could have this list and, hey, I'm going to call Mo up. You know, Mo's on the list and Mo knows those kids. And before I have to intervene and it turns into someone videoing me and all this type of stuff, these people could come down and say, hey, maybe intervene before it turns into something negative. I don't know if that's, is that legal to do something like that? Or is that something we can look at?

Yeah, listen, we're open to anything. So I would certainly meet with you about that. And, you know, I think it would be illegal. I mean, obviously there's some logistics about, you know, safety, about a citizen intervening. I mean, obviously that's something, but, you know, I mean, that's pretty much, you know, along the lines of what the Bluecoats do.

Right. I mean, that's kind of, I thought about that. Let's just, if...

But I understand, yeah, I understand what you're saying. The concept of it. Yeah, the concept, yeah.

Right. I don't know if that's something we can maybe look into, because I think there would be people who could probably help before those situations turn into, you know, we're on social media. Yeah.

I'm sorry, Mr. Troop. I don't want to cut you off.

Go ahead.

That is kind of what the Bluecoats started out doing and attempt to do, but I think there might be something to what Mr. Troop is saying, another level of it. At some point, the Bluecoats aren't always viewed in the way they originally were viewed, sadly, in some circles. And not to take away from the work that they do, because they do really, really good work in specialized situations. But there might be another level of responsible adult other than somebody from, you know, we were kind of, I won't tell you what we were doing. Everyone will kind of see what we were doing. And there were usually people who came from that. element, if you want to call it an element, or from the neighborhood, or who had life experiences, better word for it, and then people identify with them more. But I don't think that, I think they're two different things. I think they're two different things, and that's certainly worthy of a conversation, probably more sooner than later. And I'll help facilitate that, and I'd like to be a part of it if we do, because we need all hands on deck.

Anything that helps deter violence or deter a bad interaction, we are open to.

We need all hands on deck.

This command staff is open to any ideas.

Blue Coats have been out this week in Perry Square. They set up a canopy, and I've been talking to them.

Go ahead, sorry. Well, I want to move us into the budget part of it, but not to go into conversation, but maybe we could just get a description or a write-up of just the programs on the community policing for council, and then that way we can ask the follow-up questions with that.

Yep.

Thank you.

And with that... The final comment on that is that you've got to get the help over there. Anybody who went to the dinner and saw those kids graduating high school, the self-esteem that they had, the way they were able to speak. It's a full room. It's magnificent. I'm sorry. We say it's multifaceted. We can help from the outside, like Mo said, and... Mr. Troop said, I'm sorry, but it comes from the kids too. If the kids are part of that Pell program, they're rubbing shoulders with these kids in school, and they have a positive effect. It all runs together.

If I may say one more prop before we go to the budget in regards to the Bluecoats. I spoke with the other founder numerous times about it. And during this latest storm, I felt like we missed an opportunity. But I felt like an entity like the Bluecoats should receive some first Red Cross training. And they would have been really, really helpful in a situation like that. to at least go through residential neighborhoods, help orchestrate cleanups or do's and don'ts. They would learn how to use a defibrillator, life-saving messages. Because this isn't the last tragedy thing that we might have. We have trains running through our neighborhoods carrying all kinds of dangerous cargo. And if one of those things ever overturned, you're going to need that type of coordination from everybody. Because as fantastic as our city was, and they were fantastic from every level, first responders, police, fire, certainly public works, and most of all, our citizens, we need all hands on deck. Because I can tell you, I've seen what happens when that When you start talking about evacuating people for three miles from the danger, where would we put them? The county does some work, but the city, and Mr. Clark and I are going to have more conversations about it. We should be prepared. Things are changing.

Okay, with that, we're at the budget.

I just have a question because as I'm going through the salaries for all the officers, can you tell me the difference between a police officer and a Class A police officer?

Class A, that's the highest rank that you can achieve as a patrolman once you get to Class A. That's also what our pension is based off of. So Class A, that's like a police officer who's been on six years. That's a Class A officer. Six years. Six years, right? Okay. Five years? Five years.

Yeah, I was just curious because I can see where it goes from, like, you know, Class A scattered in between with the, like, detectives and then the corporals and then there's a bunch of officers and then the salaries are way different. So that's what I wanted to know.

You know how they have those step-ups? Class A is the final step-up. From there, you would go corporal, that's your next step-up, or detective, then sergeant, lieutenant.

Thank you.

And so as far as the 2027 budget, it's pretty easy. There's been no increases unless you go down to 4059. It's the second to last other service charges. That was an increase of $310,000. That is the placeholder for ShotSpotter. And obviously we're going to go out and try to find funding for that. And then that 310,000 would go back to the general fund. If you go below that, you see that we've dropped 4079 by $280,000. And that was the shot spotter this year. That was the placeholder this year. So that dropped down $280,000. And machinery and equipment went from 1.310 to 1.30 next year. That's where Shots Butter came out this year. Next year, it's coming out of 4059, but that is just a placeholder. And like I said, we're going to find outside funding for that. Or take it out. Or take it out.

You've got to run that one back by me because I'm slow. So line number 4059 is the increase of $300,000. Yes.

And that was...

Shot spotter. Shot spotter.

That's the placeholder for shot spotter. If we do not find outside funding for that, we're going to reallocate that back to the general fund.

Okay, that's what I'm... And then 4078 is just this year's...

It's this year we had that 280,000 in for shot spotter. We've dropped that out of next year's budget, so that went down to $1,030,000.

And so we paid for that out of line number 4078. Yes.

Other than that, every line item has been frozen to last year's budget. Great.

And our police dogs have grants?

Yes. Yes.

Is it possible to get a breakdown of the subscriptions that we have and the cost of those subscriptions and the price changes over the past few years?

Yes.

Under 4059. And then 4078, we'll be curious, too, just to see a little bit more of a breakdown.

So the lion's share of that is that's the axon contract. That's a million a year. Okay. And that's tasers.

That's set. It was set up so that that can. So it's that same amount every year, roughly that same amount. But that's gonna cover our body cameras, our fleet cameras or the car cameras, our unlimited storage for digital evidence, our tasers, our virtual reality, the escalation training, and all the stuff that's Axon related.

And then how long does that go?

It's a 10 year.

It's a 10, sorry, like what year did, like when do we start in?

I believe it's 2035.

That's one big contract. Okay.

The other one, and I know we've talked about this before in the past, and my memory fails very quickly, is just some of the upkeep of some of the equipment. I know we bought a lot of the equipment with grants, but I think we've never really seen down, okay, so once the grant buys the initial machinery, then what is the upkeep that we've seen after? I'm thinking around the tank or some of these other bigger things that we got with a grant, paid for a grant. I would imagine that would be really expensive to go get repaired and...

I'd have to talk to Rob about the general upkeep. We've done general upkeep of, let's say, the PALS buses that got donated to us, and that was a couple thousand dollars a year. I think that we were in just general upkeep of those PALS buses, but those were donated. I don't know the answer to that.

I don't know what the general... That's a very niche question that I hit you with right on the spot.

Yeah, that's fine. Most of those contracts tend to be proprietary, and they're used on the high end. It stops you from going out competing for...

Are you talking about the upkeep for our Teradyne or for our Bearcat, which are our SWAT rescue vehicles?

Yeah, especially the ones that we got with grant money. We bought the original equipment. Right. And even some of the subscriptions we have, because I think subscriptions is going to be what gets most municipal governments, because they're just so quickly.

It's technology. Technology, and then it usually goes up about 5% every year. Yeah. negotiating with ShotSpot or Axon. We use Celebrate and some other subscriptions that we use. We try to build those in as we come across them. Four or five years ago, we didn't have Celebrite built into the budget. And it's a pretty expensive subscription. And then we'd be like, well, now we have to find this money. Let's start putting it in so we can at least prepare for some of this stuff. So we do try to build it in when it's a significant expense so that we're prepared for it.

And there's other ones like investigative tools like Cellhawk, which is a tool that our homicide investigators use for cell phone, and it's coordination and downloading of the cell phone. So we do have a list of subscriptions, and I can certainly get that to you.

Thank you. I got really excited when I saw this. I was like, holy cow, you guys went down 10 million.

Yeah, unfortunately, the pension contribution MMO is not in there.

Yeah. I was like, we can just solve the budget issue right there.

So the mayor showed me that she thought that we were going to be around 36% this year of the city budget. So I do know that we had been around 41% a few years ago, or 41%. five or six years ago, and we've been slowly. We got under 40 was a big milestone. And she told me today that she had done it, and she thought it was around 36% or 37% of the budget this year. So that's obviously another thing that we're cognizant of is that we start bringing that number down and being within the same realm as some of the other similar sized cities and departments within Pennsylvania.

Perhaps we could do an incentive for new hires to live in the city of Erie somehow, because then they would be contributing their tax dollars right back into the city.

Yeah. As of right now, that's a contractual issue. It's in the contract, 15 miles from City Hall. So that would have to be brought up. Our contract is we'd start 2028. It would be 2029 would be the next contract. So we still have two years.

Yeah, that changed a while ago with police and fire.

Perhaps we should look at trying to give city residents points in the same way we do veterans.

Yeah, that would be a civil service issue. The civil service could approve that?

Yeah, it's just whether you have the political will to do so.

I'm correct. The civil service board would have to approve that, correct?

Yeah, the veterans preference points and the veterans hiring preference are all through civil service. So civil service would have to approve it.

Yeah, that's, I mean, I get that, but, you know, there are three, usually when people, and you didn't say this, but usually when people say, oh, you can't do this, most people say, well, why can't you? I'm not one of those people. I'm one of those who ask, how can we? Sure. And so just piggybacking off of her blind commentary, if we're talking about recruiting, You want some real community police and maybe get some people from the community an opportunity. And I think that a case can be made. And Erie doesn't always have to go outside looking for best practices. We have some really, really smart people here. So a lot of really good talent. And why wouldn't we as Erie step up to the plate and present something like that? It might be something that communities like us throughout the Commonwealth, the other 67 counties, Mike could adopt, and I like doing stuff that's never been done in the Commonwealth in the area. It helps everybody, and I think that's one of those things that I'll look into.

Yeah, that's one thing I think we need to do is think outside the box, and I know that the mayor's office has already done that in her administration, and I challenge my staff to do the same thing is think outside the box.

I'm still excited, as I was when I got sworn in in January, about because there's people over here thinking like that. And I have ADHD. You lose my attention, man. But I'm fully locked in. And it feels good working in the city, even in the fate of dealing with some of the stuff we're dealing with. I feel like we have a good team.

And then we had talked about this before at another study session with the PAL overtime moving to a different – because it's – Not technically within our budget, correct?

Correct. So all PAL overtime is 100% reimbursed through the county drug and alcohol program. It is listed on our overtime report, but it is 100% refunded. So we just need the match.

Oh, that might be from the opium funds.

That's all DNA funding from the county. Drug and alcohol, yep.

Yep. So I just want to make sure that as we're looking at this, because we're only seeing this side of it. So when we're looking at this and we had the last study session, we're like, wait a minute, I thought that this was reimbursed. But we're not seeing the revenue side come back in. Come back in, correct. So we're only seeing what's going out.

We get a monthly report and it shows us what our reimbursements are. I will tell you this, we do have some reimbursements that... should have been this year, that'll come in in like January or February of next year, which is unfortunate. But it goes back into the overtime fund. It goes back into the general fund. Sure.

Are there any?

Go ahead, Connie. I talked to some of the teenagers in Powell, and some of them want to be officers. So in a few years, that'll be great.

We're still waiting for the first one. We've got some kids in college right now.

Maybe PAL recipients get points. I mean PAL graduates get points.

Anything we can do to increase recruiting is going to help us significantly. Numbers around the country are just generally down. So anything we can do to get applicants.

It's tough being a cop now these days.

It is.

It's tough.

I guess the only ask I would have is just so that we can anticipate, because some of us on council will be here in 2029. Can you tell us just an idea on what the expense for those 25 officers is yearly? That way we can kind of anticipate how much might be added.

Here's one thing that is in our favor for this, is that the 25 officers that cover are going to be newly hired officers. The other thing that we are as a police department have to be very cognizant of is that about 40 officers are going to be set to retire in 29, 28, somewhere right around there. So if we do have to take the compliment down, the good news is we should be able to do it through attrition and not layoffs.

That was my hope.

And then obviously we'll be losing, you know,

higher state higher paid spots we'll be losing the 30 or 40 highest paid officers in the department and then we'll be hiring 28 20 29. so pretty much we're hoping we're going to be able to absorb it all we're hoping we can absorb it we're hoping that we can reapply and get federal funds again right is is what we're really hoping for but that's a you know 20 29 issue like i know with our retirements we get anywhere from three to five a year so i did anticipate that the 25 officers that we had hired over the last few years would be

replacing those officers as we gradually get to that point because I know that we have held off on additionals because our compliment is only the 194 so that's just my concern is we don't want anybody who we're investing in now to have to lose their job in a few years especially with it would be it would be all through attrition yeah yeah we should be we should be good like I said we're having

Next year, we actually are expecting just a couple. We'll probably be a lower number of retirements. And then 28 and 29, we're expecting... A significant amount.

It's not for any other reason other than we had layoffs in the early 2000s. And so all these officers have 25 to 30 years on and they're 53 or older. So they're just at retirement age and that's just when they were going to go regardless. And so then we had a three year where we didn't hire anyone because of the layoffs. So it's not because of anything other reason as that. We have an extremely young department on the one end, but then we have an extremely experienced department on the other end.

I like your use of words right there. Experienced.

Chris and I are both one of those experienced officers.

They leave the department and they come back and be firemen.

That's also true.

My neighbor did.

So this one is without outside of council's purview, but it still is more of a curiosity. Under 4043, we'd love to know just some of the, especially in the 2026, just what trainings did the officers go to?

Well, we sent the entire SWAT team to a one-week SWAT school. We sent officers to homicide school. We had a new batch of homicide investigators who's all in movement in CID. So we sent them to homicide school. We sent officers to... crime scene and evidence school. We sent our crime scene guys. Obviously, we have a lot of guys. We also get quite a bit of refunding on our training as well. Our bomb squad is completely refunded to us. Almost all the SWAT teams. So that SWAT school was completely refunded to us through emergency. I don't necessarily know the acronym, but we got that money back. So a lot of different trainings.

And I know that a lot of grants like to see those things too. So that was more just of a curiosity question and one that we often get as counselors about like, well, what trainings are they going through?

And this is trainings on top of, we require double the mandated training. We train four times a year. We do four different trainings. So we do in-house training as well. And that's the Mopotec training, obviously a gun training, but we require that four times a year.

This is a good thumbnail of what's going out, your expenditures. I don't think you really get a, me personally, can't get a really true scope of picture of it without seeing the revenue side of it, too. That's just the nature of the budget, what's coming in and what's coming out. Where it's coming from, what line item number, is it being transferred from the general fund, is it from a grant-funded item, and stuff. And so this was a good purview for me, having not, this will be my first budget.

Me too.

And so, yeah, so we'll go over it together. As chief. Yeah, so, yeah, I see the expenses. I can't wait to see how we pay for it all.

Does any of the training involve looking at instances that already happened and like reviewing those, hey, this is how that played out?

Yeah, so every year we do updates and it's basically throughout the nation, any critical incidents where maybe new laws were enacted or we do that every year, that's mandated.

I mean, I guess I mean like cases that happen in our own town, like, you know, something happens.

Oh, yeah.

Hey, this is how this was handled last. Let's look at this. If this happens, something like this happens again.

Yeah, one of the great things about body cameras is our training units can take that footage, and during our quarterly trainings, they'll go over, hey, this is what we did correctly on this call. And they don't call the officers out, but this is what we could have done better. And this was a safety concern, or this wasn't done correctly. So that's one of the great things about body cameras is our training unit can always use that and go back and show what we did right, but also what we did wrong, and let's learn from it.

Any other questions from counselors? I do think, as we kind of, I'm so sorry. Go ahead, go ahead.

She sees me getting last year's budget out, and I'm looking, but we'll save those.

We have three minutes. Put the book away.

I don't really have a question. Just a comment. I generally appreciate all the information that was given beforehand and just it being so easy to follow and thorough and the cuts. As someone who sat through five... I have never seen the police department intentionally try to cut any labor. So the fact that you did try to cut some over time is, you know, it's a little, but it does help the bottom line, especially when such a big chunk of our budget does go to your department every year. So it's appreciated to see the difference.

And this is the one department where I think we get the most questions, and including from citizens, too, and community members. And so this gives us, you know, this is the precursor to coming back in, and now we'll be a little bit more equipped as a council to answer the questions, but then to also, then you know some of the concerns that we're receiving from others to bring to you all. So I appreciate it.

I appreciate meeting early. I appreciate finance for getting these numbers as well to you early. Thank you, and I'm glad we did meet early. I think it's better that you have it in your hands now. All right.

And if you have questions, we know how to reach you. Yep. I want to recognize finance being here, too. I know they've had a long day. And I was getting my book out to ask finance some questions. And I want to thank Marilyn for being a sister to me. Because my sisters and my wife tell me, don't you ever shut up. All you have to do is walk around asking questions. She walks upstairs. I'm like, where are you going? What are you doing? She said, I can live here. I can walk around this house if I want to. I ask questions all day long.

No, they're good.

Yes, thank you to our finance department. You all do a great job up there, and we appreciate you all.

All right. I'm going to get on your calendar for next week.

Thank you all. We'll go ahead and conclude tonight's Sunday session then.

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