Council Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay. Okay. Good evening, everybody. Today is Wednesday, 01/28/2026. It is 05:34PM. This is the council public safety committee. Before we get started, wanted to officially welcome our new fire chief, chief Hamron. And I think is this the first no. This is the second one? Second one. Second one. Okay. My bad. But deputy chief, Hildebrand, he's here. And so welcome, and and thank you for being here. And miss Bikus, would you please take a roll?

Council member Bonilla. Mayor Sweeney.

Present. And council member Roach is en route. She's currently okay. Okay. Moving on to public comments. Is there for anybody in the room that would like to make a public comment on something that is not on the agenda? Is there anybody in the room that would like to make a public comment Seeing none and seeing none online, like, public comment and then move on to approval of minutes. We do have a a forum, so will obtain a motion. I certainly. Moved by council member Bonilla, seconded by mayor Salinas.

And if there are no objections, that will unanimous pass. Okay. Moving on to reports and action items. First up, we have our chief of police oral report. Alright.

Thank you very much. Good evening, members of the committee. My pleasure to give our report tonight. See, there we go. So this report covers the time frame from November through December 2025. And on the first slide, you'll see our crime data. We compare November and December 2025 against the same time period last year. Mhmm. And everything highlighted in green shows a reduction in that particular crime category, which we're very proud of, notably in the property crimes section there. Robbery and burglaries are down significantly, which I think is a combination, is a byproduct of a combination of different things, including some of the technology solutions that we have and also some outstanding work by our staff.

Next slide, please. Continuing with some of the crime data, this is a year over year comparison. So crimes against persons were up 8%. That's pretty consistent with what we're seeing countywide. Crimes against property down 28%, also consistent. And then crimes against society up 25%. Those are crimes, as an example, individual drug possession, those types of crimes, we're we're seeing an uptick in those. Our top five reported crimes, vehicle theft, vandalism, simple assault, larceny, and burglary. That's pretty consistent across the board even though we've seen significant reductions in those areas. They remain our top reported crimes that we deal with.

And then in terms of trends, we've seen an uptick in Honda Accord thefts. Two primary ways, if you have an older version with an actual key that starts the car, shaved keys, we'll start a lot of those and then we still see issues with some of the key fobs being cloned for some of the newer models. That's a mechanism of theft. Again Mhmm. Facebook mark Facebook Marketplace offer up some of those sites.

People are agreeing to sell items, and then when they show up with the item or with cash to purchase an item, a robbery takes place. So we encourage people to be mindful of where they're meeting people. The front lobby, the PD is a great place to do that. Most folks who are gonna engage in that activity won't do it in a public place, one that's well lit, one that has some surveillance police department. And then ongoing fraud, particularly around the holiday season, targeting elderly victims.

So I wanna remind members of the public, government entities will not ask for, you know, late payments and things like that over the phone. A lot of these things happen by phone. Yeah. So be mindful of that. Don't make payments over the phone unless you're certain it's legit. Next slide, please. This is just a visual of firearms that we confiscated in November and December. So 52 commercially made firearms and then six firearms that were privately made. We refer to those typically as ghost guns. Online purchase of parts that are put together to make a firearm.

And we have seen a fairly consistent uptick of firearms in the field. A lot of these are being recovered on traffic stops.

It's 58 in one month, I think.

Two months. Two months. Significant. Next slide, please. Our school data slide, a total of 161 responses to campuses in that two month period. Again, high school actually, this this month, school was a little bit on the higher side. I don't have I don't have a trend to point to for why that is. Typically, the high schools are are biggest consumer of patrol officer time. 25 responses to Tennyson High School. Some Some of the campus trends, we did have a burglary series at HSD sites.

I think one of them was the elementary school on Gadding, Glassbrook, and we were able to clear multiple burglaries. There were two suspects who were high school age students, and they're awaiting that process to play out in a criminal court. And then we had two threats that were posted online at social media sites, school shooting related, and we tagged investigators to dive deep into those right away. We were able to resolve those. They did not appear to be appear to have any merit, and and they weren't related.

But just anytime we have something like that happening, we work closely with the school district school district and the campus staff. And we always try to provide, you know, a presence just to make sure folks feel comfortable coming back to campus. Next slide. I'm gonna skip that one because the amazing doctor Emily Young is gonna do some y f b YFSB updates tonight. So on to the next slide. And then are you are you doing the link stuff?

I have link too. This is HMET and link. Just Right.

So I'll highlight the HMET. We had a 132 cat calls for service. The top call type was someone who was a danger to self and had no instances of use use of force during this reporting period involving the HMET. And that team, again, is is still working five days a week, Monday through Friday, and they are specifically trained officers paired up with Albany County behavioral health clinicians. On the right side of the slide is our referral sources.

So most of the sources that you referred to link, and I'm sure you will touch on this, are from the police department. We also have referrals that come from our partners at the fire department community. So we're still seeing positive results in the work that's being done there. A lot of community outreach and a lot of events that we participate in, especially around the holidays. We, I think, serve almost a 150 families this year through our toy drive.

That's an annual event that we we fundraise for, and we hold an event at the downtown district office. We've been able to continue that. I think that's going on gosh. It's gonna be thirty years now. We did shop with COP, participated in some training, some de escalation training with city staff, I think was an important event.

That's That's all I'm gonna highlight on this slide. Happy to answer questions about any of those. Thank you. Next slide, please. On house engagement for that two month time period, I won't read the entire slide.

I do wanna highlight that we had APD related incidents at St. Regis Village. I know that that has been an area for concern, not only for the council but for the community. We are meeting on a regular basis with city staff, HUSD, HARD, and BACS, specific to that site, specific to being mindful of the things that we may have to deal with there and being proactive in trying to prevent some of the community and and public safety impacts. Weekspark, I know there was an ask to bring some data for Weekspark.

We had 10 HPD related incidents there. A lot of these involve members of the in house community. We did make three arrests and officers logged 37 proactive security checks, just as a proactive measure to be prevented. Next slide, please. We were also asked to bring some information about the animal service services, division of the police department.

Left side of the slide there at the top, you can see the shelter intake. Are up for the calendar year 2025 over '24. And then we were also slightly up from November, December 25, the same time last period. In the middle of the slide, we did see an increase in reports of animal cruelty. Our animal patrol officers actually do criminal investigations into those types of incidents.

We had 10 in 2025 versus four in 2024. And then dangerous animal hearings below that. We did see an increase in that as well, six to two. A host of community events on the right side of the slide. We do continue to participate in adoption type events.

The trap, neuter, and return program, and a lot of that is, you know, funded through donation money, over a thousand cats treated during that time frame. And then probably one of the most important things for our shelter programs is we had thirteen hundred and twenty hours of volunteer donation time. The shelter, quite honestly, would not be able to provide the service that they provide without our volunteers. We certainly appreciate all of their time as well as our temps. Next slide, please.

And this is our last slide. This is our staffing update. We have 25 sworn vacancies. We have 17 professional staff vacancies, including 10 of those in the communication center. Those are still ongoing improvements. And again, as we've discussed previously, we're we're managing vacancies just given the the physical challenges that we're facing as a city. We are we do have seven trainees that are in the academy. Two of those folks who are graduate in February. Have a lateral candidate who just started. We also have two training candidates.

Actually, I think it's down to one because I think somebody got bounced up on the background. So I think we have one person that we're sending to Academy in February. And with that, I'll answer your questions, Julie.

Let me start since I was late. Apologies for being with everyone.

Thank you. Great. Thank you, and great report. And thanks for all of the community engagement. It's just great to see you guys out there and what you guys are doing to help the community, especially with, like, the toy drives and shop with the and all of that stuff. And, you know, just building those relationships is so important, and building trust with our public safety in light of all of the national issues that are going on, I think, is just so important. So related to the 58 guns that were kind of taken off the street in the last two months, are there any other concerted efforts to try to remove guns from our community that, you know, we might be considering this year?

There are. Don't wanna get too deep into the operational weeds, but we do have somebody assigned to the Alameda County narcotics task force. There is a level of focus that is made to firearms related cases with that group. And then we do have partnerships with ATF and some of our neighboring agencies here in Allegheny County, some of our local agencies where because it's not just a hemorrhage specific problem, where there is some targeted long term enforcement that's underway. So they're What about points? Like, people can, like, you know, return guns. Like, you

know, I think I've heard of the call back. Yeah. Or, like, something like that where they don't get penalized if they turn it in or you know?

We we have done that in the past. We used to give a $50 voucher for receipt of a gun. We would not ask any questions. We would accept it, and then they would all be booked to dev and it's for instruction. That pro program went away several years ago. We've had conversations about bringing it back. It is they are fairly staff intensive because of the safety considerations. You know, you're asking people to show guns. So it does require staff, so there would be an overtime impact there. And then I think I wasn't directly involved in this part of it, but I think the vouchers were all through donation money.

I don't think that that program that part of the program hasn't been in existence in a long time. We're certainly open to exploring those those types of options as we move forward, stopping it if finance dependent. Excellent. Thank you.

And then any kind of partnership that we're doing with HUSD or attendance in high school in particular considering the increase of incidences there, especially as compared to other high schools in New York?

We are. We had a pretty significant incident. It's not in this report, but it happened to the last week, I wanna say, not this past Monday, but the Monday prior, where there was an assault between students sitting at each other and involved a gun, And it was in the parking lot of Tennyson High School right about midday. There has been an arrest made in that case. Two individuals, we did recover a firearm.

So that part of it resolved, but it has kicked off kind of a collaborative working group between specifically Tennyson High School. We've had a liaison with HUSD for a long time. There's a sergeant who was assigned to that role. But I I was on a meeting with the superintendent. Doctor Young was part of it.

Other city staff, the principal of Tennyson High School, just to talk about what ongoing safety measures look like. But most importantly, I think, you know, we would all agree that prevention and intervention is certainly a priority. One one of the things that we found in this particular case, not unlike other violent incidents that we've experienced before across the city is that this is a spillover from the last Sweer involving two groups. We've got an ongoing issue that I think is escalating over time. And so what is what is intervention in a case like that look like?

You know, we we can't intervene if we don't know about it. And so we're really trying to shore up, you know, those communication pathways just because, you know, we don't have the on-site footprint anymore, so we need to make sure that we're talking even more now. Thanks for kind

of being a part of that work. I think that's really important, so I appreciate that. And then as it relates to animal services, with the 6% increase that we're seeing in, you know, I guess, animals that are being intake or, you know, brought in, Do we know where those animals are coming from? And are those Hayward animals? Or, like, are people from the region bringing them here? Because that actually hurt. I don't know if it's truthful. You know, like, everyone brings their animals to Hayward as a shelter. But

illegal dumping in their head.

I understand. So the the I mean, I don't I don't have a breakdown, but the answer is it's a combination. Right. Certainly, animals that are local that we intake. There's no question. But, you know, the the shelter has a, you know, like a night drop program. So, you know and and we've actually used it on patrol where, you know, if you're an officer and you're responding to a report of a random dog, you can't locate the owner. That's an avenue. Right? But, also, people from the public can come by at night, feed an animal, and the the shelter staff will will go and take that animal. It is a combination of both of those things. Thank you.

And then as it relates to the staffing numbers Mhmm. Do you have, like, a perspective on how those are trending? Is it, like, up or down? Are you, you know, are you concerned with 20% of the sworn workforce being unavailable, or is that pretty I don't wanna say average, but, you know, is that sort of a a number that you're used to working with?

Yeah. It it's it's been pretty consistently in that range in the last probably two years. I know going back before that, we were up almost to fifty five zero sworn vacancies before we started, you know, these meetings. Yeah. I think we've been down, you know, kind of in the teens before, but, again, our our positions, particularly on the scoring side, you know, there's this constant coming and going.

And so it's it's always a flex. And, you know, I think between retirements, folks that are separating via, you know, IVR because they've they've been injured and are deemed permanently stationary. All of those things are ongoing. Target the entire year. But we we are we're we're used to working within this range. You know? But when you're missing 20% of your swarm workforce, everybody else has to absorb the impact. Right? So that's the constant evaluation that we have to make at the command level.

Makes sense. Alright. Well, so those are my questions. Thank you so much, Chase.

Thanks. Thanks, Ray. I know since I've missed the earlier part of it, but I have the slides here, so I'm looking at it. But I'll so I'll pick up where you left off. Oh, thank you. I wanted to ask you about the heart program because I saw that slide just as I walked in, but I'm looking at it now. What I know that there's some funding that's gonna be going away for that. Is that late of the year, does that take us through for the LINK program, I think, right, takes us through the end of the fiscal year. And then have we sort of, like, what is the planning, I guess, going forward with that? And then I know we talked last time about the HMET private, I guess, being funded largely over time. What's how that how that's being managed?

I'll I'll do the HMET program first, and I know we kinda skimmed over the link because Emily's gonna look at that into the presentation. She probably answered the question you used to ask. On the HMED side, the goal is to get permanent people into that spot, right, so that we're not paying overtime. It's a full time assignment. Same person working clinicians all the time.

That's kind of the vision. Right now, it's a combination of trained officers who work in our district operations unit. So what will happen is we'll take somebody who's on duty and repurpose them to do that work for their shift so that it's not an overtime expense. Typically, where we see the overtime is is like on a Friday because we wanna maintain that coverage because we've got such positive outcomes and because it's a poor work. So there there is a combination. Okay. Makes sense. It's not fully funded throughout the time. Okay.

Yeah. That's good. As long as the model isn't just over time, I think that's and I know it's hard right now, right, obviously, because we're short every But, yeah, just thought that that's we're working towards that. And then you'll be talking about the link part. Do have any chance? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Go for it.

If I can answer the question, in short, and we're in the process of preparing fairly detailed budget memo for our leadership to share at the February 28 meeting. So I know I'll be able to go into more depth, but I can give him a sneak peek that we are exploring many things to offset the cost of continuing the late position after the July 1 cutoff, including billing for services, local state grant funding, w. We applied for a HUD what she gave me was here. Continuum of care funding through HUD. So we're we are turning over lots of rocks Good. Looking for ongoing funding. I wish I could say we found it. We're good to go. So I think that will be the ongoing conversation starting when you all

I see. So July 1 is like Whatever. And did we know that funding was gonna end? Was that a pot like

So when it is at its inception, the idea was to use salary savings, but we were repetitively able to find grant funding, but we never actually used the salary fundings. We've just been really successful at getting different pots of money. It isn't like one pot of money that's coming to an end. Oh, okay. We've repeatedly found new funding, and the timing is just not good. But as we have Yeah. Run through all the different funding we found, the city has entered it.

So you're supposed to have that. It sounds like we'll get more improved. So are you hopeful about something given the state of, you know, everyone's

I can defer to my boss. Okay.

I you don't need the speculation. I have his I got paid.

And I I think

At some point, would isn't there some mark point where we have to decide how we're gonna move forward? Because if we know the funding is gonna end July 1. I think we're Right?

Yeah. We yeah. We are we're rapidly approaching that point. And I think, you know, to the point that Emily made, there I mean, there are gonna be some options that will be on the table for discussion, including the the solutions that she talked about, but also, you know, vacancy savings potentially depending on what that looks like, you know, closer to the fiscal year.

Okay. More to come. Because I I know, like, you know, if I understand, so is it what is it for dedicated people link that we don't wanna live? Right, as our jurisdiction. So Alright. Well, we'll

we'll And just to add to that,

you know, one of the things that we're talking about in the mayor's conference is, you know, all the mayors right now are kinda positioning themselves, and I don't know even at the city manager discussions. But the mayor is we're we're kinda all kinda positioning ourselves right now to for the measure w money. I mean, it's I mean, it's millions. And so, would, you know, would we be able to, you know, sort of tap into those buck that bucket and and and help supplement this?

Potentially, yes. Okay. So if outreach activities are determined to be an allowable measure, WUs could We hope and think they probably will be. And it's two things. Do they do a direct allocation to cities to use how they want to? Or do we apply through an RFP process to the county for funding similar to what does for other programs? And do we get a county contract provide those activities under measure w? So that's very much something we're pursuing. Okay. I think there might be a decision at some point. Do we add these positions to the general fund? Like, the YFSB is funded, they're general fund positions. And then I offset the cost significantly with grants and contracts. And I'm always looking for more. So I think from a stability perspective, that might be an option.

Say, yes, they're general fund funded positions. But as these different funding streams come and go, that reduces the burden of the general fund or there are

other options. Yeah.

If I can also, if I can just jump in. It's because I've been the county came to our latest most recent city managers meeting, and I don't think they're gonna do a direct allocation to the cities. What I think they'll probably do is some sort of county not allocate direct allocation, but they're gonna look carefully at the fair share and try to meet that, but they're not gonna just give us money to do what we wanna do with. Like, I think that's pretty clear to me, but they will try to be fair about it. We do wanna look at an equity lens because there are equity disparities in the number and risk kind of factors that tie to race and socioeconomic status and

The region.

And region, and they wanna look at that and factor that in. But that may mean overall, the pie goes to certain jurisdictions, like o one, possibly here or two in some ways, but probably not the Tri Valley. And so then it just gets political, as you might imagine also. So I don't think we'll keep looking at that. I also think I mean, we are looking at like, we've talked about kind of programs that we're gonna have to look at carefully in in for the structural deficit. And and I don't have recommendations yet on what staff will recommend, but we'll we will have to show that this program and we're all looking at programs. Right? So this will be one

of them that we'll look at,

and we'll show you how much it costs, and maybe there's ways to offset it. And so this will be one that we all will look at more carefully.

Yeah. And in the analysis, it'd be really helpful to know some idea of what what it saves. Right? Because if Lyft is being able to help people on the streets and get them into housing, what is that saving us in future calls to to the fire department, the police department? So we should include that in LC so it's not just it doesn't show that it's just the cost.

We talked about this morning where we will we need to for all of these decisions, there are no easy decisions. I don't have service. Yeah. So we will be articulating those service impacts regarding any program elimination.

And then listen. I guess I am concerned, doctor Eric, but because, you know, you have four people that they know the city. They know all the you know? And at some point, they're gonna need to know well before July 1 because if these are people that are good at what they do and, you know, they're gonna look. So yeah. Alright. So it's not I mean, it seems like that conversation obviously has to be pretty serious at the February. Yes. Okay. Thank you. And then I was I just wanna ask about Regis. So is that eight incidents just in November to December? Just

Yeah. December. Yeah.

November and December. Responses. I mean, that seems like an increase even from the last because I feel like before that, we were talking about, like, a total, like, for, like, a year and now

I think initially, there was a there was a we we averaged about one one week. One week. So we've seen it seen it decline. And I think the combination

That's if it's eight incidents in two months, I mean, that's still about Yeah.

It's almost once a week. But I overall, I think we're we're down since they've opened. That one. Okay. And

But they have their security in place that we requested.

So security is in place. These ongoing meetings are help helping identify issues. I know one of the one of the challenges when they first opened up was, you know, there were a couple of times when we responded. They had a single staff member I know. Yeah. Who was there, no security, and, you know, 30 residents. And so those things have been addressed, and I know I was looking get with the mayor and back leadership work that was discussed. I haven't done. And so that's a work in progress.

Okay. Yeah. Just keep us informed of that. You know? Because obviously I mean, it's good that if it's now fully staffed and fully, you know, secure what they have security now, you know, maybe that's thing. Thank you. And then on the animal shelter, wanted to ask about that. Like, during with the layoffs, did they lose any staff in the end? Did the shelter lose any staff? No. They didn't. They didn't lose any staff. Okay. And so has so there have there hasn't been an impact of service in the shelter from before the layoffs or after the layoffs. Right?

It's the same. Okay. And then on the regional stuff, I think Ray brought up that, you know, I didn't realize, like, in fact, all of that sort of advocacy for the shelter made me realize just how unique Hayward is that we still have our own shelter. Right. That a lot of cities have actually shut their shelters down or relied on county county shelters. Are there county shelters sometimes?

There is a county shelter from the SPCA. All all of those and we've looked. They they're all impacted. But we've actually had neighboring cities reach out to us to see if we can pick up their

Yeah. I mean, so that's like I yeah. Sorry.

But

they wanna fund it. I mean, they wanna fund a new shelter. Like, the the cities wanna all come together. I mean, I'm sort of serious about that. Like, if we are now a regional shelter, which it seems like we are, then maybe we should be serious about our neighboring cities. Like, if Union City is saying, oh, go they have shelter. Drive your pet out there. I don't know if that's the city manager question. Like, we should be coordinating with our local cities and get a little funding to acknowledge what's happening here. Because I didn't realize, like, just that, you know, if it's true, people are bringing their animals there or they're using our services.

But yeah, I mean, and realizing now how much more of a burden there is on a shelter like Hayward because of the regional deficits, yeah, I think they should look at a little cost sharing in the region Sure. Potentially. Okay. And then the last question I had, but was the HSD stuff. Maybe it's Doctor. Young question that Hayward, we know now that HSD is going to have even further impacts on their financial bottom line. It sounds like a lot of counselors are going to go away. Seems like that will be then it sounds sounds like there might be greater need, more calls for service. You know, given that a CRO our program isn't in place anymore, what can be done to share this burden? Because and and do you already see an uptick in need?

Like, speaking of Tennyson situation a little bit, because I think that's a situation where back in the day, SROs would have been a really instrumental part of that solution, and we all are feeling the absence of it. But we do have a really good collaborative group in place, and I've had several follow-up meetings since the meeting with the chief. We've got the probation department involved, because they have since these kids are connected to probation, they have some abilities that we don't have. And so they're helping. And then we just push hard on the prevention. And so we're going to push in with some of the restorative justice services that I'll talk more about later. You know, there are things we can do, but it's not the same as the SRO program. But it it is a little bit of, okay. Let's get everyone who has something to offer and work together and coordinate, and it's better than nothing.

Yeah. Okay. I guess we'll we'll hear more later, right, now that you can okay. Thank you. Thank you.

I the other day, I caught an article in these big times about the reduction of homicides. Homicides are down statewide. They were down, I think, countywide. And they didn't drill down on specific cities. And so I just wanted to get sort of a picture of, you know, where we're where we are at last year with regard where we are at regarding, you know, homicides, how many were there, how many we cleared, you know, whether there are any still incuses.

Yeah. Our our our I wanna say we had 10 in 2024, and I wanna say we had eight last year, but I don't have that data sync economy. We we've the last two years, we've got over 70% virtually. And, you know, again, pointing to some of the technology solutions have been instrumental in generating evidence that we could follow-up on. So I think that has contributed to that clearance rate.

In terms of pointing to what's causing that decline, you know, I think that's something that is still up for discussion where we just met last week as a county chief's group. You know, nobody can point to one single thing that we're doing that is factored out. I do think that, you know, prevention, intervention, you know, addressing some of the things that Emily will talk about, particularly when we talk about our young people because, you know, that demographic group from an age perspective is typically, you know, your offender and victim population. So we're really leaning into those types of solutions. You know, we we serve a role.

There's no question. When things happen, people are gonna investigate and try to get justice for families, but there's a lot lot of work to be done outside of that. So that's the kind of the county wide chief and and sheriff commitment is to to continue doing that work.

Yeah. That's exactly what the article said. The article talked about. They were they they pointed to the decline, but they also mentioned that there there was mixed opinions. I mean, nobody really had a solid sort of opinion about why it was

why it was low.

Yeah. We've had years in the past where you can point directly to our homicide rate because it was attributed to gangs that were that were bombing each other. Right? You know, there was a very Yeah. Specific pattern that you could point to. I wanna say 2018, we had three. In 2019, we had five, and we saw this huge spike in 2020, you know, with the pandemic. And I think that's everybody's experience. Right? The pandemic and coming out of that, you know, across the country, you know, those those rates spiked. And now they're we're seeing that decline again, which is good.

Good. Thank you. It just wanted to just reiterate what councilmember Rhodes said. Just keep pushing on St. Regis. Mhmm. We did meet, and and, you know, and, you know, not to you know, I don't wanna speak yellow bats, but it was it was a was a strange meeting to say the least. But I think we were able to get to where we're at now, and so I'm glad we're seeing the results of that meeting. So I'm I'm all asleep at that, and I'm glad it it's it's working. Lastly, Weeks Park.

You know, I'm you know, of course, there's a lot of I'm getting a lot of, you know, email about it. There's a lot of, you know, chatter on on social media about it. But, you know, I I I I wanna just keep an eye on that. I know Hart is involved, you know, in that. And, you know, and I don't wanna I don't wanna sound like an alarmist, but I just don't want Weeks Park to go back to the way it was back in the eighties, you know, and earlier.

We have to keep an eye on that. And and I know that is directly connected to what's going on across the street at the church. And, you know, I know there's a lot of services and programs over there, but we just, you know, neighborhood is alarmed about what's going on over there. And so I'm glad, you know, just we just need to keep pushing hard. We need to keep pushing out there and, you know, Okay. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Great questions.

So next.

Is this the doctor Young piece? Or

Like I said, she's from where the insurance works.

She oh, you're gonna

I know. I'm coming later.

Oh, you're coming later. Okay. Okay. Okay. Team member. Alright.

Didn't mean thank you for having us. Last month, we talked a little bit about our response times and our call time our call type and percentages. Nothing really notable to report there. So more this today using the time to talk about our end of the year and where we're at and some of the challenge we're working through at the moment. We're still on historical trend for, like, you know, two to 3% increase in call volume per year.

We are coming off a little bit of a dip where we saw a spike last year, but I would say it's consistent with our trend line there, about just under 20,000 incidents. The second line you see above is responses, and what that respect reflects is the multiunit responses. So when we're sending three or four, five units to a structure fire, that really depletes our system as a whole. So we tried both. Nothing significant, but definitely something we're keeping an eye on.

Next slide. This breaks it down by our engine companies, truck companies, and our districts. The top bar graph, what I wanna call out is the engine eleven and and squad two, which are in red. Those are the two companies that we round out at the start of the year, so those are closed most days depending on staffing. But almost every day, those are round out right now.

What I think you're gonna see is a fairly big spike in engine one, which is our biggest busiest company, and they're gonna be, you know, about four to 5,000 calls a year. They think it's a that's our downtown, which creates a District 1 is definitely our highest call volume, followed by the Harbor Corridor, which is District 2, and District 7 down in Tennyson. So, basically, the heart of our city between Aspiring and Mission is the is the majority of our call volume. Our total response is, it's about the same. Medical is still around 7077%, kinda fluctuates in that 75% range every year.

Fire is relatively consistent, about 500 fires here. Next slide. So just summary of some of the challenges we're dealing with that are our main staff focus right now is to minimize the impact to the community and our residents. With engine eleven being out, squad two being out, about midway through last year is when we shut down the integrated health unit. We are public in from education officers now sharing our emergency management responsibilities while combined two positions.

One, our fire prevention plans examiner is frozen, and we froze a hazmat inspector and a route clerk to help close the financial gap this year. And, really, what we're looking at is and taking a close evaluation is is all of our response times, our programs, how can we minimize the effect to the community and the residents. Next slide. Oh, just on the last slide actually, go back to the last slide. Just wanna really give a shout out to staff right now.

We've done an incredible job of finding other revenue sources. We had about $2,000,000 in grants last year. We're optimistic at some other opportunities for this year. And we've moved some staff around to try and really significantly keep doing what we've been doing and being into not only, you know, just maintaining, but improving services where we can. With that, let's go to the next slide.

So we've done a little bit of a reorg so we can focus on some of those key projects looking into this next year. Our training chief officer used to report to our deputy chief of support services. We moved them over to operations, and next to me is chief Hildebrand, who's our new deputy chief of operations. He's gonna take training in EMS, which allows our support services deputy chief to focus on some of our key programs right now, which is expediting our permanent process so that we can support business. We're researching other, you know, the safer grant for staffing, as well as looking at EMS first responder fee.

Just any kind of way we can find a way to maintain or, you know, improve our service level. When you look throughout, you can see that we have vacancies in fire prevention, hazmat, and public education officer, and administration. So right now, staff has done, I gotta say, an incredible job of leaning in. We're pretty much busy every single day, and we'll finally just close those gaps. Next slide. Questions?

Great. I'm gonna pause. I forgot to open up for public comment after after you. So let me do this. Should we go back public comment? Is there any public comment on public state on police department? No? Okay. So public comment and go back to questions. Alright.

Oh, thanks. Thank you. And, yeah, I I appreciate that slide. And, you know, I'm just really sorry of the staffing reductions that you're having to make. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Sorry. I I wanted to ask, especially in the hazardous materials inspector, is there any concern I mean, obviously, there's concern about not having that inspector there. But is that can that can we share with, like, the county or something like that if there is a serious concern in that area? Are there other resources for hazardous material inspection?

Yeah. And I think overall, our whole program, As it sits at the moment, we're barely confident we can maintain our inspection cycle, stay on pace, and get a 100% done with that being being closed. We are looking at any effects. As of right now, I think I'm fairly confident we'll able to get all of our inspections done. I think what we're also looking at is how we close the gap between revenue and expenditures, and our fee study is a little behind. So we're trying to update our fee studies so that we are cost neutral from that. Okay. Thanks. And then on the

and then, yeah, I'm really glad to hear that you're sort of moving things to try to get some of the permanent approvals moving up along faster because I know there was some concern, especially around, I think, one of the downtown businesses, you know, that it was just taking forever to get that that permit. So glad you're working on making that a more efficient, you know, process as well because obviously, I think we've heard a lot. Well, we were talking about business friendly, you know, this friendly here last night, so that that's much appreciated. I wanted to ask about there was one significant fire with a I think it was a battery. We talked briefly on the site about it a couple weeks ago, but that people are taking their, you know, their small EV batteries from, like, scooters and bikes upstairs to their, you know, apartments or no.

It wasn't in here. Sorry. That was the Oakland fire. But I'm wondering if that's a concern going forward. Are we worried about that in some of our new, you know, higher rise buildings?

It's it's definitely something we're evaluating. We haven't seen an increase in the same other agencies have seen in their jurisdictions. And and as we look go through some of the departments, we're looking at where they're storing, you know, where the charging areas are. I think some of the big concerns I've seen across the country is when you have, like, a shop in a residential love commercial. So, yeah. You have, like, a a scooter shop downstairs, you know, charging a 100 batteries overnight. It's pretty high opportunity for something, and and having residential above that would be problematic. But we haven't flagged anything in our this one. Okay. It's not

a concern. Okay. Just maybe something in the future that consider how we in a way, your recommendation would be if you're gonna have, you know, taller buildings. What what would the infrastructure recommendation be to provide places for people to charge their batteries not in their apartments upstairs? Is that, I mean, something future, obviously, to think about. But I'm sure eventually there's gonna be some best practices in this front as everybody moves towards some sort of electric apparatus. And that's it. Otherwise, I I just wanna thank you, for doing what you are with with, you know, the cuts that you had to make. And I just appreciate the work you're still doing up there and answering those calls. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate the update as well. One of the things that I'd be interested in is kinda just getting an overall vacancy report for the fire department similar to what we get from PD. Like, what are the vacancies in your sworn and non sworn, you know, areas? Because I see that, you know, engine eleven and SWAT two and then, you know, like, the, you know, mobile integrated health unit are you know, we have some staff reductions. Everybody would just be good to really kind of understand what are the numbers associated with that, or is that just really overtime and service reductions versus actual headcount reductions or staff vacancies that you have? So

we have about eight vacancies right now on staff. Part of that is the because it was a pilot program, the four firefighters we had on the Uber and some, you know, some the staff we're getting, we're pushed them back online, which builds some vacancies, as well as we just completed a hiring of two large academies when we reduced our numbers to EMTs. Our requirements to EMT were able to hire people. So we really stay on a position of being fairly well staffed. So with the eight vacancies we have, we have 15 positions online that we basically browned out.

So that's really gonna downstate the event in overtime. So our traditional staffing model depends, I would say, on some level of overtime. Otherwise, if everyone shows up to work, there's no injuries, there's no vacation that day, you have extra firefighters. So there's a cost problem with doing that. So we're always trying to find that line. I'd say right now, the position we're in, we're staffing all of our positions with less overtime. Not a not have not being overstaffed either, so we're in a pretty good position. That sounds good. And and

I think that's important for the community to, you know, understand too. Because I think when you see, you know, an engine or squads that are being reduced, it can, you know, sort of send off some alarms. But understanding that we had a pretty strong staffing bench already and that this is it's not I mean, have we seen any sort of material impacts to response times as a result of this? Like, are response times going up, or are those kind of staying steady? Because we've been able to manage the operational impacts pretty well through.

So yeah. Yeah. We just made the changes on December 22. What I would say is our we have eight vacancies. What we have, five plus firefighters on duty per day. So and that and where those squad two was, it was in station where engine two was. Where engine eleven was engine one and then in truck one were which is downtown, just busy. So there still are minutes in everybody's neighborhood firehouse. Just we've lost some of the redundancy. Some of the things we're looking at doing is, you know, finding ways to maximize our coverage and make some changes on our response patterns to make sure that we're minimizing that negative effect.

We are looking at, definitely looking at our day to day responses. I haven't seen anything that throws off major alarm at this point, but it's only two, three weeks of data at this point. That's Thank you so much for that. I appreciate that. And those are really

the rest of my questions. Thank you so much for a great one. Thanks for

your leadership. Thank you. Thank you. Public comment. Can I just have a quick follow-up? Yes.

Just a follow-up to that. I just, you know, similar to for the public to hear that there are no no firehouses have been closed over these closures. Right? So even though there is an engine in the squad, there are still other engines are at those fire stations, right, or trucks that, you know, would've I don't know what the right title is. But each fire station still has people to respond to incidents within their name. Good.

Yeah. And every station still has an engine. Two stations have an engine and a truck, which should be off of Punta and in downtown. And, really, when we're building the redundancy in our systems for those in the afternoons, we get significant call volume increases, and that's that secondary call that becomes the problem where someone might call 91 and engine one and truck one on the call, and now they're waiting for someone coming from Allen District that it might take them, you know, for us, you know, ten minutes to get there. We try to really minimize that effect when we want.

You know, the fire we had today, we had from time of not one call to be pulling up pulling air breaks five minutes. I think we had a fairly positive outcome, so we're trying to stay in that as much as we can. With that, you're never gonna be there a 100%. There will always be times when our city is really busy. Yeah. And we're trying to find that walk that line to where we're getting it most of the time without being cost ineffective, I would say. Okay.

Thank you.

And and to that point, and kind of without overburdening our partners neither by exacerbating mutual aid. Right? So we don't know I mean, I know that that's available, but we don't want to be doing that all the time either. So I really do appreciate the ingenuity and the strategic thinking that you guys are placing on how do we sort of minimize service impacts to the extent possible because I know there's still gonna be some you know? But that's, I think, really strong leadership in the moment that we need it. So thanks again for that.

Yeah. No problem.

Thank you.

Yeah. I you know, glad you said that. Something that I'm just observing, and this is just an observation, is, particularly with fire, please, is there seems to be a lot of re you know, of course, we're being surgical about this or and, you know, and I know we're using words like reduction and and, you know, and other, like, words. But I think what what I'm hearing is reorienting and and and sort of recalibrating staffing. And, you know, you know, I think part of this process that we're going through is educating not only ourselves, but also educating the community, you know, sort of when we fine tune something like what what you just explained.

When we fine tune something, you know, that's exactly what it is. We're just fine tuning it with less staff. And, and so, anyways, I it's just an observation that I was making.

But, anyways, that's it.

Okay. Public comment. Anybody wanna make a public comment? Nope? Okay. Seeing none, I will move on to youth and family services update, and I see Doctor. Young here.

Hello. Now it's my turn.

Now it's your turn.

Hi, everyone. Thank you for letting me come and present to you. I prepared an annual update of our 2025 highlights for all of our programs. And this is the first time that I put Link into it because we're really starting to see Link as part of the YFSP program. So Link sort of lives in YFSP, and it's part of her. But I'm sharing it with you today because it's one of our programs. We'll talk about each of the programs that we have and some of our highlights from the year, some of the outcomes, and then I'm happy to respond to that you might have. Just to ground us all in why YFSB exists, I know you all know this already. But I think the age old question, why is this inside of a police department? People ask me less than they used to.

I'll say that. But why YFSB in a police department? We believe that if you can get to the root cause underlying the reasons people become known to police, then they will not see the place as much. And so I think the chief even touched on it when he talked about the homicide rates going down. Like, we prevented some of these longer term services, it will hopefully address the root causes that lead people to justice involvement in the first place. And that's equally true with our linked services as it is with our juvenile services that have been around for a lot longer. So some highlights from the year. I touched on this earlier, but our funding we brought in $2,300,000 last year. That is annual. We bring in that ledge to offset the cost of the general fund for these positions.

We I can go into the breakdown, if you're interested, of where those different funding sources come from. But similar to what we're hoping to build with Link, it's it's state, local, occasionally federal, then we can help. We serve 4,801 participants, and we were able to add a new program this year through some new funding. So we added different responsive services to our lineup of what we're able to offer. So girls girl focused life skills training. We slide got all wonky. But so first, I'll talk about the services that we provide within our offices at the police department. So we provide family counseling, juvenile justice diversion, and positive youth development services. And we were able to do that for three seventy youth. And sixty three percent were seen with their family.

So we're serving way more than just the number of kids. We also are serving the family. And then this year, we had 13 critical incident responses, which is actually a lot for us. So I wanted to highlight it because it's something you may not know. We do 20 fourseven, we will get called in the middle of the night to respond to the community if there's been a homicide or a suicide, death of a child. So sort of the most serious incidents that happened in our city, we sent a team of counselors out to respond with officers 20 fourseven, and we did that 13 times this year.

Would those incidents include, like, ICE related incidents?

I not well, I guess it could potentially, depending on how critical it got. But separately, when there is ice activity in our city, often ICE will do a courtesy notification to the watch commander, and the watch commander notifies us. We're able to offer support services to the family. And we connect with, which is the regional services for that. So not specifically, but yes, we do get involved there too.

Next slide, please. So how folks come to YFSP. This is something that I'm always really proud of, because 45% of our referrals are coming from HPD and the probation department. So we are reaching the kids that are at the highest risk of system involvement, which is really our sweet spot, our goal. But we also get a good chunk of referrals from HUSD and from the community itself. And these numbers are really consistent year over year. This is just who refers to us. And it means that our relationship with the schools is strong, and the community trusts us on their own to pick up the phone and call for service. And so I really like to see this mix. And then while so many of our referrals are coming from the probation department and law enforcement, 84 are not system involved.

And so we're getting to them before they have a case, before they're active to probation. And so we're really hitting that nice card of, Okay, we can provide the prevention before your system involved, but we know we're reaching the highest risk kids because they're being referred by the system as a true diversion. I'm gonna move on to our school based services. So this really is like the widest bet. We try and reach as many kids as possible to make school a safe, supportive environment where kids feel connected and thrive.

We are on-site at three middle schools, King, Ochoa, and Bret Hart. And then this year, in 2025, we served just over 3,800 youth with 1,300 activities of direct service. And then 122 received more direct, more intensive interventions, participating in individual and group services. And we had 83 kids participating in our summer fund program. You can see on the target population, of who we work with 70% are the students, but we also do a fair amount of work with the teachers and the administrators on the school sites.

And so when kids are struggling, doing that capacity development, that professional development, even that mental health support consultation for the adults on the campus, really is a force multiplier for when we can't be in every room if the teachers are prepared to handle behavior, for example. So that's a big piece of what we do. And we continue to focus on social emotional learning, mental health, and social skills relationships work. Thank you. So I will dive slides got crazy. I'm gonna send a better PowerPoint next time. Check the charts. I don't know why that happened. But anyway, I so what I'm looking at is normal. So I'm gonna dive into the link services.

So the best way to think about Lake is we respond out in the field. We do a lot of light touch with many people, and then we have caseloads of folks that we're doing more intensive interventions with. And I've said this before, but I'll say it again. Like, if we can provide if if someone else is providing the service, we're gonna connect them to it. We don't wanna duplicate anything that exists. And so as often as possible, we're assessing, triaging, and connecting them to their existing providers or other providers that will do the service. If there is no one, we will pick up the case and and work with it for a while until we can get them connected. So we're connected. We are part of the dispatch system. So we responded to 729 CAD calls for service.

We served 400 unique individuals, and then 90 folks received that more in-depth service that I was describing. Thank you for making it bigger. The wheel on the side, we're working with a lot of folks who are unhoused, but also a good chunk of folks have stable housing. But they're still at risk of they have service needs that are unmet. So it's not just for for the unhoused community.

It is for both. Although we do, as you can see below, the linkages we're making the most frequently are for shelter and housing, basic food needs, and getting people document ready for housing opportunities. Again, I'm getting hit on it. Fifty two percent of our referrals came from HPD in 2025. And so I really appreciate your question, council member Roche, about, like, what is the cost savings of this. I think it's right there. 52% of our referrals came from HPV, which means they called us to come out instead of having to deal with it themselves. And so I don't mean to holler them out for that. Yeah. But that's But, like, for me, it's right there.

And then, you know, similarly, 24% came from other city departments. And so the fire department is mixed in there. You all are mixed in there. Like, that is that that bulk, 75%, is city staff are using our services when they don't know what else to do. So I think that is a savings to the city.

And then again, it's a relatively new program, but I'm really excited to see self referrals and community referrals starting to tick up over the last year, which means people are picking up the phone, calling us, and asking for help, which is hopefully from the outreach and promotion we've been doing. So 606 referrals came came to us last in 2025. Okay. So our target population, again, the criteria for Link has been from and all heart has been from the beginning, individuals with homelessness, mental illness, and substance use. And so we have a breakdown here, those who are receiving our ongoing support.

Seventy seven percent homelessness, forty nine percent mental illness, and twenty two percent substance use. And obviously, that equals more than one hundred percent because forty eight percent of folks we're dealing with have more than one, at least two of these co occurring at the same time. And then I'll, lastly, just go to the indicators of success. How do I know that what we're doing is working? Eighty eight percent, and the top three slides are juvenile, but eighty eight percent of youth were deemed successful in case closing by the assessing clinician.

We have an evidence based outcome measure that we use called PCOMM. 72 of youth are reaching their target on that tool. Ninety seven percent avoided arrests while engaged with services. So again, getting those referrals from PD and probation, but ninety seven percent are not being arrested while they're undergoing the services. And then the lay team was able to make four eighty three linkages to services. And as we continue to talk about how do we connect these folks to what's gonna work long term, we're really proud of that as well. And I will just yeah. I will end with that.

Great. Before I go to council, wanna open up for public comment. Is there anybody in the audience that I can make a public comment? Nope. Anybody on that? Nope. Like to close the public comment and come up here.

Great. Thank you. Yeah. That was really good. Yeah. So if we can monetize that visit 76, you know, by by February 28, like, maybe it'll help make the case. Oh, thank you. Sorry. I don't know why that's so hard for me to do. Because you're right.

I mean, that is a diversion, right, from not having to call fire department or police department. So that that would be actually really good and helpful to know. It's just you know? And then the other thing I wanted to ask you is, you know, I've you know, learning more about Ling that might be sending LingQ in a way is only successful as the resources that are available in the community for them to send people to to get services. You know, despite some dwindling funding in in in the city and even sort of the you know, from the Fed and the state, With Measure w, do you foresee more solid services that Link is gonna be able to count on to get people, you know, I don't know, shelter, food, medical attention, that kind thing?

Yeah. So so Measure w, I don't know as much yet because I think we're all waiting to see what gets funded and when and when that comes online. But where I am already seeing it is the Mental Health Services Act transition to Behavioral Health Service Act funding, the MHSA, the HSA Prop one funding. So that was a dramatic shift in county taxpayer dollars that have been going to prevention, early intervention services and are now going to those who are at the highest risk, most need. So for all of our juvenile programs, I've been watching it going, eek, this is terrible.

But for our late programs, okay, Maybe some money will come right away. Because it's going for housing, severe chronic mental illness. And then as part of that, there's new a new crisis stabilization unit, crisis residential treatment center is working on standing above. Okay. Like, the keyword. Right? So, like, we see these these very intensive services coming online, and that will actually help us from a service standpoint.

Okay. So it's actually keep our link team Yes. In place. Yeah. But then oh, okay. Which makes it even more, you know and then I assume because of the funding that, you know, we have I know that customer has just asked often about increasing the time. Because isn't linked just nine to is it 95?

It is. I should have put it on my slide. The other thing that happened this year that I'm so excited about is our partnership with nine eighty eight and the Alameda Country Crisis Support Services. So we were able, for a relatively small amount of money, able to enter into a contract with them and answer our phone 20 Oh, okay. And 988 are trained trained crisis responders. So if you call the link phone number 247, if we're not available, 980 will answer. Okay. And so that's our workaround for 247 that we can afford right now.

Okay. That's a great workaround. You're right. Thank you. And then I love the girls focused. What is it training or services? Yeah.

So it's similar to the life skills training cohorts that we've been doing. Our one of our coordinators, Lynette Simmons, has put together a girl a girl focused curriculum. So it's self esteem, empowerment, healthy choices, boundaries, healthy And

is that something do you have to be, like, in services to get that, or is that just a program for the community?

Yeah. So it's a program for the community, but we have we are highlighting it by pushing it to the schools. Okay. And so but it's partly, like, as we spoke about Tennyson earlier, it was I didn't prepare to talk about them. But some of what we're looking at for what will help Tennyson is, you know, these quote these licensed curriculums we have ready to go, can we push those into Tennyson? And probably not the gender specific, but the restorative justice or the diversion. Everyone's there, kids that are really high risk for violence or suspension or expulsion or discipline. How do we push it in with one of our curriculums? Okay. So that's been a really successful modality for us, because the kids are there. They're happy audience.

And that will help pick up the need that's going to come if we lose these counselors on campus because of the A2SD funding. Exactly. Okay. Exactly. And

without going into too much detail, California is drastically shifting how Medi Cal reimbursement works, and a whole new revenue stream is opening up for school related services. And so that's something I'm actively pursuing to figure out how to get paid for doing these services. Be very huge. And HUSD is pursuing it. We're working really closely together to figure out how to not duplicate, but to draw down as many of those state dollars as we can. So it's really busy working on getting the money frame over. Yeah.

That was my final comment, was just to thank you. Because I know how hard it is to go after this kind of funding. You have to be really diligent, really on it, watch all the time, watch all the the deadlines, and just be and really dig deep into what is available out there. So thank you for doing all that work to bring in that, what you said, 2,300,000.0 every year. That's significant. So so I'm really glad you're doing that work in.

Thank you. My favorite part of my job, actually. Love the situation. Not

all the lighting, but all the things. Yeah. I'll find it. No. But thank you so much, Doctor. Ann. Thanks for the presentation. Course.

I know somebody who works for a local school district, and she is pursuing that same thing.

I agree. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We all are.

A large school district in Alameda County.

Every of we all are. I know.

I know.

It's like a game changer in the world of mental health. Right?

Yeah. But it's the person that can get it all in with all your eyes dotted and your teeth crossed. Like, it's so hard to meet all the criteria with all these buttons. Yeah. So thank you.

Thank you.

Do you thank you

for this report too and for all the services you provide. They're just so important. Do you ever rotate the school sites that you're anchored in? Because I was thinking about, you know, like, Tennyson for an example. So if the three sites you're anchored at now, if see you a bigger need, is there, like, a

Yeah. It's a great question. So we the sites are selected in partnership with HUSD. And for a long time, there's been a get something in every school model with their funding challenges that has shifted this year. So I don't think all sites are covered. But what we do at our three schools, someone is doing somewhere else, even if it's not Citi. However, we often are looking for opportunities. Like, for example, for one of our contracts with the probation department, our staff is not as busy as they could be from ten to 01:00 when all the kids are at school. And so I was like, we've to get these people busy. Let's get them out.

So we reached out to the schools. And this year, we reached out to Hayward High and Mount Eden. And we're actually providing mental health services on campus at Mount Eden and Hayward High under our contract with probation so we can stay busy during the morning hours. And then this came up with Edison, so they're they're next.

Oh, that

was great to hear. That's fantastic to hear. And then do you you know, out of your 2,300,000,000.0 in funding that you get externally, does any of that come from, like, the county department of ed or the state or anyone like that for the work you're doing in schools?

The biggest chunk comes from the probation department, but we also get I mean, probably the exact number. We get 247,000 from County Health Care Services, and we get almost 9 we get more than 900,000 from the probation department. So we get a lot of county funding. That's our biggest our biggest.

That's great to hear. And then, you know, I agree with council member Roche. You know, I think that for and not just specific to the lean program, but I think it's specific to even, you know, considerations around, say, Regis funding. Any time we're gonna be looking at cutting a program, I do think that we need to have the full analysis that looks at kind of what the other costs are gonna be, you know, the residual cost. Because by cutting any program, you know, it's gonna probably put a serve you know, an undue service somewhere. And I was just thinking about, you know, we're we're concerned about the number of police calls that are at St. Regis, which, you know I mean, not St. Regis, but Regis Village, which I understand. But, I mean, can you imagine if we pull funding, what could protect I mean, how many more calls? You know?

So it's just like we really need to start understanding those downstream impacts, not just sort of the immediate, you know, here's what the cost saving benefit is, but what are all of those other downstream impacts that come with some of the decisions that we're gonna need to make, I think, is important. And I think it's gonna have to in whatever way possible, be quantified because, you know, otherwise, it's too squishy. Do you know what I mean?

Yes. Yeah.

Then I'm also just incredibly impressed with how the LINK program has been able to operate with such a small staff and to make such an impact too. So great work there. And then, you know, I I appreciate the kind of success measures for YFSB generally, but I was also wondering for the LINK program, when we are talking about, like, the 77% of individuals that were served were homeless, is that, like, just providing them a referral? Or I guess, what kind of service is provided, and what do we consider a success? And then out of the people that were served, I think you said, like, there's not many that were, you know, do I I think there were, like, 400 that were all unique out of 700.

So it kinda says that people aren't continuously entering back into the system if you wanna look at it that way, but just want to get your perspective on that.

Yeah. So the the 77%, that slide, if you can actually go back, Lauren, to the line. The yeah. Perfect. So this is the of the 90 people who receive those more intensive services. So these are the ones that actually made it to a caseload. So this makes sense that seventy seven per like, greater share were homeless because they were actually needing a lot of hands on help getting documents ready, keeping up to date in the HMIS housing system. Like, really, we it was a lot more labor intensive to get them connected to housing. And so yeah. And the other can you ask the other part of your question again?

It was just, you know, like, okay. So for the 77% of folks that, you know, we provided, I guess, case management for, did they actually find housing? Or did they return later into the system as one of your

Got it. Yes. So once they stick, they find housing. So I think getting someone into the 90 is the hard part. But once they're, like, on a case load, whether it's ours or someone else's, then they're actively working. We don't hold cases if they're not actively working on taking their next steps. I think our data collection for Link is evolving. We're it's because it's a newer program that we're not quite as sophisticated as we will be when we we have said, let's make it July. And then we have we've actually made some contacts with a couple of universities to do, like, a full program evaluation. So I would like our data to be more robust. But our first focus is getting past July, and then we're gonna figure out what is data data collection and program evaluation look like.

That makes total sense. And then and then for the 48% of individuals, wow, that Mhmm. So so 48% of the folks that we served had they fell into, you know, two multiple of these three categories. Occurring.

So substance use and being in house.

So relationships and the complexity of the health that we're dealing with. Yeah. Incredible work. Thank you so much for sharing this. Pleasure. Great work. Thanks.

Thank you. Okay. Did I repeat both comments? I already know. I could close both comment and then or move on to the next item. I don't have any questions. So I'll move on to the next item, which is item number five, which is the aircraft rescue and firefighting vehicle placement. Doctor. Gowell, thank you very much.

My pleasure. Thank you for letting me share. Good

evening. So tonight, wanna talk a little bit about the service we provide at the AC and the importance of it, challenge that we have, and then talk about some options as far as relieving some pressure on the general fund for refinancing, figuring the long term solution for our apparatus. So the airport's a it's called a park one thirty seven certification not required. Basically, it's a large enough airport that has, you know, 122,000 takeoff and landings every year, aircraft as big as 20 passenger plane with 66,000 gallons of fuel onboard. But they don't run scheduled flights, so there's not a requirement by the FAA to have a staffed, r freight, at you're ready twenty four seven.

So the way we service it is Station 6 cross SaaS. They are for a gas station six, which is great. It's right there at the airport. The businesses that come into the airport really appreciate the fact that it's an executive airport that does have equipment that can deal with planes of this size. There also are two fixed based operating fuel depots, and about 400 based aircraft that are based on there. It's a fairly busy airport when you go down to our train center. Their plane is taking off, mean, all the time. Go to the next slide. So our current situation we're trying to deal with right now is we have two r rigs. The r rigs are aircraft rescue firefighting rigs, so I'll go and hear me say r for a lot.

We're not talking about being sheltered. It's r six is our most recent one, which is the one that's pictured there. It's actually we bought it in 2015.

It was

refurbished apparatus. It's actually in 1994. So with that, some challenges that comes with it is it was refurbished. It's painted. It's cleaned up a little bit, but you're still dealing with parts for the manufacturer that are over 30 years old. Providing us some challenges with the bit they're breaking more often and then finding the parts to replace it. It's down more than it should be. So that's the first one. The second one, R 66, has not been refurbished. It's 1994 Oshkosh as well that was donated for Coalition Fire several years ago.

It's pretty old, antiquated piece of equipment. It's both of them are well beyond our standard lifestyle for for lifespan for that we would use in our city. The challenge is is how we find a way to replace these. Go to the next slide. So there there are high capital costs around 1,000,000 to, you know, one quarter up to 1.5 depending on which one you get.

Obviously, we're facing some discourse strengths with our city. Going out and buying out of general fund is not something we're recommending at this point, but we recognize that we still need to have the capability to support the amount of risk that is flying in and out and also support future growth down at the airport because there's a lot of opportunity there as well. Go to the next slide. So our next steps we're recommending is there's a lot of grants both on the fire side and also on the airport side. So the FAA offers grants for all kinds of things.

We've been successful in the last couple of years getting grants from FEMA for assistance to firefighter grants. What we're looking to do is partner up at the airport, chase down as many as we can and see if we can get partial or full payment that way. There's some other contingency plans, but our general plan right now is not to go with their attrition method of going through CIP or going through the internal service fees, but go make do with what we have for a few years with the intent of being fairly aggressive with the airport, partnering up to chase down Brains. Questions?

Just let me just jump in. I you know, just I'm just curious about, you know, the current administration, you know, you know, is their appetite on delivering grants nowadays, particularly around, you know, FAA and, you know, even some of the fires stuck in. You know? I mean, we're I think Where are we on this?

I think what we've seen in in last year, we were writing our AFG grant for our paramedic school. We're being tactical about the words and the justification we use based on the administration that's currently in the White House versus ones that were either before. Say that FEMA was, you know, under some uncertainty. And, yeah, as we've seen over the last six, seven, eight months or so, the National Fire Camp was shut down for a period of time. The Yale Postgraduate School was shut down for a period of time because everything was anti FEMA in that education.

That funding has come back. I think the administration is fairly pro firefighter and fairly pro department employment security, which is, you know, FEMA's under there. I think there's a report out yesterday and this morning based on the incident that happened in DC, there's a lot of scrutiny right now to improve FAA and some funding that way. So just based on what we're seeing, I would expect to see the FAA and FEMA continue to be funded.

In usually, in in the in the spring They are in the summer. Usually, ACTC I'm one of you know, I'm I'm the city's designated ACTC. I'm on the policy committee for ACTC. And, in the, you know, spring, summer, there's an annual trip we all make, to Washington. It, of course, is transportation centered, but there is an opportunity for me to break off from the group, and we do meet with our our lobbyists.

And, you know, this year, you know, the city doesn't pay for it. ACT ACTC pays for it. But this year, I'm likely to go if the trips if if the trip is offered, but we should set up a meeting with our lobbyists and particularly around FAA and some of this other stuff. You know? That way, we can really put pressure on them.

The other the other thing is I know this is highly controversial, and it is not without controversy. It's very fraught with controversy. But, you know, there was there was a there was a program. I I don't I forget under what department, but, you know, it might have been, you know, Department of Defense where they were there was a lot of equipment that they were, you know, sort of passing on to local jurisdictions. And, you know, are some of those, you know, vehicles or, you know, are they are there fire, you know, fire trucks or, you know, these kinds of apparatuses within does that program still exist, and do those apparatuses exist?

You know? I don't know. But

Yeah. I know the program speed up. I have not looked for that. That would be something I'm I'm thinking we can explore. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Thank you for this. You know, I was I was thinking when the mayor was talking, you know, kind of about the grants. I know that we recently got an FAA grant, the airport improvement program grant for the runway, you know, improvements that we needed to make. So I know that there is, you know, something available for this.

I'm excited to see you guys go after it. But what I was also kind of just wondering is the general operating model behind it and, you know, do we really wanna sustain it on grant money long term, or is there a better funding model? So for an example, Oakland and I know that they're larger airports, but, like, Oakland and San Francisco, of course, the airlines don't pay for it directly, but they pay for it through, like, airport fees. Right? So I I you know, and I know that I wanna kinda be careful with how I say this, but people who can fly into that airport obviously have money.

Right? So if we were to go and increase the fees to be able to pay for this because this is a service that's provided to the people who are using the airport, it's not a general service that's provided to the average person in Hayward because the average person in Hayward isn't using the airport. So how might we think creatively about partnering with the airport? Because that's an enterprise fund issue to say, you need to fund this because it's a safety requirement for the airport in the same way you're gonna go and create your fee structures to fund the other critical things at the airport you need to be able to fund this. So I I like the idea of kind of short term thinking about grants and short term could be in the next, like, you know, couple of years.

But longer term, I really want us to think about how we integrate this into the business model of the airport so that the cost is is being paid for by the users, not the general community who doesn't necessarily have access to this airport on a regular basis. Those are my only comments. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Thanks, I was thinking the same thing that, you know, if we're providing the labor for the truck, like, that they should actually provide the or at least, you know, be part of that funding to get us the because if we're, you know, the training and the know how and how to use the vehicle and provide the services for it, some sort of things that require that, that I think sort of the minimum is that the funding for the actual should probably from there. Yeah. Toward themselves. How often is it used?

Close to five to 10 instances a year.

Oh, really? Yeah. Like that. So and then is that Around 10. Around 10 a year. Oh, okay. Well, that's actually we don't hear about that. It's interesting to realize that.

Recently, we had a flight emergency and flight emergency.

Okay. Yeah. And then and then are there is there a specific crew that's assigned to that? Because that would be specialized training, I assume.

Yes. That's station six. I'm gonna take on the book. Yeah. We have everybody go through anymore for fresher.

Everyone at station six or everyone? Everyone in the

whole department.

Okay. Because they might get sentenced.

Because they might. Station six, definitely, because they're there. They're doing the daily checks on the apparatus, apparatus, and they that's their first in district. They know the taxiway names and where to go. They're definitely the most proficient at it. But if they're on a medical call because they're not they're dedicated to district 6 primarily. Mhmm. And it's a fairly busy engine company. So, like, talking before about redundancy, if they're out on an EMS call, the next day it would be engine two would stop, pick up that, and it's permitting and proceed.

Yeah. I mean, so I agree. Like, it seems like the apparatus should come out of the enterprise fund, like, however however they get grants, I think, for the airport. Because, I mean, the intense amount of labor that's coming out of the general fund for this, I think, you know, like, it should be a partnership, I think, between this you know, these maybe it is partly. But I was thinking the same thing with the HASBET as far as you know, funding, like, the hazmat inspectors. We should be living, like, the, you know, the businesses that are actually producing, you know, material that would require these kind of incidents, like potential, you know, catastrophic incidents for the kind of materials that they may be using in their manufacturing and, you know, maybe, like, the data center situation with the generators and those kind of, you know, kind of stuff against that. It's like they you know, we should talk about

Well, just to look

at Yes. The

hazmat program, we're gonna adjust the salary. So it'll it should be going forward a 100% cost recovery.

Oh, okay. Okay. Develop essentially, developer fees. Okay. Great. Yep. Otherwise, you know, same thing. Doctor. Erin, thank you for what you're doing to try to be creative in the funding sources to get this. Because, obviously, this is an out of day truck. I'm sure it's very concerning for you that if you're gonna have to use it in an incident, it's just gonna give up one day, you know, that's not a great place for the firefighters to be in if that's the case. So it's obviously a concern. So

thanks for your day. Just wanna give a shout out to the airport. They've been extremely receptive as we reached out to them. I think in the past, we just deal with our normal business model of Yeah. Piece of equipment to go out. We work with

we work with

well, we're picking one out and then finding a way to purchase it. Right now, I think they're very collaborative in finding a solution together, and I think I think we will get to a better solution that works for both the airport and general fund. Great. Okay.

Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I know they're not a separate organization. They're still part the city, but as far as, you know, focusing on the general fund, yeah, thank you. Thanks for being creative. But yeah. Great. Do you want me to carry on? Why are you okay. Because the mayor the mayor had to step out. Do we do you any public questions on this one? Public comments? Okay. I think we'll close public comment, and then we're gonna go on think it's our last item, right, on the organized retail theft? Yes. Last one. Yep.

Yes. Seth? Yeah. I will be brief. The the committee asked for an update on organized retail theft, and so we're here to present that tonight. I will say that we've seen a stark reduction in this. So the first slide here is basically kind of the frame of conversation as the California penal code section four ninety point four. It's a definition. I'm not gonna read all this, but if you can think about theft, multiple people engaging in theft of merchandise for the purpose of reselling it is tip is typically what we see when we talk about organized retail theft. Right?

So that's what this section kinda describes here. Next slide, please. There was an an amendment to that section. It was approved by the voters. You know, violation committed on two or more occasions within a twelve month period, if the aggregate value of merchandise exceeds $950, you could be prosecuted under the section. Violations are typically punishable by imprisonment in county jail not to exceed one year. So that's kind of the definition of the section. Next slide, please. So for the city, our data, we looked at 2024 versus 2025, we're down 73%, which is good. Similar size Northern California agencies, we have experienced increases.

And and we've also seen just as a general that was included in first presentation was an overall reduction in debt related crime. For our locations, this typically happens, you know, at at some of our large retailers that are at the mall, other retailers, clothing stores, Ulta, you know, some of the stores, you know, like, not in the store. But Ulta is one of them where we've seen a lot of a lot of organized retail theft. Jewelry stores, I'll talk about some of that in a minute, liquor stores, and and and then others specialty retail stores that sell collectors items. Legos were a very, very hot item for a while because of the resale value that they that they have.

If you go to Target or anywhere else now, they're all behind hard plastic. Everything for them. Everything's behind hard plastic. It's these things. Legos, specifically. So on the trend side, a lot of high profile cases in the Bay Area, none in Hayward, knock on wood, thankfully, involving jewelry stores. We have over 20 people who rush the store, break display cases, and steal merchandise. A lot of times, they're using vehicles to ram the front of those stores. Some Some of these have happened in during business hours. There was one that was done at the I'm not sure if you're familiar with the lot in San Ramon.

It's it's got a movie theater and a bunch of restaurants and shops. Broad daylight, 20 people went into Heller Jewelers there. Engaged in the theft, they actually fired a shot during that robbery, I think, to scare folks. And then they left in four separate stolen vehicles that were staged outside, leading in different directions. Fremont had one last June.

There was one that was in San Francisco where I think a guy in his eighties, you know, one of the store owners was insulted, so for the medical emergency. So they they are still happening, albeit far less. They always use stolen vehicles. The incident that happened in Fremont, there were a total of nine of them, nine stolen vehicles that were used in that one. And they often gather surveillance or intelligence before they theft occurs.

And one of the things that we learned in a couple of these instances was the law enforcement agencies actually received a 911 call from somebody who said, hey. There's these guys wearing masks driving around the car. They're just kinda eyeballing stuff, and then they experienced one of these steps. Next slide, please. So this is just kind of a visual representation of our city.

We had, you 11 to 2024, three in 2025, while a lot of our similarly sized cities here in Northern California experienced upticks. Next slide, please. And then this is kind of a five five year snapshot. What's not captured on here, I think, was 2020. This was incredibly widespread so much so that the state gave out a bunch of grant money.

Governor Newsom put, you know, a whole bunch of flock cameras on all the freeways as a as a measure to combat this. I think on in June 2020, there was one night no. It's July. 07/01/2020, I think we had over 70 burglaries in one night, which is the equivalent of what we experienced in a couple of months. So, thankfully, the trend is is dropping for us, and I'll have I'm happy to answer any questions that you have on this particular Thank

you. First, I'm gonna open a public comment on this. Do have any public comments on this? Okay. Thank you. We'll close public comment, and, council member.

Sure. Thank you so much. Thank you for this report. So just out of curiosity, when when we were thinking when, you when we said, like, soft line mall and retailers, what is the difference between this and, like, a robbery? Like, are they getting is it the same thing? Like, they're getting robbed, or is this cause I know we're calling it a theft, but, like, I guess, how do you delineate the difference?

So robbery has a force repair component. You could argue robbery in some of these cases, but they they fall under the general umbrella of organized retail theft, you know, kind of in the eyes of of the court. You can you can apply both sections, I guess, is what I'm saying. But the organized retail theft section, again, some of the grant money that's come to the county through the district attorney's office is designed for, you know, some of the vertical prosecution prosecution prosecuting enhancements. So you could you could chart both Kinda. Those in in terms.

Because, like and then, I guess, is it also because, like, one's not like, you know, you're not forcing someone to do something? Because I was thinking about in this theft case, you're really not, like, pulling a gun out. You're just going there, breaking the counter and stealing stuff, right, versus saying, if you don't give this

to me, I'm gonna Correct. You know, in a case where you have shot fire, you certainly make the argument. So it's just over, you know, the other. The one in Fremont, there were employees in the store, and these people, they didn't engage with them at all. They just literally went straight to the display cases and started breaking them, stealing merchandise. So

so was 2024 sort of the mark of when everything started getting, like, locked down in stores? I mean, was that sort of the decrease that we saw? It's like before that.

We have done work with some of our retailers, you know, the crime prevention through environmental design. You know, we have staff that's trained in that. They'll come out and talk about, you know, you don't want certain displays, you know, right in front of the store behind glass, you know, things that probably should be locked up, you know, we encourage that. It drives me nuts when I'm trying to buy stuff. I get it. And I'm sure that everybody experiences that too, but I think that's part of what has contributed to, you know, kind of the client is accessibility. Right?

Because, like, I didn't even notice that, like, at Safeway, like, you know, the crime prevention through environmental design, like, you know, where it's just so inconvenient because you only have, like, one door you can go in, and then they have these gay I mean, it's just but, you know, it's what you have to do to combat crime, unfortunately, these days.

We had a had a real problem with it at Dick's when Dick's was at the mall. People would park in front. They would run inside, grab alarmfuls of clothes, and then Our investigators actually were able to make a stop, four people in the vehicle, they were arrested, and that stop led to a larger investigation involving multiple agencies. And they literally found a house in Oakland that they hit with a search warrant where I mean, it looked like a department store. Stolen merchandise from all over the bay that they had lined up and people knew about it. Maybe go and buy the stolen stuff. So yeah.

Gotcha. Alright. Well, thank you so much for this report, and good work to see these crime statistics going down.

You. Yeah. Thank you. I'm I'm so glad to see these numbers go down. And I would mean, the flat crime was helped too because people know in New York, you might get caught going out of town if you're leaving. Mean, is that do you think that's part of it?

I think there's a turn. You know, people know that we have them. So turn effects. But the other piece of it is that it's been a game changer in terms of solvability.

Yeah.

Because we have the ability to go into the flock system. And if a vehicle goes, you know, leaves a scene of crime, goes through one of our cameras, and then, you know, ten minutes later, it goes through a camera on eight eighty. You know what I'm saying? So there's a, you know, there's a way to kind of get ahead of where these people are going. So that's been instrumental in in catching people during these in progress times.

Yeah. Great. Then the other you were talking about the house in Oakland. There was that I think they did a whole podcast on the lady in Southern California that had a whole, like, cosmetic store in her garage. And she had people going, like, all I don't know I can just listen to it. So interesting. Then she had, you know, going all over to, like, Sephora and Ulta, and she would give them an order. I need this, this, and this kind of stuff, and they would go in and get it and and send it off to her. But my understanding also is a lot of these stores are getting better facial recognition software so that as soon as you walk in the store, that, know, that whole sort of having to do a pause because someone welcomes you or some stores now you have to be let in through a gate. And I guess that's a moment where they're taking. But

I I don't know anything about that. I know that the security systems have certainly improved Yeah. A lot. Yeah.

Don't know about that.

Like, like, I think. Right? So you get banned before you walk in. Yeah. That's my understanding.

Sure. Well, yeah. And we don't have any we don't have anything to do with the I think the facial recognition technology. Right? And the other thing that we've learned in a lot of these cases based on some of the arrests is, to your point, you know, you're giving lists out, but they're they're giving them to juveniles. Yeah. They're enlisting juveniles to do this stuff because the, you know, the justice system is set up totally different for them. You know, an adult gauging into activities, you know, gonna go to jail, not the same with you now. So

Yeah. I asked I remember asking the security guards at at the Safeway nearest because there were kids in there with backpacks, obviously, you know, grabbing things. And I said, well, you know they're doing it. Like, what are you gonna do? And he goes, we can't do anything.

Yeah. Most places are hands off.

Yeah. So so right. They knew what's happening.

They observed the board. Yeah.

That was a Yeah.

And then the last thing is, you know, the prevention stuff, I think, is really working. Like, I noticed more and more stores have a sign up front that says we're a cashless business, I mean, on purpose, obviously, to to prevent that kind of that kind of crime. And then and then, yeah, placement where everything is. Oh, and then the one other thing was I'm seeing more and more like, you know, you go to the flea market, someone will have a table with, like, five ties and four Pantene bottles. I assume those have been a lot of them too if we've ever done any kind of lick it. I mean, I guess there would be no way to prove that they

That's the

hard part.

Right. You know, you have to you have to know. Search warrant opened. Get representatives from Target. Actual store employees who knew how to find tags that belong to their their chains, and, you know, they they had for that purpose. Right? And they would say, you know, that's all our Yeah. A lot of times, you get a space like that,

you know,

gonna be so unsure. Yeah. So I don't know from where somewhere.

Well, bottom line is I'm really glad it hits down, and I hope that trend continues. I even the guy at Russ. I go to Russ a lot. The security guy there told me. He said, yeah. We've seen a real reduction in in in that to this store. So, yeah, something's working. So thank you. Thanks for that report. And I think the last thing we have is agenda building. I've oops. Yeah. Let's look the agenda. Is there anything you would like to add to the agenda? I'll just move our. Yeah. Thank you. Put it somewhere in March. We'll do Yeah. Great. And just I mean, I would just appreciate a continued update on egregious. And then it sounds like we sparked also just getting sort of in your report. It'd be great.

But then maybe also hearing what happens with the airport or grants or something to get that in trouble replaced.

If we got it to the the Right. Yeah. I mean, it would be great if we had a good team. I mean, I like to take her going on and make sure we can keep our link in place. And I know we have some hard decisions to make, so nothing is a guarantee. I know that, But it would be great to know that we're still working that way because July will come really quick when you have employees that need that obviously have skills that might be needed elsewhere. Great. That's it. So I think that that is I think we are moving to adjournment. Right? Yes. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thanks.