Common Council - Regular Meeting

started because we have a lot of absolutely wonderful presentations to get through tonight. Okay. So, the other thing I want to say to my colleagues is this room is super hard to chair from because I don't have the display. So, you need to like actually raise your hand. And if I don't see you, you might have to like give me a little extra wave and then I'm just going to like keep track of the order that people raise their hands and try to intersperse it with the folks online because we have about half the crew online. So, I'm going to do my best and um if I don't if I I'm going to give you a nod that yes, I see your hand. If I don't give you that nod, then you may need to like give give me another extra wave. Okay. Thank you all for being here for this council discussion on violence prevention. I believe public health Madison Dane County is our first presenter. Is that correct?

That is correct.

All right, take it away. And we have technical problems in the room. Please stay tuned. All right. Can you hear me all okay and hear me online?

Yes.

Excellent. Okay. Well, hi everyone. Thank you for having me and for the opportunity to be here today. Uh my name is Ariel Smith. I am the director of community initiatives with public health Madison Dayne County and I have the pleasure of that work of the violence prevention unit work being in my division. Um our role as public health is prevention intervention and systems coordination and that is work that happens ideally before violence escalates um as well as supporting people after violence has occurred in order to break the cycle of violence in the community. So for today um I wanted to talk a little bit about the collaborative approach that public health takes to violence prevention. So I'm going to walk us through and explain the role of public health in violence prevention. I'm going to highlight some of our cross agency and crossjurisdictional collaborations. I'm going to share some of our key successes and challenges. I'm going to share some of our accomplishments that we have achieved. And I'm also going to hopefully reinforce that um from our standpoint, public safety requires a collaborative approach um with multiple departments and also partners at the table. Um and I'll talk a little bit about how we have done that and how we're hoping to expand on that in the future. There all right so why is public health at the table? Um quintessentially violence is a public health issue. It is predictable. It is preventable. It is deeply tied to trauma, mental health, um other social contextual indicators like housing instability, um sometimes substance use, sometimes food insecurity. There's a lot that goes into why somebody may be experiencing and or participating in

violence. Um violence affects the health and safety of our community. um and also just community well-being over time. And so that is a quintessential role of the public health department to protect the health, safety, and well-being of our residents, which is why violence squarely falls within our purview. As a public health department, we work upstream um ideally again before people enter um incarceral systems before they have to engage with enforcement um and or emergency response type systems. But often times, especially in our work as a violence prevention unit, we are finding ourselves um not only supporting and helping individuals from a prevention standpoint, but a lot of times from an intervention standpoint. And so that is where people unfortunately have found themselves within the cycle of violence at many different phases. Um and this is due to violence being cyclical. Public Health Madison Dne County uh we are a unique entity. I feel like anytime I am in front of you all I have to take the opportunity to say that uh we are a dual entity with the county. So we are both equally shared by the city and the county. Um and so that does from a structure perspective give us a unique position and perspective for us to uh bridge both city departments, county departments, county systems, city systems and community partners to address not only this issue but other public health issues. Um and again gives us a unique opportunity to serve both city of Madison and Dne County at large residents. So, it takes a village. Um, we don't do this work alone. We never pretend to do this work alone. We could not do this work alone. Um, public safety in its

entirety works best when all of our roles are complimentary. Um, and so we work very diligent diligently with our law enforcement partners, specifically u Madison Police Department in the city. Um, we work with building inspection, we work with city attorney's office, we work with Madison Fire, um, just to name a few of the city departments. Um, we work with community development division. Um, I would say in the past year and a half, uh, there is rarely a city department that probably has not heard from at least one of our team members. Um, and that's just because the work of violence prevention is so broad and has so many intersections and abilities for collaboration and intentional connection. Um, so I do want to walk through just some of the more finite examples of our city collaboration. I am so sorry. I think that's my phone. Sorry. Thanks. The work never is done. Um, so some examples of our city level collaboration. Some um, I think one of the examples I want to touch on is the work that we have done with building inspection and the city attorney's office specifically with city attorney Zilvie. Um, that work has been mostly conducted in our placebased SP space work. Um, so our violence prevention intervention team work in a lot of our multi-unit housing complexes, for example, and work with residents to identify chronic issues that may be drivers of violence. Um, we do this in collaboration with an abundance of community partners and work to address those conditions in order to improve um overall well-being and satisfaction in order to reduce rates of violence. And so our team along with partners have been boots on the ground providing programming and services, providing opportunities for residents to give

feedback um that can help strengthen or address prevention or action plans that are needed. Often times those are shared with building inspection and or city attorney's office, especially if this becomes something that would fall into a chronic nuisance situation or needs nuisance abatement support. Um, and so our team, our team, building inspection, Madison Police Department, and again, a whole host of other community partners come together regularly to work to address the environmental conditions that continue um to contribute to violence and instability in those spaces. Um, again, this work often pairs with enforcement tools. Um, so I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that our collaboration with law enforcement partners on that is very important. Um, we never want to be stepping on each other's toes and we always want to be working in support of each other to have the best outcomes for the most amount of people as possible. Um, and it works very well to couple those when needed enforcement strategies also with uh furthering prevention strategies so that we aren't just continuing the patterns of enforcement and accountability without trying to intervene with long-term strategies and solutions. Um we also intentionally align violence prevention with harm reduction and housing stability efforts. Um this is actively done with a whole host of partners um including our substance use prevention team at public health as well as with um community development division um within the city. And so with them we work on neighborhood based strategies. We ensure that our funding is aligned both with funding opportunities that we are putting out into the community, ensuring we're not being redundant, but always complimentary um as well as ensuring that the strategies we're using for community investment are part of a bigger comprehensive plan. Um most times we really try to tie that back to our community-f facing strategic plan, which is the roadmap to reducing violence for

Madison and Dne County. Um these efforts, especially in the past year specifically, have included youth prevention efforts. Um and specifically working with partners in the violence intervention and um crisis service provider space and ensuring that we have those services open and available to individuals who we or other community based partners come across who may need them. We also have strong partnership with parks. Um we've worked very closely together on Parks Alive, which was an initiative started a few years ago that provides um some really positive community engagement during the summertime. Um and we've really appreciated the work that we've been able to do with parks and support their efforts and also participating in those events. So we're looking forward to that this summer and uh getting even bigger and better with that. We're also working with parks on some youth engagement opportunities. Um, we did some work with Goodman Pool. Um, and we're going to continue to do some work with parks and some other community based partners around ensuring that people have access to the pool and that the access is safe and welcoming for all who want to enjoy our pools. Um, and we've been able to do that by enlisting partners like Focused Interruption, um, specifically who worked with us last year on, um, ensuring that when we're seeing those increased adverse, uh, behaviors around violence at the pools, that we have people on the ground, we have engagement opportunities, we have um, we have the time and intention to engage with parks and pool staff with how to best handle these situations from a deescalation standpoint to ensure that everybody stays safe and continues that access. We also have we have a lot of collaborations, so I'm sorry, I will keep going. Um, we also do um a pretty intensive collaboration through the mayor's office um where city departments come together bi-weekly and we talk

about kind of all the different things either new or ongoing around violence prevention. And this coordination was started in order to prevent duplication amongst the departments. Um, and also to ensure that our city dollars are working together um, not siloed, not just in parallel, but really that we're intentionally coming together and ensuring that those dollars are being used in a coordinated way. Um, as well as the staffing efforts and and how we can best leverage the resources that we have. Um, and so I will say during my time in those meetings, it definitely looks a lot different, um, with the collaboration and being able to bring any challenges that we're having as a unit, um, or any new information that MPD is able to provide us that we need to start looking to either prevention or intervention strategies around. It's very helpful to have all of the departments, um, in one space on a regular basis so that we can work through and talk through that. So, I just wanted to give that little shout out. So work beyond the city. So as I mentioned, we are a dual entity. So I have to acknowledge all of the other ways in which we collaborate that um just aren't primarily in the city. Um and I think one of the most important things to understand about our uniqueness is that um while we're different, it's also intentional. And I think we've been able to really um leverage that coordination across the city and the county to come to some better outcomes around the violence prevention work. Um and so it's typical for public health's role to often be to connect efforts that already exist and align them. And so we're definitely pouring in additional effort and investment to do that across the city and county spectrum. Um we're not always successful, but we're going to keep trying. Um, one of the big coordination efforts that we convene uh that involves both city and county partners is the community safety intervention team, also

known as CESID. I know I've talked about that quite a bit in the past um but for me it's a core example of the systems level coordination. And so that group um brings together violence prevention staff, county partners like human services, um other sometimes courts, uh justice involved partners, um community- based organizations and partners, other service providers, and allows for the coordinated safety planning um and support for individuals who either are um actively engaging in violence or who have been victimized by violence. um and kind of everyone in between as we have learned over the years. Um the intention for that group is just to improve the information sharing while being respectful of privacy and legal boundaries but also having that intentional coordination space either when we're talking about individuals who are of concern for us at the community level or of placebased spaces or of um group violence that we're aware of. and making sure that we have a coordinated approach from all of the major systems that um either can or will have contact with those individual individual or individuals to ensure that we're all on the same page about how we're going to best support these people. Um and so that group has done an incredible job and has grown over time um to really ensure that we are successful and are creating diligent action plans to address what we're seeing in terms of violence patterns in our community. Um, as I mentioned, we also work very closely with human services, specifically Dne County Youth Justice, um, to best align with our violence prevention strategies, especially those involving youth. Um, I think we're hoping to really grow that partnership this year um, as we are recognizing that there are we're seeing more instances of youth um, being engaged with violence or violence like behaviors and patterns. and we really want to start to not start

but we really want to get ahead of that and really change the strategies and the ways that we have been approaching that in the past. And so that's going to be a core focus for our team this upcoming year. Um few more here. We also collaborate with the Dayne County Office of Community Justice Reform. Um they play a critical role in advancing community-based restorative and datainformed approaches to safety at the county level. Um and so we're looking forward to growing our partnership with them this year. And then last but certainly not least, um we coordinate and work very closely with um Madison Metropolitan School District around youth focused prevention, early intervention, um and have also worked with them on some different grant opportunities in the past. And so um we recognize that schools are a critical prevention partner. um they're often where we learn the most information about any warning signs or any things that may be coming up in the school that give us any indication um that some early prevention or early intervention efforts could be helpful um to preventing long-term effects. So, uh our systems approach matters. Violence does not exist in a single system and it's not going to take one system to um account for this issue. And so working with all of the partners I just named and hundreds more um is really where our focus is and why we have done such a diligent job of making sure we are communicating and collaborating with as many partners as possible. Um so just a quick reminder of what our violence prevention unit does. Um our core work is focused around community-based uh violence prevention, intervention and outreach. Uh we support conflict mediation. We connect people to comprehensive services and supports. Uh we manage contracts with community- based organizations. And we invest in data evaluation and continuous improvement. Um and so I want to talk a little bit

about the data that we use to inform prevention. Um we couldn't do this without the work and support of uh our law enforcement partners again on the city side, specifically MPD. Um and on the county side, we work with sheriff's department and some other law enforcement partners um in the municipalities because the crime data is very helpful and provides us context. Um it tells us what has already happened and it also allows us to understand maybe patterns that are starting to emerge or that exist. um mental health, substance use trends and other social contextual data um also help us understand how to best address the risk factors through prevention strategies. Um firearm use data helps us understand access to means and associated risk. And so together that's kind of how we form our data picture in public health. And so that colle the collective data helps us understand whether risk and harm is actually being reduced and if it's not then it allows us to go back and rethink some of the strategies that we're using to approach the work. Um I think it's important to mention that prevention outcomes don't always move on the same timelines as crime trends. Um they're often foundational and long-term. Um, so often it's tough when we see crime data uh rising andor falling to be able to actually contribute it to the work that we're doing, but it is important for me to remind everybody um that we are playing the long game, not the short game. So hang in there with us. Um how we measure our work. Uh we have our metrics organized into three categories. um process and program implementation, individual outcomes, and community and systems impact. And so I have some of that data for you today. Um

process and program implementation. Um this all of this information and data is from December of 2024 to present. Uh present being 10 p.m. on Sunday. So that's present. Um so our team conducted 159 outreach interactions. Um we engaged 108 individuals um in our violence prevention unit and through select funded partners. I'll talk about that in a moment. And we completed 38 outreach and priority placebased settings. Um, when I say 108 individuals engaged by VPU and funded partners, um, that is not the total list of how many partners or how many individuals were reached through all of our contracts. That is one contract that we used last year to support a place-based space in the Harmony Apartments. So, that number is included in this 108 because we worked so closely with those partners to ensure that those individuals were getting services through us. So I wanted to note that um our individual outcomes which I am incredibly proud of with our team um again individual outcomes they help us understand whether risk is decreasing and whether the work that we're doing and pouring into individuals is having some relatable measure or outcome. And so um for us in order to look at some stability uh the metric that we used is reduced justice involvement and well-being. And so we had 68% of our clients again from December to present um with no new justice involvement which is huge. Um I wish I had a different baseline to do a comparison but I don't. Um but what I can say is when we started this program most of the individuals that were coming through uh the community safety intervention team were caught up in patterns of recidivism. So to see numbers where 68% of individuals we have engaged in services have no new

justice involvement is huge. Um and that is truly a testament to the team that we have here at public health and how they support those individuals. Um in addition to that a big service that our team provides is connection to critical services for that life stability component because talking to someone about behavior change when they are worried about where their next meal is coming from or where they're going to sleep tonight, that's not how this works. And so our team does a lot of upfront investment in identifying those critical core needs um for an individual before we start talking about the behavior change. And so out of the clients that we served, we were able to connect 72 individuals to housing supports. So that includes either um temporarily relocating someone, getting them connected to a housing service provider, providing those direct services ourselves um of supplementing rent, for example, for somebody who is in our program and continuing service with us or for individuals who have maybe been impacted by a violent crime um to, you know, do repairs on their house, for example, if um they had bullet holes from from an incident. So all of that effort um is contained in these numbers and that was a big lift for our team and so um I think it's also a very big indicator for us budgetarily as to where we need to shift our investments in the future. And last but certainly not least, community and systems impact. Um I'm hoping to have more metrics for you all in the future around this, but um our team has worked really hard to develop our network of partners who are invested in this work. Um and so the Madison and Dne County Violence Prevention Coalition is the gathering of all of the partners who are invested in the violence prevention work um in the city and county. No, that's not an exhaustive list, I'm sure, of everybody who is invested, but that group has grown over time and we hope to see it grow in the

future. And so currently we have 152 violence prevention coalition members. Um which is great. That has grown from I think the 30 that started gosh 10 years ago when this coalition was an idea. Um and in addition to that we have 28 um joint efforts with city county partners and that includes our contractual agreements through uh the grants and RFPs that we release as well as informal partnerships through as I've mentioned a few times today CESIT and other existing groups so that we can come together and ensure coordination and collaboration. Um, so I also would have to acknowledge we've accomplished quite a bit um with our limited resources, but we've been able to build strong cross-dep departmental and community partnerships. Uh, we've expanded outreach and coordination in our priority areas. We've improved alignment between prevention, housing, and harm reduction both internal to our department and also with our partners. Um, and we've also laid a lot of infrastructure and we'll continue to do that this year for datadriven approaches for violence prevention. Um, I since I'm up here also want to take the time um to just reiterate that the council's investment matters. As I've mentioned, we're both a city and a county entity. We could not do this work without investments from both of those structures. Um, right now the city currently supports about 70% of the total violence prevention unit budget. Um, and I just want to say I really really appreciate the recent budget investment to converting our existing three half-time positions to full-time. Um, really and truthfully, they were working full-time already. So, budgetarily, this is helpful because we are no longer paying our overtime. we're just giving our staff access to full-time and full-time benefits, which is really, really important for the investment of this team um and really

matters. And I'll talk a little bit about um some of our pain points that will continue, but we will persevere through. Um like I said, that that increased our staff capacity and both our program stability. Um it's going to give us some more bandwidth to coordinate with our city partners, MPD, MFD, CDD, community partners, everyone. Um, and we're really excited to see that stronger support for um, our team turn into that stronger support for our community partners and residents. So, thank you so much. Um, and so since I'm asked, I'm just going to say it. Some of our ongoing challenges. Um, again, prevention takes time. It takes a lot of time. Uh, but it's always worth the investment. Always. Um, and so, you know, it's going to be a little bit of a a long game that we're playing here because our outcomes will take some time to materialize, but we are already starting to see the return on our investment. Um, our demand does continue to exceed and therefore it's exceeding our resources. Um, and so it is having us rely more on community partners that we aren't also able to maybe fund differently. um even though we're asking them for more and we're doing more, but we are as a team really trying to show our investment to the community by continuing to show up in the ways that we are also asking them to show up. Um our workforce burnout, um these are highintensity roles. These are people who are exposed to trauma on the daily and I and daily doesn't even cut it, the hourly basis. Um and so we're really internally at public health looking for better ways to support staff who are constantly exposed to that high trauma and high stress environment. um so that we can hopefully start to reduce some of the ways in which our workforce b our workforce burnout are showing up for our team. Um and then as always, right, need for sustained multi-year investment. Um that's nothing new to you all. Our budget is annual just like everybody else's is and we go through both the city and the county budget

process. So just naming that, you know, as we continue to see increases for demand, um you know, the financial cost unfortunately will probably go up as well, but we will do the best that we can. And so in closing, um I'm not saying anything that you all don't know. Public safety is a shared commitment. Um and we are just so thankful to all of the partners who share in that responsibility with us. Um again public health's role we bring prevention coordination um healing services and hopefully system coordination to the bigger picture. Um as our goal is typically to convene align and sustain the prevention efforts and systems together. Um but we couldn't do that without both our governmental partners and our community- based partners. Um and progress depends on continued collaboration and investment. Um and investment doesn't always mean funding. investment just means time, passion, um, and willingness to do the work. Um, and again, I'm so thankful to have a team that shows up and is willing to do that every day. Um, and yeah, together we support a safer and healthy community. So, that's what I've got.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Taking questions. Yes. But Alder Evers had his hand raised very high first. So he will go first and then Alder Glenn and then Alder Yagare and then I'll have to look at the other screen. Go ahead Alder.

Thanks Ariel for this uh very informative presentation. Lots of great info and thank you also for public health's involvement and good coming up with good solutions for Goodman Pool and for the Park Seedar Apartments that collaborative approach. you made it clear that this is a um kind of not only an inter agency but cross-disciplinary and involving community nonprofits often and in our efforts and I see Anthony Cooper a focus interruption coalition here. Could you speak a little bit more about how to how you discern where the proper role is for your staff visav choosing to engage with a community organization or or multiple organizations in in terms of solving a problem?

Yeah. So, we approach that in a few different ways and I'll talk about maybe financially first and then non-financially second. Um, and so contingent upon the budgets every year, we have the opportunity to run an RFP process where we can award community-based organizations funding for violence prevention work. Um, and our team has evolved this process over the years. I think the first few years since it was ARPA driven, we did make it more of a come one come all system of if you're doing violence prevention work and again during the co times no service was a bad service. We needed all the help we could get uh and had the ability to do so. And so that's how this started with just getting funds out to the community to anybody who was doing that work. That process has evolved for our team to be a little bit more strategic and identifying throughout the year where we're really seeing the pain points. Whether that's geographically, whether that's with a specific age group, like I mentioned, youth is is becoming a lot more of a concern for us now than it was a few years ago. Um whether it's uh more on the prevention spectrum. Knock on wood, I would love to get to a more stabilized place where we're seeing crime rates that are so low that we get to invest in prevention more. Um and so our team really does a diligent job of identifying those priorities and then structuring funding and seeking partnerships who can meet those needs. And so for example, our most recent RFP process was structured around the placebased space work that our team has been doing and recognizing that we need specific programs and services at these locations. And so looking for partners who are willing to kind of pick up and move their operations to a specific location to support these specific individuals. Um, and we've had some great partners who have been willing to engage in that work and I'm really hopeful we can announce them soon, but not today. And so that's just one way in the financial realm that that has evolved

for us. um in the non-financial realm, which I'll be honest, I don't love to talk about because I would love to give all of our partners money every time we ask them to do something. And so, just want to acknowledge the partners like Focus Interruption who have always answered the call even when we can't offer funds. Um I would like to say I don't think we pick the partners, I think our partners pick us. Um and I I really think that's a testament to the work that they do if not necessarily us. And so I've really appreciated the partnership and collaboration that organizations and especially their leaders have been able to give us of saying, "Hey, we can do this thing. Is this helpful to you all in any way?" And I can't think of a time where I've been like, "No, don't do that. That's not helpful to us." It is usually like, "Yes, let's sit down. Let's talk about this. Let's find a place for it." because no, we are just not at a place where we haven't found a service or a program um to not be what is needed for someone at some given time in our community. Um and so I think yeah, we don't really have a way that we pick partners. I do feel like the partners have picked us and that they've come to us and just have been so welcoming and offering of what they feel like they can provide and we've been able to work together to find a specific niche for where uh the gifts that they can provide can be best used.

And you regularly meet with these partners and and and the nonprofit community. Is that correct? And so the these lines of communication are really robust and vibrant.

Yeah, I think they could be more robust. We're really trying to situate that primary line of communication through the violence prevention coalition space. Um, I do think there's ways we could be better about our communication there, especially with the leadership of a lot of our organizations and partners that we work within that space, especially now that there are so many of them. Again, when this started, there were about 10 and then there were 30 and then I blinked and we're at 152 and counting. And so I think there's definitely better opportunity for us to communicate to the community based partners where we're seeing the needs, what is the data showing us, and what the prevention or intervention strategies we're looking to put forth are so that they can come back to us with more informed um offerings of hey, you were saying that this is a problem or this is the strategy you all are looking to pursue. We feel like we fit here. Um and that's the model we're really hoping we get to in the near future.

Well, thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. Okay, Alder Glenn and then Alder Yugare, I will just also add that uh every Thursday in CSIT most community- based programs were in there. Um but road map, where we at with road map? I know there was some data going on with a new road map. Um when will the community get to see the data? Yes, good question. Um, so we are still on track and anticipating for the road map to be released, I would say sometime in Could you just tell us what the road map?

I'm so sorry. Let me back up and tell you what the road map is. Um, the road map to reducing violence is the Madison and Dne County community-based strategic plan for violence in our community. So, violence prevention, intervention, crisis services, upstream opportunities, all of it gets combined with data and information and feedback directly from community members as well as our service partners as well as city and county department agencies. Um, and it gets rolled into what it becomes like the comprehensive plan. Um, and so it's our intention to release an updated version of the plan every 5 years. Um, and as fast as I can't believe it's come, um, we are at our five-year mark. And so our team has been working diligently in the past year, actually it started way before that, but mostly in the past year, um, to collect, compile this data, updated data and information from the community, from our partners, from our data sources um, into an updated strategic plan. And so we are um anticipating that that will be released in April of this year is our timeline, our anticipated timeline. Uh barring any knock on wood delays or public health emergencies.

All right, Alder Yugare and then Alder Field.

Thank you, President Ver Ariel. Great presentation. Um I just wanted to ask you to expand a little bit. uh you had mentioned early in the presentation that one of the uh city partners that you work with is building inspection. Um, last year a very wise person, I'm not going to mention that person's name because I don't want that person to get an inflated ego, but she usually sits on my right side in council meetings, mentioned to me that um management performance uh is in apartment buildings and other projects uh or or poor execution is often a predictor of violence. So, I assume that's part of the connection to building inspection. But if you could just elaborate a little bit, I'm sure you could go on for quite a while, but if you just

Yes, more insight. Thank you.

I could and I'll try to keep my left-hand comments at bay. Um, yes. Uh, we have had to and have and have welcomed our partnership with building inspection for all the reasons you just mentioned. Um, we started entering place-based work and we're realizing a lot of the predictors and indicators around why we were starting to see violence patterns in the place-based spaces often were coupled with seeing properties that were being mismanaged, residents who were not being listened to or supported. Um, buildings just kind of in dishment. We've had a few properties that also were public health concerns from a mold perspective, from um just a building deterioration perspective. And so um our partnership with building inspection I in a lot of ways feel like has just begun um because the work that our team has been able to do has produced a lot of recommendations that we would like to see um different in future city processes. So, including an opportunity for our team to work with building inspection and other partners ahead of a property being approved, ensuring that they have different um supports in place for if you start to see or have experiences with residents, what are you going to do? And making sure that those properties are held accountable to answering those questions so that we aren't constantly playing cleanup because that's kind of what it feels like right now. Um, and so I know our team is really excited to work with uh building inspection with you as alders about changing some of the city processes so that we can be more proactive in our approach and ensuring that new buildings, especially multi-unit housing, especially lower income housing, especially housing that's being placed in geographic areas that we know might already be prone to this to working on strategies and having plans to address this ahead of us actually needing to use them is the goal. So, we're really looking forward to that. Yeah,

Alderfield, you had your hand up before and then it went down. Do you still have a question? Sure. Um, yeah, I just uh Ariel, you and your team have been essential to my district and your work has been um incredible and very fascinating to watch and learn about myself. Um, so just a quick plug there too. I've learned a lot of lessons including moving at the speed of trust among others. Um, my question was also about the um update to the road map to reducing violence, which Alder Glenn got to before I did. So, I'm actually good. Thank you very much. Thank you, Alder Knox.

Thank you. Um, thank you for the informative presentation. I just had a few questions. you kind of hit a little bit on it in the previous responses, but um you mentioned on one of your slides you talked about the challenges uh that that that we face and what in particular uh which I've heard before is like outcomes take time to materialize. So my question is so in the meantime how do we measure progress or get a sense of are we making progress? Are we treading water or maybe because the need keeps increasing? Can you kind of elaborate on how you before this I I assume the road map will inform us a little more but can you give us a sense of how we're doing in that? Yeah. So, I think for our team, that's why we're really focused on our specific performance measures and what we're seeing from the individuals that we support in terms of what we're going to deem as successful outcomes. Um, and I used air quotes intentionally because I want to be clear about the way in which we provide services. Uh, we aren't the determin people who determine success. um the people we serve tell us what success looks like for them. And so yes, that makes it a little bit more challenging across the board for us to get metrics. And so it's why we decided on the ones that we did. Um so it's why we're looking at um any um um increase in justice participation while they're working with us. It's why we're looking at how many supports were we able to provide to them. Um, I think some of the other indicators or measures we're going to be looking for in the future are um some of our long-term

sustainability. So, after a client um is maybe no longer working with us, are we going to have we're looking to have a mechanism to check in with them to see if that progress was sustained? Um, and so for us as a program, that's going to be the best way for us in the intermediate to really determine if what we're doing is working. Um, but we recognize that's going to be more on an individual level. Um, and that it's not always going to couple or be married with crime statistics or crime reduction patterns necessarily.

Okay. So, when you say the clients you work with, then I assume you're talking about direct services that you're providing to what? Either individuals or or groups of individuals. But for the general residents who you indirectly serve, you know, how do they get a sense of Yeah. Uh we got boots on the ground and we should be feeling better about addressing some of these um u issues because generally we probably find out about things when we have incidents and you know the newspaper stuff. How do we get that general feeling that we have all hands on deck so to speak? Can you give me a sense of that?

I think that's a good question. I think us being more upfront about the collaborative relationships that we have across both the city and the county is just one way to demonstrate to the public that this is an issue all of us are working on and taking seriously. Um, not to kind of pitch it to my friends at MPD, but to be very realistic, and this is a conversation we have all the time, people really do heavily rely on the crime data. They want to know and they feel their feelings or perceptions and and real feelings of safety are often directly tied to if we're saying crime is up or down. Um, and that's not necessarily public health's bread and butter. And so we look for other ways to invest in the community. But I just needed to acknowledge that's not always going to then be the driver of people feeling like we're investing. So I think a great example is our team is working on some public service announcements specifically around um firearm safety with safe storage and safe handling. We saw quite the increase of accidental discharges last year that resulted in a lot of harm. Um, and so one of the things, like I said, our team is working on is trying to inform people who are firearm owners how to have them, how to have them safely, and also how to keep themselves and others safe by making sure you've got the safety on, making sure you know where your gun is, making sure you have it locked up, um, in a way that it should be locked up based on your own personal circumstances. Um, and so while that's a lot of, like I said, the work that our team does, we're not naive and we know that if we're doing all that work and crime happens to go up, that that is still going to impact people's feelings of safety. Um, so I think we're learning, we're learning how to best support individuals in our community um, by feeling safe. But I do think our biggest step in the right direction has been letting people know that there are services and programming available both through us, both through the city and the county and a lot of our community- based organizations. And so

making sure we're getting um the word out there that there is support um for anything that they may be facing or anything they want to talk about related to their feelings of safety. And I really was happy to hear you talk briefly where you're talking about building management or building managers suggesting that you're getting into the mold of like preapproval or how do we get in the front of some of these uh even properties that haven't even uh been completed yet. Uh I think about you know a lot of our community we talk we're anticipating uh Park Badger and so we just want to make sure that when you have uh a lot of people who require a lot of services that we're already anticipating that and making suggestions and so uh I really do appreciate you um saying that you recognize that we have to be on the front end of that and not chase in detail, so to speak. So, thank you for that.

Yes. Thank you. Are you complete, Alder Knox? I am. Hold on. Alder Madison, Alder Figuro Cole is ahead of you and then and then you're next. Alder Figuro Cole.

Thank you. Um Ariel, thank you so much for the presentation. um very um a lot of information there and again the theme collaboration which is something that is so key around across all the agencies in the city. So I think this is a I'm I'm very pleased to see how we have expanded on that um on that area and I am so I am confident that that will continue to to expand and and silos will eventually be fully eliminated. So, as elders, how can we if we have um organizations that perhaps are not, you know, like sometimes we run into people that are working on specific things and they're not so much, you know, so well known around the city or they're not getting funding from the city or whatever. Um what is the best way for us to um to get them to connect um into the into the road map um group? How can we help you, you know, reach out to those smaller um organizations?

Yeah, great question. Um, a few ways. Um, I'm going to use like the standard, we have an email address, uh, violence at publicalthmadison.com. Um, that would be a great way. Um, the coalition meetings happen once a quarter. Um, I highly recommend anybody who's even just maybe curious about the work, um, to attend those if they can. And if they can't, um, our team does a like coalition newsletter that anybody can sign up for. You don't have to attend the meetings to be on the coalition newsletter. Um, that does both a recap of the coalition meetings um, and also post any additional information or opportunities around violence prevention that may be coming up, either funding or otherwise. Um, and as always, my phone number is in my signature, so you can always just also have people call me. Um, we want we want to know about the new partners. We want to know about existing partners. We want to know about anybody who is interested or invested in this work because as I mentioned, we cannot have enough partners to help us do this.

Yep. Thank you. I just wanted to plug that in for people that are interested. They can connect, you know, via mail or direct with you. That's great. Yeah. Thank you again. Of course, Alder Madison, I just really want to say thank you for the presentation. I don't think the mic's on. You know, you all can hear me, just not online. Okay. But I just want I do want to say whenever I learn something like I'm excited. So, I didn't know about the building inspection connection. And when I heard it, my first thought was I was reading an article today and it talked about there only being one inspector for like um when folks got the section 8 voucher.

So I won't spend a lot of time. I got a lot of questions now about the building inspection and inspectors cuz you know when people are going through trauma and they may have a section 8 voucher, it's taking too long to get approved. So I'm excited to hear this piece of the partnership. But I appreciate your patience. I appreciate your um presentations tonight and I will be emailing you too to set up something. Well, thank you. Sounds good. Okay, I'm going to take the chair's prerogative now. Um you mentioned CESIP and I'm wondering if you could tell us what that acronym means and what it is and why we should care about it.

Yep. So CESIT is community safety intervention team. Um, and oh boy, that could be a whole presentation in and of itself, but um, it's a group uh that has been existence, if my count is correct, almost 10 years. I'm looking at 12.

Oh my god. All right. Well, we're not going to put my age in there, but okay. Yeah, sure. 12 years. Um, that's been in existence for quite some time. And it's a group of organizations at this point, although it started out as a lot of individuals coming together to originally talk about kind of how we wanted to address violence in our community. And what it has morphed into today is a strategic coordination of partners who come together to discuss specific individuals, um, specific geographic locations, specific groups of individuals who might be causing violence. I think I've covered the main three. um and essentially come up with a coordinated strategy slaction plan for how to address it. Um and so that group um is by I say it's by invite only just because we have to hold confidentiality, but any organization that's come to us and has said, "Hey, we feel like we can offer this program as service, we've we've brought to the table. Um especially with um our youth, which is again we've started to see more challenges with. Um, and so that group meets every week on Thursdays at noon. Um, and they come together. They talk about new incidences. We get information from Madison Police Department and some of our other law enforcement partners about any incidents that have occurred in the past week. Anything or tensions that may be rising, um, any contacts, casual contacts that they've maybe had that maybe don't rise to enforcement, but are caused for concern that we can start early intervention on. We work with our human services partners. Um, if there's somebody that's already in like a youth justice case load, for example, we work with that social worker to create those coordinated action plans to see if there's additional support needed from any other agencies or um community- based organizations for support for that individual or family. Um, if they're not already um involved in or connected to a service, um, then there's a a few different flows that we follow. Um, and

just to give an example, if there's someone who um was maybe impacted by um gun violence and presented at a hospital system, for example, focused interruption uh usually takes the lead um on supporting that individual and they come back to us as a group and then talk about if they need any additional support from any other groups in the room to support that individual or family. Um if they don't hit the hospital system, there's a whole different flowchart that happens. Uh but often our team then gets involved and we become direct contacts. Um and then again vice versa, we reach out and say, "Hey, this is what we're planning for for this individual. These are their identified needs. We maybe need help or support in this arena. Does this fit within anybody's scope or purview?" Um, so it's really just a way for us to come together and coordinate actions, efforts, and services around individuals or families um that are experiencing violence and or um engaging in violent practices or affected by violence is usually the colloquial term we use.

Okay, I will ask you only one additional question. Um, what gaps do you see in the continuum of violence prevention and intervention services in the city? What isn't being addressed and needs to be? Oh boy. Um, I mean, I think yes, I know I've mentioned this a few times, but we are really concerned about youth. There are a lot of compounding factors as to why we're starting to see youth violence crop up the way it is. And I'd be remissed if I didn't me, we can't then pull one thread without acknowledging the other thread. And then you start with all the threads and before you know it, you've got everybody in a web. Um, and so what we're I feel like our biggest gap is as many people as we have at the table, it's still not enough. Um, and what we're starting to see is we really need more kind of time and attention, infrastructure, and funding to address untangling that web of everyone who is now involved in this system that is generating violence or often than just or if not generating it, being perpetually victimized by it. All right, thank you. If there are no other questions, Ariel gets out of the hot seat and we move on to our next presenter.

Thank you. Okay. Okay. Here's you. Let's see if I can get rid of now. Let me see.

Yes. Does it look good now? Okay. All right. Yeah, it should be.

Thank you. I've been coming to a lot of common council meetings and other committee meetings and I don't think police has ever gone second. So, we were pretty excited walking over here, but I don't know that I ever want to follow Ariel again. Lower your expectations about bring the expectations down to a reasonable level and then you'll be overwhelmed, I'm sure. But uh we we kept this uh fairly high level. Uh Ariel did steal a little bit of thunder towards the end, but that's that's okay. It'll hopefully cut back on questions and save some time. Uh but to her point about crime uh data and um and uh data analysis, we are going to include some relevant uh updates from the end of last year. Uh it'll be the same data that you see in my fourth quarter report to all of you. So, consent agenda. You can ask me questions again later at a future council meeting or or not, but uh it'll be the same date. I'm just letting you know. Uh but I'm joined tonight by Assistant Chief Angela Kamaskki. Um she oversees all things investigations uh for the MPD. Um so any resources that uh are assigned strictly to investigate follow-ups, so like detectives, forensic investigators, uh that falls in her purview in addition to crime analysts and data analysis. Um, so if you ever need data or any crime uh data, you can start uh with assistant chief Kamasi with those requests. Um, okay. So, just jumping in for a review. I just wanted to provide a very quick uh review for you for basically what has become our business model or our data informed model when it comes to crime prevention. Um, and that's what we call stratified policing. Um and uh it is essentially um a model that merges crime prevention uh and crime reduction

efforts um evidence-based uh policing practices and accountability um into one um model that we have uh adopted over the last couple of years. And so what it involves is that I set focal crimes or the chief sets focal crimes from year to year um and uh associated reduction goals. And for for us over uh this year again, but last year as well, um those focal crimes are homicides, subjects struck by gunfire, burglaries, stolen autos, and theft from autos. Um and last year there was a 5% reduction goal, uh which was achieved. And again, this year we will look at a 5% reduction goal. And so it also involves what we call priority areas, um which you've probably heard about. Uh all of you, uh have a priority area currently in your police district. Um problem locations which uh an area obviously think more broadly big geographic uh area. Problem location can be a specific uh specific um block or specific building. Um repeat calls for service and then uh pattern crimes or crime patterns um which we uh also refer to then as micro time hotspots. And so when one of those pops up, uh what that means to the police captain of your district is that four of these focal crimes that I just mentioned uh before have occurred within 14 days within a quarter mile um of one another. And uh those are the burglaries, stolen autos, and theft from autos. Um uh so what uh what are captains doing or what are your districts doing when it comes to prevention strategies? I mean, the first I think starts with uh our partnership um largely with VPU. Um I'm I'm pretty proud of where we come. I think there's been a lot of improvements over the last year um both with communication and information sharing um and uh you know as Ariel mentioned we're meeting with them routinely and have

started involving them as of the beginning of last year um in our monthly accountability meetings where they actively participate um provide feedback to district command staff um they're able to ask questions and then we look for any opportunities uh you know to to merge efforts. Um, it can involve at the at the frontline level foot patrols or high visibility patrols, what we call culper patrols, which is evidence-based practice, which mainly means we uh infuse resources or uniform patrol officers at random times um intermittently in our problem um uh locations or our uh priority areas. Um and they rotate every two hours uh every 10 to 15 minutes. Um it seems pretty simple but the the research has shown that it actually does um uh reduce um incidents of of focal crimes and calls for service. Um uh our pop problem or problem orientated policing projects. Those are for uh particularly problem locations. So more in depth. It's not a 10 to 15 minute infusion every two hours. It's it's uh district command staff coming together with perhaps uh partners like VPU or other resources in the community um to try to take a more uh informed problem approach to it. And it's typically a longer term project. It involves uh focused community outreach efforts and then things um like you know leafleting or or or issuing flyers out in a neighborhood if there are burglaries or stolen autos or things like that that may have occurred or a micro hotspot micro time hotspot that may have emerged. So these are just a few examples uh but just to give you ideas these are the types of strategies that we talk about um in those accountability meetings. Um so again what does accountability look like? Uh it means tracking um or assessing activity using our our data uh that we have um in front of us the the calls that we're responding to the crimes that

we're investigating um and assessing whether our efforts are are having any positive gains or making any impacts. Um it's intentionally directing resources obviously based on that data. Um using those deliberate strategies for the areas and and discussing them as a team. So we hear about what other captains have tried, what they're doing um and what the resources may be um trying to achieve and then provide feedback, input um and again that input that we've been now receiving through VPU has been very valuable as well. Uh so it's at every level of the organization. Um, obviously the chief is the one setting the focal crimes. Uh, so I'm included in this mix, but um, you know, from the front line officer to the detectives that are doing the investigative follow-up uh, and Angie's side of the house, um, the supervisor level at sergeant, lieutenant, captain, um, all have, uh, a role in in this particular model. Um, the meeting structure is weekly, bi-weekly, and then monthly. Um, and so as we get to the monthly meeting, that's the larger meeting where all districts are are involved. Uh we bring resources in from from all sides of the city. Uh weekly and bi-weekly um are held both in district and then an operations level with our investigations team and our operations team. And if you remember that was assistant chief Matt Thai who came uh a few meetings ago with me to to talk about this exact topic. And again public health has been attending those meetings on a monthly basis. And we started to have conversations about including other uh partners. Maybe not every month because I don't know that uh that would be needed, but um if we have a problem location, for example, that might have a building inspection need um we want to start bringing in um other resources or other partners like that uh to include them in the discussions and and provide um you know that direct input on on strategy ideas. Uh so to give you some uh rundowns of this is uh 2025 year-end data compared to the three-year average. Now uh if you

remember in the third quarter report I did um adjust how I'm presenting this data to you. So uh that went through on the consent agenda. So if you know we didn't have an opportunity to have for you to ask questions or provide feedback. If you don't like this again this is your report uh please tell me and we will change it back. Uh but as your new chief I thought quarter to quarter was frankly a lousy way to look at data. Uh, and so what we're trying to do is take year-to-ate time periods and compare that to a three-year year-to-ate average so you get a more broad look as to what's been happening uh citywide. And so, you know, fortunately, we're having this meeting at the uh beginning of the year. We have a full year of data to share with you. So, at the end of of last year um for shots fired, we had 117 compared to that three-year average I just described. Um, and there was a 24% decrease, which is a great sign. Uh I included heroin and fentanyl overdoses because that's that's part of your uh quarterly update from me, but um that is also trending in a good a good manner. So 27% decrease uh compared to the three-year average at the end of last year. Um robberies, now just a reminder, excuse me, I talk with my hands sometimes. Uh those involve robberies with weapons or robbery by physical force. So, you know, if I walk up uh to you, Alder and grab your wallet out of your pocket forcefully, but I don't present a weapon, that's still a robbery. Um it's uh they're they're all included in here. Um so, both armed and use of uh use of physical force robberies, it's a 14% or roughly 14.5% decrease compared to that three-year average. Um burglaries, that's uh commercial and residential burglaries combined, 42% decrease uh at the end of last year. Uh, and then stolen autos, uh, a 50% decrease of stolen autos, uh, in the

three compared to the three-year average. And thefts from autos, so taking things out of cars, not actually taking the car. That's a 19% decrease compared to the three-year average. So, these are all really, I think, fantastic uh, fantastic numbers. I know a lot goes into decreases and you know there's a lot of folks that'll argue uh you know certain points but I really feel like these numbers um reflect a lot of the partnerships and a lot of prevention work uh that we've been doing here locally. So um I think everyone listening, all our community members have played a role in this. Uh all our partners have played a role in this. Um and it's it's certainly not just the police department leading this. This is a this is a team effort. So, we should all be happy with uh what we're seeing at the end of last year. Um so, now I'm going to turn it over to Assistant Chief Kamasi to talk about our investigative model.

Thank you. Um as John said, I'm Angie Kamaskki and one of the things that it's under my umbrella is um our investigative services. And so, in um 2025, we actually moved to a new unit-based model um in the um investigative services department. So with our detectives, we had slowly been kind of getting to this model um where we started out uh with those ones that I have highlighted. Um our first kind of unit based was our violent crimes unit um that we started several years ago. Um and then went down and the second unit that we created was the special victims unit and then we created a a burglary unit. So we had kind of had like a hybrid model up until last year where we had these specialty units. Violent crime obviously our homicides are uh very violent crime special victims unit is uh for uh child victims and then our property crimes unit which is which was originally called the burglary crimes unit is now all burglaries and property crimes. So, we started out with these and then we also had detectives that were in district and they would be assigned by district and they would be assigned cases um sometimes based a little bit on a specialty, maybe a financial specialty um or something like that in the district, but a lot of times they were also just general assignments. So, they were just getting uh an assortment of cases in the district. So, um over 2024 we had um led by Captain Dan Neil who at the time was in investigative services. He's now the captain of the west district. Um led a study to see about moving to a new model um with a a work group and looking at um different um agencies that were comparable um in different ways to us. We came up with trying wanting to try um an all uh unit model. And so that's what we moved to and that we've been on for the past year. Um as you can see how it also breaks down um the number of

detectives is the number there for each unit. But then there is a sensitive crimes west and a sensitive crimes east. So they cover by geography um west of the square and east of the square. And that would be uh the units that would cover uh like domestic related incidents uh sexual assault and those types of crimes. Persons crimes um is in the north district and covers things that uh the violent crimes unit doesn't. Um, so violent crimes, uh, a lot will have all of the gun the gun crimes, um, and some of the much more serious like, uh, um, attempted homicides or homicides, but then there's other things like robberies and things like that that the person's crimes unit would be covering. Uh, we have a dedicated computer and financial crimes that we uh, just started this year. As I mentioned before, we kind of had a little bit of a hodge podge throughout districts um with some of those, but those were cases that we really felt like um that we needed to have more of a unit where we were giving some people training and things like that um where they could work together and with seeing kind of the uptick in all of those uh types of cases um that that was important. uh the day county narcotics task force that has um always been and that is where we have some detectives assigned as well along with uh the county um UW is part of that task force and then we have some participating agencies that are also part of that on a rotating basis. So they will be investigating all overdose deaths um is where where they're at. Uh we have one detective assigned to the joint ter terrorism task force and that is a multi- agency state local and federal collaboration to um investigate terrorist crimes and prevention of that. Um and then we have uh four detectives who are um don't do case assignment but they are the court intake unit. So they are that behind the scenes that get everything ready to go um over to prosecution and to the courts. So, one of the really big

reasons that we wanted to try this model um was that we felt that it could develop efficiency for our teams. Um we could have definitely have that team approach um and have a collaboration um on cases that we could have training to develop expertise throughout the units um and give people that training. and for our ultimate goal to be to improve victim services and improve services to the community with this model. Um so we are going into going to be evaluating this um this year looking at our data from last year um and having that accomplished by uh third quarter of this year to see if this switching over um is something that is going to continue to work for us. And I think one of the big metrics that's the hardest to measure and that uh we're trying to do some creative thinking on is that impact to victims and the community. Um have has it made a substantial um impact and improvement to the way right that people are are having these cases. So that is um how that is structured. Um and uh we've been really excited to have that um with that structure for this last year. Um I think this slide we can largely skip over and because I think Ariel so we don't have to do a lot of repeats but as we talked about a ve very valuable partner and this is just a few ways um that I that I just jotted down out of many um that we uh collaborate the community safety intervention team the sees that Ariel talked about our detective lieutenant from our violent crimes unit attends that and sits on that for MPD. um just collaboration at the district level with our core officers, our neighborhood officers, especially in some of those place-based um uh collaboration for some atrisisk communities. Um things like that, definitely the data sharing um not only the crime data, but one of the meetings we just had earlier today in fact was

some data sharing for summer youth planning. So, uh, things like that. And then we are currently awaiting a decision on a CVIP grant through DOJ that would fund uh, PD the police department and VPU um, for some crime violence prevention within the community. So, just a few things to highlight and uh, Ariel did a a much better thorough job of explaining those. Um, and then just back to um, some of our team city partnerships. Um, as far as violence prevention, I'll just take one of these out of order and I'll turn it back over to the chief. Um, just because traffic engineering, uh, the MPD partnership with them, traffic is also under my purview. Um, and we've had a great collaborative relationship, um, with traffic engineering through our test team. So, our traffic enforcement safety team, which is made up of five officers and a sergeant. um they have worked closely um with traffic engineering on the vision zero campaign um on collaboration and information sharing. It's has been great when they're um if uh community members are saying that they're seeing problems in let's say signage or something like that where um our officers are kind of out there and can see oh yeah I can see how that really may may be a slight problem or the public just isn't getting you know where we where we want them to turn or the something simple like that. that's a collaboration that we can do and say um you know we're out there, we're seeing it and try to make the road safer. Um things like the campaigns 20 is plenty um and areas with high traffic uh crashes and things like that um that we do a lot of collaboration um where we are primarily test is primarily enforcement but they also do have a heavy educational component along um with that enforcement as well. And so that's a partnership that we uh very much value. And I'll turn it back over to the chief to talk about the other few on this slide.

Okay. Thank you. Uh just to to go back a few slides to talk about the priority areas and and problem locations. Again, I forgot to mention, so the last couple weeks now, all of your district captains have been meeting with crime analysts uh within the police department and reviewing uh previous boundaries. And obviously we I just talked about some significant declines in some of our uh tracked crimes. Um and so we're revisiting all of those uh uh priority areas and problem locations to make certain that the data still supports that they continue to exist because we don't obviously uh in in uh we don't want to not use the data effectively when it comes to identifying these areas. um and acknowledge that perhaps we don't need to keep uh being proactive in certain areas of the city anymore um because we're seeing such good results. Um we don't want uh good intentions to obviously translate um into overp policing frankly uh in certain areas of our community. So, uh, please, if you haven't yet, talk with your district captains and ask them, um, about these locations and about these areas, um, because they are shifting. And I I know one district in particular that will not have a priority area next year. Um, so that's that's a good thing. I think that means a lot of our collaborations and our efforts are are working. So um so just a quick talk about some other and Chris I won't steal any of your thunder but uh you know a lot of people often ask me about our relationship with CARES and it is a very strong uh collaborative relationship and if you haven't listened to you know MPD channel one in the mornings uh or channel 3 in the afternoons uh our cops are asking for cares all the time. Um it is a very functional healthy relationship especially at the front line. Um and I think uh you know a lot of the hiccups

perhaps that happened a few years ago that people were anticipating just haven't happened. So it's been um it's been a very good collaboration and especially with our mental health unit. I think they work very well together um as they work to try to tailor response plans for specific individuals who are suffering from mental illness in the community. um and really on both sides uh tailor a best response uh for people who are are very uh much in high needs at times. Um and you know both CARES and us continue to work with Journey Mental Health. We still have embedded crisis workers over at the MPD and our MHU continues to be um a uh national learning site uh by the council state governments and and that's in addition to CARES and so I feel like we really have established almost a Cadillac model here in Madison and Dane County. Um uh obviously we're working with parks frequently and I don't see Lisa here but she's I've been told perhaps online. great relationship with parks and and Eric and his staff. Um, you know, one of the uh locations I know Alder Knox is on has been the Pen Park region. Um, and I know that Captain Xanders on the south side has had some direct um collaboration with our our parks department um specifically around trying to bring in uh positive events um and positive uh gatherings into that area. Um, Angie talked about traffic engineering, so I won't say any more about that. But, uh, uh, and I know a lot of you are familiar with our work with the city attorney's office. Um, when we have, um, certain properties that, uh, perhaps need to be considered for nuisance abayment or or whatever the issue may be. Um, building inspection I mentioned earlier. Um, and then Metro, let's not forget, uh, is a is a, you know, valuable partner when it comes to violence prevention as well. Um and we've been coordinating around um a lot of the new stops, uh a lot of the new routes and just making sure that uh

we're you know holding safety at at all those locations um as well. So that's what we had tonight. Uh let us know if you have any questions, please. Alder Glenn, this for Angie. What? This for Angie. No, I think it's for

I'm not letting you off that easy. Um, it can be for either actually. Can you talk a little bit about calls for service and how they can be an indicator but they can't be the beginning or the end of a conversation when we talk about them. They can be used as a indicator of what can be happening. But like for instance, when I worked over by Harmony and News puts out there's 220 calls for service and you're like there was four. So the difference between and how they're all kind of bunched together. Can you explain to some of the elders?

No, I think you know incident or calls for service data is it's important but it doesn't tell the whole true story of what actually is occurring in a specific area. So that's why we often try to steer a lot of you towards thinking about crime data because that that is actually um a better story of what has occurred. Um you know uh for example a noise disturbance call for service could actually be a homicide and that actually happened in our career where you know officers were called to a noise disturbance and it turned into that. Um, and so, uh, incident data is often more of a quick resource for us to take a glimpse as to what's happening in a location or an area. Um, and sometimes it, you know, um, it takes a little while for us to get to the crime data until things are, you know, examined and investigated and then, uh, changed to an actual crime. Now, not all incidents turn into crimes. you know, sometimes uh a neighbor trouble is just that and it doesn't ever evolve to an actual crime. Um and so uh we have to be cautious when we use incident data because it doesn't necessarily mean an area is spinning out of control or crime is rampant. It could mean that you have two neighbors that just for whatever reason can't get along and they're constantly calling the police department to try to solve it. Uh and we may respond there 100 times and never actually investigate a crime necessarily. It should just be that quality of life issue. So

because calls for service also are proactive, right? And you want they're often proactive. You want people to feel comfortable to call and just so just because I mean they're all grouped. Correct. That is very correct. Yes. Yes. Very correct. Now uh back to my problem area or I'm sorry problem location and priority area discussion. we pull out the proactive call types so that we're not just perpetuating our existence in in certain areas of the city. But that's a great point. Thank you for saying that.

Yeah. No, I think it's important because working alongside you, you all do do that. So, it is all of the numbers though is what I um when with with uh the data going down and as we're looking at it does and you're talking I heard you say something about changing maybe next year with how things was that for like those department areas. Oh, this year. This year. Okay. And that was the part you were reading about uh deputy chief the the different areas of the side of town, right? We're every district perhaps is are they're going to see geographic changes as to where we're directing our resources through this through stratified policing. Okay.

Y thank you. Um great that's the conversation I'm encouraging to have like with Captain Gary. Yeah. If you haven't had it already because I think his uh boundaries are changing as well. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Great presentation and yeah great numbers. Thank y.

Okay. Alder Pritchette and then Alder Figuro Cole. Now quick question you know that I have and it relates specifically to a couple of the slides that you showed whereby there were decreases let's say for example in shots fired decreases in autothefts uh decreases in uh I think I think there was a slide on robberies you can you can you specify or are there specific interventions that were employed that would account for those numbers especially when you look at the end of the year and you look at the beginning of the year or whatever two cycles you are uh addressing what are there interventions that you say if we do this this is what's going to happen

well I I wish there was one intervention that would work for everything but I think you know the most important uh aspect of what What I think has been working well is that we're we're using uh real- time data to actually direct our our resources um into the areas that are actually having these crimes emerge. Um, and you know, when they emerge outside of specific areas that have been identified or specific locations, um, like I said, if we get four within that, uh, 14-day time period, um, the expectation from the district is they're responding immediately to that area and they're they're taking a look at what are the crime types that have occurred. So, it could be, you know, four theft from autos or four stolen autos or perhaps four burglaries. Um and our proactive effort may vary depending on what the actual crimes are. Um so theft from auto is an easy one to explain. I mean uh when we see that particular uh thing emerge, we'll look at what the MO is and and and what I mean is what what's the mode of of the theft. So are they smashing a window? Are people leaving their cars unlocked? So, if it's cars unlocked, which is unfortunately still frequently the case, uh, with valuables in plain sight, we may choose to pamphlet the neighborhood and encourage people and educate them as to what's occurring, but encourage them to lock their cars and to stop leaving valuables, uh, in plain sight. um if they're you know smashing the window then we'll look at what perhaps is taken and and maybe the you know maybe the tactic is the same but it really varies I think um you know depending on what the actual patterns are that we're seeing you know I asked that question primarily because you know during the course of the year especially from I think it was June of last year through the end of the year there was an increase in the number and I don't want to say they were PSAs

public service announcements encouraging people to lock their cars, lock their cars. So that was an education kind of an of an intervention. And then you mentioned one other thing that could be an intervention was response time. So if we parlay those two together, response time and education, do you think those two or separated would also contribute to the de the decrease in some of the uh crimes that were uh shown you know in the slides?

Well, I think I think education is always going to play a key role. I mean, I can tell you all, you know, uh when I was a lieutenant west, which was gosh, it's been 16 years ago now, but uh at the time citywide, 60% of the burglaries were all unlocked homes. Mhm.

And so I don't know that that number now, but I would venture to guess there are still burglaries being committed at times where maybe the door has been left unlocked for whatever reason, someone's forgotten or a windows left open. Uh so I think that's always going to be one of our battles is trying to to encourage folks to to lock their their homes, lock their belongings up. Uh, so education, I don't know that that'll ever stop being part of our job. But, um, response time, I'm not sure uh, I understand your question fully. Were you referring to our response time, the police or what port?

Police response time. Uh that's typically not something uh that we talk about frankly a whole lot because our our method of response is a little different than than the fire department. Uh and you know they're often responding from the same location to a specific area. uh and they're really uh their success is really nationwide evaluated on that uh critical response time where I think we would all agree, we expect our officers to not be at the station all the time. We want them out uh mobile patrolling neighborhoods and um you know, like we're suggesting through our our crime prevention model, really using their their time to to uh be proactive in certain areas of the city. So, uh, you know, if I'm being proactive on campus and, um, you know, a calls, a serious call for service happens, you know, on Midtown Road, it's my response time is going to be pretty pretty poor compared to someone who's sitting at this, you know, the West Police Station having their lunch. Uh, so it's it's not something we always we always evaluate uh simply because um the expectations are a little bit different uh between our agencies, if that makes sense. Okay. So, time and place does matter.

Time and place matters, but it's, you know, you won't see me uh come to any council meetings and and talk necessarily about um needing to reduce our response time because we uh especially now our, you know, our Dane County 911 center, they have access to AVO data, which is essentially GPS data. Um, and they use that to dispatch the uh the closest officers to call us to hopefully mitigate how long it takes for us to get from uh wherever the officer is to wherever the call may be.

Okay. The final question, you know, if you could think of any other metric that could be used, you know, as an intervention, you know, would you what would it be? Now I'm I'm speaking for for example let's say we know that the incidents of um adolescents breaking into cars you know could be high let's say in the summertime etc. And now they have been caught. They have been arrested for doing that. And let's say now that a particular community has a um a program whereby these adolescents go through let's say a crash course on why you did this etc etc and if you do this again this is going to happen. Are there other kinds of metrics that could be used to decrease crime in certain neighborhoods or certain types of crimes? I'm looking at other I'm looking at other types of interventions that could be used by a police department, not only here in Madison, but you know, wherever. Well, what what I would suggest is probably the hardest uh thing for us to consider, but um you know, one thing that I've been trying to get a lot of us to talk about uh and if you've looked at our annual reports in the last couple years, I've been um intentionally singling it out and in your quarterly reports as well. Um but both for adults and juveniles uh or youth in our community um every quarter there's a measurable amount of individuals that are arrested more than one time. Uh, and I suspect if we actually, you know, brought in community partners and took the time to to dig into the individual cases of both adults and youth in our community, it would likely expose

criminogenic needs that are being unmet uh in in Madison and Dane County. Um, and I think would probably open up some opportunities for us to be very intentional with our efforts and surgical with our efforts. Uh but I can tell you it's very hard work. It takes a lot of time and it takes um uh more than just the police department to lead it. Uh frankly, um because you know when you dig into these things um you know you're you're uncovering folks that have significant needs and unfortunately uh you know it's whatever the need may be is causing them or contributing to their decisions uh to offend. Um and uh and you know in my opinion the traditional system is not helping them then uh fix whatever that that need may be um or meet that need uh through you know navigating the court system.

Yes. you know, and I completely agree because if we're looking at if we're trying to address crime, you know, then we have to begin to think about what can we do especially to prevent that person from going out and doing the same thing again, which would be like recidivism or when we think about you read all the time about fourth arrest for OWI, fifth arrest, what did we not do? Thank you. Oh, thank you, Alder. All right, Alder Figurero Cole and and then Alder Yugare.

Thank you. Um I'm sorry, I had a little sticky note here with specific words. Okay. So, um, when Alder Glenn was talking about data, I I heard you said a few, um, words that I want to make sure they're mean the same thing or if they're actually different data sets. So when we talk about service calls versus versus um you said something about crime calls, do you mean and then you also said incident calls, are we all talking about the same offense data? Are offense incidents and crime data the same data or are those different data points?

Uh so when I refer to calls for service, I'm also calling that incident data if that makes sense. Uh okay. And then to your point, there's there's offense data as well or crime, you know, which I was calling crime data, but uh not not every incident becomes, you know, a an offense or a crime, right? Um and so that was the point I was trying to make.

No, I'm I'm good. I just want to make sure because I haven't, you know, when I asked for data, the terminology is very specific between service calls and offense and I didn't know if I was missing another bucket, but that makes total sense. Um and then the I have a a question in regard to um you know the point that that Glenn was trying to make and and you address that very you know accurately and clear that that data doesn't um you know when we get open open record requests and people try to weaponize that data to make assumptions that often are inaccurate. Is there um do we have it some sort of disclaimer when we send the data out to the public when they do open record requests that helps them, you know, understand what what they're looking at?

A disclaimer describing what uh what the the data is, what the data is not pretty much. H I don't

or can we develop a disclaimer that is you know kind of said what you said earlier that you know like like help us facilitate the assumptions that are made that are often run that you know we we we may have a lot of incident calls in a location and maybe out of out of 20 or 50 or whatever for offenses or some of those are related to you know it's very service All data has a very very um narrow purpose but sometimes it's used in ways that contribute to um fear, misinformation, disinformation type of things. So is there a way to perhaps maybe when we get open record requests from the public to have a disclaimer that just maybe gives some kind of highle definitions of what this data represents. So we can help people So we can help educate people on what they're looking at.

I mean, that's a good that's a really good point. That's not something that we've considered doing to be honest, but uh I don't see why we can't. Um uh and maybe, you know, we'll word smith something and bounce it off this body and just see if it it makes sense. I mean, I I think I think that's a good point that we haven't considered before. Yeah, I think that would be that would really help facilitate um communication with the with the router um audience because it's really especially when we're talking about um development that you know like for housing situations specifically that that information really becomes a pretty sore issue and it quickly gets out of hand. And again, when people come in with a gigantic list of of um incidents and I go back to you guys and said, "Okay, where where were the offenses here?" Then we realize, well, that's not obviously the service schools are not telling the story. And but people that receive the data don't really know what they're looking at. So, a lot of a lot of um uncomfortable conversations need to happen once that data is reported. So I would definitely I think it would be great to have a disclaimer um for that. Anyhow, thank you for the presentation. I appreciate it. Um yep and that's all I got for tonight.

All right. Thank you. I'll do you G. Thank you President Bidder. Uh you may have partially answered uh this question. I have two questions and a comment, but the first question uh I think that uh the comparison of current year to a three-year average is really helpful. One of the things that I noticed is that uh where we saw decreases for a lot of the crimes occurred because in the three-year average, there was a peak during the summer.

Mhm. and there was either a smaller peak or the elimination of a peak during the summer in 2025. And I just wondering if there was anything fundamental that we were aware of that made a difference that caused that because it was so important in uh getting that uh comparison down compared to the three. I

appreciate that question and uh you know I I I'm going to stand here and argue I mean a lot of it is what we're talking about tonight is I think our collaboration has improved dramatically across agencies within the city. Um, you know, I'll point to to Ariel's uh team. I mean, our collaboration with them has has dramatically improved. Um, and I think, you know, frankly, your police department has gotten smarter about how it uses data and how we direct our resources. Um, and uh, it it's been very intentional. Um, and I I think it's making an impact. So, thank you. Um, the other question is for priority areas. Um, have we found that there are uh procedures or practices that when we designate a priority area and we've got more resources that are brought into that area, is there a way that can be done and and has it been done that allows you to create a greater sense of trust with that neighborhood or that building or so forth? uh you know collaborating with our community partners and just some are here tonight. Uh collaborating with other agencies has been um you know critical for us uh and trying to leverage you know existing leaders in in the neighborhood frankly that perhaps we've built some relationships with or establish trust with uh is critical. Um but really trying to work with one another. Um especially if it's an area that public health authority has uh you know inroads in that's been uh tremendously impactful. Um so yes all those things and a comment uh this is tangentially related but but it may indicate something positive. I I just wanted to bring to people's attention. uh Westside Olders met with uh MPD West

District uh leadership this morning in one of those periodic meetings

a and on a subject different than somewhat different than violence present. We had a little discussion because um and I was one of the ones that noted uh resident calls concerned about uh whether they were seeing um either ICE activity or MPD cooperating activity and so forth. Uh and one of the things that came out that was mentioned uh by Captain Nail and and some of the other leaders there is that West District and all districts are getting calls like that from fearful persons. Uh they even mentioned that you were getting some of those calls

every day. And I think that's important because it signifies that people in some of our at least one of our most vulnerable populations feels that they can trust Madison police and call them and I think that's important and it's a great accomplishment for what MPD has done. Thank you.

Thank you very much for saying that Alder. appreciate that. And and soon uh and certainly I'll forward it to all of you once it's done. But we're working on um getting something out on social media that identifies all our cars. Uh every one of our unmarked cars will now have a banner sign up front in the windshield that says official MPD vehicle so that there's no confusion. Um so we'll be encouraging the the community, you know, if they see a car that they think looks a little shady, check the windshield because it'll have uh it'll have that on. And I mean, that was the the quickest and frankly the cheapest thing that we could come up with. Uh we talked about magnets on the side of the door, but you know, we thought those would probably get lost or, you know, stolen at at bar time or something like that. And then stickers, you know, it has to be a certain temperature in the garage to apply those. So, we're just it's going to be it's going to be a down and dirty version, but it's going to be up and visible in the in the windshield, and hopefully that'll help. Uh but we'll also show uh the community how we dress. Um so there isn't uh confusion um you know and uh some of our our staff who have been wearing uh plane clothes in the past have been told they have to be in uniform now. So um we're trying to make adjustments and we'll try to educate. So hopefully um you know if there's any of us that are contributing to the fear that we we want to mitigate that as much as possible. So, thank you,

Elder Glenn. Can you talk about the responses with MPD for domestic violence? Oh, thank you.

I'm going to turn it over to Assistant Chief Kamaskki. So I think one of the big um pluses in us developing these by unit is having that unit specifically having the sensitive crimes that is largely domestic violence uh sexual assault investigations. And so I think definitely getting um we had we had several detectives across districts that um that would have be assigned domestic violence cases. But I think getting that victim-entered approach and making sure that we are um doing interviews like uh victim- centered we are doing all of those kind of things that are best practices is something that um when we have now a unit that is actually addressing that we can have um a a systematic is just the wrong word but a approach where we have um people who are trained in best practices and how to really look at at um specific then um you know sets of detectives and units that um also make those relationships with DEC and other of our community partners to have some of those uh stronger relationships and just kind of continue relationships. Um and then um also it's one of those prevention of it is extremely as you know extremely tricky right um and kind of where does that fit in this whole um violence prevention area that is um one of them where it is it is really hard because it's in individuals and people's homes and um and so I think one of the biggest things that when we have detectives that are solely um assigned to that is really hopefully developing some trust with some of our victims and things like that where maybe there's something where initially it was called or they called

about one thing but are now willing to disclose you know some more or things like that where we can try to get at some bigger um the roots of things but it's it's challenging it's one of those things that I think trying to prevent just because it's largely a lot of times behind closed doors um and and still something that people don't want to report for so many reasons, right? Um that um we try to do the best we can by really having uh a victim-entered approach with um connections to our community partners.

Thank you. Just one last hard question, but just give me one second. Um, I first want to say a disclaimer. As someone who has spent her career working in criminal justice reform and behavioral health and struggled with uh the systemic oppression, I see of black and brown bodies being incarcerated at a higher rate. Um, I did a lot of healing in my previous work with MPD and building trust and seeing some really, really great officers do some really, really great hard work. And we still see those incarceration rates of young black and brown kids at higher rates. And as someone who worked in public health, I know that the numbers don't always match with crimes. Um, and so what actively are you all doing? I happen to have the pleasure of watching your interview and you kind of get this question. Um, but what actively is MPD doing to one change that and two keep building that relationship that I have seen you all build in the captains and the police. uh but really work on those incarceration rates for youth and men of color.

Thank you, owner. Thank you for watching the interview. Hopefully, you approve of the pick. Um good. Uh well, I think I think you're right. I mean, I think we've made great strides over the last several years in bringing the total arrest down, but the disparities have continued uh to persist. And I think um you know, a couple things that we're doing immediately. Uh you know, we've been talking a lot um as a leadership team about the the essentially the idea around quality assurance and accountability. And so if you think of a lot of organizations um that produce a thing, you know, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, they have they have a quality assurance set of resources that are dedicated to making sure that whatever the product is they produce goes out the door and it meets all their standards. And you've heard me all uh say repeatedly, you know, our mission is highquality police services, accessible, inclusive to the whole community. And I think if we're going to say that, we have to actually invest in looking at everything that is leaving the doors of the MPD as far as services go and make sure that we're meeting that mission um and we're making adjustments as we need to. And so uh we're sending resources. We had some grant funding uh open up um with an existing grant. We're sending resources to a couple of uh outside departments. One that's been doing essentially stratified policing for the last two decades. Um and we're trying to learn how are they sustaining it and how are they ensuring that overpolicing is not happening in their community. Um and what um you know what data metrics are they using and um how are they how frequently are they making adjustments? How frequently are they flexing the model um to make sure that we're doing what right now feels right. But I don't know that it's totally right because we're we're still learning this model ourselves as we go. Um, but I

think uh it is also going to hopefully bring us ideas on how to involve the community in things that um I've dabbled in in the past with others uh on the department but others in the community as well like arrest and citation reviews to look to see are there examples of perhaps bias that are driving certain decisions. um comparing arrest and citation decisions across geographic boundaries I think is very important for us to to do but to involve the community in it. Um I see Mika sitting back there so it could be her office, it could be you know members um of the community. Um but I think it has to be open and transparent so that we're having these discussions um together as a team to hopefully make adjustments. And you know what I'm suggesting is taking perhaps a more professional development uh uh way of correcting actions and correcting outputs. Um, so that if we see, you know, members of our staff that maybe are straying or away from what we believe is highquality services and what we think the community suggests are high quality services that we're we're making those adjustments before it maybe graduates into a complaint from the community or graduates into undesirable outcomes. Um, so those are a couple of the examples. Uh but I really want to to explore ways like that um to bring the community closer um to those discretion decisions that that I think have big uh you know impacts for a lot of people in the community. But I do think too we have to look at the whole system and I think I need to start leading some of those discussions. Um because like I said when I'm saying it's a measurable amount of people that are arrested more than one time it's like more than 15% of our total arrest sometimes which at the end of the year it's over 100. I mean that's a lot of people frankly that I think have now shown us all that they

have profound needs. So what are we doing? Arresting them and putting them in jail over and over again is not fixing their problem you know. And so I think we have to figure out how to engage the right folks at the table um to hopefully then make more informed resource decisions frankly with some of our community partners. Um and you know I think it's an opportunity in a community like this that is resource resourceri that clearly is demonstrating you know some drops in crime that are uh I think would make other communities pretty jealous. Um, I think it gives us an opportunity here to, you know, to step back and hopefully get serious about um getting folks some some assistance that they may need. So, thank you very much.

Yeah, you bet. All right. Oh, go ahead, Alder River. Thank you, President. Thank you, Chiefs, for your presentation and for answering all these questions. I know we're way behind our tentative schedule here, so I'll try to only ask a couple of quick follow-ups. Why I'm glad I went second. The first one is I I was sorry. Oh, was that JP? Sorry. I'm That's why I'm glad I went second. And I apologize to Yang and Chris. Exactly.

Thanks to Ariel for her excellent presentation and her answers, too. Um but in any event, um maybe this is kind of going in reverse order of my follow-up questions, but the first I appreciate it very much hearing the um steps you're taking in the coming days relating to the fear of the federal immigration crackdown, the terror really that so many are feeling nationwide to the uniform change. Could you be a little more specific? Will we now see all of our detectives in uniform or could you specific who

talking about that? I don't want I mean some of them might be watching tonight and I'll strike fear in all of them but we right now is a good time for them uh to always be wearing their Ray jackets when it comes to being out in the community. Now those have the same shoulder patches, the same you know Madison police logos uh and badges visible. Um, you know, we did this again last summer if you remember and and the drawback was it was, you know, I think 85° or something like that where I said you have to wear your rain jacket and then, you know, we had people um complaining about dehydration and you know, losing too much water by wearing it. So, we're going to we're going to act now with the rain jackets while it's uh, you know, nice and cold out and it's a reasonable thing to wear and then we're going to explore um whether or not that has to happen for the summer months. that being moving into uniforms or if we um can find an alternative uh you know throw over or something that will identify them readily as a Madison police detective. Um, as you know, a lot of their work uh is is done with crime victims and we want to be sensitive to uh the fact that you know some and in fact many crime victims may not want the uniform coming to their home or their place of work while they talk about what they experienced. Um certain witnesses may not want that. And so there's often times where playing close really makes uh good business sense for us and and really I think is what community members in those positions want as well. Um but we have to try to strike the right balance so that you know they're not uh being misidentified as as federal enforcement. So

So it's a work in progress. It sounds a little bit of Yeah, a little bit of a work in progress. But, uh, we're we're every Madison police officer should be identifiable, um, moving forward. Um, and and certainly I feel like I've encouraged the community to do the same. If there's ever any question, uh, with who you're speaking to, call 911 and we'll come and we will help identify um, and we will, you know, hopefully help calm the situation as well. So,

I appreciate that. Thank you. And then uh switching topics back to the stratified policing uh problem areas and that re-evaluation that's underway in progress whatever. Could you identify who the which of the six uh police districts is the fortunate one that will no longer have a problem area? Uh that's Neil in the west district is not going to have an area.

And then it got talking about all the boundaries tonight. and frankly not surprised because I think all of us read the the emails every day that we receive for for you know as subscribers to the daily call summary formerly chief's blog but now you know daily calls and you know well now Dan but anyway west uh and Harrison and South always seem to be those with the fewest calls for service identified on you know in those reports we receive uh so anyway that that sometimes has got me thinking but the conversation about boundaries tonight that's come up so much in the use of data got me thinking. Uh when was the last time that we reviewed uh our actual district boundaries? Was it when Midtown was created?

That was when Midtown was created. Aler um and that was the last time we moved um sectors and we adjusted sector boundaries. Um I I can't think of a time where we have adjusted district boundaries since that station was built. So it's been a while. And then can you remind us how often do you as a team re-evaluate your beats and your staffing relating to the data? Is that every year prior to shift pick? And every year prior to shift pick. Yes. Y

and in terms of the district boundaries being re-evaluated. There's not really a clear need for that. Uh in terms of like I'm just thinking like the leadership of some of the districts like Captain Gary was mentioned earlier. he always seems to have the unfortunate distinction of being one of the busiest, you know, districts north. And

you're kind of teeing me up here, so I appreciate this, but and Alder Glenn will appreciate this, but my colleagues at the at the side table here, but uh if you remember, um the North District lingers on the horizon list, and this isn't a budget meeting, so I won't go too deep into it, but we're we're really locked with the North District uh with with those boundaries. And so when you look at these districts, um you know, it's a lot of growth is going to continue to occur there. Um and if we want to try to accommodate and shift district boundaries, uh we need a new station. Um and so that really can't happen until until uh we move off the horizon list and into the SIP. And I know we're talking years from now, but um that in that north district uh document that that's been shared through our our budget uh documents in the past, it explains that uh and the shift that we did years ago with with some of the east district boundaries. Um you know, East is now approaching capacity because of that shift. And so we really have to keep that in mind as we as we move forward. So

yeah. Well, as I say, I think we all read those emails every day, and those two districts clearly seem to be the busiest in terms of the calls for service at least. Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. Thank you. Yeah, thanks very much. Thanks. All right, we're going to move on to our next presentation. Thank you all. Parks is after you guys. Okay. So, I need to get this on this one here.

Yeah. Where's the share? Right here. And I want Where did that go? There. How we looking? Give it a minute. There we go. Go to presentation mode. Will it go big? Slideshow. Oh, probably not what you want. Mhm. Go back and um try slideshow. Where do you see that? Right there. Way up there. Original. The original one or from beginning. Sorry.

No. Why? Why? H wheel. Can you take it out of What did you do to get it into presentation mode? I don't know. I mean, I just uh I shared it here. I clicked something presentation mode and I don't know if it does something fancy. I try stop it again here. Share it again. Where did share go? There it is. There we are. Sure. Yeah. And hit from beginning and let's just try. Come on.

I wonder if I pull up your email. Was that in PDF or was it It was PDF, you know. So, I wonder if that everybody else Yeah, I know. They wonder if we go to that. They were a little bit sad. I can stop sharing. I mean, it's okay. I wonder why it would do that. Whatever. I never understand how to do. All right. So, we do this. So, so obvious. Yeah. Open cares and then while you're in there, open parks and then parks can just and then parks. Yeah. So that you don't have to Yep. There we go. We got them opened. All right. So, cares is up there. Now, we can go back to shares and let's just make sure the AI bar doesn't come back. I figured out how to get rid of it, though.

So, where is our Zoom now? Right here. And we want to share. And we want to go It's that one. And you just have to here. Okay. Yeah, I see what you're saying. And then I'll just go switch over. You can you can kind of Is that it? Yeah, I think that's it. And then close that off. And let's hope that thing doesn't show up. I think we're getting closer. I think so. Got parks loaded, too. Okay, great. Great.

Thank you everyone. Um, appreciate you having us to chat a little bit about fire's angle to the concept of prevention. Um, I'd like to start by introducing myself. I'm Chris Hamus. I'm the assistant fire chief of medical operations for the Madison Fire Department. So, I oversee uh essentially everything related to uh medical responses and services with the department. Um, thanks to Ariel and uh to the chiefs from MPD for um their presentations. They they truly from my perspective really do the the lion's share of the work of when you're talking violence prevention uh in our communities. When I think fire, we we often my I think you ask a lot of people, you're you're more considered of a reactionary service. Um after 911 is called, fires, fire goes and mitigates whatever is there. Um our goal, as Chief Patterson was kind of alluding to with response times, is related to our our positions in stations and responding to an incident. Our goal really is to to try to keep our vehicles in the stations, right? Which is kind of an interesting concept to think about is we' we'd rather our people to just not go anywhere and stay in the stations because that means we're we're doing a good job out in the community of reducing um issues that would require response. Um we do do a lot of prevention though in the fire department related to um um working with the children and our community prevention bureaus and and fire prevention and safety. our our prevention, fire prevention bureau with with building safety and code enforcement um plays a big role in in some of the safety in our uh and a lot of the components in safety in our community. Um but one angle that Chief Patterson alluded to that that I'm going to be discussing with you this evening is our cares team. Um that's our community alternative response emergency services. Um our cares team was started in 2021 in collaboration with our other partners in the in the community here. in particular, Journey Mental Health is is our our our closest partner in this one that we have a crisis uh Journey Mental Health crisis worker that is

working on our CARES team alongside one of our Madison Fire Department community paramedics. Uh we started out with one team. Um and over the years, CARES has expanded to now running three teams uh Monday through Friday. Let me just make sure I'm good on that. Um Monday through Friday, um staggered hours. uh we've we've found uh where the the the brunt of the calls would be occurring a time of day and that's where those those teams are staggered for for coverage. Uh and then we run one team on Saturdays and Sundays. Uh the the premise of CARES is that they're going to be responding to behavioral health emergencies that are nonviolent in nature. That's really what it is. Um and and to that um there's a periphery and in our hopes and and what we're seeing we think is that we're seeing great results in the the violence prevention in some of these um instances that that have escalated to previously to to violent uh conditions in nature that that we can stay ahead of. um kind of an inverse relationship in our graphs here with our CARES responses which is a great inverse relationship to what we saw with with PDs and showing their decrease in some of those uh the crimes. We're showing an increase in the number of calls uh for our CARES team. What I have here is fourth quarter at the end of our fourth quarter data that I'm presenting to you here. Um and as you can see from the inception of the team there down in the bottom lefthand corner to uh where we're at now um that has gone significantly up. Now, there's a couple of components that um relate to that and drive that that drive that graph up is one is we've expanded our team coverage. Um being able to capture more of the calls on a daily basis because we actually have more teens out there working on the streets. Um but another big part of it is the the community and and the provider awareness level of what that team brings to the table and helping to mitigate some of these instances. So, just the recognition of what CARES can

can do for our individuals in our community. um they're being called out earlier. As Chief Patterson alluded to, you listen to the radio. Um oftentimes, whether it be PD or on our fire side of things before our CARES teams come on on staff or on duty for the day, we have our crews asking, "Hey, is CARES available? Is there a CARES team available?" And sometimes these calls stack up and as soon as they hit the uh you know, hit the go button on uh on their vehicle, it's it's it's non-stop uh throughout the day. So um the demand for service on on on cares has gone nowhere but up and you can see that in our average daily responses uh follow follows that same trend in that respect. Um interestingly enough what we're also seeing is is you can see in the fourth quarter of the year 43% of the calls are in the fourth quarter were for welfare checks and and that those numbers have is the trend of that have just increased as well. So, that's a really good use for CARES um uh to be the initial go-to um if there's no concerns for any violence in nature. And um what I'm going to get to with with our responses with CARES is is freeing up other resources that can be better utilized in our community to help in the violence pre prevention aspect and in particular freeing up uh our partners over in blue there uh so they can do the the great work that they do. Just to touch on numbers there, that's uh the number of clients that have been interacted with uh care since the inception of the program. When you're talking over 7,000 um individuals, that's that's significant. Um and and some individuals we we encounter more than once. Um these are different uh 7,000 different clients. So um the number of obviously the calls was I think just just north of 12,000 now is what we're at right now. But um so uh a significant number of of individuals in our community that benefit from the services of CARES. When you're looking at outcomes here, a lot of what we accomplish with our CARES team is is

done in person. 60% of that uh 65% of those uh individuals are are dealt with with a response by our team uh to their location. There are some uh situations that are taken care of over the phone. um we do have to transfer some uh some of the calls back to to to the fire side of things, the fire and EMS side of things or to the law enforcement side of things. And I want to kind of shine a light on that aspect right now when we're talking uh violence prevention here. When you look at that purple bar down there showing 2% of the calls of all the CARES calls are are kicked back over to law enforcement. And then when you take a look at this um graph right here, this is a representation of of roughly what a month's worth of calls looks like. And all of the blue calls are uh blue squares that are managed by our CARES team. The red and orange squares there are transferred back to law enforcement. And of the orange ones there, those are the ones that law enforcement assists in matters that are not taking that that individual to jail. So, we got a very small percentage of of calls that our CARES uh teams are called to that are are kicked over to police and and they need to be at times. But when you look at the totality of that, that really shows a take a take a look at that picture right now and then think about that before we had the CARES team in place. All of those calls were handled by either two entities. one either police or fire and and the two um highest destinations that those individuals would go to would be the emergency department or to jail. So by being able to integrate our CARES team and the resources that they bring to the table and the awareness of of the other resources that we have out in our community and getting these individuals that are having behavioral health emergencies that don't necessarily benefit from going to emergency room, don't necessarily benefit from going to jail. lining them up with those resources so we can get them the help that they need, the services that they need to um get beyond that incident or incident that they're dealing with at

that moment in time. So, I think that's alluded to it just a little bit earlier. Uh the the res the resource allocation um and putting the right resources to the right task in our community is really um uh a backbone to what this CARES program is really all about. and in particular when I'm talking uh with law enforcement allowing them to do their great work with not having to um spend the amount of time and resources that would have been historically um largely put on their shoulders. So um the collaboration between the two entities and and also with with our county has been phenomenal and and we've s seen um we feel nothing but great success in this program and and and how it's expanded. Uh just brief touch on where uh most of our individuals or clients are transported. A lot of them do go to the emergency room. When you're talking about 25% of our individuals uh that we encounter um do get transported and and out of those about uh half of them do go to the emergency room. Other uh half of those are spread out throughout uh different resources and facilities um and agencies in in our community. uh they also do about a third of uh the individuals that they encounter are referred to other resources in the community to get them the the immediate care in the moment as well as ongoing care um to to continue on um down the line. Uh last thing I'm really going to touch on here uh is just the the um the want the the desire for the CARES uh program elsewhere. And what we've tried and we've seen through other communities that are touching the borders of Madison is they've seen the success of the program and and have wanted to um see if we could provide service there. So what we've done starting February of last year uh was a pilot expansion project uh program into the city of Sun Prairie um providing care service uh to that city and since in quarter number uh four there um is summarized there but we've had 87

responses through that the end of that that program in quarter number four. It went through February, so it's not a full year um in in this numbers here, but um like we saw in Madison, once the uh services, police and fire uh in Sun Prairie started to recognize what CARES could bring to the table, we started to see an increase in their calls for for service out there. And we we think that's going to continue to happen here uh through the recognition of what is brought to the table. Um so that that um program we're going to continue to provide service in Sun Prairie through the rest of this year and we're going to continue to evaluate the numbers on that and see where where we need to go with CARES. Is is it something that we need to continue to pursue future expansion through other communities in our in our county here? Is this something where we need to look at the expansion of additional teams in our at home here in Madison to to to try to keep up with the increasing call volume? Um, so you know, when you're talking 2021 as the inception of the program, it's a pretty darn new program here. And so we're we're still kind of um feeling things out, trying to find the right carrying capacity for our teams and see what they can mitigate and manage in a reasonable manner that we're not burning them out um too much uh and being able to provide a service that's not spread so thin um that we can uh mitigate the the needs in in our community here. just a summary of some of the the um the data that we've covered there. I don't need to read through all that in detail there, but those are just some of the the take-home points. Um again, I'm uh you know, really proud of this program and where it's come. Um the the the demand for service and the increase of of its um need in this community, we think, is is really shown true in the in the numbers that we can present to you. Um we're thankful for our collaboration with our partners here to continue to provide this uh valuable service to our community and get uh individuals uh the right resource to the right individual at the right amount of time. Uh one thing I do want to just uh touch on in

particular and I'm actually going to just flip through these slides um back really quick is to the the cover page here is our CARES team. Um, I think it's important to recognize that, um, a a big part of, um, I shouldn't say big, some of these individuals that are having behavioral health emergencies, uh, don't respond well to authority. Um, they don't respond well to seeing lights and sirens coming into their into their environment or badges and uniforms, whether it be police or fire for that matter. So, CARES is is purposefully um a non-emergent service. We don't have lights and sirens on any of our vehicles. We send them in a in, you know, normal traffic speeds to the to these instances. You can see these workers on uh on the page here. They're wearing pretty nondescript clothing here to to kind of bring down the level of anxiety when they get to these situations. And we we think that's u in some individuals that they encounter is a big part of just kind of lowering the anxiety level of what might be happening in those instances to hopefully prevent some some violent nature that that potentially could occur if we're just slamming in there with lights and sirens. And um um we make a mess sometimes when our when our when our fire guys just come barging through the doors, but you know, it's it's like an armada sometimes and and sometimes that's very daunting to people. So, kind of tapping the brakes and slowing things down and spending the time with these individuals is is is really of of huge benefit. Um, also like to just throw one bit out there. You're going to see some new CARES vehicles. One, we're putting our first one in new ser in service this week. Um, they're sprinter type vans. They're beautiful. Um, we have four of them that they're they're getting outfitted right now and they're really going to help. Um, they've got spaces in the back of these these vans where they can bring individuals into the back of those, have have a good workspace where they can collaborate and help um give a much uh more efficient um and comfortable way to to interact with

individuals that we respond to and and get them the resources and the help that they need. So, we're excited to get those things out on the road here. Um, this week is you should be seeing the first one. So, thanks to all that were involved in helping support and fund and and and get that off the ground. Um, to that tune, I think that's all I I I have to really kind of cover on this. Um, I hope I did my best to get us somewhat back on track here. I was trying to speed through that, but happy to entertain any questions. All right, Alder Figuro call and then Alder O'Brien.

Thank you. Um so you you spoke about the how how much um MPD um appreciates this service and the amount of collaboration and gratitude that comes from it and they're always asking you know especially the west side they always asking can can we expand cares can we expand cares so I wanted to get your perspective on what h what has been the um how has that worked out for some prairie Are you are you getting the same kind of results or feedback from Sun Prairie Police Department?

I don't want to speak for Alder. I don't want to speak for Sun Prairie fully, but what I can tell you is that the pilot project was um was u subsidized and and and uh the assist assistance in funding it for that that first year was in place uh financially and after what Sun Prairie had seen as far as our pilot year, they decided that they wanted to continue service on their own of of funding the program uh through the remainder of at least uh through 2026. So again, not to speak for them, but uh inferring uh for their desire to want to continue the service to me um reads that um that they're pretty pleased with what what is brought to the table with the CARES uh program being out there.

That's great. And did you have data um showing kind of the same as to the number of um calls that you guys resolve versus the calls that end up going back to to their police department? It it is all we do I don't have that with me here tonight, but it's all very um very parallel to what we're seeing uh in the responses here in Madison when you look at the the volume ratios.

Great. And then um my last question is kind of a two-part two situations um happening right now. So you mentioned the emergency room is like a very high number of people ending up at the emergency room. Are you finding have you found um on the past two months any um have you noticed any changes since the Delorean funding was changed? Is the the register rooms more overwhelmed? Have you getting any roadblocks?

You know, I wouldn't say there's a significant noticeable change in our responses. Don't quote me on the numbers, but I I believe there was only a few three or four beds, if I'm not mistaken, that were available at Toyan. Uh I don't I don't want to um be held to that quote, but you know, the volume of beds there that that um they were able to take care of individuals as far as uh not being able to take care of those individuals. Now, um the realized impact as far as the volume of calls that that we go on on a daily basis, um I I don't think our providers have have seen uh a major uh impact on that. Now, I can't speak for the emergency rooms. Um you know, our our our involvement in and time um with individuals is very much revolving door medicine is is kind of how we refer to. We we spend a very short period of time with individuals um that might benefit from um detox services. The hospitals definitely have to endure longer times and and bed space with those individuals. So the impact I can only suspect and imagine is is uh a little bit more um profound with with them than we experience in the fire department.

All right. Well, thank Thank you. I mean, I it occurs to me that maybe that was also a question for MPD, but I can maybe address that at a later time to see how that impacts our um the hours police officers spend at the hospital um in general, if that has changed. Um so, yeah, that's just a note for a later conversation. Thank you for the presentation. Um I'm also very proud of this project. uh it, you know, started right before we came in and and anytime that we can find um ways to support it, I think it helps everybody. So, thank you for the presentation. Appreciate it. Appreciate it, Alder. Thank you.

Okay, Alder O'Brien let me know that I misread his hand gesture. Um so, we'll go to Alder and then Alder Matthews. Thank you, President. Thank you, Chief. appreciate your presentation and all the good work that those that report to you are doing in terms of cares. Uh the first easy question on your second slide you had mentioned the history of the locations at station 3 and the now current temporary station six. Am I correct that all three cares teams are currently at 1 2 3 4.

That's correct. Yep. We're all housed there. They redid the off the front office space there for um collaboration of those teams. You know a lot of what they do is not just responding out there. It's the follow-up work, it's the documentation, it's it's the the collaboration and working out um care plans for these individuals that we encounter out there. Um and then all of the vehicles are going to be housed there at 1234 East Wash as well. So yeah, that that that location especially um when you're talking um where a lot of our calls were happening in the downtown area was was a great spot to to get all those under one roof. Um it also just lined up well with our expansion pilot into some prairie just you know shooting out east there. That's a pretty good corridor to get out that way. Um you know looking down the road here if we end up uh evaluating uh an expansion of the team whether it be service in the city of Madison or um surrounding communities in Madison that'll be something we'll have to look at and figure out what the best location is for um putting CARES vehicles. I know there's been discussions with the new station 6 potentially putting some bays in there for a potential expansion. That'd be really close access to the belt line to get south and west and and and through quarters that way. So, um we'll we'll continue to make data driven decisions to to figure out where the best location is uh for the for the units to be able to capture most of the calls in a reasonable amount of time.

Thank you. Chris, you anticipated my follow-up question in terms of the location. And then switching gears a little, I know the community paramedics also report to you or ultimately uh you know in the organizational chart. Can you speak to um the the amount of collaboration that our community paramedics have and our CARES team members have that I would just assume that there's a lot of overlapping patients with the different needs between behavioral health and other health concerns.

So just to be clear, our community paramedics are our cares team. That's that's who consists that's our paramedics that make up that component of it. Um so the pairs on each team is one community paramedic from from which is under the umbrella of a Madison fire uh and then the correct they always have a journey worker with them. Right. Right. So they're all always partnered up together in a team. Yeah. So what I'm sorry what I'm thinking of maybe I'm not using the right terminology but are community paramedics or the term I'm thinking of the pre-day cares where where we have paramedics working intensively with our patients to reduce transports and like the most u chronic is probably not the right word but the most the the

frequent flyers is also a very inappropriate term but anyway those that were most using our EMS service and going to emergency departments I I got I got your question now. Um we call those community paramedics that and and when our CARES team they have what they call community paramedic day where they do work on those initiatives and do follow-up visits with members in our community um we work in collaboration with some of the hospitals as well under grant work um to identify individuals that might benefit from a a home visit. um our providers out on the streets on on our firet trucks and our ambulances recog if they go into a house and recognize that someone could potentially benefit from a community paramed medicine vis visit a referral will be made. Uh and for example, if you go into a home for someone that has fallen um twice in a day and we recognize there's a lot of trip hazards around the house, rugs and maybe not enough grab bars around by toilets or by showers. um they can recognize that, make that recommendation to our community paramedics. And then what our our community paramedics do, who also staff our CARES vehicle, they'll have a community paramedic day where they go out and make these visits to these these residents in these homes and try to identify what resources they can put to at their fingertips or an employee to help uh injury reduction, risk reduction uh in their homes and and and hopefully prevent, you know, a 911 call is what we're really trying to prevent. I like I started out with trying to keep those trucks in the stations. That's the best thing we can do is kind of that that prevention side of thing.

Just so I have it clear then maybe this is too organizational for most but so we don't have any like current local 311 paramedics that do community parame medicine visits still those were under an old grant and so all the community paramed are all also cares team members. Our our our cares team our cares community paramedics are under 311. They are not commissioned. Um, they're not commissioned or sworn, but they are represented by 311. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. And is that the way it was before we created CARES, too? Uh, no.

Am I thinking of a grant with Merid or something like Yeah, there was a couple different grants. One was through UW, one was through Meridor. One was for um trying to prevent readmission into the hospital for Medicare patients. Yes.

Um, and so that was one grant project. they would uh we would contract with them to to uh go out and work with those individuals that would be discharged from the emergency department, do a home visit, see if we can prevent readmission because of uh the financial uh aspects of reimbursements to the hospitals on a readmission rate. Uh other one would have been um individuals recognized as at risk um that um as you alluded to, people we' encounter a number of different times. And so that was a separate grant project that we uh our community paramedics would go out and work with those individuals and try to uh mitigate some of the reasons that they were calling 911.

And that and we are still doing that very much so today. But those are the same folks doing that good work are the ones that we'll see in the news. cares vehicles on the street this week. The exact same ones. Yeah. Very good. Thanks for explaining that. Appreciate it. Thank you, Alder. All right, Alder Matthews and then Alder Glenn.

Thank you. Um so early on in cares I somewhat anecdotally had heard about um the dispatch having you know even even calls that were asking for CARES having MPD come to those as well. Um and I only ask this now cuz I heard recently from more recently from someone who I would imagine would know about that um that that is still happening at least somewhat. Um, so I guess my question is kind of like has that, you know, decreased over time, but then also for all of your data, how are calls counted if both MPD and CARES show up like you know at the same time basically?

I appreciate the question. uh to answer the first part of that one. Um back to the premise of what CARES is, it's the we send them to the behavioral health emergencies that are nonviolent in nature. So even if someone is asking for the CARES team, I want CARES here. If there's any indication through the call taking process of of the dispatchers of the telecommunicators indicates that there's any concern for violence or injury or threat, um law enforcement will be added to that uh incident. Now, that's not to say, like you alluded to, CARES might go in conjunction with law enforcement. Um, we might have a law enforcement call that is dispatched initially that when they get on scene, they identify that CARES would be a better resource for that uh time being, and then CARES will be integrated into that call. Same holds true for fire. We have fire rigs that'll be going uh to an incident and if they identify it's a car's uh potential individual, they might ask for CARES to to co-respond with them as well or if they get on scene and identify that it's a care situation can ask them to come to that scene. Um so still, you know, you're only as good as the information you're given over the phone and the dispatchers do a heck of a good job of of filtering that out and do the best they can. Um, you brought up another point that I just want to raise and and what we started doing here a couple of months ago is identifying the the CARES calls that we can't capture.

Now, whether that be for the time of days that we don't have the rig staffed or the time of days when all of our vehicles are out there on calls already. And we're finding that that's going to be a really key piece of information for us to identify the request for service that we can't fulfill to help us push are we are we really fulfilling these teams in the right time of days uh throughout the 24-hour period or are we at the point where we need to add a team because the calls continue to come in and we may not be able to to meet that challenge of of mitigating those calls. So that's that's what we're balancing right now with the inception of the program being just in in 2021. We're watching this uh data play out. we've got now three teams that we want to um get another year's worth of data and again make some data driven decisions on that. So kind of went a roundabout way to to to get back at your answer, but um you might see um multiple agencies responding whether it be police and CARES at the same time, fire and CARES at the same time. Uh that that happens uh routinely each and every day. We work very collaboratively together on that one.

And so for the um the data that you provide, that's like every call that CARES does go to. Yes. Okay. And then for the transfer to the law enforcement agency, if it's a call where both are at the call, how does that work? Are they part is does is that automatically part or just at the resolution of the call if they're transported?

So you're talking this outcomes here trans transferred to law enforcement 2% of those individuals. So, in all of our CARES calls that we go on, there's sometimes that we get on scene that an individual is in a situation where it is not safe for them to go with our CARES members. It's not safe for them to go um with our ambulances or uh uh to the to the emergency department. Unfortunately, some people um need to go uh to a different destination and and and for the safety component. We always put that at the utmost uh for for our provider safety, for the public safety, and if it's a situation that would benefit from law enforcement, that's where they get integrated into that CARES call and component together. And again, it's very collaborative uh open lines of communication. um we all have uh radios that we can uh communicate back and forth with each other and figure out again the best resource to get the to the most appropriate resource to to each individual whe whatever that situation may be.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you for the questions. Yeah, Alder Glenn,

thank you. Um, with the way Madison is and it's set up and we have like these cities that are all around us and in the middle of us, uh, is it our job or yours? How do we expand you? How does it expand? Is it just budgetary? Is it just watching the data? Is it having conversations with like Fitchburg and Manona? I know I watched how it happened with some prairie. Will that be the exact same process and are those questions and conversations happening?

They abs great questions. Um they absolutely are happening and in fact in the last two weeks we have had two specific meetings directed at what do we need to evaluate? What are the metrics we need to look at to determine uh the potential for expansion? Whether that's expansion internally here city of Madison by expanding the number of teams we have or geographically with with where we're going to provide service areas. So, we're strategizing that that right now and it's in collaboration with the the Dane County Communication Center with with law enforcement, with Journey Mental Health, with Dane County uh health and human services, with obviously the fire department. It's u we have Sun Prairie involved with that because they're a stakeholder now uh with a with a service provision. So, um, we have our entities getting together and we're really trying to, um, decipher that out and really where we're we're hedging right now is that we we want this year to to to to play out a little bit more and get more data so we can get through the end of this year and really make some look at that data and see what makes the most sense as far as where, if any, an expansion is prudent to do and and what that looks like. Um, it's easy to say, but it's hard to do. you know, it's right, you're talking vehicles, you're talking oversight, you're talking staffing, you're talking a lot of logistics that need to be incorporated into that situation. So, we're trying to figure out what is the biggest drivers and pushers of of of making those decisions and getting us in the right direction of where we need to go. There's there's no question when you look at the the demand for service and the calls when that's continuing to increase. Um, like I said, we haven't reached our carrying capacity yet on that. So when we're continuing to see that increase, we're we're still trying to um see how our current model is being able to mitigate what's happening even though there's an increase in number of calls. So um it's it's a game we're going to uh have to continue to keep a very close eye on here and uh we'll continue to have collaborative meetings to figure out where we need to go uh and what metrics we need to use to make those data driven decisions on expansion.

Thank you. Um, other models like ours all all over have used people with lived experience like certified peer specialists. Uh, has that model ever been brought to the table of using people? I know you you use people Journey Mental Health does use them. Do you ever has that ever been brought to the table? Not in my time in this uh in this role. I I I'm not saying we wouldn't look at um we would always want to look at a potential resource that might help mitigate a a situation in a positive direction. Um whatever that resource may be um um to answer your question though I know that that specifically has not been been brought to my knowledge.

I just wanted to say thank you as someone who has worked directly through a very very hard situation for the city for us and worked handinhand with a couple of the cares people. You got a really great team and thanks for all the hard work. Well, it's it's it's a huge collaboration. I I truly mean it. It takes a village to to take care of what we got to take care of out there. Alder Pritchette

question. Um what's the incidence of CARES calls for the uh K through 12 cohort? uh Alder, I can get you that uh information um at a different time. We definitely run demographics on on uh the clients that are interacted with. I don't have that with me, but I'm happy to uh reach out to you when I when I have that data driven uh or uh data more readily available. And and if if you have that data, would would it be fair to ask whether or not uh suicides is amongst um the calls for cares?

I don't think I I have a uh great answer for that one either. Um behavioral health emergencies encompasses a lot of different aspects. Um uh there's no doubt that threat of life is is is a considerable uh situation that um they encounter. Um but I I'd be remiss if I I went and gave a percentage of of the number of calls um that are inherently related specifically to to suicide threat or attempt. Um, again, that's that that al that might be a bit more uh difficult stat to drill down on um based on how they're dispatched. Um, but I can definitely check with our data analyst and and see if there's a way that uh we could provide um more of a a breakdown of what behavior health emergencies, what what the inherent nature of those those uh requests for service are. Uh happy to look into that.

Okay. I asked that question primarily because there is at least u uh um adolescent meth adolescent medicine you know has indicated you know that the number of suicides amongst the K through 12 cohort has increased and they have attributed an awful lot of it to social media and so for that reason that's why I was asking the question but if you could get if you could obtain obtain that data I would greatly appreciate it. I I most certainly can get you the age demographics and I will definitely look into if we could have the the suicide volume and you're alder just to be clear you're specifically referring to K through 12 the K through 12 population. Yes,

you got it. Okay. Listen, this is great important. This this work is very very important especially for our young uh for our young adults and you know keep on keeping on. Thank you. All right, I think we are ready to move on to our next presenter. President, do we have uh parks? I'll pull it up here. That's who's next? Parks is next. Yeah,

you guys should be all set. Oh, that Oh, you just have to scroll instead of click cuz it's there's also a video in there. Oh, I don't know. There is. I mean, I don't know how to, you know, I'll be able to click on it. Okay. Video with share screen. There's some button that you click, but now I can't. Can I scroll to it? Yeah, let's see. There's that one right there. That's the video. I don't think you can share. I don't think it's gonna It's not live. Do you happen to have a Yeah, I have. Why don't we

Why don't we just which is fine. And so then are you okay?

Um we are in Zoom via this one though. So I have to get out of this meeting as well. So you hopefully they did they send you a link. If not I can. Yeah. So so stop sharing here.

Stop sharing here. They can hear everything we're saying. So, For those online, we are having some technical issues and we will be back momentarily.

that computer. Use mine. Okay. Okay. That's okay.

We don't have the video on our screen in chambers. Could you ask um Paul from media team to give Lisa Lashinger permission? Paul from media team. Can you give Lisa Lassener permission to share? This is Lisa. I am sharing my screen right now. I have the ability to do that. So I think probably those monitors need to be set back up. Oh, it's maybe doing something. There we go. We got it. So you Yep. You're good to go. Wonderful.

All right. So, hello everybody. My name is Terrence Thompson uh from the parks division. I'm here to talk about uh parks role in um this violence prevention uh framework that we've been discussing here tonight. Um we see our role as a provision to provide safe and welcoming spaces to recreate. And this is an important factor uh for those in our community. My name is Terrence Thompson. I'm the parks community services manager. Um, I oversee uh the division's community programs, partnerships, and two public facilities, which are the Goodman Pool and the Warner Park Community Recreation Center. My team's goal is to provide a safe, accessible, and affordable and equitable park system through recreation programs, partnerships, volunteers, community services, community events, and facility operations. and I have um Eric Net, park superintendent online and Lisa Lassinger, assistant park superintendent who is running the Zoom. Um this evening um I'll give a brief overview of how our role fits into this framework and we'll be giving an overview of Parks Alive recreation services. Lisa, you can go to the next slide. uh recreation services, um the Ranger program, the NO program, and our newest initiative, uh youth engagement on the south side of Madison. Uh next slide. As you've heard tonight, to prevent and address violence in our community, a multifactor approach is necessary. Uh this uh slide here represents uh uh from the uh prevention institute highlights the various pathways uh to violence for safety including risk factors and um protective factors uh parks and recreation and the programs that the the parks division manages our upstream strategies. Next slide. So I start talking about parks alive.

Many of you have heard of this program. this uh we're entering our fourth year of managing Parks Alive. Uh it was a pilot program that came out of COVID. Um and it occurs in 11 uh city of Madison neighborhood resource team parks. Um we have three or four of these events at each park uh during the summer from the service. It looks like a huge block party in the park. If you pulled up to one of these parks live events, you'll see food trucks, there'll be a DJ, there'll be ice cream. Uh there'll be interactive activities, community resources, but partial live is really about community building, resident engagement, placemaking. Uh and it's a very successful violence prevention initiative that we have, uh implemented within the division. The program aligns with the Madison Dane County violence prevention roadmap. Goals number two, uh which talking about support community engagement with children, youth, and families. Goal three, foster strong communities. And we're working towards increasing connection and reduce loneliness, uh increase trust, improve mental and physical health, and increase engagement with resources. Next slide. Uh since 2022, we've held a bunch of events. We had 105 of those since then. Uh over 10,000 participants, about a 28 almost 29% growth since 25. Um and that's largely from um us increasing the parks from 9 initially to 11. We've uh recently expanded uh to two new NRT parks which was Sandberg uh this past year and Galaxy Park uh which which went very well. U partner with over 70 organizations uh and departments and we have a diverse array of music uh and local uh partnerships that we have. Um these uh we've create curated diversified events to include self-care, wellness, sports and games, and arts and

culture. Next slide. So let's talk about our recreation services. Um between the division, our partners, we aim to have active and welcoming parks for a diverse array of of user groups. Um the division has focused on providing opportunities such as free events like Sina Davis movies in the park, ride the drive, uh the learn to series, um which is sponsored by the Madison Parks Foundation, as well as events at our golf courses and Opit Botanical Gardens and providing a diverse array of activities and intentional strategy. We ensure that we're inviting all of our community members into our parks. As a part of our strategic plan, we um partner with organizations like MSCR, which is Madison School and Community Rec, who focus on providing recreational programming. Um MSCR provides a subsidized recreation classes and programs at Warner Park Community Rec Center, uh swimming lessons at the Goodman Pool and offering programming at our golf course courses this summer, and is a key partner for our signature event, uh Ride to Drive. Madison is known for his events and while some may not think this is a targeted violence prevention method, uh we see community-led events and permitting we provide as an integral piece of building relationships between people and by working with um these various communities. We have uh the permitted events we support uh organizers in thinking through their safety plans and crowd management so that the event attendees are as safe as possible. Uh next, so our ranger program. Um so the rangers are our first port and contact in our in our parks. Um they cover over 280 parks. They are small team but mighty team. Um that ensures that we're providing a safe and welcoming experience for all of our

users. They use a education first approach to enforcing city ordinances and the parks behavior policy and often coordinate with uh MPD when needed and a catalyst for change uh city street reach out use provider. The rangers also do outreach programming through the junior ranger program that they provide at parks alive. um the disc golf lending program in partnership with the Madison public library and a master and last year's class uh in partnership with uh friends of urban nature. Uh next so we'll talk about the no program and I actually have a video which is uh what Lisa will be showing here uh in a second. Um but the kids need opportunities at Warner or no program uh is a youth development program that uh we created in partnership with the um Madison Parks Foundation a couple years ago. Uh this program serves as a a successful youth engagement model offering a variety of structured and uh unstructured programs uh for north side teens who once didn't see the center as a place that was welcoming. We've done a lot of intentional work with creating this program and opportunities for uh the young people on the north side to feel like they're uh welcome uh into the into the building. Um this video that you'll see here was uh created uh as a part of a grant application with the 100 men of Dane County. Uh we applied for a grant to get a a van to help us with some of the transportation issues with the youth. Uh and we got the received the grant and we actually have the van and it's in use. So, uh, I'll let Lisa hit the, uh, share button on that. I don't know if you can hear. I don't know if you can hear, Lisa. We can't hear it.

Is there a share sound? Um, when you share the presentation? No, it's not. I don't see that. But let me let me try something else. Is the volume up next to the um play button? This here? Yeah, it is. Okay.

Oh, you have to unshare. Unshare. And then uh

there should be an option to click share sound when you start sharing. Okay, let me give that a try. Is that any better? All right. Share start again and click share sound when starting up. Could you hear what I didn't have my full present mode on.

No. No. Okay. Um, tech facilitator, can you please repeat those directions to me again? I I didn't quite catch all of them. Basically, restarting the share. So, stopping share, start share, and there should be an option to share sound. I'll check in our settings as well. Okay. There should be a check box. Oh, I think I hear something. Hey, I'm Richard and I go to East High School.

Hi, I'm Muhammad and I'm going to East High School. No means gives you opportunity at one. This is one of the few free and lowcost programs in the city specifically designed for teens and young adults. I can come after school or on the weekends to play basketball, make new friends, eat snacks, and have a safe place to hang out.

No offers, team night, a fishing program, threeon-ree basketball tournament, and a referee apprentichip program. where our youth officiate graduate development league games around game day counters and earn a paycheck. No provides a place to build relationships and learn new skills that will lead to future opportunities for our kids. No offers a wlet team that provides youth perspective in developing our programming here at the center. They also earn a paycheck and gain valuable experience. Right now, we're working on a youthled basketball league with youth players, referees, and scorekeepers. All organized by our youth leadership team. With our own van, we could provide rides so kids don't have to take the city bus. We could go on so many field trips in the community and expand the basketball program. For me, no means a family.

It's more than transportation. Our teams need a familiar face saying, "Get in. It matters to us that you're here." That sense of belonging is what can change their lives.

What's your name? Where do you go to school? Yeah, that was a nice little video of the no program. Um, you know, it's one of our good success stories, I would say, within the parks division. It continues to move strongly u since we implemented it. We've been able to hire a a full-time uh program coordinator to run the program, and we actually just expanded the facility um a $9 million facility expansion um so we can um serve more kids. uh that opened uh just a couple weeks ago um you know um you know for the kids and they they've come back in full force. So um the no program positions us to um expand our offerings over to the southside. So can you go to the next slide? So our new youth engagement coordinator uh it was added to our 2026 operating budget. We work with uh Madison and Evers on the budget amendment. Um and we'll be developing um and leading programming with a focus on youth violence prevention at the Goodman Pool uh Southside Madison parks uh and the surrounding areas including the Winger Triangle. The position focuses on promoting positive youth development through direct engagement and implementing a variety of programs that support skill building, leadership, and constructive participation. Much of their time over the summer will be spent at the pool engaging with the youth that come there to hang out. While the goal of the position is to improve behavior and ensure a welcoming atmosphere at the pool, we heard from community members that the behaviors and conflicts that have flared up at the pool often start elsewhere. So, we want to ensure residents that throughout the area um they have safe places to recreate. Our park should be places where um they can experience not just the joy of recreational sports but also joy of community connection and a true sense of

belonging. This is why this position will be creating programs that happen inside um locations outside the pool as well. We envision this person developing programs similar to the no program that we've developed at Warner Park uh in collaboration with the community and responsive to the needs of the youth in the area. Um the position will be posted soon and we hope to have a new person in the role uh by the springtime. I seen the requisition come through so that process is moving along. Thank you. I'm happy to take any questions.

Okay. Alder Harrington McKini is first and then Alder Madison.

Um thank you so very much. Um I am excited about the potential for youth engagement and um could you tell us a little bit more is this a pilot or is this um and I'm specifically thinking about youth in the area of Elbert Park. Is there a plan to do an expansion or where are you in terms of looking at um duplicating that model in other um I won't say high-risisk but other areas within the city.

Uh we definitely love to that position was specific for the pool and the uh Wingward Triangle area. So um for that role that will be specifically uh for that but we're always interested in learning about more opportunities uh for us to uh create a greater impact and with our resources uh deploy those as we can.

Okay. Uh well definitely I wanted to have that conversation. I'm really impressed because um I I see how actively engaged uh the program has been with the youth around the Goodman pool and so I'm excited about that to be able to replicate that and duplicate that and I would certainly like to have that kind of conversation so that our youth can experience what the young people are doing uh over through that program. And so I certainly would like to have a conversation with uh would uh would it be you? How would I engage that conversation? Feel free to um connect. We can definitely chat about that. Um um Okay, spot on. I'm complete.

All right, Alder Madison and then Alder Knox. Uh thank you. Uh just a quick clarifying question. The position that Alder Evers and I worked on that doesn't start until like April spring. Uh April 27th. Perfect. That's all I got. Thank you. Alder Knox. Uh thank you. Um I guess uh regarding this position that we work in the pool and then you also talked about the Wingra Creek area. Is that correct? Uh Winger Triangle. Yep.

Winger triangle. Okay. So I guess one of my questions is what kind of position is it? Is it a coordinator position? I think I I read. Yes, it's a comp group 184. Okay. Can you kind of explain what that position basically would be doing or would entail? Do you have a position description already? Uh, yes. We um that position just give me a brief, you don't have to read it, but just give you a brief idea of what this position would do.

Yeah. So, focusing on uh work at the Goodman Pool. So, youth engagement works with a variety of community partners and ensuring that the youth uh have a safe and welcoming experience which also includes implementing our um pool waiver program um that was uh put out by the park commission uh at the end of the uh pool season last year and then um uh standing up our um summer nights program that we piloted last year over at uh Wright Middle School. So, we're looking at this position and how we can um uh bring that program back as well as as well as expanding into fall and uh winter uh type programming as well. That's still being developed. Uh the position just got approved for a hire uh this week.

Okay. And um I guess um when you say waiver program, is that waving the fees to the pool? No, there's a waiver that youth there's a waiver that youth have to fill out. uh 11 to 15 years old to be able to access the pool. That was uh came as a result of your situations last year. Okay. In lie of having the subparential supervision. Is that what that's about? Yes. Okay. Good. All right. Um and so I assume the parents have to sign the waiver as well as the the student. Correct.

Okay. So, yeah. I I I guess what I'm kind of trying to figure out is from what I heard about some of the issues at the pool, it was kind of a security issue. So, I'm just wondering what question would be who would this coordinator be coordinating with if there's no like youth workers? A lot of a lot of youth oriented programs have youth workers that are being coordinated. In this case, it's just a coordinator. So, who would they be coordinating with? Some of the uh what nonprofits in the neighborhood or correct? Yes. So, can you give me an idea of that?

Yes. So, we worked uh last summer with a lot of folks that presented tonight uh public health uh focusing interruption coalition helped us with that. Um also work with Madison Police, a variety of different stakeholders uh within the youth uh spectrum. from the Madison Public Library um uh is another example um that they the Madison school district uh MSCR um they'll be working with those individuals to uh identify those youth that we can connect with and make those relationship relationships with. I think uh a big part of what we want to get out of this is that relationship building before the pool opens. Um, so, uh, when the position is hired in April, um, they'll be kind of on the ground, um, we'll have a a plan form, um, making those connections and those relationships to outreach some of those kids on the south side, um, in order to help explain the rules and and expectations, uh, as it relates to use of the pool for the summer.

Okay. So you mentioned the pool users which that's citywide. So those kids could be coming from literally anywhere in the city to use our own our only municipal pool. Correct. Yes.

And then you also bitched the Wingra Creek area as well. So my question is what about the other kids of the southside? How would they would they be able to connect to this? Are you restricting this to a certain regional or group or geographical part of the southside? I'm just trying to envision, you know, uh how this uh process would would roll out.

Are you talking about as far as the pool is concerned? Well, as far as parks is concerned too, cuz for example, we have like let's take Pin Park, one of the most heaviest used parks in the city. Uh we have I'm not aware anybody coordinating violence prevention activities there other than whatever uh resources that will be coming from the the public health. So, how do you connect with all of the youth on the south side in order to make sure that you're you're going to be impactful? Uh, as I mentioned, a variety of community partners is our our initial plan. We do have Parks Alive that uh occurs at Pen Park, by the way. Um, but

I'm familiar with Parks Alive. That that's very infrequent. Okay. You know, in terms of the use of the park and the kids that are using the park. So, go ahead. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Oh, yeah. So, uh, through, uh, that array of community partners is our our, um, our plan, uh, right now, um, to help get us connected with, uh, those individuals that'll be coming to use the pool. Okay. Okay. Is is, uh, Eric or or your other uh, administrators available as well for questions?

Yes. Um, this is assistant park superintendent Lisa Lashinger. available for questions. And I think Eric is here as well trying to get my video turned on.

So, I guess I've just tried to um I mean there are a variety of uh security or safety issues at at our parks. I know at I'm familiar with some issues at Water Park, certainly Pit Park, the pool is a big focus because that's citywide, which makes sense. So, I guess I'm trying to figure out what is the park's plan to provide a safe and secure environment for young people who use the parks and adults for that matter.

Um, a as we're still working on building out exactly what this position will look like, but the goal would be for it to focus on serving youth on the south side of Madison. Um, and so it it could involve and we would envision that it would involve some additional program at parks like Penn that are also on the south side. As Terrence mentioned, we did pilot a nights at right program this last summer and that's something that we would be looking to expand. So that's um programming that happens during summer evenings when there's less uh programming happening in the schools. Um that could help with the youth during the summer. We also need to build out what this looks like during the the school year. Um, and so that's why, as Terrence has mentioned, connecting with those community partners to build on those relationships and figure out how to best serve these youth is going to be key to this position.

Okay, that's fine. So, as one of those uh community partners, the Southside Raiders uses Pin Park for several months during the year and certainly have um 80 plus kids probably using that program. So, it would be a good idea to reach out in terms of addressing some of those very issues cuz they're there probably from July through October, you know what I mean? On a regular basis. So, just just trying to figure out I don't know why nobody reached out, you know, to the Southside Raiders as a big user, probably one of the largest youth serving organizations on the Southside. So just my suggestion is somebody should reach out.

No, absolutely we would do that. Um as Terrence mentioned, this position is not hired yet. Um and they won't be on staff until the end of April. So especially uh since you're the elder of that district and uh you have many connections, it would be great if we can connect with you and pick your brain on not just the Raiders. We're very familiar with the Raiders, but other organizations that you think it would be helpful for us to benefit uh to connect with?

Yeah. Yep. Uh certainly because there are a lot of teenage kids who are very underserved even they don't frequent the Boys and Girls Club that often either. So we really have to find a way how to not only reach out to them, but when they are participating, make sure that it's a safe environment to use. So, thank you. I appreciate it.

Seeing no others in the queue, I think we will move to our next presentation. presentation.

Okay, everybody's ready. All right. Okay. All right.

Uh, good evening everyone. Uh, I know it's very late, so thank you for sticking with me. Uh for those uh community members who don't know me, my name is Yant. Uh I'm the director of the city's traffic engineering division. Traffic engineering is responsible for the city's pedestrian, bicycle and motor vehicle systems. Uh we are also responsible for the city's uh radio communication system and also uh maintain a big part of the city's uh fiber communication system. uh vision zero even though it's uh uh officially housed in traffic engineering but it really it's a citywide effort involving many city agencies out there uh such as uh the mayor's office uh MPD uh public health uh fire department uh engineering division uh fleet division um and many you know here I want to say that you know uh even my role in this is to assist the mayor and the council in uh overseeing the the work of the whole team uh but really uh you know we are where we are where we are today because all the agencies are participating and doing a good work uh otherwise we won't be done very going very far I also want to thank uh all of you our elected officials you know for all your support uh your encouragement your understanding and your collaboration uh and I want to thank our community members uh for allowing us to do different things you allowing us to

innovate to try new things maybe sometime make mistakes uh implementing you know some of the very controversial uh projects in the city and uh luckily uh you know saw mostly good results uh from those. Uh so again thank you all. Uh without you uh we're not where we are today. So first uh what's vision zero? Vision Zero is a new strategy aimed at uh eliminating traffic fatalities and severe injuries where increasing safe, healthy and equitable mobility for all. So uh it's different from uh the traditional traffic city approach in a few major ways. So first we used to think that traffic deaths are inevitable, right? just part of price we pay for our mobility. However, vision zero thinks that traffic deaths are preventable if we do things carefully, mindfully and if we do things systematically and traditionally we used to demand perfect human behavior. Everybody has to be perfect. But vision zero acknowledge we're all human beings and human beings make mistakes. However though because we make a mistake it doesn't mean that us or someone else has to lose their lives and vision there uh is also different from traditional approach in what we focus on. So traditionally we focus on

preventing all conditions. Vision zero thinks that maybe all those conditions are not created equal. So let's use our limited resources and focus on the ones are really bad. The one really you know cause people to lose their lives and you know really change people's uh uh lives forever. uh let's focus on those and we used to demand individual responsibility right everyone work as individual but vision zero takes a system approach so everyone is a part of the whole system so when we're together we can have a lot of synergy and we used to think that you know saving lives is expensive we cannot afford to do it visionaries think that uh saving lives don't have to be expensive as long as we can do small things consistently and mindfully. So here's a quick timeline of uh uh vision zero medicine. Um you know backing actually 20 uh 2019 um uh mayor Satcha uh you know challenge uh city staff uh for new ideas for innovation. Um uh I suggest to her that let's start uh starting there. she very supportive. Uh she actually uh you know took the initiative and got us uh even some grand support from Harvard University uh the Kennedy school along with the Bloomberg philanthropy. So we get some expert support from them. Uh we have worked with them work over a few months time period we developed kind of

a plan to launch visioner in Madison. So in 2020 uh the council officially uh adopt city budget that includes a small small funding uh for us to start working and in July 2020 uh you know in the height of a pandemic uh we our city uh the mayor the common council uh passed resolution uh to officially uh support vision zero in from that summer uh we start to roll out a lot of projects uh you know and meantime uh we worked on develop developing uh a vision zero action plan so that's kind of longer term road map uh you know telling us what to do uh in the coming years uh but we didn't really waste any time we're waiting the plan to be complete before we act so we act the same time We wrote a lot of projects. Um we uh formed a vision zero steering team mostly city staff from different departments and also uh a community stakeholder task force involving a lot of uh uh community organizations in our city. Uh so we consult them, ask them what they think and they help guide uh our work. We also uh kind of collaborate with one of uh uh at that time traffic engineering another initiative complete green streets and uh uh together uh we launched uh uh new program uh for public enga public engagement it's called let's talk streets uh we make the attentional

effort reaching out to uh everyone including uh our residents we used to uh rarely you know heard from uh especially those living in a you know low-inccome uh communities and uh in um summer of 2021 we also started uh another now I think everybody everybody knows it uh now it become very popular initiative it's called 20 is plenty uh so basically reducing speed limit on local res residential streets to 20 miles per to increase safety and livability. So, we started uh a pilot project in two neighborhoods. Uh I'm going to talk more about that a bit later. And uh uh we also worked with uh uh the University of Wisconsin uh and they help us develop uh you know analyze all the data we have over many years and developed what we call a high injury network uh which uh is is a collection of our streets with the highest amount of fatalities and injuries. So that uh we use that to guide our investment uh on safety improvements. And in 20 in in March of 2022, uh the common council officially adopted our vision zero action plan developed by the developed by the staff team. And uh um in April uh we are also we're also recognized officially as a vision zero city uh by one of the national organizations. Uh we also start to roll out a lot of uh uh events in collaboration with other city departments uh especially like the parks uh for the parks alive uh event uh

you know with fire department uh for Saturday safety Saturdays. Uh so really you know bring uh city resources to the residents instead of asking them to come to our meetings because we understand right not of us can afford to you know uh leave their house or leave their neighborhood and come to the you know a city building uh to meet with us and uh uh we also developed uh a new program called safe ch medicine uh to prioritize uh safety projects which I talked a little bit more on that uh and started a lot lot of program through lot of projects through that program and we continued our public engagement uh uh continue safe streets and speeding pro uh projects and uh in the spring of 2024 we released our first progress report. Uh so hopefully you know many of you haven't seen that. Uh we made a lot of progress. Uh and was and those were documented in there in there. Uh we shared a lot of data as well and very excitingly we are wrapping up our second uh progress report right now. So that's going to be released to the public very soon. Uh and there's going to be tons of more information uh in there. We are taking a safe system approach. Uh we actually uh you know started this uh before uh the United States Department of Transportation uh adopted this. Uh so uh later on you know they start to uh promote uh kind of

nationwide uh you know safety strategy and they start to promote uh safe system approach. Uh so if you work in the industry you will see that uh you will see that you know ours components are a little bit different from theirs. Uh that's because we developed this before they did. Uh so we didn't know right. uh uh so it's a bit different but the core are mostly the same. So first safe streets so we want to make our streets safer by uh mindfully design designing it uh by mindfully operating it by mindfully uh contour it um and also by doing speed management. The second component is safe people. So uh we provide education and encourage encourage safe behaviors from all road users and also you know building a safety culture in our community. Uh we all we also collaborate with uh public health and uh uh now we are starting to uh you know work with uh uh local businesses you know who serve customers uh alcohol uh you know making sure that we put customer safety uh up front uh as well safe vehicles uh we work with uh our fleet decision division um on uh promoting you know safety technology technology in vehicles. Uh you know those are can you know can really make a difference uh when crash happens. Uh and also we uh keep an eye on all emerging technologies uh that we can utilize to improve safety. Another critical part is safety data. So

we really want to be data centered. Use the data as our guide for decision making. So we did a lot of data analysis uh and really um you know trying to uh get the biggest ban uh with our investment. Last but not least safety focused enforcement. Uh so here I want to you know uh thank Chief Patterson and the whole MPD team uh for working working with us um really making traffic enforcement you know focused on safety uh right instead of focusing on uh violations may not have a serious safety impact right like you know expired license plate uh but let's focus on you know DUIs let's focus on excite speeding And also uh we work with them uh you know as uh the chief mentioned uh previously uh you know focus on our high injury network right uh you really pay attention to where serious crashes happens. So we saw a lot of uh uh positive impact from doing that. We are also listening to the public. Again, you know, through the Let's Talk Streets program, we're trying to build a better understanding of what our residents want us to do as a as a city agency and we want um to make sure what we are doing, you know, really are serving them. Uh so you know we asked a lot of people uh so last time actually we uh kind of t this together uh we engaged um almost 2,000 people through our process

and we're really trying to build a consens consensus on what we value in our community. Right. And these four things are what we heard most. Our residents ask us to put the people first to prioritize safety over speed of travel. Really, right? If you cannot get to your destination safely, it doesn't really matter how fast you get there. And our residents ask us to support community, prioritize place, and create place and prioritize access. And our residents ask us to foster sustainability, building more multimodal and uh also more green, more green streets and our residents ask us to focus on equity not just in the process on how we do things but also look at outcomes. So these are really become you know really becomes our guiding principles as we push out controversial projects right when we and we did many of those uh whenever those happens we're trying to you know get these committee values out these what do we agreed on and let's see whether you know uh those projects comply with this if so let's do it if not let's uh find something else we have also be learning from others. Um actually you know it's not a secret that vision zero really hasn't gone very well in United States. It started in Europe in Sweden. Uh we saw great results over there. Uh then a few US US cities started to do that. However you

know on most part we just put a label on the same thing, right? We just label same thing as a visioner. We expect different results. you know that never happens and uh that's why we saw you know many vision zero cities actually the fatalities keep increasing however though there are you know a couple cities who done really well for example Hoboken New Jersey so a small community cross river from Manhattan um so uh at that time when we start to collaborate with them they had four years without a single fatality on their roads uh the road Z control not not including the state highways uh now actually it's 80 years so uh but we have been working with them over the years uh uh with a lot of uh uh peer exchange uh we also got a uh some federal funding to do a peer exchange program with Arlington County Virginia so uh right across river from Washington DC um so we really uh uh you know explored uh what we can do to push vision zero to the next level in the United States. You know, as I mentioned, we are implementing implementing our new safe streets medicine program. So, it's a new infrastructure program. Uh we uh we worked uh with transportation commission. Uh we developed this new program to um kind of focus our res focus our resources on um eliminating serious fatal crashes and also filling gaps in our walk and bike network because you know data showed us that uh pedestrians and bicyclists are the most vulnerable

on the road. They are over represented in the fatality and injury data. Yeah. Because you know they don't when they travel they don't have a protection around them, right? So they're very vulnerable. We basically combined finding from a few smaller programs and integrate them as one. Uh so we can kind of go through like systematic review of all the public requests uh out there. uh I want to say that you know these folks on small to mediumsiz projects does not include like really large projects like you know reconstruct the whole street so that funding is typically included in city insurance budget uh but we work with them and building in work with them on the design of the road uh and we building in a lot of safety features uh through through through that process. Uh so this new process really puts a lot more focus on safety and also improve the fairness on how we distribute funds across the city. Uh you know I can give you one example uh South Madison um right uh you know uh we you know for many years uh we really don't get a whole lot of uh you know complaints requests from neighborhood. So but because we got so many company requests from uh other neighborhood so uh you know we we did very few projects in South Madison. However though since this program started we implemented over 30 safety projects in the south medicine neighborhood. Uh so that's just one example that shows that we are distributing our resources much more much more equitably. We are also moving forward pretty aggressively with speed management

and here is why speed really plays a critical role in the outcome of crashes. So the higher uh speed a vehic you know the driver's field of vision become narrower. So we we just cannot see them as many things if we are as we were driving maybe slower and also the higher speed we travel the longer it takes for us to stop if something happens. So that increases the possibility of crashes being happening and also more importantly you know physics tells us right higher speed that a car is traveling the more damage going to cause especially when it collides with a pedestrian for example at a 20 mile per hour there is a 13% chance a pedestrian will be killed. At a 30 m per hour that increase 40%. And at a 40 m per hour it's almost certain that pedestrian will be will be dying that's 73%. So speed really matters and that's why we have been you know very aggressively managing speeding on our roadways. But I'm happy to report that uh you know those are very controversial projects and we have done a before and after study on all those projects and I'm happy to report that we saw overwh overwhelmingly positive results on almost all those streets we we studied with only like a couple exceptions. What we saw is that we actually didn't change the average speed that much. You know, for example, East Washington

Avenue. This is uh data from East Washington Avenue. One of the first speed imaging project we did in the city, you know, following uh a safety crisis, you know, back in 2020, 2020, 2021. We had a six fatalities in a year on East Washington Avenue uh with mostly pedestrians being hit. So we came in with this speed management and we found that we reduced the average speed by only one to two miles per hour, right? Even even though we reduce the speed limit by you know some you know like in downtown area by 50 m per hour uh as we go out further uh a little bit less and uh but you know what change a lot is you know the percentage and also the number of people who drive really fast. we saw that they actually moved to the to the middle. So people who driving really fast now tends to drive in the middle now. So uh you know for example at this location uh on Eastwin Avenue people who travel traveled over 40 m per hour reduced by 30 to 90%. depending on the different locations. I also want to show you some interesting results on our 20 East Plenty program. So, we did evaluation uh last year uh you know how those two neighborhoods uh that we did in 2021 worked right. What we did is that we went back four years before we made a change and we go after four years after we made a change because that's the the the the largest money we can get at that till

that at that time. What we found is that uh uh we saw big change uh but a question is that uh you know does it change everywhere right? There's so many factors involved. So we set some control right the one of the control is the the nationwide data. Another control is the citywide data. So for nationwide data you know uh for the you know before four years and after four years crash is reduced by about three four to 4%. For Madison the whole city we did much better. Our crash is reduced by 29%. But for two neighborhoods, that's even better. For example, uh for 10 Napa neighborhood, the crash is reduced by 42%. And in the Terresa Hammers neighborhood, it reduced by 46%. So, uh well above the city average and of course the national average. So we really believe it works and uh so that's why uh last year we wrote it you know city wrote it out citywide. So uh I think you know most residents uh you know probably now have a 20 mile speed limit 20 mile speed uh limit on their streets. You know another benefits I think really is not just regarding you know just about this these streets only but also is uh general reminder on all of us right most of us start our day on local street and most of end our day on a local street so I think it's really serves a really good reminder for all of us right safety matters most

and uh we're making significant progress uh as I mentioned so you know through the vision there uh initiative we really improved our public engagement pro process and made it more equitable since the safe streets program uh was created uh we funded 237 seven projects uh most of them already implemented uh people are enjoying the benefits and some of them are in a different stage of delivery delivery process some are being designed some are uh we're getting a contractor working on it and also we get uh more projects in the pipeline uh actually become so popular so right now we have over 600 requests from our residents uh on there and so we're trying our best to get, you know, cover as many of them as possible. For speed management, over the last few years, we reduced speed limits on over 60 miles of our major roadways through uh as a little bit over 60 different projects. Again, I most saw really good results. uh and as mentioned that we uh complete the city the citywide roll out of the 20 is plenty program. We also uh developed implemented and actually are now enhancing uh a new complete green streets guide uh which kind of defines how we design streets in the future and uh we are incorporating as much as safety improvements into our street reconstruction work and street resurfacing work as well. you know actually lots of those work

actually are funded by not by our taxpayers in in the city it's funded by the federal government. So uh we uh secured travel engineering division alone um in last few years we applied and secured uh about 30 different federal grant grants and among those over $20 million of funding are religious safety. So we're bringing to our community and I think most importantly I really feel like uh you know we are institutionalizing a new design and operations philosophy in our city. I think that's going to benefit us for long term. So uh our work actually has been recognized nationally uh in for what we do in Madison uh you know such as uh the National League of Cities. Uh I know some others went to the their conference and heard they talk pretty positive about us. Uh the National Association of City Transportation Officials uh the Institute of Transportation Engineers. Uh the Visionary Network. So we got a lot of uh uh recognition from our peers you know but more important to me we got a lot of approval from our residents so I think that's really matters to me the most we received so many heartwarming notes uh from residents uh actually including one of some examples here actually uh one of the the the note actually from uh one of you or others here. Uh I don't know I'm not sure whether you can still recognize that. So uh but you know this we really appreciate you know the uh the positive feedback the appreciation from the

public uh you know from the elected officials uh because I think I one of them know said that uh uh you know they like my husband and I imagine you get a lot of communications and a lot a lot of appreciation for a job you do. That's true right? uh you know we are here to serve the public so as public tends to contact us only when they have an issue uh right you know when is going well great right uh but some of you actually take time to let us know um we thank you for that I want to share you know a piece of very encouraging data with you uh again I think more data will be in our progress report uh but This piece of data I think is the most important one. So that's the number of fatalities on city controlled or jointly controlled roadways. So I'm talking about all roads in Madison that the city can has our can have our hands on. Uh so this does not include the few roadways that we cannot do anything about it such as uh you know uh b line stoen road uh highway 30 uh but most everything else like even east avenue we we have some joint control it some of the county highways we have joint control over it so as long as we can have some influence it's in this data set when we start vision zero in 2020 20 we had the 12 fatalities on our roadways and last year in 2025 we reduce that to six. So that's a 50% reduction and uh you know we also saw that in so this is not just one year we saw the trend you know

in the years before that as well uh you know our 2024 data um uh also in the same trend so uh I really feel like uh uh what we are doing together are working and uh it's really making a difference on our streets But you know our work is not done. We still have a lot of work to do. Right? Even one death is too many. So, uh, I think you know the the fatality, our first fatality in 2026 a couple weeks ago on Packers Avenue is a sobering reminder that uh, you know, we lost um, a senior member of our community and it it just remind me right our work is not done, right? We need to continue to do this and we will not stop working until we reach our goal of zero fatalities and serious injuries on our roadways. So, let's work together. Thank you,

Alder Madison. Finally, I'm first work all night.

Well, I just really want I don't have a question. I just want to say thank you and I'm I'm like so serious because in my district at least especially in the Sanberg area all the sort of like um concerns around speeding around kids being able to cross the street you know especially with pick uh parent pickup and drop off at Samberg Elementary School just the tweaks in the neighborhood has been like I think folks have appreciated that and there was another cross crosswork near right at Porters Road where kids have to cross that's also been improved so those concerns or questions that I was getting in the beginning of my first couple years no longer I don't get those anymore. Um so I just want to say thank you especially it's when you there was a slide about the public and public access or whatever I was I saw my district represented and all of that. So again I just want to say thank you.

Thank you Alder Alder Yugare. Thank you President B. Um two questions. Uh uh first one going back to that uh collaboration uh lessons learned with a place like Hoboken which has had these notable results. Are there one or two things maybe that really make a difference between how they went at it and how apparently we're going at it uh than those that have not had uh good numbers in terms of what they've achieved?

That's a wonderful question. So yeah uh you know we learned quite a few through our peer exchanges and uh you know I have to thank uh uh uh the mayor actually for collecting us uh with their staff you know through their mayor uh we are able to kind of uh meet uh and uh uh kind of exchange ideas uh you know uh what I feel that you know they are doing well know a couple things I think we kind of uh you know copied uh you know one is u uh their way of being able to uh you know move controversial projects forward right uh I think other US cities uh uh I don't think uh that you don't they don't know uh but they were not able to find a path forward um on those very controversial projects uh what we're doing sometimes very controversial so you know how to manage the process that requires skills and also like a lot of you know uh relationship building uh trust with the community uh support from the uh you know you all uh I think that's you know make a difference for them it's making difference for us uh so secondly I feel like uh uh they really focus on doing small things consistently instead of doing like you know a few really large projects uh make big deal of it and then proceed as as normal as usual. Uh so uh you know for example uh they did one project uh they call daylighting every intersection. So which you know actually is very basic small concept which is

that uh you know making sure you remove some parking from near intersection so that you maintain that good satellite you know between drivers and pedestrians right uh it's a it's not a fancy idea but they done that consistently across the city uh I think that actually matters a lot

so I think those are a couple things Okay. Um, one of the things I think I'm seeing is that uh, traffic engineering is not afraid to experiment. I mean, some things we have to try. We think they might uh, accomplish something, but uh, maybe we'll try something else if that doesn't work or so forth. Uh so one of when when you mention that we do some things that are a little controversial uh just because so much of the BRT road is in my district. I get to hear a lot about no turn on on red. Do we have any early data yet that says that that's accomplishing uh what we hope it might accomplish?

Uh that's a great question. Uh so uh you know we're doing uh studies on a lot of projects uh and we saw again uh overwhelming positive results on most of them uh you know for the changes along the BRT route uh because uh you know it's a fairly recent so we haven't done a systematic before and after study yet you know for safety data we typically like wait you know a few years so we can get enough data Uh but we did get uh you know quite a few uh positive feedback you know from residents regarding safety. Uh actually I just heard one this morning uh when I uh dur during meeting uh about East Washington Avenue how that have changed. Uh you know we have been changing East Washington Avenue and I think you know the uh the improvements with the BRT uh you know make streets uh even safer uh especially at the you know pedestrian crossings. uh you know BRT project really you know we really uh collaborate with that project uh and you know that that was lead by uh you know DOT and uh uh microtransit but we collaborate on the kind of patent safety component at intersections so really um I think beefed up the uh accommodations for pedestrians especially like where are the PRT stations uh so I definitely think that's going to be make that will make a safety that's positive safety impact and uh uh uh yeah, I think we'll probably wait for a few years and we'll do a maybe systematic study on that.

Thank you. Thank you, Alder Pritchette.

I have a Girl Scout uh troop that I've been working with and they are seeking to earn a badge. They want me to ask you a question and the question is this. in their neighborhood on off of Old Sock Road in Schway. Uh the school out there is the Pope Farms Elementary School. They are trying to get the city of Madison to provide signage for road uh crossings, etc. And I'm going to hearken back to one of your earlier slides which mentioned the whole idea of making roads safer for everyone. One of the troops uh Girl Scout troops uh troopers fell and broke her leg, her ankle, and her leg was flailing. She had been attempting to cross the street because she was worried about the cars coming too fast. Their question is this. If they submitted a proposal, this is their proposal. This is the action they think you should take or traffic safety should take. Would that proposal be accepted? Thank you. Thank you, order. The answer is absolutely yes. Yeah. So we we uh we love to see the proposal uh from the ghost scarc and uh uh we will we'll work with them uh to evaluate is a concept and we help them to improve it. Uh so that area area is actually on our radar for improvements. It's right at the border of the city. Uh the school itself actually is not in the city. It's a different school district. Um uh but uh

you know the the Osaka road that's that segment is right in the city limit. Uh we have been working on that and uh uh we also actually providing uh school crossing guards you know a couple times every day helping the kids crossing the street over there. Uh but we do know uh uh uh there's there's more work needs to be done. So, uh I would love to uh receive a proposal uh uh from our kids over there and uh we'd love to collaborate with them. That would be great. As I said, they are very very afraid of crossing the street and as we've had a couple of conversations about Old Sock Road, especially Old Sock at Junction Road. That's a problem for seniors. They're looking for relief as well, especially at the Junction Road Old Salt Intersect. Crossing the street for them, especially because of mobility issues, is problematic. And we really and they're really really looking for some relief with respect to what do they have to do short of being maimed and or killed uh in trying to cross the street. Uh thank you. Uh that actually is already on our list. I think staff are developing some of project concepts and uh we'll be evaluating that through the safety medicine program. Uh so uh hopefully uh we can get something done over there.

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you as well, Alder Mayor.

Thank you. Uh yes, I also want to thank you for your responsiveness to the community. Um for those of you who aren't aware, prior to this fall, uh Willie Street um would go to four lanes during the rush hour morning and afternoon. We'd take away the parking lanes and um have them all all open to traffic and neighborhood the market neighborhood association felt that that caused a lot of danger. we had, you know, numerous car building collisions. And so the neighborhood association came up with the idea to um stop doing that just to keep parking there 24 hours. And uh they put it to the transportation commission who approved it and we did a trial and found that not only did it lower some speeds, but it didn't really seem to increase congestion at all. And so now that's a permanent change. Um, and I just appreciate uh being able to get that done, especially getting it started before John Nolan was closed. So, we had some accurate data. Um, but I just think that was a really successful example of a community-led idea that had support from the city and and got done and for positive change. So, thank you.

Oh, thank you. And the neighborhood, you know, for the collaboration through that process. So, thank you for, you know, bringing the ideas to us. Alder Pritchette, did you have another question or is this your hand from before? I'm going to guess it was her hand from before. Okay, go ahead, Alder Tishler.

Yeah, I I just have one uh question. more probably more first to kind of start a a more in-depth conversation in the future. But we've we've talked a lot about um uh you know making safety improvements and I actually appreciate a lot a lot of the safety improvements that that that you've done in in district 11. It's made a lot of a lot of residents feel much safer across the street. But there and and lowering the speed limit also helps uh you know quite a bit. But there are still individuals who who drive too fast no matter what. And we've talked about you know uh some of the you know uh you know by reducing the amount of uh police officers you know also and having different different people who respond to incidents uh is the right approach but I guess you know but I guess my question is at what point do all the safety measures that we're taking just aren't enough and we actually will need to actually have more uh traffic enforcement officers to really kind of be be visible and address the ISS issues of people who just just drive too fast no matter what we do. Um so that's kind of my question or or concern maybe a future discussion but

sure. Yeah. Uh you know that that's a wonderful question and uh you know I invite uh uh Chief Patterson to chime in as well. Uh I think ideally right for uh uh every project right there is engineering component right uh but there is also can be like a enforcement support uh on that uh I know that uh uh we office resource limitations uh you know both from my end from the chief's end uh so uh we have been you know our teams have been communicating constantly um So MPD you know has a member you know sitting on the visioner team meeting every week and we have been uh so what happens right now is that uh you know for some projects we uh collaborate proactively for example like a major spin matching program when we reduce speed limit on East Washington Avenue for example uh we worked at PD pro proactively programmed uh a few enforcement initiatives on there you know initially started with education uh and then followed by ticketing right uh so I think that has been very effective uh but we will not be able to do that you know for every single project uh so uh so for many other projects uh you know we use kind of engineering counter measures first and then when we notice uh still notice issues uh such as some of uh uh uh you know the the the changes as per like a signage changes right uh without enforcement it won't be that effective so so for very problematic locations we always reach out to uh you know either the the the traffic enforcement and

safety team within MPD or the district uh uh captains so they have been helping us to kind of pay some special attention to those problematic locations So uh I thought it has been you know given the resources we have I thought that collaboration has gone really well uh you know much better than by better than you know years ago. Um um yeah so uh again I think we we probably not going to have resources in the foreseeable future to do all the things we want to do in a perfect way. uh but I think we are uh using our resources uh very smartly together very smart together and we are trying to make the most impact with the resources we have. All right, seeing no further questions, I want to thank everyone for coming tonight and I know I learned a lot and hopefully um my colleagues did and um there will be things for the public to learn and um just thank you all for all you do to make our city a safe and welcoming space. Good night.