Public Safety, Finance and Strategic Support Committee (psfss) - Regular Meeting

To start the meeting for our PISFIS. So I'm gonna before we begin, I want to remind the public safety, finance, and strategic support committee members and members of the public to follow our code of conduct at meetings. This includes commenting on the specific agenda item only and addressing the full body. Public speakers will not engage in a conversation with the chair, council member or staff. All members of the Public Safety Finance and Strategic Support Committee, staff and the public are expected to refrain from abusive language.

Repeated failure to comply with the code of conduct, which will disturb, disrupt or impede the orderly conduct of this meeting may result in removal from the meeting. This meeting of the public safety finance and strategic support committee will now come to order. Clerk, can you call roll, please?

Salas?

Here.

Casey? Mulcahy? Here. Vice Kameh? Here. Chair Doan? Here. You have a quorum.

Okay. On consent calendar, we we got one item on consent calendar, which is bimonthly bimonthly financial report for January. Is there any public comment?

We have no public comment.

Can I have a motion?

Move approval. Second.

Okay. Let's vote.

That motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Okay. On item number one, we have hemp regulation status report. And that would be the staff who have given the PowerPoint would be Wendy Solazi and

Good afternoon Chair, Committee members and members of the public. My name is Wendy Salazi, and I'm the Division Manager in the Police Department's Division of Regulation. Joining me shortly will be Rachel Roberts, Deputy Director of Code Enforcement. On June 11, City Council directed the Police Department's Division of Cannabis Regulation to bring the following items to a future public safety finance and strategic support committee meeting: banning the sale of chemically synthesized hemp in the city of San Jose and requiring registration of industrial hemp retailers. However, in September 2024, after the city council's direction was given, Governor Newsom issued emergency regulations aimed at protecting youth from the adverse health effects of dangerous hemp products.

The emergency state regulations require industrial hemp food, beverage and dietary products intended for human consumption to have no detectable THC or other intoxicating cannabinoids per serving. It sets a minimum age to purchase hemp products at 21 and limits the number of hemp products to five per package. The emergency regulations were readopted and approved in March and will be in effect until September. Staff are monitoring this emergency regulation to understand the state's plans and actions following September. The hemp bill allows for the inclusion of hemp and cannabinoid extracts or derivatives of hemp in food and beverages, dietary supplements, cosmetics and processed pet food provided that they, among other things, contain less than 0.3% THC.

As a result of the emergency regulations and rules already existing at the state level, staff believes the city's role and focus should be on collaborating with the state enforcement efforts of their ban rather than creating an additional and separate ban on the sale of chemically synthesized hemp and requiring a registration process of industrial hemp retailers in San Jose. Implementing a successful strategy to address chemically synthesized hemp being sold in retail locations in San Jose requires careful consideration of the scope of the problem, regulations and enforcement tools already in place, as well as constraints, additional enforcement tools and additional resources that may be required. Unregulated products containing intoxicating cannabinoids are being sold in locations such as vape shops, smoke shops and convenience stores due to loopholes in existing state and federal regulations. Staff has received reports from various stakeholders regarding concerns about chemically synthesized hemp being sold at businesses throughout the city. And code enforcement staff have observed hemp products being offered for sale in some tobacco retail licensed businesses and have received complaints recording illegal hemp products for sale.

Per the emergency state regulations, hemp products with THC will no longer be available in the retail marketplace, and legal cannabis products must be sold in licensed cannabis businesses. With all sales of products containing being required to be sold in licensed cannabis businesses, the city and state should benefit from increased cannabis tax revenue. State regulators, including the Department of Public Health, the Department of Cannabis Control, Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, and Department of Tax and Fee Administration will work together to ensure industrial hemp is enforced from manufacture to sale. Local enforcements also have the authority to ensure licensed retail establishments comply with the law. The Department of Public Health staff are currently working with industry and regulatory partners to ensure compliance with these emergency regulations and existing law.

Businesses that violate these laws are subject to enforcement actions, including licensure actions and civil administrative and or criminal penalties. City ordinances related to cannabis and tobacco are designed to encourage the responsible sale of cannabis and tobacco products and discourage violation of cannabis and tobacco related laws. The administrative citation schedule fines for violations of the code, establishes an escalation scale with the first violation being the lowest fine, followed by increases for the second and third and any subsequent violations within a twelve month period from the date of the first violation. The fine schedule related to cannabis violations is tiered with the lowest offenses starting at $250 and escalating to $5,000 and more significant offenses start at $10,000 and escalate to 50,000. Selling hemp products containing THC is a cannabis sale.

No businesses shall operate in the city of San Jose until it's first filed a cannabis business registration application, paid all required fees and has received a notice of completed registration from the city manager to operate. If a business is found to be non compliant with this requirement, a more egregious violation would be assessed at the highest level beginning at $10,000 and escalating to $50,000 Staff reviewed hemp regulations in various California cities and counties for the landscape of current practices. As you can see, the results varied from nothing currently in place to notification of enforcement actions for non compliance, which is what San Jose did last summer as well, to plans of creating policies, to temporary moratoriums, to banning hemp. Even though there are no city resources allocated to hemp regulation, in July 2024, the Police Department and Planning building code enforcement department sent all current tobacco retail licensees a letter with their annual renewal notices regarding selling intoxicating hemp, reminding them to discontinue selling these destroy the products or bring them to the police department for destruction. As a reminder, the Division of Cannabis Regulation regulates registered cannabis businesses, and those businesses pay the program costs through various cost recovery fees.

The Planning, Building and Code Enforcement Department has a tobacco retail license program funded by cost recovery license fees. The Code Enforcement Division plans to provide status update on the implementation of the flavored tobacco ban and other program related improvements to the Neighborhood Services and Education Committee in June. As currently structured, the Police Department's Division of Cannabis Regulation and Tobacco Retail License Staff and Code Enforcement are entirely funded through cost recovery fees. This means staff are unable to perform tasks not associated with their respective regulatory programs unless general fund resources were made available or new cost recovery fees were imposed to pay for such tasks. Additionally, if staffing levels were increased to enforce the state's ban and age verification process, there would be sufficient legal staff to pursue administrative and or civil actions against businesses not complying with those regulations.

The city's Code Enforcement Division will continue to conduct annual proactive inspections of tobacco retail licensed businesses and regulatory compliance inspections of registered cannabis businesses. Staff will also continue to respond to complaints from the public regarding illegal cannabis activity and tobacco retail license business operations. Staff will continue to refer any criminal activity observed to the police department for follow-up as appropriate. As stated on the previous slide, should City Council direct staff to inspect vape shops, smoke shops and convenience stores for hemp products containing THC, funding resources need to be made available or new cost recovery fees need to be created to pay for such tasks. Our recommendation is to accept the status report on efforts to ban the sale of chemically synthesized hemp and require registration of industrial hemp retailers.

Thank you for the report. Clerk, do we have any public comments?

No public comment.

K. I'm gonna go over to council member Khamenei.

Thank you. Thank you for the report and for the information. Who would have known that something else was gonna be put on the table there? That's equally, you know, difficult. So one of the things that that I was wondering about is I know that there are no funds dedicated to be able to do further enforcement or anything like that because you are a cost recovery.

And and I think that now that you've sent out information to the different businesses, I think that it's certainly, at minimum, worthwhile to come up with a way of even, like, random, you know, sort of, like, checking it out. Because I think that at the end of the day, even from the the the the emails that we receive, the information that we receive, letters from the public, at the end of the day, if our businesses who are complying with the law, who are getting the permits, who are, contributing to our tax base, are being undermined by, these other bad actors, I think that, you know, we're gonna lose somewhere at the end of the day. So I don't know if there is any room to, have the high fines as well as, let, those businesses who are the bad actors know that we're serious, and it is going to be on a random check. And I don't know in terms of regulation or what we can and cannot do. I think that now that we have sent all of the other businesses this information, If there's a change and I I don't know if it's a legal question, but are we able to if we get a complaint that, oh, you know, they're selling this hemp here, and it has it it it is in violation of what is supposed to be.

Could we could we just find them? Could we can we take action?

Thank you for the question council member. Yes, as miss Salazi mentioned, the sale of cannabis or the hemp that has THC Yeah. Would be cannabis under our regulatory program. So we could find them if it's not being sold at one of our cannabis businesses under our existing cannabis fine.

So there would no change to that? To any ordinance or anything like that? We wouldn't have to do anything. We could just find them.

I mean, we don't have we don't have an ordinance that speaks directly to hemp. But to the extent that the hemp has THC in it, which I don't know if if either code enforcement or police would like to speak to that, that could be the issue potentially knowing whether there is hemp in it or not. Whether the hemp has THC in it or not.

So all the products that are being held in these vape shops, smoke shops, convenience stores, they have labeling requirements and they are required to list out the ingredients. So you would be able to see the list of THC content in them. And so we would be able to see that if there is product containing THC. That would be more code enforcement.

Yes. Hi, Rachel Roberts, deputy director of code enforcement. So this is when it gets a little bit or is challenging for code enforcement. We we aren't normally regulating products. Right? That's not our part of our normal scope. We're in the building, housing, zoning, solid waste, blight world. And so that's why you see at the state level the different agencies that are actually doing the enforcement and regulation on this, such as the Department of Public Health. And so there is that is an area where we kind of leave ourselves vulnerable because we're not the experts. We don't have the expertise to be evaluating those products.

And it's something that has already presented challenges with the flavored tobacco type products because they're changing so quickly. And so it it isn't something we could do alone and and isn't something necessarily we should be the enforcement arm for. I think we've been doing our best to to be responsive and take action where we can as complaints have come in, but there is, you know, more work that needs to be done in this area to really understand what that response from the city should look like and what other partners to be should be part of that effort. How

long do you think it would take to be able to, you know, review this, take a look at it, and and see what is possible?

So we are coming back to the Neighborhood Services and Education Committee in June as as miss Lauzy mentioned. And as part of the scope of that direction was to provide an update on our tobacco retail license flavored ban. But I think we can at least give you a sense of of kind of where we're at and what would be needed to take it forward and and what additional steps would have to happen in order to take more action as a city.

Thank you. And, you know, I think as you do that, it may be interesting to see at minimum what could we do if we were to put resources in it. What would that look like? Because I think that I know that in my district, I've gotten a lot of complaints about some of the smoke and vape shops and questionable businesses that are taking place there. Yes. We connect with PD. Yes. We, you know, put in complaints. Yes. The residents put in complaints.

But I think that the number of complaints that I'm getting are increasing. Right? So I think that that we need to if if this is escalating, then I think that we need to kinda see what is possible even at a minimum level. Because I think that if if our businesses that are paying their fair share of of, you know, doing the right thing, is being undermined by others. I think we ought to, like, weigh the the the the cost of what that is because I know that there are some, cannabis places that are closing up.

So I I think that as we move forward, maybe we can see at minimum what we could do. And then if there are more resources, you know, what could possibly be done.

Yes. And I I should just also add two things. One is that we do already have direction from council to look at amending the zoning ordinance to add vape and smoke shops, some sort of requirement under the zoning ordinance for those types of businesses because that currently does not exist. So that's already on the the work plan for the citywide planning team, to start work on that later this year. But also that the current state regulations, the ban that's in place is is only through September. Mhmm. And so we also that's gonna be an important factor as far as how things are looking at the state level as well as we we figure these things out.

Thank you. Thank you. And with that, I'd accept the status report move to accept the status report, on the efforts to ban the sale of chemically synthesized hemp and require registration of industrial hemp retailers.

Second. Thank you, Vice Chair Kameh. We're gonna go to council member Salas.

Yeah. It's my understanding. Thank you for the report, of course. It's my understanding that there's a lot of these folks who are setting up shop and convenience stores even selling it under the counter. I'm just wondering does PD do any undercover at all and catch any of these folks or not who are selling from behind the counter and under the counter? Have you had anything like that happen?

Well that would probably be a question for our chief and unfortunately he's not here today. But I'm not sure again where it goes into the priority list for the department, maybe Lieutenant Hamblin can help me here. Thank you.

Paul Hamblin with the police department. We don't currently have anybody we have intermittently depending on staffing we have had teams that have done undercover operations in this area but as of right now I don't believe we do.

Thank you. And then you started by mentioning a number of fines starting with $250 up to $5,000 and beyond even. Have any of those been issued at all?

Code enforcement has issued citations for violations of the cannabis regulations. We did a whole report on this, I think it was last fiscal year, and we adjusted our fine schedule. We kind of moved them around to make them a little bit more in line with some of the tobacco violations as well as aligning ourselves a little bit more with some other cities. But yeah we have issued those in the past.

Okay, thank you. And then last question. So I noticed that Campbell actually had an emergency ban on smoking vape shop permits. I'm not convinced that would do anything if people were selling it under the counter anyway, but why did Campbell do that? Have you done any research or discussions with them? I'd be curious what their thought process was.

From what I remember reading in the report was that they issued a ban while they could do some more research to see the prevalence of the issue in their city. So they just put a moratorium on registering new businesses. Operate, but they wanted to just kind of pause for a moment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Salas. I do have several questions. I'm very in line with, the vice chair regarding, you know, random enforcement or or check if you will. Can we leverage from the Department of Alcohol Beverages and or County Health to use their resources to help us do these random check, if you will?

Part of what the state's ban was that they have dedicated enforcement teams for doing this. Recently I attended a cannabis enforcement summit, that was one of the things that they asked cities to reach out to them. So I've already contacted them, can I get them to San Jose? But right now apparently their local office is not fully staffed, so unfortunately they couldn't make priority, but we definitely plan to continue reaching out to them to help us with enforcement in our city.

Thank you. Hopefully if we need to go above the the local office to. To the states and and and ask for help. And I think it's it's the next step that we need to move on. Regarding the.

All these smoke shops. I think the least that we can do is if if there's a complaint. I I think the code enforcement should send out a a very clear letter that you're you're in violation. There was a complaint against your shop. These are the action that's or or the consequence will be, right, the the the cost of of getting fined. So that way they'll they'll be on notice not to do those those, you know, under the counter sales. Is that a possibility?

Yes, council members. So we are responding to complaints and of variety of things related to this issue. You know, if it's with the TRL program, the inspector there, the the fees that are paid are are specifically for the annual inspection that that inspector does at each business and then any follow-up actions that need to be taken. So right now, often it's being absorbed by our general code program, which is our general funded team. But

there

is still some we're still trying to kind of figure out what level of enforcement we are able to do because currently, you know, outside from something falling under the cannabis regulations, there would be a state law violation, which we would have to pursue like a public nuisance. And so so I think, you know, that's part of what we'll we'll hope to provide you with a better understanding report out is sort of, you know, where we're at and where we think we're we can go. Again, not just code enforcement, but it may, you know, other partners and to help better address this issue.

Thank you.

There are no other comments. Let's vote. Unanimous. Hope

That motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Thank you very much for the report. Item number two will have fire communications status report, and that will be fire chief Sapien and Michael Woodnik from communication division manager.

Good afternoon Chair and Committee members. I'm Robert Sapien. I'm joined today by Division Manager Michael Wodnick, who oversees the department's fire communications division. Michael has twenty two years of experience in public safety communications, including nineteen years with the San Jose Fire Department. In his tenure, Michael has held positions of public safety radio dispatcher, senior public safety dispatcher, supervising public safety dispatcher, and since 2020 has served as the division's first civilian division manager.

Michael holds a Bachelor of Science in Emergency Management and earned his Master's in Public Administration from the University of Southern California. Michael is recognized by the National Emergency Number Association also known as NENA as an emergency number professional and has completed NENA's Center Manager Certification Program. Michael and I are here to speak on item D2, Fire Communications status report. Michael will provide a brief presentation after which we will be happy to respond to committee questions. Thank you.

The department provides all hazards emergency response by training and equipping responders to operate effectively and safely in all environments presented in the city. In San Jose 911 calls are initially answered by the primary public safety answering point or PSAP, police communications. Typically 911 calls that are not exclusively a law enforcement matter will include a fire department response. In these cases calls for fire and medical services are then transferred to the secondary PSAP fire communications. Fire communications public safety radio dispatchers or PSRDs service the department's first first responders and are trained and certified through the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch in both the fire priority dispatch system and medical priority dispatch system.

For medical incidents, department resources are dispatched once the location, caller phone number and nature of the emergency are determined. That dispatch occurs before completion of MPDS to expedite response. PSRDs utilize FPDS and MPDS to ask callers a series of triage questions which allow PSRDs to determine resources needed while continuing to provide life saving instructions. Fire Communications is recognized as an emergency medical dispatch accredited center of excellence. This designation requires we meet a performance standard and maintain a robust quality assurance program.

The statistics shown on the slide demonstrate the percentage of call reviews found to be compliant or highly compliant with the FPDS and MPDS protocols in fiscal year twenty three-twenty four. As shown fire communications personnel consistently deliver quality service with compliance rates significantly surpassing the average of all accredited centers of excellence worldwide. The California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, Cal OES, nine eleven call answer time standard states that 90% of all 911 calls arriving at the public safety answering point shall be answered within fifteen seconds. 95% of all 911 calls should be answered within twenty seconds. This standard applies to nine eleven calls received by the police department's primary PSAP and to nine eleven calls transferred to the fire department's secondary PSAP.

Data from fiscal year twenty nineteen-twenty twenty through fiscal year twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four shows fire communications performing below the CAL OES standard. We see correlation between increased call volume and reduced compliance to the call answer time standard due to unavailability of dispatchers at peak periods. In fiscal year twenty three-twenty four fire communications received callers speaking 41 languages. To meet the language demand we utilize over the phone interpreter services provided by CyraCom and LanguageLine Solutions. Additionally, have personnel certified by the city as proficient in Spanish and Vietnamese.

To meet performance standards, bilingual personnel must deliver MPDS and FPDS verbiage precisely. Fire communications receives calls for emergency situations through 911 and through 10 digit emergency phone lines which are most commonly utilized by alarm monitoring companies. We encourage anyone who is in San Jose and needs the fire department to respond to call 911. 911 in 10 digit emergency line call volume has increased by 25.52% from fiscal year twenty nineteen-twenty twenty to fiscal year twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four and by 56.52% from fiscal year twenty eleven-twenty twenty two to fiscal year twenty twenty three-twenty four. Call volume is a distinct metric from incident volume.

For example, a single large fire can result in multiple phone calls while being only a single incident. The National Emergency Number Association, NENA, defines abandoned calls as an emergency call in which the caller disconnects before the call can be answered by the public safety answering point, PSAP. In the context of fire communications as a secondary PSAP, it is important to note that abandoned calls do not necessarily mean that the caller is lost, but rather that calls can revert back to the source from which they were transferred. If all fire communications personnel assigned to call taking duties are already on phone calls, police communications has a policy to cancel the transfer attempt, gather basic details from the caller, create a computer aided dispatch system event for the fire department and ambulance response, and then attempt to the transfer again. This ensures that department and ambulance response resources can quickly dispatched even before fire communications dispatchers can speak with the caller to triage the event.

The second transfer attempt is important as it positions fire communications to utilize FPDS and MPDS for these calls. Otherwise abandoned calls do not benefit from the critical instructions contained in the FPDS and MPDS. Santa Clara County Communications has a similar policy where they will cancel the transfer attempt if needed and directly triage the call. 911 and abandoned call rate increased from fiscal year nineteen twenty to fiscal year twenty three-twenty four. Abandoned call rate is recorded for 911 calls only.

911 call volume increased by 31.56% from fiscal year nineteen twenty to twenty three-twenty four. Abandoned 911 call rate increased from 7.16% to 16% during that time. The phone system records the call as abandoned if the caller disconnects during the transfer process or if the primary PSAP cancels the call transfer attempt before fire communications answers the call. Abandoned call rate is impacted by situation. For instance, in the example of a single large fire resulting in multiple phone calls, the greater the number of simultaneous calls, the greater the likelihood of abandoned calls.

This heat map displays nine eleven abandoned cellular calls volume during fiscal year twenty three-twenty four. The highest concentrations are found within portions of Council Districts 36 And 7. This correlates with the council districts with the highest call volume and the highest incident volume. In fiscal year twenty three-twenty four, 911 calls accounted for 82.02% of all 911 calls, which are shown here since GPS coordinates are included in 911 call data. MPDS triage is a preliminary assessment of a patient or casualty to determine the urgency of their need for treatment and the nature of the treatment required.

In the fire communications environment, a medical event is considered triaged if an MPDS determined it is assigned, meaning an emergency medical dispatcher has determined the appropriate classification within the MPDS based on information provided by the caller. CAT events are classified as either triaged or untriaged depending on whether the final event type assigned to the event was an MPDS determinant or not. In fiscal year 'twenty three-'twenty four for events created at fire communications terminals, the medical event triage rate was 86.7. For all events which include events created at fire communications terminals, police communications terminals, and received from county communications through a computer aided dispatch system interface, the medical event triage rate was sixty two point seven five percent. From the thirteen point three zero percent of events with an untriage final event type created at fire communications terminals, the chart on the slide depicts reasons why.

These reasons reinforce that not all calls can be triaged. The reasons are not unique to fire communications. The underlying conditions are relevant to calls in general regardless of agency processing them. Fire communications maintains standard staffing levels of six personnel on duty during day and swing shifts and five personnel on duty during midnight shift. Current budget authorized FTEs within the dispatcher classification series have been in place since 2010.

Vacancies and absences result in voluntary or mandatory overtime to maintain standard staffing levels. The department provides support for unanticipated middle of shift absences due to illness or traumatic events. These situations may result in operating below standard staffing levels until back full personnel arrive or change of shift occurs. During employee breaks, remaining dispatchers cover all incoming calls. The department has taken steps to improve efficiency and reduce workload at Fire Communications to optimize operations with existing staffing and PSAP capacity.

Initiatives have included support for expansion of the city contact centers, San Jose Three Eleven responsibilities to include handling non emergency service requests previously processed by fire communications, enhanced CAD to CAD computer aided dispatch linkage with Santa Clara County communications to reduce the number of telephone calls between the PSAPs, the use of technology to automatically connect telephone calls to call takers' phones thus reducing call answer time, the use of an urgent disconnect pathway that is built into MPDS when appropriate and the creation of a rapid notification mechanism to advise on duty administrative personnel when assistance is needed such as during a major incident or period of high activity. The nine eleven center expansion enabled by Measure T will result in nine additional consoles yielding a 100% capacity increase. The department has made significant progress when filling existing vacancies. In accordance with recommendation number five in Office of the City Auditor Report nineteen oh one, the department developed a fire communications recruitment plan. Implementation of strategies identified in the plan correlated with a 93.25% increase in public safety radio dispatcher trainee applications during the application period in January 2024 in comparison to the application period in June 2023.

PSRdt hiring strategy has been shifted to incorporate larger academy sizes and utilization of temporary over strength positions. The temporary over strength positions allow us to make additional conditional job offers to offset the loss of candidates who do not successfully complete post conditional hiring steps. Those efforts culminated in a 50% reduction in vacancies between 06/30/2023 and 2024. All permanent PSRD vacancies were filled in December 2023 and August 2024. The department will continue to leverage strategies identified in the fire communications recruitment plan to fill current and future vacancies.

The department is also working on the following initiatives, increasing authorized telecommunicator FTEs to achieve appropriate staffing levels and augmenting the workforce with public safety communication specialist positions call takers. We appreciate the committee's time and we're here to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you for the report. Do do we have any public comments?

No public comment.

Thank you. As a former fire captain, I I appreciate and and grateful every single day that you guys are out there in the front line including communication. It's so important that our communication should be fully staffed in order to decrease that amount of abandoned calls. It is where our resident first contact. And the call be, you know, triaged and then sent down to the fire station to respond.

Communication, you know, this whole report is is underscore how vital the fire communication, division, ensuring the safety and the well-being of our San Jose community. It highlights that your call of volume have gone above 110,000 and yet you still have about approximately the same amount of employees, and you've done a lot more with less resources. The figure not only reflect just a number, but it reflect the lives that is impacting the life that is being protected. The memorandum also bring attention to the challenges faced by faced by our dispatcher. The high demand with technicality, multitasking, especially you're you're under pressure when when our citizen is is crying out for help.

They're panicking, and doing so while you're struggling with these, staffing vacancy. Yet, with all these challenges, I I I think you've gone above and beyond. You you're able to adopt and and you're able to improve, to support our citizen out there. By returning this report annually to the public safety and finance and strategic support committee, we are committed to transparency, continuous on improvement, and the highest standard of public safety. This memorandum is not just a report.

It's a testament to our fire department dedication, including our fire communication personnel and reminder of our collective responsibility to support them. With that, I motion for approval of this report and request that this item return to the public safety finance and strategic support committee annually for discussion and renewal review. Second. Thank you. Now I'm gonna go to give me a moment.

Vice mayor sorry. It's, vice chair Kameh.

Thank you so much. And it's it's wonderful that you're bringing this report today because this week is national national public safety telecommunications week. And so from April 13 to April 19, we celebrate and thank and honor those who keep us safe in telecommunications. And I had the privilege of joining mister Woodnik at the dispatch center. And I encourage my colleagues, if you haven't done it, please go, and you could witness for yourself the wonderful work, that is being done.

And and I appreciate all of the, how can I say? The ability to do everything that you do and keep us safe while you're doing it. The the call volume is incredible, and fact that you do it very, very well is very much appreciated by our community. So thank you. Thank I thank your staff for all the work you do.

And, you know, I'm looking forward to the Measure t improvements that are coming. Not soon enough, but, you know, I hope that that it'll be, you know, sort of in terms of the layout and everything, a much better place and work environment for those who really, really give a 110. So thank you so much, and, I appreciate you all.

Thank you, vice chair. We're gonna go to council member Salas.

Thank you so much for the report, the details. But also thanks for what you do every day. It's above and beyond every day, I know. Hey, I have two questions. One, I see you had a 110 incidents last year. I live in the downtown my district is a downtown district so there's the Guadalupe River and there's the Coyote Creek and there are, I don't know, I would say hundreds but of fires there almost daily, but I'm just curious of those 110 calls, generally speaking, do you have a sense of how many are along those two creeks? I mean is it 10%, is it 50%, is it?

Well I do not have statistics of that specific area with me today. Our phone system does record the latitude longitude that is presented with nine eleven cellular calls which would typically be how we're receiving calls of that nature. So we do have the statistical ability to do data mining for specific areas.

But again I was just wondering if you have a sense at all along the creeks. There's so many campers that we've been dealing with.

Yeah I don't have the specific data for that specific area with me today And

then I'm curious about on the bilingual side of things, I assume you're looking into AI and what have you done relative to the AI system that we use for instance relative to other languages and responding to calls because it sounds like you're really short of staff in that area too.

Speaking industry wide, there are multiple initiatives involving AI ongoing. There are products that are emerging in the market that attempt to do transcription of various languages, so real time translation and that is something that I have been monitoring as I've attended trade events. We have not implemented such a product in San Jose, however there are initiatives related to that that are interesting and we're monitoring to see what is the accuracy level of that technology. The really important key element is the high degree of accuracy needed and we would want to be sure when adopting such a technology that it is tested and will ensure that our community members are receiving the help they actually need based on what it presents to us.

Thank you so much, and again thanks for all you do every day, every twenty four hour day.

Thank you.

Thank you councilor Morales. I I do have a couple of questions. If you compare to other city, in ranking wise, what is the our ranking in in pay compared to surrounding cities?

So I do not have specific data with me today on what are the current pay rates of the neighboring cities. I have heard commentary within the workforce of concern related to the relation of pay rates and I am aware that that is an item that the bargaining unit that represents our staff and the city have worked on in recent times.

Thank you. My understanding from several years back, I believe we're ranked to next to the bottom regarding pay comparing to other city. Is that correct?

Jennifer Shembrey, deputy city manager. So we do these we look at them during negotiations, and we were in negotiations last with MEF in 2023 and we'll be in negotiations again with them in 2026. I'm sure it's a topic that will come up in those negotiations and we'll look again. That is not my recollection. I believe they are close to it market, maybe just a little bit below market. But again, that was a little couple years ago, I can definitely pull it up and circle back with you offline.

Thank you. And I think that would would help with, recruitment and and retention. Another question for you. Is it common for a senior dispatcher to not only monitor their subordinates but also take on emergency call at the same time?

Yes, it is. Our senior public safety dispatchers are what I would refer to as working shift supervisors. So in addition to performing their supervisory tasks, they also perform all tasks of a public safety radio dispatcher. There can be multiple senior public safety dispatchers on duty at a given time, in which case one of the two does perform dispatcher tasks as their primary role during that shift. Additionally, when there is a shift that there is only one senior public safety dispatcher on duty, is our standard staffing level, then they are responsible for the entire operations occurring within the communications center and they can process nine one one calls as appropriate during that time frame,

but they do have to balance that with the supervisory duties. I I visited the PD communication and their supervisor duty is merely supervising their subordinate. They're not there to take on emergency call. And I thought, you know, we're we're a little bit different I guess. And would that impact the service to the community when they call in?

So our analysis does suggest that having the shift supervisor focused on the supervisory responsibilities is the best practice and to that end that aligns with the staffing initiatives that we're working on within our long term goals.

And I I heard that the fire department and the police department eventually will there's an RFP to renovate the communication center to improve and and bring it to the the modern technology. Is that is that correct? And when will that be happen, you know?

I believe you're speaking in reference to the Measure T expansion of the nine eleven center, is that correct? Yes. Yes, absolutely. We are engaged in ongoing meetings with public works and other stakeholders for that project. The latest timeline that I have seen this week for that is completion estimated in October 2026.

Thank you. Any other comments? Let's vote.

That motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Now we open up to open forum. Is there any comments from the public?

No public comment.

Well, meeting adjourned.