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

Welcome to public safety finance and strategic support. So before we begin, I want to remind the public safety finance and strategic support committee members and members of the public to follow our con code of conduct at meetings. This includes commenting on a specific agenda item only and addressing the full body. Public speaker will not engage in a conversation with the chair, council member, or staff. All members of public safety, finance, and strategic support committees, 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 a removal from this from the meeting. This meeting of the public safety finance and strategic support committee will now come to order. Can the clerk, office please call the roll?

Council member Tordillos?

Here.

Casey? Here.

Mulcahy absent. Council member Kameh? Here. And Juan? Here. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Anything on the work plans? We have one item on the consent calendar which is a bimonthly financial report for January and February. Do we have any public comments on that?

No public comment.

Can I please have a motion on the consent calendar?

So moved to Thank

you. Let's vote.

Motion passes.

Well, thank you very much. And to item number d one, innovation and technology project status report. There's a presentation from Colette, Jesse Juarez and Shirley Duan or Jung for that matter, sorry. My bad.

Good afternoon, Sherid Wang, council members, members of the public. My name is Caled Tofik. I'm the Chief Information Officer and Information Technology Director. We are here to present the project status update based on the recommendation from the 2019 audit report. I'm joined by Jesse Juarez, the division manager for the project management office and Shirley Young, the Project Manager in his office. And with that, we get started. We'll provide an update on the status of technology projects, highlighting key accomplishments and conclude with an overview of the IT strategic plan. And with that, I turn it over to Jesse to get us started.

Good afternoon, Chair Duan, council members and members of the public. I'm Jesse Woros, the division manager for the project management office in the IT department. I'll briefly cover the types of projects we manage. Our portfolio consists and focuses mainly on large complex initiatives that meet at least one of four criteria, Projects over $500,000, projects that have and require cross department collaboration, projects that typically last over a year, and also high profile and or sensitive projects that are sensitive and high profile to the city. Across all of these, our role is to ensure projects are delivered efficiently, transparently, and in a way that best serves our residents.

There are a number of benefits that, the city gets from the project management team and and a lot of benefits to the residents. PMO ensures that city projects are well managed, aligned, and deliver real value to residents. Steward, for example, stewardship of public funds. We provide a structured oversight of over $46,000,000 in active projects, making sure every dollar is tracked, justified, and delivering measurable outcomes. Better services to the residents from three one one improvements to CRM upgrades.

Our projects directly enhance our residents' access and experience city services. Cross department coordination. We connect over 15 departments helping teams work together efficiently and reducing duplication and service gaps. Transparent accountability. With 92% of projects on schedule and regular reporting to city council, we keep leadership and the public informed. Reduced risk to the city. We identified delays and risk early, preventing cost overruns and minimizing service disruptions. And finally, modernizing the city. Key initiatives like the business tax system and learning portal upgrades help modernize infrastructure and keep the city competitive. Ultimately, the PMO turned strategy into results, delivering better, more reliable services for the residents. Now I'll turn it over to Shirley.

Good afternoon, chair Dwan, council members, and members of the public. My name is Shirley Young, and I am a project manager with the project management office and ITD. I'm pleased to report that the PMO implemented 11 projects from the last time we report to this committee. These projects span across a wide range of IT initiatives, which directly benefit city operations and its residents. For more information, please refer to appendix A in the provided memo.

On this slide titled PMO Status Update, we are showing total active projects led by the PMO and their aggregate budget and on time success rate. 22 of 24 of our projects are currently on track or green status, which means they are meeting timeline, budget and scope requirements. We have one project with a yellow status. There were slight delays selecting a vendor. However, we are back on track and currently laying the groundwork to start the project.

Lastly, we have one project with a red reporting status, which means significant challenges has occurred that impacted the project timeline. In this case, the path forward involves rebidding for the project. This slide highlights three major project launches. First, on the left side, the new business tax system launched in January 2026 replaces an aging platform and supports about 30,000,000 in annual revenue, ensuring reliability and continuity for this critical function. Second, the CRM for Council and Mayor's offices has brought nine out of 11 offices onto a single platform with the remaining offices on track to move to the new system by the end of the year, moving away from fragmented tools and creating a more consistent, responsive experience for constituent communications.

And lastly, on the right, the SJ Learning portal also launched this year. It is our first centralized training system offering over a 150 courses and helping drive compliance, workforce development and employee retention. Together, these projects show how we're modernizing systems, improving service delivery and investing in our workforce. I'll now hand it back over to Kallen.

Thank you, Shirley. Our IT strategic plan for 2026 ensures that all our technology investments are directly aligned with City Council priorities and focus on delivering measurable results to our residents. At the core, our goal is to enhance quality of life in San Jose through innovation, collaboration and more proactive service delivery. We're also using data and analytics to promote informed decisions and implement AI in ways that prioritizes measurable results, privacy, safety and transparency. At the same time, cybersecurity remains a top priority as we protect city systems and data.

Finally, we track our progress through performance metrics, dashboards and customer feedback, ensures accountability and continuous improvement. The strategic plan is positioned to effectively respond to City Council priorities through actionable initiatives. This strategy is then aligned through the IT annual work plan where priorities are translated into specific projects, milestones and measurable outcomes assigned annually to IT managers and staff. We organize our work focus and focus on five key areas: community engagement, innovation, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and data, ensuring a holistic approach when addressing city needs. Throughout, we stay grounded in core principles of equity, effectiveness and accountability.

Finally, we track progress using performance metrics and dashboards by reporting regularly to city council and this creates a clear line of sight from strategy to execution, ensuring continuous feedback to enhance services. Artificial intelligence is a great opportunity to help us improve city services and we are approaching it in a practical and a responsible way. We focus on three levels of impact. First, at the individual level, we are using AI to support staff in their day to day work. This includes drafting memos, summarizing reports and analyzing data.

The goal is to save time on routine tasks so staff can focus on higher value work that directly serve our community. Second, at the system level, AI can help automate processes such as invoice processing and help desk. These are areas where AI can improve speed, accuracy and consistency. Third, at the operational level, where more seamless government services can add more value to our residents. This includes automating parts of three eleven requests and supporting permits review processes.

In all areas, AI must be deployed responsibly ensuring privacy, security and transparency. As part of implementing the city's data governance policy adopted last May, we have launched cross department working groups focusing on data infrastructure, analytics and data literacy. These efforts support the three core principles of our AI data strategy: establishing data as a service, focusing or fostering communities of practice and ensuring measurable impact. Collectively, these principles form the foundation for a balanced and effective approach to data management and use. This foundation also positioned the city to responsibly adopt AI by ensuring we have the right data, right skills and governance for optimal results.

Our data and AI app scaling programs are built on the foundation of investing our people, process and technology, highlighting the critical role of training staff to drive process improvements through effective and responsible technology solutions. We recently completed the third data upscaling cohort where 21 participants from 10 departments delivered 15 projects. Also, our AI program is part of a broader citywide AI training effort. At the foundation level, we have trained over 800 staff through a one hour baseline program delivered online and in person, and we are on track to train more than 1,000 employees by the June. Recent surveys showed that 85% satisfaction rate where staff felt empowered to use AI to help them perform their daily work efficiently.

Last week, Council approved the formation of the Gaviar Coalition as a nonprofit corporation, marking a strategic milestone in the city's ongoing commitment to responsible and forward thinking use of AI in government. Our GAVI summits will be hosted again in San Jose and continues to grow, and we hope to see all of you in December. Promoting our approach to transition from reactive to proactive service delivery model, we are applying AI in a practical way to enhance operations. The goal is to create a more efficient, predictive and proactive way where system can identify service needs before they are reported by the public. By detecting concerns early and routing them through our three-one-one system, the city can respond more quickly while maintaining structured and scheduled service delivery, therefore maintaining minimizing disruption and downtime.

And last November, cameras were installed on parking compliance vehicles to detect potholes and illegal dumping. And last month, we started a pilot to detect graffiti. The program is being implemented in phases in partnership with the Department of Transportation and Parks and Recreation and Neighborhood Services. This initiative reflects a forward thinking approach to streamline services and improve customer satisfaction. This concludes our presentation and staff is available for questions and feedback. Thank you.

Thank you so much for the presentation. Do I have any public comments?

There is no public comment.

Okay. I'm going go to Councilmember Khamenei. I

always have questions. Thank you for the the report. And I guess, you know, as I was looking through it, a lot of progress has been made. So thank you for that. The ITD target performance metrics, one of the things that I was just sort of like wondering about not being in your industry is on the customer satisfaction of 70%, I didn't know what to compare it to.

And so I just was wondering like what is industry standards as well as you know, is that a good thing, not a good thing, is that comparable to other governmental agencies. I I was just curious because as we look at these percentages, the vacancy rate of 8% is very common. That's very good. But I just didn't have like a comparator when looking at customer satisfaction.

Yeah, we looked at different sources and 70% seem to be the common standard for government in customer surveys and similar services that the government agency provides. So that was the baseline. We couldn't find like an established standard where one organization said it needs to be 70% or 65% or 80%. But that was the average that we've seen from different agencies comparable to our size.

I guess one of the things that I'd keep an eye on this one is that as we're looking at customer service not just for your department but citywide and what is the expectation of the community. This is one area that I think we need to be a little bit more sensitive to because I think that even with the SJ three eleven issues they don't normally see it as a just technology issue because of the departments and all of that. But I think that to me I was thinking well 70% I couldn't tell if that was a good thing, a bad thing or why isn't it 85? Why isn't it 90? Why isn't it something else?

So I think that in terms of if you're able to as you're moving through this in the next year or so, kind of think about a little bit more context to it. Yeah, but with that, thank you so much for the presentation and I'd move acceptance of the status report.

Second? Second. Okay. We got a motion and we got a second. Well, thank you for keeping us safe in a sense through the cyber security. And I know it's a difficult task trying to integrate the three one one system where I think we should have a a link so that way the responsibility, for example, on Capitol Expressway would go to the county because it belonged to the county. Right? Health services and so on. Same thing with the state. Do do we have that capability at this point because a lot of people don't understand what is the responsibility.

Some are they understand some of the responsibilities at the city, but they all understand the responsibility of the county or the state. And if we can clarify that, then we can be the, I guess the central link that we can help them even though it's not in our realm.

Thank you for the question. We are doing this manually today. So if somebody calls for the county, for example, or reports something, we give them the information and sometime we call their behalf to report the incident. What we're trying to do is we built the three eleven loss here to be able to scale where we can provide that connection to other agencies who have a system that we can interface with. Unfortunately, lot of the agencies that we deal with, they don't have a 311 system that can absorb the tickets.

So one of the things we're looking at this year and next year to see if we can offer our three eleven system for them to use for some fee. So that way we can generate some revenue to offset our costs and also provide like a seamless service to constituents within the Bay Area. But that's something differently, I think of a high value and also will help us to kind of measure how many service we provide in the city and how many we can triage to others and keep track of that as we offer that service to other neighboring cities.

Well, thank you. I would imagine you probably worked with county supervisor Betty Young in order to get some of this funding or program so that way we can integrate together. I think it's a huge benefit not only for the citizen of San Jose, but there's our many pockets that belong to the county as well. I do have a couple more question. As the city of San Jose become the AI hub, how do we leverage AI to help us to enhance our efficiency, our effectiveness, and our creativity without being afraid that it's going to take over some jobs, if you will?

That's a big question out there. Right? And and I know there's a lot of employee out there who's are are having this fear that AI would take away their job, their jobs. And and I would think that AI would be a great tool, an enhancement. And actually in your perspective, would it create more jobs or take away?

It's hard to really predict what's going to happen. I think it's going to do both. It's going to create new jobs and it's going to be potentially impacting others if they don't get trained and be ready to transform their position to do something different. And this is really the approach that we're trying to take is get staff ready So the as the technology advances, they're ready to perform their jobs with the new skills needed to continue to be effective in the market. What I'm seeing also that as we're doing the training, we constantly get feedback from our staff, surveys and engagement, to kind of get feedback regarding their concerns, their risk and see how we can learn from that interaction, whether with the community.

And we did a lot of community engagement with a lot of the AI process, especially the cameras that we installed on vehicles, just to make sure that we are in alignment with them, understand the concerns before they become problems, and hopefully we can influence some of the direction and strategy and policies to make sure that we're not waiting for something bad to happen and we're approaching it in a more proactive versus reactive approach. So I think by continuing the engagement, the training and the awareness, we are in a better position to mitigate or minimize the impact. And hopefully we can drive it where it leads to more economic development and more advancements in staff careers and skill sets versus waiting for a detrimental impact coming from outside influence on the city.

Thank you. I read a a private report. It said that AI is gonna be able to create a 170,000,000 jobs throughout, you know, the The United States. But I don't know if it's true or not, but I would hope it does. That would help all of us, you know, especially in the city of San Jose here. Anyway, well, thank you very much for your report and let's vote.

Motion passes.

Thank you so kindly. Second item today, it will be police staffing expenditure and workload audit report. The presentation, today will be, with staff attending will be Joe Royce, Gitanjali Madrekar and Michael O'Connell, Dinoza Kudoy, Paul Joseph, Gina Tabaldi, and Nate Bennett.

Afternoon. I'm Joe Royce, Otter. I'm in the box with Katanjali Manjukar, Michael O'Connell, and Delnosa Katoy Baragunova, to present our follow-up report on police staffing expenditures and workload. Also in the box is chief Paul Joseph and deputy chief Gina Tivaldi. This report is a follow-up to the city auditor's 2021 audit of police staffing expenditures and workload.

The objective of the 2021 audit was to review and compare the San Jose Police Department staffing, spending, and calls for service over time, including the allocation of staff by bureau or division and use of overtime. It had 10 recommendations, including adding more sworn officers in the context of the city's overall budget, improving management of overtime, optimizing deployment of patrol staff by analyzing alternate shift schedules, tracking calls that would be diverted to non sworn staff, and reassessing how community service officers or CSOs are deployed. At the time of this audit, nine of the 10 prior recommendations had been implemented. We're following up on the 2021 audit as the city council has identified increasing community safety as one of its five focus areas, with the long term goal that San Jose residents live in a community with responsive emergency services and safe streets and roads. And in addition, since the previous audit, the department has continued to face staffing challenges and has struggled to meet its goals on responding to calls for service.

In addition, overtime costs have continued to increase. In fiscal twenty four-twenty five, the department's overall expenditures totaled $561,000,000 an increase from around $459,000,000 in fiscal year twenty nineteentwenty twenty as was reported in the 2021 audit. Budgeted staffing levels in the San Jose Police Department are lower than they were twenty years ago, particularly among sworn officers, and recent turnover has led to vacancies and a decline in the number of active sworn officers. As I mentioned earlier, the city prioritized increasing community safety as one of its five city council focus areas. And the department has, in response, the department has undertaken several staffing and deployment initiatives to improve services, as I'll discuss briefly in later slides.

Reported three findings. The first finding was that the department is using multiple strategies to improve response times. Although the police responded to fewer calls for service in recent years, the department continues to struggle to meet its response time goals. We found in fiscal year twenty four twenty five, the average response time for priority one calls was eight point one minutes, exceeding the six minute target. And similar to the 2021 audit, calls for service and response times varied across police districts.

The department has initiated a redistricting effort and piloted other efforts to improve performance such as piloting combined two person cars, district wide dispatch in some areas of the city, and others. We do wanna note that the current response time calculations include calls downgraded to a lower priority, may not provide the most accurate indicator of performance, so increased transparency and improved response time calculations. In this, we have in this finding, we have rec we recommend, excuse me, the police department include outcomes from its redistricting efforts and future focus area reporting and updating response time, reporting to exclude downgraded calls. Our second finding is, the department continues to face staffing challenges and relies on overtime to meet operational needs. Despite recent efforts to improve hiring and retention, persistent staffing challenges have increased the department's reliance on overtime to meet operational needs.

As I mentioned earlier, well, I didn't mention this part already, although the number of budgeted sworn positions has increased from prior audit, the department had fewer active sworn officers and has seen rising separation rates among recruits and and early career officers. We note that we noted that patrol shifts were routinely staffed on overtime, and overtime accounted for nearly one quarter of all sworn hours worked. 124 sworn staff worked over one thousand hours of overtime in fiscal year twenty four, twenty five, which raises concerns about sustainability and officer wellness. I do wanna note that the department has implemented new recruitment initiatives, and retention incentives are included in the most recent labor agreement with the San Jose Police Officers Association. In fiscal year twenty four, twenty five, overtime costs reached $72,000,000, a 53% increase over five years.

At the time of the audit, overtime hours were frequently spent on follow-up and report writing, often without the required documentation or appropriate supervisory approval. In February, the department updated their overtime controls over follow-up and report writing, and ensuring those new controls are all followed and monitored for compliance will be important given the increasing costs we've seen in the past few years. To increase transparency of retention efforts and better management overtime, we recommend that the department augment current reporting with outcomes of current hiring and retention efforts and develop a process to monitor compliance with overtime approvals. Our third finding is that community service officers continue to be a valuable resource for the department. Since the 2021 audit, the department restructured restructured its its CSO program to streamline reporting relationships, improve operational accountability, and better integrate CSOs into patrol operations.

We found, that unlike other areas of police operations, the department does not track performance metrics to assess the CSO program's effectiveness. We also note that addressing inconsistencies between the duty manual, designated CSO dispatchable call types, and actual field responses can support more effective deployment. To further improve the CSO program, we recommend department develop and track performance metrics for the CSO program and update the CSO dispatchable call list in the duty manual. I do wanna note that the second recommendation is not meant to restrict the types of calls that CSOs may respond to, but just to update the list of call types outlined in the duty manual that are prioritized for CSO response by dispatch. A separate section of the duty manual describes other types of calls that fall within the duties and responsibilities regularly undertaken by CSOs, and a recommendation is not meant to affect that language.

Overall, there's eight total recommendations. We wanna thank the police department for the time and insight during the audit process. Ask that you accept the report and cross reference to the April 28 meeting of the full city council. Happy to answer questions, but first, I'll turn it over to the chief for the administration's response. Thank you.

Thank you, Joe. Paul Joseph, chief of police. I appreciate the hard work of the city auditor and his staff and the collaborative approach to looking at all these issues, working with us to come up with recommendations that were workable and seeing where where our progress was on some of these things. We do agree with the recommendations in total with the one exception that Joe mentioned about. We wanna align the call types that the CSOs go to without removing any call types that they're they are currently authorized to go to because we like the operational flexibility there, but that's a very minor, point. But, otherwise, we are we are in acceptance of the report as

Well, thank you so much for the report. Do we have any public comments?

There is no public comment.

Okay. Is, any of the council member well, I'll go to council member Kameh.

Thank you so much. I wanna thank you for for the report. These reports are are so critical, and and thank you for the, what am I thinking of, the

Briefing. Briefing.

Yes. I have so many of those. It's just sort of like getting a little bit overwhelming. But yes, the briefing was very helpful so it answered a lot of questions. And, I just wanna move the report. Thank you.

Can I get a second? Second. Thank you very much. I just wanna say thank you for all the hard work to to keep us to be the the safest city in the nation. Even though our staffing in the police department is about a thousand, I'm I'm hoping someday we'll get a get to at least 1,500.

Then we can work towards the the 2,000. And it's amazing that the same smaller geographical areas like San Francisco, they have over 2,000 police officer. And yet, we are still the safest city in the nation for 1,000 police officer to include the four year straight in a row, a 100% solvent on the homicide. I know there's always room for improvement. And, I know that our police department is one of the most progressive in using less lethal force.

Being able to understand the needs of multicultural and ethnicity. And, we continue to lead the nation on that. And, I just want to say thank you again for all your hard work. And, let's vote.

Motion passes.

Thank you so much. The next item is the fire department operation annual report. The presentation will be chief, Sapien and deputy chief, Aaron Fryler. Oh, we got through pretty quickly.

Good afternoon, chair, chair committees, and members of the public. My name is Aaron Fryler, deputy chief of operations, and I am joined by fire chief Robert Sapien. We are here today to present the fire department's annual operational report with focus on call volume, system demand, and emergency response time performance. The San Jose Fire Department is a full service, all hazards, fire department serving over 997,000 residents across more than 200 square miles. Our mission remains constant to protect life, property, and the environment through prevention and response.

That mission is carried out every day across complex involving evolving operational environment and expanding service demand. As an all hazards department, we are responsible to extend well beyond fire suppression. We provide emergency medical services, technical rescue, hazardous materials response, urban search and rescue, airport fire protection, wildland response, and 911 communications. Additionally, the fire department participates in statewide mutual aid, federal emergency management agency team responses, multiple service disciplines requiring ongoing training, maintenance of a variety of qualifications, certification, and licenses. The department also maintains a variety of specialized apparatus and equipment to support various service disciplines provided.

The fire department responds to a developing emergency and disasters across its diverse hazard profile, including San Jose Moneta International Airport, major event venues, hospitals, universities, wild land urban interface, varied commercial and residential structures. In fiscal year twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five, the department responded to over a 111,000 calls for service. It is important to understand that this call volume represents individual incidents and not the total number of resources committed to each scene. A single incident can require multiple units and personnel, particularly during fires or complex emergencies. For example, in San Jose, we we respond to a confirmed structure fire approximately every sixty hours, And on average, we commit about 33 fires to each one of those structure fires.

So while we report a 111,000 incidents, the actual operational workload and demand on our resources is significantly higher. Over the past five years, demand for emergency service has increased by approximately 22%, while the city's population has decreased by about 5%. Historically, call volume tracked with population growth. That relationship that relationship no longer holds. What we are seeing now is a sustained demand for fire department resources independent of population.

This sustained demand places continuous pressure on the system resulting in greater workload, reduced resource availability, and longer response times. Call volume is not evenly distributed across the city. While the San Jose Fire Department is busy across the entire system, demand is heavily concentrated in the urban core, particularly in battalion one, which handled over 26,000 incidents this past year. During peak periods, this demand draws resources from surrounding battalions into our city's core. That redistribution of resources in other areas increases travel distance for subsequent calls.

This heat map illustrates call density across the city with red indicating the highest concentration of incidents. What this shows operationally is this sustained demand in the core that continuously commits fire department resources. As units are assigned to incidents, they become unavailable for the next call, forcing responses from more distant locations. This is where call volume directly impacts travel time and overall response performance. When we look at call types, the distribution remains constant year over year with no significant shifts.

Emergency medical calls continue to represent the majority of our workload at over 60%. This consistency tells us that the increase in demand is not driven by one category. It is a system wide growth across all incident types. It is important to note that while fire represents only four our fires only represent 4.3% of total incidents, We are such a busy system. This represents an average of over 13 fires per day.

Over the past five years, EMS call volume has increased by nearly 20%, while all other call types have also increased by more than 13%. While EMS demand has stabilized in the last year, it remains at an elevated level. This sustained volume continues to commit resources for extended durations, particularly when transport delays occur. The result is reduced unit availability across the system. The next section focuses on response time performance.

It is one of the most important measures of service delivery to the community. The city standard measures total response time from call receipt to arrival. The goal is to arrive on scene for priority one emergencies within eight minutes 80% of the time. This includes alarm processing, which is from receipt of call to dispatch, turnout time, which is from dispatch alert to wheels turning, and travel time, which is time en route to arrival at scene. The county emergency medical services advanced life support response time standard measures time from notification of responders to arrival on scene.

Minimum performance is eight minutes 90% of the time. In fiscal year twenty twenty four twenty twenty five, the department achieved approximately 64% compliance with city standard and an unadjusted rate of 86% with the county standard. After factoring allowable exemptions, the department met the county standard 10 out of 12 months in fiscal year twenty four twenty five. The primary factor driving the gap in meeting these performance goals is travel time driven by reduced resource availability. Additionally, the county ambulance provider experienced extended response times and also introduced BLS ambulances into the system.

This resulted in lower resource availability across fire department response network, resulting in lower response time performance. As shown in this heat map, late responses, defined as travel times greater than four minutes, are concentrated in the same area with the highest call volume. Even though these stations are close together in the core, the volume of incidents results in units being unavailable. This forces responses from greater distance, increasing travel time, and impacting overall response performance. To address these challenges, the fire department is advancing several key initiatives focused on improving system performance.

These efforts focus on two things, improving how we deploy resources and ensuring the right resource is sent to the right call from the closest available location. These include CAD to CAD integration to improve coordination and reduce call processing time, closest unit dispatch to reduce travel distance, community paramedicine and telemedicine to better align resources with patient needs, continued development of fire station thirty two and thirty six to improve geographical coverage. Each of these efforts is designed to either reduce demand on the system or improve how quickly resources can reach the next emergency. In closing, the department continues to experience sustained growth in emergency demand. That demand reduces resources availability, increased travel distance, and directly impacts how quickly we can reach the next resident in need.

We remain focused on improving system performance through strategic investments, operational adjustments, and data driven decision making. We appreciate the committee's continued support and are happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for the presentation. Do we have any public comment?

There is no public comment.

Thank you. Obviously, the fire department is one of my favorite department in the whole world. And, but there is some concerning about we're down to 64% of meeting the timelines. And,

I

know that if you were to compare our geographical first due from a particular station, on the average I think it's about six six to eight square miles and some even at 10 square miles. Am I am I correct? And, just for an example, the city of Santa Clara is 10 square miles and it's got 10 fire station. And just some of our first two are 10 square miles. So in order, let's say let's say the geographical of station four, they're responding to a medical emergency.

So now, we have another call in Station 4 1st due. They have to another station to dispatch. Meaning, all the way from the, you know battalion one to come over to cover that first due, which is probably Station 30. And that travel time, especially in traffic hours, would you guesstimate that would probably take twelve minutes?

Thank you, council member, for the question. I couldn't give you a precise, time not knowing location of a call, but I can tell you that that is essentially capturing the the syndrome that chief Fryler described which is in the busiest areas of town when units are committed, units have to respond from further distances requiring more time, to arrive on scene.

Yeah. So so I just do a simple math. Right? Most of the time, let's say we we we didn't make that eight minutes. Let's say round off to eight minutes. And then the travel time from the second due over, anywhere within the second due to the the first due is minimum four minutes. That's without even any type of traffic, would imagine. So, I appreciate your your your answer. And, how are we doing on the recruitment and retention? I I know that according to last year, my understanding that the San Jose Fire Department got $600,000 towards recruitments.

And out of the $600,000, I believe $300,000 went into background check, and the other $300,000 into hiring two analysts.

So council member, that is the next item on the agenda as we have a recruitment, report. So if you don't mind, we can Okay. Take that question then.

Well, okay. We'll wait until the next, report then. I think council member, Torres have a few question.

Thank you, Cherry. Just one quick question. First, thank you for the report. You mentioned kind of this decoupling between population trends and call volume. I'm curious if you divide it into different sorts of calls, if there are any service calls that are more closely tracking population trends or if it's across the board everything is up and completely decoupled.

Thank you for that question. General trends, we're seeing the greatest growth in emergency, medical services. I believe our analysis, supports a theory that it is, in part related to an aging community. There is some analysis in in the report, that does talk about, the the, age of our community and the the percentage of calls for individuals that are 50 years or older is by far the majority of our calls. So I think we continue to see that.

In addition, the real inflection point came, coincided with COVID. And I think a lot has changed in terms of community expectations and available medical care for our community. And we are ultimately a very reliable safety net for our community. We arrive whenever we're called. And so I think we're seeing a little bit of behavior change just based on on that inflection point and all the factors related to changes in in available medical care post COVID.

Thank you.

I do have a couple more question. Is we know that the baby boomer population is getting older and and they're quite large. And I believe that as the population get older, there will be more call volume towards medical needs. We look into anticipate hiring more firefighters and and create more stations so we can meet that demand.

Thank you for that question. I'll I'll add, to that strategy in as you're aware, chair, in 2018, our residents approved Measure T, which was in part inclusive of recommendations by the department after a very comprehensive organizational analysis that showed that we needed to improve our service footprint in the city. In other words, densify the footprint of fire stations so that we could reach our destinations and keep pace with rising call volume. So that is in fact a strategy that we are pursuing still. Secondly, we are looking at some workload management strategies.

You heard from Chief Freiler, one of them, and I'll add a second. The one that Chief Freiler mentioned is the community paramedicine strategy, which is intended to engage the community directly to find the definitive care pathways that those individual patients require. Because what we're seeing very often is that they cycle through the 911 system, are taken to the emergency departments locally and then released, and then they cycle back and use the 911 system again. And so trying to trying to match them with the appropriate care is important and that could have some value in our aging community. Secondly, our emergency medical services agency here locally has implemented what is called nurse navigation or telemedicine.

We are also pursuing opportunities to establish within our medical priority dispatch system calls that we could triage over to telemedicine, which can also help us find the right place for patients that may not necessarily require a code three fire engine and an ambulance ride to the hospital. And so there are a variety of approaches that we're looking to take to to try to deal with this increasing call volume.

Thank you. Let's let's say somewhere our economy has gotten a lot better, we're we're out of the deficit. Chief, do you ever think about reimplementing, med 30?

Thank you, council member. I I think given the opportunity to add resources to the city, I do have priorities in mind. I do have some span of control issues that I need to address in the organization for better management and command and control. Certainly, we still, believe it or not, have not restored some resources that we lost, in the Great Recession. We are still without, as you know, in your council district, engine thirty three.

We're still without what used to be truck three. We eliminated the hazardous incident team, which is now a cross staffed resource. And so given new resources, I think I would have to evaluate the needs of the organization foundationally. So I I could not say that it would be med thirty as the first priority.

But but it is in in one of the priority, I would say, not the first.

I I think as we evolve programs as I described in in in particular community paramedicine, I I am recognizing that in an expanded service like that, that we will need some field oversight and what that looks like could be similar to that kind of coordination that that Med thirty offered. So it is certainly in in my mind as as a future need for the organization.

Thank you. Deputy chief Freiler, did you happen to know the numbers to homeless calls volume, if you will? I I think last year it was around 11,000.

Yeah. Thank you for the question. We'll have to get back to you on that statistic.

Alright. Just send me an email on that. Thank you so much. Let's vote. Do do we get a motion? Right? Do do we get a motion? Can we have a motion then?

Motion to accept. Thank

you. No other question. Let's vote.

Motion passes.

Thank you. The next, item will be fire department staffing recruitment hiring annual report. The presentation will be Chief Sapien and Athena Treaty.

Good afternoon. Again, I am fire chief Robert Sapien. I am now joined by our administrative services deputy director, Athena Treaty. We will provide a brief presentation on item d four, fire department staffing, recruitment, hiring, and bilingual services. The fire department organization structure includes the office of the fire chief, five bureaus, including operations, fire prevention, emergency medical services and training, support services, and administrative services, and the fire communications division.

While the fiscal year twenty twenty four twenty twenty five operating budget authorized 855.48 positions, including a 135.48 civilian positions, our report today will focus on sworn positions only. The fire department provides fire prevention, all hazard response services across 200 square miles. Three platoons provide twenty four hour coverage with six battalions supporting 34 active fire stations and a minimum of a 190 personnel on duty daily. Field classifications include battalion chief, fire captain, fire engineer, and firefighter. Battalions are single person resources staffed by battalion chiefs.

Engine companies, truck companies, and the urban search and rescue company are stacked staffed with four personnel, most often including a fire captain, a fire engineer, a firefighter EMT, and a firefighter paramedic. The aircraft rescue and firefighting company located at San Jose Moneta International Airport operates with three aircraft rescue firefighting trucks and is staffed with, excuse me, with six personnel. That is a fire captain, three fire engineers, firefighter EMT, and a firefighter paramedic. In fiscal year twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five, sworn vacancies averaged eight point o 1%. Generally, vacancies are concentrated at the fire engineer and firefighter ranks as onboarding occurs at the firefighter rank.

Promotional examinations are conducted regularly to keep pace with attrition. Qualification for promotions to ranks above firefighter requires specialized or specified levels of experience, extensive education and training, and testing. The vacancy rate for sworn classifications at the end of 2425 was 7.36%. Department attrition in sworn ranks is primarily driven by retirements, approximately 75% over the seven year period shown in this chart. To keep pace with average annual attrition, the department targets two academies of 25 to 30 with firefighter recruit applicants required to possess either EMT certification or paramedic licenses for qualification.

COVID-nineteen driven statewide education and training lapses resulted in a statewide paramedic shortage that persists to date. The department seeks to maintain a maximum of 173 firefighter paramedics and 94 firefighter EMTs. Attrition and promotion, combined with fewer paramedic licensed applicants drove down firefighter paramedic numbers, creating staffing imbalances in the department. Some relief has been achieved by leveraging paramedic licensed fire captains and fire engineers. These are known as support paramedics, and applicant numbers have steadily increased over the last two years.

In 2025, the department was able to place seven firefighter EMTs in paramedic training. These students are expected to be fully licensed in the 2026. In fiscal year 2024, 2025, 720 sworn personnel were authorized. This equates to about point seven five firefighters per thousand residents. Comparatively, the aggregate firefighter per thousand residents of other municipalities, excluding the city of Morgan Hill, in the county was 763 to eight eight hundred and fifty two thousand and two or a point nine zero to 1,000 ratio.

San Jose Fire Department staffing levels are consistent with NFPA seventeen ten requirements and 16 of the 17 most populous cities in the nation. In Santa Clara County, engine and truck company staffing levels range from two to four across fire county fire agencies.

The fire department's Bureau of Administrative Services, in partnership with the Human Resources Department, leads the hiring process for all sworn personnel. The department's recruitment program is supported by a team of 1.5 full time equivalent staff and an annual budget of 642,000. This includes 122,000 in authorized overtime, which allows sworn personnel to participate in annual oral boards as panelists for firefighter recruit and represent the San Jose fire department in recruitment and community outreach events. In fiscal year 2425, the Bureau of Administrative Services conducted a variety of entry level and promotional recruitments that filled 82 sworn vacancies, of which 45 were new hires and 37 were promotions. Firefighter recruits are external recruitments with a rigorous multi step process and an eighteen to twenty week entry level academy that prepares them for field duty.

The department establishes and maintains eligibility lists for the ranks of fire engineer, fire prevention inspector, arson investigator, fire captain, battalion chief at approximately two year intervals depending on the timing and hiring of list of viability. The department's recruitment goal is to make the most of our marketing and outreach efforts while working within a within limited resources. To do that, we focus on multichannel approach, partnering with schools and nonprofit organizations, and maintaining a strong presence across social media, our websites, and other advertising platforms. In fiscal year twenty four twenty five, we expanded these efforts through several key programs. We hosted our sixth annual women's plus boot camp, which brought in over 75 participants ages 16 and older, and we are continuing that momentum with our seventh annual event scheduled for May 14 at the Fire Training Center.

We also continue to support the fire explorer post eight eight eight program in partnership with Learning For Life, giving young adults ages 16 to 18 hands on training and classroom experience to prepare them for careers in the fire service. Additionally, as an accredited local academy, we're able to deliver state fire training curriculum in house with certified instructors, which gives us more flexibility in scheduling and coordination. Our partnerships also play a key role, including collaboration with South Bay Regional Public Training Consortium, which operates under a joint powers agreement with seven community colleges, and the California Firefighter Joint Apprenticeship Committee that is a partnership between California firefighter professionals and California State Fire Marshal's office, both which help expand access to quality fire and emergency medical response training opportunities. Finally, we've maintained a strong visibility in the community through active social media engagements and participation in over 90 career fairs and community events throughout the year.

Language access and bilingual services. In fiscal year twenty four twenty five, the Fire Communications Center accessed language and translation services to communicate across 34 different languages and accessed these services 3,523 times to process emergency calls. The languages encountered most frequently were Spanish and Vietnamese representing 84% of the total. Spanish represented 63%, and Vietnamese represented 21%. Regarding the fire department's bilingual services, it is the vision of the city of San Jose and the San Jose Fire Department to provide multilanguage bilingual capabilities in all services delivered, emergency medical services, fire suppression, fire prevention, and public education.

To achieve this, the department will strive to have at least one certified bilingual employee either in the rank of firefighter, firefighter, paramedic, fire engineer, or fire captain on each shift at each fire station. The department currently has 151 sworn bilingual staff. Bilingual skills are included as additional competencies or desirable qualifications in the firefighter recruit job announcement. Bilingual certification for recognized languages is compensated at a rate of 2.5% of top step firefighter per pay period. In fiscal year twenty four-twenty five, field responders reporting meeting language needs approximately 95% of the time through either fire department bilingual staff present, bystander assistance, police department bilingual staff present, language line services, or through other means.

Thank you. We are ready if you have any questions.

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

There is no public comment.

Okay. I'm gonna take my privilege here as I, deputy director Athena, treaty. I I didn't hear the amount of funding that was allocated, for recruitment. Can you repeat that for me, please?

The Of total is 642,000 and that's inclusive of both 1.5 full time equivalent staff and non personal.

And then I I believe you broke down. How did you use that $642,000?

Of course. So for staffing, it's around $300,000. And for non included in the personal services, we have a 100 about a 122,000 for overtime. And then for nonpersonal, that totals about 200,000.

Thank you. And and have we reach out to for for example, is 21% of their services are from the Vietnamese American community. Have we reached out to the community to try to recruit more Vietnamese into our fire department?

We are we are working towards a little more targeted type of recruitment efforts. Recently in this fiscal year in September, we established a recruitment and outreach representative list. So we, put out a solicitation to department personnel for those who were interested in being a part of those recruitment and outreach efforts. And we have a total of 36, personnel, of which about, I think, 20 or so are sworn. And they've identified what type of recruitments they would be interested in. And so when we do have those opportunities come up or we find them ourselves, we reach out to them and see if they're available.

I know in year 2000, my class had a probably the largest Vietnamese recruitment group. And then after that, I think we was we didn't get the whole lot of recruitment after that. We get sparse one or two here and there throughout the hiring process. And I I just wanna see more recruitment in in towards the Vietnamese American community. Thank you. And then we're gonna go to council member Khamenei.

Thank you so much, and thank you for the report. I really appreciate your taking, you know, different efforts, especially the the boot camp that's coming up. I'll probably see you there. I I think it's really great to continue to reach out into the community to let others know what a wonderful career this can be in the event that they haven't even thought about it. And so I just wanted to appreciate that.

I also was wondering, I know it's been several years, and are you seeing progress? I mean I sort of from afar have seen incremental progress but I'm just wondering if you mentioned that there are two academies a year and I'm just wondering is there a reason why we don't have sort of like, I don't know, I wanna call it open enrollment when positions come up or something like that. I I was just wondering how you know, I know that other, depart other fire departments have sort of a rolling, list, and and I know we kinda close the list after two months or something like that. So I'm just wondering if there are other techniques that perhaps we could use.

Thank you for that question. I'll I'll try to answer, and then Athena will clean it up probably for me. So I I think the the the question about how we I I think the question is about how do we capture candidates and make sure we don't lose them.

Right.

What we do now and we've done for some time is we maintain an ongoing interest list. Okay. Which is if you identify yourself as being interested in the career, we will make sure that you get every notification of when application periods open.

Okay.

The reason we run the application periods the way we do is that the process is very intensive. And for frankly, expediency and for efficiency reasons, batching applicants as we put them through those rigorous steps of testing, backgrounding, interviewing, selecting. Right? All those steps are sort of done, require a lot of staff time for each of those processes, and so to be as efficient as we can, we group them together. We also have found in the past that when there's too much time between that conditional offer where we're we're completing backgrounds in the academy, that the more time goes on, the more we lose candidates to other departments.

And so having a nice fresh list with all those completed steps ready to go helps us build that final roster for each academy.

Okay. Thank you. You

did a nice job. I don't have anything

to add.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. With that, I'd like to move acceptance of the annual report. Second.

Oh, thank you. I just want to clarify something that the two staffing position and what is those clarification? Could you give me a clarification on the two staffing?

Council member, think are you referring to the two positions that were added in fiscal year twenty two, twenty three?

I believe that is 2223 possibly. For the recruitments.

Okay. Yes. So that was the last time that we

had

staffing added. One of the positions is a staff specialist position, and that position was or is dedicated to helping out with our human resources program. And a portion of their responsibilities is supporting recruitment, and more transactional, and helping to develop plans. And this person actually does all of the scheduling for firefighter recruit and has every all the communication with all applicants. We also had an analyst position added that is not part of the recruitment. It was added to the employee services side of our programming and supports our public records act request program as well as performance management.

Thank you. And then the $122,000 for the overtime, have we act how much of that have we used in the last fiscal year or this last one?

So a bit a larger portion of that, about 90 well, I would say about a 100,000 of it supports our sworn personnel to serve as panelists for the two oral boards for firefighter recruits that we we host every year. And then the remainder supports our recruitment efforts. And so last year, we just take a look here. We had spent about $10,000 of the 15 that's allocated for our our recruitment efforts.

Okay. And then the non personnel, a $142,000. Can you just kinda give me a a broad spectrum of what is being used for?

Mhmm. A majority. So the the rest of the nonpersonal is about 100,000. A majority of that's dedicated to our backgrounding services. So backgrounds, polygraph, psychological services that we utilize for both of our firefighter recruit as well as our dispatchers. So that represents about a 118,000. And then the remainder allows us to be able to pay for entry fees, if you will, for participation in different career fairs and job fairs, advertising, as well as some giveaways that we have when we do participate in those events.

Alright. Well, thank you very much. Any other question? No. Let's vote.

Motion passes.

Alright. Now we're going to open forum. Do you have any public comments?

Thank you. We have a few requests to speak. Batman, Michelle, Martin, Crystal, b, and Emma, please. I'll read the names names again. I have Batman, Michelle, Martin, Crystal, b, and Emma, please.

How generous.

Okay. So I've been out the past week at the site of the jungle encampment, right across the street from Happy Hollow. I'm here speaking for all of the residents that can't make it because they're currently fighting for their property, their pets, their family, and their lives as city of San Jose comes in and sweeps them. Sweeps these people off of their, out of their, you know, self built homes with a promise of housing that is apparently not going to be fulfilled. People who were told that they were getting offered housing are now not apparently being offered that or that offer has been revoked or changed.

And this is all happening while they're having their belongings taken from them, while they're being kicked to the street. This is unacceptable, and I think we just need to face the facts. We need to be housing people and have a place for people to go before we decide to kick people to the curb. And I really hope that we I can, at some point, set up a meeting. I believe, Dewan, it's in your district. Is that correct? I'm not a 100% sure. Whoever's district it's in, I don't care. We need to set up a meeting. We need to talk about this because this is unacceptable.

We have to be providing people with an opportunity to find housing, and we need to stop breaking protocol and taking people's belongings when they are already on the list for housing. They are not supposed to be moved until that promise of housing is fulfilled. Then you can take their stuff, but that's not what's happening. They're shooting first and asking questions later, and that is unacceptable. I'm gonna say it again. It is unacceptable. I'm gonna be out there for the rest of the week, but I expect all of you Thank

you. Next speaker.

Don't let this continue, please.

Hi. Last week at city council, we were here. We met with several of the council members, and council members Duan's closing words to one of our residents was to worry about her own situation. That resident has been doing everything possible to advocate to get into housing and was told yesterday that she fell through the cracks somehow and will be instead sent to Tent City instead of sent to a tiny home along with at least 10 other folks. We believe there's many more who are completely off of the list and or getting sent to Tent City when they already have perfectly habitable homes.

So we're here on behalf of those residents. Many more wanted to come, like Batman said, but obviously, they're moving right now. And what their request is another resident was told that he's not on the list because even though he texted his caseworker at PATH, caseworker didn't speak Spanish. So she didn't reply to his text in Spanish because he sent it in Spanish because that's the language he speaks. So we're here on behalf of those many residents who have fallen through the cracks, who have asked us to come here today and to ask you all, first of all, we hope council member Duan and also any other council members who are able will join us after to meet with the two residents who are here today.

And also to urge the city to take action that if there isn't enough housing available and people are needing to go to Tent City, then they can stay where they are until the housing becomes available. As one of the residents told me directly today, They should follow their word and give us housing because right now we already have tents. And if we don't all

fit as a house, it would

be better to let us

stay here and avoid losing all of our things, right, until there's actually placement for everyone. So with that, I will pass it to the residents, but really hope to be able to speak with speak with council member Nguyen and speak with anyone who's able to meet with the residents after this about how things have been happening this week. It's only been two days and already several folks we've spoken to who've lost everything. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Yeah. I wanna represent represent the people from the jungle that that we were promised one thing, and we're we're all given false hope now. I was one of the one of the few people that signed first, and I was wondering why I haven't got sent up to the training homes. So I called, you know, when I was already told, in fact, that, you know, everything's good. Don't worry about it. You know, we'll start picking you up. We'll take you over there. As the days go on, watching these people take off. I'm like, you know, what's going on? So I pushed pushed to make a phone call. And, they were on a okay. I gave my name, whatever, and then they're all, oh, your paperwork didn't get sent through. Like, what do mean my paperwork didn't sent through? Like, you said everything is okay. What's going on?

You know? Well, the conversation went went away in in regards to saying, okay. Well, let's we'll finish this so you can get your tiny home. They wanna send us to this place I never even heard of, 10 city. And I'm like, why would I go somewhere? I feel like I'm going backwards now, not forwards. You know? So I was given a lot of false hope. And now they're, you know, they're saying all this, and they will call Mike and this and that. I'm not gonna call nobody because it's it really seems like it's a done deal that you're gonna send me this 10 cities and that.

Now I feel like I'm going more backwards. Is that even cool? You know? You know, I'm, you know, really pushing to remove all my stuff, I actually didn't have to move my stuff because, I don't even know where to put it now. I don't even know where to put it because they're come with the cops or come with the city, whatever, and start bulldozing the place down. I shouldn't feel like I have to move at all until they get their act together or get me where they said they were gonna promise me. Okay? Or otherwise, I I'm not gonna move. I'm not. Because here, they pushed me. I didn't even want a second for the program in the first place I knew something was gonna fall through the cracks or some something. You know? I just have much luck I got out here in the streets. You know? But I put myself out here in the streets.

It's another deal, but, you know, don't say something and then just say, okay. Sorry.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi. I'm reading a comment from a resident who was not able to be here right now.

Going to give us a chance to bring our things inside the house, and they took everything, everything, and not even a blanket for one of us. For me, this is a deception, a trap we don't deserve because we are cooperating with them. Didn't he give her a slightly dirty look? It is one of the counties that contributes the most money. One doesn't arrive because one wants to. It's because the situation is becoming more difficult. If we receive good pay, we'll work, but there isn't one. He has a family. He wants to excel. They think about what he said, that people are worse off than before.

Thank you. Next speaker.

It doesn't bother me because of the change of clothes I'm wearing. Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi. My name is Crystal. I'm from the camp. I just think it's pretty much unfair how I've honestly, I was only there for

a few

months at the jungle, and some people that I know that have been there for years somehow didn't manage to get housing. I mean, I think that's pretty unfair in the fact that they're just not being allowed to stay there. I just think it's I don't know. So something should be done about it because I don't see how they can just let somebody, you know, fall through the cracks and not help them and offer housing and at the same time not allow them to stay there. They I mean, I lost a lot of things. I'm staying at the tiny homes now, but I think it's really unfair that, you know, they're not getting you know, they're not being put, you know, put on the list to do something. They're just being, like, forgotten. You know? But that's it. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello again. So we did meet last week and we had a discussion about all of the ways that residents did not know their status in within the tiny homes. And here we are experiencing the consequences of somebody not knowing whether or not they are moving to a tiny home or they are moving to Tent City. This is actually a consequence of the list that we gave to city housing. We advocated for it because there was so much uncertainty.

And, lo and behold, we found that the uncertainty was clouded around people who did not actually get their housing secured. And today, even as PATH was driving around, I was trying to clear things up for other folks. I was like, do you know your status for the housing? Lots of folks were telling me that they didn't. Do you have a date for move in? No. And so, I asked them to clarify with PATH and I actually watched them as PATH was interacting with them and they kept on being like, no, we have an appointment. No, we have an appointment. No, we cannot answer your questions. I think you're with somebody else's list.

I and and giving them continuing to give them false hope. And these what we forget is that as this is happening, Tucker, HCI, and SHAPD are literally packing up people's homes, not even a stone's thrown away. So these folks are trying to pack and they do not know where they are going. It is incredibly anxiety inducing, which is why I really want to invite council member Don because this is your district, but actually all of you guys to come sit down with us, sit down with the residents, and learn what is happening within the city of San Jose. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

I am hoping that, you can make kinda heads or tails of this image, but what this image shows is, a construction to crew doing sawcuts to bring power to that orange x. This is at the end of Rosewood Avenue. The same thing will happen at the end of Maplewood and, Henry Avenue. But this is exactly where the fire trucks need to back up over this space. A poll was intended to go there.

Image is now lost, but this will directly impede the ability for fire trucks to back up into the space that they need to back up over to be able to turn around and get out of these dead end streets. This is an engineering flaw that I brought to the city two and a half years ago and have worked with everybody at the top who should have been able to get this thing averted. It's a last minute issue. I'd like to talk to the council member after this, but, you know, this this situation, if these polls go in, it's gonna impede the ability of garbage trucks and emergency service vehicles to back up to make their three point turn easily enough and get out of the dead end streets. This is an engineering flaw that should have never been approved three and a half years ago whenever the park was engineered.

Right? And I shouldn't be having to come here at this last date, last minute, to avert an engineering oversight that the city should have never approved. It's it's ridiculous that I have to be here now at this point to try to avert an engineering drawing that simply should have never happened when there were other alternatives. So this city still has a chance to prevent this poll from going in and the other two on the other streets.

Back to the committee. Back to the committee.

Thank you very much. Meeting adjourned.