Municipal Council - Special Meeting

I'd like to call to order of the Norristown Municipality Special Council meeting on Thursday, July 23rd, 636. Can I have a moment of silence and a pledge of allegiance? Madam secretary, can we have a roll call please?

Natalie Colson. Here. Madeira Robinson. William McCoy.

Here.

Jasmine Griffin. Here. David McMahon. Here. Justin Queenan. Here. Rashad Bates.

Here. We did have an executive session on, what would that be? Under, that wasn't litigation, right?

Mr. President, it was an executive session on matters of information, so an informational executive session, as well as a little bit of potential litigation.

Okay, so we had an executive session on information and litigation. Vice President, do we have any announcements?

If anybody needs a translator, we have Jess here with us today. It's like you could be here on a Thursday. I did my announcements earlier this week. Oh, National Night Out is, y'all let you take over. August 4th. August 4th, National Night Out. It is between, is it 500? 500, Powell's Avenue. Powell's Avenue.

Great job. Do we have any public comments?

Yes, Gretchen Stein.

Hello.

Hello. domestic violence, and when I had an SVPO, an officer put me, and I was attacked by the gentleman, the officer put me in the mental institution. I was the victim, not the criminal, and he was, got free, and I did speak to Chief Trail about that, who will investigate, and then today, I was at the courthouse, and I was harassed by five or six of the sheriff's deputies. I called for help for the police, and nobody came. I called again. Nobody ever came. So I am moving back to Norristown soon, next month or the month after, and I just want to make sure that I have no further problems with anybody, no more false charges, anything like that, or being ignored when I call 911. Thank you.

Thank you.

That's the only one.

Okay, thank you.

All right. So moving on to municipal administrator. A motion to approve the settlement for the pending tax assessment appeal for 1500 DeKalb Street.

Thank you, Council President. Before you is the proposed settlement for pending tax assessment appeal for 1500 DeKalb Street. As you know, Council, from time to time people do appeal the tax assessments, and it is customary for the school district to start the process since they're the largest tax bearer. And once they have done their assessment and come to the settlement, It will pass on that information to our solicitor who will review that settlement and make a recommendation to council. And in this instance, that was what has happened. And the solicitor is recommending we settle this particular appeal. Excuse me.

Council, any comments or questions? All right, seeing none, do I have a motion to approve the settlement for the pending tax assessment appeal for 1500 DeKalb Street? So moved.

Second.

Madam Secretary.

Natalie Colson.

Aye.

William McCoy.

Aye.

Jasmine Griffin.

Aye.

David McMahon. Aye. Dustin Queenan.

Aye.

Rashad Bates. Aye. The ayes have it.

Next one was a motion to approve the settlement for pending tax assessment appeal for 1430 DeKalb Street.

Yes, Council President, this is the same issue. The school district has reviewed it. Our solicitor has reviewed this settlement and has found it to be satisfactory. And as you said, it's for 1430 DeKalb Street. I failed to mention the other one and I'll mention it here. This is for 2025 and 2026, resulting in a reduction in tax revenue.

Council, any questions or comments? Seeing none, do I have a motion to approve the settlement for pending tax assessment appeal for 1430 DeKalb Street? So moved. Second. Madam Secretary.

Natalie Colson.

Aye.

William McCoy.

Aye.

Jasmine Griffin. Aye. David McMahon. Aye. Dustin Queenan. Aye. Rashad Bates. Aye. Motion passes.

Authorization to accept and relocate the 9-11 memorial to Elmwood Park near Fire Chief Memorial.

Thank you, Council President. As I had communicated with Council, I think it was Friday the 17th, the county has asked the municipality to receive the memorial for 9-11 that was previously located at the courthouse. Given the courthouse renovations, the area which it would have been in is now a green area, and that green area actually was part of the land development requirements, so they had to find a new space for this particular memorial, and I think there was a discussion between council president and the commissioner, and that's why it's before you tonight, because we thought that it might be suitable near the fire chief's memorial. And right now, it's in a private space where the families cannot visit it. And since it is such a significant moment in our history, I think we're doing a good job in trying to accommodate the families who lost loved ones and affected the whole country, so to speak. At least give it a space in our park where the families can visit and the rest of us can pay homage to that memorial. That's why it's before you tonight, because it's a council action for you to accept or not accept.

Council, any questions or comments?

I have a question. Councilman McMahon? So has there been a response from countywide, from other first responders and organizations about this, or any feedback? Everyone satisfied with this potential move?

I heard from our fire chief, and he's the one who told me right now it's not visible anywhere, and that I think we lost 12 families in our community that were associated with 9-11. It's my understanding that he would be more suitable to answer that question. We didn't get into that, but he's the one who advised me that, no, it's not visible to family members right now. So that's as much as I have.

Yeah, that's all I know as well. But I will say he's not here to defend himself, but he said he's going to make it look really good. He's going to have a nice flower bed around it and everything, so I'm prepared for that. So, Council, do I have a motion to approve the authorization to accept and relocate the 9-11 Memorial to Elmwood Park near the Fire Chief Memorial? So moved.

Second.

Madam Secretary.

Natalie Colson. William McCoy. Aye. Jasmine Griffin. Aye. David McMahon. Aye. Dustin Queenan. Aye. Rashad Bates.

Aye.

Motion passes.

Moving on to Parks and Recreation. Resolution numbers 26-65. Request for Municipal Council to approve the contract with Cosimo Riccoli and Sons for installation of a concrete slab for the National Fitness Campaign Fitness Court. Hello, Council.

All right, so this is related to the National Fitness Campaign. This particular contractor came in with the lowest responsible quote for the actual concrete slab. If you recall, earlier in the year, via Resolution 2637, we were classified funds for this particular item. We were classified $25,000 for this, so we are under budget for it. So we're essentially just... Come and see you to award the contract so we can move forward with the fitness court.

Thank you. Council, any questions or comments?

Councilman McMahon. Is there an update on a timeline? So when we approve this, when does it seem like things start going into place?

So right now we have the equipment it's already sitting with us they're waiting for us to give a timeline as far as the completion of the slab so they can actually start the Installation process or start to schedule for the installation. So they're waiting on us to move forward You're welcome Counseling other questions or comments

All right, seeing none, do I have a motion to pass resolution number 26-65, request from municipal council to approve the contract with Cosimo and Sons for the installation of a concrete slab at the National Fitness Campaign Fitness Court. So moved.

Second.

Madam Secretary.

Natalie Colson. Aye. William McCoy. Aye. Jasmine Griffin. Aye. David McMahon. Aye. Dustin Queenan. Rashad Bates. Aye. Motion passes.

Thank you.

Planning and Municipal Development. Resolution 26-61. Requesting Municipal Council approval to apply for the DCED Multimodal Grant.

Good evening, Council. This resolution and request is for council to authorize the municipality to apply for the DCED multimodal transportation fund. This asks for $1.5 million for funding from DCED. On the screens for context of where these funds would be applied, this is a slide from the 2025 Elmwood Park master plan that was done by Simone Collins. And, uh, this application is also, uh, they are also assisting us with this application. Uh, Pete Simone is here. Uh, if you had any more specific questions regarding this grant and the work that's proposed to be done, um, the critical aspect to consider for this, uh, this grant is that this is expected to be the final round, uh, in which the municipality, uh, does not need to, is not required to, uh, match. So there's no match that's required for this round of grant funding through the MTF. The grant application is due next Friday, July 31. And a council resolution is required as part of that submission. These funds are mainly for the design and engineering costs. which is about 30% of the construction costs. The total construction cost is around $5 million for the improvements that are in this, as you can see here up on the screen, along Hardin Boulevard. Some of those improvements include new sidewalks, curbing, raised crosswalks, new street lighting, traffic circle or roundabout, one-way street conversions with bicycle lanes along Spruce and Basin James Street, and then new stop signs amongst other improvements. What will help if we get this funding or get this grant is that it advances the project through the design phase, which will allow us to seek new funding down the line as this would be a shovel-ready project. So this evening, we are asking for your approval to submit the application before next week's deadline. Thanks.

Council, any questions or comments? All right. Seeing none, do I have a motion to pass resolution 26-61, requesting municipal council approval to apply for the DCED multimodal grant? So moved. Second. Madam Secretary.

Natalie Colson.

Aye.

William McCoy. Aye. Jasmine Griffin. Aye. David McMahon. Aye. Dustin Queden. Aye. Rashad Bates. Aye. Motion passes.

Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to police. Resolution number 26-58, establish or remove handicap parking.

Good evening, Mr. President, members of council. The resolution before you this evening is to, this is basically a monthly housekeeping thing that we do for our handicapped parking. If you recall, residents are eligible to apply for handicapped parking placards if they met certain criteria. We also do a review each year to determine whether or not a space was granted and is no longer needed. So before you in this resolution is basically three steps. One, to approve the establishment of the new spaces. One piece is to remove unnecessary spaces. And the third piece of this resolution is to actually install the signage for the new spaces and remove the signage for the old spaces. So that's what this resolution relates to. And it's been reviewed and that's my recommendation to full council that they be passed.

Council, any questions or comments? Councilwoman Coulson? Oh, no, okay, I'm sorry. Okay, so then, oh, go ahead, Councilwoman Griffin.

I had a question. The signs, do they go in front of the parking spaces or behind the parking space?

So it should be a simple question, correct? In my previous life in a municipality in this county, we designated the front of the space and we designated the back of the space. And we marked it off in feet. What it appears to be in Norristown is they put one sign up. I've seen them in front of the space. I've seen them to the rear of the space. But I've also seen areas where the space is not clearly delineated. We have ongoing discussions about parking and handicap parking. I think that's something we'll address at a later time. But we should be uniform in how we designate those spaces, and that's something we need to look at.

Thank you, yeah, because I just, I'm seeing a lot of issues with people because of the confusion with the signs. So I just wanted to get some clarification.

In a perfect world, we put two signs, and then the curving between the two signs would be painted blue, and it would lessen any confusion. Thank you. Thank you.

Council, any other questions or comments? All right, seeing none, do I have a motion to pass resolution 26 58 to establish and remove handicap parking? So move. Madam secretary.

Natalie Colson William McCoy. All right. Jasmine Griffin, David McMahon, Justin Queen and Sean Bates motion passes.

Thank you. Moving on with more police, we have resolution number 26-66, request for municipal council to approve payments of parking, mobility, transportation, consulting, LLC for April 2026 invoice.

So I'll give you some context to this, and the solicitor who's here also has some information. But basically, the municipality entered into an agreement back in 2025, or perhaps even 2024, with PMT parking consultants to do consulting for parking. There was a previous amount designated, I believe it was $50,000 in the 2025. This is February 2025 when it was approved. Fast forward through April of 2026. The services rendered exceeded, if I'm not mistaken, the original $50,000 that was authorized. So the reason this motion is before you tonight is because you originally allocated $50,000 in your 2025 resolution or ordinance, resolution if I'm not mistaken. And now we have a bill that exceeds that. That bill has been reviewed by legal, myself, and staff members. And based upon our review is our recommendation that this invoice be approved.

A question. How did we get above that $50,000 threshold?

That's a good question. So it would appear that The consultant was working with the previous administrator, and they were doing work. I was not a part of those conversations, okay? And quite frankly, I can't speak to how it went over and above the allocated costs. All I can tell you is that we reviewed it, and it appears that that is the case.

Okay, now what about for next year? I guess since you'll be here, will we know ahead of time if it's gonna be over the threshold, or do you don't think it's gonna happen again?

At this point, they've exhausted the monies, so there is no more invoices that will be coming. There's no more consulting at this point moving forward. So this will close out that portion of it, and then if Ms. Talley elects to do new verbal work, then that will come before this body again to approve another contract and amount of money for consulting services.

Okay, thank you. Council, any other questions or comments?

Yeah. Just for clarity, because I know some people are going to ask, if you have a contract for a set amount, how do you exceed that? Because they're going to assume that the consultant signed that contract and agreed to it. Was it based hourly, or was it just the totality?

I believe it was based hourly. And I think what the issue that happened was is... When the municipality got to December of 2020, got to the end of the year, 2025, which is in the resolution, they had already billed $49,967.87. So they were right below the 50,000 threshold that was authorized. Then you flip over into the new year, and I think what had happened was there was some confusion as to whether or not the municipality had authorized the consultant to continue to provide services. So the consultant was providing, well, Based off of the information that was being provided to me, and I will tell you I communicated with the consultant, the consultant provided me additional documentation to demonstrate the work that was performed from January to April. And I also spoke with staff members who were listed as the people he was working with and confirmed that he was in fact doing work. So I think what had happened was there was confusion that he was authorized to continue to do work after the $50,000 was exhausted. And then we got to April, and he submitted the bill, and that's when finance said, wait a minute, I don't have approval for this. And of course, they bring it to us, and we say, we need to go back and get council's approval. We also need to verify that the work was performed during that period of time, because we assumed that that would be a question for council, which is why our recommendation is, in this instance, the contractor did perform the work. I understand that there's a question or confusion about the contract issue, but from a legal standpoint, we would recommend if he performed the work, you probably should make the payment so as to avoid any litigation.

So not only did he perform the work, we received the services that we were actually requesting from him. Correct. Once this payment is done, would that conclude that contract? Yes.

So I did inform the contractor when I spoke to him on the phone that once this was paid, unless council authorizes a new agreement, no further services were requested or needed. I don't believe he's performed any services since. He certainly was happy to continue to work with the municipality, but that's certainly up to you as council. But I did communicate to him that once this invoice was paid, he should be performing no further services for the municipality.

Thank you Councilman Griffin I have a yeah, I guess a question and concern because I remember this Contract and I remember asking About a cap for it and I remember we were told yeah They're not gonna go over the cap and I was like, are you sure and they were like, yeah, and now here we are Is there a way to safeguard us in the future against something like this happening?

again, I And I'm just giving you my thoughts here, just to be clear. I think what had happened was with the transition from 2025 into 2026, if you look at 2025, he remained under the cap. He ended the year within the authorized amount by the payment. I think what the confusion was is, and I suspect maybe the anticipation was, is that prior administration was going to bring to you a new contract in 2026 that you would presumably maybe approve, and that would address any invoicing. That would also explain why we didn't receive an invoice in 2026 until April. Because it's not as though we had received invoices up until that point. We didn't receive an invoice until April of 2026, which was for time going back to January of 2026. So again, I think there was just a miscommunication mistake. Obviously, we held it to the cap when we were notified about it. and that's why finance had brought it immediately to everybody's attention, hey, you've got a problem here. Going forward, I think it would just be finance continuing to do their job, which is as soon as they see that we're at the cap, hey, we need to get more permission and approval, which is, by the way, why we ask sometimes to say, including the resolution, what is the cap that you want to place on this so we don't exceed it?

Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, do I have a motion to pass resolution 26-66, request for Municipal Council to approve the payment to Park and Mobility Transportation Consulting LLC for the April 2026 invoice. So moved. Second. Madam Secretary.

Natalie Colson. Aye. William McCoy.

Aye.

Jasmine Griffin. Aye. David McMahon. Aye. Dustin Queenan. Aye. Rashad Bates. Aye. Motion passes.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Chief. On to Public Works. Resolution number 26-63, ratification of emergency contract, Marshall Street and R Street bridge repairs.

Good evening, Council President, Council Members. I'd just like to go over a brief overview of the repair and actually the basis for the resolution. So there was a routine inspection done on the bridge. This bridge is actually to my left on the other side of the Public Works building and then on the other side of Marshall Street. It's that wall there. During this inspection, they found that there's a tree growing out of that wall. This was brought to Pannone's attention. Pannone did an inspection. We confirmed the findings in this report. This was a report dated March 27, 2026. We completed our inspection on April 1st. The Public Works could not do the work because they didn't have the personnel or the resources to be able to do that work, so Pannoni was authorized to look for a local contractor that could be able to do this work. We did find a contractor, Cosimo Riglioli, provided us with a bid at $13,040. Because this was an emergency project, we found that the costs were fair and reasonable. We awarded it to Cosimo. They completed the work on June 25th. Pannoni did a follow up inspection. We found the work to be satisfactory. So the Resolution 2663 is being presented to Council to formally ratify and authorize the emergency repair work, which has already been completed, so that we can also close out this project. And I believe in your packet there's like a before and after of photos. I don't know if you saw them. They did a good job. We were very happy with the work, and actually they did more than what was in their scope. That's good.

Council, any questions or comments? All right, seeing none, do I have a motion to pass resolution 26-63, ratification of the emergency contract for Marshall Street and R Street bridge repairs? So moved. Second. Madam Secretary.

Natalie Colson. Aye. William McCoy. Aye. Jasmine Griffin. Aye. David McMahon. Aye. Justin Queenan. Aye. Richard Bates.

Aye.

Motion passes.

Thank you.

Thank you, Todd. And now we'll go through departmental reports for police.

All right. It's excellent that we've gotten to this point in time so quickly for my hour-long presentation about the state of the police department. Good evening, members of council, members of the community, elected officials, manager, and our esteemed solicitor. I'm happy to be reporting tonight. Our June report, since coming here, our departmental staff, our professional staff, our data analytics folks, we've been working to try and develop what I felt was a more comprehensive report, not only monthly, but quarterly, biannual, and then our annual. So what you're seeing here is kind of our latest iteration of what we think this is going to look like. So you'll be seeing this on a monthly basis. Now, you get a fact sheet that you should have gotten. And what we did is, for the pub, we felt, well, why don't we take that fact sheet and make it more visual, kind of take some of the bullet points out of there, and be allowed to have this presentation. The goal is this presentation goes on our public-facing website. So it's accessible by our public. It helps with our transparency and accountability. Just real quick, if you don't mind, I'll get my readers out because I'm getting old. June, at a glance right now, our part one crime down in June was down 2%. Now, that doesn't sound like a lot, but our year, part one crime year to date is down 26%. So we definitely had a long bottom and out. That curve, that downward trend line started to smooth out a little bit in June, which is why it went to 2%. Our traffic accidents for the month of June, they're down a full 12%. So, and our public crime continues a multi-year reduction, actually is down 24% as I talked to when you're multi-year. The strongest trend lines that we've seen though is our auto theft is down 60% for year to date. There were 62 fewer stolen vehicles in Norristown than there was at this point in 2025. which is great because we are right now at a reduced staffing level. But we've still been able to deliver the quality of service that we expect and bring down our crime. So I applaud the men and women for their diligent work. They've really been working hard to continue protecting this community. But when we get to our violent crime, although we did have an uptick, so we saw an uptick in June in our robberies. And I told you that trend line was coming down and it started to bottom out. So we're really concerned what July is going to look like. Because July is either going to make or break that trend line. It's either going to continue down or perhaps we can bottom out, maybe go up. Burglary is up slightly, theft's up slightly. Our ag assaults are down 20%. And as I talked to you earlier, our auto theft is down 60%. One of the implementations that we did in early January was the high visibility programming. If you recall, we introduced a memo to have the patrol lights on the vehicles activated at all times. We took the majority of unmarked fleet, and they're all marked. So what we want to do is we want to increase the visibility. We want our residents to see not only the police department, we want the people who are here to commit crime to see that the police are out there and about. So we'd like to believe that that is correlation, but right now we don't know. We'll have to do some more studies on that. Again, next slide, just really digging into the crime trend for this year. Auto theft down 52%, robbers are down 56%. We had a murder this year, and I'm not gonna talk about our murder stats because one murder's too many. We lost a young man this year. So I'll leave it at that, the stats there, but that's unacceptable as far as I'm concerned. Ag assault's down 23% year to date. Our quality of life crimes tend to be down, as simple as assaults are down. Our drug violations are down. We have been really aggressively pursuing violent crime. I would argue that some of this drug-related stuff could actually be needing some attention, that we're not out there being as proactive as we should be, but violent crime has been taking a precedent for us. But overall, we continue to reduce quality of life crimes. We'll get back into the next slide, if you don't mind. Again, robbery in June did increase. Well, why did it increase? Where did it increase? If you recall back in 2025, I brought to you our crime plan for 2026. It was location-based, person-centric. So now we are using our data to understand where do these crimes occur? Are there trends? Are there patterns? Is this one individual committing multiple robberies, or this is multiple people committing robberies? And we're digging through that data as we move forward. Year-to-date robbery still does remain down 56%, but we saw that trendline break in June. Same thing with burglary. We're still down, but we definitely saw a trendline break. Here is a heat map. Now, I know we've had some discussion about crime mapping in this community. There was a crime mapping program. I know Ms. Colson and Ms. Robinson in particular, there was a program that this municipality subscribed to back in 2020 or 2021 called crimemapping.com. That subscription ended. However, we're still getting some of our data, so the data was out there, and people were saying, hey, what happened? The data stopped flowing. That was probably as a result of our RMS change, but what was out there probably a year ago wasn't accurate anyway. We've contacted that vendor. We've actually made some inroads with them. We may be reintroducing that, so look for that in the 2026 budget, or strike that 2027 budget as an item that we'd like to bring back. But here's a heat map. Concentration really is the southwest quadrant of town. So that's where we're increasing our patrols. We're definitely engaging in more uniformed, proactive, high-visibility patrols. Work on getting foot patrols active to try and stem that time. This is a 14-year trend of where we are as a trend line year over year. So, again, we're down 7% for all Part 1 crime. But if you look at violent crime in this trend line, we're down 24%. So we're making some headway. We're definitely making some headway. We talked about in our 2026 crime plan that I presented to you in December. I outlined to you some of the things we need to do as highlight, which is reduce gun violence and firearm offenses. That's in progress. And again, we've reduced our violent crime. Our shootings are down. We talked about creating a community impact unit. Council was able to help us get the funding to reorganize some areas in the building. We got some office space. We did appoint one officer to the community impact unit, and we hired one individual as our mental health co-responder who was in that unit. With the approval of the hirings on Tuesday and some other issues that are working through our hiring and our staffing levels, we hope to fund our second officer into the community impact unit this fall. So we'll have two sworn officers in that unit with a mental health co-responder. Our traffic enforcement unit, if you've been paying attention, you may have seen our new pickup truck. It's around town, it says traffic enforcement unit on it. I'm the guy who's been driving it, so if you got pulled over, it was me. So we have the equipment, we have the resources, we need the staffing. And we're gonna get that this fall when we get the people in place. As I pointed out earlier, our mental health co-responder program is up and running. He is doing a wonderful job. I had a quick conversation with the superintendent, newly appointed Dr. Green, I believe, with the district today and yesterday. We're going to get together, and what I'd like to see is how can we leverage that resource with our co-responder. with the district because while the high school may be in West Norton, the majority of the kids that go there are from Norristown. And we know that a lot of mental health issues, a lot of issues with respect to family, you know, they take place at home and get carried to the school, and they take place at school and get carried back to the community. So we need to figure out is there a nexus there that we can exploit with our co-responder. One of the things we had a goal for 2026 was to transition to our new record management system, which we've done. It's successfully and fully implemented. That is going to help us make sure that we're getting great, accurate data, you know, garbage in, garbage out. So we need to make sure we're capturing real data. And one of the things you'll see in our 2027 proposal is a workload study to determine staffing. A lot of folks on council and all police professionals, we always want to try and figure out how many police officers do we actually need? What should we actually be budgeting for? And I would submit to you that actual workload, in other words, examining the amount of work we do, the amount of calls for service, the types of calls for service, the duration of time that the officers invest in this call for service, and then the amount of time we need for officers to have free time to be proactive, to be out there in the community, being visible, and engaging in traffic enforcement and other operations is really important. So that's going to help us with the records management system. Gun violence in Norristown Firearms shootings, we had one shooting in 2026 that's down from two, so we had a 50% reduction. Robbery with a gun, we're not doing so good there. We had none recorded apparently in 2025. The shot spotter activations, you can see that number there. Again, all this comes back to our crime plan. Directed patrols, high visibility, data analytics, Looking at where crimes occurring and trying to identify the individuals who are most likely to engage in crime so we can provide resources to deter them from away from committing crime. Traffic enforcement, this is goal three. This is something I'm kind of partial to. We are a multimodal community. As a matter of fact, I think we approved a grant funding thing this evening for the area down on Sterringer and Harding. That will be a highly transited, multimodal area with bikes, people on pedestrians and walking. We want to make sure they're safe. So we need to get that traffic safety unit running. As I said, we have the truck. We need the people. You'll see more of that later. Community impact, engagement, we're definitely trying to ramp up those things. We've done the water rights of the cop, the summer prayer sessions. We had a great new program this year, a young officer, junior officer, Jalise Davis, came to us early in the year with a Girls in Blue mentoring program. There's a lot of programs out there to mentor young boys. But Girls in Blue is a specific program for young girls. I will tell you I've monitored the progress of the program. I've heard feedback from people who have participated, and it is a really great program. It's going to be wrapping up in August, but we intend to continue that in the future. It matters. Why does it matter? Because our engagement to the community matters. Our support from the community matters. We need the community to trust us. We need to be transparent and accountable, and I think we can all agree that we've been working in that direction. Visibility, accountability is really important to me in the men and women's department, and we're gonna continue to improve in that area. The staffing snapshot, I think we've kind of talked about that. Right now we're at 54. We're down 15 from our... from our budgeted level and with council's support, we've been slowly working away at that. And then basically this is junior review, some pictures of some of the events that we've gone to. We were at Juneteenth, we were July 4th, we have been at a number of events, Elmwood Park Zoo, Um, we were just at a variety club. Well, that was July, but technically it's summer, right? We're at the variety club yesterday up in, um, Worcester. Um, and this is, this is what the department that I think that we need to have. We need to have a department that's community, is community facing, forward looking, uh, proactive. empathetic to the community, to the needs of our community. We understand that our role was here as protectors and guardians, and I think the trend lines are showing that we've done that. We've really worked to ramp up that engagement, and one of the things that you'll be seeing this year later with our budget presentation is the strategic plan that will take us from 2027 to 2030. So I hope that wasn't too long-winded, but I appreciate your time, and I'll be more than happy to answer any questions.

No, it's great information. Thank you for your hard work and the rest of your team. Thank you. Appreciate you. Council, do you have any questions or comments? I have a comment. Go ahead, Councilman McCoy.

I just want to say we appreciate you. I know I do. I appreciate you, Chief. And most importantly, I knew you were the right decision since the interview days, and I'm glad to be a part of that process.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

Councilman Colson?

I agree wholeheartedly with Will. I love all the work that you're doing. I love that you're here. I think you're doing everything that you said you were going to do, and I really appreciate it, so thank you.

I appreciate that. I'm an impatient person, so I wish I had the ball a little further along. But we're working. And I just want to put it out to the men and women. You really do have a great group of men and women working in this community. Professional support. They're eager to serve. I mean that wholeheartedly. So thank you. Thank you.

Council, do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Meeting adjourned.