Public Safety & Criminal Justice Reform Committee - Regular Meeting

Well, that makes sense. Yeah. I'm slow sometimes.

I want to call to order the Toledo City Council Public Safety and Criminal Justice Reform Committee. Clerk, call the roll.

Hobbs. Here. Williams. Here. McPherson. Morris. Here. Sorantu. Here. Also present, Kramer and Gaddis.

Thank you all for being here. I do apologize to our court for the late change. We had an important event come up that I really need Mr. M to be able to take care of. And so please forgive us. I apologize for the late change. Thank you so much. And so now we are with our city law department. Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here today. Happy New Year. Oh, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I also want to thank my vice chair, council president, Venice Williams for being here today. Thank you.

Happy New Year. Dale M. City Law Director. I'm joined with Paul by Paul Sirian, our General Counsel Jeff Charles, our Litigation Chief and Rebecca Facy, our Chief Prosecutor. Thank you, members for making the time to review our presentation today.

If you look at the first slide, this goes over our organizational chart. We have two divisions in the law department, the criminal and civil division. On the criminal side, it's the prosecutor's office and the prosecutors handle all manner of misdemeanor cases, domestic violence cases, assaults, OVIs, traffic, those type of things. On the civil side, we have two sections, the general section and the litigation section. The general section folks deal with general questions of law, contract review, contract drafting, support for the planning and zoning department, legal research and writing if you ask for an opinion that's generally going to be generated by the attorneys from the general division.

The litigation section deals with those cases that are brought against the city and those we prosecute, we mostly defend actions that are brought against the city and our city employees. In terms of highlights, really remains similar to last year. Highlight number one is the retention and attraction of attorneys. With the help of counsel and the administration over the years, we've been able to increase our salaries so that we can remain competitive in the marketplace and 2025 with your help, we were able to give equity increases to our prosecutors again in order to allow us to remain competitive. Our salaries are projected to remain stable in 2026.

And the other highlight is that with this budget projection, we are going to be able to maintain our three person domestic violence unit, as well as having a dedicated clerk. That hasn't always been the same over the years. There have been times when we've had two prosecutors. There have been times when we have been so short staffed that we've had to go back to our old way of dealing with domestic violence cases, but we've remained pretty steady for a few years now of being able to have a three attorney prosecution unit or DV unit rather. If you look at our schedule of positions, the budget contemplates 36 FTEs, we're budgeted for 29 attorneys, that's 12 on the prosecutor's side and 17 on the civil side.

This reflects a decrease of one senior attorney, we're no longer manning the felony initial appearance courtroom and because of that we were able to reduce our staff. That's gone back to the county prosecutor's office who had handled it for decades and decades. So right now we have no vacancies in the department, I'm probably jinxing us, but that allows us to have consistency and continuity and so we're fortunate there. The next slide starts to get into our expenditures by fund and category. We have three funding sources, the general fund, utility services fund for our Department of Public Utility representation and the risk management fund.

Overall, our budget estimate is $9,200,000 and that's approximately $180,000 lower than 2025 amended. That's really a product of a lower line item for our judgments and claims, giving up the senior attorney slot, budgets as you know go up and down and ours increased in certain areas and went down in others, but the net effect is that we're $180,000 lower this year. So that's the big picture for the law department budget and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Councilman Hobbs, I'm sorry.

Council

President Williams.

Thank you. Just a question, just want to ask what the thank you for your presentation. Just want to ask just for our edification, anybody in the audience, the services line, can you talk about what services I know some of them some of the fees that we pay are for outside counsel. Can you do you have a breakdown of some of

the services that are provided especially out of the risk management fund?

Yeah, I can give you by way of referral, a whole breakdown of that, but yeah, the services, the bulk of our services line item and risk management is for judgments and claims, but there are a lot of things baked into that and that are not detailed in the overall budget here. Okay, thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you, Councilwoman Morris.

Thank you, chair. Thank you for briefing us. I'm really excited to see that the three person domestic violence unit is still a priority and the clerk as well. You know, just recently, we had a gentleman by the name of Jamere Jones. I don't know if you're familiar with this case, but, you know, he was charged with three counts of kidnapping, three counts of rape, three counts of felonious assault, one count of strangulation, two counts of causing harm, via strangulation, and one count of domestic violence when he was holding a pregnant woman inside his home and threatened to set her on fire.

These are the kind of things that we're seeing, and these are the kind of things that we cannot allow to happen in our community and these are the things that we definitely need to prosecute, at the strongest level. You know, from time to time, people disagree, people, you know, don't see eye to eye. This is malicious and disturbing and ugly and, these are the kind of things, know, again, whatever kind of domestic violence wherever it starts. I was talking with Councilman Sorantu before I came in and I want to know about this guy, I want to know what his history is, I want to know what is his experience through the the court system, I want to know what judges he's seen, I want to know what kind of bail he's had. I want to know all this kind of stuff because it really I like to think that somebody just doesn't snap and this happens.

I I feel like there's been missed signs along the way and, you know, that's what you see as a prosecutor. You see the missed signs along the way and I really hope that we can, as a community, continue to address these issues that affect domestic violence in our community. It's just, it's unacceptable. Thank you.

We obviously agree and that's why we've been so appreciative that over the years that you and some of your fellow members have been supportive of allowing us to right side the staffing in the prosecutor's office so we can have the domestic violence unit. I've talked about this in the past, but Rebecca Facy came to our department with an expertise in domestic violence cases. She prosecuted on the for the county prosecutor's office, felony DV cases and it's been a passion of hers for many, many years, most of her professional career before she was an attorney. And so we're fortunate to have her expertise, her guidance in the department goes well beyond just having three people who handle those cases, it's discussions about how to best handle them and how can we increase convictions which is challenging for a lot of reasons that go beyond a budget presentation. But we're fortunate to have her and we do take these cases very seriously.

They're the most serious case that we handle in municipal court.

Thank you, Councilman Soransu.

Thank you, mister chair. I too share councilman Morris's outrage at this recent event that happened, but we have so many domestic violence cases that have gone on. But I what I'd like to know from the prosecutor facie is, are the number of domestic violence cases, have they increased over the last couple of years, or are they decreasing, or are they staying about the same?

Thank you, councilman. So we have seen a slight increase in domestic violence misdemeanor cases filed in Toledo Municipal Court in 2025. We were up about 180 cases from the year before. However we're seeing great success in our conviction rate as Director Empsh just mentioned on the domestic violence cases since creating the DV unit in 2023. We have seen a significant increase in overall convictions as well as convictions specifically for domestic violence charges.

Often in criminal cases, there are plea agreements that result in amended charges. A primary focus of the DV unit is to make sure that any pleas that we're resolving a case to are, to the extent possible, domestic violence enhanceable charges, meaning that if that same defendant is charged with domestic violence in the future, it will be charged as a felony as opposed to a misdemeanor, which is how the law is written and intended to act as opposed to amending charges to plea agreements that do not have that potential enhancement in the future. Again, specifically for the intimate partner violent domestic violence cases. We have a lot of domestic violence cases in our court that don't involve intimate partner violence. They're siblings or parent child involved adult individuals.

So our three person DV unit is really able to focus on that intimate partner violence. And while we have seen somewhat of an increase in overall filings, I think that there's a larger context to why that may be as well. And when we are successful in prosecution, we will see an increase in reporting to police and cases being brought to the criminal courts to begin with.

Well, I appreciate that. The other issue that counselwoman Morris and I have discussed many times is that we wanna know what was the disposition of the cases. Those that were convicted of domestic violence, not where the charges were reduced, but domestic violence. What happened? How many, you know, went to jail?

How many were fined? What was it or how many put on probation? I know that we're we've been briefed many times on the, McArthur program, but we we really would like to see what's going on and what the rate of recidivism is among these people that are being convicted in a court of law. Are they coming back in again, or are they doing something to get assistance and mental help, mental therapy, and things of that nature so we don't have repeat offenders. So if you could do that by way of referral, getting us or if you know already what the numbers look like, we we would be very, very interested in that to know is the system working?

If I may, our office has been working with the City University of New York for the past several years to create a database of this information specifically as to what you're asking. Some of my numbers today reflect that information that they have preliminarily been able to give us. We look forward to being able to present this body as well as the community at large with much more information about the outcomes of these cases very, very soon and the increase in convictions from 2023 when I entered this position through this past year.

Okay. We look forward to getting that that information because to me it's it's salient to what we're trying to accomplish here and that is reducing domestic violence significantly in the community to benefit the entire community. So I I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thank you, mister chair.

Thank you. Question I have is, mister Ims, you stated that your budget was a $180,000 less. Is that was that last year or that's gonna be this upcoming year?

The 2026 budget estimate is $180,000 less than 2025 amended.

From the one position being?

Well, it's for a number of reasons, but we've lowered our line item estimate for judgments and claims. We've got the senior attorney position we gave up. So we went up in some areas, but overall net we went down.

All

right, thank you, I appreciate you. Have a good rest of your week. Thank you so much for being here.

Chair Hops, thank you for accommodating my schedule and I appreciate all of your time today. Thank you.

I'm sorry. Just before you come, is there anyone thank you, Ms. Julie. Is there anyone that had a question on anything that they were saying? Just before they leave, did anyone have a question on anything they were saying?

All right, thank you. Can we now have the municipal court? Thank you. Thank you so much for being here today. I really, really appreciate you all taking the time to come. Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman Hobbs, and thank you, Madam President, and the rest of the esteemed members of this council. My name is Brian Lotta. I'm Deputy Court Administrator at the Toledo Municipal Court and I appreciate your time today to present the Toledo Municipal Court Judge's Division's budget. I always like to start out by looking at our mission, vision and values. What you'll see here is that we're throughout this presentation we're going to focus on two things.

One, the spirit of service here at the Toledo Municipal Court as well as the importance of the balance that we have between of course the judicial independence, however, making sure that we're being accountable to this body as well as to the taxpayers of the City Of Toledo. So the first thing I would like to do is look at our full time equivalent chart because we do have some pretty important information that can be gleaned from here. First, I'll just hit on some of the housekeeping issues. We did have some positions that were moved. One of the things we'll see later in this presentation is that the court launched its first help center this year.

So we do see that there are some positions that were moved into this new help center. I will say with the help center, there were no new positions created with the help center. We were just moving positions and roles that were previously assigned in other disparate areas into one location to make it more accessible for the public. The court also created a new probation officer fellow. However, that also does not hit the general fund as this probation officer fellow is going to be fully grant funded.

But what that does bring us to is you'll see that from 2025 to 2026, we have an increase in I believe it's 4.69 in FTEs. Now that increase is wholly attributed to a new security staffing model that the court must embark on this year. So I will as we're going to go into that, I wanted to just highlight that that is where that increase in FTE comes from is that new security staffing model. So as we talk about security at Toledo Municipal Court, historically this is something that we've had a contract with the Lucas County Sheriff to maintain the security of the building. They would operate the front door, work courtroom security, be in charge of all prisoner transport as well staffing the center counsel to just watch the security of the building overall.

As we looked at things, we realized that there are a few things. One, the contract was routinely going understaffed. They did not have enough staffing to meet all the needs in the contract. That means that there were certain positions such as courtrooms that were going unstaffed, which did not provide enough safety in the courtroom. We had courtrooms with judges and magistrates and the public that did not have any sort of law enforcement or security in the courtroom at that time.

When we couple that with the increasing cost of the court security contract, the judges determined that it was necessary to start to move in a different direction when it came to courtroom security. So what we've done is we have increased the part time court security bailiff position to kind of take over some of the functions that were previously covered under this court security contract. Instead of having the courtroom security be held by the Lucas County Sheriff's Office, that is the role that will now be expanded to be covered by our court security bailiffs. What we're going see in this chart here is you can see the contract had historically been steady through 2021, 2022, but it has increased significantly going into 2025 and it was projected to increase by I believe 18% in 2026. So instead of that 18% increase in the contract, we decided to move to this new model where we reduced the amount of the contract and increased the number of court security bailiffs that increased our total security spending by only 6% and that actually saved the general fund about $0.02 $5,000,000 from what the original projection would have been if we maintained with the original contract.

Outside of security, do want to highlight a couple of different projects that the court has worked on specifically to improve access to justice. One, we have a new website that's actually going to launch on Thursday. The website was needed to make sure we had needed ADA accessibility. So our website was not ADA accessible before, so to make sure that all of our citizens had proper access to view court records and view the information that was on the court's website. We did update this and there are several things that we did notice where we took the time to really make sure we updated our information.

It received 100% accessibility on a recent accessibility score. And in addition to that, it was optimized to be able to work on cell phones as opposed to just on a desktop browser. We find that most of our most court users when they are looking to access the court's websites are not doing it from your standard desktop, most people are doing that from their phones. So we make sure the website was optimized for that purpose. Additionally, on the accessibility front, our civil bailiffs department launched a new workshop last year.

This was a workshop that was designed for both tenants and landlords to kind of give an overview of the eviction process. This was held at the Mott Branch Library and was very well attended. And one of the things that we really liked about this is how it was able to help all citizens because if more people have an understanding of the eviction process, we think there's less room for error and for people to kind of know what to expect and do the things to prevent these things from happening from there. So that was something we're very proud of. I know that the civil bailiff's office plans to do more of those workshops again this year.

They also partnered with the legal aid to help with the tenants and the Realtors Association to help with landlords to make sure we kind of cover both ends of that coin from there. As I referenced earlier, the court also launched a new help center. This was a budget neutral mission where we were able to take positions that were previously separated throughout the court such as our license intervention specialists and our mediators and our court navigators to put them into one location to try to have a one stop shop for self represented litigants that specifically had issues with our kind of civil court process. So that is in the we're standing up that process right now, but we're really excited as to where that's going with mediation as well as things like record ceiling and license intervention. Lastly, I just want to talk about some of the resources that we were able leverage this year.

We do know that we're very appreciative and understand the responsibility that we have with the general fund. I want to highlight some of the things that we have done outside of that to kind of maximize the effect that we can have in the community. That's going be handled through grant funding, through trust fund spending and a few other projects that we're able to work on there as well. So first, I'd like to hit on some of the grant fund that we received. The the probation department specifically was awarded a $1,700,000 community corrections grant this year, which is excellent to be able to promote some of the programming such as anger management, barriers intervention and things along those lines.

Similarly, the court was awarded a $12,000 Violence Against Women Act grant that was used to refurbish the victim waiting room for people who are victims of domestic violence to make sure they have a safe place to be while they wait for their court hearing. As we've previously discussed before, we also have our partnership with Harvard University for our community diversion program study. This study as a reminder is a way to test the efficacy of our diversion program to make sure that we're actually taking good data to determine if this study, if this I'm sorry, this program actually is accomplishing the things that we hope that it accomplishes. So taking the time to make sure that we're testing to make sure these things work the way they should. Additionally, as part of the help center, we did launch a pilot program for contract mediators where members of the community can be certified through remediation through your house Supreme Court and be paid to mediate cases.

What we decided to do for this to make sure that the state budget neutral is the court does have access to a mediation trust fund and any of the contract mediator payments will be coming out of that mediation trust fund. So this does not hit the general fund in any way. Additionally, I do like to highlight that we also have our lead program that we use this year. This is a program that was originally started by Lucas County that the court launched their own version of a couple of years ago. This is something that the court has also opened up to the city of Toledo there as well to have different employees come and learn how to lead from the middle was the mantra of this program.

This is a leadership development program and the twenty twenty five graduates, They have their graduation, I believe on the twentieth of this month. So we're excited for that. But I do like to highlight a couple of projects they worked on such as the they worked with the Urban Beautification for the Great Swapathon. They developed an internship program for the Toledo Municipal Court and they did a very nice job with a security awareness training program for the City of Toledo IT department. I believe they also presented that to senior leadership for City of Toledo IT as well. So those are just a couple of the programs I want to highlight on. And if there are any questions about the budget for 2026, I'll be happy to take those at this time.

Thank you. Councilwoman Morse.

Thank you, chair. Thank you for that briefing. I'm happy that there have been so many improvements over at Toledo Municipal Court. It has been well needed. So I'm hoping it's looking a little bit brighter over there. The changes that you had with the Lucas County Sheriff's Department and now you've kind of buffed up your court security bailiffs, are they city employees, are they county employees, are they private?

They are Toledo Municipal Court employees. So the way that they are employees of the court just like all the other judge division Okay.

And then I'm excited to see about the civil bailiff workshop. Was that the first one that you had had?

That is, that's the first workshop that they put on and they did put a lot of time and energy into making sure they got it right kind of maintain that balance between both sides, but get people the information that they needed. So yes, I'm very proud of the work they did for that.

Well, I'm hearing from all kinds of folks about the garbage changes that we've had at the city. And so one of the things that I would urge if you do another one of these is that you make sure that you talk with our blight folks because I hear a lot about set outs both from the residents, but then also from the landlords. And we really it's incumbent upon us at the city to figure this out. And because right now, our neighborhoods are just cluttered with all kinds of stuff and it's not safe for kids, it's not safe to, you know, for individuals who may need, have mobility issues, it's just not safe. So, if you do that again, if you would, make sure that we include the Blight, Urban Beautification, you know, Department of Public, Services, included in that because I think that's a piece of the puzzle that we really need a lot of education on.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Ms. Lauter, if I may, very quickly, is there a difference between a regular bailiff and I keep hearing you say court security bailiffs? Are those two different? Are. I apologize. One that talks back and forth between the judge and are there other ones that are standing there armed? We

have a bad habit the court of using the same name for numerous different things. So I apologize for that. So we have I'm actually if you don't mind, I'm just going to break down. There are really three different bailiffs, I would say that could happen at the court. One is our court our law clerk, which is the person that you'll see kind of working with the judge that is a courtroom bailiff.

Those are the judge's personal staff and that position has been steady for this entire time. We also have our civil bailiffs, they're the ones that go out and perform evictions such as the workshop that we just discussed there. And finally, we have our court security bailiffs. Those are the positions that we are expanding out. They've done things such as like kind of man the front door in the mornings, but now we're going to expand it out to include them in the courtroom as well. So that is and I apologize for that confusion because that nomenclature is clunky because it's three different positions that all are some sort of a bailiff, correct?

Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Julie. Ms. Councilwoman Gattis.

Thanks, Chair. I just wanted to extend kudos and thank you. Optimizing for cell phone, that's gonna be revolutionary for so many of our residents and so thank you for being so thoughtful as you perused redoing the site. That's it, Chair.

Thank you. And

on her first official committee meeting, Councilwoman Erin Kramer.

Thank you so much. And thank you for the report. And it sounds like you guys are doing some really innovative things and I really appreciate that. I do have a couple of questions about the help center because it does seem like it's a really great program and really beneficial to our citizens. How has that been being used? What's been the reception on that?

So as of right now, we're just the help center. We just formally had a program called CDSP, which is Citizens Dispute Settlement Program. We have been in the process of converting those positions from CDSP into the new help center. So right now they have been probably up and running for about three months where they're really putting together their programming, putting together their policies. They have had some people come up, but once we actually have the final court navigators are moving up to the help center this week on Thursday as well, that's when we're going to start seeing more people kind of like be directed up to the help center from there.

And we're going to make sure we're keeping good stats to see how many people we're serving, what issues are they serving on so that can kind of direct the type of services that we're providing for people. So I don't have good information for you right now, but that's exactly the type of stuff we're going be trying to figure out.

No, that's great. And I look forward to maybe a year from now having another conversation about Yes. How are you how is your office getting the word out about that help center?

So we've worked with a lot of our so our help center commissioner is someone that we have tasked with really kind of working with a lot of our community partners because what we don't want to have is redundant services. So they've worked with the Lucas County Law Library with legal aid, we have class attorneys that are in our building, we have the Toledo Bar Association and they've right now been in kind of doing that meet and greet stage of like going to these different organizations saying, the quarter is launching this help center, here's the areas that we're doing, what are the areas that you're doing so we can make sure that we're not overlapping on services that we can be sort of a clearinghouse to make sure that, hey, if there are certain issues, we can direct them there so we can keep the court services for the things that are kind of not being covered elsewhere.

Sure. Yeah, I appreciate the not wanting to be redundant in those services. So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Councilman Soransu.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. A couple of follow-up questions. Could you could you repeat the court security people? Are they retired deputy sheriffs, retired TPD?

So historically, yes. They are usually, the the people that we hire for these positions have retired from either TPD or the Sheriff's Office and they're hired part time by the court and now we're just expanding the number of those positions to kind of cover these things. So usually they are, yes, retired from either TPD or one of other local law enforcement agencies.

So there's three additional ones that you've gotten or four?

It should be four.

Correct. Four. Okay. All right. Okay. Now I see the budget for court security, but where is the budget for the municipal court?

I apologize, it looks like that slide may have been left out. I can send that to you by way of referral to get you that as well.

Okay. We really need that. It's pretty important. In terms of the overall budget. So that would include security, the judges and so forth. The other question, if you could, by referral, get that to us right away. The other question I have is magistrates. Do we have any magistrates at municipal court?

Yes. So we have a full time magistrate who handles our small claims docket in the morning and our traffic docket in the afternoon. We have a part time magistrate that handles our eviction docket in the afternoon. And then we have a few standby magistrates that that come and cover if someone is

in Okay.

Alright. And then I think I noticed where one is left. Sorry. The judges, it's there's a footnote, elimination of part time magistrate position in 2025.

Correct. So that part time magistrate position was almost a kind of like accounting error because it was always a part time position, but I think it

was Okay.

Originally calculated as a full time position, but it's really part time.

Great. Thank you. If you could get that budget information, I would appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you, mister chair.

Councilwoman Morris.

Just I think we have it in the next handout. That's the different one? Okay. Yeah. Oh, okay. Sorry. Just wanna make sure.

Mr. Lotter, question on your the pilot mediator program. How does that work? Does they're so do you apply for this online? How are you chosen? Is it done at somebody's house or how

That's does that a great question and thank you for that because this is one of the things we're really excited about. So one of the things is for our civil cases specifically, we've currently been kind of bound by the hours of the courthouse for some of this alternative dispute resolution. We've been bound by the hours of the courthouse. So what we're doing is the Supreme Court has long had a program where you can be certified as a Supreme Court mediator. So what we're doing is opening it up and this is actually going to there's going to be a section on the new website specifically for this to like become a contract mediator where someone can go through the programs with the certification and essentially kind of apply to the court to be on this program.

And then they can be once we verify all their credentials, they can be referred cases, they have to return them to us within a predisposed time period to make sure that we're staying within our timelines. But then they can work with the clients to say, hey, if you're someone who has an office or wants to meet the library to meet these cases, you can meet people where they are. If this is someone who wants to use the court resources and say, hey, we have a mediation room, we're going to reserve that from there. But it really just gives more access to people to kind of do different types of mediation because it doesn't have to happen within the four walls of the building.

Okay. And the decision is recognized legally binding whatever? So with mediation Or do we give it to someone to look at and say here's what we came up with?

Correct, they're going to give their if they reach an agreement that thing gets forward to the court and that judge then has to review and sign off on that from there.

All right, I appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Lotta. Thank you so much. Art Toledo, Municipal Clerk of Court, Ms.

Valley Bowman English. Mr. Lott, is that on the website? Is that on this website?

It will be on the new site that launches on Thursday.

Okay. Yes. So I can go in there and apply and all of that right there?

Correct. It's out there now, but they're on Thursday. Pilot program. Yes. Okay. Thank you.

If you want to, we all have a copy. It's up to you. But that's up to you.

Good afternoon, Chair Hobbs, members of the committee. My name is Alex Jugolet. I'm the chief deputy clerk in the clerk's office for Valley Bowman English. She's so sorry. She can't be here today but I'll be presenting our budget presentation.

As you know the clerk's responsible for maintaining the public record on court cases in Toledo Missile Court and collecting and distributing the fines, fees, and bail and and other monies on the cases. We have two divisions, the criminal traffic division and the civil division. In the criminal division, our case management system is integrated with the jail and the police department. Data entry has to be very accurate because anytime we enter something a warrant will go to TPD, a release will go to the jail. So it can be a very high stress job and the people that do that data entry have to be very sure that they're doing it right or there can be consequences.

In the civil division we process civil and small claims cases. We also process wage garnishments and trusteeships. That's about $8,000,000 a year that we process just in that kind of money. The next page you'll find our organization chart. There's a clerk, myself, total of six management positions in our office.

We have eight supervisors that are organized as part of the UAW, and we have 62 frontline deputy clerks that are part of ASME thirty four eleven. On page four, you'll find our organization chart. There are 76 total deputy clerks and starting next week, next Monday, we will be fully staffed for the first time in about four to five years and I cannot thank you enough for the raises that you have passed for our bargaining unit because it has made all the difference in terms of that staffing. Page five is our case filings. We got our I was able to get the case files for December recorded for you.

I do not have the fines and costs recorded for 2025, but you can see based on this chart that our case filings have incrementally increased and they are back basic, they're increasing since the pandemic and we are going up every year. The chart will break down civil, criminal, traffic and then give you a total number. On page six, I've listed our expenditure budget by category. You'll see the biggest increase over time even though our staffing levels over time have decreased. It's a labor.

There have been increases in supplies and services. As you may know, we spend about a $05,000,000 a year in postage. That's something while we can't control the postage costs, we are working on ways to reduce postage and reduce the amount we send because we're sending notices via email and we hope to continue that next year. Page seven will show you our general fund revenue collection. 2019 through 2024 is our actual general fund revenue collection while 2025 is the budget we submitted and 2026 is the budget we submitted and it shows that we are tracking higher each year since the pandemic and we're actually at we're higher than pre pandemic levels in terms of what we submitted to the general fund.

Starting on page eight are our 2026 priorities. One of our priorities, I would say the last five years has been destruction of case files that we're allowed to destroy under the rules of superintendents in the Ohio revised code. In 2025, we destroyed over 98,000 case files. We have plans to continue this type of destruction in 2026. Additionally in 2026, we plan to launch an AI chat bot.

We're working with a company right now to guess test and teach this chat bot interactive customer service. Right now on our website you can look up any case with a name and a date of birth. So we're teaching that chatbot to look up cases for somebody. Right now we answer phones from 07:30 in the morning to seven at night Monday through Friday, but that doesn't help somebody after 07:00 or on the weekend. So we're working to teach this chatbot to answer people's very specific questions about when they have court next or how much money they owe when we're not available.

And the final page is our collection of delinquent accounts. Since 2005 we have turned our past due fines and costs in the criminal traffic division to a third party collection company. In that time, we've collected $34,000,000 and we plan to continue that in 2026. With that, I'll open it up to any questions.

Councilman Sorantu.

Thank you, mister chair. Thank you for the presentation. I wanna go back to page seven.

Yes, sir.

You are showing city fines for the year 2024 at 61,000,000 or yeah. 61,000.

61,000. Yes.

And then for '25, it it was budgeted at 66,000, but for '26 it's budgeted at 41.

41.

Why is that? That's that's a There's big

a there's a couple things. Number one, we see a lot of city fines is if the charge is under the Toledo Municipal Code versus the Ohio Revised Code. So if you look at state fines, those that's the fine money under the Ohio Revised Code.

Right.

So over the years, we have seen an increase in state fines and a decrease in city fines just based on how an officer charges.

Right. Because we've had an increase in ORC

In o charges. Most of our charges nowadays are ORC charges. So that that's number one. The second thing is on the state level last year the state did away with vehicle registration blocks and what a vehicle registration block did is when you went past due on your fines that we would put a block on you renewing your tags.

Mhmm.

Last, I believe it was the April, they did away with that. So we're we're starting to see a decrease in collections because of the lack of a vehicle registration block.

Okay. Alright. So, yeah, in terms of the state revenue, it went from 714,000 to 670,000.

I'm sorry. Which one are you

The state costs.

Oh, so so costs are different. I'm sorry. City fines and state fines is just two lines down under

electronic Right. See

state fines. But costs are the court costs on it. Right. Now costs never block the vehicle registration. You could only block based on on fines. So it it's a little a little different, but the vehicle registration block is the primary reason right now why we're seeing a decrease in that revenue.

Okay. Alright. I appreciate the explanation. Thank you. Thank you, mister chair.

You. On the on page six on your overtime, 2022, seventy four thousand, twenty three, '47, '24, '43, '25 and went back up to 65. And it looks like it may be around 59. With all of the positions and everything that we're filled, do you think that over time will continue to decrease or you think it'll jump back up again?

2022 was a little higher than normal. There was some grant funding that we received and and the way the grant funding worked, we would pay pay it out and then reimburse the city at the end so it it can't we used overtime and then and then reimbursed the city. Typically our overtime is around 50,000 a year. We have had increases in that overtime because we have not been able to fill positions especially third shift. So when we have a very small third shift, only two people work a night, we have three people total.

So when one position isn't filled and one person's off on vacation, we have to have overtime and it cost us as you can see, it costs us a lot of money because we were just running overtime all the time when people were off. So we're hoping to keep it between 50 to 60,000 once now that we're fully staffed.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Councilman Soratsu.

Thank you. Just to follow-up. So so it's really a twenty four hour operation at the court at the clerk's office?

The clerk's office is a 24

opera yes.

And you have three people overnight? Well, minutes

We have two people that work overnight, but it's three staff members that rotate days, if that makes sense. So people are off. One person works four tens

Okay.

And then the other two people work five days a week. So it rotates so that there's always two people that are working.

Great. Thank you very much. Thank you, mister Chip. Thank

you. Thank you, Mr. Lotta. Thank you, Ms. Hu. Thank you so much for your presentation. At this time, can we have fire and rescue?

Good afternoon. Chairman Hobbs, vice chair, and president of counsel Williams. Members of the committee, Alison Armstrong, chief of the fire and rescue department. Here with me today, deputy chief Verdell Franklin and, my fiscal officer, Tammy Powell, here to present our department budget. On Slide two is our organizational chart.

There's really I know there's a lot here. There's no major changes, except I wanted to point out that we do have three fire inspector vacancies right now. We're actively filling one, but we have seen a decrease in qualified applicants for those positions. So we're working on any and all options to make sure that we can fill them. Current staffing, have five eighty three uniformed and 18 civilian.

Next slide is just a high level overview of the total budget which is just over $106,000,000 Main drivers for that are wages and benefits. That accounts for about 92% of our total budget. Sorry. There we go. Okay.

And then with that, we had overtime proposed overtime budget of $5,400,000 and that increases or decreases based on overall staffing, people off on FMLA, paternity leave, other details like the negotiations team and whatnot, that then we have to backfill those positions. Our supplies and services represent approximately 8% of our total budget at just over $8,500,000 Next slide, proposed budget highlights and our initiatives. First and foremost is always hiring. So right now, we have a class of 20 budgeted to start in August. That would maintain our current staffing levels because we expect around 20 retirements and 26.

Also fire and EMS vehicle replacement, we have a fleet of 30 some 35, I think frontline vehicles. And so our goal is to replace a third of that every year. We've been behind due to COVID and cost increases and build delays and whatnot. Building improvements is always ongoing. As you know, we have 20 I think over 22 buildings.

Average age is 50 years. Through the support of the mayor and city council, we've been able to tackle a lot of those improvements, but we still have many that are outstanding. Next item is we're looking at purchasing analytics software to really help drive our decision making and deployment of resources. Particularly, we've seen an increase in run totals out in West Toledo and we are limited by what we say bays and beds, right? So all of the bays at the stations out there, with the exception of one, which would be on Reynolds, are full of vehicles, and there's still a demand.

So we're hoping the software can help us forecast where the need is going to be and then also deploy the current resources we have in the best and most efficient manner possible. Also need that software to maintain our accreditation and our ISO rating. Next slide. So just an overview of our proposed full time FTEs. Not a lot of changes here.

We changed over from one building and grounds person to trades mechanic. So you'll see zero in the B and G line and then two for the trades mechanics. That's to help facilitate those repairs and get more things done at our stations in a timely fashion. I talked about the fire inspectors. There was a three quarter reduction from 25 to 26 there.

And like I said, we're actively filling three vacancies right now. The class of 'twenty is what brings the number to six twenty there. And then the number of paramedics fluctuates based on how many people are in school. That is made available to anybody that wants to take that training and we do pay for that. And then they get an increase in pay once they're licensed.

Next slide. So our estimated general fund revenues for 2026 proposed, we're looking at just over $13,000,000 And the majority of that comes from our EMS billing revenue and the $4.5 or so million stipend, guess we'll call it, that Lucas County pays to us top rate advanced life support services. However, with the increases you see there, we also had a lot of increased expenses to take on the ALS treatment and transportation. And so really most of the increases are offset by those costs top rate and then purchase of equipment and vehicles. The remaining revenues come from Ottawa Hills contract for fire EMS services, fire inspection fees and then other arson and fees that come in.

Next slide there. So proposed expenditures by funding category. The wages and benefits, you'll see increase and those are all according to the new CBAs that are in place. There's just over $1,000,000 decline in the amount allotted for supplies. And some of that adjustment comes from doing our part with the department to balance the budget, but then also we're doing our best to make smart purchases and we had some one time purchases.

I don't say one time, but we had some bigger upfront purchases that we think the ongoing costs will be lower. And then we also got a grant from the AFG to help purchase EMS supplies and equipment. There's about a 368,000 reduction in the services line. And then you'll see below there's approximately 281,000 proposed from the One Ohio Opioid Fund. And as I'm sure you're well aware, there's restrictions on what that money can be used for.

So we intend to use it within those guidelines in order to purchase EMS supplies and equipment. Next slide, proposed expenditures by funding category. This is for CIP. So we're allotted just over $1,540,000 dollars for 26 in CIP. I have more info on the next slide regarding that.

That is a reduction from the 25 amended amount. We do have four engines on order that we should receive in the next couple of months. We have three ambulances on order also that we'll receive in 2027. And then I'll talk about some of the other things that we're going to do in the next slide here. So for our proposed capital expenditures, fire vehicles, we're going to spend $1,000,000 most likely to send three or four of our existing ambulances and have them remounted because the build times, the costs associated with new fired EMS vehicles are just astronomical.

And so we believe that's the best bang for our buck is to take an existing apparatus, send it out to get it remounted, which essentially gives you back a new chassis and they remount your box on top of that. So that saves us money, saves us time. They can get them back in six to nine months versus two to three years. And the vehicles that we're looking at sending, they're not in service right now anyways because they're beyond serviceable life or they need repairs. They can't keep them on the street.

Right now, just for a frame of reference, fire engines just over $1,000,000 a ladder truck is $2,500,000 and a new ambulance will cost $450 And again, two to three year build time for that. Building improvements, we've been able to tackle a lot of the roofing projects, which are instrumental in preventing further damage, leaks, health hazards associated with that. We still have a couple that are leaking, the one on Headquarters and the one at Station 17. So we're looking to take the funds that we still have remaining and then put it with this additional funding to tackle those projects and whatever else that we can get done with those funds. The need is still great there.

And then for fire equipment, that $250,000 will be used along with the vehicle purchases to purchase any new hose, equipment, computers, radios, things like that that come along with a new vehicle acquisition. I think that's it. So that is all I have. I'll take any questions.

Councilwoman Morris.

Sorry about that. We were talking about referrals. Thank you so much for your briefing. I'm really upset to hear that you have three vacancies in the inspection. The fire inspection service is an amazing tool that we can use in the city for a whole variety of reasons.

One of the one of them is that's very paramount is that it keeps our community safe. It gets into buildings, it makes sure that our you know, just that the commercial buildings are safe. It's just it's a it's a wonderful tool. Can you tell us a little bit about the reason why we are seeing these, vacancies? Is it a fund? Is it do they not make as much money? Is it, people just don't wanna come off the the lines? Just kind of give me an idea.

Yeah. Absolutely. So I think there's a number of factors that play into that. What we've seen previously is that we would hire retired firefighters to then serve as fire inspectors. And part of the issue is the fire safety inspector certification. So when I came on the job, we got that training in the academy. It was a two week course. And my class was last class to get it. So that was in 2000. So the department does not provide that certification for our current employees because we went away from uniformed people doing the inspections to civilians.

So with that, we don't provide it. And so we don't we're not getting enough qualified applicants because people don't have the certification for one. And then for two, we're seeing a little bit of a trend away from retirees wanting to come back and be reemployed. You know, once they retire they want to enjoy their retirement as they should. And so there's that.

So we've been hiring more, I don't want say like non retired inspectors, more people that have a background in the fire service because to get that fire safety inspector certification, you have to also have a fire certificate. And that could be a thirty six hour fire certificate, but you do have to have that first as a prerequisite. And then you can get the fire safety inspector certification. And then to add on top of that, we do require the fire protection inspector certification within three years of employment. That's a difficult certification also but we've made changes to help people obtain that.

We've been successful there. I think the pay is competitive. I really do. It's just if you have younger people that want to work in the fire service, generally they want to be firefighters, line firefighters and go into fires. And you know, we're filling those vacancies no problem. So we are, I was hopeful we get more applicants this last round. I was very disappointed also that we only received a handful and out of that, I believe only one was qualified. So we are moving forward with that hire, but, we're going to do everything in our power to attract and hire, inspectors. It is important.

Do you see that as a problem in other departments as well?

What's that?

That there is a difficult way to attract it because I would think that that certification maybe not the protection certification, but the other two that are other departments having trouble getting inspectors as well.

Yeah, believe they are because I see ads on Facebook or we get emails through a chief's group that we have locally and within the state. And I do see a lot of advertisements for that position.

Okay.

We are going to look

at I'm sorry

to interrupt you. We are going to look at doing the class. I mean we do have a training charter. That's one of the things that we're going to talk about now is to offer that possibly. But also, know, there's a difference in unions too as far as who's actually doing the work. But previously, uniform firefighters did those inspections. So we're gonna come up with any and all ideas to make sure we can continue doing those.

I would really like to be a part of any of that. And so, you know, I don't know if you ever have people outside the department that looks at that, but these are so important. These, I cannot stress how important those positions are. And then, I know you had talked about having the new, what is it, the new data software, the data analysis software to help you with deploying more resources. As a resident of the Westside, I am concerned about that, because of all of the different runs that we're seeing, and, how we're able to keep all these rigs and one of the things that I saw when my, I had my neighbor's home caught on fire, was, the the rigs that we have in in West Toledo specifically 18, it's a pretty old rig.

And so I would like to make sure that once we get the software that we start looking at obviously when we have larger amounts of runs that we deploy good rigs to those runs so that we don't have any issues with if we're using them so much, we want to make sure that they're good rigs and they're not going to break down. Again, it's just something that I as someone who needed assistance, who called in a fire and having an old rig come and seeing some of the how bad it was, it just it would be nice to I know and I know they're expensive and I know there's a long wait. Sometimes you can't even get the the rigs. It's Right. I know it's it's a process, but I'm hopeful that this data analysis software will help us and help you.

I mean, at the end of the day, I think we're gonna need another station out in West Toledo. And that scares me because that's gonna be a whole lot of money. It's gonna take a lot of resources and at some point and I'm gonna just say it out loud and I don't care who listens, but I think we're going to have to find a new funding stream for our first responders because we cannot continue down this road and when you make that 911 call, you need those services to to make it to you. And so, I'm I'm just I know enough to be scared. And so, if there's anything that I can do to to help you, I'm I'm happy to do that.

Yeah. Appreciate questions and support. Thank you.

You. Councilwoman Morris, Council President Williams.

Thank you, Chair. As always, I always am gonna advocate for District 4 Stations 17. I'm glad to hear that the roof is getting done. 16 is still trash. I know there's been some upgrades, but the difficulty is having men and women that serve us leave their homes for some time for a twenty four hour shift to stay in places that have mowed.

I know 23 is a big one that gets a lot of runs and 16 is just trash. That station is outdated and I'm going to work harder to advocate for funding for that station this year.

So we did complete the roof there.

Yes. It rained on the inside and trash roofers.

We did work with that company and their insurance company to mitigate the water damage replacement of goods that were destroyed and get the moisture out as well. So we have taken those steps. I know you're

all trying.

It's not a great design. That station is not designed So we run into a lot of problems with maintenance and water intrusion.

It's trash. You can say it. You can't say it. I can't. It's a trash station to have our men and women that are first responders. I think Councilman Hobbs staying in that station overnight. Yep. I'm not doing that, but we got we got people that I have a heart condition. So if I am telling you I can't stand it because this summer when I went over there, the dragon coulda came through the roof because that's their, mascot. The dragon might as well bust through the roof.

I mean, it was raining on the inside. It was so terrible. So I'm going to do some advocacy for station sixteen, as much as I can on a higher level, go to the state, wherever we gotta go to get some funding for this. I know our budget is everybody keeps saying we broke, but I do not feel that have asking some men and women that come and take on this job and risk their life every day to risk their life for mold or cancer. Ventilation systems need to be updated, and I do appreciate how much the fire department has tried to make it work by getting the roofs fixed.

It's just that design is terrible and we got to figure something out, we got to be creative with it. So I'm going to do my due diligence to be creative with trying to help as a district representative. Another question is I want to go to page eight and talk about the Capital Improvement Fund. Significant dip in this fund with the services there. Can we talk about that?

Over the years, we spent at least half 1,000,000 less or more on that. What services are being cut to $250,000? Just want to talk about that. And if you don't have it in front of you, I can take it by way of referral, but I really want to see what we what services were cut to take us all the way down to a quarter million when we've always spent a million and I don't want to make I want to make sure that we're not cutting significant and important services out of that fund.

Do you have it pulled up? Okay. I'm going turn it over to Tammy Powell to answer Okay. Your

Thank you. First, I'd like to ask what specifically like with the services of the capital improvements, just that $250,000

Yeah, it went from last so we can go over the years. We can go to 2022, 1,400,000.0, $20.23 dollars 1,000,000, twenty twenty four dollars 1,400,000.0, almost $1,500,000 2025 we spent 1,200,000.0 and then 2026 we only spent $2.50

Yes. And I believe that trying to better understanding.

I

also went back into twenty two, twenty three, twenty four to see what these big differences are and trying to figure out the itemization of how that does go with having supplies and then services that are under under capital improvement.

Mhmm.

And it appears that they the 250,000 that with the services from what I am seeing and could see that we did it was more about the contracts for the equipment more like our SCBAs and the other the smaller accessory type for our vehicles and so forth that we did use it on. The higher amounts were when we did order those rigs like the four that we have coming, the engines and so forth

Mhmm.

That money was used to get them supplied with all the fire equipment that you do need at the same time as well. Now when we get or we get the contracts, we get it already with the rigs, we purchase them with that equipment on there. So how we had done it and it had changed and then when it was given, there was a big disconnect. So I believe that that is what from the 250,000 which would be appropriate not appropriate is not the right word because of course we need so much more to get, but actually out of what we are allotted for vehicles Mhmm. That that 200 that 250,000 goes with the vehicles because what we end up the ordinances that we come with the proposal is kind of to combine that 250.

I don't know if you had remembered in last year and the year before, we provided the came for an ordinance from the capital improvements to combine the equipment with the vehicles because they go hand in

hand. Okay.

And we had higher amounts. We ordered a lot more rigs those years and like the three ambulances also. Those have the equipment that were already ordered with them.

So Okay. It's just in another fund. It It's under under another line item.

Already under commitments because we have the Okay. Contract. So it isn't showing as what's available. It's already been set aside because there is a contract already for those. So I believe that if that answers your questions, the big with the services is that that is combined. And in the past, we had three that were delivered this year. We have four that are coming and another three. The services money is what supplied each of those vehicles with the equipment. Does that make

sense? Does make sense. So the trucks are already coming with it. Okay. I got you.

You'd like more detailed information, we can get that

to Okay. By I got you. Thank you. That's actually all that I have. But like I said, I am going to advocate for Station 16 to have significant, if not overhaul, upgrades. I've been advocating for five years. No need to stop on the sixth. So thank you so much. I appreciate the budget presentation. Thank you, chair.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilwoman Gaddis.

Thanks, chair. Thank you for your presentation. On page seven under Supplies, you had mentioned that we you've deducted $1,000,000 off of that and that some of that is due to a big onetime purchase. Could you share more about what the purchase was from last year versus the change this year?

I'm going defer that to Tammy also.

Okay. So you said on seven and you're talking about the difference between the services and the supplies under the general fund?

Yep. Under the That

a matter of the change from chief shares to myself that the mill you see the difference in the opposite for each year. To me, contracts meant I I took those out of supplies where if it was a supply contract, he had it in supplies. I put everything with contracts with contracts, whether it's supplies, vehicles, services. To me, contractual, that code means you have a contract on it. So when you look at it, it does even out.

I just I tried to put it more with where it was. I wanted to know our contracts. I wanna go to one area funding code. So in supplies, you had we have 850,000 annual for medical supplies that for the year before, when your data is in supplies, I moved that down to contracts because we have a contract with that company if that makes sense. Yes. I'm trying to just get it that it's easier to follow for all of us with the wording.

Oh, I appreciate that.

It's easier

to explain to our residents too then. So I appreciate your attention to detail.

But I can give you one very specific example of a piece of equipment that we needed or wanted to purchase with the ALS changes, like our laryngoscopes, right? So upfront that if it doesn't upfront, it's a large cost, but then you just buy replacement blades, right? So our ventilators, same thing. And some of these things might qualify under CIP, other ones under general fund. But equipment like that, that's expensive, like a ventilator is $10,000 a unit, but you just buy the circuit to replace its disposable.

Okay. Okay. I just want to make sure that you guys have the equipment that you need and it's not like on the fritz and we're scraping by it. Know, it's what you do is important. So I know that councilwoman Morris had mentioned the this empty seats on the fire inspection certification. When you guys offered that certification in training before, do you know about how much that cost per class?

I'd be able to look that up. Can get that to you by way of referral. I don't know the current cost for a class. I would guess it's $150 to $200 for the two week course.

Okay. I will get a referral to you. I appreciate that. And then the data analysis on deploying software, will that take into consideration the sitting trains? In my district, District 3, trains like to sit, and I know that that can be a challenge for some of our firehouses, especially when they're laying across every track. And if I'm struggling to get through, I I I worry about the people that need our help. So will that be able to take that into consideration?

I believe that they can model and predict factors like that, build them into the software to give us insight into how that affects response times, what alternate routes are, things like that. From the demos that we've looked at, I would think something like that is possible.

Okay. And then just one more going back to the fire inspection. When the when when fire inspections are done, do you bill those by chance? Yes. That's correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Councilman Sarantu.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Chief, I want to go back to estimated general fund revenues, that page, and I want to make sure we understand that. The charges for services in 2025, you had $10,069,000 for 2026 proposed 12,800,000 That is because of the takeover of ALS?

The majority of that, yes. And actually the 2025 actual amount is going to be over 13,000,000. We're waiting on collections from December and there's a lag with billing and collecting the funds from the transports several months. So actually, we'll be about the same for '26 of what the actuals Okay. For '25

All right. And then how are we doing on the soft billing that we have when we send out a squad and then the insurance companies are billed? In general, how are we doing on that?

Like what our collection rate is?

Yes, collection rate.

I don't have that at the top of my head. I can get that to you by way of referral. We get reports from our billing companies

By our billing company on way of referral, I'd like to see for years '24 and '25 what was billed and what was collected. Okay?

Yes, sir.

And then in terms of the the next page, going back to supplies, I recall from the hearings that we had that when we took over ALS, we also got their medical supplies. Correct? Is that part of that savings that we got when we took over ALS?

That is correct, that everything that we currently had in our possession, vehicles, equipment, supplies, was all signed over to

us. Okay.

All right.

So we took possession of all of that.

Okay. And then in terms of reductions in budgets, as you well know, we have a very tight budget for 2026 and will certainly be even more challenges in 2027. So my question is hypothetical, if we were if if you were to take the administrative staff that you have, not not the people in the firehouses, but the administrative staff, what effect would that have in terms of the department and the services to the public? I'm talking about, like, fire inspection and and licensing and and things of that nature, arson investigators, if they were all to return to the firehouses in order to prop up

The staffing.

The staff, what would what would the effect be in terms of services to the public?

Yeah. So when we were trying to to figure out where to make cuts and how that looked, we have about 60 people, uniform administrative staff, that purchase EMS supplies, do the facilitate the billing of the ambulance runs, arson investigations like you said, public education, all sorts of things. And so we run very lean. Now we could shut some of those bureaus down or we could decrease the number of personnel in them and reassign them to line operations to bolster staffing, which would then reduce overtime in theory. I mean some days it would reduce overtime, other days we would just have extra people working.

We could do that. However, the cost of that is a delay in getting supplies ordered, a delay in getting runs reviewed so they can be sent for billing, arson investigations happening a lot slower. And so therefore Inspections? So inspections are being done by civilians. They're not uniformed.

So Okay. Are those primarily retirees that are doing the inspections? Or

used to be mostly retirees. Now I think we have a couple that are two retirees.

Okay. Alright. So there would be a negative effect in terms of of a delivery of services

Correct.

In number of areas? Correct. Alright. Thank you, chief. I appreciate the

information. Thank you, mister chair. Thank you, Councilwoman Morris.

Thank you. I just wanted to let you know I'm going to submit this by way of referral. Because of what Mr. Sorrente was just saying is that we are going to have a lean budget. And so we have to look at other ways. And so I'm going to ask how many AFG and other funding source grants have we applied for and what were the results and the timeframe would be the last five years. So I just wanted to get that on record. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Are there any questions for Chief Armstrong and her staff? Any questions? Any questions for Chief Armstrong and her staff? Anything from the public? All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Chief Trendley. Good afternoon, Chief Trendley. Thank you for being here today. Deputy Chief Braun and Lieutenant Brown. Alright.

Good afternoon, counsel. Thank you for having us. With me today, have assistant chief Braun and lieutenant Holmes who's in charge of our fiscal section as she tries to get this thing to go to full screen. Control L. L, thank you.

There we go. All right. So I realized that we do we did not have our quarterly meeting in December and we wanted to kind of do a year end wrap up first before we moved on to our budget. So I will do that pretty quickly here and just kind of start off with how we kind of ended the year for stats. Our homicide numbers were actually equal to twenty twenty four at 38, so we had a 0% change there.

As we look at our shooting incidents, we were down 16% in our total shooting incidents. This includes a 15% reduction in persons shot. We saw a 26% reduction in our robberies, a 10% reduction in our burglaries, and then a 2% reduction in our auto thefts and a 23% reduction in our theft from autos. We finished the year for our calls for service. We saw a reduction in our calls for service of 3%.

And as we looked at our staffing and we'll talk a little bit about that as well when we get into our budget, we're currently sitting at six eleven sworn officers. Okay. So then just a quick little wrap up, we'll move on to our budget presentation. As you see here is our organizational charts and there has not been a lot of changes from the previous years, a couple of small tweaks, moving some staff and consolidating a couple of units. But overall that is the same as last year.

When we start looking at our proposed budget highlights and initiatives for 2026, are budgeted for an Academy class of 25. As we're looking at that, start talking about our numbers a little bit. We are down three from 2024. So in 2024 we started at six fourteen, we're currently at six eleven. So we are starting the year a little bit lower than we did last year.

If you remember last year, we did have a class of 45 scheduled. Unfortunately, we only graduated 28, but then we added seven laterals into that. So we added 35 officers last year. However, when you look at what we lost last year, we had a reduction of we lost 54 officers through either retirement or resignation last year. And as we look at 2026, we are also anticipating that we are going to see 35 to 40 retirements.

So with the current staffing of 25, we anticipate we will finish the year significantly lower than we are at this current time. The other highlights are we're looking to replace vehicles through our CIP funds we do have $1,000,000 to purchase vehicles. As you guys know, we've talked about this a few times buying vehicles has been hard over the years just because of post pandemic, no not being able to get vehicles. We have been able to purchase 20 vehicles last year. Unfortunately they're still in the process of coming out.

I think 14 of them are still inside fleet right now being worked on being outfitted with equipment. So we will be getting those out hopefully here shortly, but then we'll use money to replace our vehicles. Our current fleet is very old, a lot of miles and I know we talked a little bit about this before sometimes some of our CSO cars they have problems even getting them started. So we're desperately needing vehicles and unfortunately it's not a quick turnaround, not a quick process for ours either. The final thing is I wanted to talk about our drone technology that we've been trying to implement as drones as a first responder.

We are still in the middle of our pilot program and so far the results are good. We would like to make this a permanent program for the police department. However with our current budget problems, we're not going to be able to purchase any drones this year with our money. So we are looking to leverage our law enforcement trust fund to try to support this program because we believe it is a good program and it's going to go a long way to making our officers safer and increasing our response times. Okay, so as we start to look at the next page here, most of our positions are staying the same.

On this first sheet, see a reduction of a criminalist and that's really just because of a job title change because of a promotion to a staff criminalist. On the next page here, you will see a reduction of one records clerk that was a vacancy at the time of budget process. So that was eliminated from our budget. With that remaining of 33,000,000 we still believe we'll be able to continue to provide the services that we need from our records department. Okay, as we start looking at proposed expenditures by funding category, for us obviously the lion's share of our budget is personnel costs, roughly 90% of our budget comes from personnel costs.

So we'll see some increases in our budgets based on the fact that there were raises over the last three years that significantly impacted the cost for manpower for us. And then as we look, we're budgeting roughly the same for overtime this year. This actually 2025 was the first time we actually went over our overtime budget. It was a combination of factors partially because of the contract and some of the back pay that had to be done, but our overtime is costing a little more and we've started supporting some city events throughout the year, like the marathons and the fireworks and all of the concert series we used on duty officers, through recall to do that to, make sure that we could have a safe environment for our community to come down and enjoy those events. So as we start to see other reductions under our supplies and services, you'll see some noticeable reductions there.

There's a combination of things there. Number one, there was a basic reduction in our expenditures from budget, but we also as a part of the process of trying to figure out how we could reduce our budget went through and we streamlined a lot of our different equipment and software leases and supplies and also having a smaller class. We have less money to outfit that class, but we were able to save some significant money in those areas by being proactive in 2025 and purchasing some of the things that we would normally have to purchase in 2026 to make sure we could get ahead of the curve a little bit. So there is a significant reduction there. When you look at the street construction maintenance and repair fund that goes to support our three traffic aids.

And then looking at our capital improvement fund, as you can see under supplies and services you have zero sum there. Those are combination of things. Some of the previous years we had purchased like our ShotSpotter program that was through CIP funding. There were other software that was moved into general fund. So a lot of that is just maintenance and how it's paid.

So it does look like there's a big reduction there. Part of that is the $750,000 or so we used to pay for ShotSpotter that's come out of there over the years. And then in the Tow Lot Fund, we are seeing a little bit of reduction in operational transfers or revenue if you will. And part of that is due to the fact that we don't charge victims for storage fees. There was a law that was passed on that.

So we have seen some small reduction in the amount of money that we're taking into the tow lot based on those changes in the law. I guess I was covering it there. All right, so as for our proposed capital expenditures as I talked about $1,000,000 for our police vehicles that will give us roughly 10 vehicles, 10 marked vehicles. Unfortunately they are very expensive now with all the equipment everything on them. And then our police equipment this is funding for our radios and obsolete equipment we have to replace throughout the years.

And that is our presentation for the budget. I'll gladly take any questions you might have.

Council President Williams.

Thank you. I'm sorry if I missed it, part of the presentation, but I was wondering and want to go through and talk about the quality of life and team operations. Are you planning to do that for 2026 deal?

So we are going to transition away from our team initiatives. We're going to do something a little bit different. So we are going to do monthly initiatives with the operations division. So every watch commander every month will pick an area inside their district during their times that they're seeing issues or problems with and they're going to target those areas and come up with different plans of action to try to reduce crime and or reduce blight and make it better. One of the issues with our team initiatives, we're not getting a lot of participation in our community meetings.

We're trying to we're spending a lot of resources for two or three people to show up at our quality of life meetings. But a lot of those things that happened during those initiatives will still happen. So we are still going be working actively partnering with OSP and doing gang sweeps and enforcements throughout the city. Talking with the Governor's office, they would like to see that increased even. So we will probably see some of these initiatives happening once or twice a month including air operations either through planes to do speed enforcement and or the helicopter to help us with doing crime suppression.

So those types of activities are still going to continue. Our community service officers are still going to be out in the neighborhoods addressing blights. So that part of the program will still be there. It's just going to be kind of broken up instead of doing three major initiatives, we're going to do smaller initiatives all year long and hopefully make a bigger impact and try to freshen things up and try to come at it from a different approach. Speaking of CSOs, I'm not sure if you guys have been notified yet or not.

We have redesigned our CSOs and realigned them. So now there is a CSO assigned to every district council person. So you have one person, so we utilize your guys' district map to assign our personnel. That way a lot of times right now you might have two or three depending on which district you're in. Now you can 100% say my CSO is this person no matter where in my district it is and that'll be your one point of contact.

Thank you. Thank

you, Council President and Councilwoman Morris.

Thank you very much for providing this information. I'm I'm sad to hear about 25 in your next police class. Given the retirements, the laterals, it's it's troubling because you start off, like you said, if with 45 with this last one, and they peel away for whatever reason, whether it's a background check, whether it's physical fitness, whether it's just that, it's just not for them. 25 is not a lot and that's if you get them all and that's not very promising. So I'm just putting that on record, I know times are tough but we really need more more more officers in our in our force.

So, I I didn't catch what you had said about the shot spotter. Can you tell us will the abbreviated area still contain that ShotSpotter or is that gone or?

So that is paid for through '26 right now. There is not any specific monies in the budget that I'm aware of for that to continue past '26.

And by way of referral or maybe you know, is it can you remind me about the amount that it was? And if you can't, off your top of your head, I want to say

Yeah, I'm trying to

remember 200,000, 200,000?

Yeah, think it was $2.80 for all three areas,

two All three right, that just kind of gives me a little starting point. And then, you know, every time, I know we've had a couple of pursuits and every time I see an accident involving a police vehicle, first I ask if the, you know, if people are safe, but second then I see money. And you had just got done saying how expensive these vehicles, number one are period, but then with all of the equipment that goes inside them. When there is an accident and when our staff is repairing the vehicle, are they able to salvage the additions to the vehicles while they're being worked on? Is that I mean can you take a computer out of one and put it in another vehicle?

Yes, we can and we try to do that as much as we can. So if a vehicle is totaled and depending on the age of the vehicle and how new the equipment inside it is, we do try to salvage that and keep it as much as we can. Unfortunately there's a lot of things that happen with wiring systems and stuff like that they go completely through the vehicle that unfortunately have to be repurchased for a new vehicle. But overall the cameras and the computers and all those types of equipment, we do try to take those out and use those again.

And then another thing that I was curious about especially in the neighborhoods, we do get requests for the cameras that are on the trailers. And the last time I had made a request, probably for an after hours club in my district, it was like many of them were in disrepair. It's kind of a dying technology. I don't see us investing in more of these cameras. We're investing in other technology. Can you tell us are those still functioning? Are they still being repaired?

So they are still being prepared and repaired excuse me and unfortunately those get repaired at the same place our cars get repaired. And so a lot of times it takes a long time for that to happen. Unfortunately, we're not able to outsource those to get them repaired, but they are continuously working on them. Some are small problems, easy fixes. We try to get those in and out fast but some of them are more complicated that they have to really spend some hours on.

And then it always gets down to do you want us to outfit your cars that have been sitting here for six months or do you want us to repair your cameras. So of course we say both, but that's not really fair either. We are trying to get them back out on the street because they are very useful and obviously they are something that is requested not only from counsel but from neighborhoods and other leaders in our city because they are so effective.

Do you know how many we have right now?

So we have roughly 10. Okay,

do you know how many are?

The last time I checked it's been about three or four weeks, we only had two operational.

Okay, all right. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Councilwoman Morris. Councilman Sorantu. Thank you,

mister chair. Chief, can we go back to the beginning of the meeting, the stats? You said how many how much down were robberies?

Yes, sir.

Let me find.

Our robberies are down 26%. We went from $3.95 in 2024 to two ninety two in 2025.

Okay. And then the burglaries?

Burglaries were down 10%.

Okay. All right. Could send us that by way of e mail to the council this

time? Yes, we can. And some of these will change very slightly just because reports are still coming through being validated for the end of the year. But overall, you're going to find that this is going to hold pretty true.

Okay. As far as recruiting going, how is recruiting going at this point?

So here's part of my frustration we actually have quite a few recruits available to take for the next class. We're sitting at over 125 was that right?

That's a huge increase because a few years ago the numbers were significantly lower.

So yes and the testing has been similar the people taking tests but more past and more making it through backgrounds right now. So right now we do anticipate being able to interview quite a few people for the 25 spots.

Okay. When do you anticipate the drones you'll have a study done on the drones and you'll be able to move forward with that?

So we are right now it took long time to get it implemented because of some issues with well, some issues with the process. So we've asked them even though we technically signed the contract last December, they had said you're coming up on your year, but really we only became operational in the fall. So we've asked them to continue that through May. I'm still waiting to hear back from them to test that out. I would just tell you from initial looks at it and even in the first couple of days the amount of guns and arrests we were making with the drone. I I think it's gonna be a very worthwhile program for us.

Okay. That that's good to know. I have I came across information from the city of Cleveland that they are they actually have operationally speed and red light cameras in school zones, that it is allowed. At least the red light cameras are allowed in school zones. So I've asked the law director this morning to look into that because I think it's something we need we do need to take a look at.

My concern is that I'm I'm out on the streets every every day of the week because if I stay home, I'll keep getting honey do lists. But at any rate, in all seriousness, I see so much speeders on four seventy five and seventy five, they're not going 70, they're going 90 or higher speeds. And I'm just wondering what the State Highway Patrol can do to assist us. I think we've had them assist us in the past. Am I correct on that?

We have and they continue to do operations with us and especially when you're talking about the highways what's really beneficial is when they bring in their airplane. And so we'll do a combined effort with them when and their airplane to actually pull over a lot of cars that are speeding during on the expressways. So we do a lot of operations with them, speed, DUI, obviously gang sweeps and crime suppression. They've helped us out tremendously with our street takeovers and drag racing. They come in and help us in those areas as well. So the Ohio State Highway Patrol is a great partner to us.

That's encouraging and that's very important because it's difficult I think. If you don't have a helicopter or you don't have airplanes, it is very difficult. I know pursuits are dangerous, and we certainly don't want to put our officers at risk in that situation, but there's just so much of that. The other issue, of course, is the running of red lights. I see it all the time.

I'm talking about, you know, Monroe Street, Talmadge, all the busy intersections. People it's not like when the light is turning yellow, it's like after the light has turned red and they're a 100 feet behind and they just whiz through the intersections. And, it's it's just a very dangerous situation.

Yes, sir.

So I'm sure the the department is aware of that too. So anything we can do to stem that would be very helpful. Thank you, mister chair, and thank you, chief.

Thank you. Councilwoman Gaddis.

Thanks, chair. Thank you for your presentation. So you'd brought up the community service officers. There'll be six of them, one for each district?

Yes, ma'am.

And are they still going to attend neighborhood watch

Yes,

watch ma'am. Meetings? Yes. So in the neighborhoods where, like, I think about Junction where chair Hobbs, president Williams, I merge together, will all three officers go to those block meetings or will they

I guess it depends on what kind of block meeting or neighborhood meeting you're having. If you're having a combined meeting with that goes across all your districts then yes, we can have them all there. If it's one specific neighborhood that is within a specific council district then it'll just be that particular CSO.

Okay, thank you for the clarity that helps. And then I seen, I got a text from my dad that we'll be back on live PD. Does that impact our budget at all? Is that just a partnership or?

So no, it does not really impact our budget. We receive and we the city receives a small licensing fee every week that we're on the show, but that really just goes to offset some of the overtime that happens. It's not really intended to be a revenue generator, it's more for from our standpoint, it allows us to give that look inside policing and a little bit of community engagement even though it is being done virtually, if you will. And it helped us a little bit with recruiting over the years too.

Yeah. I definitely see that even though it's on a TV there, people definitely are building trust by watching our officers in action. So he's definitely your biggest man, and he's looking forward to it. So with that, I'm done. Thank you, chair.

Thank you. Councilwoman Kramer.

Thank you, chair, and thank you so much for this report. I'm gonna go back to councilman Sorrento's questions about the drones. I know it is a pilot program at this point, but do you know what the cost of that program would be because it sounds like it's a great tool for us?

Yes, unfortunately is a great tool, but it's also very expensive. So per drone in which right now we have one currently that covers roughly 46% of the city, believe is what the number turned out to be. It's $250,000 a year.

Okay. So right now we have one drone that we are using? Yes.

Yes. And we've been looking at different options with the fire department and they were interested in the technology as well. So we're kind of talking about ways that we could use it across both departments. Right now we run it out of our crime center. So and that's an operational 20 fourseven. So that allows us to be able to control it from there. Ideally, a second drone would get us to roughly 90% coverage for the city and I think that would be optimal. But now you're talking $05,000,000 a year.

Right, okay. Thank you for the information. I appreciate it.

Councilman Sorontu. Thank you, mister chair. For the benefit of members, you probably already know this, but the administration commissioner Maloney is conducting a study regarding neighborhood organizations, block watch, and so forth. We all know that the number of block watch groups has dwindled down to very, very few groups compared to a few years ago. And we all know that attendance at these meetings, as you've indicated, chief, is down significantly.

So there there's a survey that's been done. There's a study that's being conducted, and recommendations from the administration will be forthcoming. And I think, again, I would hope that all of us, the council, the police department, fire division, so forth, that we are all looking at these results and looking at what we can do to improve more citizen participation in terms of helping our neighborhoods do well, become cleaner, become safer and so forth. So I just wanted to bring that up that hopefully in the next few weeks, we'll have that report and we can all get back together and figure out which way we should go because I think the police department has been very active in the past in that. And again, you're a key ingredient in making that program successful.

So thank you, chief. Thank you, mister chair.

Thank you again, for being here. My question, and we've had conversation about this, chief, is with the closing of the Northwest Station on Sylvania. Have we because you know I'm extremely interested in something of a police presence, whatever you may call it or wherever you may want it to be. Especially in that Jackman and Sylvania area where District 6435, we all kind of come together in that one, I'm sorry, one. We all kind of come together in that area and it would represent, I think it gives a presence not just for one particular area, but I think it helps District 1, district four, district five, district six having a presence in that area.

Has there been any progress on that? Is there any update? You know, we've talked and there's some suggestions, but wanted to see from your standpoint, what do you think?

Yes, So we have identified two buildings in that actually at that intersection or within a couple 100 feet of that intersection. Director Sellhorse has been reaching out to one of them, unfortunately not getting a call back yet trying to see about leasing the building. I did provide a different location to Safety Director Crawl and he's going to have that one looked into as well. So we are looking actively for a space where we can have some type of community presence there whether it's community service officers being there and or a neighborhood style office where someone can come in and file some reports. But we are actively looking for location in that area.

Okay, yes I'd really like to and of course we're dealing with the budget, I do understand, but I'd really like to have I think we, I'm sorry, all of us, all of us, all the council members especially in that area would like to just filling out reports, sometimes it can be hard to get in downtown and then have those that are East side or north to have to drive all the way over on Nebraska. And, know, our offices are working extremely hard And sometimes you can go in the office in Nebraska and it can take hours because we only got one person, so it could take hours to get a report done. Sometimes people can be discouraged. And, yes, especially dealing with domestic violence, I know there's a specific place they should go, but you know a lot of times people just go to where they see police and they wanna file a report. And so they may not go to the correct location to file domestic violence.

And we don't want people getting discouraged and, you know, because of time and everything else. And so, you know, really hoping council president, councilwoman Morris, and councilman Melden, you know, think we're really hoping that we can get something to happen there in that area so that it's, you know, that area is a very, you know, it's a historic area. It's 5 Points, you know, we used to have red wells there and just, you know, they remodeled Long John Silver's, but didn't do that one. But it's just a, you know, a really I think it's a great intersection. I think especially start high school going past every morning.

It gives our kids, I think, a connectivity with our officers that I had growing up. I think at times if we could have our academy, you know, run some miles over there or do something. I just think that gives something there for the community and it makes them feel safer and more confident in what you're already what we're already trying to do to make our our city. Nobody wants to be unsafe. Our officers are doing working as hard as they can. We're working as hard as we can. And so just trying to see if if there was any progression on that.

Yes, sir. We're actively working it.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Are there any questions or comments from the public?

My name is John Bibish. I live at 2152 Grant Wood Drive and I'm here to specifically follow-up on the points that you made, councilman excuse me, chairman Hobbs. Aspirationally, I'm just thrilled to hear that the police department is looking into a location on Sylvania And Jackman. However, here's the tough question. Are they so committed to this that it was included in the 2026 budget?

Was money provided in the 2026 budget to secure location there and also for the attendant build out costs that would be necessary in order to staff it in 2026? That's a yes or no question.

No, it's not included in our budget as of right now.

Okay. That to me is a very good indication of the level of commitment. All right. And practically speaking, I think you will all agree that if it is not in the 2026 budget and it is not presented by the safety committee or council as a whole, nothing's going to happen until at least midyear when budget adjustments, if any, are presented to council. And that is a disappointment to me.

Now I was here five months ago to give my views on what needed to be done with the closing of the Northwest Station. I came with a presentation, and you all stayed awake, that not only showed viable locations on Sylvania Avenue, that changed it from a one district issue to a four district issue, an issue that covered all of the Sylvania Corridor. It showed feasible locations. And I not only did that, but I also said don't worry about the money. It's there.

Because at that point in time in August, I presented to you the information that was in the 2024 audited financial statements of the city. And that report showed that they closed the year 2024 with a surplus in excess of $24,000,000 $24,000,000 more revenues than expenditures. And that $24,000,000 went into the stash, the fund equity. And it brought the fund equity up to the point of in excess of $100,000,000 It's actually more than that. However, there's parts of it that are not expendable.

I'm saying to you that when push comes to shove that at that time there was an undesignated an unappropriated balance in the general fund, all other things being equal, in excess of $100,000,000 Money was not a problem. And I would challenge anyone here or in general to prove me wrong. Okay. Now, we're in 2025. Five months later, after careful thought, it's clear the administration didn't decide to proceed.

Now, you know, they could justifiably say that's because their priorities are different. However, if they're putting the police department behind the eight ball because they're not giving them access to a lot of money that's there, Shame on them. If the police department didn't at least ask, well, that's a different story. However, I'm here asking. I'm saying to all of you that this is the time when you can redress this inequity, provide better police protection for everyone on the Sylvania Corridor with money we already know is there.

You can do this by doing no more than going back and taking a look at that proposed ordinance that I presented to you that you could use as a template in order to get this thing off the ground. And if once it's ordained by counsel, then perhaps the follow-up by the people that the police department is relying on to get this done, you could light a fire under them to make sure that it's given some priority. I would be glad to answer any questions that you might have as far as what I'm proposing or the veracity of what I'm seeing. That's a no. Chief?

I don't have any questions for you, sir. I appreciate it.

You'll be better off if that station's there, and you'll be better off if you're not fighting over pennies when there's dollars available if you're allowed to go beyond the scope of whatever is being provided for you as your target number. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other statements from the public? Anything else from our public? Alright. Thank you all, all of our council members. Thank you all, chief, today. If that be no more, this meeting is adjourned.