Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an Overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2016 Budget for the following: Harbor Department; Water Department.
We will be doing our budget presentation and first we will be hearing from our police chief and his team. Then we will be going to the fire. Department and then we will be hearing from. Disaster preparedness and emergency communications. And with that, I'll turn it over to chief unit. Good evening, our mayor Garcia and members of the city council. As you know, our public safety efforts in Long Beach are a true partnership. So I would like to start with some acknowledgments. First of all, I want to recognize the men and women of the Long Beach Police Department who work every day under very difficult or work very hard every day under very difficult circumstances to keep our community safe. I would also like to thank our city departments and the community for their partnership in making this city a safe place for all people. Finally, thanks goes to the city manager and the City Council. Your ongoing support is very much appreciated. You are familiar with our core services. These services are guided by our recently developed strategic vision, which closely aligns with the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics and Sir Robert Pils nine Principles of Policing. Our goal is to make Long Beach a safe place for all people. And our mission is simple, yet effective public safety through partnerships. Our core services include safeguarding lives and property in our community, providing law enforcement services in a constitutional manner, responding to calls for service, thoroughly investigating crimes, and proactively seeking to build partnerships with our community. This slide addresses some key accomplishments. In FY 14, officers were dispatched to nearly 170,000 calls for service on an average day. This translates to officers responding to 487 calls for service. They proactively initiated contact with our community over 1100 times and made approximately 63 arrests again. This represents activity on an average day. In addition, our daily workload includes COPS projects, which are special projects for long term problem solving, handling special events and high profile incidents incidences. And we also address many council requests for services. Many of you well know when you dial 911 in an emergency situation, officers are arriving on scene on average within 4.8 minutes. That is an incredible accomplishment. We also continue to place a strategic focus on gang suppression efforts through various investigative methods, including working with our city prosecutor, Doug Halbert. To conduct citywide enforcement on gang court orders that encompass several gangs. Partnerships with other agencies to address gang crimes. Gang detectives and a probation officer assigned to the gang enforcement section to help augment the work of our officers in the field and to highlight some of our enforcement. 90% of our human trafficking arrests. Led by our vice section, are gang members and an estimated 50% of compliance checks for subjects released pursuant to AB 109 involve gang members. In the past two fiscal years, the use of discretionary overtime and non-recurring funds approved by the City Council have helped us to focus or help us to focus our efforts on certain crime trends. You may remember in 2014, we received nonrecurring funds to combat human trafficking and conduct prohibitive possessor enforcement. Both operations proved extremely successful in FY 15. So far, we have been successful in reducing residential burglary by 19 4%, which equates to 218 crimes citywide. When it comes to our approach in addressing crime today, we devote our resources in a data driven, focused manner, as opposed to using more traditional police sweeps, which has a common which was a common enforcement tactic used in the past. In our efforts to increase the level of community engagement, we will continue to seek expanded partnerships with our community. This will enhance communications and information sharing. Some of our key partnerships include the Ministers Alliance and the organization. Why'd you stop me? We also work closely with other city departments, community based organizations and our community on the public safety continuum. The safe Long Beach violence prevention plan and to provide safe passage to our students. We are also looking forward to working with the city's new innovation team. We are grateful for our continuing academy classes because they are allowing us to replenish police officer positions as a result of attrition. Academy class number 87 graduated 24 recruits in December of 2014. Class 88 started in May of 2015 with 45 recruits and will graduate in November of this year. Testing for Class 89 is currently underway with an expected start date in May of 2016. Lastly, we also want to highlight that over the past 15 years we have improved most substations in the city and are close to completion of our substation. We anticipate moving in in early 2016. As you see, most of the police department budget comes from the general fund. In FY 16, there are no changes in our sworn full time equivalents. However, we are transferring civilian employees to another department, which I will explain later in my presentation. Grant funding is an important resource for our department in FY 14. The police department was awarded 15 grants totaling $4.8 million in FY 15. The police department continues to receive both allocation and competitive grants. There are some key changes in the FY16 budget. One of the most significant changes is the creation of the Community Engagement Division, which will increase our ability to build stronger relationships with our community. This is very important or this is a very important part of our ongoing effort to build public trust. This division will continue to explore community partnership opportunities, social media communications, manage our youth explorer program and volunteers, as well as develop a more robust internship program. Through $150,000 in nonrecurring funds. The department will continue to train officers in the areas highlighted in the president's 21st Century Task Force report. These topics include mental health issues and homelessness. Verbal de-escalation. Fair and impartial. Constitutional policing. Cultural diversity. And alternatives to arrest. In this proposal, the department has been allocated $2.2 million to fund overtime for prevention, enforcement and investigation of violent crime, as well as to address other emerging crime trends. The Academy lieutenant position will focus on new training initiatives, developing the lateral process and recruiting. We will continue to partner with civil service to identify law enforcement recruiting opportunities in an effort to hire people who best reflect the diversity of our community and who will uphold the high standards of our police department. Another change is the upgraded criminalist positions, which will provide a higher level of sophistication for investigative assistants and managing evidence collection. Because we have a large general fund budget and many grants to manage the financial bureau will be enhanced. By the addition of an accounting technician, financial services officer and an administrative intern. Lastly, as I alluded to earlier, 65 public safety dispatcher positions will be transferred to the Department of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Communications. The demands, expectations and the level of accountability placed on our officers have never been higher. Today, our officers are more carefully chosen, more diverse, better educated and carefully trained, and more technologically and tactically sound. In these next two slides outlining significant issues and opportunities, you will see a common theme in our efforts to build trust, increase capabilities, and have a more strategic focus. Part of that strategic focus includes our communications plan, which will involve assistance from communication professionals to better shape information about the police department with our community today. There are many emerging technologies for use in law enforcement. We have been working on several new and innovative technologies such as online reporting, a new personnel scheduling system. Our mobile AI camera platform. And we are exploring E-Ticketing, which will reduce time spent on data entry of citations. In addition, our department is in the selection process of a vendor for our body camera pilot program. The pilot program will provide the department with a better understanding of resources needed to operate this initiative. We need to point out that this program may require additional resources as the pilot progresses and as we prepare for full implementation. It is important that we employ a data driven approach to our enforcement strategies to maximize our limited resources. As part of the mayor's proposal, non-recurring funds may be added in the FY16 budget for a new gang analyst to augment violent crime strategies. We are all concerned about the violent crime increases we have seen this year, and we will continue to make focused enforcement a priority. While the city achieved the lowest reported number of violent crimes in 2014, this year, overall crime has increased by 6.3% based on a five year average. And since the beginning of summer, there has been a spike in violent crimes. I recently attended a violent crime summit convened by the Major City Chiefs Association in Washington, DC. The preliminary findings of the summit among 35 participating cities were very revealing. On an average homicide increase, 19% this year. 62% of the cities have had increases in nonfatal shootings. 40% of the cities are reporting crime scenes with shootings using multiple firearms. Almost half of the agencies report an increase in gang retaliatory violence. Synthetic drugs have reached have not reached all cities yet, but 30% reported increase in violent crime where the offender is under the influence of synthetic drugs. I would like to reiterate that these preliminary findings after polling 35 major cities nationwide. In FY16, the department will focus on improving the quality of existing resources and equipment. As I mentioned earlier, the police substations have received improvement over the last 15 years. However, other infrastructure, maintenance and repair needs have been identified. These issues these issues will require attention in future years. It is essential to provide a clean, safe, functioning work environment for our employees to enhance employee performance and morale. In addition, the Department is expanding the procurement of projectile launchers and munitions to be more readily available to police officers in the field for improved alternative moderate force options. The Police Department is grateful that FY16 will afford our organization an additional year of resource stability with minimal impacts to our current level of service. We have implemented many new programs and efficiencies with a budget neutral impact to the general fund. In closing, the police department will approach FY 16 as a year of transition. We will diligently reevaluate the department's structure, along with citywide priorities and emerging crime trends, to identify the most optimal way to guide the department through the budget limits forecasted for FY 17 and f y 18. As part of our many strategies, a police department will continue to actively seek available grants, explore technology that streamlines administrative functions. And we will continue to work with our internal and external partners to develop comprehensive programs that maximize city resources to address public safety. This concludes our presentation, and I believe we're going to do the other departments first, and then I will be available to all of you for any questions that you may have. Okay. Let's move on to fire. Good evening, mayor garcia and members of the city council. This evening, I will be giving you a brief overview of the Long Beach Fire Department's fiscal year 16 proposed budget. My presentation will also touch upon the services provided by the Fire Department some of our key accomplishments for the current fiscal year. Significant changes in fiscal year 16 proposed budget and some major issues and opportunities for fiscal year 16. The Fire Department delivers fire rescue, emergency medical services, hazardous materials response and non-emergency response services to residents, businesses and visitors of Long Beach. We provide a 24 hour operation for which all first responders must be prepared at all times. A primary goal of the fire department is to reduce the number of fires in the city through our fire prevention efforts. These include services such as fire inspections and code enforcement, investigation of suspicious fires to our fire investigation and arson detail , the implementation of environmental safeguards and efforts to reach out to the community with fire prevention and safety messages and related information. Additionally, are training division provides essential services to the entire department. They prepare entry level fire recruits to be effective firefighters through our fire academy. And equally important is their work in ensuring that all of our first responders receive the continuing education needed to maintain skills and stay current with their knowledge of firefighting and emergency response tactics. I would like to outline excuse me, I would like to outline some of the fire department's accomplishments and highlights for our current fiscal year. Over the past 12 months, the Long Beach Fire Department has responded to 62,000 fire, emergency medical services and other emergency incidents. This equates to more than 130,000 unit responses. We have been and will always remain a very busy fire department. Included in this number is over 45,000 medical calls and over 5000 fire calls. This number also includes hazardous material responses, airport responses, marine safety responses and other non fire responses. Earlier this year, 20 new fire recruits graduated from our fire academy. It's our plan to continue running annual academies to keep up with attrition and ensure adequate staffing levels at all times. And as you know, last year, on July 10th, the fire department implemented the Rapid Medic deployment or RMD program throughout the city. The program has been in place for one year, and I'm pleased to report to you that the data that we have submitted to the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency and the Data Safety Monitoring Board has shown has been shown by them improvements in response times and patient care. We continue to have a very active Community Emergency Response Team or CERT program. This year was unique in that we conducted the city's first ever Spanish language cert class. It was. We also conducted a teen cert program. CERT classes provide community members with practical hands on instruction and demonstrations of how to respond to emergencies. And we continued to effectively utilize federal homeland security grant funds. This year, we were able to secure funds to continue to improve our response capabilities and to improve our effectiveness in working with neighboring agencies to manage large scale regional emergencies. The proposed fiscal year 16 budget for the fire department is just over $98 million. We have a total of 485 budgeted full time equivalent staff consisting of 364 sworn muftis in the fire ranks. Another 26 full time year round marine safety first responders, over 160 seasonal lifeguards and 33 full time ambulance operators. Additionally, the fire department is supported by civilian staff in fire operations, support services, fire prevention and administration. The bulk of our budget, over 70%, is in the general fund, which supports most departmental activities. The proposed FAA 16 general fund budget for the fire department is just over $72 million. Additionally, Tidelands Funds supports marine safety activities as well as our fire operations in the Port of Long Beach. The Harbor Department provides cost reimbursement for the services provided to the port, and that is included in the $23 million Tidelands Fund budget for fire prop fund. Funds from the oil production tax continue to provide additional support for fire staffing in the amount of nearly $1.8 million per year. And along with the Health Department, the fire department provides environmental protection services that are supported by the Cooper Fund. The stands for Certified Unified Program Agency and through permit fees, it provides funding for inspection services and businesses emergency plan reviews to ensure hazardous chemicals are handled, stored and transported in accordance with current state and local standards. The Fire Department's proposed fiscal year 16 budget includes several changes that I'd like to highlight. First, as you are aware, the city has been transitioning to a consolidated and public safety communication center for the past several years. The next step in this process is to transfer the fire department's dispatching staff and associated budget to the Department of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Communications. A second budget change reflects the need for additional staff to provide administrative oversight and planning for the fire department. The professional administrative staffing level in the fire department is very low for a department of our size and complexity. Therefore, we are proposing the addition of an administrative officer who will be responsible for managing the department's personnel safety contracts and many other administrative functions. We are also proposing the addition of a part time clerical position to assist with the many Public Records Act requests we have been receiving. This will partially replace a full time position that was dedicated to providing these services, but was eliminated from our budget in fiscal year 2008. Additionally, the proposed budget provides ongoing funding for a CERT coordinator. We have had an increased support for the CERT program over the past couple of years, first with grant funds and then with additional one time funds for cert enhancements. The short term commitment of funds has allowed the CERT program program to grow, giving us an opportunity to train more adults and teens. The addition of the budgeted CERT coordinator will allow us to support the current level of CERT program activity on an ongoing basis. The CERT coordinator will be responsible for coordinating the activities of the City CERT Program under the direction of the Deputy Chief of Fire Prevention. Duties will include recruiting and training volunteers, developing lesson plans and conducting training and drills. The CERT coordinator will also assist sworn fire staff in the Community Services Division by planning and attending CERT program meetings with CERT team leaders on topics related to emergency preparedness under direction from the Deputy Chief of Fire Prevention. The position will also help coordinate the department's social media and website efforts, and the CERT Coordinator will have a strong, analytical, organizational, strong communication skills as well as experience working in a public safety organization. The next change in our budget is to realign the number of budgeted, total sworn positions to reflect our actual staffing levels. The Department will eliminate 24 budgeted positions that were kept on the books as overstaffed positions to reduce budgeted overtime. However, these positions had never been filled. Therefore, there will be no effective reduction in staff. The net effect of this change is a savings of $200,000. The final change in the budget is in the Tidelands Fund. This is a reduction in marine safety staffing. We are proposing the reduction of one vacant marine safety sergeant rescue boat operator position. Looking forward to fiscal year 16, the department has several significant issues. The first is to conduct a thorough analysis of all potential cost savings efficiencies and cost recovery mechanisms in an effort to maintain staffing levels for fire suppression and emergency medical services. The fire department has reduced our budget over the past seven years by eliminating four fire engines, one fire truck and one paramedic ambulance. Therefore, we'll be looking at all options for maintaining our service. Another challenge is to continue our multiyear multiphase plan to address workforce privacy issues in our fire department facilities. The Fire Department and Public Works Department have made great strides over the past several years to ensure that our facilities foster a positive work environment and provide privacy for all our employees. Our facilities are unique in that our employees utilize them on a 24 hour basis. Therefore, it is essential that all facilities offer private dormitories, changing areas and restroom facilities. Fire and Public Works will utilize existing capital improvement fund appropriations to conclude these workforce privacy projects. And finally, the Department will begin implementing the first responder fee, which was approved by City Council on July 21st. In conjunction with financial management, we will determine collection rates and the amount of revenue received. This information will be essential in determining the level of funding available from this new revenue source in fiscal year 17. And with that, that concludes my presentation, and I'll stand by to answer questions after Mr. Harrison. Thank you. And now we're going to hear the last part of our presentation from Emergency Preparedness Management. I hear. Mere members of the City Council. It is my pleasure to present the first budget for this new city department, the Department of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Communications. I am joined in this presentation by the Fire Chief, Mike Derry, and by our police chief, Robert Luna. As we join, as we become a part of the city's continuum of public safety. This new department was created in fiscal year 2013 to centralize and bring greater focus to disaster preparedness and emergency communications functions throughout the city. This reorganization was implemented to better align Long Beach with a growing demand for integrated public safety services and strengthened collaboration between city departments, county, state and federal resources with responsibility for disaster. Prepare, preparation, response, recovery and mitigation. Thank you. In terms of our core service. Long Beach is fortunate to have miles of waterfront coastline that attract tourists and visitors from across the world. We operate our own airport gas utility and the second largest deepwater port in North America. These are great amenities for the city to have, but they also make Long Beach a complex city in terms of disaster preparation. Earlier this year, the City Council approved the updated Natural Hazardous Mitigation Plan that identified and provided mitigation measures for many of the risks we have. Therefore, our plans, exercises, training events are all designed to be flexible enough to adapt to all hazards as well as natural disasters, biological incidents, and that and national security emergencies. While an earthquake is the most probable natural disaster for Southern California, we can see from the recent power outages that a disruption of significance to our quality of life for a prolonged period can have detrimental effects on a community. We also we also administered a Homeland Security Grant program to provide training and equipment acquisition for our first responders and disaster preparedness organizations. And integral to the department is the provision of 911 Emergency Communications Services for Police, Fire and Emergency Medical calls for service during a disaster. The call center would activate a mass notification system to alert residents of the status of a pending or actual major emergency. The call center would also provide updated information to first responders, information that we receive from the public. Thanks. The new department hit the ground running in terms of accomplishments for five days beginning July 15 through July 19th and again on Friday, July 30th through August the first. The city suffered its first major power outage since the 1950s. The power outage was caused by fires in Southern California, maintained utility vaults at the height of the power outage. Approximately 30,000 residents were affected. The city responded by activating its EOC emergency operations center at its highest level for a sustained period to assist police, fire, public works and other staff to manage city resources to restore power to the affected area. This was the first activation at this level since the 2004 Verizon service interruption. And we will and we will report on this interruption in greater detail at the September 1st City Council meeting. But I'd also like to say, Mayor, City Council, as you are aware, the city's response was matched 141 by this by our residents response as well to this major disruption of our quality of life and services to our residents. We had just an outpouring of support from residents, nonprofits, the business community, just resident two resident camaraderie and mutual respect helped us to manage this major disaster and move forward. There were no increases in crime and criminal activity during this period of time, and there were no major accidents during this time. Our response was aided by almost 300 city staff and community partners that we trained throughout the year through our whole community approach to disaster preparedness. Many of those staff responded to the incident or to the D.C. Department Operations Centers or at our EOC or at the emergency shelter and food distribution points went through that training during this past year. I spoke earlier of the probability of an earthquake affecting Long Beach, and I'm really proud to state that Long Beach is one of the few cities nationally to participate in the earthquake early warning system to provide seconds or minutes of warning before an earthquake might strike. We are beta testing this technology to see how departments could use 20 seconds, 40 seconds, a minute of warning before disasters strike to put in operational changes that would save lives and property. We oversaw a $9.1 million in Homeland Security grant funds to provide training and equipment acquisition for disaster preparedness and response activities. With this equipment activities, with this equipment acquisition. We're not talking about militarizing our police department. There are no armored personnel carriers associated with this acquisition. But rather, we we emphasize our acquisitions on communications, the provision of generators and training for all hazards. Not yet. The 911 center received over 700,000 calls for service last year and exceeded state requirements for answering 90% of those calls within 10 seconds. And finally, we reduced overtime for our public safety dispatchers by 30% by recruiting and training 22 dispatchers, reducing the fire public safety vacancies to one position and reducing the police public safety vacancies to three positions. No. Our budget is made up entirely of the city's general fund. It is cost neutral to the city. As you heard, the two police chiefs before me indicated the transference of public safety dispatchers from police and fire to this new department. There is a net zero budget impact from this transference of staff. Major changes. As I stated earlier, the next step in a transition of the consolidation of the police and fire dispatch is duties as the transference of the dispatch staff to the new department. This will facilitate the ongoing consolidation and cross-training program to improve services to residents requiring police, fire and emergency medical services. We will, if approved, upgrade a public safety dispatcher to communications and center coordinator to provide oversight to the communications in our operations. And we will add, in addition, an administrative analyst one to provide support to city departments and community partner organizations in developing their development preparedness plans. This slide provides you with an update on the emergency communications consolidation and cross-training program through a phased approach. We are across train police and fire department dispatchers to improve customer service, eliminating the transfer residents calls and realizing economies of scale through staff performing similar work. Consolidation will also position the call center to handle next generation 911 technology, including receiving texts and pictures to 911, which we are currently not able to provide this service to the public. Phase one is to cross-train staff to eliminate the transfer of resident calls from police dispatchers to fire dispatchers. Phase two is to cross-trained staff, to provide dispatch services to police, fire and emergency medical calls for services. The next steps are to complete the Animal U with police and fire that address operational protocols, create consolidated policies and procedures, and continue recruitment and training successes. And then finally looking forward, our significant issues and opportunities are to maintain emergency communication staffing levels to facilitate cross training program. Continue to implement emergency operation plans that benefit the whole community and maintain training programs for all hazards response teams. With that may remember City Council, this concludes our presentations and we are available to answer questions that you may have. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to go now to questions of the council for the department heads. So I'll start off with Councilman Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to I want to thank thank our city departments for those presentations. I want to thank Reggie Harrison for that presentation. I think that's fair. This new department is really one of the core roles of government, and I think it's smart that we aligned some of this duplicative services of services that are already taking place in fire and police department in those. I want to start with some just some comments on our police department for our chief. So so first I want to I want to just applaud a number of things in this in this budget. And so so first, I want to applaud the establishment of the community engagement division. And I think with the establishment of our community watch programs, you know, innovative things we're doing, like with the Security Committee on on the Atlantic Avenue in North Long Beach. I think that's that's really creative. Could you span just a moment on the role of this division? The Community Engagement Division. Yes, Councilman. And happy birthday, by the way. Thank you. I'll try to get out of here quickly. This division is going to be focused on making sure that we have partnerships with everybody in the city, collaborate with not only our community on a consistent basis, but to make sure that we're communicating the right way, the right message to everybody involved, and then looking for any opportunities to get better at what we're doing from a partnership perspective through the media. Just to give you an example, that division is already training a lot of our lieutenants and is going to be training our sergeants in how to give more and more rapid information to the media out at the side of events, which is going to to help us a lot in the perspective that our community has with the. So that's just one example. I could go on for a long time. They're going to be doing some great things for us. Sure. And I also want to applaud the the conversation about the 21st century policing. I've I've read the president's report. A number of the president's recommendations were were received as controversial in the law enforcement community. So I'm very proud that you're embracing it and that there are there's a proposal in this budget to actually train our police department on it. So I just want to acknowledge that next, I have sort of an anecdotal statement. You know, I've personally seen a, you know, a lot of human trafficking activity and increase personally. I don't know if that's justified or if that's represented statistically, but I've seen an increase there, but a decrease in gang activity. There was, in my opinion, more activity last year than this year. And could you just sort of elaborate a little bit on have we sort of placed more of a focus on one and taken taking a lesser focus on the other? Because I it's sort of getting disproportionately to one side. I'd love to not have either of them, but but human trafficking is is really a it's stepping up in North Long Beach this year. So what can you tell us about that? Human trafficking is an awful crime. And I'm proud to say that our department, specifically our investigations bureau, our vice unit, is a leader in the nation. They are going out and not only enforcing or suppressing the crime, but they're actually working in collaboration with many community based organizations in arresting the individuals who are involved, but getting assistance to what we formerly saw as prostitutes, but now we see as victims and connecting them back with their families. From the gang perspective, our strategies for this department have really changed over the last several years where everybody is focused on gang suppression. So for example, under the human trafficking example, our vice unit leads the efforts and gets other specialized units involved around the department. And we make these arrests. And 90% of these arrests we find are gang members that we're taking off the street for many years at a time. So they are not victimizing other people because we find that they're not only doing human trafficking, but they're dealing narcotics. They're suspects in shootings at times are victims in shootings. So all in all, it's it's a strategy that I think will make this city safer as time goes on. Well, I would just say that we're seeing more victims of human trafficking on the street. So maybe we can have a conversation off line about some of those hotspots. Absolutely. Many more victims. Whereas I can tell you, you know, I was skeptical about the cross-training approach of sort of eliminating the gang unit, but cross-training, training. Everyone and I expressed this last year, but I have to give it to you. I've seen the statistics in District nine. I've seen the direction their head and I've seen the, you know, the the arrests that have been made, the high profile arrests have been made and the lack of activity this coming summit, this past summer, this current summer, it's I've seen an improvement. So I have to I have to hand that to you. So the next the next thing is, are we at the same level of the exact same number of sworn officers? Are we at the same staffing levels this year? Last year, we have 806 budgeted. And yes, we're at the same level we were flagged. Yes. And I wanted to clarify something you said in your earlier statement that we had gotten rid of our gang unit. We actually still have a gang enforcement section which investigates gang crime on the vice side, right? No, no. We have a vice section that investigates ABC prostitution and does human trafficking and a couple of other things. But we also have a gang enforcement section that specifically is assigned all of our gang cases in the city. That section also has a very good intelligence portion of it. What we eliminated due to budget reductions in the last several years was the field enforcement portion of that gang section. No, I get it. I understand that the gang field field team was what was eliminated. But, you know, it seems that you're on the same same level of staffing. Is that from last year to this year, have calls for service increased across the years? We do have a slight increase in the calls for service that we're handling. And I know that the trend we commonly see every year, there's an increase in calls for service, not necessarily. In the past, we have seen a decrease. We've seen a decrease because in the way we approach work, especially through our patrol bureau, is we do more problem, long term problem solving and we work with the public safety continuum. So, for example, when we get dispatches, instead of going back to the same place over and over and over, we figure out different ways to approach it to eliminate the problem. So we're not going back. That being said, in the last year we have seen an increase in dispatches, which is a little different from the previous years. Okay. So in I'm a believer in the public safety continuum. If we're if we continue to see increases, I think it's unfair to expect your department to continue to do perform at this level without having a conversation about increasing staffing levels. I think that's unfair. I think you've done a great job and you're doing a great job this year, but I really want to watch that closely. The next thing is our our academies. So we have academies schedule and they are how many people are going to be in this year's academy? We currently have an Academy class that's about halfway through and we have 37 police recruits who are left in that class. We are currently we have recruited and we're in the process of hiring for the next class. And Mr. West has made it very clear to me that he wants us to over hire to make sure that we don't run into vacancy. So we're currently assessing that within our police department to see what we can maximize as far as taking on a larger class that I'm glad to hear that. I know that there's a attrition rate in the class and there's a attrition rate in the department. So we want to make sure those are actually level. And then so finally, I've learned a lot over this last year about just all the resources that the federal government has for us. And I'm glad that you are engaged in the like the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention and a number of other things. I think we should we should continue to place a focus on identifying grants that could support us. I know that Office of Justice Programs and the Department of Justice, they have a cops hiring grant that we. It was my understanding that we are you know, we haven't pursued those because of certain contingencies related to if we hire someone, we have to keep them on our on our roster for a certain period of time. I think we should. Can you tell me have we gone after that? Has that changed? Have we gone off of the cops hiring grant in recent years? So this is the grant that covers three years of staffing. It's a federal grant that helps departments hire or rehire police sworn officers. Yes, sir. We have looked at that, but we did not pursue it because were we as a city are not in a position to go out and hire more police officers because we can't just look at our budget for this coming year. But we're in the forecast, which are very well aware of in the next 2 to 3 years. I don't want to be in a position where I'm recommending to the city manager that we're hiring more officers and then we have to maybe lay them off. We will continue to pursue every angle on every grant and if at all possible. I don't think there's anybody in the city that doesn't agree that once we can afford it, we would like to have more police officers, but we have to be fiscally responsible when we're recommending those things. And I would expect that you do. You do just that. My thought is that if for some if there are conditions on these grants that make them not suitable to our city, then we should take a legislative approach and make sure that the next round is crafted to where cities like Long Beach can take advantage of. Because we are hiring. We we've done an academy for, you know, the last few years, and those are all new recruits. So I would love to see if we can offset some of those costs with federal grants. So I'd love to have that conversation perhaps at the Fed Ledge Committee. It's a an idea. Thank you. I'm sorry. It's a great idea. Thank you, sir. Certainly. Next the next one, just to mention, there's a community police community policing development grant which provides one time funding for things like our our community engagement division or the our training. So that's something that's closed this year, but that's something that I encourage we continue to look at. And then there's the, the, the OJP anti-gang initiative grant, which seems like we're doing innovative stuff around there. We should, we should look at those if we haven't already. So those are just comments. I want to thank you and all of your the members of your department for the tremendous job that you're doing. Thank you, sir. Thank you. So. So I just want to I have a couple questions for our fire chief. Okay. So, Councilor Richardson, there's been a request to see if we can do any of the PD questions first so they don't have to keep switching. Do you mind if we do that? He's up there now. I'd rather just knock it out so I don't have to speak twice. Okay. This was a request from me. Know from Fire PD. Would you mind if they. They want the command staff up. They're just doing one. Everyone else remember to talk twice. I'm just. This is a request from PD and fired. I would. Do you want to go ahead and go ahead and just go ahead. Gunfire. Go ahead. Because that's the question that everybody's asking questions. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. So. So I wanted to first ask about the implementation of the fire fee. How's it coming? Councilmember the we are currently working through the process of when and how will implement that fee with the director of financial management, John GROSS and his staff. And we expect to issue some some type of memo to this council that will outline how and when that will go live here in the near future. Okay. You have an idea of a timeline. As of right now. I don't I can't give you a specific timeline, but I can tell you that between the fire staff and financial management staff, we're working diligently and trying to make this thing come online as quickly as we can, but we want to make sure it's right in the process. Great. And is there I see I'm looking at the memo from Long Beach firefighters 372 and it says that there's a proposed elimination of 24 vacant positions. Is that true? Can you elaborate on that? Councilmember The the budget solution that we put in place this year eliminates 24 vacant positions. If you go back to 2008, when we first started, when during the Great Recession, we went through a series of daily engine reductions. It started with one where we would have the engine in a station but not staff it. And then the following year we went into two engine reductions where we had two engines without that were there, but we weren't staffing them. And since that time, we've carried these budgeted positions that have been unfilled in our budget since 2008. So basically what this issue does is it makes our budget actually reflective of how we deploy in the organization every day. It makes our budget reflective of reality. So these positions haven't been filled in. How long? No, sir. Since 2008. Prior to fiscal year, 2007. So none of these have been filled since oh seven? That's correct. And and I would just be concerned about that's a cut. I would be concerned about that moving forward. So I'm going to I'm going to continue to look at that. Next, I know that last year we had the conversation about R&D, and I'm going to bring it up again. I know that we are still dependent on L.A. County EMS to approve or deny this this program. And so the question is, now that we have a fire fee, are we? If in the event that the county were to reject this program, what will be our contingency plan to make sure that there's no loss in service to our residents? Councilmember. I don't have any indication that the county would step in, given the data that has been submit to them over the past year and given the data safety monitoring boards letter that they submit to the full EMC Commission, I don't have any indication that the agency would not look at that data and see clearly that the program is effective based on the data. If the if the committee or excuse me, if the EMC agency through the commission came back to us and said, for whatever reason they were going to shut down our pilot program, we would then be required to revert per the four or seven guidance policy, revert back to the system we had in place with regard to how we deploy our paramedic rescue ambulances. But that would force us in fire management to take a very hard look at the overall system, the organization that would support those paramedics in their work. And it would require it would require probably a month or longer for us to put together a plan that I can articulate to you to tell you exactly how we would minimize the impact of that. Okay. Well, thank you so much. That satisfies my my questions. Rosemary Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have. I have a few questions. I'll start with fire. Since you're sitting there, I. And then I will ask a few questions of police as well. Chief Terry. And I know we've discussed this in briefings and in other meetings, but if you can share with us when we expect to hear back from L.A. County, the EMS agency, regarding our pilot R&D program. Councilmember the the pilot program when it was approved, when it started on July 10th, 2014, it was initially established as a two year pilot program. So we have standing a plate standing placeholder at every EMS commission meeting where the commission is given an update from the Data Safety Monitoring Board or EMS staff on an on the Long Beach paramedic program. So if anything comes up, that's where they would address it. So as it stands right now, we're still in the middle of our pilot program, although we had the Data Safety Monitoring Board submit a letter to the EMS commission at their last meeting with a report that that basically said that they felt the data that was being submit to them was coming in on a timely basis. It was stable, and it showed across the board some that they said they had no issues with regard to patient care or quality of service. So they the Data Safety Monitoring Board made a recommendation to the for EMS Commission that we stopped submitting the data to them. We then went back to the EMS agency, the director, and said, okay, well, what are our next steps? And so basically what she told us was they don't they don't know exactly what the next steps are, what the process is from here. But we're just going to stay in the pilot program for now while the county works out whatever the next steps are going to be. So are they giving us any feedback on our response time parameters or anything like that? So. The data set. I'm going to let Deputy Chief Sergeant weigh in on this, because I believe you're referring to the letter that was submit to the boss potentially by the Firefighters Association, where they call out a specific. Yes. And we'll let Deputy Chief Sergeant talk about that. He's got more knowledge on that. In regarding the two reference. 407 there was one section that stated during the pilot study the time difference between the arrival of the first paramedic. And the second paramedic should be within 3 minutes. 95% of the time. When we looked at the data prior to R&D, we achieved that goal 79 to 80% of the time after initial start of the R&D. We were remained at the same amount, 80%. That issue was discussed at one of the IMS Commission meetings. We made some changes and have improved that time difference down to meeting at. 84% of the time. We relate. To them our. Discussions as far as the ability to meet that. And they stated they they believed that it was not a realistic timeframe or time goal and that there would be no penalty for not meeting the 95%. They would continue to look at it for the remainder of the the pilot program. We would continue to try and improve the time on the timeframe. Within 3 minutes. And if there is any sign of any patient degradation that they would look at again, other than that, they considered it an irrelevant mark, unable to achieve and they would just continue with the pilot program. And Vice Mayor, if I can just add on to that. So this time differential, this get the second paramedic on scene within 3 minutes of the first was an issue that was put in through a subcommittee of the EMS commission as we were ramping this program up. We had no knowledge of it. The reality is there is no agency of the 31 fire departments in L.A. County. There is no agency in L.A. County that is held to that standard. We weren't held to that standard prior to the information implementation of our M.D. There is no agency in Los Angeles County unless they have a firefighter, paramedic or a paramedic standing on every corner that could meet that time standard. So when, as Deputy Chief Sergeant said, when we went back to the EMS commission, we said, this is an unrealistic standard that's not applied to anybody but us. It wasn't applied to anybody pre or M.D. So why are you applying an unrealistic standard that you can't validate with any sort of justify in any way? And the EMS commission unanimously agreed. They said, you know what? We agree with you. It's not applied to anybody else. It is an arbitrary standard, and we're going to keep it in the policy. But there will be no penalty if you don't achieve that. The 95% of the time they said continue to work on it. We want you to constantly try and strive for better, but there is no penalty. I think the most important thing on this, though, is that what we do know with the data is that we are getting a paramedic on scene faster today than we were prior. And I think that's the most important thing for our community. And I agree with you. I think that is paramount here based on what you said. I'm just curious what criteria they end up using to evaluate our pilot program or our or our R&D pilot program if there is no other example. Well, so this was a this three minute time standard was a unique thing. As I mentioned, they got kind of kind of put into the policy at the very end of the preparatory period before we went live. And we on it, candidly, we didn't even know that discussion was happening until it was too late. The Data Safety Monitoring Board of the EMS agency has asked us to send them 32 specific data points every single month. So they range from response times to times for specific treatment modalities, like how long does it take to do an EKG or how long, you know, electrocardiogram, or how long does it take to defibrillate a patient or how long to start an I.V. or what's? Our ROIC is a big one. Return of spontaneous circulation. What's what's how in a percentage? How many of your patients do you find in the field that are pulseless, not breathing? But by the time they get to the emergency department, have a pulse. So there's 32 data points that the Data Safety Monitoring Board looks at every month. And they're primarily they had been primarily looking at the data to determine whether or not anything that we were doing constituted either a degradation of care over the previous system or constituted anything that would pose a safety risk. The letter that they sent to the EMC Commission in May said clearly that the data was stable and poses no risk. Thank you. And, Mr. Mayor, that's all I have for fire. I have a few questions for police, if that's okay to chief. Thank you, Chief. Lana, I have a few questions from Councilwoman Pryce, who is not here today, but she did have very specific questions and hope that we could address it this evening. So for police, she wanted us to ask which officer position is being moved into prop age funds, thus reducing a motor officer? So that would be a reduction by the $74,000.20 $3. Item five Palo Alto. In NY 11, we had ten motor officers assigned to the prop fund due to reductions in revenue at that time. Half of an FTE was moved over to the general fund. This particular employee split his time between the Violent Impact Motor Fund and General Patrol functions on the motorcycle. Given that we do have funding sources for this upcoming year for the bridge fund, we're moving that 0.52 FTE back into Prop H to be funded. Okay. That's that's great. The second question we have is why does it state only 0.96 position is added when the description states that three positions will be added. Will this end up adding more officers on the street? That is an item that's required. It's quantified as $159,312. Vice mayor that's related to the addition of an admin intern over the hours related to adding interns that equates 2.967 FTE. Okay. We. I appreciate that clarification. And then an item for $210,000. What is the total fiscal year 14 budget for the red light camera program? And this program was eliminated several years ago. Therefore, what costs are remaining in FY 15 and beyond? Vice Mayor Currently we are in the process of removing that equipment from the traffic signals. I'm sorry, I don't have the exact amount of what that would cost us. I think we're anticipating that exact cost from the vendor. Okay. And that's fine. We can we can get that for me at another time. And then I wanted to go back to the. Motor officer conversation. And over the years there's been ups and downs in that area. And depending, depending on what specific crime needs exist in the city, throughout the city, we do have other quality of life issues that motor officers were assigned to, for instance. They're they're high profile issues. And then there are just simply quality of life issues that end up degrading one's peace of mind. And so if I could know how many motor officer positions currently exist or are proposed for FY16, if you have that. Mars. Look in that up right now, usually with our motor section, the majority of homework traffic complaints throughout the entire city on two different shifts. For example, a lot of them address issues or challenges, traffic challenges around schools. And then we have a separate unit on motors with what we call Impact Motors that specifically addresses violent crime and any hotspots in the city. You know, I appreciate that because I did not know that I thought that they were interchangeable. So you have a separate. Subsection of motor officers that address violent crime. They're not used interchangeably. Generally, that's the case. But if if we need to move people around for one reason or another or say hypothetically, they're working a special event in the city which may be on overtime, that's apart from what they normally do. So they may be shifted to that specific mission for that day. Okay. So I think therein lies the challenge is some of the things surrounding major events or noise issues along our major corridors. That ends up being an overtime assignment generally. Yes, ma'am. And we're we are very supported by the Office of Traffic Safety in getting grants to specifically address issues surrounding motorcycles. And I know that over the past several years, I have gotten many phone calls and emails from you about concerns about motorcycle issues in and around the second District. And our officers do periodically run operations and make it clear to people in this area that we don't want, for example, very loud muffler noise waking people up at all hours of the day. So we do enforce those sections. Thank you. And since you raised that, I'll ask openly. We know that there are fixed events that come to Long Beach. We have an editorial calendar through the CVB or any special events actually would be probably the best place to be. A sign for weekend support. You know, when we experience the influx of visitors, do we pointedly assign those officers for that time period? Generally, we do. Okay. I appreciate that. Vice mayor that in addition to the ten impact motors that we have budgeted in Prop eight, we have 21 traffic motors for General Traffic patrol and that includes police officers all the way to the rank of lieutenant. Okay. Thank you. That's it for me, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Canterbury Ranga. Thank you, Mayor. And since police is up right now, just go ahead and start with police. First of all, before I begin, I want to compliment my my colleagues for asking many of the questions that I had. So I guess it shortens my level of questioning, but it also we all have interests. And, you know, my interest is obviously with with people. Obviously, we're only as good as the people we hire and the people we recruit. So and having been the former recruitment officer for the city, obviously, I'm very much interested in how we're going to go about finding these new recruits that are going to be filling these new academies coming up. I didn't see it in your budget where you had anything budgeted for recruiting. How are you going to make those assignments, if at all, if you're going to be assigning police officers or or are you going to create a a recruitment task force of of a sergeant or a lieutenant with police officers to go out to these community colleges and police academies to to find these diamonds in the rough, to join to join the Long Beach Police Department. I don't see civil service here, so I'm not sure if it's if it's through them that you're looking at, that the fund is going to come up from budgeting those kinds of events. I know it costs money. It sometimes it costs an entry fee to go to a job fair or or to just the time used to commit the time to to go to these events. Can you I appreciate you will probably don't have an extended plan at this point in terms of how that's going to what that's going to look like. But you have to have at least an idea as to what you foresee in terms of recruiting for the next year, for the next couple of academies. Recruiting a diverse workforce and one that meets the standards of that we have in this police department is one of our top priorities. Civil service is the primary department that is responsible for recruiting, and I think they do a fantastic job. I know that Deputy Chief Beckman, who's sitting in the audience, has been working very hard lately with Candace, our civil service director, and always looking at new and innovative ways of bringing people on board. As a matter of fact, one of the things that we've changed is the entry level test for police officer, where we looked at the city of San Francisco and we looked at the fact that they were they came up with a different test model. And so we're going to be testing it or we did test it this way around. So we're going to see how that helped us. Will Consistently, we do not have an internal budget to recruit. So we use moneys that we're giving. We're given to train and to hire from the academy to fulfill that mission. We have people who who have full time jobs, and then we will hire them on overtime to go out and do it. And we try to find the right personalities to fit that mold. And I think we're doing a very good job, but we can always be doing better. And and a lot of that goes back to the public trust and the community collaboration efforts that we're going to do, our community engagement efforts we're going to be conducting to make sure that we get more people who want to apply for police officer. So a lot of things going on in this profession right now where people are kind of shying away from it and we just got to do a better job of bringing them in the fold and making them realize that they can become the change they want to see if they join us. Okay. Well, are we are we going to be hearing civil service at all during these budget presentations? Mr. West. We Civil. Services ready to. Make a presentation of the. Counsel requested. The only reason I'm asking is because obviously if the commitment is for diversity and for recruiting the best and the brightest and the ones who want to get here, we have to. We have. The only way we're going to show that commitment is by budgeting for it. And I'd like to see that we have a budget for recruiting. That's that we have to put our money where our mouth is in that respect. But it's not. I don't need an answer now, but I certainly want to see something in there that shows the city's commitment. To hiring a diverse police department and getting the best and brightest. And I want to say the same for the fire department as well. I want to see that kind of commitment. I don't see it here in tonight's budget presentations, but I certainly want to see that commitment somewhere being presented to city council. That that you are committed to that. Well. Councilmember Mayor. Both the fire department and the police. Department are definitely committed to that. And you can see that when you look at. The folks that are in the academy. But we'll talk to the civil service and. Get back to you on what the budget is. And civil service to facilitate the. Attraction of the best and the. Brightest. Not good. Another thing that last year I did not see in the civil service budget is a recruiting component either. I mean, it was the recruiting division that was there is gone. So the. I'm just curious as to how you're going to go about doing this without having a specific fund going towards recruiting. So you certainly think about like I said, I don't need an answer now, but I'd like to to have the city have a a stated commitment towards diversity, towards recruiting and and getting the best that we possibly can. I appreciate that. Thank you. The other question I have for police is that the transfer of these 65 dispatchers that's going to go from there, going from police to disaster preparedness. From police and fire to the dispatchers assigned to police. And the fire department will be transferred to the new division. And in doing that, I notice that in the in the disaster preparedness component on page 21, I guess it was talking about. Also recruiting efforts in that. In that respect, I know that the dispatching is a very difficult job, very stressful. The people who answer a911 calls are are doing God's work. When you're thinking about it because you're answering to a person, a person's call who's under distress, and that person has to demonstrate a high level of of tolerance and understanding to be able to respond to those calls. And you're talking about this cross training of of dispatchers in police and fire. Is it to understand the different protocols in regards to how you respond to a police response or how you respond to a fire as opposed to a fire type of call? I really didn't mean for you to do that. But you're there. As councilmember, I appreciate the question and in your description of the difficulties, the challenging work that these dispatches have, I often describe it as multitasking on steroids while they are listening to a resident describe what is, in most cases, the worst day of their lives, and simultaneously putting that information into a computer, a computer aided dispatch systems or into some technology. But our focus in phase one, as you described, is to eliminate the transfer of that call when that resident is in that heated moment describing the worst day of their lives, and then to have to momentarily be put on hold and transferred over to the other dispatchers there, we see this as a service improvement. We've been working at this for a couple of years now, just working on the protocols primarily and some cross training with our supervisors so that we can understand how we'll be able to accomplish this. But the major hurdle for us has been up to this point, the vacancy factors. And if council members who are part of the Public Safety Advisory Committee recall back in November when I reported out we had vacancy rates at about 30% and overtime in excess of a of $1,000,000. And so we could not begin across training program until we impacted both of those areas. And and we have our vacancy factors known as I reported earlier, are at 3% and 5% respectively. And we have reduced overtime by 30%. And over the course of the next month, we will reduce that even further as more and more of these trainees are coming out of the academy. So we're approaching this cautiously. We're being diligent in our in our in our in our approach. And we have oversight them working with us in terms of police and fire to ensure that no operational protocols are violated as we move forward. Okay. Thank you for that for that response that you said it's going to be it's so hard work in some of these consolidations. Is there any opportunities for. Well, maybe not opportunities, but any impacts on positions that would would require putting that many people into a into a different. I'm guessing there's a there's a there's a there's a transfer not only of of the positions from one department to another, but also a transfer of positions from one location to another. I think I know we used to have a dispatch center here in the in the in the basement of City Hall, which was fire with police . And then we had fire in a different, different location on the community. Is that what we're talking about as well in terms of putting them in one location? We currently the dispatchers are co-located in the emergency operations center. And that second floor level, they're they they've been co-located since that building was established about 12 years ago. Co-located, but separate on that second floor, they're separated by a wall between the two disciplines. We do not anticipate position eliminations as a result of of consolidation and cross-training. All of the skills that are currently being provided in the center will continue to be provided through the cross-training program. And as I said, it's a phased approach. So those those those staff that we have invested a considerable amount of training in will continue to be valuable assets to us on a go forward basis. Okay. Thank you. In terms of police and you still there, Chief? Yes, we have a what we have had in the past. And I see that we continue to have an agreement with Long Beach City College and providing them with the security services. Has there been any changes in that contract at all? Has there been any increase? A decrease is what what what's that looking like right now? As far as sworn officers, there has not been a change in that service that we provide to Long Beach City College. I believe if you've seen any changes. It's for the dispatching department. Have we made any changes to the contract amount? Has it gone up or down the last? Couple of years. Always remain flat. As far as I know, it's remained flat, but we'll research it. And if that's not the case, we'll get back to you on that. I mean, not that I would want to increase the fees for City College, but, you know, if it if we're making these changes in terms of staffing and and in our dispatching, that's a cost. And and there's some opportunity to recover some costs. I would certainly want to to explore that opportunity if if it exists. If not, that's fine. Yeah. And there should be. From my notes here, there should not be any changes. Changes in the last several years. My questions regarding the R&D have been, uh, have been addressed. I'm not going to ask any more on that one. The last question that I have is, uh, in the. Well, actually, I think I think I'm done. I think I know what's been asked for. And if I may clarify one of your earlier questions about recruiting. In looking at our numbers, the council mayor were generous enough to give us $1.5 million to hire the last class in this upcoming class. Part of the cost or the charges that we take from there are recruiting. That's part of it. Civil service still primarily is involved with recruiting, but that's how we pay overtime for officers, a special group of officers who are trained to go out and specifically recruit for us. I appreciate that. That's wonderful. I did find my my last item here. That was with the fire I looked at was asked already by one of my colleagues. But in terms of the implementation of the first responder fee and you're you're. Ability to try to implement it as soon as possible. There was a concern raised by the Council in regards to making it not as cost prohibitive for members of the community who may not be able to afford those fees. How well are we going with that? We look at. It. Council member. Thank you. The part of the work that we're doing with with Mr. GROSS and the financial management team and the fire department folks is working on the hardship waiver and the process by which a member of our community, should they be able to demonstrate a financial hardship, would be supported by the city through existing policies or or other other means. So that will be part of the report or the two from four. Or the. Letter that we will issue you prior to implementation. Yeah. I also asked about the possibility of a a user fee that would go into the. The building system. I'm sorry. Yes, Councilmember, the council did ask us to you did ask us to look into the possibility of a subscription fee. There are a number of agencies in the Southern California region that have implemented subscription fees to varying degrees of success. And that also that information and our research will be included in that in that communication back to council as well. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you. That's all I have. Councilmember Austin. Yes. I'd like to also thank our department heads, our chief fire chief police chief and our new chief of Disaster Preparedness Emergency Management. Mr. Harrison, for great presentations. This has been a very informative and I like Councilmember Urunga. I'm short on questions because many of the questions that I had, I have already been asked. So I will do my best to be brief. In the 2014 budget. Chief Luna, we we appropriated, I think, $250,000 or so somewhere around that to work toward getting guns off of the streets from those who are classified as prohibited possessors . Does this budget address that category or do we have any specific plans in there for 16 to to attack that issue? I think we had some success was just just researching and found a press release so that we we actually took a significant amount of guns off the street through that that program a couple of years ago . Um, and I will give you credit for, for giving me that suggested a few years ago to, uh, to look at that area. Well, during our first gun back buyback program, are we working to. To eliminate prohibited possessors from having guns. In and you're right in FY14, we had additional funding that the council was generous enough to provide to us where we formed a specialized unit temporarily to address some of these issues. And just a quick recap on some of those stats. We had 30 arrests, 26 felonies for misdemeanors, 55 firearms recovered, which included six assault rifles, three rifles, four shotguns, 42 handguns, ten search warrants, 86 probation searches and 42 searches with the California Department of Justice. So it was successful. We do not have immediate plans to take it to that level. We are going to try and utilize as much of the 2.2 million in in regards to doing this part time, if we can, as staffing allows. Well, I'd just like to just comment on that and say kudos to LV PD. It shows that when we as the City Council make a commitment to to public safety in a targeted fashion, that we can have success. And and I like for this Council to give strong consideration to maintaining our commitment to to getting guns off off of the streets, that that program, I think, proved successful and would merit our attention in terms of redirecting or finding new resources. And is this budget to do that? I would I would venture to say that lives were likely saved as a result of that effort and the commitment of the city council. So I know that we'll be talking about this budget over the next few weeks. Certainly, I would ask that my colleagues take note of that and as well as our police chief and city manager. So. Thank you, Chief. That was the question I wanted to ask to the fire chief. You feel? I think much attention has been given to the R&D pilot model and I guess the jury is still out. We are moving forward with budgeting. We're making decisions based on assumptions that it will be maintained and successful. But I was curious to know noticed that you said that 21 positions were eliminated. How many of those were were identified as sworn positions? Councilmember, if you're referring to the budget presentation that I gave there, there is a section in there where we talked about some of the changes we made this year. It was 24 vacant positions that were basically not filled since 2008. We've been carrying those positions in our budget, but they haven't been filled since 2008. So it doesn't actually affect any person. It's basically making our our budget reflective of how we actually deploy every day, if that makes sense. Okay. So maybe maybe it's semantics that I said 24, 24 positions eliminated, but they were they're no longer going to be there, right? That's true. That is a true statement. Yesterday emanating from your budget. How many of those positions were sworn positions? And was there any is there a correlation with the R&D program in terms of your staffing? Councilmember All of those positions would have been our would be sworn positions. They would have all been firefighter positions. So as I mentioned during my presentation in 2008 where we did the daily engine reduction, then we went to a second daily engine reduction. We basically had the positions budgeted, but because we weren't filling them, we realized the savings. And so they just kind of lingered in our budget up until this point. So because we needed to realize about a $200,000 savings, this was a way to make our our actual deployment model reflected in our budget. So it all lined up and at the same time saved $200,000, which means they didn't have to impact any of our existing operational capability this year. Had we not done this, then I would have had to realize an operational efficiency and some way to get to that $200,000. So we're talking 24 positions. And forgive me if my my math is fuzzy right now. It's getting late, but that seems like it adds up to way more than $200,000 savings. Well, so it's it's a and I'm going to let my administrative bureau chief David Honey handle this. So the way this the way this works is we back the positions out, and then we have to put the value of the overtime back into our budget and it nets out to 200,000. But David can't answer the specific budget part. That's essentially it council member US and the way chief explained it when we did keep these positions budgeted in what we would call an overstaffed model, those positions at least budgetary reduced callback over time in our constant staffing model. So as we return these or as we would delete these positions that are or have always been vacant, the callback over time would at least budgetary would increase, but it would the increase would be less than the cost of those positions that were being reduced. Okay. So I guess I'll just just comment that, you know, I have some concerns about the elimination of positions. We still have uncertainty with this this pilot program that we are involved in. I mean, I know you feel confident that that it will will be supported and ultimately be adopted by your Ms. the county of your agency . But I think we the jury is still out. And I think it's a risky call. It just that's just my, my, my comment on that. Um, Mr. Harrison, thank you. The B and again I said I'd be sure. See? The cross-training Mr. Wanga or Councilmember Baraka touched on. Actually, part of my question, and that was the the cross training between the fire and police dispatchers. And from my experience, just working with other public agencies, I know you have a high turnover rate. Right now. You said the the the vacancy rate is only 3 to 5%. Is that correct? Correct. Well, kudos to correct. And the civil service and recruiting process for for turning that around. I mean, it's been absolutely a month or so since we've done that. And so that's good news. I'm curious to know with what the retention rate is for for for those employees. So retention. Thank you very much. I know you're you were present when we made the presentation back in November to the Public Safety Advisory Commission. And we talked about the challenges that we were facing at that time. And working with police and fire, civil service and others. We in a city manager's office very supportive. We implemented some efficiencies in the recruitment in terms of bringing in new public safety dispatchers. That has paid benefits, obviously, to us. Retention is very high in this in this workforce. The the difficulties in the early years of employment where you really mastering learning this task. But once that's been overcome, we have dispatchers that have we have a number of dispatchers that have been in the center for 30 years, which gives me some concern, because some of those are going to be retiring. But but you can see you have dispatchers with five years of experience and it is a huge jump to dispatcher the 15 to 20 years of experience. So retention levels are pretty high once they get through the training. And just forgive me, the cross training, is it the ultimate goal to have a dispatcher be able to answer any call at any time from fire or police? That's correct. We'd like to have a dispatcher be able to when they pick up that phone, they're able to initially take the call from one of four from a resident requesting police, fire or emergency medical services. Currently, fire department employees provide emergency medical dispatching, and we will continue to provide that service to our residents. So we're going to phase in we're going to work at the call taker position first. We understand that and be able to implement that piece of the of the program at a much later date. We'll look at the dispatching operations. All right. Thank you very much. Great work. Councilman Hughes. Mr. Harris, you can stay right there. Don't go anywhere. You guys can tie mine any more than 30 seconds. Cut my mike off. I like that. We're going home now. Real quickly. I just have one question, Mr. Harris, and that is, how do you educate the general public on disaster preparedness? The question is how do we how do we educate that? So we take a whole community approach on educating the public. We talk often about police and fire, and of course, they have a substantial role that they play. But our entire community plays a role in disaster preparedness, including our houses of worship, nonprofits, all of our residents, the American Red Cross, they all play a role. And so opportunities like coming out to council district offices and making presentations to the community on September the 12th, we have a large resource fair, really Long Beach. We also participated recently in resource fairs and District seven and two as well. One as well recently. We provide outreach, education opportunities in a variety of ways. On the 27th, if I may plug this one, we have a an outreach or training program that is specifically targeted to those areas of the community that was impacted by the power outage recently. We really want to get into those those those communities. They help them to better understand how they can sustain themselves for five days in a cost effective manner. Thank you. And I really wanted to let everyone know that just goes to show you how you guys jumped into service and really helped an awful lot of people during that time. Next, I'd like to have our. Thank you, Mr. Harris. You can sit down now. Now, the fire department, what percentage of the fire department, you know, calls for medical. So what percentage? Councilmember Right now, we trained about 84% of our total annual call volume is for emergency medical service. Thank you. And please. Yes, sir. What is the plan? What is the police doing to replace the officers that are, you know, retiring? Our normal attrition rate. Each year between 25 and 35 officers. And this year, we expect about the same. And again, all of your support and allowing us to recruit and hire and train new police officers with the current academy. And then the one that we plan on having for this coming year will hopefully keep us up or keep up with attrition that we're losing, the officers that we're losing. Very simple. Thank you very much, Chief. And I want to thank our yes for coming up and giving us your input on the things that we need here for the city of Language. Thank you again. Councilman Gonzalez. Okay. Look, they're all staring at me like, who's next? We'll start with P.D., Chief, since you're right there. I first want to thank all three of the departments because the work has just been tremendous for many years, but just as of late, because of the power outages and so much that has happened just lately, especially in the first in certain areas with gang activity and just shootings that have happened, although we're not at the levels we'd like to be, I think the commitment to using discretionary funding for gang suppression for me is, is, is tremendous. So thank you for that. Also the community engagement. Chief, I think your yourself your staff has really remained committed to that. The events, the the community policing has just been it's been great. And I've seen the the big impacts it's made. I have a couple questions. So some retirements and people just leaving the police department, has that impacted us at all? Has that been a big contributor to our vacancies and our staffing levels? It consistently is. It's a constant challenge to keep up with attrition. But again, the support that all of you have given us financially and we have a great team that continuously is recruiting and hiring and training officers and we are now in our third straight academy, about to hire a fourth. So I'm very hopeful that we can keep up, continue to keep up with the attrition rate that we have. Okay. Great. And thank you. And I know you mentioned that. And also, let's see here, I think there are a few things are already answered. Um, I feel like there's another question, but I'll ask this question is just, I'm just curious how many police division officers do we have? How many do we have currently? I'm having Mara right to my right. Look at that. I want to say it's in the area of about 20 something. Give me a quick second and we'll we'll take a quick look. We have 34. Cores. 35.2 assigned to the port. Okay, well, we'll keep 35. How about that? Okay, wonderful. I think everything else had been answered. So. Thank you, Chief. Appreciate it. Thank you for your work. Thank you. And I'm our chief of fire. Chief, my three. I also want to thank you for your work and all of your especially the efforts with CERT. I think I saw them firsthand with the power outages and just seeing what they do day to day as it was. It was just great. I have a question. As far as the first responder fee, I know that when we had talked about this the last time, the first responder fee, you had mentioned it, coming back conservatively for collection rates at 50%, which is still pretty low. What are we looking at as far as improving our. I know we're looking at that, improving our collection rates. Thank you, Councilmember. When we gave our our presentation on the first responder fee, our estimation or our numbers were predicated on a 20% rate of return, which which is a very conservative estimate, given our historical perspective in that arena with regard to collection rates, that I guess that is a question that would be better posed towards our Director of financial management as that the billing folks fall under his shop. But I can tell you that we do everything we can to work with them, to submit the necessary reports to them in a timely manner so we can have the opportunity to build. And now as part of it, also part part of my question too is some of it in-house and then outsourced? How does that work? The collection rate for ambulance billing is a bit difficult and may be misleading. A lot of the ambulance bills are. Paid by. Medicare and medical at less than 100%. And when you make that calculation, you end up with a low collection rate when in fact the collection has been made at the authorized level. So Medicare and Medicaid only pay a small percentage of the total bill. So that has an impact in determining the collection rate. And it's pretty standard across the country, I don't think. I suspect our rate is probably a little better or certainly at least the same as other people. We do not have a low collection rate. To further answer your question, that in in Long Beach, we have a lot of collections from insurance. We have a lot of collections from Medicare and Medi-Cal or as but as I said, it's at a lower percentage because that's what the law is. We also have a lot of buildings that have no address and there's no opportunity to make those collections and there is no process or procedure that we can use. And I think it might be better to say, nor should we use to try to collect that money. So overall, we use the normal set of collection procedures. We send out bills. We do go where it's appropriate to a collection agency, and after an appropriate time, we write these bills off again. Our collection rates are, at the very least, pretty normal. My guess is that they are better than normal. And we and just to clarify, so it's all through a collection and outside collection agency, not through. Our. No. I know most of our collections are done in-house and most of our bills are paid in-house. It is only at the very end of the process do we turn it over to a collection agency, and we will be in the process of reevaluating and going out an RFP with it for a new collection agency within the next year. Okay, great. And then my last question is the marine safety position. What was what is the role of this vacancy exactly? And then the amount? Councilmember it's a it's 150,000 $145,000 a year that our target there that we're trying to get back to. Historically, over the past number of years, this position has been called a vacation relief spot. This position, although it's been vacant for some time, it has allowed our Marine safety chief the flexibility of staffing the organization with a 24 hour dove capability and having this position filled either with overtime or other other personnel work on our rescue boats and peak load staff in certain areas throughout the summer. So currently, although we say it's vacant, there's not a body assigned to that position. The Marine Safety Chief has effectively utilized that position for operational needs. Okay. Great. Thank you. And then I'll have Reggie come up. Reggie, and thank you also for all of your work. Just real quickly, one question. So I see that over about 250 employees received emergency response. Preparedness, I guess training. What type of training was it or what was. So we we trained to a FEMA standard. So when you when you've seen some of the national report, I was like at Hurricane Sandy or the Boston Marathon and you've seen where they've called upon the logistics section leader who to come out to talk about what are their priorities? Are you seeing the finance section chief or planning those kinds of sections? So we we we train to those kinds of standards. First of all, they put us in the best position to be able to manage an incident because we do them to standards. We manage the incident. The other thing is that by doing it to this standard, it puts us in the best position to be reimbursed for expenditures as well. So incident command structure is very, very important to us and we certainly roll that out and fell into that role as a part of our recent power outage management team . Okay, great. Thank you very much. That's all for my questions. Counsel for Super Now. Thank you and thank you to all our presenters tonight. Great job. I just had a one question. Most of the questions have been asked and answered, but I just wanted some clarification from Chief Luna on the. A follow up on Councilman Richardson's question about the field gang enforcement unit. I guess the clarification I'd like is. I think we're talking about the difference between a unit or section that exists versus the function they perform and where you no longer have the field gang unit, someone is performing that type of function still with the police department, correct. We have a variety of specialized units in the field that have taken on that responsibility because we don't have the the field unit to do that any longer. Okay. I just want to make that. It's like the unit goes away, but the function is still being performed. So I just, you know, violent crime and gangs is still one of our priorities and we're addressing it with every man and woman we have. Okay. Thank you. And the only other comment I want to make is just my enthusiasm over the community engagement division for communications. And just an anecdote on that, how important that is. This past early Saturday morning, 1 a.m., we had a power outage in the in the fourth District. And right away, within the hour, I got it. And I'd like to name these guys because they did such a great job from the fire department, battalion chief Espino and from the PD Lieutenant Bergen Camp both contacted me within that hour and we were able to get that information out to the public through social media. So I think that's one of the real keys. So I know this is under police for the community engagement, but I'd sure like to see fire and everyone involved in that because I look like the hero when I put all the information out and all the credit goes to fire police in that case, in fact, someone comment on on social media that the fourth district councilman was faster than the SC website. I'm not sure if that's a high bar or not, but I was glad to take that credit. So in fact, if police and fire can do that directly, I happened to be up at 1:30 a.m. studying the budget, of course, and but if that could go directly out from police and fire to the community, I think that's ideally where we want to be. So thank you. Thank you. And Councilwoman Mongo. Thank you. Well, so much of what we've come here to discuss has already been been answered. A couple of quick compliments to our police department since you're in the hot seat. First and foremost, I've really appreciated the embracing of the Department of Justice best practices with recruitment in regards to involving the community. And a lot of the neighbors of the fifth District have really enjoyed being a part of the team that has evaluated the two prior classes of of officers. And I think it's an eye opening experience for neighbors to sit in a room with people who would like to give their life to service and and become police officers . And it really gives you a taste of the kinds of individuals that you're bringing on. And I think you're doing an excellent job. I know that it's hard to lose members of the Academy class, but above all else, I appreciate that the number one thing that we're looking at is the standards. If someone's not cutting it, we cannot put them on the streets. Our community is just too important and our community's safety is too important. So thank you for that. I have some questions about your detectives bureau. How many members are currently in the Detectives Bureau? Is looking that up for me to give you a specific number. So anecdotally, what I'm hearing is that a lot of those individuals are very passionate about what they do and they stay in that division for a really long time, which is great because the quality of service that we're getting. My main concern, though, is as as some of our most regarded detectives and professionals are are retiring. What is our plan to bring in new talent in that area over time and. I don't know the specifics of how to say it, but almost everyone in that unit is of the same tenure, and that timeline is getting close . That is something we consistently concern ourselves with. And by the way, that number is 142 and it you do lose experience when people do retire. And our best estimates are that that we probably will have probably on the higher end maybe 35 retiring not all our all out of investigations of course it's throughout the department but at the same time, it gives younger officers an opportunity to go in and and learn a new job and eventually bring in that enthusiasm and passion that everybody before them once had. The only thing from a department perspective that we continuously focus on and are deputy chiefs and commanders do an excellent job, is that we will rotate people through some of these assignments. If somebody out there is doing an excellent job, we may rotate them into violent crimes or robbery or burglary, and they gain extra experience. We also focus a whole lot on training, both internal training of the department and external training opportunities. The city manager's office really supports us in sending people out of town to very valuable training, and we realistically are keeping an eye on the future and making sure that we're we're training our employees for for the future. Well, I appreciate that. I know that when you have a team of bad guys in a community, they can have several victims. And unless the detectives and the investigations are really going forward and we have the resources to go out and fingerprint in those areas and do the things we need to do. Catching those guys can take longer and more victims can happen. And so I really appreciate the work they're doing. I know our interactions with that team has been fantastic and so thank you for what you're doing with that. I understand this is a status quo budget, which means that should. The Council bring forward a marijuana ordinance that we would be looking to allocate significant additional resources to your department that we don't currently have available. That is an accurate statement. Yes. When it comes and I've I think I'm on the record saying this, that history has shown us that having these clinics both operating. I'm not going to say legally because I don't know if that's even the appropriate term. But operating in the city, we had a lot of citizen complaints about the activity in and around these locations which increase our workload. So obviously with these clinics coming in, based on our past experience, it would increase the workload of our men and women on the street, which is going to impact our service overall negatively. Well, that's a big concern for me. I know that we've talked a lot, specifically with my East Division commander, about the quality of life issues that we're really lean on being able to address. And I know Commander Griffin and your team have gone above and beyond to increase the safety in our parks and to look at our our traffic issues that we have from neighbors who visit through the community without regard to our are our street signs that tell very clearly posted speed limits. And so as as resources, then I would be concerned about additional funding that would result from a potential ordinance of such. And I would want to be sure that should we move in that direction as a council, that you have more than adequate resources available to ensure that the safety of our neighbors is our number one priority. Because in this district we've had several drug issues already this year that I think you and your team have done an excellent job addressing. And I also want to give credit to code enforcement, because code enforcement and PD had to work really closely on some of our more conspicuous neighbors that needed to be moved along. So thank you for your work on that. I know that some neighbors have reached out recently that one of our our neighborly criminals has recently gotten back out of jail, but that I hope that we're back on the case and working hard with the investigative team again. And so thank you for coming out to neighborhood night out and keeping the neighbors up to date on what's going on, because it's really important that we know where we stand and to protect our community. With that, we move on to fire. Chief. Chief, first and foremost, thank you for what you've done on the East Side in the last year. Our response times that I've been reviewing have been fantastic. I heard from a neighbor off of Bellflower and Wood Wardlow that had the fire department been there, any leader, any leader at all, she doesn't think that her husband would have survived. And so to the great to the great work of your community, every life is important. Could you specifically communicate the reduction in mutual aid? The fifth District borders several other cities, and we used to rely so heavily on mutual aid. And this year you've done an excellent job ensuring that the the dispatch has been able to accommodate each and every call from the Fifth District at a significant reduction. Could you get us those numbers? It comes from I don't have the the exact numbers off the top of my head, but I'll do my best to go back and summarize what we found over the past year. We used to rely on the fifth District borders, Orange County Fire Authority primarily, and a little bit of Los Angeles County Fire Department. Orange County Fire Authority a year ago, over a year ago, would typically respond into the east side of Long Beach about 17 times a month, if I recall that correctly, about 17 times a month. And starting last July with our new program, we put in place because we have more apparatus available to respond on medical calls, which is primarily what we do. We we lowered that number down to one or two times a month from Orange County Fire Authority and the L.A. County side of things in North Long Beach and the northern end of the fifth District, we saw a more dramatic reduction in our reliance on mutual aid. And I don't have that number off the top of my head. And I wouldn't I don't want to make it up, so I'm happy to provide that to you. But we did see a more dramatic reduction in mutual aid requests from L.A. County Fire. We've reviewed those reports and we think that it's fantastic having our trained Long Beach Fire Department deployed regularly. The men and women that are at the stations that serve those neighbors regularly specifically, we have a few of our senior neighbors who call on the fire department often. And it's so important that our officers respond because they know those neighbors and the concerns more intimately. So the fifth District has really benefited from that. And we really appreciate it. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Councilmember Ranga. I would be remiss if I did not thank the police and fire departments for their fire. 101 police went on that you gave what you put us through the training, put it put us in the in the heat of the fire and in went with the fire department and got the feel of the the equipment and the heat that that our firefighters go through. And, of course, the the orientation that we got from the police department and and how difficult the job it can be and how easily a simple police stop of a traffic stop can escalate into something horrible. And I really want to thank you for giving us that orientation and exposure to see that it helps us in terms of orienting us in terms of what the what an important job you do. And I really and I really want to thank you for that. Thank you. And in chief, as you as you closed, I just want to reconfirm something. I know there's been some some questions in the community. While I know that we've been taking the five year average for for violent crime, and we're monitoring that. It's my understanding that on the on the very important number of of murders, which right know we track very closely citywide as of today, from what I understand, there has not been an increase in murders. It's about the same as last year. I mean, maybe give or take one or two. I mean, everyone obviously is is is an issue and we should take seriously. But I believe it's about the same as last year. Is that correct? Yes. Currently, we stand at the same level of murders that we did at this time last year. Which at which as last year was a historic low. It was. So we're still at that same from a murder point of view. We're still kind of facing a historic low number. And obviously, we're very hopeful that the fact that that trend continues clearly. Yes. And just as I stated earlier, if you look across the country, at most of the big, big cities across the country, they're experiencing significant increases. So we're we struggled a little bit this year, but our men and women are doing an extraordinary job. And and we'll keep on working and chipping away at it. And from from my understanding of listening to what's happening in some of the other urban cities, the increase in the murder rate has not just jumped, but dramatically jumped in many cases in a lot of urban centers. That's correct. I think the average was about 19% across the country, especially on the East Coast. So I think as far as for for Long Beach is concerned, to to see that level of consistency, while certainly, you know, murders, we know we want we don't want any to happen, obviously, in our community. But to have that historic low, I think stay stay the same is not just a testament to the work that the men and women of your department do, but also to the really continuum of public safety practices that we have. I think the work that's happening in the parks, in our schools, through our health department, through our non-profits, it just goes to show, even with all the additional pressures, that you guys are just doing an incredible job. So thank you for that. You're very welcome. And if I could just make another comment, there is is community support, because when we get these crimes, we need people to call us if they see something, they need to say something. And when we do get a shooting or a homicide, for people to come forward and be witnesses is a tremendous help and helps prevent further crimes in the city. And we've been getting that and we're very fortunate as a city. Well, thank you, Chief. We'll obviously keep watching all these numbers with interest. So thank you. There's a motion and a second on the floor. Any public comment on the budget hearing? Please come forward. Good evening. I'll try and be brief though. I don't know if I'll match. Kelsey, my brother Andrews. My name's Erin Fletcher on the president of the Long Beach Lifeguard Association. Thank you very much. Honorable mayor and council member for the time and leading da. Thank you, Councilwoman, for bringing up a larger than my point. The $150,000 that we're talking about coming from the Marine safety budget isn't money that's just sitting there not used. Our chiefs been able to use it to enhance the dove response for the 24 hour capabilities. So if we do can't cut that vacant position, we do lose service. It impacts the service model that we're providing to the community right now. The good news. And what I saw tonight is that the two vacant Marine safety officer positions that we have are should be slated to be filled. And so I'm hopeful that Chief Medina will be contacted very soon by civil service to be allowed to fill those requisitions that he said he's put in for as well. For that. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker, please. Thank you. Hello. Good evening, City Council. I know it's really late. I feel like we're all watching the countdown. Right? What time will we get out of here? So I'll make this as fast as I can. My name is Jen. Victor Anderson. I am with ECI Communities for Environmental Justice, and also I work with the Long Beach Language Access Coalition. In light of this budget hearing, you know, we're talking about the Long Beach Police, Fire Department and even the emergency preparedness with all the different the the blackouts that have happened, the issues have been going on in the city. And so we're here as a Language Access Coalition to talk about the importance and the need to continue to advocate for language access here in Long Beach. We want to recognize the progress that the the city has done with language access on translating documents, recognition across various departments as well as the continued funding that's been approved. I know we mentioned it in the Budget Oversight Committee to the I believe it's 80,000. It's approved for next year. Still, we do grow concerned that from the previous fiscal year out of the $250,000 that was allocated for language access, $70,000 was unspent. And it's important to note, because the community is waiting for through language access to be implemented here in the city. And while we're waiting, we wonder why was the money not spent? What were the parts of the language access policy for fiscal year 15? Where was the money spent and how are we making sure the residents from all across the city are getting access to various resources and various aspects of city? We asked the City Council to continue to fund language access, but also to prioritize public display and signage, phone lines and voicemails, front stop or alley languages. And also we wanted to note that the with the mere suggestion for a single phone line for next year's budget, we hope that this phone line also includes Latin language accessibility for people that don't necessarily speak English. We want to ensure that language access is incorporated in budgeting and planning. We ask the language access in future years is be integrated and itemized in every department. The budget has on an ongoing priority. For instance, the mayor has directed parks, synagogues and other departments to integrate funding for future years of the B.C. Youth Program. We believe the same can be done for language access. And finally, we asked the city to schedule development services in one of the upcoming budget hearings that the issue of language access can be further discussed. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Seeing no other public comment, there's a that was a hearing the motion on the floor to receive and file the hearing. Please cast your votes. Well, she carries eight zero. And we're going to go to 28 who actually was not aware that there's actually a group here for 28. So now I am so we're here 28 now and.