Councilman Clark. guitar solo Thank you. This is the July 8, 2014 Public Safety Committee meeting. First item on our agenda is the approval of the summary. I have a motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. The only... I had a question. Council Member Farmer. I would just like to update the minutes by having the roster of those who were in attendance added at the beginning, please. Just so we know who was there. Who was there? Who was president? Yes, ma'am. We'll do that. With that one change, I think they're fine. Thank you. And then it also, at the heading, it says February 18, 2013. Well, that's a good catch, too. I believe it should be 14. Is there any other discussion on the summary? Approve as amended. Or is motioned and already done? Sorry. I have a motion to approve as amended and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you very much. Next on the agenda is an update on the Division of Police Home Fleet Policy, and I believe Scott Shapiro is going to provide us that information. and he also passed around an information sheet for us. Thank you, Scott. Sure, thanks for having me. I was asked to give an update on the home fleet take-home policy. I've got a handout. Has everyone been able to get the handout? Okay, great. This was just handed out, is that correct? Yes. Thank you. So this is, I'm giving you an update. Before this has been finalized, we have an agreement that we've negotiated with the FOP that's going to be voted on this week. But I want to start off by clarifying a term. It's been said that the home fleet policy has been suspended. I've seen that written and said, and I just want to clarify that that's not true. When you talk about a home fleet policy, a police department can have two different ways of handling fleet cars. They can have pool cars where the same car sort of runs 24-7 and different people occupy it. Or you can have a home fleet policy where individual officers have cars. And there are advantages to that that we see here in Lexington. and we've had a home fleet policy since the mid-'70s that continues today. So with a home fleet policy, and what has not changed all along is that police officers drive them to and from their own homes. So, again, that's not changed. Police officers continue to drive the fleet cars to work, park them in their neighborhoods, and that's part of the value that we see, that we as a city see, in the home fleet program. So what had changed as part of the 2012 collective bargaining agreement is to amend the home fleet policy to not allow personal use of the cars. So errands, going to the gym, things other than going to and from a police officer's home. So when that was negotiated in the collective bargaining agreement, it was anticipated that it would save about $800,000 a year. That turned out, the latest numbers that we have, which you all have in front of you now, that turned out not to be the case. It saved about $288,000, according to the latest numbers. Part of that was driven by, I think the initial assumption was that the mileage would decrease by about 15%. It turned out to be more like 7.8%. It also turned out that maintenance costs, even though the cars were being driven less, maintenance costs actually rose. So maintenance was driven more by the age of the fleet than by the amount the car is driven. The good news on that, of course, as you all know, is that we've got about 150 new cars that are coming online. So maintenance costs should drop. It also turned out that insurance costs didn't change. And so we have $288,000 in savings instead of $800,000. But again, we see the value in putting back in place the personal use part of the home fleet program. I think the administration saw the value in that over a year ago and started talking with Mike Sweeney, picked up the conversation with the new president of the FOP. We've been talking to him for about six months, came to an agreement to reinstitute the personal use policy at a cost of $50 a month. That essentially covers the price of gas. That's now being voted on by the FOP this week. So I think we'll have, hopefully we'll have an answer on that by early next week. So there's one other thing I wanted to mention. So there's a recent story linking the personal use policy to crime. And I wanted to say that looking at the numbers, it's hard to make that claim. As we saw, when the personal use policy was not in effect, crime went down. Crime's been declining in Lexington. In 2013, it declined 7.8%. Lexington has a violent crime rate that's less than half the rate of our peer cities. And I wanted to make that point. But again, we do see the value in having this greater police presence, doing all that we can to continue to fight crime. and that's why we wanted to reinstitute the personal use policy. So that's my presentation. If you have any questions, I'd love to answer them. Thank you, Scott. We have several council members signed up. So Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Chairperson Henson. I put this into committee, Scott, over a year ago because the numbers weren't supporting what was negotiated, and I won't go back through the collective bargaining agreement, and what was negotiated. I understand why they took it and why it was there. And I appreciate you all going back to the table, so to speak, and getting us a better deal for not only our police officers, but for the community as a whole. Far too often I've seen when an off-duty officer is at a baseball park and a situation was diffused because they were there. I've seen far too often someone break down and an officer come to their aid and assist. So I would caution us when we talk about crime stats that crime went down And, you know, really this policy, it didn't affect that, but it did. A couple things on the crime stats. We're tracking them differently than two years ago. That's a fact. We're not tracking it the same way. The other thing is when the new state law changed, we're ticketing more. And I think the crime rate, and correct me if I'm wrong, is only calculated or recorded if we actually arrest somebody, not if we ticket them. And some of the offenses now are ticket offenses and not arrestable any longer. So I think that's had an impact on some of our data. But I would like to see crime go down, obviously, and appreciate saying it does. But I think we need to be fair in that comparison that it has changed in how we calculate crimes. But thank you for negotiating this. And will you send the counsel? We're going on break today. I don't think any further actions needed in this committee unless someone would be opposed to the deal that has been reached, of course. Will you report back to us via e-mail this week? next week what happens or do we need to take this up in committee again and and endorse it obviously we don't have a role in collective bargaining but this is something that several of us wanted to see changed and changed back to to benefit the community so how would you be reporting back to us at this point sure I'd be I'd be happy to email the group as soon as I hear about the vote okay and again it's $50 a month that's right is that deducted monthly or bi-weekly or how is that going to be broken? They have a system in place. It's already, it's still in use because there's a $50 fee for folks who use the cars during off-duty work. There's also a deduction that takes place for folks who are driving out of county in terms of the mileage. So the structure is already in place. So would that be in addition to those individuals who are already using them and paying the 50? Would that be another 50 for them? It wouldn't be another $50,000. This covers off-duty use. And this will cover $115,000 worth of fuel, basically? That's according to my calculations based on a low threshold of uptake on the policy. Okay, and I assume that this will be renegotiated at the next collective bargaining, the amount? We imagine it would come up. So there's no CPI built into it or adjustment if your prices go up or down? That's right. There's no. So it'd just be a flat rate until it's renegotiated. Okay. That's right. Well, Scott, thank you all, and then thanks to the administration and chief. I know everybody pitched in and worked on this behind the scenes. It's been a long year in going through the process, but these things are negotiated, and that's what's happened. I appreciate the officers willing to come to the table, too, and help try to make it a break-even situation. I think it will benefit our community going forward. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. That's great. Thanks. And we'll say the FOP was great to work with on this. Communicated very well. Council Member Lane. Thanks, Chair Henson. First, I'd like to say that I've always been in support of taking the cars home because I think there is a benefit to minimizing crime. When people see police cars riding around, it does make a difference. But since we've done this study, I am interested in the metrics on that just to see what it really is going to cost. I had a couple of questions on this analysis. The first one is, what was the average fuel cost per gallon in 2012 versus 2013? because I believe the fuel rates increased in the last year or so, and maybe that had a bearing on the amount of savings not being as great as we'd anticipated. So I wonder if you could evaluate that and give us an answer on that. I can take a look at that. It was my assumption that that was the difference between the 7.1% decline in fuel versus the 7.8% decline in mileage. which that was why there was a, due to the slight uptick in fuel costs. Right. But see, if the fuel cost per gallon had gone up, say, in the last 18 months, you could have driven less miles, but, you know, it's going to cost more, so the savings would not necessarily be tied into how many miles you actually drove. It would be the actual price of the gas. So I think that's one question I have. The other one is on depreciation in that you just mentioned that our fleet is older, and therefore we have higher maintenance, but we probably would have less depreciation on an older fleet because it's already been depreciated. And we put in new cars, so if we have new cars in there, they might have a higher depreciation level. So there's an issue there. We've got apples to apples calculation on that. That would be the case. So, again, depreciation is more soft costing. I think the main hard cost here that we were looking at were fuel maintenance and insurance. Okay, and then I guess the insurance is just an inflationary issue. You know, the claims vary year by year. It turns out there were fewer claims, but ended up costing a bit more in 2013. there didn't seem to be a correlation with the actual prevalence of driving off-duty. The other question that would relate to mileage and also to fuel and maintenance is how many cars did we run in 2012 versus 2013? If we had more cars running in 2013, then we would have had more mileage because there would be more cars running around, even though we weren't doing the take-home policy. And also, you know, maintenance might be a factor there, too. We have a higher maintenance because there are more cars. I think that would be another number I would like to look at. As I said, I do support take-home policy, but I think we've already got some of this data together. I think it ought to be tweaked a little bit more and get a really good number on this so we know exactly what our cost is, so that when we do bring it up in the negotiations for the new contract, we know what it's going to cost us as a government and what concession or whatever we might get from the FOP. So those are just my thoughts on that, but I think this is a good start. Thank you very much for your work on that. Thank you. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. I am very happy to see this happening. I, the last campaign, this was one of my campaign platforms. We should have a home fleet. And then Chief Bastin said, well, crime's down. So that shot that. Frankly, I don't care whether crime's down or not. Well, I shouldn't say that. And that's not exactly what I mean. I would like to see the home fleet reestablished, and I appreciate this effort. I think this is very, very good. But there's no way to estimate the value of having police on the street in a more regular fashion that this home fleet process would do. And I'm also going to say, well, let me ask a question first. Will all officers have a car to take home, or is it an optional thing? In other words, they can say, no, I don't want to do it because I don't want to pay the $50. So all officers are issued a car, and they can take it home with them right now at no cost. No cost, yeah. That doesn't change. Yeah. So that's the policy that's been in place for 40 years. I understand that. What we have now is the ability to use it for personal use for $50. And so they will be their option to whether to do that or not. They can opt into it, exactly. Okay. Okay. Here's my take on it. If an officer who takes a car home and uses it for personal use, that officer is pretty much required, I assume, Chief Bastin, that if there's a need for him to act in the role of a police officer, then we certainly expect them to do that. Why in the world should we be charging them $50 a month in order to be responsible in that way? I like reestablishing the policy, but I don't like charging our officers $50 when, in fact, we are expecting them to be literally on duty if the case requires. And so I would just simply suggest in whatever is going on in terms of the FOP that we as a government say to our officers this is a good plan and that we ought to provide the car for personal uses any way we can at whatever expense. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. Scott, could you tell me, I think I understand what the FOP is going to be voting on, but what exactly are we asking them, or what are they going to be asking their members to do at the vote? So because it's part of the collective bargaining agreement, we both have to agree to it. They have to put it out for a vote. So it is amending the home fleet policy to allow police officers to opt into a $50 a month payment to use the car for personal use outside of work, outside of driving it to and from home. Yeah, that's what I thought. And I'm like the other council members. I think there's a lot of benefit that it's hard to put a number on. You know, I know personally if I see a police cruiser, the first thing I do is I look down and see what my speed is. I mean, it just kind of comes just, and I think everybody else, I mean, it's a safety issue out there. It's hard to put a dollar figure on, and I'm not sure if the $50 that we're charging is something that we need to be charged. I think this is something that is a benefit to the community, and it's really, I don't think it's one of those Pennywise panel foolish that we really, it's a benefit to this community that we don't want to not have. Absolutely. We agree. You know, they are required to, if they see some issue, they are required to stop if they are in their vehicle. And they do, thousands of times. And that's something that you see every day, and we'll all as a community benefit from that. And in addition, just the police presence, just the visibility does an enormous amount for the community, helping folks feel safe. Thank you. Council Member Massadi. Thank you, Chair. Scott, can you answer one question about the $50? Is it for the police officers who are using their vehicles for off-duty jobs? So for off-duty jobs, they had been paying $50. That's not something that had changed. So that will continue. So if you're using, so this $50 would cover either personal use or an off-duty job, sort of anything that a police officer would do off-duty, except for folks who live outside of county. There's a separate calculation. They may live quite some distance that covers gas. I don't know if we can quantify, as Council Member Clark said, the value of this. I think that we're good stewards of the taxpayers' dollars, and that's what we're trying to do. But when it comes down to it, I don't think you can equate dollars and cents to safety, public safety. And that's a basic service that we provide the community. And I'm not sure that I would even consider charging the officer the $50. I mean, we do expect them to respond. You know, they do have the ability to use their vehicle to, you know, go home and so forth. But, again, they are expected to respond. And so I would hope that maybe during these negotiations it wouldn't be more about dollars and cents. It would be more about what we can effectively do to take care of our community. So if you'd give us that update, I really would appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks. Council Member Farmer. Thank you, ma'am. I'm appreciative of all the conversation and supportive, as everyone else is here, and realize the potential and, I mean, hopefully it's worked for many, many years and it will again. I guess my question is, on the page that you brought us today, was it just available today or could it not have been in our packet? or how is it that it came late homework here in my estimation? You know, this was a presentation that was in flux as we were negotiating with the FOP. So it was, I thought I would have a handout instead of creating a presentation that would have to change. And then you said voting is ongoing now in the FOP? That's my understanding. And so how is, do they have a presentation over what they're voting on? You know, I'm not sure what Jason Rotherman provided to the folks who are voting. Well, I just, I would like to see something in writing from you about what's being voted on and what's going on. I mean, you've said what it is, and you've had questions and follow-up as to what it covers and what it does and how it's going to work and comments to maybe we shouldn't be doing this. And I think that's the value of having something in hand to see what's going on. And that's my little cusp of the day right there. I can email that around this afternoon. I think it would help us all have a better frame discussion because there is support here, and it's about knowing what the parameters of the leadership are. So I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, sir. Council Member Lane. Yeah, just going back to the $50 a month, that would be $600 a year. And it costs about 50 cents a mile to operate a car based on the IRS. That's what they generally allow you for a tax deduction. So if $600 divided by 50 cents a mile would add up to about 1,200 miles a year or 100 miles per month. So I don't think the $50 a month fee is really unreasonable because I think most people drive more than 100 miles a month with their car, so that would be a good deal. The other point I would make is that if we have 500 cars, I don't know how many are issued, and you spent $600 per car, that adds up to $300,000 in cost that would be reimbursed by the $50 a month utilization fee. So I think in your negotiations you ought to take some of those numbers into consideration also. But I want to reiterate, I still support the officers having the car. I just think it needs to be a fair deal for both sides. Thank you. Thanks. Council member Eichers. Thank you, Chair. Scott, when did you say that the FOP plans to vote on this? It's my understanding that voting began a day or so ago. Okay. Yes. My understanding, it started yesterday and would go through this coming Sunday. And so if they vote against this, then where does that leave you all, I guess? What's the next step? Then we obviously cannot make the change. Both sides have to agree with it. So the personal use policy would not be in effect. Okay. And then maybe this is for you, maybe this is for Chief Bastin. What is the policy for police responding when off-duty, if in their cars? Are they required to? And then if they are required and they do respond, then how does that play into overtime? Or do they make up those hours later? or how does that work? Because I can imagine there could be a car wreck and someone respond and take up a lot of time or at a ball field intervene and take up some time. It can, and it can be compensated in overtime. Sometimes we flex time. Okay. If they're coming in the beginning of the work week and they've stopped the day before for an accident on the way home or something like that, we'll give them off a couple hours early. We try to manage overtime by doing that. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. and it depends on when it happens in relation to the work week. But, you know, we do that. The priority calls are the ones that folks are actually required to stop on. The policy, as we used to have it with take-home and off-duty use, was even if you have family members in the car, if there's a priority one call that goes out, then, you know, for the safety of your family, You're to put them at a safe location and continue on respond to that call. You're required to have a weapon in the car, the radio on anytime you're using it. For a minor thing, you know, you're not required to stop. If there's a report call somewhere, you don't have to go to that. That's what the B units will do. Sure. Okay. Thank you very much. Council Member Stannett. I was going to follow up Scott. When is the next collective bargaining agreement for police up? It's not until next year. Next year? Right. Okay, so if this is voted on by the membership, it'll be good for a year, basically. That's right. Then renegotiate it. I think the council did pass an ordinance to approve the collective bargaining agreement, so I assume you'll bring an amendment if this passes in August, so we'll vote on it on our docket as a resolution or whatever to accept the amendment? I'll have to check on that. Okay, I didn't know how that would work since the council passed the resolution to start approving all collective bargaining contracts. If this will be an actual amendment, or is this just a verbal agreement? Since it's an amendment, we'll check on that. I'm not sure it's required for an amendment, but it could be. Yeah, the faster we can do it, the better it is. Regardless, we'll let you know and make sure that we get you all the information we can. So, and under the proposals, Council Member Farmer asked, when is the effective date that we presented to the FOP? is if they vote yes. Is there an effective day? Is it August 1st, July 1st? We haven't discussed the effective date. We'd have to go through and see how quickly it could be. You say it on the microphone just so everybody can hear you. We don't have an effective date, but I'll also send it around an email as soon as we have that. Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you. Scott, I had a few questions that I want a better understanding of the $50 because I feel was the same as several of the other council members that why $50? I could understand if you were using your vehicle for moonlighting or for a second job, but not if you were using it for personal use, but then had to stop whatever you're doing and take a call. So, you know, and we, I remember this committee, and you said that you would take it into negotiations with the FOP, but I don't, I didn't remember a $50 price tag or anything like that. So it's out of the council's hands, right? It's up to the FOP. But I would think that they would be more likely to agree if there was no cost involved to them. There was. The FOP did conduct an initial survey of $50 a month. and that received overwhelming support. So there's the sense that this will pass. Okay. So you have a good, and I guess if they choose, if it's voted on by the FOP and it passes, then everyone has to do it. Or is it a volunteer? It's voluntary. It's voluntary. So if they say, I don't want the $50, they don't have to, they cannot use their vehicle for personal use. That's right. They can still take it to and from their homes, but just not use it for personal errands and such beyond that. Well, I just wanted to express, you know, I don't particularly like, you know, it's like if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. and I see it as being that scenario and why we should be charging on $50 a month. So that's my thought. Council Member Lane, I think, had another. Could I make a comment to that, Chair? Could I make a comment to that? Yes, sir. I think it's important. I think we all recognize the utility and the value of this policy. and I think it's very important though to remember why we're having this conversation today and that's because we asked for concessions from all the unions when we began negotiations two and a half, three years ago and this is a product of that process. The FOP chose to go this route rather than take concessions in another way and that's why we're having this conversation. Okay. Thank you, sir. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I just wanted to add that I personally believe that we, the Council, should approve, you know, any amendments to the collective bargaining agreement. And I'm not sure that I actually think this is maybe handled the best way possible. It seems like it would have been better to do the discussions about this, you know, in negotiations and come up with an agreement and then bring it to Council. because, you know, essentially if you were trying to negotiate an agreement and we were, you know, some members said, well, let's do this, some said let's do that, you know, it sort of weakens your negotiating posture and it maybe divulges too much information that would be hindersome to the negotiations. So maybe for your upcoming negotiations you could reconsider how this was handled too. I agree with that. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Massadi. Just to follow up on what Council Member Lane is saying, you've already had the discussions. They're already in the voting process. So everything we're discussing today is basically a moot point because here we are saying, several of us, no, we don't need that the $50 is something that we don't want them to require. Well, they've never even had the opportunity to discuss that. And so that's what I'm thinking here. I said we're kind of putting the cart before the horse here because you've already got them voting. we're saying here to you no we don't think the fifty dollars is something that should be required upon them so they're not going to have that opportunity to say well you're right we agree with you and that's i think we've done this backwards i think we probably should have had this discussion first and then gone to the the fop and talk with them and i understand the concessions but here this is you know um this is something that we're trying to input we're trying to give you and how strongly we feel and our constituents feel and they're not going to have that opportunity to deal with that at all. I was at the podium last time we had this conversation, and I heard those concerns, and we took those concerns to the negotiating table. You know, again, the concessions were a product of the recession. We didn't want to be having this conversation, but we had to ask for concessions three years ago. And we did listen to your concerns back, I think it was in January. Is that right, Council Member Stennett? This was a product of a negotiation. I understand, but we're up here saying to you, giving you what we feel is important for the city and for our constituents, and now we're discussing a $50 fee here that several of us don't support. And we think it's important that, you know, we have public safety as the number one priority. And so that's my feeling. i don't know how anybody else feels about this but i feel like as council member lane says we've done this backwards council member stennett a year ago we put this into committee everyone agreed when i made the motion to put it in committee in april because the numbers weren't holding true numbers which were voted on during collective or agreed upon during a collective bargaining process i think it was clear from this council back in january that we asked them to go back to the table and negotiate a better deal and if you are telling us that's the best deal you're able to negotiate going both ways in terms of the savings that we projected in our budgets that may or may not being realized right now we projected an 800 000 savings each year we're not realizing that now so we have to make it up somehow um i would you know obviously be in favor if we can give them the home fleet back with with no cost, but if that's what you're saying, that was the best deal that was negotiated was $50 at this point, and again, we asked you to go negotiate back in January. Is that the best deal that we were able to offer at this point on both sides? And that's why they took it to their membership? I mean, to Councilman Masati's point, was it ever offered just to give it back? Was that ever requested just to give the fleet back, the option of home fleet? I'll let Scott talk to that specific negotiations. I had the original conversations with Mike Sweeney and then a follow-up with Jason after he came on, but I turned it over to Scott after that, so I'll let him speak to that. It's hard to know exactly what you mean by the best deal. This was the compromise where we preserved some savings, at least covering gas, and it was a low enough monthly cost that the FOP felt comfortable that they could bring it to their members. So it was, as with any negotiation, it was a meeting. Right. And, you know, I know we discussed back in January again that the legal ramifications of collective bargaining, and the council really has no legal power to dictate it one way or another. And I think that's why I don't know, I don't see anyone here from our law department to rehash that conversation that we had. But, you know, I too would be in favor as we look at next year's agreement to putting this back on the table and making sure we keep it available for our officers to be able to use their cars off duty. And I'll just wait to hear from the vote coming up. Thank you. So no one else has any questions? Thank you very much, Scott. Thank you. And you will, I guess we will be hearing what the outcome is of the vote. And this afternoon I'll circulate a paragraph that describes the change. Thank you. And Chair, if we could just keep this in the committee until it's resolved. Yes. Again, that's the point while it's in committee is so we can discuss it because we want to see a change. I think that's been made loud and clear in January and today. Thank you. You're welcome. I'll speak to that. Could I speak just to you? Council Member Clark, I'm sorry. Yes. I just want to say, Scott, I think it would be appropriate for you to transmit our conversations to the FOP to let them know how we feel about this. And I think probably we're in a situation where we can live with the $50 for a year. but I think I agree with other council members that we ought to look at this very seriously. And if there's nothing we can do about that at this point, let's live with it for a year. But I would really like for the FOP to know the basis of our discussion and the passion that we feel for this particular issue. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Lane, I was wrong. I'm back for a follow-up question. Yeah, I don't know whether this was fully detailed or not, but is it my understanding that the $50 fee is optional? In other words, if a police officer wants to take his car home and not use it to run errands and take his family out and do that, he doesn't pay anything. But if he wants to use the car for personal reasons during, is that in Fayette County? Is there a geographical boundary on it within Fayette County? Right. It's $50 a month is the charge for that. And that's an optional thing. The police officer is not forced to pay anything. That would be their election to pay that. That's exactly right. I hope I was clear on that earlier. this is an optional monthly $50 cost, and it's only for personal use. So an officer is free to drive their cruiser to and from their house at no cost. And that's the way it has been, and that's ongoing. Just to follow up on that, I believe the IRS would require the police officer to pay taxes on the use of a car if he got it for free or she got it for free because they didn't pay anything for it. Therefore, it would be some type of a compensation for the personal use of the car. I'm not sure what the law is today, but I think there's a tax issue there. But if they elected to pay $50 a month, it would probably eliminate any tax liability. That's something you ought to check in more detail on. I wasn't aware of that. I'll look into that. Council Member Massadi. Just a couple more things. I've got a son that's a police officer that is in a home fleet program. They pay nothing, and he is required, whether he's driving the car to and from work, as Chief Bastin said, to respond. By virtue of parking that police car in your driveway, you are there to serve. I mean, people knock on your doors, people need help, and for us not to consider that as part of their, you know, whether they're driving to an off-duty job or whether they're driving home or they're driving to the grocery, these guys are on call 24-7 just by the virtue of being in that car. So I think to charge them the $50 to me is, in comparison to what we get for the value of our city and the public safety, is not even an ingredient in this whole recipe. So I feel strongly that what we're asking them to do is beyond, like I said, 24-7, and I don't think it's necessary that we have to have them pay for this, what they're doing for us as citizens. And if you would, you know, as I said, I guess they're discussing this now. If you can, again, as we've said, if you can discuss this further with the membership or let them know that there's several of us that are real concerned about this, that would be helpful. Thank you. I will. And one more question. Can you tell me how many jurisdictions there are in Kentucky that have the home fleet plan and how many that pay and don't pay? Do you have that broken down? We did do one analysis. So in the Uniform Crime Reports, the way the FBI looks at crime in cities, we looked at the cities that closely matched us in terms of population, and there were 12 of them. And we did call around and receive 12 responses on the way they deal with fleet vehicles. So of the 12 cities that are similar to Lexington, six of them have home fleet policies. So six of them do have a pool policy, and six of them have a home fleet policy. So of the six, three of them allow for personal use. So it's about 25% of our peers allow personal use of the vehicles. And these are Kentucky jurisdictions? These are not Kentucky jurisdictions. There are cities that are similar to Lexington. In size and population? That's right. In the amount of officers they have? That's right. Okay, thank you. You're not off the hook yet. Keep it coming. Health Member Farmer. So this committee doesn't meet again, I take it, until September the 15th, or September 16th. So, will all this be concluded before then in your estimation? That would be my guess. How did this want, how come we're talking about this today? Was this just something that circled to the top of our agenda because it's been in there so long? Yeah, Council Member Stenet requested that it be placed on the agenda. And I appreciate that we had the update on it. And I just, I don't know. Obviously, I'm having a problem with what I would consider personally a lack of transparency or a lack of respect or something in terms of bringing to this committee the information about this issue, which your presentation has only bred, in my opinion, more questions. I'm sure everyone has negotiated in good faith and is doing a great job, but it's tough for us to sit here and see that today in the darkness. and I guess it's a good thing we're going to go on a little bit of break because maybe I need one but I appreciate your time on this. I wish it were reflected better in the committee's packet in some of our conversation today but thank you. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you sir and Scott thank you for bringing the information that you have I guess we will look forward to hearing the results of the vote. Hopefully that will be a positive one. And to what Jamie said earlier about the reasons that it was taken away to begin with, I think we all totally understand that. And, you know, our city was in great financial needs back then, and that was one thing that was negotiated. And I think we can understand that. But here we are in a different day. And the amount of savings that was projected did not pan out. So I just feel like that it is, if you place a value on the home fleet, that it is more valuable than what the savings, much more valuable than what the savings shows. And I don't necessarily agree with the $50, but if that's what you came up with, that's what you came up with. And so no one else has signed up to speak. So I think you are finally free. Thank you. Thank you. And next on our agenda is staffing levels for community corrections. And I believe Director Rodney Ballard is here to present. Thank you, Rodney. It's good to be here again. Now I'll figure out how to work it. Okay. Well, good afternoon. This is a follow-up from our meeting we had several months ago, and I've added some new slides and some additional information. In FY 2009, the division was staffed with 299 corrections officers. When I came here to work in 2012, we were approximately 58 officers short. In working with the CAO's office, we got those numbers up to see the FY 14 numbers, is 263. We met extensively with the Commissioner of Public Safety and the CAO and came up for FY15, a hiring of 15 new officers, of which eight would be hired in July and seven would be hired in January. By doing that, it saved us some money. Currently, I have an academy class that started today, or excuse me, yesterday. There's 13 in the class, and today I'm 11 short in addition to the ones that are in the class. So our current staffing level is our cap is 278, and we currently have 267 employed. One of the things we asked when we asked for the additional staff, what we're going to do with them, and here's an example, one of our housing units that has two officers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We want to expand that to a couple other areas, and these are additional high-risk areas, the inmates that don't play well with others, as we say. Transitional units, behavioral problems, as you can see. So with this increase in manpower, we'll be able to do that. Here's an example of what we'd like to do. The housing units can change based on our demographics, but you can imagine the bulk of our work is done between 8 in the morning and 11 o'clock at night. So we'd like to put two officers in some of those housing units for officer safety and decrease the workload. You can assume one at night because we hope most of them are asleep between those hours. I've included some pictures. Some of you may have been out to the detention center and seen it. Some of you may not, but this is just a couple pictures of different housing units, different styles. It's a sub-day room. That's a dorm with bunks. We looked at the overtime. When we looked at the overtime, we took into consideration all the benefits that our employees incur, and each employee costs us approximately $53,000 a year. We asked for $975,000 in overtime, which is equivalent to 18 full-time employees. I wish hiring 18 full-time employees would eliminate the need for overtime, but that's not possible because of those things listed, sick leave, vacation, military leave, FMLA. other things in working with the the Commissioner public safety CA office we wanted to put a plan together we understand that from 2007 2008 we were in a recession and we had to just make some tough decisions but we also want to put some plans for the future so you can see there in FY 15 they would approve 15 new officers and then we hope in FY 16 and 17 to hire 10 additionals which it brings to 298 officers. So we do have a plan in place to get closer to that 299 officers that we had in 2009. Last time we met, you mentioned some vests you'd like to see for those folks making high-risk transports outside the facility. We purchased those. They're currently being in use. That's an example of what they look like. They're a, think of as a sweater vest, more or less. It goes over top. You stick your arms to the holes, and that's what's on the front and the back side of it. and you can see the cost, and they're implemented and they're being used. Through our discussion, you asked me for some data on turnover, and you picked the year 2011, so we started with 2011. Understanding that PeopleSoft doesn't track all this, so we had to look this stuff up by hand, so there's not a known data field, so we had to use the data that we had. So we didn't capture all the information each and every year because it's not captured electronically. But you can look there in 2011, we had 51 folks leave us. As you can see, the top reason is for new jobs. Second is termination. So we looked at those, and then we compared it to 2012. 2012, I went to 66. Again, you see new job is the highest category for leaving. Termination is second. Family issue is third. We looked at 2013. Again, you can look at new jobs was the highest category. terminations being second family issues was again one of the number one reasons we looked at a total of accommodations from 2011 and 2013 just because it were full years we didn't put in 14 data we've had 178 people leave and you can see that the top three categories is new jobs termination in family issues 14 is trending the same way in that new jobs retirement terminations and family lead in the top three reasons that the employees are leaving the division one of the things we did look at though is one variable that's a common theme is for new jobs so we went back then we broke down the new jobs and exactly what those consisted of the ones in red it's hard to see until easier to see on yours I can consider those public safety so those of that a hundred seventy six that left for new jobs 21 went to public safety as an example nine went to the police department two went to the fire department 13 to other correctional departments two to the sheriff's office one to US marshals and one to probation and parole I'll submit to you we hired the right people they were good people but they were able to get jobs that either met their family schedule a little better or paid more money we then looked at the correctional officers we were losing and then I've got reasons for the the the two county agencies up there one young man lived in Madison County, lived about two miles from the jail, got a job just saving gas was the main issue. Another young man's wife got transferred from Lexington to Bowling Green, and we helped him get a job at the Warren County jail because that's where she was being transferred. So of the 13, nine went to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and that was obviously for increasing money. And we just had a young man this week went to Alaska, or last year went to Alaska with the Department of Corrections. And that's my presentation for this evening. One thing I want to also admit, or tell you, is that one of the things we took your advice is that when, we have a formal exit interviewing process that goes through one of our majors. And since the last time we met, I've asked to interview everyone before they leave. It's an informal interview. I don't keep any notes. I don't write anything down. It's really an opportunity for me to talk to the employee and say, can you tell me really why you're leaving? I'll be honest with you. I've had a couple employees tell me they didn't like the supervision, didn't like how they were treated, and they left. The majority of them repeated to me the same thing that was on their application. Either it was difficulty adjusting their family lives. If you can imagine being a single mom working day shift, and you have children and you have mandatory overtime, but you can't not leave your kids at the daycare on second shift. You have to go pick them up. So that increases hardship. So most of them were very honest in the reason they were leaving, either for better-paying jobs or the schedule was more conducive to their family needs. Thank you, sir. I have one council member signed up with a question. Now there's two. Council Member Clark, thank you. Thank you, Chair. In looking at your request for additional officers, Rodney, tell me how many units you actually have that you have to populate with officers. You were indicating that some were obviously more serious than others. And how many total? I have 20 housing units. 20? Plus the intake center. Okay. Okay. And is there a, I'm seeing partial assignments here. Is there a chart that would show all these units and how they're manned in each case? Well, what makes it confusing for you is that although they're manned, the variable you don't know is the type of inmate that's being housed in that unit. I understand that. As an example, if I had 80 Otis the Town drunks, just nonviolent, laid-back folks, is much different than a 40-bed restrictive housing unit with folks that don't play well with others who refuse to follow the rules. I do understand that, and that's one reason I would like to see all the units broken down by the seriousness of the inmates. Obviously, you need more people, and it would be good to see that whole picture to say, okay, these are units that need more officers, to give the justification for your request. And I think that would be very helpful to me if we could do that. And also, I'd like to ask, I see the $53,000 with benefits, correct? Yes, sir. What is that average salary then? I think with the new contract, I think it's $14.52 an hour, I believe. $14.52 an hour, okay. And this average salary is based on how many hours a week, Rodney? Forty hours a week. Forty hours a week. Okay. I did some numbers for you out of curiosity because I look at it because nobody's more concerned about turnover than I am. I took a family of four. I assumed that the person that worked for me was the breadwinner. I assumed that that person provided all the health insurance for his family for a family of four. His take home for two weeks is $617. No. Understand. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Rodney. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Clark. Thank you, sir. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Chair McHenston. My question is sort of looking at the macroeconomics of the jail. Can you tell me how many beds we have available in the jail now? As many inmates as we have is usually our response. We currently have 1,266 beds, though. Okay. And our ADP here this last couple months have been running right around 1,300. That's our average daily population. Okay. And I believe the pods originally were designed for eight per pod, so you're now running maybe 12 per pod. Is that how that works, sir? That's correct. Okay. And you might want to just say what a pod is because I've been in the jail several times. Some people may not know in our audience. You might want to explain that. We actually call them sub-day rooms. There's actually this where we're at could be the general living area, and then there's sub-day rooms where they're in behind additional doors. There's an example. Well, that's a sub-day room where the inmates can come out either one at a time or all the time, and then you can see the cell doors, and that's actually the living unit where the inmate lives. This is a dormitory setting where the inmates can move freely in there, and as you spoke of, was designed for eight, and there's probably 12 bunks in there today. Okay. All right. But the other question I had, the total operating cost for the jail, including the debt service on the building itself, is approximately how many million per year? Could you give me a ballpark? Approximately $33 million. And I have to defer to Ms. Hamilton. Is the debt service included? I don't think it is, is it? I'm not positive about the debt service, but the operational cost of the jail is about $33 million. Okay, because the idea I wanted to bring out is if it's, say, $23 million and we have around 1,300 beds, how much per year per bed is that? Can you give me a poll? About $72 a day. Okay, so that's going to be $25,000 a year or something like that? Correct. Now, granted, we're not just keeping one person in that bed all the time because you have the criminal element is rotating through there. Some are longer term, some are short term. But if you look at it on a cost per bed, you know, it's just a staggering number when you add that up. It is. Our average length of stay right now is running about 19 days, up from 16 days. The U.S. Supreme Court instituted new bonding regulations effective July the 1st, hoping to get some of these people out of here. In addition, when I first met you, we weren't housing any Class D inmates. Today we probably have 125 Class D inmates that are being paid to house by the state of Kentucky. We had probably 30 or 35 federal inmates. Today I probably have 80 or 85. I'm in the process. You signed off. I think a council voted for me to renegotiate the federal contract. And over a four-year contract with a $10 increase is about $1.2 million in additional revenue. So of the percentage of people in the jail, what percentage are we housing for another government agency, and how many are for just Fayette County? Not math. 200 of them, I'd give you an estimate, is we're housing for other folks. So of the 1,300, 1,100 belong to us. All right. So where does the revenue for that reflect? Do we have a line item? We sure do. About how much revenue we pick up annually from managing the other prisoners for other agencies? Probably about $3.5 million. Okay. Okay. Well, then that's only about 10% of our operating expenses for the jail. But those, in my industry, I would look at those beds would be empty. Right. And would be bringing in no revenue, and there's a constant cost that we incur, lights, electric, water, the physical plant. Those fees are constant if there's somebody in that bed or not. Okay. Well, maybe I misunderstood your number. How many people do we house in the jail and the number of beds for outside agencies? We have 1,266 beds. Right. And we have approximately 200 of those beds today. I'll call them contract beds. We're being paid to house those folks. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you very much. That's all my questions. Thank you. Council Member Massadi. Thank you, Chair. Director Ballard, you said that your major conducted exit interviews with some of these, or I guess with the majority of the employees. All of them, yes. All of them. Okay. It's hard to believe that they didn't have pay is one of their concerns. I mean, when someone's making not even $15 an hour, or you said, you know, $600 every two weeks, I can't imagine pay was not an issue. It is, but it's reflected in a new job. When they're leaving, they're leaving for a new job that pays more money. Well, sure. So I guess my question would be to you, do you think that they're getting adequate pay for what they're doing? Well, I can tell you from my experience, if we were in an urban setting where unemployment was very high, those kind of jobs are cherished. When you're in a community that has a good economy and there's other industries competing, it's tough. I think if you look at our community, they can go work a Monday through Friday job, have off Saturday and Sunday, and get very close, if not just a little more, in their salaries. Some of the folks that have left us, though, have gotten substantial increases, like the Bureau of Prisons. Starting salary is $46,200 a year. We lost two last week, moving their families to Pennsylvania, which tells me they like the work. But we're not paying enough. Yes, ma'am. And do you feel that? I mean, I asked you if you think that they're being adequately compensated, and you kind of gave me the reason why you thought this community as opposed to others, an urban community. but do you, as yourself, as a director, feel they're being compensated enough? At the upper management level, yes. At the entry level, no. What do you think would be a fair salary? You know, without really, because I don't live in your community, without digging down and seeing what other businesses pay, it would be my guess. If you looked at us in a correctional field, you would find that we're being comparable to what the industry standards are. Is that right? Yes, ma'am. I was just thinking if we had a better rate of pay, we would have a higher retention rate. Well, I think that's true, but I don't want to mislead you either. Money's not always all the issue. Oh, no, and it's a job that's unbelievably hard to do. I mean, I can't imagine that there's a lot of people that really relish going to work and dealing with criminals that they have to pat down that maybe have urinated or thrown up or drunk or whatever. I mean, it's tough, and that's why I'm thinking $15 an hour to do that, it's a pretty tough job. It is, and we appreciate you recognize that. Because if I haven't told you, the men and women of the division do a great job each and every day for the community. Well, I would hope that maybe there was some thought given as far as their salaries down the road. Because I do think that compensation is key to keeping people and getting good people. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Stinnett. Thank you. Director Ballard, thank you for coming in once again. A couple things I wanted to circle back to that you mentioned. You have 278 authorized strength. You didn't have it on your slide. We just calculated it, I guess. You have 278 with the 15 new officers that we put in this year's budget. Yes, sir. How many vacancies do you have today without any new classes? 11. Just 11. So Matt doesn't add right. So we gave you 15 new. Well, I have 13 in the cadet class. 13. Today. This started yesterday in a class, Monday in a cadet class. Okay, so you had 24 vacancies. Well, I have 24 people not working as correctional officers. I have 13 that are in the academy that are our employees. Right. And we're paying their salaries and benefits. But they're just not realized in the day-to-day operations. That is correct. Okay. So I assume we'll have another class be able to fill, get you to maximum strength by next budget cycle? Yes, sir. And is the plan to ask for another 15 next budget cycle? Well, let me back up. One of the things we did to try to improve our retention is we added another week to the academy, thinking that maybe we could spend more time educating the folks and working with them to make them more prepared. The second thing we did in our hiring process, we then instituted issuing polygraphs to pre-employment to try to weed out some of those folks before we go through all the trouble of hiring them. So, yes, next year and around December, we'll begin those talks with the CAO and Mr. Bill O'Mara, depending on what revenues look like. And we'll, you know, who knows what next year will look like. Ideally, yes, but we've at least got a plan in place that puts us in that direction. So what's your capacity each year? How many can you really put through a training academy? I mean, is there a max? Well, it's not so much a year, but we have a classroom we've designed for 20, 20 computers. A lot of things we do, as you can imagine, is paired up, practicing handcuffing, searching. So that's a number that works good for us. So approximately 20 in a class. We've ran larger classes. I don't think we're as efficient as we are with 20 as we were with 40. So getting to 298, again, 299 officers sworn eventually. Tell me about the overtime situation today. And is it going down? Are we still having mandatory overtime? Well, we do. We're always going to have an overtime. As an example, we have 13 people on late duty. Three are work-related. Ten are not work-related. You take those out of the mix. And then with the FMLA, the FMLA Intermittently, we're hiring a lot of young men and women coming back out of the military. And they still have military obligations. So their weekend drill, their training takes them out of the work site. So there are other factors that also drive that. We've had as many as in the last probably two months, five inmates in the hospital at one time. That means I have to send at least five officers. Some of them require two officers per inmate. So that can directly impact my operation. And then it's the vacation season. People taking off trying to use their vacation time. So how much overtime do you have budgeted this year? $275,000. Okay. And then you all did not take place. Excuse me, $975,000. I was going to say, it didn't drop that quick. No, I'm sorry, it was $975,000. And you all did not take place in our recent compensation study, correct? We did. Even though you're sworn, I thought we said. But see, the compensation study was for non-collective bargaining folks, so it was only basically the office staff and maintenance. Okay, none of the sworn officers were in there. Have you all done a market study and seen what other areas are paying? Informally. Entry level? Informally, yes. Can we do a formal one and give it back to this committee to look at it? Can someone look at it and bring it back to this group here and let us see what other cities are paying so we can see comparisons, actual real numbers, versus just sitting up here saying, well, we're not getting paid enough or we are, vice versa? Would you be satisfied with Louisville and the surrounding counties? Well, I think we've done enough studies on this council. There are several comparable cities out there we can use. Oh, you mean outside of Kentucky? Well, absolutely. Okay. I mean, sure. or who you feel like your best competition is, who could be losing people to or not. I mean, but Louisville, obviously, Cincinnati, Knoxville. I mean, there's a lot of cities, even in the western part of the state, Bowling Green or other cities. But just what you feel a fair comparison is. It'd be good data to cease. Without hiring an outside consultant, I don't think we need to do all that. But I'd like to say it. The other thing you have to remember, Kentucky's unique in that we're still the only state that elects a jailer. I understand. You appoint it. Most states have a sheriff who has a full-time police department. And one of the caveats in working in the correctional setting is you work so long in the correctional setting, then you can go to the road patrol. So they have a natural feeder system to keep people coming into the jail. And, of course, their intention is to hope that they come into the jail and like the jail. I understand. But if you could do that for us, that would be helpful just to see. Even northern Kentucky, where you came from. I know there are some comparisons we can do up there. And then my last question, my time's up, is you talked about management being maybe one of the issues while people are leaving. Has your new deputy director helped in any way curb some of that mental management issues? And what else are we doing? Because since I've been on council, I've heard that's the issue, that it's not the higher management. It's in between there. And that things are not being communicated from top to bottom the way they should. That's the best way I can say it. What are we doing? Has the assistant or the deputy director helped in any way to get in those weeds and figure out what's going on? Give us an update on what we're doing to correct that. Absolutely, he's helped. But you've got to remember I took over an institution that has a culture that's been going on for 20 years. So to change culture is a long period of time. Obviously, those issues that you mentioned, yes, we're definitely talking with. I think it's improved. I don't think it's where it needs to be. To be quite honest with you, your staff's still reeling. from when the FBI came in the door. That set them back. That was more of emotional damage done to them than I think anybody even realizes. So they're still reeling from that, but I think that there's an area we have to focus on. I had a captain and lieutenant left this morning for Aurora, Colorado, to attend the National Institute of Corrections for two weeks. I had a major, just came back, spent two weeks. Every year I've sent two people to Sam Houston University for leadership training. I just came back from the Kentucky Jailers Association. I took four line officers there for training. So we're working on those leaderships. We're getting to roll out a new sergeant's leadership program to try to improve all those things. But, yes, we're working on all those things while at the same time trying to manage the operation of the jail each and every day. I understand it's a huge undertaking, but I think management's been the consistently or consistent issue that's been brought to this council since I've been on here 10 years. And, you know, I want to see us make some inroads to that. I know it's just not just as simple as changing bodies and moving assignments. There's a lot more that goes into it. As you said, it's a culture. And I'm not here to tell you how to do your job. That's by no means. But I would like to hear, when I hear from rank and file, that management is improving on the mid-level. Because I think there's some good managers up here, but I think we're missing something in the middle, and I'm not sure what it is. And the good news is we're getting ready to go through another promotional process. We had Major T.R. Gibbs. I think he had 28 years of service to our communities retiring. So that leaves openings for a new captain, new lieutenant, new sergeant, and with that brings new leadership, which is what you're talking about. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Massadi. Director Baylor, one last question. Terminations are 14% this year, and they were 18% from 2011 through 2013. Is there any similarities of reasons why people are being terminated? I don't think there's a common theme other than I think if you'll talk to my staff, we've raised the benchmark. We are holding them to a much higher standard. And we're doing that because recent case laws in my position is to protect our community from civil litigation. So we've raised the bar. And our expectations of our employees are much greater today than it was three years ago. So those that are not stepping up the plate, not doing their job, are finding employment in other places. And it's usually not that we're asking to leave, it's just they're not meeting the standards and we're bringing them in and talking to them. It's not like we don't coach and counsel them. It's not like we don't call them in and say, here's your deficiencies, here's the areas you need to work on. We do that. But some adjust and do well and others don't seem to adjust and then we have to make those tough decisions. I guess that it goes back to the caliber of individual you're hiring, and maybe as we talked about, the compensation, the management process, all those factors, I'm sure, play into it. So hopefully we can, when we get your report, we can get an idea of where we are in comparison to other cities, and hopefully make some better adjustments so we don't have these terminations, and we have a better caliber of individual that's applying for the position. Would you like this report sent to you prior to our next meeting? Because it won't take me until September to get it done. If you do, with Ms. Henson's permission, I'll give it to you or send it to Hillary, and you can send it to everybody. I can do that. That'd be great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Rodney. And I wanted to share my thoughts. I know that, Rodney, you and I have had a lot of conversations. I care a great deal about community corrections. the service they provide to our city, the employees, the hard work that they do. I think, you know, when you look at corrections overall, I think that you've really made some significant improvements to efficiencies and food service, everything across the board has seen a lot of improvement. and I appreciate that. And I know that you're working to control the turnover. And a couple of recommendations from the public safety link was to come up with a plan, which we will put in this committee that you can present to us, to reduce the turnover rate. I think pay plays a definite factor in that. and what Council Member Stenet has heard and brought up is the same that I've heard as far as middle management, I guess, issues. But I think we're moving in the right direction. Now, another recommendation from the Public Safety Link was to have HR conduct the exit interviews. And I know that you've taken on that, and I think that's good that you want to know what's going on. But if an employee requests an exit interview be conducted by HR, that should be allowed, don't you think? Absolutely. I mean, even if it's both. Yeah, we're okay with that. Yeah. And I just think it gives us a better picture of what's going on. But thank you very much. Thank you. No one else signed up to speak. Thank you. Sorry. Next on our agenda is the outsourcing of fire, building maintenance, and I believe there's two presentations, one from fire and one from facilities management. And fire will be first. Yes. Thank you. Jump right in here. Kind of a recap. We were here in February. Not much has changed. We still have 44 structures. 23 of them are fire stations that operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Budgeted, we have a staff of three civilian senior trades workers who provide our maintenance talent with a sworn supervisor. However, since the end of April, we're down to one civilian and Captain King who tries to manage that circus with no help. We have had two of our trades workers leave for different jobs. One retired and one went to another job. and we interviewed for the first replacement just yesterday, so hopefully we'll have our second person up and pitching in fairly soon. Just to remind you that back in 2010, there were three civilian and six sworn personnel assigned to building maintenance, but those folks were moved out in order to up our staffing on our fire trucks when we were short. So the only thing that's really changed since February, obviously, has been that we have a little less help than we do. Now, looking back on our funding, this is the account that we pay for our repairs and maintenance of our fire stations. You'll see it's been fairly stable over the years. We did get a bump this year, which will be used all around town for just truly routine and deferred maintenance issues that we've been putting off over the years. in preparing for this we sat down and spoke with fleet and facilities with director baradarin about how do we establish a baseline for for what is maintenance costs his recommendation was that for what we what is normal in the industry is a couple of dollars a square foot for repairs and maintenance and then also 80 cents a square foot for roof replacements and he said that's what we should be basing our budgets on. So if that were the case with our almost 195,000 square feet of buildings out there, our repairs and maintenance budget would be, requests would be somewhere in a 545 area. Let me back up to this slide that we just had. This is what our maintenance budget has been for the last five or six years. So here's what we pay our people in our building maintenance. These are all civilians. We have our supervisor, when we figure in his benefits, comes out to be about $37, a little over $37 an hour. The skilled trades workers, and these were based upon the place in the pay scale where our last two skilled trades senior workers were, were about $32 and $35 an hour. We do outsource some of our work. Obviously, if you drive by a fire station, one of the things you notice is it's got two big doors on the front, at least. Some of them have many more. But overhead doors consume a lot of our outside building maintenance costs. And as you can see, if we call them Monday through Friday during business hours, we get hit for about $108 an hour for the work that they do, as well as some travel expenses. So those rates there, we do some work. We do engage some people from outside, some independent contractors, and these are the rates that they charge us. Should we have to call them after hours on weekends, those are also the rates that we get charged for those times. And one thing that we have never explored is how much would it cost us to have you on that drop a dime, we need you right now, retainer. When an overhead door fails, if a fire truck or an ambulance can't get through the door, we need to address that pretty quickly. So for us to go to an overhead door company and say, you know, when we pick up the phone and say, we need you now, we get you now, how much would that cost us? We've never explored that because I don't think anyone is going to get us into a contract with us that would provide that in any reasonable amount of money. So I asked Captain King, give us a day in the life of one of our building maintenance people. When I did this part right here, this was pretty much the end of exploration as to outsourcing our maintenance versus covering what we do inside. On this particular day, our senior, this was our supervisor that did this. He started out by spending about four days, four hours rather, working at station two on the overhead doors. We had broken a chain that operates the door. Obviously, he explored it further to find out why is the chain breaking, fixed that, did some reprogramming on the remote openers for those two companies, spent about four hours. At his hourly rate, we paid him about $149. Had we called overhead door for that amount of time, we would have paid about $474. While he was there at the station, he repaired an ice maker. There's a lot of companies that run out of station, too, along with the district officer, so there's an ice maker in that station so that when we get out on the scene, we have some rehab work. You see what we paid for him. He went on out to Station 19, did a little bit more work on a bay door, came back by Station 14, repaired the oven, and that was his daily work, including travel. So in that very elementary exploration of cost, $300 versus almost $900 is pretty simple math to me. we did look back here are some actual figures that we have paid to the overhead door company for these months as well as a heating and air conditioning contractor that we've been using since one of our open trades worker positions is someone that we asked to be licensed in hvac so you can see the kind of amount of money that we have spent when we compare that to the having our people there on call or actually on duty with us. It's a, it's for us, it's a pretty easy decision. Another factor that works into this is if we rely solely on outside contractors, when those contractors are in the fire station, we'll have to have someone there with them. Somebody to let them in, somebody to be with them until they leave. When our employees are going in there. They have access. They know the station. They know station life. And when the companies go out to respond on an incident, they stay there and stay working. So we see a lot of value to our building maintenance people. As in February, they do a lot of work. They keep a lot of buildings open and working every day. Hopefully we can get some more staff in there with our open positions and take a little load off of it. Any questions? Thank you, sir. And we have Council Member Lane. Thanks, Chairman Henson. Chairwoman Henson, excuse me. Yeah, my question had to do with if you outsourced most of the work and you put in the budget, the number you had there on one of your pages. Let's see what that is. Was it $545,000? $545,000. Do you feel like that would cover all the repairs and maintenance that you need for all the stations? I think it would be additional expense because, as I just told you, we would have to have people there to be with those outside contractors as they were in the station. As we speak with fleeting facilities about outsourcing, one of the factors that comes up is that our current civilian staff would be responsible for making sure that the work that the contractors are doing meets the standard and is appropriate. So if we're going to add that amount of money to our repair maintenance budget and not cut our personnel costs, I don't see how that goes down anywhere. Would $545,000 fix it? I have no way of knowing. We're so far behind now. it would probably take several years at that level to get caught up with all the items that our building maintenance staff handles on a daily basis. Are some of the items that we're behind on are capital investment like roof replacement? Absolutely. Those kind of things. How many roofs do you have that are in bad shape right now? You can't count them. I can't count and don't keep track because we have no records to let us know how old some of the roofs are. We really don't. You just recently approved a contract to replace the roof on Station 2. We know that a lot of our other roofs are beginning to get some age on them. You know, it kind of goes with when the call comes in that, you know, it rained last night and we've got light fixtures full of water. It's time to start looking at replacing roofs. We did ask as a capital improvement plan for this past budget year. we put a request in to have a steady stream for roofs and aprons because those are large dollar items that we seem to encounter regularly. You know, if I'm thinking if I'm lucky enough to get 20 years out of a roof, I've got 44 buildings. I need to replace a couple of years. Well, generally a good business practice that private business would use, they would estimate the replacement cost for a roof, and they would appreciate it over a number of years. And each year they would put some money into the fund. So when it goes bad, ultimately the money is sitting there ready to put it back in. I think government has had a tendency to not reserve any money and then just pay it out of our general fund, hoping we have enough to cover it. But I was looking at the numbers. If you have, was it two civilians or one civilian and four sworn officers or sworn firemen, whatever, how have you? No. We have our budgeted numbers are for three civilian trades workers, one supervisor, two seniors. Okay. What is that budget worth annually? With benefits, I'm guessing it would be in the neighborhood of $200,000, a little over $200,000 a year. For five people or four people? Sure, for three. Our sworn captain is going to oversee that budget. Okay. But, I mean, he or she would be working full-time to oversee that, so we're paying them to do maintenance, right? Yes. So you'd have to pay that person and your three civilians. Right. And I thought the civilians were coming in at a higher number on your screen up there, but... The reason I was getting around to that, if you put your personnel that you're hired and then you put what you're spending for, you know, outsourcing and for repairs and maintenance equipment and all that, it would be interesting to see what your total expense is for maintenance now and then what it would cost if you outsourced it. But I see your dilemma. It sounds to me like you're... 24-7, you know, you need to have somebody to immediately respond. You can't wait around until the next day. So, you know, maybe what you're saying, you don't really have an option. You just need to operate a better repair and maintenance program. Maybe that's the answer. I think the term Mr. Baradaran used in February is the best we're doing right now is putting out fires. Right. And that's what we do. We keep the fire stations operating. We don't make any progress. We simply keep them operating. That's all we have the capacity. That's all we have the funding to do. And that's all we've had for several years. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. That's all I have. Council Member Stamett. Thank you, Chief, for coming in today. We appreciate this comparison and update. A couple questions. The prices that you quoted for outsourcing, those are just calling them up, asking them what they charge hourly or what they're currently charging us, I guess, on a per case basis. To my understanding, when I asked Captain King to do that, the fee for the electrician is the only fee that we do not currently use people. We do overhead door, obviously. We use them quite often. We do have plumbing, HVAC people that we are, as we speak, engaging to do repairs for us. I think the electrical contractor's rate probably came from one of our people who does electrical work and says, this is what I would charge you to do this kind of work. Just curious if we took it a step further, though, and asked for a contract to be bid out for those services. I know Jomshe maybe can answer this better. I'm not sure we did. I was just curious if we did that either for all as a package or individually, how much we could buy that rate down. because I know there are companies that do that, that are clients of mine, that don't pay that. I can tell you that. They pay half that, which if we're talking getting those then half, then we're talking those other rates of an employee. So I was just curious if that's an option we could look at. And the other option, do we look at what about other people within government who are already doing those functions? Could they help ever? Are they that busy? I don't know. I'm just asking. I think you'd have to ask Director Baradarin, but my take is that he's pretty busy also. So, you know, again, could we share staff and another part of government? Like you said, though, you know, you want access to the station. There is some advantage to having fire personnel having 24-7 access. I'm just looking at all the options to get the best picture possible. So is that an option, Jumshi? You want to talk about either one? Because don't we do some contractual work on some of these areas for other parts of government for any of these systems, HVAC, electrical, outsource? I can only speak for our group. During the past five years since I've been here, we've noticed we probably have lost close to about 23 positions. Out of those, probably I would say close to about 10 to 11 of them have been what we call skilled trades, electricians, HVAC techs, plumbers, and so forth, as well as a couple of facilities managers because of the budgetary issue, obviously. Right now what we've got, it's bare minimum is what I consider to be just to meeting our day-to-day operational needs. On a part-time basis, when we have a chance, if there is an opportunity or if there is something in terms of emergency, we don't have any issues trying to lend a hand. For example, Scott Kelsey, who is our environmental assessment manager, is currently working with FARM on a couple of projects in terms of identifying potential exposure to some of the older buildings. We're also providing the same thing with some of the facilities with parks and recreation. In terms of skilled laborers, that's also we're at a disadvantage. Like park and recreation is suffering from the same thing. I know for a fact that corrections got a very limited staff. So as I mentioned, if there's an emergency or something that really requires us, we don't have any issues helping out, but that would be at a cost of putting aside some of our current projects. Yeah, I appreciate you telling me that because you also brought up parks and corrections. I think we're all having these building maintenance issues. it. So it seems to me that there would be a way to get under a blanket contract with LFCG for a flat rate and bid out those services. And if fire needed them or corrections needed them or you needed them or parks or whoever that we could call on those contracts and get the work done faster at whatever cost we can negotiate. So, I mean, our CAO's here but would that be something to take a look at? You can look at it two ways. One is what they call a general FM contract, which is a one-stop shop, like pretty much what we do with the two courthouses right now. Meridian, that's a national company, is responsible for day-to-day. Obviously, there's a firm price that you agreed on. It was advertised. We got pretty good companies from outside the city, as well as state, came in, and we're interested. But that would not be a cure-all. That's just to primarily take care of your day-to-day items, janitorial services and cleaning and making sure the systems are running at least operationally. Now, any items that will require some repair, that is an additional cost that will come in. The other one is the one that we have started to use on an as-needed basis are identifying specific systems based on their primary functions. For example, all the data centers, they all use virtually the same systems. We consider those to be mission-critical operations. So we went ahead and last year went through all of them, conducted a condition assessment, found out there were a few issues with them, got those taken care of. Seventh floor in this building, for example, that houses a lot of the data center. And now we have that on what we call the PM rotation with a contractor that comes in three or four times a year as needed, taking care of those issues. That is going to pay dividend long-term in terms of not having any emergency breakdown or being able to also do some predictive maintenance and repairs. That, to me, at this point probably would be our best approach in terms of financially to be able to take a look at this, but also give you some time to be able to get your CIP projects in line and try to get some financial help coming in in order to replace some of the aging systems. At this point, the biggest issue with us and I know with a lot of other groups is not being able not to have the resources to do the preventive maintenance. That is primarily 95% of your problems you got on a day-to-day basis because of that. So that's where you need to concentrate on. And that's the model we're working on right now. But we try to group these items and the services. For example, with the roofing that FAR also is using their contract, we got a price contract with three pretty good roofing companies in town. In terms of providing day-to-day inspections if it needed, spot repairs, and even in some cases complete roofing replacement depending on the size of the job. So those are some of the things that we've already incorporated and there are also a list of other things that we're going to be doing. But the way the language is, they're all made available to parks and recreation as well as fire. The issue at the end of the day is the funding. $150,000 has not even come close to what they need. Yeah, and the bottom line is just that I want to make sure the fire maintenance is taken care of, as well as all the other ones. So they were just focusing on fire. and whatever the best approach to get there in the short term, if we have to outsource, whatever. But in the long term, let's get a permanent solution so that we can do the preventive maintenance and do the things that keep us going and not keep raising that tab because so many things we've deferred, and that tab keeps rising, especially in this building. And I don't think you have enough staff. I know they don't, obviously, with today's discussion. So just trying to figure out the best way to get us there. I think if we did a general contract and outsourced for each of those, I think you'd get a better pricing than what we were showing on Sunday. You'll get a better pricing, but again, at the end of the day, if you don't have the funding, that could be asking for $20 an hour or $50 an hour. It doesn't make it that easy. I'd rather you ask for $200,000 versus a million, so trust me. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Clark. Thank you, Chair. Sure. Council Member Stinnett pretty well asked my question and made a, I think, brought up the topic of contracts, and I was thinking the same thing, so I appreciate that. There's one other question. Chief Hoskin, I see all the figures, and I would like to know what your recommendation would be. We're talking about outsourcing. We're talking about our own employees. What is the solution? What is the best way to deal with this problem? I think it would be a two-pronged approach, to be quite honest with you. I think we have some big problems that, obviously, with the staff we have in our building maintenance division, we can't tackle. So those obviously go out to private contractors. Yeah, at first. And we have some of those projects going on now, and there are more of them that we could obviously, with funding, put off to there. But with essentially 23 houses that never sleep, 24-7, there's a lot of things that go on that we've got to have that staff to be able to send out, either take remedial steps to keep the place open until we get overhead door or a plumber or someone else in, or to just address the smaller issues that come up, seem like on a weekly basis. So I think we're always going to need a building maintenance division that the staff at the fire department can call someone on their cell phone and say, well, you were heading there to do an oven door or something to that nature, but this is something a little bit more of a priority. Go to this other station. And that allows them to address problems and keep the fire stations open. You know, we over the year have had some very talented people who have learned tricks of the trade that can go come in and in a couple hours in the middle of the night make a temporary repair, keep a bay door operating, and then tomorrow we call the overhead door company in to do the true repair. That hybrid method is the only way we're going to operate. We have to have availability 24-7 because those buildings are in operation 24-7. So no matter what we do, we're not going to get rid of the outsourcing because there are going to be things we're always going to have. There are going to be things that we always have. Okay. Would it make sense in terms of budget and the effectiveness of the program to reduce the outsourcing and increase the employees? We need more than three civilian employees, I believe, to maintain 40 buildings, 44 buildings. I do believe that. whether we have to go back to or need to go back to where we had 12 or 13 people working there every day, that may be too much of a luxury. But I will say in those days when we had that level of staff, we did some of the more contractor-type things. We did room additions. We expanded stations. We did some pretty big projects because we had the staff to do that. We have not had those people for four or five years now, so we don't even try to tackle those things. That's kind of what I was talking about. If we moderated some of that to have in-house, we would get rid of a lot of the costs of the outsourcing. I think so. All right. Thank you very much, Chief Hoskins and Chair. Council Member Kay. Thank you, Chair. I want to follow up on comments that a couple of other Council members have already made and hopefully make a point about the difference between our responsibility as a council in the short term and our responsibility in the long term. We've talked a lot about the difference in cost between maintenance and repair and preventive maintenance. It seems to me preventive maintenance is a way for us to invest money that will return in the long term money to this community as we save money in the long term. preventive maintenance is the standard, maintenance is adequate, repairs is simply short-term expense that we have to incur because we haven't done appropriate maintenance and because we don't do preventive maintenance. So I guess my comments are really for my fellow council members. It seems to me when we look at the budget, we ought to be looking to do the best we can in terms of preventive maintenance so that in the long term, we save money for this community. And it's hard for any council, I think, to make decisions that cost money in the short term and only yield in the long term. But I think that's what we need to do. Otherwise, we're simply not giving you the resources you need and John Sheed the resources he needs to adequately maintain our buildings and our fleet and save us money in the long term. Now, having said all of that, I have a very specific question. we've been in conversations off and on about some buildings that are right across the street from the central fire station that we own that are not in good shape that have been in need of either significant repairs or demolition can you tell me what's going on with those buildings let me say one thing I bring this up because they are high visibility They are on a thoroughfare. People see those every day. It also happens to be in my neighborhood. And ironically, they are the home of our building maintenance division. Is that right? Yes. That's the cobbler who doesn't have any shoes for his family. The two-story part of that building is unusable. One of the biggest hurdles we have to that is there are some unusual things that happen in that building in that electricity, water, and even part of the city's fiber optic network run through that building. So when we tear that building down, we have to somehow make accommodations to move that. So that's money. and quite frankly, you've seen our repairs and maintenance budget. To tear that down would take probably more than what we have in the repairs and maintenance budget. I would love to get rid of that building too. The one-story part behind the building where we are still using, you're going to hate to hear me say this, but it needs a roof. So, you know, it's a funding issue, And it's difficult to put money on that building when you have fire stations that are teetering on the brink of not being able to be used. I understand. Thank you for your answer. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. There is no one else signed up. Thank you. So we have another presentation by John Sheed. It'll be a quick one, I promise. If we can get through it in about five minutes. Definitely, depending on the questioning. I just want to provide an update based on a presentation we had a couple of months ago on some of the items that we're moving forward with in terms of facilities management that probably will impact FIRE in a positive way. And also, we've been asked to kind of provide a couple of recommendations on what we think need to happen in order to get... And these are the items that are not really limited to FIRE. It's any group within LFECG that deal day-to-day basis with facilities is going to have to deal with. One thing that we're happy to report is we have selected a company to provide us on a subscription basis, a computerized maintenance management system. This is, in my opinion, probably the most important aspects of building a good maintenance operation. Just to give you an idea, as Chief Hoskins said right now, the biggest issue is trying to figure out some of these buildings, the actual score footage, what are the systems that they contain, when was the last time we did a roofing repair, what is the long-term maintenance needs, as well as having a preventive maintenance program that is going to be coming up on a regular basis, and work orders automatically being issued. What we plan is that we hope by the end of current calendar year to have a system fully implemented that is going to provide services not only to us but also to FHIR as well as the corrections. The system is completely web-based and makes it a whole lot easier for us to be able to store data and most importantly, the customers be able, any place you have access to a computer with the internet, be able to get on site. You'll be getting into an LFECG specific opening page and you'll be able to just by filling a couple of blanks report that you have an issue and it's grouped based on if it's roofing, if it's general trades, if it's HVAC, what have you. Once that work order has been sent in, you'll be provided with a tracking number, just like when you send something via UPS. And it will give you time to time, it will give you updates on what the status of your work order is and if somebody's been assigned to do the work. The beauty of it is that all of this is going to be handled, hopefully paperless, because that way those work orders go directly to each trade supervisor. and he or she can go ahead and assign a technician to it based on the tech's workload and where they're at and when they might be able to fit that in. Obviously, emergency type of services get priority and they get taken care of much quicker. The funding for the first year, we've been able to find some sorts of funding within our current fiscal year budget that we're going to pay for all of it. And from second year on, then each group would be responsible to request the needed funding and be able to fund this. Now, again, if it's council's wish for us to be the primary group that's going to be asking for funding for it, we don't have any issues whatsoever, so that would be y'all's call. But I believe this would be definitely moving us greatly in the right direction with a system that's going to provide you with a lot of information about how you're doing, creating internal benchmarks, and so forth. Next thing we really feel like is needed specifically for FHIRS operation is to conduct a facility condition assessment. This would, what we're asking for is what is called Level 1, which is a, I hate to use the term basic, but that's what it is. It's primarily having some tradespeople and consultants doing a quick walkthrough and verify some of the data and assign a condition score to each of these items that you see up there in industry known as Uniforma 2, kind of specifying specific systems associated with every building. Or you can do what we call a modified. Depending on the source of funding and so forth, You can actually go through that list and pick two or three that you think are most important one, and that's all you can afford right now, and that is fine. In my opinion, your biggest and the most important, just based on the fact that the fire department, the fire stations also house firefighters, so it's occupied 24-7, is making sure you go through your environmental with every one of those buildings, especially the ones that were built before 1978. identifying any potential issues with asbestos and lead obviously even with a newer building you want to do some in in terms of mold and so forth the biggest issue with the biggest contributor for the mold issue obviously are your roof systems and moisture penetration based on what I was looking at on the ongoing rate right now I'm confident that about 120 to 125 thousand dollars should provide us with sufficient funding to conduct a facility condition assessment, an independent one. The timeline for it, we suspect from the time we're given the funding until we get somebody who is qualified to do the job and provide a report and a final report after the council be six to nine months depending on availability and the seasonality of the job. We were thinking about potential funding source and that is the only thing that came to my mind right now because there are no other funding sources available. I would like to recommend that this item at least be considered when the Council is taking a look at the potential fund balance for the FY214. This, I'm not going to go through every one of these items, shows you what potentially a facility condition assessment report will contain. There are going to be a lot of data in it. Most importantly, in my opinion, is the items, the third item that says deferred maintenance and capital renewal cost estimates. It will look at every facility and it will give you a full report depending on the roofing, environmental, electrical, life safety and what have you, and also adds a price tag and give you some options on what each of those deficiencies will be costing you should you move forward. Also, it will give you a very good basic system by which you can build future CIP reports and capital needs on. I believe that will give you a really good roadmap at least for the next 10 years. One thing we're looking at is the current maintenance funding And as Chief Hoskins showed you, you're talking about 110, 115,000 to this year, which is 150 averages. And we've been very generous, 50 cents per growth score footage. That is not even barely adequate. Just looking at what they've got right now, there are a few roofs that are beyond repair that need to be replaced. You've got some environmental testing and remediation that's going to have to be done, in my opinion. You're probably going to need an additional $300,000 added to what's been already given to FIRE in order to at least start moving with some of these projects that have been deferred for too long. Potential source, again, I hate to go back to the fund balance issues, But in my opinion, that's the only one that we could come up with, but I rely on your judgment in terms of what might be appropriate funding for this. Additional recommendation, as Chief Hoskins said, and we talked about this a little bit earlier, staffing level of even if they were having three full-time staff, I don't consider it to be even close to be where it needs to be. We were looking at some other operations, and based on fire department, the number of buildings they've got, we really believe that at least for the next two years, adding four full-time staff each year for at least the next two years should put them at good footing in terms of being able to possibly do even flex time, where you can have four, 10, 10-hour per day type of shifts, expands your service period per day and so forth. You can have people even coming in later on during the day if they need to. But I believe that this is what really would get them to the next level where they need to be in terms of keeping up with the PMs and reports. The other thing is that the CIP, A lot of groups look at CIP as just a pain during the budget process. You just plug in numbers and send them in. But to me, it's a wonderful tool. But in my opinion, the fire department's CIP requests should be very heavy on repair and maintenance of the existing facilities, just simply because of the shape and condition they are. The current fire stations, let's face it, even if they get approval for the next three or four new fire stations, used to get stations that are substandard and they definitely need to be brought up to standard in order to provide the services to the firefighters. The other one's obviously something I think that's been discussed through the link is looking at the operational cost reductions and consolidation opportunities by taking a closer look at all of these. but that's outside of our scope. That's pretty much, as I mentioned, it's a quick update and recommendations. Be glad to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you, John C. Sure. No one signed up to speak, but I did have a question. And you talked about doing an assessment of would that just be fire? At this point, yeah. The concentration was to really get a better handle on what some of these fire stations. What the issues are. And have you done that on other facilities, government? I've done that in my other life, but we've been doing it on as-needed basis a little bit here a little bit there with our own buildings we're not even close to be where we need to be feel like in fire stations terms because just because the condition they're in and the amount of deferred maintenance this is something that you you got to bring in a good amount of resources immediately and be able to get that report done quickly to identify what are the most immediate items that needs our help. I guess we'll keep this item in committee. I still don't feel like we have the issues solved, but we've run out of time. Again, if there's one item, in my opinion, at least for the current fiscal year, they're in desperate need of additional funding just for their maintenance items. That is, to me, imperative. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I think we have about three or four minutes before work session begins. Would you prefer to adjourn, or we could go through items in committee? Motion to adjourn. And we can do this when we return from break. There's several items that need to be removed from committee, but I'm okay with waiting. We'll go through a few of them. So I would need a motion to remove abandoned housing. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. And a motion to remove tenant transition and household disposal. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. A motion to remove fire station locations and ISO ratings. Do you have a motion? It's different. It's an analysis, a location, fire station location. Okay, I'll make a motion. Take that off. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. And remove the Division of Police Staffing Plan. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. And a motion to remove animal remains on private property. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Motion to remove emergency operations center update. Well, you want to leave that in committee. That's fine. And that is it. So thank you, council members. Madam Chair, I would make a motion to remove compiling a list of safe places people can go to in times of weather or emergency needs. we can't even do that for our own employees I don't think we can do it for the citizenry so moved thank you all in favor thank you Thank you.