Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I would like to call to order the meeting of social services and public safety committee for May 2, 2023. The first item on our agenda is the approval of the March 14, 2023 committee summary. Does anyone have any additions or corrections? Motion approved All those in favor Any opposed that motion passes, thank you Second on our agenda we have an item about crime reduction technology and the Presentation will be from commander great house who is here with us today from Lexington Police Department, but first I want to ask I'm going to ask Councilmember Baxter to say a few words of introduction. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, everybody, for joining us today. I just wanted to take a brief moment to remind everyone that this presentation is for informational purposes only. It does not require any action on Council's behalf. So I want to thank Commander Greathouse for keeping everybody really informed and offering us all the opportunity to come over and take a peek at this technology before this presentation. So without further ado, thank you. Thank you. I've got a quick PowerPoint to go over where we are in our technology upgrades in the police department. So we're going to start here. We're going to start with our flock LPRs. As of right now, we're more than halfway deployed of the new 75 towards the total number of 100. We expect to have full implementation in the coming weeks. The police department has teamed up with FLOC themselves to actually develop a community education video that is up on our transparency page. We've also teamed up with Council Member Gray to produce one of those videos, which is up on her page and also on ours. A map of the LPR locations has been provided on the department's transparency page as of today. So that map of all the locations is actually up for public view. And our LPR statistics will continue to be updated on our transparency page. And that is a picture of what the map looks like of the LPR locations, and that does include all 100 of the locations. Rolling into traffic cameras. traffic cameras the infrastructure has been around and been built out for over the past 20 years in 2016 there was a page actually provided for the public to view those cameras access to the traffic cameras for law enforcement purposes is public safety and event driven and also investigative research traffic engineering manages those city cameras and the infrastructure and the deployment locations for the purposes of their traffic management. Server updates were completed with FY23 funds to allow recording. Those are now recording, and Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives set the retention for those at 60 days. Our law enforcement access is restricted, and according to policy, we conduct audits. If evidence is taken from that, it's actually put in our evidence management system, and all those persons that have access to that are actually run out of the intelligence unit. These cameras cannot be used for speed or red light enforcement, and that's by Kentucky law. We have continued our community partnership meetings with our community partners with ACLU, Human Rights Commission, and NAACP on the development of our policy. We've also made multiple presentations to the community and our community partners as of today. We're up to 37. Those are some larger businesses, the smaller businesses, local media. We made a presentation at the Mayor's Neighborhood Summit this past weekend, the Lexington Chamber of Commerce Board, other local law enforcement partners to include other first responders, and council members and staff. and this is a map of what the cameras actually look like on a map when you click on the link for lexingtonky.gov backslash traffic cameras. So our technology integration is something we're looking for for this year's budget and it's FUSIS. FUSIS is a software solution that supports real-time intelligence ecosystem that unifies public safety assets while also allowing community partnership integration that integration is voluntary and this fusis technology or platform actually integrates all of our technology to include lpr traffic cameras and community cameras the future fusis registry allows voluntary public and private partnership integration Lexington residents would have the option to register their cameras and essentially just let the police department know that there is a camera system there. If there is a crime that occurs in that area, it allows us to be able to send a notification out to them at their most convenient platform, whether that be a text or an email. We would ask for a specific timeframe then to look if they actually have that footage, then they're actually able to upload that into a platform that is secure and we're able pull that down and put that in our evidence management system businesses also can integrate their systems by purchasing a core device from fusis that would allow the police department to monitor and or look at feeds that are incident driven or case driven the police department is only going to look at these feeds if it's in in relation to a public safety event this program is voluntary it is not mandatory law enforcement access to this is going to be strictly managed through the real-time intelligence center and it's only going to be used for public safety events lexington police department has created a real-time intelligence center which within the intelligence unit that manages these technologies there has been an ask for two police intelligence analysts to help staff that on a full-time basis at least during the daytime as we move forward. The mission of the real-time intelligence center is to provide real-time up-to-minute information for first responders on calls within the city and these could be anything from violent crime, collisions, active shooter incidents, public safety, community events, missing persons, fire hazard response, severe weather issues or disasters and it is all this is driven towards providing efficiency for our community. The real-time, next slide, Real-time Intelligence Center, this will create efficiency for the community, as I mentioned in the previous slide, improve situational awareness, aid investigations, leverage and strengthen partnerships within our community, increase safety for first responders, and ultimately provide the safer community through the integration of these technologies. These technology investments will also support services like the fire department, emergency services, traffic engineering, DEAM, and other local law enforcement agencies. in the link and I'll play the video when we're done with this and it'll give you about a two minute and 30 second quick little video on what FUSIS actually is. These are some of the communities that we have talked to and or visited that actually have these technologies to include LPR and FUSIS. One of the bigger ones here that I want to point out is Cobb County, Georgia. In the last 23 months they were able to solve 100% of their homicides and that is that article I think was at the first of March. They were able to solve 62 homicides with the integration of technology in their community. Right now, Atlanta, Georgia, where FUSES actually started, has over 16,000 registered cameras and over 15,000 integrated cameras within their real-time intelligence center. And we will continue to update our information on our transparency page. So with that, I'll play the video, if you can play the video real quick, and then I'm open for questions. Smart cities thrive on intelligence, and the most powerful form of intelligence available to a city is video. But till now, the fusion of public and private video was impossible without millions of dollars of investment, thousands of hours of custom integration, and new cameras and software. Every day, thousands of calls are made to 911 centers, but 911 operators and first responders are stuck working with limited information regarding the location and nature of situations as they unfold. And the time spent gathering intelligence leads to lost property and lives. Enter FUSIS. FUSIS combines all public and private video resources into one common operating system in minutes with very little setup time and no change to the camera systems in place. It starts with the FUSIS core. Within seconds, FUSIS detects, analyzes, and connects every camera on the building's network and builds a separate secure feed to a single web-based platform known as FUSIS One. The video feed is securely encrypted and transmitted either by an ongoing live stream or on demand based on an alert. Policy-based sharing ensures video is only transmitted when required and adheres to the privacy considerations of its users. For example, schools may choose to limit video sharing to emergency situations like an active shooter event, and unlike other video systems, FUSIS brings internal cameras onto your platform as well. Businesses may choose to share live video across a multi-campus environment while sharing only on alarm to first responders. The FUSIS camera registry also enables entire communities to collect and securely share camera locations and recorded video evidence between private and public sources. In the event of a theft, for example, police can automatically request footage. The store owner can securely share recorded as well as live video feeds to aid in the investigation. Plus, FUSIS This goes beyond video, enabling field-based users to transmit their location, send panic alerts, receive image and text alerts, and communicate directly with Fusus One via an iOS or Android compatible app. Fusus resides at the intersection of public and private video and IoT, building bridges within communities, making smart cities smarter, and keeping their residents safer. And that concludes my part of the presentation. I'm open for questions. Thank you very much. Colleagues, I'll entertain questions. Please request to speak. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commander, for the presentation. Just a couple of quick questions. In the video, it said that the information or the access to the videos are policy-based sharing. Can you talk a little bit about that? So what speaks to that is the owner of the device, so private businesses purchase a core device, and they want to share that video feed with us. It comes with whatever restrictions they want to impose. So if they want to allow full access, they can allow full access. if they want to have it during only certain business hours they're allowed to do that it's completely scalable and up to them okay so and then you also said during the presentation that these aren't actively monitored they're they're monitored once an incident or an event is taking place can you explain to us how that how that's going to work or how it works so unless there's a call for service or there's a special event which requires a police presence we're not going to be looking for looking through the cameras, just looking to see what's going on. Our people have plenty of other work and other jobs within the agency to keep them fully occupied. So they only respond in the real-time intelligence center when they're actually they call for service. So if there's a stolen vehicle that may be located or a missing child or there may be a major wreck or there may be a hazmat incident, that's when they're going to go into that real-time intelligence center, pull up the available cameras, and feed out intelligence, real-time intelligence, to the officers that are responding and provide other backup information that may be gained through other social media or news outlets or things like that and provide that information to the responders that are actually at the scene. Okay, okay. So, you know, I think that's real important for the public to hear as we talk about this technology and how it's going to be used. So it's not, every camera is not currently being monitored. is going to be monitored and the center is going to be activated once an incident is occurring in real time. I know you are still working on the policy. The retention portion of the policy, how is that going to work as far as how long video is going to be kept, how long it's going to be admissible how long or how far back we can go and research or you all can go back and research incidents how does the time that's actually set by statute that's actually 60 days so we are required to keep those for 60 days after the 65 after the 61st day they disappear they just roll right over right over top of each other if there is an incident or a case where we need to go back and look for a certain piece of evidence if we find that in video form that will be taken off and put in our evidence management system, that now becomes part of the case, which is evidence. So then it is kept for the duration of that case until it is actually adjudicated. Okay. And you said statute, that state statute in regards to video evidence, is that what that's referring to? Yes, it's actually set by Department of Library and Archives. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. I have a few more questions, but I'll circle back. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me. No, I'm not on this committee. Commander Greathouse, can you tell me a little bit about the process involved for officers to get access to video recordings for investigative purposes? Walk me through what those steps are, please. Sure. So as I mentioned, the management of the video recordings is actually through the intelligence unit. Each one of those detectives is handbicked by the chief himself, so we have the cream of the crop in our intelligence unit. what the detective will do or an officer will actually submit a form that form will include a case number a date a time and an incident location where they need to have research done our detectives in the intelligence unit will then take that look back at that specific time frame and that location to see if there actually is evidence that fits their their case they're working on if they do find it they will then download that and put that into our evidence management system so you don't have text messages or emails floating around it actually is managed through our evidence management system which has audit trails so we know when video was pulled and when it was actually booked in essentially booked into evidence and kept there and then that you can log and look and also see when people view that in the evidence management system. Okay. So the investigating officers don't have basically just access to the system. No. They have to make a request for that video. Nobody inside the Lexington Police Department has access to those videos except for the intelligence unit. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for the presentation. A couple of questions. The servers and stuff. So are we storing two months of data locally, or do we have, are we going to be, is there going to be some sort of cloud component that we may incur monthly fees? I just want to make sure you've calculated all that in. So the good thing is we ask for enough money to buy servers so they live here within the Lexington Fader Mechanic Government. So we own those servers. There will be a maintenance fee, which I don't know what those are. It's going to be nominal from year to year. But we actually own the servers and we own the hardware. So there is no other fees outside of what we've already paid. And you feel confident that you can store two months a day? We feel confident that there is plenty of space there to store the 60 days of the cameras that we have now, and then it allows expansion for traffic engineering moving forward. At some point, somewhere down the line, I'm sure, depending on the number of cameras that are out, we may have to upgrade or add another rack, but I think right now we've got plenty of space. Great. Thanks. Do you – so the two-months concept, so there's going to be like an auto purge, it sounds like, unless you've already logged that you need something for evidence. So it kind of forces us to pull everything that we could ever think of as evidence for within two months, right? Because if something happens in the third month of your investigation, you determine that, oh, you know, we could find that over here. It's too late. That's correct. Is that true? Okay. Okay, and that's kind of by state statute? That is correct, yep. We have to keep it for at least 60 days. We think 60 days is where we need to be as far as the retention. Okay, all right. But you could go longer if you wanted to or could you not? The agency would have the option to, yes, but as of right now, the minimum requirement is 60 days. Okay, all right. And then my last thing is, and I kind of harp on this all the time, and I mentioned it to you guys, And when we looked at this, and I think it's great. First of all, I think this type of using technology to help make people more efficient in what they do, I think that's what it's intended for. And I'll kind of continually say when you have an increased efficiency over here, because you're using technology that costs X, there's usually a decrease in manpower needed to manage that efficiency. And I don't know exactly how that works in city government, but typically I would say if I needed 600 people, I maybe only need 590 because I'm going to be so efficient. And that's just something I'm just kind of laying on the table. I don't know exactly if you've thought about how it's going to assist your people, and how much time it's going to save, even if you've done time studies or anything like that. And I know you're looking at adding two people to do that probably are going to be data analysts that kind of deal specifically with the system. And is there two people that you can take out of the picture somewhere else? Just curious. Well, I'll speak to specifically the analysts. The analysts are needed for the number of cases that request that we anticipate we're going to get from our detectives. just for reference right now there are hit runs detectives there's two of them they work about 250 cases per month that's large specifically with major intersections being where most of these hit runs actually happen so there's going to be a need for them to actually go in and look at that video that's time that takes a lot of time to go find that stuff and then you have to look at how does that actually transition from them doing that job and I spoke about everybody has more work to do than we have people than when an actual incident that is live happened, they're going to have to stop what they're doing and then go there. So as far as the time management goes and the number of people that we would potentially not need, I can't speak to that as of right now because we don't know what we're going to get into until we actually have that physically, the machine up and running, essentially. That's it. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Fogel. Thank you, Chair, and thank you. I'm sorry, Plumman, your name disappeared. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Commander Greathouse. This might have been in the initial presentation that we saw. So we have this infrastructure in place over the past 20 years. How many of these actual traffic cameras does that include? I'm not sure the actual number. There's, I think, 135 intersections that are covered right now. I know that if we had all the video feeds available to us, we have more video feeds than we have people actually on the agency to look at them all as far as the surveillance goes. So based on the intersection, how many cameras would be at that particular intersection? What was that number again? 135 intersections. Intersections. One of those has a quad. Intersections. Okay, and I know you've done 37 presentations to kind of get the word out there. So your next step looks like you would be an outreach to the community if somebody wanted to register their camera. Is that correct? Well, that wouldn't be until actually we have a signed agreement in place with FUSES. So we actually can't start that process and have our webpage developed by them until we actually have a signed agreement. Okay, any timetable on that? We're hoping in the next month or two. Yeah. It would be budget, that's right. And then also, you said it's going to cost a business to purchase one of those core. How much would that be? So the initial cost for four feeds, which probably for most businesses would get what we would like to have the public forward-facing cameras. It's $350 for the first purchase, which includes the core and then the first year subscription. And then it's $150 every year after that, as long as the police department is a customer of FUSES. What that does is it provides the customer also the ability to have a platform where they can actually pull their cameras up and view them. So they actually get a mobile platform, as I spoke about in the video, where if they don't have a good management system, maybe they have a login or it's cumbersome, it makes it a little bit more easier for them to be able to look at their own cameras and manage their own feeds. But for the public, there's no charge on it? For the registry itself, there is no cost to that. It's just essentially you register saying, I have a camera and I'd like to help if you ever need help in my area. Okay, and I guess when the time comes, there will be an outreach or a marketing plan to the community as well to businesses on how to get involved in this. We will continue our public outreach and education up until the rollout and even after that. Okay, great. You answer my questions. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Fogel. Thank you, Chair. Can we start with the flat cameras? Are the flat cameras in front of Alcove Apartments, which are the new apartments on Russell K. Road? Is that the Lexington Police Department, or is that privately owned already? They have two flat cameras. I was on tour yesterday. Where are those parts located? Russell K. Road, the new housing units on Russell K. Road, is that privately owned? If they were on private property, they would be privately owned. Okay, thank you. And is there any new data using the flat cameras since the last time you all presented to us? Our data is updated and put on our transparency page, I will say on a weekly basis, but we updated as quickly as we can. Okay, but you don't have anything new and exciting for us to hear right now? Just go to the page? Not already on the page. Okay. Okay. So with the 60 days that we talk about that the information will be held with the new intelligence, I know that the open investigations, the investigations by the police department takes longer than 60 days. So does that mean that that information will not be stored in an open investigation? So if there is a video that is pertaining to an investigation and a detective makes a request to have that video preserved, then it will be preserved as a piece of evidence. Or someone's attorney can make that same request? Can someone's attorney make that same request to preserve that information? All those videos are subject to open records, yes. Okay, thank you. We're doing really good now. Traffic cameras. Who created that policy mentioned for the traffic cameras? So we have a policy that we developed on the video management system, which includes all of traffic cameras and also closed-circuit television. So any video that we would have access to, that policy. Was there any community input? We had input from the ACLU, the Human Rights Commission, and the NAACP, yes. And can you please state to this council what their decision was? Because I know the decision. were they in support or were they against these intelligent units? I can speak specifically to the Human Rights Commission because I was copied on that email that they did support our effort. I did not get copied on the other emails from the other two. And when did you meet with them? It's probably been about three weeks ago, I think. And the ACLU and the NCAA? They were all there together. Okay, and so can I just quote for the council that they're not in agreement with this intelligence system? I'll just quote that for the council. That's not even a question for you. Can you define what, and the question is, I'm in First District, so a lot of folks in First District are really concerned with privacy. They're really concerned. We know we need policing. We know that. And we know that we have, I know that we have 20 cameras that's in our community. And this, the intelligence, will that connect to the flock cameras? So first I'll speak to the question you had earlier about the organizations that we met with. First of all, I don't want to or intend to speak for them. I don't want to say whether they support it or didn't support it. I would say that we met with the three organizations. It's the ACLU of Kentucky, it's the Lexington Human Rights Commission, and the Lexington chapter of the NAACP. We provided a presentation of the Real-Time Intelligence Center, all the same information most of you have seen. We provided them with a draft version of the policy. We did receive some feedback from the ACLU of Kentucky when requested change that we did make. I will say that when we did the policy for the flock cameras, we did the same thing and also shared the policies then. And from the discussions we had had with them on the flock policy, we had already received some feedback that they had had from that policy that we went ahead and incorporated into the video management system policy. So some of the same language that had been suggested before was already put into that policy. I'm sorry. So can I state for the record that I have spoken with them and they are not in agreement with this policy? And so that's what I want to state. And we had testimony from the ACLU at the podium that clearly stated that they weren't in support. So let me just move on to my next question because I'm on the time frame. Please. So you said, is there no price to the citizens? They do not have to pay a price to get cameras and to tap into the police department to help assist in investigations. There's not a cost? So for the registration, no, there is no cost. Okay, so we found that it was $150 a year because I've been digging into this information. Council Member, can you sign up again if you want to? Okay, I will. Thank you so much. Thanks, and thank you for sticking with me. Appreciate you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. I'll just follow up with that one question where you said there's not a cost. That's with the FUSIS program, and how does that work that you register, and there's not a cost for people who want to join on to that? So I need to make this clear. there's actually essentially two different groups within the fusis platform there's a registration that is the people that do not want to share their feeds with the police department so in other words give us essentially live feeds if there was an incident happening we wouldn't be able to look live at their cameras that is a registration that is zero cost so if you have like a home security system or your business that you just don't want to have access to you just want somebody you want the police department to know there's a starting point i'd be willing to help but you need to ask That's for registration. There's zero cost. If you wish to integrate your cameras with the police department, that is a different category. Those are the people that want to purchase the core device with the yearly subscription, and then they want to be able to share access or some access with the police department for us to view those cameras on a remote basis, either live or recorded. So I hope that makes that clear. There's actually two different categories. And what's the cost in that second one? The second one is the core device, the smallest core device they have is $350 for the first year and then $150 for the remaining service after that. So per year after that. Okay. Thank you. I hope that, and you, Council Member Fogel, come back and follow up, but I think that should help answer those questions. I want to talk about open records because I have to think now that we're going to have more access to this, that we'll probably have more requests for open records. and do you all anticipate that? And if you do, do we have enough people to answer those? Because those can be timely, I'm sure. Through our estimations, we believe that the number is not going to grossly go up because those requests are already essentially a blanket form that comes in that says that we want for specifically traffic accidents, the body cam reports, and then any traffic camera information you may have. We just don't have that information. So we don't anticipate those going up grossly under a large number of those. And we feel that the staff we have now is adequate to handle any increase that we do see already. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Worley. Thank you, Chair, for the recognition. I'm not on this committee. Commander, thanks for the presentation. And a few things that I want to make sure I'm clear on and that the public is clear. So these, the traffic engineering cameras that are going to be able to be utilized through FUSIS, these are not new cameras, correct? These are existing cameras that traffic engineering already has. Yes. And how long do you know that those have been in operation by traffic engineering? I think they've developed that layout over the last 20 years. So a long time we've had these cameras. And FUSIS is just a technology that's going to allow the police department then to, in investigatory situations, be able to use that information that's already being videoed. Yes. But I want to point out, you made clear that the use of this policy is all through the intelligence center policies and procedures. So the triggering of going to look at what one of these cameras might be seeing is only in a, you used a public safety event, was the quote you said. So this is not a continual surveillance. That is correct. So there would have to be something triggered that then would cause an investigator in the intelligence department to say, we need to pull this particular traffic engineering camera and see what may or may not have happened. That is correct. and I think because FUSIS is going to allow for the use of all of our different technologies, I think it's to make clear the differences in the technologies. These are not new flock cameras, correct? That is correct. Again, traffic engineering cameras and their placement use direction is all under traffic engineering for the purposes of traffic engineering, not a police department placement, correct? Yes, sir. And I think you showed a map that showed that these are pretty well pervasive across the entire city. Would that be your assessment of these traffic engineering cameras? So FUSES then, and the cost of that was $150,000, is that correct? Yes, sir. that then just allows the technologies to all be brought into a centralized, usable way for the intelligence department to then say, well, we had this hit from this camera, we had this license plate reading information, we had this officer got this report from this particular area. Is that what I'm understanding that correctly? Essentially, it puts everything into what they call one pane of glass, so it integrates everything into one platform. And the efficiency that the Councilmember Savigny was talking about and the manpower. So it's been described to me that there's still going to be boots on the ground police work, knocking on doors, asking for witnesses, what they saw. But this might make that more expedited, whereas you know where there might be a private camera or you might have seen an eyewitness in a vehicle that you could speak with. Is that the idea of how this could make the efficiency of investigation? Absolutely. Yeah, police work, good old-fashioned traditional police work is not going away. This is just a technology that's going to help us get there faster. So in a situation where we are officers short in our authorized force, this would help those patrol officers and investigators be more efficient and using their time and trying to potentially solve these cases. Absolutely. So anything that extends our public safety capabilities I think is a great thing. I think this is an exciting opportunity, and I'm looking forward to see how it rolls out. And I just wanted to make sure I got that right. Did you say Cobb County, Georgia, using this system, it was able to solve 100% of the homicides in that community? Yes, sir, over the last 23 months. How many homicides was that? 62, if I'm not mistaken. They solved 62? 62 homicides, yes. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair. and thank you, Commander Franson, for these questions. I guess I share some of the same concerns in regards to the open records request. I feel like we need to set some expectations about what is going to be eligible for open records request because if folks think these cameras are recording, if they have a personal incident that they would like to go back and see if a traffic camera picked up, that's not something that's eligible for open records request. with the police department or city government, period, is it? Those are set in statute of what they actually have to, or what their request needs to have. It needs to be very specific on what exactly they're trying to look for, date, time, and location. Okay. Yeah, and I think that's something that we're going to have to work out with and communicate with the public over time, because I can see open records requests coming in for a variety of different reasons that they think these cameras are all live and recording all the time. The other thing I kind of would like somebody to speak to is can the department lay out how this technology will impact communities that already feel like they're over-policed? How will this technology impact those communities? The FUSES platform, is that what you're speaking of? Yes, sir. I think the chief's going to make his way down here. I will say one thing before he gets down here is it is voluntary. So it's not a requirement that anybody or everybody has to sign up and integrate their camera system. Hello, everybody. It's good to be back. Thank you, Chief. As far as being over police, I don't know if we can ever get rid of that or offset that. I think what you need to do is you need to take a balanced approach. And I think that's what we do. The traffic cameras are there for traffic reasons. The flock cameras are there for public safety reasons. We took the tack of placement for the flock cameras looking at where crime happens. I think if you do that and you're focusing on areas that you believe or you think is over-policed, I think also you have to look at those might be areas where people are over-victimized too. So we do have to look at that. And if we're going to police fairly and just, I think we need to take into account what the victims want as well. And I think that's what we did with this whole program. And Chief, the other thing that I was shown and told in regards to this technology is that it may create a situation where if you have enough evidence to know exactly who you're looking for, It keeps other folks that aren't the ones that you're looking for from being harassed, detained, or whatever. Can you speak to that? That is correct. And like Commander Greathouse said, it makes things more efficient. You know, before this technology, we would get a call of maybe a blue Toyota or something like that. Well, how many blue Toyotas are there? There's probably quite a bit. This technology can pinpoint. It's a blue Toyota with this license plate. It's a blue Toyota that maybe has a dent in the side or something like that. That technology helps us be more specific. Therefore, we're not stopping. Every blue Toyota, we're stopping the blue Toyota that needs to be stopped. And I think that's something that folks would want to know that this technology can prevent. Because I think the comments and the concerns about communities that feel over police, that this is just another. And what I would like to say to that is we're not constantly watching it. we get information in that directs us to a certain area where a crime occur or where there's a public safety need. So we're not just sitting there watching people. And that's, I think, what's confusing people that think that they're going to be watched all the time. We're only going to be looking at that when there's a need for us to look at it. Yes, sir. And I'm going to ask somebody from the department to get with me about the policy. I think the policies that we put in place when a new tool comes online is what we use to protect the folks that have the greatest concerns about these new tools. So I'm just going to ask somebody to circle around. And we have that policy. And after meeting with the other groups, we're still waiting for their input to see if we have to change some things in the policy. And I know we work very well with the Human Rights Commission and AACP. and ACLU. And I'll just have to say I don't think they're against the policy. They want a real written policy. They want us to be able to explain why we do things in a policy. Most of the time when I talk to some of these groups, the feeling I get from them and I don't want to speak for them or anything like that is that generally there's an opposition to surveillance. period. And we're trying not to be surveillance. We're trying to be proactive and better reactive to address issues of public safety. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Fogel. Thank you. We're not going to be leading up to facial identification and all of that through this intelligence, are we? Is that the next FUSIS does not integrate any facial recognition in there. Okay, that is such a good answer. In this statement, it says Lexington Police Department has created real-time intelligence center. So it's already created? Yes. Okay, and on your two analysis, so they're not going to be surveying the city with anticipation or waiting on a crime to occur. the two analysis will be activated when there's a call coming in? Is that how this works? So the analysts will be doing processing those requests that come in for investigators. And they want to see if there's a video that's pertaining to the case. They will process those and then put those in the digital evidence management system. If there's a call for service, if there's an incident that is active, they will then transition to that and work that incident, provide that intelligence to the responders. Okay, so the beauty that I have out of this is that it's traffic cameras, and I know they're out on Nicholasville Road and all over Lexington, which is great, because the people in our community, I can say to them, you know, people out in Heartland, if there's a stoplight out there, if something happens, then it'll show. It'll show on the south side. It's not only on the north side. So hopefully I can put some people to rest. I'm still not comfortable with it, but any time Council Member Worley speaks with his attorney voice and puts it all in perspective, then he sways me over a little bit, and whoever else has that ability on council. So we just had a homicide that is devastating in our community. there's not a stoplight over there and we know that shots farred was called in and that has devastated our community on the north side. Plus it was a student that I was teaching at Bryan Station through the JAG class and just the fact that shots farred, shots farred. And then I was told that they found him the next day and he died an hour after that, which means he's laid in that in caps with Parker all night bleeding to death. So I'm just devastated over that. And so whatever we can do, thank you for helping me see a different perspective because we do feel over police. And then it will hold police accountable for their actions also. This will help us not only to solve crimes but to make sure that the police is doing it in the proper way. So thank you. That's all the questions I had. I had more, but he killed it. Thank you. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to wrap up a little bit and really just say thank you for wanting to be in front of this and provide us as much information as we possibly can. And the fact that you guys have had 37 community engagement opportunities with council members and the media and other concerned businesses and things like that is amazing. And I really commend you all for doing that. I was curious if you could tell me. I know that you mentioned that there are, and this statistic is mind-boggling to me, that there are 250 hit and runs every month. and probably a lot of them are on Nicholasville Road, which is my district, so I'm really excited about this. Are there any other potential benefits to this, like kind of extras that we would get besides just solving violent crimes? Like I know if we could solve hit and runs, that would be amazing as well. Is there any other added benefits that you foresee? I've seen it a lot. uh there's probably some that we don't even know about that is going to benefit for the community one that i can speak of specifically is we had an we actually given a presentation to a government employee and happened to know they mentioned that they travel a certain route out of town every day and while we were giving the presentation we pulled that camera up and there actually was an accident there wasn't an officer there rush hour friday five o'clock i'm sure nobody wants to sit in traffic anymore and they have to well the intelligence center now can can provide real-time information to those first responders and say, this road is completely blocked, so let's start a couple tow trucks that way. May say five minutes, but five minutes saved is a good thing. So we see that as a benefit. We see a benefit to potential responding to hazmat situations. Maybe there's an accident where they tanker in a nasty substance spills. Well, that information needs to go out as quickly as we can to both the fire department and to Deem and to the police department. When you think about wind direction, we need to say, hey, we can zoom in on the placard and see exactly what that is, provide that information so they can curtail the way they're going to respond to that scene safely for the people that are there. I think that's great. And I think, like you said, we don't have a full understanding of what benefit this is going to be to the community. So I'm really excited about that. You know, I've said since I joined council that one of the most frustrating things that the government does is operate in silos. And so for us to have a technology that integrates all of these systems that we currently are paying for, but utilizing each of them at the highest level that we can is the best use of taxpayer dollars that I can think of. So I'm really excited and hopeful that this will be approved in the budget so that we can move forward. And once again, I just want to thank you guys for your hard work on this. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, and thank you for your work on this. And once again, thank you for the presentation. I just want to make a few comments. First of all, I think you all did a fabulous job of showing us how this technology works and how it solves crime. And I think I was hesitant at first because I am sensitive to how people want to be policed, and a lot of times people don't want surveillance. But people also want accountability and they want truth. And we've seen that with body cams and the desire to have those. And then I just think that you all really showed us that you can solve a crime a lot faster if you have evidence of that crime. And a video of a person's face, the vehicle, what people were wearing, all of that. And, you know, I think as council members, we get a lot of phone calls from people frustrated about crimes that aren't solved or shootings that happened and no one was ever found. And so while I at first was hesitant, I think I've come around to see that this can be the wave of the future because we all have technology in our lives that it can be positive and it can be negative. But I think this system and the traffic cams, if used properly, can really be a tool to help solve crime more quickly and efficiently. And so that's why I think that, you know, it's something that I've come around to be supportive of. and I appreciate all that you all did to try to show us, and I hope that people know that this is not something that anybody is taking lightly and that there's policies around it and that this is something that can be used to really help solve some of these shootings and other crimes that have gone unsolved. So thank you very much. And does anyone else have any other comments about that? All right. Thank you. And now our next item is the after action review that was referred to committee by Councilmember Baxter. And I think she would like to introduce this item and provide some remarks. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, everybody, for sticking with me while all of my items get heard in committee today. So after our last windstorm incident, I received several requests, complaints, inquiries about our response as a city. And so I felt like it was very important for us just to take a public review of the situation and make sure that we are responding to any incidents in the city to the best of our ability. So I appreciate Commissioner Armstrong being here with us today and to share some information that he has gathered on this last storm. So thank you, Commissioner. Well, first off, I'd like to thank Council and especially Council Member Baxter for giving us the opportunity to speak today on this topic. As many of you know, the windstorm back on March 3rd was unique to Lexington. It was unique to the entire state, to be honest with you. When I was talking with some employees that have been here over 35 years, there had not been anything like that in our city during that time frame. And hopefully we won't have anything like that again for another 35 plus years too. I'd also like to take the opportunity to thank everyone, especially those individuals that were out there in the rain at night, working countless hours on the excellent job they did. and the leadership in this room that provided the guidance to get those things done, I really appreciate as well as all of us should. I'd also like to thank our community partners, especially the Sheriff's Department, for them being willing and able to carry the load whenever we needed it. As you know, after-action reports are not something new to government. We've been doing them at least over 30 years from my personal knowledge. While we try to prepare for every foreseeable incident or event that's going to occur in the city, we never really can, especially if it's a large-scale event. But whenever we have a large mobilization, there are areas that we can update and change or update our operating standards, and that's what an after-action review is actually for. During these reviews, we take the opportunity to look at what worked, what we need to improve on, and are there additional resources we may need. Every one of these incidents essentially is a learning opportunity for us. Sometimes these reviews involve just one or two divisions, sometimes one or two departments, because as you can imagine, what we're going to be discussing today involved almost every department in government and a lot of decisions. And while I'm presenting the PowerPoint presentation today, there are a number of division directors and my fellow commissioners back here to answer any questions that the council have specific to their departments or divisions. The presentation touches on numerous entities in government. And we need to make sure that we have that correct information for you and for the public if you're asked. And while we may be centering most of our discussions on the event that occurred on May the 3rd, This is actually, the information we'll be discussing has a direct correlation to any event that requires an emergency response of any significant size or any size for that matter. So with all that being said, I'll go ahead and start the presentation. I'm going to go through it very quickly. I know you've had it for the last seven days and some of these slides are just for general information. I don't want to waste your time with that, so we'll get started here. Obviously, whenever we talk about an event like the windstorm, tornadoes, earthquakes, ECEP, something along those lines. Our first bullet there is the mitigation of preparing for, responding to, and recovery from such incidents are the key factors that we take into consideration. We also have to take into consideration the type, the cause, how much notice we have, the size of the event, and the duration. And that takes into account both our internal response and external response. Our timeline for this event, this slide essentially just says that the National Weather Service gave us a few days notice that there was an event coming in, but to what severity was changing, going back and forth, when it was going to hit us. And, you know, that's how weather is in the state of Kentucky. But we prepared as best we could to reassure you and the public that we were having discussions about this the Monday before. And we were making preparations, not knowing if we were going to have a significant event or not. You know, there have been times in the past where we plan for something to come in and it occur. And by the grace of God, it's missed us. So we weren't sure if that was going to occur this time or not. But honestly, on Friday, whenever it did come, it was pretty clear because we could see what was happening in western Kentucky. Now, what I'll say to this timeline is it's not necessarily in chronological order. And the reason that is is because a lot of these things are going on at the same time. You know, and I didn't necessarily write down that I talked to this director at 205 and I talked to Chief Weathers at 207. But the key things here is seeing what was occurring in western Kentucky, the governor declared a state of emergency for the entire state. Our EOC, or Emergency Operations Center, was activated virtually, and we'll talk about that a little bit later on another slide. Media and social media began to formally encourage citizens not to travel, to be weather aware, and take shelter when possible. our outdoor warning sirens sound first at 12 30 and then at 3 31 for the tornado watch and then then the severe thunderstorm warning you know we get asked that questions i'm sure you all do on occasion too while i was at home and i didn't hear it reminder those sirens are for people that are outside not inside your residence and we'll talk at the very end on the slide on how citizens can better prepare for any type of incident that may occur, whether it be a windstorm, a tornado, flooding, whatever it happens to be. So those are the things that we did the next day. Then we, very early on, we activated the EOC in person. 311 was operational as well, and the mayor declares the state emergency. There were some questions about this. Whenever she actually, in our discussions on Friday night, the decision was made that we were going to go ahead and declare it. The governor did it for the entire state before it even hit central or eastern Kentucky, which is a little unusual, but he could see what devastation was occurring there, but we still didn't know what was going to happen until it hit us on Friday. The mayor officially signed the documentation backdating it to Friday, but with that being said, there were some questions, as I said, about what's that actually mean. A state of emergency in law department can go in greater detail if needed. That essentially just gives the mayor some abilities to use some additional resources to bypass some purchasing requirements. It affects our CBAs with unions. But the reason we didn't do that proactively or before the event hit is because we knew we were prepared enough that we probably would not need to do that. So some people get confused that somehow or another that prevented us from being our citizens being eligible for some kind of FEMA relief or Kentucky Emergency Management relief, and not the case at all. So when we go down the Sunday, all the major roads were open, with some of the roads still being powered by inverters. And then the following days, we return, and I put that in kind of quotes, normal operations. And probably really we weren't back to full normal operations until the following week. But for the most part, police, fire, corrections, you know, E911, we had pretty much leveled the playing field and that's not to say that our streets and roads folks weren't out there still working hard. That's not to say our parks and rec people weren't out there working hard addressing some of the damage that occurred actually on our property as well as because I'm assuming you all know some LFUCG property was actually damaged. We're going to start with emergency management first. There's a short little synopsis of what they do. some of the positives, some challenges, some future needs, the EOC training, whatever comes to the 311 personnel. There's also a confusion about our EOC. We staff or open our EOC quite frequently, to be honest with you. There's a lot of events that occur that we staff or we open completely the EOC. NCAA events, the celebrations when those do occur. The WEG, July 4th, events, things like that, VIP visits whenever we have a large fire. If you remember the stockyards years ago, that's an example of it. And there are times that we open the EOC that it's not necessarily weather-related, but obviously the public sees us most. Whether it's a weather event of some type, like an ice storm, a tornado that hit Masterson a few years ago, if you remember that. Or the ice storm. Yeah, heavy snow, those kind of things is whenever we may open the EOC, but there are times when we open it with a little fanfare, to be honest with you. One of the issues that was brought up in most of the discussions I had with the divisions that fall under my purview is we had communication issues, especially with KU. KU has been an excellent partner through this since the event. And thanks to Deem, they've met with them a couple of times and we figured out a way to prevent what happened last time not occurring. But much like I would assume some of the people in this room, when the storm hit, my phone didn't work correctly. Landlines went down. It was difficult to communicate with anyone. Luckily for us, our radio communications between our units out on the street didn't break down. Anytime something like this happens, there's always got to be a backup to a backup to a backup. And in this case, it actually did fail because of the landline and cellular communication was directly affected by the storm. But we think we've got that fixed going forward. Let's see. Bring future needs, bring critical EOC coordinators to the EOC in person. We had discussed about doing some EOC operations virtually. size of this event we initially started virtually and then we transitioned to in person we think that's the plan going forward we may staff it virtually but if we open it it's always going to be in person going forward regardless of what the event is because we think that gives us a better line of communications some of that may be just because it was new to be honest with you let's see going on to the next slide e911 as you all know when uh director uh patent has actually addressed this in council before around the time of the windstorm. E911 did receive, actually had a power surge that affected all 40 counties that's hooked up to their same system. Luckily for us, we had good leadership at E911 Center, so they were able to transition to the old school landlines and handwriting, and things just kept going. The public couldn't really tell much of a difference. Once we were able to, I say we, they, they were able to make that transition over to that again old school more way of doing things and it was effective in that. As you know we have a grant to upgrade that system but I'm never going to be able to tell you 100% even that upgrade if we were to unfortunately have an event like this again that it guarantees it wouldn't happen again. A system that gets so overwhelmed you can it's it's it's a dicey thing to be honest with you. So let's move on to the next like I said I'm going kind of quick because I'm already down to three minutes I'm never going to get that done. Fire and emergency services, the third bullet down, additional personnel and equipment. You know, whenever we have what was referred to as pool vehicles, this is an excellent example of using those. Those are the vehicles that we keep a couple years because, you know, they may be over mileage, but, you know, we can still use them a little bit if someone's car breaks down or something along those lines. But luckily, fire had a number of pool vehicles that they could get 12 different teams. Is that right? I think so. 12 teams out in the field pretty quickly out of a lieutenant's academy that they were having. Additional, that's the CAD dispatching system. That's something that they're working on currently. Identified a lack of necessary equipment. Chainsaws that are either, well, battery powered preferably is something that we're looking at purchasing them and giving one to each major because, you know, if they're on the way somewhere and there's a tree in the way, they still got to get through there and they can't wait on someone to come get it for them. The configuring the CAD is essentially being able to identify the units that are out in the field, and they ran into an issue there whenever they added those extra or pool vehicles to it because they didn't have their specific identifiers. And a distributing plan of the equipment. Better plan there. Just to make sure that you all understand, this is not just on the 3rd, but this is from the 3rd to the 8th. So some of these dispatch calls may be related to the windstorm and may actually be the aftermath of the windstorm or not related to it at all. But we were asked to gather this information and provide it. As you remember, we did have one fatality during the event, the windstorm. Sadly, we had one. Public safety, police. Again, I brought up the one fatality incident. Next slide. Off-duty personnel, this is bullet number two, off-duty personnel call in. We're able to respond quickly. That's an example of the home fleet plan in action. I think Chief Wells would like the same thing, but I don't think we could afford it. But that is a perfect example of people being able to get, as they say, 10-8 in the field in a very quick manner and be able to respond. They work with fleet services. I want to thank fleet services for working with them on fueling plans for vehicles, especially those that had the inverters that were being used at the intersections to power the lights. Some of the challenges, they're looking at more inverters for their vehicles. Personnel shortages and then the barricades were not heavy enough that the wind was actually blowing them away. So they're looking at weighted barricades or some other additional response for that. Environmental quality and public works. This is from Commissioner Albright. stressed the importance of the teamwork between the multiple divisions that fall under her purview. Very important notice here, no employees were injured during this entire event. Sadly, we lost one citizen with the type of dangerous work some of those folks are doing, streets and roads, parks and rec, water quality. We're very lucky no one got injured. She identified some training gaps, essentially, to be able to make sure everyone knows how to do each other's jobs in some of these instances. The inverter boxes. I have a note down here about the real-time intelligence center. What that essentially means is that can help with identifying what lights are out, what trees are down, using those cameras in a more proactive way whenever something like this happens. Here are positives. Talked about it earlier. Wait a second. Sorry. That's a double slide, didn't it? Sorry about that. Challenges, notifying staff to report. That's something that they're currently working on. My clock says, yeah, how much time do you need? Is five good? Five. Okay, if there's no objections, I will give Commissioner Armstrong five more minutes. Thank you. All right. Notifying staff to have them report, as you can imagine, again, communications was hampered because of the storm. Some future needs are listed there. Some contracting needs, whether it applies to the boom knuckle truck or the knuckle booms, or multi-use vehicles or additional personnel, much like the snow plan, I would imagine. Somewhere along those lines, I'm sure she can provide you additional information in regards to that, too. Department of Social Services, this is Commissioner Alan Bryant. The EOC participation, some of the things that they've done there to assist our seniors, and they were able to keep most of their services going immediately following this one. which is good because as you remember, some schools were closed during that time frame. So we had other things for people to do. Also, we essentially had locations that individuals could go during the day and charge their phone or whatever it happens to be. Of course, a lot of businesses were open during that time frame too, luckily. So that was a benefit. Housing advocacy and community development. Code enforcement, essentially what they did is assist the DEAM and citizens in identifying damage and getting a better understanding of what it looked like so they could report back to Kentucky Emergency Management and FEMA. We had 1,824 reports of damage, quite a bit, quite a bit. Some just maybe one or two shingles, some complete roofs. And as you see, probably there's a lot of people still getting that work done now because of the shortage in the labor force. And this is Commissioner Lantern. And specifically, I know this from personal experience, when something like this comes through, we want to make sure that citizens have the opportunity to have time to get those repairs done without facing any type of enforcement action from the government. Going forward, and these are just the high points, I would say, activation of EEOC will be in person. Alternate or backup communication avenues are in place with our non-governmental entities. I mentioned that earlier specifically with KU, but our utility companies as well, whether it's gas, electric, water, those kind of things, we've re-upped that to make sure those are taken care of. mentioned the Kentucky 911 refresh as well. Some equipment, whether it's in environmental services or in the fire department or police department, we're compiling those lists and working on those at this time and continue to update our MOAs, MOUs, and policies. Last thing, and then we'll go to questions. Some pointers and how citizens best prepare. Best thing I can tell the citizens at home to do is go to our website, go to the dean website, the BeReadyLexington.com. It's in 11 different languages and it gives a lot of information on how best to prepare for essentially any type of incident that we may face. Ice storm, tornado, you know, human-made event type thing. Be aware, make a plan, build a kit. The Be Ready app can notify you of upcoming incidents that may be of concern. Lex Alert is the same thing. Make sure that they're paying attention to facebook and twitter we do have the am 1620 radio station sign up for with alerts with media other media outlets too even if they sign up for the be ready app i would encourage you pick your favorite couple tv stations and sign up for those too whenever the whenever the event was occurring i got all kinds of alerts to be honest with you from different things only use your cell phone when truly needed and probably director patton's biggest one, only call 911 if it's an emergency. That should be all the time, but especially when it's an actual event like this. And stay off the roads when, if at all possible. Questions? Sorry, I went long, but it's kind of hard to cover something as big as that in a short amount of time. Thank you so much. And now we're going to entertain questions. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Commissioner, for that report. And thank everybody, all the divisions throughout city government with their efforts during this emergency. I think in the heat of it, when you don't have power and you don't have heat yourself, I think everybody's scrambling to try to get themselves and their family taken care of. And I'd just like to mention that I appreciate the sacrifice that our city employees made to get up and do the job when they were struggling themselves. So thank you for that. I have a couple of questions, but I actually want to hear what other council members have to say. But one quick question. As I was riding around during the disaster, I seen a lot of sworn police officers at intersections with inverters hooked up to their patrol cars, powering the lights. Is there a reason why our sworn police officers were doing that as opposed to our traffic safety officers or any other folks throughout in city departments? stood. Well, the safety officers were doing it too. You have to remember there was a time whenever we had a significant number of intersections that were down. So I'm not going to say 100% that yes, 15 of them were doing it, but there are examples of them doing it too. I don't, I'm not sure if we have a tally on the number of intersections that went down at one time, but it was much more than 15. So you would have sworn officers doing that too. So I guess it was an all-hands-on-deck situation. I just thought it might be a better use of resources. Now, the police department called people in early. Now, this applies to other divisions, too. But you're asking specifically about the police department. They called people in early. They held people over. They brought their entire traffic unit in. So it was, at one time, a kind of all-hands-on-deck type thing until we were able to somewhat stabilize the situation. Okay. And I'd like to thank the citizens because for the most part, they stayed off the roads, which made things easier. Yeah, I guess I wasn't one of those citizens. No. I didn't want to point that out. All right. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Fogle. Thank you. I just wanted to say thank you to your whole team. I was here during the press conference, and all of you all were here, and you guys were working hard. I see you back there. I just want to acknowledge all the great work that you did. That 911 was off the chain. They were answering calls, and I know that had to be a hard job to do. With the two houses that was, where did those people go? I'd have to defer to Commissioner Lanter. Is he here? There he is. I was just wondering, did we have anything in place for the two, was it two families or was it just the property? i don't know about these two specifically but i can tell you that we have funds at community resident services that when we condemn a home any in any situation whether it's the storm or any other situation uh community resident services can pay a thousand dollars for their relocation and they when when so when code the way we got it set up whenever code does the condemnation they at the same time give the family that information so that they know about that help. And so I would have to check to have more information about those two specifically, but I do know they should have been given that information for that relocation. That is so awesome. Thank you. And that's really the only question I had. I just wanted to reiterate, I saw the downed trees, And we were down here because my lights went out for a while. I had my grandchildren. So we came down to the city building. That's why I was here for the press conference. And my granddaughters and kids was excited with the cameras and wanted to get on camera. But I kept them with me. And, you know, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. But I just wanted to say one more time, thank you. I am so glad I was in Lexington during the storm because everybody went into action really, really fast. Everyone. And so I just wanted to say thank you again. Thank you. Council Member Plumman. Thank you, Chair and Commissioner Armstrong. Thank you for sharing all that with us. I think it shows us all of the activities and responsibilities that come under each one. And I think that's good for all of us to know. There was one thing I'd like to have added to that list proactively. It's just communications thereof for each one. I felt like, at least from the phone calls and emails that I got, that it was a little tough to navigate for some of our constituents exactly where to go. And I know my power was off from Friday night to Wednesday night, so I wouldn't much help. But I think, you know, I don't know if there's a single source. There's multiple sources where you can go. and maybe there is more of a consolidated, marketed, single source place you could go. I think that even at BeReadyLux.com, if we could proactively have that utilized when we get into these situations and really get it out there and repeat it and repeat it and retrograde it to Twitter and Facebook and all this other, maybe one single source. But with that said, you referenced that with KU. You've had some meetings since then because that was tough, using their app all the time. I mean, on an hourly basis to see when we were going to get power back. But you said there were some things that had happened there, and then you also said that you said some things fixed moving forward. Could you share some of those thoughts? Sure. First off, with the response back to the original, whenever it comes to the beready.app, emergency management does update as best they can there with the events that are occurring as much as possible, per se. But I understand and I hear what you're saying about the better communication about that. Sometimes the communication that citizens are looking for is out of our hands. But 311 is a huge help whenever it comes to that because some people will call. Now, I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth, but sometimes they call and ask questions that we don't have any purview or we can't answer. Or, you know, that, hey, when's my electricity going to come back on? We don't have that answer. And that was the big question. That was the big question. And I'm sorry, what was the second part of your question? You referenced that there had been some meetings already with KU. And then also that something just, I think just moving forward, fixed moving forward is what your words were. I'm not sure if I alluded to it earlier or not. If I didn't, I apologize. This is an after action report presentation to the council. We had an after action report or meeting immediately after the event. That's what we do. We don't wait. We go ahead and do it, have those discussions, make what changes we need to. One of the things that first jumped out was, okay, we couldn't get in contact with some of our community partners, KU and a couple other people, okay, because they have been good partners through this. What happened? And I know Tim Brandyween played a big part in this, and I apologize if I'm butchering what he did here, but they were identified. They have the state EOC that they're normally a part of and they also have their local kind of command center and that's in what Simpsonville? Yeah, Simpsonville, Kentucky. And Simpsonville was hit just as hard if not harder than us. So communication with them went down. So we've reiterated to them the importance of having a body in our office when it comes. Now, I understand some reluctancy on their part and the fact that 40 plus, I don't know, 120 counties were probably affected by this. So where do you gauge where you put that body whenever it's an all hands on deck type thing? But we've had discussions with them specifically about them either one or two things, having an actual body in there with us or having a direct line of communication with a backup to the backup to the backup. And they had issues with their landlines too. Is that right? Yeah. Tim's shaking his head, yes, so I must be right. Okay, so there is a recognition of that whole external communication. You know, some of this stuff, you couldn't do much about it because it didn't exist, but I just still feel like some single storm. It's not a pun, but it is sometimes a perfect storm in the fact that you have a backup to the backup, but what happens if both those fail? but Tim put on his galoshes and went out there and got it taken care of and we were able to get in communication with him pretty soon after the event or during the event itself but it just took a little while to make the first communication with him Mr. Trump Dr. Ross the other thing that we did talk about with KU is what you mentioned is messaging they pretty much knew early on from the damage that they had so much damage that all they were going to be able to accomplish in the first 24 hours was basically making their system safe to work on. So there was technically no restoration done for the first 24 hours. I think, and what we discussed with them, and I think they understand, if people know what the situation is and they know they're trying to make it safe, and at least it's going to be three days, then you can plan for that. So that is one big thing we really talk to them about and how we can better jointly more inform the public on the true status of the situation. You know, they had 800 broken poles in the system, and it takes four to six hours to fix a pole. So, you know, getting how we present that and the public understands that, I think, is really something that they've learned. And we've talked with the corporate offices in Louisville about this. So I think that part of it, you know, we'll be able to better do the next time with their assistance. I just wanted to share that. Yeah, that's great. And thanks for sharing that. I think it's just frustrating when someone is led to believe what's going to be on in the next six hours, the next 12 hours, and then it's four days later. You're just like, wait a minute, tell me up front. I can plan better. So that's great that that's in the works and appreciate that. I want to thank Director Duggar for adding that. Thank you. Okay, we're going to go on to Council Member Wu. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you for the whole team. I was really impressed with the combined response and the cleanup. We saw streets and roads out there, waste management, you know, all hustling, hands on deck. Unfortunately, I was also part of the problem like Councilmember James Brown. I was out driving around the day after just kind of seeing what everything looked like. One question that kind of follows up on Councilmember Brown's question about inverters. Is there a different way to go about this inverter question that we don't tie up not only patrol officers but also the cruisers? Because I saw a couple of intersections where it was just a cruiser, no people in it, plugged up on the sidewalk. to a thing is there is there a better technological way to tackle this and i'm going to ask jeff to come up here real quick but my understanding of this is to one um the inverters that we have in our police cars we've been putting in those for a number of years now they were able to work out and they're currently working on a system where the car itself could just stay but i think traffic engineering is looking at some longer life batteries or something is that right or i'll turn it over yes so far the inverters are about the best that we figured out and that was a combined effort between the police and us probably 15 years ago is when the program started um normally there's just one or two intersections that don't have power so the inverter program works great because you have a police officer that pulls up they don't have to get out of the car to do to direct traffic they just plug in and the signal goes back to operating the way it should be. What the commissioner was talking about is we do have some battery backup systems. We've got two deployed right now, one at Nicholasville and Manowar, and the other at the Diverging Diamond Interchange. That gives us about three to four hours of power if it loses grid power. That was not sufficient in this case. So depending on what you're trying to prepare for, there's only so much we can do, basically. Yeah, and I appreciate that. My next question might be for Commissioner Albright. I have a couple of sort of next time questions that are interrelated between KU, electrical lines, trees. What is KU doing on that sort of front to potentially mitigate the amount of tree damage, lines going down, all these sort of situations? What is it that we can do as a city, but also what can KU do to get ahead of the next storm so that it's less damaging? Well, most of the poles probably were more of the distribution system. And those are the ones that they have a routine maintenance program that they're pretty aggressive about making sure that that now that is where they do more of the trimming than the clearing. So those are the ones where you might you end up with a lot of the slingshot looking trees at the end. But those are an effort to work with the neighbors to maintain the trees while maintaining the lines. they've not approached us about revisiting any of that so far that I know of. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair. I had asked KU to at least give me some more information so that I could share it with you guys today. Some of it we've already heard in the past. this event ranked as the third most impactful event for the KU companies in the past 20 years there are 400,000 customer interruptions and 250,000 customer outages at the peak 800 broken distribution poles and 22 broken transmission structures 22 transmission structures I mean that's huge and would you say four hours to repair one pole is that what somebody said, so do that math. We had agencies from 12 different states here that had come to help, and they had more than 90% of customers restored in four days. Councilman Plowman and I were not of that group, but I'm pleased with how fast that all came on. So I think what we've heard today is that there was just a communication issue. It was a communication issue from KU. It was a little bit of a communication issue from the city. So as a communication major, it just goes all over me that we don't do a better job. So I am really interested in how our government communications department can better serve our community as a whole. So I would task that group to work with all of the individuals or all the departments that we have heard from today to try to get a consolidated plan in place. I think it's really important for us to know what the plan is and then know how to communicate it. Most of the frustration in this community comes from people not knowing what's happening. And as council members, it was even hard for us to know what was happening at the time. So I think that was the biggest source of frustration across the board. And it's not that we weren't working. Good grief. Our city employees were working their tail ends off. And I could not be more proud of our response and how well we did everything as a city government. We know that KU is KU and Vice Mayor left. But he had asked how KU can do a better job. And really, truthfully, it boils down to the community allowing KU to do their job. We can't continue. I'm going to say it again. We just can't continue to say no to everything. We can't say, no, you can't cut our trees, but we want our power. They go hand in hand. So we really have to be cognizant of that moving forward. But I would really be interested to see government communications present us with a more thorough plan and how to communicate. And, you know, as Commissioner said, if the backup to our backup is missing or down, that's an issue. but it's not unattainable you know that's something that we can still look forward to and try to solve and truthfully with all this technology maybe we just if our technology is failing maybe we just fall back on radio i mean we have our radio station our am radio station and i think it's really important for us as a government if the mayor is doing press conferences and things like that and nobody has power or internet to view these press conferences the press conferences need need to be on the radio. Like that's bottom line. So we need to work better to figure out how to communicate with the general public. So that's my two cents. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Council Member Baxter, for putting this in. I guess I'd like to ask Director Duggar if she walked out. Okay. Okay, well, I guess, Commissioner, I will ask you, but... I'll do my best, but go ahead. I wanted to talk to her about the state of emergency, and I think she's probably the person that I need to... I could probably answer any question that you have. Okay. As Council Member Baxter said... Okay. Director Duggar, welcome back. I got a question for you. As Council Member Baxter said, I think this is our third worst, or one of our top three that KU said. My question has to go with asking for a state of emergency. What goes into that, and what, can you give me the timeline on that, on how that happened? And I think it was reading our after action review that we did virtually and that we won't do that going forward. Well, the activation of the EOC and the mayor declaring a state of emergency are not necessarily joined. You know, we can open and activate the EOC with cause. The state of emergency was done. It was Saturday. We didn't file the paperwork until a couple days later. But really – And could you go through both of those processes so for the public to understand with the EOC and then the state of emergency and how they interact and what goes into that? Sure. The EOC is a localized center where we coordinate the response of an emergency or a disaster. And that can be done by the Emergency Operations Center plan, which was approved and adopted by this council in 2021. Not necessarily this council, but by the council. And that can be activated by myself, the commissioner, the CAO, or the mayor when we see the need to do that. And as I said previously, sometimes we activate for a fixed event, like the Fourth of July or the NCAA or something else. The declaration of a state of emergency is an act in the state law, KRS-39, that allows the mayor or county judge executive to declare that the community is in an emergency situation. Basically, the powers that that provides to the mayor is to issue a curfew, to not necessarily have to follow all of the purchasing policies and regulations, to request assistance from the state and other things. At the time on Saturday, there was none of that needed. It doesn't prevent us from the response or coordination or enacting mutual aid agreements or asking any of our partners that are part of a normal response to come to the table. So it was, like I said, it was determined and declared verbally to the state on Saturday, and then the paperwork followed. What was the virtual part of it that was in our? Well, the virtual was when we actually opened the emergency operations center. That can be done virtually with people working from home or wherever they may be because the system that we use to manage disasters is virtual. You can log in from not being in the room. Did I read, though, that going forward we won't be doing that? No. It's been the decision of several of us when we powwow to, for the critical, let's say the incident is mostly based of fire, police, public works. Those people then would be in the EOC. We still would probably have support partners, maybe the school system, maybe some other entity, like we have a representative from the Commerce of Lexington to be our business liaison. They may still be virtually, but those people that are in the direct response phase, their representatives would be in the EOC. Okay, my time's about up, and I think the chair probably has some follow-up questions, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you once again, Commissioner Armstrong, and then everyone involved in this. I know that everyone was working very, very hard, and it was not an easy situation to deal with, So I just want to thank everyone, all our city employees and different divisions. It was really challenging, and you all were fielding questions and trying to make things happen, and it was not easy. And so I think everyone did a great job. I just wanted to ask a few things real quick. One of the biggest questions that I received from constituents was about warming stations, why we didn't have those, or providing a place for people. And then also, some folks were trying to get oxygen, and I know I had talked to Director Duggar about this, And we're trying to have a way to take care of their medical devices. And some folks, even though we tried to set something up, were not able to get that. So could you speak a little bit to why we didn't, and I know there's reasons that, but I would like the public to hear, why we didn't have warming stations more early on in the process and how we might respond next time for folks that need help with their devices. I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer the first question, but I'll take a shot at it unless somebody pushes me out of the way. Can I start with the second one first? Sure. All right. As you know, just recently what you were talking about is the medical equipment that's being charged in oxygen. Thanks to the council who recently approved it, we are going to be purchasing equipment to be able to do that going forward. It's from a grant. So that is a great thing. That was something we identified. Perfect example of after action working exactly how it's supposed to work. So I don't want to say that issue is fixed, but we're headed down the right road. We can decide later if we need to add more, but we'll have one. Heaven forbid there's something else that occurs anytime soon. Whenever you talk about the warming centers, the Red Cross is normally responsible for setting up any kind of center like that. But with that being said, we were able to open community centers. Commissioner Bryant's here, but we were able to open a number of community centers during that time frame. We only had one or two that were closed. Of course, we did provide programming to the kids and everything. as it applies to stays overnight. I think there's a legal concern there that I'm not probably the best person to speak to in regards to it. But a lot of, while a lot of people didn't have power, a lot of people did. You know, the mall was open pretty early in this type of event too. So there were opportunities for people to go places. The nighttime overnight would normally be the Red Cross, and that's only for medical assistant needs, is my understanding. And that's what, I'm sorry, that's not the Red Cross, that's the Health Department, I think. Well, I'm on the board of the Health Department, it's actually the Red Cross. Okay, all right, I'm sorry. They work with them, but I think my understanding is it's only if something, there was a lot of damage to people's homes. Right. Is that right, Commissioner? Right. Sorry, I'm sorry. I don't want to speak for Director Duggar, because she's the one that communicates with the Red Cross, But it's when the homes experience lots of damage, like with the floods in eastern Kentucky, is my understanding. And when she comes back in here, she can certainly push me aside and correct me if that's not right. In terms of medical equipment, as Commissioner Reynolds knows, but this is mostly for the public, is that the health department is part of the EOC, and they handled many of those calls for whether it's oxygen tanks or what have you. We as social services didn't necessarily receive any calls related to anything needed like food or what have you, except for the senior services. The seniors did have some calls where we were able to give out food and whatnot. In terms of warming shelters, our case managers really didn't get any calls for anything like that. However, I want to say that we convened and discussed opening shelters, and there's many things that we have to think about. There's security. There is space. We actually was looking at one of the school buildings, the Ardegreva Center, and we had a consultant come from the health department to look at that and said that optimally you could only get 20 to 30 people there. and who do we choose out of over 300,000 people to be able to allow to come there? We're not set up to do medical. I mean, yes, I am a nurse, but it has been a long time since I've practiced, and I can say the same for a mayor. So who would take care of these? What security would we have? Who do we choose out of it? The community centers, and I think that that's what Commissioner Armstrong was maybe getting me confused with Commissioner Ford. The community centers were open for people to come during the day as their normal operations. They could come, warm up, charge. We also had our satellite centers open for the seniors. They could come in as well. And our director, Stonbaugh, like I said on the slide, they did have some people that reached out and we were able to help them as well. I do want to point out that when we did open during the, I say the second windstorm, when we did open, warming shelters we had am i getting this correct one person show up one correct so i don't know if necessarily people wanted to warm up at a government center they wanted their electricity in their homes so those are um some of the kind of issues that we had and things that we have to think about and trust me we went round and around and discussing that and unfortunately We are not set up to do the type of shelters that I think most people think about when they're watching TV and there's a catastrophe that comes to town. We are not set up to do that. Okay, thank you. That's very helpful. I appreciate it. And once again, I appreciate the presentation. My only last remark is I'm going to agree with Council Member Baxter when it comes to communication that hopefully maybe next time we can just get the message out about what we're doing a little better. That way folks have the right expectations. Like if we're not opening warming places, why? And things like that, just so that we can try to mitigate people's concerns and just communicate as much as we can. And I know it was challenging with KU, but hopefully for the future it'll be less challenging. So thank you very much and thanks for the presentation. Next are items referred to committee. I'm just going to go over the list really quick. I'm going to follow. I did send a follow-up email last time, but I will send another one or get with each of you. My goal is that these items are all presented in this calendar year. So the first one is the expansion of the adult mental health court with aftercare program. Council Member Fogle, what's your update on the expansion of the adult mental health court with aftercare program? Yes. Can you say that again? I'm going over items in committee, and it's the first item, and I'm just asking for updates because I would like them all seen this year. Didn't know if you had an update on that. The only thing that I would like to say is that I'm working closely with New Vista, and we're trying to revamp this commission because I volunteered for it. And I love that's just part of who I am. I love working with mental health issues. And so we will have a really good report as we revamp this. I will get with you then to make sure it's scheduled for this year. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Substance abuse intervention is Council Member Sheehan. She's not here, so I'll follow up with her. Crime reduction technology, we want to keep that in committee. Division of Community Corrections update. Council Member Brown, he is done. No. Corrections update, keep it in. Second. Okay, all those in favor? Okay. That's for Division of Community Corrections update. Anyone opposed? Okay, that passes. To be removed. Five, improve enforcement of traffic laws. Council Member LeGrie's not here. Follow up with her again. Assessment and enforcement of noise ordinance. I'm following up with her. We talked about that today. Review of golf cart policies. Any council member she in? Eviction, diversion, and right to counsel. Tenants' Bill of Rights. still marching on. Okay, we'll find a time for that. The full after action assessment and review, is there anything else you'd like to continue or would you like that? I'll move to remove. Okay, is there a second? All those in favor? Aye. Okay, that can be removed. Any opposed? All right. Ten, review of innovative and sustainable portion of affordable housing Fund Ordinance, that's at Shein, Source of Income Discrimination. Yeah, I got that. You still? Yep. Okay, that's coming up, right? Did we? We haven't scheduled it yet. Scheduled it yet, okay. Just been talking about it. Okay. Thank you. And then are there any of the annual ones that anyone wants to remove? I'm not going to go down the list. Chair, next month I think we're doing the police and fire and the corrections kind of staffing, how they're doing and all that. Staffing. Okay. So that's on the calendar for next month. Yeah. Okay. Any other ones from the list of periodic updates? Okay. We'll keep it with that. All right. Well, that concludes our business for today. Would someone like to make a motion to adjourn? All right. All those in favor? All right. And we're adjourned. I'm out.