 Ladies and gentlemen, if we could find our seats. Everybody get their appropriate dose of caffeine. So you're likely we're not going to do what we did for the city executive retreat where they all had to do a scavenger hunt of the new convention center. After lunch to kind of walk it off and wake up a little bit while they got to know the new facility rides. Rebecca's walking in, Joe's taking a seat with his coffee. So speaking of the new convention center, if you lift up your table tents, you will see a little surprise. So Mike Sawyer and company with the transformation of the convention center, they wanted to wait until the transformation was actually complete so that it wasn't an artist rendering, but a real live photograph of this beautiful facility that we now have. This is a keepsake for you courtesy of Mike and company to remember all the great work that you've been a part of and bringing this great new asset to our city's inventory to offer up to the rest of the country and the world. So Mike is there anything else you want to say about that? So we'll have a free gift wrap service available for you afterward supporting Girl Scout troop number. So now that we're back we're going to resume with public safety but just a quick word on process. We had a lot of themes and points and propositions that came up during the conversation. So as we continue through the afternoon's program, I'm working with some of the team from the budget staff where we're attempting to capture the things that reoccurred across multiple comments as kind of specific questions to be taken on or we think we heard this from the group. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Where do we push, pull it so that when we come back to the afternoon dialogue session after the thematic areas, we'll tee up individual themes or questions that we heard so then the group can grapple with that particular point. Does that sound good? Does that sound workable? Great. So now we will resume and we will pick it up with public safety. And so Chief Hood, I'll give the floor to you. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of council. We're excited to start this off and we're going to blow right through this. A mission statement. We prevent harm through caring service. Our overall departmental goals and we're going to talk about response time management as our priority. Everyone in this room, all of your family members are going to call 911 for EMS services in your lifetime. So it's a statistic that everyone's going to have to take advantage of. We believe that our fire stations and our firefighters should mirror the community that they're serving. We train, we provide stellar customer service to our citizens by providing great internal customer service to our members. We do one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet, so safety is critical, wellness and resiliency. We're full service fire department, 1858 positions, and these are all the different areas that we serve the city of San Antonio. A lot of departments do not do certain areas of these operations, but we do everything. We're going to talk about EMS and so talk to Cheryl a little bit. It's always important for us to go back where we were. And this is one of the things that since Cheryl's been here and some of you on council have really assisted us in building a stellar award-winning EMS service. And so we want to talk about that for a few minutes. 33 EMS, the start of EMS, we had seven paramedic units in 1974. We have grown to a system of 33 EMS units, eight peaks, and we've gone from nine medications to 43 drugs. Advanced responder training started in 1979. In 2008, we put advanced life support equipment on 68 fire apparatus. So we would be able to get paramedic responses to the citizens that need us quicker. This program in itself allows us to get to the citizens a minute and 13 seconds quicker. When I arrived here in 2007, we were running out of EMS units every single day. We needed to figure out a way to get to the citizens faster. So one of those ways was to send fire trucks with paramedics on board and also to send fire units only on certain calls that may not need an ambulance. So we've been very successful with that. Also special operations has grown with the coordinated complex attacks, hazmat, technical rescue, all of those things. We have paramedics in place to do that, running out of stations one in 45. Mobile integrated healthcare, we're extremely proud of that program. We'll touch on that in a little bit. Response time management, it's not reductions. It's management. How do we get there quicker? CATS system, AVL, station alerting packages, which have given us about three minutes of a head start to get there quicker. Still having paramedic dispatchers. Our peak time program, we run eight peak units. We're able to once a month look at the car volume for the previous month and put those peak units in the hours that we need them. So very efficient way to do business. One peak unit runs 58% of a full time unit. So we're able to put those peaks in during the 12 hours that are the busiest in that area. Fire medic only response program we talked about. The other thing we want to focus on is a taxicab voucher program. We're able to respond on a call, evaluate them, give them a taxi voucher and save an ambulance keeping it in service. We did about 1213 of those last year, which would have been ambulance transport. And then our mobile integrated healthcare program, which we're really excited about. We just have put in the full implement from the pilot, which is seven paramedics and a lieutenant. We're going to be able to meet some of those people that we weren't able to in the pilot. We identified 120 people that were calling us frequently. Those calls for 911 have diminished or decreased by 56%. So we've identified another 224 that were calling us about 4,000 times a year. So this is an efficiency we're very excited about is also an opportunity to provide quality care. We are part of a asthma grant with university health systems. We have identified several pediatric asthma clients in the city that go to the hospital quite a bit, that call 911 on a regular basis. We're going out to them and helping them in their environment, providing them medications, advanced treatments, keeping them out of the hospital, saving the insurance money, and the wear and tear on our units and our availability to keep them in service. So our MIH program we're excited about and we'll continue to provide great quality care for those folks. If you look at the EMS unit locations, this is something that we've taken out all the districts. We've taken out everything. We don't politicize fire resources. So these units go all over the city. So for that sake, we have the EMS units that you see in blue are full-time units. Brand new 50 is going to come on January 17 with our annexation. There was another slide in here that highlighted the peaks and I don't know what happened to it, but we have peak units that are in there and we're going to be talking about peak unit up at station 32. If you look at this map here, the top busiest fire stations in the city, station 32 runs more than 3,000 runs more than any other fire station in the city. If you look at stations 24, you can see a huge jump in the responses in that area and also station 44. We are running probably about 6,000 runs more a year since we put our last medic unit in was in 2012 and that was medic one. So also our responses have increased about seven seconds, which is a lot annually. So those are increasing. We look at station 24 and 44. Those are single companies with a medic unit. We look at fire station 32, which has a lot of resources. But again, very, very busy area. That peak unit runs more than 800 runs more than any other peak unit in the city. We look at station 32 at Worsbach and Babcock. One of the ways we can improve our response time is through infrastructure. This station will be, we have a brand new station that's going to open up in July of 18. Should be fully operational sometimes in August. If you look at this picture, there's an EMS unit that parks in the parking lot. There's a squad that parks in the back. We do not have the resources or capabilities to put additional beds in. We can only sleep eight people in the station. So that is part of the problem that we're dealing with. This new station will open up in probably the whole zone coupling in August. This is going to allow us to have a full-time medic unit to have additional beds, to have additional base space to where we can add more resources. This is about 14,500 square feet. We do have several other projects that are going to be opening up in the future. I've had a chance to brief each and every one of you on fire stations. We want to make fire stations as big as possible to hold those resources because we're looking at 50-year stations to where we can add resources. And that's been a challenge for us. And we'll go a little bit further into that with the ladders. The recommendation to make it quick professionally, I recommend that we open a brand new medic unit at Station 32 in 2017. We've done the metrics. We have done the research. It's a professional recommendation of myself and the staff. I will quickly go into ladders. I'll let you to Lake University in the middle. You can see platforms up. Things burn a lot quicker than they used to. They burn a lot hotter. We get a lot of fires, especially apartments that go out of control very quickly. The safest way for us to put a fire out is to be able to get above it and put water down. So ladder trucks provide that for us. They also do extrication, salvage, rescue. They respond on auto accidents and they're critical in our emergency response because those ladders also carry paramedics on them. So they're a critical piece of equipment that we have utilized for decades. Currently we have 20. Most of you have heard last budget year, the years before we talked about the insurance service office, which is the insurance rating service. In 2007 we were rated a three. One is best, 10 is worst. We have an opportunity in the future to bring this department, this city, to a class one department, but it's going to take the addition of ladder companies. Currently we have a ladder coverage in our city of these 20 ladders of about 82%. We're trying to get that higher. And that is one of the things that ISO is going to look at. If you remember last year or the year before when we got an ISO rating of two, a lot of the insurance companies took the insurance rate down on additional 8% on your insurance. So it is critical in your commercial and residential insurance. And so we're looking for that benefit. We're also looking for the benefit of having more coverage with our ladder companies. You see the ladder deployment right here, the ladders that we have in the city. There are 20 and you're not seeing the fire stations or other stations. Every station has an engine, have 20 stations that have a ladder and they all have squads. If you look at the eight minute response, all of these populations that you see, 11,342 to 2,371 do not have ladder coverage within eight minutes. So that means that we get an engine company there to start putting out the fire. I do not have the support mechanisms there with those ladder trucks coming in. So it is something that we definitely need. We have started a ladder deployment committee to look at our current ladder placement. We will be looking at moving some of the ladders that you just saw to other stations since we have the infrastructure to do that. But along with that, we need to add ladders to this system. We are looking at adding a platform in 2018, one in 2020 and one in 2021 over a five year period. So these are critical and again, my professional recommendation and the recommendations of our staff doing the metrics and looking at best practices in the cities, other cities that we add these ladder companies. I stand by to take questions as after Chief McManus. Thank you so much. Thank you. Afternoon Mayor, Council. I have got three very brief presentations to walk you through today. The first one being a recommendation on increasing our authorized strength by 25 officers each year for the next five years. That would make us 2,510 officers. Strong versus 2,385, which is what we have today. That increase provides more of an opportunity for us to be proactive. It provides for, it takes into account an increase in calls for service of about 3% a year back since 2005. And it is also consistent with the essay tomorrow plan. That talks about maintaining a level of service to our growing population. The projected cost for that over five years is $30.7 million. And that would include 10 vehicles each year for the next five years to go along with that strength, authorized strength increase. The next presentation is, it's just a kind of a preview for an agenda item that you'll see tomorrow. We will submit an application for a COPS grant. Seeking $3.1 million for hiring. It's a three year grant for salaries and benefits for up to 25 police officers. It funds $125,000 per officer, covers salary, basic benefits. Does not cover other expenses such as vehicles, radios, equipment. Overtime or language pay. We're seeking council's authorization for a $7.8 million match from the general fund. With those additional officers, and we don't know how many we'll get. We could get one, we could get 25, we could get none. But whatever ones we do get, we will use it to improve our downtown public safety and quality of life issue downtown. What they will do is there's a condition on this grant where they have to be used in a community oriented policing type of way. We would intend to put them into our crisis intervention team, our impact units and expand what we do downtown further out. Make it a bigger footprint in dealing with the homeless situation. Offering services to homeless people. That homeless situation has now started to spread from downtown. We're seeing less of it downtown and more of it in the surrounding areas. So we would use those officers for that purpose on the impact team. Just some numbers for you from the impact team. Since October, we've made 579 contacts, 219 of those have refused service. We've referred 191, 89 of those have been emergency detained. And 80 of them have been taken to the detoxification center. And that program, if you recall, is a combination of police, fire, and mental health workers and homeless outreach persons from the Haven for Hope. We recently went to a convention in Chicago, this is an intervention convention. And we were recognized as a national model in dealing with homelessness and the mentally ill, our partnerships with other agencies that deal with those issues has been recognized nationally. And lastly, group violence intervention program or GVI. We had a group from San Antonio recently go to Kansas City to see there, to look at what they do with their gang intervention program. And they supposedly have a model that we wanted to look at. And that model relies on strong partnerships within the community. And what it does is it gives gang members a path out of the gang life. Because right now, they don't see a path out. And just an example I want to cite is when I was in a meeting with some of these kids in the gang, one of them took a gun out of his waistband, put it on the table, and said, okay, here's my gun, here's my drugs, now what do I do? I'm in the gang, what do I do? Quite frankly, I didn't have an answer for them. So this gang violence intervention program will provide a path for some of those kids who don't see a way out. Boston used this program back in the 90s. They showed a 27% reduction in shootings, a 34% reduction in gang involved violence, a 63.5% reduction in youth homicides. Kansas City program shows like numbers, 40% reduction in homicides and 90% reduction in shootings. The area that we're looking to work this program is East Point. East Point has an elevated crime rate. Majority of residents describe crime as serious. And groups such as NAACP and faith-based organizations offer the programs that are offered as well in this program. So the goals in this are to use violence, build relationships, provide a way out for gang members who feel trapped, and to boost economic development along the way. And that, I believe, concludes my presentation. Thank you. So Josh, could we get that lights up? Thank you. Al, open us up. Thanks, Chief. Having witnessed the GBI program in Kansas City and understanding that it's going to take a significant amount of funding. What are we looking at? And what type of personnel? There's a city-wide approach so that it's not just focused on the area. But because there are geographic areas a lot smaller than ours, it was a little bit more manageable. Right. We haven't determined the budget impact yet. We're still looking at that. We're looking to work through that proposal and present it to City Council as we, when we finish. And then another one of the things that they had were entire departments. So the entire gang unit was run through their NOVA program. Their entire street crime or narcotics program was run through their NOVA program. Are we planning on making those shifts as well? I think it's something that we look at, Councilman. I think we look at the broad spectrum of possibilities that might go with this GBI program. And East Point, just that footprint. I know we've seen reductions in crime in East Point. It's still higher or more elevated than a lot of the other parts of the city. What about the areas that are still in the promise zone that are further out, further east? I think that just off the top of my head without sitting down and working through it, I think that we should extend it or could extend it to areas that we really need it in. Thank you. And I didn't get to mention earlier, since the mayor had final remarks, but yes, on the mayor's program to make sure that there's some kind of parity amongst the streets. That's a good thing. Thank you. We'll probably be talking about air quality and things of that nature, but there's been a lot of focus recently on how the police and fire coordinate incident management on our highways and perhaps that there could be a better way of being able to deploy our resources to be equally efficient and be able to keep traffic moving along. It was pretty well determined in a lot of the studies that we looked at was that when you have a major incident and you deploy resources to address that incident by virtue of blocking more traffic or slowing traffic down, there are secondary and tertiary incidences that happen creating even more bottlenecks. Are we looking at trying to figure out a better way of deploying services? I mean blocking lanes and things of that nature. One to improve the traffic flow and the other one just to manage the resource that we deploy for each one of those incidents on the highway. Can you talk a little bit about that and how we might be able to be a little bit more efficient with what we have? Yes, sir. Right now our current response time threshold is 30 minutes for crashes on the freeways. Our actual response time is 13 to 15 minutes. We would need to come to council to have an ordinance change, change in the ordinance that would... Eric, is it a contract change or an ordinance change? It's a contract change. Contract change, too, that would reduce the 30 minute threshold in the contract to whatever time we're thinking about. I know Houston is six or eight minutes. Yeah, I mean that was a model that we looked at was Houston and they have a really small short window of removing incidences. And one of the things that was very profound in their statistic review was that, and I forget the exact number, was some huge number like 40 or 50% of the accidents that happened on the freeway do not involve a crash. It's an incident that ran out of gas. Something happened that they could have just been moved off of the highway. Right. And ultimately created a better flow, not having that secondary incident happen and all that kind of stuff, which is something we want to look at, but we also know that we deploy, for example, in a major incident on the highway, we deploy a fire truck that blocked a handful of lanes. Are there any assessments of being able to manage the, I guess, the equipment that we deploy that still gives us the protection for the person that got involved in the accident as well as the officers that are there managing incident, but being able to do it in a more efficient way. The idea being we want to get protection to the incident, you know, the incident participants, yet we want to keep traffic moving because as we look at those bottlenecks, what we're doing is we talk about an idling ordinance in the city. Well, I mean, if you're sitting on an interstate because there's an accident ahead of you, there's an idling and pushing an awful lot of, you know, carbon monoxide and the like into the air and we'd like to be able to figure out a way forward on that. What are your thoughts on that kind of initiative? You know, this is something that in the fire service we deal with nationally as far as why those fire trucks taking up those lanes on the freeway. And so national best practices states for us to block a lane. If we need to do patient care, we go on a lot of different wrecks, but if we go on a wreck on a side street or an intersection, we're only sending a fire truck in a medic unit. If we go on a high speed accident that occurs on the freeway, we send two large apparatus. And so once that fire truck gets there, if they determine that this patient does not need to be transported, then we're going to get out of the way as quick as we can. But if we need to transport them, then we have to open their doors and we need that other lane to protect the firefighters. There's a police officer who killed in New Orleans yesterday blocking traffic. I've had three of my fire trucks since I've been here totaled because they've been hit by drunk drivers on the freeway. I would much rather place a $750,000 fire truck than to have a firefighter kill. I went through that experience in Phoenix. I had a good friend of mine named Tim Hale cut in half by a drunk driver as he's getting the gurney out. So we are going to block that lane until we can get the patients out and then we can move them. There's no smaller apparatus that I'm going to put up there because they're going to tear a police car up. They're going to tear an ambulance up. If they tear a fire truck up, then so be it. But we have to protect the patients and the personnel around that incident. So we try to get out of the way as quick as we can. A lot of times we are waiting on either police to control the traffic or a tow truck and we can't leave that vehicle stalled in the right lane and so we're going to skinny the lanes down as soon as we can get out. But that's something I think for each of your education is why we block traffic and why we have to do that and that is a standard best practice. Don't misunderstand my question. That was the same position that the Houston folks took and they said that's something that from a protection of the public is incredibly important. The other piece of it though is the 40 or 50% of the others cars that are stalled that we need to pull out of there and they talked about processes. Chief, this will be more along your lines and I know I'm running way over time here. I'm going to throw a flag just because we're focused on our budget questions today and this sounds more like a procedural conversation. That's what this is. So the issue then becomes is there a way for us to be able to remove those incidences quicker without having or do we have to have some sort of budget discussion around deploying more resource? For example, a trans guide having officers be able to issue edicts to remove cars that are just been abandoned. I mean, is that working? Is that in the works? Well, let me answer part of that and the chief can answer the operational part. Part of this new contract we have in place for towing, the tow companies located their dispatch function to trans guide so that they see the accident before the police officer shows up and calls for the record company that's probably attributed much to the reduction in the response times we've seen just in the first year of the contract. Secondly, you know, there's issues of accidents on the highway. There's fender benders on the highway. There's flat tires and out of gas on the highway. The flat tires and out of gas on the highway don't contribute and don't necessarily have a fire truck blocking lanes for it. They may be impacting traffic. The tow contract does not address that. That's a safety patrol. And in other cities in this state, that's a function that's either funded through MPOs, Text Dot. We don't have a safety patrol, I believe, in San Antonio. No, we don't. At some point, I think we had it, but for whatever reason, we don't have it. But those don't necessarily end up being tows for us. I guess from a budgetary perspective, and we can wrap it up with this, I wouldn't like to see us have some level of dialogue. We were to deploy those because I don't think we can address the deployment of the equipment because that's a big issue. But we can address the issue of clearing the other large percentage of the cars that are just stalled by making a decision to clear them out of there. What would be the cost for us deploying a patrol like that? We used to have it years ago. Certainly the MPO is looking at figuring out ways to fund that, but I think it's going to take a city and the county initiative as well from a participation perspective. I'd like to see that given some level of discussion. And I think my three minutes are up. Thank you, Ron. Thank you. I wanted to just speak on Chief Hood, your recommendations with regard to the EMS unit. Yes, sir. What is the difference operationally between deploying in 2017 versus October of 16? The difference would have to be within the budget office. But in terms of the operation because the materials we got yesterday, there was a recommendation kind of two part. It would either be deployed. The medic 32 recommendation was for fiscal year 17 or there was an option for deploying in October of this year. Okay. So that option would be in money. In terms of the operation of your department. The operation of our department as far as reducing the workload. Yeah. So what does that mean for your department if we were to do it in October? Okay. That means that I'm basically putting about nine seconds back on the clock for somebody that needs that capacity. So anytime you add an EMS unit, you're putting about nine seconds back on the clock. So the thing is with this unit, it's running more than 800 more runs in every other peak unit. And it would be the busiest full time if we were able to do that. So it's very hard to bring another 12 hour peak in in a position like that when those guys are out running calls all the time. So it is the most critical EMS unit in the city. And if we would have had the capacity of a larger station, it would have been in service years and years ago. So it's absolutely critical because everything happens around that medical center area. They run 3,000 more runs in that area than any other station in the city. So it would have a huge impact. Okay. So and repeat again when 32 was coming online. 32 is going to be completed in the middle of January. It's going to be operational sometimes in August when we'll have the holes breaking. I'm sorry. That said July. It's going to be operational in August, but it's going to be completed probably the end of July. Okay. Well, I mean, I would voice my complete support for the best case scenario with regard to the medic units. I know the volume. We've been talking about it for years now. So at this point, you know, from an operational standpoint, that would that would be what I'm most interested in in terms of what we budget into the next fiscal year. So Chief McMannis. Thank you. Thanks. Chief. On your recommendation in terms of adding personnel, we also heard in a previous presentation that the current budget projections show that we are budgeting to all the positions available. Your recommendation is to add positions. Is that right? Correct. Okay. So at this point, you know, set the record straight because I've heard many different numbers thrown around. What is our open positions currently? What is our open positions? What are our positions to be filled that are not filled currently in the department? Your vacancies. Your vacancies. Yeah. We've got 147 vacancies right now. 147 vacancies. So we are with the cadet classes that are coming through now projected to fill those. We have another 43 as of Monday ready to go in another class. The goal is 50 in July to address that 147. And then another class of 50 in September that we're recruiting for also. So that would take us down to 47 plus any that retire between now and September. On average, we average 60 to 70 vacancies at any time, five to six a month in terms of retirements and or terminations. Okay. So historically what we've averaged is in the 60 to 70 range, but this would take us below that with the class that we'll start in September. Okay. So in terms of historically what the department has looked like in terms of positions filled and positions vacant. We will be staffed up when? We'll have they'll be in recruit class. They won't all be graduated, but we'll be staffed up by the end of the calendar year. Okay. And then this conversation about adding positions. Your recommendation is in order to get to us to a more proactive position. That's yeah. He's in what we've included in the forecast is 25 additional new officers beyond the 23 85. Another 25 a year over the next five years. Okay. Go ahead. Chief. No, I was going to say that that the officers that are funneling through the academy right now. We'll start to see them on the street, you know, after, after next year sometime into the spring. And as we work our way through that, you know, through the year, you know, those officers will all be on the street. Right now, you know, we have 81 cadets in the academy and 17 on the street that are in their probationary period. So as, as, as those cadets come out of the academy, the street strength will grow. Okay. And then the earlier budget presentation. Cheryl, the, the projections in terms of our fund balance was based on just where we are today in those field positions. They're not including chief's proposal. Okay. That's correct. Okay. Well, just in terms of the constituent perspective, I think they would agree that your recommendation is a priority. So I would fully support it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Rebecca. Yeah. Staying on that path about Cheryl, you said about six to seven people retire a month. Is that correct? Are we talking? Are we? Yeah. Is that just police or is that police and fire or just police? And what about fire? Chief, how many on average fewer? I can tell you that. Firefighters stay longer. 40 to 50 years. Okay. We were about 83 or so years back, but it's gone down considerably. Okay. And so you said we have the cadets, but then we also have maybe police officers who've moved from another city to all, to San Antonio, correct? That's, and the promotion area period is different. That was a program. That was the lateral entry program. And that did not, that did not kick off real strong. We didn't get a lot of response to that. Okay. All right. Two, one thing that was not mentioned in here and that I want to mention right now, because it's a discussion piece that we had was about the PSAP and the 911 call center. So where is that recommendation here? And are we looking at it with our budget recommendations moving forward? Because I know that's been something we've talked about already twice. Yeah. I want to give the stats as to where we are today in an update on the consultants report and when that will be out, because we'll have it in time for the budget recommendation. The consultant started his work sometime in, I believe it was late April. We will have at least a preliminary finance report that we can include into the budget recommendations from his work. For the work sessions. Yeah. And we're coming back to public safety in June with that. Oh, okay. Towards the end of this month. Okay. So the stats. Chief, where are you now? Because the drop call rate was much higher and you have it down to what, 87% within your guidelines now. So the drop call rate is much lower. Yeah. Last week our grade of service was at 90.62. So that means calls that come in have to be answered. 90% of the calls be answered within a certain number of 10 seconds. And then the abandoned call rate for the week was 18.12. We've been holding steady right around 18% for the last few months. In January it was up around 23, 24. February it was 20, 21. And then it started to drop from there and we're holding steady about 18%. It fluctuates a few percentage points each week, but we're holding fairly steady. Okay. Well, to add my voice of support, I'm very much in support of this community oriented policing, the cops grant, because I think that's where nationwide we also see things moving. And of course with our ladder with the letter and with the medic, I think I want to be supportive of these, but I also want to see what comes back with the PSAP and the 911 consultants findings. And then when it comes to the mobile integrated health and the fireside, we, it has been demonstrated with the proven metrics that it, it is making an impact and it is reaching these efficiencies and we have creative ways. So I think as it continues to grow, we have more opportunities to invest in that area. And I think that's all I have. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Chief hood. I wanted to ask a question about the mobile integrated health because I think it's a success story. And I'm not sure if you're asking us for an increase in investment of which I would endorse because I think what I've heard from your presentations and from the feedback from some of the folks we met a few days ago who are the on the ground individuals who implement mobile integrated healthcare. Can you just kind of tell us a story because this started as a pilot. And to, to preface this, we're not asking for anything with that. But what we're trying to show you is that we're trying to be efficient and find solutions rather than just utilizing ambulances and coming in and ask for an ambulance every single year. But we have gotten to the point of capacity with our system that we do need to add ambulances. But the MIH program is a success. We're looking at initially 224 people that were calling us over 4,200 times. High volume utilizers, super users, whatever you want to call them. And so we have cut that rate to 56% decrease in the 120 that we have started working with. So now by having the seven medics that can work and reach the rest of the population, we're looking at decreasing that response time even more or that response to people calling us. But it is a success, but it doesn't. What we're trying to show is we've used all kind of efficiencies, but we're at the point now where we need to add more transport units in the system. Okay. To reiterate, I think what I'm hearing is we've created as much efficiency as we can in going after the proactive, frequent flyers, I'll term them. And you've got seven people who are running mobile integrated health now? Yes, sir. And I think what you showed is their day to day is truly proactive. They've got a list of individuals to take on and check on so that they're not costing the taxpayers and your folks time. Right. So where we are now is that we're getting the best we can out of mobile integrated health. Your request is we really truly just need to help on the. Absolutely. Besides putting the paramedics on the fire trucks, the mobile integrated health care system, the taxi cab vouchers, we've done about everything we can. We need more EMS units. We're still increasing runs about 6,000 a year. And we're thinking out of the box, but we can't go much further without some more help on the on the transport side. Well, thank you, chief. I think you've proven you've shaken the trees on efficiencies and we're in a position now where I think our direction to staff is, you know, this is a priority. Let's find ways that we can implement it into this year's budget. Thank you. Thank you, councilman. Mike, please. Sorry about that. We can start my time now. So I just want to say congratulations. I think I think your your your request for the for the latter companies is important and speak to the 2014 Wedgewood fire and the need for for the latter companies in that particular instance. Absolutely. And you saw you saw firsthand. And so if you look at ladders, we have ladders and we have platforms. What we're asking for is platforms because we do not put firefighters on the end of of a stick like that. That's for more control. There's another picture that you can show a platform where we can actually get above the fire. The two firefighters can control and move the ladder. And as you see there, that particular truck pulls 60 people off the top of Wedgewood that would have probably not died of fire, but they would have died of exposure. And so we were able to put that ladder and then pull everybody off. And so they're instrumental in as far as what we do. And so we do need to add those also. So you were able to see that firsthand. Yeah, this is a situation where where the folks could not possibly walk themselves down because the elevators were walking. They couldn't climb down a regular ladder because we do use sticks for rescues, but those people could not have climbed down those ladders in that condition. So this was the only way to get up there. Thank you, Chief. Chief McManus. Before Chief McManus comes up, the Wedgewood fire for a viewing audience, that was a mutual aid firefighting event. So Wedgewood is not located in the city of San Antonio, but nonetheless we have a mutual aid agreement with Castle Hills and we fought that fire helping them because they did not have the equipment or resources to be able to handle that fire. Absolutely. I think chief has done a great job of making sure we've got some state legislation to address these kind of issues in the future with sprinkler or high-rises. Real quick before you proceed, so are you, does that sound like a positive endorsement? Yeah, absolutely. This is another positive endorsement coming up. Chief tells us about the impact team and what it's doing and then talk about where we're expanding beyond the downtown limits because we're having some issues in some neighborhoods as the success of this program has grown and some has pushed some of the issues into the neighborhoods, speak to that. So we started in the core, the very core of downtown with the impact team and as I mentioned there's two officers from the mental health unit. There's a Fire EMS, Haven for Hope, Outreach, Crisis for Healthcare, Psychiatric Type person. And what they do is they travel and they approach every single homeless person that they meet and they ask them if they need services. We check them out medically through the EMS person. Any service that they ask for we will accommodate them, we will take them there, we will take their belongings with them in order to entice them to go. The numbers themselves show that we have been very busy downtown. When I go to community meetings specifically in district 5, the community folks say that they're noticing more homeless now than they had before. It's because even with the softer approach that we're taking it's still pushing them out of downtown. So we want to expand that footprint and start hitting the outer rings of downtown and we'll keep going out further and further until we hit the county line. But with the increase in officers it gives us the ability to be more proactive in doing things like that and doing things like community engagement, having more discretionary patrol time. And I think also talk a little bit about how this is actually coupled with another one of our departments and how that collaborative effort is really going to help us increase our ability within our own department of human services as well as what Haven for Hope is doing. Right, we've worked closely with Melanie. Worked closely with Jose, I think it's Jose's in here right now. I mean it's been a very, very good effort and we worked most closely starting off when we kicked this program off back in January. We worked through November and December putting this together and I have to say that I'm pleased with the results so far. Well, I want to say I'm very pleased with these results too. It's made a, not to use the same pun, but a real impact on downtown and we hope to expand this program because as you said it's really going to be needed in the surrounding neighborhoods as we're trying to address this issue downtown. Before we started this softer outreach approach we had more complaints, at least anecdotally, we had more complaints about the homeless than we do now. So I'm not, I'm not sure why that is, but it just seems to, that we've got fewer complaints now than we did before when we were trying to aggressively push it away. Well, thank you Chief. Thank you for what you said. Chris. Chief, really, really glad to hear about the addition in that 25 over the next several years. Yes, sir. Fully support that, but wanted to ask if that's going to keep us on pace with attrition and the retirements that we're having. Eric, you mentioned the retirements are more, right? This is in addition to Councilman, in addition to filling the vacancies. This is 25 on top of filling vacancies. Okay. It was my understanding that we've had more retirements as of late over the past year and a half, two years. Correct? And with manager, she said we average, historically we've averaged six or seven retirements a month. I added that this past 12 months we've seen that step up a little bit to eight to nine a month. Yeah. So there has been a, there has been a little bit of an uptick. A lot of that is functional of the bigger classes that maybe we hire in waves going back 25, 30 years. Okay. And that's also why we have four classes scheduled and budgeted for this year. So we had one start in January, another one in April, one starting next month, and then a fourth in September. And preliminary for the forecast in the FY17 budget, we have a minimum of three full classes budgeted. As we go through the summer, we may add fourth class to the FY17 budget. Okay. I appreciate that. Councilman, the rationale behind the 25 is that, you know, it's, it's a capacity issue. We have a capacity to put so many through the Academy at one time. And in order to, to add those 25 per year and keep up with attrition, I think that 25 balances off with the capacity that we have to put those folks through the Academy. Well, good. And certainly, whatever we can do to continue to keep up with the demand that we have out there in the community, certainly. And you can also say that while it's great that we're able to replace those officers, you can't, you can't necessarily replace that experience that we're losing when those officers retire. So I'm glad that we're having these cadets that are getting trained up and we're getting them out into the, into the forest. You know, we need to be mindful that, that experience component that we lose because of the uptick that we've seen recently. And I think that we probably had a month or two where we had never seen the retirements as high. Is that correct? I know over the aggregate throughout the year it was higher, but we had a couple of months there where the, where the retirements were just very high. Is that correct? I'm not sure specifically what these guys want to be. Can I, can I, yeah, can I look at, then can we see or, you know, we don't have to see it now, but I'd like to see the retirements that we've had over the past 12 months. By month? By month. Okay. Thank you, Eric. And then chief on slide three, looking at the Boston, the Boston and Kansas City models, you know, certainly, I know and appreciate councilman works willingness to go out and look at different approaches and plans and how we can keep all parts of our community safe. What, what are the costs associated with those programs and how feasible are they and how can we find a way to implement some of the things that they're doing in those cities to bring them back here home and, and find a way to implement them in the department. We're going to look to replicate those, those, those other programs and again, we're not, we're not finished analyzing exactly what we're going to need. We're going to need some positions. Not quite sure how many yet, but we're going to need a few civilian positions. So the, the, the cost, the budget we based on the, you know, probably more than with the positions we needed anything else. Okay. Well, as I stated earlier, you know, this is public safety is the number one priority that we have. And again, it's, it's been reiterated to us by our constituents time and time again. So the, the talks that we have now are so important and I'm glad that we're having this discussion about different programs and how we can, we can fund them. Thank you. Chris. So if I can just pose a similar question. Would you like to see an endorsement of the group violence initiative? Yes. Post as a priority. Funding those vacancies and then supporting the additional officers that you have proposed the 25 officers that you have proposed here. I'm very strongly supportive of, but I do have some concerns about the program that we're talking about here about proposed program GBI regarding it being strictly in the East point community because it's not something I like to brag about, but, you know, I think we have these same problems of elevated crime. A crime described as a serious problem of having gangs, of having faith based organizations that are willing to step in. So how can we, I mean, is it the ideas that you have a target and then you can try another area because I feel like, you know, again, it's not something I want to brag about, but I think if you ran the numbers and the 07 zip code is the highest for violent crimes, highest for incidents of gang relations and that sort of thing. So how can we make sure that we're getting support? I don't think that means that we're not going to look at other areas of the city council, but I think we have to prioritize where we roll out first. And once we see how it's working, maybe we tweak it here or there, but I think at some point, not think at some point, you know, we'll move into other areas of the city that we require it or benefit from it. And is the target because of the designation of East point? Yes, ma'am. So that's the reason for it. Yes, ma'am. So I just, I hope that we can, you know, consider the fact that, you know, there, it may not be the highest need. Well, I don't recognize it's a high need, but there are others. So I just want to stress that when we go and start particular programs. Okay. And then I just want to also mostly just talk to Chief Hood about some of the, of your officers that have been involved in the units that you're mentioning here. And they've talked about how rewarding it has been to see the successes, especially regarding children and asthma with response times and helping those children get the medications that they need. I was approached by one of your officers at an event saying that they feel very proud of the work because they have been able to help people that were in critical conditions. Sometimes just getting them access to the medication because as I talked to other doctors that were addressing specifically childhood asthma, they said they're one of the reasons why they have so many repeat calls for asmas because the children don't have the money or the parents don't have the money to get the children all the medication they need. And through some of your programming, they were able to help those children and they had great pride in the fact that they were able to help people. Well, thank you. If we can prevent people from calling 911, that's what we want to do. And unfortunately, there's a lot of times where there are small children involved. So if we can keep them on medications and make sure they're getting their breathing treatments, it's a benefit for us for the hospitals and for the insurance companies. Thank you. Thank you. And last comment in this section to Joe. Chief McManus, number one, thank you. Number two, I have more confidence in your assessment of the numbers we have and the numbers we need than anybody else I hear on this topic. So thanks for sharing your views on that. My question really is more to the manager, which is if the chief is recommending 25 additional officers a year, I am assuming, Cheryl, that had we been able to get a reasonable resolution to our contract dispute two years ago, we would be in a better position to fund 25 additional officers per year than we are today. That's true. So it's easy, chief, for all of us to say yes, let's give you 100 new officers a year, but we got to pay for them. And that's not your department that comes elsewhere, but that's one of the reasons where we're having this retreat. So thank you, Cheryl. Chief, my question is the one I raised this morning, and I don't know if you were in the room when I did, but I assume Eric related to you, and that is we've got a social media world in which people can say anything they want to say and not be constrained by the truth, but we've got a self-styled political leader on the social media stating that San Antonio has the second highest murder rate in the country only after Chicago. I thought I would ask somebody who I presume knows about our murder rate to comment on that allegation. One of the other council members mentioned that we were on social media the murder capital of the world, and I think that I hardly think that 57 murders versus 41 last year to date makes us, you know, a murder capital or a dangerous city. Unlike in Chicago, we do not have, I mean, they have an outrageous number of shootings in a day. The shootings that we have here, the ones that result in murder or not, there's typically some type of relationship, whether it's a strong relationship or whether it's simply having looked at the person for five seconds, there's always some type of a relationship between the shooter and the victim in these crimes. So it's not, to use the term, it's not the Wild West here in San Antonio. These are, in most cases, not random shootings. When I say random, I'm talking about someone walking up and just not liking the way someone looks and shooting them. It does seem, again, at least anecdotally, that there is a lot more of a tendency for somebody to pull a gun than there has been in the past, and I don't know why that is. But I have a comparison back in my office from all the cities across the country that show increases in crime, and it seems that there is a trend across the country where violent crime is up, and we have not been an exception to that. But our murder rate is not alarming in the sense that we are now a murder capital. Chief, but of the top 25 cities, where do we rank? I'd have to check, Cheryl. I don't have to talk about that. But nowhere near number two. Pardon? But nowhere near number two in the country. I wouldn't think so, at least anecdotally. I mean, I just read eight pages in the New York Times following 38 people who were murdered in one weekend in Chicago. Right. We'd have to really get busy to catch up to that. Right. Okay. Thank you, Chief. Great. So in the interest of time, we'll move to our next section, our neighborhood and social services. So if we can invite that team to come up, our first speaker will be Melody Woodley, Human Services Director. So Melody, the floor is yours. Good afternoon. So I will, this presentation I'll start with on the consolidated funding process, the funding priorities and term limits. And then I'll go right into introducing a presentation on youth services. And so I've done a number of presentations on this topic on consolidated funding. So I'll move through this very, very quickly. As you know, every two years, the Human Services and Economic Development Departments issue a Human and Workforce Development Services RFP. On May 6th, we received 122 applications for that from 63 agencies, including nine new agencies. And so your survey results, where you identified funding priorities resulted in significant reallocation of funding between categories, you know, most significantly at 1.3 million reduction from the community safety net category and a 1.2 million dollar increase to workforce development. These funding amounts are estimates based on the current fiscal year, 2016. And today's process, the goal setting process will drive the amounts that are available for 2017. And let me show you real quick. So this is how the pool breaks down. Once the funding is designated to Afterschool Challenge and Haven for Hope as well as the new set aside for agencies, really that leaves 12.1 million for the competitive process. And so we received applications totaling almost twice that amount just to give you some perspective. And as you saw earlier, and I mentioned the reallocation of funding between the categories was considerable and it will have a considerable impact on services. The total increase about 1.7 million to youth services and workforce development that will allow us to expand high performing programs and fund new initiatives to improve education and workforce and help families improve their lives. But on the other side of the equation, an equal decrease of 1.7 million to children and family services as well as the community safety net will reduce significantly reduced services for victims of domestic violence, Haven for Hope support services, voluntary income tax assistance and senior services. And so right now 11 evaluation panels are reviewing applications and scoring them as well as interviewing the agencies. We will make our recommendations based on those scores as well as alignment with city council priorities and the evaluation process and city council priorities are basically what goes into that. But then also what's very important is the amount of funding available in each category. And so also on March 9th at B session I brought to you three options for funding term limits for delegate agencies. First one was a four-year limit on agency funding that would the clock would start in 2017 and there would be an initial reduction in 2018 of 1.4. The second one was a four-year program limit for your funding limit for programs. Also beginning in 2017 with a reduction in 18. And then the third alternative really was to continue using the priority setting process as well as the evaluation process to limit the time agencies or impact the time agencies were funding. Currently we only have a match requirement for agencies and so we also had some discussion about using a programming match requirement. And so there was no clear direction from council regarding term limits based on that presentation and there was a request from council that we talked to the non-profit community and get their input on city funding in the local fundraising environment. So we reached out and had three facilitated work sessions with the delegate agencies. 32 agencies participated and I'll run through some of their comments with you. So you won't be surprised to know that none of the agencies supported term limits. They commented that term limits would be disruptive to services for vulnerable clients and the city should purchase needed services from those agencies that have the most experience and provide the high quality programs. Also that the program match should not be implemented in the instances where the city is purchasing services for specific needs such as our senior services activities for our senior centers. They also we also asked the question about how to improve the funding environment. There was some discussion on wanting more coordination in more coordination with the department and between each other as well as request that the department hold agency in areas specific meetings and that we look at prioritizing these funds through a community needs assessment. And so in summary we will present the recommendations for delegate agency funding during the with the city manager's proposed budget for 2017. And as a reminder on July 1st the communication blackout period will begin and that will go through the posting of the agenda for the budget adoption ordinance in September. And so I will move right into a presentation on the city's youth investments. As you saw in the previous presentation the consolidated funding pool does provide considerable resources for youth services. And council priority setting resulted in an additional $450,000 being allocated to those kinds of services. But that's just one of many city investments or city initiatives that are focused on youth programming and improving youth services to help youth succeed in school and life. And so I'll provide an overview of those. City investments support three primary youth focus areas, education success. Programs promote on grade level achievement in high school graduation, college and career readiness programs. Those give youth a chance to explore career opportunities as well as to succeed when they go to college or when they begin working or training in a vocational or trade option skill. You strengthening programs, they will, what they're designed to do is really prevent at risk behaviors by helping young people build on their strength, learn good decision making skills, and the purpose of that really is to help them make those decisions to deter crime, deter incarceration, teen pregnancy and gang participation. And so as you can see the city's youth investments are considerable. They total over seven departments, almost $28 million. And these are primarily through the general fund. And so first, Antonio Public Library offers year round activities to youth for at the teen center as well as at branches across the city. They include the mayor's summer book club, mayor's summer reading club, live homework help, a number of digital resources focused primarily on teens as well as even snacks and lunches. Through Project Worth the Metro Health focuses on preventing teen pregnancy and connecting youth to opportunities. Through Municipal Corp partners with 15 school districts and 14 charter schools to address truancy through the diversionary contracts with parents and students. This program has served over 35,000 youth and has reached an almost 99% success rate. Elma manages contracts to support workforce training for young people as well as the award winning Alamo Academy stem model. And Human Resources Department manages an eight week work first program for young students right now. 60 of those students are working in 30 departments earning $9 an hour. And Human Services, we operate the ambassador program as another summer youth employment who went to high school locally. We also manage contracts with the San Antonio education partnership to operate Cafe College as well as provide the scholarship program. And then as mentioned in the consolidated funding program we fund over 46 programs through that effort and council has as I mentioned increased the funding for that program. And so I will hand this over to Janet Martin to provide more detail, a little more detail on the consolidated funding. Those programs really fall under the youth education, you strengthening Eric's behavior. Summer youth employment is a component of that. Our out of school time programs as well as after school challenge. And Janet will expand more on what parks is doing. We have 15,000 acres of park land 247,000 parks 26 recreation community centers 16 skate parks 18 dog parks 197 playgrounds 52 miles of trails as you can see it starts in parks. And our community centers is just one of those places where we offer youth the opportunity to come to a safe structured environment where they can enjoy exercise, nature and develop new skills and meet new friends. And last year we served over 85,000 youth at our local community centers. One of our largest programs is our summer youth program where we served over 6,000 youth last summer and registration is underway right now. The advantages of a summer youth program are numerous. But just to highlight a few of them, we teach kids teamwork, new skills, have them develop new creativity. And we also have a safe, fun environment that parents can relax that their children are being supervised in a very fun field environment every day. We offer it 8 weeks during the summertime, Monday through Friday from 7.30 to 5.30pm and we have a lot of activities to plan and we also have enrichment activities such as math and science and art and fitness and every child that is in our program is enrolled in the summer reading program and we encourage them to have reading program each day after lunch. So we also provide them a healthy lunch and a snack in the afternoon through our summer food program. Swimming. It's a great way to keep fit especially during our cool, during our hot summers and it's also a healthy activity for a lifetime. We have over 23 outdoor pools where youth can swim in the afternoon and evening hours free. And to give you a sense of our participation last year we had 58,000 youth who enjoyed our summer pools. Music and dance classes were offered through our department at a nominal fee and we had over 4,300 participants last year who participated in some type of music or dance class. And our fitness and athletics is also a very popular program. We offer a variety of leagues throughout the year to include basketball, volleyball, indoor and outdoor soccer and plus we have our fitness and the park program which is offered year round with over 145, oh I'm sorry, 150 free classes at 40 different locations and we had over 35,000 youth participate in some type of fitness or athletic activity by our department. And our natural areas we have plenty to offer free fresh air, sunshine and nature and abundance. And we give those children the opportunity to walk out into nature and observe wildlife to understand how to grow a garden, butterflies how to encounter snakes and basically walk and hike our trails to understand a little bit more about wildlife and the nature they live in. And last year we served over 2,400 participants. And to wrap this up at the end, here's a collage you can see youth exploring the opportunities and excelling our city programs. And at this time I'll turn it over to Xavier. Thank you, Mayor and Council. Switching over to animals as part of a quality of life initiative. I'll go quickly through these. I know we've talked a lot about animal care services to the major budget process. Just a quick reminder is background where the department came from and where it's going. Back in 2004, 10% live release rate strategic plan developed in 2006 with a goal of 70% by 2011. That was not attained in 2011. Re-evaluating that strategic plan was done in 2011 and actually a new component was included in that. And then in 2015, the new component of education was included in that. So as we stand today, these are the four strategies that have been worked through with the advisory board as well as council and staff and citizens. Again enhanced enforcement, increased live release rate, engage and educate the community. That is the newest and control stray population. Some of the key programs that have been initiated that support these different strategies include increasing our rescue partners, the microchip initiative that council approved, spay and neuter on the first impoundment which means if that dog is impounded then it is required, a spay and neuter is required before the owner can retrieve the animal. Free resources such as increased spay and neuter opportunities as well as free microchip, microchip mania which for example we just did in the Tobin community center area. As we go into some other programs, our trap neuter release with our cats have really significantly addressed the failed cat population in San Antonio. Again, that education which is more community based really looking at going out into the neighborhoods block walking, really trying to change the behavior of the community and looking at compliance based enforcement and what that means is instead of purely a punitive fine of looking at the requirement being for the resident to come into compliance meaning keeping your animal secured making sure your animal is spayed and neutered, making sure your animal is from the opposite extreme if you are not humanely keeping your animal for example if you have them tied up or something that you come into compliance. So kind of again overlook of our outcome process one of the questions that came up from council as part of our mid your budget discussion was looking at our live release as opposed to the stray roaming animal so we have a big population of roaming animals. We in 30,000 animals a year. So our shelter capacity right now based on maintaining a live release rate around 88% these are the different areas of where they assist us in that. Rescue account for 43% for example our return to owners is about 19% so this is where the model is today and what we really are looking at is alternatives of how do we address one over the other so council was asked what if we want to increase the live release rate what would be required. Some of the things we talked about were incentives or stipends that would assist the most difficult to place animals. We talked about advertising or promotion meaning being able to promote more animals for adoption and for fostering on the other side of the equation looking at reduction of the stray animal population anything that would not have monetary impact would have a negative impact on our live release rate so it would require us to increase the negative outcomes on pets that we would have. So for example if we were to add we were to we currently have a five day average stray hole period for an animal for example. If we were to reduce that by one day while we would be able to maybe pick up 5,000 more pets annually our live release rate would decrease by 3%. So it is a balanced approach of how we look at addressing the roaming and our live release rate. So every effort that we make one will impact the other and so they need to be done in tandem in order for us to maintain the current level we are at today. There are different approaches that we can look at in enhancing either side of the equation and those are some of the alternatives that could be explored during the budget process if council wishes to move one direction or the other. And we are going to switch to World Heritage. Good afternoon as everyone knows on July 5, 2015 our five Spanish colonial missions were designated as World Heritage Status and as a result of this designation we will see and we have already begun to see an increase in economic activity. Staff immediately developed a work plan that helped us identify the deliverables and tasks necessary to really better leverage these opportunities. The work plan identified infrastructure needs, way finding opportunities, marketing, small business development and land use opportunities that we must go forward and implement so we can better leverage this World Heritage designation. We are the first in Texas, the 23rd United States and joined a thousand other worldwide and we will be able to say that we are really going to be a best practice and we've already initiated discussions with several other entities that are looking at going after the World Heritage designation in their communities and they're looking at it to us because they've seen how we were able to partner with all of our partners and realize this designation together. In fiscal year 2016 the budget included $500,000 for implementation of the plan and we immediately started working on the beautification assessment to really understand how people are getting to the missions and how we can better improve those routes so they have that sense of place and they understand they're going to the missions and they're going to somewhere special. We also have funded branding banners that will tell people they are on the right track as they're riding their bike or driving to the missions. We have initiated a market assessment with University of Texas of San Antonio to help us identify the small business communities around each of these missions as we try to enhance cultural tourism in the area and we spent the majority of the funding on developing a mobile website that could be translated in five different languages to really help people understand the importance of the designation, the importance of the missions of San Antonio and also help them understand where they can go within the area to promote economic development and we finally have initiated the land use amendment process and are working with all the neighborhood organizations within the 5400 acre buffer area to really improve the areas and identify what we want to see in the areas around the mission and what we don't want to see. In addition to the $500,000 in the fiscal year 2016 budget we created the World Heritage Office and hired our first director of the World Heritage Office Colleen Swain and also Convention and Visitors Bureau continues to market the World Heritage Office in their fiscal year 2016 budget they included $250,000 for these marketing initiatives and we'll do so in fiscal year 2017. We've identified through the assessment and our work plan what we really would like to focus on for fiscal year 2017 and that includes creating a World Heritage Incentive Fund to really promote legacy businesses in the area help promote cultural tourism in the area and also help promote small business economic development in the area. We also need to improve the way finding and signage within the World Heritage buffer area and continue the staffing and operations within the department and finally programming of this $2.6 million in dollars in needs about $2 million is new funding and $600,000 is already included in the base. What we'd like to do with the World Heritage Incentive Fund is really help those businesses that have been in business within the buffer area to stay in business and help them succeed. We also will facilitate small business development through incentives and technical assistance and instant development that supports the cultural tourism in the area. We can't do this until we complete the economic assessment that UTSA is doing but we'll use that assessment to help us develop a toolkit. We also need to fund the signage package for Mission Trails Package 5 that has not been complete and that really helps us get to the entire length of the 8 mile mission road, a mission route. We want to brand our major routes. We have 1200 signs along the 5400 acre area and of those 1200 signs they are spread among six different entities. You have Via, you have Textot, you have the City of San Antonio you have Bear County and then you have National Parks but none of them are branded the same and so we have a beautiful World Heritage Brand that was created as a result of the designation process. We want to make sure that we brand the trails and the signage so people know when they are within the World Heritage Buffer area, they're within, they're going in the right direction and they're not confused. We will be creating a larger World Heritage Office. Right now we have the director position but we're going to redirect two positions from the Center City Development Operations Office. We have a special projects manager that focuses redevelopment within that area already and it makes sense for them to be within the office and then we have a facilities operator that is programming at the Mission Marquis and so we'll be moving them over to the office and then we're creating another position, a management analyst, we're proposing that so we can help with the coordination efforts among all these other entities that have engaged in this partnership. We'll continue our programming with the Mission Marquis and Spanish Governors Palace and then you'll see other budget requests and the budget process within the fiscal year 2017 IMP and the 2017 bond program and the Convention of Visitors Bureau budget for their marketing efforts and that concludes my presentation and I'll pass it on to Edward Benavidez, CEO of the Tricentennial Office. Good afternoon Mayor and Council. This afternoon I just want to do a quick overview of the Tricentennial so as many of you know in 2018 San Antonio will celebrate its 300th anniversary of our founding. Last year if you recall the Council created a nonprofit organization solely for the purpose of planning, preparing and implementing the 300 anniversary of our community. Here's just a quick mission our mission here with working with the commission is to celebrate our heritage, tell our story and celebrate the future for the next 300 years. Over the last couple of months the commission has been meeting regularly to define and visualize what the Tricentennial will be and while the celebration will be, will include festivities this is also an opportunity to really showcase our art and culture and all the other amenities that we have in San Antonio not just for locals but to share with the world. So over the past couple of months the commission has developed four key pillars that we will celebrate and commemorate our Tricentennial. Those initiatives include art and culture and so within arts and cultural you'll see performing arts, you see visual arts, you'll see commission public art displays and installations. Within history and education this is an opportunity to tell our story where we came from who was responsible for our founding in light of our recent visit with Spain and the Canary Islands and other communities who contributed to who we are as a community. This is also an opportunity to engage universities and school children to be part of the story and get them excited and engaged as part of the Tricentennial year. In addition, community service what can we do together as a community and really work to the betterment of our neighborhoods, our schools, our churches and lastly is commemorative week. So in May of 2018, May 1st through May 7th each day will highlight and showcase San Antonio in a big way and really bring the community together to celebrate who we are as San Antonians. During this planning phase over the last several months the commission also developed guiding principles that we are working with the staff and seven working committees of the commission that really help us and guide us in our planning efforts. Those principles ensure that we create a positive and or lasting impact to the community showcases our diversity authenticity and inclusiveness also celebrates the Tricentennial identity and identifies financial viability, transparency and integrity throughout the process and educates and celebrates who we are as a community over the course of 2018. During this time we've also had discussions as to the overall budget of the project and so right now what we're at is we're proposing about a $12 million overall project between $12 and $15 million. That project is based on three areas reflecting again to support the arts and culture, history and education initiatives, community service and commemorative week. The $3 million is proposed from the city $3 million would come from the county and actually yesterday I had a meeting with our county liaison to discuss this opportunity and so having ongoing conversations as part of their budget development within the county and then we would look to the private sector to also secure funding from them to support the initiatives and so in total we're recommending a $12 million project to support the overall initiatives within the Tricentennial year in 2018. As a reminder the Tricentennial will actually kick off next December 31st New Year's Eve in a very big way reimagining what we see downtown with New Year's Eve and then going into 2018 and concluding at the end of the calendar year of 2018. The funding would come as proposed over the two years $3 million would come from the hot tax and right now what we're doing staff is working within draft budget and identifying those initiatives that could be supported by the city and by the county and in the private sector. In addition to that the city has been a great partner with the city's providing unkind support to the non-profit. The staffing and the operating budget is being supported by the city to support not only personnel but then marketing and branding of $270,000. Right now we have currently seven positions one is vacant. Regarding the operating budget there are funding alternatives here laid out there are three consisting of the $950,000 with different funding sources ranging from with alternative A from the arts funding and hot tax revenue alternative B $475,000 evenly from the arts funding and hot tax and lastly alternative C where all funding would come from the hot tax and so these are alternatives for consideration by the council as far as the operating budget the operating budget is different from the $3 million that would support the direct initiatives to support the tricentennial so there are three different pots of money here and with that that concludes my presentation good afternoon mayor council be very brief I just provide you a quick overview of the cost of non-attainments of federal ozone standards if you remember where our ozone comes from this is a pie chart that shows the majority come from point sources which are basically electric generation and industrial sources on-road which are cars and light duty trucks and non-off-road which is basically construction and airport operations and we start talking about economic impacts these are the sectors that are going to be hit that will filter down to our our businesses and our residents in terms of timeline if you remember this past October EPA lowered the the ozone standard from 75 to 70 parts per billion basically placing the city of San Antonio in non-attainments we're expecting a formal determination by EPA in October of 2017 and depending upon where we are designated as there are different categories if we are designated in marginal non-attainment we have three years to come back into attainment or moderate we have six years if we do not meet those attainment standards we will be reevaluated once again by EPA so in terms of the economic costs as I mentioned the sectors that would be impacted really it is across the board we have new businesses and industry that need to are interested in relocating to the city of San Antonio there will be additional permitting and regulatory requirements that they need to go through if existing industry wants to expand again there is additional regulatory hurdles that they need to go through as well as paying for additional offsets for any additional emissions that they will be releasing into the environment there is transportation impacts that we want to implement road highway or transit projects we need to really consider and evaluate the air quality impact and mitigate those as much as possible and we are really also looking at the potential for INN programs for all of our residents and businesses in terms of having their vehicles inspected and part of a maintenance program so it really sort of snowballs through our community the closest study that we have in terms of what this economic impact could be is from CAPCOG that completed this study recently and found that non-attainment can mean 24 to 41 billion dollars for their region between 2018 and 2046 as we are a larger region and have a larger economy we would project that that would be larger for us ACOG currently has an RFP out for a similar study and they are expecting that to be completed this fall but that is only taking into consideration the direct economic cost there are also direct health impacts and this chart basically shows what the health impacts are from air pollution and ozone and you can see that the incidence and severity of ozone related health impacts increase in terms of range at the bottom so we can see asthma and different cardiac effects affect a much larger proportion of the population you know I think key to this is that there is an economic impact for all of this so those impacts include medical costs, lost school and work days, early deaths along with the cost of pharmaceuticals so what staff is recommending is in addition to this economic impact that is being conducted by ACOG that considers funding a public health impact study of non-attainment so we can really quantify what these health impacts are and really help us communicate to the public and our stakeholders that this is really a big issue not just necessarily a dollar and cents issue but it really has a long-term impact on the sustainability of our residents from our children to our seniors with that I think we're ready for questions great so if I could get the lights up Josh please so from a process standpoint in consultation with Cheryl we realize this is a really expansive category right so it probably makes more sense to break it up into some sections so we'll be taking it in several elements delegate agencies and youth programs will be one section so we'll take comment on that first then animal care services will be its own section we'll have whatever exchanges you'd like to have on that world heritage and tricentennial will be taken as a block right related matters there and then air quality will be its own section so we'll begin with delegate agency funding and youth programming Chris you're first sir I really just have a lot of positive things to say about what you're doing so much so that we're very pleased with the ambassador program and I know that program falls under what y'all are doing I wanted to see though how we were quantifying the students that are going through the program then tracking them as they come back are we doing that so those children that signed up in our summer youth program yes we can track if they return on a yearly basis is that what you're talking about I was talking about the ambassador program yes melody so the ambassador students we we track the ones that come back some of them will come back for a second year as an ambassador student for the most part most of them do one year we're doing some follow up as far as making phone calls and finding out if they've graduated from college but we don't have a formal long-term tracking process in place it's something that we are looking looking at and working with the education partnership on comparing how they track students over time reaching out to our local chambers as well and really engaging them to find opportunities for them as these kids are graduating coming back we have kids that are going to Georgetown points all over the country in the world and I think it's incumbent upon them to recognize that talent and do their part to help we're making the investment on the city side and I call on those folks to be helpful as well so however we can do that I would appreciate that and to let you know the chamber is very involved in the program they sat on the panel looking at the applications and so they're very interested I'm glad to hear that Xavier so we're going to take animal care services as a separate item so we had youth services right so it was delegate agencies and youth programs with the two talks thank you Francisco thank you I have a comment on the delegate agency term limits actually maybe a question where does that stand now are we essentially not moving forward of term limits we did not implement term limits because there wasn't clear direction from council in the RFP we included language that we could implement them for 2018 or program match but at this time nothing and I think that's the right thing to do I do not agree I think that's the discretion of the council to determine priority year to year and I have to say that I don't agree with the rebalancing of the delegate agency portfolio I mean I look at the big problems that Bear County and San Antonio have in terms of our socioeconomic disparity in terms of the wage scale, predominant wage scale in San Antonio and I think that it is a mistake for us to believe that these issues are going to be addressed without our intervention our delegate agency funding has remained relatively stable over the years but the need only increases every single year and we see that with its homelessness we see it in just about every area and these nonprofits are not you know they're not endowed so they are working off of donations some of them from the same pools that they all essentially compete for San Antonio Bear County area is number one or number two in domestic violence and child abuse and neglect and childhood deaths and I think that the fact that we're now taking a million dollars out of that pot of money that's going to agencies that are already that are already taxed for resources and manpower and facility space we have for instance the batter women's shelter takes in an average of 70 cases a day and that fluctuates obviously I just heard that today they had 160 this problem is only getting worse and I think that we have a number of different agencies whether it's the EDF or our chambers or our essay works programs that are working in workforce development we should work on that together collaboratively but to pull that from our agencies that are working sometimes single-handedly on these most important issues I think is a huge mistake at the very wrong time for our community so I would urge us to reconsider the money that we're taking out of community safety net I have other comments there on the other items so thank you mayor I've got Mike Shirley Rebecca and Alan thank you Francisco just concerning councilman Nuremberg's comments with all due respect I think one of the most important things that we should do and it is our responsibility to do this is to not send a message to these organizations that they have funding forever and ever and ever I think it's absolutely essential that we establish some kind of term limits if we don't do that we're making a huge mistake on behalf of the taxpayers somebody has to say after a while you've got to stand on your own and run your organization and quit depending on the city which is behind in trying to fix potholes so let's make that clear we need that as a part of the planning process and Melody while we have you up there I wanted to make this comment this morning when we were talking about ADA requirements but I think you're the right person to send this message to I am getting messages from the senior centers from the customers that we need to be looking at ADA compliance and I specifically have been getting calls from Larry Johnson who you may know and he writes a lot of editorials for the express news and he is saying that we need to look at how we take care of our visually impaired people and what we can do from a budgeting process to look at how we can improve that accessibility at those senior centers would be very helpful. The senior centers are all absolutely ADA compliant and they exceed ADA compliance in several areas like number of handicapped parking spaces or stalls in the bathrooms we we take care of visually impaired and special needs and we have a case by case basis so if we have a senior come in and we get a request for a piece of fitness equipment that has Braille on it we address that at that particular center we'll bring that equipment in so we do have that in various centers but we can look at what it would take to provide that set of equipment in all of the centers. Thank you very much because I think that's an important initiative that we ought to adopt I apologize I made an error in my queue management the mayor had been waving at me for a while so I'll give the next mic to you. That's okay. Thank you. Be brief here. Well on this area first I'll commend the staff on the work they've been doing there certainly is quite a bit to do in this space I wanted to say that I think in relation to the delegate agencies in our youth programs that I'd like to see a specific link to my brother's keeper which I think is a priority that we've embraced and should drive and direct our investments focusing on those that are most at risk and in our community given the demographics of our community I think has a tremendous impact on us and our future and to me it kind of links to the previous discussion we had about public safety and violence and all those things we need to be thinking about how we can make investments that would prevent those types of outcomes at the community level and then similarly I just wanted to offer my reflection on how those categories should be prioritized I agree the nonprofits do a lot of work in very critical areas helping families that are at risk but if as was noted we keep making the same investment year after year but what do we get more need than to me that says we should rethink how we make the investment and I think all of us have read studies and have seen indications that poverty is a key driver for many of the needs that we serve through the first three categories so I think we can make a difference in those categories by addressing poverty which I see as us doing through education and workforce development so that's why I would say that I think the way we currently have the investment categories make sense because I don't think we should keep making investments year after year just to see a continued increase in those horrible statistics so I'd love for us to take a different approach in trying to be proactive break those chains of generational poverty and I think that will result in some more positive numbers or less of a need for services in relation to the safety net and youth services and family services which also we live in a very generous community I think individuals in the private sector are more apt to come to the assistance of nonprofits that are serving in that sector as opposed to workforce development so I just kind of see that as an appropriate place for us to strategically invest our dollars thank you and so I just want to offer my support for the continued trend that we're on that we're not eliminating or they're not creating term limits for any of the delegate agencies I think we recognize the importance of them and just as in the previous presentation with the chief hood about the prevention prevention is always a miss medicine as much as we can invest in these problems from happening investing in youth and children services and family services when they're young we hope we'll have better outcomes in the future and we know that I mean again we've continued to see high increase high rates of domestic violence of childhood violence and they are coming out of specific areas in the city and so I would like to see that investment continue and I think I've asked this question a couple times I think I've asked it almost every time and I never have an answer about how many people are employed in these delegate agencies because I think it's still something that we're not recognizing how much of this could be considered still economic development and workforce training in the fact that there are so many people involved in the delicate agencies whether they're volunteers which could be considered in kind and also how many people they serve just as a whole I don't know if you have those numbers Melody if you could have them for us at how many people are employed by all these delegate agencies that we serve sure we have the number of people we're paying for in the budget so we can work with the agencies to put together the entire employment complement for for each program I would like to see that and even possibly you know what the the average salary is for people that are in these industries so and then even as just as a total how many people that they serve so as we meet with each non-profit they tell us how many people they serve but in actuality how many because it could be hundreds of thousands of people that are being served by this dedicated source of funding and we do have that one can provide them okay thank you and Francisco what was the other one that we were talking about here human services and was there another one oh youth the ambassadors program which I have nothing but wonderful things to say about the ambassadors program so we can continue to support those those programs thank you Rebecca yes question about the the delegate agencies the investment categories because going through the spiral it had children family services asterisk community safety net two asterisk these also include funding for after school challenge and it does include the haven for hope I this is that right haven for hope is included in the community safety category but isn't that its own item I mean it's a designated funding something council decided to designate funding to but those dollars the 5.9 million is in the community safety net category that's the total funding that's allocated so then it's actually how much if you take out the the 5.9 million then it's really only just 2.8 million that we have available for the community safety right that's how that works so then it's 2.8 for the community safety net alright that's and with the children family services are after school challenge that's designated and so we then have to take out another 2.7 million from that from that yes okay that and that's what we're left with and can you please explain to me where does the domestic violence issues come out of the community safety net or the safety note right okay not the family services no alright right now they're in community safety that's that's a confusing part of it so let me go to the term limits conversation there and I hear what councilman um Gallagher was saying but one of the things I was thinking about when it comes to term limits and that's why I was concerned about the term limits of agencies or the term limits of programs because there are some programs that have been faithful and good and effective and efficient and then to um then ban them from that not necessarily it would give them completely shut them down but then it would change and alter those individuals those families who need those meet those needs but if we can continue can be focused on the evaluation and the effectiveness of the agency itself I think that would be so I think um I'm now moving towards alternative C that we would set the priorities for these new agency fundings and the evaluation process and plus and as I was mentioned before we have to own up to say no to certain things when they're not meeting our criteria too and having that so that's one issue um for me and then next um the youth programming so when it comes to youth programming I know you identified some of the organizations do they go through the same type of evaluation um as the delegate agencies um well the 46 programs that are funded through the delegate the consolidated funding process there are 46 youth programs they go through all of that evaluation and then there are a number of programs that city staff operate so the city is funding youth initiatives both through direct services by city employees and then also through contracts so for example like with the alamo academies but the SA youth SA youth has to go through an evaluation process to look at their efficiencies they don't have over 50% of their um funding coming from the city uh rena can probably speak more to their budget but they are part of consolidated funding program this so I guess that's why I need clarification so there comes there's comes from the consolidated funding but they're under economic development yes economic development manages the work development contracts okay all right I understand that and then um finally I want to also make my case that we need to include um in our youth programs somehow with the parks or something when it comes to anti-bullying and team dating violence those pro programs need to be a part of that conversation um and I think our libraries are doing a fantastic job and need to maintain a priority thank you okay thank you uh I guess in in consideration of time uh should not pursue the term limits is uh where I stand on the uh delegate agencies but I do uh think that some additional mentoring should be uh growing as far as uh building the capacity or growing new nonprofit organizations that are uh younger may have different ideas potentially different programs in the same fields so if we can uh focus on the funding tied to uh very similar to our sub beta program uh just on the nonprofit sector so growing smaller nonprofits in order to build capacity throughout the network um uh definitely want to chime in on support for my brother's keeper as well and uh workforce development I think is the key uh again being in a community where we have a number of issues until we get uh the people in the community up to the skill sets and up to the capacity where they can uh perform the types of jobs that will keep them in these communities uh allow them to afford the uh the rising uh property costs the rising costs of living costs in our downtown and near downtown neighborhoods I think it only makes sense instead of creating subsidies uh finding a way that they can afford these neighborhoods genuinely okay thank you Joe Roberto and Ryan Joe thank you Melody how many delegate agencies do we have grand total both supervised by you and supervised by economic development right now we have 65 how many 65 65 and how many in the last 10 years have been defunded in the last 10 years I mean this is a guess but I can go back and get the information I would say probably 20 to 25 maybe we do defend a handful every year I think in the last year three were defunded for performance issues if you could give me that information I would be grateful for it I used to be very active with united way I mean the problem with this issue and I want to go on as a big mega ditto to councilman Gallagher's comments we have a tendency to I'm astonished you're saying we have 20 that aren't on there after the last 10 years which is why I'd like to see that the problem with 65 agencies is that means we have 65 executive directors many of them have chief financial officers many of them have other staff so we're paying for all of that and as I look at that list there's a lot of those organizations that if we were in the private sector we would consolidate into a much smaller list of people and thereby achieve measurable administrative savings and I'm not going to ask you to opine on that but if I were to say to you I'd like you to figure out a way to consolidate and reduce this from 65 to something that is both more efficient and more manageable I assume that you could do that we could definitely explore that yes um and of course the problem because Cheryl often refers to the issue of crowding out with regard to the cost of our public safety but to the extent we don't have room for new agencies we tend to crowd out getting new agencies people with new and different ideas one of the people one of the groups in that category of delegate agencies is I assume Project Quest yes which more than being a social service agency is a job training and job recruitment agency would that be a fair statement it seems to me that I remember the day when they were a line item and I would certainly support us going back to that approach because they are and Mayor you've made a point time and time again and if we could go to the chart that shows the pluses and the minuses of funding I'm glad to see that there's a net increase in workforce development I mean the best thing we can do for most of the people who are being impacted by these delegate agencies is to try to get them or people in their family a good job and if we can do that there would be a significant budget reduction in the need for the agencies and the need for the services which is why I've supported your making workforce development a priority you're your your analysis though in consulting with the providers obviously is that they don't view term limits as a good idea no the feedback we got was that they thought that that would have impacts on the quality of programs and services to to clients and the challenge I think to those who suggest that we've always got the option of evaluating each agency ourselves is we don't do that I mean we're not equipped to evaluate each one individually and if we did we'd be meeting five times a week for six hours a day and I don't I don't think that's a feasible alternative so the the challenge of other places saying well you all just evaluate them and weed out the bad ones and keep the good ones is that's not a very practical way to deal with it which is why I thought term limits was a good idea I came from an organization that did term limits and it works pretty down well for 20 years so I think that that makes the point but I certainly support the budget allocation that that you have shown us and I assume are recommending yes thank you thank you thank you Melody tell us are we meeting the goals of senior services the goals for the work for the could we do more well the senior services under consolidated funding support activities in our senior centers so we've built a number of new large senior centers and we need the activities growing and it is growing what about youth programs are those growing absolutely I mean there's the answer right there right I mean this is a race with no finish line right and so with all due respect councilman Gallagher I wholeheartedly disagree with you I mean this is not the way we should be approaching these kind of delegate agencies we don't have a finish line I myself I'm a boys and girls club kid it helped me quite a bit and you hope that these agencies impact lives in a very positive way and they can help people in the long run but senior services are not decreasing we're all getting older sitting here by the way you've noticed except you councilman but I just want to point out I mean this is the issue of our time is our aging population you brought up ADA and as you know I just brought out that CCR about ADA compliance ADA compliance is not an architectural issue it's a civil rights issue we're all going to be there hopefully someday we'll hopefully grow gracefully and might need some help here and there whether we're a kid or we're much older we're going to get to the point where we actually need more help and we're growing population and so decreasing seems to be the opposite direction of which the way we should actually be going two examples of how it's increasing and yet we're proposing a decrease it just doesn't make any sense to me that's all I have thank you so at this point we will transition to animal care services thank you very much great work Al Ray did you have a on the previous one I apologize so we'll hold and Ray let's come into you I don't think we'll need the staff I like alternative C and with regard to the mix of community safety safety net while being in the family there is a I don't think that our end goal should be as councilman Trevino discussed that we're going to zero out this category I think that we're living in a city that has a lot of need most of these nonprofits do consider in their budget every year a portion of it coming from philanthropy and I think philanthropy is where San Antonio comes in as well is that we happen to be in this business because we're not a big city with a huge philanthropic inventory of folks so we're all competing for the same funds whether it's the Boys and Girls Club the rape crisis center, any baby can child safe all of these doing some really important work and I don't I think it's easier to be callous about it when we look at it as just 65 agencies but when you call me a softy but I've visited a lot of them I've seen a lot of their work I've put faces to names with respect to the folks that are victims that we're not capable of taking in and dealing with their cases whether they're mental or social issues that I think we need to meet so if I would like to see a readjustment of that I don't know if we're voting on that but I do like I do think community safety net is one in which when we see a decrease it does make me feel a little uneasy and just to say alternative C and if we can reevaluate as we go towards the end of the budget about where we ended up on our mix here community safety net as I'm actually looking at the specific programs as I look them up encompasses a lot of nonprofits that I think are truly important to some cracks that too many of our residents fall through unfortunately thank you Francisco so Alan animal care services thank you Xavier Xavier you mentioned the potential of reducing the time in the kennels for a 3% decrease in the live release rate correct so what we look at is again the balanced approach of how many animals are being impounded to the live release impact so while we don't physically have the ability of housing an additional thousand animals that would take a procedure change so for example for average straight hole time right now is five days if we were to reduce that potentially down meaning that the animals had less time for a positive outcome we could impound potentially more animals but the live release would be impacted as well and that 3% where would that put us in regards to our peer cities within Texas El Paso, Austin, Houston, Dallas so in Texas while we are one of the strongest the other cities are making a lot of strides they're actually following a lot of the examples that San Antonio is doing so I can get you the exact figures of the other Texas cities but right now we are predominantly much higher than the large cities the smaller cities of course smaller universe are able to have a larger impact on that so we're leading the way in live release so 3% would probably still put us in the number one spot between the large cities except for Austin correct and that would probably make a marked difference as far as public safety I was just talking to a high school student yesterday who said he was riding down the street and got bit by a dog while he was riding down the street on his bicycle so it's hard for me to and what does the 3% actually equate to so currently if we some of our months for example so we impound 30,000 animals so if we if we were to hit a 90% live release rate that means there are 3,000 animals that have a negative outcome so you would be adding an additional 3% so you're talking about another half of that so potentially another 1,500 to 2,000 animals that would be euthanized realistically with those 30,000 that we pick up every year don't we pick up another 30,000 as dead animal carcasses? I don't think I brought the exact number of the dead animal pickups but they have been decreasing but I would need to get you that I didn't actually bring the dead animal I think I know in the past Shirley's mentioned that for every animal that we pick up there's another animal that we pick up dead approximately it's 22,000 animals a year and the dead animal pick up so I mean how humane is it to leave those other animals out on the streets and let them die either by vehicle impact or by starvation well we know the answer to that I mean it's not humane but it's at least allowing for the human population of San Antonio to be a little safer to get those dogs off the streets right well actually it would be opposite because the city would actually be taking more the city would be handling that responsibility as opposed to the pet owner which we're saying in that case is that the pet owner the city will take your animal off the street and we will euthanize it humanely as opposed to the pet owner taking full ownership and taking care of their animal and making sure their animal isn't out on the street now I'm not saying that we should end our efforts with education and imploring people to be more responsible pet owners but I definitely do think something has to be done on the public safety side and this is one of the things that I'm definitely focused on that no kill is wonderful but no stray first and then we can because we still have no idea how many strays are out there on our streets correct? Correct and just to remind council you know the previous practice was to pick up the animals and then they were euthanized and that's an unending cycle so what we have looked at through again the balanced approach is looking at education, enforcement compliance spay and neuter efforts again to try to stop that population coming in I understand the councilman's concern and the only thing that's balanced about it is that all the stray animals are in poor neighborhoods in the city if all the neighborhoods had equal amount of strays and I wouldn't have an issue with this but because the poorer areas in the east west south and some of the near north have all the stray animals there's nothing balanced about the extreme north side of 1604 not having to deal with the issue while the inner city and poorer communities have to deal with it that's true from that standpoint numbers the balance that he's referring to is adoption and a live release rate in partnership and spay neuter services in partnership with picking up the strays if we were to pick up all the strays then we need to build more kennels and hire more enforcement officers to pick up more strays and this is an ongoing issue with councils every council that we've worked with has struggled with pick up the strays and euthanize animals versus should we do an adoption program and try to have greater live release and councils to varying degrees have supported those approaches but most have said we need balance to do both but I think that 3% number is still balanced because 90% of the animals that reach our kennels still meet a positive outcome so I would implore that that at least be considered and it would put us ahead of every other city except for Austin correct Dallas is coming up quickly behind us again they've really made some big strides in the last few years a lot of investment from their city council as well I just don't feel in closing I just don't feel that the poorer neighborhoods of our city should have to bear the entire burden of the majority of the stray animals out on our streets thank you Rebecca Shirley the mayor thank you for the so I think you just said it if we increase the no stray then you're saying right now how things are in place that it would be increased euthanasia for our animals or build out more kennels which would be money a large capital a large capital improvement okay I would like to I would also recommend and give direction that we do need to continue working on enforcement especially with the sweeps that we do and those who are allowing their dogs to just roam freely in the neighborhoods and not properly securing them we need to do more enforcement because once we do that we know that people will take more responsibility or then they will leave their animals and then we'll have to pick them up or something like that too but it is about pet owner responsibility and the education that we need to do also I'd like to recommend something with more traps because we have a lot of homeowners or neighborhood associations who know exactly where these animals are and they can trap them or have that opportunity so maybe looking at that and also enforcing and stopping these breeders or these backyard breeders as well as those who are selling the animals on the street corners or in parking lots etc to really stop that or enforcing that more and also I'll say it again looking at transporting animals because we know that many of our partners ACS partners do the transport and if there's a creative way that we can do that transporting to other locations I'd like to see some recommendations or some options alternatives budget wise for that too yes thank you sure so dare I say I think we are on the right path with this issue and while it is not perfect I think that this is the right strategy and we just need to continue moving on it and we still have an issue with strays but there have been times out in this last week in particular that I haven't seen any dogs in my neighborhood and that's a very unusual occurrence so I think that I know dare I say that's why I'm saying I say it with but I do think so this was a big priority of mine and has been and continues to be a big priority of mine but I have seen a reduction in the amount of loose animals I do believe that just by looking without being expert looking that the dogs I see do tend to be loose and not strays they look pretty healthy and clean and with collars so that's why I think that we're on the right path and while my priority is always loose and stray animals not live release I think we're headed in the right direction and it's a great improvement and only because I think you're not you're not the permanent ACS otherwise you would be getting all the calls from me but I wanted to call the other day and say that I actually did not see any loose animals on my routes so continue is my view. The mayor, then Ray, then Chris. Okay thank you I just want to echo some of the sentiments that were just conveyed especially in councilman work having you know had the opportunity to serve and focused on part of town where the stray population was a big issue and I just you know I'm kind of reflecting on a recent experience and just wanted to offer additional suggestion the councilman via grand suggestions were very specific but I want it I'm hoping that maybe we can take a closer look at the education component and I just wanted to reflect on experience we had when we were in Spain we were in a business meeting where someone a Spanish business person or government official specifically asked us about our experience with water conservation and the success we've had related to water conservation and Becky Cedillo was there and she was a staffer at SAWS when it was created and she gave a real historical reflection on where our community started where people you know flushed and ran water when they brushed your teeth and didn't know what the aquifer was and we were really at you know a very different point than we are now and she talked about the focus on education and how over the course of a couple of decades we've made a whole we've changed a whole different mindset as far as people's consciousness on water usage on conservation and people actually changing their habits and so when we talk about this I'm you know I think back to that of course nobody wants to sit here and say it's going to take us two decades so there's no stray dogs on the street but I just don't know that we're being aggressive enough on that changing the community mindset because the main problem is a people problem not an animal problem and so what can we do to be more proactive in that space and yes the returns that we want to see may be further down the road but at least that means that a council 10 or 15 years from now won't be sitting here having the same debate so I hope that as you all look at your budget proposal that we can really focus on more in a more aggressive way on the education and enforcement opportunity because we can change not just people's ideas but also their behaviors thank you Francisco I just want to rebuff exactly actually reiterate what the mayor is discussing and as somebody who's had a spiritual revival in this category it was my attitude and the attitude of that of my family and my neighbors that was often the problem whether it was an animal that we said well that's the neighborhood dog it roams outside to roam that that is a issue and nobody told us otherwise that it was a problem we didn't get an ACO telling us that we were going to come back and be cited that the dog outside was the security I mean that's just not the purpose of an animal and I think we have to change the attitudes and we're slowly getting there I think we're seeing it a little bit in our district and I think there's a few things that I was going to request as we're talking about the budget that'll help us continue to try to make great progress I think we can inch forward even more and make some great progress going forward I don't know if this is this is rumor or true but I think that some districts have a dedicated ACO officer correct so Councilman over the last few years additional resources that have been added to the budget have specifically been targeted around the more of the roaming and loose animals so for example such things even as the Spaniard clinic in District 3 that's at Brooks that's we have dedicated officers in District 5 and in District 2 so again being community based more grassroots block walking as you and I think the city manager have done years past you know really having the conversations with the pet owners on proper how do you properly have responsible pet ownership and to try to make that change in behavior so we do have two officers that are dedicated in those two districts of highest need but if I think we came back with a recommendation to council it would be a focused and in the area dealing with stray and roaming animals well so I would say this I know that we have two districts that have dedicated officers and as Councilman work described there's some districts that have this issue more than others and in my district we're still in an area where we're trying to make progress I would you know propose and request I'd love to have dedicated ACO not necessarily just because we want to pick up more animals but it's what we realize is some of these ACOs are our education arm they are doing a lot of return owners they're doing a lot of citations and I think if we can have somebody dedicated to this district what we try to do is kind of mirror them on the safe officer that PD has so they are attending neighborhood meetings they become part of the fabric of the community in other words they become the person that you can go visit with and say hey you know Mr. Johnson Mr. Rodriguez's dog gets out on a regular basis you know they can have that conversation it's an education that has enforcement eventually to it if it's required but again trying to change the behavior first and I would say that we remain consistent and vigilant on our partnerships with our with our live release partners I think that has proven for us instead of building a shelter what we can do is find these virtual shelters in our foster network and as long as we're doing well by the foster volunteers that's a that's a sustainable potential option for us and the last thing here is I think attach the engagement and education with so many free resources so many so many things that we give away low cost that I think if I could I'd ask for marketing dollars for ACS so they might actually be able to so that the right eyes the right folks with the with the attitudes that needs shaping are actually taking advantage of our services so it's ACO officer a dedicated officer and if I can request even some extra funding for marketing and engagement at ACS thank you thank you Francisco certainly want to echo the comments on the education piece there are very important very important to the overall strategy that we have and while I've been doing this long enough to know that there's no silver bullet out there I think that we are on the right path we are taking the right approach really pleased with your leadership Xavier that you carried out continue to carry on the success there at ACS and I think it's it's a stamp of approval to when when councilman Gonzalez says that she's also pleased with it too that there's no path of dogs in her neighborhood so I think that we're on the right path and I don't want to jinx it but just want to again echo and support the education piece as much as possible because you know as I've gone to talk at different schools and talk to neighbor associations it is important that they get that information and we're talking to them constantly about educating and being responsible pet owners and getting that education information to them so I think that that's certainly the right approach to it so thank you so we're going to conclude this segment I would say I'm an exercising facilitator prerogative we're at a bit of a point of diminishing returns on people's attention span we've been at this for a long time the last couple of sections have been pretty intense so let's take ten and pick it up at five till and resume with tricentennial and world heritage discussion and go from there break