Public Safety Committee

PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE April 4, 2017 A special meeting of the Public Safety Committee was held this date beginning at 3:35 p.m., at City Hall, Second Floor, Council Chamber. Notice of this meeting was sent to all local news media. PRESENT Councilmember Kathleen Wilson, Chair, Councilmember A. Peter Shahid Jr., Councilmember Wagner, Councilmember Lewis, and Mayor John Tecklenburg Staff: Bethany Whitaker, Council Secretary The meeting was opened with a moment of silence by Chairwoman Wilson. Discussion regarding the proposed creation of a Department of Public Safety: Mayor Tecklenburg thanked Chief Brack for leading the department to the best operation and for her service. She had come to him with her thoughts and plans to retire and it got his mind working for a more unified strategy for providing public safety. He wanted to bring it to the Committee for discussion. One of the challenges the City was experiencing was growth. The estimates were that in the last four years the population had grown from 125,000 to 142,000. It’s unofficial but it would put Charleston as the number one city in the state in terms of population; that was a 13% increase in a 4 year period. The number of visitors had also grown the same percentage of 13% from 4.76 million to almost 5.5 million. That was approaching an increase of a million visitors per year over the last four years. In a similar fashion, the number of housing units had increased. Last year they saw almost 3,000 housing units permitted and the number of hotel rooms had increased dramatically over the past year. 2016 was the first year in the City’s history that saw over one billion dollars in building permits issued. When they thought about the growth, folks were concerned about traffic and transportation, flooding, drainage, and the impact that the growth would have on the quality of life. He wanted to ask the committee to think about what impact the growth had on public safety as far as what they were providing through police, fire, and emergency services to the citizens. Calls for services from fire and police had both increased and over the last four years they had gone 17,000 for fire service to around 23,000. That was a 35% increase; many of the calls were not related anymore directly to a fire; only about 20% of calls were related to a fire call. They responded to calls that included emergency medical services, and the same thing was happening on the police department side. They had grown from 112,000 calls per year to 126,000 calls which was an 11% increase. They didn’t have good statistics on how many of those calls were old-fashioned ‘cops and robbers’ calls, there was reason to believe that the preponderance of those calls were also non-crime related. The overall calls were dramatically increasing. This has led to increases in the budget for both the Fire Department and the Police Department. The Fire Department had a huge increase of almost 35% over the last four years from 24 million to 31 million per year. On the police side, the budget had gone up from 41 million to 47 million, which was a 15% increase. Joint combined budgets were around 80 million of the total budget of almost 200 million. About 40% of the City’s budget was for the Fire Department and the Police Department. There were challenges in both of the departments, with one challenge being retention. The national average of retention for public safety officers was last reported as 7.4%, but they believed the latest statistic showed it trending upward. A year ago, the City was at a level of almost 10% with the Fire Department and almost 11% with the Police Department. They have seen an uptick over the last year, but it was an issue in both departments, that they believed needed to be addressed. One of the issues that needed to be addressed was the amount of pay that they were able to afford for the public safety officers and officials. They had constraints of what they received, and they had requirements that were being put on them by the State for retirement contributions. Between retirement benefits and direct pay, they needed to save every penny that they could elsewhere in order to do a better job with pay and benefits. Some of the areas that were growing were Westedge, Magnolia, King Street, Meeting Street, and West Ashley. The Cainhoy peninsula already had many things that were already approved. There were many new developments on both James and Johns Islands that had already been entitled. They had the growth and it was already happening. They needed to be able to plan for how they would serve the citizens. Currently, the chiefs did a great job, but they were still dealing with the day-to-day operations of what happened in their departments. This is why he thought it was a good idea to consider a Public Safety Department with an advocate who had a larger view of the entire needs of public safety and the City. Public Safety was the first job of government, and to keep the citizens safe they needed to address the challenges of growth, retention, and to coordinate services so they got the best bang for the buck and were able to take care of the employees. Traditionally, they had the Emergency Management Division. There were about 150 cities in the United States that had moved in the direction of some form of consolidation. In some places it had worked well, and in other places it hadn’t. It depended on where they took it, and here in Charleston, what would suit the City was not cross-training. It would be to find the areas of efficiency that could be consolidated from an administrative view. They had a marine safety division in the Fire Department with a vessel, and they had a dive team in the Police Department. This could be an area where there was cross-purpose and savings. They would still maintain a fire-fighting force and police-force, but they would have an individual that would have the vision over both departments, as well as Emergency Management to help manage the overall effort. It would add possibly one new employee, because the administrative assistant could come from within. There would be a Public Safety Director and four different divisions would report to that director; Fire Department, Police Department, Emergency Management, and Fleet. He believed the benefits would be a better utilization of resources, and a better unified strategic vision. Right now, they didn’t have separate committees for each department; they had a Public Safety Committee. They would be able to focus more on long-term solutions and challenges that face the City because of the growth. He likened it to the individual chiefs flying at 20,000 and able to see a lot but they had their day-to-day duties. This would provide one person that was thinking strategically at a 40,000 foot level about how they could coordinate training and services. There was a number of ways that the departments could further collaborate and cooperate with each other to save money and provide better public safety. All savings would be reinvested dollar for dollar back to the first responders. Another example was the optimization of resources. They could have retention and recruitment policies that applied to both police and fire departments. They had grant writing that came out of both departments and that function could be coordinated, and they could also have better consistency with policies and processes among the departments. They could also get economies of scale and procurement and purchasing. They had been growing in West Ashley so they could build new Fire Stations there. At the same time they were building a new police station. If they had been thinking strategically 5 or 7 years ago, they may have combined a police/fire facility in West Ashley, as opposed to building 3 different places. He wasn’t sure they were taking the 40,000 foot view and planning the facilities with the growth that would happen in mind. They were spending millions of dollars on those facilities, and if they had thought about it, they could’ve saved money and would have been able to pay the employees more. The Illumination Project had been a tremendous success in the community and he believed that same process could be applied across other departments. They could have more strategic public outreach allowing the departments to work directly with citizens. Policing and fire-fighting has changed dramatically over the last five years, and there has been a real awareness in the country of more community-based policing. The Fire Department had been involved in all kinds of services calls; he was at the fire station in West Ashley and they shared that they had helped a gentleman who wasn’t very physically agile to retrieve his remote that had fallen behind the bed. That was a nice thing for them to do but they didn’t really need a fire truck to go out and do that. With more information from 911 they would’ve known better than to send more than 1 or 2 people in a car. This would provide better coordination. He was asking Council to take a hard look at the challenges they faced going forward, particularly in growth and addressing retention. He asked for their feedback going forward and said that they needed to work collaboratively to find solutions to these challenges and provide citizens with the very best going forward. Rather than having siloed departments, they should look at the bigger picture and the system, and whether it made sense as a City to organize itself, where given the changes that had been occurring, and to have increased coordination and strategic thought moving forward. He would be happy to discuss that with the Committee. Councilmember Wilson said that members of the Committee were free to ask the Mayor questions they had regarding his proposal and presentation. Councilmember Shahid said he didn’t have questions but had a few comments and suggestions on how they may want to proceed. He thought of the old axiom ‘you don’t fix something that isn’t broken’. His eyes had been opened to a lot of issues within the City and he had a strong affinity for firemen. He had been around to a few of the stations and he thought that the City had a broken system. He didn’t think that they were aware that the system was broken; it concerned him. The City’s number one responsibility was to provide good and efficient public safety. Everything else fell behind that which was evident because 40% of the budget was dedicated to the Fire and Police Departments. The City had been blessed with wonderful chiefs and the City had been well-served. Morale was low because the mission had changed in the past ten years. The City needed to be aware of that issue. Where the first responders stayed was depressing; he had been there. This was an opportunity to address these strategic issues that they needed to put to the forefront. There had been comments that they were doing this to accommodate Chief Mullen and he didn’t think that was what they were trying to do. Chief Mullen was a great guy and in all things, he would be here for a period of time and then he would leave. What they did here with this development, if they did create this, they needed to be smart on how they created this department. Once they did this, they would have a problem undoing it, so they needed to set this up right. They needed to listen to people in the community, and the employees and find out how they thought it would be best to do this as well. He thought that once they engaged in the process, they would be enlightened. It would be a great help to Council and to the Mayor. The model could be tinkered with. Over time, if they did this, they would see a shifting of the other divisions within the departments. Charleston today is not the same as it used to be. He was afraid that for too long they had gotten behind the curve, and they needed to get ahead of the curve. This was the first step in the process. Councilmember Wagner said he needed clarification. He heard that the City was not the best and needed to do better. The paper had asked for a quote on what he thought about his and he didn’t have enough information to make an intelligent decision. He would’ve liked to have the slides sooner. During the last meeting, the statistics about calls were talked about. He asked if EMS would be under this as well. That was where the vast majority of calls were going. Right now there were four men having to respond when two employees in a pick-up truck may work just as well if they had the right equipment. That was what he wanted to see, but they didn’t need a department to do that. He didn’t think that it was broken, and thought Chief Mullen had done a tremendous job and didn’t think that was broken either. There were 150 cities were using it, which means that thousands weren’t. He thought they needed better statistics as to why they were looking at this. He wasn’t seeing the savings because they would be adding another layer. He needed to see that before he could get behind it, but it was worth studying and knowing. If there was something better out there, they did need to know. Councilmember Lewis said that right now there were four people on a truck. Right now, they had a rapid response unit for downtown and maybe they need to put one in other areas. He asked if they would get one in West Ashley. Chief Brack responded that they were looking at the statistics for downtown for one year and then would expand. Councilmember Lewis said that was working well downtown. When EMS was short on help, the Fire Department would help. They needed to look at this and see if they could get a unit for West Ashley. The Departments were working well together from different municipalities and both Chiefs were doing a fine job. They were trained for their positions, not for other positions. They would have to do a national search for this position, but they needed to know if this was working in other cities. They needed to advertise the job and see if they had someone who would be interested in this job and had the qualifications to do this. They didn’t know until they hired a consultant to do a study to see if this would work. They needed to come up with a budget to do a study. They didn’t need to have their minds made up that they would create this before they did a study. If they did this, it seemed like this would have the Mayor running parts of the City and the other person running other parts and that wasn’t how Charleston’s government was set up. He didn’t think the City was ready. Mayor Tecklenburg said he was just bringing this for consideration. He recognized the form of government and this person would still report to him. He said that Councilmember Wagner had asked why and he thought the best answer was in the word ‘optimization’ or phrase ‘best public safety the City could provide.’ The budgets were trending upward, and they knew that there were challenges with the pay scale. He asked how they sustained that growth long-term unless they maximized and got the best optimization out of resources. The models differed around the country, but he proposed that they would maintain separate departments with their own chiefs who would be fully knowledgeable in their respective fields. A Director of Public Safety didn’t have to be a fire expert, because they would have the fire chief. Councilmember Lewis asked why the chiefs should have to report to a director when they had a mayor. He said that if that was how it would be they needed to change the form of government and get a city manager. Mayor Tecklenburg said that it was more of a merger. He was just suggesting this and knew that it needed to be studied before they went ahead with it. He asked if the growth, increase in calls, increase in budget, and challenges in retention called for a more unified leadership and collaboration and optimization. Councilmember Lewis said that it called for good chiefs which they had. It was working and he didn’t know why they needed to merge them to make it work. He understood that growth was coming and so they needed to look at the budget to make sure they were providing what the departments needed to meet the needs of the City. Mayor Tecklenburg said that he agreed that the City had great departments but they did have challenges that needed to be addressed. Change was never easy, and he didn’t want to change for change sakes, but he was suggesting that this was an opportune time to consider change and to look at a different way of doing things. Chairwoman Wilson asked if they were looking at a nominal or full consolidation. She thought she knew the answer, but it hadn’t been officially addressed. The biggest question she had was regarding redundancies and morale issues. She wondered why the ball hadn’t been rolling up until this time, because these things could be addressed without the possibility of merging departments. She saw an undercutting of the chiefs, because there wouldn’t be a director that would have expertise in all of these areas. There was nothing worse than reporting to someone who didn’t have the expertise in what someone was talking about. She thought that would be a hard person to find. She saw the need for chiefs who didn’t need to look up and see several layers above them in which they had to report. The current system had them reporting directly to the Mayor and Council, and she thought that system had worked for the most part. She would like to see detailed police and fire budgets, and not just the glossy version. She said they needed to see what was being spent and where it was being spent, and if there were redundancies, they could move forward and address them now. She asked why they needed to have a merger to address this. She said in the research that these things tended to work well in cities that weren’t growing at the rate of Charleston and that had relatively lower crime rates. Charleston was continuing to grow and that gave her pause as to whether this was the direction they needed to go. Once a new level was created, it would never get smaller. She asked what would happen with future build-out and what would happen when they have to bring a deputy director. She asked what would happen if this didn’t work because there were costs and problems associated with splitting things back up and going back to the original path. She had seen the living conditions of the firefighters and they were in need of repair. They needed a new forensics unit, but she did know that the location of the stations was critical. There were circles around the stations that related to response times and insurance ratings. She didn’t know if consolidation in those areas was practical or wise, because there were other things to take into consideration. They needed to move wisely. If the departments weren’t answering calls related specifically for fire-fighting and crime, that wouldn’t change with a unified department. She thought the time was best suited with getting the chiefs together and asking how they would fix these things and find cost efficiencies that would generate revenue back to the departments. The salary discrepancies should have been addressed years ago. She asked if they had done a risk-benefit analysis of this and if they had done SWOT analysis. Sometimes, it could become so optimized that they lost sight of where they needed to be. They needed to give this substantial thought. As they were looking for a new fire chief, it would impact the quality of candidate they brought in if there was question about who they would report to, and that needed to be taken into consideration. There was a lot that needed to be fleshed out; a lot of it was financial. They needed to look at the reality and do an analysis. Councilmember Wagner said that he wanted to offer his services to look at the optimization after tax season. Councilmember Shahid said that the discussion had been productive and it was important. They had great departments but the process was broken when it came to retention, morale, and pay. They needed to continue to look at this and talk about it. He wasn’t sure if this was the best way to go, but this was the first step. They needed to be honest once they looked at it as to whether it would be a good or bad idea. Many more things would come to the surface when they hired a consultant. Issues had been dormant for a while, and they needed to be addressed. Councilmember Wilson said that there was a lot more work that the Committee and Council could do before they entertained the idea of bringing in a consultant to give them their answer. They needed to take responsibility and flesh it out themselves. Mayor Tecklenburg thanked the Committee and said there had been excellent questions and suggestions. The purpose was to start the discussion about how they could better serve the citizens. No matter what they did, if would lead to improvements if they kept that in mind. They would maintain separate departments. There were other cities that had done a full consolidation and that was not what he was suggesting. They had a mechanism in place to proceed with a thoughtful study of the issues, and that was the new performance innovation program. They were doing the SWAT analyses of departments and they needed to let them do their job. They had already hired a consultant with the Innovation Program and they could do a study and bring it back to the Committee. Chairwoman Wilson said that she didn’t think they could have the same people that were involved with the SWOT analyses. That wasn’t the way it should go, because this was too specialized for the City. Mayor Tecklenburg said that was why they hired the external group. Chairwoman Wilson asked what expertise they had in public safety. Mayor Tecklenburg said that was one of the reasons they were hired; because they had that expertise. Councilmember Shahid asked where they should go from here and Chairwoman Wilson said she wanted to see detailed budgets and look at where the redundancies were. Councilmember Shahid asked when the performance review would be finished and Mayor Tecklenburg said that it was ongoing on and they would finish all of the departments by May. They may share with Council at that point what departments they could study more intensely. Councilmember Shahid asked if the committee could get a preview for the police and fire departments and Mayor Tecklenburg said he didn’t know why not. Chairwoman Wilson said that was a start and Councilmember Shahid said that he wanted to look at an opportunity for them to engage the public to get their feedback and hear from the employees. Chairwoman Wilson said these were all steps that needed to be taken. Having no further business, the meeting adjourned at 4:43 p.m. Bethany Whitaker Council Secretary