Budget Review Committee

BUDGET REVIEW COMMITTEE JUNE 2, 2014 A meeting of the Budget Review Committee was held Monday, June 2, 2014, at 7:14 p.m. in the Aldermanic Chamber. Alderman-at-Large David W. Deane, Chair, presided. Members of Committee present: Alderman-at-Large Lori Wilshire, Vice Chair Alderman Richard A. Dowd Alderwoman Pamela T. Brown Alderman Ken Siegel Alderman David Schoneman Alderman Michael Soucy Also in Attendance: Mayor Donnalee Lozeau Mr. John Griffin, CFO Alderman-at-Large Brian S. McCarthy Alderman-at-Large Jim Donchess Alderman-at-Large Diane Sheehan PUBLIC COMMENT - None COMMUNICATIONS - None DEPARTMENTAL REVIEWS Public Health & Community Services Community Services Community Health Environmental Health Welfare Administration & Costs Public Health Client Fees Kerran Vigroux – Director of the Division of Public Health & Community Services I’d like to introduce my managers first and then I’ll do a bit of an overview of the division. Bob Mack is our Welfare Officer as well as the manager of the Welfare Department. Susan Myers is the Manager of our Community Health Department; and Heidi Peek is our Health Officer as well as our Manager of the Environmental Health Department, and Janet Graziano is our Finance Manager for General Government. Ms. Vigroux Our division is one of only two full service Health Departments in the state. We have four departments so three are managed by the three managers I just introduced and then I oversee the fourth, the Department of Community Services. We have 27 employees and no vacancies. Our division budget is a combination of city funding and state and federal funding and we came under the 2% budget as requested. A little over 1/3 of our overall budget is funding through grants such as the ones that came through the Board of Alderman last week for immunization, sexually transmitted diseases, and tuberculosis. Some of our accomplishments were that this year we celebrated our 6th Annual National Public Week. We organized over 11 events throughout the week with 19 different community agencies that help us celebrate what public health is and how we partner in the community and what we do. It started with a kick-off event at the Boys and Girls Club and ended with a Walk/Ride event which Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 2 started at City Hall. Last week we celebrated our 3rd Annual Public Health Conference. Our conference is all about highlighting what has gone on with public health over the year and we highlighted our Community Health Assessment that we have presented to the Board in the past as well as our Community Health Improvement planning process which highlights the three top priorities we are looking at in the city for access to healthcare, mental health, and obesity. A lot of the departments are all working together to pull this off. We have taken a very little amount of money and have been able to leverage over $100,000 in community funds and additional city funds to make improvements to the Heritage Rail Trail. There are now some community gardens and a beautiful Muriel. We are really looking forward to having the community come out and take good care of the trail, using it all to enhance healthy eating and active living. We have started to send you our quarterly newsletter to help keep you informed. Some of the priorities for FY15’ is for us to complete our next strategic plan, the 2014 – 2017. We are also mid-way to ¾ of the way finished with our Community Health Assessment which is again, looking at health data through focus groups in the community as well as others. To continue the CHIP process (the Community Health Improvement Planning) looking at the strategies that those work groups have identified and moving forward with those. Another large project that we would like to attain this year is the National Public Health Accreditation. Also, we would like to see some significant progress made towards a new building this year. Chairman Deane Is that part of your strategic plan? Ms. Vigroux Yes, it’s part of our on-going process in discussions constantly. I’d like to call attention to four items in the Community Services budget. On page 131, Professional & Technical Services, that’s where you will see the budget for the accreditation process. I think it’s something that we are poised to do this year. It’s important for your local health department in many ways. Number one is to better serve our clients, but also we have met the three pre-requisites which are a previous strategic plan, a previous Community Health Assessment, and a Health Improvement Plan. We are at the point where we can go after the accreditation. I think the accountability and credibility of the accreditation that it brings to not only the Health Department but also to the city. It will bring a dedicated technical assistance person and team from the National Accreditation Board that can help us look at our SOP’s, our processes, become more efficient, help us to connect with other Health Departments to see how we can improve what we are doing, what we are doing well, and what are some great best practices out there that we might not be aware of but that we can implement. It is $8,270 the first year, and it is a five-year cycle. Years two, three, four, and five, the price is $3,100. It is similar to other public associations that have accreditation and I think it’s really important for the staff for their morale and recognition for the responsibilities to make sure that we are doing what we need to be doing in the best way possible. I would also like to look at Code 61, just to highlight that we have increased our educational and marketing lines just a bit. For the past couple of years we have been funding mostly out of that line for our National Public Health Week activities but then we are really strapped for the rest of the year and we do a lot of community events. We are at all of the Summer Fun events, we have things that we give out to he kids that promote health and maps that we have made but we are a little tapped and so I was looking at increasing those lines a bit. Under Code 68, Other Expenses, you will see the actual line for Community Health Improvement Plan and we have actually doubled that line. What we are seeing with the implementation of the programs, there’s a lot of excitement around it. We’ve leveraged over $100,000 in additional work. Our partners in the community are stepping up and doing things as well so it’s a very small investment for what we have seen to be really large outcomes. We’ve got some great lighting on the Rail Trail that’s happening because of all of this movement. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 3 Chairman Deane How is the CHINS Program working out? Ms. Vigroux The CHINS, I’ll speak to fiscally and then I’ll let Bob speak to that. We have decreased the CHINS line from $40,000 to $20,000. We started out at $100,000 when the state cut the CHINS funding because we were really concerned about what was going to happen to the kids that were accessing CHINS services. We didn’t want those kids falling through the cracks. The city did step up and put $100,000 into that account. Less than $10,000 was used that first year, we cut that back to $40,000 this year and we are proposing to bring it down to $20,000 but we are afraid to completely cut it because there is still some uncertainty with the CHINS Program. Bob Mack, Welfare Officer I oversee the CHINS Program to the extent that the referrals that come into the program, those applications come to the Welfare Office and we review them to make sure they are appropriate referrals to the program. To date, some 13 families have been enrolled in the program and we have expended about $5,200 to date out of that CIC line. They received a good number of referrals in the month of April. They established a new partnership with the Boys and Girls Club. They were primarily getting referrals through the School Department and I think the connection with the Boys and Girls Club has increased their referrals. We are looking at the $20,000 figure that was proposed with a slight increase in the usage that has come up recently. Chairman Deane Do you think the program was unknown about and now people are starting to utilize it? Mr. Mack That probably has something to do with. I had mentioned the program at a few meetings and there were people that had not heard much about it. I think the word has gotten out and there are a few more referrals coming in. Alderman Soucy The CHINS Program, is that a state program too? Mr. Mack The CHINS Program was a state program that got cut significantly and the city had stepped up and put in $100,000 because of that significant cut. Alderman Soucy But, I heard CHINS came back, did it? Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 4 Mr. Mack It didn’t come back to the same level that it was at initially. There have been some funds that have been re-established at the state level. There are some different limitations with the new CHINS dollars. There’s not as much behind the court mandate as there used to be. I’m not a CHINS expert but this is a program that when we heard about the reduction and the cut in that funding that we felt it was prudent for the city to step up and do something for the youth in Nashua. Ms. Vigroux I’d like to add that the CHINS funding that has been reinstated is very narrow and it is for the most severe cases. It’s not really helping kids that we were hoping to catch, the ones that could benefit more from a prevention mechanism so that they don’t end up in the court system. Alderman Soucy Is the CHINS court mandated? I mean I know you have the delinquents versus CHINS but when a child goes into the CHINS Program here in Nashua, is that court mandated? How does that child get into the program? Mayor Lozeau The children get into the program because their parent’s file a petition in essence, saying that they are having a problem. When that state originally cut it, we put together a work group of somebody from the state, the Superintendent of Schools, somebody from the Police Department, a whole group of us worked on what we were going to do because everyone was really worried that it would get to the level of only the serious kids and the kids you could impact quickly and the parents felt a little bit helpless. The point of us connecting with the Boys and Girls Club, our partnership is with the Youth Council and also with the Children’s Home, through the Youth Council, if they need; what I refer to as a quick dip, a little respite. The Boys and Girls Club being part of it, we feel that the parents will feel that there is something available to them. Alderman Soucy So it would be the Boys and Girls Club that would supervise a child? Mayor Lozeau No, it’s the Youth Council that’s providing the services for the program but the gatekeeper is the parent. Parents will call an organization, they often call the DCYF and say what do I do, I can’t manage my child. In the past, they could file a petition with the court and say I need some help and then the court would order services from the state. Alderman Soucy The last question is if a child is no longer in compliance with his CHIN’S direction, what happens then? Mayor Lozeau They move up that ladder into a more serious offense. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 5 Alderman Sheehan You mentioned that you have access to national people. Is there a consultant fee for any time that we need somebody to do any of the things that you had talked about? Ms. Vigroux That’s part of the funding so it’s that $8,000 that would be paid in the first year and the $3,000 for the subsequent years. That pays for that technical assistance. Alderman Sheehan So there’s no additional cost? Ms. Vigroux No. Sue Myers – Manager of Community Health Department The Community Health Department has a pivotal role in promoting and protecting the health of our community. Our staff has some little known responsibilities which are actually among the most important of protecting the health of the Nashua region. These responsibilities are the rapid and efficient response to reports of infectious disease. There are 60 reportable diseases which our team follows up on and investigates. They range from everything from chicken pox to salmonella to other illnesses which fortunately, remain very rare such as meningitis, and hepatitis A. When providing disease investigations for reportable diseases, our team partners very closely with the medical community and our schools to implement infection control measures and to identify contacts that may need medication to prevent the occurrence of illness. Disease control activities and clinical services are the very foundation of public health nursing and we are widely recognized for our clinical services which include childhood and adult immunizations, tuberculin skin testing, sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment, HIV and hepatitis C counseling and testing. In the fall, on an annual basis, we implement a very extensive flu vaccination campaign including clinics at all Nashua Public Schools, for city employees, as well as at a number of community sites. Our budget for flu vaccine has increased this year. The flu vaccine has increased in price and this year we are opting to go with the Quadravalent Flu Vaccine which provides additional protection against the fourth strain which causes influenza. We are fortunate to have a mobile public health van which is used to provide public services at a number of community sites. The mobile van also provides the opportunity to engage residents at a number of community events. The Sumer Fun events at Greeley Park, the Fairy Tale Festival, the opening day event, which is actually this Saturday, June 7th, and the Nashua Goes Back Event. We put $2,000 this year for vehicle repairs and maintenance which is to support this mobile van. Chairman Deane What year is it? Ms. Myers I’m not sure. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 6 Mayor Lozeau It’s slated to be replaced in 2018. Ms. Myers It’s essentially an RV which is fit to a clinic space. It only has a little over 8,000 miles on it so it’s very low mileage but I think the years are, indeed there. Ms. Vigroux It’s a 1999. Chairman Deane And it’s got 8,000 miles on it? Ms. Myers It doesn’t travel outside of our city. The Community Health Department serves as a technical resource for our medical partners within the community providing guidance around infection control, tuberculosis, STD’s, blood borne pathogens, and other topics pertaining to infection control prevention. We have a wonderful partnership with Lamprey Healthcare and the New Hampshire Department of Health & Human Services. On the Million Hearts Program, this is a national initiative with the goal to prevent one million heart attacks and strokes by 2017. Our nursing staff met the competencies and we introduced the program in February with free blood pressure screening clinics, twice per week. Additionally, we have expanded the scope of the program to include blood pressure screenings for all clients’ access public health services at out division. The Community Health Department staff includes seven employees, myself as the Community Health Department Manager, four Public Health Nurses, one Administrative Assistant, and a bi-lingual Outreach Worker. A part-time Nurse Practitioner provides testing and treatment at our STD/HIV clinics. All of our services are provided under the standing orders of Dr. Alexander Granick. We have asked for $2,000 under contracted services for Dr. Granick. The city is required to pay for some of the hours that Dr. Granick provides for us but the bulk of his salary is paid for under a grant. During the coming year we look forward to continuing the expansion of the Million Hearts Program and increasing opportunities for blood pressure screenings in the community to identify those residents with undiagnosed hypertension who may be a risk for a heart attack or stroke. We look forward to continually assessing our clinical services and outreach efforts and looking for opportunities to expand our clinical services and are always looking for those interventions which are evidenced based. Continuing our role at technical experts for the community. It will be key to expand awareness of infection prevention and disease control initiatives at long-term care facilities, physician practices, hospitals, and community based agencies. This may include presentations and an education campaign on TB prevention and control. The prevention of vaccine preventable diseases through immunization and education on newly emerging infections such as Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome. We will indeed be an essential partner if MERS, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome poses a public health risk to our region, as we would during any pandemic or public health emergency in our area. Alderwoman Brown Thank you for meeting with me to discuss Lyme disease. Would you tell the community what the department is doing for Lyme prevention and awareness? Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 7 Ms. Myers We work very closely with New Hampshire Department of Health & Human Services on Lyme disease. We look forward to working with the community to provide education about the occurrence of Lyme disease. Preventing exposure to ticks is very important. Hillsborough County is among one of the hottest spots for ticks in this area. Lyme disease is a tick borne illness. Heidi Peek, Health Officer and Manager of the Environmental Health Department Most everyone has probably heard of the CDC’s Essential Public Health Services but there are also Environmental Public Health Services as well. Environmental Health has two pivotal roles within those. First is to enforce the laws and regulations that protect environmental public health and ensure safety. The third one is to inform, educate, and empower people about environmental public health issues. We meld our enforcement with education. We look for opportunities where we can educate people to either become compliant to prevent some sort of a disease or just help them out in general. We have a department of six. I am the Health Office and the Manager; we have an Office Manager, and an Environmental Health Technician. Two Environmental Health Specialists’, one is the Laboratory Director. With the exception of the Office Manager, we are all on-call 24 x 7 in the event of an emergency. We just recently hired our Laboratory Director in April. He comes to us from Rivier and is doing a very good job becoming acclimated to the position. You’ll find that where the Board of Health is referenced in the ordinances, the Environmental Health Department does most of those duties. An example would be land/use and septic approval, the Environmental Health Department actually conducts those tasks. Most of our work is licensing, inspecting, conducting site visits, and investigations, and responding to citizen complaints. Obviously, what we are most known for is our largest program which is food service. In the last 10 months of this past fiscal year, we conducted 1,280 inspections of food service facilities. We helped 21 facilities change ownership and become newly licensed and we issued 29 new licenses. It’s very gratifying for us to help these people. Most of our citizen complaints, and sometimes you can tell they are calling from Massachusetts because they will ask for the Board of Health and they are accustomed to making their complaints to the Board of Health. They are typically sanitation. We conduct housing inspections and sometimes there are Environmental Health hazards or perceived Environmental Health hazards that might simply be an odor or nuisance. The Animal Control Officer who works through the Police Department, he and I represent the local Rabies Control Authority and we make decision accordingly about animal bites, quarantine of pets, and euthanasia and decapitation. We approve septic design, we sign-off on demolition applications, and we provide subdivision approval. We work very closely with Code Enforcement, the Fire Marshall’s office, the Police Department, and with Building Safety. We also work with the City Clerk’s office for licensing. We also work closely with DES and DHSS at the state and on occasion, we will work with EPA if they get a complaint that rises to that level. For educational purposes, we just sent a letter out to all of our restaurants explaining why it’s critical to keep their doors closed so that pests stay out. We are gearing up for mosquito season right now and we oversee the trapping activities that our vendor does. In the next month we will start sending out our educational messaging for prevention. We’ve put together some information on Lyme disease as well. We work closely to make sure that the public’s needs are met. Recently, the Human Society for Nashua did a low-cost rabies clinic out in the parking lot behind City Hall and it was exciting to see that kind of response. 68 pets were vaccinated that I suspect probably wouldn’t have been and the City Clerk and the Deputy City Clerk were here as well issuing licenses on a Saturday to make sure that the dogs were licensed as well. We participated in Code Enforcement’s rooming house inspections; we do a number of housing inspections when it comes to unsanitary living conditions, pests, rodents, etc. One thing that people may not be aware of is that we recently moved our offices down to the first floor; opposite the Welfare Department so that we are a little bit more customer friendly and people that may have some mobility issues don’t have to travel up to the second floor. We are also immediately adjacent to our laboratory which works out well. We have a Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 8 small micro biology lab but we do some other tasks in there as well. We identify insects or common containments people may find in food products. The lab also oversees all of our mosquito activities and a lot of our educational messaging. We have a lot of field equipment that we use during inspections that are maintained and calibrated in the lab. Bob Mack, Welfare Office & Manager of the Welfare Department The Welfare Office for the City of Nashua provides interim emergency assistance in accordance with State Statute RSA 165. We provide assistance for low-income and those that are presently poor and unable to support themselves. Our goal is to assist those folks and promote greater independence by either providing some direct assistance but also linking them to other community resources and agencies. The general assistance that we provide is available in the form of a voucher system where payments go directly to vendors for assistance with things such as emergency rental assistance or temporary emergency motel placement, food and maintenance or personal care items, prescription assistance, prevention of utility disconnects or restoration of a service. We do occasional burial and cremation assistance and sometimes some return home transportation. The Welfare Department is made up of seven staff including myself, we have a Sr. Case Technician, three other full-time Case Technician’s, and Intake Worker, and an Administrative Assistant. We completed approximately 22,000 interviews over the course of this fiscal year and saw around 1,200 unique households. We provided direct assistance to approximately 61% of those who were interviewed. We issued 1,800 vouchers for assistance. The largest category of assistance was the homeless prevention and emergency shelter assistance. That was about half of the vouchers issued and about 400 medical vouchers for emergency prescription assistance to those that are uninsured or to assist with some co-pays. We assisted 152 households in emergency motel placements and/or direct shelter referrals. We work very closely with area agencies such as shelter providers, housing providers, social service organizations, and the mental health center. We work through the Greater Nashua Continuum of Care, we work to coordinate the Annual Project Homeless Connect Event which links those homeless and at risk with needed services. It’s also a good networking opportunity for those social service agencies to get together. Our staff participates in various committees and groups such as the Financial Assistance Network, the Gate City Immigrant Initiative, the Employment Sub-committee, the Hispanic Network, just to name a few. Alderman Siegel Community Health on page 133, there’s a line item Wages per Diem and it seems as though the existing amount right now is well below budget. Is this one of those trailing items things? Ms. Myers We were recently fortunate enough to be able to interview three per diem applicants for the position of a per diem Public Health Nurse. This will provide support for some of our clinical operations in the event we have an extended medical leave and we need to cover our essential clinical services. Alderman Siegel So basically what I am looking at is a contingency amount for people when they are out for coverage? Ms. Myers Correct. It would be additional staff to provide support and we are in the process of touching base with HR about the recommendation to hire. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 9 Alderman Siegel For vaccines and medicines, I assume the reason it’s so low is because that item is coming up tomorrow in Finance to purchase the vaccines. Is that correct? Ms. Myers Actually, the flu vaccine this year has increased a little bit in cost because we decided to go with the Quadravalent vaccine which provides protection against four strains of flu. Alderman Siegel I just meant that the money spent to date is much lower than budgeted. The last question it seems that Medicaid recoveries were lower than expected. What’s going on with that? Mr. Mack Those are just personal reimbursements. We don’t really get any Medicaid reimbursements for prescription assistance that we have issued. We do get some reimbursements if there is a lien on a property and that property changes hands or is sold. Years ago, it was much higher when there was a lot of activity in the real estate market but lately we haven’t seen a lot of reimbursements. Alderman Schoneman We heard about the Community Health Assessment in the beginning. Does that relate to an assessment that would pertain to all of these departments or is it predominantly just one of the departments? Ms. Vigroux The Community Health Assessment has quite a team from the division working on it. It’s a pretty large undertaking but our primary person on that project is our Epidemiologist, Ashley Conley and then we have a team of people that help to take on some of the different tasks as far as getting the data. We conducted 11 focus groups throughout the region so that took quite an amount of staff time. Alderman Schoneman So the Community Health Assessment as tool, would include things like the Welfare Department or Community Health? Ms. Viroux No, not necessarily. It is across the entire community so it’s looking at the health of our community. We have chronic diseases, some environmental health, measures of emergency preparedness, hypertension, woman, infants, and children measures, diabetes, and mental health issues. Alderman Schoneman When was the last one done? Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 10 Ms. Viroux We completed it in 2011. We do it on a 3-year cycle and we work with the hospitals to do that as well because they are on their 3-year cycle for their Community Benefits Plans. Alderman Schoneman Was that the first one that was done in 2011? Ms. Viroux Yes. Alderman Schoneman Okay, so this is the first time we are going to have a comparison between the two? Ms. Viroux Yes. Alderman Schoneman What is your sense of community health in Nashua? Ms. Viroux I think we do live in a healthy state overall. You are definitely going to see some disparities here in Nashua but sometimes Nashua does a little bit better than some of the surrounding towns because they might have less access than Nashua does. A lot people assume that because we live in the city our health is worse than the town’s around us and that’s not always the case. Alderman Schoneman On things like obesity, are we making progress? Ms. Viroux We did our first one 3 years ago so we do talk about behavior change and how that does take a while. In public health we really talk about prevention and it is change over the long-term. We don’t anticipate that we are going to see a huge change in 3 years. What we do see are other kinds of measures that are changing like the schools opted to let us go in do a program with their parents and kids. We did our big Walk with the Mayor in October and had over 200 people come out. It’s an opportunity for people to see that’s its fun. It’s incremental. We do have evaluation measures of our programs to see if they are effective. Alderman Schoneman Do we have issues with things like Hepatitis A and those kinds of things in the city? Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 11 Ms. Myers Fortunately, hepatitis A is a very rare occurrence. We don’t have a lot of cases in Nashua. That is a food borne illness. If there were a case of Hepatitis A identified in Nashua, we would work very closely with that individual to identify any contacts they may have had exposure to and we would make sure that those contacts received the appropriate medication to prevent illness. Alderman Schoneman Do we have anything that seems to be a threat to Nashua aside from flu prevention? Ms. Myers I think we just need to continue to be vigilant with our efforts to vaccinate our children and adults to prevent the occurrence of vaccine preventable illnesses. Alderman Schoneman So they are all pretty low? Ms. Myers At this time, yes. Alderman Sheehan Is the incidence of smoking something that is measured in the Community Health Report? Ms. Viroux Tobacco use is one of the measures. We look at the youth risk behavioral survey and it’s a self- administered survey but it is very reliable. Alderman Sheehan Just for the youth or are we looking at adult tobacco user’s as well? Ms. Viroux We don’t have the adult data unless we can get that from the state. Alderman Sheehan A few years back, we had eliminated treating for mosquito’s and Triple E. Have we seen any change in those numbers to prove that was a good decision? Ms. Viroux We have not seen an increase in numbers. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 12 Ms. Peek There really has been very little change. Our risk, last year’s map was at moderate and that was more due to Triple E positive mosquito’s in Litchfield. We have had some positive West Nile Virus mosquito’s here. We were treating catch basins with larvacide to kill the juvenile mosquitos. That worked out well but DPW has implemented a really good program of cleaning out those catch basins on a regular basis so there’s very little standing water there at this point. We really don’t have the landscape to support a lot of the Triple E breeding sites so we are conducting surveillance. We have a company that will come in and trap once per week so we know if we have any positive mosquitos in Nashua. Those activities start in early July and continue until October or the first hard frost, whichever comes first. If we were to actually spray, we would come back and ask for that money. We do have Dragon Mosquito who has applied for an emergency permit to do spraying if the need arose. Getting the educational messages out is key and pivotal in trying to prevent illness. Mammals are tested routinely by veterinarians if an animal has died with neurological systems, horses specifically. Humans are tested if there are neurological systems that the Dr.’s can’t put a finger on. Alderman Sheehan So there was no increase last year? Ms. Peek Correct. Alderman Donchess Does the health assessment get into the levels of heroin addiction? If not, do you have any sense of the scope of the problem in Nashua? Ms. Viroux Our last Community Health Assessment did have a chapter on substance misuse. It didn’t really go into detail about the different types of drug use. Some of the questions were self- reported but mostly it was around youth and marijuana and alcohol use. Certainly, we are aware of what is happening and the increase in heroin use in the community and how it is affecting the law, and the hospitals. We don’t have any specific numbers. We are hearing about the Narcan that’s being used. Alderman Donchess What is the Narcan? Ms. Viroux It’s a medication that is administered to people who have overdosed. Mayor Lozeau Alderman Donchess, if you are interested in numbers, we can get some information from both New Futures and the Nashua Prevention Coalition that are working together to identify those numbers and where it relates to youth versus adults. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 13 Alderman Donchess That would be great, thank you. Alderman Siegel I would also like that. Mayor Lozeau I will send it to everyone. Alderwoman Brown I’ve seen some educational opportunities to learn about bed bug in the community. How is that going here in Nashua? Ms. Peek It’s fairly constant. We haven’t seen how the new legislation has played out yet. We are acting in more of an advisory capacity than an enforcement agency and we are sending a lot of the complaints directly to Code Enforcement but we still have people come in with bite marks and bugs to identify. There are certainly issues with our greater transient population like the rooming houses. Those places still see a great deal of activity. Alderwoman Brown I understand that if a tenant reports bed bugs in their apartment that it is the landlord’s responsibility to treat it. I that correct? Ms. Peek They are required to inspect it is my understanding of the new law. Alderwoman Brown They don’t have to treat it or spray? Ms. Peek Well, there are some subtleties there as well. The tenant may be financially responsible if the landlord can demonstrate that the tenant had brought them in. I haven’t seen how this is going to play out in the courts. Alderwoman Brown I am involved with the Lyme Community at the State House and locally and I’ve heard many complaints from people that they have been misdiagnosed or their doctor’s don’t recognize the symptoms. Is there anything that we could do for public health to inform doctors. I know that they get alerts from Dr. Montero but I’m hoping that there is something that we could. Is that possible? Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 14 Ms. Viroux We have an intern coming on this summer and they are doing a Lyme project for us and part of that is to work with us to put together some materials for physician’s and have some other informational brochures in there. We have fact sheets on our web site for Lyme and certainly anyone calling the Health Department is going to be connected to Environmental Health for more information if they need it. Our Environmental Health Department even created a diorama that shows someone how to design their backyard with some dry zones to keep ticks from coming into their yard. We do quite a bit with Lyme disease. Ms. Peek When we helped out during the rabies clinic, we had a whole table on Lyme disease because we thought that pet owners might be interested in that. Alderman Schoneman Do we have instances of rabies in Nashua frequently? Ms. Peek We had a grey fox in 2011 and he had attacked some neighborhood dogs and children and people out raking yards. The Police Department did a great job of shooting the fox so that it was not shot in the head and we were able to get accurate results and it was positive for rabies. That’s the last time that I can think of that we’ve had that wild animal to human interaction with a positive animal. Every once in a while we get a bat that tests positive. Alderman Schoneman What is the prevention for rabies? Ms. Peek Vaccinate pets and watch wildlife from a distance and don’t attract wildlife to your homes. Chairman Deane I appreciate everyone’s overview and thank you for coming. Fire Department Chief Brian Morrissey, Fire Chief Nashua Fire Rescue consists of 176 people. Currently, we have four open positions; we are in the hiring process. It takes about five months for us to fill positions. We anticipate having all of our positions filled in the middle of September. We have eight facilities. There are six fire stations, the communications center over on Lake Street, and then our training grounds are at the Four Hills Landfill. We operate six divisions, administration, operations, the fire Marshalls, our mechanical division, training safety, and communications. We have 35 motor vehicles, 5 trailers, and 2 boats. We average about 8,400+ calls annually, a little over 700 per month, about 25 per day. Our proposed budget for FY 15’ is about $21 million. It’s up by 2%. Wages are certainly the biggest carry on that Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 15 budget, about $13.8 million. The benefit lines are about $6 million and utilities and fuel are at about $288,000 and then the behind the curtain operation of the Fire Department, tools, equipment, running all of our underlying processes cost about $650,000. Vehicles are generally funded out of CERF. In particular, in 2015, we are looking at replacing all of our self-contained breathing apparatus. That has price tag of about $465,000. We have been successful in securing a federal grant to provide that for us so there would only be a 10% match required. Chairman Deane Are you doing all of them? Chief Morrissey Yes, all of the breathing apparatus at once. I think the last time we replaced them was in 2000 and right after we had replaced all of our masks in 2000, in 2004, after a lot of the terrorism events in the U.S., they upgraded us to have chemical, biological, and radiation technology to be integrated into our air packs. We did the C-burn upgrade to our air packs at that time and that was federally funded. Chairman Deane So we have to come up with $46,000? Chief Morrissey We did have about $450,000 in CERF or had planned to get that out of CERF. Chairman Deane What was plugged into CERF? Chief Morrissey The air packs. When we did the CERF re-alignment back in 2009; 2010, that number had been carried in there. Beyond that, we get involved with the Capital Improvements Program. Generally that fund is deferred maintenance and Chief Galipeau manages that end of the budget. We have been involved in chasing grants mostly to provide upgraded equipment. Our hazardous materials response team, we get a lot of grant funding to keep the HazMat team funded whether it’s federal or state grants. We also provide some revenues; about $85,000 comes in through the Fire Department. Alderman Dowd I noticed that your diesel fuel allocation for next year is down. Is that because of the new vehicle? Chief Morrissey Actually, for the first time in a number of years in FY 14’, we carried a line item for diesel fuel. Fuel used to always be carried in the Public Works Department so we got an assigned number for FY 14’ and as we have tracked our usage in FY 14’; we were overstated so we have reduced that number. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 16 Alderman Dowd I noticed that both your lines on overtime are way down. Is there a reason for that? Chief Morrissey We attribute some of that to the change in shift make-up that we did a couple of years ago. We went from single shifts over several days to a 24-hour system. We believe that saved us some overtime costs. Alderman Soucy Being somewhat familiar with your budget, as a Fire Commissioner, I do want to commend you for what I believe to be a very tight budget. Under Capital Improvements, what project do you deem to be the most necessary that you really need? Chief Morrissey In this fiscal year, we’d like to get moving down on Spit Brook Road. We’ve been talking for years about putting a third bay on it. It’s a two bay building and there’s no through access. If we needed to up staff of change our capabilities with the existing structure, we really can’t do that. It was built in 1976 to house a crew of 15 people total and we know have 36 people. Alderman Siegel I realize that you have a large variety of vehicles and it looks like you have a single mechanic. Is that correct? How does that work, the way you maintain the vehicles? Chief Morrissey We actually have three people in the Mechanical Division. There’s a superintendent, an assistant, and a mechanic. Basically, they do all of the routine maintenance to our vehicles – brakes, oil, tires, etc., but at a certain point in time, we outsource major repairs. For instance, if something really big goes wrong with one of our diesel engines we go out to Cummings or Power Products or back to the dealer if it were that bad. Alderman Siegel Does the department have a separate garage for maintenance? Chief Morrissey Yes, the Corner Road fire station houses our repair facility. They also maintain and repair all of our other equipment. Our rescue tools and all of our breathing apparatus are serviced in-house. Alderman Siegel How many fairly standard motor vehicles do you have being serviced? Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 17 Chief Morrissey We have 35 total vehicles, 12 of those vehicles are front line fire apparatus, 7 of them are what we call support vehicles so 19 of our 35 vehicles are big trucks and then the rest are compiled of 6 pick-up trucks, several cars, the shift commander and the safety division run mid-sized SUV’s. For winter use, we’ve gone to the Ford Interceptor SUV and it has all-wheel drive. Alderman Donchess You were talking about the potential improvements to the Spit Brook Road station. Is there a budget or an estimate for the cost of that project? Chief Morrissey It was somewhere in the neighborhood of about just over $1 million for the actual project. That would include architectural engineering and the facility itself. It would just be adding a bay to the left of the building. Alderman Donchess Would there be any increased capacity for the crew? Chief Morrissey Yes, we would redesign the crew quarters. Right now there is a very limited training area and we have no area for working out. We don’t even have an area in that building to store protective clothing. When that building opened it was equipped with a 1964 pumper and a 1959 aerial ladder. Alderman Soucy Is that one of your busier stations? Chief Morrissey Spit Brook Road is a busy facility and it was placed in the middle Spit Brook Road before the Pheasant Lane Mall and before all of the growth on Spit Brook Road. Alderman Soucy Due to its location, being kind of out there, I’m venturing to guess that there is a long waiting time for its back-up to get there compared to the other stations? Chief Morrissey That’s correct. Generally, our first due responses are about 4 – 6 minutes citywide, and 90% of the time, it’s below the 6 minute mark. The problem at that end of the city is if Engine 3 is not available you pretty much double that on the widest end so the second engine would get down there in 10 – 12 minutes. We track the response time. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 18 Alderman Dowd Your training facility down at the landfill is grossly in need of replacement and your auxiliary fire shed, I understand is going to need to be replaced. What are you doing with regard to upgrading your training facility? Chief Morrissey It’s a very interesting question. For the past two years, we have been chasing federal grants for that facility at Four Hills. In this year, probably in the last 30 days, generally what happens is that you get a nice letter from the federal government saying thank you for your application and try again in the future. To the best of my knowledge, all of the “thanks for applying” letters have gone out and we did not get one of those this year which means one of two things. Either we are lost in the mail or we have gone up in the review. I believe we may be in final review but we don’t get any information like that directly. No one give you a heads up. I have heard through the grapevine from other Chiefs in the area that they have heard that we have been moved into final review. If we were successful in getting that grant, the cost of that facility is about $490,000 and that would be about a 10% match and that would significantly increase our ability for training out at Four Hills. Alderman Dowd The other question I have is the fire station at the airport is sort of limited in size and they now have 17 based double engine jets there and they typically have 21 on the air field at any one time, sometimes even more. Is there any consideration given to upgrading the equipment at that station? Chief Morrissey We’ve looked at that any number of times over the past fifteen years. The biggest thing that we did was in 2009 we changed our foam capability for up there. We have a Ford 550 truck for foam capability. Keep in mind that we are really not a crash fire rescue service dedicated to the airport. It’s kind of a sideline of what we do but we understand our role up there and we do have capabilities should there be a problem at the airport. Alderman Dowd Didn’t the Airport Authority put some money into that station in the foam capability at the time? Chief Morrissey We got some money; mostly the money for that vehicle came through the Souhegan Mutual Aid Group. Back in the middle 90’s, we had picked a military surplus vehicle that was a 1978 vintage Osh Kosh crash truck and it needed significant amounts of work and it really wasn’t a vehicle you could bring over the road. If we needed foam on Route 3 or the south end, or up by Exit 8, that vehicle really wasn’t suitable for that. When we went to the Ford 550, it gave us a better capability for our use in the city. Alderman McCarthy I had sent you some information a while back about the opportunity for some free training on aircraft first responses. Did you reach a conclusion as to whether that was useful or not? Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 19 Chief Morrissey Yes. Captain Conway reached out and was in touch with them and we have scheduled several independent trainings through that. Alderman McCarthy For those members on the Board that don’t understand the opportunity, just as the Fire Department now has to deal with the fact that when you go to cut a car open, there are some places you can cut and some places that you can’t if there is pyrotechnics in the car. The same thing is true of most modern light airplanes. There is a group of aviation guys that understand that stuff who are doing first responder training. Alderman Donchess If there were a third bay at the Spit Brook Road fire station, what equipment would you put there? Chief Morrissey We would initially relocate the tower ladder over into the next bay because we would oversize it and we would then be able to move the engine into the longer bay that is currently occupied by the ladder truck. Immediately we could relocate a brush truck there and get some cross staffing out of that. What has happened down there as recently as a few months ago in January is that we had a breakdown of the engine at about 9:30pm and it was only 4 degrees outside. A lot of our vehicles function very well in cold weather but to bring a vehicle down there and park it outside is not the optimum thing to do. You can freeze up a pump in about an hour and a half. If an engine is out of service, it drops our response time capability. Alderman Donchess And that would be when the engine at Spit Brook is out of service? Chief Morrissey Yes, if it had a breakdown in the building which does happen from time to time. Alderman Donchess You mentioned that the response time for the second piece of equipment for the south end neighborhoods is 10 – 12 minutes. If there were a third bay would the response time be affected? Chief Morrissey Most importantly it would be if we could move another vehicle into that building for certain times when we have – even if we wanted to move somebody down there for several hours, sometimes between the Thanksgiving holiday and the Christmas season, on Saturday’s getting the engine from Lake Street down to the south end corridor through the D.W. Highway. Sometimes we do up staffing during storms, snow emergencies and that sort. It would make a lot of sense to put an engine down at the south end of the city. It’s a huge geographic area. Generally we end up putting an engine in service either at East Hollis Street or sometimes at Corner Road. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 20 Alderman Donchess Perhaps I missed something but remember the explosion and fire on Carlyle? Was it ever determined what caused that? Chief Morrissey There was a significant amount of gasoline in that house and I don’t think they ever pinpointed exactly why it was there. Alderman Donchess Gasoline was being stored inside of the house? Chief Morrissey I think it may have been spilled around the house. Alderman Schoneman I have a question about the volume; you mentioned that you received 8,400 calls a year, 25 per day. Can you explain any trends there are from year to year and what type of calls do you have? What forms the largest percentage that you have? Chief Morrissey We have rescue calls can potentially drive up our number, EMS calls, accidents; vehicle or industrial. Alarms in the buildings, fires in buildings; not necessarily fires that you’ll see on the 6:00 news but we have 300 fires annually in buildings from unattended cooking to small accidental fires that can happen for a number of different reasons. We do a lot of assists with electrical problems and there are also all sorts of service related calls. People will call us out because of smells, leaking refrigerants and that sort of thing. Alderman Schoneman Would you say that volume trends are as a result of a percentage of population growth or is it somehow behavior related? If you were to try to figure out what is driving changes in volume from year to year presuming it’s going up. Chief Morrissey We have been somewhere in the range of 8,000 – 8,600 for about the last five years. The population is fairly stable, somewhere around 90,000 and then any number of people that are here during the workday, just passing through. We see a various influx. There is no day of the week or time of the day that jumps out as being the busiest. A number of years ago, the NFPA - there were a couple of major fires, one was in Texas, one was in New Jersey, and I believe one was in Washington state and they all happened around 9:50 a.m. on a Sunday so if you had trended that out it would look like well, if you are going to up staff, make sure you are up staffing at 9:50 a.m. on Sunday mornings. We have fire activity or incidents that occur across the calendar and the day. Sometimes you will see some uptake about 4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. between traffic accidents and things that happen in the home. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 21 Alderman Schoneman This is fire rescue and does not include ambulance services, correct? Chief Morrissey Yes, that’s correct. Alderman Schoneman So you would extract someone from a car let’s say but then an ambulance is also called to take them to the hospital? Chief Morrissey Yes. Alderman Schoneman Someone doesn’t call the Fire Department particularly right, they dial 911 and it goes to an operator somewhere and that operator then determines if it’s a police matter or an ambulance matter or a fire matter. How does that work? Chief Morrissey That’s generally what happens. There’s a center in Concord, NH, and it is determined based on the nature of your emergency. They will then dispatch the call to the appropriate Nashua Department and if that department feels they need to contact another department, they would do so. Our fire and ambulance vehicles are dispatched from 38 Lake Street. Alderman Schoneman So you would call the ambulance but you are not operating the ambulance. Chief Morrissey Yes, we would notify them; we are hard wired to them and tied in. Alderman Schoneman Just a general question about 911. If someone calls 911, does there have to be some kind of response to that address? Is that a requirement generally speaking? Chief Morrissey Generally speaking, yes. Even a 911 no contact or a hang-up generates a police response. You could have someone that’s being assaulted or who have had a medical condition so they do respond to no contacts. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 22 Police Department Law Enforcement Training Public Safety Chief John Seusing, Chief of Police I don’t think I need to give you an overview of the Police Department but I did want to address a couple of things for an opening statement. As you can see by the budget that we had proposed to the Mayor’s office, the increase of our FY 15’ budget was about 2.9% and the bulk of that covered really more salary than anything else. It was for funded or settled and unsettled contracts, in-grade promotions, and there was some slight increase on our operational side. I do know that the Mayor had cut our budget by $70,000. Now $70,000 certainly is not a significant reduction in our budget, I understand that but certainly, it’s not in the direction that we were hoping to go in light of the discussion that we had before you about a month or a month and a half ago. When we met a month and a half ago about our workload assessment and the proposal that we had made to you after discussing some concerns that we, as a Police Department were seeing in the community. I said then and I’ll say again today that the Police Department to include myself and the Police Commission understand the job that the Budget Review Committee and the full Board has to make in terms of making decisions regarding everyone’s budget and we know that there is only so much funding to go around and we understand that. Since we were down here, myself and Karen and my staff had looked at our budget and what I wanted to propose for consideration really as a follow-up to the discussion that we already had was something that is directly related to the FY 15’ budget and that is specific to two positions that are currently funded in our FY 14’ budget as well as our proposed FY 15’ budget. These are two positions that are currently vacant that we are not going to fill. Those two positions are the Systems Support Specialist which is one of the three original positions that we had in our IT Division and the second position is a part-time file clerk that had a salary just short of $14,000. The Systems Support Specialist had a salary of about $51,000. I do know that some members of this Board were aware that there was some discussion between the Police Department and the Mayor’s office within the last year or so regarding our IT Division. We had lost two of our three people in our IT Division. They had gone out to the private sector and we were discussing with the Mayor’s office about filling those positions because clearly our IT Division is one that is critically important to the Police Department. In those discussions, we had talked about maybe reorganizing our IT Division and we did. We had given some additional job responsibilities to one of our current members and we did fill one of those two vacancies that we had. It just so happens to be one of our employees that had previously left, Mr. Peter Cinfull, who is back as our IT Manager. Currently, we have two IT positions filled and as I said before, we had changed some of the job responsibilities to make it a little more efficient. When we prepared our budget, we were not sure if we were going to need to fill that third IT position. The discussions that we had with the Mayor’s office was that we would certainly try to function with two IT positions along with receiving some assistance from the city’s IT Division if we needed it. Recently we had decided that the two IT positions that we currently have filled are going to be sufficient. We feel very comfortable that we will not need to fill that third position. I bring that up because that particular position is still in our FY 15’ budget as well as the file clerk position. The person in that position retired in the fall and we are not planning on filling that position. I bring those two positions to your attention because again, they are in the proposed FY 15’ budget. I would propose for consideration, again going back a month and a half ago when we talked about our workload assessment and the proposal that we made before you was that knowing that the Budget Review is going to have to make a decision regarding our proposal at some point in time, that I would propose for consideration that the funding that is in our FY 15’ budget for those two positions be used towards the proposal that we had previously made to you. Specifically, that our current Sr. Relations Specialist Officer has announced that she is retiring in August. That is a position that the Police Department cannot do without. If I don’t fill that position with a civilian position Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 23 as I had proposed previously, I am going to have to put a police officer in that position. By utilizing the funding for those two positions; that would actually equate into freeing up two police officers, one being the Sr. Relations position because there is already funding in our budget for that police position and the second position would be the Tactical Officer. The funding that would be available from these two positions would allow me to free up that Tactical Officer because what I had talked about previously was that the duties being done by that officer can be absorbed by the personnel that we currently have in the department but we would have to make some adjustments to their PDF’s and accordingly adjust their salaries. I wanted to talk about that consideration because it directly affects this budget in that those two positions are in this budget and if that funding is allowed to be used in the manner that I just spoke about, it would allow us to utilize two officers more efficiently. Alderman McCarthy I am a little bit confused about what that does to the bottom line. Are those positions in there after the $70,000 adjustment? Chief Seusing Regarding the $70,000 cut, I wouldn’t support that cut for obvious reasons. I will fast forward and say that if the Budget Review Committee or the Board as a whole feels that our budget is going to decrease by that $70,000, I would propose that those two positions be used for that cut. Alderman McCarthy Those together come to about $65,000. So you are telling us that your budget is ok as submitted but that you’d like to have that $70,000 back in positions that are currently not funded. Is that right? Chief Seusing That’s correct. If that $65,000 or $70,000 was left in there, I would propose that that funding be used towards the proposal that we just spoke about. Alderman McCarthy Is the $70,000 just in there as a bottom line Mayoral adjustment? Chief Seusing Yes, that is my understanding. Alderman Soucy I am going to disagree with the Chief. I think that $70,000 is a significant cut. We should be going in the other direction. I’ve worked here on the streets of Nashua and I’ve worked the streets of Lowell and we’ve got a heroin problem and it’s increasing. Chief Seusing We do have a heroin problem. In 2013 we had 48 overdoses and we have already surpassed that number this year to date. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 24 Alderman Soucy Now with heroin addiction, is it fair to say that many of these people are not gainfully employed? Are they using other methods such as shop lifting, theft, prostitution, and larceny? The heroin addiction is becoming quite prevalent in this city. It’s brining in all types of other crimes, right? Chief Seusing Yes, the vast majority of the crimes that we investigate are either directly or indirectly related to a drug problem, without a doubt. Alderman Soucy When people move to a community, they look at the schools, public safety and police. We should not be cutting them short. We have an issue and I remember in the early 90’s when crack cocaine came into the city and that was the first time that I had seen street prostitution. While the crime did spike for a bit, the Police Department did grab a handle on it. I would really hate to see this city become a moniker like “Trashua” or “Manchvegas.” This is a wonderful city and I’d hate to see it turn into a city like Lowell or Lawrence and not have people want to live here or want to send their kids to school here. Chief, I respectfully disagree with you; I think it is a significant loss and I would not support it. In fact, I’d like to see you get an extra police officer or two. Visibility is everything. Alderman Siegel I share Alderman Soucy’s concerns and respect his years on the force. I am not at all in favor of cutting officers that can help address the drug crime. Every time we can prevent drug crime, it’s a benefit to the city. I want to make sure that whatever money we are spending, as much as possible, will go towards the visibility on the streets to help leverage your efforts out there. One of the questions I have is with regard to fleet maintenance. The general amount of overhead associated with maintaining and keeping a fleet and this is citywide, not the Police Department specifically but there’s a certain amount of overhead with maintaining all sorts of separate departments and I’m not just talking about the personnel, it’s the garaging facilities. I understand the need for security of course, but there is also the idea that there are separate pieces of very expensive test equipment to maintain vehicles and every department seems to have their own set of replicated tools, diagnostic equipment, to a certain extent personnel, and if possible, I’d like to see some consolidation done where appropriate. I am concerned with the separate departments having completely replicated functionality in vehicle maintenance. It just seems wasteful. I mention that as a thought and I don’t know that you can address that here. I would like to see uniformed personnel fighting crime out on the streets and less of the back end stuff. I think you have addressed my concerns about the IT personnel up front. I understand that you have a need for security so it’s a very different type of problem. You don’t want to have people just have access to your network and servers, encrypted or not. I get that. A question I had on the workload assessment, which I reviewed in great length, Captain Lima was calling out the increase from 2007 to present day and in reviewing the actual numbers, 2007 was sort of an aberration in that there was an exceptionally low call load for some reason which I don’t know. The implication at the time was the number for 2007 was called out, the number for last year was called out, and the mind would think there was some linear increase but in fact, 2007 was low. Then there was some oscillation about the mean in which 2013 was actually slightly lower than 2012 but within some statistical fluctuation. Can you explain what happened? Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 25 Chief Seusing From 2005 to 2007, the numbers were relatively the same but the increase from that point on I think can be attributed to a couple of different things. Certainly, it was for regular general calls for service but more importantly, we have done a better job in accounting for our time and I think that had been addressed in here. The dip in 2007 from 2006, I don’t have an answer for you but the increase from that point on I believe generally is because we have done a better job of accounting for our time. Alderman Siegel 2013 is down slightly but I am concerned that we have a lagging indicator given the overdose numbers that are horrendous. It seems to be an indicator of a crime wave happening. Chief Seusing Certainly, the increases in overdoses are one of the most significant statistical things we have seen in our numbers. They can easily translate into a separate crime issue and there’s no doubt that the increases in the overdoses are related to crime that we are also investigating. Alderman Siegel I guess you are just confirming that it’s the case. Alderman Sheehan The overdoses, I know that some news in other places has reported that things have been put into the heroin that have caused spikes in the overdoses. Do you think it’s that people don’t know what they are taking or is it an increase in usage? Chief Seusing I think that it’s both. There is a rise in usage but also some of the heroin has a synthetic fentanyl that is in it which is certainly extremely addictive. Alderman Sheehan Are you carrying the Narcan? Chief Seusing We are not. There are some agencies that are considering it. I had a discussion with the director of AMR and I’m not sure that we need to that because the response time from AMR is very quick. If we receive a medical call, that call will go to the Fire Department and AMR before us. Many times we might arrive there sooner because we are already on the street, they are right behind us. Some agencies in the rural areas have considered training their officers to apply that. Alderman Sheehan I’ve been seeing a lot of arrests recently so nice job. Tonight there was a rumor that there was another Swatting incident across the street from where there was one last year. Are we doing anything to recover costs when something like this happens? Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 26 Chief Seusing I don’t have all the details on this latest one. I know that Deputy Chief Lavoie had looked into it. They do occur and as far as recovering costs, we would make an effort if we could put a value on the restitution. It’s difficult because it’s an on-duty officer responding. If we were to arrest someone for a false report or false public alarm, the restitution piece might be a little difficult. Alderman Sheehan That might be enough restitution and have some accountability. Chief Seusing They would be charged accordingly. Deputy Lavoie, Deputy Chief The swatting incidents, we sometimes don’t know who the suspect is because they do it over the internet. It would appear that the incident tonight was another swatting incident. Often times the victims house has nothing to do with it, it is just random. If we knew who was responsible we would take criminal and civil action. Alderman Sheehan It’s just such a waste of time and equipment. Deputy Chief Lavoie It’s dangerous too. Alderman Sheehan Last year or the year before, we had civilian positions being addressed. What progress have we made on civilian positions that are open and being staffed by police officer’s? Chief Seusing We wanted to fill all of our civilian positions in our communications area and we have done that. I think currently we might be done by one position because someone has left. We have seen a decrease in overtime partly as a result of that. Alderman Sheehan We have some line items that seem to jump a lot in the salary ranges. One of them is in IT, there’s a 15% increase for one person. There’s 8% on the line item for lieutenant. There is a 6.6% on record’s technicians, and 6.86% on sergeant’s which seems above what the contracts have come in at. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 27 Chief Seusing I can certainly address the IT position. We had reorganized our IT Division and we had increased the responsibilities of both of our current IT positions so both of their salaries were increased, the IT Director and the Network Administrator positions. Is that what you are referring to? Alderman Sheehan That’s part of it. It seems to be sergeant’s that went way up. Chief Seusing I know we had just approved their contract. I guess the increase you are seeing I can’t really answer to. Karen Smith, Police Department Business Manager The base for the budget is FY 11’ and it’s a multi-year contract so it’s compounding the three years’ worth of raises on that line. Alderman Soucy The one line item that kind of strikes me is last year we had an enormous spike of armed robberies and I’m looking at some of the overtime coverage and I’m guessing that is probably a direct consequence of maybe not having enough coverage. The line that strikes me is the overtime investigative where that’s gone down by $24,000. If the trend continues and we have another summer or year of armed robberies and a couple of homicides, if you run out of money there, what’s the plan? It seems a little low. Chief Seusing The overtime budget in the FY 15’ is for the most fund level funded from the last year except for an increase because of a settled contract. Every year we do spend more than we have on overtime budget usually by a couple of hundred thousand dollars and I know that gets absorbed by a surplus payroll account. I know that’s been discussed previously. In the past, we have budgeted what we’ve needed in our overtime account and then I think at the end of the year that would be a surplus. Several years ago we had a pretty significant decrease in our overtime budget. I think it has increased a little bit since then. It’s been hovering just shy of $1 million but again, fairly consistently we have been spending probably $200,000 or $250,000 more every year. Again, we find that in the surplus, in the payroll side every year. I do want to mention that the investigative overtime fluctuates from year to year and we really don’t have any control over what that number is. I think the number that is in there has been a number that has been fairly consistent from year to year. I will point out that we anticipate at the end of this fiscal year which is only a month away; we are going to see about a 30% decrease in the coverage overtime which is a pretty significant amount. That is attributed specifically to the fact that we have been operating generally at full staff or at a higher staff level that we had in previous years because we have had most of our vacancies filled. We talked about filling the CT positions which allows the officers to be on the street and being at full staff. We have seen consistently from month to month, comparing these months to previous fiscal years, that those numbers specific to coverage overtime has had a pretty significant decrease. At the end of this year we are going to be about $1.2 million in overtime which I think will be a little bit less than last year. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 28 Chairman Deane Chief, your coverage overtime is showing $185,000 that was budgeted and you’ve expended $263,261. Ms. Smith It’s just the way the budget has been prepared. In past years, we have had a budget for payroll and a budget for overtime but at the end of the year there was surplus and the Mayor had asked for us to reevaluate the way we were budgeting. The overtime account as a whole are not funded the proper amounts so whether you are looking how much is in coverage or in investigative, we have to do the best we can to put a number in there knowing we are going to go over. When you compare it to actuals for that line, they are not going to match up. The difference is going to come from the vacancies in the over attrition and other accounts to offset it but it makes for difficult reading as far as lining up the numbers. Chairman Deane You kept your attrition number the same as last year at $140,000. Alderman Donchess I believe that one of goals should be to make Nashua known where it is hard to do a heroin business and I think you said that if you could get additional officers you would assign them to a second drug unit. As I look at the budget, are there two additional patrolmen from the proposed year? Chief Seusing No. Alderman Donchess So this retains the same number of officers? Chief Seusing That’s correct. Alderman Donchess You are not proposing any additional officers? Chief Seusing That is correct. This FY 15’ budget is nearly identical to last year and in terms of staffing it is identical. Alderman Donchess What persuaded you not to seek additional personnel for a second drug unit? Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 29 Chief Seusing When we spoke a month and a half ago regarding our proposal, the three additional officers that the workload assessment stated that we needed and then the additional proposal to that was for four additional officers, three into the drug unit and one into the pop unit. I thought before we put anything in the budget that we should come down and discuss our concerns with you. At that time, I didn’t feel it was proper to just put in additional funding for additional officers until I had further discussions with the Board. Just because it’s not in this current budget doesn’t mean that we don’t need it, we absolutely do need it to address the issues that I had previously talked about. Alderman Donchess In terms of the number of personnel, I am looking at page 108, patrolmen all ranks, full time equivalents for FY 14’, $130,000 and then the full time equivalents for FY 15’ is $132,000. Ms. Smith The in-grade promotions are involved. The first year officers are not involved in that. The number has not increased but people are moving. Alderman Donchess You made the big arrest the other day and we congratulate you for that. A half of pound of heroin is a lot. How do you think the battle is going regarding combatting heroin dealing? Chief Seusing That arrest was a result of one of our officers near the end of his shift just saw some motor vehicle violations which didn’t really result in anything significant but I’ve talked about how important it is for our officers to be proactive in motor vehicle reinforcement. We ended up getting a half of pound of heroin off the street. As you probably read in the paper, one of the occupants of the vehicle was armed with a loaded handgun. They fought with our officers and we had to chase them down and wrestle them and I thank God that they didn’t use that firearm against our officers. The officers did an outstanding job! To answer your question, our current drug unit is extremely busy. I guess we are getting by but my concern is where is this going? I think it comes back to being proactive. The folks in my drug unit have told me that they have more intelligence coming in that they could be addressing regarding the drug problem. They have more work coming in than they have time to do which is why part of my previous proposal was for additional officers so we can increase our drug unit. The drug unit is going after the core of the problem. I can put more detectives out there and I can certainly put more officers on the street which I can easily justify but I suppose before I do that I need to address the issue that’s really causing all of this crime and that’s the drug issue. If I had more detectives in my drug unit, I absolutely believe that we would be able to make an impact in the drug dealing that’s going on in this city. I’m not saying that we would see results quickly at all but I think it’s easier to understand that is an area we have to focus on because this drug problem is not going away. Unless we take a stance and be proactive, we are not going to see a difference. My fear is letting it slip away from us because once that happens it will be very difficult to get it back. There are other cities and towns where that has happened and it hasn’t happened in Nashua yet. If we don’t address it, that day will come. People moving into the city and starting their business here, that’s what they are going to look at. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 30 Alderman Donchess Going back to the people who were arrested for the heroin, were you able to determine what their plans were? Chief Seusing They were from Vermont and we do know that they had purchased the heroin south from here, but not far from here. They buy it and bring it back to their community to sell it. Why they were in Nashua, they had told us that I don’t think had a lot of credibility. I’m not sure that they were just driving through here. Alderman Dowd What percentage of the drug situation is school aged offenders, both middle school and high school? Chief Seusing I don’t have that percentage. We do see it at that level and know that there have been drug dealings in the schools. The School Resource Officers are aware of it and they do address it. Drug addiction starts at a very young age and it goes past my age. The drug dealing does too just at different levels. It’s across the entire spectrum. Alderman Dowd So your Resource Officers are being proactive in the schools? Chief Seusing Absolutely, the SRO’s are able to build the relationships up with the students. Many students will come to them and report things to them and that’s critical. Alderman Dowd I know we have an issue with adding officers but would you not say that there is a lack of coverage of the Resource Officers at the middle school level? Chief Seusing I would agree that there is a lack of a presence at the middle school level. We have five SRO’s and two are assigned to each of the two high schools which leave only one for the three middle schools and the twelve elementary schools. Some years ago we had six SRO’s and because of budget and staffing issues we had reduced that by one. I do know that Superintendent Conrad has brought those concerns to my attention. We are looking at possibly looking at having the SRO’s from the high school share some of their time at the middle schools. There used to be four officers in the pop unit and now there are three for the same reasons. We are spread pretty thin. Alderman Dowd Going to the revenue side, I looked at the fire arm permits line, it seems very low. Do we not have a lot of people requesting permits or are we not covering the cost of a background check? Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 31 Chief Seusing I think there was about $28,000 in there. That fluctuates. We’ve made some purchases out of that account. We had purchased our new sign out of that account. Ms. Smith The permits are under a separate account. Alderman Dowd Okay, so that goes in the Special Revenue Account. Ms. Smith Yes. Alderman Dowd Is it low relative to other communities? Chief Seusing Are we talking about the pistol permit account? Alderman Dowd Yes. Chief Seusing I don’t think it is. Alderman Dowd But the actual permits, do we charge more than Manchester or Hollis? Chief Seusing No, we don’t. I’m not sure exactly what that fee is. Alderman McCarthy Some years ago, the period of permits changed from four years to ten. Did that put us in a situation where a whole lot of them get renewed in the same year and then we don’t get renewals for a six year period? Chief Seusing I’m not certain. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 32 Alderman McCarthy I think it changed to ten years a few years back so you would have a period when all of them would lapse over the period of four years but then none of them would lapse for ten more years after that so there would be a six year gap in there when you would only see people apply for new ones, not renewals. Chief Seusing It seems like the ones that I see come across my desk are renewals, they come across my desk constantly. Commissioner Valade There was a period there when people were afraid of the gun rights and stuff like that so they applied for permits and there was a big spike. Alderman Sheehan You had said and it was quoted in the paper that you are not going to be able to arrest our way out of the heroin. One of the things that are going away we are hearing is the drug court. What impact do you think that might have? Chief Seusing I do know that Captain Mike Kerrigan who is in charge of our detective bureau, he’s actually on a committee right now to actually establish a drug court here at our Superior Court. We currently do not have one. I do think that having a drug court would certainly be very beneficial. I do agree that we can’t arrest our way out of this problem. There are many moving parts to it. The treatment part of it is huge. The drug court will be a piece of this whole thing and I’m hopeful that it does come to be in existence here sometime soon. Alderman Siegel I want to express my extreme concern about the staffing levels of the drug unit and I completely agree that it has got to get beefed up. In reading the workload assessment, the idea that the possible intelligence gathering is being compromised because there is not enough personnel to follow-up, that is almost more painful than the actual lack of additional officers in a sense because that could be used to perhaps build an idea of where best to deploy additional resources. That in addition to the notion that even someone getting sick and family leave; it leaves a gigantic hole in investigative capabilities. I believe there’s a statewide ammunition purchasing program, is that correct? Ms. Smith Yes, we do go to the state bid looking at the pricing for ammunition as we would do with vehicles. Alderman Siegel When we purchase the ammunition, is that actually going through the state program or is that going outside of the state program? Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 33 Ms. Smith The list that we have for items are not all on the state bid contract so we do go out to bid but the vendor who has the state contract will bid on it. Alderman Siegel So you do always avail yourself of that? Ms. Smith Yes. Alderman Siegel On the workload assessment there was reference to the data base of pawn shops and other shops where people could potential sell stolen goods and I thought that was great but I wanted to know what the status of the work was on that. Obviously things are not useful to be stolen unless they can be sold for money to then pay for the drugs. Chief Seusing I am not completely certain. I know it’s a big computerized and is it completely finished? Deputy Chief Lavoie They have one version that they have been using and they are trying to upgrade it through IT but it is computerized as we speak. Alderman Siegel And is that currently operational and are we seeing any successes with that? Deputy Chief Lavoie Certainly, we find stolen goods quite often whether it be the same people tracking by name or tracking by the goods and there’s a City Ordinance requiring that every pawn shop second hand dealer to respond in a certain amount of time to hold the items for a certain amount of time before they sell them to allow us to at least attempt to recover them. Alderman Donchess That was due to the efforts of this gentlemen and myself back in the 70’s, that they hold the items. Alderman Sheehan Alderman Wilshire bumped that to a month instead of week and that’s what really worked. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 34 Alderman Soucy We have a retired Nashua detective now working with us at UMass on how to do that and we’ve had huge success in recovering stolen goods. Alderman Siegel As a follow-up question to that, and I understand there are HIPA regulations, but it seems to me that the gateway drug to heroin is prescription narcotics and they only happen with prescriptions. Is there any ability currently within the constraints of our existing health privacy laws to track prescriptions through the area pharmacy’s assuming that’s the main conduit for eventually illegally sold prescription narcotics? Chief Seusing There is. Currently it’s my belief that in the state, they are in the process of formalizing a prescription monitoring program. That does work in other states. As far as I know, we do not have it in this state. That will be a very important piece to fighting this whole problem. A lot of people out there who are addicted to prescription drugs, they go doctor shopping and without this monitoring program available, one doctor does not know what the other doctor has prescribed. I do know that it has been talked about being implemented here very soon. Alderman Siegel And you would have the capabilities to put that in play similar to the database that you have for pawn shops? Chief Seusing I don’t believe that the Police Department necessarily would have access to that. That might go through the D.E.A., I’m not sure who would have access to it but it would be available. Alderman Schoneman Do you have any idea what the overall drivers are of the drug problem? The people that you are finding are overdosing or dealing drugs; are they long-term residents who began their drug dealing here or are they coming from somewhere else with that habit already? Are we doing anything to attract them here? Chief Seusing I think one of the driving forces is the prescription drug problem. That has had a significant impact on our heroin problem. Prescription drugs are prescribed to a patient initially who probably needs them. I think more times than not they are probably over prescribed. I’ve talked to many people that have received a narcotic drug for a knee issue and they have been giving 30 or 40 pills and they only need 3 or 4. Sometimes they self-regulated themselves and there’s not a problem but many other people don’t. If they get a bottle of 30 pills then they are going to take 30 pills and before you know it they get addicted to that drug. When their physician is not refilling that prescription because the patient’s injury has healed, it’s not addressing the addiction problem which leads the patient to seek the drug elsewhere which drives them to the heroin problem. It gives them the same high. It’s an opiate based drug. Heroin is much cheaper on the street and we’ve seen many times where we have seen someone that you might not think would be addicted to drugs. When you talk about a drug addict you kind of have a picture in your mind of what that looks like. When it starts off, it could be any one of us in this room that Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 35 gets addicted to it and because this addiction is so powerful, it leads you to do something that you ordinarily wouldn’t do which is a very scary thing. One of the cases that we investigated that stands out in my mind is a young woman who was working for a gym and she was in charge of the finances of that gym and she embezzled over $100,000 over a period of time and we arrested her and she told me that the vast majority of the money that she was stealing was to feed her prescription drug problem. This young woman was spending $3,500 per week on drugs. I always bring that up because here you had a young woman who had access to money. I think it puts an emphasis on the addiction. These people are married to this drug and they will do anything not to withdraw of the drug. I am told by the experts that people withdrawing from heroin feel like they are going to die. I think there needs to be an educational component to the physicians who are prescribing these prescription drugs and I know that’s happening. I don’t know if this drug issue has any bearing on whether or not the drug addicted people are from this community of not. This issue affects everyone and anyone. Alderman Schoneman I can understand that is does but I’m just wondering how we can stop this from becoming a bigger problem. I was concerned that people from other communities might be bringing the heroin here but it sounds like that’s not necessarily the case. There may be people that are thriving and doing well in Nashua that might be becoming addicted to the drug. Chief Seusing I will say that as far as the drug dealing in the city, if you go south of the border; that is where it’s significant. I think that if the culture in your community is that these drug dealers feel comfortable selling heroin as a business without worrying about being caught, that is what’s going to fester and become a problem that you can’t overcome. I do think that some of the drug dealers that we do have in this community, they go south of the border to buy their heroin and then they come back here to sell it. I do think that because of our proactive efforts, I think people know that Nashua is not a community that wants these people in here. I think the message is getting out but we need to be even more proactive to prevent it from getting out of control. Alderman Schoneman I think the proactive piece of it has to be something that prevents it from occurring in the first place because of the drug dealer is selling drugs here it’s because there’s someone here who wants to buy them. If we can do something to crush that supply, it’s going to increase the strength and the desperateness of the demand. Chief Seusing I couldn’t agree with you more. I think the educational piece is critically important. We have made efforts in our schools. I have recently had a conversation with Detective Kerrigan as far as increasing the education surrounding this issue in terms of bringing it to the schools more than we already have but also to the public. For the last couple of years, we have brought into the schools a gentleman by the name of Chris Herren, who used to be a pro basketball player who really lost his career because of drugs. He’s a motivational speaker now. I have not met him but I’ve talked with some of the officers that have seen him speak and they say he is an extremely powerful speaker. I’m told that some of the kids are in tears after hearing his story. We have told the School Department that we would pay for his services out of our forfeiture account to come into the schools once per year and address the freshman class and now we are even thinking of having him speak to younger kids as well. This includes the private high schools in the area as well. We feel that if we can just get a couple of kids to listen to him and it stops even just a couple Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 36 of kids from getting addicted to drugs, I think that’s money well spent. Deputy Chief Lavoie If I could just add, last year, after his talk, two kids, within the same day, went to their guidance councilor’s and admitted that they had a drug problem. Alderman Schoneman On the idea of the prescription drugs being a gateway to heroin, do we have a sense that all of the prescription drugs are initially purchased from a local pharmacy or are there some programs or distribution centers? Is there any way people are getting them for free? Chief Seusing The short answer is yes because we have had people breaking into people’s homes and that is what they are going after and then they will sell them on the street. We’ve had robberies at pharmacies to get the drugs. Some of the drugs come from their parent’s or grandparent’s medicine cabinet which is why these take back programs are so important. We just had a take back program in April and we had over 300 pounds of prescription drugs that were taken in in just one day. We are in the process of getting a drug box in our front lobby so the folks of this community have the ability to come in and drop their prescription drugs off. There were a few rules that were difficult to abide by. We have to have 24-hour video monitoring of it, we had to make sure that the box we purchase met all of the guidelines. Alderman Soucy I am also concerned about the gang activity that quite often brings in the drugs. Do we national gangs here or are they local? Chief Seusing They are mostly a local issue. We have had some gang members that are from larger gangs from bigger cities but to answer your question, I think we have pretty good control over it but again, we always have to be one step ahead of it which is why I suggested that we put another officer on the pop unit. One of the responsibilities of our pop unit is to identify all of gang members and to keep track of them. Alderwoman Brown So the bottom line is not only was $70,000 cut from your budget, but also that you need three additional officers for the drug unit, is that correct? Chief Seusing You are correct that our budget came to you with a $70,000 cut. My proposal talked about three officers that we would put into our patrol bureau which was a result of our workload assessment. The other part of that proposal was an additional four officers above and beyond that of which three would go into our drug unit and the fourth one would go into our pop unit. I will say, since you asked that question, but if we did receive additional funding for more officers, I think everyone knows it would take about 10 months to get him on the street. I would put officers in my drug unit before I would put them into patrol. Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 37 Alderwoman Brown The Nashua Prevention Coalition, that’s a group who has gotten federal money for the medication box for the police station. I also believe that there focus is on drug prevention for teens and encouraging people to get lock boxes for their medication. Hillsborough County is waiting to hear if we have been approved for Drug Corp. Alderman Siegel If indeed we do have the ability to increase the force have you a voted on an increase in the authorized strength if that happens? Commissioner Maffee Yes, we brought that up to 185 two meetings ago. Alderman Sheehan Am I hearing it right that the report suggested more patrolmen but you would prefer them on the drug unit? Is that correct? Chief Seusing The workload assessment primarily dealt with the staffing issues in our patrol bureau. I proposed three officers to go into the patrol bureau and then above and beyond that, I asked for four officers to go into the drug unit. Any additional officers will be added to the drug unit. OUTSTANDING DEPARTMENTAL REVIEWS FROM PREVIOUS MEETINGS May 19, 2014 Miscellaneous Revenue Surplus General Contingencies Contingency-Retirements Contingency Negotiations UNFINISHED BUSINESS – None NEW BUSINESS – None Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 38 TABLED IN COMMITTEE MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGEL TO TAKE FROM THE TABLE R-14-028 MOTION CARRIED R-14-028 Endorser: Alderman Michael Soucy Alderwoman Pamela T. Brown Alderman Mary Ann Melizzi-Golja Alderman-at-Large Diane Sheehan Alderman Richard A. Dowd Alderman-at-Large Brian S. McCarthy Alderman-at-Large Daniel T. Moriarty AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR AND CITY TREASURER TO ISSUE BONDS NOT TO EXCEED THE AMOUNT OF ONE MILLION TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS ($1,200,000) FOR THE PURCHASE OF A NEW AERIAL TOWER TRUCK FOR THE FIRE RESCUE DEPARTMENT Tabled pending Public hearing scheduled 6/2/14 at 7 PM in the Aldermanic Chamber MOTION BY ALDERMAN SOUCY TO RECOMMEND FINAL PASSAGE MOTION CARRIED R-14-033 Endorser: Mayor Donnalee Lozeau CREATING A SPECIAL REVENUE FUND FROM STATE HIGHWAY FUND BLOCK GRANTS AND A PORTION OF MOTOR VEHICLE PERMIT FEES FOR ROAD AND HIGHWAY EXPENDITURES Tabled pending Public hearing scheduled 6/9/14 at 7 PM in the Aldermanic Chamber R-14-034 Endorser: Mayor Donnalee Lozeau RELATIVE TO THE ADOPTION OF THE FISCAL YEAR 2015 PROPOSED BUDGET FOR THE CITY OF NASHUA GENERAL, ENTERPRISE, AND SPECIAL REVENUE FUNDS Tabled pending Public hearing scheduled 6/16/14 at 7 PM at NHS-North Auditorium GENERAL DISCUSSION - None PUBLIC COMMENT - None REMARKS BY THE ALDERMEN - None POSSIBLE NON-PUBLIC SESSION Budget Review – 06/02/14 Page 39 ADJOURNMENT MOTION BY ALDERMAN SIEGELTO ADJOURN MOTION CARRIED The meeting was declared closed at 10:11 p.m. Alderman Ken Siegel Committee Clerk