Public Safety (Subcommittee of the City Council)

PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE MINUTES Wednesday September 14, 2022 7:00 PM Planning & Neighborhood Services Building Lower Level Conference Room 23 Union Street, Norwich, CT Committee Members Present: President Pro Tem Joe DeLucia, Alderwoman Tracey Burto and Alderwoman Stacy Gould. Committee Members Absent: None. Administration and Staff Present: Jeff Brining, Norwich Public Utilities; and Chief Patrick Daley and Lieutenant John Perry, Norwich Police Department. D Volunteer/Central Fire Departments and Others: Norwich: Chief Patrick Montoya East Great Plain: Chief Keith Milton; Laurel Hill: Chief Aaron Westervelt; Occum: Capitan Justin Lawton; Yantic: Deputy Chief Paul O’Connell and Taftville: None. R Citizens Present: Joan Philbrek and Brian Kobylarz. I. Call to Order and Quorum: President Pro Tem DeLucia called the meeting to order at 7:04 PM. There was a quorum present. AF II. Adoption of Previous Meeting Minutes: Alderwoman Stacy Gould made a motion to defer adoption of August 10, 2022 meeting minutes until next month. Alderwoman Tracey Burto seconded. All voted in favor. The motion passed unanimously. IV. Citizen Comment: T Brian Kobylarz of Hobart Avenue believes the planned round-about on Route 82 DOT, will decrease pedestrian safety by eliminating access to cross walks. He also spoke about how it will cause local businesses to have fewer customers and possibly cause businesses to close. Joan Philbrek from Elm Avenue, hopes the committee can move meetings back to the firehouse because the current location is too authoritative and sterile. The first issue she brought up was that the traffic increased on her street. Her neighbor came to the city council to discuss concerns and was told the police would look into it. They put a traffic box on the street, took it down after a while and they’ve heard nothing from the city about it since. He continued to call afterwards with no updates. They hope to have a higher police presence in their neighborhood. The second issue Philbrek has faced are aggressive panhandlers in the city. She has become accustomed to being verbally assaulted by panhandlers in Norwich, at least 3 different times recently. She shared how she drove by one who yelled at her as she was driving. She informed a police officer and he said if the person is not impeding traffic there's nothing they can do about it. Philbrek wants the city to pass an ordinance to address this problem because the panhandlers reflect badly on Norwich. She saw a man in a truck, driving around town picking up panhandlers and dropping them all off at one house, which she believes means they are a syndicate. V. Unfinished Business: a. COVID-19 Update: i. Infection rates & trends - local/regional/statewide: Jeff Brining of Norwich Public Utilities reports no significant impacts from covid. All Norwich Fire departments are following covid guidelines, masks and gloves are required on all calls but all stations are allowing members to choose whether to mask up while at the station. The majority of staff at each location is vaccinated for covid-19. One member of Laurel Hill fire department was covid positive at the beginning of the month. b. City Manager’s Report on Fire Chief’s meetings: President Pro D Tem DeLucia read the report submitted by the City Manager into the record. The City Manager met with the Fire Chefs on August 24th 2022 and the next meeting is scheduled for September 28th 2022. SEE ADDENDUM I. R c. Dispatch & Radio System Upgrades: No updates. i. Project progress to date: None. AF d. Traffic Enforcement Update: Chief Patrick Daley said they had 212 stops last month. There was a discussion about how when vehicle cases are sent to court the offenders are not being fined/prosecuted then it is the same as if they were never pulled over at all. The amount of people caught with no insurance or suspended licenses is high. The backlog from covid is empowering people to break the law.There is a 2023 deadline of when many prosecutors and court staff are retiring which is worrying T because they are already understaffed. The power to redirect traffic is very limited. Traffic calming about slowing traffic, reduced traffic is an effect of traffic calming. Chief Daley does not recommend speed bumps mainly because they damage snow plows. Joe DeLucia heard a talk about rumble strips, and wanted to know what other towns are using them. Daley believes no town is because they are extremely loud. Most towns are extremely anti-rumble strip. Noise pollution is a big problem for them. VI. New Business: a. Department Updates: i. NPU Update: NPU Update: Jeff Brining reports current reservoir at same levels as last month, 77%. The decline has stopped but they are not in a place to remove restrictions on water usage yet. They hope to continue the restriction for at least two more months. They also continue to prepare for storm season. Recently there have been a high number of pole hits, luckily not every accident has caused an outage. ii. American Ambulance: No Updates. Vice President Gregory Allard was unable to attend.  iii. Police Department Update: The Police Department this month concentrated on quality of life. The Norwich Prosecutor helped add a fine for open containers. There’ve been an uptick in Fentanyl overdoses, two today, two last week. Recently they've been non-fatal. They had help from federal friends to attack distribution networks. The department has been involved in federal investigations, but needs more help at lower levels (street level, with mid-management) which then helps improve quality of life. Guns are an ongoing problem and he believes that they should take the war on drugs model and use it on the war on drugs. The Chef then began addressing Joan Philbrek about panhandling, and discussing how it is viewed by the court as a societal issue and how the station is addressing it. He shared that there was a problem with panhandlers by route 2, but panhandling there has reduced since the police department began giving out a high level of tickets in that area. West side has had good luck after property owners posted no soliciting signs, then panhandlers are trespassing and they can be arrested. iv. Emergency Management Update: Chief Tracy Montoya reported D they did calibrations of radiological meters with CT DMAS, delivered 40 sandbags to residents in need due to the recent storms, and received PPE from East Great Plains. v. Fire Department Updates RAF 1. Norwich: Chief Montoya reported 229 calls for the month. Causes include mutual aid, lift assist. 8-17 Montvel structural fire. 8-19 Brush fire to the rear of 57 woodside. 8-26 Mutual aid of fire in Taftville. 8-30 mutual aid call in Preston city. 8-14 supported the Mohegan tribe council with cultural crossing. Small number of flooded basements and flood calls, 9-17 memorial service as part of CT maritime heritage weekend. 3 new hires are in their 3rd week at fire academy. All personnel are caught up with Human Trafficking training. It is mandated training for all ems personnel. All platoons completed EMT and service training, deputy fire marshal completed in service training, 4 officers are in the state fire officer 3 course. The state association of fire chefs brought up a scientist from Florida to do T a PPE cancer demo, and the Norwich Department has asked them to do it again. Companies completed world rescue training at Mohegan park. Montaya completed his report by saying the department was awarded an assistance to firefighter grant of $417,000 for rapid intervention training, aerial operations and pump operations. 2. Taftville: Chief Timothy Jencks had a work commitment and was unable to attend. 3. Yantic: Chief Bill Eyberse did not attend so Assistant Chief Paul O'Connell gave the report in his stead. They had 39 calls last month, 17 were rescues/medical emergencies, 7 were vehicle accidents, 1 vehicle fire, 7 mutual aide calls, 3 internal alarms, 2 hazmat. They are following covid guidelines. Alderman Gould mentioned that Yantic is hosting the state firefighters convention on Saturday, September 17 2022. O’Connell shared that it would be at Kelly Junior High and starts at 11am. They are hosting it along with Taftville.  4. Occum: Captain Justin Lawton reported 23 calls for month, three of which were mutual aid. 159 calls so far this year. 8-6 provided coverage to Yantic. 8-7 Structural Fire on 14th St. 8-26 Fire on South A Street in Taftville. They are still trying to get 41 replaced. 42 is the same, no updates. They spoke last month about Marine 4 going out of service because part of it was coming unglued and it needed a lot of motor work.There are currently 38 staff total, 36 active, 1 candidate being processed, 1 member leaving/moving to California. Gear washer and dryer are installed & functional. They are starting training now with their membership. 1 member going to EMT training in January, 3 members are in fire 1 at ECEF, 1 starting fire 2 at ECEF, 2 members signed up for Health and Safety officer in november. Occum plans to reach out to request training on Human Trafficking. 91% of staff vacinated. 5. East Great Plain: Chief Milton 81 calls last month, a few mutual aid assignments, accidents on 395 (at least 8 times last month). They are continuing routine and online training. D EMR/EMT refresher training is on 7-24 & 7-25. This past month members trained in narcan and glucose testing and EGP will start carrying narcan on their trucks soon. 1 member started firefighter 1, 1 member started emt training. pp supplies are good, space limited, no members currently got covid. 93% of R members are vaccinated. They are replacing plywood on the storage shed to get it prepped to be sided. Critical needs at the firehouse are engine 52 replacement and replacement of the parking lot. AF 6. Laurel Hill: Chief Aaron Westervelt reported that COVID supplies were sufficient. They had their 75th anniversary on the 13th. Every department in the city was there. 300-350 people were there. 107.7 radio station came, there was food, and it was a great event. All trucks are currently in service. They did a small square tanker shuttle training, with approval from NPU. They moved water from one river to another so the water reservoir was unaffected. At least 20 departments were there. T VII. Other Business for future discussion: None. VIII. Next Meeting: October 12th 2022. IX. Adjournment: Upon a motion by Alderwoman Gould seconded by Alderwoman Burto, the meeting was adjourned at 8:20 PM. All voted in favor. The motion passed unanimously. Respectfully Submitted, Ivery Stakley