Police, Traffic & Public Safety Committee

Town of University Park Council Committee on Police, Traffic and Public Safety May 10, 2023 7:30 p.m. Meeting Notes Members Present: Gathercole, Morgan, McGaughey, Wells, Sweet Agenda 1. The Minutes of the April 12, 2023 meeting were approved. 2. Chief Baker went over the crime statistics of the past 5 years in the park. There has been one recorded incident in the park in that time. On September 5, 2022 a sexual assault occurred where a woman was slapped on her buttock while jogging. When she turned around a man was masturbating but ran off when she began recording him. This incident occurred during early evening hours when it was still light outside. The park is currently closed at 11:30 p.m. until 5:30 a.m. and there was discussion of changing the hours to dusk or possibly two hours after dark. The Chief was asked to draft alternate language to the current code 5-101 and to bring it up at the next PTPS meeting and forward it to the Council. It was agreed that there needs to be a public hearing as well as pricing of signage to all entry points to the park. 3. In response to concerns of non residential parking, especially where residents do not have driveways. Chief Baker developed a draft University Park Residential Parking Permit Program. The purpose is to maximize available parking for residents while discouraging long term, walk off, and commuter parking on residential streets. Only residents on designated streets are eligible for residential parking permits. The Chief looked at historical data and complaints and identified 13 troubled areas to identify as designated residential parking streets. The Chief will forward to the committee the draft as well as the draft sticker and a map of the areas identified. Temporary parking would be permitted as the Residential Parking Permit Program would address long term parking. If implemented we would need to change parking Code 9-104 by adding a proposed residential parking permit. It was suggested that we start out as a pilot program on certain streets. There would also need to be education to the public that this was going into effect. We would need to seek legal advice from the Town Attorney on how to proceed. 4. The Chief was asked to speak of the Nixle Emergency Alert System which would allow up to date information from the police in the form of text, email or over the web. This is free to the public. The initial cost to the Police Department is approximately $2200 annually (the Chief will check on the exact cost). Police receive up to date information. There are 4 types of messages: Alert (urgent, must know), Advisory (less urgent but need to know), Community Information (day to day information in the community) and Traffic Advisory. Users can tailor their messages through Smart path so that they can either receive Alerts and Advisory via texts only or just Alerts via texts and the rest through emails. It's up to the user to set up how they receive the information. There was discussion among the committee members of a communication break down after the homicide last year and reliance on the list service which doesn't always put out accurate information. It was also mentioned that the storm last summer where trees were down, power lines were on the streets, roads were closed and that quick and accurate information was needed to get to the public. The committee agreed that this would be beneficial to the Town as it would be coming from the police and that we should add a line item to the Police budget on the May 15th Council meeting. I will send out the information to the other two Council members before Monday's budget discussion. If this passes, the committee discussed advertizing in the Newsletter with possibly an insert, Mayor's email, council members emails and the UP website. The Chief will also ask Nixle if they have a marketing tool to get the information out to the Town.