Public Safety Advisory Commission

Minutes UN Public Safety Committee Commission Regular Meeting Minutes OF Thursday, April 21st, 2022 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Virtual FI 1. Call to Order CI Meeting called to order at 6:00PM by Amy Booth 2. Roll Call AL Public Safety Commission Members Present Amy Booth Kim Nordby Ruthann Reim Diane Bendixen Guests Chris Saunders, United 4 UP Public Safety Commission Members Excused Galina Perekopsky Pete Whipple C Jim Feore DO Staff Present Non Voting Member Present Jennifer Hales Scott Adams, WPFR Chief Greg Premo, UPPD Torey Heidelberg,UPSD Members (voting or not) not present 3. Approval of Minutes UM Pete made a motion to approve the minutes, seconded by Kim. Unanimously approved 4. Public Comments No public present 5. Welcome & Introductions – James Feore & Pete Whipple EN T Commission members introduced themselves and asked that new member Pete Whipple to do the same. James Feore is excused and will give an introduction at the next meeting. University Place City Hall 3715 Bridgeport Way West Tel 253.566.5656 University Place, WA 98466 Fax 253.566.5658 www.CityofUP.com Pete has been in UP for about 2 years, is a transplant from Pennsylvania – followed his kids to the area. For a little over 30 years was a City Manager in Pennsylvania. Retired. Feels like he’s only been here a couple of months because of the virus. Working remotely for an East Coast EMS company as an unpaid consultant. Had a nice conversation with Chief and Jennifer to learn about public safety. 6. WPFR update/ report out – Asst. Chief Scott Adams UN Lot of changes over the last month – ramping up out of COVID restrictions. Things opening. The only thing they are not doing is station tours. Safe sitter in June or July. Youth academy coming up in June. They will have 30 high school kids from UP and Lakewood. Just did the roadshow last week from Curtis. There are links to all of these programs on the WPFR website. OF Open House is coming up the first Saturday in June. Very excited! Call volume up 10% this year – about a 1/3 of those calls are UP. Endeavor (WPFR boat) has had some significant calls. There was a call on 4/4 – 10:30PM, received a call that a sailboat was caught in the storm – reports that it had capsized. There were 3 people on board. It FI took 5.5 hours to get the sailboat to safety. It was a scary/ interesting call. Two WPFR lifesaving awards – both from UP awarded at Commissioner meeting. CI Paramedic shortage. WPFR having a retention and recruiting issue with paramedics. There are more paramedic openings than ever before. AL Added a new Battalion Chief to the North station (UP). That individual will do scheduling and supervisory stuff. Added connected care position person. She helps WPFR with frequent users of 911. Adding a Squad 31 car that will serve UP – this is in addition to Squad 21 that is currently the only car of its kind serving WPFR’s area and will be dedicated to Lakewood. C Chief Sharp happy to come and speak to Commission anytime. DO 7. UPSD update/ report out – Torey Heidelberg Things are getting back to normal. Busy time of year with athletics and state testing. Getting back to some normalcy. Facing a bit of an uptick in cases this past two weeks. We are prepared and still offer testing. Lots of test kits. UM Torey transitioning to Transportation to fill in as they had a director leave. Incident yesterday on Grandview. A person came on the bus, that did not belong on the bus. The driver was able to get the person off the bus. UPPD was able to respond and gain control of the person and get him off the bus. Driver was calm and cool and collected. UPSD planning some training follow up with Drivers. Kudos to UPPD! 8. UPPD update/ report out – Chief Greg Premo 9. United 4 UP – Chris Saunders EN T Chris Saunders is here! United 4 UP is a coalition set up to determine how to meet the needs of the community. In September U4UP restarted. Chris reached out to community to see what the needs were. Community expressed an interest of finding a venue to go to discuss issues in University Place. Chief Premo presented to U4UP recently and brought in the largest crowd they have had so far. page 2  There are 80 subscribing organizations to U4UP. First project coming out of COVID is the inclusive playground announced at the Council meeting on Monday at the City Council. U4UP will be there to support this effort. Inclusive play is a playground equipped for physically and cognitively challenged kids. This has been a good year and a good start! UN Meet on the third Wednesday of every month. Usually, they have a speaker every month that has a different emphasis. This last meeting, they hosted five immigrants to talk about their story and how well she was embraced by the US and the community. What worked well? What did not work well? Next month they are going to the flip side of the immigration group and allowing the individuals who work in OF immigration to help people integrate and how that is done. AB: What projects have you worked on recently? CS: No projects. This year they did a community assessment to collect some data. Talked about FI vulnerable populations. In this community we have about 35,000 residents and 8,000 of those are seniors. 7% of residents are under the age of 5. Also looked at the demographic with cognitive issues. Also sought out other issues like what are the services in relationship to helping those with cognitive disabilities. There are many stakeholders who participate in U4UP so it is really nice to see those minds CI come together to help address community issues. A lot of their work is teaching each other about services/ community. Future projects? AL CS: We are really hunting for gaps in the community. We know that when the High School has early dismissal – the community experiences a lot of drifters. There really is no place for kids to go. No place for kids to gather – they are drifting through the community. C The community center serves seniors and only about 1/3 of those seniors live in UP. DO Part of their role is to encourage others to step into roles to assist in filling in gaps. For example, the Rotary and Kiwanis are working on the Inclusive playground. This, in turn, re-energizes these organizations. AB: Do you partner with Tacoma Safe? CS: No. Might be something more for discussion next year. 10. Other Business UM Discussion/ concerns about the safety of our community and the concerns about police staffing both in UP and within the region. 11. Adjournment AB adjourned the meeting at 7:17PM EN T Respectfully submitted by: Jennifer Hales Public Safety Administrator page 3 UPPD Approved as submitted/amended 5.19.22 UN OF FI CI AL DO N ME CU T page 4