Are we ready? Good morning. Welcome to the Tuesday, [clears throat] April the 28th budget presentation with the And this is my first time doing this, so give me some grace, please. Uh we're going to ask our city manager, Craig Freeman, to say the blessing and then followed by Girl Scout Troop 2699 to give the pledge. Stand if you're able. >> Father, we thank you for the blessing it is to serve this community and just what a good community we serve. And I thank you for the uh uh council and their leadership and their guidance. And I ask that you' just bless them today during this time of deliberation as we're reviewing the budget. Bless those who've uh worked together to prepare the budget. Thank you for all the hard work of our employees who serve our residents every day. And then those who've worked to prepare this budget to uh bring a proposal to the council. I ask that you'd bless during the deliberations today that you'd just give everyone peace as we're working through this and that we would work together um as a team to be able to uh develop this budget or prepare um adopt this budget that would um help us to serve our residents. And I just thank you for the time we have today. I ask you just bless our time and bless the people that are here in Christ's name. Amen. >> Amen. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We have one item for individual consideration. Oh, call to order. Um, we have one item for individual consideration. U setting a resolution for public hearing dates 12th, May 26th for budget related presentations. Uh, need a motion. and it passes 5 to zero. I'm going to turn the meeting over to city manager Craig Freeman. >> Thank you, Vice Mayor. Uh just want to introduce Chris York, our budget director and assistant finance director. He's going to uh introduce the overview of the budget, give the overall uh overview. We are going to take our budget our order presentations a little bit different this morning. We're going to do the budget overview. We're going to hear from public transportation and parking and then fire and then police. And so we'll just change our order a little bit. Um as we're going through this, I just want to express my appreciation to Chris and his team and the folks in the finance department that work together to pull the budget together. U but also all of the departments. Um we have by our policy our financial policy is a decentralized process that every department is involved in proposing their budget. you know, we work together and they start back in November working on doing preliminary estimates on the budget and as they're working through this, I mean, you think about it, they're really trying to project basically our revenues 18 months out. And so, it's a pretty significant lift and then we give direction to the the uh departments to come back with budget proposals for us trying to achieve certain level of um of budget. This year, as we've talked before, basically revenues are growing. Um sales tax is our primary driver. Um Chris will talk about the expected growth rates that we have but the revenues you know our expenditure growth we have is like our our salaries and other expenses that we have related to benefits and salaries and employees. That's the largest portion of our operating budget. And then you have um other expenses that are in there as well. And we're affected by inflation that just like everyone else is. So you have some growth in your costs. Our growth in our costs is at a certain level. growth in revenues. They have grown, but not as much as our expenses, and that's why we had to make some reductions this year. And you'll hear about that as departments are presenting their budgets. But I'm going to turn it over to Chris and let him do the introduction, and then we'll follow through starting with some of the budget presentations. >> Yeah, thank you, city manager. Uh, I'll jump right in here, but I do want to take just 30 seconds to acknowledge the team uh sitting off to my right uh kind of in between all of the uniformed officers back there. Um, we've got our deputy budget director, Steve Akens. He wrote a large portion of the capital budget today. Um, our specialists, Tiarra Taylor, Nicole Tower, and Jessica Scaloon, and Lorie Herd. We've got our analysts, Billy Smith, Joseph Chapen, Preston Golden, Fabian Bradford, and Joseph Wilson. Uh, lots of nights and weekends go into making this labor of love here document over, uh, several hundred pages. And so, um, really want to acknowledge all the work they put in. And then I would echo the city manager's comments, um, to our partners in the departments who work with us throughout the process. They take our phone calls and then they take our emails and then our follow-up phone calls and then our text and then our instant messages and they still talk to us. So, we're very grateful for them as well. Um they really help the make the lift the lift a little bit easier. So, let's just get into what we have planned for you um over the next few weeks. Of course, we have our intro today um followed by a presentation from Embark uh then fire then police. Then on May 12th, we'll have our first public hearing. Um, and then we'll hear from public works, parks and wreck, and development services. We'll finish up our presentations on May the 26th with uh presentations from the airports, municipal courts, information technology, and utilities. So, it's a little bit of a stacked meeting there. Um, we'll also provide you the public comments at that time. And then on June 3rd, we'll ask for your consideration in adopting the budget, which of course will go live on July 1st. Um, as a 60-cond primer for our residents, uh, this is an ongoing process that we do every year. Um, our annual budget really all starts with the resident survey. We want to know what the residents are prioritizing. And the way we do that is by surveying them annually, um, getting back uh, their their top priorities and then those feed into our council priorities, which then we build our strategic business plans, which we dust off every two years. Um, and so really the budget development process is really our one-year plan of how we're going to achieve our strategic business plan with the resources that we've forecasted. Sounds easy. All right. And I'll just remind everyone what our council priorities are. Uh, these are last revised as of 2017, but they basically cover everything that we do in the city. Um, and they are our guiding principles for how we develop the budget. So without further ado, we'll jump right into what does the budget look like. So the big number at the bottom there, the total budget, uh [snorts] is an increase uh just over $2 billion to $2.12 billion, a 3% increase. And we have this broken out for you into a few different categories. Of course, we have the general fund um which is going up 4.41%. Um and that feeds, uh most of our departments. It is what pays for most of our services. Then we have these other operating funds. These are going to be supporting funds. Uh things like uh public safety sales tax and other things that aid the general fund in providing those services. It's increasing at 6.81%. And then we have our another excuse me, our non-operating funds and these are going to be all of our capital focused funds. Um and those stayed relatively flat uh this year at 1.19% increase or 1.137 there uh in the millions. And so or in the billions, excuse me. And uh so what I would say is that the story this year uh is a little bit different than last year. Last year it was our non-operating that we're increasing dramatically and that was as we were scaling up for all these projects that we have planned. This year we're really reacting to some of those cost drivers that the city manager alluded to um in our general fund and other non other operating funds. So uh again a little bit of uh explanation here. This is our third year of cuts and that's a little bit confusing for our residents to see a higher number in the right column for FY27. And the reason for that is that we start the the process by developing the same service level budget. Um so the same services that you're receiving in the current fiscal year, which is FY26, with all of the known cost drivers. That's our starting point. And then we cut off of that. And that's how we get to a little bit higher number there. Uh I'll give you an example. The general fund is up 4.41%. Um, and that's based on a few cost drivers. Uh, those include health insurance cost increasing at about 8.3%. Um, so there's a few million dollars right there. Our pension contributions for uh many of our staff members uh from ABSME as well as uh management and non-represented is going up about $4 million. That's based on an actuarial number. So that would stay fully funded in our pension. And then the cost of living adjustments and stipens that were awarded in the current year. When you put all those numbers together, your starting point is about $20 million higher on top of the same service level that we're receiving right now before we ever start the process. Other operating funds again are those supporting funds are going to include the airports, the utilities, the storm water drainage funds, as well as fire and police sales tax. Uh some of the big movers there are our police sales tax up about $3.2 million from prior year. Uh hotel or excuse me, internal service funds are up about $4.9 million. And this makes sense, right? Because uh when we have cuts asked for in the general fund, those supporting funds that departments have access to are going to start feeling some of that pressure. Some of the other uh large increases there are related to our hotel motel tax, um which is up about $9 million. We talked about this during our most recent budget amendment. Um we've really been chasing our actual performance in that fund for a while. This gets us in line with that and matches what we did in our amendment. Um, and so we we're capturing what reality is for that fund after the increase from 5.5% to 9.25% just a couple years ago. Uh, and then also, nope, I think that's it there and we will move on. Okay. And so as we look at all of our revenue to balance that budget at $2.1 billion, um, we see that our largest recurring revenue source of course is is taxes. They total $939 million or 45% of the total and about $42 million more than in the current year. Um when looking at the total budget, uh the taxes categories also includes property taxes here um uh for our debt service fund which is about $159 million and those go towards paying our general obligation bonds. Other areas to note our fund balance at 662 million. I always like to explain that when we're looking at this big picture, this is going to include all of our capital funds like maps for better streets, safer cities, and so on. And so, we've accumulated those funds over a number of years. As we roll out the projects, we're really using the tax that was received there in prior years, but now we're calling it fund balance because we didn't receive it in the current fiscal year. Uh and then when we get down to uh fees and charges, we have about $316 million and those are going to include building permits, ambulance, ambulance membership fees, storm water drainage fees, and so on. And they account for 15% of the total. Federal grants are up 8 million from last year. Um and they account for $95 million uh right there on your right at 5%. And then other revenues include things like interest, lease revenue, and other miscellaneous sources and account for about 3% or $67 million. Transfers in are too small to see, but they're about 1.7% of revenue or $36 million. And those are funds received from our public trust um for operating costs for water, wastewater, solid waste, and airport services. So, as we narrow the aperture a little bit and get down to our operating revenue, this is where we start to see where we're paying for services. This strips out all of the capital uh non-operating funds like we said, maps for better streets, safer cities and so on. And so it gives you a better perspective what the resources that we have for actually delivering services. Again, taxes are the biggest piece at 64% or 622 million of that $979 million number. Um and then fund balance shrinks um down to just 2% there. Um because again, these are going to be funded by taxes. These aren't those large projects where we've accumulated dollars and now we're needing to spend those. Fees and charges account for about 30% of the operating budget at $292 million. And then transfers and other revenues such as interest are about 5% or $65 million. Some of the largest category, some of the largest changes o over um the prior year include that hotel motel tax we talked about that's plus $9 million as well as the medical services program which is going up about $5 million. Um, and that's due to our fire department's uh, success with their supplemental ambulance service. Okay. So, looking specifically at the general fund dollars, sales tax accounts for 54% or $341 million. Other taxes is our second largest revenue source. That's of course going to include the use tax. Um, and that includes uh, $123 million or 20% of the total. And the call out there is that use tax is 17% of the 20. So use tax is really other taxes uh almost entirely. Other fees are projected to come in about $91 million or 14%. And then franchise fees uh follow with a total of $59 million or 9% of the total. Uh and then finally miscellaneous revenue and fines together make up about 4% of the remaining total general fund revenue and combined they're about $24 million. So, let's talk about a little bit about that's a lot of numbers I just threw. Actually, let's talk a little bit about the story behind the numbers. Um, we talked a little bit about sales tax growth. We are still seeing pretty weak sales tax growth even as we're monitoring in the current year. So, uh you may have uh seen the most recent sales tax check. It was very good. It was over 10% growth. Uh but when we put that all together, we're still expecting to land the current fiscal year at about 1% within 1% of our target. Um, and our target was pretty restrained at less than 3%. So, we throw around that 3% number a lot. That's our historical average that we like to see to pay the bills. We're not seeing that. Um, in the current year, we're going to be close. Um, and then in the next year, we're only forecasting a 2.3% sales tax growth. In fact, overall revenue growth, we're only forecasting a 2.6% number. And so [snorts] really again, as the city manager indicated, the revenues just aren't keeping up with the expenses in this next year, which is why we had to request uh a 1.4% cut from public safety, a 2.4% cut from all other general fund uh supported departments. [snorts] Okay, so this slide puts us uh into the categories specified by the municipal budget act and gets us back to that $2.1 billion number on the expenditure side. Capital is the largest category there at 34% or 715 million. Again, these are our large projectbased funds. Personal services is the next largest category at $684 million. And right behind that, uh, we've got other services which includes contract, utilities, and chargebacks at 18% or $379 million. Supplies, uh, are projected at $72 million or just 3% of the total. And then debt service comes in at 159 million, which we discussed earlier. Lastly, transfers makes up about 5% of the total. Uh, and it's projected to be at 105 million for next year. As we would expect, when we get to our operating expenditures, we pull out all of those capital and now personnel services comprises 2/3 uh plus of the budget. Uh and that's because again, we're excluding all of the project based uh budgets. And really, this is where we're delivering services. It takes people to do that. Personnel services accounts for 673 million of that total. Uh followed by other services at 178 million and then transfers at 90. Uh finally we have supplies at a relatively small $30 million and capital only makes up about 5.9 million of this number. Now [snorts] so then as we focus even further uh into the general fund again personal services comprises the majority of the expenses at 68% or $432 million. Other services at 26% again includes utilities contracts for services those are at $166 million in this chart. And then supplies are relatively small at $9.6 million followed by capital um at $1.1 million and then transfers gross to $29 million. Um and that's as we put funding uh where it needs to be uh to to be uh expensed and accounted for. Okay, so now switching to what we're funding by category. Uh so again, this is just the general fund at that $638 million number. And we can see that public safety makes up the majority. It's a core service um and accounts for 62% or $394 million of that total. Public services is our second largest category and that's going to include public works, development services, planning and so on at $120 million or 19%. And then culture and wreck is really parks u and wreck and they account for 9% or 66 million but it also includes our contracts for services um for things like the convention center, the myriad gardens, civic center and so on. And then finally, you have general government at 10% um or just under $60 million. And those include finance, city manager office, HR, IT, and our general service departments. All right, a little bit of an eye chart here and I apologize for that, but this is what that looks like spread out across each of your departments. Again, I would note for you that we are seeing an increase in FY27 um based on same service levels. Um, but as you can see, uh, for the most part, it's pretty incremental, spread out across each of our departments, um, without any significant movers. Um, I do will call out the city manager's office growing at 12%. Uh, and the reason for that, that's a little bit of inside baseball, but, uh, we had been funding our task force uh, recommendations out of non-EP departmental for many years. Uh, we have solidified that in the city manager's office and so that is the the reason you're seeing that increase. It is not a net increase to the general fund. it is just moving it out of non-EP departmental and putting it where the program lives. All right. And now I'll just quickly go through um some of the changes uh the major changes by category. Uh starting with the fire department. I won't get too far into the weeds here because you're going to receive a presentation from chief in just a moment. Uh but the fire department proposes to uh delete six fire corporals off of multiple ladders. These are the fifth man on many of those rigs. And so there will be no impact to the rigs being out of service, but will reduce their total number of uniformed uh personnel by six. It also solidifies that million dollars that we talked about during the public safety sales tax amendment for the fire wellness program that they recently stood up. Uh and those were the major changes there. Again, um you'll hear from fire in just a moment. You'll also receive a presentation from the police department. Um but they will net down one position. Um, but as a reminder, I do want to call out that they are carrying forward the 20 frozen uh uniform positions from the prior year. They weren't able to restore those in the current year. So, those are still authorized positions, but there's not funding associated with them. So, we are down 20 positions there. Um, they are also funding an assistant municipal counselor, one out of the public safety sales tax um for some support there. They've added two crime analysts for their uh real-time crime information center um or real-time information center, excuse me. Um they've deleted one office assistant and then deleted two police service technician twos in our municipal courts department. Uh they were able to achieve their target with some line item reductions for services they no longer needed. So not a lot of movement there. And that rounds out our public safety portion. Now switching to public services. Uh we've got uh starting with public works. We really have two stories going on here. So public works needed to meet its target. So they have reductions there on the right of several positions while at the same time we know we're standing up the geo bond program with a one of the large with the largest sale that we've seen and so we need to start ramping up for that. Those are those ads to the left and so overall um they are going to have a net increase of two positions most of which are going to be funded either by the geo bun chargeback or services performed by aquit and those are called out for you on the left. You will be hearing from Debbie Miller in public works on May the 12th. [snorts] All right. And then switching to development services, uh they will net uh one position down. Uh they're deleting three total positions from our uh code enforcement uh section. Um and then they're also adding two elevator inspection inspectors. The elevator inspectors were able to be funded because the fees they charge for those inspections cover the cost of the two that we have existing. and they believe the total need is over double what they're able to inspect at this time. So those are expected to be funded. Um Brock will present to you on May the 12th. And then planning is adding a net of two positions. Um one includes a zoning and compliance officer as well as an admin coordinator. And then they're also able to add two GT funded positions that will be working on affordable housing projects. public transportation and parking uh really is shifting a couple of positions, but they will show up as deletes in the general fund, moving two IT positions out of the city fund and into the transit side. Um, and they're also proposing to adjust their weekend service hours. I won't get ahead of Jesse. He will present that to you in just a moment. The utilities department adds eight positions. As a reminder, this is an enterprise fund. It is funded by rateayers and so they do have these funded um in their existing rate structure. You'll hear more from them on May the 26th. Um some of the big pieces of that are going to be the four property maintenance program positions. They're taking on some of the work that was be done being done by parks for the mowing at some of their facilities and so they're staffing that up. Um there's also a pretty big move of 122.4 million that's coming out of the city side funds and going into the trust funds. Uh the reason for that is the department has a preference for the trust u because they're able to engage in multi-year contracts um and be a little bit uh faster in response to things like spikes in chemical costs and things like that. We've seen some budget amendments here at at the city council for those reasons. This would eliminate that need and allow them to be a little bit uh quicker to respond. Okay. And then in our parks and recck department uh we are down five positions. Um, and those are really related to a restructure that Melinda will tell you about on the 12th, but it is eliminating the natural resources program and moving that program uh across both the recreation and the grounds management division. Those efficiencies will have allowed her to cut some positions. They're also adding one golf uh marketing coordinator which is supported by the golf trust um and the uh the rates that they charge at the the trust. So, that should be funded. And they were also able to put a little bit of uh line items aside to support park amenities, trails, uh and athletic field program improvements. Okay, finishing up with general government. So in our general services department, two positions are uh proposed to be deleted. One is a recreations facility technician and the other is an office administrator from the administrative line of business. Finance is showing a deletion uh but really that is a reallocation. It shows as a negative one for finance, but it is moving our performance measurement program outside of finance and into the innovation program which is inside of the city manager. So, it's a net zero when we look at the city manager's office alongside this one. U but it is a net negative one or is it a negative one for the finance department. And then it was able to help hold their headcount steady and they were also able to add about $1.3 million in contract funding. Um those are things like Microsoft 365, Oracle and so on. They're they're unavoidable. We have to do it. All right. And then in the city off auditor's office, they were able to reduce a contract uh for IT related audit services to achieve their cut. And then we talked about some of these in the city manager's office, but they're netting plus three. Uh and also that public safety partnership funding is moving from non-EP departmental into the city manager's office. Some of the positions include a public information officer that will be dedicated to the new geo bond. Um they're also adding a construction project manager for the MAPS program as well as an admin coordinator to the maps program. These are both related to the arena uh and getting ramped up for that work. And then we have the municipal counselor's office. They're adding two. We talked about one um related to the police department uh being funded by the public safety sales tax and then we're also adding one more being funded by the geo bond. Okay. So where does that leave us? So we end um or the proposed headcount here is 5089 which is a reduction of one from the prior year. But again the 20 police officers that are positions that are frozen are not accounted for here. So effectively we're ending with 5069 for FY27. What that looks like by department is right here. And I apologize this uh fire number is incorrect. Um it is a net reduction of six corporals. Uh that slide needs to be updated but we are ending with 5089. Um and that's the only adjustment uh to this slide. Apologies for the miss. Okay. Now we are wrapping up here. So of course we uh present the budget book to you and try to comply with we do comply with everything out of the municipal budget act. We have won the GFOA award over the last few decades. Um and so we expect to continue uh to receive that award um following their best practices. I might give you just a quick overview of the budget book for our re residents benefit. Um so uh couple of sections here in the introduction you have the city manager's message. I do have one flag for you on that. It matches that slide there that the proposal from fire in the city manager's message is not correct. Um it is six corporals that they are proposing to remove there. Um we have one of the alternates uh in here and I apologize uh for the miss on that. Um then throughout the book you get to the financial summaries. That's your quick section of really everything that's going on with the budget. Then you get into your departmental budgets and that gets you the specifics with the major budget changes. Um, I tried to explain to a neighborhood group the other day that we try to make it very easy within the first three pages of every department section. We give the major budget changes. You can see exactly what's going on with every single department. Getting into the fund summaries, those are what we actually by law are turning into the state. And then we finish up with the capital budget which just gives us a snapshot of the projects that we have over the next year and plus. And then finally, the appendix has some good information um compliance, glossery of terms, all that good stuff. Uh, one more call out for you in the capital section. All of the department projects are updated uh, with the exception of utilities. They weren't able to get theirs turned in on time or in time, excuse me. And so those uh, might have a little bit of movement, but we rolled forward their 5-year CIP plan u into that. So it it shouldn't be too far off from what you're seeing here, but we do expect a little bit of movement once we receive that. Uh, and I think that's it in terms of the budget book. All right. So, we'll just finish up with how our residents can get involved with the process. So, again, we will have um multiple opportunities for public comment um on May the 12th, May the 28th, and the 26th. Um and then we will also open up our public comment process as we speak. So, that will be open today. And if residents want to uh interact with us, they're welcome to go out to vision.c.gov. Uh we'll have the budget book posted out there as well as all of the presentations including mine. If they want to review that at their leisure, of course, this will also be on the YouTube channel as well. Or if they just want to email us directly at budget comments.gov, we will look at every single one of those and provide them to do to you as we always do. And then if you want to send in a text or even write us a letter, we were happy to receive either of those uh information up on the slide. All right. All right. And then we call this out. This is probably the the best uh resource for our residents um to engage with the budget process. This is that vision.c.gov website. It will include all of the information including the budget book, all of the timelines, calendars, and some basic information on how we develop the budget. And that's it. That's all I have for you this morning. But I'm happy to answer any questions. Uh before I hand it over to transit, >> can I ask Well, thanks for the presentation. Uh, I want to go back to the health care increases. You said it was 8%. Is that right? >> 8.3%. >> 8.3. What was the increase last year? >> I don't think I have that number in front of me, but what I will tell you is that we generally run a little bit better than medical inflation. Um, which tends to be in the 7% range. Um, but I could get you the exact number, sir. >> That'd be great. And then I'd like to know just because I've been following at the national level there's been these increase in healthcare costs and I I'd like to better understand where those increases are coming from. >> Absolutely. Happy to get it for you. >> Thanks. >> Thank you Chris. Appreciate again your leadership and the office and then all the departments that have worked on the budget. Um we're going to walk through our presentations this morning that we have three and then as Chris said coming back in a couple of weeks we'll have some additional presentations as we go through this process. So, thank you, Chris, for your leadership and your work in this. >> Thanks, sir. >> So, next up, we'll have Jesse Rush, our Embark director, and he's going to give us a presentation on the transit and parking budget. >> Good morning. How's everyone doing? Good. Well, good morning. Uh, yes, as city manager said, I'll be presenting the public transportation parking uh budget. Uh, first, good morning, vice mayor, city manager, city council. Happy to be here. Uh if you had told Jesse Rush back in 2017, October 2017, that he had an opportunity to stand in front of you today to present the uh budget for public transportation and parking. You would think he was lying. Um but what I can tell you is that whenever you get involved in public transportation, I say this pretty often, it gets into your bones, right? And so what you find is that when you go to other cities, you actually end up dragging your family along and you start riding public transit everywhere you go or you start going down strange streets to go look at parking garages. But it literally gets into your bones and you start to see the the impact that public transportation has on your community, on your city. So really, really happy to be here, happy to share this presentation. Uh I will say buckle up. We've got about 50 slides to go through. We'll go through them pretty quickly. Uh, but I' I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the team that put this presentation together. Right. So, we've got some fantastic photos, as you can see from this cover slide, and Lloyd uh Rosen helped put together those photos. We've got a lot of intense data. Chip Nolan, our planning uh manager, put together that data for us. Uh, all of our budget information was developed by Christina Henkins over my left shoulder there, working with the city departments. But finally, Ty Holly, right? Ty put together our presentation. If it wasn't for Tai, I'd literally be standing up here presenting bullet points and it'd be very, very boring. So, appreciate Tai's hard work. Thank you, Ty. All right, so let's jump into it. So, who are we? Right, so we are a public trust to the city. Uh, we were established in 1966, uh, where we established the Central Oklahoma Transportation Parking Authority. Uh, over on the right are all the different modes that we provide, right? We provide our fixed route bus service, our BRT uh street car service, public parking, ferry service, our uh plus ADA service, and uh many many mobility management programs. Now, if you take a look at those modes, there's quite a few there, but what I'd like to point out is there are over 3,000 public transit agencies across the United States. There are less than 10 public transit agencies that provide the same amount of modes of service that we do here in Oklahoma City. So, let that sink in for just a second, right? 3,000 agencies, 10 of them, less than 10 of them, provide as many modes of service as we do. All right. So, we are celebrating our 60th anniversary uh for the uh for COPA. Uh you may have saw it on the previous slide. 1966 is when it was established. Um so, the important thing there is to think about uh Oklahoma City in 1966 or the United States in 1966. So, back in 1966 was when the US Department of Transportation was established. that's uh their main goal was managing time zones across the United States that has since uh gotten much more in-depth in what they provide. But also in 1966 uh Ralph Gills was uh sitting at a bus stop waiting for a bus when he developed the idea of video games. He actually wrote a a paper while he was waiting at a bus stop of how he could play video games on a television. But for us, that's when uh public transit was established as a public service. And so what we've done is we put together a short little video that I'd like to share with you all. And so out of this, well, let me show the video first. Before highways and boulevards, Oklahoma City moved on dirt roads and [music] horse teams. Transportation was about survival, about connection. and about becoming a city. Before long, steel rails and wires humming [music] with electricity powered street cars, shaping neighborhoods and commerce. The Bell Ale Power Plant energized a system that declared Oklahoma City had arrived. And by the end of the 1930s, nearly 19 million Oklahomaans were using public transit. The arrival of the world's first [music] parking meter signaled a change in our city. Folks were buying more cars and buses replaced [music] those early street cars. Flexibility had been chosen over permanence. In 1966, [music] Katpa was formed to manage the bus system and parking. Transit [music] became a public service. First operating as the Oklahoma Transportation Company, then rebranded as Mass Trans in 1975 [music] until 1992 when it was rebranded as Metro Transit. Through decades [music] of automobile ownership increasing and public transit ridership decreasing, mass transit continued to keep the wheels turning while adding access via COPA and Transit [music] in 1982 for those with mobility impairment. The maps project [music] sparked a transformation. As revitalization was brought to OKC, [music] so was the idea that transit could once again shape the city. First with [music] the launch of Oklahoma River Cruises in 2008. Operating under a new name in [music] 2014, Embark unified services, modernized fleets, and restored confidence. Rails and street cars returned to downtown [music] in 2018, not for nostalgia, but for strategy, anchoring development [music] and reconnecting districts. Rapid launched in 2023, the boldest bus investment in generations. From horsedrawn stage lines to electric street cars to buses, garages, and BRT, Oklahoma City's [music] transit story is not a straight line. It reflects the city itself, adaptive, resilient, [music] and always in motion. The vehicles have changed, the streets have changed, but the purpose remains the same. to provide access to opportunity to each other and to the future. All right. So, clearly pretty proud of that video. But, so what we're going to be doing over the the rest of this year is we're developing a video series where we're going to be interviewing uh previous uh directors, uh previous mayors, and previous board members from our COPA board. So, you'll see those video series roll out through our social media, our website. So, be on the lookout for those. All right, so let's jump into it. So about five years ago, uh, Embark established our our roadmap. That was our strategic plan. All right. So our former director, assistant city manager, J Jason Fairbrush, was a spearhead for that. And what came out of that was a a mission, a vision, and core values. And that's really what's been driving u embark for the last five years. So on the screen here, out of that road map was our vision, which is embark will be worldclass transportation that is accessible to all and all want to access it. Right? That is our aspirational goal. Those are the things that we are driving for every single day. Um also out of that came three primary initiatives which are create a great place to work, enhance the status, use and understanding of our services and preserve the confidence of the board and the city. And so that's really what is going to be the framework of our presentation today. So let's jump right into it. The first being create a great place to work. So [clears throat] out of that we uh created the Stoke Storytellers program. And so on the screen here, you you can see uh Latania Roberts winning a legend of the year uh there for uh 2025, but really it's an opportunity for uh our staff to be able to provide peer-to-peer recognition. So you're able to share a card with uh one of your peers about something that you've seen that they've done that was, you know, went above and beyond, but really that peer-to-peer recognition. Uh so out of that we've had uh to date a little over 5,000 folks showing or sharing that peer-to-p peer recognition. Out of that we've had 91 legends of the quarter and we've had four legends of the year come out of that. All that tying back to our core values of be safe, be there, be open and be kind. We love acronyms and transit. So if you tie that all together, you get stoked. Uh the next program that came out of our roadmap was our culture compass. So this is a a group of individuals, frontline staff that got together that are there to really drive home culture at Embark. And so what we found about five years ago was that there was a disconnect, right? Disconnect disconnect between our frontline staff and our supervisors. And so with culture compass, they've been able to help bridge that divide. And so some of the things that have come out of that, uh, we're all familiar with the gauge survey. If you're part of the city, we've seen a 72% completion rate of that gauge survey. But if you think about it, right? So most of our frontline staff are out driving buses. They're not sitting behind computers. And so to be able to see that gauge uh survey completion rate increase by that much, it's really really significant. We owe that to our culture compass. Uh we've increased our stoke storytellers by 20%. Uh we produced the Stoke stories. Uh so everyone at your desk, you've uh you have a hard copy of those of that document. That's really an opportunity for us to share some of the stories of our frontline staff. And so we we often tie that back to creating legacy, right? So our staff are out there doing fantastic jobs above and beyond of just providing public transit. They're doing some incredible stories. And so we've been able to capture some of those stories and our staff can take those home and be able to share those with their family members saying, "Yes, I do provide public transit, but this is some of the other things that we do." And so really creating that legacy. Uh and then you can kind of read some of the other things there, but really want to point out two individuals that are really driving this home. Uh first being Jackie How. You can see her there in the right in the middle with the red top. She's really been helping drive uh culture at at our uh at our division here. And also Laura Laura Miller there on the right side. Uh really again just taking the initiative of taking the culture compass and driving it uh through the organization and making sure everyone gets an opportunity to take part. Uh the other thing that came out of our road map was uh what we call coordinates and this is our bi-annual meeting. So if you think about it, I'll show a slide here. Now we're uh getting close to about 450 individuals at at Embark and they all work different shifts. And what we found five years ago was our staff were oftent times saying um why am I finding out what's going on at Embark from our customers folks that are getting on our bus and so again through our roadmap program we've established this uh coordinates program where we get all of our staff together and we provide updates and information of things that are going on at Embark and really be able to just share our message with the staff. It typically takes about six meetings to be able to do that and they're usually about two hours long uh to be able to get in front of all the staff again with everybody working the different shifts. It takes about six meetings to do that. But it's really really really enjoyable. Uh we also get to uh celebrate our legends of the year every August at coordinates. So just again an opportunity for us to all get together and celebrate the things that are going on at Embark. Again uh create a great place to work. Part of that is providing um workforce development. You can see here on the slide for the last 12 years we've grown about 60%. Two major uh changes that you'll notice there was around FY23. That's when we launched the BRT, right? So we saw about a 10% growth there. And then just recently with FY uh 26, we saw about a 7% growth. That was uh us bringing the OKC street car inhouse. So we grew by about 34 uh individuals when we did that. So again, we're starting to see that increase. But over the last 12 years, we've seen a 60% increase uh uh staffing and workforce development. Uh you'll notice a video there in the as it was playing as I was talking. So we've also been able to provide additional training. So if you remember uh back in the day, you used to whip out the the TV and VCR and you get some of the the the funny videos that you'd have to watch for uh training. Well, we're able to do that inhouse and really specialize some of that training with our staff. You notice we were showing a video there making sure that staff aren't just walking into the shop that they're following their appropriate procedures. So really proud of that and proud of the the additional training that we're able to provide for our staff. Uh also creating a great place to work means having great facilities. Right. So we recently are or actually just wrapped up phase one of our remodel at our South Main headquarters. You'll see some images there from that phase one remodel. About a $3.4 million project that we've been working on. It was uh funded by federal grants and ARPA funding. Uh and so really really proud of that. We were actually moved into this facility in the late 90s and uh it got to a point uh about a year ago where we had up to two to three folks in every office to be able to to get everybody into the office. So and we had offices that were odd sizes where they were closet size and some were conference room size, but we were able to really uh standardize our our offices at South May. So really proud of that. And then also I mentioned it earlier but also bringing street car in house right creating a great place to work making sure that we have the appropriate staff to be able to provide the services that uh we need to provide. All right our next initiative is enhance the status use and understanding of our services. So how do you do that? That's by getting out in the community. And so a lot of the times you know we we talk about public transit as a service but what we also do is we're out there getting into the community. We're doing special projects. One of those is state fair senior day shuttle. So every year the state fair has a senior day and so we wanted to make sure that folks had that front door service and so we partner with the state fair to be able to essentially provide a parking ride where uh seniors could go and park their vehicle and they could board our buses. You can see whether they're using mobility devices, whatever it is, we're able to provide that service, literally take them to the front door of the fair, right? So you don't have you don't have that long walk that you have to do. We're providing that service. Another thing that we've done uh recently was uh we started visiting schools. This is a photo of us uh visiting John Rex. Uh happy to mention that we're actually uh visiting Aztec Middle School today. We have staff that are there right now that are uh showing students and and middle schoolers how to use public transit. So a lot of times whenever you ask somebody, well, do you use public transit? And if they say no, the most of the time the reason is it's scary, right? It's just I don't want to get up there and not know how to buy a ticket. I've got people behind me. So, we're trying to really get out into the public and try to take away that stigma or that that scary factor of what it is. Like, it's so easy to be able to board and whenever I'm on board, I know what to do. So, going to middle schools, we're we're actually going after future transit riders, right? So, we're wanting to make sure that they understand how to use it. Another thing that we do of being part of the community is our every year we host a community fair where we provide uh free services to folks that uh maybe otherwise couldn't able to access those whether it's flu shots um dental programs um dental hygiene kits, fluoride treatments, you can see it all there. Uh mental health outreach, we partner with the mental health association. They're uh on site to be able to provide those services uh if anybody needs it. But really just being able to provide those services, meeting people where they are. Uh and we provide that every year at our at our transit center. Uh again, community events, being in the community. You'll see a video there in the top left. Uh if anyone's familiar with the Oklahoma Children's Museum or the play, uh Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. Uh we were able to partner with the Children's Museum to take one of our buses out there and have staff there to provide information on what public transit is in Oklahoma City. One of the cool things about this uh event actually was they they made a puppet and they branded it Embarks. We had an Embark puppet uh that they're actually going to give to us. We'll get to to take that home with us. And all of the anything bus related or transit related was branded Embark on the stage. So really getting our image out there, getting our our services out there. And then again, anytime there's a major event going on downtown, we're usually a part of it. Right. So you can see there in the top right um the lights on Auto Alley, the lights on Broadway. We were there uh providing information of our services and of course first Americans Museum. So we partner with the city of Oklahoma City uh the American Indian Cultural Center Land Development and Okana to be able to provide a uh a landing at the Okana Resort. We had that ribbon cutting for uh the the the bridge. So we also partner with Maps 4 to uh for pedestrian access. Uh we had that ribbon cutting last year. will be providing service uh here in about two weeks at the first Americans Museum. All right, continuing that talk about partnership, right? So, we of course have partnered with MAPS 4. There's a maps 4 program for public transit improvements. One of those is providing shelters. Uh so, you can see here, this is an image of what our expectation of worldclass transit looks like when it comes to bus shelters. Uh so if you talk look all the way back to 2014, we had uh about 60 of our bus stops had shelters. We have 1,347 bus stops. So a very very small percentage of those bus stops had shelters. We took that as an initiative. We wanted to make sure that our folks had dignity when they were standing at a bus stop. They're not standing out in the elements whenever they were waiting for a bus. So we took an initiative to start providing bus shelters at our bus stops. A few years ago, we had about 167 when we [clears throat] started that partnership with MAPS 4. uh the phase one add an additional 140. Uh we received a $19 million grant to provide uh bus shelters uh through the maps 4. And so what we were able to do, we were able to leverage that maps for money to to make it go a little bit further and use that $19 million to uh to provide more bus stop shelters. And so we're currently just wrapping up phase one. When we're all said and done with MAPS 4 and the additional uh raise grant, we'll have over 727 of our bus stops will have uh shelters. So over 54% of our bus stops will have shelters. If you look at the national average, the national average is 30%. So we're well well above the national average when it comes to uh providing dignity to our customers. All right, moving along. Uh anybody remember last year this big event that went on downtown, big celebration, championship parade? Well, we were a part of that as well, right? So we we partnered with the Oklahoma City Thunder to make sure we were providing uh access for folks to be able to get to the the championship parade. Uh so what we did was we set up parking rides. We set up a parking ride at uh the state fair uh Remington Park and at the state capital. And so we provide uh uh service to nearly 10,000 folks using our parking ride during that event. So in three hours we nearly car we doubled our ridership uh for a single day with nearly 10,000 folks using our park and ride for the Thunder Championship parade. Winter weather just a few months ago, right? We had record-breaking winter weather. And whenever you talk about one city, one team, this is a great example of what that means. And so we partner with public works to make sure that we were able to provide service. We never missed a single hour of service during this winter weather event. Uh that takes a lot of effort from many folks out there. Making sure that our our street car stops are clear, our street car tracks are clear. Uh making sure that you have access to our transit center. If you were downtown and you took a look at our transit center during that winter weather event, it was probably the most cleared area in all of downtown. Uh but what that means is it takes partnership. It takes partnership with public works. Uh specifically, Michael Colbert. He was uh the gentleman that was in charge of public works and getting the streets cleared. and we met every single morning and anytime there was a significant area that maybe needed a little bit more uh work done simply called him up and he was able to to provide staff to help support that. Again, we were able to provide service and never missed a single hour during this winter weather event. Uh we also like to celebrate, right? So, we just recently celebrated our our 1 millionth rider on our Rapid Northwest system. We're seeing uh on average about 41,000 folks use our Rapid Northwest every single month. So that is our highest ridership mode. Uh but we recently celebrated our 1 millionth rider. Actually on Christmas day we celebrated our 1 millionth rider. And uh you'll notice in the bottom right picture there uh uh Fritz Ethridge. He's actually in in attendance here with us right back there. Uh but during this event, he shared a story with me that I think really symbolizes what public transit is. Right. So, he'd mentioned that uh every single morning there's a gentleman that jumps on his bus uh gets on at the park and ride location. He gets on his bus. He rides it downtown. He gets off the bus and he walks through downtown. He's a retired gentleman and that's how he gets his exercise. Right. Every single day he uses the Rapid Northwest to go downtown and just walk around downtown. Then he hops back on, goes back to the park ride and goes home. So, you know, we we talk about public transit as a service, getting folks to jobs, but it also provides a service to be able to get folks that are retired that maybe don't want to sit at home watching, you know, judge Joe Brown or whatever it is, they actually want to get out into the environment. We provide that service as well. Uh we're also a partner with the Women's College World Series. And so, back in FY23, we're able to provide one bus to provide parking ride to be able to get to the front door of the Women's College World Series. We carried nearly a thousand folks that year. Uh each year we've increased our service and each year we've seen our writership nearly double. Right? So in FY24 we saw uh nearly 3,000 folks use that service. FY25 we saw nearly 6,000 folks use that service. This year we're going to be uh upping the Annie. We're actually going to provide a few additional buses for that and we're hoping for 10,000 folks to use that service. Uh important note, there is no longer parking at the Women's College World Series. So, if you need access, be sure to use our service. We'll get you to the front door. Mobility services. So, this is uh this is one of the the the programs that um Dr. Marilyn Dylan runs and it is a program that, you know, has significant impact, but she's able to do that without um any general fund subsidy. And so, most of these programs are funded by individual grants. And you can see the writership that we receive out of that. Uh just an example of some of the services that we provide. We'll just partner or tag on to the Palomar Palomar partnership, right? So, if you think about the Palomar, they're making sure they're providing services for folks that are experiencing domestic violence. We provide transit there. A lot of times you may see someone that's experiencing domestic violence, but they don't have access to a vehicle or a way to get out of that situation. We will literally go to their home, pick them up, their belongings, and take them to Palomar so they can be able to receive those services to be able to get them out of that situation. So small, you know, small service but great great impact. And so just wanted to point out the uh the just exponential writership that we've seen on that. And those are direct uh direct service impacts that we're providing every day. All right. So this is our writership. So you can again see our writership across the board here. So on our bus and rapid, we combine those. We saw nearly 3.2 million folks or we're expecting about 3.2 2 million folks to use that service this year. Uh street card about 216,000 using that service, our ferry service. So important note there is that um we operate on the Oklahoma River. There are three dams or three locks that we operate through. We had to provide or sorry partnering with public works uh we had to provide service on those dams. So we weren't actually able to navigate the entire river. We're only able to navigate the eastern portion of that river. So we provided u what we call excursions. So you could board at uh the Brooktown or ex or or the um regata landing and we'd go out and take you around and show you some of the the scenes. So but we still saw an increase in writership there of nearly 1500 folks using that. Our plus service that's our ADA service uh nearly 50,000 folks using that and 132,000 using mobility services. If you add all of that up that's about 3.5 million folks using uh transportation. Just to put that into context, if you think about uh the Paycom Arenita being about 18,000 folks at a soldout event, it's about 198 soldout events of folks that we provide service to. We just had the Memorial Marathon uh two days ago. We saw 30,000 folks come out to the for the Memorial Marathon. We carry about 118 Memorial Marathons every year, right? So, significant service there. Uh I'll go through these graphs pretty quickly uh again. So, uh, this is our total bus ridership about 2.6 million. This takes out the Rapid Northwest. This is for a total uh our night bus ridership about 100,000. Our weekend service about 362,000. And then our Rapid Northwest, this we we put this so you can see this linear. I would point out that in March, we saw nearly 57,000 folks use our our Rapid Northwest. That's a record-breaking month. And then I would also point out that we saw uh similar on our OKC street car. Uh on average we average about 20 to 21,000 folks using our street car every month. We saw nearly 32,000 folks use street car in uh the month of March. All right. Our final initiative preserve the confidence of the board and city. So how are we doing that? Well, one of the ways we're doing that is uh focusing on our on street parking. So we have uh a little over 1500 on street parking spaces. uh Corey Hubert uh he's over here on my left. He provides management of that on street parking and parking enforcement. And so when we launched uh or essentially when we took over parking enforcement in October of 23, uh what we've seen is we are able to provide a service for uh the different districts of downtown to where you have more turnover, right? And so what we've actually seen is we've seen other districts reach out to us asking, can you start providing, you know, parking meters so that you can provide those services in our district because they want to be able to see that parking turnover so that folks can be able to get to their services. And so we launched this in October of 23. We're currently working on an ordinance change to expand our services. So right now we only can provide enforcement for folks that exceed their their uh parking meter time. We also know that there are other uh uh offenders out there that you know maybe are parking in front of fire hydrants, things like that. So, we're working on ordinance now that we'll be bringing to city council uh for your input to see about expanding those services. Uh also our off streetet. So, in the top right there, you're going to see a video of our artist that uh painted our Sheridan Walker garage. Um I'll I'll talk about the budget here in just a second, but our off- streetet parking is an enterprise service, right? So we are providing uh services based on uh revenue that comes in. So two major projects that we're working on. So we're currently in the process of doing a $1 million elevator modernization for the Century Center garage. Those elevators are well past their useful life. Cory's doing a tremendous job of making sure that we maintain that service as best we can, but it is time to replace those elevators. So other than the elevator shaft and the elevator car, everything is going to get replaced on those. And then also we just completed a 1.6 $.6 million project of all of our garages for routine maintenance. Uh making sure that all of the expansion joints, everything that goes into just a concrete structure, but there's a lot that goes into it, making sure that all of that meets that useful life and and proper maintenance. So, we're just wrapping up that project there. All right. So, again, talking about partnerships, right? So, we just we recently partnered with uh ACOG maps 4 to develop our long range transit plan. So, what does that mean? Well, we want to focus on providing frequency. We know that frequency is what drives writership. And so we're uh intending to over the next, you know, several years uh increasing our frequency uh on our system to improve that to 16 highfrequency routes, nine highcapacity corridors, and you can see the impact that that'll have as we continue to develop that out. All right, last couple of slides here. So about in 807 days, but who's counting? Uh the Olympics are going to be here in Oklahoma City, right? So we are hosting two events. We're hosting the canoe slalom and the softball. Uh we have experience of providing uh park and ride services. We talked about it earlier with the women's college world series providing park and ride services for uh the softball stadium, Devon Stadium. We're in the process of developing a a in-depth plan of how we're transportation is going to support the Olympic Games and uh we'll be providing more and more information as those get closer. All right, time to talk budget. So, an important note here is earlier Christian pointed out uh the transportation or transit budget. What we're going to look at today is going to be our trust budget. So, you you may notice some uh differences in the numbers. That's because we're presenting on our entire trust budget. You can find our budget in pages C-147 through C-156. So, let's take a look at it. Uh, so for FY27, our COP budget, our totals at $69 million. Uh, you can see how that breaks out. Uh, would like to point out that our bus service there includes paratransit and BRT. Uh, and 73 or 73% of our budget is made up for bus services. uh Norman. So $4.3 million there, but important note for Norman is we are providing um bas essentially contracted services to the city of Norman. So none of that uh funding comes from the general fund. We we provide service. We submit invoices and we uh collect that that invoice money back from Norman. Uh parking again enterprise fund uh street car at 6.9 million and then ferry at 1.1 million for a total of a little over $69 million. our funding sources. So for off- streetet parking, again, important note, right? Enterprise funds. So money in, money out. Uh $6.5 million uh funding for our off- streetet parking services. You can see that break broken down there. Majority of it or 46% of that budget comes from our monthly parkers. And then funding sources for public transit. So this is our bus, paratransit, street car, ferry, and BRT. broken down. You can see 58% of our budget comes from the city's general fund. Now, what makes us different, right, is if you think about the city providing funding for a service, but what makes us different is we are able to leverage those general fund dollars to get federal uh federal funding as well. And so, you can see 16% of our budget is made up of federal funding. Uh 4% is comes from our fairs, about 2.6 million. Uh 1.9 million comes from the state or ODOT. Uh again mentioned that earlier Norman we get funding from Norman. And then finally other at 9.5 million those are those localized grants that that help support the mobility management services and other uh minor services. So again total of 69 million. This is our our broken down uh budget. Uh if we just focus on the total there we saw about a 3% increase. Uh majority of that is coming from wages. Christian mentioned that earlier right? wages, merit increases, u healthc care increases. So we saw that increase by about 3%. If you look at our major budget changes, uh the first being the the most uh uh this most increase there being about 1.2 million, again focusing on uh personnel cost, uh salaries, merit increases, health insurance, and other benefits. Uh I'll skip the middle one there for a second. Uh we'll also see a slight increase of about 116,000 to increase funding for labor and supplies. I mentioned it earlier, the MAPS 4 uh bus bus stop improvements. So, as we're adding more bus stops, we need more staff to make sure that those bus stops meet that worldass expectation, going out cleaning, taking out trash, making sure that they're they're clean and and ready for our folks. Uh our budget reduction is going to be focused on our weekend service. So, right now we operate uh from about uh 6:00 a.m. till 7:00 p.m. Our budget reduction of about $434,000 would be reducing those hours of service on Saturday and Sunday from uh 8:00 a.m. to about 5:00 p.m. So, a slight reduction in service there. Uh the reason we chose those hours is that's when most of the folks are using that service. Uh but admittedly, there will be, you know, folks impacted by that. All right, we got through it. Final slide. So, uh, back in March, we celebrated Transit Employee Appreciation Day. Uh, thanks to the council, we were able to celebrate that, uh, through a, um, proclamation. So, I appreciate that support. Uh, but we were able to put together a video that I'd like to share really just focusing on our staff that provide this service every single day. Um, you know, uh, I'll I'll just kind of end on this is that, you know, you may not use public transit, but I bet you bump into somebody today that does, whether that is, you know, someone working at a restaurant, someone working at a warehouse, um, retail, whatever it is. I I bet you bump into somebody using that public transit. Again, we're we're providing service to over 10,000 folks every day using public transit. And we couldn't do it without our frontline staff and our our transit employees. So, I'll just wrap it up with this video and then be happy to take any questions. The reason why it's so important is because the folks, especially here at Embark, they they put in the time and the effort and the hard work to make public transit world class. And we have to recognize that, right? Cuz that's what we do. We provide access for people to be able to get where they need to go, whether that's their doctor's appointments, their school, to get home, or just to their job. Basic necessities. >> Getting people to where they need to be on time, in a safely manner. We kind of keep the city moving and that is what it's all about for us. It's like being out there being there for the ones that use public transportation. I was uh pretty fortunate because you know I rode the buses before I started work here. So I really knew the routes and uh me coming to work remarks been a life-changing event. Showed me a lot of core values. Showed me the responsibility of being a team player. coming to a company that based like on family, you know, like unity and stuff and a lot of great people to work here, you know, and I'm forever grateful, you know, that gave me an opportunity to come here [music] and, you know, people are really grateful. You'll have passengers that'll get on there that they'll show how valuable we are to them. They'll thank you, you know, every day, you know, like, "Thanks for getting me to work." I'm a firm believer, you know, when somebody's really trying to make that effort, you help them, you know, that just it uplift them. It makes them have a way better days. So you you also heard from Lester. He's in the crowd right there. So appreciate the hard work that he does every day as well. So that is uh that is our FY27 presentation, our budget presentation. Be happy to take any questions. >> I just want to make sure looking at the slides and then looking at the written written materials at C147. The total budget will be 49,354 and some change. Is that right? >> Right. So that is the the city budget. And so what we presented today was the the trust budget. So, there's additional uh funding that goes into that. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Y Thank you. >> Um well, I'll just start out by saying I really, as always, appreciate everything you all do. I It's no secret you all are probably my favorite department. Um part partially as from a selfish position of riding the bus to get here. Um but also, um just because of the um the the wide birth uh range of services that you all provide. um to just kind of get people from A to B. Um and um I wanted to highlight a few things. I was wondering could you go back to the slide about the bus stops through maps 4? um because I just I thought that was so staggering to me again as somebody who uses the bus and um I was actually recently at an event um sharing uh about you know sort of lots of things going on with the city but we ended up talking about transit quite a bit and one of the women who um was facilitating the event was um shared that her she and her mother moved to Oklahoma city 20s something years ago and would ride the bus to work. Um, you know, and at the time it was like wait an hour on the best, you know, sit situation out in the sun or whatever elements. Um, and now her mom is retired and uses senior mobility services. So, but she specifically was highlighting, you know, that there weren't many bus stops at the time or shelters at the time and that it's very encouraging to her to be be out and about and see how many more of those are just from that personal experience. But so, you said this was so we did $19 million through MAPS 4 and then so was that like a onetoone match that the raise grant did or what how did what was the um the percentage of like how they that match program? So, so most grants are a 2080 split. So, we were able to use uh the maps for funding to to provide that local match, that 20% match. >> The additional 80 gets us to about 19 million. >> Okay. Gotcha. Okay. So, the total for all of these was 199 million, >> which I think like again, you know, maybe for just like someone watching and any of our most of our personal household budgets, that sounds like a staggering amount of money. like I, you know, I don't want to even think about how many years of my life I have to work to eventually have earned that much, let alone spent that much in my life. Um, but in the kind of grand scheme of city budgets, that is kind of a tiny drop in the bucket. and to see what a um improvement that makes as far as like being well above the national average and in bus shelters I think is I I hope that we kind of take that as a lesson that we and in general this is what I often say about you all as an agency is that you all often have the uh slimmest of resources but are doing the most with them. You're finding those matching dollars. You're um really making them go as far as possible. So, I just kind of wanted to highlight that because I think that is again sounds like a really big number, but in again in the grand scheme of like city dollars and and the money we raise to do various projects, it is a tiny drop and is making a huge difference dayto-day to a lot of people across the city. So, I wanted to highlight that. Um, and as much as I'm a cheerleader of you all, I also feel like I need to ask some tough questions about this um this service. uh you know and again like it I don't think probably again to the average person two hours on either side sounds like a huge um uh like hit but thinking about again how people plan work schedules visiting family especially on the weekends that the bus already doesn't only runs once an hour except for maybe the BRT. Um I'm just I'm curious do do you all have like a number of like this is how many on average writers you think this will affect or so any numbers like that you can share? I >> I do. Yeah. So when we looked at it and if we uh focus on the hours that we'll be providing we'll be uh over the course of a year we'll be missing about 38,000 folks. >> 38,000. Okay. Um, and then my other kind of question, and this wasn't kind of part of your presentation or the budget anywhere in the budget, and I my impression is because this is a decision made solely by the trust. Um, but I know you all have been pilot piloting the street fair free street car program. Um, and I kind of wanted to highlight that because um, as as many might imagine, I have a I have a heartburn over that because I've asked many years for us to study what it would look like to have bus fair free um recognizing that there's a lot of benefits that come with that of quicker boarding, spending less on the technology of all the, you know, different fair systems or um, the boxes and the buses um, and haven't, you know, haven't made much headway on that. And I was just curious if you could share a little bit more about that decision, um, kind of where it came from and was proposed and then how much we're missing, I guess, in receiving that revenue of street car fair that we would at least for this portion, you know, this this uh pilot period. >> Yeah, of course. So, yeah. So the question is essentially looking at um you know uh January 5th COPA board initiated a pilot program to make the OKC street car for uh free for 6 months ending on July 5th essentially a pilot program to see if that increases wrership so uh the catalyst for that is essentially taking a look at other peer markets right so we've looked at Kansas City Cincinnati Milwaukee um we've looked at the Denver mall circulator um there's a couple other small downtown circulators. All of them provide the service for free. Uh essentially taking a look at it as more of a more of a downtown circulator more than you know a a transit service where you're taking somebody from maybe outside of downtown to a downtown uh to a downtown service. So what we've seen is that all of those services that offer that for free uh specifically you can take a look at the Kansas City street car they launched uh providing that service uh fair free they've all seen their wrership um either be significantly higher than what OKC street car uh wrership was or after they launched their program to make it fair free saw their wrership increase significantly. uh we've started to see the same thing specifically uh on I mentioned in March we saw that writership over 30,000 when our average is about 20 uh just looking at the numbers that we're seeing coming in for April we're seeing that um essentially be the case that more folks are using it um specifically when it comes to revenue. So when we took a look at it we were receiving about $100,000 in revenue for OK Street Car. Uh I I showed a slide earlier. Uh revenues received for fixed route bus services and BRT are closer to about 2.5 million. And so to be able to offset the that cost of the revenue, we felt that the street car would be a great pilot project to see uh going fair free it was more obtainable. >> Gotcha. um as far as those other um well okay a few so I guess the recognizing and I guess I've sort of part of like why I've been in the past poo pooed about like oh we wouldn't want to do fair free is that um many people think the main um argument for it is to increase wrership and that isn't always that doesn't always bear out um in in from what I've seen um but I guess like where I'm kind of like just feel a little bit of a rub is that [music] it feels like with, you know, one it when I think is specifically about Kansas City, they not only made their street car free, they made all of their system free. And so that feels a little bit um different because I I don't interpret their street car as a downtown circulator. I see it much more as like a point A to point B. Um, and so I think in my in my view I would hope that we could like zoom out a little bit and say like there's probably other factors about why that wrership is higher than ours. Um, and I guess I get the where the heartburn comes in for me is that because when I think about a downtown circulator, I think about the types of folks most likely using that um are going to be tourists, people with higher incomes, right? people who can bear that cost a little more easily than you know again like this 38,000 people who are now going to have service reduced um who are very likely getting to work right and and don't have high as high of incomes and so that's where again I would just hope we could like think through that a little bit more strategically and um I'd be curious to see if we can explore options um or like I'm curious to hear like is it does it feel like a priority that when we do have like a a budget swing in the positive direction that we could restore that service kind of like where where is that falling in your kind of planning reign? >> Yeah. No. Uh I I will say that again as a lover of public transit, my goal is always to provide as much service as we possibly can at the highest frequency that we possibly can. And so yes, of course, as you know, as budget allows, we would look to add back uh service that makes the most sense, whether that, you know, be putting weekend service back or or whatever it be. So trying to use data as as the most log logical decision when adding back service. >> Well, thank you. I appreciate it. >> Uh as always, thanks for your work and presentation. uh when you began your remarks uh about once you start working with public transportation uh it's in your bones and that really resonates with me when I went to Selma Montgomery and Memphis u for spring break which I referenced to this council a few weeks ago we went to uh the museum there talking about the Montgomery bus stop or bus uh boycotts right so knowing that the very first piece piece of legislation our state government passed was not about access to education or mental health services uh but you know segregating our public transportation services our public services period uh so when I think of 1966 and the creation of KPA I think of the two years before that as well with the civil rights act and the voting rights act I those are three years that are emlazed in my mind. So, it will always give me like councilwoman says um heartburn anytime I hear a conversation about reduction in services because I feel like when we when when the city government or quite frankly state or federal comes to us and says we're experiencing you know a reduction in revenue and then we we need to address that by having our departments cut it almost it almost always feels like we're attacking a symptom rather than the initial root cause of this problem. Um and that root cause is unfortunately rooted in a history um a very recent history of segregation and once we integrated the buses a deliberate political uh attempt to create that stigma that you're talking about to make it seem like public transfer uh public transportation is scary. Um, so I'm I am I it is next to impossible for me to hear arguments about reduction of services. Um, so I'll start there. [snorts] Um, second though I I know you feel this in your bones and I just want to applaud Embark uh you and your team. Sunday bus service, weekend service, the increased frequency that we've seen in literally just the last eight years of uh the life. You you have come up against that history I have just described. Uh and as councilwoman said, you've uh well, she alluded to, you've uh squeezed lemonade out of an onion, right? Not even a lemon, right? So, I just really want to applaud what you all have done on the most fixed of budgets and um so I'm very happy about the bus shelters. I am very happy about a lot of the improvements that we're seeing and I just want to thank you and your team and voters and the council who have moved us in the direction of the shelters maps for the bonds. Would you mind uh telling us just briefly you tal Councilwoman asked about the restoration of services and maybe I'm getting out ahead of myself here, but would you talk to us a little bit about Nashville, Tennessee and their recent election, the choose how you move election? >> What happened? Did they approve it? >> Yeah, absolutely. So, uh I believe in 2018 Nashville put out an initiative to essentially uh establish a dedicated funding source. uh it failed. Uh however they they did a good job of taking lessons learned from that event and they came back right and they came back and um I believe it was 24 23 24 they again came back with a a sales tax initiative to uh provide dedicated funding source and what they focused on uh was there there's three areas that they focused on uh sidewalks right still mode of transportation you're just on your feet uh signalized intersections public transportation and safety Right. And so those are the four areas that they focused on with their 1 cent sales tax. Uh it passed overwhelmingly. Um there there is a a really really good document online. You can go and and check it out. Uh it's choose how you move. Uh they they lay out the plan uh for that one cent sales tax and it's a it's a really incredible plan. they've they've started the initiation of many projects that came out of that passage of that plan and they are they are seeing significant uh service improvements and uh increases with that plan. Uh it is my strong advocacy position both in private and now here in public that when the time comes and I believe the time's approaching soon for our city and Edund and Norman to have an election for commuter rail connecting our cities for service connecting us to the airport for service connecting us to Midwest City my hometown well right outside of Midwest City Tinker Air Force Base, which calls Oklahoma City home. I just want to make sure we're on the right page there. But um that commuter rail conversation, my understanding, would also include conversations about increased bus rapid transit service. It would also have conversations about the different municipalities I have just named improve, correct me when I am wrong here, improving bus service in those municipalities. And as I have advocated behind the scenes and now in public, let me just say the choose how you move model that you have described to me that Mayor Hol has brought to my attention a couple years ago. Uh to me it is the model for us. Every time the city of OKC publishes something on Facebook, could be about the arena, it could be about uh trash collection, it could be about what have you, the comments are always as follows. fix the roads. It doesn't matter what the topic is, it's always fix the roads. And so my advocacy has been that this should be an all of the above approach to public transit. I've served on Kappa for going on 11 years now. And it is as you've described it, director, it is about how you move. Whether that's a mobility device, whether that's with your feet, it's a bike, it's a vehicle, it's bus, it's street car, it's bus rapid transit, it's commuter rail, it's light rail, it is an all of the above approach. And I think that should include funding a dedicated revenue source for ongoing street maintenance. We should not have to wait every 10 years for a public bond election to fund a series of streets. And that's the cycle we're in. That's the system. And I think that we have an opportunity with this election to include not just public transportation, but no matter how you move, whether it's ongoing street maintenance, ongoing maintenance of our sidewalks, ongoing maintenance of our bike lanes and operation dollars, this is an opportunity and I would advocate strongly that we restore this, we advocate to restore this weekend service should this council choose within this budget to reduce it, that it should be priority A in that restoration. So too should the frequency that I'm to understand and just tell me where I'm wrong here. Uh but the frequency the improved frequency that our long range uh plan is looking at that I've gone to budget workshops for um 23rd Street. I'm guessing on the southside you all would look at streets like 29th, [laughter] right? Maybe 59th, but I know for a fact the street where the state capital is >> Yep. >> Right. um should be moving at we've already gone from an hour to 30 minutes, let's go to 15. >> Right. >> Right. And that gets people quicker to work, quicker to recreation, quicker to education. So, I just want to lay this vision out and I want it in public and I I I think a lot of leaders are on board with this. Um I've spoken with Governor Henry, who's uh the one transit um president, former governor. We call him president. I don't know what [laughter] the >> chairman, excuse me, chairman, former Governor Henry. Uh, no, this this this is what we need to do. This h for too long it is residents complaining about our streets and complaining about the lack of the frequency that we need. And so I I I just want to will this into existence. Did I miss anything? >> No, I I think I just just for clarity, I feel like I need to point out that one transit is a completely separate >> completely different. >> Yeah. So completely separate from embark uh but you can find more information at the one transit website >> and everyone should you should go educate yourself on this um there um thank you for the presentation unfortunately uh slashfortunately I have to step away I'm going to be as you mentioned in your presentation the Aztec students uh in W 2 are about they're learning right now how to use public transportation and I really want to thank your team when I invited you all to come to every middle and high school and eventually elementary school in W 2 so we can teach our students students how to use public transit. I'm incredibly grateful that we're doing that and then I'm going to go join those students right now. So, but I'll be watching fire and police online and I'll I'll have some notes for you, Chief Kelly and Chief Bassy. So, thank you all so much. >> Thank you, Jesse. Appreciate the presentation or the presentation on the budget and all the uh questions answered there. Next up, we'll have Chief Kelly >> presenting the fire department budget. I can't. Yeah, we're going to take a fivem minute recess due to lack of quorum. We'll be back shortly. All right, we're ready to get started again. Chief Kelly, floor is yours. >> Morning, uh, Vice Mayor. Good morning, city council. Mr. City Manager, Richard Kelly. I have the honor of serving as the fire chief and uh uh really appreciate the opportunity to be here. If you want to follow along, which I know you'd love to u we start on page C53 on the budget book and uh we'll just go ahead and jump in. So, when you look at the mission statement, we're really this is where the rubber meets the road every day and what we try to do for our residents. Definitely meeting the uh safe, secure, and thriving neighborhoods. That's our primary focus which is a council priority to make sure that we serve our residents a high level. And we really focus on three things. Our vision, mission, and values. And right here is our mission statements. It's really where the rubber meets the road every day. And we look at this at all core levels of our service. And that's responding quickly, safely, courteously. And we just say this simply, our mission is to meet the need, whatever that may be every day. And really through leadership, we look at that through our values. And uh we start off our value state. I mean, I'm sorry, our vision. And we start off our vision statement very simple, building a premier fire department. And we're here today to talk about a premier fire department and what we do every day. And we're really that because of your support. Uh so, thank you for your support and what you do for us every day. And it really wouldn't be able to do that without a residents. I know it takes a lot of effort in that to make sure that we have the trust and and uh everything with our residents, and we don't take that lightly. So, thanks for the opportunity to be here today and talk about that. What I would like to focus is you all know this uh I get the honor of standing up here and talking about our budget but really takes those behind the scenes to make it happen every day and and and really bring this together. So I would like to thank our business assistant u to the fire chief Clint who has to deal with all the numbers and put all that together. I'm a Moore grad so sometimes I I struggle with numbers and then I have Alina Croy um who put this together and I really appreciate that. Uh and then uh um the uh uh office of management budget. Sorry, am I stuttering there? The office of management budget of really working through this with us. It was a back and forth. Really a lot of work that took place in that. So it really as I said takes a village and then uh Charm Rear who is our business intelligence specialist. All of those working together to come to what you see today and I'm really proud of the efforts. And then my command staff and I'll be introducing them in a little bit. but uh really of working through this collectively. So, thank you for your support. Our residents and everyone working together to see this through. This right here is a you know a lot. I know it's a very busy slide. Uh I I look at the right just to focus in the areas what we're looking at today. Last year in our in our FY26 budget, we had uh 1,0 uniform with 113 civilian staff for a total of,23 uh personnel serving our community every day at a high level. And then what we're bringing to you today for FY27 is,04 uniform staff, 113 civilian for a total staff of 1,117. And you can see all across the the top there our org org chart and the command staff and the different levels of service. Um and I'll talk through that today of how we provide a high level service every day. This right here, I know it's a busy map. There's a lot going on here, but I I really want to talk about this. This really is the core of what we do every day, and that's the rubber meeting the road. Uh currently, we have 38 fire stations. Uh and you can see our active fire stations in red and those fire stations that dual row as fire and EMS transport are in blue. So we have 38 stations in all different wards. And then we went ahead and added the green stations and that's the future and that's what was bright and that we're excited our residents supported you all supported of giving us the capability to expand our services even during difficult budget times. We know there's challenges in the future of moving forward in that. We want to celebrate this opportunity to look forward and see what we can see in the future. But station 39, that was a bond that we brought forward to rebuild station 10. We've been able to move that north to 153rd and and North Rockwell. We're working on that project, but that was a 2017 bond that we're working through. And then with the 2025 bond, you'll see the the new fire stations. And you'll notice in the area of still have some work to see exactly the locations of those, but station 40, which is the area of Kilpatrick and Northeastern. Station 41, the area of Northwest 39th and Kilpatrick Turnpike, and then station 40 in the area of Reno and Frisco Road. There's obviously as we get closer to these, when we start to build these out in the capital improvement plan, uh, and as revenue returns in those areas to get us in a in a right, uh, space to continue that growth, we'll look at those locations. Also want to point out here, you look at the map and you see it very busy, but you'll notice the communities around us. And what I'm I'm proud to say is those areas in green, those are areas that we have automatic aid. And that's where we respond to seven other communities. And in that, our focus in that is fast response to our residents, not only in Oklahoma City, but other communities where we can support each other. And automatic aid basically we have on structure fires. When we get a a fire that's on the border and we have that carved out in CAD, we get an automatic response from another community or vice versa if it's in their community, an automatic response. So that is really something I'm proud of. We're leveraging those resources in the community to provide high level not only to Oklahoma City but be able to do that reciprocate that. And then if you look at the areas in Brown that's we we still have mutual aid in those areas and we're very well supported and to have a great relationship with those communities but this speaks to a high level of what goes on the metro have how we respond work well together and continue that Oklahoma standard that we've all know and understand how important that is. On the right there you'll see our different units. I won't get into heavy detail on that, but we do have 38 ALS engine companies that serve our residents at a high level every day with a paramedic on board. Uh so that's important to note in that, but that map tells a lot there of our service to our community. Now, as we get into what we're looking at, the major budget changes, this is the main slide. We're going to talk through those that we have. Um obviously is to uh meet our budget challenges this year. We looked at how we can do that and really provide same level service. So we're really doing what we can to minimize impact to our community. And in that we looked at um we have uh 13 ladder companies. On those ladder companies, many of them have five personnel on the those apparatus. And we use those extra bodies to actually cover a lot of days off and things like that. So what we looked at is reducing those by six. Um and that basically would be two on each shift for all for your aware awareness in that we have three different shifts the A B and C shift and all and on those in our budgeted strength basically on each shift we have 306 personnel and a minimum staffing every day of 242. So as we make that reduction we would actually drop that to 304 on each shift and and still a minimum staffing of 242. We have the blessing with your support. We have the overage program that we have through our public safety sales tax that will cover those with uh overages to be able to make sure that we have those personnel on that to coverage to cover those areas. Obviously, still a reduction in that, but that's our main focus in that is providing high level service to our community and making sure we have the firefighters to do that. The next one we look at is these are just rollup costs as as Christian talked about in that of increasing some of those uh numbers in the baseline general fund budget. Uh you know just to keep same level service for that as 7.4 million that covers that cost such as uh salaries, merit, retirement, health insurance and other benefits. So there is an increase in that of that 7.4 million. And then I bring before you, we talked about this earlier in the year when we did a sales tax resolution of adding a million dollars in that that's just carrying this forward to continue uh to provide wellness to our firefighters. And in that part of that's the pro team contract that you already approved to help our firefighters through as they're injured on the job to try to get them back to work quicker and those that may not be severe enough that they're missing work to continue that high level service of PT and other things to get them back to work quickly or to strengthen maybe an injury that they do have. And then we're also looking at some other areas in that to increase our wellness of some type some fitness equipment. We're also looking at behavior health screening that we implement. We do a WFI assessment every year where every firefighter in the department goes through a physical assessment and that's just to see where they're at with our athletic trainer. We want to roll that into and do some behavior health because wellness is whole wellness, not just physical but uh mental health in that area. So that's some things that we're looking at. But we also added some blood screening this year and we're fine-tuning that every year. We added some APOS A and B which is cardiac related to really try to look at some things to reduce the cardiac risk for our firefighters which in turn helps everything helps our health care helps you know the OJIS things like that we run through challenges. So we're really focused in that area. So those are our three major budget changes that we're looking at this year. Now, what I want to get into is really break down the budget for you so you can see it in full detail and and you can, you know, it's pretty diverse and it's actually grown uh in my eight years as fire chief and in different areas and I'm really proud of that because we're providing more services. But if you look at that, our our main level service uh funding, I'm sorry, for our services again is general fund at 60% at $141 million there. And you can see our fire sales tax fund is, you know, even though this is a tough time, it has grown, you know, every year and we've got to see some improvements in that. Um, so that right there is is about 28% of our budget at 66 million. And then our medical services program, as Christian talked about earlier, has been very wellreceived. I'm proud of our our personnel that stepped in the gap there and really working together as a partnership with IMSA. But that is a revenue driven where we can actually, you know, we we do bill for services and we're seeing that being uh wellreceived and been able to do our due diligence in that where we're not costing money for the city and be able to make that return. And then we have our our maps for use tax which seems very high at 24 million, but that again is apparatus that we're waiting on that actually a lot of that's been encumbered and we're waiting for that to u you know for the apparatus to be delivered. you know, with your support and what we've been able to accomplish just this year, and it it doesn't usually fall this way, but we've been able to take delivery of 18 new engine engines, which they're very expensive, and it was really designed to be so many each year, but with the challenges we had in delivery, we kind of got them all at once, but still, we appreciate that, you know, to see that level uh that we're able to get into. and and with that we're going to see some of our oldest apparatus around 2020 or 2021 for our engine companies. So that's that's really unheard of and really appreciate that. And then our special purpose fund and that's what we support and and we get that funding for our mobile integrated health care and again that's another thing that you all stepped in the gap the opioid settlement funds and we really appreciate to be able to do that. um can't say enough about the partnership, one city, one team of really working together with the police department and other areas in the community. Uh you all supporting that. It's really been one of those that uh can't say enough about it and it really goes a long ways and what we're doing to serve our community and meet the people's needs where they're at. So that's a great program. And then the grants management fund falling right before that. That's actually grants that we've received for our mobile integrated health that we're going to be expanding some of those services, adding one more team, adding a couple peer recovery specialists that'll be outreach people in the community. So really excited about that. And then our fire sales tax fund that we have a few things that we're expending on that to get that accomplished. So again, you can see a slight reduction in our budget from last year to this year. uh but still uh well well um well funded and appreciate the the again support that we receive from each and every one of you. This right here um is just these are really the people that make make it happen every day. And uh I'd be remiss if I didn't uh mention my command staff, my deputy chief of operations, Shane Smiley, our deputy chief of support Derek Ke uh deputy chief of fire prevention services Dominic Brown. They're the ones that get their picture up here on the limelight, but I really have others of my command staff that are here today, too. Our battalion chief administration, Donnie Bennett, and our battalion chief of health and safety there, Lamont Smith. So, um, they really work with me every day. It's a team. Um, one city, one team. Again, we take that to heart and what we do internally and really how we provide external services. So, thank you all for being here and I appreciate their support in what we do. So we'll talk a little bit about each in that get into each line of business we're working. Obviously the fire administration uh portion of that is uh you can see it broken down in two areas. Our executive leadership and then our public relations and marketing uh 40 employees that we have in that for $24 million. uh and our executive leadership again that's uh the majority of us that provide that facility strategic planning uh reporting for uh to make sure we meet those key measures and objectives. Uh and it really takes a village in that for us to provide those services and uh to operate at high level. Our job is to cast a vision to create that and to drive the organization towards that vision meeting the city priorities and what our residents demand from us every day. And then I can't say enough, I didn't, you know, Chief Douglas is not here, but he is part of the command staff. He's our public relations and marketing. Most people believe he's the fire chief, and I like that because he's out there every day talking, and he does an outstanding job for us and really has a key passion for speaking on behalf of the fire department, what we do. But they have three employees there and do yman's work. It's a 247 365 job working with the media, making sure our outreach uh it goes well. And you'll see hopefully you'll see that tonight we have a light the night event that Chief Douglas worked very hard on and they're supposed to light the downtown red and that's in honor of fallen firefighters and that's a nationwide event and those are one of the things that he does and does at a high level and I really appreciate that and hopefully you'll see that come to fruition tonight. Uh there he is speaking of Chief Douglas right there is probably where he's at doing a media interview. But uh one of our highlights I want to bring forward and this is not one that you know we cast the vision. We've been working on this project for really about three years and that's an accreditation. I would love to stand before you today and say hey we're accredited but I'm extremely proud that we're in the process. It's not an easy process but working for center for public safety excellence. It's a uh accredited program that most uh that you see in the fire service. It's the predominant fire service accreditation and we're going through those processes to be accredited. Uh it's a lengthy process as I said, but I'm really proud of the work. Um we had to do a community risk assessment, a standard to cover. We're working now on a se self assessment manual that when you add it all up, it's about 15,000 1,500 pages of documents on how we operate best practices. But uh we will see that to through to fruition and it's a very very small percentage of organizations that you see are class one ISO departments which we are that are also accredited and especially being a metro department the numbers are even uh smaller than that. So, I'm really excited that our staff have leaned in and it's really not about the accreditation. It's about the journey, how we can improve and that's what the demand is every day from you all to us and from our residents to us is how do we find ways to get better and this is that process to evaluate that and hold up the mirror to see how we can improve. Next is our operations. Again, under Deputy Chief Smiley, as I said earlier, 990 employees. This is where the rubber meets the road, but it takes all of us together to make that work. Uh you can see our our four areas that we have work sections within. That's our fire suppression personnel that do the work every day out in the field. And then you have our emergency medical services. Those two together are all our suppression personnel. And that's based off on a proportionate ratio pretty much on the the call volume, how that's how that's budgeted. uh the majority of our call volume about 70% of our call volume's EMS uh you know and 30% falls into everything else which actually structure fires is about 3 to 4% of our call volume. So you can see how that combines together of the 640 and the 286 employees and then you all uh well very well versed on our mobile integrated healthcare program. Lori and her staff over there has done an outstanding job leaning in and really building the way because that was a new program that you all supported and we're learning every day how to improve that and grow. And then our medical transport uh extremely proud of those employees and what they do out there. Really have built the culture of how that works and how we work together with IMSA to provide highlevel services to our community. And in that, I would like to uh highlight our EMS transport. Again, they're busy out there every day. Uh what you see there is our our transport stats about 12,312 patient contacts, transport over 9,500. And then our on scene time, it's really about responses. There priority ones are those life-threatening calls that you have for services, heart attacks, cardiac arrest, strokes, those things you see that really make a difference on response time. And we've been meeting that by 92% and that being in there in 10 minutes and 59 seconds or less. And then the priority too, you know, someone still has an emergency could be a broken leg. And I know something like that. I know that doesn't sound like how you want to wait. Uh but it's not something at that point that could be life-threatening, but we're still meeting that priority to scene time with the EMS transport in 24 minutes and 59 seconds. So, this is again an an opportunity for us to provide that safety network for the city to continue services at a high level and and we're really proud and honored that we're able to do that every day. Then our support services. Um you you know it's really you look at that you wouldn't be able to go out on the road every day and do the job we do if we didn't have the incredible support network that we have our firefighters and and civilian staff that are behind the scenes. Whether it's turning a wrench on a firet truck, it's making sure the computers work every day. And believe it or not, we're very uh have a lot of technology demands within the fire service. And there's a lot of things that go on there to HR needs to dispatchers that have leaned in and done a fantastic job and I'll talk about them here in a little bit. But we we have a lot of work that goes on that. So 43 employees at 20.4 million logistics and maintenance that we have uh 24 employees at 17.4 million and then our fire dispatch 19 employees at 3 million. And in that you know our our maintenance not just apparatus but fire stations. We have over 42 different work sites uh all throughout the city. So, we're really looking at that to be able how can we, you know, work together and and and be able to achieve, you know, what we need to do every day. And and we live in those 24/7. And we have a great partnership uh with general services where they actually have a team dedicated. They're actually redoing fire station 15 uh which hopefully that's something we can roll out and and show you all the great work they did done there. But it really again talks about collaboration. I couldn't stand up here and say what we do as a fire department, we could do it in a standalone silo. So, I really appreciate that of working together and that falls under our support services. One thing I really want to highlight here, again, it goes without saying public safety. It's not just about the fire department. It's not just about the police department. I talked a little about leaning in and MIH. This is a program. If I go to a fire station, I say, "What's the best thing we've done?" Most of our firefighters are going to say the DFR program. uh is so incredible of getting that drone out in front and getting that real-time feedback to our firefighters responding. If you haven't been in that world and see that all time, you may not fully understand that. But it but it's one of those to get that scene because a lot of times we show up blind. We show up, we don't know what we have and then you're trying to catch up when you get there. And second, save lives. If we can see that scene when we show up, we hit the ground, we go to work, we know what we're we're tackling, it's huge in that. and working together with the police department. We fly ours through our our dispatchers and they do through uh fly theirs through the real-time information crime center and it's seamless. I mean, it's almost, you know, there's so many things of working back and forth together. But in in our time frame, we've seen over 11,000 flights in that and 2,200 hours of service. And then we're adding 10 additional drones and platforms in July. So, I'm super excited for that with a goal of, you know, time we reach the Olympics of having at least 50 platforms throughout the city of being able to see those things that are out there every day. And I can say it's making it safer for our firefighters and really appreciate that, you know, police when they were looking this and sitting down with us and working together, this is a vision I had and they were already working on it. To sit down and do it together, I think speaks volumes of what we can do together. And we got a short video here. I want to just talk to you real quick and show you about it. Uh, and she's going to go ahead and play it here. Alina, what you see here is a a side byside view. This is a thermal imaging view that we can toggle on the drone. Our right side, you can see the actual 4K view. But what's important to note is if you look at that one on the left, you can see clearly right to the roof. If we had firefighters working on the roof, if we have people that were leaning out windows and what was this incident, we cut it down, but they the drone actually got there before our our firefighters and gave an onseene report. So, they can actually get real-time information. If I had someone on the roof, again, if you look at that smoke, you can't see anything. So, it's so important for the safety of our firefighters, for us to get to scene and go to work. And also on this, this is just one that shows how it can help us, but we see this many times that we're able to upgrade incidents because we see a lot of fire or we see something maybe on a smoke investigation where we send one or two apparatus and we realize, hey, we got a working fire and we can upgrade that. But we've also seen it where we send people out and we get there and there's nothing there and we can downgrade it. So it really is effective service to our community of being able to say, "Hey, we need more or we don't need more." and that way we can get people back to service and know we're available at that point to serve our community at a higher level. So, there's so many things we're learning every day and leaning into that space, but it's really something I'm super proud of and I think if you ask our firefighters, they're going to give you the same feedback. Next, I'll talk about our fire prevention services doing great work out there every day. I see them leaning in more and more and this is the contact with the community and sometimes where people was asking about permits and you know different questions and community risk and all that but we get a lot of really positive feedback because our staff over there really want to serve our community a high level to make sure our people are going in out of a safe building. That's the most important thing. If we can prevent a fire, we can save a life. And so that's so important in what we do every day. But in our fire investigations, we have 14 employees that really are passionate about what they're doing, working, again, that's a law enforcement uh area that they work in a lot. Great relations with the police department in that 14 employees at 2.4 million. And then our community risk reduction who's in the schools and I'm seeing more and more they developed a a bike helmet program where we actually are giving away bike helmets. I think at our last event we gave 149 or at at a event free bike helmets. So, anything we do to reduce the risk to our public. So important. And we can't ever say enough about getting a free smoke alarm. If you live in the city, you own your house, you don't have a working smoke alarm, call us 316 beep. We'll put up a smoke alarm for you. We want to make sure the safe you're safe in your home and we put it up to code. So, we're not just going to put one. We're going to put one in the hallway in every bedroom of your house. Uh, so we really want to make sure and our community risk reduction leans in that area. And our field personnel, this is again working together. We'll go out and put one up. I had a person at church was asking about it the other day and they said hey you they put came to my house four guys showed up on a fire engine and said I didn't know you need that many to put in a smoke alarm and he said but I realize oh that's what they're out doing in the in the community and very appreciative of that but we do that and I'm really proud of that and then our code compliance again just like I said every day making sure we're in a safe building that things are safe if you look outside there's an occupancy level here from the fire marshall making sure you're safe in here so That's important in that. We have 20 employees that do that, 3.3 million, and really a partnership again with development services to work and make sure everything's safe in our in our community. This is a highlight. There's several highlights in this, but we had canvases last year where we actually canvas areas uh May 4th, August 23rd, November 23rd, and April 4th. Now we're starting to try to be a little more proactive, but unfortunately on these is a little reactive. If we have a fire fatality in an area, we always go to that area in canvas. Uh it's an unfortunate event, but we recognize sometimes there's a heightened awareness and the reality is breaking down barriers because it's some people don't want, you know, it's like a salesman coming to your door. You don't want to let them in your house. So sometimes we have to work through that and that gives us an opportune time. But they do a great job in that. You see how many smoke alarms were installed? 649. So again, we can save lives through being proactive and I really appreciate they leaning in that. And then they've uh a 32% increase in fire and life safety sessions last year. They've really focused on the outreach we're getting back in the schools. We we ordered a new blowup house. It actually is an air house that we take out to the schools and they can do it's a little bit easier than a trailer. So we can get it out there, blow it up in gymnasium, take kids through that. And it's really important. Again, it's not bouncy house. It's about focusing on fire safety and other safety uh areas within their lives. And then this was uh one that we felt is really important to talk about. We moved to a new platform and it's a nationwide platform. Since the 1970s, the fire department, uh the fire service has used what's called sniffers, national fire incident reporting system. And just this last year, uh we made a transition to nearest. I would love to say it's been seamless and everything's been perfect. It's been a challenge, but in that at the end of the day, when we get everything worked out, we're going to get better data and where we can actually get information to serve our community. The old data was very clunky. It was all based on a numbers and it had to fit into these certain codes. Sorry about that, talking my hands. Get into these code code areas and it made it very difficult. So the new platform is going to be beneficial but it's definitely creates some challenges for us in our data because now the connections that we have and you know are not perfect in that we're working through that but I think it's just really important to to talk about that. So as we work through the data challenges but also in the future our goal and what we'll see nationally is be able to really give good data to say how how are people dying in in fires. I mean it it wasn't as good a data as in the past. Was it a candle specifically? Because it could report to some basic heating sources, but we really want to get granular so we can save lives. So, that's a new platform that we're working on and we're working through some of the challenges. Every time we come in here, we want to talk about strategic goals and strategic results. And one of the big ones we've had for years is this 7 minutes or less 70% of the time. And we really have looked at ways how we can improve that. You know, when when you look at a response, it's time someone picks up the phone till we get on scene. And you really think about there's a challenge all the way. Making sure we get the phone quickly, making sure we dispatch it quickly, making sure we get out of the fire station within 60 seconds or less. And then drive time. So, we've really focused on those areas and reducing that down. Now, as the city continues to grow with the expanded footprint in that, there will be challenges. And that's why we've looked at this, you know, growth in the city. How do we improve that? But we're taking advantage of every way we can to improve that response time. When you look at that, right now we're meeting about 66.3% on target. Um again, um for many years we was about 58 59%. And we actually made one little adjustment and that was looking at our turnout time and that was how fast we get out of the fire station. Right now our goal our goal, not right now, but what the goal is is 60 seconds or less 90% of the time. uh we're right at that 90% level and you know very proud of our firefighters leaning into that and it actually went from 58 59% to years to that 60 65 66%. So we're continuing to lean in that space. we, you know, we don't want to get out there and say, "Hey, you need to drive faster. You need to," you know, we want to focus in that, but we're still looking at ways improving that. On the back side of that is traffic management systems to look at how we there's programs out there and we're leaning into that uh with other city departments are looking at that where it has, you know, it can manage the traffic signals when you're going to an incident. So, if you create that safe uh pathway of green lights, you can improve that response time even more. So I think there's a lot of ways you can look at not just building fire stations but look at technology and that's some things that we'll continue in the future to lean into. And then one other area we focus on is drive time because the other gives you some variables. When you talk about drive time that really looks about locations. So our long-term goal that we're looking at is a six-minute drive time anywhere in the city to our responses 90% of the time. You can see right there we're about 75%. As we continue to lean in that space, we continue to add those stations and building those areas, we'll work towards that goal of 90%. That way, we're, you know, consistent throughout the city on providing effective services to everyone in your wards and everyone in our community. As we finish up here, we obviously uh want to have some long-term stretch goals that we're looking at. And three that we're looking at is really looking at uh one's our fire stations. I talked about that earlier. That's a very heavy lift in capital that our residents have leaned into, you all have leaned into. You we have a couple fire stations built in 1951. So, we recognize the continued and actually they're not in bad shape, a couple of them. Uh but we really have to remodel, bring them up to common standards. So, we're really looking in that area. So, we want to conduct a comprehensive assessment uh of that just like we did at Fire Station 15, which is 122nd May. We added like 3,000 square feet on that to modernize it to bring it to that level. And we want to do the best with our dollars that our residents give us. We lean in in some of these fire stations. Instead of a full rebuild, we can remodel and add too. So, we're looking at a comprehensive study. We did one in 2016. Uh we believe it's time again we need to do that and continue to lean in that space. And then we want to enhance our community safety. So, we're looking at updating our community risk assessment plan and standards of cover. That's part of the uh accreditation process. And a community risk assessment is looking at all the risk in the community and how we address that. And our standards of cover is how do we respond to those risk? What type of services are we providing? So, we want to update that and continue that updating process. And there's the last one data is driven to drive both of those is looking at our data systems again to transition that to the nearest platform. So when we walk in here we give you good data, geospatial data that can tell you pinpointed locations and what we're doing. So we're really trying to get that application development. So that's our goals, three major goals that we're looking at for this year. So again, that is our our budget presentation. and I can't thank you enough for your support and what you do for us and how you help us to be an outstanding organization and hopefully something you all are proud of your fire department what we do every day. But with that, I'll open up to any questions. >> I guess uh rumor has it that when we do this budget procedure next year, you may not be with us to make that presentation. >> That that picture you have up there probably won't include my face. So, uh yes, sir. I plan on retiring September 30th. The one thing I wanted to say was I I just wanted to thank you and I'll do it more than once, but during your service, um the department has expanded, it's grown, it's improved, and we went through some tough times with the pandemic and we went through budgetary issues, but you've always been there, you've always been prepared, and you've always done a great job. Thank you very very much. >> Thank you. I I appreciate that. I really say it's my staff. I mean, to me, my job is again to get out in front of those things. And if it wouldn't be for them, I know when I walk in the office sometimes when they see me come in their office because I've got an idea in my head, uh, they probably get a little nervous. Uh, but I I do really say thank you. Um, but it wouldn't I would we wouldn't be able to do that without you all support. So, um, you all have leaned in every uh every bit of the way and you challenge us and we do appreciate that. So, thank you, sir, for those kind words. >> Great job. Thanks. >> Thanks. Mhm. Thank you, Chief. Good job. >> Next up, we have Did you want to >> Yeah, let's >> Okay, go ahead, >> Chief. Basy, before we get started, I have lots of friends in the back row who need to go and they want to speak on the police budget. So, if it's okay with you, we'll let the citizens to be heard um come up and speak. Uh Chris Fussleman. Um, I'll remind everybody, state your name and address and you have three minutes and the lovely Miss Amy will let you know when you have 30 seconds left. Chris, good to see you. >> All right. Thank you, Matt. My name is Chris Fusselman. My address is 4209 Northwest 144th Street, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73134. I've spent over 20 years working closely with the Hispanic community here in Oklahoma through media, businesses, and relationships across the city. And I can tell you from real experience, the work that the Oklahoma City Police Department has done uh with Hispanic community has been significant. Um, I've seen the effort to build trust. I see, you know, sometimes when I think of things, I I look at at organizations and I see how proactive versus reactive they are and and the group of leaders that I see at the police department, they're they're certainly very proactive in the things that they do and very purposeful in the things that they do. Um programs like the police athletic league where I volunteered as a coach, they they have community cookouts um through police officers showing up at community events. Um, you know, they take the time to listen to the community. Um, I've seen them communicate in both English and Spanish on radio and on TV and through social media. Um, and they definitely make themsel make themselves accessible to the community. Um, I I'm especially thankful for the connection that they made to specialists who educate families about online predators and how to talk to our kids about those dangers. Um, I know my daughter's school and the parents have truly appreciated that. So, I think we need more of that. Um, bottom line, I've seen them connect in ways that matter, ways that improve lives, and in some cases save lives in the Hispanic community and with Hispanic families. Um, trust in law enforcement in law enforcement is not automatic. It takes time to build trust. Uh, it has to be earned. Um, and I've seen a consistent effort from our Oklahoma City Police Department and in making that effort um to build relationships and not to just respond to situations. Um, when that trust is built, it doesn't just help law enforcement, it strengthens the entire community. It's a domino effect. Businesses grow stronger, families feel safer, and communication improves across the board. I think a lot of us can agree with that. >> So, I just want to say >> I'm sorry. >> So, I just want to say to the officers in the room, your work matters, >> your efforts are noticed, and it deserves more recognition and more support from all of us. Thank you for your time. Next up, Jessica Martinez Brooks. >> Good morning, Vice Mayor Hinkle and Council members. My name is Jessica Martinez Brooks. I live at 2704 Lander Place in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. and I stand before you today as a lifelong resident and proud fourth generation citizen of Oklahoma City to support our police budget. I want to take a moment to share my personal experience with the Oklahoma City Police Department. Over the past few years, I've seen a strong, positive, proactive relationship with our department develop in spite of what is happening with federal officers in our state. Through regular meetings organized by Major Valdderama, community outreach officers, and department leadership, including Chief Bassy, we meet monthly in Capitol Hill to gain a deeper understanding of how decisions are made and what drives their work. They listen patiently to our suggestions and we listen to them. A mutual respect that has developed over the years. I believe that is one thing that is missing in today's policy and legislative debates. We're all invested in this city and we all share one top priority that um city manager Freeman mentioned at the beginning of the budget discussions today and that is safe, thriving neighborhoods in Oklahoma City. I want to highlight one specific way OCPD is actively working toward that goal through recruitment and community-based initiatives. I currently work at Metro Tech where we have partnered closely with OCPD over the years on embedded law enforcement high school cadet programs that the late Sergeant Thomas shepherded for so long. This program serves students from Oklahoma City public schools, Crooked Oak, Milwood, Aztec, Santa Fe South, and some of our homeschool population. What makes this program so powerful is simple. The students come from the very neighborhoods that they may one day serve. And in my experience, those are the individuals most committed to keeping our community safe. I'm proud to share that in the most recent OCPD Academy class, three cadetses came directly from Metro Tech. This initiative gives students early exposure to careers in law enforcement, builds trust between the community and police, and helps diversify departments not just in Oklahoma City, but across the metro area. We've seen similar success through our fire cadet program as well. These are the kinds of proactive forward-thinking efforts that strengthen public safety for the long term. >> 30 seconds. >> I also want to personally thank OCPD for their accessibility, their willingness to answer calls, provide support, and stay engaged with community partners. Thank you for your service and to the city and your continued support of our police and fire. [clears throat] Good morning, vice chair, council members, and staff. My name is Salvador Anttoveros. I'm here today speaking um in my personal capacity as a citizen citizen, taxpayer, and contributor to this great city. My address is 11701 San Sebastian Drive, Oklahoma City. First, I'd like to congratulate uh and extend my appreciation to all of our public safety and transportation personnel. Um as well as the leadership teams represented here today. Thank you for everything you do uh for our city. I've learned a lot this morning and I have a even greater appreciation for the work, planning, and coordination it takes to keep Oklahoma City moving and safe. Today, you guys are discussing the Oklahoma City Police Department uh annual budget. I understand there's a lot of different points of view and I respect that. These are important conversations because they affect public safety, uh community trust, and the future of our city. A few years ago, I participated in a ride along with Oklahoma City Police Department, and I will never forget the experience. At the beginning of the day, we had a get on the road quickly. The first call involved someone who had was weighed wanting to hurt themselves. Then we responded to a domestic violence complaint. After that, the officer I was with stopped to check on a person experiencing homelessness. Then came a call involving a possible kidnapping. It later turned out that guns and drugs were also involved. All of that happened before lunch. That day gave me a much deeper respect for the men and women of the Oklahoma City Police Department. The work they do is difficult, unpredictable, and often dangerous. They are asked to respond to some of the hardest moments in people's lives. I also want to recogni recognize the importance of leadership, training, and accountability within the department. In my experience, those things matter. Public safety and community trust must go hand in hand. We need a police department that is well trained, accountable, responsive, and properly supported. For those reasons, I respectfully urge the city council to support responsible funding for the Oklahoma City Police Department. >> 30 seconds. >> Including the resources necessary for training, accountability, and service to the community. Thank you, Gloria Torres. longer than I thought. Good morning, Vice Mayor Hingle, um, City Manager Freeman, and council members. My name is Gloria Torres. My address is one108 Midfield Cross Street, Oklahoma City 73159. And I have spent over two decades serving my community as an educator, an elected official, and most recently as the executive director of Gayos and Historic Capitol Hill. I'm here today to speak in support of the Oklahoma City Police Department. not to dismiss challenges we we still face as a community, but because I believe in giving credit where credit is genuinely due. I've seen this department's commitment to keeping our community safe for years. As an educator, I can attest that OCPD has been an intentional partner in all of our public schools, helping to ensure the safety of our students across the city. most recently at um historic Capitol Hill with Fiestas de Las award-winning annual celebration of Latino culture and identity. They don't just show up, they contribute continuously providing expertise, equipment, and advocacy that helps our community deliver a world worldclass event. I want to give a quick shout out to Captain George who's been there every year supporting us, even put up barricades for me one year. Um, those kinds of partnerships happen when a department makes a deliberate choice to invest in community. Most recently, they brought that same spirit to Plaza Cayo Cinco, which is another investment uh by our city into our community, hosting the Hot Dogs with Cops event that brought officers and Capitol Hill and the broader South Oklahoma City residents together in exactly the kind of informal human way that builds trust over time. I also want to want to acknowledge that this department is doing the harder work of self-examination. In 2020, Mayor Halt appointed me to the law enforcement policy task force. Through this process, 39 recommend recommendations on deescalation, community engagement, and accountability were identified. A specific focus to me is always the community engagement piece. Many times that looks like having law enforcement that understands our language, >> 30 seconds, >> and our cultures. [cough and clears throat] In 2020, there were only 6.8% 8% commissioned Spanish-speaking or Latino representation um officers. Today, through recruitment efforts, intentional recruitment offers, we see more of 15% that very closely mirrors our population. I do have a bit more to say, but with my time already up, um, approving this budget says that we value a department that is doing the work in our neighborhoods, at our celebrations, in our plazas, and around our kitchen tables. I'm proud to stand here to support that. Thank you. >> Thank you, Gloria Ronald Grant. Wenosas, council members, friends in the crowd, and everybody else. My name is Ronald Grant, and I'm a proud resident of Ward 5. I know there are many perspectives and experiences when it comes to policing. I am here to speak to the actions of the police department that my family witnessed on April 8th. Around 5:45 p.m., my wife and I were leaving our home to take our middle son to a concert when we noticed police activity on her usually quiet street. That alone was unusual, but as my wife got into the car, she suddenly and in a very serious tone told me, "Go now." She told me she had seen a neighbor point a rifle at us. I quickly sped away trying to process what just happened and immediately thought about our oldest and youngest sons who we had left at the house. I called my oldest son and told him what happened and told him to lock the doors, stay low, and move somewhere safe. My wife called another neighbor and learned that shots had been fired. My son confirmed that he had heard a popping sound. My wife got on the phone with our other neighbors to share what we knew in an attempt to help them. After a bunch of phone calls, there we were sitting at a concert surrounded by beautiful music while a dangerous and uncertain situation continued to develop outside our home. I can't fully describe what it felt like as a parent to know your children are in the middle of something scary and you can't get to them. While we tried to be present at our son's concert, our neighborhood was filled with officers who brought calm to a very dangerous situation. There were dozens of officers, lots of specialized equipment, and a clear, steady presence. They weren't just managing a potentially dangerous situation. They were taking care of our community. Officers went door to door calmly evacuating residents. My sons were safely escorted out of our home behind a protective shield. Neighbors were checked on, guided to safety, and supported throughout the night. When we tried to get baby supplies to a displaced neighbor who had forgotten her diaper bag, an officer didn't hesitate to deliver those items for us. Another officer paused what he was doing to walk a resident safely back to her home. And after hours of uncertainty, when we were finally allowed to return home at 3:00 in the morning, an officer walked us all the way to our front door to make sure we were safe. This situation lasted for hours, and it involved real danger. And yet, because of the professionalism, restraint, and commitment of these officers, not a single person was harmed. >> 30 seconds. >> Not my family, not my neighbors, not even the individual at the center of it was harmed. We often hear the phrase serve and protect. That night, I saw it in action. They protected my children. They served my neighborhood. And they did it calmly, professionally, and with an unwavering commitment to every life involved. On April 8th, in an instant, my family's sense of safety was taken from me. But because of the men and women of our police department, we quickly recovered it. Thank you. >> Thank you, Ronald. Kevin McDaniel. Good morning. T McDaniel, Ward 7, 929 Northeast 17th Street. Um, I am not here um to support the police budget um nor to support the police. I don't know. Since we're talking about statistics and experiences, um OKCPD has been ranked top five um in police brutality in the nation. Um last year, I think tallying over 30 plus people um who were killed, Oklahomaans um by the Oklahoma City Police Department. When I talk about safety, in my personal experience, it's never come from the police. It's come from community members. It's come from mental health resources. has come from good parks, recreation, public transportation. Never somebody with the badge and a gun who has the power to take life and who has taken life in communities like mine, in communities on the south side and even in communities on the north side, anywhere west side, everywhere in Oklahoma City, OKCPD has been um in a nice way to say the mean person on the block. And my experience is I'm never calling the police when I'm in trouble. I'm calling people who I know are going to protect me and aren't going to take my life because of how I look and how things may seem because of a lack of intelligence and true teaching that is happening by the police department. I don't know if you all even understand where the base of police came from, but it came from slaves came from slave patrols. So, as a black person, as a minority in this country, and even as I was hearing um Councilman Cooper talk about one of the first laws that was passed in Oklahoma, it was Jim Crow. So, as I'm sitting here listening to all of these things that we talk about the police do, nobody's brought up the fact that people like me get killed by people like them on a day-to-day basis. And especially here in Oklahoma, more than anywhere in the [clears throat] country. So, no, I'm not here to say that I support the police. I'm not here to say that I want them to get more funding. I in fact am here to say that we should be giving this funding to other places. They have the highest budget. Every year I come to these meetings and they get all the money in the world and we talk about cutting uh bus routes. We've had people come in here who are like, "Hey, I need to get to my job. I need to get to different places, but they're getting cut. Police are getting >> 30 seconds >> millions of dollars. So, I am here to say we need to be looking at something else when we're talking about public safety. Public safety ain't the police. And it ain't the police for a lot of people. So, no, I'm not going to sit here and say that the police are doing a good job because they're not. And if we look at the statistics, you all can see that, too. There's no change that can happen because it is strategically been created to the downfall of people who look like me and people who are oppressed and marginalized. And it is built to support white people, white men specifically in power. So I I'm not I'm not about to shine no light on a system on a people who have been degrading since the creation. We need to be offering funds in other places that will actually bring safety to our people, to our Oklahomaman, and to people who look like me. Thank you. [applause] For Jorge Hernandez. Uh, good morning. My name is Jorge Hernandez and I am the president of Tango PR and um my address is 3009 North D Oklahoma City Oklahoma 73107. I want to thank you all for the opportunity to speak this morning in support of Oklahoma City Police Department. As a longtime community uh coordinator, supporter uh organizer, it's been my privilege to work with police department because without their support, without their collaboration, our festivals would not be successful. To keep our community safe, to keep traffic in control and to keep the community engaged would be impossible without their uh support year after year. Um, it has been amazing to see the growth, not only uh in their commitment to our community, but it's also been wonderful to see the growth in their Latino representation of officers throughout Oklahoma City. I know that building trust takes time, takes commitment, takes hard work, and it's a two-way street, and I want to thank the city and the police department for helping us make those bridges stronger. um and lasting in our community. Personally, I know that every time I've needed the police department, whether it's been in my house, whether it's been in out in the public, they've always been there to respond um quickly and professionally. I'm grateful for their service. It's not an easy job to do. Every time they walk out of their home, um it's a difficult job, but I want to thank them because they continue to come out. they continue to do their work and I we are a better city and community for their work and for their commitment. I want to also say that um we support uh all the efforts and are grateful that um the bilingual uh the bilingual unit and the chief are making to engage on a regular basis with the Latino community to hear us out and to understand the problems that the Latino community faces on a year in year out especially during these difficult times and wanting to hear how we can how they can help our community feel safer and continue to contribute to the safety of our community. So, want to thank you for supporting our police department and ask you to support them uh in their efforts this morning. Thank you. >> Thank you, Jorge. That's all the people we have signed up to speak on the police. I do have other citizens to be heard, so if you wanted to be heard on the police, raise your hand and and go out. Uh, Ariela Francisco. >> Good morning, council. Aurelius Francisco. That That's probably because of my handwriting. Sorry about that. My name's Aurelius Francisco. uh ward seven east side of Oklahoma City resident. I am here uh once again, fourth year in a row to speak on the budget uh to call for a participatory budget process here in Oklahoma City. What you all have seen this morning on the police's budget specifically is the exact kind of dialogue and conversation that we need to be having uh on the budget. We've heard very different perspectives on the police budget specifically. I as an eastside resident, I as a black man, I as a researcher view the police as an institution. And so any positive individual interaction with the police cannot negate the institutional realities of policing that historically and presently have violently stripped black communities, communities of color, poor communities of resources. So when we talk about the budget specifically, there's so much opportunity to fund things that actually support community safety beyond police and fire that currently get 62% of the general fund budget. And so I hope to hear through these next six weeks or so um proposals to support other efforts. We heard from the fire department earlier, $2 million to mobile integrated health, right? Uh would love to hear if that's an increase from last year or not. uh seeing the employment levels of that mental health crisis response is so so important. Uh the police themselves have even acknowledged that they don't want to be in those mental health crisis response calls, right? So what are the ways that we can be increasing that budget? Uh I was on the subcommittee that was focused on youth safety and youth violence, community violence intervention. So I would love to hear under the city manager's office at some point uh what will be the funding and the support in this budget around community violence intervention. Um, I want to say very clearly uh that the police do not equal safety for me, for my loved ones, for my family members uh in the east side of Oklahoma City. And so when we continually talk about the police as though they are equated to public safety, it is a slap in the face to me and my family and my community. Last year, city manager, you said that people who were calling for a participatory budget, which was a diverse set of people from all wards across Oklahoma City, weren't indicative of the entire city because we were critical of policing. Right. This morning, you have heard people from other communities who are in favor of policing. So, I ask you, sir, who is representative of Oklahoma City? And is it just the people who agree with you? And if so, you're not actually representing all of Oklahoma City. It isn't one OKC. And so I would ask you to critically look in the mirror and make sure that you are listening to everyone, the people who agree with you on the police and the people who do not. Because the reality is what a participatory budget would allow is for everybody to be heard. Folks who love the police and folks who hate the police, folks who've been brutalized by the police and folks who have good experiences with the police. And the truth of the matter is is when you negate our voices each and every time as one of the unelected officials on this body, you are saying very clearly that you do not speak for or represent me and my people. And that's a problem. [applause] Cole McAfee, did I say that right? Hi, my name is Cole McAfee. My pronouns are they and she and I'm a resident and homeowner in W 6. This is the seventh year I've tuned into the budget process and offered feedback. Last year, Mr. city manager, you suggested folks like me have some radical covert agenda because who else would show up and offer comment on the budget year after year asking for major priority shifts when the hearings are hours long on Tuesday mornings weeks in a row. And I have continued to think about how disturbing it is to acknowledge that the budget process is so incredibly inaccessible that folks who make the time to show up and ask for something different must somehow not be representative of the communities that we live and work in. The thing is, as an autistic person, it's ingrained in my system to fight for the right thing. That commitment to justice is not something that I can just shut off. And it's the deep frustration in the ways in which we continue to uphold a status quo, in the ways in which we continue to fund police at the expense of community safety rather than meet the needs of folks who live here that propels me to continue to tune into this process annually despite a council process which is largely expected to be a rubber stamp. What we've seen today is so similar to what I've witnessed year after year in this space, which is essentially talking through numbers without space for innovation, meaningful questions or shifts, and no expectations that you, as council members, will do anything different to change the budget on behalf of what your constituents need. [cough and clears throat] In my day job, I serve queer and trans folks across Oklahoma from right here in Oklahoma City. And every year as the budget vote comes up during Pride Month, I think about how when Sylvia Rivera and Marshia P. Johnson put their bodies on the line at Stonewall, I'm pretty certain it wasn't for a future where a trans woman could be arrested for work in survival economy by a cop wearing a pride pin using her correct pronouns. Safety to me does not look like gay or Latina or black cops being the ones to kill and lock up my neighbors. The kind of department that includes folks in attendance here today who've sat in the back and mocked black residents who are here to speak about their experiences with police, I think proves exactly what kind of department you are funding and exactly at the expense of whose safety. The status quo does not and has not kept us safe. through education and community engagement. I have talked with community members in real time across this city about what they want in this budget process and in this budget. And it is not ever once more policing. You have a responsibility to the folks you serve to do something better than this process where you once again rubber stamp the continued investment in the deaths of your constituents under the guise of safety for proximity to power. We all deserve better. We as residents of this city who take the time to show up or who cannot make the effort to be here deserve a participatory budget and we deserve a shift in the continued investment in policing. Thank you. >> Do Bontoya. Did I say that right? Good morning, city council. Dulce Montoya, War 3. Um, [gasps] [sighs] it's been um a year since I was here speaking about the budget, specifically for the budget that is going to be given to the police department of Oklahoma City. And it's been quite a year for my community, my immigrant community, and the folks that I have supported dealing through detainment and deportation. Since the last budget, um, we have seen the impact of giving additional funding to the police department and I have seen I have heard the experiences of the people of my own community. I know we have leaders or so-called leaders of my community speak earlier about it and I don't know if they're speaking about also the families that have been impacted by being racially profiled, incarcerated and then deported. So I will talk about the realities of the people of the immigrant community in Oklahoma City. More money for me and my community means more targeted operations and racial profiling. We have seen the numerous safety operations the Oklahoma City Police Department has conducted in a specific Oklahoma City area since last year. But more specific to certain neighborhood, yes, that includes Cayosco and it's not a mistake. We continue to learn of multiple stops and arrests that have led family members ending in deportation pipeline. Oklahoma City the police department does not have a contract that requires them to collaborate with immigration enforcement. However, they voluntarily continue to obey by it and they have a ICE officer in the Oklahoma City County Jail. So that means for every person that is detained, they do um based on their racial profiles and if they suspect of the person being undocumented, they put a icehole for them for 48 hours for ICE to come and pick them up. I have had several families being impacted by this, leaving kids fatherless, leaving families broken. So, if you continue to provide more funding, more families are going to be impacted and that's on you. I ask city council to please stop giving more funding to the systems that continue to harm and separate communities and invest on our resources and things that put communities that are in desperate need of. We have an education that I don't have to tell you about it, but we need to invest in our future. The kids of this community in healthcare and housing and mental health crisis. Calling the police for somebody that is having mental health crisis is not going to do anything. They're just going to arrest and detain. And we know they are not capacitated to assist something like that. So I ask you, it's your responsibility to invest where the community is needed. And if you sit down with talk to your constituents, they will agree. They want more education, more housing, more healthcare. Thank you. >> And last up is Mayor Lee Perryman. >> Hi. Uh, I'm Marily Perry. I live at 101 Northwest 16th Street. Um [clears throat] last year at the same meeting I signed up to speak on um to speak on the police budget on that this agenda item. Um and I was not given the opportunity to speak until all the police officers had left the room. So this time I had signed up just at the end. Um but I appreciate that you guys are allowing us to speak. um on this item while they're here. Um I had originally signed up to speak about like today I was going to speak about the budget process and making it more accessible for residents to participate in. Um and that's definitely something that I hope you will move towards. Um, but now hearing that the the earliest uh commenters and sharing their experiences, um, I definitely feel like I, uh, want to speak up about, um, in January, I spoke to the council, this council for the first time about what was happening with ICE in our community. Um, and my church is part of an organization called Voice, which is a nonpartisan group of faith organizations and nonprofits that work to address issues that are affecting the members of our institutions. Um, our institutions are very concerned about how ICE activities affecting our members. um Laaf Floracita Catholic Church with a huge Hispanic population is one of our members [clears throat] and we've made multiple attempts um for months I think beginning in November to meet with Chief Bassy um for our voice clergy and leaders to meet with Chief Bassy discussing the concerns that our institutions and their members are having with what's going on with ICE in the community. Um we've had no success, no response. Um, as I said last week at this meeting, um, I've spoken with two different officers who were clearly unaware of what is going on with ICE in our community. They told me that it's, uh, only the the only people being picked up by ICE are people who are on ICE holds in the detention center. That's not the case. They told me that only violent criminals are the ones being targeted. That's not the case either. It's regularly people on their way to work um with no criminal record being picked up because it's convenient and easy and they can do it quickly. Um and I know that that's ICE and that's not the police, but it's really concerning if the police are not aware that that is what is happening. >> 30 seconds >> and not willing to speak with community organizations, groups of community organizations and clergy about the fact that that is happening. Um, so I hope I hope that we fund public safety in all its forms. I hope that we I hope that our uh that Chief Bassy will meet with voice to talk about the concerns that are happening with the im immigrant community here. Thank you. >> Well, that ends comments from the citizens. So, Chief Basy, it's all your Good morning, vice mayor, city manager, esteemed members of our city council. Um, first and foremost, uh, let me thank you for your commitment to Oklahoma City and the support that you show all of the city departments throughout the year. We serve a wonderful community and we couldn't do it without you. So, um, thank you. I'm excited to present our budget and what I know is going to be another challenging budget year, but I'm looking forward to discussing how we can use it to serve our community and its growing needs. I want to take a moment and acknowledge my command staff members who are present here today. These are the men and women who are behind the scenes um doing all the work. I get a lot of credit for their hard work. Um I take the blame occasionally um but I am uh very proud to work with each and every one of them. Uh they are selfless in their commitment to this community and they have sacrificed more than most people will know and just being here today. I'm appreciative to see them and and thank them once again publicly. I also want to thank those who helped me prepare for this budget presentation. Um, planning and research unit, um, my budget manager, Michael Stroop, and his office, um, the finance office and everyone involved there. And I want to recognize Liliana, who's going to be helping me with the presentation today. The police department is built on purpose, empowered by values. Before you you see our mission statement, our vision statement, and our core values. Our mission statement is the mission of the Oklahoma City Police Department is to deliver exceptional police services to our community with integrity, compassion accountability respect and equity. Our vision statement is the vision of the police department is to ensure Oklahoma City is one of the safest cities in the country through strong community relationships, innovative strategies, and healthy, well-trained employees. And our core values were highlighted in our mission statement. It's integrity, compassion, accountability, respect, and equity. And we also like acronyms, and that spells I care. This is a little bit of a busy slide. It kind of shows our departmental organization um and how responsibilities flow. It's different than our lines of business, but I wanted to utilize this slide to talk about staffing. Um I want to tell you that when I came before you last year we had 1140 sworn positions filled. Today I stand before you with 1215 filled out of the 1235 authorized. Um not to underestimate the impact of our professional staff because we can't work without them. They are contribute greatly to the success of this organization. We have 309 of 341 positions filled. Now, if you all recall at the city council budget workshop, there was a discussion about staffing studies that showed that to adequately police a city this size, um that 621 square miles with a growing population of well over 700,000 and swells to over a million on any given day in the metro area. Um that we were going to need at least 1,600 to 2,000 officers in the future to be able to do that. um at minimum that would require somewhere in the future an additional 365 budgeted positions. I I'll make a comparison. You know, we look at what we consider to be major cities. You take Boston for instance, or you look at some of these other cities with large populations, they build up, we build out. Boston is only 48 square miles. They don't put the miles on the cars. They don't have to traverse that much terrain. Um they don't have to cover that much area. um their people who are in need or in pretty close proximity. This creates an additional burden for us um and strain and we're doing a lot more with less. I mentioned members of the command staff being here, but I want to take a personal moment to thank my executive staff members who are here. Um what you're looking at is 193 years of police experience between all of us. And I don't take that lightly. Uh it's a lot of commitment that's been given um sacrifice and I want to acknowledge them individually. The administration bureau is run by Deputy Chief Vasha Butler. The Investigations Bureau is run by Deputy Chief Jason Samuel. Operations North Bureau is run by Deputy Chief Jason Clifton. Operation South Bureau is run by Deputy Chief Bobby Tomkins. And Special Operations Bureau is run by Deputy Chief Brian Jennings. I want to take a a personal moment, if I might, and thank and acknowledge three of them. Deputy Chief Jason Clifton, Deputy Chief Bobby Tomkins, and Deputy Chief Brian Jennings are close to retirement. They're leaving soon. Each one of them has served over three decades, more than three decades, in their commitment to this community. We're a better city and we're a better department because of their service. And I just want to thank them personally for everything they've done for this department, this city, its employees, its community, and me personally. Thank you. Now, we'll look forward u move forward and look at some of the budget changes. Uh again, we know this is going to be a tough budget year uh with required reductions for all city departments. The police department was asked to reduce our general fund budget um base budget by 1.4%. Um I also want to remind you that um we rolled into this budget cut already with 20 positions frozen from the previous fiscal year. That's not figured in 1.4%. So as we look at these changes, I'll start with the uh reduction in jail contracted services. Uh we contracted with Cleveland County Jail at a lower rate than we were paying Oklahoma County. And then we significantly reduced the contract for the Oklahoma County Detention Center um for a savings of $31,000. Um the reallocation of funds for supplies and services and equipment um was something that we were able to do because we realized that we had extra room in the police sales tax fund um and we were able to reallocate services and equipment um to the tune of 850,000 which creates an additional savings to the general fund airport police services revenue increase. So this is interesting. We have anou with the with the airport for um police services and in the past that was figured out the reimbursement was figured out by estimates. Uh we both agreed this year that per theou it needs to be actual cost and so we'll be reimbursed an additional $630,571 this year. And last but not least is something I'm going to dive into a little bit deeper later on, but special events revenue enhancement is going to be a ordinance that we're proposing um for chargeback for special events. You know, we cover a lot of events um basically for free. And when we say free, no, we actually comes out of a um unfunded man part of our budget. And so we're proposing an ordinance which would assess a fee for that and offset some of those costs. And um we're predicting somewhere around $439,000. Let's take a look at our proposed budget for this year. Our operating expenses are a little over 261 million. Our capital and nonoperating expenses are a little over 51 million. And then our transfers are 13.9 13 thou $13,971269. So the total proposed budget is $299,43,367. I want to point out that last year's adopted budget was $300,199,395. >> [snorts] [sighs] >> Looking at our budget by classification, I have this slide up for just one reason. As you can see, personal services is 70.8% of our budget. That's people. That's employees, salaries, benefits. The majority of our fund goes to staffing people and serving our community. We have less than 30% of our budget to meet all our other needs. Looking at our budget by source, you'll see our two largest sources are going to be the general fund and a police sales tax fund. Those numbers are printed for you. Um 191 million in the general fund and just under 75 million in the police sales tax fund. Some of our other sources are the maps for a use tax fund. um our other fund and the emergency management fund 3% which is basically 911 and that funds staffing as well. Moving forward with our lines of business, we'll start with the administration line of business. This covers the executive leadership, human resources, professional standards, public information. It's $31 million of our budget and it's comprised of 91 positions. As you look at the last program, their public information, I just kind of want to brag on them a little bit. An LFR statistic from last year, they um had over 3,200 social media posts. What's important about that? Well, our Facebook page has the third highest number of followers amongst major city police departments in the US and Canada. Recently um our social media was ranked number one in a recent article from social media strategy summit on 50 government agencies doing an amazing job on social. One of the most important aspects of this line of business and is near and dear to my heart is wellness. And this year, we're extremely happy with the progress that's being made to facil facilitate wraparound services for all of our employees. We need our employees to be the best version of themselves at work and at home in service to their community and when they retire. This job takes a toll physically, mentally spiritually emotionally and we want to support our employees through every bit of that. So, coming in the near future, we have the Cornerstone Wellness Facility, which will house what you've already heard about, the pro team um tactical performance, which is physical therapy for our first responders, police, and fire. What's important about them is they treat our employees as tactical athletes. They understand that job that we do the physical demands and they get us back to that point faster and more efficiently. They've been used in over 50 cities and the su success rate is phenomenal. Um I'll just give you a couple of quotes. Indianapolis um fire has been using them since 2018 and they've seen a 44% reduction in workers compensation costs. The Louisville Metro PD started in 2023 and they have five and a half more officers on duty at any given time prior to implementation. They realize the effectiveness of this program after day one. I want to take a moment and thank the Oklahoma City Police Foundation and especially Councilwoman Katrina Avers for helping facilitate the lease of the facility for Cornerstone Wellness. Your contribution will save lives and will have a huge impact far beyond any of us can imagine at this point. So, thank you. As we move forward with wellness, I want to discuss something that some of you are familiar with. It's called the 49 project. And I'll tell you a short story. We lost three employees in the last few years. all at the age of 49 to cardiac issues. If it's predictable, it's preventable. And members of our wellness unit took that personal and challenged themselves and challenged us to find a way to combat that and give our employees and their families uh a better quality of life. They started hosting wellness health summits in different locations around um the department throughout the course of the year. Um a couple of years ago, this was the second year. Um this year we saw a 37% increase in participation. It culminates at the end of the year with one annual health summit. Several of you were there at the civic center this year and I thank you for showing up and seeing the investment and the commitment um to our employees and you being there showed them that you care. So thank you. There were over 30 partners vetted there to take care of the physical, mental, spiritual, and financial wellness of our employees. There's an interesting story that none of you know. Some of you were there, some of you didn't get a chance to make it. I hope you make it next year. But we had an employee walk in and we don't know his name because it's anonymous. and he was in a hurry, but they convinced him to do a health screening and they immediately detected that he was maybe a couple of weeks away from a fatal cardiac issue and they were able to get him to the medical providers he needed to prevent that. That's the important invest that's the importance of investing in our employees. The administrative line of business also encompasses um the current and emerging technology that we're utilizing in this department. I'll name just a few. You're familiar with Axon because it's our transparency and accountability piece. It's body one cameras, it's dash cameras, it's incar cameras, it's our record management system to name a few. But Axon is doing something um that's going to be a gamecher for us and maybe other communities. The newest feature is Axon translation where the body camera can audibly autodetect over 50 languages and then translate between the officer and that individual in real time. So I want you to imagine the global events that we have coming to this city in the immediate future or just the people that live here now and have language barriers. The ability to utilize that technology to communicate in real time without having to wait for interpreters or call for additional resources. It's going to be a gamecher. They're also partnered with prepared 911 which is a platform we can drop on top of our computer aided dispatch system which will pick up the phone in the absence of a human being able to do so which will reduce our call wait time to zero. I want to take you back a couple of years when that was an issue because we had low staffing and and 911 and we were doing everything we could to uh facilitate the need but technology has leveraged us in a direction that cuts that weight time to zero. It also has the translation features. It can take that call build that call and send it to the dispatcher um to be automatically dispatched out to officers. that also reduces the wait times for those people in crisis who need a response quickly. Online reporting um is just the platform that allows residents of our city to create their own police report using a portable device or a computer. Between July 1 and April 23rd, over 3,900 reports have been received. This also reduces the wait time when you can pick up your phone and immediately create your own reports. But it does several other things. It allows residents of this community who feel like they want to compliment an officer to do that electronically. But for those who are not satisfied with their encounter with law enforcement, it allows them to file a complaint. near and dear to my heart is the awareness notification um that's embedded in this program that allows residents to provide information about an address or individual so that we know if there's a special needs um that exist at that residence or with that person if there is whether it's physical, mental, or whatever the case may be. anything that's pertinent that would help us respond with the right resources for the best outcome. Chief Kelly did an amazing job talking about drones as first responders. Currently, we have 36. The goal is 50. Again, we have 621 square miles to cover. This is a force multiplier for us. We're currently ranked third in the country in drones. number of drones as first responders behind New York and Las Vegas. And I don't know about y'all, but I'm a little competitive. Um, I would like to be number one, not for ego's sake, but for the sake of our community who needs that rapid response. Chief Kelly did an phenomenal job of describing how someone in our Arctic or someone on their end of dispatch can fly a drone, get there first, give us a realistic feed, give us realistic feedback on what's occurring so that we could send the right resources. It is indeed a gamecher and again it's a shared resource between us and fire. Moving forward, I'll look at the investigations line of business. This encompasses two programs, investigations and investigation support. It's $37.5 million of our budget is comprised of 246 positions. Investigations programs is exactly what you think it is. It's those investigative services to crime victims and prosecutors to hold people accountable for criminal acts. But investigation support program provides the investigative and technical support um to those investigators. And I'll give you a couple examples. Um that's going to be your property crime specialists, your crime scene investigators, everyone in your forensic laboratory services. It's going to be your property management unit. And those are largely SL um staffed by professional staff members who don't get a lot of recognition for the work that they do and the contributions that they make to our efforts. And so I just want to take a moment to acknowledge them now. Um just some LFR statistics in regards to that. The number of responses to crime scenes last year 1,000 to1. The number of EV number of evidential items process over 2,000. We alo have also have a victim services unit that reaches out and tries to assess the needs of people after the criminal investigation whether it's needing help with VPOS's or um just any other afterare needs that they may have and 498 victims were serviced last year. So, whenever I travel and people hear I'm from Oklahoma City and they hear what I do for a living, they always ask me that one question. And I'm sure you get that same question. How safe is your city? We get two questions. How affordable is it? And how safe is it? And we measure that by crime data. Um, and top of the list is going to be violent crimes. And that's measured primarily nationally by two major categories, homicides and aggravated assaults. If you look to your right, you'll see um that our homicide timeline going back to 2020. We're fairly consistent. We're somewhere in the mid70s when it comes to homicides. Uh with a spike um of 91 in 2021, but probably the most impressive stat on this page is going to be 92% of 2025 homicides were solved. Currently this year, I think we're sitting somewhere around 94%. I want to tell you that this number is subject to change because we don't give up on cases. Um, I wanted to highlight two cases um that are already solved in 2026. There was a 2003 stabbing um that occurred. um DNA analysis was able to identify a suspect who is now being held accountable for that crime. We also saw the 2021 homicide um where a subject was stabbed multiple times inside of a bar. The suspect was identified. it was determined he was in DOC custody but was going to be released this summer and probably would have been back in our community never having been held accountable um for that crime and and posing an additional threat to our community. But now there's a new warrant um authorized for murder charges and he will be held accountable for that crime. So it is my hope that that 92% rises over time because we continue to work these cases to the best of our ability. And although we focus on violent crime, property crime is just as impactful. There is a feeling of violation and a loss of safety that occurs when your property is taken from you. We're so serious about it that we created a property crime specialist group, an entire unit, 16 individuals who focus solely on that. They're professional staff members. They show up and they give you first class treatment. You know, I think a lot of people are surprised when someone shows up and they actually have the time to hear their story, dust for prints, do DNA swabs, take photos, anything and everything they can to hold people accountable. Here's a very unique LFR statistic for you. We clear 31% of property crimes. That doesn't sound impressive to you, right? until you hear the national average is eight. We are far and above what other people do and how seriously we take crime in Oklahoma City. But I had them place another stat on this slide because I think it's important. I talk about it all the time publicly and it's the number of firearms stolen from vehicles. If you go to our Facebook page, you can see we have a we track that number in real time so our community is aware. 398 firearms were stolen from vehicles last year. Here's an even more startling um fact. 270 of those cars were unlocked. I would challenge you to ask yourself, is there a correlation between those stolen guns on the property crime slide and some of those crimes we see on the violent crime side? I think yes. So, this is my plea to the public. Please do not leave guns in cars and please lock your cars regardless. As we look at the operations line of business, this is our where the majority of our budgeted positions are. Um it's patrol, 911 communications, youth services, crime prevention and awareness. is $141 million of our budget and it encompasses 98 positions. Let's start at the beginning. The first step in returning chaos to calm is going to be those people working in 911. They're extremely busy as you can see. 1.31 million calls serviced last year. Approximately 430 something,000 I think 432,000 were police calls. 21,98 of those were life-threatening calls. Those are going to be our priority one calls, which means there's immediate danger to life safety. But here's the stat I want to pay attention to. mental health calls 68,095 calls last year. That's a reduction of 27% from the previous year. Why is that? We started looking at best practices for best outcomes and utilizing additional resources um in order to respond to crisis. Uh we have an amazing partnership with mental health providers around the city, co-responder units. We also, you know, we've encouraged people to use 9 988 when it's not life-threatening and there's no no significant threat to anyone's uh safety. But the biggest game changer, mobile integrated health, the fire department. [sighs] Though it may seem strange to support another department's budget during our presentation, we work collaborative collaboratively to address these issues for the good of our community. The mobile integrated health unit has through their crisis call diversion dispatchers and dispatch their crisis response teams, their alternative response teams played a significant role in the decrease in mental health calls that we receive. When you give people the right resource the first time, you eliminate those repeated calls from that same person who's untreated and continues to cycle. They've been a game changer for us and I just wanted to take a moment to thank them for being visionary enough to jump into this space. They're great partners to work with. It's a great program and I 100% endorse it and again ask that you fund mobile integrated health. Um we also play a part in that because our mental health training although you're aware that we have 200 budgeted positions for the CIT program um CIT team that's not the total number trained as of this date. Currently, there are 582 of us training, including myself. When class 154, which is currently in the academy, graduates, there'll be 634 CIT trained officers. And I think it's making a difference in us recognizing people in trauma and applying those resources. And those resources are becoming more prevalent and online and helping us Community engagement and support is huge. You can see some of the programs that we participate in and that we help with. We had well over 53,000 outreach efforts with youth. Last year I heard someone mention earlier today the Metro Tech and the Francis Tuttle programs, their police tech programs. Here's how we turn the tide on what anyone thinks the history of policing is and how it impacts our community. We take children from those communities who have that shared experience, that understanding and that knowledge and we bring them up and we help them enter into this profession and they bring that perspective and that knowledge and that love of their community to their service of this community. And we have several members of our cadet program that are now police officers serving in the same communities where they grew up. And that's how you turn the tide and that's how you make a difference. I also want to point out that the city has a homeless action plan um and we have a homeless outreach team that offices with the key to home partnership um to support those efforts. And Triad is all the way to your right. And I want to take a moment to talk about Triad. Triad is our senior outreach efforts. It's our program to reach out to our seniors who as they um get older, their resources or access to resources change and they need someone to help fill that gap and access those resources for them or make them aware. They also need that feeling of safety in their communities as they get older. um they're often the people that we don't hear as often um that we don't consider when we look at the big picture, but they play an important part of the history of this city and they deserve the best resources and police services that they can receive from all of us. And so we're very proud to work with them and try to treat meet them where they are and meet their needs. I wanted to take a moment and we work with so many people, but there were three in particular I wanted to thank for the work that they've done this year. Um, Sunbeam Family Services and their work with seniors, especially grandparents raising grandkids. The Police Athletic League Board who helped make um extracurricular activities available to children all over the city. and the Alpha Community Foundation who took an elementary school in my old district where we used to put up crime scene tape and they built community center and they are doing everything they can to give kids healthy choices and opportunities um as well as other members of the community. Thank them. I want to thank them for their contributions and their collaborative efforts with us to help change lives. Next line of business is public safety support. You can see the programs. These this line of business includes administrative support, court related services, and department training programs. It's $17.1 million of our budget and it's comprised of 114 positions. There's just a lot of work that happens that people don't pay attention to. And just one small group of employees in this line of business is responsible for processing over 63,353 open records requests last year. It's overwhelming the amount of work that they do. That includes redaction services. training is a big part of um this line of business. Class 152 graduated with 54 recruits. They finished the field training officer program and they're actually out patrolling the streets now currently as we speak. Class 153 graduated 62 recruits and they're currently halfway through the FTO program and class 154 is currently ongoing with 50 recruits. Around the country, we've seen other departments struggle to um meet their staffing needs. But Oklahoma City is a magical place. It's a championship city and everybody wants to be on the team and we've we've seemingly turned a corner on that. We focus more on just recruit training. Cleat requires that we have a minimum of 25 hours of training every year. We more than exceed that for our employees. Last year we conducted over 2957 hours of training for our employees. It includes topics such as leadership development, specialized training, reality based training, and cleat training. I also want to thank the city for what it's doing to provide additional programs like leadership Q for employees to make sure that they all employees have access to training and opportunities to better themselves and advance their careers. Next, we'll look at the special operations line of business. This is uniform support and traffic safety, special operations support, special protection events and emergency response. This is 34.3% of our bud $34.3 million of our budget and it's comprised of 218 positions. [snorts] Couple of highlights to point out. In 2025, um they responded to over 41 significant events, emergencies or disasters and they processed over,200 forensic examinations of computers and electronic devices. [snorts] There's been a lot of conversation about our real-time information center. This is nothing new to anyone here. I just wanted to show you some of the the outputs of it. And last year they assisted with over 14,000 calls. They cleared 774 of those calls. By clearing, that means that no police officer needed to respond to the call based on the uh the real I'm sorry, the artic getting there first, whether by camera or by drone, and determining there was no need. That freed up those officers to respond to other people a lot faster. We're not currently 24 hours um 7 days a week. Um we still need to hire additional analysts. We're not there yet, but as the city continues to grow, as those large scale events come, we know there's going to be a significant need to do that. And even to meet the need now, we're utilizing overtime to kind of meet those needs. Some examples of um things Arctic responded to last year. Um 265 trouble unknown calls, 372 missing persons or kidnappings and over 1,890 check the welfare calls. You know, when we came up with this concept of a real-time information center and drones as first responders, we had an idea of what we thought it would do and how it would work. But you know, sometimes we we we learn something new every day and there are new opportunities. And I just want to point out something that happened a couple of weeks ago. There was a dog mauling call where someone was being vicious viciously attacked by two dogs. An analyst in the Arctic flew a drone to that location and saw that occurring in real time and being very quick thinking and innovative in that moment, dropped that drone down to ground to ground level and shoot those dogs away from the victim, preventing further harm. That's not something we ever envisioned when we put this in place, but it may have saved a life. Another thing I want to point out is um connect Oklahoma City.org. It's our camera sharing program for residents. I want to point out this does not give us live access to anyone's cameras. It just tells us that there are cameras in that location. So, in the event that there is an incident, we know where to look for evidence. It's a great way to keep neighborhoods safe and hold people accountable for crimes in your community. So, I encourage every I'll say it again, connect city.org, special event staffing. You can see from the pictures there's a championship parade. What a wonderful day for most of us. It was a long day for some of us. Um, extremely hot. But what a wonderful time for our city, right? We had a championship NBA season. We had a championship celebration and everybody showed up primarily as the best version of themselves for this event. But let me tell you, it was a big lift. Um, just looking at, you know, last year, you can see the overtime hours that were expended on special events. Um you could see that we're just under $2 million in overtime. I want to point out something. You know, as you look at some of the events, the College World Series, we have that every year. Um LA28 is coming to Oklahoma City. Every time we pull staffing to cover these special events, it leaves a gap somewhere else, which sometimes means that there's overtime to cover that, which is not covered here. It's part of the reason why you're going to see a proposed ordinance very soon um which assesses a cost um for staffing threat assessment and overwatch and tactical support. This is not something new. Uh Tulsa has been doing this for years. Other cities have utilized this to offset the cost. Um these things aren't funded. there was no way we could predict and fund um or or plan a budget for a parade of that magnitude. Um so just bear that in mind when you see that proposed ordinance come. We look forward to hearing your input on that. I'll conclude with the resident survey because whether we like it or not, what our residents say to us matters and we want to meet the needs um no matter who they are. Um, so, you know, looking at these statistics, we're 64.1% um, is what we were rated in quality of police service. We're 11% higher than the national average, but we're not satisfied. We can do better. Um, and we will look for innovative ways to get that number up. I am proud to report that 87% of the people who had contact with the Oklahoma City police officer last year reported that they received fair treatment. 85.3% of residents want stricter traffic enforcement. This is in alignment with the city's vision zero program to reduce fatality collisions down to zero. It's a direct response from our community. They want safer streets. They want to be able to get from A to B safely. We saw a spike in auto pedestrian collisions as well. What we've done in response is we have traffic saturation programs that we utilize in areas that were hot. We use a heat map um based on collision data. We have an analyst that looks at that and helps us identify those hotspots where we're seeing those collisions. And our goal is to change driving behavior and save lives. We also look at other things like traffic control devices, lighting, crosswalks, anything that might impact the safety of our um motorist or pedestrian community. Last but not least, 74.3% of residents feel safe in their neighborhood. We're proud of that, but we think it's everybody's job to keep everybody safe. I would again admonish everyone to utilize technology there. There are cameras available, utilize your neighborhood associations um and re we have um police community relation officers who meet with them regularly. Um if you have concerns, please reach out to us and let us know. With that being said, that concludes my presentation. Um I'll stick around if you have any questions for me. you mentioned this the success that you're having with um Facebook and social media and reaching out to the public and I just want to share with you this morning um I was looking at Google News and up popped an article about Oklahoma City its police department and its real-time information center and it gave an example of successful turnout as a result of that center. I guess the question I'd have to you is if we wanted to expand it to 24 hours and 7 days a week, is that something that you could provide us with numbers for the council and the city manager to take a look at? >> Absolutely. Absolutely. I can tell you probably off the top of my head, we need an additional a minimum of additional four analysts. Um, if we wanted to cut utilize that program without using overtime, we would probably need at least a minimum of eight additional analysts. >> Great presentation. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Um, so what would how much would those eight additional analysts cost? I don't have the exact cost for that, but I can get that for you really quickly. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Hi. I made it back. Thank you. >> Yes. Um and I can't wait to watch the fire presentation. Thanks for yours as well. Uh a few items. Um, one, uh, maybe this is our council office as well working with you all, but I believe I've made a request to do a, uh, ride along with the two, uh, divisions that are in W 2, Heapner and Spring Lake. So, still very interested in that. Um, especially now that the semester is wrapping up over the next couple weeks. So, maybe that'll open up sometime this summer. Uh two, I share your enthusiasm to no one's surprise for the mobile integrated health and I appreciate the collaboration um and the kudos that is happening between you all and fire. As the author of the resolution that helped give birth to that um item, I I want to have a I want to note a couple things. one, I as I've mentioned before would like to do a ride along with mobile integrated health. Um, if I can rewind us back to ' 06 when residents were asking for that intervention in terms of the fact, the unfortunate fact that someone with a mental health condition is six finds themselves 16 times more likely to end up dead during an encounter with law enforcement. um that that was a very uncomfortable thing to say aloud and it was an uncomfortable thing for us to hear and to process. And when the idea of borrowing the best practice that we see in Denver and Eugene of what we now call mobile integrated health, the mental health response, right? training, retraining our 911 dispatchers to better recognize, right, when it's a a 911 mental health call, even if maybe the caller isn't explicit in that. When those ideas first appeared at this council, there was enthusiasm on the one hand, but a disbelief it could work on the other. incredible push back. I mean, city manager is nodding his head over there. The the intense conversations that I've had with Craig Freeman on this topic have like forged us in fire, right? We don't always agree, but we have had some incredibly intense conversations that have in fact given birth to this work, this program. And the data speaks for itself. Right. 20 was it 21 27% reduction? 27% reduction. >> I know we're in an era of budget cuts. Austerity will never be the answer to crime prevention and public safety. And as we've just heard counselor Stonecipher bring the idea to us of increasing the real time, I would and will until my last breath on this earth advocate for this council to increase funding for mobile integrated health. If you want to see that 27% number keep improving, that's the answer. and I will I'll die on that hill, right? I remember your predecessor, his uh wife, I believe, was a teacher, right? And that was the way into this because she, like me, a former middle school teacher, we we know that teachers have been asked to become mental health providers. And in the same way that the society didn't fund access to mental health care and counselors, they put those responsibilities on teachers and they put it on law enforcement. And the time has come to stop that, right? It will make your jobs safer and it will make our residents neighborhoods safer. I there has got to be a way for us to look at these numbers, these budget numbers, and figure out the increased funding for mobile integrated health. It it is the equivalent of having a patrol officer out there. I I just can't stress this enough. My whole life's work has been studying media violence and the root causes of real life crime and violence. And when I when hearing you as the chief of police get up here and applaud fire, which houses mobile integrated health, and to see those statistics, that just feels so good to be able to go back to W and tell the people who protested, who wrote emails, who called this office offices uh during that horrible summer of 2020 to go back and say, "I have good news. I have good news." So this is important. If if we're going to talk about real time increases, then right alongside that must be conversations about increasing the capacity of this outreach. Our residents lives depend on it. I am cannot be any more serious than that. two. Um, on this note of the community policing resolution from 2020, um, if we want to see violent crime go down and make sure that the officers uh, go home safe to their loved ones and to make sure that our residents are safe, then it is incumbent upon us to with haste, with diligence and haste to implement ment this city's first violent interruption program. Newark, New Jersey with their community street outreach team. This is from Policing the Police 2020 um the PBS documentary Front Line. You can Google it. The data is there. And just as much as there was a time that people on this horseshoe and some people in the crowd looked at me when I said mobile integrated health barring from the best practices of other cities and said I just can't imagine it. I just can't imagine it. I am here to tell you that Newark experienced a 30y year low in violent crime. The statistics that our chief is presenting on that board we can go further with the implementation of a violent interruption program. Our officers will be safer, our communities will be safer. That has always been my goal. The longer we delay this work, the more danger of violence exists. And that's why I speak with urgency on this. Not only was there a 30-year low in violent crime, but in the South Ward in Newark, where violence was its highest after the implementation of their violence interruption program, a 50% reduction in homicides. That makes your jobs safer and it improves the safety of our communities. But it's not in this year's budget. And this is now 6 years after that community policing resolution. So I I I I have an urgency that I worry sometimes we all don't share and I worry sometimes that urg that lack of urgency exists because there's a lack of an imagination. But there was a trust we all built together in 2020 when this council approved that community policing resolution unanimously. Unanimous approval. And I am telling you, I can't promise you a 50% reduction in homicides. I can't promise you a new 30-year low. But good God, wouldn't you take half of that? I would, and I know my residents would. And I know there's already conversations internally that we've had about uh like where will I find the money in the budget? I would say people's lives depend on us finding this money in the budget and that includes your officers and that includes our residents. And this cycle of violence will never stop until we intervene at the level of prevention. It is so tragic to me that we have to have the work that you were describing, Chief, of talking with the victims afterwards. Police cannot just be reactionary. There has to be that moment of of prevention, not in a minority report kind of way, but in ways that we know work like in Newark. I will beat this drum again till my dying breath. And I would suggest to you that like key to home, we have a public private partnership opportunity here. Where is the fun? Where is much foundation? We have great community organizations and leaders who could partner with us at the public level to ensure that our children go home safely, that they're not at the mercy of these gangs, and that these guns that you're describing that are being left in cars that someone doesn't go grab it to go resolve a conflict. So, I'm just connecting some huge dots here. And I'll speak at length on this because again, something I get really tired of is that anytime someone like me raises these sorts of things, it's seen as anti-law enforcement. And as I keep saying, my goal is to make sure that law enforcement gets home safe and so too do our residents. and you citing the success of the mental health uh the mobile integration approach that that should make me a more trusted partner than I even was six years ago when I brought these ideas to this council. So um what is the status then of that was that was my remarks. What is the status of the violence interruption program? So, right now the the youth safety advisory committee is reviewing that recommendation as you stated that we do not have additional funding in the budget right now for that. Um, it's something that we're evaluating. There's some additional funding that's still available that we had for our task force recommendations to move forward. Um, some of that Chris talked about this morning that we went ahead and moved into the program budgets. Um, so it's something that we're still looking at through the summer, I think, looking at RFIs to see what services are available out there and then like you're saying, looking at grant opportunities. I was texting with Andrea um that looking at grant opportunities whether it be through something like in as much or federal grants that can help us with funding that to see if maybe we can combine some of the funding that we do have with other opportunities. >> Um it it's I just think time is is of the essence. Every day I get an email about the homicides. I always save those in the police folder and that behind a homicide statistic is a family and a person. So I I just I see this intervention opportunity for us. So um and to the federal level, I think in so many ways we're on our own because the federal government has been cutting this sort of grant funding and that should put us in the most conservative position we can imagine where we take care of ourselves at the local level. We intervene to keep our cities and our neighborhoods safe. That's the opportunity in front of us right now. So but chief, thank you for your presentation. and thank you for the collaboration work that you're doing um with with fire and I look forward to those ride alongs. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, Chief. >> I'll just add one thing and that is it's just a real quick brag for you and I haven't gotten the opportunity to share it with other council members, but I've been at a couple of national meetings lately and didn't people didn't know who I was or why I was asking and I was really just being curious. Um, but I've heard incredible recognition of the Oklahoma City Police Department in multiple national forms for the mobile integrated health program for the first responder wellness program being top five in the nation. And then um the drone first responder uh real-time information center literally being the cutting edge and leading the country in integrating technologies and capabilities. So, thank you for continuing to lean in and and to try to think about how we can do things safer and smarter and we can see the difference. >> Thank you. Well, thank you all for your support and all that you do for our city and for our police department. >> Thanks, Chief. Thanks for the team. >> Chief, thanks for always being there. >> Thank you. >> And if Chief Kelly hadn't sked out because he's a quitter. >> Oh, I didn't say that out loud. Them, too. With that being said, we're done.