we will now move forward with expanded response presentation and city manager shuckman will discuss the staff report and the expanded response executive committee will provide an overview of key outcomes achiev to date and outline next steps thank you mayor and Council uh we have a brief presentation for you tonight um uh it's an update on the progress involved in the poad um grant for the collaborative Solutions Grant and specifically about the expanded response portion of that um you'll see on the screen here which is uh a fair amount of text that I'm not going to just read to you but it is the the why of the project why we're working on it um and it is recognizing the uh important role that Public Safety our Public Safety organizations play in community well-being and um recognizing that we have an opportunity to look at that in a way make that make sure that it's working for all community members as well um I want to just take a minute to thank uh Deputy city manager Sant Lisa Chief green and chief brel for their work um on the executive committee we have spent quite a lot of time together which is great um and we've made quite a lot of progress that we're excited to share with you tonight um and then there's also a significant amount of staff from uh in particular both Public Safety departments who've been involved in this um but as well from administrative services and uh so I wanted to say thank you to them there's too many to name but I wanted to thank them as well um with that I'm going to hand it off to Miss Santa lisis to talk us through the next couple slides and we will uh have time for questions at the end as well mayor and Council I am uh this is the reminder portion of the presentation is how did we get here right and uh what and then we'll move into a conversation around expanded response specifically so collabor Solutions is the name of uh a shortened part of the name of a very long grant that the city received in 2021 uh $250,000 to do some Innovative and transformative work to traditional approaches to Public Safety and some of uh the the poad Family Foundation the um components were to include uh racial equity and reducing harm to marginalized communities and increasing um trust and transparency with local government public safety and community and reducing the occurrence of potentially negative encounters so we embarked on this journey in 2021 and there are three um three or four I guess we'll say here uh large components to the grant work uh first is training development so we're looking at uh training in a variety of different spaces including restorative practices we are conducting a racial Equity policy audit for the entire public Public Safety handbook and uh excuse me police handbook and engaging in Community Partners along all of our processes and that leads us to the third initiative which is what we're here to talk about tonight and that is expanded Public Safety response Services uh this is a term that the city of Golden Valley is using specifically um within a space that uh others may have heard as alternative response or um other response so uh the the City and thanks to the Chiefs uh looked at how what are we referring to in in this in this space and how are we going to refer to what we're doing and really what we're looking at is expanding what are we uh expanding our resources for our community and so I'm going to turn it over to the two chiefs who are going to talk a little bit about what expanded response looks like in Golden Valley thank you mayor and Council for having us tonight to talk about this um so expanded response is something that can mean a lot of different things in a lot of different cities and what we're really looking at this as a way of looking at what we do um recognizing that our First Responders both police and fire have been asked to do more and more of the past years call volume continues to increase dramatically um we're called for more and more different types of incidents that were being being asked to respond to and as that in demand on our Public Safety continues to increase we recognize that there may be other ways to better serve our community other than just using police and fire we do a lot of really fabulous things in this community we're very proud of our police and fire departments um but we also recognize that you know there may be times when you know sending a police officer or a firefighter isn't the best solution um we also recognize that there are communities uh within Golden Valley and everywhere that have an increased likelihood of having um escalating encounters with Public Safety and lower outcomes um including bipot communities people with developmental developmental intellectual physical disabilities um people who are experiencing mental health crises um and people who are on the are gender non-conforming transgender LBGTQ qia um two Spirit Plus folks um so we really want to look at how can we best serve all of our people especially those traditionally um marginalized communities um very briefly I want to share one of the the big wi for me on why I want to do this I read recently a quote by Desmond Tutu um it was actually a book I read was reading talking about mental health for First Responders um and the quote reads there comes a point when we need to stop just pulling people out of the river we need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in our police and fire very good at pulling people out of the river um we what we need to do and we don't always have the time and resources to do is figure out why they're falling in and how we can stop them from falling back in and that is my vision for what we're doing with Community or with expanded response man she said a whole lot she didn't leave any room for me to really really talk yeah so so mayor and counsil thank you all for allowing us to to talk to youall about this expanded respon I think the main thing is is that as you all see on the screen is that a lot of time when you talk when people in the community is this something to defund the police this is not anything to defund the police this is not taking away positions from the police department this isn't taking funding way from the police department this is just looking at are there other best practices that we could put in place to uh have uh police or fire respond to things that could uh where our resources could be utilized uh in better uh in better places I think one of the another key thing I want to touch on is something I've been talking about since I've been here is the data what is the data really telling us about this and how is that really informing us how we're going to uh provide this service to the community and the data has really shown that there is a need for some type of uh expanded response uh here in Golden Valley and how that fits into Golden Valley not what it looks like and Minneapolis or Brooklyn Park or any other suburb City but what is needed for the the community in Golden Valley so um we put in a lot of meetings a lot of hours coming up with this there's been a lot of community input and continued so hopefully we can come back and bring you all something that uh we feel that is is a good um a good service to bring to the community so is that it hand it back to okay all right thank you so the the slide in front of you is uh just a a timeline that shows you kind of where we are in the process you'll note that we are light on specifics at the moment and that's because we're working with staff from both Public Safety departments to make sure we're selecting the right areas that we can make some progress and make an impact um so we're in that process right now um and we look forward to Bringing back more specifics once the project is uh closer to implementation but we wanted to also make sure that you had an update Midstream so that you had the opportunity to ask questions as well and that uh we were able to share the progress being made um you'll note and I mentioned at the work session in February that there was two meetings that would happen before we were able to present this to you um so those those Community engagement meetings have happened we also this week will start engagement sessions with our staff who have not been involved in this process so that we're getting good ideas and feedback from them um and that's something that uh we will do over the next week and a half and uh all with an eye on making sure that as Chief green said that we're putting together a program that works best for this city not for what Albuquerque does or what some other city does um and we that has been really the anchor for all of us as we work through the project is making sure that it fits for our community and for our organization um with that I think that is our last slide and so we wanted to make sure that there was an opportunity to answer questions should you have them um and also recognize that we'll plan to be back with more specifics as we get closer thank you I'm excited that this is finally happening um how has the uh turnout been the I would defer to I think both one or both who's able to speak to the community engagement s okay thank you uh yes mayor and Council we um have had a pretty decent turnout I'm going to that's how I'm going to characterize it um we've actually had a lot of community engagement around Public Safety happening simultaneously so we are doing the community engagement around expanded response which uh Chief brel I think can speak to uh and then we also have a lot going uh around policies and so at the last policy meeting on Thursday I think there were about 21 individuals um who came and and the I spoke with the facilitator and uh she couldn't have been more excited about the engagement that came from the community uh she said people were coming with vast backgrounds and differences in opinions and perspectives and they were able to have a really great conversation and and have some great takeaways for City staff to look at so I know that's more on the policy side but um for Community engagement overall around Public Safety initiatives we have going on is uh is going well yeah I can say I was at the first two Community engagement sessions the first one we had approximately 20 people attended that um the second one which was during daytime online it was a smaller group at that second one um and I believe when I had talked to Scarlet who's helping lead the community engagement I believe it's probably in the neighborhood of about 20 I think that may be registered for the one on Thursday evening um it's been a great chance to get some really good feedback some really good conversation we had representative of our Command staff from police and fire at both sessions to be able to talk a little bit in the kind of first part of those meetings about what it is that we do um there's a lot of misconceptions out there of people don't understand you know why you know when I call 911 for a medical emergency do I get a police officer and a firefighter showing up and it was a great opportunity to be able to talk about some of those things answer some questions and then police and fire Representatives all left to basically say okay we're not going to you know be looking over your shoulders as you give some feedback on things and um it seems like it's been a really great opportunity to have that engagement great I don't think I have to this this is this is this is women history women's History Month it's women's history this is women history take a back seat yeah I'm just taking a back seat I I mean the community engagement has been really helpful and the community has been engaged uh with uh whether it's been online or in person so uh and I can continue to see that we're going to get that same type of community engagement whether it's related to the expanded response or to the to the policy uh questions yeah great any other questions um how much has the Peace Commission been involved I me I know you're on the on this discussion or has it been kind of more Community focused and then kind of feedback from what recommendations yeah so I think the the Peace Commission has been involved with this uh quite a bit um I know this has been presented to the Peace Commission and I believe they've been involved in some of the um probably some even some of the the public engagement so so they are aware of it and they've been uh involved even from the beginning so great um thank you very much and thank you to all of the the staff for this update um as someone who's been here you know probably the longest through this entire kind of transformation um I'm really pleased pleased to get it and really excited about the work and Leadership that Golden Valley is showing as um a staff as a city and as a community um uh when I joined this Council you know uh over seven years ago we were really a community that was was fine just kind of being in the middle of the pack and we have transformed into a community in a city that wants to lead the change and um uh this is really exciting I think the poad grant was an acknowledgement and recognition that this really important work is being done here and this important leadership is being shown here and um uh so I just wanted to express my appreciation for I know the hours and hours and hours of of work that you all are putting in um and the uh deep Community engagement which again you know transforming um I led the process to transform the Civil Service Commission into the Peace Commission and really leading this process where we have uh deep Community involvement in the policies and the decisions and the way that we do things in the city has been another really positive transformation and um I'm excited about this I appreciate the work and um um I look forward to uh to further updates