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MINUTES OF THE PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE October 2, 2023 AUDITORIUM Present: Councilmembers Rader, Bullock, Baker Also: Councilmembers Shachner, Kepple, and Marx, Mayor Geroge, Chief Fischer, Director Vargo, Director Leininger, Mark Walters (Director of Community and District Activities) Call to Order: 6:04 Approval of the minutes of the July 31, 2023 meeting of the Public Safety Committee A motion was made and seconded to approve the minutes of the July 31, 2023 meeting of the Public Safety Committee. All members voted in favor. Minutes approved. Communication from Councilmember Baker regarding traffic guards. (Referred to Public Safety 7/17/23) Chairman Baker reviewed the communication and provided some background and context to inform the discussion. Chief Fischer discussed the challenges of hiring for the position. He said it is not a highly sought after position because of the split hours (one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon). He also explained that when police can’t fill the shifts due to call offs then they need to use city staff to fill those roles, which takes city employees away from their primary job and costs the city more money due to higher pay rates and overtime. Lt. Deucher stated that by ordinance there are 29 permanent crossing locations and six substitute crossing guards. He explained when there are call offs dispatch will first try to fill those spots with the substitutes, but they currently only have five substitutes and some of them can only work one of the shifts. When there are still additional spots that need to be filled, they will then go through the list of city staff starting with the two parking enforcement officers, then public works staff and lastly the patrol officers. He also reviewed some additional hiring challenges and stated it is a thankless job since the traffic guards need to plan their day around the split shift. Councilmember Marx stated that in the past people were retiring at a younger age but now people are working longer and it must be more difficult to fill those positions. She suggested that Lt. Deucher reach out the Kiwanis Club and the local retirement communities for recruitment. Councilmember Shachner asked if there was any financial analysis done to see if the city raised the rate of pay for traffic guards at what point would it combat the overtime costs of having city staff fill in. Chief Fischer replied that the current hourly pay for the Traffic Guards is about $17.22 per hour so if you round up on average they are making $35 a day, and paying staff overtime would cost significantly more. However, it would be difficult to make a clear analysis due to the sporadic nature of the call-offs. Chairman Baker steered the conversation to the second part of the meeting and asked Director Leininger to review the Active Transportation Plan and Safe Streets for All grant. Director Leininger stated the Planning Department is currently undertaking two initiatives related to the matter. The first one is the Active Transportation Plan that examines all of the non-vehicular connections 1