Bangor council reviews public works budget, cameras and paving plans

[9:49] Wayne Mallar: In meeting, Counselor Mallard, can you hear us? Yes, I can now. Oh, isn't that wonderful? [9:55] Susan Deane: I don't see you but I can hear you. Yes, we're having issues with the cameras, so we're going to proceed without the cameras and get started. I will first start with, I guess, do we want to nominate a chair? Sure, I make a motion to nominate Counselor Dean as chair. [10:19] Speaker C (unidentified): Second. Thank you. Without [10:24] Susan Deane: any doubt, Counselor Dean, would you like to take it away? Certainly. Are we live? We are live. Good evening and welcome to City Council budget workshop. It is Wednesday, May 20th, it is 5:27 p.m. We apologize for starting a bit late, we're having some video problems but we do have audio, so you cannot see the table, but around the table tonight I'll be sitting in for Chair Hawes. We have Counselor Carson, Counselor Faloon, Counselor Leonard, Counselor Fish, we have Public Works Director David Tilon and the City Manager Carollynn Lear. First up we will be discussing the public works budget for the coming year. I believe we will let you take it away. Thanks. Oh, and we also have Councilor Mallar joining us again too. Well, [11:29] David Pilon: good evening. This is my first time with the City of Bangor budget process, so David Pilon, Director of Public Works. I had provided a read-ahead packet, I don't know if you guys saw it, in there in that packet some explanations of some of the different items that we'll be talking about this evening. There's some definitions on paving and why we need to spend the amount of money we spend on it, and then there are return on investment and benefits to constituents for every item on my budget list and also a memorandum in there requesting that we reallocate some of my capital projects before they get approved because I made a error in my budget submission. I had submitted an item in there and then weeks later it didn't make sense to me, so I asked for it to be removed, and then before this meeting I figured out that it shouldn't have been removed, we needed to retain it in there. So I want to start with core functions and recent accomplishments. I don't know if you want me to read all of these or If you guys do some highlights on them. Okay, so under core functions, street maintenance and repair, public works is responsible for paving, patching, resurfacing approximately 400 lane miles of streets and roads. We also maintain approximately my sidewalk curves, the traffic signage throughout the city, and pavement markings. Most of these, if not all these, are part of the capital request as we're going in here. We oversee the upkeep of 20 city owned parking lots and provide maintenance support for 11 different schools in the city. We do snow and ice control throughout through plowing, sanding, salting roads and sidewalks. We see an average of about 75 inches of snow annually, totaling about nine million cubic yards of snow on roadways and sidewalks, which is a monumental effort for us to keep the road clear and then mitigate those snow piles in the downtown area and move that snow to different areas. Storm water and drainage systems, we maintain 5000 plus storm drains, manholes, and culverts which help to manage flood prevention and drainage improvements in the city. And one of our big activities going on right now, if we're going around, we're cleaning all of those items. That's one of my capital requests is the back truck that we use in that process. Solid waste and recycling, we manage residential trash collection, recycling programs, and disposal services consisting of 14,000 plus tons per year for the city of Bangor. Forestry management, we manage all publicly owned trees, including six or fifth properties with over 8,500 trees. In coordination with parks and rec, we also oversee downtown landscape. Fleet management, we maintain city-owned vehicles and heavy equipment consisting of some 750 pieces and ensuring operational readiness. It's going to be some of my other requests we're going to talk about in there. Traffic and streetlights, we maintain 68 traffic signalized intersections, maintaining also about 3,700 streetlights throughout the city. That's one of my larger requests in my capital projects is the mile vision. We'll get to that in a minute and what that does for the city. We also support construction for city projects and coordinate with contractors, utilities, and closely with Jefferson and the City Engineering Department. We maintain and care for five city-owned municipal cemeteries encompassing approximately 66 acres with approximately 6300 burial sites. And emergency response and support, we assist during natural disasters or major events by clearing debris, restoring infrastructures, or at the best of the fire department or PD or any kind of an event that happens in the city. Recent accomplishments, I was hired in December and he's still here and I'm still here. We had a single snow event which required removal of 15 plus inches of snow, which was 1.2 million cubic yards of snow that had to be moved. Took quite a while to clean that up and then move the snow. We have new training conducted for snow operations equipment hookup and use procedures. To date we've trained 20 employees to successfully get their CDL licenses. Four students complete the supervisor leadership training course. We have Rhodes Scholars in progress and we'll have one awardee next month down in Skowhegan who will receive his Rhodes Scholar. That'll make two for Bangor Public Works. That's about a three-year process for the individuals to get the road scholar. We implemented the emerald at borer response plan including injection of trees, which is ongoing now. We just purchased enough chemicals to inject over 200 trees, and if you didn't see the news flash, they've been identified in the Bangor area now. So in a tear, a fourth position was added. Individual has already prepared the city response plan for the red scale infestation that could possibly happen. Also prepared the Essex Forestry Management Plan and the City Forest Management Plan is in process, supposed to being done there too. I've had two plus miles of wildfire mitigation activities completed in City Park to date. A lot more to go on that. Over a hundred 311 11 forestry service request completed in December. Clean up from hazardous trees, hazards such as tree removal and pruning. Up to the date this was published, we've had over 1700 responses to see click fix. So we get multiple a day to come in for different issues or any anything around the city. Fleet has created and closed over 2400 service orders to date. Fleet completed 60 plus hours of training per tech to include a NA PA series, MMTA series, Ford and Cummings training, and then they just did another series where they've got the text 608 certified because they can work on or 609 certified they can work on the air conditioning and vehicles. Police service director became the vice president of the main chapter of American Public Works Association, and we've paved approximately paved and chip sealed approximately 7.51 miles of roadways and 3.6 miles of sidewalks to date. Goals and priority, infrastructure maintenance and improvement with the goal of maintaining and improving the city's 400 lane miles of city streets, roadways, and 80 miles of sidewalks. The department will prioritize completing scheduled paving projects, expanding sidewalk repair program for ADA compliance and continuing improvements to the 68 traffic signals, all part of the budget request. Winter operations optimization, we're going to enhance snow and ice control for the public safely by investing in GPS enabled plows for tracking efficiency, evaluating salt and sand usage for environmental impact reduction and commute, and improve communications with residents during those storm activities, and again it's going to be another one of my telematic requests which will show you what it is and talk about what the request is. Sustainability environmental compliance, in order to reduce environmental impact for the department operations will increase street sweeping frequency to reduce pollutants and expand recycling education and participation, and fleet modernization ensure reliable and efficient equipment for operations by replacing aging vehicles with fuel efficient models, implement preventive maintenance schedules, onboarding new fleet maintenance program which is also one of the requests in the capital program, and I'm in the process now working with fleet to update and improve their preventive maintenance program that they have for the city equipment. Public engagement and transparency improve communication and response to residents by informing our bank or residents online of online service request notifications tracking systems, publish animal performance Metrics and project updates. Host community meeting, major infrastructure projects. Part of that was the sign that I requested and was awarded, the digital sign that we're putting out there. I've been working with the city to be able to push messages on the city website and working to send out a mailer to get everybody to sign up for the C click fix. So of 32,000 residents, it's around a thousand that are actually signed up at this point. So if we could get, you know, a considerable amount of people to sign up for it, and they can ask for what they want to be notified for, whether it's a parking ban or whether it's construction activity going on or we're going to be paving in your neighborhood, that type of information could be provided quickly and efficiently out to the residents. Workforce development. Build and maintain a skilled and resilient workforce by providing training on new technologies and safety standards and develop a succession plan for key roles and enhance recruitment strategies. We're already working on recruitment strategies. I developed a program of instruction for a mentorship program, so all of my new unqualified hires will come in and participate in a 60-day mentorship program before we make a decision to sit them for a CDL. We have a lot of issues where they come in a couple days later, they're in a CDO program, we don't know their capabilities at that point, and so we're finding that some of these guys aren't capable to perform or pass the tests and stuff that's going on there. So this would give us an opportunity to fully integrate them into the public works operation and how we do business and give them an opportunity to evaluate us and whether or not we're the right choice for them. I think it'll go a long ways towards having a better. We're [23:13] Susan Deane: back. We apologize, we had a moment of audio failure, but we are back. We are live and we are discussing the [23:22] Speaker C (unidentified): budget for public works. Okay, I'm going to start with core infrastructure with the paving, [23:28] David Pilon: chip seal and sidewalk paving program. It's a 1.5 million dollar investment from the city with that finance earlier this week where we approved the budget for 1.8. There's additional money that we'll receive for LMI and TIP that should help pay for that funding as we move forward. And also just for your knowledge, when we get to a point we run out of money, we just stop paving. So our paving list is put together by our paving manager is based used from biology program which I have up on the map here. So I pay me man, it drives around the city with a device in his vehicle, and it looks at the conditions of the roads, and AI formulates the road condition, and then it provides us an LMI or index for what's good and what's bad, and that's how we derive or get to our paving list. It's on each year that we put in, and as you can see from the image that's up on the map here, it's not continuous miles of road, so they're sporadic throughout the city. And as you know, our roads and infrastructure are aging and failing quickly. And then even on this list, some of this will be a full mill and pave, some of it will be a shim, and some of it might just be a skinny coat, and some of it will be a chip seal, and so it's tar gravel. You don't know what a chip seal is. We're trying some new products this year because residents weren't very happy last year. The new product is coated, so it's going to adhere and stick better to the surface, and we'll have less of the extra gravel that remains for that week period while it's compacted and put down into place. I won't read all of these to you, but in the packet I gave you, it goes on, it just tells you, gives you some assumptions and cost calculations, and it gives you some lifespans for those different theories that we're going to be applying here. And part of that is the justification for my next year's ask for paving is going to be substantial compared to what we've been operating on. A 1.5 million dollar budget approximately gets us 2.5 percent of our 400 miles, not enough. We'll never get ahead of, we'll never get ahead of it. So I'm looking to try to get 10 of our roads. If we could get 10 of our roads and we could pave 30 to 40 miles, we're paving about 10 right now all over the city. If we could pay 30 to pave 30 to 40 miles of some continuous roads, the residents would see the results immediately, be a lot happier, and our road conditions would be a lot better throughout the city. [26:16] Joseph Leonard: So or we'll follow on that. So like I think if I ran your report correctly, sorry, this is councilman, for those who can't see, of the 400 roads, if we do it in, if we, if paving a road is done in the most efficient way, I think you said the 25-year lifespan, oh yes, that's [26:39] David Pilon: that's for a full mill and pave. All roads won't need a full mill and pave ever, you know, some of them won't need it, some of them have been done, some of them are starting to fail, and at that [26:48] Joseph Leonard: Point then we would probably shim coat them, but to your point of a 2.5 percent as opposed to 10, how many years will that take to go through a full rotation of all the city's 400 miles? [27:01] David Pilon: Six to eight years probably, and I have to, before next year, I will calculate, get with my paving manager like what's done and what's set for the next 15 years, and I'll remove that and I'll come up with whatever the balance is on what we need to actually attend to, whether it's 300 miles or 200 miles, and then adjust the budget accordingly on that, and of course we won't hit all of those miles, right, so the goal is in that 30 to 40 mile range, so but then I can tell you how many years it's going to take before we get in front of that, and even in so if it takes five six seven years, if we had all of our roads done and then we're living on a seven to 12 year lifespan on the roads that are there with minor repairs moving forward, so I think it'll be effective if we can get to that point, so thank you for that clarification. Yes sir, is it, this is counselor [27:52] Susan Deane: Dean, is it safe to say that your biggest concern for this time of year is paving the majority of [27:58] David Pilon: your work, correct? We're going in, we're getting ready to go into paving now, and so on top of that paving, if I did get an increase in budget, I'm going to have to raise my operating costs. We do the milling and prep work for all the paving that happens, so if we're going to go from the 10 miles we're getting now and we're going to go to 30 or 40 miles, it's going to require a lot more of us prepping that or contracting out that where we can contract it out also to meet the deficit, but it's work that we can do. Yes ma'am. [28:33] Carolyn Fish: Thank you. How do you prioritize the CCLIC case reports? Are you able to investigate [28:44] David Pilon: all of them, and so then like how do you? Absolutely. My customer service manager opens every one of those and responds to them on a daily basis. If I get direct emails, I respond to residents often, I responded once a day because they saw one of our myovision cameras, sent me a picture and want to know what it was, so I pulled up in detail what it is and what we use it for and what we don't use it for and send it back to that resident to let them know that we're not spying on anybody or retaining any video or identifying people through facial recognition, that type of thing, but yes, if he can't resolve their issues then he passes the phone over to me and I will talk to the residents too about those issues that come in. A lot of them are really small. Some of them might be my garbage cans missing. We have snow plow damage, which we're still working on and fixing. I had one directly to me today. I looked it up, I sent it over to my foreman and I said, is this on your list or have you attended to this yet? And on the way here he responded and said he thought it was done and we'd get to it before the end of the week. So and it's to go back and loam and grass seed an area that we plowed up. So are [29:56] Susan Deane: you still receiving phone calls or are most people using that click fix? [30:00] David Pilon: They do the click fix and we'll respond to them so that we get the notices in. And yes, we do get phone calls on a daily basis down there. So rather than just want to talk to a person, but the quick fixes come in. I get them on my computer every day, I look at them and then like I said my customer service manager responds to all those people, whether it's through email or through phone calls. Citywide pavement markings, this is where I had a error in my submission for the budget. What got approved nine days ago I think was 154 000. So the original ask was 175 for this and then what got approved was 154. We went through all that, you know, we're gonna to citywide refresh all of the markings throughout the city, some 8 000 markings. What I need to do is two of my requests that are on my budget is a power screen for a hundred thousand dollars and an additional traffic signal upgrade for a hundred thousand dollars and I want to scratch those and reallocate those to the citywide pavement and markings if possible. The power screen is something that public works has been pursuing since before I got there basically at the big box where we can throw aggregate in and it will screen it out or it'll break up our clumps, which we've been doing with a front end loader now or whatever we need to do to break that material up or when we do it'll go back on my list for next year. We can help us to screen dirt down into fines for different activities that we're using that material for. So and the signal upgrade was just an additional request on it. I have a larger one that I'm retaining in my budget request that we will hit the corridor signals with mile vision. We'll talk about that in a minute. So why that's important, you're asking to move that 200 000 to your pavement through the city-wide pavement marking? Yeah and [32:17] Susan Deane: I'll give you an updated, I tell chatting with Stephanie earlier, I think it will make sense before we start making decisions for us to give you, Tracy had an item where you missed some revenue, for example, so we'll do these sort of small changes that need to be made and provide you sort of an updated capital list and tax rate calculator document to work from before you start making decisions. You don't have to remember that. [32:52] David Pilon: Also in the packet that I prepared for you was my explanation and the rationale for wanting to move those items. The next one we'll talk about is fleet telematics. I'm looking for two hundred forty nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine dollars with fleet telematics, yes, is right now I've been using Samsara. We put a controller in the vehicle, I have inboard outboard dash cam, so it's looking at my drivers, it's looking forward of us, and once I go into contract track with them, we will outfit approximately 93 vehicles with these cameras. On our larger equipment, anything with wing blades, our scrapers, our big equipment, it's going to have 360 cameras, so they'll have a left and right mounted camera and a rear mounted camera also, and that'll give the drivers in the cab, it's like, I don't know, you guys got the fancy car where you can see the 360 down view, it ais it together and puts just a 360 view around your vehicle. The point of putting the telematics in the vehicles is obviously behavior modifications and safety and help us to avoid incidents and accidents. So some of the incidents and accidents we share, telephone poles, we share fire hydrants, we hit light poles, all of these are in the thousands of dollars when we hit them. We had contact with the vehicle this year with a resident who claimed injury, that's going to be more than the cost of this probably for 10 years by the time that one gets done, and with this telematic system that I'm looking to put in here, it has in cab coaching and I can control how much coaching it gives, so it will, if you start moving the vehicle and you don't have your seat belt on, it's going to tell you to put your seat belt down. If you have harsh braking, if you're speeding, if you're inattentive driving, which is the big one that I'm looking for, the amount of hours that we do our winter operations, when I have drivers in a cab for 32 hours beyond 24 hours, they become less aware of everything that's going on, they don't slow down, they don't stop when necessary, and so this in the cab is going to be able to coach them. They have a feature in there, it's called nudging, so I can give them two opportunities, I can give them one to four opportunities to self-correct before it'll report to me, where we can then pull up video footage, take a look at it, and then assign a coach to talk to that individual, from that person's direct lead to their format to me. You can call that individual on the phone, whether they're sleepy or whether they're doing something they're not supposed to be doing, and have a conversation with them at that point, take them off the road if we need to. I think it'll be a huge cost savings for the city moving forward to be able to get this in. I've been working it since I got to public works. I've been putting information out and printing flyers and printing data, had stuff up on the boards in my break room, had discussions with union about putting this in. A lot of people are apprehensive about it because they think we are investigating them or following things, but one thing with ours is we will have no audio. The audio is off, we're not recording any audio, we don't need it. The vehicles, and then my guys are on the phone all day, whether they're talking to a doctor, they're talking to their loved one, we don't have time to listen to those conversations, nor do we want to. So the big thing is going to be able to correct those behavior modifications, avoid those incidents and accidents, and I think it will serve the city very well. I used it at a company I worked for in Wisconsin and it was very good. We did behavioral health transports and extraditions of prisoners, so we were kind of mandated to have it in there, but it protected my staff there more than, you know, hurt them with the type of incidents that happened in those vehicles with these behavioral health people. So do you recall off the top of your [37:01] Speaker C (unidentified): head how many accidents you've had this year so far? I can't even keep track. When I first got there [37:06] David Pilon: I had one a day for my first two weeks, and whether it's we shared a fire hydrant or we slid into a post, and without any kind of other than their story, it's kind of hard for me to debate it, so they get a win. Now when they start racking them up, then of course we have accident investigations that we perform, we have counseling that we perform and all that, but still I'd like to have seen the video for when we hit the car in the intersection section. And whether we could solve that or not, very quickly, whether who was at fault, I've had a couple residents hit my plow drivers this year and get out of the vehicle self confess right there, which is a good thing. Saying they didn't do it, was their fault. So and I don't want to take anything away from my crew, we are in a dangerous business. We are on ice, we are on hills, we are on tight streets. And we're in, like I said, we're in dangerous conditions. And we are going to have accidents right but even those accidents when we go and review those videos we can counsel them to about this is how you should do it next time it won't slide off a road this way or maybe your speed was too high something was wrong with the situation which created that environment for that accident and [38:27] Speaker C (unidentified): main dot uses the system main dot uses it [38:31] David Pilon: they're using it on the maintenance portion right now i've been talking to my fleet director and see if we want to try it also the university of maine uses it and you know there was apprehension for my union and then i think i calmed that down and told them what we're using for and started providing those videos for them and i haven't heard any other apprehension like i said i only had four test cameras but i've had multiple people on those vehicles utilizing them what's pretty cool about it is with the employee photos that we have when a driver gets into a vehicle it's going to ai identify that driver and assign them to that vehicle because i might have 10 drivers in one vehicle during the day right and then so who wrecked it who put that dent in that bumper well they're not going to be able to say i didn't do it because we'll be able to face it right back with the video and find out what our equipment is in the condition it's in some of the returns on investment obviously is costly equipment failures preventive maintenance it does have a maintenance piece in it so it's gonna read the codes in the vehicle help us identify faults in the vehicle quicker and then we could get them through fleet quicker to have them repaired and back in service we're hoping that it's going to lower our insurance claims and also our rate so Andy has been working to see if this is going to lower our premiums across the city for the fleet equipment that we're going to put this into it should I Would think at some point I'm going to cut fuel and labor costs by optimizing routes, and so I can see when my vehicles are idling. So if I got people that are out there and they're deciding on vehicles all day, we can coach them and mentor them to turn the vehicles off, don't leave them idling, we'll save thousands of dollars in fuel. One of the coolest things, and I think why I was leaning so hard forward to get this, is on the screen is a gist map of our plow routes that are on there, so at this point you and this is just a jpeg so you can't zoom in that far on this, but you can see on this I have our snow routes are indicated on here for sidewalks and roads. At this point there's some telephone poles that are indicated by the blue dots in there, but I will be able to overload our live gist maps into screens that the operators will have in their vehicle, and so what they're going to have is a summertime view of the road that they are operating on or sidewalk that they're operating on while there's 15 inches of snow on the ground. So now they're going to see the transitions, they're going to see those fixed objects that are there and hopefully avoid all that. They're going to see when they need to turn off a road and turn back on a road, and the cherry on the top here is that at some point we'll be able to take a piece of this, place it on our website, and residents will be able to go in and see where a plow is in a plow route. So that's the better communication with the residents, right so it won't be able to control it, they'll just be able to see a blip moving, or we can go back and setting up my front office and operations center now. So I'm going to have multiple monitors up there, we'll be monitoring all this, and we'll be able to see, I'm hoping that we're going to be able to determine plow blade up and probably down, and so if a resident calls and says you guys haven't plowed my road yet, we can go back and we can pull video and say no, we plowed it 30 minutes ago, you're a priority two, we won't be back for a while, that type of response to the resident. So I think this will propel us a long ways forward too. Obviously benefits of the constituents is we'll power out to be done faster through real world monitoring or real time monitoring, transparency to the residents, safer operations, improved storm, winter storm operations, reduced equipment downtime, increased worker and public safety with dash cam and safety sensors to reduce accidents and safe operations and more efficient use of tech dollars by optimizing our routes and our work effort as we go out across the city there's a lot more involved In this for me I have to reprioritize all of our routes take a look at those see how we're doing them assess if we should only make left turns or right turns or however we're going to do it and figure out the most efficient way to do it so that'll be quite a bit I'm working with Mr Miller there's a piece of arc I guess that there's a program part of it that is set up for snow operations so he's looking to see whether we can get it we pay for most everything except for that one little piece so He was trying to see what kind of a deal he could get to bring that in I think that'll help me to optimize our routes and the way we tackle the snow when we do get it so more to follow on [43:29] Speaker C (unidentified): That. [43:32] Joseph Leonard: Any questions you said you actually answered it's counselor Leonard again by the way sorry video Naso oh well how fun so I thank you for the description on the telemetrics technology because I the first thing that came to mind when I was reading that And that was, I don't know if it's still implemented, but the similar GPS system that the Marines used for their civilian vehicles, you went about 60 miles an hour, it was just an automatic Article 15. But also- [44:09] David Pilon: And I can set speed limits on my vehicles. Yeah. Oh, okay. [44:13] Joseph Leonard: And we had a large maintenance support vehicle that also, because of the amount, and you didn't touch upon this well you did a little bit as much sometimes civilians are not honest actors and one of the things that we had issues with in the military was people would get in front of these large vehicles and if you didn't break in time you would rerun them and then obviously we would have to pop up the money on that forced them to have air brake technology so as soon as you took your foot off the pedal it just automatically started to break and i mean i had an initial question regarding like what happens after the annual subscription for the for the three years what that cost was but i 'm not even really that concerned about as much because the cost savings on this is i mean you just really spelled it out for me. So I don't really have any direct questions, but I just appreciated the information you gave us before, but also the clarifications. [45:28] David Pilon: A couple of things with the contract is there's a clause in there. If I do not receive money from finance, then we're null and void. We just do what we do. All the equipment they're gonna send me and that I have in my possession already is at zero cost. So at the end of our three years, if we determine, well, we're not saving any money, this isn't effective. That we just stop and figure out something else to do. So this is 75 000 a year and like I said a few utility poles or light poles and fire hydrants is going to cover let alone vehicle accidents and that type of thing that's going on or damage to our own equipment. So I think we're pretty low risk you know once we invest in it. [46:14] Daniel Carson: Two comments. I also appreciate the explanation on the cameras. I can certainly understand why the union would probably have had some initial apprehension seen in other industries where you know qps drivers they blink along the door they go. So I really appreciate that. And the second one is I'm really looking forward to the when you reorganize and reclassify. I'm thinking of our parking ban policy but to be able knowing that information is coming to be able to sort of think through that in a more predictable way for residents to match the work that you're doing [46:54] David Pilon: there. So I just had a meeting two weeks ago about our parking ban policy and we're working to reconfigure the city and zones and then enact parking bans by Zone by day. So there's a lot of thought going into making sure that there's enough parking spots for everybody you know his main effort when the storm comes we clean the roads and then when we got to come back and we got to clean up whatever it is a million cubic tons of snow is where we really need the vehicles out of our way. And so we'll start looking at that in zones and so zone one is going to go into a parking ban everything's out of the way we'll clean it in a day maybe two and then zone 2, zone 3, zone 4. We'll kind of figure that out. So that's all in the process right now also. [47:45] Carolyn Fish: Thank you. Okay, so you say that we'll save money when you install that technology. How is that savings reflected? So when there's an accident, I assume that at least some of but it's covered by insurance so would the savings be reflected in savings on our insurance primarily [48:13] David Pilon: it'll be on insurance it'll be on operating budget it'll be on a lot of a lot of insurance when we hit a light pole or a utility pole and whether we affect somebody else outside the city that should be in our operating budget sometimes we'll self-repair that three thousand dollar poll and not claim insurance on it so now we're not so the obviously we're going to hit the poll right the main expectation is we do some behavior modifications and my operators aren't on their phone hitting polls basically so or they're not looking down at their lunchbox looking for a snack paying attention to the road the cameras will tell them to pay attention to the road the cameras will tell them to slow down that type of thing whatever kind of AI mentoring we want to do in the cab or coaching as they call it so and again towards that behavior modification every one of those that gets logged i get a report every day so i can see how many people did rolling stops how many times you did a rolling stop during the day and it's going to generate a conversation and work towards that behavior modification so the cost savings is going to be hopefully reducing the amount of incidents that we're held liable for and reducing [49:25] Speaker C (unidentified): the amount of money we spend on those different items so and so would then i mean obviously [49:32] Carolyn Fish: you can't predict exactly how much the savings is going to be because you can't predict accidents that's why they're called accidents but so would those savings result in a reduction in future [49:44] Susan Deane: years in that operating budget i mean ideally if our insurance rates go down that will 100 % be reflected in a reduction to that line in the budget. [49:56] David Pilon: The city line, right? [49:58] Susan Deane: The city line, yeah. I think the harder thing is, you know, or I guess maybe the harder thing to quantify will be the efficiency gains in time and productivity, right? Because those employees don't go away, they just get to other work more quickly because they're doing their jobs more efficiently. [50:18] David Pilon: I think we'll have good feedback after this next winter storm and what kind of results we're going to get out of it. I don't, I can't even tell you off top my head. We've had a hundred incidents since I took over. I haven't been there five months, so we have them on daily basis, whether it's dry or whether it's in the snow. They're running into people's fences, we're sweeping sidewalks, and I don't know how many fences we back into, or they're articulating the machine and it catches the back of that fence, and so some of them want an insurance claim, some of us, some of them we always offer to repair because we can go to Home Depot, buy the stuff and make the repair. So that's still across from the city. I have to divert two guys to go to Home Depot to pick up materials and spend the time doing that job where they could be out doing something else for the city, let alone the cost of the materials, and then if they're not happy with that, they'll do an insurance claim. One [51:10] Carolyn Fish: more comment like I, you know, the reason I'm asking this stuff is, you know, when people ask us about, you know, their taxes and, you know, all these things in the budget and we say, oh, this, you know, not specifically this, but other things too, like this is going to result in cost savings. I assume that's all going to be tracked so we can say, here's exactly what we saw in cost savings and, you know, be transparent, because I hate to say something's going to result in cost savings, but then it's never reflected, you know, and then people get frustrated because taxes keep going up, so then they're like, where are those [51:47] David Pilon: cost savings? And we will be able to provide that to you. Again, I've been working with Andy. He's working with MM to pull MMA to pull that data on what we've spent just this year, and I asked him if you could pull the previous two years on what public works costed to operate in accidents and incidents, and then I can pull data from fleet on what they consider damaged equipment, operator caused damage on equipment, that type of thing. So we'll be able to quantify it with some numbers for sure. And then base it against how many accidents we've had this year to once I install that, we should see that chart just bottom out. Again, we are in a dangerous business. We do dangerous stuff, so we will have some. But I don't want to have another accident at an intersection ever. I don't want to make a left turn downtown and run into a building 200 feet off the road and not know why it happened. And so these are some of the issues that we are trying to go to, and that one hasn't even been settled yet. That's going to be expensive, I believe. So I have a question regarding the [52:58] Susan Deane: insurance company and perhaps the cost savings. What is being reported to the insurance company, just things that you're putting claims in for, or will all the driving infractions go to the insurance company like it would if you had a camera in your car? Are they going to know if someone's speeding or running a light, or do they only know the claims that you're saying? None of [53:20] David Pilon: this will go to the insurance company. It's not, it's not really their business. The speeding and the rolling stops, that's for me and my crew to counsel these guys. And the nature of the business, I turned off the notifications on rolling stock because I got so many a day. It's just the nature of our business. We're doing long line and we're cleaning curves, we're doing whatever. We pull up, we hop out, we hop back in, and we keep going. So rolling stops isn't really a thing. We don't have any accidents involved with rolling stops. So if we get to that point, obviously we'll have to modify that behavior. Speeding, it's hard to tell, you know, if we're pushing snow on a truck, are we speeding or we're not speeding? You know what amount of effort is required for that truck to push that tonnage in front of it. So that's really not a big thing. So as it stands right now, I think if you're going over 75 miles an hour, it's going to report it to me, because nowhere in our area of operations should you be going that fast. Now we can hop on the highway and be doing 70, but most of our equipment should be doing 70. So as it stands right now, the intent is not to share that data, this stuff, with the public and or the insurance company. Yeah, and so I think the [54:31] Susan Deane: impact on the amount of insurance we pay will relate more to the reduction in the number of accidents, as opposed to, you know, you and you know, insurance companies allow you to turn on a tool on your phone to track your speed and reduce your rate by one percent. It's not that sort of program. It's more of the reduction of accidents. Good. [54:52] David Pilon: Moving on to traffic modernization. Yeah, so Main DOT uses mild vision. My vision is, let us observe, excuse me, our intersections with real-time footage. I have an image up on the screen right here right now. This will be another screen that will go into my op center. This is a live view of the condition of the stoplights across the city right now where we have mild vision cameras input. Put the cameras that I'm asking for on this will go into our four doors into our high activity roads, whether it's Stillwater or it's it's Hogan or any of the really Main Street which whatever ones are busy along these corridors they'll go in. We it will help us to first of all we get a lot of calls at night where somebody complains that our stoplight is not changing. So once we get that phone call my dispatch driver has to jump in his vehicle drive out wherever the city that light is and look at the condition of that light see if there's an issue with it and then call my electrician my signal master to come in and handle that with this signal master can look from home and get notifications and they'll be able to just look up on the wall if somebody's calling and making a complaint at 395 and odlin road the light's not working we can see that it is right here still might cause us to go out and take a look at the condition but it'll help us with that i know backs is working towards prioritization feature in where emergency services are gonna be able to approach the light and it'll change for them so they'll never have to stop at a red light. We tested one for our plowing activity this past winter pretty slick device. So I'm hoping we'll be able to piggyback on that so that my large plow trucks with wing blades down don't have to come to a stop at a red light. Well, there's traffic in the intersection. They just will continue through so as they approach at whatever the sequence is 100 feet it acknowledges them and then by the time they get there. It's a green light. They just keep moving. So I know the fire department's interested in it and I know that the paramedics are interested in it. Not sure the police just turn on their sirens and go so and yeah so but what this will help my signal master to be able to control the lights across the city help with the timing where Main DOT is having issues with their big plan that they did they can't get their timing right to control these corridors so I don't know if you guys have any issues where You pull up the light, you sit there forever, and you think it should be turning. Well, this will help us to be able to figure out the traffic flow through there, what the proper timing should be. And then for the laptop, Chris will be able to modify the timing on those sectors, those cars, as we go through this. Here we go, I'm asking quite a bit of money here. It's 297 a thousand dollars for 32 cameras. They're expensive to put in, but we will self-install them. I think I bought two since I've been there and Chris goes out, puts them in. There's all kinds of stuff in there because basically the state owns everything, right? So they own the signals, they own the stuff, but we maintain it all. So and so Chris to be able to go and put this in, and the state's putting them in some areas, and we're going to put some in. And so ultimately we're going to have a good visibility of what's going on across the city, what's happening, being able to control these [58:49] Speaker C (unidentified): lights at these different intersections and just make sure that we don't cause panic. These don't [58:57] David Pilon: store images. No, and that was the response I sent to the individual today that asked. We don't store images, it has no facial recognition, it does not read your license plate number. So if it does store, it stores it for a very short period while it analyzes the timing of the lights, but it has nothing to do with facial recognition, license plate recognition, or any of that kind of stuff. So I sent a pretty detailed message out. I should have added it down here tonight, what it does and what it doesn't do and so it doesn't do any of that. You know, we get forward and people are curious, we can put a notification up on the city web page two and say this is what we're doing, and again I put that data right in there, so what it does and what it doesn't do. So but they will start to see them pop up, and so people are curious why there's a camera hanging there. Looks like a candy cane except it's gray in color. You've seen any above the intersections, it's [59:55] Joseph Leonard: just a quick question. Oh, I'm sorry, did you have a question? I did, I mean you can go ahead and ask that, it's just a really quick one. You said this, the state is, or maybe I'm putting words in your mouth. Did you say that the state is making a push for more of these cameras across? [1:00:14] David Pilon: They're using them and putting them in where they're establishing their, they own every signal in the state. So we maintain them for the state basically, and they give us a stipend money to help us to do the PM maintenance on it. But yes, in some intersections, outside of the city of Bangor, they are putting them in across the state also. It is their favorite device to put in, I should say. So they do provide potential stipends. Is that universal or is not well for in the state of Maine it is. So I think they'll give us $1,200 per intersection. So it's a little over $100,000 faxes, partly controlling that and we're in partnership with the smaller towns around here. So we have 68 signal intersections somewhere in that number while brewer has five you know or another community has two so we get the largest say and how that sorry go ahead just saying we get the largest say on how that stuff is controlled and processes so and a final [1:01:21] Joseph Leonard: question and i probably know the answer to this has the state been working alongside municipalities to provide funds to invest in more of these cameras or is it [1:01:34] David Pilon: pretty much every municipality for themselves municipalities are for themselves so on what I know they could there could be some stuff going on that I'm unaware of so my question's pretty [1:01:47] Carolyn Fish: quick we get a lot of people who are well I mean maybe not a lot but we get people concerned about these flock cameras and I know these are different but do you think people are confusing these for the flock cameras and that's why we're kind of seeing an uptick in concerns [1:02:05] Susan Deane: about those I used to I recall at least one communication that Council received with an inquiry and I believe at least three of the five or six that they identified were actually these mild vision traffic cameras that don't capture or store any images and then I think a couple of the other ones on those were actually privately owned businesses not municipal owned yeah and the flock [1:02:31] David Pilon: cameras are private cameras that somebody sneaks up on the poll anyways to put on their page and yes i responded i don't know if it was somebody about those i went down talked to my signal master and he explained the whole thing and i provided it back up so yes and we can again when we push the information out to the city we say these aren't flock cameras we're not we're not doing any of this type of transformation because like again they will notice them they will start seeing them so yeah really nice pictures so it [1:03:00] Speaker C (unidentified): looks like candy cane yeah but campaign got a [1:03:03] David Pilon: little hood on it not very big but you'll see them up there so on to the next one going on to the next one is facility modernization so the new equipment garage and sand shed this is a request to design and engineer and what we have currently is our sand shed wasn't condemned but it's close to being condemned the structure is failing and we are going to need to replace it so what we need to replace it with is the question why I would like to get somebody to come in and design and engineer what we really need and what the costs on that would be and then for the facility if you've been to Public Works in my backyard I have two liens where we park our big trucks in which they get about a quarter of that vehicle the nose of it into that lane they become inadequate they don't properly protect the equipment they're old and getting run down and basically not large enough what we're looking for so I've already made contact with one of the engineers years and there's another public work department that just built one about 5,000 square foot facility about what I'd be looking for at five bays in it I'd be able to park three of my big plow trucks in there and then and then have some overhead hoist to build this help move those wing blades which are very heavy it takes a lot of effort to hook up and disconnect those type of things there'd be a condition building so we can get them out of the weather we'd have some type of heat in there whether it was from the floor or from the top and additional bays in there whether one was turned into a wash bay or we could watch our own equipment that might become quickly unnecessary as buses upgrading fleet and buses upgrading our wash facility over there now with a drive-through facility another one would be for a short maintenance activity over there where we could self-repair our mirrors or put on a cutting blade and not take it over and interfere with what fleets got going on over there or we take it over for a mirror and it has to sit there for one day to a week in order to put that mirror on because they've got buses in there the equipment's not movable and that type of stuff so I'm not looking to do any kind of a full maintenance activity over there not looking for lifting devices. I'm not looking to hire a mechanic into my facility. This would be just a place for us to be able to maintain tools and some of this bench stock we would need to be able to do this. When I talked to the engineering, they thought that this might cost $7.5 million for what I'm looking for. With that, I was provided an opportunity to put in for congressional spending so I put in a half for that for 7.5 million dollars don't know if it'll fly or not there wasn't a lot of like items in those requests that I was able to figure out but at least if we could get this designed engineered and designed we would have it whether we spend the money next year or in the near future where it will become necessary I think at some point my facility is very old and aging and I know it's winter equipment we operate in the snow but doesn't mean we have to leave it in leave it out in the weather 365 today is just as bad on that equipment as a snow day was so that's [1:06:50] Joseph Leonard: not we get that grant yeah well I won't be back out some more [1:06:55] David Pilon: more money then so some of the things with this is develop an accurate and detailed project scope produce a cost reliable construction estimate address environmental site permitting requirements ensure the project is shovel ready for future construction funding and reduce long-term operational costs and extend the life of our critical at critical assets we're going to get into that next on my budget lifecycle of our equipment. What this will do is extend the lead the fleet lifespan, cut long term maintenance costs by preventing weather deterioration increases service uptime during storms and reduce staff time spent working in undersized and efficient utility facilities. constituents is more reliable winter storm response, less taxpayer money spent on avoidable repairs safe working environment for public work staff and long-term sustainability for core city services and then fleet modernization this is where we're going to go in and this is on a five-year cycle I believe that's how it works so we just life cycle out our equipment whether it's one year two year three year five year we have some equipment that's 20 years old that goes into a life cycle plan we Are heavy use and heavy wear on our equipment for the nature of our business. So some of the things we're asking for this year going at the next one is equipment trailer just a life cycle request. The biggest thing is going to eliminate us having to rent trailers to move our equipment from job site to job site. Once I become fully staffed, we're going to be on a lot more job sites and be able to tackle more business. Faster response to some of those work orders, more efficient use of my staff time. The leave back is $90,000. It's a life cycle item again. We have two and one of them is due to be cycled out. We'll reduce labor hours, relieve cleanup, lowers storm drain blockage and related flooding risks. And like I said, it's one of the big things we've been doing for the last month is going around and cleaning out the storm drains. What it'll do for the constituents is they'll have cleaner streets during fall leaf season and fewer flooded yards as we're able to maintain these at a better rate. The next one on my list is the compressor. As I was looking at this today, that's a double, you can just scratch that one off. We'll talk about it again in a minute. A vibrator roller is looking for sixty thousand dollars. This will improve pavement compaction quality and extend our patch and paving life and helps reduce premature failures that require costs of new work. Benefits to the constituents fewer potholes longer lasting utility cuts and small paving jobs. What I mean by that is any water work or electrical utilities we pave a road they could come behind us and they could cut it open and so now we're putting a patch in and we got to make sure that the patch is that grade and level and done properly so it doesn't turn into potholes again. At the life cycle piece the pavement striping machine at fifteen thousand return on investment is reduced outsourced striping costs enables in-house touch-ups without contractor mobilization and constituent benefits as crisper lines and crosswalks throughout the season and safer school zones and pedestrian routes and that's part of the pavement marking that we're having to go out to which we will always have to go out to that because we don't have the equipment or the crew to tend to those 8,000 markings across the city. What we do have is ability. Instead of having the contractor redeploy from wherever they're coming from because we paved a quarter mile of a road, we need to restripe it. We'll be able to put that striping down ourselves. Or we have a crosswalk that fades on a regular basis for whatever reason, environmental or high usage. We can go out and attend to that ourselves. We do have a striping machine now, very old and not very effective, so a new machine will put us a long ways. That so snow blower is just a life cycle. Faster snow removal on sidewalks, downtown corridors reduces overtime and mechanical strain on aging units. Benefits improves winter road safety by clearing heavy snow more quickly, reducing crash risk for residents and visitors. Enhances the city's ability to handle increasingly frequent high volume snowfall events. We didn't have a lot of high volume ones this year, but we had a lot of ice and had a lot of events back to back at an edge or two inches or three inches. That'll just help us to improve our efficiency while we're doing downtown areas, cul-de-sacs, parking lots and narrow streets. We have a lot of difficulty in those areas. That's big basin vacuum is just a bigger version of our leaf vac. The one we're looking to replace is our frame is rotted out and I don't know if it's going to be repaired. That's a 300 a thousand dollar ask and again it prevents expensive storm water system failures, reduces emergency call outs caused by blockages, improves compliance with environmental regulations. Benefits again fewer flooded basements and intersections sections, cleaner waterways and reduce pollution and more reliable storm water drainage citywide. Sweeper 285,000. So right now where we're at is our one of our sweepers is really old. 287 is out of service right now and it's going to cost $10,000 just for the rear motor. That's just the parts. That's not the labor and the time that's going to be required to put that back together. These are very difficult to get. So if you prove this today and I ordered today, we probably wouldn't get this for a year. So for the street sweeper they have a long lead time to get this piece of equipment in, but that's where we're at with that. These because of the nature of the work that we do, they do wear out quickly and so one it's on a constant rotation and being they 've been needing to be replaced. And you could say a previously replaced machine is a 2009 at its end of its lifespan. Helps reduce wear on stormwater infrastructure by removing grit and sand, reduces the volume material, entering the cat basin. I don't know if you've been out to our lot where we dump these, but it's a mountain of material that we collect in these street sweepers. Continually, throughout the day, they go and they have to go dump them, come back, fill water, and then continue on. So we do pick up a lot of debris. Benefits to the constituents, obviously cleaner neighborhoods, less airborne dust, and more attractive business districts and public faces once all that material is up and gone. No pusher blades, 15,000. Again, this is a life cycle item. Increases our plowing efficiency per operator. Reduces fuel usage. Benefits faster road and parking lot cleaning, shorter storm recover recovery time for businesses and residents. Sidewalk plows, it's at 255,000. It's a very expensive piece of equipment that you see on the sidewalks with downtown. That's also used as a sweeper in the summertime. They're out cleaning our sidewalks now, sweeping sidewalks. So the high use piece, again, it's a life cycle. I think we have five in service right now, and so it's just, it's a continual life cycle. By next year we'll need another one to life cycle out one of the other ones. That's [1:15:26] Susan Deane: pretty much a yearly. Yeah. [1:15:31] David Pilon: Replaces high maintenance older units with requiring fewer repairs, increases winter out completion speed, and extends operate a operational lifespan of sidewalk network. Benefits a safer pedestrian access to schools, bus stops, for businesses, and more predictable and timely sidewalk clearing. I think through our winter season we might add three of them in fleet for whatever issue they had on them, so they do break quite often. Next item is a hydro seater. This is a new item that I'm requesting. What this is going to do for us is reduce our workload by about a half on what it takes, and also reduce our return visits to areas. So we do a lot of plow damage, whether it's public property or resident property, and we've spent the last two weeks going back out repairing this. Whether we're bringing in dirt, we're smoothing it out, we're putting grass seed down, and then we have a hay chopper, straw chopper, and we're chopping hay, and we're putting it down. Part of that is today, and this last weekend it was Really windy, so any of that we put down just blows away, and then we have to go back down and do it again. Amount of effort we have to put into takes more people to do it, takes more equipment to do it in the fashion that we're doing it in, and return visits to the site. If we're able to get a hydroceder, whether it's a trailer mounted unit or the unit itself is the trailer, if you're not familiar with a hydroceder, you put your seed mix in, and then they have a product called Attack. It's what you see when you see people spraying grass and the green stuff that's the tack piece of it 's going to adhere the seed to the ground so wherever we go and do these which we can do on the roll the one we used at Fort McCoy had like a fireman's nozzle on it and we can just keep rolling and do whatever we need to do and so it is put the material down and forget so then we just hope for rain after that right so the material will remain the grass will grow it'll come in nice and full and we won't have to go back and retouch those areas. And again, it's just the nature of our business. We're always going to have some plow damage. I do it at home in my own yard, depending on whether my yard's frozen or not, right, how much damage I do to the yard, yes. [1:17:56] Carolyn Fish: Is that material that you use for that environmentally [1:18:01] David Pilon: environmentally friendly yes the if I can't quote everything on it but it's used everywhere it's used in the city now by contractors it's used everywhere so it's the same seed product I can recall about my head what the tech product is but it's gonna go into the ground and biodegrade into the ground okay no pvs no I can get some from the airport if you want we [1:18:29] Speaker C (unidentified): we had all that over there. So we're in the airport under the bus. [1:18:34] David Pilon: Oh, it was one of my main issues over there the whole time, trying to figure out the way to come take it away. [1:18:45] Carolyn Fish: Another question. The street sweeping and the sidewalk sweeping, like does that kind of take place? Obviously not year round, but like in the warmer months, like continuously, or do you just do like, you know, swipe across, you know, every neighborhood and call it good? Or is that like, we're doing [1:19:03] David Pilon: the spring clean up right now, and then as identified, if we need to readdress something, we will. Then I think somewhere midsummer towards fall we might go do it again. So I haven't evaluated all of my processes yet on how we're doing all that, but it's, it's on my agenda to evaluate that too. I'm actually in the process of developing an SOP right now for everything that public works does, and fleet will end up in there too, from when you get out of your car in the morning to you leave at night, and everything in between. There'll be a standard operating procedure for everything that [1:19:33] Susan Deane: we do there. So that would be a great thing for your sign, because I know people are confused. You put out a brush, have you picked up the dirt, is it time, what do we rank, we're always asking what's next, and we make the wrong choice a lot of the time. So I think that's a biggie. I think, I thought that we'd like to know. Yep. [1:19:57] David Pilon: Loader backhoe again, it's just a life cycle piece of equipment. The turn on investment is core multi-use piece of equipment, reduces reliance on rentals, supports excavation, storm cleanup, forestry tasks, and snow removal, and extends productivity by providing reliable year-round services. Benefits the constituents is faster pothole, sewer, and water line repairs, more efficient storm response. So it's just an all-around piece of equipment that we can use for multiple different tasks that we have all right going back to the compressor, the proper one here. So this is to replace one that's close to inoperable, and so it's a trailer compressor that we pull around. We use it while we're prepping roads for paving, we use it when we're cleaning out storm drains, we use it for a million different things. The one we have right now, it works, but it's 20 plus years old, and it's definitely at the end of its life cycle. It's not efficient for us to use. Upgrading this, some of the returns on the investment will be faster restoration of utilities, sidewalks, and road cuts, reduced overtime associated with delays, and improved efficiency of limited staff resources. This will be used, like this says, across multiple divisions. It can be shared, streets and sidewalks, utility repair, parks and rec. So it's not something that we're going to pigeonhole, it can be used for other projects that are going on too. Benefits to the constituents, obviously faster street, sidewalk repairs, residents will experience fewer prolonged Disruptions around road cuts, water and sewer excavations, sidewalk hazard removals, quick repairs means less time with lane closures, detours, noise and dust impacts, and will quickly clear frozen catch basins, break compacted debris, and respond faster during weather events. With this piece of equipment, it's a highly used piece of equipment. Again, I think they've been trying to obtain this for a few years, and we're back out of here again. A couple more for Public Works, and I just only have a couple for fleet. We're going into forestry ground equipment. This is a new request for Ben. This is for a compact forestry tractor. They do have a full size tractor, but it doesn't fit everywhere that they operate, which makes it difficult for them to perform all the tasks that they need to do, whether it's in the forest, on the walk trails, or wherever they're at operating. And what happens then is where forestry is then in competition with the rest of my crew for these pieces of equipment that are needed, whether we're out prepping for road paving or we're doing repairs and that type of thing, so we only have so much equipment to go around. By providing him this tractor will eliminate the need to rent or outsource forestry equipment, improve staff efficiency for high volume forestry tasks, and extend the life of the existing forestry fleet. Benefits to the constituents is better maintained parks, trails, and city forests, faster storm debris cleanup, and improved appearance and safety for public green spaces. With that, he's also looking for a 15-foot flex wing mower. In that time contractor right now, some of the places that we mow in 60 plus acres that they mow with a 60 inch mower deck, so for forestry to go out there and near one of the parks, I don't know the name of everything, it's a reclaimed landfill that we mow right off the side of a park there. This is weeks of operations for them to mow this stuff, and it's not like we're in a continuous mowing pattern, it's even once a year. I think it's two to four weeks to mow this. We'll be able to do it in a couple days with a flex wing mower. We'll be able to move to it, put the wing mower out and knock this stuff out quickly, and then they can go back to dealing with the emerald ash borer or the red scale bug or whatever else they're doing. So they're very busy in forestry for sure. Again, some of the returns on investment, reduced mowing time, cuts fuel maintenance and labor over time, extends the life of current equipment, benefits to the constituents, obviously cleaner, safer, regular, maintained, open fields, improved use of parks and recreation area, and better aesthetics quality across the city. Looks like another one snuck in on the end there. So we're looking to replace decorative lights. I got a couple different classes here of lights of two different ones in there. A lot of it have to do with the area that they're in and the style that they're there. So I think collectively that's 140 000 worth of light fixtures we're looking to put in. The reasoning for the lights is they're about at their 10-year lifespan right now, and so we can wait and as they fail we can replace them one at a time. Again the effort and cost should be higher then if we will again like a city-wide refresh and replace these lights with a brand new led. We'll get a better down light, we'll have better light for the residents as they're traveling on the sidewalks and in the darkness. It'll prevent costly repairs, they'll reduce the energy and maintenance frequency and avoid liabilities incidents from any structural failures that might be possible with the age of these lights. And again benefits and constituencies, safer night travel, more attractive downtown and school zone corridors, and prevents dangerous pole collapses. He's already had one failed and of course we had a few of them true. These [1:26:15] Susan Deane: be similar to what's there. Yeah yes and Chris is [1:26:20] David Pilon: is trying to get everything to be the same across the city so we're not trying to service many different styles or types. [1:26:37] Carolyn Fish: Are you still down approximately, I think you said not that long ago maybe a few months ago that you were down approximately 11. 11. [1:26:48] David Pilon: I think, well, and but just some good news, we made it extended an offer to an HEO1 today. We hired an HEO2 yesterday. We hired an arborist two yesterday, and we're sending an offer to a harborist one. So at the same time I've hired all those guys, I have released a few people, and I've had more people leave on their own accord, which part of the reason that generated my mentorship program to make sure that we're hiring in the right people and moving forward with the right people that we need so we can build a quality workforce that we're going to have some longevity [1:27:30] Carolyn Fish: with. I know you've only been in your position since December, so I don't know if you know how long it's been down, like significantly down, but, and that's okay. My question related to that is, I'm gonna scratch your throat here. Is that, so the money that was budgeted for those positions, is it kind of just sitting there? [1:28:03] Susan Deane: Does that get reallocated? [1:28:04] Carolyn Fish: And I guess that was sort of, maybe that's a question for you. [1:28:06] Susan Deane: Yeah, so when we had talked about our unassigned fund balances previously, I noted over 75% of the unassigned fund balance that we lapse every year is unspent salaries and benefits for vacant positions. So really it's kind of a cycle where though that money goes into the unassigned fund and then we all collectively make decisions about what we want to do with that it's [Speaker C (unidentified): not small] and you know I think we'll have we'll have conversations about whether we're generating too much unassigned fund balance when we talk about whether we want to use any of that unassigned fund balance this year to reduce the tax rate so we have about I think 2.8 million that in my opinion we could prudently use but I think it's worth a conversation about what the right amount of cushion is in any given year and probably keeping that number go [1:29:30] David Pilon: ahead okay we're gonna jump over to fleet he's got three requests this year and you should go pretty quick it's a gas and diesel dispenser as you know we provide the fuel for the city fleet at one central place down there currently we're using some antiquated analog systems and we're going to upgrade and put in digital systems and this is something that's been in the work long before my time he's looking for fifty thousand dollars this will reduce fuel loss building inaccuracies and Prevent unnecessary spending and by and protecting tax dollars, lower maintenance and repair costs by replacing failing equipment that currently requires frequent service calls, and extend the lifespan of the fueling infrastructure, delaying large-scale capital costs, and stabilize stabilizing large-term budget planning. Benefits of the constituent obviously more reliable and faster emergency response, keep fuel into vehicles, improve the environmental and public safety through modern leak protection and spill mitigation in that area. More efficient daily operations. Don't know if you've been to our fuel point over there, but it's pretty active from sunup to sundown. A lot of vehicles move there, they move a lot of fuel from that one site in there with two very old pumps. The next request is this one. Yes, the rental, thank you. Rental van replacement, that's a life cycle issue. You again return on investment is dedicated maintained fleet vehicle reduces downtime. City owned van can be maintained on schedule and supports municipal sustainability goals and reduces operational costs at the end of its usual life useful life cycle sasset and will retain its resale and fade in value which is even our equipment as we life cycle ours it goes into an auction somewhere and that money is returned to the City of Bangor at a substantially reduced rate but we'll get something back from it. Benefits the constituent of owning the van eliminates rental fees and creates a stable and long-term asset. We talked about diesel pumps and then the last one for him is maintenance management program upgrade. So right now he uses a system called Dossier and he's looking to upgrade that system to what's called Dossier. It will it is basically a fleet management system where you can schedule in the preventive maintenance and inventory your fleet and the techs will be able to use it to sign the punch in and punch out throughout the day. You can manage your parts system through it. It's not my favorite system but so I'm hoping that the upgrade to the dossier 7 will help improve it so I'm getting to my last request here and we'll talk a little bit about why we need some improvement over there what this will do for police. The return on investment is reduce unplanned repair costs by using updated asset data, optimize lifecycle planning, and improve productivity in the shop. Benefits to the constituent is more reliable infrastructure and public service services because maintenance is better planned and executed, and quicker response to resident concerns. This crew have current data to diagnose and address issues faster. And so in winter ops, if I get four or five pieces of equipment down that we're utilizing to clear snow and ice has an impact all the way across the city right so we end up moving less snow and clearing these roads in a less productive manner with that my last request is a program change add two mechanics to fleet services fleet maintenance roles with the intent of them concentrating on Public Works equipment as their primary function over there they would fall under they would be in the fleet union they would fall under the ownership and leadership of fleet over there but their main focus would be on my 100 pieces of equipment ish and to develop a maintenance service plan for those to do pre-inspections to do i will assist them and figure out a plan on how to get my equipment up to standard at 10 20 in the military so it's fully mission capable and ready to go at all times what's happening right now is it's kind of a little reactive and not proactive and so we need to fix fleet to get it more on a proactive basis discussions this week with the director and the foreman over there and talking about trying to develop a plan i'm hoping this dossier 7 will take us a long ways forward into getting that done and looking at the equipment set of that 700 ish pieces of equipment categorizing it figuring out how many hours per pieces of equipment it takes to do preventive maintenance on it and then scheduling it you know throughout the year so this many pieces on in January February March April May June and so then that equipment will start rolling in on an annual basis semi-annual basis whatever is the requirement for that piece of equipment and yes we have to build in for the unexpected stuff break a lot of equipment so that has to be figured into the schedule too and you got to figure right now he is working with five mechanics over there he's had some turnover over there too the last two he lost we just had a discussion today was 72 hours or 72 years worth of knowledge that walked out the door for various reasons that they leave over there same various reasons they leave public works i [1:35:52] Susan Deane: Think I would know all of the other department heads aren't here to note for you. I think timeliness of vehicle repair and preventative maintenance is sort of a citywide issue with all of the departments. I think for example, if Courtney were here talking to you about the bus, she would talk about how the issue of buses being down can really impact their operations. I suspect that Chief Hathaway would nod his head about the impact that down PD vehicles has on their operations. So certainly having to focusing on public works [1:36:28] Speaker C (unidentified): will free up resources to better serve other departments. [1:36:32] David Pilon: Absolutely. Once this goes into effect, and once they get my equipment set up and ready to go, then they can spread their time out across the other departments. But this is just the start of a plan that I'm thinking of for fleet over there. And you got to think that bus probably takes one third of their time. Public Works takes one third of their time and the rest of the city's equipment takes one third of their time. So nothing to get with how much stuff the police bring over there. But they got some fire stuff they do. They got the rest of the admin fleet. they got the rest of the departments of the equipment that has to pass through there and be attained attended to so i think by the chop small that's a big pushback from the director over there is that they really don't have a lot of room over there even though they just hired a guy he's pending start and so they're only going to be down one and they're going to kind of run out of room over there and a lot of the running out of room is any day you walk in there 's two or three buses in that garage and those buses are 40 foot long and they take an entire bay. If that bus goes into an inoperable mode they either got a towed out or there it sits and then if you walk in there it's buses it's us PD's and they're being serviced and then the other random equipment that gets in there. So it's a big effort in there. I think fleet services could probably double their staff and still be behind over there. So I think that's where they're at right now and it's no fault on though on them. It's the turnover and it's just it's just an ongoing issue so [1:38:15] Joseph Leonard: I just want to say just a comparison statement. My last three years in the Army was with an automotive maintenance repair company. You don't have to convince me at all about mechanics being added to staff. It's with the amount of equipment that we have. It's not even for me about the cost, it's about getting that equipment turned out immediately. I've seen too many pieces of equipment that will get repaired and then an hour out of out into the field it's back in the shop immediately. So it's you can't even predict even when a piece of equipment is repaired that it's actually going to be ready to go as soon as it goes out there. Not through no fall of a mechanic, it's a lot of times piece of equipment don't get the full diagnosis that they need and that usually has to do with the not enough labor time, not enough analyzing it like what went wrong with the equipment or the inspection of it. So yeah, more hands on deck it can only convince me anymore. I appreciate that and I think we can [1:39:26] David Pilon: do good things over there if we can get the right set of mechanics in there. We just opened up their CBA negotiations today, so hoping good things are on the horizon for them as we move forward, get the pay scale correctly, get the right set of people in there, and stop the bleed of those guys that are leaving before pay. So and then keep some of that knowledge that we need in there, and part of that is when we come back to you guys to get our terms for the negotiation I've got some stuff in there about the amount of stuff we do. We're we're an anomaly here with the number and of makes and models and types of equipment that those guys service. So you go to a car dealership, they're working on trucks and cars, we're working on 20 different sets of equipment over there. So it's a lot of knowledge that takes a lot of years to gain that knowledge. So [1:40:30] Susan Deane: what do you mean the cost of adding two mechanics? I [1:40:35] Speaker C (unidentified): believe it was just over a hundred thousand for salary and benefits. There's a swing, there's [1:40:44] David Pilon: it was a I would bring them in at a mid-level because I'll be looking for more than just a tech one. I'm gonna be looking for somebody that's gonna come in to be able to develop that preventive maintenance plan and be able to take the lead on the equipment and work with me and my crew over there as well as work for Mike and his crew over there. So we thought we were bringing out [1:41:20] Susan Deane: I think in retrospect he's had a tough path because he probably had to start his budget within the first couple of weeks of taking on the role, and so not surprisingly I've been [1:41:36] David Pilon: preparing, you've been seeing things. Yes, and seeing things. Oh wait, you think this was a [1:41:41] Speaker C (unidentified): big budget? Wait for next year. We gotta appreciate his honesty. Yes, this is very comprehensive, very [1:41:49] Joseph Leonard: Yes, you did a great job. I did have a few closing questions and remarks. Just going back to plowing and paving related to the climate overall, the planning board just received about the changing in the climate that's happening in England right now. Are you seeing an increase, and I know it's just one year that you've been here, so it's okay if you don't have enough data for this. Are you seeing more from your drivers, like icy, sleety material that you're plowing? And how, and if so, like how does that affect the overall plowing, like in terms like changes, like does it make it more difficult, easier? Well, I've been in made [1:42:47] David Pilon: for two winters now. I was at the airport for the first one, so I wasn't out plowing roads, but this year was definitely an icy year, so it was back to back to back ice, and ice is very difficult to plow, and it's much harder on the equipment because we're applying more downforce, so we're scrubbing up all the paint markings that we like to put down, and we're affecting the pavement that's underneath us, and we're affecting the equipment, so I would say that this year was a very icy year [1:43:17] Joseph Leonard: and in regards to paving, because of the, usually when we're having icier years, that usually means there's more thawing, basically how much damage can happen from a winter year that consistently thaws back and forth as opposed to just staying cold. [1:43:38] David Pilon: It depends on what level that we, and I'm not familiar with everything that's been done to our road system yet. So if we shim the road, which means we're putting an inch of blacktop down and leveling the road up, you know, that thaw and freeze, thaw and freeze can have a high impact on it. If we're milling and paving it and we're putting a good substructure on there, it's going to obviously last a little longer. That's reflected in the years and why the longevity of those different types of applications are there, but and then it has a lot to do with the quality of the work, if it's sealed properly, if the sides are done properly to prevent that water from mitigating, getting underneath the surface. Anytime the water is going to get underneath that surface and it's going to freeze and thaw, it's going to affect, you're going to get all those potholes, basically anywhere you see a pothole, something frozen, thought, yeah, and just a [1:44:28] Joseph Leonard: Final comment. The reason why I ask those questions is I don't think it matters what year any counselor serves on the City Council. Plowing and paving sidewalks and roads is like always the top three that citizens are most concerned about, and it's not going to change from the 90s. I don't think it's going to change in the 2050s when we get to that point. The reason why I brought Rob, that's a big jump that you'll be asking for next year. And so I very much appreciate you inviting us to any of us who can make the time to go to a paving that's being done, because I think it is gonna be important if we are gonna discuss that increase as a budget for a budgetary IM next year. I think it's gonna be important, not only educating all of us on what goes like technically into the paving process itself but also to produce any type of video education for the citizens themselves, just so they are aware of hey, we understand that this is a huge increase, but this is the reason why we are doing this, because we're only going to have the Bangor Mall for so long to compare ourselves to. I'm hoping we'll get a good day and we'll get [1:45:50] David Pilon: an area that's being paved, an area that's being chip sealed, maybe some concrete sidewalk work going on, and I'll bring a paving manager out there who can do a lot better explaining how we arrived at where we're at and what's going on and how the material is being put down, why it's being put down in that fashion. So I think it'll be good for you guys. I was told to find the vehicle without shocks when we take you guys around, just make sure you got a nice ride out there, but I'll see if I can find one with shocks. It's a comfortable ride and I can get a bus so we can sit on a bus and everybody can have a conversation about what's happening out there. So more to follow on that once we get a paving schedule locked in and we know where we're at and we've got a good example, we'll be able to do a couple opportunities in case you guys can't make it on the first one, give you a second opportunity to go out and take a look at it. [1:46:44] Joseph Leonard: Construction is very rare in the summer, obviously, yes. [1:46:51] Carolyn Fish: Well, thank you David, thank you guys. [1:46:56] Speaker C (unidentified): Wonderful, thank you, so [1:47:01] Susan Deane: we have King, Hathaway, Bengal, PD. [1:47:11] Police Chief: Good evening. How do you want to start with this? Is the budget or do you want to talk about the police department first? But the it's just a little rundown. Okay, so sure, your police department, when we're pulling staff, has 84 sworn police officers and 28 support staff. Support staff are dispatchers, BCAT that you're familiar with, maintenance, clerical. There's some unique qualities of your police department that's different than maybe many other departments. We're one of only three departments in the state and investigates all level of crime from a theft to a homicide. We have a state certified SWAT team. We have an FBI certified bomb team. We have a drone team, polygraph unit. We have one of only three computer forensic labs in the state. We provide services that are far beyond what you might consider for a community our size. We have people that specialize in a host of different tasks from specific training every year. For example, we engaged in active threat training during April school vacation week and we have people that specialize in that training module. They travel to New Mexico every other year to make sure that they're training us on present day challenges. We have a very robust training unit. We have a training, our training function spent a great deal of time at the police academy training there as well. We have an officer assigned to the police academy. We have an officer assigned to the housing authority, to the school department. We have two supervisors and an officer assigned to main drug enforcement. We have very close relationship with main drug enforcement. There are a lot of unique things about what we do. Our BCAT program is fairly unique. Our partnership with Acadia Hospital, Northern Lincoln Hospital and our mental health practitioners that ride regular full cars is a fairly unique program. In fact, there's no other program quite like it across the state. We're very fortunate to have that partnership. All volume roughly 105 calls a day. We do more calls every day than any four or five other departments in the county combined. Grand jury felonies, we indict more people every month and all the departments in the county combined. We are very busy. I know that sometimes you might get a call from somebody because we didn't see a car that was packed left with a curb or we missed a shopping cart and so forth, and I very much appreciate that. But I promise you our officers are moving from call to call. We're backed up five to six plus calls a day all day long. Our dispatchers Triage our calls for us, and we try to, obviously we're very quick to the emergency call, and some calls sit in queue for some time. There are a number of things we'd like to do to solve that. One thing is we recover, we answer roughly 2500 traffic crashes a year. Most of those are minor crashes, say Walmart, Hanniford, Target, or Kohl's. Many of those don't need a police officer. We're kicking the tires on the possibility of developing a civilian response team that could cover just traffic crashes that are minor, the ones in the roadway, the ones that are serious, the ones that have drivers that are maybe under the influence obviously need a police officer. But if you back into a car at Walmart, you don't really necessarily need a police officer. We're working through that process right now. I'll have something to present to you next year on that, if not mid-year, with the city manager's permission. I don't have a cost or an idea what that would be yet. I'm still, we're still working through that. I mentioned BCAM. We have four full-time responders, and I anticipate that next year at this time I'm probably gonna present the need for two more. I think we can be much more effective, active. If we have six, we can have better coverage. We'll talk in a moment about increasing our request of you to allow us to increase our downtown patrol. I think just increasing our presence with BCAT and with downtown patrol will help us. Staffing is a challenge. I think every you talk to, you just talk to the public works director, he's struggled with this. I think virtually every city department is struggling in some level with staffing issues. We're down seven patrol positions right now. In addition to that, we have two out on maternity leave. We have two on long-term military leave. That's 11. And we have one that is out with an injury for the summer. So we are going into the summer down 12 positions. That's a full crew. It is a bit of magic every day to fill our shifts. Our supervisors are doing absolute best they can to make sure we have a full crew on the street, and they have done a very good job. Sometimes we put our supervisors, we put them out on the street as well. But it has been a challenge, and I don't want to make excuses, and I don't want to, I always try to avoid using staffing as an excuse for anything. If there's an emergency, I promise you we'll be there in two minutes or less. That's our goal. If somebody calls and they're in crisis, we will be there. But some of the calls, sometimes they sit for a little bit longer than people like. If you get back into a Walmart, you could wait 45 minutes. I very much understand you're frustrated we get there, but we have spent an enormous amount of time dealing with a person with struggles with substance abuse, from mental health issues and homelessness, has become an overwhelming challenge for us that all we do all day, it's all we talk about, it consumed us, that has prevented us from being proactive. We don't run, we're not in our school zones like we want to be, we're not in the neighborhoods like we want to be, we spend an enormous amount of time in our parks and sidewalks and dealing with issues associated with our sheltered population i think you know it's a moment in time i'm certain that 's going to improve and when it does we'll get back into our neighborhoods back into our school zones five six years ago we had an officer in every school zone at the end of the day at the beginning of the day we're not able to do that right now we don't we're not running right now right now because we just don't have the ability to do that and we certainly want to get back to that. Is a primary goal of ours to get back into our neighborhoods. That's a staffing challenge and a challenge of call type. We spent, like a moment ago, we spent a lot of time with vagrancy, loitering, worn out. So I'll just give you a quick number, for no particular reason, I'll just use Brewers, since our neighboring community, the call type that we might associate with folks that we might deal with that are from the unsheltered population or had substance abuse issues or mental health complications, patients are vagrancy, persons wanted, out of property owner and business owner would want somebody to remove from their business, or welfare checks, when checking on somebody. So far this year Brew has done 291, we've done 2253. Our officers are moving from call to call. I talk to them in the hallway, I talk to them in the parking lot. Not a student that is attending a criminal justice program anywhere in the state that hopes to step on a needle or move a bucket of human waste when they get out of class. So that's what you do in Bengal, but you don't do that in other communities. And we are working very hard to retain our good employees, trying to keep people motivated and keep them moving in the same direction. I know there's a sense of frustration from your constituents, but I promise you, if they wrote a patrol car one of our officers, they have a different vantage point of what goes on. Do you feel you're losing your police officers for other cities because of this? No, I don't, because if you want to work for us, it's because you want to be busy. You want to investigate a homicide, you want to be a polygraph examiner or a drone operator or the SWAT team or the bomb team. That's the person we want. We're not for everybody and we know that, and the folks that don't want to work for us, probably it's best because it wouldn't be a good thing for us. The people we have, we want to retain. We really do have a very skilled group. You are fortunate to employ the level of talent that you have. And much like the public works director mentioned a moment ago about the fleet maintenance and losing that level of expertise in their mechanics unit, we have so much talent and we've spent so much money getting them to that point. We need to retain them, and that is the goal, trying to keep everybody motivated, to keep them, keep them going in the same direction. This is not a doom and gloom. I'm quite confident we have very good people, and I don't anticipate we're going to lose people because of this. I don't. The people that have left us recently left us for federal employment. We had a couple leaders for other departments because our call volume wasn't for them, and a couple people just left the job. So I don't, I don't anticipate we're losing people because of the challenges that we face right now, and we're in a moment of time, this is, this is, we'll move through this process, we will. So our operating budget is, we try to present you with another flat budget this year. You know, our budget is 92 percent people, another four percent of things that we don't control, like natural gas, fuel, vehicle rentals, we rent out all of our vehicles are owned by fleet maintenance, we went all over water, sewer, things of that nature in The balance of our budget that we do control, we've asked for a 1.8 increase, and that increase is really the cost of applications and online tools and so forth that we use, subscriptions and things of that nature. So we're not, we're going to try to keep our budget flat again this year and not ask for anything additional. We can, we made it work this year, and then pretty confident we'll be make it work next year in [1:57:00] Susan Deane: our I can move on from that. This is a question, so we have BJ and then [1:57:12] Carolyn Fish: of course we have Streets Plus, which I know is separate, but Portland recently started placing constables like down there, and I'm wondering if you know what the difference is, and would that be something that could potentially benefit a bank or... [1:57:33] Police Chief: So we presented that program three years ago, but it was sidestepped to bring Street Plus on. Okay. So we did present that program almost identical to what Poland is using right now, right down to hiring a retiree to manage the program. Yes, that program, we were hoping to manage that on our own through a comfortable program, yes. but I mean we certainly respect that the Street Plus was the which was a better option at that time, and that was the decision that the city, the city went in, maybe something to look at [1:58:03] Carolyn Fish: what can we do as a council as far as with ordinances? I mean then once we have the ordinances, you know you guys are kind of left with enforcing it, but with the homeless, you know, committee now, you know, we just put it together, it's new, but hopefully maybe with the service partners when they're the unhoused are sent here or they come and there's an inbox and they're coming from throughout Maine and across the country, you know this puts a lot, you guys are out on the streets, you're the ones that sort of have the first interaction a lot of times with new people. Is there anything that you can think of that we can do as a council, as a city, that could help intercept this problem? [1:58:56] Police Chief: Well, I don't know. I don't know that I can speak for the council, and I appreciate the question. I don't know if messaging is the issue. I mean, I believe the city man has shared with you that BCAT tracks unique faces and unique individuals. These are folks that BCAT is not engaged, our public health is not engaged, options has not engaged, and the PAP team is not engaged over the course of the month. And I believe it was 44 new individuals last month. And I believe it was 40 or 41 a month before. So those are new folks that have joined our unsheltered population or the population here in Bangor that is vulnerable and will need care. I don't know how you stop that or how we think why that's occurring. I don't have I don't have an answer to that. What I do know is it's unlikely that the police department will be the agency that will solve that issue. And very much appreciate that people are frustrated because we're not, for example, ordinances are very helpful for us because it gives us something to point to when we say you must do this. And I'm sorry, but there's a rule that we have an ordinance, but that's a civil violation so we're not going to arrest somebody if they say no I'm not I'm not going to do what you want me to do. It's a civil violation. We give them a citation and the city solicitor's office has to now prosecute that case. This is not something that we're going to arrest somebody for. We'll use the sidewalk ordinance which is effective as of tomorrow and if someone violates that they get a citation. We don't arrest them, we don't take them away, we don't have that, we don't have that authority. We give them a citation and then that citation will have to go to the city solicitor's office and that then they'll prosecute that case. It doesn't change that person's behavior at the moment. If somebody walks into a business for example and they 're disruptive and the business owner calls us, we'll show up, tell the person to leave, they don't leave, we'll arrest them. That's an immediate resolution to a to a problem. That is not what a city ordinance is. City ordinance is a citation for a civil violation so there's a difference. An annoyance is very helpful, but it's not necessarily going to solve the issue in the [2:01:03] Carolyn Fish: moment. But it helps send a message. It most certainly does. [2:01:07] Police Chief: And a police officer needs something. For example, the hours change in the park right across the street here. It's easier when an officer says, I'm sorry, but the park closed at 8, and then the person wants to argue with the officer, and the officer can say, no,, the sign is right here. You know, I need you to please leave. And while we're talking about our officer engagement, you do employ a very high number of very compassionate police officers. And I say this because I think you're becoming aware that maybe people are brought here by other communities. And we don't do that. We're not, we're not just shuffling people out of town because we don't have that mechanism. Our officers are very compassionate, and they do try to find solutions for folks. We don't have the ability, I would, I was asked today why don't we just drive people back to where they're from. We do when they want to go, but I can't hit have somebody and put them in the car and say go ahead and discover where you can do that. But many of the people we engage, you know, are from other communities. They're not necessarily didn't attend school in Bangor, for example. They're from other communities, but if they have chosen to be here, that is their choice. We can't just force them back to their home community, so to speak. [2:02:31] Daniel Carson: That's aggressive regarding the program that counselor brought up a few years ago that you can present, that I would be very interested in seeing that. Yeah, we can talk further about that. [2:02:41] Police Chief: I'd be happy to talk about it. 's a similar program to Street Plus. It would just be managed by the city constables. For me, I'd like to know about, so a constable like the animal control officer is a constable, so a constable can issue a citation. The reason the animal control officers are constable so she can issue a citation for a violation involving someone with a pet or an animal. Parking enforcement folks are constables. Folks at the airport that write site right parking citations in front of the airport, they're constables. That's a constable level. I kind of was hoping, and I 'm still like I mentioned a moment ago, that I could use a constable level position for the crash investigation that would go to Walmart and investigate your crash, be there timely so you can get on with your day. We can move on to the next crash. But yes, I'd be very interested in having a conversation with you further about that. Yes, and then follow [2:03:36] Daniel Carson: follow-up question on counselor Fish's question. When BCAT interacts with new faces, do we record information if they let us know where we're from? Do we have that? So generally it's tricky. [2:03:51] Police Chief: It's tricky because, you know, folks are pretty coy about someone sometimes when they're talking to you. I generally always ask you where you're from, and I'm not, I'm not asking because I just like conversation. So if I'm down here and at the park and I'm talking to someone, I generally ask them where they're from, and most people just won't have conversation, they'll tell you. Some people look at it as I'm asking because, you know, you're trying to determine whether or not I'm a Bangor resident. That is not why I'm asking. There's no why BCAT asking, that's not what the police officer asked for. The most part, we're just conversational, that's how you start a conversation. Next thing I might ask you is, you know, what do you do for work, or you know, what do you, what are your hobbies, just those kind of conversations. A lot of people don't want to answer that when BCAT asks those questions, so they're not effectively tracking that information. Yeah, no, I, so no, that's the answer [2:04:39] Daniel Carson: No, I'm thinking about that because it would be helpful, and not necessarily to add another thing, but for us as the council to find a way to track some of that information. I think, you know, people end up here for lots of different reasons. Sometimes they come right, my friend says, well, actually, you know, we really struggled in a service over there, and there's a place here who could help for whatever million reasons, but I am, I think I shared a personal story with you about living in Cleveland, Ohio, having a customer for five years who disappeared, who walked into my bank door in Boston, Massachusetts, and ended up being a law enforcement officer in Cleveland, Ohio, who stuck him on a bus and said goodbye. And so I don't generally think that's how most people are coming here, but I guarantee that a few people, at least in the crowd of 40, are being purposefully sent here out of state by other places, and to me that amounts to human trafficking. Right, when anybody in authority just says you have to go and you have no choice, that's, that's, that's trafficking to me. And so I think where that would be the case with people who are coming here, I would like to know that, you know, because I think that you Know, I think of our legislative committee, I think working with our state delegation, working with the state, I think that's a question that needs addressed. You don't think anybody anywhere in the country should have the right to shove somebody in a car and tell them that they're going to go somewhere else without their consent, and that does happen. So be interested in us finding a way to think about how we can get some of that information and for the purpose of helping people, not, you know, to create a pipeline where we're just automatically sending people back, but to really be able to encounter people in the way that they actually need, if that's what's happening. Yes, if I were to talk to [2:06:26] Police Chief: some of my colleagues, they will tell you, well, you're resource rich, that's where the services are, so we need to send the folks, the most vulnerable, the folk, the person is struggling with a mental health complication, to Bangor because that indeed is where the services are. That may be true, that may be true in part two. I'm sure somebody watching this is going to be upset when I said we don't force people in the cars and drive them away. Then why does every other police department do that? If so, if we were to, we have so many people that are in our shelter population, I don't know that we would have enough and enough vehicles to be shuffling people out of town. Now if person presents to us and said, I am from Portland and I want to go back to Portland, I have family support in Portland, BCAT will bring them back to Portland, Scowhegan, Caribou, wherever they have a family support. They landed here for a host of different reasons, they were brought here because of a service issue, but they failed out of a program, but they won't, they have no financial means to get back to their family support. We'll get them back there through BCAT or through a collaboration with city public health, but we do that on a fairly regular basis. [2:07:41] Susan Deane: But I mean, it's scratching the surface. Yeah, I'll do both of those. Back to the 40 to 41 new one housed in March and April, which is a concerning number. We don't have a full council here, but I think we need to have a discussion. I was under the impression that most of us felt we need to take care of the people that are here and we need to stop allowing this influx, but we haven't figured out a way to do that. But I think we need to get together, be on the same page. Is that really what we're all Thinking because to take all our resources and spread them over hundreds of people when we could be just allocating them to maybe 50, 75, we could do so much more for people. I think that's where we're failing. We need, we need to have a plan. We do have a committee, but we are the council as well, so we kind of need to figure this out. This is more immediate. I like that discussion would help the PD without the council, without city manager, and it would help the people that are struggling, so that would be where I would like to see discussion occur, so [2:08:51] Police Chief: back to the operating budget. So are there any, I mean, again, the last couple, we're in our third year of trying to present a reasonably flat budget to you. You know, these obviously is the contractual obligations we have to our staff entering year three of our contract, so we'll be negotiating the other companies. We have all three units, we have three units, and they'll all be due for negotiating here in another six, seven years. [2:09:34] Joseph Leonard: One of my questions always has to do with the overall time that a police officer has, that white time that they have, which you guys don't have, as you said earlier, five to six calls, chasing those five to six calls. So I'm always more than open to, if there is a way that we can save the police department its most valuable resource, time, I want to invest in that. And, I'm gonna sound like a broker, I brought this up to you personally multiple times and on some councils and council meetings, and this is not at all a conversation about the ethics of using AI in the police department, but I do want to have that conversation because there have been some departments now across the country that have been using their body cameras with the assistance of artificial intelligence to help write those reports. And I, to, so, and I just use that as an example for ways that if the police department can bring us those ideas, I do want to hear them. But I guess to that specific point, the amount of reports that an officer does write for any incident or any call, last time I checked in toward the police, it takes a considerable amount of time from each point. Your officers do, you know, from those other departments that have used those programs, has it saved time, has it saved labor costs overall, or has it been more problematic to use and more of a resource heavy than intended, if you, if you are aware? Yeah, I am. [2:11:29] Police Chief: Aware so in this state the attorney general's office won't allow us to use that technology, okay. In the district attorney's office here in Bangor Penobscot County and fairly certain other district attorney's offices across the state to include Cumberland County are not allowing that technology quite yet, and largely because the court system hasn't accepted it. So there are some, there are some, there are some challenges with it. I do know of two agencies that are using it. I'm certain that it does save time, I'm certain of that, and I think in time we will get there because our, we talk, we have a lot of young supervisors and they are all technology hungry, and I had a conversation with Jeremy Brock about this topic today and we all think at some point we will move to this AI platform where the body camera will capture what occurred and generate a report. The officer obviously is going to have to review that report and put his or her name at the bottom of it and that will be the official report, but currently the court systems have, with the AI is advanced so quickly that the court systems are not ready for it and therefore the prosecutors are not ready for it. So we're not, we're not able to use that technology, who all in was using it. I don't know if they still are, but they were using it for cases, for instances where there would be no prostitution. So if that complaint, for example, where there's no suspect, someone stole the flower pot off your front porch, they were using it for that to try it out. I don't know that they still are, they may be, but they're not using it for anything where there's a prostitution. I think Wilton PD in the Western part of the state has been testing it. And I know that Somerset County Sheriff's Office has been testing it as well, but nobody is using it for a case where this prosecution at this point. I think that is, that is [2:13:21] Joseph Leonard: indeed going to come also Carson, we might want to add this item to a legislative committee [2:13:28] Daniel Carson: discussion at this point every time anybody says anything just so you know anytime anybody says anything that identifies a gap with the state it goes on a big list that I have. Good, it's already [2:13:39] Joseph Leonard: already here perfect, I guess I'll hold off on my other question if Councilman Mallory is going [2:13:46] Police Chief: to talk about it okay, yeah did [2:13:54] Joseph Leonard: you see him, I didn't see him, I just didn't know if he was got [2:13:57] Daniel Carson: after oh this is okay, that's the matter [2:14:02] Wayne Mallar: I'll ask the question. Basically, I'm curious about shopping carts. Shopping carts are private property, yet all the homeless or the unhoused seem to have shopping carts. Are those stolen property, or have they paid for them, or did they, were they given them? And if they were stolen property, don't we have a right to take them back? So we've engaged [2:14:32] Police Chief: the supermarkets, Shaw's, Hannaford's. They do not wish to be a victim in this instance. So therefore, we, it's not a theft if we don't have a victim. We cross this bridge several times. The council chair Pelletier brought this to me some time ago. We explored it when she asked us to. We just don't have a victim, therefore there's no chart, there's no violation, and that's the issue we're struggling with right now. I have looked at what other communities have done about penalizing the stores, for example. I'm sure there are some creative things that we can, we can consider. But yeah, no, I'm sorry, Councilman Allen, we're not able to pursue the shopping cart issue [2:15:16] Wayne Mallar: because nobody's reporting them stolen but don't i just find it difficult that a person can have be a receiver of stolen goods and not be prosecuted well if someone stole the generator [2:15:32] Police Chief: off your porch, but you did not care about it, then we would not be able to charge that person. [2:15:41] Wayne Mallar: So what you're saying is if we have trash, we should put it on the street and let people take it. [2:15:46] Police Chief: I don't know. We don't have a crime. That's what, that's what I'm trying to explain. There's no crime. We don't have a victim. The store does not wish to be a victim. They're not reporting [2:15:55] Wayne Mallar: reporting the shopping cart stolen, so we don't have a crime. Well, if their name is on the cart, then it's their property, is that not correct? But they've chosen to allow that person to use it. Then they have to give you an affidavit saying they've given it to them, otherwise it would be considered stolen property. Let's make them work if [2:16:18] Police Chief: they wish to report the shopping cart stolen, we'll pursue it. But that's not what currently is happening, and it's not, I will share with you that Sergeant Brock has had conversation with the managers of the local supermarkets, and it's not their decision. It's a corporate decision. It's not, it's not at the local level. It's, it's a corporate decision not to pursue. This is not just in Bangladesh, this is all across the country, is my understanding. So [2:16:44] Wayne Mallar: I think you have an obligation to tell the public that yes, these are stolen property, but the people don't want them back, therefore our hands are tied. People look at us and say, why are you letting them use a shopping cart that has been misappropriated? [2:17:02] Police Chief: Well, this is again a misunderstanding. It's not we the police that are letting folks use stolen property. It is not stolen because the store has not reported to us that the property [2:17:12] Wayne Mallar: is stolen, nor do they want it back. All right, let me back up and ask one more question. Okay, if I put a shopping cart out in front of my house and someone steals it, can I file a complaint? [2:17:24] Police Chief: You will, you pursue it. Do you own the shopping cart? Yes, if you own the shopping cart and someone steals your shopping cart, yes, we will pursue it. Okay, it's no different if they stole [2:17:35] Wayne Mallar: your car. All right, I, that's what I assumed, but I just wanted to know. It's not the shopping cart, it's the item, right? I agree. So I'll put a shopping cart out and see if it disappears [2:17:48] Police Chief: years. Will you own the shopping cart? Yes. Okay. [2:17:55] Speaker C (unidentified): And maybe [2:17:58] Joseph Leonard: Councillor Miller will want to piggyback off of this. But I do have legitimate questions regarding dispatch though. So well, I know you've talked about this multiple times and I and I completely understand the issues regarding bringing everything into one umbrella. I think it is important for Bangor PD to have a dedicated dispatch system. That said, just because of, while I appreciate Penobscot County moving to the AWS system, they were pioneers in that. And I thought that was, maybe I'm being over generous with this. I thought it was very brave of them to take that initiative actually. And there are, you know, bugs with that system, but I do think we are going to start to get to more of a larger umbrella dispatch system at some point in the future, similar to what we're seeing with AI being implemented for any type of law enforcement issue. And I guess my question is, even if we put all the AI talk aside, how is it that we can and try to reduce that response time to those five to six calls that are in queue for officers to respond to when we already have our system piggybacking off of Penobscot County at this point. Without knowing the dispatch system too much, I just feel that there's a lot of administrative overlap, administrative overlap, that we might be overlooking in regards to saving time for police officers to respond to, or even making it so that those calls that are more urgent, more emergency focused, can move up into the line as opposed to some that might get waitlisted down. And maybe you already have a response to that. [2:20:06] Police Chief: I sure do. So there's no connection to this at all. Regionalizing doesn't change the priority of the call. The reason the calls are in queue is because we don't have enough staff. It has nothing to do with the dispatcher. The dispatcher actually is triaging our calls and calling folks back to let them know that we should have an office there in 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Our dispatchers are doing that for us, so they actually triage our calls where Penobscot Regional Dispatch can't do that at the level that our dispatchers do it. They provide a great product. This, I mean, they have some phenomenal dispatchers at the Penobscot Regional Communication Center, but our dispatchers do something that's a little more unique for us, and that is indeed manage our calls. The fact that the call is sitting in queue has nothing to do with the dispatchers that we have. Don't have an officer to dispatch it to, so if we want to be more efficient with that, we need to hire more police officers. It has nothing to do with that dispatcher, and the dispatchers actually help us manage that much more effectively than if we were to rely on an agency that we don't have any controls over. And again, I have nothing, I mean, I will share with you that I know some of the dispatchers at Penobscot and they do fantastic work. They're a good group. And I do appreciate that there is value in regionalizing in some instances, and there are certainly cost savings in some instances. We have, I have broken this down, I'm happy to have this conversation. I didn't bring my data with me, but the savings are significantly diminished when you start looking at value. We answer roughly, well, 15,000 calls a month in dispatch, and we would still have to have somebody answer that phone. They're not going to answer our business line at the county, so we have to retain phone operators if we're not going to have dispatchers, and of course we dispatch for the fire department. During the summer months, we take everybody's phone calls. Somebody in the city needs to answer the phone live, 24 7. That's us. So if somebody calls because a tree came down at three in the morning on their street, we will answer the phone and we will call all public work, get the emergency trucks and dispatch them. That's why we have a 24-7 dispatch center in Bangor. When we were able to consolidate and regionalize our 911 system, so our 911 phones are answered at the Penobscot Regional Communication Center, we actually send the ambulances out quicker now. So when the dispatcher takes, if you want to call, if you call and say somebody at your workplace is having a cardiac event, the dispatch is going to walk you through what it's going to, what, how to do cpr. Well, our dispatches used to do that and that would take them away from momentarily from dispatching the ambulance. Well, now they're doing that at the Penobscot Center. Our dispatchers can see the call on the screen, they're dispatching the ambulance while that is occurring. We are actually pushing out ems quicker now because of the system we have than we did before when we were doing everything ourselves. This system, our partnership with Penobscot region communication system is valued and we do appreciate it. And I can go into, I'll consume half the night, we'll be here late if we want to talk about this, but I can talk in great detail why there is real value in maintaining or dispatch center and I can talk about the savings and where the savings really are and whether or not and I had a conversation with the counselor Mallor about this and I'm certainly happy to have the same conversation with anybody here that has questions about it. [2:23:53] Joseph Leonard: I really appreciate that clarification and please correct me if I'm wrong. The issue that is to solve is not necessarily from the dispatch Center unless we want to get more or dispatchers themselves. It's in that the time that police officers do not have when going on call. [2:24:15] Police Chief: Yeah, a good example is if the police officer today versus the police officer 20 years ago, police officer 20 years ago just did everything real quick. Back on the radio, clear the call. We didn't really solve the problem, we just solved the emergency. Now the police officer needs to solve the issue. Because if we don't solve the issue now, we'll be revisiting it in 30 minutes. So sometimes we're on call for 45 minutes trying to solve an issue, and a lot of it has to do with somebody who is struggling with a, with a mental health break or a mental health issue, and we need to reconnect them with their case manager. We can get BCAT or our mental health professionals over to help us, but we're spending time on that call. And that's why the, fender bender at Hannifred is holding. It has nothing to do with the dispatcher. It's the fact that the police officer is patrolling that area or the nexus section over is on a call. And the value of having our own dispatches is we expect that they will call that person back and say, I'm sorry, we know where we've been 10 or 15 minutes, we haven't got to you yet, but the office is going to free up shortly and they're going to get over to you. And that's just a service, that's just a value of service. I want to make sure that people know that we haven't forgotten, that we are coming, it's just going to take us a little longer than we were hoping. And this is a, again, we said earlier, we're just traveling through a moment in time. This is all going to improve in my opinion. We've been through this before and then it gets better. Five years ago we were, we were in every neighborhood, every school zone, and we're going to get back there. I know we're going to get back there. We're just, we're just going through a bump in the road [2:25:42] Carolyn Fish: right now. Thank you. Did you have a question? Yes, but I think, I think, oh, I just want to say a number of years ago, I think two or three times we'd come back to this county dispatch and I know Tim was still there I think, but it was, there was a lot of time really spent investigating that. And because the uniqueness of Bangor and being the service centers as you said, you have fire and you have EMS and you've got so much going on with all your calls, I know that at least twice it was looked at and for all those reasons you mentioned it was just always the end result was [2:26:18] Police Chief: as the dispatch here at the bank or pd was more effective and yeah i mean i think largely that when you what you're referencing we looked at it whether or not it was a financially sensible to continue with our own center and when you look at the value of our center and then you look at the cost savings they go along we're not saving enough remember we have concerts and we have a lot of things that go on just beyond just the traffic accidents and the and the ems calls we have a lot of events that occur in Bangor and again our dispatchers need to be on their game. We'll have 12 15 officers assigned to the concert venue. We'll have a whole crew working they're also managing the radio for the fire department at the same time. These are all things that our dispatchers have to have to balance and we run a dispatch center pretty lean. We have eight full-timers with a supervisor two on duty generally that's we really need three but we run it with two but during events say we have a concert a large concert we'll up staff and dispatch because the call line will be increased. If the fire department has a special event going on we'll make sure we have staff and we keep very close partnership with fire department as well. We want make sure we're meeting their needs you know they have a lot of EMS calls and we want to make sure that we're being efficient for the fire department as well. And if Dave Telon calls me the public works director and said you know I'm not going to run my dispatch during the summer months we'll answer those calls and we will do that and he'll transfer his phones to us. So at night we will answer his calls and we'll call out his emergency personnel if necessary if there's a reason to. We'll answer the call for any city department that needs after hours coverage. How long have you been at this staffing so last summer was the first time in 15 years that we were full staff. We went through this it was it was a dream last summer was really fantastic it was it really is it's amazing how people make a difference. So last summer we were full staff everybody was in a great mood you know overtime was mitigated people were able to have take vacations and have time away. We're still able to fill all the concert assignments all the parades all the other events and then you know we slipped into where we are now. The good news is we have five people in different stages of the hiring process right now all five look really good. We'll have them ready to go assuming they finalize all of their testing we'll have them ready to go for the August academy. We hope to have seven in the August academy but I'm fairly confident we'll have five. We have a an officer assigned to the cat to the academy right now full time she's there she's very good and they wanted her but she's there because one reason if she's there we can put cadets in as we want. So if we find if we if we have eight or nine cadets that we want to hire then we can get them all into the training Ordinarily you might get one or two, so that's the benefit. That's why we're doing this. We know we need seven plus positions in August and we're going to fill, I promise you. So that's an 18-week process when you come back towards the three and a half months, so it takes almost a year before when we hire you to when you're on your own. It's just about a year. So what we're shooting for now, to be honest with you, is next summer. We're preparing not for this summer. We know what we're going into for this summer. We're already looking forward and trying to prepare for next summer. We're always looking 12 months ahead, always. Everything we do is one, three and five years out. So we will manage. Listen, we this is not unusual. We will manage this. There's I don't this it's fine, right? This is we have very good supervisors. We have an awesome group of police officers. We'll manage this summer. We'll we'll be very responsive to everybody's needs. We're already focusing for a full staff next summer and that's what we'll be. I assume that overtime costs are up a bit. They are, but you mentioned earlier, so when you know I know I don't use my payroll money to buy gadgets and gear and equipment. So when overtime is up, we're low staff, so it's a wash. It's not it's not I'm not gonna I'm not going to the city manager asking for additional funds because our overtime budget is overdrawn. I have I'm short staff, so therefore it's a wash. In fact it's cheaper in many instances to pay overtime than it is to pay for a full police officer with benefits. So we'll turn we will be turning money in payroll money in this year. Yeah, capital [2:31:17] Susan Deane: or downtown officers? Okay, we're downtown. [2:31:18] Police Chief: Downtown officer. So we are going to ask you and would appreciate if you would consider a second officer downtown. Currently we have one officer. He works four days a week, a 10-hour shift, nine to seven. That's largely based on what the business owners and the folks wanted for coverage. We'd like to have you know a perfect well you'd give us two more, but we understand that there were one of many departments. So an additional officer would allow us expanded coverage and it would be a six day a week we would we would have we would have downtown coverage Monday through Saturday and that would be the goal if we had another officer which I know it's you know maybe next year I'll come to you we would have seven day coverage with expanded hours but if we if we could expand our hours Monday through Saturday January to 7 p.m somewhere in that 's that's our goal with a second officer you might ask us what's the return well it's hard to quantify what presence you know what the presence of the officer provides, other than we know that most bad behavior doesn't occur when it's a police officer. And Keith Marby is your downtown officer right now. He might have seen that the chamber, you know, invited him. I mean, he has had a baby shower for him, and he's, he's, he's got this, he can talk to anybody, and he's done, he's done a great job with him. And we have another officer who spends a great deal, he will be filling in. So Keith is out for a good chunk of the summer on maternity leave, so we haven't been going to fill in for the summer is obviously really good at just getting you to talk to him and i 'm 100 confident in that the business owners are going to like his style and they're going to they're going to like his the manner in which he enforces things he 's been in this park a lot i left the city manager's office after a meeting and he was coming back from school saw something he didn't like he was in the park over here and what it was is somebody was engaged in bad behavior under reply walked out of city hall and I went away, what's going on? He said this person's doing this and that, I'm taking care of it. And when they were all done, they shook his hand and thanked him, and they took their stuff and they left. And that's the style that obviously Dozer brings, and that's who you'll have downtown for this summer. If we have a second officer downtown, he may well be your officer moving forward. So if you would, as you consider all the budget requests, I really hope [2:33:57] Susan Deane: that you might consider this request. So I'm sorry, no, currently when we're seeing multiple officers, they're being pulled from other areas to deal with things that are going on. Yeah, those are just [2:34:07] Police Chief: Office, oh gosh, no, those are officers that should be pulling lately, at least I have seen. Yeah, those are offices we bring in from the Hogan Road or from, yeah, they're not in their areas, they've been pulled from. Oh, for sure. Yeah, no, they should be out patrolling in their, in their respective areas. We have the city is, has six patrol areas, and generally we run with six or seven officers is on duty, and we're pulling two or three downtown, so wherever they were supposed to be, they're not. Yes, hence the early discussion where we're not in our neighborhoods like we really want to be, we're not in our school zones where we really want to be, because we're pulling two or three offices downtown to focus on these issues, for sure. I [2:34:46] Susan Deane: was just going to note to you that one thing that we can talk about when it's time to make these final decisions is that we could pay for the salary of this new officer out of the TIFF budget if we wanted to, so we could make it such that it wouldn't have a impact on the tax rate. That is something that we have not done in the past, but we went to our TIFF council to evaluate whether that was permitted under the documents that created our TIFF, and he confirmed that it was, and to me I think particularly knowing how much our downtown community appreciates and connects with the existing downtown officer, it would seem to me to be probably a supported and appropriate use of money if that's something you're interested in. Okay, you have a question? Yes. [2:35:47] Wayne Mallar: I have a question. I've talked with the chief about this before. Do you think it would be who of us to have two officers and eliminate the ambassadors? What kind of an effect would that add on the downtown? [2:36:02] Police Chief: I'll just answer it this way. Three officers, two officers are better than one, and three would be better than two. It would allow us expanded coverage, and it would permit us to have seven day coverage downtown. We would have some overlap, obviously. I do, I would be appreciative. I would be very appreciative if you would consider second officer that the request that we're making, if indeed you had a conversation and you thought that you could, you could provide us with two additional officers for that assignment, we would certainly gladly take it. I must tell you, however, I don't believe that we would fill that third position this summer. That would be something we would be focused on for next summer. We just don't [2:36:47] Wayne Mallar: have the staffing to accomplish but would you assume it would be beneficial to more beneficial official to the city to have three offices downtown and not have the ambassador program [2:37:02] Police Chief: I think, I think the two programs align. I don't know, you know, the ambassador program, they have different functions potentially, and they provide a different service than the police officer will. I don't, I don't actually know the hours of the ambassadors or what, when they're, they're present. But what I can tell you is I will, you will all know when the police officer is present downtown, and we will provide you with a structured schedule, whether it be one, two or three police officers. And the business owners most certainly will know because whenever there's a police officer, the assignment downtown, the patrol car or patrol cars are parked somewhere where it's very visible. And that's by design, we want the business owners to know that we are present and we are downtown, they see the car are in front of the Mexicali Blues, for example, the downtown officer is somewhere downtown. If the patrol car is in front of the library, the patrol officer is somewhere downtown. And that's the purpose of having that car visible and available. If we are fortunate to have a second officer, part of our capital request is for a second patrol vehicle for downtown as well. And we can discuss that momentarily really about in our capital and but three is better than two better than one well you [2:38:28] Wayne Mallar: Have my vote for two, we appreciate that so [2:38:36] Police Chief: Our capital is fairly consistent year over year, most of our capital requests involve vehicles, as you work down that list you'll see body cameras, so generally, when we have a large expense, we try to part that out so we pay for it over a period of three years. That's what you see there. So this body camera that I'm wearing right here is about a year old. So we have many years of life left in this program, but we're going to be paying for this current version until 2029. You move up, you'll see mobile data terminals. Those are the computers in the cars. We use tablets with keyboards. Ours are, they generally last about five years. We're into our seventh year with the current model. In fact, we have, we're out of compliance with some federal regulations, but our I.T. department got us back into compliance temporarily. They put some software in place that allowed us to extend our use of these, but as you can see, we'd like to purchase new mobile data terminals and we will pay for that over a period of three years. Down near the bottom you see electric. Patrol vehicle. I would, we have one electric vehicle now. It's our court officer's car. It's a little Kona that we got on a program through Hyundai and Efficiency Maine, and we'd like that to have a conversation about a second downtown vehicle, but that wouldn't be an electric vehicle. We've already talked with fleet maintenance about it. We have a general idea what that vehicle would be. Fleet maintenance is supportive of this. It's not a pickup truck. It's a smaller SUV that would similar to the size. Of the current patrol cars that we use now. We have a charging station at the police station. The reason that we're asking for two vehicles along the two officers is just what we spoke about earlier, a visible presence downtown. That two vehicle parked downtown is better than one vehicle, and I just, the vehicle that we're currently using downtown is, it's got 140 or 50,000 miles on it. Officer Larvae shines it all up and keeps it clean. It looks good, but it's a good, it's a very, it's a, it's, it's, it's a. Bit rough otherwise. Got a lot of rattles and shakes in it, but he doesn't drive it 25 miles an hour, so the car is fine. And the other requests are fairly straightforward forward. We have a uniform, so you might see the officers wear these outer vests. I don't have one on. I have another vest on, but they would live here on their vests. So when we purchased those, we really didn't do anything with any winter gear, so they've been layering up with under clothing and so forth, but we need to buy a real. Purpose under a winter wear for them that go under that is purposely designed to go under that, and that's what I'm asking for there. And it is a reference to CID. So when we, I mentioned active threat training earlier, one of the things that our instruction staff looks for is failures, right? We need to improve. There's always a failure. One of the failures we have is we have a detectives are in plain clothes, right, which is great, but if they show up, they've got to have something they can put on, right? Now we have to identify them as police officers, so we want to buy some outer wear that they can, that they'll have in their cars, that they can put on immediately, that they can always have at their disposal. They always have their best with them, but we need something a little, a little more obvious. If they were to go for whatever reason, if they happen to be in Brewer and there was something at the Brewer High School, they went over there, we need them to put on something that's clearly identifying them so that's what we're asking for there we're asking for some winter we have for our patrol group and for some identifying clothing for our detectives the last one is forensics equipment we have a computer forensics lab and now we need to upgrade some technology in there and i missed one above electronic fingerprint system we're still fingerprinting people like they did on dragnet and adam12 and we need to move into the new age and we'd like to buy electronic fingerprint system and that's what that is. We did apply for some professional funding as well to enhance some evidence electronics and some technology in our electronics in our and on the patrol group. They needed something that we have a drug testing system but it's obsolete and so I'm hoping we apply for 165,000 and it's all technology based for evidence and I'm, I gotta have my fingers crossed that we'll be fortunate to receive that [2:43:29] Daniel Carson: grant. Just interested if we offer any thinking about those electronic services outside the police department. The reason I'm asking, when I was in banking actually I had to go every year to be fingerprinted either the FBI or the police. We used to, we don't any longer. That's because it's [2:43:51] Police Chief: there's private business that does it now. So in most cases if you were to go to, if you work for a bank in Bangor now they just send you to the business, they don't, nobody comes to us anymore, very rarely. Sometimes somebody might come as a school teacher or something like that, which is fine, if you're a Bangor resident we'll take care of you, if you're a Bangor school teacher, but most, businesses that require fingerprinting they have a relationship with one of the private businesses that provide that service now yeah we used to do it a lot we don't and then the other items at the top of that list are our vehicles we're seeking for new patrol vehicles we are we try to we try to keep a patrol car 100 to 140 000 we pretty hard on a patrol car you know they you know multiple drivers some are good some are not so every year we 'd like to replace four patrol cars if we did four this year we could do four next year detective and services cars one or two years only oh yeah we're there we try to keep a decent rotation. Those cars last as much longer than a patrol car. Yeah, that's, that's our capital request. After sitting with the public works director, I feel like I should have snuck a few more things [2:45:14] Daniel Carson: You should have stuck them onto his list [2:45:17] Police Chief: Well, he explains it very well. I mean, I was actually very full, very informative. So questions, any questions also [2:45:31] Joseph Leonard: Leonard, I actually feel so long without winter jackets [2:45:35] Police Chief: Jackets. So I worked overnights and I will share with you there. By January, you don't, you don't really wear a jacket anymore. You just acclimate. Because in the car, I didn't like wearing a jacket in the car. Right? It's bulky. So when you get out, you just, you know, and that's what these are. That's what our group grew was done. They just layer up. But there's been some, there's been some angst over the fact that we need a better jacket. It and we the, it came to our attention too late in the season, so we couldn't make it happen for this past winter, but we'll make it happen for the coming winter. They will have the winter gear that they need to be outside in the cold weather. Well, when I saw it, I was kind [2:46:20] Joseph Leonard: of shocked, and then I looked back in my memory and I recalled, oh yeah, I don't ever recall a Bengal police officer actually wearing a jacket ever. Well, they had their jackets, they all have [2:46:32] Police Chief: jackets. Problem is, you put a jacket on, it covers all your gear, because all your gear is here now, it's not on your, it's not on your hips, right? I still wear a jacket, but they don't, because all their gear is here. If you put a jacket on, zip it up, you can't get to any of your equipment. So we're going to buy something that fits underneath the vest, and it'll be very grateful. And if you say [2:46:51] Susan Deane: yes to this, I promise you, and if you think about it, they always look like they were freezing [2:46:56] Police Chief: Yes, I think they were. Yes, they won't be this winter, I promise you. It's quite literally the least they'll be appreciative. Any other questions about any topic other than legend or otherwise [2:47:18] Susan Deane: Thank you. This is not a question. I just want to say I do appreciate you giving the [2:47:24] Carolyn Fish: the budget, the proposed budget, relatively flat. This makes it easier for us, I think. [2:47:32] Police Chief: Well, my administrative assistant, who helps me a great deal with this, she's also a taxpayer. It's always good to have a taxpayer in charge of the money, so he keeps me, she keeps me under [2:47:43] Susan Deane: control. Thank her for us. [2:47:51] Daniel Carson: I just want to make a comment while you're sitting right here. I happen to be sitting on an airplane when Vice President Vance was departing, so I happened to also really get a great view of just the amazing coordination between all of the different departments and your people who were working that day, and I just wanted to share how impressed I was just with the amount of coordination and, you know, the choreography that really went in. I appreciate [2:48:24] Police Chief: you saying that. I will tell you that you're making that call. Deputy Chief Bushy, Lieutenant Jason Stewart, and Sergeant Jeremy Brock headed that up, and they did a phenomenal job. The service tomorrow for Pilot Tickets, our coordination is done by, has been done by Lieutenant Stewart, and he has done an amazing job. In fact, he may still be at work. He has worked late into the last two evenings. There is a lot to these events, but we have a good crew, and we have some very good planners, and Jason Stewart and Jeremy Brock and Dave Boucher have been on top of things for us. I appreciate you saying that. Of course. [2:49:00] Susan Deane: Well, thank you. We are adjourned. [2:49:02] Carolyn Fish: It is 8.06 p.m.