[5:47] Good evening, everyone. We've reached the hour six p.m. This is September 1st, 2026. And this is the meeting of the City Council of the City of Woodland. And Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll? Councilmember Lansberg? Councilmember Garcia-Kadena? Councilmember Moreno? Mayor Potem Vega? And Mayor Stollard? Here. And before we proceed any further, we have just come from closed session.

[6:18] and we do have a reportable action and I've asked our council to please indicate that reportable action.

[6:25] Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

[6:27] Yes, we do have a report election from our closed session regarding a liability claim received from Martin Brothers Construction.

[6:34] And in closed session, the council unanimously voted to deny the claim received.

[6:41] And that's the report of the election.

[6:43] Thank you.

[6:43] With that, we'll proceed to the Pledge of Allegiance, so I'd like to ask Mr. Jessie Ortiz

[6:50] to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

[6:51] Jessie?

[6:52] The

[7:02] public will request that one nation under God in the visible, with liberty and justice

[7:08] for all of us.

[7:13] Thank you, Jessie.

[7:16] All right.

[7:17] This is the time for public comment and during public comment, it's for items not otherwise

[7:22] on the agenda.

[7:23] Speakers have three minutes.

[7:24] Hopefully they use that opportunity to sign up out in the lobby and our clerk will call any speakers who have indicated a desire to address us this evening. Madam Clerk.

[7:34] I have no speakers signed up to speak. All right, looking out. Anybody in the audience, wish to address the council tonight?

[7:41] On a night of not on the agenda? Is it not on the agenda tonight?

[7:49] I can't hear you. I'm sorry.

[7:53] Yes, you have. You have a right to come up for three minutes and speak. Yes, this will be the time.

[7:58] It would be nice if you could state your name clearly so the clerk could get it.

[8:03] Hi.

[8:04] Tammy Anderson.

[8:06] I'm a resident here.

[8:07] Thank you, Tammy.

[8:08] Welcome.

[8:09] Just bringing up the Comcast instruction that's going on.

[8:17] We had one of your people come out and I want to thank them for that.

[8:24] I haven't seen any changes yet.

[8:27] It's a little bit worse and I just wanted to, I'm concerned it's a little bit worse.

[8:32] We've had three power outages in a week because of them and now they're back in my neighborhood.

[8:41] So since today I was mowing my lawn and I tripped on one of their unfinished spots in my yard.

[8:48] I thought it would be good to attend the meeting again.

[8:52] In other words, the problem is still a problem.

[8:56] It's elevated.

[8:58] All right.

[8:59] Thank you.

[8:59] Well, our staff is following you, and I know I say our manager will take note, okay?

[9:04] Yeah.

[9:04] I think we need to have, it seems like they're going in stages with different companies.

[9:12] And so none of it, the problems start over again.

[9:17] It's repetitive because it's a different company.

[9:20] So now we've got more markings than we've ever had and nothing is stopping it's

[9:26] elevating. So I don't know when it ends. I'm looking forward to that but I came

[9:32] tonight to see if we could just kind of keep an eye on it some more and not lose

[9:38] interest in it because it's tough. It's tough to get through and one of the

[9:45] the individuals I talked to in the current crew said that there will be a night time crew

[9:51] coming in.

[9:54] Night time. Working at night? I just don't know when this ends. So I don't

[10:05] know what to expect. I just think we need to keep an eye on it.

[10:09] Well, thank you. The city is on alert and they are watching it and thank you for the additional

[10:15] input. The situation will be addressed. Okay, thank you.

[10:20] All right. Any additional comments? You know, we wouldn't want to turn our council meeting

[10:26] into a long discussion on a problem that's really going to be handled at the staff level. Is

[10:31] there more to add to what's been said? Yes.

[10:33] Well, come on up and say it then.

[10:35] On

[10:39] the City Council website, in relation to this Comcast

[10:44] debacle, it says that the residents will get notification.

[10:51] There's no notification.

[10:54] So you're not upholding your rules and regulations.

[11:01] It's just, it's insane.

[11:03] You made that point at our last council meeting.

[11:05] you are entitled to notice, staff is working with the company to make sure that they are providing notice.

[11:12] You've had no notice even since our last meeting I take it.

[11:15] Yes, sir.

[11:16] Okay.

[11:18] It's a problem.

[11:20] Thank you.

[11:24] All right.

[11:25] All right.

[11:27] We are in public comment.

[11:30] Candice did you wish to address us in public comment tonight?

[11:33] I knew you'd mentioned that.

[11:35] So come forward.

[11:36] please remember for our school boards with us tonight, Candace, we welcome you.

[11:40] Okay. Thank you guys for this moment. I recently got a text message from my

[11:47] first born who is attending CSU Monterey Bay and she was lamenting about what an

[11:53] awesome experience she's having, how her accommodations are getting met, and she

[11:57] said, and I walk around campus and I don't hear anybody using the N word.

[12:05] And that's

[12:06] Before she left for college, I wrote you guys all a note

[12:10] that she experienced being called the inward

[12:13] at the Woodland Library,

[12:15] where she was crafting to make a gesture's hat

[12:18] for the Renaissance Fair with her younger sister.

[12:21] And it wasn't just one time, it was repeatedly.

[12:25] And the staff at the library were so shocked

[12:28] they didn't know what to do.

[12:30] And this man walked past my two daughters,

[12:33] 17 and 13, and made a point to say it repeatedly so that they could acknowledge that he was calling them the N word.

[12:44] This hurts my heart as a public servant, as a mother of three daughters who teach my daughters about black excellence.

[12:52] And that's a trauma response because black excellence is all about proving that you belong in spaces.

[13:00] And unfortunately, I've passed that on to my daughters as well, that they have to achieve,

[13:05] they have to do things, they have to be a part of the community, they have to be seen

[13:10] in order to feel protected.

[13:11] And that shouldn't be the case, especially in a place like our library, where our homeless

[13:16] population go to hang out and find a safe space, where our children who don't have safe spaces

[13:23] at home go to use as a refuge.

[13:26] So, I reached out to both City Council and the Library Board as well as Training Camping

[13:31] who I truly respect, which is why I allow my children to use that safe space without supervision

[13:40] because it is supposed to be a safe space.

[13:44] I got great responses, thank you all, I responded, I deeply appreciate that.

[13:50] But as I said in my message, I teach my daughters to be helpers and to find the helpers.

[13:57] And in this, I'm working with the library to find a way that we can train the staff to

[14:02] be helpers.

[14:03] And when they see something like that, to not freeze up, but to respond.

[14:07] And instead of taking into consideration how to respond to this person who is assaulting

[14:15] my daughters verbally, how to support those who are being assaulted and those people

[14:20] who are being harassed.

[14:22] I hope we can take stock and get the use involved in being a part of this change and being

[14:27] helpers, anything that I can do to help support this.

[14:32] I know we are taking our own steps within the school board to acknowledge our biases and address

[14:39] them as well.

[14:40] So thank you for this opportunity to come and speak to you guys about this incident.

[14:45] Candace, I can't thank you enough, both for addressing this issue in what I call such a mature and responsible way, and you know how terrible we all feel about this, and I'm grateful.

[15:00] Your daughters have a mom like you to build up their confidence, retain their confidence even in the face of such hatefulness. It's not acceptable. We don't tolerate it. And I'm glad things are happening. And hopefully we won't have a repeat of this situation ever again. I appreciate your response. Thank you. Thank you.

[15:23] All right. I believe that concludes public comment for this evening. So that allows us to move along.

[15:31] to communication from Council and our staff, and we're going to start off with David down here, David's Councilman, David Moreno.

[15:42] Thank you Mayor. I'm happy to announce the great work that the collaborative for

[15:50] Woodland News is doing as a subcommittee. We formed a new subcommittee within that group to address

[16:00] as children's literacy, as well as we got a highlight from the school district about the work that they're doing to bring in more inclusivity, particularly student representatives.

[16:11] They'll be taking a position on board meetings.

[16:15] They won't have voting power, but they'll be involved in agenda review and policy discussions, and will have the superintendent in as a resource.

[16:27] So I thought that was pretty neat and something to celebrate.

[16:30] Thank you.

[16:31] Thank you Councilman Moreno.

[16:33] Councilmember Garcia Cadena.

[16:36] Cadena.

[16:37] And nothing to report today.

[16:39] Thank you.

[16:42] And that means Mayor Pro Tem Vega.

[16:46] Thank you Mayor.

[16:47] Good evening everybody.

[16:49] So I just wanted to share my colleagues on the school board ask that I highlight

[16:54] the outreach that they're doing around the boundary redrawings around the school.

[16:59] So they're doing everything they can to try and get input from all of the areas in the city.

[17:05] So just encourage folks to participate.

[17:07] The more information they have around these various maps that they're entertaining and

[17:14] sharing and socializing, the better they will be informed in terms of what the community needs are.

[17:20] So, please, if you have children or no children or were a child.

[17:26] As we all know, the schools affect the whole neighborhood,

[17:30] and I think it's important that we help out our school district

[17:33] as we're making this important decision.

[17:36] And then also, back to school night was,

[17:39] it seemed like it's earlier every year,

[17:41] but I just wanted to acknowledge how much fun it is to be

[17:44] at those back to school nights and how the neighborhoods light up

[17:48] around the schools.

[17:50] So it's a great time, the Return to School

[17:53] and our community, so I very much enjoy it.

[17:56] That's all, Mayor.

[17:57] Thank you.

[17:58] Council Member Lansberg.

[18:02] Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

[18:04] Another reminder that this weekend

[18:06] is the C-10 intervention on Main Street.

[18:10] It's gonna be Saturday and Sunday.

[18:13] If you haven't been to it, you're missing a great event.

[18:17] It's Labor Day weekend and I know that you might have other plans but if you're not then

[18:22] it'll be out of town.

[18:23] Make a point to stop on Main Street and check out the C10 trucks.

[18:29] It's amazing what a guy, and sometimes the gals take a hunk of 10 and turn it into a

[18:34] jewel with a lot of time and it'll probably a lot of money, but it's worth taking a look

[18:40] at those.

[18:41] This important thing about this event is that it attracts about 15,000 people to our city.

[18:48] What that means to our city is that our hotels get full, our restaurants get busy, and

[18:54] our stores, other stores get busy as well.

[18:57] These kind of events are what make Woodland Woodland.

[19:00] Hope to see you there.

[19:02] Also remind everyone that this is campaign season, and I see that one of our local candidates

[19:08] is sure tonight.

[19:10] take the time to get to know your candidates before you vote.

[19:15] You actually have a voice as to who will sit up here next year.

[19:21] Take the time to find out who your candidates are, what they're about,

[19:25] because we have a couple good ones in my district that are running this year.

[19:30] So, take the time to do that.

[19:34] Lastly, as Commissioner of the Yolo County Housing Authority, I was informed recently

[19:40] that Yolo County Housing Authority has been selected by a famous actor, Andy Garcia,

[19:48] to spotlight Yolo housing on his nationally acclaimed show and it's going to be about strengthening

[19:57] communities about affordable housing.

[19:59] When Andy Garcia and his crew does, they come into your city and highlight a particular

[20:07] public setting like or improvement district like the housing authority or the city or

[20:14] a parks department and focus on the good work that these public entities are doing in

[20:21] an entire country.

[20:22] So, this national show, if we get filmed, which I think we are, it's going to be national.

[20:31] So, the city of Woodland, the Yellow County Housing, will be highlighted across the United

[20:36] States.

[20:37] And the purpose of doing that is to bring attention to the problem of affordable housing.

[20:43] And the goal, really, is to get people thinking about affordable housing and contribute to that

[20:50] policy. We need more affordable housing. There's no question about it. So thank you to Andy Garcia

[20:58] for selecting Yola County. Congratulations, Rich and congratulations to Yola County Housing

[21:04] Authority and the City of Woodlands, grateful to be partners with Housing Authority in the great

[21:09] work they're doing. Speaking of housing, Congressman Thompson also hosted a gathering of elected leaders

[21:16] in the county to talk about housing recently.

[21:20] Councilmember Garcia-Cadena and I attended and I can only say, it's very encouraging to hear the caring from all the agencies and the perspectives that we're shared.

[21:31] Right now, building costs would, I'd say, probably be at the top of the list of inhibitions between getting housing bill and not housing just for the low and very low income people, but even moderate priced housing is hard to come by.

[21:46] So, we're all working on it and we're grateful to have the Ola County Housing Authority.

[21:51] But more people can enter into the housing business if they're able to.

[21:57] We're grateful for the group from the faith community that helped bring the Freeman homes

[22:04] online.

[22:05] Just a few months ago, that's the 14 houses up at Freeman and Kentucky, we're happy to have

[22:10] them with us.

[22:11] I also want to congratulate the Opera House on another outstanding production, it was

[22:16] Greece, the musical, high school musical, they also held their annual Chesley's

[22:22] events. Both nights, the auditorium was filled. I want to thank the rotary clubs of

[22:27] Woodland, Sunrise and new clubs that listen to our city manager, give his excellent

[22:33] presentation on city operations and our finances. Appreciate their attention, kind

[22:41] to our needs.

[22:46] I also had a really unique opportunity Friday,

[22:50] Friday at the Tour of Beale Air Force Base

[22:51] with a group of other mayors and city managers

[22:53] in the region.

[22:55] It's really hard to appreciate how much is going on at Beale

[22:59] and it affects a lot.

[23:01] It affects all of us.

[23:02] They have the YouTube and Reconnaissance Aircraft

[23:05] there that's been in use since the 1950s

[23:08] and it's still a workhorse.

[23:10] that plane is so superb, so sophisticated, they are literally the eyes on the entire

[23:16] planet Earth and it's all being coordinated from Bel Air Force Base and it was so encouraging

[23:23] to me to talk to so many of the Airmen and women there and the experienced pilots that

[23:30] fly this U2 and just see how really committed they are to their mission and their confidence.

[23:35] it was very affirming so we can be proud to have

[23:41] be a layer for space and I suspect among our community

[23:43] or some people that work there as well.

[23:46] All right, Mr. Manager, it is your turn.

[23:50] Thank you Mayor, members of the council and Mayor,

[23:52] thank you for mentioning the rotary clubs.

[23:55] We're getting some mileage out of the state

[23:56] of the city presentation this year

[23:57] and been invited to sunrise and new and rotary

[24:01] will be attending as well tomorrow host lines

[24:03] for a similar presentation.

[24:04] So it seems to be resonating well and getting good feedback and a lot of good questions from those groups.

[24:12] Also Council Member Moreno has mentioned of the collaborative, I think it's worth noting Dr.

[24:17] Navarette, President of the Community College reported out that their enrollment for this fall semester is 20%

[24:23] up over the prior year, so they continue to soar to new levels.

[24:27] So congratulations to Dr. Navarette and the leadership there.

[24:31] So that's great to because the trend is otherwise most community colleges in California

[24:37] Absolutely, that's going the opposite direction. So

[24:40] So other than that just quick check long range calendar next meeting

[24:43] We'll have reports from both community services and community developments as part of their semi-annual reports

[24:49] So look forward to the great work both those departments are doing

[24:54] Thank you, Mr. Manager

[24:56] All right. That includes Council and staff reports. It brings us to item H, the consent calendar.

[25:03] This is items 4 through 10 on our agenda. And it's important to note that the agenda

[25:08] was amended earlier today for item H5 to align the recommended action language with the actions

[25:14] indicated in the staff report and proposed resolutions. So when we're voting today, we'll be with

[25:20] revisions as indicated, not as originally circulated with the agenda.

[25:26] So, members of the council, you have seen items 4 through 10.

[25:29] Is there any item that anyone wishes to discuss further?

[25:34] I see no indication to that effect.

[25:37] Does any member of the public indicate?

[25:40] I do have one comment.

[25:42] Okay, we're going to, we'll listen to your comment at first.

[25:44] The comment I have is, Mr. Mayor, is that our fire sheep, Eric, the audience today, and

[25:51] And I know how much time he spent working on the agreement regarding the spring light.

[25:59] So thank you, Eric, for all the work you've done and your staff.

[26:04] Here, here.

[26:06] I'll second that.

[26:07] All right, so we have no further comments from the council.

[26:11] We opened it up to the public first.

[26:14] Nothing from the public?

[26:15] I have no speakers.

[26:16] Nothing from anyone in the room.

[26:18] All right.

[26:19] All right, so we now have a motion from Council Member Landsberg to adopt items 4 through 10 with the corrections item 5 is indicated. Is there a second?

[26:28] Second.

[26:29] Thank you.

[26:30] Mayor Pro Tem Vega, second's the motion for the discussion.

[26:33] There being none, all in favour say aye.

[26:37] Opposed?

[26:38] Okay, motion carried.

[26:39] Thank you.

[26:40] That completes item H, and that brings us to our two remaining items of the evening, which are our public safety report.

[26:47] Starting with the police and I see our distinguished chief Brian Kenan coming forward.

[26:52] And he's going to fill us in. This is again twice a year report update. And after that,

[26:59] we'll hear from the fire folks. Chief Kenan.

[27:04] Good evening, Mayor. City Council members, Ryan Kenan, your chief of police. And yes,

[27:08] today, tonight, I get the opportunity to showcase the highlights of the first six months of

[27:12] of 2026 for the police department.

[27:14] As you'll see here, a lot of the great work,

[27:17] some of the challenges that we had to overcome,

[27:20] but I think I say that every time I have an opportunity

[27:22] to talk about our staff, your police department,

[27:25] is an extremely committed group of men and women

[27:28] that are absolutely committed to making this community safer.

[27:31] Many of them live here, their children go to school here,

[27:33] they have ties here, and they do want to do the best

[27:37] for this community and my showcase set tonight.

[27:40] So some of the things that report covers today

[27:42] Today was operating challenges, staffing, our response, and crime trends, quality of life

[27:46] for co-responder efforts, our ALPR usage, as well as community outreach, and our second

[27:52] half of the year priorities.

[27:55] Staffing for us, as you can see here, we're 28% of sworn positions were not fully deployable

[28:00] and I'll go over that a little bit later, but these are the challenges adapting to support

[28:04] new and outstanding technology quickly.

[28:07] It's outpacing our ability to actually do the job through our bandwidth.

[28:09] with repeat offenders, criminal justice system constraints,

[28:13] people not going to jail, not staying in jail.

[28:16] Some of the stuff that our community sees,

[28:17] it's what we live every day.

[28:19] And then you can see our success

[28:20] is we hire 10 officers during the reporting period,

[28:22] priority once times, response times went down.

[28:26] Reported offenses were broadly stable,

[28:28] and their homelessness related calls declined again.

[28:33] So this slide here talks about,

[28:35] really what our staffing challenges look like.

[28:36] Like hiring 10 people in one year is a huge burden, is a huge weight that not just the

[28:43] police department has to deal with, but one of my partners here, Kimma Kinney's back

[28:47] here.

[28:47] Her team is the one that is really carrying this heavy burden of helping us hire officers

[28:53] as well as professional staff.

[28:55] But on paper, it's fine that we show that we have zero vacancies which has today or next

[29:00] Monday rather.

[29:01] We'll have actually no sworn vacancies on paper.

[29:04] And that can quickly change for us, staffing for us is an absolute moving target.

[29:09] It can change quickly for us, but you're going to see there, on average, this first six

[29:14] months, I only had 52 officers that were actually deployable.

[29:18] And that's not counting vacations, sick time, everything else.

[29:22] On average, we had three vacancies the first six months, four in the academy, seven on field

[29:25] training.

[29:26] And we actually, at one point, had 10 officers on field training for a couple of months.

[29:33] and then six modified duties and injuries.

[29:35] So there's our workers' comps, the different leaves.

[29:38] Again, impacting other departments as well.

[29:41] But although we can get them on paper quickly,

[29:43] it does not get them on the street working fully deployable

[29:46] quickly.

[29:47] It takes four to six months to hire, takes six months

[29:50] to go to an academy, and then it takes us four to six months

[29:52] to go through a field training program.

[29:55] So people leave, it takes us 18 months to get them back on.

[30:00] To replace them. And then what's happening is we're actually not even replacing them one for one, because a three, five, six-year officer has three, five, six years of experience. And we're bringing on somebody that has zero experience. So we're losing years of experience with our officers. But this is where we are right now staffing, I can say quickly changes for us. But as of next Monday, we'll have another trainee who just graduated the academy today, starting on his field training journey.

[30:30] And then you have here priority ones.

[30:31] So we were able to see your prior to one's calls response time

[30:34] to drop from 607 this time last year to five minutes and two seconds.

[30:40] And then our prior two's dropped as well from only about 11 seconds.

[30:45] That's important to talk about, especially when we start looking at, again,

[30:49] how many officers we had actually work in the streets.

[30:51] During that time, we had 10 officers riding with FTOs.

[30:55] That's 20 officers essentially not doing full-time work because they're tied in with going to calls,

[31:01] training, paperwork, and all the other stuff that goes along with that.

[31:04] Calls for Service Total Calls, so this includes our community calls.

[31:07] The community calls this, generates a call for us, and then our proactive calls as well,

[31:12] so it's the officer's making traffic stops, pedestrian stops.

[31:15] And doing the extra is, so you can see we have a slight decline of about 8%.

[31:19] And when we get to proactive calls, I'll show you where the difference is.

[31:29] So again, the officer initiated calls, so we just talk about the traffic stops,

[31:32] follow-up, extra patrols, we dropped significantly 25%. Our traffic stops account for 46 of that,

[31:39] and throughout this period we were actually down most of it, we were down two out of our three

[31:44] traffic officers due to leaves and injuries.

[31:52] Following up on this, so you can see their traffic

[31:54] stops declined 25%. Our traffic officers write majority of the traffic, make the traffic stops,

[32:00] as well as right in the majority of the traffic citations and you can see there we had a decrease

[32:05] in our DOI arrests as well and our collisions saw decrease as well over the six months.

[32:12] It should be noted too. Some of this that helps us certainly with our overtime

[32:15] the coverage is our grants that we get through OTS, the Office of Traffic Safety and with that we

[32:20] during this reporting period we had a $70,000 grant majority of that was used for overtime and operations.

[32:27] I think we had eight DUI saturations, 11 distracted driving enforcement, as well as six additional traffic focused operations.

[32:41] So having the officers out there, not just the motors, but sometimes our patrol officers, other officers will also work traffic with them.

[32:50] Again, reported offenses relatively stable in the sense of we had a small increase in

[32:57] person's crimes, slight decrease in property crimes, crimes against society were up,

[33:03] again, proactive efforts on our officers' parts and their group B, things like vandalism

[33:08] and those types of things are included in group B. But in a little bit more detail here,

[33:12] so crimes against persons.

[33:14] and so he used to see a report called UCR Summary Reporting.

[33:19] So UCR Summary Reporting is if a crime,

[33:22] if a call for service in incident

[33:24] had three different crimes associated with it,

[33:27] UCR picked a hierarchy, so it was the most important one.

[33:29] So we had a sexual assault tied in with a domestic violence

[33:32] tied in with a burglary call.

[33:34] You would only see one

[33:35] and we would only report on one of those.

[33:38] Today in the last couple of years,

[33:40] we've done what we call National Incident Based

[33:43] reporting summary. So that actually for a call that has all three, all three are counted towards

[33:49] that. So here you'll see sexual assaults are down and aggravated assaults are down under crimes

[33:55] against persons. But one thing we've been going through as you noted on the highlight, they are

[33:59] higher counts in false imprisonment and domestic violence categories. So we saw an increase in intimidation

[34:04] cases as well as kidnapping. What reality under the kidnapping one is it's not the street kidnapping,

[34:11] what we're seeing is family violence.

[34:13] We're seeing our domestic violence,

[34:14] where actually officers are seeing

[34:16] that the victim is being locked in the home

[34:18] or moved from one room to another.

[34:20] So both of those are different offenses

[34:23] that are now being tracked.

[34:25] And that's what we're seeing.

[34:27] Crime is, it's property here.

[34:29] Overall property crime is down.

[34:31] You can see there, the highlight,

[34:33] the plus 60 possession of stolen properties,

[34:35] there's the largest increase.

[34:36] One of the reasons here is actually due

[34:38] to possession of stolen properties,

[34:40] actually some of our shopping carts. Some of our shopping carts are, depending on the circumstances,

[34:44] are deemed to be the felony like it is here, as opposed to our ordinance, which by the way,

[34:52] we have 47 shopping cart citations that we've issued. And then our vandalism is down as well.

[35:03] Crimes against society, I mentioned these are essentially the proactive efforts of our officers.

[35:07] This is drug equipment violations, drug possession, those types of things. So our officers are making

[35:12] car stops, pedestrian stops, and they're coming into contact people where they're making

[35:16] more drug and narcotic arrests, and DUI is incorporating this one through, so all those

[35:23] different numbers add up to this, and you'll see, again, an increase there.

[35:30] And homeless related calls, so our homeless host team should operate at three officers for

[35:38] over almost two years now, they've been operating at two, this is a seven-day-week coverage

[35:43] In addition, we have our social service manager who continues to be, you know, all things in this realm helping out our staff.

[35:52] We've been down our community enhancement specialist for the last few months due to injuries.

[35:57] She has Kristen Klein, our social service manager, has done the best to pick up where he has left off in the sense of, you know, the debris working with two men in a truck.

[36:08] all of our services. She also runs a laundry program where she's getting these

[36:14] relationships, getting people into services, tons of success stories there. And you

[36:18] can see we continue to see a drop in homeless-related calls for service.

[36:25] Not perfect, we'll never get to zero. But you can see there the continued

[36:29] decrease. Our mental health holds with our two co-responders that we have. Again,

[36:34] significant resource that we have with the two of them because they're able to work with the

[36:40] officers and work with people and sometimes that means we don't have to take them to jail. They

[36:44] can get into services immediately and it gets them off the streets and it actually gets again helps

[36:49] to reduce calls for service that are being generated. You'll notice the highlight the 509-235

[36:55] of the services officer offered. For most of this time period, we are actually down to one

[36:59] the co-responder due to injuries. So the officers and the staff have continued to do a good job at

[37:04] reducing the impact to the community even though we've had disruptions in our services. And kind

[37:11] of up to date piece that we've been doing our supplemental point time count every quarter. In January

[37:17] we did a point time count. Our count had about 154 chronic illness that were living on the streets.

[37:22] We did another one in May of this year. We were down to 147. And then we just did one August 25th. We

[37:29] you're down to 136 point time count with people, 137, sorry.

[37:34] And what we found is, again, about 56 of them, the 136 are from out of town.

[37:40] But they all have, majority of them had a reason to come back to town.

[37:43] Family, friends, opportunities, maybe it was work.

[37:47] And then 18 of them have been homeless for a year or less.

[37:50] And so by doing this quarterly point time count, the supplemental count,

[37:54] we're actually able to start staying ahead of what our unhoused community needs.

[37:58] And coordinate those efforts along with the shelter has been running at about a 60 to 70 percent capacity during this time

[38:05] One of the things with the shelter though is and the officers of experience is that if there's really some of that needs to get into the shelter

[38:11] And even though there's no beds available, the shelter has actually made that possible. So we've seen success stories with that as well

[38:21] One of the things we probably don't talk about enough a lot of things that happen inside the department. This is property and evidence

[38:28] So proper evidence is a completely different beast that we have to contend with, but as you can see there right now

[38:35] we have about 20,000 items related to safe keeping, evidence for crimes, everything, all those things that are still in house, they're stored there.

[38:44] And then you see there we take in almost 22, 2300 items through the end of June, as are firearms, drugs, and then on top of that

[38:54] All the work that they have to coordinate with the DA's office, audio, video requests, DOJ.

[39:00] We have to go through and we actually destroy firearms, we have to destroy drugs,

[39:04] all the different other purging of items, and then work with people who come back

[39:10] to collect their safe keeping items and all those different things.

[39:14] That's a complicated business.

[39:17] ALPR.

[39:19] So, you see there, our officers internally did 5,647 searches of the database.

[39:26] The top five purposes are vehicle theft, assaults, stolen property, weapons, offenses,

[39:31] hit and runs.

[39:32] And what you can see there is the 2,000, 200,000 reads a day, that's what the license plate

[39:38] reader sees on plates.

[39:40] It's not what the officers are seeing, that is just the data that's being collected for

[39:43] that period of time.

[39:44] and then big conversation always is, so what about other agencies?

[39:48] You know, trust you, the Woodland Police Department, but what about everybody else?

[39:53] And as we talked before, we've adjusted our policy.

[39:55] One of our policies actually is we're doing our audits.

[39:58] Our policies says we'll do at least minimum of one audit a year.

[40:03] We have since changed that starting this year.

[40:05] We've done one audit per month to see what's happening.

[40:09] And we've been reviewing the different searches

[40:13] is that we've come through, that we've come across.

[40:16] So as you can see there, we are at searches conducted

[40:17] by our personnel, we also are at the outside agencies

[40:20] that are using our data and using the system.

[40:25] And what's happening is if we see a red flag,

[40:26] we review that a little bit deeper,

[40:28] and then we may restrict or suspend an agency from our system.

[40:33] I can share with the City Council, we have done that once.

[40:36] We have currently there's one agency

[40:37] that is suspended from accessing our data.

[40:40] We are, we follow it up with them,

[40:42] We're waiting for them to come back with corrective actions.

[40:47] But again, it's limited to use the legitimate public safety purposes.

[40:51] I well aware it's happening in the media across this country as it relates to ALPR.

[40:57] We have our approval authority as well as we created a new ALPR FAQ, which explains the system limits,

[41:06] the safeguards and that is now on the city's website that lays out all the potential questions

[41:12] that our community may have and how it's used for more information.

[41:19] We're sure, again, why does this system exist?

[41:22] How do we use it?

[41:23] Here's some of the, just a couple of the success stories we've had.

[41:27] It is absolutely a game changer when conducting investigations.

[41:33] You know, for a long time, the investigations for us,

[41:37] it was trying to find a needle and a haystack.

[41:40] And when someone gives you a vehicle description

[41:42] or even potential plate,

[41:44] You don't know where that vehicle is.

[41:45] You don't know what vehicle is related to the case.

[41:48] And now you're searching a lot of,

[41:50] following up a lot of things you don't actually have answers to.

[41:53] This system actually allows us to find out where a plate is,

[41:56] where a car at a time was.

[41:58] Maybe it was nearby, the crime that occurred,

[42:02] or it's a hit that says this vehicle

[42:03] just drove through this intersection headed westbound.

[42:07] That's where we're gonna have to go find a stolen vehicle

[42:09] or a kidnapping suspect.

[42:11] So you can see here some of the success stories we had, the officers located the suspect vehicle for an assault with the deadly weapon.

[42:19] We actually had a hit and run investigations the officers used the license plate reader camera for comparison before and after the collision was reported.

[42:29] So they found the car with no vehicle damage before and they found a picture of it with the vehicle damage after the hit and run was reported.

[42:36] That's how they tracked down the hit and run suspect.

[42:37] So on vehicle recovered, very common the officers are driving in town, somewhere a vehicle

[42:44] drives through a camera system, and then the officers know that maybe it's headed westbound.

[42:48] They can go look further down that direction.

[42:51] Again, another assault with a vehicle, a stolen U-Haul truck, and a restraining order violation.

[42:56] So these are just a number of success stories that go beyond, you know, just the normal stuff.

[43:04] Our outreach, our volunteer hours, our volunteers are actually having a potluck today,

[43:09] going over their plan of action, you can see here with 22 volunteers, 23 watch groups,

[43:14] and then they attended the Nationalite Out events, like many of us in this room,

[43:19] 1,500 and 22 volunteer hours.

[43:23] There's a stat that talks about what the value of volunteer hours is, and you can see 52,950.

[43:30] Our positive satisfaction, so after community calls us, our officers go out, they handle

[43:36] the call, they get a survey, much like we do on social, you know, from a different business

[43:41] or whatnot.

[43:42] We have an 85% satisfaction rate with our community, a 6% negative, 9% neutral.

[43:48] But I'm going to tell you in this line of work, it's pretty hard to get an 85% satisfaction

[43:52] rate.

[43:53] Absolutely.

[43:54] 3.5 million Instagram views, 658 Facebook, we have a great social media platform and

[44:00] so great social media team and it puts out a lot of great info.

[44:05] And then for four priorities of going up to this next six months, stabilize our staffing

[44:10] and deployable capacity, we're going to see some bumps in the roads in the next few months,

[44:16] improve emergency response performance so continue to get to calls quickly.

[44:19] Also, sustain our crime reduction and then continue to reduce our homeless related

[44:23] instance and repeat calls offender. Repeat calls.

[44:27] But again, despite all the stuff going on, 10 hires, 17 percent, decrease in response

[44:32] times, reported calls are stable and then our unhoused related calls are down 19 percent since

[44:41] 2024. So even with all the staffing challenges, even with all the new, you know, staffing

[44:46] tapping is coming in, all the new officers, they're doing a great job.

[44:51] Any questions?

[44:52] That's no standing report, chief, colleagues.

[45:01] Okay, it's been suggested that we have public comment first. Is there any public comment tonight?

[45:07] I have no speakers. Anyone in the room wish to speak to this?

[45:13] Well, I could hardly imagine a better report. It's that good.

[45:19] The important numbers are down and nothing is dramatically up that we don't want to be up. And I just would like to say,

[45:29] If you haven't interacted with our officers, don't pass up an opportunity.

[45:34] Go to coffee with a cop or any of the other public events where our officers are present and just have a conversation and I think you'll feel as I do that we have a lot to be proud of here and we can be really confident that our officers are doing the job we want them to be doing.

[45:51] All right, colleagues, do you want to add any comments?

[45:54] Vice mayor?

[45:56] Thank you.

[45:56] Pro-Tam?

[45:57] Marvig, whatever.

[46:00] I respond to tours.

[46:03] Gee, thank you so much.

[46:04] You know, one of the things to add on to the mayor's comments is that I see the pictures

[46:09] of on these slides and I see you all everywhere.

[46:14] I mean, the volunteerism is amazing to have the number of volunteers and it really does

[46:18] make a difference, I mean, whether it be youth events or the farmer's market. And our

[46:24] fired, our police department is very well loved and respected in this community. And it's

[46:29] because of all of the work that you all put in and being out there. I've recently been talking

[46:35] to business owners that have restaurants on the west side of town. So La Superio Shopping Center.

[46:42] and Ray Lee's shopping center and you know I get questions around. Well, is there is the same

[46:49] effort and outrage that our police department does on the east side of town this for in terms of

[46:56] the homeless encampments and addressing those. Is it the same do they prioritize and I assured them

[47:02] that you all drive around because I see you and I drive around and you pay the same level of attention

[47:08] and care to all areas of the cities, right?

[47:11] There's just always more that can be done, right?

[47:15] So sharing that and thank you for looking

[47:18] and with limited resources still spreading the love

[47:22] throughout the community.

[47:24] I want to also go back to the the flock,

[47:30] the statistic.

[47:32] So one of the things, so I've made a comment around,

[47:37] And there was a business owner here downtown whose car was stolen and she shared with me

[47:43] that it was recovered shortly after it was taken before it was damaged beyond repair.

[47:50] And she said it was because of these cameras, right, that they were able to find them.

[47:54] So I hear stories about that and certainly having somebody, the car being stolen and damage

[48:00] is a significant impact to people.

[48:02] also. I like that you're sharing the positive stories. And then as we've had many conversations

[48:10] and we had some very active community group members that are also concerned about some of

[48:15] these red flags. So these audits that were conducted by community members, which I appreciated.

[48:23] And then I do appreciate changing the policy to have audits be more frequent.

[48:28] And I'm glad that there is now a process for the red flags and I have a question around the protocol you said there's been one agency that's been restricted.

[48:41] What is is there a documented process for for them or that the plan of action that you will take once that is flagged?

[48:51] So, once we flag it, our process is we notify that agency, let them know that we found,

[48:56] you know, let them know what we found, right?

[48:58] Maybe it's a, the search criteria was questionable because they have an opportunity to go back

[49:03] there and they may not know about it.

[49:05] And so they have an opportunity to review it and see, and maybe, maybe it was a legitimate

[49:10] search and it's all on the up and up and that's the corrective action that comes back.

[49:13] So, we reviewed these, the same criteria.

[49:16] This is what this award, these are legitimate operations, legitimate searches.

[49:20] and then once they show us you know are they taking creative action with personnel, then we would

[49:26] unsuspend their access. Does that make the answer that question? And so in that process is that

[49:34] documented in our in our policy or? It's documented in the audit that we do. So we do the monthly audits that

[49:40] we're doing right now. We would show in that audit if they were to come back with corrective action, we would

[49:44] notated in that audit. And are those audits available publicly or only via PRA? Right now

[49:55] we haven't put on them on the website to make them accessible to everybody, but certainly

[49:59] they would be accessible through a PRA. Well, and I just ask we have had, I think almost

[50:06] every other day I have somebody reach out to me, you know, and I appreciate and share

[50:12] some of the just concerned right I mean we have a diverse community here we have a lot of immigrants

[50:18] we have mixed status families and I love how our community comes together and they want to make

[50:24] sure that we're protecting our citizens you know spend some time talking to folks over the weekend and

[50:29] at least 10 people ask me what are you doing to protect our our migrant communities from these terrible

[50:34] targeted raids right and then each time there is a rumor of ice being in town which by the way

[50:41] really appreciate you and your team always being accessible when we hear those and you share what

[50:46] you know and if it's a fact or not and I appreciate that. So this is just a concern that exists

[50:53] and it's not about mistrust of the department it's just we I mean we all see the news and you watch

[51:01] YouTube and these things are scary right and how is surveillance happening and then also just people

[51:07] caring about our neighbors here so I would agree with that and I think we all believe in

[51:13] the same the thing about mass surveillance even as your police chief I don't want mass

[51:17] surveillance but what I do on is I want the tools to actually protect this community and recover

[51:24] kidnappers, you know youth that we've seen you know recover stolen vehicles and the like

[51:29] you know I too have seen the social media feeds that talk about the misinformation about how

[51:34] the system worked. I'm not a, you're talking about a, you know, a vendor themselves, but just

[51:40] the technology, the technology has allowed us to do things so much faster and so much quicker

[51:45] and more efficient than we ever have been before. And like I said earlier, this is, it allows us to

[51:50] actually find this needle in a haystack, and quickly, like the example of the stolen car.

[51:56] Our officers, certainly the old school way of things is you would go to a place where cars got dropped

[52:01] off, where every day you were taking a stolen vehicle report, well the graveyard team would

[52:06] go out there the night before that night and they would drive around until they found a stolen

[52:09] car that was reported. Today, we don't have to do that. As soon as that car gets reported,

[52:14] we get a flag on one of our 38 cameras. So out of our 15 square miles and I believe we have 320

[52:21] miles of roadway or something like that, we have 38 cameras that are not on every intersection.

[52:27] And I know the misinformation of selling these cameras will tell you where you're driving

[52:31] where you're going to eat, where you're going to church, they're not, they're not here.

[52:36] You might get a hit at one intersection and then another. We do not know where you stopped,

[52:40] where it drive way you pulled into, where you went to a fast food restaurant or church.

[52:45] It's just this is a one snapshot and that's trying to just educate people on actually how the system

[52:49] works and I know we're very slow at that. We're not as good as getting all the public relations

[52:55] information out but this is why it's important I think to continue to educate the community on what

[53:00] But we're using this for and how we're using this here in women.

[53:05] Good.

[53:06] You know, and just I appreciate an advance your participation in the forum.

[53:10] That is being done with all yellow County agencies around the immigration.

[53:15] What's the title?

[53:15] I had it up and I closed it.

[53:17] I do know it's on September 23rd, though, I don't remember the title.

[53:22] What is the title, Jesse, of the event?

[53:30] No, no, I appreciate it's all of our law enforcement agencies coming together to speak

[53:35] about the topic of immigration.

[53:37] So thank you for participating that.

[53:40] Absolutely, looking forward to it.

[53:42] Thank you.

[53:43] That'll be all mayor.

[53:44] Thank you.

[53:46] Thank you.

[53:47] I just wanted to piggyback on what our mayor was saying about having the community attend

[53:51] the coffee with the cops or whatever is going on.

[53:55] I have a longtime friend who has a special needs son and she has had, as he's grown into

[54:02] adulthood, had concerns about if he ever has an interaction with the police, how he would

[54:07] And how we would react or how that would go.

[54:11] And it wasn't this last one at the chamber, but there was something previously.

[54:15] And she had an opportunity to speak with some officers.

[54:17] And it really eased her mind.

[54:20] It gave her a lot of assurance on how our officers have been trained to work with a broad range

[54:27] of community members.

[54:28] And I think it really helped her give a good set of sense of satisfaction.

[54:35] So, I do appreciate when our community is able to interact with you, I think sometimes

[54:42] people see people in uniform and kind of get intimidated.

[54:45] So, it's really nice to be able to interact that way.

[54:48] So, thank you.

[54:48] Thank you.

[54:49] I would agree.

[54:50] Having a chance for our officers to talk to our community, once you get to actually talk

[54:54] to them, you see that we're just people.

[54:56] We have families.

[54:57] We're coaches.

[54:58] We do all the same thing that everybody else does.

[55:00] We just happen to wear uniforms and carry guns as a job.

[55:03] But as soon as they get to know, get to talk to them, I believe, and it works in our favor just about every time.

[55:10] Thank you.

[55:11] David, did you have any questions or comments?

[55:16] Chief, I just want to say a special thank you for highlighting the fact that it's through these special grants like the OTS grant that you're able to pay for the overtime and have these special operations where you make our streets safer and it allows our community to feel like there's.

[55:34] There's work being done to look for outside revenues to support our mission here

[55:40] highlighting the

[55:42] Presentation that you did here. I wanted to ask can you highlight can you talk a little bit more about the duration that it takes for a

[55:48] graduate of the Academy

[55:51] Like the duration from the Academy graduation to being a

[55:55] Solo officer like out of field training. What's the duration of that?

[55:58] They feel training typically lasts about four to six months, but that can be extended right like for if we needed to we could

[56:05] extend them and a lot of times it's making sure we're giving people the opportunity to develop.

[56:11] You know, we don't we hire good people. We invest in good people. We want to see these good people be successful.

[56:16] This job brings a wide variety of experiences. You're not going to know everything in four to six months.

[56:22] And so we absolutely give people an opportunity to extend it. We've done that with a number of individuals.

[56:27] We might send them to additional training, one of the challenges of a lot of new hires is actually report writing and so having to write reports and you know that we're going to go to the DA's office and everything else so it often becomes a challenge and so we'll send them to report writing school and given them that experience to get them past that.

[56:45] I'm glad those resources are available because it's a whole different change in how you

[56:50] present the information, right?

[56:52] Like I've seen friends that have absolutely benefited from that level of training and

[56:57] also even from our national night out talking to one of your officers talking about how they

[57:04] were especially drawn to coming back to the community because of the resources that were available

[57:09] the extra time that your officers took in community members to recruit and so to speak,

[57:15] to have people say this is what the job is, it's no mystery and this is what it's going to take.

[57:20] I just want to highlight that because what we're seeing here in these numbers is this long effort

[57:25] of investment into the future, into our officers and making sure that our cities being covered.

[57:33] So, I want to highlight that in continuation to the conversations about flock.

[57:39] The conversations with the community are all valid and the concerns are there, especially

[57:44] being scrutinized through outside of actors, right, that have nothing to do with woodland,

[57:49] but just the tools that you're using.

[57:51] I want to know, can you identify what would be considered a red flag?

[57:55] Is it two violations, questionable violations?

[57:58] Because my understanding with flock is that it's changing, right?

[58:01] people have found out that you know with state laws changing of not helping or

[58:08] are complying to federal investigations right away in California. There's

[58:13] other tools, there's other aspects of the flock technology that's changing

[58:17] with the legislation. So can you talk to me about what are some, what does it take

[58:23] for it to be a red flag? Yeah so the the ALPR question with with flock. So they

[58:30] They have, as of April, they have a new audit assistant that they're using, that when you use algorithms to see, maybe a plate has been run multiple times.

[58:39] That's what we're seeing across this country. It's in the East Coast, in some places, like a plate has been run a significant amount of times in a short order, right?

[58:47] And so that would be a red flag. And that's some of these auditing tools will allow us to track that stuff faster as opposed to trying to hand counter it or use an Excel spreadsheet to do that.

[58:57] Also, what is their search criteria?

[59:00] What's their reasoning?

[59:01] Obviously, the crime is associated with that,

[59:03] but then there's a reason for that.

[59:05] And what we've seen is things like XOXO,

[59:09] that's a red flag.

[59:10] And so that's what we've seen.

[59:12] And again, the auditing tool that we'll see

[59:14] in the ALPR technology will help us as well.

[59:19] Well, I appreciate the effort that's been done

[59:22] to keep up with the trust in the public

[59:25] and for the sake of transparency, having these monthly reports.

[59:28] I want to ask one last question about, do we currently have WPD policy regarding an abuse

[59:37] of systems, not specifically flock, but if an officer were to, you know, take advantage

[59:43] of the tools that are offered to them, right, flock is just one of the tools.

[59:47] Do we currently have a policy in place of a consequence?

[59:52] We do, it's actually state law too.

[59:55] So if someone was to violate, say,

[59:56] a CLETS, a California law enforcement telecommunications system.

[1:00:00] Using that data to access that license, again, license plate or driver's license location, it is already state law that says they've learned violation of along with our policy that sets that. So they evaluate any of our technology programs. They're not only just the PD policy, city policy, state law and rising those, you know, each one of those different violations would lead to termination if not prosecution. Well, thank you. I want to congratulate you and your team.

[1:00:28] and the high percentage of satisfaction in public opinion and the efforts that are done to connect with the community.

[1:00:36] Thank you.

[1:00:39] Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

[1:00:43] Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

[1:00:46] Thank you, Chief, for the great report that you provided to us.

[1:00:51] If I had a hat, I would tip it to you and your staff.

[1:00:55] because I'm amazed the work that you accomplished in the six months being down so many people, having been there, I know what it's like.

[1:01:04] So, again, gradually at your staff, all members of the City Council, I'm sure they don't join me, make sure that they know they'll be

[1:01:13] appreciate what they do in day in and day out. I sleep better knowing that you're out there.

[1:01:18] Why not you personally look at your staff?

[1:01:21] I sleep better, too, and they're out there.

[1:01:24] Not me.

[1:01:26] The other thing I want to mention is I want to thank you for the flock FAQ is well written.

[1:01:36] Well, it's informative.

[1:01:38] And I'm glad you put it on the public website so people can take a look at it because you're right.

[1:01:43] There's a lot of misinformation out there about flock, but we have to look at, you know,

[1:01:48] the benefits versus the risk. And I think that your council is behind you. And we'll keep it up

[1:01:56] and protect our community as well as protect the information on the flock.

[1:02:03] The third thing I think you said that you're hiring a lot of local people. I'm glad you're doing

[1:02:08] that because that's what makes our city successful. People invested in our community are going to stay

[1:02:15] here, they're going to work here, they're going to raise your kids, they're going to go

[1:02:18] to nugget and raise all those other good things.

[1:02:22] So I appreciate the effort on hiring local.

[1:02:26] The last question I have is, comment I have is, I thought there was a time we had a top

[1:02:33] 10 homeless thing, I hate to use that term, but we focus on certain groups or certain individuals

[1:02:42] those who really need the work who are creating the work that you required to do, are we still doing that or not doing that?

[1:02:54] So we still have something similar, so it is our top offenders.

[1:02:58] It's the ones that are generating the calls for service for us, maybe the more arrests.

[1:03:02] And we consider our top offenders that need more attention in the sense of not just us making more arrests,

[1:03:09] But working with our different partners, whether it's the sheriff's office is the DA's office

[1:03:14] It's you know a nonprofit all those different things to get them the resources that they need and so yes

[1:03:19] We have our top offenders that the officers are made aware of kind of every month during our leadership meetings

[1:03:27] Keep that up. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you so much chief. I have no further questions

[1:03:34] I feel the report was comprehensive and very nicely delivered.

[1:03:39] I thank you on behalf of all of us.

[1:03:41] Thank you, and I just thank my staff for when they put this presentation together.

[1:03:45] They're the ones that they're doing the work.

[1:03:46] They're working graveyard's weekends.

[1:03:48] And we would not have the success if it wasn't for all of them.

[1:03:51] So I appreciate your support for the men and women of the police department.

[1:03:56] And again, like I said earlier, they are committed to this organization and this community.

[1:04:00] So thank you.

[1:04:01] All right. All right. Well, there's no this was an information item. So we have no actions. I have a question for you. Do you think I might have something to do with leadership to do what you think you might have something to do with leadership? Oh, it just might.

[1:04:16] Well, the manager gets some credit to because he hired him.

[1:04:19] And now we return to our fire department for the semi-annual report and coming forward is our locally grown fire chief, Eric Zane.

[1:04:30] Eric.

[1:04:31] Well, good evening.

[1:04:32] Thank you, Mayor Stuller and council members for having me here this evening, Eric Zane, your fire chief.

[1:04:37] Our semi-annual report also represents the first six months of this year.

[1:04:42] and it also kind of really highlights the work that our staff are doing day in and day out to protect our community.

[1:04:50] And why did you mention also the invitation to come on September 11th?

[1:04:55] Was that going to be part of your presentation?

[1:04:57] It was not, but yeah, that's very true.

[1:04:59] Why don't you announce to the public what you're doing?

[1:05:01] Yes, so September 11th, we'll at 6.50 in the morning at Fire Station 3, 15.50, Springlight Court,

[1:05:08] work. Both the Woodland Fire Department and Police Department will be hosting a joint memorial

[1:05:15] that we've done every year, kind of memorializing the 25th anniversary of the tax at the World

[1:05:22] Trade Center. So we hope that you'll come out and join us and just kind of really be together

[1:05:29] the morning of and remember those that lost their lives.

[1:05:33] Thank you, Chief.

[1:05:33] Thank you so for the you know operations at a glance for the first six months of

[1:05:40] this year we handled 4,300 calls for service with an average response time of

[1:05:47] four minutes and 26 seconds that's 11 seconds faster than the previous six

[1:05:52] months some of that can be attributed to the fact that we now have response

[1:05:56] corridors along East Main Street and Gibson Road which include the

[1:06:03] make out trans-controlled intersections that are now utilizing GPS.

[1:06:08] What it does is when we're going lights and sirens down the road, I turn my turn signal

[1:06:14] on.

[1:06:14] It knows that I'm going to head westbound on East Main Street.

[1:06:18] It's going to start to open up those intersections with green lights.

[1:06:21] Clear's the traffic, reduces the amount of time that we have to take, oncoming traffic,

[1:06:26] making a safer response corridor, making a quicker response corridor, and that was a joint

[1:06:32] effort between community development and our traffic folks, as long as public works and staff

[1:06:38] with the fire department as well as cow trans. And so that's been quite the effort to coordinate,

[1:06:45] especially when you start involving other state agencies. But we've gotten there and we're

[1:06:52] definitely seeing a positive impact in those corridors. So as we start to identify additional

[1:06:58] intersection that we struggle to gain control of while responding to emergencies will work with our public works to prioritize those intersections as well.

[1:07:07] The the 4300 calls for service that is a slight decrease from the July to December time frame, not unusual.

[1:07:15] We tend to get pretty busy in the winter time with vehicle accidents and we tend to have a little bit of a lull in the spring time before fire season kind of hits.

[1:07:24] As you can see, we received aid 49 times and provided aid 51 times.

[1:07:29] That's a pretty good balance there for the resources that we've been sharing.

[1:07:37] So this graph represents the calls for service that we typically see in our community.

[1:07:45] The blue line represents this past six months and you can see that we've had in most areas

[1:07:52] some decreases. In the false alarms category, you'll see a pretty significant increase.

[1:07:59] Some of that has to do with the way we're reporting. We have a new reporting system that

[1:08:02] we had to step off into. And we're learning how to best identify those incidents in the

[1:08:10] reporting system and software and working with our company officers who are completing

[1:08:14] those reports to make sure that it's best categorized. But the federal government did require

[1:08:19] this change as of January. So we are starting to report out slightly differently.

[1:08:29] In a correlation there you see good intention calls, good intention calls or calls where people

[1:08:34] calls with good intentions could be they see smoke and it happens to be a barbecue or they see

[1:08:40] someone down in a park and they happen to be taking an app. So you know people

[1:08:45] we utilize 911 for all sorts of reasons and those do generate calls for service for our department.

[1:08:54] So, fire outcomes and properties saved. So, we do have a goal of containing room of origin,

[1:09:01] 80% of the time. The first six months, we saw that at 70%. And that is a little bit of a dip,

[1:09:09] but we also, again, are reporting differently in this new software and things are categorized

[1:09:16] differently. So we've been working with staff, but we're also not talking about huge percentages,

[1:09:22] right? These are, we're talking about structure fires where homes or businesses are actually

[1:09:28] burning. And, you know, three or four outcomes can really change those metrics. But again,

[1:09:37] what I do want to highlight is the $71 million in property saved in this first half of

[1:09:45] year. Last year alone we saved about $56 million in property. So the first half of the year

[1:09:52] this year we've had some very significant incidents. One of those incidents was a large vegetation

[1:09:58] fire out on the Pioneer Avenue where we had fires that almost got into some lumber yards.

[1:10:08] So these numbers reflect some of that wood that could have been lost would have been revenue for

[1:10:14] these companies and also jobs.

[1:10:20] So priority called travel times. Again, the try to get from the time

[1:10:29] we go on route when we get on scene, four minutes, 90% of the time. We do that about 50% of the time.

[1:10:36] We can get on scene within a full five minutes, almost 90% of the time. So we start creeping towards

[1:10:43] those numbers. And again, why is four minutes so important? That's really when brain death starts

[1:10:48] to occur in folks that are start of oxygen. So think about holding your breath for four minutes,

[1:10:54] what kind of position would you be in after that four minutes? Those are some of the metrics that

[1:10:58] we look at. We do have really good CPR survival rates, and I'll be at the next semi-owner report

[1:11:04] reporting out on what this year looks like. So far with the efforts that we've made, seven individuals

[1:11:13] have walked out of the hospital and gone home completely neurologically intact

[1:11:18] this year alone and those are some pretty incredible outcomes even from the

[1:11:24] county's perspective you know we're doing really good really really good work

[1:11:29] out there cause of origin cause of origin or cause of ignition as you can see

[1:11:38] intentional fires. We had about 60 intentional fires that we could confirm

[1:11:43] were caused or were started by people intentionally. Equal to that are

[1:11:49] undetermined fires and so why are those numbers kind of equal? Well fires are

[1:11:53] constantly as they're burning they're destroying their own evidence and so if we

[1:11:58] aren't able to find a really solid cause or we don't have good camera footage, we

[1:12:05] can't really make it a termination. So we continue to refine this. We have a very strong

[1:12:14] investigations team, especially our two inspectors that work for the community risk reduction

[1:12:21] division of the department. They are fire investigators. They do a great job. We've actually had

[1:12:27] some arrests this year that fire that I talked about on Pioneer Avenue that resulted in arrests and

[1:12:32] believe that that individual still may be in jail awaiting trial for the damages that they caused.

[1:12:42] So some community service highlights. So we've had in the first six months, almost 500 contacts

[1:12:49] within a housed individuals. These are all opportunities in which we can share what we know about

[1:12:54] the services that Chief Kanan and his staff can provide or the services that Fourth and Hope can

[1:12:59] provide to our on-housed individuals in our community.

[1:13:04] Canceled and non-emergent incidents, you know, 330 times in the first half of this year,

[1:13:13] we canceled to calls for service at doctor's offices or skilled nursing facilities where

[1:13:20] there's already medical staff on site.

[1:13:22] This isn't just, this is actually really important to us, call shedding and an organization like ours.

[1:13:33] We've staffed for apparatus in the city of Woodland since the 1980s.

[1:13:38] The configurations of that apparatus have changed slightly, but

[1:13:41] there's still only for apparatus available.

[1:13:43] Call volumes have gone from roughly 18 to 2000 calls in 1983 to roughly 9,500 calls in 2025.

[1:13:55] We have to stop responding to certain calls where our assistance isn't required.

[1:14:01] So the company officers are given the authority to cancel to non-emergent calls.

[1:14:07] So code two incidents at skilled nursing and doctor's offices where there's already a physician on scene.

[1:14:12] there's already nurses on scene, really what they're looking for is an ambulance to transport someone to the hospital that needs a higher level of care,

[1:14:20] that that clinic or that skilled nursing facility can't provide.

[1:14:25] It doesn't necessarily require the assistance of the fire department.

[1:14:28] That's a good plan.

[1:14:30] Engine company inspections, you know, our folks are busy, but they're getting out and they're making contact with our business owners.

[1:14:37] They're inspecting their businesses, making recommendations to make sure that they're safe.

[1:14:42] that they're not, you know, going to have issues with electrical, wiring, exits are clear.

[1:14:51] Just really the basics, but they do a great job and it's a really good opportunity for our staff to interact with our business owners.

[1:15:02] So some personnel updates, you know, like the police department, the first six months of this year, we onboarded five new firefighters. That's a lot for an organization our size. It takes a lot of effort. Our human resources department, a mighty two in that department. They do a fantastic job of assisting us through the hiring and onboarding process are firefighters. We onboarded our first lateral firefighter during this time frame.

[1:15:31] That's significant because we have so many new and young firefighters.

[1:15:34] We're actually bringing in some folks that have a little bit of experience that can kind of fill a gap for us.

[1:15:40] We did hire four new firefighters, sent them through the Academy.

[1:15:45] The Academy is six months long.

[1:15:46] They are paid as recruits through the Sacramento City Fire Academy and they were brought in.

[1:15:55] They started their first shifts back in June.

[1:16:01] We're seeing a reduction in our overtime expenses because we have these folks on, so we have less vacancies, but we still have two current vacancies, and we're currently recruiting for two lateral firefighter positions right now.

[1:16:14] That would bring us to 100% staffing.

[1:16:17] So we're really excited.

[1:16:19] We have interviews coming up this next week.

[1:16:22] We're hoping to find, you know,

[1:16:24] two worthy candidates to come serve our community

[1:16:27] and join our department.

[1:16:30] This also, we did have a retirement in that

[1:16:34] and so that also brings about promotions,

[1:16:36] which is really great moral booster for the organization.

[1:16:40] But we did lose some firefighters to other agencies

[1:16:43] and, you know, we do struggle in that area

[1:16:46] to compete with other agencies that are also hiring laterals.

[1:16:51] And some of these folks can go find positions that just quite frankly pay more

[1:16:57] and we can't necessarily compete with some of these Bay Area agencies that they're going to.

[1:17:03] But we try to do everything else in our power to make sure that the environment that they work in

[1:17:08] is one that promotes growth and opportunity.

[1:17:11] and we really hope that this is the community they want to stay in and serve, and so we also do

[1:17:18] really look for local candidates that want to serve their community in which they grew up in,

[1:17:24] like myself and Battalion Chief Cormula, who's sitting in the back with me this evening.

[1:17:30] So, fire prevention, our staff of three, the fire marshal and two inspectors, they also do a fantastic

[1:17:38] That's a job of attending community events on our behalf, providing safety demos for our

[1:17:44] business community.

[1:17:47] We have seen a reduction in plan reviews and new construction inspections, but that

[1:17:54] has given them the opportunity to increase the amount of inspections that they're conducting.

[1:18:00] We did have a third half-time temporary employee that is no longer with us.

[1:18:06] So we're, you know, we shrunk our staffing based off of the need currently, and they're able to meet the needs of the risk reduction division with the three of them currently.

[1:18:21] And, you know, they're a powerhouse group of folks that do a great job of representing the department.

[1:18:27] They handle the majority of our social media, and they work closely with the Community Development Department on, you know, approving new plans and looking at, you know, new projects in the city.

[1:18:43] And then again, just a highlight and, you know, thank you for recognizing the efforts regarding Elcorn.

[1:18:48] that was a significant effort that took a lot of agencies, not just the City of Woodland

[1:18:57] and the Woodland Fire Department and the City of West Sacramento and the West Sacramento

[1:19:00] Fire Department but learning all about Lafko and that process and being involved with the

[1:19:05] county.

[1:19:08] It was quite the effort, I learned a lot, I'd appreciate having that opportunity

[1:19:12] in my career to work on an annexation. It doesn't go without, you know, some

[1:19:19] hurt feelings out in some of our rural areas, but I can confidently say that

[1:19:25] we're providing very good services to the residents of the Elcorn District,

[1:19:29] and that, more importantly, that the city's being reimbursed for its costs to

[1:19:34] provide those services. And then also, Engineer Ed, you guys all know him and

[1:19:40] and building that pool, but working with our engineer

[1:19:45] Edwasnowski on Fire Station 4 project.

[1:19:49] We have surpassed kind of the initial phase,

[1:19:53] which is the kind of general scope of a station program

[1:19:58] and in its elements.

[1:20:00] And now we're gonna be moving into site design and engineering,

[1:20:03] which is also exciting for a fire chief

[1:20:05] to have the opportunity to build a new facility

[1:20:08] that's going to further reduce response times in our community and spread out our resources

[1:20:14] and just provide a safer city for us to all live and work in and that's it.

[1:20:21] Well that's a lot thank you Chief and we're also grateful to you and your team.

[1:20:27] I think the citizens can feel comfortable knowing that we have a wonderful public safety team

[1:20:32] here between fire and police, and how exciting we have 10 new police, we have five new firefighters,

[1:20:40] and it's also important to recognize that the time we spend here is important, learning

[1:20:47] more about this, going through this, because between police, which is about $30 million of

[1:20:53] our city budget, and fire, which is almost $17 million, I mean, that's $47 million out of

[1:21:00] But 77 or more, we are more now.

[1:21:04] So you realize it's almost two thirds of our budget is represented by these two operations.

[1:21:10] Which, that's why cities exist is to provide for safe environments for

[1:21:15] their people among the other things we do.

[1:21:17] But this is our most costly area, and how wonderful for us to have chiefs like you to

[1:21:23] to provide these services, manage these operations,

[1:21:28] and bring us the good people you have brought to us

[1:21:31] to fulfill this mission.

[1:21:33] I thank you.

[1:21:34] Colleagues, do you have questions?

[1:21:38] You know, you don't have flocked cameras,

[1:21:40] so there's not a big many questions here.

[1:21:44] So don't be offended if there's not as many questions.

[1:21:46] I've not offended, not at all.

[1:21:48] If you do, okay, we'll start with 10 there,

[1:21:52] or see a cadena.

[1:21:53] Thank you Chief. I did have a question you had mentioned that one person who is possibly sitting in jail right now and it looked if I was

[1:22:02] understanding correctly there were nearly 60 intentional fires that were set were the majority of those people prosecuted or did I see that wrong?

[1:22:13] No, so even though we can tell that these are intentionally set doesn't always mean that we have a suspect.

[1:22:21] So I believe we've affected between three and four arrests in the last six months that

[1:22:28] have resulted in people going through the judicial system, just this one individual because

[1:22:33] of the egregious nature of the fires that they set on a red flag day, they're currently

[1:22:38] still being held.

[1:22:39] All right.

[1:22:40] Thank you.

[1:22:41] It is important to remember too that some of them are serial fire setters too, so it's not

[1:22:45] That's certainly 60 in 60.

[1:22:48] Yes, that's correct.

[1:22:50] Thank you.

[1:22:50] Okay.

[1:22:50] Thank you.

[1:22:51] Our mayor pros down.

[1:22:55] Thank you.

[1:22:56] Thank you for a great presentation.

[1:22:58] It's always a joy to see to see you.

[1:23:00] Enter firefighters out there doing all the good work and I always remind it so I represent

[1:23:05] spring lake and I live in spring lake and all that area, all that growth.

[1:23:09] Everything we have throughout the city and your agencies remains the same size.

[1:23:14] and I always just I really appreciate the positive attitude that your staff has all the time when

[1:23:22] they're doing so many things. I mean I think about the shelter it wasn't there you know a few

[1:23:26] years ago and you're providing the services there in the columns and so you're doing a lot

[1:23:30] with with with not enough resources but the culture that you have throughout the department is you

[1:23:38] can feel it right in the joy and then you see the fire trucks out in the community and people are

[1:23:44] are just very happy, so there's, I just wanted to commend you for the culture that you have

[1:23:49] and that the camaraderie and the expectation that you have of yourself and throughout the

[1:23:55] Fire Department of professionalism. You can see it in its felt in the community. I have a question

[1:24:01] around the calls for service to the Eastbymer way. I know it was, they were becoming a problem and

[1:24:10] really kind of a waste of resources similar to the non-emergency transport calls that you mentioned.

[1:24:18] Can you share a little bit more about how that's improving or not?

[1:24:23] Yeah, that definitely ebbs and flows. As the emergency shelter increases or decreases their capacity,

[1:24:33] we may see an increase or decrease in calls for service. We do work closely with the shelter

[1:24:38] to mitigate some of those calls for service,

[1:24:43] or maybe the high system users

[1:24:45] to help provide additional wraparound resources

[1:24:49] for those individuals.

[1:24:52] Some of the calls have just quite frankly migrated

[1:24:56] from their facility here on Court Street

[1:24:59] and fourth, just out to East Bimmer Way.

[1:25:04] And the staff are doing a good job of trying to manage kind of the expectations of the folks utilizing the shelter in the services and living in the tiny homes, but they also have free will so they have access to us and we'll call us for services and if we need to follow up with staff we will.

[1:25:26] There has not been a significant increase in calls out there recently.

[1:25:30] It's been fairly kind of normalized and leveled out a little bit and I think that's as they provide additional services and provide on-site medical services, some of the needs of those residents are being met on site.

[1:25:46] No, thank you for that, and I appreciate your efforts and also Chief Canand's efforts to work

[1:25:53] with our hospital to make sure that we are not overly burdening them because they are also

[1:26:00] strapped for services or emergency room nurses or have their hands full so just making sure that

[1:26:07] we all work together. So I know you all do that and I appreciate that, I think that helps everybody

[1:26:12] provide the level of service that they're intended to provide and not more, so I know that's extra time, but that coordination is important, so thank you for that.

[1:26:24] Of course, thank you.

[1:26:25] Thank you. Any additional questions?

[1:26:32] Just a comment, Mr. Mayor.

[1:26:34] There just recently my wife and I had to call the fire department because our gamma

[1:26:41] alarms are going off again.

[1:26:42] It was a four o'clock in the morning and the fire department responded, but and I thank

[1:26:51] him for that.

[1:26:51] But what's amazing about their staff, his to Eric staff, is there a jack of all traits?

[1:26:57] These guys and these ladies know a lot of stuff, I'm amazed about how much they actually

[1:27:04] the toolbox is huge, I think it's almost larger than law enforcement, they're toolbox is pretty damn big, and I appreciate the knowledge that your staff has and the compassionate they have for your constituents. Thank you.

[1:27:21] Appreciate that we are just problem solvers.

[1:27:24] Yeah, that's great.

[1:27:27] I'm not seeing any additional expressions from the council.

[1:27:30] any member of the public that wishes to comment on this report?

[1:27:33] I have no speakers.

[1:27:35] All right. Well, it is an informational item, so there's no action needed.

[1:27:41] Thank you, Chief.

[1:27:42] We're going to turn in a moment, but I just want to emphasize, as our manager said today,

[1:27:48] if you have questions or concerns about city operations, please speak up.

[1:27:53] We are committed to doing the best possible job we can, consistent with available resources.

[1:27:58] So we can't solve or work on a problem if we don't know about it.

[1:28:02] Three ladies came tonight, they were here last week.

[1:28:05] They have legitimate concerns, we're working on that problem.

[1:28:08] And I would recommend these ladies perhaps to be invited to a meeting with representatives of that company to talk out some of those things.

[1:28:16] Because it's been two weeks now, and obviously they're not satisfied that enough is being done.

[1:28:23] So with that, we come to memorial adjournments, are there any tonight?

[1:28:28] Okay, Tania.

[1:28:30] Yes.

[1:28:31] So, I wanted to recognize my aunt Judy Aidan who recently passed away.

[1:28:38] She was 85.

[1:28:39] She lived her entire life in Woodland and was very involved with the community

[1:28:44] worked at Blue Shield for I think 35 years.

[1:28:48] And so, she will be greatly missed.

[1:28:51] Well, thank you.

[1:28:52] I would also like to recognize a Davis resident, John Mont Smith.

[1:28:56] And the reason I do so is because he did so much for

[1:29:00] Yolo County and the cause of climate action.

[1:29:03] He formed the climate compact at Yolo County,

[1:29:06] convened all the cities and interested parties on,

[1:29:10] for whatever things we could do to lift our environmental

[1:29:14] responses here in the communities of Yolo County.

[1:29:18] He just cared passionately about it, it was a no nonsense guy.

[1:29:21] Everything was fact-based, you know, and he wasn't, he didn't want just happy talk, he wanted effective work, and he helped us with our climate action plan for the city of Woodland.

[1:29:33] So we, we regret the passing of both Judy Egan and also John Mott Smith and we adjourned in their memory this evening.

[1:29:41] We will reconvene in two weeks on Tuesday, September 15, right here at 6 p.m. with that adjourned.

[1:29:53] Alright.

City Council Meeting

Transcript