Regular Finance Committee Meeting - Last Monday Mon, Feb 23, 2026 ยท Finance Committee https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/949 == Executive Summary == The Finance Committee meeting on February 23rd, 2026, focused heavily on two main topics: a detailed educational presentation on the city's financial terminology and budget processes, and a contentious discussion and vote regarding the approval of a one-year pilot program for ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection service. The financial presentation aimed to demystify terms like budget vs. ACFR, encumbrances, funds, and the city's organizational and coding structures, in an effort to improve understanding among council members and the public. There was also a discussion about the efficiency of budget adjustment processes and the low threshold for City Council approval of budget adjustments. The debate over the ShotSpotter pilot program, funded by a state grant for youth violence prevention, highlighted concerns about the technology's effectiveness, potential for false alarms, data privacy, and whether the funding was best used for technology versus more direct youth intervention programs. Despite these concerns, a motion to deny the ShotSpotter agreement ultimately failed, indicating the committee's intent to move forward with the pilot. The meeting concluded with administrative updates regarding the upcoming FY27 budget preparation and an internal audit of the procurement process. == Key Decisions == - Approved the agenda unanimously (5-0), with one item pulled for discussion. - Approved the consent agenda unanimously (4-0), after one item was pulled. - Motion to deny the ShotSpotter service agreement failed (2-3 vote), meaning the committee intends to move forward with the pilot program. == Motions & Votes == - Approval of Agenda โ€” Passed unanimously (5-0) - Approval of Consent Agenda (as amended) โ€” Passed unanimously (4-0, Councilor Castro absent for this vote) - Motion to deny the ShotSpotter service agreement โ€” Failed (2-3, Councilors Castro and Bamonte voted 'Yes' to deny; Councilors Casset, Garcia, and Faulkner voted 'No' to deny) == Public Comment == No public comments were received from online or in-person attendees during the designated public comment period. However, council members, particularly the Mayor and Councilor Castro, raised questions and concerns throughout the meeting that reflected public interest in budget transparency and the use of public funds. == Topics == - ShotSpotter Technology Funding - Budget Terminology Presentation - Meeting Procedures and Roll Call - FY27 Budget Preparation - Internal Audit Procurement Process - False Alarms and ShotSpotter - ShotSpotter Court Effectiveness - Police Resources and ShotSpotter - Future Funding for ShotSpotter - Youth Violence Prevention vs. ShotSpotter - Agenda Approval - Public Comment - Presentation Time Limits - Next Meeting Date - Meeting Adjournment == Full Transcript == No, it's just, look, it's not good at all. Damn. I'm just having trouble connecting. Okay. Can we go live? Are we live? Yeah, I got it. All right. Are we ready, everybody? Okay. I call to order this Finance Committee hearing on February 23rd, 2026. Can we get a roll call, please? **Speaker:** Certainly, Madam Chair. Councilor Cassett? **Speaker:** Here. **Speaker:** Councilor Castro? **Speaker:** Sent. **Speaker:** Councilor Garcia? **Speaker:** Here. **Speaker:** Councilor Bamonte? **Speaker:** Here. **Speaker:** Chair Falner? **Speaker:** Here. **Speaker:** Madam Chair, you have a quorum. **Speaker:** Thank you. Approval of agenda. Anything from staff? **Speaker:** No changes from staff. **Speaker:** Anything from the members? **Speaker:** Move to approve. **Speaker:** Second. **Speaker:** Okay, we have a motion to second. Can we do a roll call, please? **Speaker:** Councilor Cassett? **Speaker:** Yes. **Speaker:** Councilor Castro? **Speaker:** Yes. **Speaker:** Councilor Garcia? **Speaker:** Yes. **Speaker:** Councilor Bamonte? **Speaker:** Yes. **Speaker:** Falner? **Speaker:** Yes. **Speaker:** Madam Chair, that motion passes. **Speaker:** Thank you. Now on to the consent agenda. Anything from staff? **Speaker:** Madam Chair, item L was pulled this evening for discussion by Councilor Castro. **Speaker:** Move to approve as amended. **Speaker:** Second. **Speaker:** Can we get a roll call, please? **Speaker:** Councilor Cassett? Yes. Councilor Castro? Councilor Garcia? **Speaker:** Yes. **Speaker:** Councilor Bamonte? **Speaker:** Yes. **Speaker:** Chair Falner? **Speaker:** Yes. **Speaker:** Madam Chair, that motion passes. **Speaker:** Thank you. And now public comment. Is there anyone in the audience or online that would like to take the time to have public comment? **Speaker:** Madam Chair, we do not have any members from the public online. **Speaker:** Okay. No one in the audience. Okay. Moving on to presentations. And I am working with the City Manager on a new way of doing presentations. Sorry, Andy. If we can keep it to 15 minutes for the presentation and then 10 to 15 minutes for questions and answers. If we can do that, that would be awesome. So, let's go ahead with the presentation. **Speaker:** My microphone. Chair Falner requested this presentation be given just to make sure everybody understands what we're talking about when we're talking about various terms, when we throw about various terms in the budget process, and just in general for things coming up for the budget procurement, what have you. I originally had this presentation subtitled, "Or what are those finance people talking about?" So, going on to the next slide, just general what we're talking about when we talk about budget actuals and encumbrances. The city's annual budget serves as a program and policy roadmap for the given fiscal year. The fiscal year runs from July 1st to June 30th every year. The budget's not meant to be merely a financial document. Rather, it's better defined as a policy document with numbers. It outlines the city's goals for the year in question and summarizes the resources the city's dedicating to attain those goals. A budget is forward-looking. It reflects projected costs and revenue sources and synthesizes these with the goals of the Mayor, governing body, and the community at large in order to form a plan for how city services will be delivered and how they will be paid for. By contrast, the ACFR, or Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, is backward-looking, meaning it summarizes the previous fiscal year's activities in terms of revenue received and expenses spent and reflects the adjustments and finding of the city's annual audit process. Rather than budgeted money, the ACFR focuses on actuals, meaning actual dollars received and spent. The city's accounting division produces the ACFR, assists in the audit process, and ensures that all city transactions are done properly and in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP. Often we also talk about encumbrances. These are monies committed to future purchases and payments for services. They are approved by the governing body in the form of contracts and purchase orders through which the city will receive and or spend its financial resources. And these areas are the domain of the city's purchasing division. So moving on to the next slide. What is a fund? A fund is the city's basic financial unit. Funds separate resources and expenditures into distinct categories or pots, each dedicated to specific purposes under city ordinances in state or federal law. This structure ensures money is used only as intended and prevents inappropriate commingling of funds. Some funds, such as the General Fund and the Half Percent Capital Gross Receipts Tax Fund, may support funds that are not fully self-sustaining. These subsidies are recorded as transfers between funds. You will see those in virtually every budget that we produce during the annual budget process. The Budget Office works with departments and senior staff to ensure that each fund is balanced with revenues and other sources, including transfers and available balances, covering all planned expenditures. At the fiscal year end, a fund's revenues minus expenditures determine its ending balance. A surplus increases the balance. A deficit reduces it. Available balances may be appropriated for one-time needs through a Budget Adjustment Request, or BAR, subject to state requirements. For example, the largest one, the city must maintain a General Fund reserve equal to one-twelfth of current budgeted expenditures, excluding transfers out, which limits the amount available for appropriation. And keep in mind, you might hear during the time over the course of the fiscal year, you might hear the city's annual one-twelfth retirement required reserve is X, and then a month later you might hear the city's annual required reserve is Y. Why are those numbers different? Because every time we add to the expenditures budget, unless we're adding it to transfers out of the General Fund, their reserve is recalculated. So it is an ongoing number that changes over time as the budget changes. Next slide. Okay. Then we move on to how is the city organized? City services are delivered through various offices and organizations. Some report to the City Manager, while others, such as the Municipal Court, are led by elected officials. In that case, the Municipal Court Judge. All operate under the oversight of the governing body, City Council, the Mayor, and or the City Manager as defined by law and ordinance. A department is the city's highest organizational level and is led by a director, typically reporting to the City Manager. Certain directors, such as the City Attorney, may report directly to the Mayor and or City Council. Departments may contain one or more divisions, each led by a director who reports to the department director. Divisions may further be divided into sections and in some cases units. So just an example, the Public Works Department includes the Complete Streets Division, which in turn contains multiple sections, including Grading and Drainage Maintenance, and that particular section is further divided into component units: Administration, Drainage Maintenance, Equipment Management, and Grading. So that's basically how the structure is set up. There are departments, under them are divisions. Under those divisions, there may be sections. Under those sections, there may be units. Not all departments have, not all divisions have sections or units. For example, the Budget Office, which is within the Finance Department, operates solely as a division without any additional subdivisions. There are no sections, there are no units. And another thing, there may not be all areas of the city have all org codes and all functional units within the city are located within at least a department and a division. There are no cost centers in the city that don't have at least a department and a division. So that's just kind of how the general the org chart and the organization structure works. Next slide. So this is where we get into why I was talking about the organization. What is an org code? You've probably heard us talk about org codes before, or organization codes. It's a seven-digit number that the financial system uses to identify a specific city program or service. It's often also referred to as a cost center. I've always described it as capturing the who and where of a financial transaction. So, examples of orgs are like Police Administration or Building Permits Division. An org code can be thought of as the intersection of a fund and organizational unit such as department, division, section, or unit. Each org is assigned to one fund, one department, and one division. A single fund may support multiple departments, such as the General Fund, and some departments may administer multiple funds. For example, Parks has a General Fund component. They also have the MRC, which is a separate enterprise fund. They also have a bit of Quality of Life money. Those are all in separate funds. The seven-digit fund code or code has two parts to it. The first three digits correspond to the fund number. So that identifies the fund or the funding source. An example, an org code that starts with 100 denotes a General Fund org. If it starts with 525, it denotes Midtown, the Midtown Fund, and so on and so forth. The last four digits of the seven digits indicate the organization branch. It these four digits identify where the program sits in the city's organizational structure. So if the org represents a division, the last four digits are the four-digit division code. For example, in 6203501, which is ITT Administration, that means it's division, the division code for ITT Administration is 3501, and the 620 denotes Fund 620, which is the Services of Other Departments Fund. If it represents a section, the three-digit section code is preceded by a zero. So in the case of Police Admin, the org code is 1000310. Section 310 is the Police Administration section code. If it represents a unit, it's a two-digit code preceded by two zeros. So in the case of Transit, I believe this is Transit Maintenance, org code 54093 indicates Unit 93 Transit Maintenance within Fund 540, the Transit Fund. Just some examples of org codes include Parking Field Operations, which is 5350457, again 535 Parking Fund, Section 457 Parking Field Operations. Fire Medical Services, 1000186, again that 100 at the beginning indicates General Fund. Or the Affordable Housing Trust, which is now moved to a new fund, 242, which is why it starts 2420223, indicates the Affordable Housing Trust section. And then Airport Operations, 5456050, again 545 is the Airport Fund, 6050 is the Airport Division. It doesn't have any more subdivisions underneath it, so that's why that division code is used for the end of that. Moving on. What is an object code? An object, sometimes called a line item, is a six-digit code that identifies a specific revenue source or expense. It captures the "what" of a financial transaction, what the city's receiving or paying for. So, some examples include Municipal GRT revenue, Building Permits revenue, Professional Contracts expenses, and Office Supplies expenses. There are seven categories of object codes. Object codes starting with one, two, or three are balance sheet codes for assets, liabilities, and fund balance. These are generally used only by Finance and apply to entire funds. They do not apply to individual org codes. Then we have revenue codes, which start with four. These would be taxes, fees, grants, other incoming resources. There are expenditure codes, the ones that you're probably most familiar with. These start with a five. Things like salaries, fuel, utilities, contracts, equipment, debt, service, and more. Then, six and seven codes are transfers in and out, respectively. They're most often used, as I said, to subsidize non-self-supporting funds, often from the General Fund. There are other reasons we use transfers. For example, we have to pay debt service, but the debt service fund is located in a different fund than the half percent GRT, which funds the debt service. So, it has to be transferred from the half percent capital GRT fund to the debt service fund to pay for that debt service. Altogether, these object codes standardize how the city tracks what it earns, spends, and transfers. Next slide. So, just to go real briefly through the object code groupings, you will see these in the first part of the budget book. Every year there's a summary of all revenues and all expenditures that groups these things together. So, in revenues, we have the major categories of taxes, which is GRT, both local and state shared. This, by the way, is the largest single city revenue source. We also have property tax, franchise fees, lodgers tax, gas tax, and other taxes such as housing excise tax or cannabis excise tax. There are licenses and permits, which include business licenses, building and zoning permits, animal licenses, and other licenses and permits, fees, and charges for services. There's a whole long list there. I won't read it all to you. The biggest ones in this category, of course, are the utility fees, solid waste, wastewater, and water fees. Fines and forfeitures, which include parking and violations. Rents, royalties, and concessions. This is a pretty small category. It would be airport rentals, both terminal and space, equipment rentals, parks and recreation space rentals, and facilities rentals. Miscellaneous revenues. This includes everything that doesn't fit into another category, such as bond proceeds, insurance recoveries, sales revenue, and other miscellaneous. Of course, we have intergovernmental and state intergovernmental, which include state, federal, and county grants and other grants, which would usually come from private entities such as foundations or trusts. Interest on investments, which are proceeds from the city's investments of non-committed cash. And then, of course, the aforementioned transfers from other funds. Next slide. Expenditures, personnel services. This, of course, includes salaries, which includes incentives. Then we have benefits, FICA, per employee health and life, workers' compensation, dental insurance, and uniform allowance. Then we have the super category, if you will, of operating expenses, which includes contractual services, utilities, repairs and maintenance, supplies, which are defined as, often we get confusion between when do you call something an equipment purchase and when do you call it a supplies purchase. A supplies purchase is basically a consumable. So, it may be pens and pencils. It may be asphalt for streets. It may be bullets for police, what have you. It may be hose for the fire department. Basically, consumable things that don't really have a long useful life. Then we have insurance costs, travel and training, both in and out of state, other operating costs, which, by the way, includes internal service charges, which are also known as services of other departments, which I know you've all heard of. There's a whole long list there. I won't go through the whole thing. Probably the biggest, other than services of other departments in there, is advertising. Then we have capital outlay, vehicles and equipment over $5,000 unit cost. So, if the individual item is over $5,000, then it's considered capital outlay. Then finally, we have land and building, which are capital projects mostly associated with CIP projects, including startup design and construction costs, as well as remodeling costs. Then the other major categories are debt service principal and interest and transfers to other funds. And last slide here. We do budget, in the vast majority of cases, we budget by what's known as a rollup or by category. So, what this means is that if I have $5,000 in, let's say, operating supplies and I have $0 in my gasoline line, I could spend up to $5,000 in my gasoline line, even though nothing's budgeted in that particular line because they both live in the same category of supplies. Of course, it goes the other way, too. If I spent $5,000 in gasoline, I couldn't. And that was, and the only other line is office supplies. I couldn't spend that $5,000 in office supplies. I've blown it all on gasoline. So, this just gives you an idea, an example, like in the contracts category, we have professional contracts, service contracts, and other consulting. In the supplies, we have office supplies, operating supplies, and uniform and clothing. These are not a complete list of everything that's in those categories. They're just examples. So, within the contracts line, you don't need to do what's known as a T-bar or technical budget adjustment to move money from, say, professional contracts to service contracts or from office supplies to operating supplies. But if you wanted to move money from contracts to supplies or vice versa, then you would need to do what is known as a T-bar. And I'll get to that in a second. Also, Mayor: Andy, can I stop you one second? Andy: Sure. Mayor: Is there an appetite for us to go a little longer than 15 minutes? Andy: Sorry, I... Mayor: Yeah. Okay. So, let's do that. Andy: We're getting pretty close to the end. Sorry if I'm taking too long. I know it's a lot of information, and I appreciate you so much. So, let's keep going. So, also, if we are trying to move money between funds or departments, a BAR is required. In other words, it's a different process. It's not what's called a T-bar. It's actually a little bit more involved. And with that, I will actually move to our other presentation, which is provided in there. And this is just a brief flowchart. Mostly this is given to departments when they start. This is just to understand what's the difference between what we call a T-bar and a BAR and what are the signature requirements for a BAR. So, first off, the first question there is, does the adjustment that's being sought result in any net change to revenue and/or expenditures in any fund and/or department? If the answer is no, in other words, within my budget office budget in general fund, I want to move money from, say, contracts to supplies, then that's just a T-bar that the department will enter it directly in Munis, then electronic approvals in Munis for the department director, budget officer, that's me, the finance director, and then we can post it. If there is any net change, in other words, the answer to that first question is yes, then that becomes a BAR, which is, we call there that red indicates that it's a paper process. Even though we don't really do it on paper so much anymore, it's still a form that has to be filled out. Unlike a T-bar, which just requires a memo to be attached, a BAR is an actual form with signature lines and everything and starts with optional division director signature, then department director signature. The budget officer signs it, and then there are several decision trees that happen. If it reflects a carry forward of grant or capital in any amount, if the answer to that is yes, then it can go directly to the finance director and then be entered. If not, and this is per ordinance, city code chapter 11-4, if it does not reflect a carry forward, then the question is, does the net change of the BAR amount to $5,000 or less? If yes, once again, it goes to finance director and it can go in. If no, then it goes to the next question. Is the net change less than $60,000 or less? If the answer is yes, it can be signed by the city manager. If no, then it has to go to the council directly for you to approve. And regardless of who approves is the final approver, once that's done, the budget office takes it, we enter it, the department director approves, the budget officer provides final approval, the finance director approves it in Munis, and then we post it. So, that's pretty much, I know that's a lot of information, but of course, I'm here to answer any questions you may have on any of this. Mayor: Okay, can we start with a round of applause for Andy? Good job, Andy. A lot of dense material, and you did it. You pretty much hit the mark, I think, given the amount of information you're trying to get us to absorb. Before I go to the committee, is there a way that we can do cheat sheets that kind of tell us what the codes are so we can reference those cheat sheets? Andy: Yes, there is actually on the city's intranet site, on the budget office side and also on the Munis page, there is an Excel chart of accounts that has tabs for all of these things. It'll have tabs for all the org codes. The org codes are actually on two tabs. There's kind of a reverse lookup. There's one where it's sorted by department division and then one just by sorted by the org code itself. So, you can look it up either way. If you're like, "Well, what org codes are in fire?" You can look at the one. Or if you say, "Well, what org code does 100000021 mean?" You can look it up the other way. There's also a pink tab in there for the object codes. Again, the org code is the who and where. The object is the what. So, both the revenues and expenditures are all listed in there. There's a ton of them, but you can, of course, they're all searchable in Excel. There's also a table in there for funds. That's a red tab, so you can see, actually, maybe we, while I'm talking, maybe you can bring up the chart of accounts if you have it on, and we can just kind of go through that. There's a lot of tabs in there that you won't really be interested in. There's tabs defining the old system that we used to use, E1, and a crosswalk for that. Sometimes people still need to know that stuff, but the further we get into Munis, the longer we go with Munis, the less relevant all that is. It just, you know, every once in a while it's like, "Well, that, we used to have this four-digit fund in E1. What did that mean?" We can still, you know, look it up. Mayor: When I asked, just so the public knows that this is available online, and I know that the website still is difficult to navigate, I think, and so just so that I asked the question so that the public knows they can access this information as easily as we can, and so as mostly okay for the question so... Andy: I think it's something... Mayor: It's not public. Andy: Oh. Mayor: This is an... So, then try to resolve that. Going to committee. Let's start with Paul. Yeah. I mean, Councilor Bamonte. Councilor Cassutt. Councilor Cassutt: No, no questions. I just, this, this actually brought me back to when I was first elected, and it must have been in the first few months because it was before we locked down. And Andy, you did a wonderful job then. I actually remember walking through this Excel spreadsheet with you. And thank you again for the refresher. This was really, really helpful. And thanks for spending all that time with me then looking at Excel spreadsheets. I appreciate it. Mayor: And for the idea, goes Chair Falconer. It wasn't a new idea. I just felt like as a committee with new members and some senior members, it was a good idea to get a refresher course for all of us. Councilor Castro. Councilor Castro: Thank you. Not too many questions. I do think I will have some offline around restricted funds and how we can better utilize those. I know some of those are directed by the state. Correct. Are there any funds that the city is restricting currently? Andy: There are many. That's kind of one of the things that I talk about. And not to belabor the point too much, but there's always a temptation and an understandable one when we get a new revenue source coming in or, let's take, for example, back in the, or right now, the cannabis excise tax, which is coming in, there are state requirements, there are legal requirements on how to use the money. So we have to put it in a separate defined fund and make sure that we're only using it for defined purposes. There are some other revenue sources, such as land sales, that are defined by ordinance. They can only go, right now under current ordinance, they can go in general with some exceptions. They go half to affordable housing, half to economic development. We use the fund structure to restrict how those monies are used. So they only go to housing, only go to economic development, and they get their shares and they're not commingled. One of the things I talk about though is when we talk about new revenue sources, like I say, there's always a temptation to say, "Okay, this money, I don't want it to go to the general fund because then they'll spend it on candy and records." I want this only to go to this limited fund in this limited purpose. And of course, that's understandable. That's the prerogative of the governing body. But one of the things that I talk about is that the more we do that, the less flexibility we have in budgeting. So there'll be times when you'll ask me, for example, and sometimes it's not the City Council doing this, it's the state or whatever, but sometimes people will ask me, "Well, can't we use lodgers tax for that?" No. There are very defined, specific things that we can use lodger tax for: for advertising, promotion, for arts, for certain things. But for example, we can't use it to fund parks. We can't use it to fund planning and land use. So, there are some examples like that. And like I say, it's a balancing act between wanting the revenue to only be used for certain purposes and the fact that that's great, but sometimes it cuts off our flexibility to fund things. So, sometimes it's the City Manager, the Mayor, or Andrea Hair will tell me, "Well, can't we use this to fund that?" And I'm like, "I'm sorry, we can't." It's sad, but it's true. So I hope that answered your question. It did. It sounds like most of the restrictions are coming from the state, but we have restricted ourselves a little bit locally as well. I'd say it's about half and half, actually. Then the other question I had was in the flowchart. Munis won't be able to determine the budgets reflecting certain grants carrying forward. Is that correct? Will you just explain to me a little bit what our shortcomings are around Munis? Certainly, Councilor Castro, Madam Chair. The reason all that area is marked in that red boundary and it has that little cheat note in there that says "paper process" is because this decision tree, all these yes/no questions in there, are something that you cannot program into a financial system. It's just not sophisticated enough to do that, especially since every city and every county's decision tree would be different. So you can't necessarily, Tyler Munis cannot necessarily program that into our system. That's why even though we try to get electronic and get away from paper forms, even electronically processed as much as possible, this is an area where we really can't do that because it takes a human brain to look at it and say, "Okay, this is a carry forward, this is a carry forward of grant or capital, or it's not." You know, what's the total net? Even the ask question of what's the total net of a BAR, because it's like I might have several items adding up to more than $5,000, but then I have decreases taking it down the net to like maybe $3,000. We would say, "Okay, well, that's still within the Finance Director's purview and so on and so forth." So, it's really because of these questions that a computer software, at least at this point, maybe with AI someday we can, but I don't really trust AI to tell you the truth. But we could get to the point of an electronic system being able to answer these questions, but we're not there yet. Thank you. And if there's anything we can do to help with efficiency in this process, please feel free to reach out to us as we refine our processes. No further questions. I will mention on that point, one of the things that we've talked about introducing to the governing body, and it's an element that causes a lot of confusion for people. Currently, I believe the threshold for approval of contracts is $200,000. That's for the approval of a contract, but the approval of a BAR moving to the City Council is still $60,000. So I still have people to this day saying, "Well, my BAR is under $200,000. Why are you saying it has to go to the council?" Because the BAR threshold for a BAR is $60,000. I think this is unusually low. When we talk to other cities and counties, they say, "Wow, it's just $60,000 that it has to go to the council." I understand you. We're not asking you to give up your power. Any BAR that is approved at a lower level than you will ultimately still go to the City Council on a quarterly basis. So, it's not that you're never getting a bite at the apple to look at these things, but it would make the process a lot more efficient if we could maybe raise it at least to the same level of contracts. So, just something to think about. Councilor Garcia. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Andy. That's, you know, when you get into the weeds of all this stuff, and you really barely touched base on probably the tip. It's kind of like when I'm talking to Director Condelia over IT stuff, you know, it's called geeking out over it, and there's not a whole lot that really understand that. I know that previously we had a former director or assistant director, Lo, who was really involved with this. Currently, who else understands all of this other than you? Pretty much most people within finance and your kind of point people for budgetary and accounting processes within departments. I would say in this room, Anna Marie back there at the end of the room definitely is one that understands all of this. Generally, people like Marcella Apodaca in Community Services, she does BARs, she does contracts, she does all that. So, and of course, just about everybody has a rudimentary understanding of it. At least we are actually talking, we were just before the meeting, I was talking to Armenia about maybe we should put that slide presentation that I had earlier onto the internet site. We already do have how-to guides on looking at the chart of accounts and how to use account inquiry to manage your budget, but this might be a good addition for, especially for new employees, to know. Okay, they're telling me about orgs and objects, and I have no idea what the heck they're talking about. So that might be helpful in the long term. The plan is once we get control of the internet again, to put this thing there. So, we try to, that's one of the many how-to guides we in budget have tried to put up there, just as we know that people are joining the city all the time. One of the complaints is, "Well, we don't get trained in all this stuff." So, we try to put out these how-to guides as much as possible. So, at least people who start don't feel completely lost at sea, and they can at least understand the structure of these things. Thank you. And I, you know, it really comes down to time in the seat to understand these things because, I mean, you know, with the previous presentation, there's this number and that number, and this signifies the department, and this signifies everything underneath that department. Yes. And so, I guess to my colleagues' questions earlier in regards to, I know you can't open up everything to the public, but we do need to open up some to people understand how this is working as well because there's many members of the public who say, "Well, why can't there's so much, there's money in the city, why can't we, why, why isn't it going to parks?" Or, you know, at least to understand a little bit of, you know, at this point, most of the people understand the general fund. Everybody, it's like your large checking account, right? And then what about the other subsidiary? You know, how do you pull it from the general fund, and what can you pull from the general fund? Going back to Councilor Castro's point, you know, what's restricted, what's not restricted? And I think some of these are some of the things that if we don't even understand that sometimes up here as elected officials, as the general public, may be like, "Wow, okay." I think one thing to keep in mind, and this is true for any city, county, municipality, even the state, the general fund is pretty much, other than that reserve requirement I was talking about, the general fund is pretty much the only fund in the entire city that is almost entirely unrestricted. You could use it for parks. You could use it for police. You could use it to, you know, buy a Lamborghini. Not that you would, no, but if you could come up with a case and a legal justification for why you need a Lamborghini, you could buy it out of the general fund. So it's the one place where we kind of have a lot of flexibility, and that's why just about all departments have at least some general fund components. The only departments that don't really have any general fund piece at all would be Public Utilities and Tourism because they have their own revenue sources that are separate. But general fund pretty much is pretty unrestricted in what you can use it for. That's why it's always the toughest one for us to balance because so much gets thrown in there because of that need for flexibility that I was talking about before. And one other thing I'll mention, one of the push-pulls that we always have, I know Chair Faulkner has talked about this in the past, is that we have an 11,000-plus line budget. When you look at all the object codes, all the org codes, everything in there, if you look at the whole thing, it's 11,000 lines. That's really not a practical way to make decisions for it. I mean, we in budget have to, people in the departments have to, but you know, and we in budget can handle all of that, you know, giant field of weeds, but we generally don't present the budget to you that way just because when you're that far down in the weeds and looking at 11,000 lines, it's easy to just throw up your hands and like, "I don't understand what's in here. There's so much data in here." That's why we have things like we sum things up into the fund level or the category level for objects because if we were talking through like, you know, $1,000 for dues, $1,000 for advertising, $200 for print and publish, you know, the budget process would be twice as long, and it would not help you in making decisions. In fact, it would make it harder to make decisions just because I've got so much data to look at, you know, how do I, how do I process all this? So, when we summarize things in the budget book, it's not because we're trying to hide anything. It's because we're trying to help you make decisions better in a way of looking at it at maybe 10,000 feet instead of ground level because ground level, it gets pretty messy. Thank you. And yeah, 11,000 line items is, that's quite a lot. I guess you break it down to departments, you break it down in different ways, it's probably easier to understand. But I appreciate what you do, Andy. I think that it really does take that level of knowledge that you have had over all these years to deal with all of this. I appreciate it. Thank you. No questions. All right. I would just say, Andy, thank you again so much. This was a heavy lift that you kind of gave us a little bit of a tutorial with a lot of dense information. I encourage every member of the Finance Committee and the council to meet with Andy to go over some of these things if you want to do a deeper dive. One other thing I want to add is, and correct me if I'm wrong, staff, a BAR is not a budget amendment resolution. It's the budget adjustment request. So, from now on, on the Finance Committee, and I'm working with the City Clerk to get this on all committees, we're going to be saying that that's what it is because a resolution is misleading in the sense that councilors can do resolutions, and we cannot do a budget adjustment request. Yes. And so we're working a lot on the agendas moving forward, making sure things are clear to the committee and hopefully other committees. And so that's one thing I wanted to add is we're going to start course-correcting on some of the things that have been kind of misidentified, and it's not fair to the public in the sense that the public thinks we're doing a certain thing that we're not doing and we don't have the authority to do. Okay. Councilor Castro. Councilor Castro: Thank you. Sorry, just to follow up with that, Chair. I do want to maybe have the discussion here, maybe it's at Governing Body, about how we talk about some of these abbreviations, requests for proposals. Knowing that most BARs are brought by staff and not by the Governing Body ourselves, that we pass and approve contracts that maybe we aren't a part of writing the actual contracts for, these things might be better to be cleared up at Governing Body, but I think it pertains to finance. Yeah. And so we're just trying to get the dialogue started here. And I think I said this before, but I'm going to reiterate, it didn't happen on this agenda. Moving forward on the next set of agendas, hopefully as long as I'm chair, if it's a federal grant, it will be identified as a federal grant. If it's a state grant, it will be identified as a state grant. We will start, if it's support staff, it won't just say support staff. It will say, I think I used an example last time, if it's support staff for the police, it is crime scene techs, so that we know what we're dealing with. Because I think there's been things that I've seen being on the Finance Committee where we're debating something that isn't even our money. We're a pass-through. And so once we realize we're a pass-through, the debate's over because it's not coming from the city money. It's the state or the federal government or a private sector organization. So, I think we might be able to free up some time and be more efficient if we know that what we're dealing with is a pass-through situation and that it's not the City of Santa Fe constituents paying for, I mean, they are in the sense that it's state and federal, but I think we're, I think we're really working hard. Staff and I are working really hard to identify spaces where we can be more efficient and more transparent. I think the public has a right to know that if we're hiring support staff, they have a right to know what support staff specifically. And so that's stuff we're working on that kind of is wrapped around this presentation. Andy, thank you again. I can't thank you enough. I kind of brought this on you shortest. Andy: No, it was my pleasure. And Madam Chair, Councilors, you did kind of put into my brain one of the things that I tell the people who work for me, and actually I'm often telling people in departments all the time, try not to use jargon because keep in mind the City Councilors cannot be experts in every single area. No one can be. And so sometimes when we're doing the budget book, we have to call somebody in the middle of the, "Right. And what is, what does AFT mean?" You know, or whatever that, whatever that may be. I will just mention one of the unsung and probably unnoticed aspects of the budget book that you probably have just glossed over or not even looked at in the past, and I don't blame you. At the very end of the budget book, all the budget books we've done since I've been here, has a large glossary of abbreviations. So especially for new Councilors, but even for people who have been here for a while, that might be a good resource to keep around once in a while just because, you know, when we say, you know, "What does RFQ mean?" That's probably going to be in there. And is that on the internet? Andy: It is on the internet. All the budget books for the last several years are there, and it's going to be the last section in the budget book. Okay. Thank you so much. And I look forward to all the more work we can do together and to get our council educated and the community educated on the budget process. And I just have to say, I agree with Councilor Garcia. Not everything is palatable for the public because we can get way down in the weeds on some things that are not going to help us make good decisions. But I do think where we can find space to make sure that the public understands the broader issues and kind of like where we're robbing Peter to pay Paul over $100,000, that the public has access to that. So that's one of the things that I want to work on where it's appropriate. And so thank you so much, Andy. Again, next item of business. Next item we have item 7L. It is a request for approval of a service agreement with Sound Thinking, Inc. for the purchase of a gunshot detection, location, and forensic analysis service in the total amount of $354,000 for a one-year term. And I believe we have various members of the PD staff with us this evening. So, we'll entertain a motion first. Move to deny. Second. Can we get a roll call on the motion? No. Oh. Sandy Emory: Hi, my name is Sandy Emory. I am a Youth and Family Services Program Manager, and I'm here with... Captain Montoya: Captain Montoya with Santa Fe Police Department. I did pull this item. I can start questions if you'd like, or would you like to give a presentation, a summary? What's the appetite of the committee? Do we want a presentation or...? I think a brief overview for context of this one is important as to where this is coming from, where the funding is coming from, all that. Okay, then let's do the presentation. 15 minutes or less. Captain Montoya: Yeah. Set up the background on the funding on this. So, this money was allocated through a grant that was given to the Youth and Family Services Department for the City of Santa Fe, and part of it is set up to help address youth violence. When this initial grant was requested several years ago, a lot of issues that we're having were youth throughout our community. Youth throughout our community were doing nefarious things such as getting their hands on firearms, discharging them in public places including parks, streets. Since then, we've done some other work, but this is one big piece of that as well that's going to help us with identifying areas where this is, first of all, occurring. Secondly, it'll help capture all the data that we need to help us respond to calls that are not reported. And our hope is it's not just going to be addressing youth doing unsafe things with firearms, but even adults alike. This also goes into some technology stuff that the department is looking to invest in. So these sensors will help us with kind of getting that ball rolling. So if someone doesn't call in, you know, sound of gunshots in their neighborhood, or if we do get an alert and we go to the neighborhood and we find shell casings, which is a big tool that we've done with the Department of Public Safety because they've also expanded their services through NYBIN. What NYBIN is, is pretty much it gives a fingerprint for a shell casing that links it to a firearm. And then once we get a firearm in custody that's run through NYBIN, and then through that process, we can link that firearm to other crimes that have occurred whether it be in our community or through communities across the state and sometimes even across state lines. So this grant was approved by the City Council. It has been received, and today's request that we have going through the process is to get the purchase order to enter into that agreement and to execute that grant. I know there's a discussion at the last meeting, or there was some questions on if this money could be reallocated for another program or some other effort. At this point in time, it's going to be probably a very hard task, if not impossible task, to make that happen. Reason being is through the process, we would have to go back to the state. We'd have to request an adjustment to the grant. They'd have to evaluate it. They'd have to approve it. It'd have to come back and have to go back through our entire process. Once that is done, then we start this process back at square one. We're approaching March, and to have this money set up and ready for execution by the end of June 30th, that is also going to be a second miracle we'd have to pull off. Again, we understand that the Governing Body and this body here has the authority to weigh and evaluate if this is going to be in the best interest of our community, but based on the information that we've had and the trends that we've seen over the past eight years, we've seen where we've had an increase in youth using firearms. I can name off several cases where our detectives had to come out to address those things. Luckily, they're able to curtail that. But in the past eight years, there's been at least three separate sprees of incidents where youth have used firearms to either fire guns in communities or to even harm and even commit murder. Right now, we're kind of on the downslope. If the trends stay on track like we've seen, then probably in 2027, we're going to see that we may have an increase in this if things remain, or if the predicted models remain the same. So this equipment would be helpful for us if we had it in place. Again, one is a deterrent. If people know we have this, they know that there's a consequence and they will be found and apprehended and held accountable for this. This is one big tool that will help with that. The beauty of this as well is it's on a grant, so it's going to be essentially a one-year pilot for us to see if this will be a good fit for us. If we find it's not a good fit and it's something that we don't want to have in our community, then once the term is done, then we can stop with the contract and go from there. But know the staff is here to address some of the things specific about the program. I'm going to be here to answer any questions that will be concerning our budget or finance side of things. So, I think that being said... Okay, Councilor Castro, you pulled this. You want to start? Oh, more presentation. Sandy Emory: Thank you, Chair Faulkner, Council. Pardon me. So, one of the things that DC Belz was saying about the funding that was misreported recently, it is actually a $1.2 million grant that we received from the Department of Health. Of that, $88,000 has been subcontracted to community organizations. That was done through three different RFP processes. We were originally given $400,000 to put into the community that was doubled during the term of this grant because of the work that we have been doing, and we've been able to contract those funds out. I will say the RFP process does take some time, but the amount of funding that we are really able to get directly to the community has been really incredible, even through, you know, the challenges that we can have in getting money out the door some days. So, thank you. Any other staff? One more. Let's go. So, Madam Chair, members of the committee, in reference to this technology, ShotSpotter, what is it? It's acoustic devices that measure gunshot detection around a specific area. So, what we did was we grabbed the data from June 21st, 2023, to January 4th, 2026. There was also an analysis done prior to this, and we grabbed the data in reference to homicides, assaults, assaults with shots fired, and shots fired as well. So, a total of 132 in that time frame with the most current, and this is the data that we had come up with. So, a little over a year ago, the data has shifted. It has shifted slightly northeast. So, these maps that we have right here are a total of five miles. Going back, this is the old data again. It has shifted. The dots are the calls for service that we have responded to. And again, these are the updated maps with five-mile coverage. So, what's very important is in this map, you see the calls for service. What you don't see, what we're not seeing, are the shots that are going unreported, and I believe it's about 80% that go unreported. That's very crucial to us. We want to know where these shots are coming from, and this technology can do that for us. So, right now, we're actually in one of the zones from St. Francis Drive all the way to East Palace and Hillside, as far as almost West Cordova. And that figure you see there is a homicide that occurred. So, this technology can provide us the data, and not only the data, but we could also use data for good, which I can leave the reps to talk about that, on how that works, if you like. Chair and committee, good evening. Alfred Lewis Jr., 393000 Civic Center Drive, Fremont, California. I'm the Vice President of Trauma Response and Community Engagement at Sound Thinking. I want to start by making sure that you know that Santa Fe is very unique. I've done over 100 deployments over the last nine years, and Santa Fe is the only agency that has made a decision that they're going to use a public health approach to address gun violence and how it impacts children, youth, and their families with the deployment of ShotSpotter. Our Data for Good program is a program that has an understanding that we have more data than any other entity as it pertains to gunfire and gun violence in communities. Most of the time, as we shared earlier, less than 20% of the actual gun crimes that are occurring are being called into the police department. But with our Data for Good program and the alert data that we get at Sound Thinking, we have temporal grids, days of the weeks, hours of the day, repeat gunfire location, gunfire that occurs within a quarter of a mile of schools. With that information, services can be delivered with precision to children, youth, and families who are adversely impacted by gunfire and gun violence. One of the things that we share is just because someone is not hit doesn't mean that they're not harmed. The psychological harm and the trauma that occurs as a result of exposure to gunfire and gun violence, it impacts children's ability to perform in school. It impacts their behavior. What you would normally believe to be insubordinate behavior is often as a result of the trauma that they're experiencing. So, our trauma response and community engagement team over the last several years, we've been working with municipalities, whether it is through hospital-based violence prevention programs, school-based violence prevention programs, social services, economic opportunities, and the like community-based organizations, so that they are delivering services as a way of getting to the root causes of gunfire and gun violence in communities. As you know, there are certain communities where gunfire flourishes; in other areas, it doesn't. Addressing those root causes has been shown to reduce further harm and to reduce violence in communities. That's our Data for Good program. We have a team of professionals that will work with your city to assist in program development. But the great thing about it is you've done all of the work. I mean, the fact that when you compare what the city of Santa Fe has done, it looks like something that I've been preaching for the last seven or eight years at our company. So, you have all of the resources in place. We only need to share the data so that they can point resources there. You'll be able to do a dual or a parallel path to addressing gun violence. You've made it clear that your primary focus is the situational awareness to deliver services, and on a secondary basis, you can use this service for your police department to respond, find active killing scenarios, find victims of shootings, render aid, collect more evidence, and further investigations. So, that's what our Data for Good program is. And if you have any other questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Thank you. Is that it for the presentation? Okay, looks like that's it for questions from the committee, and it was pulled by Councilor Castro. So, the floor is yours. Thank you so much. Sorry, Chair, we stepped on you a little bit. Thank you so much. So, I just want to remind folks, we're not under oath, but I would hope that we could answer the questions as fully as possible. There were a couple follow-up questions I had from my last round. I guess I will start with Sound Thinking. Let's talk a little bit about the change in name, some of the legal actions taken against ShotSpotter, what we have maybe improved since that update in that change. We changed our name in April of 2023, and the reason why we changed our name is because our primary services were ShotSpotter Gunshot Detection. That was our company name. Over the last several years, we've acquired several different technologies and companies. We have a Safety Smart platform. Of course, ShotSpotter is our marquee product. We have Safe Point, which is an AI-assisted weapons and explosive detection system. We also have Plate Ranger, which is an automated license plate reader system that integrates with ShotSpotter. We have Case Builder, which is an AI-assisted case-building solution. And we have Crime Tracer, which we call AI for cops, and we also have Bird's Stop, our drones. So, it was an evolution of our company that is the reason why we changed our name. You ask about any legal action against our company. There's no legal action against our company related to our services or anything like that. There may have been incidents where agencies have had legal action, but it has nothing to do with our company. We are not party to any legal action. And I know that you had mentioned that there was a 98% overall retention from municipalities. Will you tell me about the municipalities that have chosen not to retain you? Okay. So, what exactly do you want to know about the ones that chose not to? Why they chose not to retain you? So, we've had a couple of municipalities, like the Miami-Dade Police Department. They were ShotSpotter customers, and they ended up leaving us. But they saw a spike in gun crime. They came back to us. We deployed there. We started with an 8.85 square mile coverage area, and now we're close to 30-35 square miles in Miami-Dade County. Thank you so much. I was just wondering why they chose not to go with you initially. What were some of the concerns? Different agencies have different reasons. Is there a specific agency that you want to ask me about? We'll start with Dade County. Dade County. Well, at the time, I know the major who was over the division personally, Stephanie Daniels, who ultimately became the director of the agency. When she came to the agency, they had, I'm sorry, when she came to the district that had ShotSpotter, it was a deployment that was paid for by the FBI, and they had the responsibility, it was their, from moving forward, was their responsibility to pay for it. They didn't have metrics in place where they were able to identify the fact that it was worth keeping it, and as a result, they got rid of it. So, that was the reason for the Miami-Dade Police Department. So, correct me if I'm wrong, my understanding is it was a one-time funding source that came from the FBI, and they didn't want a recurring expense coming from their internal budget. Correct? They didn't have metrics to prove its efficacy, and they have since proven its efficacy. Yes. And they have, they keep some of the best metrics of any of our agencies now as a result of that lesson learned. Perfect. How about Chicago? Pardon me. How about Chicago? They also chose not to go with your service. Correct? Chicago. I started at Sound Thinking on December 30th, 2016. On January 3rd, 2017, I was in Chicago. I actually did the deployment for the onboarding for Chicago. Chicago started out in two districts, District 11 and District 7. They saw incredible success, and they grew to 117 square miles, our largest deployment. Mayor Brandon Johnson campaigned on getting rid of ShotSpotter. It is, as I said earlier, an elected official's decision to move forward or not move forward with gunshot detection. There was an overwhelming support for ShotSpotter in surveys, as well as roughly 90% of the elected officials and aldermen were in support of keeping ShotSpotter. And Mr. Lewis, sorry, just for interest of time, what were some of the concerns that I guess Mayor Johnson had? I can't say for sure what his concerns were. There were, I can remember being at a meeting once, and there was a concern over Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old who was firing a gun. There was a ShotSpotter alert. The Chicago Police Department responded to the ShotSpotter alert. Adam Toledo was shot and killed. There are people in the community who blamed ShotSpotter for that incident. That is one of the incidents that I know of that was mentioned. So, and I will definitely leave room for my other colleagues and come back around, but that is a great point. How do we address gunfire from the police department regarding this technology? So, when a shot is fired anywhere, including our police department, that will alert ShotSpotter, and we will use resources, and it will go through the process of being, you know, part of our alert system. Is that correct? Yes. So, what happens is when there's an alert, the officers, everyone who's logged into ShotSpotter, whether it's on their mobile data terminal or on their smartphones or the communication center or real-time crime center, everybody gets the alert. It gives them situational awareness. It will give them a historical Google map image with an 82-meter halo around the gunfire event. It will give them an audio file and contextual information. For instance, whether it is a multiple shooter scenario, whether someone is firing a fully automatic weapon, whether it is a moving shooter, it'll give direction of travel and speed. That gives officers situational awareness so that they can appropriately respond tactically. And when they respond and they find an active killing scenario, they can address it, as well as when they find victims of shooting, they can render aid and save lives, which is something that has happened hundreds of times in the city of Chicago and other cities across our country. And we'll come back to, because I know it was your testimony in the last committee hearing, that this is a life-saving technology, and we will definitely touch on that. My concern is, can we distinguish between civilian gunfire and PD gunfire? Absolutely. Counselor, for the context on this, again, a firearm being discharged is a firearm being discharged. There is no different signature between a firearm that's discharged by a police officer or a non-police officer. So the frequencies that it uses, there's no distinguishing frequency between the two. Okay. So the only way is we will know that we will have active units in the area, and that's maybe the way we can distinguish. There are other mechanisms in place. So for one, our officers wear body-worn cameras. So that's one way that that incident will be captured. Secondly, we'll get an alert on the system that'll say, "Hey, there was a firearm discharged." Usually our protocol is if an officer utilizes deadly force, as soon as it is safe to do so, they make an announcement over radio to let their supervisor know, and then we have our response protocol with that. Wonderful. And so the reason I'm in, DC Valdez knows this, for everyone's information, there has been some concern about friendly fire and police activity versus some of our civilian activity. Also, we live in sort of a rural community where people are shooting all the time. So I have concern, I will be very honest, about false alarms. That was a concern in the city of Chicago, from what I read, and this is an old report from 2021, right? More than 60 times a day they were getting false reports. So, I am concerned about false reports. I am concerned about the expenditure of our local resources when going out to some of these reports, based on if it's an active situation, if it's a life-saving situation, or we're just going after somebody who's shooting out in the wilderness at Caca del Rio. And also, I have a little bit of concern. So, I can one or two more questions and then we'll go to this. Sorry. And these are all just comments to sort of set folks up, and then I will cede the floor. I am also a little bit concerned about the source of the funding. So, the fact that it is a one-time funding source, and this is something that will be recurring, has really been discouraged for us to do. And so, I have some concern, even though it is technically a pass-through. I think we have sort of a moral obligation to make sure that those funds are going for what they are designated for. And I will cede the floor. Thank you, Counselor Castro. Let's start with Counselor Garcia. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for those questions, Counselor Castro, and I see your concerns. I have some questions, I guess, and just going through this. Really, you want to be data-driven, right? And I think that's what this is really, really going towards. I want to give a little bit of back history over a ShotSpotter technology that happened in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And I think that this was a case where a certain individual had it out with politicians. And I believe by following that case a little bit, some of the data that was provided by the ShotSpotter technology was utilized to actually hold this person accountable. And so I think that, is the city of Albuquerque using this technology, or is it a different technology or a different company? And counselors, just introduced myself. Jamie Algot. I'm the Vice President of our Solutions Group. So work very closely with Alan Rich. The short answer is yes. Albuquerque is using the ShotSpotter technology currently. They had an initial deployment, and they expanded the use of it within the city after that first, and I believe there's total, not four total expansions that took place. The data you're referring to, I'm not sure, maybe you should give a little more detail about that. Well, I mean, it was the case that I was referring to. It was the legislators that were, a certain individual had ran for office and lost, and was completely upset and hired people to shoot up houses. And in that specific case, that information was utilized to actually hold this person accountable and actually put him away. Yeah, it's a good example of some other incidents that we've had, but I want to kind of double-click on what you just indicated about being data-driven. You went back to the use of public health funds and a health approach to really addressing and attacking the gun crime and violence problem. The challenge is if you're only working with 20% of that data, it's a little difficult. I do want to throw out two interesting statistics. These were independent studies. One was by the Brookings Institute. One was by the Brookings Institute. Sorry. Thank you. Specifically, they did an analysis in Oakland, California, and Washington D.C. of the gunfire events. What they determined is that 20% actually went down significantly to only 12% of gunfire events that had a correlated 911 call associated with it. So imagine your police department, your human health services attempting to address a problem with roughly 10% of the info. There was another very random survey. Portland, University of Portland, Oregon, simply went out and asked the community, "If you heard gunfire, would you call 911?" Alarmingly, only 9.3% of those surveyed said they would. So when we get back to the data conversation, this fills that gap. It fills the potential for a witness who fears retaliation in that gang incident to be able to see where these shooting events are occurring. We have the ability to find the shell casings, connect them through NIBIN as we talked about, and identify that one or two percent that's committing the majority of the violent crime in your communities. That's really what's key. And not to take too much time, Counselor Castro, I do want to hit on one real quick thing with regard to your question about officer-involved shootings or multiple shooters. We actually track in ShotSpotter the sequence of the shooting events and the rounds. So it's not just, hey, there was gunfire. We track who shot first. We track the sequence. We can see if there are moving shooters. We can see if there are many multiple shooters. And then there's a critical incident like an officer-involved shooting or unfortunately a mass shooting in this day and age. You can request, it is part of our services, there's no extra fee for it, what's called a detailed forensics report that provides a very, very precise analysis of who shot first, very, go down to three feet with that analysis, because the initial response that we publish is within 90 feet, but that DFR goes down to within three feet. It's very easy for us. We can't distinguish between the officer's firearm and an assailant, but we can identify who shot first and how many rounds. So I wanted to address that. Sorry, Counselor. Thank you. So currently we're relying on 20% of calls, and these are calls that come into 911 or whatever reporting, whether it's the non-emergency number, whatever. So we're missing 80%. What, and so what is the percentage that we would increase to? I mean, because they're not placed everywhere. And how do we strategically put these in places where we are having, I guess, we would follow the initial data of, currently, I mean, I can sit at my house on the Southside and on a Friday night and hear gunshots, and I'm a counselor. Do I always call in? I don't, because the police, and yet, yet sometimes I, hey, there's going on, opening the door. Is it fireworks? Is it gunshots? Can you decipher the difference between fireworks or gunshots? We can. So we do have the ability to distinguish between fireworks and gunshots. Other things that will set other systems that aren't as precise as ours off, helicopters flying over, trucks backfiring, dump trucks, and so on. We actually dismiss those through the machine learning and the computer algorithms. And then we have a second step, which is referred to as our IRC. That's our Incident Review Center. They'll do an analysis. So they listen to and look at the sound signatures that are captured by the sensors. The more specific thing is that all of this is being deployed based on the data. We're not going out and randomly placing these in communities. We're using existing data and information to determine where best to deploy them. And that's some of the information the police department shared with you there. What we often find is after we deploy them, we recognize that there are some sounds that will be captured adjacent to or outside that area. We're not going to publish them. That's by design. But we may see in Insight, which is their back-end reporting tool, there are missed or dismissed items outside of the designated coverage area. We determine we may need to expand this a little bit. So, I know we don't want to go there yet. I get it. We want to make sure we're successful first with the deployment, but it is data-driven, and we are capturing 90% or better inside of that coverage area. I'll actually throw out some stats which I think are really impressive, and you'll kind of understand what this does. Do you have some visual aids you could pop up on? I can. I'd be happy to. This will kind of hit on some of the very questions that you asked of all of our customers. Last year, we detected 17 million bangs, booms, and pops in urban areas. That's everywhere from NYPD down to Pueblo, Colorado. Of those, the machine learning system dismissed 10 million plus of those sounds. We don't want to overwhelm your 911 center. We don't want to overwhelm these folks. But that secondary review, what we called the IRC, it actually took out another 6 million of those events as not being gunfire. That two-step process brought us down to 200,000 total published incidents. Now, some of those incidents had multiple rounds, multiple shooters, fully automatic weapons. So that's how we get to the kind of crazy number of 17 million almost down to 200,000. Why that's important? That means that only 3% or so of the sounds that we hear in an urban situation, urban deployment with a 96% accuracy. And the reason I talk about accuracy is this. We encourage, this is one of the reasons Miami-Dade wasn't successful at first and why they are now, is they capture what we refer to as ground truth. What do the officers find when the dust settles when they get to the scene? Because that helps to improve the model. We found nothing. We need to know that we found a subject and more importantly, we provided aid and rendered care. That's important. So that all plays into that feedback loop. So we get to 96%. And the reason I'll point some of these things out, our SLA is 60 seconds. We were less than 25 seconds to deploying and publishing that event to officers and first responders. That is a significant reduction in time. Then if someone calls and it goes to 911, goes into the queue, it gets stacked with other calls, it's loud noise, unknown trouble, someone could literally be dying. So this is really important. 90% is the accuracy. As of just last week, I pulled the stats while we were on the call last week. I was not able to join in person. The accuracy was actually closer to 99%. So that's why we're coming here with a technology that's very precise and accurate. Thank you for that data. And I'm timing myself, so I'm just about out of time, but I think that information for me is very important because how do people know what the difference is between a vehicle backfiring or somebody shooting off a gun? I mean, I'm a hunter. That's a pretty distinct sound for me, but not to just the general person that's out there. The data is important. I'm a supporter of this. I'd like to see how it would work in our community. It's very big on the radar with many people in the district that Councilor Falter and I represent. I have constituents who call me all the time and they're like, "My house was shot." I was like, "Where did that gunshot come from?" Well, it came, more than likely, from the dollar store when people were out there. Without having the data information to back this up, I think I'm a supporter. I think I will support this. Thank you to the police department and you all for working together. I think a last question for the agency, which is the police department, DC Valdez or whoever, Captain Montoya, how important will this be to efficiency in your department when it comes to calls like this? Madam Chair, Councilor Garcia, again, these folks mentioned, the accuracy is one. When folks call in, that time delay when someone calls in a call for service to when it gets dispatched and having those critical seconds. They said 25 seconds, it's going to go and send us an alert, let people know the area. That is helpful for us for situational awareness. Secondly, for technology, we talk about smart policing and utilizing technology to help improve our responses. Again, one thing I'd like to share and convey is we're trying to achieve better outcomes. So with this technology, we're hoping that we get better data. So when we do have to respond to an area, we're not going to be going in there putting ourselves into a position of jeopardy. We're going to stage. We may be able to put a drone up, send a drone in to scout out the area, see what we have. Is it people that are out there firing firearms? Is it someone out there lighting off fireworks? And then we can use that data to go and get better outcomes. One thing we have seen with our patrol deployed drones, it's been very successful. And one thing we are putting in a proposal for a strategic plan is utilizing drone as a first responder where they will respond off a drone docks. I know we've done a couple of examples here in our community where folks are able to see that technology, but we're looking at a response time in 3 minutes or less with a DFR drone. 25 seconds of notification of this, that DFR drone could be on scene in 3 minutes or less, which is going to be very helpful for us. Thank you. I think that's it. I know. One last comment. It'll work with other technologies such as our drone program and things of that nature. One last thing I just wanted to give you a shout out. I saw you this morning running traffic calls on Rodeo Road at 7:00 a.m. this morning. So, DC Valdez getting it done. Thank you guys. Yes, sir. My pleasure. Great. Let's... Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm not sure that your mic was on, but she did, she did in fact call on me for the record. So, thank you all. I have just a few questions. I'll try to be speedy, especially since I have that one that I need to get home and fed into bed. So, going over a little bit of what we discussed in quality of life. As I stated then, data is data. It's how we use it that's going to matter. So I think this is a question for staff in the sense of why was this included in the grant proposal that we approved? I believe, and I'm remembering correctly, when we voted to approve the grant proposal, this was, this program was included. So we actually already approved the grant that stated we were going to use this technology. This isn't new. So just, you know, that that's been out in the world for people who are a little surprised by it. Not us. I'm not saying that's just in general. Thank you, Counselor. Yes. Excuse me. I also am a little under today. So this grant was written by my previous director, Julie Sanchez, in concert with Chanel Delgado with the county. And really ties to the violence prevention strategic plan that was written for 2022 through 2027. And when looking at the Department of Health's violence intervention funding strategies, what my predecessor was really looking at was how we can really create a whole picture of community health. And one of the things that I'm very lucky in my position that I get to do is that I get to work with the PD fairly often. And I'm able to see firsthand in our own police department how our officers are very trauma-informed, very response-oriented around community safety, not just policing. And so this, you know, and it hearkens back to when community health and safety was also inclusive of the police department, the fire department, which is a whole longer conversation than this, but it really is a really beautiful way to put together this really coordinated community response, which we're able to do with our community providers and nonprofit networks in our schools, and also proactive law enforcement and police work. And really, you know, it just really shows the strength of that partnership and that, you know, we're able to talk to, you know, our partners at the PD and work together to make our community better, which is what everyone is working toward. Thank you for that. And I, you know, for anybody who didn't get to work with Julie Sanchez, and thank you for coming in and filling her shoes, but really one of our, you know, standout star staff who, you know, I appreciate your conversation around. She really was looking at a lot of holistic approaches and how do we tackle an issue from multiple sides. That was something that she really did quite well. And I know when we were having this conversation around this grant and our application and accepting it and what the, what the activities were going to be, this was really highlighted that taking both the, you know, public health preventative approach. How do we look at, you know, finding people that are potentially perpetrating crime in our community or are honestly being irresponsible with guns? Like I, I understand this, well, you know, people may be, you, you can't be shooting in your backyard. That's not safe. I mean, it's, you know, these are the, the things to really think about that, you know, when it's an opportunity to provide education around, you know, how do people safely have and utilize guns? Are there, you know, teenagers who are getting access to guns that are not locked up? But so, again, how we use this information is going to matter a lot. And that will be something that, you know, if this is approved, that I will be really interested in continuing to have this conversation as we gather that data, as we have touch points with individuals that have fired guns within city limits. What does that look like? What picture is it telling? And is it violence? Is it, you know, other type of crime related involves violence? Or is it irresponsibility that we really need to be addressing so that we don't have tragic accidents? The other thing that I am curious about because we have had this discussion a few times. I'm not sure who this is a question for. Data ownership has been a large point of conversation when it comes to our drones. DC Valdez, you knew I'd be here with this one eventually. When it comes to our drones, when it comes to the body cameras, who owns the data and what is our destruction and/or preservation policy around it? Madam Chair, Councilor Cassid, so the data is going to be again owned by the department. There may be some information that the vendor has that is utilized for calibration purposes, but it's going to be stripped of anything that again is going to identify that here's what this incident is tied to. The data is going to be property of the department. We're going to utilize it and maintain it in compliance with the laws that say how long we have to retain it. And once we get to that point, if it's no longer needed for a court case or for any other type of court proceeding, then it would be disposed of at that time in line with the schedule. Now, depending on what it is used for, there's going to be different terms and times when it becomes eligible to be disposed of, but we only need it for as long as we need to either complete an investigation or go through a court process. Okay. All right. Thank you. So we'll be following our internal processes around around data and how that is preserved and how that is shared and how that is destroyed. Yes. And one thing we are doing with some of our programs is we're putting language into the contracts that the data is again our property and if it is going to be shared, we have to give our explicit approval. I'll double check how this one is written and if there's any change and I can give you an update. Wonderful. Thank you. I appreciate that. And then around the data, in the quality of life meeting, we had a conversation about that it would basically capture one second before the shot and one second after. Can you explain to me how this works without there, you know, are we constantly recording and that information is just dumped unless there is a shot? How does this, how does this work? I mean, and again, there's always this concern, you know, from the population. Are they being monitored? Are we hearing conversations? You know, those types of things that are occurring. So, can we get more information about how that technology works? Sir, Jamie, again, I don't mind addressing the question. First and foremost, the way that we deploy the sensors is purposefully above ambient street level. These are not on stop signs. They're not at, you know, bus stops. We typically place them 20, 30 feet above the streets. They'll be on the top of a light post, on the side of a building. That's purposeful so we can avoid ambient conversations. They are triggered by the sound or say loud bangs, booms or pops. As I mentioned, fireworks could set them off. It'll be one second before and one after during that recording. In addition to the gunshot, in addition to the sound, you may hear a voice, but it is not recording voices constantly. And I, I want to point out the Oakland Privacy Commission actually did a private independent analysis of the technology for this very reason. They, they actually indicated along with New York University, they looked at this as an independent study as well. We'll be happy to share those with the council members and the chair, but they specifically indicated after that review that there is a very low possibility recording voices of it really infringing on privacy and rights. And we know that's a very big topic these days. It's something we're personally concerned about. So the short answer is it is very small amount of time in that one second before and after is someone shooting. There may be an utterance. There may be someone screaming, but it's only during that recording because of the trigger of that loud bang, boomer pop. Okay. Thank you so much. Recording. I appreciate that. And if you could send that over, I, I would appreciate seeing that. So thank you. Be happy to share it with all of you. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Appreciate that. Management. You know, I think I, I covered most of this, you know, at quality of life. I, I'm with Councilor Garcia again as a another Southside counselor. I have a lot of constituents who hear gunshots frequently. I know we recently, thank you, legislature, got $700,000 for Herb Martinez Park. Very excited about that. But one of the reasons that this was the priority for district 4 is because of the reports from my constituents that they were hearing gunshots on a regular basis in the park. They're not being reported. They're not calling. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But having a mechanism by which we can be alerted to them, that we have the proper law enforcement responding. I know for the safety of my district that that feels really important. We had multiple shootings that occurred in the district, homicides that occurred in the district, and there's a whole host of issues with our criminal justice system that contributed to this. But there is the question of these individuals had been previous violent offenders. Were there times that they were firing off guns that we potentially could have intervened earlier? I think another question, and I'm not sure this is within our purview, and DC Valdez, this is probably for you, but I know that our courts have a lot of conversation around pre-trial diversion programs, especially when we're talking about youth violence and how we can potentially use these opportunities to get teens that may be in a place that could potentially move towards danger, towards a better track, and identifying them early and getting them into those programs. Do you have any information on what that might occur? Are we, I believe that we also speak with the DA's office on this one. So any information there? Yes, Counselor. So this would involve CFD if they are a minor that's under the age of 18. One thing that I think is powerful with this is I've seen other jurisdictions, and again, this allows a chance for us to also expand on services, is utilizing what they call a Violence Intervention Program, VIP. They've utilized this where they've seen there's a large number of incidents in this area, and rather than sending the police, they'll send out folks to go meet with the community and start addressing the root causes and helping people dissuade them, and then finding champions in the community that can help educate folks and get them out of that area to hopefully prevent people from going down that path. But again, there's so many grant opportunities with that. This would be another big piece of it, and with this technology, it'd be useful. Sorry there. This is actually part of our overall strategy. We have the recently launched pilot, the Youth Pilot, where it is modeled after that community intervention that DC Valdez was sharing with us all. So we actually have that in place. The ultimate goal of the Youth Rise program is to, right now we are receiving referrals from the First Judicial District, but eventually, once we are out of the pilot mode and into real full robust operations years into the future, we can also be aware of youth who are maybe bystanders to violence or gunshots or whatever, and intervene with them before it gets to the point where they are part of the justice system. It's, you know, there's a traffic incident and one youth perhaps is arrested, right? But there's three youth in the car, right? What are we doing for all of the kids in that car, right? That's what this funding for my programs is meant to address, right? Is all of the root causes of those. Wonderful. Thank you. I am out of time. So, thank you so much. Thank you, Sheriff Falconer. I just have a couple of questions about data real quick, and then about money, since we're so. What is the current percentage rate of false alarms associated with this technology? Roughly speaking, we have a 1% to 2% false positive or false negative. That's kind of that 96% that we were seeing on average over the last two months. Okay. And then what would you, what sort of data do you have showing the effectiveness of this technology in court cases? Great question. And so one of the big differentiators of ShotSpotter and the SoundThinking offering is not only do we provide them with the technology, but we also provide expert witness testimony in that detailed forensics report that I mentioned. Why all of that is important is that ShotSpotter is one of the only technologies that sustains and stands up to what is called the Fry Act and the evidentiary act around it. So it's passed, and I believe it's 26 court cases that it's been. Both Fry and Daubert, we testified in over 400. But 26 specific challenges to it as evidence. And that is actually helping to prosecute those cases. So it's not just, "Here's the technology, good luck with it." It's also supporting when we get that 1% and we find out that a diversion program is not the option, we can prosecute. We provide the expert witness testimony. We provide the detailed forensics report, and the evidence stands up in court to successfully prosecute. I want to make sure we hit on something. We're not about making arrests. We're about identifying who the shooters are. If ultimately an arrest and prosecution is the way we go, prosecution is success. We can arrest all day, but a successful prosecution of the right people, taking that small percent out of the equation, is what's most important. Okay. Thank you. And then this is kind of a data and cost. What sort of, and this might be for Chief Valdez, what sort of increased demand do you see being placed on PD resources responding to the additional calls that are going to be coming in from this? Madam Chair, Counselor Bamonte, I think with any new program that we have, we're going to see probably a slight increase in our response to these types of incidents because now we're capturing data that was otherwise not been reported. Once we see that, again, based on behavior, when they see a police officer respond to an area after there was an incident involving gunfire, then there's a likelihood where they're saying, "Well, wait a second, they got here really quick." And there may be a deterrence with that response where they see a drone get put up and then officers looking around or talking to people. And on occasion, we may even make contact with someone that was unlawfully discharging a firearm in a public place. And that's going to be shared with our community through our media release process or social media to highlight those things because we want awareness in our community to help deter those types of behavior. But I think initially, based on what I've seen with the implementation of programs, when we have new technology, we'll see an increase. We'll see a change in behavior, and then we'll start to kind of either see either level off or even decrease. But depending on how folks are going to react to this type of technology, that'll dictate if we're going to either be on a flatline or if we're going to have that decrease. Okay. Thank you, Chief. And then should this be successful, where do you foresee the additional years of potentially using this? Where do you see that $300 and something thousand coming from? Because this is a huge chunk to bite off of. And I realize this isn't our money yet, but it will be. What I think is going to be helpful is we've seen some technology, and some have been really well proven, I think, here in our community for us to see the benefits of this. I don't think it'll take too long for us to see that it'll be helpful for our community. And within a couple months of it being stood up, we can say, "Hey, this is something we would like to keep." And then we can have further discussions on how we can find funding sources for that. Again, this will cover the first year of the funding for us to cover it. There's other options we can look at. One thing, look at the heat map, if you will. I saw that the downtown area had a number of incidents that we saw reported from our data. If that holds true and we see that with this technology, I'm happy to go ask my colleague Randy Randall, "Hey, what can we do to improve this corridor with our lodge tax or something that can improve safety in that area?" And there's other revenue sources we can look at too to make this priority to maintain it. Okay. Thank you, Chief. And just, I mean, I just want to be clear, I'm not against this per se. My parents live in Abu Creek. They had shots fired into their house a couple years ago. So I'm not against this, but I am aware of a public perception right now that, you know, why are we using this money for youth that was set aside for youth and family services to buy this technology? And to me, at the moment, it still seems like a rather reactive rather than a proactive technology. You talked earlier about the education and these programs that we can use to reach out to kids. So why isn't this money being invested in that instead of something like this? This money is actually directed toward the purchase of this program. Right. I understand that this was included as part of the fund, but why this instead of using that money as more of a proactive approach to finding those youth and education and other programs? Yes, and we are using $800,000. I understand that, but I'm still trying to find out why this specific money is being pulled from this grant for that instead of all that money being used for those programs. So, it's a package, right? So, we need one, we need the alert to get the data. Secondly, we need the outreach as well. And if we don't have that alert mechanism, then it's going to be hard for us to capture good data to then start putting resources into neighborhoods that are affected by this. So that's why it's important for us to do this, and I think the approach that the former director, Julie Sanchez, we had discussions about this and how it can help us in our community. It's not just going to be purely reactive. Once we start getting data, then that information can be utilized to deploy resources from the violence intervention program they call Rise to get folks out there to help with outreach and to start moving the needle in a different direction. But if we only have funding going towards that program without the data for this technology, then we're going to be again losing about 80% of those incidents, and we're not going to have a complete picture of the data that is necessary to do these programs. Okay. Thank you, Chief. And again, I'm not necessarily against this program. I've got questions about the sources of funding and continued funding, and that's where I'm having some issues, but I thank you for your. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay. Thank you, Counselor Bamonte. I have a couple of things I'd like to add to the conversation. I think how police forces, how a police force responds to the data that you provide is on the police force. It's not on your organization. So, like in the case of the Chicago shooting, that was a matter that was in the hands of the police force and not the people who gathered the data. Secondly, I would say that I do believe that we cannot approach youth violence in silos. We can't do all behavioral health and nothing else. We can't do all preventative and nothing else. We can't do all data gathering and nothing else. I look at this program, I think Counselor Garcia and I, our district holds 30% of the county's children and youth in our district. And I look at this as an opportunity to gather data that will allow us to make concise and smart decisions. Does that mean there's a little less going to behavioral health and more going to data gathering? Yes. But the upshot is how can you provide services for a population that you don't have concise and smart data on? And so I will support this as well because I would like to know statistically if we're making good decisions around how we're funding the capture programs and the soft handoffs and all the things that we need to do. I do think it's important to spend a little bit of money on gathering data because otherwise we don't know what we're dealing with. We are just speculating at that point, and to me that seems like we could waste money in some spaces that could be better spent if we knew exactly what we were dealing with or as close to exactly as we could. So with that being said, I think I'm going to call for the question. I'll call for the vote. Let's do roll call. Mayor: Thank you, Madam Chair. So, for the public, can you remind us what the motion is? Yes, Madam Chair. So to reiterate the motion, we currently have a motion to deny. First motion by Councilor Casset and second motion by Councilor Bamante. Castro, actually. Oh, I'm sorry. Castro. I mean, the motion just in case. I did it. Thank you. Saw her walk in and I was going to zoom it, but I heard it come in. So, motion to deny is currently on the floor. Councilor Casset. No. Councilor Castro. Yes. And I'd like to explain my vote. And then Councilor Garcia. No. Councilor Bamante. Yes. Councilor Faulkner. No. So, Madam Chair, that motion is denied. Do we have another motion? Oh, yeah. Sorry. So, again, I think that my biggest concern is the source of funding, and I would like to look for other sources of funding in PD if possible, if there were the opportunity for other funding opportunities for equipment and data gathering. Thank you. Move to approve. Second. Oh, no. I can't. I can second. So, we have a motion to approve by Councilor Garcia, a second by Chair Faulkner, and we'll do a roll call. Councilor Casset. Councilor Castro. No. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Councilor Bamante. No. Chair Faulkner. Yes. Madam Chair, that motion to approve passes. All right. Okay. Next order of business, matters from staff. Let's give staff who presented a round of applause. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be very brief. We are in the midst of preparing for the FY27 budget. Andy Hopkins and the rest of the budget team, as well as our departments, have been fantastic in putting information together for their requests, and we've been having initial meetings with the different departments. So, as you know, it's a lengthy process, but so far it's going very well. I also want to let you know that we are moving forward with our procurement process internal audit. So this is one of three audit internal audit plan projects that we're working on this fiscal year, and that just kicked off with Baker Tilly. So we're very excited to see what the results yield for that. Awesome. Thank you, staff. Anything from the committee? Madam Chair, just a quick question, and I know budget hearings and stuff like that, when we start really knowing when those are going to be, it would be great to know as soon as possible for scheduling purposes. Thank you. And just a reminder that this year, because of the budget resolution, budget preparation resolution that the governing body passed, we'll be combining those. So it'll be a joint meeting between the Finance Committee and the governing body for those, but we don't have dates yet, but we will get those scheduled as soon as we can. Okay. And then our next meeting is, Madam Chair, next meeting will be Monday, March 9th of 2026. Okay. And we're adjourned.