Committee meeting to order the date is uh November 2nd the time is 304 with us today we have U Alderman taliver alderwoman bade Alderman Warman Alderman bug and myself Alderman Franco uh first item is um clerk is there anybody from the public wishing to speak no okay then we’ll go right into the
Agenda item 23-0 828 review of the proposed 2024 City budget and we’ll start off with the police department I’m sorry somebody else was supposed to go first commun Affairs I didn’t know I’m sorry all right we’ll go with um mayor’s office of Community Affairs and Clayton I just want to say
Uh kudos to you for putting the people that’ll be looking at your budget right off the the front page just random pictures for the collage good good for you random random photos for the collage I’m sure there was if I known you were here Dell we would had you on there as well
Sorry good afternoon everyone thank you um as we prepare to move into 2024 the mayor’s office of Community Affairs um looks forward to really following the mayor’s theme of uh Aurora advancing if you look at your second Slide the mission of the department uh is to communicate connect and create
We’ve put and collaborate as well with the best information and intention in the most effective and power and Equitable manner that accurately reflects the one Aurora Community so we get that charge to do all of those every day with three official divisions Communications under Tony Martinez who
Is here we have some exciting news uh about growth and enhancement uh events under Mike Nelson who was here with us as well uh great work this year busy winter coming up uh and our Equity diversity inclusion division Michelle Clark who is also here some transformative work Happening Here in
City Hall and in the community that she’s doing and as I presented last year we’ve always had this fourth division of community relations if you will the things that we do to engage and connect the community that’s kind of been shared throughout uh the department uh as a
Whole and I could stand here and and give a list of things that we’ve done but I want to take a quick Journey Through the last 12 months um via video about although of course it takes us hours and hours to put things together or to collaborate with people to do so
We’re going to get about one minute per month as we look at the last year from last November until this Tuesday people have so much fun shopping you would think they live at the mall you know those people but now you can actually call the Fox Valley Mall home
This afternoon more than 300 new apartments officially open in Aurora for several decades two historic buildings in Aurora are getting ready to reopen their advisory Council visited more than a hundred seniors in nursing homes who had been in the military a big celebration for the city’s veterans there veterans from different conflicts
Marching in the parade alongside Jr and I’m Casey cronis live in Aurora where the magic of the holiday season is in the air city of Aurora lit up its City tree as well with the fireworks show and parade earlier tonight CLE Market opened its first and only Suburban location in
Aurora the holiday season has officially arrived here in Aurora the ribbon cut on the month-long Festival of Life over the 3-day opening weekend some 4,000 Vehicles 12,000 onlookers drove the one M light show Christmas came early for dozens of small business owners in the western suburbs of Roy mayor Richard
Irvin presented checks for up to $10,000 as part of the city’s continued Co relief efforts Valley Mall in aora has more options for your Christmas shopping 3 2 1 Welcome to Fox Valley Mall it is a big day for small business owners at Fox Valley Mall eight new stores are cutting
The ribbon today in Aurora the city of Aurora honoring the heroism of six police officers and a resident tonight for saving the life of a 9-year-old boy Aurora is celebrating Three Kings Day buddy oh yeah you can see the three kings are busy handing out gifts at
Linta restaurant kids signed up for more than a thousand donated toys in Aurora tonight the community honored King’s Legacy of Justice equity and mentorship TV personality and attorney Star Jones delivered the keynote speech happing today the city of Aurora will remember Civic icon Fred Rogers a visitation will
Be held at 3: this afternoon his funeral is at 6:00 tonight the city of Aurora Ming with other communities that saw mass shootings the leaders are inviting a Buddhist monk for a special prayer at tonight’s city council meeting at 6 tonight they’ll remember the lives lost in Montery Park in Half Moon Bay
California mayor Richard Irving says Aurora knows the g-ring hurt those communities are going through after a disgruntled employee killed five co-workers at the Henry Pratt company in 2019 in AAR it was standing room only for the fourth anniversary of the Henry Pratt tragedy Wednesday morning prayers Our Father who are in heaven flowers
Candles and tears still so visible 4 years L birthday celebration for a World War II veteran you know we’re running out of those this was the scene in Aurora over the weekend and the veteran is Ray Moore who turned 100 yesterday we are celebrating Black History Month by
Recognizing two Aurora teens who made history this weekend they were crowned the first Mr and Miss Black Aurora of the city Aurora’s 911 call center is getting an upgrade Illinois Congressman Bill f presented the city officials with a check for $ 2.28 million in federal funding yesterday International women’s
Day and to celebrate a group in Aurora is giving back the Empower bag collection Drive is the first CommunityWide service project for women in the city’s first employee Resource Group celebration of women’s History Month a new exhibit in Aurora is honoring the legacy of women in the
Military hidden Warriors is now open at the Aurora Grand Army of the Republic Military Museum back as we continue to celebrate women history month we found a female owned spot that highlights monthly boss babe events welcome owner of wickwood House in Aurora Shannon Gutierrez hi America strong how a
9-year-old came through when her mother needed her most today a 99-year-old Aurora girl will be honored for saving her mom’s life at Aurora celebrated its first ever St Patrick’s Day procession it was named in honor of the late Dan Dolan senior Aurora hosted a special Ramadan celebration last night Muslim leaders
And youth were honored for their service during Aurora’s annual Ramadan Proclamation ceremony that is the mayor of Aurora Richard Irvin helping to cut the ribbon on a new Asian grocery store Yan is owned by a husband and wife from Burma AA is honoring its 911 dispatchers it’s part of a National Public Safety
Telecommunicators Week here mayor Richard oen visited dispatchers on the job he thanked them and called them Heroes and gave them all Awards do you have an old computer or TV sitting around your house the city of Aurora is planing here to help you get rid of those electronic safely need mulch for
Your yard you can pick some up for free this weekend the city of Aurora has a giant pile of it sitting at the corner of Illinois Avenue and State Route 25 just one catch you got to dig it up and Hollow it away yourself the all girls
Air Force Roc drill team from West aora High School is just honored with their own day and the street sign the students known as lady Blackhawks beat out 26 other teams for the drill Aurora is mourning the loss of longtime public servant John Whitey Peters the former fifth W Alman who is lovingly
Called Whitey has died he retired back in 2015 after serving 12 years April is financial literacy month and city leaders in Aurora want to make sure everyone can take control of their finances the Aurora Financial Empowerment Center is celebrating its three-year anniversary with a r cut today marks one of the most important
Annual festivals for the sick Community the saki signifies the beginning of the harvest season earlier this week Aurora mayor Richard Irvin honored the community with a proclamation recognizing April as sick awareness and appreciation month National Nurses Week which begins today Aurora First Responders are honoring their nurses
There was a motorcade of fire trucks to honor the nurses today residents in Aurora honored the those who’ served our country with a Memorial Day parade and s new this morning two Aurora legislators are being credited for a new law which allows for the expansion of drones to fight crime
The good news this morning students in Aurora can get free meals All Summer Long Summer celebration kicks off tonight in Aurora the downtown area will be decked out in artwor paying tribute to Andy warhol’s eclectic career and pop culture influence he high energy celebration and West Suburban Aurora
Today the city kicked off its Pride weekend festivities with the drag raising today the city of Aurora held its fourth Annual Pride Parade oh man it’s a happy day brother Aurora Aur L we celebrating Pride Aurora happy Pride Illinois’s oldest farmers market returns this weekend this
Will be the 111th season for the Aurora farmers market today Aurora kicks off its juneth celebration this morning the city’s communication officer Clayton Muhammad joins us to talk about it Clayton good morning thanks so much for waking up so early here to be with us and no no problem good morning JC we
Appreciate cars lined up this morning for Aurora’s third annual Jun food distribution drive through more than 150 members of black fraternities and sorties got together in Phil’s part to volunteer and pass out food to those in need his youngest black mayor will visit Aurora for juneth 19-year-old Jaylen
Smith is the mayor of Earl Arkansas tomorrow he will be the guest speaker for Aurora’s June team flag raising today International Soccer Star and two-time Gold Cup winner onel Raina will be speaking to people in Aurora Raina is sharing his life story at West Aurora High School tonight at 7 own Ryan
Boatright returns to his hometown to coach his first basketball camp the NCAA Champion was joined on court by talented young athletes got a chance to learn how the pros play city of Aurora will honor The Life and Legacy of trailblazing aler woman shaita Hart burs Hart burs was the
First black person elected to the Aurora city council serving for 32 years first off Paul it was a great to see you honored as the Grand Marshall of the Aurora parade that was was about that yeah it was fun it was a fun time I was a Grand Marshall look there I
Am is launching the next class of Pitzer priz winning authors the free program to help children publish and sell their own books nearly two dozen pets found forever homes in aora over the weekend this is really cool animal care and control hosted a Christmas in July event
Inherited week is off to a festive start in Aurora is Puerto Rican flag raising ceremony got things started yesterday there was music and dancing and Puerto Rican Pride on display around the downtown of Illinois’s second largest city a celebration of culture out in Aurora the city hosted a flag raising
Ceremony to Hoist the flag of Bolivia up into the sky it was all to honor the 198th anniversary of that country’s independence from Spain and in Aurora the city hosted 26 National Night Out events and more than 7500 children and adults celebrated at the annual event simultaneously some tiny dancers helped
Peterson open her new dream Dance Academy at Fox Valley Mall this shoers the Suburban Mall welcomes eight new businesses mayor Richard Irvin joined the owners for ribbon cutting five of the store sell clothing several feature Beauty items and selfcare products too there’s a hair salon and photography
Studios and an array of selfie places to the suburbs of Aurora free haircuts were also part of a special back to school event here families even had a chance to win some pretty cool items in a raffle for many of these incoming students the school year is a chance for a fresh
Start cuz I’m excited to learn new things cuz you could keep learning and get on a good career path the city of Aurora celebrated the 77th anniversary of the independence of India August 15th marks the country’s independence from Britain in 1947 stud in Aurora are taking part in the annual celebration of
R shaam it’s observed every August through the end of the Hindu lunar calendar busy Labor Day weekend in Aurora the city celebrated their ribbon cuting two for new art galleries and one for beloved Church the main Baptist Church unveiled plans for its new 32,000 square foot Unity center Dana what an
Emotional morning we spent here alongside First Responders some of which responded three of them were firefighters that were sent to New York City in the days after the September 11th going to take you to Aurora they’re celebrating a huge weekend ahead of the official start of Hispanic Heritage
Month they’re hosting uh just again wall to wall all over the city tomorrow marks the start of the fiesta patrias celebration joining us now to talk all about this is events administrator and Aurora director of communications Tony Martinez thank you Tony for being here no problem I you D Scott kicking off
Hispanic Heritage Month with something very tasty yeah a couple with roots in Bolivia has put everything they have into a restaurant in a a long Restaurant Row in downtown Aurora you’ll find Alice’s Corner a friendly and welcoming atmosphere led by the husband and wife Duo Alice and Oscar brron today the city
Of Aurora hosts its annual German Unity Day event with a flag raising ceremony it commemorates the date when the former West and East Germany divided in World War II became one country again oh there we go there we go yeah get it it was a party in aora
Yesterday today that right there was Isabelle BME who just turned 100 last month out way she parted with other 100-year-olds in Aurora and other one year-olds there was a huge celebration in Aurora for a budding cincin Arian Lenny Baker turning 100 years old tomorrow she’s so gorgeous youngest Alderman has been sworn
In 34-year-old Brandon toer is now the alderman for Ward attend a big honor tonight for two Aurora city workers who jumped into action to save a baby they got an MVP award from the city council for their her residents recycled more than 30 tons of electronics over the
Weekend more than 2,000 people dropped off TVs and other electronics saving them from going into landfill laa is now considered one of the safest cities in the United States wallet Hub compared more than 180 cities across the country and rated Aurora at number know it’s going to be a chil one Patrick
Of trators but the city of Aurora has a game plan and that includes H Coco and heat Towers to it is pretty full out here so they’re seeing some good attendance the sort of thing they want to see and a lot of folks have been coming here specifically because you can
Hit so many places in one time which is parents were trying to stay War city of Aurora is now trying to lure the Bears out of Chicago a letter of interest says in part the quote Aurora offers unparalleled key resources to take a vision and make dreams come true look
Aurora’s got it going on y’all I’m telling you that’s 12 months and 12 minutes there so we had a good year so far since the last time we met so much that is really just a a high level we these are things that M has been involved in personally either
Organizing or collaborating certainly communicating out to the greater uh Chicago land area so that everybody can see what we’re doing we could have gone another 30 minutes we captured everything that is going on throughout the year and that’s what we look forward to continue to do and I think Terrell
Hit it on the head and a Ro’s got it going on and that’s why he spent so much time out here with our youth and make it certain that they have accessible Role Models uh he and so many other Chicago media personalities because they see through their professional lives what
Aor is doing and they make it in their personal lives to to become a part of what we are doing out here uh in aurar all this is happening through our team at mocha and you see the orc chart as it currently is uh with our Communications to the left
Events in the middle uh an equity diversity inclusion to the right and then there’s that gray shaded box that we’ve always called community relations again as we work to build up those are at the bottom of the chart the boards and commissions that we’re responsible for our cultural boards lgbtq board uh
HRC so that we can stay connected engaged uh in moving forward just some really highlevel uh overviews uh of things that that have happened this year here under the events division uh as you know Mike has been promoted from manager to uh director uh taking the lead at our
New Festival of Lights uh last year you know jumping in and that’s what you see happening there we have so many new initiatives like Festival Lights like Chris kall market and the war Hall experience um but we also have those traditional things like parades and fireworks at MLK state of the city and
Inaugurations and some things like a mixture of both like Halloween when it’s uh 20 degree or or 20 mph winds and how do you how do you pivot in make those things happen we’ve had extreme highs like honoring Our Heroes Ariana lemman and APD officers who saved the young man
From drowning our water and sewer guys who uh brought the baby back to life and we’ve had some extreme lows uh the death of alderman OK Conor and Fred Rogers and Deacon Bruce Wy Peters and of course shaita Hart Burns but uh we continue to celebrate celebrating life of 100y olds
There celebrating our nurses and our dispatchers uh providing our children Role Models like mayor Jaylen Smith and Raina and Ryan bght and Paul Conrad and that becomes the work that we’re trying to do here at mocha making certain that we do things in an equitable Manner and
Pushing things out and you see that in our events division expanded Farmers Market this year with new activities a new St Patrick’s Day Parade uh new staff recognition days to make certain things are happening internally and externally you know a lot happening in the community events division you see it
Reflected in the budget how we continue or hope to continue to expand and Ascend next year Mike Nelson is here with us um are there any questions for the Vince division from your budget items that Mike can help answer does the comme have any questions comments appears we don’t
Okay coming over to Michelle and the equity division so much uh transformative work she’s doing as a one-woman show handling things as if it’s an entire division with four five plus people there um watching our Roar Divine n Alliance grow from a local uh Club here to last weekend now becoming a
National member of the national pan atletic Council West Suburban chapter we’re proud to start that here in AAR I guaranteed 150 plus volunteers whenever we reach out to that group we love to watch that grow um and to expand we’re looking forward to expanding our Interfaith Alliance as we see things
Happening uh in Israel in Gaza we know how important it is to bring our religious leaders together here in aurar so that we continue to focus as one Ro internally the city certainly has has begun to take on those tough conversations Michelle you know King off her EDI training series having the
Uncomfortable conversations unconscious bias training that you know held first for for staff leadership uh then we’ll get out to every single staff member staff members we’re looking forward to launching in collaboration with the purchasing division the new mwbe program as we work with our minority women business enterprises if you will in the
City of aora and how does this city support them we know the need is there and how do we make sure that our procurement processes reflect uh in in an equitable manner Michelle taking the the lead on that as well and of course you saw in the news the uh Power women
Resource Group really setting a standard uh for other resource groups not only have other municipalities inquired about it but so have businesses and how do you guys really get that women women’s group so strong and and so powerful the work that Michelle is doing here uh internally and externally certainly is
Helping to put us on the mat we look forward to in 2024 to continue to ascend and enhance she is here if there are any questions for the equity line items questions or comments about that yeah hold bu uh thank you on um the decision package on the coordinator
Position I don’t know if this is a typo or not so uh in the explanation it says uh that this is going to start executive E15 step three at 2832 an hour you can maybe maybe it may be an question over there uh starting at 2832 an hour and then it
Says salary is $80,000 a year um so the math on that $28 an hour is not $80,000 not yet it’s not I’ll defer to Finance on that one 448 fa P 448 that even even with a hay study $28 stepping up to 80,000 a year that would be
Like huge jump that wouldn’t potentially that that’s more than likely a tip yeah okay thank you can I can I ask Mike Nelson a question real quick yeah Mike like I’m looking at um on the special events you don’t page number it’s 456 somebody’s following it’s got performance measures sure and it’s got
Um July 4th Revenue projected to be $1,000 how how do we generate revenue for the first July I what do that even accompl uh vendors uh we line the Wilder prominade with food vendors we do charge um we hadn’t been charging the last few years due to coid um we were kind of
Working with our local vendors we prefer local food trucks uh especially for that event we like to keep it uh try to do Aurora business only um we have gone back to charging though so we’ve been slowly um bumping up that uh participation fee every year okay so I I
I didn’t know where they originated from but that yep you’re welcome anybody have a question for Mike while we got him on the stand here raise your hand I I do ma’ uh I did see something we are adding with the lights every year so could could you
Give some more details Holiday Lights Holiday Lights yep so we um as you’ll see this year we’ve done a great job working with a small committee we are enhancing the holiday Decor in the downtown area um that is a plan that will span over the next few years so
We’ll keep um adding to our collection if you will really trying to get Aurora on the holiday map so you’ll see more uh light displays in the downtown area um lighted trees uh things of that sort we’re working we’ve got a small um in-house committee and we’re working hand inand with Aurora downtown’s
Streetscape downtown Aurora streetscape committee uh to really again just put us on the holiday map make Aurora a holiday destination and these holidays include uh wintertime holidays or throughout the year uh so that’s a great question so we um a lot of a lot of it uh I believe
Will be um holiday events but we’re also looking at buying things that we can use all year round things that aren’t just uh won’t just be utilized for holidays so um for example we’ve got orbs right now I believe planted in the Riverwalk along the G those can be uh changed to
Any color for any time of year any holiday so we’re really trying to think outside of the Christmas holiday box and uh really trying to purchase things and use things that we can use all year long those orbs are permanent right uh Alex are they are they permanent I believe
They are they’re not permanent yeah I believe I’m not sure I don’t think so because we were talk we’re waiting also to see what because you know the um paramont AA is working on the new theater there so they’re going to they’ll be there for a bit we just haven’t decided long term
Okay and I remember last year we had a plan to have uh the lights fixed that were given by the Aurora Rotary Club sure that will be separate and this is a different program I believe so correct yes separ festival lights at okay thank you you know while we’re on that topic
Mike Quick it says here for the the money allocated for that each year um It’s a combination of purchasing and renting yep um do we know precisely what breakdown it is I don’t need to a dollar like percentage wise um I’d have to get that back to we’ve been working with
Jason um uh on a lot of that um but uh a lot of the bigger pieces I think we struggle with um storing them so renting is a nice option we’d have to find places to store them and we’re quite frankly running out of storage
Space and the reason I asked that is cuz I see 50 55 it kind of goes up and if we’re purchasing that we’re accumulating quite a yes boatload of you know flights but if we’re renting the combination renting I get every year you’re going to have to rent some so trying to figure
That out yep okay yep all right any other questions or comments yeah I got question um did you throw in for a little uh garage over at our new facility on New York Liberty uh I would love that um I would love that I am running out of my
Own storage here but uh I’m storing currently in a closet somewhere but uh but uh yeah we’re looking at uh all the options all the options may have open some new doors yes thank you very much Mr Mr shro nice Christmas present extra garage would go up over there I would love
That any other questions or comments for Mike while we got them up there thanks Mike thank you very much I do have a question for the che for Michelle Michelle Michelle okay hi Michelle could you please go over uh the ucgs program the is that the Heritage Ser the
Her gr school oh so it’s a Heritage uh Heritage series um the Graham School approached us because they do a lot of distance learning and we would be the first municipality to participate with them and the idea is that we would offer the community and staff um a Heritage Series
So pick a month it could be pride month Black History Month it could be what’s happening with between Israel and um Hamas right now just going through culturally uh some history and learning um teaching us all about culture and cult increasing cultural competence that sort of stuff okay thank you so it’s and
It’ be taught by professors okay I don’t I think I said that thank you so excited thank you last year we continue to talk about community relations and as we look at expansion and and ascending uh we move now into 2024 budget where this uh Shadow Division if you will becomes a reality
Uh under the the title of community engagement as opposed to community relations so many things that we’re already doing as you’ve seen throughout the videos and just just our interactions throughout the year um that we’re handling under this department both Tony and I come out of school community relations school public
Relations and in that school model you do everything from marketing to communication the community relations um you get into bigger businesses those activities are separated and so as we operate in that mindset of a big business we have to really look at where we can best uh you know just emphasize
Uh the growth and the expansion and part part of The Proposal was taking the community engagement Division and making it uh official you see some of the things that we’ve already done what we will continue uh to do under this model to really serve as that facilitator between our partnership and the mayor’s
Office being that voice for the mayor’s office a representative of of the mayor’s office um and with that uh we looked at the department mocha as a whole um and realize that it really is a public engagement office you see so many engagement officers coming out Chicago
Go out of uh New York out of Chicago Transit Authority and so many uh bigger companies there uh in the office of public Ed uh engagement out of the the president’s office at the federal level to be that middle person uh that middle uh entity between government and our
Community Partners and we have such a wide breath of Partnerships as you all know from our cultural groups to religious groups to business and all that we just naturally do under this department uh the mayor definitely uh saw fit to improve that this Division and approved as Community engagement and
With that um we looked at internally here and we already had an engagement Division and how best we could streamline everything and we’re bringing those engagement folks under the mayor’s office of Community Affairs those neighborhood people that you’re used to working with I think you’re going to be
Really excited to see how we make certain that every Alderman has an engagement person right there um you know to assist you uh in your activities uh this uh Community engagement division again bringing the teams but Now supported um with the partnership under mocha with events uh with Equity uh in
Particular so now as we do events um through the engagement division we have event uh people like Mike who’s been doing this for nearly a decade who has such a a a a wise depth of knowledge on it so now we’re partnering to make certain that all the events and
Engagement activities are streamlined across the board so when you come to the ward n cleanup we know Al bug that your sound system is going to be there ready to go if you need a stage if you need a DJ now under this model there you still
Have your engagement person but now it’s now spread across the mocha division really the fingerprint that we like to do everything and I use the ribbon cuting as an example you can always tell a city of aora ribbon cutting versus other ribbon cuting just because some of
The things when you come in the stas are there the ribbons are there the music’s there the scissors it’s branded as an aurora piece we want to be able to do that across the board and every department has some Community engagement initiative uh we saw just this week uh
When we were over at Station 8 you know for uh the the bike uh and ped uh pedestrian study that’s Community engagement uh we saw it on the screen with our electronics recycling that’s Community engagement today is the um uh the international existing business code Workshop that’s Community engagement so
Internally every Department police and fire engage the community in some way and now under the this department we’re charged with making certain we have that one vision and streamlining making it through uh serving as that repres representative to the mayor um formalizing and normalizing uh internal and external engagement activities uh
Enhancing and expanding engagement opportunities uh recognizing the people supporting Citywide efforts in and out of City Hall and fostering the positive culture uh sometimes in the business world this is called the culture the people in culture office how do you make sure that good energy is there um It’s s
Of this division connections collaboration uh and communication will still stay the same simply because if you look at Public Safety couldn’t imagine them without their own Communications folks it’s very detailed when you look at engagement public engagement if you will uh we’ll have that same type of uh Communications
Piece although the request is going to be to expand the Communications Department uh throughout with that um after talking with the mayor in daa after 22 years for me and in Communications uh and watching uh Tony uh grow uh as just an amazing Communications professional um we we
Talked and looked at an opportunity for uh me to evolve into the the City’s community uh pardon me the chief engagement officer still the chief Equity officer merging them both together still doing the work that we do serving as the mayor spokesman uh and for the mayor’s office and handing thing
From a mayor’s office level um allowing for the growth in of the Communications Department under Tony uh as he’ll go into more detail with the proposals him as the chief Communications uh officer along with Chief marketing officer we really never had that position or really that strict focus of marketing here uh
In the city and it really needs to be separate and focused on so that we can all make certain that we can grow together if you saw 80 plus videos at 12 minutes you know if we all join together as Communications or public engagement and Public Safety and Citywide
Communications we can quadruple that across the board especially with some of the amazing team members that Tony has with technology and so what you’ll see now is the proposal for mayor’s office of Community Affairs stay the same uh nothing changes with my position but the title uh carried to Chief Communications
Officer Chief Equity officer Communications dropping off Chief engagement officer stepping in still serving as the mayor’s spokesman and adviser um as we continue uh to move the city forward under the mayor’s office of Community Affairs uh someone pointed out that’s kind of like the the public engagement office it should maybe the
Mayor’s office of public engagement well we like mocha more than mope so we’re going to keep it as mayor’s office of uh Community Affairs so we’re not trying to be mopes around here but uh if we’re the Department of Public engagement we can be pretty dope sometimes so that’s our
Goal as we move forward in 202 24 thanks DX appreciate it um and so that’s the proposal as you watch this division uh grow and then the department evolve uh you’re going to see from your own personal seats as Alderman uh the benefits of having Communications people assign to you engagement people assign
You with events and that team that’s already with Brian and and Karina sadik really coming over just amplifying your neighborhood uh events uh tenfold and just really bringing some great energy and with the communications we all you can work naturally together uh any questions on that piece I know I went
Pretty quickly I is I have a question about the brand and marketing division yes and that’s coming up yeah okay he’s coming up yes y I’ll just I’ll just wait for that okay perfect and uh the communications marketing department is the proposal well you know but I guess I
Have a bigger question too that was a little bit more nuts and B the next one but I think when I came out the city council 8 and a half years ago we had hired a firm to basically be our branding firm remember went from all the
Green logos and that to the yellow and blue and the different things the Star Trek P the St Trek yes could wear mine today but but I got the wrong one on but so will this duplicate what they would do or would they be responsible now because we have our own Department as
Oppos a Contracting out like we did there I mean would they pick up the ball we’re going to change logos and stuff and this is what they do yeah I’ll let tell you go into detail when his part comes up but it would be a hybrid uh for
Sure I mean we have now full-time 24-hour people that do marketing we need it all the time when we brought in Northstar destination strategies they were here I believe about a year period of time with a really high price tag and as you guys know we come back you as you
Call it the star Star Trek logo uh and things here and we’ve worked around that you still see the symbols that are here um but Tony’s plan is he’ll show you in just a minute how do you bring that internally and partner with external people but having professionals inhouse
To merge marketing and Communications um as a whole so you’ll go into detail did you mention uh somebody will be assigned to Alderman’s office or Alderman can you expand on that from both departments again ton go in detail from Communications and marketing but under uh the mayor’s office of Community
Affairs as we grow the uh engagement division the same engage neighborhood specialist that you’ve had the three that are working plus uh be additional supervisor um they will have assign assigned Alderman to work with and so as we work with Rich and his team there they know that these for however they
Broken up in the in the office there will be an engagement person assigned to them so as an alderman uh either a w Alderman or at large you know that this is the person that I’ll call out of mocha that will help me uh do the uh planning engagement activities you know
Them already uh who are already in place what you have now is the added support of having events uh experts if you will with Mike and event uh coordinators with his team who can also come along with with uh expertise to help plan events as
Well uh then you add the equity lens on I know sometimes we reach out say can you help find a singer or can we look for a different speaker now we bring the equity lens on so when you look at aora events uh even in your Awards it
Reflects our community uh as a whole so we’re really looking forward to watching that grow okay all right could you just um I don’t know I’ll ask the question now and maybe we’ll get the answer later um so I see where you’re going it’s fantastic um I think because we just had Mr
Shanahan here and his Community Development uh or or his portion of it in the community um it looks like we’re coming together a little bit so we kind of explain to us the sure the delineation yeah and we always have some aspects you and when we saw this we
Probably were converging uh you a bit much and that’s why we saw this opportunity to really uh differentiate from a community services what services are you providing to the community what services are you providing to our seniors what services are you providing to our um our youth what services are
You providing to our businesses that comes under the Community Services model Community Affairs or public engagement how do we then take those uh same individuals and make sure they’re connected to um the city hall structure or the government structure uh and providing those experience curating those experiences for them um that you
Know they’re able to then have a voice at the table so we can’t lose that peace so we are been we then in charge with mocha as being the onear uh kind of Champions there how do we make sure that everyone has a voice at the table let me
Give you another example we have a number of advisory boards here in the city our cultural advisory boards youth a lot of them have advisory titles but I’ve been here a decade very little is actual advising the administration for the city council we then have a plan in
The new mocha model under engagement that there’s regular communication Avenues where our advisory boards are advising the mayor and the City Council on activities that relate to their charge and not just planning events so when we go to the African-American hery board what advice are you bringing to
The table to help aor black community aor Indian Community the lgbtq community and so that then becomes a different Alan bug bringing up to the table and having that two-way um opportunity to uh to engage engage throughout as opposed to Simply providing uh a service there
And great news coverage we’ve had and we we’re going to keep doing that but we have to go beyond just those clips and how do we make certain you know that those individuals that are showcased and activities really are authentic uh and have a strong base here in Aurora and so
It’s a work in progress but we did see it converging a lot more this year the last couple years than before um and it was our opportunity to say this is what community engage Community Services will do providing services to the community and Community Affairs will manage affairs from the mayor’s office level
Often we get in the community as you all know they want to speak to an alderman they want to talk to the mayor um and you you’ll continue to work with your Wards and your constituents and this office could help serve will help serve from the mayor’s perspective that when
We’re meeting with groups they know it’s a direct line to the mayor this will hold on to that mayor’s office title okay other questions on that piece I know that’s a lot of changes I think we’re good okay and then finally our last division I’m going to turn it over
We sit here uh in a room um that kind of borne out of out of Tony’s mind and his his expertise and professionalism you go across the hall we were at the uh ribbon cutting and we just see the difference that it’s made already bringing the roal
Media center here again you’re having a season Community publication professional but also someone born and raised here so the passion the loves from AAR so you go down the highlights of the works already being done this year um and why it’s so critical that in order to grow Communications it needs to
Break apart as its own Department um that we can now work throughout uh the the city hall structure with other departments and the community to brand and market and communicate aora effectively while at the same time the other divisions and departments uh continue to do the work that we do
Together and so if there are no questions for me I’m going to turn it over to Tony uh who per your approval hopefully will be our new Communications Chief uh and marketing Chief don’t All thank you Clayton Tony Martinez director of communications you can see accomplishments external internal you know one of the uh the biggest accomplishments obviously yes we’re in this room we’re here broadcasting live all of our committee meetings all of our Council meetings and it’s a huge effort
You know we have a small group right now of five individuals on our Communications team uh you know we have Alex Johnson who’s uh behind those controls in our control room right now controlling the cameras um controlling that live feed going out to to our Outlets we have John Zago who is our
Communications coordinator handles the website he’s also Manning the computer in the presentation here uh tonight we have our graphic designer Tom King and then we have our Communications Court Nicholas Rashard uh Thompson uh so where we are a small But Mighty team and you see you know some of the highlights
We’ve uh you know done this year so we obviously revamped you know this this location all the technology can’t wait for the city council chambers to be completed and you’ll see you know all the beautiful technology down there and the functionality of that room um another accomplishment that we know
We’re very proud of working with it as our partner uh we uh fully launched inside 44 our employee internet side uh so now that’s the landing page for all of the internet browsers for all of employees so that’s where we will really put all of our news push out all the
Information for staff uh in SharePoint online which is very interactive we have all the departments on there HR has all of their documents so now this is the one uh the one point the repository for all of our documents and news for all of our city staff so really you know really
Engaging our staff you know in that way and we’ve seen some great engagement just uh launching it you know a few weeks ago with all the Departments going online so this time we’ll switch over to my PowerPoint I believe John if we can switch over uh to the communications and marketing
Piece and I’ll give a a brief uh overview uh we’ll go through the admin portion and we’ll go through the different divisions uh that are proposed uh for the communications um and marketing department so as Clayton you know touched upon right they’re they’re doing the engagement piece very well see you
See all of the the highlights through all the events that you know we have we have accomplished this year and we’re obviously hoping to do more next year uh the importance of making sure that you know we communicate that and keep folks engaged with that communication uh so
Communications is a market our missions to connect engage and unite the community with the best information and intention through creative accurate Innovative communication that enhances the city brand uh you know that the the marketing piece you know as I as I came here about two years ago you know I know
Alman Franco you touched upon you know h consultant to do The Branding work things like that but that really it really requires a 24/7 effort internally to making sure that those recommendations and that plan for that brand is executed on a day-to-day basis right you know I think as you walk
Around City Hall you roll around the city we still have what is our brand you still have the old you know Sunburst logo out there the green logo we have the the light version light blue version of the royal Illinois you know logo we have the dark blue version we have
Different variations out there and really what is our brand what how do we want to identify ourselves with right now and into the future uh so that’s why we’re looking at a Communications and marketing department uh and with three divisions uh brand and marketing uh Communications and video production and
I’ll go a little bit into detail a little bit on what that looks like but as an overall Communications and marketing department the the overall and ultimate goal for this department is really to operate like an inhal in-house you know Ad Agency marketing agency uh you know to that that we have marketing
We have communication video production all in in uh obviously all in one department and be able to execute any project uh and any uh you know initiative that comes along and really you know in 2024 to align our communication efforts so we can work more efficiently you know not only
Processes but also having the technology in place to be able to efficiently and efficiently communicate you know immediately uh all the things and great things that are happening throughout the city and as we Implement you know obviously the work that goes on um implementing and internal work order
System right now that we don’t have in place I’m working with our T our te Department you know there it should be just like if we need you know our facilities Department we put in a work order and if we need a window fix or we need the floors cleaned or we need
Something that go if something fix in the facilities that should be the same way in the communications and marketing that way we can better track the work that’s coming into the department we can track TR the amount of time it takes and we could track the turnaround time so
Making sure that nothing falls through the cracks you know right now we’re been operating on a kind of an email email system emailing me email my team you know can you do this project can you complete this sign this way we can make sure that we work more efficiently so
That way we can work more effectively as a department and also to expand the communication efforts I’ll go a little bit into that in the communication division to create more two-way communication you know I think nowadays is you know back back in the day a few
Even a few years ago it’s okay to have that one-way communication I think people are are are wanting more right and how do we engage and how do we engage in that two-way dialogue so then that way we can not only the residents hear us we hear what the residents are
Saying and have that you know engaged you know conversation first Division I would like to uh go over is The Branding and marketing division so you see right here uh we have three positions here uh two are existing so we’re so we have a we already have a coordinator on the
Website coordinator for graphic design um so now it’ll be The Branding and marketing uh coordinators with with the specialization in website and graphic design but also including another uh marketing coordinator which will be a general coordinator but also with a focus with economic development uh throughout my two years here there’s
Been a very great need for economic development and providing marketing obviously feedback uh uh for the projects that they have going on to making sure that they’re consistent with the brand of the city uh so not only will from the chief Communications marketing level where I provide that strategic Direction where we’re going
But also having a coordinator there um with economic development with our department to making sure that um they can help support those initiatives those projects those deals that you know they’re trying to uh you solidify on the economic development side so an economic comment real quick
This is where I had a question before which you you’ve explained it’s on page 471 it talks about brand and marketing coordinat like singular and it says three so yes so it’s they’re actually all so to make it easier um just like in the communications division see they’re
All marketing coordinators but they have a specialization so they’re all marketing coordinators one would have a specialization in website specialization in graphic design and and then the other one is a general kind of uh Economic Development uh you’ll see the same thing in Communications where they’re all coordinators but they’ll have their specialization
And the only reason I questioned that is because I saw a coordinator I’m like well that means one but we got three and that that’s okay but I just you know I was just kind of a little bit confused but you clarified it I just want to make sure
Okay so when we talk about branding and marketing in 2024 you know I’m saying some people ask you know what’s the difference um what’s the difference between brand branding and marketing branding is the why you know who we are why we are right and the marketing is
How we do it so when you’re looking at you know marketing wise especially in the government agency level you know corporate you know obviously has their own in the in the in the government realm you know marketing is how you do it you know it’s the immediate how how
Do residents engage how do we create those creative messages The Branding is the why is the overall arching and more strategic plan um through throughout the you know entire process uh so basically in terms marketing is more immediate more of The shortterm Branding is more of the long-term of who we want to
Identify ourselves with so branding really identifies a trajectory where we want to go marketing really details that those tactics and then marketing really uh really drives the engagement sales right if you’re in a corporate right but it really really drives the engagement and how how many people attend an event how
Many people interact with a Facebook post how many people interact with with an Instagram post uh and then The Branding just really is just the reputation that we want to have you know as a city uh so the goals and the Outlook from Brand and marketing is really to you know establish that
Identity help shape that narrative so we’re in the process of of establishing those brand guidelines of so if somebody needs a logo we have the right logo and the only logo to use how to use a logo when to use the logo when to use when to
Use a seal you know when to use a seal when to use the the word the word logo right so really identifying and really establishing that brand collaborating with the different departments for more consistent branding and marketing um provide that strategic outlook for the city brand and then also under the
Brand and marketing is also launching the first phase of the city website which you’ll hear uh more about in the coming week have any questions on the Brandon marketing division questions or comments from the committee continue okay so the communications division obviously this is one that we’re transferring sorry I’m
Sorry all the B did you have a question yes okay go ahead sorry uh could you go over the details about the website any updates on it yeah so you will be receiving update on the website a presentation you know the website here in the next in the next week um so we
Are in the process of we’re in in the process of of electing going with a new website vendor um there there were some uh kind of some stumbling blocks here some some some things that we encountered with our original website vendor that we did go with um so we’ll
Have some more details on that much more details on that you know in the weeks um so I don’t want to go into to too much detail with that now because we’re going to be uh you’ll be sharing that information with you here in the short
Term so as we go into the communications division right this one is well we all know what this division does obviously with social media um media relations um so we’re proposing uh we have a Communications manager to oversee this this division right now it’s the director so this will be actually you
Know kind of a downg in that position um so a Communications manager and then we’ll have three coordinators and each specializing um one in public relations or or just the general Communications coordinator one in social media and then one to um support the Alderman’s office efforts um
So we know the need to help the alderman with their communication needs especially as we try to shift towards that two-way communication piece I’ll go into that a little bit um to to help the Alderman’s office and alderman all the men and all the women on how to uh and
Communicating with their residents so we have a lot of creative ideas and a lot of ways to help support because we know that you know it’s a lot it’s a lot of work for for just one person for you guys to help you know engage you know your constituents and keep that two-way
Communication um and then bringing over the transl um translation specialist that’s currently in mocha into obviously this division so if we look in 2024 as we really want to build upon the Great Foundation we currently have you know we we we’re out there on social media all
The time we’re we’re in the Chicago media but you know how do we explore different ways of communicate with the public and create that two-way communication uh really you know increase the access to those communication materials you know in different languages that’s why the translation specialist it’s very you
Know it’s very integral piece not only Spanish but every other language that’s spoken throughout the city um also to support the council members you know communication efforts um you know we’re trying to here in 2024 you see we just launched next door uh being in you know
On the next door app um really trying to see you know explore those test that those Waters out to really try to engage folks um and that would be more of a two-way two-way dialogue not just you know not just posting something and let letting it go but having that two-way
Dialogue with those residents there because that’s what that that form is for um and and for that Communications coordinate to help the all men all the women to you really complement your efforts you know to on the next door W to to help try to mitigate any any
Inaccuracies out there or any issues that come up that we can help from the city Side to to help provide the facts and and help you know with any of those concerns that do come up um and try to cover every try to cover every aspect I have any questions on the
Communications division portion questions or comments from the committee go ahead next is video production uh this is this is a division that you know I I know Alex is behind those controls there uh he he’s uh he eyes are part watering because he’s probably very happy to get some
Hopefully get some support back there um but right now we have you know one person really uh that knows the ins and outs of the of that equipment we we we all we all can serve as backups but really you know give kudos to to Alex
Johnson for the great work he’s done uh and really being here day in and day out um we’ve created some great Partnerships with you know good morning Aurora you know he gets here at 7 o’clock in the morning uh and some Council ni is here
Till 8 8:30 p.m. at night so uh this this division was help grow grow our efforts um to really provide you know top-notch video production um and complement those communication efforts so that we can create materials and programming um all all year round for uh obviously our our Public Access
Television and and all of our communication and marketing needs um so in 2024 you see um we’re proposing adding a community services coordinator um to help um Alex out and then also adding two seasonals SL interns um to help out um to see how that how we
Progress into that how we can increase our programming how we can increase video produ production um here in the city um in 2024 we’ll continue to establish Partnerships with those different entities uh good morning Aurora we that’s daily here right in the TV studio every morning now we have the
Uh electives that are are are also perform also recording some programming but also create some more in-house programming so we can have program throughout the clock uh also leveraging and and fostering relationships with our our educational institutions uh so auror University just came and did a tour the
Other day the the Illinois media for broadcasting also did a tour on how we can attract some interns um some folks younger individuals that are interested in video production how we can get them through the door and have a mutually beneficial relationship so we can help you know alleviate some some of that
Burden uh and and that need that’s there for video production and then another goal for 2024 is launching the ACT actv mobile app so now we have the technology in place to be able to launch that custom mobile app so not only can you just go
To the website you can download the app that’s specifically branded for Aurora and they can see everything live right there in the palm of their hands from the custom mobile app can I ask a have any questions Tony I have a question related
To the actv m this is for the app but uh currently it’s online like good good morning uh Aurora people have to subscribe or how do they get it and what are different Medias Facebook and can you go over that so can definitely so so right now um for actv obviously it’s in
Channel 10 Channel and then channel 99 on AT&T channel 10 for Comcast so if you’re in city of aora limits those are the channels that you can watch it um we also have it live on our website so we have uh if you click on the little television icon on the homepage it’ll
Take you to the the landing page and you can watch it live right there so it has a a screen shot of and live feed from actv and it also has a pro programming guide right under that um with the ACT actv custom mobile app they all they
Need to do is look for the app which we have the uh the QR code for download the app and then it just comes up there’s no subscription there’s nothing um they and they can just watch it from the palm of their Palm with their hands or on their
IPad uh whatever device that they download the the app too okay can you please provide the list to us so we can absolutely yeah absolutely and then we we’ll also create some marketing materials so once we launch the mobile app here in the beginning of the year uh so we’re trying
To really increase our programming so then that way we have a pretty robust programming so then when we direct people to go there residents to go there they can stay engage right I what I we didn’t want to do was just have one program running and you know push out
The app and people get bored right resident gets bored we want to make sure that we have some a pretty robust programming uh you know throughout the day uh so that we can keep our residents engaged and informed okay and then I have one more slide and
Then the decision package um for our department um is a decision package for a vehicle so we are very anticipating obviously we’re very excited about our our mobile uh our mobile TVs our mobile cameras to be able to take throughout the city also we we have those are going
To be delivered here this this week uh and we really want to get out in the community and really capture you know Live Events uh capture anything that we can to put on actv put on our website um and that way we can go out in the
Community but you know obviously to haul that equipment around we do need a vehicle to to be able to do that uh but as we look at the marketing piece also uh you know having a dual purpose of being able to wrap the vehicle in messaging to engage folks right to have
Call call to actions um so to to Really uh uh wrap the individual with graphics and you’ll see some examples of some graphics here we have you know Dage County forest reserves I was there created that wrap for it for that vehicle um but any other kind of
Messaging that we want to wrap the vehicle with so if it’s you know we’re trying to uh you know push traffic to the new website or to download the mobile app it’ll be in different ways that folks can engage right and a QR code on the vehicle and then also how to
Engage or if it’s a specific event for that year it all depends on what the messaging you know and what kind of marketing campaign we have throughout the year so really using as a dual purpose for you know carrying equipment but also using as a marketing marting
Tool uh you know Market you know uh vehicle wraps is one of the most effective and most efficient and most cost effective ways to to advertise you know an organization and messaging um it goes Leaps and Bounds over an actual billboard and it’s much much uh more
Cost effective uh to do it um so that is the decision package it’s a front of view for uh the only one uh for this department this year so with that I answer any questions you might have comments on the committee Forman um I I think this is
Great you know and and really kind of spearheading what I think the city needs so but what what how’ this idea come about was it compare everybody wants to compare to other cities are there other cities or Villages around or counties that do similar absolutely so you know
This been this has been a conversation that’s been there for you know since I’ve I’ve I’ve gotten here right and the need for marketing I think is pretty apparent right so we look at other other cities uh you know just looking at other cities comparable to our size uh we’re
Se you know currently we’re severely under sized in our Communications and that and that’s not even including the the video production side uh so you look at uh cities around our size um they’re easily double the double the amount of folks that we have that include Communications and marketing um and then
Even when you look at media I mean it also eclipses to almost three times you know the you know uh the department size uh because obviously the media the video production side you know we’re just starting off but takes a lot of resources right you know I think
Everyone gets really excited with video pieces right and to see how all the you know all these different TV programs are using live you know these these you know like PD live or or you know carpool karaoke you know cool things that they do on TV oh why don’t governments do
That well you also don’t see the slew of people in the background you know to try to execute that so uh we we have looked at comps um and you know that that’s how the the structure was uh uh was determined and then with this how many
New I was trying to find it through here there’s a total of how many new staff members will come on board for 2024 so looking at netting I know I had that number here we’re netting around five yeah five and then two seasonals and then um I I guess our goal
Is transparency I think is something that we always hear about uh changing that perception that people still have as aora it’s you know unsafe or you know this is all the ideas that we’re going to try to P out to people and and use that to our full advantage and as
Alderman we’ll have access to help coordinate events and things like that as well too with that new person so I think it’s a great idea uh for what you guys have this set up so thank you thanks yeah thank you Mr Alexander if I can just quickly elaborate um I don’t
Think there’s a better time given the level of talent that we have to do this than 2024 uh Tony and Clayton have worked very very hard uh their team has worked very hard um and frankly our cable TV studio that whole effort really took a hit in 2008 2009 in the
Great Recession when we had to cuddle out of that and it never really came back and yet other communities have very successfully communicated and engaged with their residents visitors using cable using all the social media and so um we also you know out of respect for the tremendous amount of time that
Clayton puts in sometimes around the clock and work that people don’t see um having the team with him uh gave the mayor and I Supreme confidence that Now’s the Time to make this Division and and this separate department so uh I think we are equipping them as best we
Could given the constraints of the budget uh but as things go next year and we’ll monitor uh there are still things to complete but I think we’re giving them the proper startup tools to make this successful right out of the box and uh uh we’re just very thankful for both of
Them and their staff they’ve done great work and they’re going to do even better work in the future Tony I got a question for you yes um we should do quarterly newsletters from the city mail them what are we going to do that again now I let me let me go a
Little further I know we’re getting to the digital age I know mailings is it’s not archaic but I know we’re trying to get away from that but I do know that there’s a number of people out there that like to get information in the mail whether they got online or not I’m not
Suggesting that we do quarterly newsletters again but with with all this exciting stuff happening yeah uh it would be nice if we did a mailing in my opinion did a mailing say the TV the websites all those kind of stuff let them know that and then we’re good for a
While again before we get them but I just think that there’s a segment of people out there that’s just not in the digital age yet because I know when I sent out my paper newsletter they love it so I know it’s an expensive thing to do quarterly but is is any thought about
Doing that periodically to say something new and exciting is happen let’s send that out there is so there is uh there are funds in line item for a newsletter I like you said you know I don’t think we’re going to get back to the quarterly newsletter you know frequency because it
Is does you know take a lot of funds but we’ll find ways to hit you know to feed information and get the information how residents want it so whether it’s through a survey or whether it’s an opin to be able to really hit those folks that really want that paper uh you know
Newsletter and we’ll find ways to do that as we you know strategically plan out as we you know grow the team are in full force and we come uh together for that you know strategic Outlook and how we really want to execute communication you know going forward with the feedback
From our residents from you um and rest of the staff thanks Mr Alexandri and I think um just quickly we know from the resource guide that came out of Katrina board right work there still is a desire for people to have materials on paper in a book form also
In my time here past administrations have utilized uh newsletters at either different frequencies now we had less social media opportunities then but they were done either comprehensively with multiple topics or they were sent out on single topics so I think based on the feedback we’re getting you will see I think a mix
Of paper newsletter but the emphasis is going to be on social media and all these Outlets that we’ve developed including the use of Channel 10 YouTube and all the different um Outlets that we have that makes sense and and I say that because if you want people to turn on channel 10
Send them a newsletter one time use Channel 10 and now we’re done you know that type of thing just getting that that new exciting stuff out there even if it’s just one time yeah absolutely thank you any questions or comments from the committee all in that thank you I
Also think you guys do a great job and I know you work a lot of hours um did we look at nc1 17’s model in this uh how they do it because there’s a setup more as Community television uh to cover more than just the city and events and ingrain
Themselves into the city my concern is that this looks a little bit like state-run media versus having a an independent nonprofit uh that gets some funding yeah we did look at that model uh yeah like you said they are set up you know much differently um they are subsidized partially subsidized by by
The city um they are also a nonprofit right and so so um that’s you know that’s the decision they made um but that is something that we we looked at um and they do great work I mean I came from the d h County Forest Reserve work
With them uh and on a daily basis to push out news so very familiar with with their setup um you know right now that’s just not a plan or model that you know we decided that’ be most effective at this time um but it’s something that we
Have looked at and then is a community going to be able to use the uh resources that we have here is in in the past under the old um model you mentioned a 2008 cable TV uh effort but there used to be a studio that the community would
Have access to make it like like the library yeah so ex so that’ll be that that’s the goal so we’re finalizing you know what that policy is right for for the usage it’s a little different and City Hall having it here in City Hall than you know in the other location
Because it was a little bit you know the hours we could have been a little bit more flexible but we’re we’re finalizing what that looks like what that policy is um and you know what those Partnerships are because we want to do our own programming um so we are looking you
Know as it to be a community space and eventually as more as we get more resources is you know if you know we’re approve from more resources down down the line is really being a you know kind of education Hub too right to to Really emphasize video production if we have
Individuals that are interested and we can help complement the efforts of the you know educational Institutions and really you know being in an education Hub but also you know uh you know mutually beneficial relationship for for you know the community and for the city to help our video production needs
M go here well um are we done with your presentation I want to thank clay are we done overall so I I do want to thank you guys for the presentation was very thorough uh we like the slides uh you gave us a lot of good information and we
Certainly look forward as aldermen we certainly look forward to working with the Alderman’s office on Communications because that’s kind of what we do we’re you know we’re the bridge um we’re the conduit between the citizens and the mayor’s office that that really will help us out so we appreciate that thank
You very much thank you thank clim thank you app all right we will move on to the Aurora Police Department good afternoon everyone thank you for uh allowing me to present the Aurora Police Department’s budget for 2024 before I get too deep into the police department’s budget um for 2024 I
Just wanted to go over some highlights of 2023 Chief can I just have you say this is Chief cross just for the records oh I’m sorry this is uh Chief Cross of the RO Police Department sorry is now considered one of the safest cities in the US wallet Hub compared
More than 180 cities across the country and rated Aurora at number 25 the survey looked at the top two cities in each state ranking them in three key areas safety and crime natural disaster risk and unemployment and job growth Aurora is the second largest city in Illinois
Earlier this year wallet Hub also ranked Aurora as one of the happiest places in America Chicago this year came in at number 140 so uh we show this uh clip because uh for a couple different reasons number one you know obviously as a city we should be very proud of of that
Accomplishment but also we want to show that what’s possible uh when the community public Public Safety and government all work together is now consider so I’m going to focus primarily on some accomplishments for 2023 and um primarily want to talk about Staffing Community engagement and modernization we became fully staffed
This year for the first time in a very long time uh we’re proud of that fact because many municipalities Across the Nation and internationally for that matter uh are struggling to to get police officers uh it’s it’s an epidemic right now however that’s not the case here in Aurora and as a
Result um we’re able to do proactive police work violent crimes like homicide are down and we’ve also uh were recently honored by the state um I’m Sorry by um aim which is the alliance against intoxicated Motors for having the most uh DUI enforcement in the state last
Year and so we’re able to go out and do some of the things that we couldn’t do last year because we have more Staffing and better equipment so we talk about our staffing we have three overall core values one is to continue to recruit the best police officers hiring and training our new
Recruits and providing officers with the best training they can get to do their jobs effectively we put a lot of effort into Recruitment and trying to attract the best and brightest people we use social media job fairs recruitment days where people can take the physical tests and things of that
Nature right now we currently have authorized Staffing of 318 officers and as mentioned earlier we’re fully staffed our lateral program has been significant has helped us significantly accomplish this as we’ve hired and we continue to hire officers from other agencies that want to work for the Aurora Police
Department one of the reasons that officers want to work here is because they they receive a lot of training our officers receive as much if not more training than any other municipality in the state it’s the Cornerstone of everything that we do when asking new officers why they
Want to come to work in the RO three things seem to be a common theme one is training two is equipment and tools to do their job and the third is opportunity for career development and advancement we’ve also increased our staffing in Telecom where we’ve
Struggled uh we had 16 in 2022 and we have 23 so far this year so we’re very grateful of that we also repurposed three sergeants that were in our jail this allowed us to do a do a couple of things one create a career path of advancement for our cdts
As we now have non sworn supervisors in in our booking area and it also allowed us to address some span of control issues and create much needed position to address the organization of our increasingly growing special events next let’s talk a little bit about Community engagement we have two overarching goals
In the organization one is to reduce violent crime and the second is community engagement we believe it’s very difficult to do the former without first addressing the latter so we do this in several different ways and I’ll just touch on a few we use a program called my 90 which
Provides us with critical feedback from our community my colleague deputy chief Thomas will speak more about my 90 but I’ll touch on a couple of things our agency is in the 80th to 90th percentile satisfaction rating in the areas related to equity and overall service quality of service this includes positive view of
The agency whether people were treated fairly and with respect and had their questions answered also whether they felt they were listened to and understood what they were to we also continue to have a thriving Citizen Police Academy which will be graduating its 54th class next Thursday as you know we also started our
First Spanish speaking Police Academy last fall and it will be graduating its third class next Tuesday we’re also proud of the fact that that class has doubled in size since the first class and we hope that number will continue to grow we also have our youth Law Enforcement
Academy in the summer and we just started up a new police explorers program we had an overwhelming response and we have 24 participants in the program right now this program helps us fill a gap between the youth Law Enforcement Academy and the cadet program that we
Have we also just acquired to do blood hound police dog some of you may have already seen her running around Sadie that we believe is a great Community engagement tool and a valuable service resource and next with regard to our modern modernization we also continue to modernize our operations to keep up with
The everchanging society we now have the capability of using e citations which makes the process of issu issuing citations and sending mandated information to the state much more efficient we’re also uh in the process of get standing up you uh scheduling the ukg I think some of the other City
Departments are already using it but we’re getting ready to get started I think sometime next month this should streamline many tedious scheduling issues that arise in our department we’re also in the process of trying to continue to modernize our Dispatch Center uh this has been an ongoing project that’s almost done the
Center has received a much needed makeover with new consoles monitor and Furniture also an upgraded computer AED dispatch computers and a video wall we have the latest iterations of axon body cameras as well as the latest iteration of the taser we’ve also seen tremendous benefits from using axon evidence.com evidence solution benefits
Include more efficient and effective evidence sharing between the community and the police department cost savings and saving time for officers to complete other tasks we’re also in the process of standing up our online reporting system which will allow people to fill out some Reports online and will be a timesaver
Both for the community and the officers we’ve also made the successful conversion from UCR Uniform Crime reporting to ners National incident based Reporting System we also had some Crisis Intervention unit infrastructure improvements we now have an adequate room to house our growing CIU unit as well as some other representatives from
Organizations that we partner with like FSA and SAS in a modern workspace and we also have approval to implement fusus which is a software that will be discussed later in the presentation anyone have any questions on questions or comments in the committee not all lash on the uh online reporting if a
Resident of Aurora let’s say somebody stole a $1,200 mountain bike out of somebody’s yard and um the person files an online report of theft does the insurance company take that online report or are they going to want to see something well I think first it had to
Be investigated I don’t know what the insurance companies will or won’t take but um you as a citizen will will have the opportunity to fill out as much information as you can if you don’t want to go to the police department or if you don’t want an officer to come out you
Can fill it out right away eventually that information will get to an investigator they’ll have to investigate do we have suspects don’t we have suspects but I don’t know I can’t say what the insurance company will take and what they won’t take okay for somebody to fill out their own police report
That’s what I was asking yeah they can fill out their own as much information as they can they’ll be allowed to fill that out and that will go that will come to us and then we will have to investigate it you know make sure it’s a Bonafide crime and then um you know
Liaison with the victim and then you know go from there but they that’s the idea is that a person wouldn’t have to wait for an officer to come out if you know it was maybe in the middle of the night and they didn’t want to come out
They didn’t want to wait for an officer it’d be easy for them to go and put that information in to be followed up on later you know we wouldn’t want obviously someone this an on you know something that’s going on right now to do that but okay try to make it a little
More uh efficient for people we’re good all right I’ll turn it over to uh deputy chief Thomas good afternoon see my name is Matt Thomas I’m the deputy chief of police and I will present the requests for an increase in Staffing I’ll start with our requests for additional officers um we continue to focus on attracting the best and brightest police officers who represent our diverse Community our recruitment
Team and public information team um has created a yearound strategy to attract applicants to join APD over the past year we’ve focused on high school and college events job fairs and inti a recruiting campaign outside the state of Illinois to attract applicants like the chief previously mentioned uh our
Current authorized strength is 318 swarm police officers but we need additional officers to further support our community’s needs and continue down the path of success and making Aurora one of the safest cities in the US later on in this presentation uh you also learn we are seeking approval to purchase a
Comprehensive Staffing study as part of a larger plan where we will review our future staffing needs to complement the ascending vision for Aurora we know we need more officers so this Staffing study will examine every dimension of the department and serve as a road map
For us for the next 5 to 10 years also later in this presentation uh we will be asking for additional equipment and vehicles to support the requested increase in total officers and the overall growth of our department at this time though uh for the year 2024 we are
Asking for seven additional officers we feel that is a manageable number uh considering the number of expected retirements and the number of trainers needed to properly manage our new recruits in our training program last year we asked for seven officers as well and and although uh we were um met with
Resignations and retirements we were still able to meet our staffing goal as the chief mentioned by the Year’s End we not only added more officers to the Patrol Division but we were able to fill several service specific uh positions such as the crisis intervention investigators uh recruiting and background investigators and a domestic
Violence investigator uh those were not uniform positions but they were necessary to align with the changing landscape of policing we have a similar plan for 2024 the plan is to add officers to the Patrol Division and again to add officers to some of our special services and specialized enforcement divisions like the
Investigations Division and our crisis intervention unit the chief mentioned we just recently finalized the office space for our crisis intervention unit and now we have that infrastructure and capacity to add more officers uh we have also noticed a trend that overtime is no longer becoming a long-term viable solution to supplement
The need for for more officers uh there’s been a shift in the mindset of some of the officers who are not signing up to work as much overtime time as we used to so as we increase the number of special events Aurora is hosting and as we try to accommodate the number of
Requests for extra police presence in schools and local businesses we are seeing that need met with a shortage uh last year we had approximately 30% of our special events and extra jobs unfilled so we believe that growing our number of sworn officers is one of the
Key ways to help fill uh some of that shortage question I I have a comment um you know I read somewhere you mentioned now you’re increasing officers for anticipated retirements I can’t agree with that more because I know there’s government agencies that wait till somebody retires
Then they hire and there’s a void of three months to three years correct so getting ahead of it is spot on so that that’s a great thing I’m glad you’re doing that because we can’t have that void especially with Public Safety correct so I’m I’m very happy we
Anticipate that and we we usually ask ahead of time to try to get that projection about what who’s planning on retiring at the end of the year so we can predict ahead of time and not be stuck with that void and and I’m so happy that the overtime in essence is
Going down a little bit because there’s certain occupations that you don’t want the person who’s doing that to be fatigued correct you know and we don’t want our police officers or our firefighters fatigued so that’s another benefit from that too so I’m so happy to hear those words come out of your mouth
Because it really is very important yeah yeah and and you know what um the next side our our request is is not just like ours alone right we like the chief mentioned um you know we we had stood up that customer survey uh soft program this year called my 90 um which solicits
Feedback from the community so um maybe some of you have have seen this after you if a Community member calls the police or maybe somebody has told you about this um after a Community member calls the police they’ll receive a text message on their phone with a link to
Complete a survey and provide feedback about their interaction uh so we also take that opportunity to ask the Community member um what their concerns are and what they would like to see in the community and the number one request from community members we surveyed was to increase the number of
Officers in our community um additionally there is uh one Staffing model that we looked at that uh published by the United States Bureau of uh justice statistics which has recommended guidelines for police Staffing using a per capita model I think you might have asked about this last year the this model suggests that
Municipalities should seek to attain a ratio of 1.8 to 2.4 police officers per 1,000 residents given the guidance from this model Aurora could strive for a police force of somewhere between 325 and 430 officers so as I mentioned we’re currently sitting at uh 318 so by adding
Seven officers in 2024 and then continue continuing to gradually increase our authorized strength we’ll be in a better position to meet the growing needs of our community did you have a question I did yeah uh thank you deputy chief uh thank you for starting to look at the uh the
Overtime number and that’s really uh where I was focused we’ve looked at that number for a very long time um and of course as as we looked over the years on increasing Staffing you know we were looking at that overtime number coming down correct Co blows
Everything out of the w so those numbers don’t count over time was through the roof and needed to be um but 2023 2024 we have the same $6 million so understand with the increased number of events thus you’re going to have increased overtime correct um but where
Are we if if we’re at the point of getting fully staffed so we’re right there at the cusp getting fully staffed yeah um to add more officers above that so I’m looking 25 whatever um where can we start Toc because I mean like I said we
Talked about this a long time ago but looking at adding a number of officers and then your overtime is going down by 5% 10% because it is 6 million so correct if you knock it down you know 3% uh that’s $180,000 so that’s that’s like an officer and a half right um so
Are we looking longterm at at and doublea yeah we we’ve had this discussion before but yes sir I can I can answer that and I think that’s part and parel why we’ve decided to put in the 24 budget the Staffing study we know for sure anecdotally for a city our size
We are underst staffed in terms of the total number of sworn so that’s why we’ve been subject to the budget adding the folks and making the commitment but we decided now is the time to put the Line in the Sand and get find out that number currently and then
Once we have that number that will inform 25 26 you know and that’ll be a strategy and it will definitely be tied into the incre the effect on overtime uh but will also I’m looking at it as you know what does it cost to hire a police officer there are a number of
Factors sure no different than what’s it cost to hire a firefighter so to the administration it’s a necessary cost of doing business and so what is that number and how can we tackle it so we’re going to expect this Staffing study to give back a lot of data not just here’s
Your number based on an FBI number number a population number um we’re looking for a comprehensive set of data that we can then start costing out and planning out and yes our expectation is that overtime will continue to go down um as we keep increasing staff thank you any other questions for
The chief deputy chief right now okay we can go on yeah okay the uh the other position um that we’re looking for is a an additional Lieutenant so that in addition to the seven officer we’re also looking to create a lieutenant position who will manage um some of the most
Critical areas in policing today like the chief mentioned those areas include recruitment hiring training officer development and officer Wellness currently our office of Professional Standards Lieutenant is responsible not only for managing all of the formal and informal investigations both sworn and non sworn personnel but he’s also responsible for man managing those
Critical areas of recruitment training hiring officer development and officer wellness and this has become an unmanageable workload uh so to put this in perspective departments in our area which are smaller in size than Aurora have one full-time lieutenant and one full-time Sergeant solely in charge of managing their employees investigation
The community expects a a swift resolution to internal investigations and with the addition of body War cameras and other technology uh the investigations and review process has been has become extremely timec consuming uh leaving little time to manage the recruitment training and professional development so we’re asking to separate those areas of
Responsibility into two separate Lieutenant positions so we’ll have a an office of Professional Standards Lieutenant who will manage um employee investigations and then we’ll have a newly created professional development Lieutenant who will manage those critical areas of recruitment training and then professional development questions okay continue okay I’ll turn it over to
Commander flowers for the staffing Study good afternoon I’m Don Flowers uh Commander for the Bureau of neighborhood policing or more commonly the Patrol Division and the K9 officers um the Staffing study uh deputy chief kind of hit on it and Alex kind of hit on it some of the things that I want to
Talk about you know uh to repeat you know the Department of Justice say 1.8 to 2.4 per 10,000 citizens uh latest census uh that I know that we all have questions about um puts us at like 18,500 people um with that the range uh that the deputy chief said 325 to 433 um
It’s a generic standard and it doesn’t answer a lot of the questions that we have about growing our police department and and what we need and where we need those things um so doing a staffing study it’s not just about a number of officers uh that we need to have it’s
About the efficiency with with which we use those resources uh those people and the things that all these things that we’re we’re getting all these uh programs and Technology it’s it’s about that so what we’ll do is look at uh our current divisions within the department and analyze their effectiveness in
Accomplishing uh the missions that align with the Department goals and with the city goals uh of community engagement uh violent crime reduction uh a better quality of of life um it’ll look at uh how our units within the department and the city are interacting uh and how effective that interaction is how how
Are we working with the fire department how are we working with uh Property Standards or or the street department even uh what are we doing to make each other’s jobs easier um it’ll look at our supervisory staff um we just talked about possibly getting a new lieutenant
Um talk it’ll talk about span of control and how many supervisors should we have what’s you know the traditional number of five to six people per Sergeant or or or direct supervisor um it’ll look at all that stuff it look at unity of command um it will look at s succession planning hopefully
Um uh the special we’ll look at Staffing and specialized units uh included case screening um if you don’t know we have an investigations division they usually carry pretty heavy case loads um having been in the investigations Division and been a supervisor in that uh Division I
Would always go to some trainings and I would ask other supervisors what kind of case load are your guys handling and a lot of times it’d be like five to anywhere from five to 10 case loads and I was looking at my detectives who were
Carrying 20 to 30 to 40 sometimes um so there are other divisions uh within the department that have that same kind of problem so how are we being effective in that division how many detectives do we need um our administrative assignments for for our staff sworn versus civilian
Do we need some of these things to be civilian do we need some more things to be sworn um what’s the most effective way to use those resources and and to get the most out of our budget um our calls for service this is really big uh
Workload uh how it affects not only the amount of officers needed but also how many dispatchers uh Court detention technicians which is are the people that work in our jail and process people book people um records Personnel Etc um our use of overtime we talked about that a
Little bit earlier uh not just the budgetary cost but the efficiency with what what are those officers doing the well-being of those officers where we’re concerned about the well-being and you know I think it’s pretty common knowledge that you don’t want over tired police officers out there cuz the more
Tired we are the more it affects us uh so you know it’s also morale I mean when when you’re burnt out all the time and and and you feel like you’re living at work uh we got to find a better balance for our guys and I think there’s there’s
So much more that that could be into it um I’ve been kind of diving into this process uh as a matter of fact uh I’ve reached out to Northwestern University uh reached out to University of Chicago I haven’t really heard anything back from them um looked at private uh
Industries that that do these kind of things I just recently uh found Michigan State University has a police Staffing Observatory um I just had a a phone call meeting with the chairman of that committee and and kind of he sent me a a really long report that he did that I’m
In my way in the process of working through so these are all the kind of things that that we’re trying to do we’re trying to make this um again just I feel like I’m I’m beating the same drum not just for right now not just about the numbers it’s about using those
Resources and it’s about a road map for the future about when do we need to start doing these things and when do we need to start increasing uh our you know our numbers our people uh and just to see how do we do that how do
We how do we come up with that number than just saying it’s more than just a number that the Department of Justice says and and if you kind of look now like I’ve been doing the research it talks about workload and it talks about the health of of our officers and
Everything else so that’s kind of what we want with that Staffing analysis so if I if I can make a comment actually a question too I think the Staffing analysis is necessary because things are changing you know evolving technology and and you moving your pieces of puzzle around are very
Important have we done this in the past sounds it sounds like this would be a periodic thing maybe five six every seven years because you want to say okay this is where we were in 2023 when I was 2029 we need to go four so I I don’t
Know have we done that in the past or I know we’re not doing for five more years it’s long as I’ve been here we have not but you may recall we did something similar for the fire department for station locations so I think we need to get into that
Rhythm um of doing it for both police and fire sure so again dealing with data and evidence and not conjecture or a generic standard something that’s tailored to our community and it is fairly common at other municipalities I’ve had experience in other communities where these are a
Kind of a I don’t know if they’re necessarily routine but they’re certainly done from time to time well and I would think that would be appropriate based on everything changing so rapidly if you do one now in five years you probably need to do one so on
And so because it probably will pay for itself you know many times over because we do this make sure we get it right or as close as we can to get it right so I think it’s a great idea any other comments or questions thank you Commander appreciate
That Al lash have we looked at you talked about technology a little bit uh just on the speeding issue using a remote radar controlled that would issue city of Aurora tickets um not not a private company not connected with a private company but um I know it take a
Little bit of a technology lift but uh the number one issue I think that a lot of us get is speeding and I know that you guys are busy handling other calls so um I’m just asking if we’ve looked at that and what uh options are out there
Um so to my knowledge uh We’ve not looked at that and I’ve haven’t heard any talk has uh anybody heard anything about that no um that’s the that’s kind of the first I’ve heard of uh of of an enforcement tool like that um but I I can tell you that our traffic
Enforcement is up uh about 117% this year than it was last year it’s been a focus of ours to concentrate on on traffic enforcement and traffic safety uh get this out so as of uh September we had uh yeah it was up 117% so last year in September we had um
7,14 traffic stops this year in September uh up to up till September we had 15,470 traffic stops we had um 2022 we had 6,774 citations that were written in 2023 we had 9,546 citations so that’s up uh 40% and and uh written warnings are up 310% 426 in 2022 and
1,750 in 2023 so traffic uh we we hear the the cries from our citizens about traffic and speeding and and all sorts of other traffic issues and that’s what we’re we’re doing but I I wasn’t aware of the technology that you just discussed but uh certainly could be an
Option for more efficiency it’s something we could definitely check into it might have to be something that’s coordinated with it but I would say long term it might I mean I’m just one Alderman and what the others think I’m just saying that is we look at technological solutions I’m sure
Something’s out there and if we could run it through the city versus the private company um that would be Chief well I got you real quick um because we’re talking about this and I want to give you guys Kudos because you have answered the Bell because speeding running stop signs that complaint comes
Every day so you guys act making the Traffic Unit Vision greater but I but I saw something in in the measures and just it it kind of surprised me that uh traffic tickets for this year estimated is 9630 right great for next year we’re budgeting we think it’s going to be
8,100 and yet we’re going to actually put more people on the Traffic Unit so my mind I’m thinking if we got 9600 this year and we’re going to go out and basically look more for that that our numbers would be the same or higher I was kind of surprised that it went down
Because we’re going to we’re going to put more emphasis on that next year yeah and and I I think that was an estimate you know I just got these numbers I I’ll be honest with you I didn’t think traffic enforcement would go up 117% I mean I’m glad to see that because
That shows our officers are out there hitting it hard you know that the um the number that you got was prior to us realizing how well we we actually doing so if we continue on that trajectory obviously our numbers will be higher than than what we anticipated I just saw
Mr Alexander you want to say something I’m sorry no I’m good okay thanks yeah I I just noticed I’m like you guys are doing a great job those numbers are going to go up because the more people out there the more tickers are going to
Give so I just was kind of surprised but yeah yeah and we’re going to continue to focus on it again you know this is what the community wants and that’s our job to to give the community what it wants so yeah I think um yeah there’s two ways
To look at that of course uh you do a traffic detail and hopefully after that detail over the next 2 3 4 weeks people are going slower thus less tickets during those 2 3 4 weeks weeks after that so um you know possibly they they
Can come down but uh to uh Alman lash’s point I unfortunately have had the experience of uh coming before our red light cameras because of my teenage daughter recently um so there there is a back and forth on that uh the citizenry um looking at those types of uh surveillance if you will
Um so you know the state doesn’t do it in that way the state has the ability to eat uh with with the iPads and those things um and you know other municipalities have actually gone away from red light camera somewhat so it it it would take a
Lot to look at to to kind of go the other direction on that Mr Alexander Jing something so I it just occurred to me um I have answers on and I mentioned to the chief there are speed cameras that are deployed in the city of Chicago uh they’re
Permanent so and they’re not without controversy um so it would be way Beyond I mean it would be a very involved study very costly and we would need more than just it you would need the cooperation of our four County court systems we’d need to talk to the police
Union because now you would be essentially taking potentially duties away from the rank and file um and I just want to mention you know this Council for years has responsibly worked with the police department with the vendor for the red light camera system we’re not Oak Brook we’re not any
Of those towns that abused or dealt with those companies uh in fact our red light camera program is touted as one of the better one run ones and every time in Springfield there’s been a question about get rid of these cameras we’ve always provided the way the city does it
Uh and it it’s been lotted for how we do it in terms of fairness due process the does not uh have final say on the issuance of tickets we have sergeants who review in the Traffic Division and we have great data so uh I think it’s
Something we could look at I think it would probably make more sense to do a one that’s not fixed like Chicago because now you’re also targeting and branding neighborhoods as somehow inequitable from another neighborhood and I think Alman bug makes a great point the whole whole issue of big brother and
Surveillance and a camera and a Stop Bar making I mean it’s so that’s why we built in the human element to the red light camera we would need to replicate that with this if we installed permanent so it’s something we could certainly look at if it’s something the
Administration the mayor wants to us to do or if there’s a consensus we’ll certainly look at it I think we need to keep this though focused on what on this budget process right now so let’s we’re going to move on okay Mr chairman can I make one quick
Comment no no right now we don’t we’re running way behind you can have that comment with the with the police chief afterwards all right next uh next presentation all right uh I’ll have this uh presentation to uh this has to do with the field training program um a
Little background on me I I’ve been involved in the field training program for 23 years as a field training officer field training Sergeant the uh admin Lieutenant of it now it’s under my perview as a commander um so we actually have this system uh installed and
Working right now um it is a software that’s actually kind of a so Source uh vendor um we use the field training Associates uh the sakov model um this is the only software that field training Associates will let use their forms so those forms are downloaded into their uh into their cloud-based service
Um like I said it’s cloud-based so they keep all the storage that’s that’s not a cost that we incur um kind of what it does is uh it’s specifically D for designed for our field training model and it standardizes uh all of our ftos and what they do
Um if you’re not familiar with the field training process it’s a 16we process for our officers that they that they go into after they’ve done a 7-week in-house uh training and the 16we uh basic Academy training they come they come back they’ve got 16 weeks in our field
Training process with four different fto um we do that so that they can have you know different points of view from fto and you know fto can have different points of view with them to see if they’re struggling how do we help them and we try to get give them everything
That they need what this is going to do is going to make for easier transitions for those fto when they’re getting a new recruit they can see where they’re struggling and they can kind of focus what they need to do to help that person uh give some different ideas in there and how
That happens um some of the upsides of this there’s no limit to how many devices we can uh use this on uh I know that a lot of our field training officers are actually doing it on their phone um that way they don’t have to fight with a clunky computer in the car
While they’re they’re going along um and they can do it from anywhere so if they got to go home at the end of their shift and and take care of a kid or whatever they can be working on it at home and I know some of them do that um it uh any
Updates to the service are completely free that’s all part of the the subscription that we’ll have um it’s like I said it standardizes language and it it makes it so that as as the commander or even as the chief if he wants to look and see how a specific
Recruit is doing um he can look at that at any time he can just pull it up and see how it’s going it tracks all of our training it tracks all of our you know positive stuff as as well um and what it does is and and I’m sure you’re aware
The liability aspect of when you’re training somebody sometimes it doesn’t work out um and we need to do everything that we can this ensures that we do everything that we can to teach this person how to be a police officer and if they can’t when the time comes it’s legally defensible and it’s
Easy and it’s all right there you know and uh like I said it’s always the goal of the field training program to get people through and do everything that we can but sometimes it just doesn’t work um it’s not cuz it’s a bad person or or
Whatever it’s just not fit fit for them so um real quick the the cost is we we we paid for this uh for this year out of a our Academy fund because we did hire so many laterals as we talked about earlier um we had a lot of
Money left over in in the money that we had uh allotted for the police academy uh laterals we don’t have to send people to the police academy so we figured that would be a good use um that’s 8,420 for the initial setup and the subscription
For that for this year uh and then for the next four years um it’s $7,923 a year uh no price increases every update is included in that um it’s not uh in my opinion a very heavy lift to make sure that we’re doing this the best way that we can gets everything it
Agregates everything um and so it’s not a bunch of different drives and it’s not a bunch of different forms here and it’s something that we can have at the ready that we can bring out and say oh yeah we got this you have a question yeah we got
This guy we can look at it instead of going to a million different places questions comments thank you all right uh Lieutenant Lieutenant W all right hi my name is Andy walcot I’m the lieutenant over special services for the police department um I’m here to talk to you guys about a handful of
Things we’ve asked for this year um the first one uh is for police social workers for Crisis Intervention unit you guys have heard a lot over the last few months on the crisis intervention unit um as you’re probably aware The Crisis Intervention unit aims to serve our members of of our community serving
Suffering from symptoms of mental illness through the collaborative work between our investigators and our mental health professionals currently the CIU program staff consists of three police investigators one police Social Work coordinator and then additionally we have grant funding for two full-time and one part-time social worker from FSA of
Greater Elgen who’s our current Social Service Agency up to this point we’ve funded the social workers from the Social Service Agency entirely through grant funding we’re looking to increase the number of social workers starting in 2024 and to supplement the current Grant we have that ends in September of 2024
To guarantee that the program does not collapse if we were to run out of Grant grant funding so that’s why we’re asking for that we it should also be just noted our crisis intervention unit has become a leader and co-response two police calls we’ve this year in over the last
Year we’ve had agencies from as far as away as uh Miramar Florida come to visit and evaluate our program uh to see what takeaways they can get from us additionally it should be noted that this year alone our police incidents which are police actual documented reports not just calls for service where
Officers are going out and dealing with people that have mental issues but these are uh these are calls for service where or these are actual incidents where police have documented a police report either a crime or some other issue going on have Rose and are on target for a 30
43% increase over last year and that just highlights just how important this piece is and uh we appr appreciate your support are there any questions in regards to this portion questions comments one comment um thank you that’s bringing social workers is is a important thing to keep you guys from
Having to deal with that all the time splitting up the dues for the more subject matter experts that’s a great idea so yeah perfect Mr Al did um I think this is a great program uh our cop officers and and also uh David has presented at a number of my neighborhood meetings and
I’d would encourage you to to bring this to your neighborhood meeting it’s a great program thank you anything else okay next I’m going to talk about our drone program uh the Royal Police Department uh got drones at the be end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019 is
When we came to you guys and requested those we use them for detailed traffic crash and crime scene mapping we also use them for locating Miss missing persons or persons who have fled from a crime scene and to assist our special response team this year the police department worked closely with state
Legislators to craft a new law allowing for increased use of drones for enforcement across the state across the state this includes the ability to use drones to monitor special events for demonstrations to the public and to respond to calls for service this funding will allow us to continually modernize our drones additionally it
Will allow us to have enough drones to handle mult incidents and events around the city at one time and in case that a drone was needed to be repaired we would still be able to operate and function properly we plan to alternate the types of drones purchased every year so that
We kind of each kind of specialty we we varied up every year so that we’re uh we’re keeping the the best and most modern technology questions other women B um officer when we say special events is there a number of uh people requirement that is called like that’s where these
Drones will be or um any special events it’s all according to what’s authorized by the state statute um and that varies on the size of the municipality the type of event um so we can’t just put them at any special event it’s it’s the law is very restrictive so it allows it you
Know a lot of this was uh after the Highland Park shooting and where subject has been on the rooftop and we realized hey if we’ had a drone up we could have seen what’s going on and and and had or potentially seen what’s going on and and
Be aware of these problems or you know other issues that are around there traffic congestion and certain areas and and trying to adjust that but it does vary according to the specific event and according to what the is allowed by the state law thank you any other questions to know do we
Drones that can fly inside the buildings now we do we do have a few drones that can fly inside um buildings um it it’s a difficult task it’s it’s still one of those things that’s being honed um because the radio interference and walls and all the different things and then
You wouldn’t believe it but even the drafts out of these uh you know air vents in the ceiling can can move a drone and most drones now are operated on GPS so um those are uh with inside a building they lose their JPS signal so they’re they much more
Um dynamic in their movements and that that you can’t control as much so um we’re still waiting for the best product available to come out um we have other abilities for inside buildings um but we’re still working towards that any other questions thank you thank you lieutenant all right the next
Request is uh License Plate Reader subscription we received this year a grant from the Illinois Attorney General’s office as a part of their program to P combat retail crime across the state this grant includes the purchase of four fixed license plate readers to be placed at the Chicago
Premium Outlet mall and two quick deploy license plate readers to be used to combat crime at retail establishments across the city including organized retail theft robbery and burglary the purchase of the six devices in the first year service have been included in the grant but the police department will be
Responsible for yearly service and maintenance for the following four years which takes the device to through their anticipated life cycles of roughly 5 years this service includes subscription maintenance warranty and cellular services for the devices so this would solely support the Grant and I think that is either it just went through or
Is in the process of going through uh the the approvals uh currently questions comments move on okay the the last request that I have is uh for an executive secretary so this would be an executive secretary assigned to our special service section which oversees special events the Traffic Unit and our
Critical incident Intelligence Center we’re asking for an executive secretary to assist with duties which do not require a sworn police officer to handle these include answering phones communicating with victims of Hit and Run crashes tracking and disseminating complaints about speeding truck uh truck enforcement issues and parking complaints additionally the secretary
Will be handling the administrative duties related to Towing and Tow comp companies manage the day-to-day operations of our uh electronic crash and electronic citation Solutions and assisting with track tracking upcoming special events and their cost this position will free up time for our traffic investigators to address speeding truck and parking enforcement
Complaints around the city so this goes in whole with our goal of trying to work harder to make a difference on these traffic and parking complaints that are going on around town currently we have police officers sitting behind the desk answering phone calls and and handling duties where this
Person could free that those officers to be out on the street doing the things we need them to do for the community so questions or comments on this one all uh not on this actually um I missed a a drone question I apologize back a little
Bit um cuz you know we’re advancing the this we started this in 18 and we’re moving forward and it it’s working very well and I know we’re we’re always Guided by the state statute we always have to of course follow the the legislation um under the legislation are
We able to put up drones when we have incidences of power outages and that’s because of power outages uh traffic congestion and just type of those type of emergency situations are we able to put up drones to monitor those situations so there is an exception within within the law that allows for
Basically natural disasters and most of those type of situations would fall under natural disasters so that’s going to be you know your fires your your na your your other natural disasters within that it’s a broad definition because it actually go goes back to another portion of the Illinois compiled statutes where
It pulls the definition of natural disaster and that’s when it starts bringing in things like power outage things like uh um um you know floods hurricanes fires um all kinds of you know riots actually fall under that section two there’s a lot of different things that fall in there so it it
Varies I can we can get you more details if if you have more questions at later time thank you I appreciate that more thanks all right thank you and I will turn it over to Lieutenant Raleigh hi everyone Lieutenant Bill rally I’m the administrative Services Lieutenant I hope to be brief and uh
Inform you on just a few uh equipment requests that we have for next year and I’d also like to just call out some of the items that we initially placed uh in the decision packages for 2024 that we’ve otherwise found either grant funding or we’ve found other uh reasons
To take it out of our budget request I know that a lot of you received those that packet so I just wanted to draw attention to it and explain uh why we decided to remove those from our budget requests I’d like to start first with our special operations
Group if I can do this correctly there we go uh as many of you know we use uh we rely on non-p Police Undercover vehicles for use of Narcotics and other uh investigations um and in in those we often need to use a rental car some of
The reasons for that is that we would need a regular turnover turnover of vehicles so that provides enhanced corve covert surveillance uh and the ability to conduct sensitive uh investigations while minimizing danger to our some of our undercover officers for example uh and this uh this expense is funded
Through our asset forfeiture uh funds awarded via the state of Illinois uh and of course all of that’s done in compliance with the app asset forfeiture and procedure act we’ve also noticed that uh since uh 2019 uh and Mr Mick I know can uh attest to
This uh rent the the cost of renting a car has increased in the United States by 48% uh and of course we’re feeling that as well so uh our standard budget coming into this year of $60,000 per year and asset funds uh Falls very very short uh
Stacy’s frankly tired of me asking for Budget uh transfer amendments every month or so when the rental car bill comes through so what we’re asking for is a line item increase to bring us up to a reasonable amount of money mostly as an administrative act so that uh we
Don’t have to uh bother the folks in the budget office uh when it comes time to pay the rental car bills any questions on that I I do yes do we get because it’s a police department do we get like a rate you know when we rent a car we do
Get a Government rate and we have a we have a contract that’s bid out through purchasing and uh we send it out for bid just like we would send out a bid for any other vendors and the lowest responsible bidder comes through uh I believe they do give us a rate I
Couldn’t tell you what that is compared to say you or I walking in off the street but uh even with that rate our our rental car bill is significant but theoretically it’s better than anybody walking in theoretically in pract well I think in practice it is yes sir any
Other questions all right I’m going to move on then to our trauma kits this is a great one here uh we currently have approximately 73 police vehicles in of our entire fleet that are equipped with these traits they are similar to what you’re seeing here but they’re not
Exactly what we’re looking for what we’d like to do is we’d like to be able to out all of our police uh vehicles with the same life- saving and equipment that we have in the the other vehicles of course the a fire department is amazing uh and their ability to come and save
Lives but often times we find that we’re there uh first on scene uh and uh the ability for us to give life-saving care while the um paramedics show up is probably critical further uh we’d like to have some of these placed in various locations within our Police Department
That would be considered high risk for instance uh the front desk let’s say someone comes into the front desk suffering a life-threatening wound or God forbid we have uh an incident that occurs on our shooting range where we’re either we are training our officers or other agencies are coming in
Training officers and we have a catastrophic injury we like to have something to sort of stop the bleed literally until the the Medics can show up so uh and finally we’d also like to have an opportunity for all of our school resource officers to have one of
These trauma kits in their office in whatever school they’re serving so that uh we can also provide that same service uh again in the unfortunate event um hopefully never to occur of a school shooting or some sort of a a mass catastrophe there questions thank you all right we’ll move
Along to um our aped fitness room now we have a great Fitness room at the appr department it was uh put in place when we built the police department about 12 years ago uh our most used piece of equipment are our four treadmills uh and what’s great about these is everybody
Uses them not only our sworn staff but our professional staff our records clerks uh 911 dispatchers uh anybody who works in or is affiliated with the building come by uh and because this is the most used piece of equipment it’s the first to be worn out they’re at
Their end of life in fact they don’t make the treadmills that we have anymore and they don’t make repair parts uh and they’re starting to fail at a rate that we may have to consider removing them uh as a matter of safety I hate to think
Someone’s on it we can’t turn it off or activate any of the safety mechanisms so we’re asking uh permission to replace all four of these treadmills in the 2024 year with something new along the same manufacturing line we think they’re pretty good uh it’s a commercial grade
Uh treadmill that I’ve looked at and that we’ll start the procurement process once it’s approved questions all right moving on to a a chair replacement project that we started uh this year actually you you approved the uh the funding that we needed to replace chairs
In our community room uh that was at the beest of the late and great uh Alderman heart burns uh we’re moving on now once uh and those chairs are due to be replaced here in the during the week of Thanksgiving when we have very little use in our community room so we’re
Thankful to have that uh our next phase here that we like to look at is we have similar chairs as you see pictured here as what’s in our community room this is our uh Patrol inservice room a very heavily trafficked uh room uh a lot of
Gear coming in and out there six times a day plus we use this for ad hoc training sessions uh meetings that are too large to to take place in a your standard meeting room uh and sometimes we even have it as a spillover for our community
Room if uh we have folks from the outside that want to come in and have a brief meeting uh and our community rooms unavailable to them long short of it is they’re worn out we need to replace them questions thank you all right I’d like to just quickly draw your
Attention to some of the things that we no longer need in our budget uh that we’ve removed we like to we’ like to be responsible stewards of the money that you give us uh the first one is our seasonal worker program we did have a great this great uh program that we
Wanted to put together involving a member of our community who was a special needs person um we aligned with Alex Voit and she brought this young man over to us um and Jim Bell and his his budget carried that seasonal worker uh on the budget on his budget with the
Understanding that we would then uh seek to put it on our budget uh and Carry It Forward uh regrettably uh some very serious safety concerns uh uh the gentleman didn’t work out we don’t have any plans immediate plans to continue this program I think it would be
Irresponsible to carry it on our budget if we don’t think we’re going to use it we do understand that if that comes up and we do need that uh we could make a request at a midye or some some other Bud budget amendment so we’d like to
Remove that from the uh our budget request for 24 Mr Alexander if I can just say we are actively looking we use this program in the parks department about five years ago uh and golf so we’re looking to reallocate the opportunity to a non-public safety department in the city
So look for some information on that thanks okay so our next item here is uh software editions for a digital forensic investigator many of you might remember last year we brought in uh Jacob lure who’s our digital evidence investigator uh and we set him up with the proper
Tools that he needed to begin his job uh and as he got settled in he realized that there were some software items that he needed uh and initially we placed them with you for a request for a budget for 2024 in the interim uh we also found
We found grant funding that can uh take care of this just to call out quickly to it it’s celebrite Guardian gray key and chainalysis reactor these are items that help us uh investigate everything from child pornography to cryptocurrency crimes uh and other digital related other crimes that have a digital uh
Fingerprint to them um however we we have found grant funding that’ll take care of that question thank you yes the Aon contract upgrades many of you this is a very recent thing for the finance committee in particular uh we recently with the help of a lot of folks
In the city um were able to uh retool and combine our three axon related contracts into one contract with an extension out to five years I know you uh have all heard a lot about this at a at at the recent finance committee so I won’t belabor that point but because we
Were unsure if we were going to have that done last year we had it in our request for uh 2024 uh just in case we needed to move it into 24’s uh decision package program uh and of course you approved that uh back on uh 824 and it
Went to full Council on 912 of 23 so there’s no need for us to ask for that for 24 good okay same here with fusus which came in right after our axon uh body camera request uh we funded this through a your midyear budget amendment
That you approved on 911 of 23 and passed by Council on 926 of 23 uh as you might recall that’s a common operating picture which Aggregates all of our video input and and all the various inputs from throughout the city into one uh usable uh system okay okay uh and
Finally water rescue kits now this was a great idea we we found that we were uh we Aurora police officers were jumping in the water and saving people at a at a start of uh rate thankfully we’re the first ones there and thankfully we had a chance to
Save a lot of good lives in the last couple years um so we had the idea that we wanted to make sure that we outfitted each of our squad cars just like those medical trauma kits with water rescue kits that’s a common sense approach to policing uh turns out the Edward burn uh
Grant for this year we were able to use those funds to pay for these water kits so there was no need to ask for operational funds good great thank you all right now moving back to things we are actually asking for and I’ll be I’ll continue to be brief as I
Can we have two requests for squad cars this year typically we come to the finance committee asking that uh we have a vehicle replacement for our outdated and our overworked Fleet uh usually that’s around 16 police cars per year uh we do have that continued request uh as
A part of an ongoing maintenance uh we’ve worked with Derrick Winston and Jim burel and the folks over at Central Services and have identified once again 16 16 Replacements uh is a good number for us to aim uh notwithstanding any issues that might be going on in Detroit
At the moment we’d like to be able to plan for that as well also I think as deputy chief Thomas and chief cross mentioned earlier uh we have this ever expanding uh Cadre of services that we’re we are uh giving our community and we’re grateful to be able to do that uh
We’re glad to have a crisis intervention unit and a special events unit and uh expansion in some of our other areas but with that of course comes the need for equipment uh hard bodies on the streets great but if we need cars that we can send them out so we’ve done an analysis
Along with Derrick Winston as well uh and uh members of The Command Staff and realized that really an increase of 20 vehicles to our overall strength of our Fleet would get us in a place where we would be able to adequately outfit our officers our men and women uh as they go
Out and serve now as it stands currently uh some of us share I myself share a squad car with three other people uh which is great cuz I don’t get out much but there are folks uh in investigations and other parts of the police Department that are sort of hot boxing cars as
They’re trying to scrunch for things in the event of an unfortunate event it’s uh it’s quite the it’s quite the scene to try to see how we can go out and Scramble for police cars we think that this is going to give us the proper amount of support we’ve also figured in
Ongoing maintenance and fuels C fuel costs with this um and so we’re going to ask for 20 additional added to our Fleet in uh in addition to the 16 so the the 50,000 plus per year after this year that’s all fuel each year for those for those squats right yes sir it
Made sense I just want to make sure yes all the wom B uh Lieutenant it mentions 18 squad cars whether it’s 16 or 18 it began as 18 but after we did a we did a sort of a late change uh with our budget asking to be upgraded to 18 six 18 was
Our initial ask and we’ve asked to increase that to 20 okay and uh what is an average lifespan of a squad car well you know the lifespan of a squad car is measured not in just just in mileage uh mileage is obviously a factor and our
Cars are we put a lot of miles on our car a lot of them run 24 hours a day uh and and the actual age of the vehicle is also a factor um how many times if if the vehicle’s been crashed um what kind of use it’s had it’s really a uh drick
Winston over the garage has he’s a genius with this he really is able to to look the service record on a vehicle uh the fuel the fuel spent on the on the vehicle um a lot of other factors and determine when that vehicle is most ripe
To be reclaimed from our Fleet and sold off at auction so um it’s a it’s not an easy you know there’s not a hard line here that once it hits you know 150,000 mies we we take it out we also do a thing where we bring vehicles in and say
The the vehicles are first given to an area the department that maybe doesn’t use them as much and we La that sort of filter filter through the system towards the end to another area that doesn’t use as much most of our cars though we try to put right in our uniform Patrol Fleet
Where they can do the most good and and the the most good the fastest so those cars take a beaten and we we try to get those uh replaced as soon as we can thank you sure Lieutenant can I ask that since the decision package shows 18 and
I’m assuming the numbers per squad car and fuel are based on 18 we’re going to 20 can we change that and get us some new numbers on that yes Absolutely and we thank you for your time is there any other questions questions or comments thank you okay Al lash I I don’t think it’s any new piece to you but I would definitely like to see usu’s most advanced um carbon reduction system in a vehicle that’s available on the
Market thank sure and I know that we have and we continue to look for something that lines with that um we have to balance our you know our desires for that and I I agree with you um in the meantime we have to we have to fit
Our outfit our Fleet with something and uh until the Advent of something that makes makes us happy on both levels we just have to do the best will what we have thank you you got it just uh real quick if I may I’ll be brief I just wanted to uh on behalf of
The police department thank this Council uh as well as the rest of the members of the council that aren’t here as well as the mayor’s office and our community for the support that you give the police officers I’m a little bit biased but uh you know our police officers do a great
Job protecting and serving the city and we couldn’t do the job that that we do without the support of all of you so just want to say thank you well Chief thank you because going to number meetings and listen to constituents the vast majority and I mean the vast
Majority of people in Aurora appreciate the work you guys do they always talk to community police officers they love them they think they’re doing a great job you guys are doing a great job so uh I I mean I can’t give you any more accolades you guys are top- Notch as the statistic
Show so thank you for what you do thank you for your service because that’s not a job we’re all cut out for it and uh you guys deserve they have the resources you do to keep us and your guys safe so thank you very much for that much
Appreciated thank you thank you is there anything else to come thank you yeah these guys are good uh is there anything else to come before the finance committee today heing none we have a motion to adjourn I’m sorry I just have clarification for the coordinator position was a typo so the the hourly
Rate should be $38.30 you take that times the 2008 hours and you get the 79,000 yes you do that’s why we love math perfect um so thank you for that so we have a motion to adjourn by Alderman Warman second by Al aler women bade all
In favor say I I opposed and we are adjourned at 5 something 528 thank you
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