Meeting of 2004-5-20 SPECIAL MEETING

Vincent read the title of Item 1 as shown above. He said Council convened in executive session and there was much discussion held.

MOTION by Patton, SECOND by Ewing-Holmstrom, to approve the proposed agreement with the Police Union, IUPA, Local 24, subject to the approval of the Union's members and if so, authorize the Mayor and City Clerk to execute the agreement. AYE: Ewing-Holmstrom, Shanklin, Patton, Haywood, Warren, Bass, Givens, Devine. NAY: None. MOTION CARRIED.

Mitchell said the Police Department will review their proposal for the coming year. He said he had a request for a vehicle inventory of all vehicles the City has in it's possession and he handed that out to Council. He also passed out a requested report on the number of supervisors and who they report to and how many they supervise.

Chief Thorne presented his budget to the Council and provided a handout. He said the Police Department includes the Uniform Division, the motorcycles, which we do have four operational, the Bike Patrol Unit to be utilized in areas which there's an advantage to some stealth and ability to get into tight areas. They have a very effective Canine Program, Criminal Investigation Division, and Special Operation Unit. He said in his opinion, all of these are the finest in southwest Oklahoma, based on statistics and the level of training they receive and the job they do with what they have. He said they also enjoy a great deal of citizen involvement. They have the Citizen Police Academy which have formed an alumni and are very supportive of the Police. They assist in many functions. They are involved in a fund raiser for the purchase of some tazers for the Police Department. They have taken in approximately $10,000. They also have their Sentinel Program which is a valued part of their department. They are not represented in this budget because they are basically not funded. They are civilian volunteers who work for free. He said they are blessed to have these citizens who function in a uniform capacity and assist in taking some of those calls that don't require a police officer. He said they have very active Neighborhood Watch Programs which benefits the city as a whole, especially those areas of the city that are impacted with crime and other problems. They assist us as far as cleaning up dilapidated structures, identifying those locations to us, and assisting in anyway they can. He said in his opinion, those dilapidated structures contribute greatly to crime. He said one broken window attracts another and they have had incidences where those dilapidated buildings have been utilized to store stolen property, people will actually cook meth in some of those places, and generally brings the quality of life down in the neighborhood, not to mention property value.

Thorne went over the organizational chart and now have added the Communications Division. Temporary part-time officers are not reflected in this budget. He went over the summary of their budget, as proposed, including the addition of the Communications Division, which increases their budget a little over $1 million from last year.

Thorne said their Headquarters Division increased by $2,500 for training and travel. He said they have been affected in the department with some retirements and there's no replacement for expertise so we have to provide, as funds are available, training others to gain that experience. He said they had nothing in capital outlay last year, but this year they have $47,200. He said $45,000 is recommended for the purchase of tazers. Tazers are a benefit to the police department, the city, and the citizens because we believe the use of this tool will reduce the number of injuries to those suspects arrested and also to the police officers. He said they do have a significant impact in the department every year on injuries related to arrests.

Patton said he sat in on one of the demonstrations and they said they have noticed some police forces have a dramatic decrease in Workers' Compensation claims filed by using these tazers.

Thorne said yes it's a sizeable reduction in the percentages and is pretty much consistent with any department and also once those are taken on line, there is also the advantage of simply having and displaying them because no one really wants to get shocked.

Patton said the most important thing is saving an officer's life, you can't put a dollar figure on that, but something you can quantify is the drop in Workers' Compensation claims. He asked how much they cost individually.

Thorne said approximately $800 each for the model they would like to get. This model does include a computer chip which they could download information from the tazer. Information such as how many times that tool has been utilized and the duration, which would help in any type of complaint. If someone tries to say the officer tazed them for a long period of time, this would verify the time used. The tazer is designed for a 5 second duration.

Thorne said it has two small dart-like points with a barbed end on them and are attached to a very fine wire. It has a range of about 21 feet. You actually have to shoot it and those barbs can deploy into the skin, but if they do, they are very easy to get out, it's just like a pin. If you have heavy clothing on it will find a ground, it does not have to go into the skin. You can also direct stun someone. You can place it on someone and shock them. To safely do it you would be back a distance and we would utilize this tool before we do a hands on, before we have to physically wrestle with somebody or use our aspatons.

Shanklin asked if he would be hurt or laying passed out or what. What does it do to you?

Thorne said it causes muscle contraction and you would fall and there wouldn't be anything you could do.

Bass asked if there is another weapon the officers would carry. Are you going to continue to carry your gun?

Thorne said yes, they will still continue to carry their side arm. That would be a tool to use in those situations that do not require deadly force and want to incapacitate someone so they could be arrested. That wouldn't be in all cases, that would be on a combative or a person resisting arrest.

Ewing-Holmstrom asked if there is special training that goes along with this and is it included in the monies they have put into this account.

Thorne said yes, the initial start up cost would be more, because it is a requirement that they be trained with that. They have recommended having our self-defense instructors trained and they would train the rest of the department. It is a mandatory requirement that proper training is received and that a policy be implemented in place, governing the use of those in certain situations.

Purcell said he has been to several of these demonstrations and if Council hasn't seen one they really should see the movie. Workers' Compensation claims have dropped as much as 40% in some cities using tazers. Also, we pay claims when people (the bad guys) get hurt. You have that cost and the cost of not having police officers on the street for large periods of time. In 2002 there were 117 lost days and in 2003, 145. Probably a tazer wouldn't help every one of those, but in many cases it would. We have less police protection when this happens. He said we have a group of people out there who are raising enough funds to buy 25 of these and the Chief has put in for another $45,000. That buys approximately another 50, which brings it up to 75. He said his proposal is we need to come up with another $45,000 somewhere, so we provide 125 tazers to the Police Department during this next budget year, so by the end of next year, all officers needing them will be armed with tazers, as opposed to some with and some without.

Ewing-Holmstrom asked if these will be demonstrated at the Cops and Kids Picnic.

Thorne said we can and so far, everywhere we've been, someone wants to be tazed.

Thorne said the next item is a storage container, which is more commonly known as a conex box. He said space at the Police Department is at a premium and they have a large number of paper documents they are required to retain for a certain period of time. He said they have some containers already, but for $2,200 and the amount of material it can hold, it is well worth the expense. They are a weather tight naval shipping box.

Ewing-Holmstrom asked if they could get one donated, would that alleviate their problem.

Thorne said they are open for any type of donations, provided it was weather tight and able to secure it.

Thorne next went over budget comparisons. Last year's budget in the Uniform Division was $308,652 and this year's proposed budget is $326,617. The accounts having a difference of less than $1,000 are not reflected in this. He said account 204, fuel account has increased $16,465 and account 265, training and travel, has an additional $1,500, to bring up the level of training due to retirements or transfers out of the Uniform Division. The Capital Outlay in last year's budget was $207,000, which was six patrol vehicles and this year we are requesting the same amount. We are requesting six patrol vehicles or utility type vehicles for patrol.

Thorne said the budget comparisons for activity 67 which is our CID, Detective Division in last year's budget was $57,590 and this year is $59,750. We have additional monies for fuel cost of $960 and additional funding for training and travel of $1,200. We had some senior detectives retire last year, which were some of our primary homicide investigators and we do have a need to increase the type and number of training in this division. In Capital Outlay last year we received $18,000 for the purchase of a mid-size sedan and this year's budget we are requesting $31,000 which includes a mid-size sedan vehicle and have a request for $13,000 for five computers. This division has some old computers and is experiencing a lot of crimes related to internet computer frauds and the upgrades in the operating system of the city has caused us some problems with computers.

Mitchell said we have a range in price from where we buy computers from about $1,800 to about $3,000 depending on the hardware systems purchased. For budgeting purposes we simply said for every computer requested in the budget we will plug in at $2,600 so we wouldn't get into this discussion about the differences in prices of computers.

Devine said he thinks where they missed it at is they are not actually paying that much for the computer, it's the programs that go with it. Those programs are not cheap.

Purcell said $2,600 is really high, but it doesn't hurt because all it does is go into carryover for next year if they don't spend it. If it only costs them $5,000 for five computers then we roll over $8,000 the next year.

Warren said some of those computers are going to have to be wireless and some will need a gig of memory because of using them for CAD.

Endicott said what they tried to do this year with computers is look at what the department's needs are for computers. For budget purposes we tried to use one number.

Warren said the other thing we don't do is offer any local companies to bid on it.

Ewing-Holmstrom said that was her next point and if we are not offering our local businesses an opportunity to at least meet or beat the deal, how are these computers being serviced. She asked if they were being serviced locally because Dell and Gateway are nowhere near Lawton and we can only do so much for the small businesses in town.

Purcell said we have talked about that before and that's a big problem. The service, depending on where you get it, may not be there anyway. They decided it's better to do all Dell and Gateway because they are standardized.

Shanklin asked if we buy the software from the same company we buy the computers from. If we don't he thinks we need to give our local people the opportunity. He said we should allow our local companies to come down here and present what they have to offer.

Thorne said the next activity is 68, the Service Division, which involves the Records Division, the jail, Property and ID, and Building Maintenance. He said last year they had $247,445 and this year's proposed budget is $274,187. Under account 201, Tools and Supplies, included in that is the jail food cost, there is an increase of $15,000 for food. He said they were under funded in that account last year. The capacity of the City Jail will increase from a maximum of 51 to 70 inmates, so we will need the extra money for food and related supplies. In account 216 there is a $1,685 increase for jailers uniforms. We will be adding three more jailers in this budget, which is requirement under the Jail Administration as far as supervision of the inmates. In account 248 we have an additional $10,000 for utilities, due to the increase in utilities. Last year's Capital Outlay was budgeted for $8,500 and this year for $9,500 for a printer for the Records Division and a convection oven for the jail.

Thorne said all of their jailers are civilians, in fact, all the employees in this division are civilians and all supervised by David Livingston.

Deputy Chief Johnson said they were put behind a little bit because they were trying to save the City $3,000 on a fire alarm system required by the Fire Marshal through the DHS Grant, but they were having a little trouble with the State Grant. They went ahead and pulled the money out of City Budget. This week they are running conduit and anticipate next week the fire alarm being installed. Once that is approved by the State Fire Marshal, we will go ahead and start plumbing lavatory and making the beds and such like that.

Thorne said we weren't able to proceed until the fire alarm system was accomplished first. We do have some funding to accomplish the remodeling in an account already within the City Budget and are trying to maximize the use of some grants they have to accomplish that.

Thorne said the next budget comparison is for activity 69 which is our Training Division. We have an increase of about $1,300 for travel and training. This also increases training funding for new hire officers. This division basically funds a sizeable amount of the training and training related materials for the entire department. Under last year's Capital Outlay we had $2,500 and this year we are requesting $5,000. He said there is an error in the budget book which reflects four or five pistols and it's actually 10 pistols. We are requesting to buy five for replacement weapons and are requesting an additional five because we would like to have five smaller pistols like the Glock 30. We have some officers who have smaller hands and we have the need within the department at times for a more concealable fire arm. This would be of the same caliber which would mesh with our current operations.

Thorne said the next budget comparison is in the Communications Division. He said they have limited knowledge in this division. Supply and services hasn't changed from last year's budget. The only changes we have will be in the Capital Outlay is for $16,000 for a Server Computer. These Capital Outlay items are funded with 911 funds.

Mitchell said this year, with Doug Wells retiring, we are splitting off Communications from MIS and moving MIS into Finance and moving Communication/E911 into the Police Department. The Communications Division will still be supervised by a civilian. He said all the items were requested in the supplemental that Wells submitted to them.

Thorne said the Department Total of last year's budget was $10,877,874 and this year's requested budget is $12,790,645.

Purcell asked if under Personnel Services, the one for 04-05 includes the Communications Division.

Thorne went over the breakdown in personnel. Headquarters, account 65 has the Chief of Police, 2 Deputy Chiefs of Police, 1 Communications Supervisor, 2 Lieutenants, 8 Officers, and 1 Secretary. He said the 8 Officers are the Special Operations Unit and 1 Crime Stopper Investigator. He said they have an additional funding request for this division for Crimestoppers for $3,000. They do conduct two auctions a year for the Crimestoppers Program.

Johnson said historically they have two bicycle auctions a year. The City has an agreement with the Crimestoppers Organization that they basically will do most of the leg work on the bike sale and will gain the proceeds from that sale. They average $1,500 per sale. They would like to see the $3,000 put into a 279 account. Because of reimbursement issues, it has to go back to General Fund, so we are asking for the $3,000 up front and the City will get the $3,000 through the year put in the General Fund.

Vincent said State Law, on the sale of confiscated, abandoned, or surplus property, requires it to be sold by auction, which Crimestoppers handles for us. The Police Department pays the cost of getting it approved by the District Court which is minimal, but State Law requires it to go back into the General Fund. He said we talked about this last year as a way, in next year's budget to possibly get this back over into funding the operation, but we couldn't just transfer the money straight from the sale of the auction, it had to go through the budgeting mechanism.

Shanklin said he remembers in the past making motions to give that fund to Crimestoppers. How was that legal then?

Vincent said basically we did it as a budget amendment. We are talking about the proceeds of the sale has to be deposited into the City General Fund.

Purcell said what we are saying is to put $3,000 in the budget now and we are going to get the $3,000 back in the General Fund.

Shanklin said we have given them funds after the sale and we did it from the floor, right up here. Anything that came from that sale went to Crimestoppers.

Vincent said we have it in the Code that way and we are saying we need to put it in up front into the budget, or do a budget supplement like we have done in years past.

Thorne said we did have some requests and the intent was to establish a flat line first with the minimum things the department would need to operate and anything in addition would be up to the Council, to make a decision on it.

Mitchell said we had an awful lot of requests that didn't make it into the preliminary budget.

Thorne said in the preliminary budget, page five, all these additional requests are reflected in there.

Purcell said this particular item is a house cleaning issue. Before we never put it into the budget then they have to go through the supplemental budget.

Thorne continued with the other division breakdowns. The next is the Uniform Division, account 66 has 1 Deputy Chief, 6 Captains, 13 lieutenants, and 100 Officers. He said they do have some specialized units that answer to some supervisors that, in addition to their job, have 7 or 8 officers they are responsible for. They have an additional funding request for $10,500 for Body Armor, account 201. We have been awarded a reimbursement grant under a Federal Program that allows for a 50% reimbursement on the purchase of body armor.

Deputy Chief Smith said specifically it's called the bullet-proof reimbursement program and if approved, they will reimburse the City 50% of the cost with any approved vests. We submitted 51 personal body armor at $34,000 and they have agreed to give us $17,000 once we make the initial investment and submit our receipts and they will reimburse us within a couple of weeks. Initially, to buy those vests, it's going to cost us $34,000 to buy approximately 30 vests. This 201 fund is only funded at this time with $22,000. He said right off the bat we don't have enough money to buy vests, let alone supply the Patrol Division with supplies necessary to function for a year. Purchases of vests is a contractual issue between the City and the Union and we have to supply a vest every five years to an officer, whether the City pays 100% of it or gets a 50% reimbursement.

Mitchell said they would be reimbursed $17,000. We have a grant match allocation in our City At Large Fund that we could use to match this grant if we need additional dollars.

The Criminal Investigation Division has 1 Captain, 2 Lieutenants, 16 Detectives, 1 Secretary, and 1 part time Pawn Clerk. Thorne said the current pawn clerk is also the Chief's Secretary, so that position will be added to this division in a part time capacity.

Devine said he thinks we are missing what that job capacity involves. That is something we need to look into and maybe making that a full time job because that pawn clerk has to work with every pawn ticket that comes through the City of Lawton. If someone has turned in a burglary or a theft they prepare a list and have to compare every pawn ticket with that list to check for stolen property. He said there is more to that job than you might think. He said we need to look at making that a full time slot.

Thorne said his request was for a part time position and his logic behind that was to initially get it started, evaluated and see how we operated. That position does assist in making cases for us. Stolen property has been located related to offense reports and not only does this person look up information for our detectives, they also work with Wichita Falls, Duncan, and Ft. Sill. A lot of their calls are related to the pawn detail.

Thorne said they have a request for additional funding in this division in account 216, Uniforms and Equipment for holsters and vest covers for $1,000 and in account 231, Proficiency Testing for $1,000. We now have a lab at the Police Department and can do limited testing related to fingerprint analysis and things like that and there are fees required to maintain that level of proficiency in testing and such.

Thorne next went over a breakdown in the Technical Services Division. He said David Livingston is in command of this division. This division consists of 1 Commander, 2 Principal Clerical Associates, 10 Police Clerks, 12 Jailers, and 1 Maintenance.

Thorne said additional funding requests are in account 201, Jail Food increase of $13,000, based on what they have expended this year. It's hard to plan for your jail populations which can fluctuate and normally ours is running right at capacity, if not a little bit more. The next increase is account 212, Maintenance Agreement with an increase of $2,913 for their Management System, the elevator, the archiving equipment and the microfilm reader/printer. Based on the past, they feel they need additional funding here. In account 231, Janitorial Contract, a request is made for an increase of $5,600. We really do not have any control over this contract, it's a contract with the City which has been $1,350 per month, which is $16,000 a year and we are budgeted for $11,000. In account 428, Electricity Cost increase of $8,000 and with increases in utilities we are going to need additional money in that account. There is a typo in the book, $10,000 was put into the telephone account which should have been in the utility account and that has already been identified and changes made.

Thorne went over a recap of additional funding requested for the entire department which is $50,513, above what is in the budget book. Additional Capital Outlay Funding is requested for six patrol units for the Uniform Division of $207,000, account 66. He said in the budget year of 2002-2003 they received no vehicles, they needed those funds to make ends meet, as a City. They have approximately 134 police vehicles in the Uniform Division, 73 of those are in excess of 7 years old and 43 of those are in excess of 100,000 miles. They are asking to purchase six vehicles they didn't get in the previous budget and are also asking for 4 Police Motorcycles, which is contingent on receiving additional personnel.

Smith said no, not all four of them, some are getting some miles on them and can still be used, but eventually they will. They could use a couple more motorcycles on the street right now. If they got 8, his plan was to put at least two of them on the street and retire two of the oldest ones and use them for training, to keep from messing up the newer ones and take the other two and put them on the street and they would have 6 guys out there on motorcycles.

Thorne said they don't have to have six, maybe three cars and two motorcycles or four cars and two motorcycles, they are really not prioritized. They do need some cars because they need to continually replace those as they go along. He said they are very fortunate to have a very efficient maintenance shop and are very good at keeping up the maintenance on the vehicles but they are still getting a lot of miles on them.

Johnson said four years ago they had over $270,000 in one grant and the last one they received was $62,000. They are seeing all these Block Grants for Law Enforcement being converted to Homeland Security money. They are dictated to what they can buy with those, such as gas masks and generators. That's where they are getting hurt real bad because they can't go out and buy cars they want to. Specifically on the Homeland Security Grants, no vehicles can be purchased.

Thorne went over personnel requests next. He said Livingston is in charge of their civilian personnel in the Technical Services Division which there are 26 civilians in this division. In their Records Division at one time, they had 12 Records Clerks and over several years of short falls in funding, they are down to 10 Clerks. It does impact the department greatly. The information extracted now for data entry into the computers is a lot more than they had 10 years ago, they are at the same staffing level they had 10 years ago. They do have a request for a Records Manager, which would serve two purposes. This person would ensure they stay at productive levels within the Records Division. This employee could also assist in data entry. They have a front desk at the Police Department and currently staff that with a Police Officer on all three shifts and this position could release an officer to go to the field. By adding a civilian position, they could add an officer to field duty. He said during the day shift there is normally quite a few officers in the station so they would have someone in the station with a fire arm, but the evening and midnight shifts would have to be staffed with a Police Officer for security of the building because of the jail, etc.

Thorne said the next request is for additional Police Officers. They are asking for consideration of 10 officers. He said it is a large expense but he feels he has the responsibility to bring this up. He said if they were to have 10 Police Officers granted, they have identified positions in which they would like to place them. He said 7 would go to the front line, Patrol Division and one would go to the Crimestopper Investigator position. They have a large volume of Crimestopper leads that come in and one investigator doesn't have sufficient time to investigate and track those in an efficient manner. One of the other positions would go to the Criminal Investigation Division, which presently they have 16 Detectives. The average case load at this time, according to the Division Commander, is 1.27 cases per day. They can get a tremendous amount of backlog. Presently they only investigate those cases that have a solvability factor. In other words, they have an identified suspect, have sufficient evidence at the scene and could do a follow up. On those cases where you don't have an identified suspect or something to follow up on, they have to let that go. They put that in an inactive file until some additional information comes up. The final position requested is a Captain to assist in administrative functions. He said there are not many supervisors at the Police Department that are not wearing two maybe three hats. They have several people who are involved in the management of some grants projects, some supervisors that supervise a patrol team, in addition to the community oriented policing component of the Police Department. Another supervisor has his 7 or 8 officers to supervise and then would have four motorcycles to supervise. He said over the years they have chopped away our upper branches to staff the bottom and have overloaded their upper branches.

Mitchell said the next department is Municipal Court with Donna Mata and Judge Corrales.

Mata said they are asking exactly what they had last year with no surprises, no new personnel, no new anything, it's just trying to keep her head above water and processing those tickets.

Mata said she came in one weekend and worked 14 hours processing tickets herself, they don't do overtime in their office.

Mata said all equipment requests goes through MIS. Currently they are using mainframe computers. Some of those terminals are used and have been replaced three times and they are slowly trying to get up to speed where everybody has a pc because it's becoming more and more necessary to be able to interface with the other programs in order to get the job done.

Mitchell said we will go through a bidding process and once we receive bids we can always compare that to the State Bid and see whether we are getting a good value for our dollar amount.

Snider said the Summer Reading Club is one of the things that gets more people in during the year and last year we had 2,426 children participate in our Summer Reading Club and had around 7,000 individuals attend the programs conducted during the June and July time frame. A program started last year was an outreach program to senior adults called Golden Girls and Guys Day Out. One Thursday a month they invite residents from the four assisted living centers, the five nursing homes, the two adult daycare centers, the 2 retirement centers, the three senior citizens centers, The Center for Creative Living, and any walk-ins who want to come to the Library, they provide a snack lunch for them and a program. Another program the Library runs is a mobile books program. You used to see the bookmobile running around town and in 1999 that was replaced with a van and the same centers previously mentioned, they carry books to them on a rotating basis and place 25-30 books at each of those locations and rotate those out, as well as doing home deliveries to different individuals who may be home bound. They also go by the Juvenile Detention Center and make deliveries there. He said they also have discussion groups going on now, one is a family discussion group, one is an adult discussion group, and the third is a chess club that just started up in the last couple months.

Snider said the only increases in their budget from last year is under account 204, the petroleum products has gone up and the other area of increase is account 231, Professional and Technical Services, which our janitorial contract comes out of and it was under funded last year, so he has requested an increase there.

Warren said there are no funds in here designated as to have been received from the County.

Warren said $30,000 is not what a normal billed amount would be. At one point we figured with a formula, as to what the County would provide us in funds.

Snider said County support has decreased the last two years. In 01-02 the contract with the County was $44,432, but in 02-03 and 03-04 it's $30, 190. He said how they figured that he doesn't know. When he was appointed the acting director in December of 03, he looked through and found out we did not have a working contract. He came before Council and got a contract in February 2003 for $30,000. He had requested the $44,432, but they only funded him at $30,190. When he went to the County Excise Board last summer, he requested around $75,000 and they funded $30,190. The Excise Board is meeting in July and to get any funding he has to go. We currently have 2,358 active cards for County residents. In the last year, they had 17,800 uses by those 2,300 cards. We currently have 27,601 Lawton residents with cards. If you divide the amount of money the County gives us by the number of active cards, their funding us at $12.80 per card. If you divide the amount of last year's budget from the City by the number of active cards, the City supports the Library at $31.75 per card.

Warren said the funding keeps going down and at this point we haven't reduced the amount of use the County is allowed at the Library. This is another example of what the County believes to be shared services. That means we provide the services and they share it. That's not working and we have to figure out some way to get around that. He said he doesn't know if we recall all the County cards and sell the County a card at $31.00 each or what the answer is, but the business of Lawton has no business subsidizing the County residents. That is not what the whole plan is. We are supposed to share the services and share the costs. He said we need to figure out some way they pay their fair share.

Snider said he, Mitchell, and Buckley have talked about some alternatives if the funding level they recommend this next year is somewhat similar to the funding level they got this year. They have already touched base on some suggestions on compensating the Library and letting the citizens that have Library Cards know that when the County increases funding, they don't have to pay more. They haven't worked out all the logistics on that, but have some ideas.

Mitchell said Snider is correct, his impression last year was that's how much money they had left and that's what we got. After they allocated all the other services and departments, that's what they had left over and that's what they allocated to us.

Snider said there were five positions in the Library that were vacant when the budget was put together last year and those positions were eliminated. He is requesting two of those positions be put back in. One is the part time clerical assistant and the other is the part time Library Aide. The Library Aide would work with the Children's Services area, doing the shelving of materials, reading the shelves, assisting with the Summer Reading Program, and other areas as needed. He passed out a photo of the Library's holding shelves to show how far behind they are in reshelving. With the Library Aide they can get those materials back out so when the Summer Reading Club starts at the first of June, they would have material out for those children to check out. He asked Council to consider putting that position back into the budget at $8,206 as the beginning salary.

Snider asked to address the clerical assistant first since the two are tied together. The Clerical assistant would be working in their Technical Services section and this would be a part time position. This is where they order the books and materials, process these items, and get them ready to go on the shelves. They would be opening the mail, checking in, processing, and distributing approximately 200 magazines and newspapers monthly. Processing new acquisitions for the shelves, preparing materials no longer usable in the Library, preparing those for disposal, would be a backup in our Inter-Library Loan functions, and would also be trained to handle both State and Federal documents. They have been a documents depository for the State of Oklahoma since 1978 and a partial depository for Federal documents since 1987. They are one of the largest Federal depositories in the State at 34% and get a lot of material every week. The agreement with the Federal Government is they have to maintain that for five years and after those five years they can drop it and offer it to other Libraries. After they check it with their Regional, which is the Oklahoma Department of Libraries in Oklahoma City and if they say it is alright to drop and dispose of, they shred it and it goes to recycling.

Ewing-Holmstrom asked what a Federal Depository is and what type of documents does this involve.

Snider said it contains the US Budget, the Star Report, US Code, CIA Maps, BIA documents, US Military things that have been published, US Department of Agriculture, US Department of National Library of Medicine. All of these things are published and if it is published by the US Government, by the Government Printing Office, it is a depository item.

Ewing-Holmstrom asked if they have a tracking system as how popular those items are. She asked if they can be checked out.

Snider said yes they can be checked out. The only things they currently do not check out is the US Code.

Ewing-Holmstrom asked what the closest Library, besides ours, that is a Federal Depository.

Ewing-Holmstrom asked if any Federal Grant money was received for handling these documents.

Purcell said what Snider is asking Council to reconsider is adding to the Library Budget the Clerical Assistant for $9,742 and the Library Aide for $8,206.

Purcell said it might be a transposition of numbers. He asked if it was only those two items.

Snider said only one other thing is the window cleaning. It had traditionally been part of the janitorial contract and for some reason, in this years contract, it was excluded and the windows need to be cleaned and he doesn't have any budget to do it with.

Purcell reiterated that Snider is requesting the two positions and $2,000 for window and furniture cleaning. He asked Snider to prioritize those three items; two positions and cleaning and get that to the City Manager.

Haywood asked if ASCOG sends anyone to help during the summer months, with students.

Snider said they do have a teen volunteer program that helps during the summer. ASCOG has in the past, but they are changing their program and he's not sure about that. He said ASCOG told him the person could not work at night. It wasn't handled through ASCOG last year, it was handled through ZOE NEED.

Haywood said he would talk with them because they do have older college students who could work at night.

Snider said the number issued to the County was 2,358 cards and 27,601 from the City.

Ewing-Holmstrom asked if there wasn't a program at one time called Friends of the Library.

Snider said yes, they still are. They are the ones who funded the new reference desk and who, along with McMahon Foundation, put in our automation system. They have put in the new chairs and tables in the Board Room, as well as the Meeting Rooms. They put the fans in the Library, they paid $1,800 this year to do some of the roof patching, and they also funded some of the travel expenses this year. He said the Friends do a lot for the Library.

Ewing-Holmstrom asked if any of those people actually volunteer. Is their main goal fund raising or do any of them come in and do hands on help?

Snider said they do sort the books to get ready for the book sale. Some of them do volunteer off and on throughout the year in the Library, but he doesn't have a set structure. They have a lady who volunteers for RSVP who comes in about four out of five days a week. She currently covers the books and does the mail distribution, etc. Most of this last year he has had a light duty City employee that helped with this and several other things around the Library. That person has since moved on and is no longer at the Library.

Ewing-Holmstrom asked what the degree was for someone to work at the Library and asked if it was a Library Science Degree.

Snider said no, OU has one, North Texas, and Texas Women's are the three closest universities that have MLS degrees.

Ewing-Holmstrom said someone who is working towards that degree could possibly be an interim for the Library.

Snider said he has contacted the University of Oklahoma and most of the interims, because Metropolitan is up there and Pioneer is in the Oklahoma City area, you also have El Reno, and Guthrie, just about any of the MLS students interested in public libraries, do their internship up there.

Ewing-Holmstrom asked if Snider had been in contact with Cameron for students who may be looking for internships that might be seeking a degree in Journalism instead of Library Science.

Purcell asked Snider to get the priority list to the City Manager on those items he has requested prior to next Thursday.

Tim Golden, Human Resources Department Director referenced page 26 of the Preliminary Budget and said he isn't requesting anything that isn't already in his submitted budget. He is requesting a 10.29% increase over last year which will be $39,616. Most of his items are identical with the exception of two, which is line 101, Salaries, and he is requesting a part time Senior Clerical Associate that he desperately needs and the second thing is his request for $20,000 additional in training and travel, line 265. That is training and travel for City wide operations. Currently out of that account comes about $18,000 for the education budget, and will use about $2,000 of that proposed $35,000 for training his department, and the remaining $20,000 will be for training leaders in the City predominately. He said he wants to focus on Leadership Training for Field Foreman leaders and above. The second thing he wants to train on is hiring and selection for hiring authorities so we can keep ourselves out of legal trouble and the third thing is safety. In safety training, the return on your investment is dollars on the penny and is a very difficult thing to measure because you don't know what accidents don't happen, but all studies suggest that would be a great investment on your dollar. He said he is requesting $39,616; $17,061 for salaries, and an additional $20,000 for training and travel.

He said we will possibly move the Workers' Compensation function, which is currently handled by Jeff Welch, the Safety Training and Workers' Compensation person, which are generally three full time jobs. We may transfer the Workers' Compensation function to the City Attorney's Office. That has been discussed, but hasn't been approved. If we do that, it would be to allow the Safety and Risk Officer to focus on safety and training. We really need to spend more time and effort on targeted training with a specific intended outcome before we do the training.

Mitchell said that would also allow Welch to go out and do site inspections, as far as determining whether or not our crews are following safety procedures, etc.

Ewing-Holmstrom said in just over two years she's been on Council, she has been in conversations and attended meetings where they have talked about Workman's Compensation and situations where potential lawsuits that have been brought against the City, due to lack of training through the chain of command. She said some of that training to some on the Council doesn't seem real important, but it really is important and it's good Golden has taken the initiative to really push it. We are talking about training, safety training, and personnel training that is going to save the City big money in the long run and that's very important. She said it doesn't sound like an important thing compared to a motorcycle, a tazer, or a new roof for the Library, but it is important and she hopes Council will support his requested budget.