Phoenix Council Approves $15M Housing Trust Fund Allocation; Public Safety Reform Draws Vocal Opposition

Overwhelmingly voted to support our park system and because of that Parks and Preserve initiative, we're able to fund really important upgrades like the one you see here today. So thank you to those of you who make it to the bottom of the ballot and help us fund these great investments. I've often said that parks are one of the clearest reflections of a city's values. When we invest in parks, we invest in people. And we in the City of Phoenix have made parks a priority.

We have one of the largest park systems anywhere in the country and one of the most successful. And now I get to introduce the man who's leading that department, Parks and Recreation director Marty Whitfield to the podium. Marty Whitfield Thank you, Mayor Gallego, and good morning to everyone. I know it's going to be a scorching day today, but it's not bad so far, right? The mayor and Danielle mentioned a lot of new amenities here.

This cannot happen without our community partners and residents that work hand in hand. I would like to thank Chase Builders. They do a lot of great work for the Parks Department across our system and you will see the great amenities that they did today. The design firm of Hewitt and Zollers also participated in this project. And then my team, Danielle, who's the deputy director over the Northeast Division, Jake Johnson, who's our park supervisor. He's there in the back hiding.

But this cannot be done without them. Our parks development team, Lance Gray, I know he is here somewhere. There he is right in front of me. He leads our capital improvement program. So I just want to thank them. And then of course, our city engineer staff. I would also like to recognize Jenny Ann Sumner. She's right. Yes, please give her a round of applause. So when I started in the parks department in November of 2021, I kept hearing this name, Jenny Ann Sumners, Jenny Ann Sumners.

And I was like, who is this Jenny Ann Sumners? So I finally got a chance to meet her. She's very engaged in what goes on in her community, not only this park, but all across the country canal. So I just want to thank you for your partnership and just give me a call whenever you want to, right? Okay, thank you. I know she will, right? Earlier I met Dr. George Barnes from the Balls Elementary School District, so I'd like to thank him. And then the mayor did mention Gail Knight.

She's over there right to the left there. Thank you for your partnership. And Gail and I go way back. She's like a mentor to me and it's always great to see you, so thank you. I'd also like to highlight the efforts and leadership of Mayor Gallego. I know Vice Mayor Keisha Hodge-Washington cannot be here today, but without them and of course Councilman Robinson, their support for the Parks Department, none of this would be possible.

I also do want to mention, I do not see her, but my former boss and assistant city manager, oh there she is right there, Inger Erickson, and I'm sure she'll be ripping up the pickleball courts here in a minute. We're going to have a couple of minutes. My current boss is right next to her, Deputy City Manager Dave Matthews, so thanks to your support. One of my assistant directors is over there standing next to my wife, Brandy Barrett. I cannot do this without her. We laugh on a daily basis.

We also cry on a daily basis running this department, but without you I cannot do that. And then finally, she might get me for this, but I'd like to thank my wife who joined me today. My wife, Julie, The refresh amenities you will see today build on the legacy of this park and as a welcoming destination where families can relax, connect and enjoy time. So thank you again for all being here, part of this celebration.

And without further ado, let's cut the ribbon and officially open the new sports courts. Thank you for the Thank you. Checkmate Good info is a good thing The Broadway Curve project is in the works Prepare for lane closures and detours Stay ahead of the curve at i10broadwaycurve Good evening everyone, welcome. My name is Erika Flores. I'm the communications and marketing director of Audubon Southwest and Rockies region. It's my pleasure to welcome you as we celebrate the bird-friendly Phoenix.

We're very excited for this partnership between Audubon Southwest and the City of Phoenix that brings our community together around a shared vision, making Phoenix a place where birds can thrive. Tonight is an opportunity to learn more, get inspired, and discover how all of us can be part of creating a more bird-friendly Phoenix. I'd like to recognize first the City of Phoenix leaders that are here with us tonight. Mayor Kate Gallego. Vice Mayor Keisha Hodge, Washington.

Deputy City Manager Alan Stevenson Phoenix Environmental Programs Administrator Nancy Allen And Environmental Program Manager, Patricia Ballo. Audubon thanks you for your commitment to creating a community where birds and people can thrive. I'd also like to thank the center director, Danny, who's walking over. And our Audubon Southwest team for hosting us tonight. And acknowledge Audubon Southwest Senior Policy Director Haley Paul over here.

As part of this evening's program, we'll hear from Mayor Kate Gariego, City of Phoenix Environmental Program Manager Tricia Bala, and Audubon Southwest Senior Policy Director, Hayley Pog, about the Bird-Friendly Phoenix initiative. But first, we present to you Audubon's documentary about how migratory birds depend on rivers, wetlands, lakes, and other water resources as they travel through the west. This is Birds on the Move, Desert Rivers.

While birds are migrating both north and south, we know that waterways, wetlands, rivers, riparian habitat are crucial on their journeys. And if we don't have reliable, sustainable, resilient water supplies, then we're going to have less habitat and we're going to see an impact to birds. There are studies showing the decline of the population of migratory birds. And the main drive of that is the loss of habitat.

These places provide a lot of benefits to local communities on water security, clean water, food security. So it is not only about the birds, it's also the co-benefits that these places provide to local communities. Mutually beneficial outcomes that are happening when you're doing work on behalf of birds, that is what is most inspiring to me. In order to have winds for birds and winds for water, we have to have winds for people.

Riparian habitat is often what we call the riverside habitat that's kind of along our rivers, lakes, and our streams. You could also think of wetlands. As you might imagine in Arizona, we don't have maybe as much wetlands as you would experience in the eastern part of the United States, but those that we do have are vital for birds as well as for people. We're at the Kachina Wetlands, which is a beautiful open space with trails, but also happens to be great bird habitat.

And what really interesting is it sustained by purified wastewater which is often called reclaimed water here in Arizona which is put back out into the environment and allowed to spread throughout these different basins supporting all the habitat you see around me Throughout the state of Arizona, our watersheds and our groundwater basins are all connected and part of an important ecosystem. All of our rivers connect, including the Salt River behind us.

It flows all the way down to the Rio Salado Audubon Center. This is a center that's located right in the heart of Phoenix, right? Everything you see beside us here just 30 years ago was a garbage dumping site. Having those community partners come together on habitat restoration work has led to this amazing green lush riparian area right in the heart of the desert and in the heart of the city.

Rivers are vital in the arid west, especially here in Arizona where riparian habitat and rivers make up about 2% of the landscape, yet 80% of the wildlife rely on rivers or riparian areas at some point in their life cycle. It's not an overstatement to say they are crucial for life. We're here in the Sonoran Desert, we're in the heart of Phoenix, the hottest city in America. Water is important.

The amount of water that is used and consumed by people is only increasing, and so we have an amazing team of policy folks who are working to figure out how we plan for the future of Arizona's water. That's important not only of course for people, but for the wildlife that depend on these riparian and wetland ecosystems as well. This is the Gilbert Riparian Preserve At Water Ranch in Gilbert, Arizona. It's a 110-acre nature preserve and water recharge facility.

So we have seven ponds that are filled with reclaimed water, so treated wastewater, and it's been designed to make sure that it's a habitat for birds. It's a really important place for water conservation and bird conservation. So what's at stake if we lose our flowing rivers and this precious habitat that it sustains? Well, for one, our economy. If we let our rivers dry up, we're letting our economy dry up.

Add on top of that that our rivers, like the Colorado River, the Salt River, the Verde River, They sustain 4 million people in the Phoenix metropolitan area. We have agriculture that relies on flowing rivers and reliable water supplies, as well as industry. We all have a stake in this, and we must do what we can working together to be as wise with our use as possible, so that we can sustain our flowing rivers, because we know they're so precious here in the arid west.

One of Audubon's strategic priorities is of course community building. And that is the bread and butter of what we do here at Rio Salado Audubon Center. When I first started here about two years ago, one of the things we noticed very quickly is that anytime we were hosting a community event, 80 to 90% of the visitors would say things like, Wow, I've lived here my whole life and I never knew you were here.

We kind of scratched our head and went, alright, we haven't been doing something right, we need to find a new strategy so that people understand that we are here and that we are available. One of the ways in which we're changing that is through our community partnerships and through community events and through a bit of an overall facelift. I think Rio Salado is probably one of the most interesting urban birding places that I've ever been to.

We are surrounded by industrial zones and landfills and the creation of this habitat has allowed nature to re-enter the metro area. So it's a great place to see just like anything you want. A lot of the work that we do is educational. A lot of the work that I strive to put programs in here in the Rio Salado are educational. So not only are kids learning something, but adults are as well. That really brings in the community, not only a one generation, but two generations.

That is the way we try to attract people to do a lot of our conservation work, is through that education, and that has seemed to be working for us so far. A restored, healthy environment, you know, is productive for anybody who touches the area, right? Us as people, wildlife, pollinators, the river that runs through it, and the organisms that live within it. Tricing and Tricing and Tricing and Tricing and Tricing and Tricing and Tricing. That's the function of a center like this, right?

To become that hub for conservation actions and connecting communities with the conservation work that is needed to provide a better habitat for people and wildlife.

So I started with Audubon about six years or so ago and not long after I started I was setting up motive stations at a lot of the centers across Audubon and I kept hearing this desire to track migratory birds And so one of the powers of Audubon is this like really wide diverse network And it became pretty apparent that everybody can just go out and do their own thing, or we can have a really coordinated effort that we can ensure that people that are engaging in tracking studies By doing it in a coordinated way that's focused on the flight plan that's leading to conservation action on the ground.

My name's Theona Vivial. I'm the current president of Desert Rivers Audubon Society here in the East Valley of the metro area. Behind me is the first urban MODIS station in the state. MODIS, I think at its core is a community of people that really care about birds. It's an entire network of antennas. Those antennas are able to listen to tags that we are putting on migratory birds.

And as a bird flies or migrates past one of the antennas or MODIS stations, then it detects that bird flying by and that information gets downloaded and sent to Birds Canada. They're the stewards of the MODIS network and they organize the data. It's available to anyone. The idea is to be able to track birds that are migrating and to determine if they've got suitable spaces to rest and eat and recharge on their migration path.

It's places like Kachina Wetlands that may seem small, but we know that birds are using all of these types of habitats along their journey, both north and south. The crux of our work is really trying to find what are those weak links and trying to fix them so that that full annual cycle stays completed. Migration is a natural phenomenon, I think, that exemplifies really the mystery of nature and the natural world around us in one of the most exquisite ways.

They interact with their environment in such... Thank you. Councilwoman Hernandez, here. Councilwoman Hernandez, here. Councilwoman O'Brien, Councilwoman Pastor? Councilman Robinson? Councilwoman Stark? Councilman Waring? Vice Mayor Hodge Washington? Mayor Villego? Mayor Villego? Council information and final request. We'll start with Councilwoman Hernandez. Thank you so much, Mayor. Just want to share some quick updates from District 7.

I'll wait for the, okay perfect, next slide, I'll wait for the slides to come up. Okay. Okay, you can go to the next slide, please. First, help me welcome Victoria, our newest constituent service specialist. If you live in District 7 and need help, you can reach our office at 602-262-7492. or by emailing us at council.district.7.phoenix.gov. Next slide. We also launched our second cohort of the District 7's budget working group funded through our office's participatory budget.

We received over 20 applications in just one week. So that tells me that our residents are super excited to nerd out on all the budget things to make sure that they are part of how we can get to the district 7. how we decide how our city spends their money. Next slide. This fall our parks have been full of life at Smith Park, Kee Park, Hoey Park, and Santa Maria Park. We've been bringing neighbors together.

I want a special shout out to and say thank you to Renee Dominguez, Cowtown Skate, and the Cactus Canyon High School boys basketball team for showing up and helping us meet residents where they are. Next slide. Next slide. Next slide. And next slide. Awesome. Thank you. Also shout out to local businesses, Maleta Cafe, El Tacazo, and Centrico for hosting our community through our Cafe or Tacos Con Ana series. It's such a pleasure to support D7 restaurants while learning from our residents.

So if you're a local business that wants to host Cafe Con Ana, please reach out so we can spread the love.

um you can go to next slide next slide next slide um I also want to give a shout out a special shout out to Migs of the Valley together we've been visiting district 7 restaurants supporting local businesses and talking policy and city budget with our neighbors over a good meal so thank you Migs for helping us bring city hall to where our community already gathers uh next slide in uh October I joined Jeanette Murgia and UnidosUS for a community walk and we visited Acent affordable apartments with Chicanos Por La Causa.

Affordable housing is more than buildings, it's families who get to stay rooted in the neighborhoods they love. Along the way I got to talk to two incredible business women in District 7, Angelica Abel Tacazo and Maria of Maleta Cafe. Women like Angelica and Maria are the heart of our local economy and I'm grateful for the time they took out of their very busy schedule to share what they're seeing and what they need from the city. Next slide.

This summer our team had the chance to hear from Angela Davis speak at the social conference in Chicago. The message we carried home was simple, we need each other. No one gets free alone and no one stays safe alone. It was also amazing to see the awesome work that other cities are doing to support their residents. Our team brought back so many lessons for how we can improve Phoenix. Next slide. This month I was honored to receive recognition from the National Homelessness Law Center.

I want to be clear that this award doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the health care and harm reduction providers, the faith leaders, and community members who keep people alive and cared for every day, often without any recognition. I do accept it on their behalf and will continue to work to remove barriers we have put in place that criminalizes caring for our neighbors across our city parks. Next slide. District 7 was also proud to be home to Arizona's first Trans March.

Community marched through our district with joy with their families and with their whole selves. Our trans neighbors belong here and our office will keep standing with them. Thank you to the Arizona Democracy Resource Center for leading this powerful event. Next slide. Next slide. And finally, I want to say a name, Andre Ramirez. On October 10th, Andre was shot and killed by Phoenix police.

This past Saturday, his family and community gathered at Aguila Park to honor his life and to call for real mental health resource investments into our community. To Andre's family, we see you, we're with you, and we will keep pushing for justice for Andre and for a city that responds to crisis with care. Next slide. If you're out and about in District 7 this fall, come check us out. Lots of great opportunities to meet your neighbors and have some fun with your family. Next slide.

And one more slide. A toda nuestra familia del Distrito 7, gracias y los esperamos en nuestros próximos eventos. Thank you so much, Mayor. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Stark and then Councilwoman Guardado. Thank you. Just one short announcement. Again, D6 and D3 will be competing for the Turkey Drive that Desert Horizon sponsors. Last year it was a draw. Kevin raised the most money. I raised the most turkeys. But as we all know, this year I will beat Kevin in District 6.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you Councilwoman, Councilwoman Gordano. Thank you Mayor. So just wanted to start by saying that we're very excited to announce that for the first time ever in Maryville with our partners at Keep Phoenix Beautiful, an Ivy Cycle event is coming. Thanks to the Milwaukee Brewers for hosting this large event on their parking lot on 51st Avenue, just north of Osborne, 3600 North 51st Avenue.

Check out the flyer for our list of items accepted completely free, no charge from 7 a.m. to 1130 a.m. So if you have old computers that you want to get rid of, if you have just stuff that has been sitting in your home and you just don't have the time to go to Goodwill and you don't have the time to take your water bill and take it to the RV Cycling Center, please feel free to stop by, come by.

They are going to be taking all sorts of things There is a list of things that they will not take like paint and other sorts of cameras but everything else you guys can come by drop it off We going to be very excited to see you guys all there this upcoming Saturday from 7 a to 12 p and also happening this upcoming 21st of November is our annual turkey drive El Pavazo. So we are very happy to welcome families once again. We will be handing out turkeys.

We will be handing out a full dinner for the families. This is a time where we bring families together, where we bring community together. We will be also having conversations around Light Rail and for everyone to continue to give us their opinion on how they feel about Light Rail coming down Indian School. And it's a moment for people to come together, for community to come together. This is one of my favorite events of the year.

We will have a little bit over 500 turkeys, so we're hoping to see people there. And that event will be from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Maryville Community Center on 51st Avenue in Campbell. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Let's queue up Kelzma Pastor's PowerPoint. Thank you. I'll just get started as I queue up. These are midway October advance events and I seem to be very, very busy. And I'm very busy with a lot of my colleagues together. First slide is the College Depot grand opening.

Always many people know I support students in education. Education is the most powerful thing that can change a family in its trajectory. And I want to say I got my Wallace and Landlough library card. Next slide. All right, I'll keep going. It doesn't seem to be moving, but that's okay. We also opened, or I was with my colleagues at the Prisma Community Care Mobile Health Unit ribbon cutting. It's the free HIV STI testing, preventative care, mental health screenings.

I'd like to thank all my colleagues that were there. Community highlights, obviously neighborhood associations, gang kickoff, block watch parties, tree planting, you name it, we did it. Next slide. Next slide. Community cleanup in Tisdale. This is a community cleanup that we formed at Block Watch, we formed an association, and we are now activating them to clean it up in that area. It's located on 27th Avenue in Thomas and if you know that area, it's an area that needs constant cleaning.

Phoenix Pride Parade. I was fortunate to be one of the Grand Marshals as we celebrated the 45 years of Phoenix Pride uplifting and bringing together the LGBT community. I would like to thank everybody and all employees that participated and were part of it. Community meetings, I'm still working on the urban farm. I'm there with SRP looking at the connection of the water, how we're going to do it. Working with Boys and Girls Club and Isaac School District.

The 27th collab meeting, there are 80 organizations working to strengthen neighborhood safety, the West Phoenix light rail extension open house. Next slide. City of Phoenix employ ride and drive. I had a great time cutting emissions, empowering sustainable operations, but I had a great time driving. I actually took the car and went down central and said, let's go cruise central. They were like, we're a little off path, but that's okay, let's cruise, and enjoyed it. Enjoyed Mike.

This is Betty Cruz's son, who he says, you know my mom, and we went cruising. Next slide, residence recognition. Obviously, AJ, Vision Zero Community Advisory Board, and congratulations to the D4 awardees of the 2027 Food System Grant recipients, four of District 4 grants went there and I'm so happy for them. Before I end, I want to say thank you to Julie. I don't know if Julie's here, but I want to say thank you to Julie. I won't be here for your retirement.

I wish you the best and thank you for all your service.

I also want to wish happy belated or happy birthday so sorry happy birthday to Councilwoman Hodge Washington and I want to thank everybody for Noche It was the day of my birthday and I enjoyed every bit of it And of course Councilwoman Hernandez for her award It nice to receive a national award so there a lot of gratitude and thankfulness happening today so thank you Thank you so much and thank you for that great congratulations for our city attorney, Julie, who is retiring.

Can we give a round of applause for Julie? Not her last council meeting, but we might as well start the celebration now. Wonderful. Any additional council updates from my colleagues? All right, so Councilman Pestor has her new Wallace and Ladmo library card. Our household has one as well. Mayor, there was four birthdays on this dais, which was you, Vice Mayor, Councilwoman Stark, and Councilwoman Pestor. And O'Brien and Councilwoman Pestor. That's right, that's right.

I was like, I couldn't remember who was scoring me, but happy belated birthday to all of you. Thank you. There's been a lot of sugar in elected officialdom and our assistant city manager also celebrated. So lots of, lots of, yes, people can read into all those birthdays. A huge thank you to the folks who helped with the sound improvements. So back to the library card. We have launched a very exciting partnership between Phoenix Public Library and ASU Women's Basketball.

It builds on a ticket partnership we had with Phoenix Rising. Right now, you can use your library card to get access to two free tickets per home game and a discount on additional tickets through the 2026-27 season. The partnership tips off against Arizona State University's at the home opener against Jackson State at 5 p.m. on November 2nd. So that little piece of plastic might be the most valuable little piece of plastic in Phoenix.

Use your library card to unlock all sorts of things now, including Sun Devil women's basketball. Incredible team led by coach Molly Miller. Today is the deadline to mail your ballot to vote in the election. So after today, if you'd like to vote, recommendation is to drop them off at ballot drop locations instead of using the mail. And we at the city are trying to prepare as much as possible for a smooth election.

We're hopeful all of our city departments who do any work in the right of way that might involve street closures will be very mindful of polling places and try to help get everyone to their polling place as easily. As possible, our public safety team is working hard to make sure it is a safe and successful election. So thank you and best wishes to folks who are on the ballot in that area. And with that, I believe we will move to our first agenda item, the Housing Trust Fund.

This addressing housing is something that all nine of us, Atlas, Dias, have made a priority. It is one of the most confounding problems we face, not just as a city but as a country. Our Housing Phoenix Plan and the Housing Trust Fund each play a crucial role in guiding our efforts to continue to push to create more affordable homes. When we launched our Housing Plan in 2020, we established strategic initiatives using city-owned land to develop affordable housing.

For example, our goal was to create or preserve 50,000 units by 2030. We have far suppressed that. We're now at more than 71,000 homes and years ahead of our goal, but we are not stopping. We know the need continues. We established the Housing Trust Fund with a focus on ways the fund can continue to support the development of affordable housing. Starting with 15 million, we've already set aside money to reduce or waive plan review and permit fees for affordable housing developments.

Today's presentation will look at ways to allocate the remaining Housing Trust Fund dollars to best serve our community, including Helping residents stay in their homes by funding eviction prevention, although ultimately we know the county and state legislature need to be involved with lasting solutions here. Helping residents on their path to homeownership with down payment assistance, helping finance the city's own affordable housing programs.

And now I will turn it over to our deputy city manager, Gina Montez, to introduce her team.

Thank you Mayor members of the council It a pleasure to be before you this afternoon to give you an update on the Housing Phoenix Plan We especially pleased to be discussing the Housing Trust Fund that you all authorized and funded last year Really excited to be giving you some proposed allocations and get your feedback and direction on that particular piece of the Housing Phoenix Plan really enables us to put some more resources behind all of the goals that we been working towards under your direction under the Housing Phoenix Plan So with that I will turn it over to the Housing Department leadership team starting with Titus Matthew our Housing Director Thank you, Gina.

Mayor members of the council, it's my privilege and honor to be here this afternoon to talk about the Housing Trust Fund. It's just a distant memory. A year ago we came before this council to talk about the housing policy which you approved, and we're grateful also for this past year, as Gina mentioned, the funding of the Housing Trust Fund to $15 million. The Housing Phoenix Plan was approved in 2020 as a policy roadmap designed to help increase the city's housing supply.

The plan included an overarching goal to create and preserve 50,000 units by 2030. We're pleased to report as of today we have over 71,000 units created or preserved and this work is showing that our housing options have increased for Phoenix residents and this is an ongoing process and we continue to be successful in this regard. And those of you who are watching, in terms of the breakdown, 20% of the 71,000 units created and preserved are affordable. Several years ago, it was less than 10%.

That's a significant milestone we want to highlight as well. The success of the Housing Phoenix plan efforts are evident in the increasing housing unit count and further demonstrated through the implementation of the plan's nine policy initiatives, which you see here on the slideshow. Today, I would like to highlight three initiatives that have served to increase affordable housing supply.

The third initiative of the Housing Phoenix Plan was designed to redevelop city-owned land with affordable housing. Of the 144 parcels of land set aside for this purpose, more than 80 parcels have been released for development through a request for proposals or RFE process, Thanks to the Mayor and Council's efforts and foresight to utilize city's own land to create more housing options, today we have far more than 650 affordable rental or ownership units planned under construction or complete.

Outside of developing city property, we have also supported the development community through public-private partnerships consistent with Initiative 4 of the plan. Seeing the need to provide additional support to affordable housing projects during the pandemic, five million dollars in ARPA funds, American Rescue Plan Act funds, was provided to several development projects throughout the city. Through this program, 544 rental units were created, the last of which were completed this spring.

In issue seven of the Housing Phoenix Plan focuses on the preservation of our existing housing units. In support of this initiative, this body created a community land trust to provide 25 permanently supportive affordable homes for first time home buyers, complementing our efforts to produce new rental housing. Thanks to the Mayor and Council support of this innovative idea, more Phoenicians would now be able to become homeowners and have a pathway to create generational wealth.

Under your direction, tremendous efforts have been made to increase the supply and affordability of housing in Phoenix, as evidenced by the success of the Housing Phoenix Plan. However, affordability challenges remain. Our 2024 housing needs assessment communicated a gap of approximately 59,000 affordable rental units needed at households at 50% of the area median income or below.

At 50% of the area median income, a 3% household earns an annual income of approximately $51,000, can afford $1,300 in monthly housing costs. Our current housing prices exceed what is affordable for a household at this income level. The average monthly rent in Phoenix is around $1,800. On the home ownership side, a median price home is $445,000, which would entail a monthly mortgage payment of $3,500.

Current housing prices are challenging for our low-income households, underscoring the need for additional affordable housing support, like a housing trust fund. I'd like to turn over the presentation with Assistant Housing Director, Avi Gonzalez, to provide an update on the housing trust fund. Thank you, Titus. To further the city's commitment toward affordable housing, the mayor and city council created the Phoenix Housing Trust Fund in May of 2025.

And the Housing Trust Fund was created as an additional funding tool designed to accelerate the creation and preservation of affordable housing within the city of Phoenix. Last November, a housing trust fund policy was approved to guide the administration and use moving forward. At the time that the policy was approved, there was limited funding available, so no spending or allocation recommendations were made.

Thanks to your support, this year's budget approved additional funds, bringing total available resources to $15 million. With this increase in available funding, the Housing Department is seeking your direction on how to spend the Housing Trust Fund dollars. Before discussing our recommendations for spending and allocation, I wanted to Briefly review the housing trust funds policy, administration guidelines, and approved uses.

The housing trust fund policy outlines that funding distribution priorities should be reviewed periodically with city council and be aligned with current housing needs. Additionally, any disbursement needs to be consistent with the policy and the approved uses. The policy's approved uses were designed to provide flexibility in addressing the housing needs both now and into the future, while providing consistency with the Housing Phoenix Plan's initiatives.

The approved uses within the Housing Trust Fund policy include home ownership activities, gap financing for affordable housing creation or preservation projects, preservation or strategic acquisitions of land or existing developments, and affordable housing revolving loan fund for pre-development and construction purposes, and other uses that meet the intent of the Housing Trust Fund policy and are The spending and allocation plan we are presenting today incorporates several approved housing trust fund policy uses.

All proposed allocations are consistent with the policy and will help address our current housing needs. There are currently $15 million in available resources in the housing trust fund. Of this $15 million, $1 million are for pre-approved housing plans and $2 million for reduced plan review and permit fees was approved as part of the housing trust fund allocation in this year's budget.

This leaves $12 million in total remaining resources to allocate, and we are proposing to use the remaining resources in the following manner. $1 million for home ownership, $1 million for eviction prevention, $6 million for gap financing, and $4 million for city project gap financing. I will now turn the presentation over to Deputy Housing Director Samantha Keating to discuss these allocations in further detail. Thank you, Aubrey.

The first housing trust fund allocation is pre-approved housing plans. Pre-approved housing plans help reduce review time and provide an expedited path toward a building permit. For this category, one million dollars will be used by the Planning and Development Department to create single-family and middle housing pre-approved plans. The second category is reduced plan review and permit fees.

In coordination with the planning and development department, $2 million will be used to provide fee reductions for new affordable housing development projects. Up to $300,000 per project will be provided to low income housing tax credit for LIHTC projects over the next two years. Tronches of funds will be released in alignment with LIHTC funding cycles.

Funds will be distributed through a competitive application process with a dedicated set aside for nonprofit projects and prioritization criteria that emphasizes serving special needs populations. Our next category is home ownership. $1 million will be allocated for activities to support new homebuyers. This investment will support programs that provide down payment assistance or permanent affordability like our community land trust.

The photo on the screen shows one of the community land trust's first time homebuyers in front of a home he purchased last year. The next proposed allocation is eviction prevention. In this category, $1 million will be used to support the eviction legal services program. This program, administered by the Human Services Department, is designed to mitigate the negative impacts of eviction that can cause barriers to renting in the future.

To continue support for the creation or preservation of affordable housing, $6 million will be used for GAP financing. Modeled after our successful home investment partnership program, this funding will offer competitive financial support for new affordable housing development projects, where costs often exceed what lower income households can afford to pay.

Up to million per project will be provided as a low loan Over the loan term funds will be repaid and recycled to support future affordable housing activities Our last spending category is City Project Gap Financing million will be used to support Housing Phoenix plan redevelopment projects and other city housing projects These funds will be included in future RFPs like redevelopment of Ambassador West or the Housing Choice Voucher Administrative Offices.

As with the previous Gap Financing category, assistance will be offered as low-interest loans that will be repaid and used for future affordable housing efforts. The photo you see on the screen is Helen Drake Village, a housing Phoenix plan under construction next to the Helen Drake Senior Center. Like many affordable rental developments, this project relied on City Gap financing to move forward. I'll now turn the presentation back over to Housing Director Titus Matthew. Thank you, Samantha.

Mayor and members of the council, we have reviewed Good recommendations for use of the current Housing Trust Fund resources. Before you, as a recap of the recommended spending and allocation plan that incorporates planned funding for a variety of affordable housing activities that address our current housing needs. We're here to seek your feedback, comments, approval of the spending and allocation plan for the Housing Trust Fund as presented today. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you so much.

Vice Mayor, do you want to start? Thank you, Mayor, for the opportunity. As you can probably imagine, I'm very excited and elated for us to be here, $15 million. This is a powerful opportunity for us to change lives of many Phoenicians. I'm incredibly excited about this investment. I think the Housing Trust Fund is about giving families stability, helping seniors remain in their home, and creating new pathways for affordability.

I'll start off by thanking Gina, Titus, Aubrey, Samantha, and our entire housing department for this update and for all the work that has gone into advancing these important housing initiatives. I do have a couple questions before I give my statements, Mayor. I don't know if we had any community questions or speakers. We did not. Okay, perfect. I didn't want to get ahead of ourselves. I think it might be helpful to understand.

I think the recommendations are in line with what we've heard from the communities as to what they want us to invest in. and what their needs are, but what measures will staff use to evaluate the success of the Housing Trust Fund, and how do you anticipate that the council and the public will receive updates on these outcomes? Mayor, I'm Mr. Council Vice Mayor. Good question.

I think in Category 1 and 2, those would have determined outcomes in terms of how many deals we can help in terms of affordable For example, on the reduction of fees and plan review fees, it's a finite amount of $2 million, but we know we get, on the 9% low income housing tax rate deals, generally Phoenix receives about one or two awards. And then on the 4%, it's up to a max of $300,000, so the rest will go towards that cause and a set aside for non-profit.

So I think those outcomes will be determined in a year or two. In terms of home ownership, currently what this council approved was the community land trust. So we gave five million dollars to the community land trust to create 25 homeowners.

And one of the recommendations I would make is to continue that because that particular community land trust remains permanently affordable because the homeowner only pays for the mortgage or the improvements of the land and the land stays in the community land trust. So if ever the seller or the mortgage holder sells the property, it will remain affordable to the next buyer as well.

In addition to that, the eviction prevention, I think that is a question for Jacqueline in terms of how many people can be assisted in terms of her case management and I'm not privy to that yet but Jacqueline is willing to come and talk about it. On the gap financing, generally, vice mayor, it's very predetermined in terms of six million.

Depending on how the deal is structured in terms of total development It could range from anywhere from fewer units to hundreds of units out of the $60 million that's being proposed today. Thank you so much. I definitely want to ensure that as we move forward, the home ownership opportunities, as I mentioned in our private briefing, is very important to me.

I really believe that for many, home ownership is the pathway to establishing generational wealth, And I want to make sure that we are doing those We are intentional in ensuring that working families and first homebuyers are getting the opportunities that they rightfully desire I said this a couple weeks ago when the mayor and I joined a conference with the Wall Street Journal It is I believe housing and economic development are not separate They are all the same And I think talent follows opportunity And if individuals don have the opportunity to be able to purchase a home or to find a home in our community we run the risk of losing those individuals So I would definitely love to see that as we craft our program for the first time home buyers that we are intentional in ensuring that we are focusing on particular census track within our cities and demographics who have faced historical or additional barriers to home ownership It is one of the things that makes Phoenix a great big city We have a higher percentage of home ownership than other cities and I want to make sure we continue to do this.

And I think the housing trust fund is a great opportunity for us to do that. While we want to ensure we're building more affordable housing, I want to make sure we don't lose sight of home ownership at the same time. So I just want to say that the housing trust fund is a major step forward, but housing affordability continues to be a long-term challenge. So we can do this to take in the right steps and I think we're making, we're doing that right now.

This Housing Trust Fund, as you know, has been something that I've championed for since the day I joined council. And I'm very excited that we are making strides. We are moving forward. So we know there's a number of reasons why we don't have the number of affordable housing or attainable housing that we have as a community needs. But I think this Housing Trust Fund is more than us just identifying the problem, but we are taking actionable steps to help remedy those problems.

And I would love to see us partner more with our state and our county in order to do so, but I just wanted to applaud our housing department for the work they have done in this arena. And I look forward to seeing the investments from the Housing Trust Fund deliver real results for the residents as we make more homes available within reach for our working families, more stability for our renters, meaningful pathways to home ownership, and stronger neighborhoods without displacement.

I also want to thank the residents who took the time to share their stories with us, whether or not that was participating in budget discussions, advocating for housing solutions has helped make this progress possible, and their voices should continue to guide the work ahead. I am beyond proud and grateful for the foundation that has been built.

At the same time, one plan or one strong budget doesn't solve the housing crisis, but I believe if we continue to invest in housing, supporting families before they reach a crisis moment, And it's our responsibility to take the Housing Trust Fund and turn it into measurable lasting housing opportunity for Phoenix residents. So thank you so much. Thank you each and every one of you for that, for all of the work that went into this.

And do you have a motion to approve the Spending and Allocation Plan? I do, Mayor. I move for us to approve the Spending and Allocation Plan presented by Director Titus Matthews. Second. Thank you. We have a motion and a second from Councilwoman Pastor. We have Councilwoman Guardado, Councilman Robinson, Councilwoman Stark, Councilwoman Heron. Hernandez. Thank you, Mayor. First, I just want to thank the housing department, city staff, Gina, Titus, everyone.

Thank you guys all for your vision, for your hard work, and most importantly, listening to the neighbors and listening to the needs that everyone has in the city. Because like it was said, like Vice Mayor said, it's not just about affordable housing, but it's about people being able to buy a home. Driving in different parts of our city, we see a lot of young adults that have a career, that went to school, that did things the right way and still cannot afford to buy a home.

And I think the fact that we're able to create a path for them to be able to get there, to be able to buy their first home, I think that's incredibly important for a lot of our young families. And we have a lot of our young families, at least in District 5, the average age is 31.

So we have a lot of people that we need to figure out how do we help them get into that home and how do we help them being able to reach that American dream that maybe their parents were able to reach and they're not able to get there. And I think everything that we've been able to do, I was very proud to see the Helen Drake's picture on there that is under construction.

also very thankful to all of the neighbors throughout the city of Phoenix that have gotten out there and talked to the neighbors to say, yes, in our backyard, yes, we need to build affordable housing, yes, we need to build any type of housing, one, to help end homelessness, two, to making sure that people can stay housed in their home. I think that's very important.

And for me, one of my biggest goals as I came into council and a lot of the challenges I saw was to be able to have people being able to play, live, and work in their same neighborhoods.

For so many years we see people drive to the east side of the valley to be able to go to work, and drive to other sides of the valley to take their children to school, and they normally only come into their homes to sleep And the fact that we changing that and that we turning that around and that we creating a different atmosphere and a more comprehensive approach for all of our families that is important I guess one question that I did have for you, Titus, I know that I've been talking to some of the school districts and making sure that we do sit down with them.

I know that a lot of them, I know I have a meeting with Alhambra tomorrow where we're going to be talking about a parcel that they want to develop into affordable housing because the crisis that we have in our schools right now is that we have far too many kids that are leaving public schools and going into different cities, leaving the city of Phoenix just because it has become very unaffordable to live there. Is there a plan for that? Mayor, Madam, the council's councilman, Goddard.

I want to remind the council you have had successes in terms of we have had three different deals we did with Alhambra and Isaac School District, two in District 4 and one in District 5. So we will continue to give options to school districts to provide land for affordable housing. We will partner with them as well. Thank you so much. And just to finish off my comments, no one should have to decide between paying their rent and putting food on the table.

No one should have to make a hard decision on removing their kids from the school where they're having a lot of success. We have so many great schools in the city of Phoenix and we are losing a lot of our children to different schools. It disturbs their ability to learn. It disturbs their stability that they have in their schools. And the more that we can do to making sure that we keep our families housed, that we keep our children learning, I think that's incredibly important for our families.

So I'm very grateful to all of you for all of the hard work and for everything that's going on. Thank you, Vice Mayor, for helping us champion this and getting us to this point. And we are not done. There's still a lot more work to do. There's a lot of work to do at the state level and at the county level, but I am very grateful for the hard work and everything that you guys do for our residents every day. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much, Councilwoman.

Councilman Robinson, followed by Councilwoman Stark. Thank you, Mayor. First, I'll join my colleagues and those who have spoken and I'm sure those who are going to speak in thanking Titus and his entire department and everyone who has been working on this. It is tremendous work and truly appreciate their hard work.

But the quick question I have, and I think it was for Samantha during slides 11 and 12, and you don't necessarily have to put the slides up, but it was about the $1 million designated for pre-approved housing plans. And I was curious, and I'm sorry if I missed it, are those templates strictly intended for multifamily complexes, or do they apply to middle housing models like duplexes and triplexes as well? Mayor, members of council, Councilman Robinson, thank you for the question.

The planning and development department, as I understand, is planning to utilize the funds for pre-approved plans for both single-family and middle housing types. So, looking at different typologies to provide housing through that program. Okay, thank you very much. Again, Titus, Everybody, thank you. You guys do a great job. And Mayor, thank you for the time. Thank you. Councilwoman Stark is next, followed by Councilwoman Hernandez. Thank you.

First and foremost, I have to say it's great when you actually adopt a plan and then you can implement and see things happen and see results. So I want to thank all of staff. You've done a terrific job. I wanted to follow up a little bit about the pre-approved housing plans. I know that in planning department they do have what's called standard plans and that's for production houses. This, my understanding, is something different.

And so do you have a definition of what pre-approved means from an income standpoint? Because a lot of production homes that we have are pretty high end and they're not necessarily affordable. So have you put some definitions together to Mayor, members of council, Councilman Stark, no specific income definitions for the standard plan. Part of the Housing Phoenix plan was to increase the supply of housing across all income levels.

So the intent with the pre-approved plans is to be able to provide more housing that can come to market quicker and help with affordability through that measure. Because I mean, I wasn't sure. I would hate to see us take their standard plans for some of the higher end housing we do. I'm looking at Josh because he may be able to answer this and really utilize it for more of the middle housing and the starter homes and maybe even ADUs that serve a purpose for affordability.

So I want to make sure we have a distinction and I think we do a wonderful job with the way we do standard plans now, but I just want to make sure we're putting the money in the right place. Mayor, Councilwoman Stark, members of the council, as you recall, we have two pots of money that we're going to be working with. One is the pot of money from the Housing Trust Fund, and another is an allocation you gave us in the budget.

For the focus on this one, what you'll be seeing from us in the spring are two RFPs. And for this one specifically, in collaboration with the Housing Department, we're going to focus on, to the greatest degree we can, more affordable products. So that could be part of the RFP will be outlined that there'll be smaller product types, missing middle housing types. The other one would be your more traditional plan sets.

And so we see a distinction between the housing trust fund money and then the general fund money that we'll be using for the two RFPs. Great. I'm glad to hear that. I do want to make sure we have a distinction because we really do want to drill down and make sure we're addressing the issue of affordable housing.

Clearly, I think we do a good job of higher-end housing, but we really do need to look at how we can get people into homes, and that starts with making sure that we have starter homes and middle housing. So I appreciate that greatly. Thank you. Also, the other question is that, you know, I know we have properties out there, city-owned properties, and some of the locations of the properties don't necessarily lend themselves to affordability. In other words, they might be in the downtown area.

I know that Councilwoman Pastore had a parcel of land that we've been a few RFPs on, and we just never really have had the opportunity to see someone say, I'm not going to do affordable housing. It's close to the fire union. Yeah, that's been kind of up and down. And so just, and I know we've had some success now, but it took a while.

So is there any processes in place so that when you see properties that may be at a higher cost rate because of the location of where it is in the city, what are you doing to try to offset that? And is that really the gap financing that we're looking at? Or are we going to use the housing trust fund for those kinds of properties? I just need some understanding. Mayor Mrakas, Council of Council of Council and Stock. That's exactly right.

So the $4 million we've set aside for housing projects is to help with those deals that we own, the city owns in terms of redevelopment. So we want to put it towards the gap finance, like for example, Ambassador West, 830 East Jefferson, potentially other housing things planned properties that we own as well. Great. Well again, I think you guys have done a terrific job, but this is an important issue.

Everyone deserves home ownership in my humble opinion, and certainly you're doing whatever you can do to make that happen. And I thank you again for all the hard work. I thank a lot of my colleagues, including the vice mayor, you really addressed the issues and we need to continue to look and explore ways to make sure we're building affordable housing, whether it's starter homes or middle housing, whatever it takes. I think we need to be supportive.

So we, you are the experts and you're doing terrific work. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Hernandez followed by Councilwoman O'Brocking. Thank you, Mayor. I'm glad to hear there's so much support for this because one of the things that I think, and Josh, stay right there because I have some questions for you. I think part of it, right, like we understand we have a finite number of resources, funding resources available as a city to invest into housing.

And I think part of the other process that we need to look at, and I know it's part of, it wasn't highlighted today, but it's part of the Phoenix Housing Plan, is how do we amend our zoning codes, right, to actually create and onboard those more affordable options, right?

There are reforms that need to happen in minimum lot sizes, right, that would onboard, that would give folks the tools to build starter homes, bring back the starter homes back around single stair reform, you know, looking at our, continuing to look at our parking minimums.

You know I a big supporter of Yigbee How do we partner with our faith groups for them to have the tools to build housing on their land just like we do with school boards or school districts And so all of those right like have we looked at are those part of looking at the future and how we expand and continue to onboard more housing options Mayor, Councilwoman Hernandez, members of the council, yes.

I certainly want to give this council a ton of credit for all the work that you've done over the last couple of years. We were the first to have a comprehensive ADU ordinance, first in the state to have form-based code. Last year we adopted a comprehensive update of Chapter 6 of the zoning ordinance, which is our residential districts. As I discussed in the 2026 Planning and Development Process Improvement Report, we touch on many of those concepts that you outlined.

By the end of the year, I'm scheduled to sit down with each of you to talk through a Texas Amendment work program that will look at additional proposed amendments, our zoning ordinance and then we have an interdepartmental group looking at the different codes that impact housing so that's not just the zoning ordinance but to your point councilwoman the subdivision ordinance and building code as part of a holistic uh review about what we might need to change to support more housing.

No that's great to hear because I know that also a lot of those measures fall in line with the road to housing 21st century road to housing act that the federal government for once did something great um in housing work um and you know one of One of the other forms and we've talked a lot about is our middle housing, right? Can you give a quick update on where we're at with the possible expansion of middle housing beyond just the central business district?

Mayor, Councilwoman Hannon, members of the council, yes, we have a monthly meeting with ASU. As you know, we have an intergovernmental agreement and partnership with them right now and the Morrison Institute. We are scheduled to circle back with this council by spring of next year with an update. We hope to have some updates maybe by the end of the year to let you know where that progress is at, but we're set to have a full report provided by ASU next spring. Okay, thank you.

And then my last question for you, Josh, is, you know, initiative number four that's covered today is enhancing these public-private partnerships. I think that also goes in line with looking at the developers that build affordable housing, right? and how do we like what can we as a city do or is there more we can do to proactively engage the affordable housing developers versus just waiting for them to approach us on projects.

I know I take a lot of time to go meet with folks and I'm trying to get as many housing units into district 7 as possible at all different income ranges because it's needed across the board. So is there anything Is there anything you can share that we can be more proactive in that? Mayor, Councilwoman Hernandez, members of the council, yes we have regular conversations.

Just a few weeks ago we sat down with members of the nonprofit community and faith-based community to take a look at excess church parcels to understand what exactly would need to be changed in this own ordinance to facilitate more housing going in those. Those are active conversations that we have that will include as part of our text amendment or program discussion with all of you.

But yes, we regularly engage with the nonprofit and faith-based communities about housing and what we could do to better serve them. Perfect, thank you. And, Dydas, same question for you, from your perspective. Councilor Dydas, members of council, we work with developers on ongoing basis and Samantha Keating is our affordable housing deputy who meets with developers on a regular basis.

We also advocate for affordable housing and work with planning and development on trying to coordinate the process in terms of how to reduce the wait times, increase affordability. That's a function of Samantha and her division, a person of the 2-1 team. But nevertheless, we also do GAAP financing using our federal home funds. And just for, since 1983, we have dispersed over $100 million in create over 8,000 units.

So we're making great strides and we have ongoing meetings with all types of developers, including the nonprofit community, as Josh mentioned, the faith-based community. We meet with advocates and activists, as well as we have developer forums that we host before we issue an RFP. and the PPP for affordable housing as well. Awesome, thank you Titus.

And then my next question is, you know, this plan when the Mayor and Council approved this plan back in 2020, I think, the goal was set at like 50,000 units. It surpassed that by 71,000 now. How do we adjust our goals as we're seeing growth continue to happen to make sure that we are trying to get ahead of the need? Mayor, members of council, Councilwoman Hernandez. So as you mentioned the plan is approved in 2020. The goal was, one of the goals was creating and preserving 50,000 units by 2030.

There also are nine policy initiatives as well. So we have not completed all the initiatives at 100 percent.

So my recommendation is this plan is in place till 2030 and maybe come revisit at that point when the goals are complete and we can come back with a robust discussion with this mayor and council to figure out do we need a new housing Phoenix plan for the next decade or so Okay thank you for that um and then uh my next question is you know one of the initiatives and you talked a little bit about is the community land trust um I love that that policy item I love that tool being um here you know existing here in the city of Phoenix how can we expand that or like what kind of funding does that need to continue to grow Councilman Hernandez the council one of the categories here is home ownership.

So one way to do that is passing on funds to the community land trust, the new town, CDC, and in the future, and maybe next year during the budget talks or program budget talks, this council can decide if they want to set aside additional funds for home ownership. But I am a strong believer in home ownership as well.

I think that is an important tool as well as creating generational wealth because that, and also community land trust model The City Coupes' model remains permanently affordable during its entire existence as well. Because one of the challenges with the Down Payment Assistance Program, if the buyers sell the home, they may not sell it necessarily to an affordable housing buyer.

So that's one of the challenges of the DPA program, but in the Comercy Land Trust, it remains permanently affordable and gives an entry level to residents to own a home as well. as well. Awesome, thank you for that Titus. And then my other question for you is I know one of the issues we sometimes come across as the city is working on affordable housing projects, right, like the maybe the thoughts of what affordable housing looks like to some folks.

So on the education side, how can we do, how can we present what affordable housing projects look like now to kind of combat the maybe negative thoughts that exist out there? I have toured a lot of different affordable housing developments and they are beautiful. They blend in with the community so well. So how can we elevate that to really make sure that our residents fully understand what that means and why they're so important in our communities?

Mayor, members, council, Councilman, and Nance. One of the things we do is education. Where we do RFPs, where we go into the area considering affordable housing developments, we meet with the community. We talk about proposed plans. We talk about what the units will look like.

We also engage with residents to show them their work end product as well, because I think it also will help when all of you also engage in that exercise with your citizens in your district, talking about what does affordable housing mean to me. Because, you're right, one of the negatives about affordable housing is the connotation, it's low income residents or the product is not of good quality.

I can challenge anyone in Phoenix, a project we are associated with is compatible to market rate apartments and very good quality as well. But education is the key there. Absolutely, and I agree with you. And I think, you know, the mayor said something that we definitely need support from our county and our state electeds.

I mean, one of the failures of the state legislature is that they let lapse the low income housing tax credit, right, which falls in line with one of the measures that we're funding is in the gap financing to make sure that those affordable housing projects actually can come to fruition.

So I would really encourage all of our Phoenix residents to engage with their state legislators to really stress how important it is for them to be champions on housing and support renewing the low income, not only renewing, but expanding the state low income housing tax credit so we can make sure that we are constructing more projects like this, or that our communities need at different income levels.

So I would really urge that and I think as a city hopefully we can get behind support of that as the you know January and new legislature comes because you never know what they're going to be doing down there. But I think that's really really important tools like that and you know I'm going to always drum the beat the beat or beat the drum for zoning reform because that really is a huge pathway to help us meet the goals that we have.

having these plans when we are really streamlining our process to make it easier to build more diverse housing typologies because I don't want just apartments or big homes. I want a variety so that our residents have the option for them to make the determination for themselves. Do I want to be a renter? Do I want to be a homeowner?

And if they want home ownership that they have actual viable options and we as a city, you know, need to do our And I think a huge weight of that is through the zoning reform in addition right to to finding ways to keep folks housed which we can work on both and both are very important so thank you so much to all of you for all the work that you doing on housing your entire departments planning and housing I know we talk a lot and I have a lot of questions all the time for all of you but you know I do appreciate all the work This is a great first you know this is a great start and I just really excited on how we continue to move the goal for the goalpost forward on how we going to deliver real solid housing options and really as Phoenix being the fifth largest city in the country how we can really be the leaders on what housing solutions look like in the state of Arizona.

So just thank you all for all the work that you have done on this, and thank you to Mayor and Council for supporting a lot of these measures. I'm really excited just to see how we move forward. Thank you. Councilwoman O'Brien. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you to WC manager Montez and Titus and the staff for this plan. This vote impacts every resident because stable housing is a foundation of a healthy city. It's how children thrive throughout the school year without being uprooted.

It's how adults build careers without bouncing from place to place. It's how families build wealth that lasts for generations. There's a lot to like in this plan, including support for home ownership and eviction prevention. I'm especially focused on how we get more housing built by cutting red tape and reducing barriers. 10 of the $15 million goes to gap financing and low interest loans to move projects forward. 2 million reduces plan review and permit fees for qualifying developments.

And 1 million creates pre-approved plans for single family and middle housing like duplexes and townhomes to expedite permits and get more housing options on the market faster. Fees don't build homes and a project The project solves for lack of financing or an approval task doesn't house anyone. This is the work I pushed for in my housing solutions plan and I'm glad to see it here. I also want to be candid about this investment.

It includes $6.6 million in one-time money from a general fund surplus. Builders, nonprofits, and lenders plan years ahead and they need to know what will be available. I'd like to work with everyone here, Mayor and my council colleagues, on a permanent annual funding source. The Housing Trust Fund policy we adopted last November allows several sources, like a dedicated general fund commitment and proceeds from city property sales or leases.

I look forward to continuing this work with all of you because stable housing is the foundation for educational success, economic opportunity, and community prosperity. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much. We have a variety of different tools and we've talked about some of them at other meetings. The tool we're using to get more affordable housing, we've celebrated that our voters approve general obligation bonds. One we've touched on but not as much in depth as opportunity zones.

We have several departments working on this, so maybe for Titus or Samantha, can you talk about how we might try to market the type of housing investment we want to people who are seeking to use this tool? Mayor and members of the council, great question. We are actually collaborating with CED to help them with figuring out opportunity zones. One of the things we do in our allocation here is to give preference points to housing developers to build an opportunity zones.

And we have currently three parcels of the Housing Phoenix Plan that are in opportunity zones as well. So one of the things like, for example, Marcus Denise currently is going through a choice planning grant and we apply for an implementation grant. and we figured out the plan. One of the things we could consider is, it is an opportunity zone, how we can collaborate with affordable housing, health care, and other features that are good for that community as well.

So we are working with CED closely and NSD to figure out how we can collaborate and bring opportunity zones and leverage the Housing Trust Fund for those dollars as well. Wonderful. Thank you. And I'm hopeful we maybe even have a marketing guide for people who are interested in pursuing this option to tell them where the city would love to. I believe government can do big things and can address problems like housing, but we also need to show success.

When we make investments that pay off and deliver new housing, we want to make sure the people who benefit know. Director Matthews have been working to make sure when we do bond projects that it's clear that the residents voted and made these investments and so that the people who live there will know it was because of the city of Phoenix and our partners. As we invest in gap financing for projects, how will we make sure that the people who benefit know?

If someone gets benefits from a housing plan, how will they know that the City of Phoenix was a partner? Mayor, Mr. Council, good question. One of the things we're working on, we have worked on, is and our RFPs, when we do developers, we partner and provide gap financing, we're ensuring that developers put up signs, like a plaque or a sign on the project itself that was funded by the City of Phoenix. That's a requirement going forward we've done with our developer community as well. Wonderful.

And maybe in someone's personal home we don't need a sign, but at least if we could make sure they're informed that they did benefit from publicly available plans. I think the more we can tell people you have benefited from a City of Phoenix program, perhaps the more they will support us doing more and success can build upon success because this is a big challenge and we got to show wins if we're going to keep asking our voters to support us in taking on big, big challenges.

One of the things I want to draw attention into this is the set aside for nonprofits. We've seen a bunch of changes in the capacity in our nonprofit housing market. We've seen some incredible leaders who have moved on to new opportunities or retired. And we, I think many of us have concern that we support the nonprofit housing developers who often know our community quite well and are really driven. So I've heard great feedback on this investment and to our nonprofits.

Please know we really appreciate you and we're making this to support the role that you play in our community. A few of us are coming from one community's annual lunch where they honored Dr. Sheila Harris, our state's first housing director, for many things, including addressing that certain populations have bigger housing barriers than others. Particularly today, they highlighted housing barriers for the LGBT community, but we know there's many, many barriers.

One of my great points of pride was working with Councilwoman Stark and Councilman Waring to make sure victims of human trafficking had a safe place to call home. That's not a population that is traditionally called out in housing metrics and grant requests, but we were very innovative here at the City of Phoenix and found a way to deliver for a group who really had a lot of housing barriers.

and it's I think been a very successful project that's gotten some positive national attention and support as a new type of best practice. When we take federal funds we must follow their priorities, but this pot of money has more flexibility. Can you speak to how we might be able to serve diverse populations who have even higher barriers but are not called out in federal and state policy documents?

Mayor, Members, Council, one of the things we're looking into, we've already talked to a few developers already, trying to target and do specialized marketing when we provide gap financing, reaching out to different communities, vulnerable populations and the communities that have not been heard in the past, we'll be reaching out to across all types of communities because one of the things we've looked at communities in San Francisco and elsewhere where they built housing for LGBTQ communities, so we're actually looking into that as well.

So we'll be reaching out across different groups to to make sure everyone's heard and available to respond to the RFP. Wonderful. We want to be a city with housing options for everyone and we know for many people there are challenges. We also want to make sure that as we address those challenges we do with an equitable lens. We do not one part of our city to take on all of the challenges. It needs to be a citywide effort and we will call on our neighboring communities as well.

Phoenix cannot solve this challenge. No one part of Phoenix can solve it. We got to work together and be creative. No community should face all of the burden, but we all have to do more, and hopefully this tool will give us the creativity to be more nimble and to have financial support. Councilman Pastore, did you, I think I saw you out of the corner? Councilman Pastore, go ahead. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you to my colleagues.

I first would like to commend the housing department and I would like to commend you because I know how difficult it is with all the different demands that we have across our city. And I appreciate the fact that you actually listen to constituents, listen to the council and build a really good solid plan. And you can see the fruit of your labor happening, currently happening, and you can actually touch it instead of the housing department. and see it and see the pride that happens.

I also like to thank Deputy City Manager Gina Montes for leading this piece and being in the space that you're in at this time to enjoy it. Because I know it's hard work and sometimes there's never a thank you. So I appreciate all of you and give you gratitude to the work that you've done.

I also want to take a point of pride because I as my tenure ends when I enter and by the time I end there will be 29 housing projects that were built in District 4 That includes Central and Columbus that is in the middle of the process in the sense of there's a hiccup in the health industry, in the health care area, because we wanted to have a health clinic part of that project.

We also part of that project built in a space for fire to be able to have, to be able to store their equipment that is needed at Still Indian or anywhere else in the central Phoenix in order to get to a big fire. So we were creative in that space because we knew what the community wanted. We also were adding a bike area and then I believe electrical vehicles was the next one that was being added.

But that is a project that I would say came from not only community but came from us in the sense to provide, look at city land and look at affordability. Because it's 100% affordability. And I am hoping that that project, because they were looking at the financing and was really doing a great job in finding the financing to close the gap. There is also another opportunity in Montebello. The Montebello property, there's a great opportunity there.

There's a great opportunity to take the ideas of everybody on council of looking at the possibility of middle housing in that space, also the possibility of looking at purchasing in that space, and also looking at the ability to build up and go up and be able to build up. be able to have housing within there. The other request was to be able to save some of the part of the parcel for a future center, possibly a library, a senior center, something where people can gather.

And so I am actually excited at the fact that we have this opportunity to be able to make it happen. And this council supports it. So once again, I just want to thank everybody and thank the constituents who have come and said this is what we need.

And for us in listening and for you guys making it happen and putting it in a plan and you can always drive around the city of Phoenix now and look at the fruit of your labor as you see families, people living, seniors living, LGBTQ living in communities that were built by the city. So thank you. Thank you and congratulations. And a good point about co-locating facilities, you highlighted Helen Drake in the senior center with our housing investments.

It's been exciting to see the city invest home gap financing funds and projects that then have Head Start facilities on the housing project campus. We're really trying to meet people's needs and it's been nice to see us work across departments. So very exciting. Any additional comments before we vote? All right. And with that, we will ask the city clerk to call roll call. Guardado? Yes. Hernandez? Yes. O'Brien? Yes. Pastor? Yes. Robinson? Yes. Stark? Yes. Waring? Yes. Hutch Washington? Yes.

Gallego? Yes. Passes 9-0. Thank you all. Appreciate that. We have unanimously passed the allocation plan and great conversation about what we are doing on housing. Item two is our quarterly public safety reform update. This item continues our commitment to update the community on our reform efforts and I will turn to Assistant City Manager Lori Bays to introduce the item. Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of the council.

Our team is coming down to the table, so I will introduce them and introduce the item as they're taking their seats. This is our second annual report on the public safety improvement plan approved by the city council in September of 2024.

You notice as you see the participants in this presentation that this is a multidisciplinary plan as public safety is not just police and fire it is multidisciplinary and we have taken that approach under your leadership And we are also building upon decades of work between the city and the community on this subject And so today we will provide you a presentation that will outline the progress that we made on the plan as well as how we built upon the work of this council as well as previous councils Additionally we will also provide you our second The second update on the community transparency initiative and the progress that we've made on that initiative that was approved by the council earlier this year.

So with that, I will introduce to you our team. Presenting today we have Executive Assistant Chief Dennis Orender. Chief Giordano is not able to be here today. He's actually providing testimony at the sentencing hearing related to the incident involving Tyler Moldovan. And so we thought it was important for him to be there. Also presenting today is Assistant Chief Jeff Enzo, Assistant Director Jody Wolf, and from the Community Assistance Program, Program Administrator D.C. Ernst.

From the Office of Accountability and Transparency, Director Shannon Yohani. And last but not least, Director of the Office of Homelessness Solutions, Director Rachel Milney. So as you can see, we have an amazing team working on this effort and without further ado, we will get started, starting with Executive Assistant Chief Orender. Thank you, Lori. Thank you, Lori, Assistant City Manager, City Manager, Mayor and City Council.

Our presentation today provides an overview of the community engagement process for the upcoming strategic plan. We will also summarize the progress of the police department over the past two years in the completion of the city council action items of September 2024, along with crime reduction achievements and the implementation of our continuous improvement initiatives.

So our strategic plan will integrate lessons learned from the United States Department of Justice investigation, ensuring that the department's future direction is informed by a clear understanding of past issues and a commitment to meaningful, lasting improvement. The plan will also capture the reforms made by the police department in the past 10 years, again with the guidance and direction of city council.

As you can see on the right side of this slide, under the umbrella of public safety, the plan will be built around the four pillars of continuous improvement, crime reduction, community engagement, and business operations. The strategic plan will also build upon multiple efforts, which includes the approved city council action items from September 2024, along with the continuous improvement plan from 2024, as well as the department's crime reduction plan.

These components reflect the city's ongoing commitment to strengthening public safety and enhancing police services. So to ensure that we are building a strategic plan that is comprehensive and reflective of the priorities and needs of the community, we have sought initial feedback from you, Mayor and City Council, and we are now beginning to seek input from the community and our employees.

This input plays a critical role in shaping our plan for the future, and we will seek that input in a number of ways. The public comment period will open in late November 2026 and will remain open for at least 45 days. We will share a community survey in multiple languages, which will help us understand how residents feel about their interactions with our police department.

We have conducted some community meetings to encourage discussions and help us refine our strategic objectives, and we are looking forward to the opportunities to further engage with our community to build this plan. Our goal is then to publish the plan and promote it to the community in January of 2027. On an annual basis, we will report back to mayor and council on our progress.

Before I hand the presentation over to Assistant Chief Benza and Assistant Director Jody Wolf for an update on public safety initiatives, I just want to say thank you to mayor and council for your continued support, your investment in public safety, and we are extremely grateful for your confidence, And I assure you that we remain committed to building that confidence, earning that confidence every day by serving our community with courage, compassion, integrity, and professionalism.

So at this time I will turn it over to Assistant Chief Jeff Benza. Mayor, members of council, thank you for having us.

In September of 2024, you approved 37 action items, 29 of which are now completed which is almost 80 percent Eight have ongoing elements and eight are still in progress With your support with the community support and our city partners we implemented measurable and meaningful changes to our policies and training with these completion of these items The eight items that are completed have ongoing elements which further emphasize the department commitment to continuous improvement accountability and transparency Updates and projected projected completion dates of the remaining eight items will be detailed in this presentation I'd like to provide a brief overview of our eight complete and ongoing action items.

Starting in the fall of 2024 through the fall of 25, the department achieved completion of many of the action items related to discipline, policy violations, and the requirements of the Professional Standards Bureau with respect to training and investigations.

Examples of performance training include use of force training, even when there is no misconduct identified, The new police jujitsu, time, distance and cover efforts, de-escalation training, and each of these training elements contribute to slowing down incidents where there is a use of force or potential use of force and lowering the level of force that needs to be used.

Clear standards and accountability measures for PSB investigators, supervisors and commanders ensure every policy and law violation is fully investigated. The PSB manual has been updated to outline standards for PSB personnel requiring all potential law and policy violations to be investigated. This incorporates multiple levels of oversight, including referral serious cases to the critical incident review board.

This strengthens transparency, improves consistency and improves public confidence in fair and thorough investigations. PSB investigators are delineating any policy shortfall in a separate but related investigation to correctly capture the misconduct for reporting and for behavior correction. Discipline outcomes are also fully explained.

Should the police chief decide to deviate from recommendations made by the discipline review board in relation to discipline outcome, for example, the number of hours an officer was sustained on a violation or was to serve a suspension, the police chief and city manager must both submit submit and endorse the discipline deviation form stating both the deviation and the reason for the downward deviation.

To summarize our completed activities that have ongoing activities, we continue to review, revise, and align our policies and procedures with the highest standards in law enforcement. Every policy receives an in-depth review at least every two years with an annual review of our core policies, such as our use of force policy and our First Amendment policy. Community members can view all of our policies on our forward-facing platform.

Any substantive changes to our policies will be reviewed by city leadership and the community. We will report substantive policy changes to you, mayor and council, as well as the Civilian Review Board on established timelines.

And our crisis intervention team has received training of both mandatory and discretionary training to both enhance their performance and help us to encourage them to continue training with the goal of better trained crisis intervention officers and to recruit more to the field. In addition to the city council and action items, the department is making efforts to improve in the following areas.

Critical incidents, accountability and transparency, and community engagement and engagement with city and external partners. We continue to focus on compassionate accountability and enforcement in a number of fields, including homelessness and behavioral health. We are focused on bringing the right services to solve the problem, including crisis intervention teams, co-responses with behavioral health teams, and connecting 911 callers with the right resources without police interaction.

We have seen an overall decrease in the number of officer-involved shootings per year. We believe this can be attributed to the following things. The launch of our new use of force policy in February of 25. ICAT training, which is Integrating Communications, Assessment and Tactics training, which is 16 hours for our sworn personnel.

As a refresher, the ICAT training is evidence-based law enforcement training designed to enhance officer and public safety skills through de-escalation, crisis intervention, and critical decision-making skills. We are training our staff in advanced bystandership for law enforcement or ABLE training, which is eight hours for all police department employees. ABLE training empowers officers with intervention skills to prevent misconduct and promote officer health and wellness.

We've increased the use of communication de-escalation techniques. We're training both at the academy for new recruits as well as our now resuming our annual training module for veteran officers and employees. We've expanded the use of our less than lethal tools and patrol. We've included the police jujitsu platform at the academy and in our module. As you can see from this graph, there's a downward trend in officer-involved shootings.

The Department will continue to prioritize training on de-escalation, slowing down incidents, and where appropriate for community safety, using less lethal tools to resolve violent encounters. When it comes to those items that remain in progress, we continue to collect data on stops, searches, and arrests. We collect the age, race, gender, and housing status of those community members with whom we interact.

We will provide annual reporting to the U-Mayor and Council and the Civil Interview Board. The anticipated launch date for this is December of this year. In addition to specific training courses, the department has paid particular attention to developing and evolving the method of training for both basic training and post-critical incident training.

The key areas of development for the Basic Training Academy include creating an adult learning-centered environment, leadership of the focus of creating critical thinkers, decision makers, and good communicators who solve problems. We will utilize the PhoenixU online platform, excuse me, Arizona Post outlines, practice tests, and scenarios to train our officers. All this is combined with a philosophy of coach, train, teach.

Changes were also made to the areas of the post-critical incident training, training, which is intended to improve both individual and organizational readiness for future incidents and to support the mental health of the involved officers. These changes include communication, tactics and our use of force policy, tabletop exercises and training specific to officers and their squads who are involved in critical incidents.

And since early 2026, in partnership with our communications and the community assistance program, CAP is attending our pre-academy for police recruits to train them on the functions they serve and how our officers can use them on calls for service. The department and city continue to support the smart notifications for first responders. Anyone wishing to sign up may use the QR code currently displayed on the screen.

Smart Notifications for First Responders is a voluntary program for city residents to provide the police department with information to help officers who may respond to their home. The goal is to create a pathway for community members or the legal guardian to inform the police department about health concerns, mental health concerns, cognitive issues, communication methods, or other concerns. Since its inception, 37 individuals have signed up for the program.

With regard to our youth interaction policy, the focus of this policy is to help our employees recognize youth development and to engage with our youth accordingly. The draft policy has incorporated public comment, e-learning training is in development, and we anticipate a launch of this policy and its associated training for all employees later this year.

Under the leadership of Councilman Guardado, we will begin using our Youth Advisory Board for programming and policy Criation and a partnership of the parks and recreation and the opposite kind of a billion transparency. We will assist with youth internship program, which have opportunities for our youth for a career to pathway to career as well as college. Our individuals experiencing homelessness policy was developed assistance from the Office of Homeless Solutions.

This policy emphasizes offering services while balancing enforcement and managing the property of those with whom we interact. This draft policy has incorporated public comment, e-learning is in development, and anticipated launch day for this policy and training is later this year. We've also completed the analysis of determining which sworn positions can be better filled by our professional staff.

We will continue to analyze and prioritize those positions that will become professional staff positions. And we've created a better career path for our Communications Bureau staff, which has stabilized our staffing and provides professional development pathways. Earlier this year, Mayor of City Council, you approved the procurement of our early intervention program. We purchased a product from Benchmark called First Sign.

This procurement process has been completed and in partnership with the vendor we're developing the system requirements and the implementation plan. The system is a predictive plan designed to identify employees who might need intervention. It's based on things such as calls for service, the types of call for service, hours worked, and involvement in critical incidents. The intervention system is wellness focused and non-disciplinary.

For those activities specific to training we launched cultural awareness training last year The training remains ongoing We implemented a mandatory procedural justice and customer service training in late March We launched a hearing impaired training for all employees in alignment with you mayor and council and the council vision to become the most accessible city in the nation and to become an organizational certified autism center which has been recently achieved The department launched autism training for all public facing employees in April of 2026.

In addition, we launched mandatory training for protecting and serving those of movement disorders for all employees. This training was developed by the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center. In reviewing and revising our interactions with vulnerable persons, we're taking a multi-strand approach, including the revision of associated policies.

We are rolling out a crisis intervention team incentive pilot program to all precincts with the intent of increasing the number of critical incident training…critical incident trained officers to respond to calls involving crisis intervention. This is to increase the availability of those officers and ensure the right officer responds to the call to solve the problem.

And thanks to new legislation that was passed as part of the most recent legislative session, there's been a change to the rules related to police officers serving behavioral health orders to patients who are already hospitalized and per court order are staying in. This frees up our officers to answer radio calls and to prioritize those crisis intervention calls. And we've recently added a new behavioral health question to the 911 operators.

Crime reduction efforts over the past two years have focused on the crime plan, which uses data-driven activities for crime reduction and crime prevention. We continue to see downward trends for both violent and property crime. We've effectively reduced the backlog for continuing to process sexual assault kits, which has been ongoing for some time. We've been particularly focused on our hiring efforts and have seen a greater number of individuals interested in becoming Phoenix police officers.

This has resulted in our largest class in five years with an anticipated 50 recruits starting in December. We're also continuing our commitment to the 30 by 30 initiative, which is 30% of our recruits being female by 2030. We currently have a class in the academy with 40% female recruits, and the average at the academy is 24%. We've seen the implementation of major systems to support policing and the community.

With the support of Councilman O'Brien, we implemented the Call Triage Program, which has alleviated 10 to 15 percent of calls needed to be answered by a live operator. We've also implemented a new records management system for the department, which documents all of our activity conducted by our officers in the field.

With the support of you, Mayor and Council, the city manager, the department is also benefiting from new facilities, Including the opening of the new police headquarters, the launch of the real-time crime intelligence center, improvements to our communications and radio dispatch facilities, and in sponsorship of employee wellness equipment from the police foundation. These new facilities are designed to enhance services and to better support our employees who serve the community.

Crime reduction efforts over the past two years have consisted of data-driven activities on crime reduction and crime prevention. They've identified and addressed the quality of life issues with partners, for example, the Office of Homeless Solutions, Community Assistance Program, and Phoenix Cares.

They've involved departmental collaboration between patrol, investigation, and technical services to develop plans to have the most impact to crime hotspots, including the disruption of youth violence at parties. And they've emphasized the vital engagement between the police department and the community to understand and address concerns that impact their neighborhoods and their businesses.

These efforts have been supported by our technology tools, drones, crime gun intelligence tools, rapid DNA, shot detection, and the real-time operation centers which fuse these technology tools with traditional crime fighting to impact neighborhoods in a positive way. The table you see on the screen is a uniform crime reporting from 2020 to current. This table provides a crime rates per 100,000 residents for both violent crimes and property crimes.

The overall trends we observed in Phoenix mirror those observed at the national level with crime rates decreasing year over year. From 2024 to 2025, violent crime has decreased 13.5% and property crime 14.1%. In this graph, we see a comparison across county years for the timeframe of January to August, so we can see how we're doing in 2026 since we don't yet have a full year of data.

As you can see, we continue to trend downward in both violent and property crime, and this is in comparison to the same timeframe over the past six years. I will now pass the presentation over to Assistant Director Wolfe.

Thank you Chief Benza Mayor and members of council As we shared with you previously we implemented our new records management system that we went live with just over a year ago in September of 2025 That transition was completed successfully and we have since then focused on optimizing the system and for 2027 we have planned future upgrades With the new records management system, we're able to participate in the National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS.

The system allows us to report crime in a modern way in compliance with the Federal Bureau of Investigations requirements. And as a result of the new records management system that Mayor and Council approved, we were able to achieve our NIBR certification in January of this year. This is a huge achievement for the department and comes after sharing three consecutive months of data with the Arizona Department of Public Safety, who was our state system for reporting crime statistics.

The system also allows us to provide enhanced data reporting at the request of counsel for key metrics such as race, ethnicity, age, gender, and housing status across the following different types of reports that include adult arrests, juvenile referrals, calls for service, time spent on calls, and self-initiated activities.

And then in the spring of this year we also added adult bookings for misdemeanor cases and citations in lieu of detention in support of the Community Transparency Initiative. One of the other tools that we use is called Community Connect and this is for community engagement directly with those individuals who request service from us. This is an innovative public safety engagement solution and allows us to automatically send updates in real time to those who request service from us.

For example, if you call 911 during an emergency, once you engage with our operators, we're able to send you real time messaging via email or text messaging that we've received your call, we've dispatched it, the officer will be there in 30 minutes, and so on, through the entire We are able to do this in multiple languages as well as provide extended support for victims beyond the initial response to their call through the victim portal.

As we've also shared previously, we updated our 911 answering protocol in December of 2025. And we now ask callers, do you need police, fire, or behavioral health? The purpose of doing that with supportive counsel is to connect resources, the right resources with people when they're facing an emergency.

If they respond that they would like behavioral health, we're then able to transfer them to a behavioral health specialist, either through our partners in the fire department with the behavioral health unit, that DC EARTS will share information update with you in just a few minutes, as well as our contracted crisis counselors.

We implemented that policy or protocol update in December of 2025, and for the first time ever, we saw the number of calls transferred to the behavioral health unit to our partners in the fire department exceed the number of calls transferred to our crisis counselors. This is a significant involvement in our practice as we continue to focus on connecting people with the right resources.

As you see on this graph, that trend has continued for the majority of 2026, with a yellow line indicating the number of calls transferred toward the behavioral health unit exceeding the number of calls transferred to our crisis counselors. You will note that we see a decrease in September. It is too early to know if this is an anomaly or something else that we're observing.

What we have done is continue to work with DC's team on providing reminders and updates through squad briefings of our communications and emergency answering operators. And with that, Mayor and Council, I'll transfer the presentation to DC. Thank you, Jody, Mayor, Councilmembers. Thank you for having us today. Today I just want to give you an update on the Community Assistance Program and specifically the Behavioral Health Units.

We are currently at nine Behavioral Health Units staffing 24 hours a day and responding to the city 24 hours a day. We reached that target earlier this year.

As mentioned before, this graph shows the total number of calls that are transferred from PD communications to one of our behavioral health supervisors who then helps triage the call and make sure a behavioral health unit is sent out As Jody stated we have noticed a decline recently and we are looking at impacts on why that is happening We have a supervisor from our program embedded in PD communications to help identify calls that can be transferred to us not only for our behavioral health team but also for our crisis response team as well as we continuing to do education with PD communications and are going to their meetings to provide additional education on calls that we can accept and respond to This slide represents the total number of calls the behavioral health units go out on.

It differs from the number of calls that are transferred and the fact that PD, once they are on scene, can identify that a behavioral health unit is needed and they can request this or FHIR can also do that. And finally, our behavioral health units, which are staffed utilizing a crisis intervention specialist and a peer support specialist, may stop throughout the community as they're driving around if they identify someone they would like to engage with.

This slide represents a snapshot of our call volume in September. Of the 942 calls that we were dispatched out on, 720 of those responses were singular unit responses, which met the criteria that mayor and council set of trying to avoid police and fire from having to respond out on calls that are basic that are mental health based or substance use based. So we're meeting 76% of our total calls are just our units going out and not having to engage fire PD to resolve those needs.

This slide represents our goal of responding with under 25 minutes. Our units are unique in the fact that they are not like first responder units. We do not have lights and sirens and they have to respond using the normal speed limits. As well as they don't have first due areas. So you could have someone in South Phoenix respond to a call up in North Phoenix if that is the only unit available to respond.

And we are able to keep our response times staying within the speed limit to under 25 minutes. Finally, this slide represents how we're doing as far as staffing. We're currently at 86 percent staffing of all of our specialists, supervisor, and coordinator positions. We are also continuing to work with our peer partners to hire additional peers. I'm excited to report that our next hiring event is starting tomorrow.

So anybody who is interested in applying for a specialist position, there is a QR code on the screen. You'll be looking for crisis intervention specialist position. That position will remain open until November 11th. And with that, I will turn it over to Shannon. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of council, and community members.

Though it's been just a few months since I was here last to share about OAT, I'm always excited to re-review what we've been doing since that time, and I'm excited to talk to you about the milestones and achievements we continue to reach. As always, our team continues to show our dedication to our five Rs, reach, report, review, resolve, and repair.

As far as our goal of report, post hotline implementation, which is one of mayor and council's dedicated directives from September of 2024, one of the 37, was for the city to develop a dedicated hotline for complaints and concerns regarding the police department. As part of the collaboration between the police department and OAT, what we did was agree that all non-urgent or emergent complaints would be directed to the Office of Accountability and Transparency for response and intake.

So as a result of that, just in these past few years, you've seen a significant increase in the number of contacts that members of the community are having with OAT. Our dedicated review team has stepped up to take a 2,000% increase in inquiries and complaints since our first full year with staff in 2023. Inquiries alone just in the first three months of 2026 have exceeded all of 2025 by 3,000%.

An important note is these increases reflect all contacts with OAT, not an overall increase in police complaints. As part of the hotline and portal implementation that I discussed, that routing process is likely the result of this increase in contacts with OAT. The majority of the increase in contacts for both complaints and inquiries reflects that new role, as well as the city's and the residents' increasing knowledge of OAT in the community. Review reports and tracking.

The OAT team is currently reviewing 175 department administrative investigations and the balance of our caseload still runs approximately 85 to 90% of our mandatory caseload and so then 15 to 10% are discretionary caseload. As of today, we have published 66 reports And by the end of this week we will be at 69. We've made 31 independent recommendations across 44 reports and the department has agreed with 29 of those 31 recommendations.

Two of our newest out recommendations came from the same case which was released a couple months ago. The first is to amend arrest and detention tactics and operations orders to recognize the impacts of extreme heat and surface temperatures on detained or arrested subjects. The second from that same report was to educate department employees on how to recognize, respond to, and relay the signs and symptoms of heat-related illness.

Our other two both also stem from the same report and have carried across reports since these have been issued. The first is conduct interviews of involved officers in all animal shootings, and the second was to implement standard response to loose animal calls. All four of these recommendations resulted in an agreement from the department with implementation dates that range over the next 90 days to six months. Resolve and repair mediation.

We have this year doubled the number of mediations we have done over all the years prior. We've completed 17 mediations to date. 78 is a goal. 17 mediations completed to date. Two of those have been individual officer mediations. The remaining 15 are department level mediations. There are currently 65 complaints that have come in that are with the police department for review that have been approved on the OAT side for eligibility. We have one scheduled currently and we continue to work.

Our mediation director meets with the police department weekly to review those complaints and determine eligibility. REACH, REFORM RISING. You've heard many times from me about this particular one. This is a very exciting one for our team. We, as you know, the last time I was here, we talked about the intergovernmental agreement to put in place with the Phoenix Union High School District.

That was put in place by the Mayor and Council on August 26th, and we got started right away with doing recruitment activities at South Mountain High School. So we are just completing our first cohort there of the official launch of the program. Graduation is next week. We are very excited to see what these kids present as their community action initiatives and we'll be compiling a report for you all to be able to see what those initiatives are at the conclusion of this cohort.

We are explaining to additional high schools in the spring of 2027, including Maryvale High School. We've been in contact with the school's principal as well as the district to establish that and begin our recruitment efforts there. So this cohort that's happening this year at South Mountain is 26 students. They range from freshmen to seniors.

They've had topics and presentations regarding immigration, civic engagement, release and reentry, mental health issues, higher education, and employment opportunities. We're looking forward to continuing to partner with various city agencies as well as District 5 in those pipelines as well as the Youth Advisory Board and building ways to greater connection within the city. As always, members of the public can contact out by phone or email 24-7.

We can take voicemails, all staff will call back within 24 hours, and we do intakes in person at City Hall between 830 and 430. If there's any members of the public who have something that they'd like to address without today, please see me after the presentation. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. The Office of Homeless Solutions recognized four years of operations this summer, so I wanted to take a few moments to reflect on where we started, what we've done, and where we're going.

So first, if we take a look at our historical point in time data from 2015 to 2022, which really led the city council and mayor to create the Office of Homeless Solutions, we saw a rising number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in this time, and very disturbingly, we saw a decrease in the number of places available for individuals to find for resources. We had a decrease in shelter at the time.

Since our creation in 2022, we've done many things, but I wanted to highlight six very high profile accomplishments. First of all, the very large encampment that was around what was then the Human Services Campus. At one time, up to 1,000 individuals were living in that area. We decommissioned that encampment in a humane manner, offering every individual an indoor place to go, with 83 percent of those individuals accepting that placement.

We have also focused very heavily on geographically dispersing shelter throughout the city.

For many years, the only place individuals could access resources and shelter was at the Key Campus in downtown Phoenix, And now we've spent many, many of your resources geographically dispersing those shelters, having shelter in places where people need it most We also worked very hard on reducing barriers to entry to shelter so making sure every project we open has the ability to accept pets partners and access to property storage We have built a very diverse outreach team.

Each one of you has a dedicated homelessness liaison for your district. We also have liaisons that target only encampments in parks, in streets, and in alleys. We've really diversified outreach throughout the city and have increased our internal capacity in that manner. We started with nine individuals in the Office of Homeless Solutions and we are now at 36, the vast majority of which are working out in the field every day connecting people with resources to help end their homelessness.

Community Court, which was obviously a multi-department project, but this project is really working to help individuals who are cycling through our municipal court system not only address their judicial issues, but also end their homelessness and get resources in that court system. And we've really moved from a funder of services to a direct service delivery provider. We continue to fund the amazing nonprofit work that occurs in our community, but we are also now the owner of shelters.

We are operating them. We are out in the community conducting outreach ourselves as a city. And to show you what we've done, this is since 2022 when the Office of Homeless Solutions was created to now our point in time data, where you can see in blue our sheltered number has increased dramatically with the help of the resources that you've dedicated to that. And we've also seen a reduction in the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness.

And just to highlight those shelter numbers that we've created since 2022, in total when the project, the one project we have left under construction right now, which is a family project at the Salvation Army, we will have created over 1,400 new shelter beds that did not exist before the Office of Homeless Solutions was created in 2022. And now where we're going. In February of 2026, you all unanimously approved our strategies to address homelessness plan, which focuses on five key tenets.

Prevention, neighborhood safety, coordination, housing, and system accountability. The plan goals are to decrease the number of people who experience homelessness through prevention, to decrease the number of people in a sheltered or unsheltered situation, reduce the length of time someone spends in a shelter or an unsheltered situation, and of course increase housing for individuals exiting homelessness, and to increase the awareness and the effectiveness of our services.

This year we've had some very specific priorities out of that plan. Housing, I'm excited to say our master leasing program will house our first residents this week, so we're very happy to get that program off the ground. We also have a new development we've been working on for the last year that will open in early 2027 in District 5. La Perla will be 126 units of senior housing for seniors exiting homelessness.

We've also instituted a rapid exit program for individuals in shelter who just needed a light touch support who could exit shelter rapidly with a little bit of resource. Heat relief. We just wrapped up our 2026 heat relief and at our four extended hour OHS operated sites we saw record numbers of individuals. We are looking for a permanent building for future years. We've been leasing the site at 20 West Jackson which has been wonderful but looking for a permanent home for that.

Workforce services. We are really hoping to have equal workforce services at all of our shelters. Currently, we have diversified resources and really trying to increase those. And last but not least, shelter effectiveness. We're looking to provide consistent and effective resources at all city-funded shelters. Last month we did launch a new OHS data dashboard in order to provide additional transparency on what the Office of Homeless Solutions is doing and what our funded nonprofits are up to.

This screenshot shows clients served in emergency shelter for individuals, family, rapid re-housing, safe outdoor space, and street outreach programs. But this is just one of many new data dashboards and you can scan our QR code if you want to access the full dashboard. At these quarterly updates, we always provide you an update on our property storage program.

As you know, when we were created, we had a mission to not only make sure we had property storage at all of our shelter sites, but also create a program and a process to attend to unattended property that we come across when addressing encampments.

We now have a full program to do so leaving notification letting someone know when we are going to take their property and store it and leaving a second notification when we have stored that property so people can connect with us to obtain that property and allow us another additional outreach at that time Today we've stored 351 containers since the program started. We have connected 41 containers back with their owners and 48 are currently being stored.

We also continue to partner with Phoenix Police at our two shelter sites that have a no wrong door policy, the Safe Outdoor Space, as well as Phoenix Navigation Center. We've had 156 public safety referrals to the Safe Outdoor Space. The vast majority of those come from the Phoenix Police Department with 138, but also from adult probation, park rangers, DPS, and fire. And then at Phoenix Navigation Center, we've also had referrals from police and fire or CAP.

And finally, we continue to coordinate our services with Phoenix Police when needed when addressing encampments. And as Chief Benza mentioned earlier in the presentation, OHS is working closely with PD as they finalize their policy, specifically as it relates to property and adapting our current policies in order to meet their needs. I will now turn it back over to Lori Beggs, City Manager. Thank you, Rachel.

The final portion of our presentation is related to the Community Transparency Initiative update. This is our second update to the council since the initiative was adopted in March of this year. As you know, residents throughout Phoenix have shared concerns about how federal law enforcement activities are impacting the community. And on March 25th, Mayor and Council took action to approve the Community Transparency Initiative or CTI.

CTI directed staff in six specific areas and required staff to provide updates at least every quarter, which is what we're doing today. The first directive was to document and preserve information on federal immigration enforcement activities within Phoenix City limits that may violate criminal statutes and or individual civil rights with the intent to investigate crimes committed by federal agents who act outside the scope of their duties.

The update on this is that we have received 30 reports to date. 17 of those cases have been routed to the special investigations detail of the police department for further investigation. 13 of those were non-criminal comments or complaints submitted to the portal. And on the screen, we do have the link to the portal itself. The second directive was to collect data on impacts to city services as a result of federal immigration enforcement.

The update is that we have been collecting data on staff time and dollars spent related to the initiative. So far we have spent approximately $73,000 in staff time across the fire department, OAT, and the police department. In addition to that, we have also incurred an estimated $65,000 in CTI related costs. This includes the cost related to sign installation, media activities, and training development.

Additionally, related to directive number two, the Community and Economic Development Department developed a tool called the Phoenix Business Impact Questionnaire. This is a questionnaire available to community members to assess impacts on small businesses and local economy and our local economy. It connects businesses with resources and support.

So if a small business is impacted by federal law enforcement activities, they can fill out this questionnaire and request to receive resources from CED and also document the impacts to their business. The third directive that was provided to staff by Mayor and Council was to identify potential partnerships and volunteer opportunities to facilitate the initiative. We have been collaborating with the International Rescue Committee for employer-focused training.

That training is scheduled to be available by December of this year. We have also had ongoing collaboration with a variety of community groups and advocates, many of which are here today, to support affected residents and businesses. Directive number four was to ensure that we had multilingual communication channels across city services and resources. We developed a CTI webpage as well as a Know Your Rights specific webpage, which is offered in multiple languages.

We also developed an administrative regulation, which I'll talk about in just a minute, that has also been translated into multiple languages.

And we have been sharing materials throughout the community through city facilities and through our partners to ensure the community is aware of information and what their rights are We have just recently made an addition to that communication by posting posters in English and Spanish in Sky Harbor Airport both at the information counters and in the restrooms I was traveling this weekend and I was pleased to see those posters posted when I was in Terminal 3 so that a new addition to our communication plan and we have also added relevant data to our webpage which was mentioned by Assistant Director Wolf earlier.

We are on a monthly basis posting misdemeanor arrests and citation in lieu of detention data on the website. Directive number five was to implement training for city employees who may encounter federal enforcement actions including protocols related to administrative and judicial warrants. We have developed two CTI training courses specific to city personnel, which does include volunteers, interns, and contractors under city supervision.

We initiated the first training, which was focused on responding to federal law enforcement encounters during city work time. That training is now 99.7% complete as of October 21st. And the second training that we launched was related to educating city employees on resources available to the community. So helping them to understand the resources so that they can direct community members to the CTI Complete Portal as well as the Know Your Rights resources.

And that training is 97% complete as of October 21st. The final directive that mayor and council made to staff was to develop options for the council to consider related to outside organizations staging in our parks, preserves, and other city property.

What the council ultimately decided was to direct staff to approve an administrative regulation on the use of city property for civil law enforcement, which was published and distributed to City of Phoenix employees in March immediately following that meeting. And I'm happy to say that we have now posted 446 signs across city facilities, focusing on housing, human services, library, neighborhood services, parks and recreation, and public transit facilities.

You can see the language of the sign on the screen. And that concludes our presentation. We're happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you so much. We'll begin with Councilman Robinson. Thank you very much. First of all, I would thank the City Manager's Office, Police Department, Fire Department, Office of Homeless Solutions, and Office of Accountability and Transparency. This is a ton of work. They are moving in the right direction.

Clearly, at our, the Mayor and the Council's request at our direction, they're really doing a great job. I have a couple of questions, a couple of comments, and a couple of requests. I normally don't like to take up a whole lot of time, but in this particular case, I think it's kind of important. And I'll kind of go in order. I want to start with, I think Chief Benza was talking a little bit about public safety improvement updates, what we've completed and what's ongoing.

And he talked a little bit about discipline outcomes and investigations and such. Can someone take a couple of minutes and maybe it would be Chief Orenda or Chief Benza, one or the other. Could someone give us a brief explanation on why some investigations, especially use of force investigations, why they take the amount of time that they do take to investigate?

Because that is one of the concerns that we hear over and over and over again from folks about the length of time that it takes from the time an officer is involved in a use of force incident until you really hear the nuts and bolts about what really happened.

Mayor, members of council, Councilman Robinson, the reason these investigations do take time is we do take necessary steps to ensure that the investigation is done thoroughly and complete, And we are to be able to held accountable for it later on with transparency. Measures in place. We do focus on getting investigations done more quickly.

That's been one of the discussions that Chief Giordano, Chief Orner and I have had about getting investigations handled more quickly for the sake of the officers and for the sake of the community. However, we don't want to go too fast and miss something in the investigation. With respect to use of force incidents, we have our force evaluation review unit who reviews level ones, twos and threes.

for our investigative purposes to ensure that the actions are within the training of our academy and within our policy. Any violations of policy that are noted are shipped over to the Professional Standards Bureau, who will review that. In the instance of critical incidents, the Force Evaluation Review Unit makes a review of that and they provide that to our Professional Standards Bureau, who also does a review.

That includes a review of the criminal investigation, interviews with the involved officers. That is then packaged together and then presented to up the chain for review to make sure that the document is prepared appropriately. And then it's presented to the critical incident review board for their review. That requires some some time to get that the board together to hear the the case.

With that, that's a presentation by our professional standards bureau who does a PowerPoint presentation about the critical incident. The officer or his or or her labor representative can make a statement on their behalf. Once that is complete, the board makes a recommendation. The board chair forwards that recommendation to the police chief, and the police chief makes an ultimate decision on what happens with that, if that's in or outside of policy reference that critical incident.

Chief Pinza, thank you very much for that, and that's a great explanation, but let me put it a different way. And I'm looking for just, you know, more than nuts and bolts. Officer A is involved in a shooting tonight, let's just say. It's a use of force incident. It's an officer involved shooting. Why can't we hear more about it on Wednesday?

Just, you know, Chief Orendor or Chief Benza, I mean, if it happens tonight, why can't we hear about it the next day or the day after or something like that? Can you explain to us why that's not That doesn't happen? Yes, Mayor, members of council, Councilman Robinson, great question. So in that example, if we were to have an officer involved shooting tonight, that is a criminal investigation that has to happen before the administrative investigation happens.

So the administrative investigation gets put on pause until the criminal investigation is completed by an outside entity, which is our Department of Public Safety. Once the criminal is completed, it gets forwarded to the county attorney's office for a review, and once that review is complete, PSB will finalize or finish whatever steps are necessary for the administrative investigation.

And then it follows the steps that Chief Benza talked about, where it will get forwarded to a use of force board, or critical incident review board, as we call it today. And then that process goes to the police chief for a final determination as to whether or not it's in or out of policy.

So the short answer is sometimes we have to pause for the criminal investigation to be completed and forwarded to the county attorney's office and wait for their evaluation before we finish the administrative investigation. Thank you. That's exactly what I was looking for.

You know, I do understand, obviously, that there is a lot that goes into it, but sometimes I find myself explaining to people that you can't have a rush to judgment on either side, and you have to wait and get that information. Thank you for that very much. I truly appreciate it. Let me move on to another question and it actually comes down to the, or was it, a little, some of the work that's going on with CIT and such.

I just got a notification a short time ago about an incident where our officers were able to talk somebody out of an act of suicide. They climbed up on a water tower or something of some sort and were threatening to jump off, and the police officers, CIT trained folks were able to get out there, make the contact with the individual, and bring it to a successful conclusion, meaning that he came down and they're seeking to give him help.

I mention that because if there's one thing I would request in our next briefing on this public safety presentation is can we hear more about those types of things? Because I know it happens more often than not. We have a tendency to hear about the negatives, and we should, not saying we shouldn't, but there are also times like this, and this incident is just a couple of hours old, that we should hear about with regularities. That's more of a request.

Another point I wanted to make, sort of a comment more than anything else, when it comes to our youth interactions policies, and I think Councilman Gargado may have a couple things to say about that, but I will say that the more interaction we have with our youth, and this goes back some time, it truly, you can see it in a lot of things, in our crime statistics, in surveys that we've had with the public and such, the more of, The more interactions we have with our youth the better off we are as a law enforcement agency and people understanding why the police department does what the police department does And same needs to be said that you know the youth have a lot of suggestions as to how we at times can do our jobs better and that can be taken into account So the work that Councilwoman Gervato and folks are doing I just want to make note of that Another thing I want to talk about is behavioral health I know D Ernst and folks have talked about all of that One thing I wanted to make mention of earlier this summer I was invited to the American Arbitration Association had a conference It was entitled First Responders What works best for first responders, alternatives for first responders.

And I will tell you, a lot of things that are being done in Phoenix were talked about at this particular conference. And I know several folks have reached out to D.C. since that time. So, D.C., thank you and the fire department for being so responsive in that regard. It was very helpful. And I keep hearing from folks really envious of what is being done in Phoenix. and it's great that we're still moving forward in a lot of those areas.

And the last couple things I had is when we talk about public safety improvements and updates and then back to crime reduction efforts and such, people are concerned, and again justifiably so, about the technology that is in use. G4Rinder, could you briefly explain when it comes to technology, how often, how, well, what's the process?

If it's somebody that we are looking for, or is not a process that is used, let's say there is a need to maybe track somebody, do something along those lines, somebody who may be involved in significant criminal activity, and we need to follow up or follow somebody or something along those lines, can you give us an example of the supervisory approval process that something like that has to go through? Mayor, members of the council, Councilman Robinson, great question.

The department that we are looking for that we are known to have committed specifically like a violent act. The detectives don't have the autonomy just to make decisions and there is a lot of communication that happens up to the chain of command, certainly up to the sergeant, oftentimes up to the lieutenant. And depending on what technology is requested or needed will depend on how high that decision needs to go.

Or sometimes even with use of force, what type of, as we saw in 2020 during the protest, we made some changes to certain types of force or certain types of tools that we will use, have to go all the way up to the police chief as well. And if I could go back to your first question, I did also want to add that we are still adhering to our 14-day protocol, our transparency protocol, when it comes to critical incidents.

And we share as much information as we can so that we don't compromise the internal or the criminal investigation that the Department of Public Safety does. So I just wanted to mention that we still complete the critical incident briefing videos through the Public Affairs Bureau. Yeah, and thank you for that. Thank you for answers to both questions. And going back to my first question, that is very important. And I skipped over that as well. Thank you for that.

The next, I think it's more of a comment on the next thing, on public safety improvements. Jody Wolf talked a little bit about the community engagement and the programs or the process that's in place now for automatic updates to people who call in for calls for service. One of our neighbors had a situation with somebody who was creeping around the neighborhood and got into their backyard and doing one of those things. And the officers were dispatched.

They heard all about it each and every step of the way. And I got to tell you, it made the neighbors feel so much more comfortable about what was going on. And it turned out to be innocently enough, but it was just one of those things that they were really happy with the amount of service they received from the police. Police Department. So those points that you made, Jody, I think have a big impact on people. So thank you very much for that.

And the very last question I have, I believe it goes back to, and I'm just flipping through the presentation real quick, so if you just bear with me, Shannon, for you, and with regard to the reports and tracking of departments, you know, your department has come up with 31 recommendations and the police department agreed to 29 of them. The two recommendations that weren't agreed upon. Shannon, can you explain a little bit about the process that you guys went through in the discussion?

I believe it was probably with Assistant Chief Benza, but can you take us through what that looks like? Your department makes a recommendation and for whatever reason, the police department may not agree with it. Can the two of you, one way or another, give us a brief explanation on how to do that?

How that goes about Mayor members of council Councilman Robinson Yes absolutely So we draft our reports and we send a draft version of the report to the police department two weeks in advance The purpose of that is for a factual review and to help us have an understanding if there gaps that we may have in something So we don always get the full scope of information necessarily in our initial records requests.

So sometimes there may be things that we didn't receive that may be missing that Chief Benza can take a look at and say, hey, I found this particular thing. Or it may be we got everything and we just have differences of opinion on the way something might work.

But what we do is we have a a conversation to make sure that we have an understanding because how we communicate as civilians, which is probably one of the biggest challenges with anybody that interacts with law enforcement, no offense to law enforcement, is law enforcement has a typical perspective or viewpoint that sometimes can make it hard for them to understand things from a civilian perspective.

And so I may write something that makes a lot of sense to me, my team may write something that makes a lot of sense to me, but when it goes over to PD, they have implementation questions, they have questions about specific terminology or things that maybe aren't in their world, but are more in the civilian world. So we have those conversations to make sure that we understand the intent of the recommendation. To the extent there's disagreement, and the system to this point has worked itself out.

Those two recommendations where we had disagreement were in our first year publication. I believe that those were reports that were issued in April or July of 2024. We haven't had any disagreement since that point. And so one of the examples I think I gave before was We had made as part of a recommendation in that report that related to an officer-involved shooting of a dog, my team had made a recommendation that all patrol cars be equipped with snares.

And so in a conversation with Chief Benza, we talked about the practicality of that. Is that a useful tool? Is that something that's actually going to improve? What would the implementation of that look like? And as we had that conversation, it wasn't a realistic thing that would actually address the issue that we had with it, what had happened in that instance.

and so we removed that specificity but we still had recommendations where you still got that standard protocol for loose animal calls which we had made the recommendation of snares we took the snares part out so that's really that conversation it's not PD influencing it's it's sending them out so we can get a better understanding and there have been times where the department has said we still don't like it and we said okay and then we sort of you know that's what the way the system is designed we're not supposed to agree on everything but ultimately I think when we and we reach that understanding of what intent is because we do all have the shared intent of improving community and public safety, we end up getting to that agreement.

Okay, thank you very much for that. I do appreciate it. I think it's important for folks to know, you know, 31 recommendations, 29 were adopted, two weren't. Why those two weren't adopted. And you explained it perfectly. My very last question, like I said, I didn't really, I don't normally like to take up too much time, but I really appreciate all the work that's gone into this whole thing.

And Rachel did not want to leave out the Office of Homeless Solutions, and it's more a comment than anything else. You know, in District 6, we rely on you guys a whole lot because we get a ton of calls on folks who are experiencing homelessness in parts of the district who are out and about. Rachel, at your office, and I've told you this before, you guys respond all the time.

I follow up on a lot of those requests that we get or a lot of those calls that we get that day or the following day, and they're usually taken care of. So thank you very much for all that you guys do, being on top of it. And you're, you know, the professionalism of your office is probably, it is top notch. There's no probably about it. And with that, Merrick, thank you for the time. I know I took too much time, but I think it was really important.

all the hard work that went into all this to Lori, to the police department, to the fire department, to the office of homeless solutions, and to the office of accountability and transparency. Thank you guys for all that you're doing. It is great work. I know there are those who feel that maybe it's not enough, maybe we should be doing more. I won't necessarily disagree with them, but what you're doing is great. So thank you very much, Mayor. Thank you for the time. Thank you.

Shall we go to public comment? All right. We'll begin with Jeremy Healthcott followed by Thomas Claiborne. Forgive me for taking a little walk. I wasn't expecting to be called back quickly. Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council, thank you, Jeremy Healthcott. I am here this afternoon specifically I want to address some things regarding CTI and what's really I think a robust amount of activity that has come out of it.

What I about to say I don say pejoratively it an objective fact We are a big city We are run by a large bureaucracy Things take time They don always happen quickly And when we started this CTI process that was a genuine concern We dealing with events that are happening in real time on our streets in our neighborhoods This isn something that could languish for years or even months and I really want to offer appreciation to Assistant City Manager Bays, to Executive Assistant Chief Orender, to Chief Giordano, for shepherding us through a process that has moved quickly and has been responsive and active in ways that I think are pleasantly unusual for a city of this size.

And I want to encourage every member of this council to please continue your support for staff and for community in our collective efforts to do this. It just as an example, and I want to give fair credit where it's due to my partner in crime at the nonprofit Mandy's project, its founder Samantha Cooley was the originator of the idea of creating signage and deploying information at the airport. It was suggested to the city manager's office through the assistant city manager. It's already done.

That was a matter of weeks ago that that idea was first floated and we're already seeing it implemented. So again, I encourage each of you to please continue to support this program. Your support is appreciated. We're doing good things and I thank you. Thank you. Thomas is next, followed by Omar Thomas. So Thomas Claiborne and then Omar Thomas. Thomas Claiborne, could you sort of indicate so we know you're coming? I do not see Thomas Claiborne. It would be Omar followed by Joel. Is Omar Thomas?

Okay, great. First of all, excuse my lack of etiquette. I'm not well versed in these types of environments. That's very comfortable for me, but good afternoon, honorable mayor, members of the city council, chief of police, and everybody present. My name is Omar Thomas. I stand before you today, not simply as a concerned citizen, but as a man who spent 35 years incarcerated. I was locked up in 1988. I was recently released last year, September 22, 2025.

The terminology that I've heard today is familiar. 1988, 1989, and 1990 is like yesterday for me. So too is the terminology that I hear today. The technology has advanced. The policies have been rewritten, but my question is, has the culture really changed? In 1988, 1989, and 1990, law enforcement agencies across the country were discussing professionalism, similar to today. They were discussing training, accountability, community relations, and public safety. I was four decades ago.

Today I'm hearing those same arguments. I'm also hearing the same promises. De-escalation, use of force reform, improve supervision, transparency, community trust. These are important objectives. I acknowledge the work being done. Thank you. But after nearly four decades of the pandemic, Joel Cornejo followed by Richard Vanek. Joel Cornejo-Jeda Good afternoon, my name is Joel Cornejo-Jeda, organizer with Semillas, Arizona. Lead with pride, you say. Pride in what? The killings of our relatives?

You come here talking about the future of public safety, but safety for who? Because for our people, your vision looks more like guns, more surveillance, and more ways to criminalize our existence. This government created the conditions. Our communities are struggling to survive. Families cannot afford rent. Children are going hungry. Our shelter relatives are dying in the streets while this city owns vacant properties. And your solution is more policing.

You want us to take food out of our children's mouths to buy more bullets. You cannot shoot poverty away, and you cannot arrest homelessness out of existence. You criminalize our survival and then arm the institution sent to enforce that criminalization. Our neighborhoods are not hunting grounds and our people are not your prey. When we hear your sirens we don't feel safe, we pray.

We pray another father isn't killed, another mother makes a home, and another child doesn't have to bury someone they love. And you have the audacity to come before us asking for more power. Council, don't pretend these decisions are beyond your control. Every dollar, every policy, and every expansion of police authority is choice you are responsible for. You cannot keep creating the conditions that destroy our communities and then conquer the criminalization of our survival public safety.

We demand no more police expansion, no more surveillance, and real independent accountability, housing, health care, and resources for our people. We are not asking you to make more we're not asking you to make policing look better. We are demanding that you stop treating our lives as expendable, our children deserve food, not bullets, and our relatives deserve housing, not handcuffs, and our people deserve to live, not just survive your policies.

Under this chief's leadership, we've seen some of the most bloodiest years in police history in the country. So council members, keep this in mind as you continue to approve more funding for this department instead instead of putting more money in our people. Thank you. Richard is next, followed by Ryan Cutter. Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus, Yeshua's precious name, open everybody's eyes and ears so we can be of one accord today.

The plan and competence of denying basic assistance is fully documented. 15 months stuck in the cycle. Only because I was at a council meeting twice, I was given a bed. And it's actually just a tent. Alright? Proof of forced psychosis and cash for cots. The owner, Tripp Rivera, who owns Rivera Properties, his mom, Denise, works for Rudy, the man who stole my phone. I'm here to report widespread municipal code violations and tax evasion of a group home at 3643 West Maricopa Street in Phoenix.

Worse yet, the property manager, William Breeden, stole my social security card and opened a mortgage. Here's the proof right here. Now, he has a mortgage at 1507 Weir Avenue. When confronted regarding this matter, he went and made physical threats of violence and firearm violence. When I tried to report it, these crimes to the Phoenix police, they let me wait for over two hours.

Under USC 34-12601, the Department of Justice must investigate this police department for a pattern of practice of conduct that deprives individuals of their rights under the United States Constitution. I then attempted to report this to officers bureau that was in front of CAS who refused to take action. The attorney's office, attorney general's office also failed to take my report.

To document systematic failure, I have reported the mail to the mail that he stole in my name to the postmaster general. That's the only way I could get this reported. The total inability to report crimes combined with the persistent fear of death and directly mirrors the transnational repression that I came here last time and talked about. The rat experiments using humans that they have out there in front of CAS, Governor Hobbs is well aware of.

She has a master's degree in social behavior and she knows about Dr. Calhoun's experiments that I'm a part of. If you see me dead, you know what happened. Alright? And yeah, I lost a third or fourth year of marriage because of this transnational crime. Ryan is next, followed by Lee Ellis. Excuse me for being upset.

Council my name is Ryan Cutter I here as a leader for the Phoenix Metro Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America but more importantly I here as a resident of District 8 and a born and raised Phoenician On January 26th of this year, Christian Diaz Rendon was at home with his family when a man entered their home and began shooting his gun, striking one of Christian's sons, Damian, in the leg. Christian bravely disarmed and restrained the man and called the police.

Christian's wife, Mariana, recounted the moment when Phoenix PD officer Jason Valenzuela arrived as follows. Quote, The one on the floor is the attacker, and the one holding him is my husband. Be careful. He didn't give me any time to explain anything. He shot him without mercy. He didn't say, raise your hands. He didn't say, move away from him. He didn't say anything at all. He just shot him.

Officer Jason Valenzuela walked into this family's home and murdered a husband and father of 12 by shooting him in the face in front of his family. Christian was only 36 years old. When recounting the event and the guilt he felt, Damien, Christian's son, said this, He fought to protect us. I kept thinking the entire time in the hospital if there's something I could have done different. Maybe if we hadn't called the police, maybe it would have been better.

If all they were going to do was shoot him, it would have been better if we handled it ourselves. We did handle it. He saved us and the cops, all they did was kill him. Charges against officer Jason Valenzuela were dismissed and he has yet to face any consequences. Since then, Phoenix PD has killed more than nine people, nine more people. Yet they expect us to believe them when they say the supposed strategic plan they have coming up is built on a clear commitment to service and accountability.

Chichi O'Donno and the rest of the Phoenix PD should feel immense shame for their crimes against our communities. Thank you. Lee is next, followed by Mark. Instead, they propose, plan to propose a joke plan which they plan to focus on planning out community engagement and the social media product framework. Why don't we go to virtual comment, Evelyn Castillo. ...that looks likely to use deadly force among the top ten of the population in the U.S.

If you want to reduce crime, start by targeting and prosecuting murder and call officers. If you want to improve our community's quality of life, leave our community to the fuck alone. Roland Harris? Roland Harris? Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me? All right, Roland. Hello? Okay, thank you. My name is Roland Harris. I'm here today to speak on behalf of the Justice for Jacob Coalition, Jacob Michael Harris Foundation, as well as my murder son, Jacob Michael Harris.

First, I'd like to start out by saying that our coalition has no faith in Oak, nor in its current leadership. Now, moving on to something more important. Based off of what your chief just said, that they are implementing these changes based off the DLJ report. I find that kind of hysterical due to the fact that the same Phoenix PD said that this DLJ Proprietary public support was false. Moving on, like I said, more important things.

I don't think the Phoenix PD should have any interaction with these youth or have any type of youth programs. But the simple fact is you cannot be the oppressor and the victimizer, then turn around and try to be the healer and the bridge builder to these youth within this black community.

I think the Phoenix PD should focus more on fixing issues like the fact that the black community only makes up 7% of the community of the city of Phoenix, but yet it's three times more likely to be killed than a white resident in the city of Phoenix, and they make up 41% of the community. I think that we need to move forward with trying to invest and divest from the Phoenix PD and start investing in more youth programs and more programming for this community.

I do want to leave one reminder to the city council, mayor, and the Phoenix police department. You guys all took a note to be public servants and you are not serving the public.

I heard the city council say that they are taking community input Well this community has given plenty of input on saying that we want no more funding to police We want you to divest funding from police and start investing in this community So I ask you again remember your oath Remember the fact that you serve this community and you need to give this community what we want You can give us what you want You need to give us what we want We haven come in here and asked for any more funding to the police We continue to ask you to take funding from the police but yet then it community engagement community input when it something else I don't know who that was.

Wonderful. Thank you. Okay. My name's the LS II, and I was court ordered to the SOS. I'm on probation for three years for homelessness. I do outreach, and 90% of our community we spoke with are not aware of programs and resources that would be valuable to our community. If our Phoenix Police Department will possibly inform them where to go for the help they desperately need, I think we might be able to end this. We can only end this crisis if we work together.

I know we can do it, but it takes community. And if we work together, we find the solutions that it is. Let's work together to make this problem in. Thank you guys. Thank you, Lee. Appreciate your patience. Mark will be next, followed by Mohammed. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm Mark. I gotta agree with Mr. Thomas there. The culture is extremely difficult. I want, but I really wish for all of us to be here today is outraged at how our police department hurts people.

But I don't even see disgust. I don't see any We need to divest our funding from the police and provide it to community resources. That's all. Thank you. Muhammad is next, followed by Faith. Good evening. My name is Mohamed and I live in Council District 1. I'm here because decisions made about public safety affects our everyday life and we have the right to make our voices heard in those matters.

This plan is very concerning because it proposes to expand police involvement in situations that need non-police solutions. When someone is facing a health crisis, whether it's mental or physical, housing insecurity, or any other social need, the response should be led by an equipped team of trained mental health professionals, counselors, and social workers, and should never default to law enforcement. It's in these situations that things escalate and loss of life occurs.

Also, it proposes community engagement through activities and surveys and meetings. And I understand that engagement matters, but it must be genuine. Residents should be able to shape the decisions and not be simply asked to endorse them after their direction has already been set. Also, police involvement in our schools will only be seen by the student body as what it is, an armed occupying force in their sanctuary of learning.

Additionally, family members will more than likely categorize the police presence as early indoctrination of their children and, in other words, cause public outrage. Lastly, and most concerning of all, the plan expands the use of high-tech surveillance, including tools such as drones, automated license plate readers, and AI spyware. These technologies can threaten privacy and deepen surveillance with serious consequences for communities that are already disproportionately affected by policing.

In summation, beefing up an overly funded police department does not keep our community safe. Investment in our policing should not supersede investment in people and their community. This billion dollar department needs to come back with plans that- Thank you. Faith is next, followed by Nancy. Thank you very much.

Mayor my name is Faith Kearns I with Funds for Empowerment We were part of the DOJ with this whole shelter thing And we still have the problem We still have the problem with the homelessness especially here and in Sun and Slope Something needs to be done, and as far as giving the police a raise, that was a big mistake because the police don't deserve it. I've lived here all my life and I've seen things just deteriorate.

Some of it's because of the council and some of it's because the police are not doing their jobs properly. And with that I close. Nancy is next, followed by Joe. Nancy Lam, Good afternoon. My name is Nancy Lam. I live in District 4. The strategic plan positions Phoenix PD as a solution to many of the issues our communities are facing, when in fact, it is contact with the Phoenix PD in expansion of its budget that is the root cause of many of our problems in Phoenix.

We cannot criminalize poverty, criminalize behavioral health crises, and criminalize our youth in order to create safer communities. Making survival behaviors criminal only entraps that person deeper into punitive systems with high recidivism rates that do not actually rehabilitate or provide that person with the resources they need to eat, stay housed, get healed, and get education or employment.

Because police intentionally duplicate the work being done by more appropriate and better trained departments, the work of these groups is weakened. We need to increase support for human services, housing, mental health services, caseworkers, social workers, and therapists in our community, and move as much of this healing work away from police as possible.

They are the experts in how to provide these services and resources, and it is fiscally irresponsible to pour more money into an agency that does these things inefficiently, poorly, or in ways that cause harm. As an example, the DOJ report documented how PPD has a history of escalating in situations involving youth that causes interactions to become increasingly more violent.

PPD does not have the proper training and skill set to work with our youth, and yet the City of Phoenix has launched a program at Phoenix Union High School's expanding OTE into curriculum and has placed officers at every high school campus in the district this school year. Young people need community-based resources, after-school programs. Kids need therapy, emotional and behavioral support, and anti-bullying programs.

Kids need to be trained in non-violent conflict resolution and healthy communication skills. These kinds of skills and investments into their growth are the ones that actually prevent violence on school campuses and disrupts the school to prison pipeline. Having officers there does not disrupt violence before it happens, but simply responds to the violence with more violence as evidenced by an officer pressing charges on a student after he was involved in breaking up a fight.

Investments into policing are not investments into our people. This billion-dollar department needs to come back with a plan that decouples actual human services and resources from its department. Thank you. Joe Larios followed by Sophia. Hello everyone. My name is Joseph Larios and I want to remind this council that Phoenix police colluded with Maricopa County attorney to bring false gang charges against protesters in 2020. Protesters, by the way, who overwhelmingly tend to be our young people.

And yet today, we have Chief Dennis Orender presenting a police strategy, who should have no role at all in developing a strategic plan for Phoenix Police Department. Let's remind everyone, Orender is at the heart of this scandal around false gang charges. Orender was at the October 23rd, 2020 meeting to decide to charge the protesters as a street gang.

He wasn't simply Early in attendance, he was Ben Moore's commanding officer, the commander in charge of the now disbanded tactical response unit, which we had to come here and demand the city to disband.

We also sit here with Ed Zerker, whose decision after receiving the independent investigation from Ballard Spar's report determined that as discipline, all commanders and lieutenants, including this one, Arendar, As a form of discipline, who attended the 1023 meeting would be permanently ineligible for promotion. And here, yet we see them sit here today. Your leadership who's supposed to guide you and give recommendation on how to resource has no integrity.

And the fact that they're here presenting to us just tells me that you all are asleep at the wheel, that none of you are taking seriously accountability, which is why all of us are here. Speaker after Speaker saying we cannot continue to fund police in the name of public safety. It has no integrity. There should be no choice, you all should be ashamed of yourself.

And especially, I would like to call out, Councilman Begredado, we cannot be investing in bringing more false ideas that we can trust the police to our youth when this is what we see them doing. Thank you. Sophia is next. Followed by, Sophia next, followed by David Morgan. Good afternoon. I grew up in the most police zip code in Arizona and yet I had to survive human trafficking. Phoenix City Council oversees a top hot spot in the USA for missing and murdered indigenous people.

As an indigenous survivor of homelessness and human trafficking, cops did not free me. Community care empowered me by providing housing, food, health care, and transportation. Don't embold the deadliest police force in the USA with more funding when you have the most chance to get to the police. The children who lost SNAP and Medicaid in the USA.

The children who lost access to SNAP and Medicaid are at high risk of entering into human trafficking, as I also fell into human trafficking from becoming legally disabled and Social Security did not go far enough to pay rent. Fund the people, especially the babies who need care, shelter, health care, transportation, and education. Thank you. David is next, followed by Jeremy Peraza. Hi, I'm David Morgan. We have a serious homeless crisis.

I have to sit here and listen to this lady lie to you, how great they are. I spent two years in the shelter. They didn't help me, they just threw me out. Why? Because I come here and I speak. I got selected to the budget group. Oh my goodness, heaven forbid I should be proud of myself for accomplishing something while living in a homeless shelter. We are arguing about the police and their funding. How much more funding do you need to keep killing us? It only takes one bullet, dude.

Mayor, council members, my name is Jeremy from Glendale, and I'm co-chair of the Phoenix DSA. Every weekend I drive a half hour to downtown Phoenix to serve free meals to people who are forced to struggle for survival, who are regarded and treated like wild animals in a city that chooses to spurn their existence. As I break bread with these human beings, I see and hear the horrors of Phoenix PD first hand.

City park gates unlocked as a honeypot to lure and lock people in after dark in an inhumane dragnet. Padded, armored, tax-fortified cruisers telling the homeless to move you dirty people. Even myself and others for the now criminal act of sharing food with starving individuals in public parks experience harassment by officers who are themselves well fed.

It's not lost on me that Phoenix's unsheltered people are the residents that this council has failed miserably, in favor of policy choices that benefit and protect the wealthy. Instead of meaningfully funding public housing, social workers, or mental health counselors, you fund a police department bloated to over $1 billion annually, doubled from 2010. You give Phoenix PD carte blanche to be judge, jury, and executioner, including routine executions of people experiencing mental health crises.

Arizona's incarceration rate is higher than the national average, and the DOJ has found systemic patterns of PPD's excessive force against unarmed and poor people of color. How many more billions must it take for this violent blue gang of publicly funded thugs to finally house all your constituents in the private prisons that you also misappropriate their taxes to? PPD's strategic plan extols community engagement while shielding abusive officers from material punishment.

It lauds youth interaction while enabling SROs to maintain the school to prison pipeline. It sanctifies AI surveillance so officers can stalk families and spy on children's playgrounds. Instead of solving the root cause of over-policing, this plan empowers the bureaucracy that incubates it and the impunity that promotes it.

It's not a solution, it's an insult, it's untenable, and if you want community trust, drop the paternalistic pretense of insular reform and allow your community to draft a strategic plan instead. Thank you. Alexiana is next, followed by Eric Richardson. Hello, everyone. My name is Alexiana Ramirez, and I live in District 8.

Hello everyone my name is Alexiana Ramirez and I live in District 8 The issue is the Chief vision will continue to expand police involvement into situations that require non solutions We cannot keep relying on law enforcement to respond to behavioral health crisis poverty housing instability and challenges facing our youth while under in the services that actually address these conditions Funding the police defunds all the programs that actually keep us safe.

In fact, because police intentionally duplicate the work being done by more appropriate and better trained departments, the work of those groups is compromised. My brother Andre Ramirez was murdered by Officer Alexander Warner, badge number 11555 with five years of service, and Officer Tristan Rezo, badge 12029 with two years of service in District 7 on October 10, 2026. De-escalation procedures should have been followed and a crisis unit should have been called in this type of situation.

And now my 24 year old brother is dead following the mishandlings of the Phoenix Police Department. We are not the first family to go through the loss of a loved one at the hands of the Phoenix Police Department. I would also like to mention the PPD internal audit of the South Mountain Precinct and note that a federal investigation may be needed. I will continue to question all 23 years of service.

Chief Giordano has under his belt and what that exactly translates to if the issues remain out of his control. Investments into policing are not investments into people. This billion-dollar department needs to be held accountable and actually protect the people it claims it's serving. I should not be wearing my brother's ashes around my neck right now. Thank you. Thank you. Eric is next, followed by Julian. I'm Eric Richardson. I represent Funds and Empowerment.

I'm also a current resident at SOS. And really, everybody basically said all I was going to say for real. I mean, I don't know what else I don't know what else to say, but it'd be selling a repeated record. But I hope you all are paying attention to what everybody's saying. I mean, for real. I mean, I'm actually from St. Louis. I've been here for 10 years and do the math. I was out there in 2014 when the Ferguson arrest happened.

And all I can say is pay attention or else something similar to that can happen here. Seriously. That's the reason why that happened, basically, because everybody's paying attention. Basically, you get what you get. I don't want to see that happen to Phoenix, but if I don't pay attention, it will. Trust me. Julianne Schmidt followed by Frank Urban. Julianne, could you indicate you're here? You are. Oh, I'm sorry. You did say available to speak if necessary, but I figured it was worth calling.

Frank is next, followed by Elizabeth Venable. Hello there, city council. My name is Frank Urban, as you guys well know, with Fund for Empowerment. Basically everything that I was going to say has been said already, and you guys should seriously wake up. The Phoenix police does not deserve any more money. They are, and you can look, you guys can look this up, one of the most corrupt and violent institutions in our country. They do not deserve it. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Elizabeth is next, followed by Laura Reyes. I think that it's important to understand that there are a lot of problems that are caused by policing and then they're not always ameliorated by policing. There are a lot of routes to crime that could be addressed, one of them being housing and homelessness. You know, I talked before about how there's a $12,000 to $16,000 savings on policing when you have an additional shelter bed.

and that actually goes up for people that have criminal convictions You save more if you house them Just part of the reason why I trying to get you guys to make for example the safe outdoor space more habitable I look at that data and those exits and I just go, oh, we're just from homelessness to homelessness. You know, you guys could be saving more money, But I see why, you know, maybe there's an incentive not to, and this doesn't fall on any particular member of staff.

It's just sort of a thing about policing wherein they have an incentive to a certain degree to continue to sort of follow around homeless individuals, including with drones, in sort of interesting ways, and track them. And because it increases the amount of arrests that you can make, and about a third of the arrests that were in the DOJ report, they showed were of people experiencing homelessness, and many of these arrests are of minor sort of status offenses.

And so I would just encourage you to look at, also one more thing I'll say is that if you don't have teeth to your accountability, it doesn't work with policing. This is a separate topic, I'll be quiet, but you have to have real penalties for real offenses and you have to have real things that officers will motivate officers to change their behavior. Thank you. Laura. Laura is next followed by Dorian. Hello.

Many times people navigate life thinking that their reality is how everyone experiences life, with no consideration for others and constantly running from accountability. That is exactly how Phoenix AD functions. The way they create strategic plans for safety completely disregarding our reality, An example, implementing community engagement survey, how does that work without trust? The fact of the schools that were chosen to implement your programs, that is not lost in me either.

I wonder what they have in common. Their constant questionable decisions and devastating actions done by their members, that is the foundation of our relationship. You function as if we were going to forget and move on. I don't want to just stand here and express how we've been betrayed, how we've been hurt, but I will use this time to remind everyone we do not trust them. That department is completely disconnected from how they are perceived by our community.

If anyone doesn't understand why, it's important that you take time with family communities that have lived, that now live with collective traumas that have been created by them. Slowing down incidents means nothing when people are losing their lives. Investigation was mentioned earlier. Who participates in your violation investigation? Anyone appointed from any community that has been impacted by your decisions? Because that would be transparency.

Frankly, nothing was presented today that covered how they're going to substantially address anything. Now because we do find ourselves navigating a complete severed relationship, my community does not see how any of these plans will make us safe. The city needs to look into the many ways our communities can benefit from more resources that will keep us safe. Do not let decisions to be made without real community consideration. Thank you. Dorian is next, followed by Elizabeth Gonzalez.

Dorian Gonzalez- Hey, y'all. All right. Just like kind of simply put, like the need for homelessness prevention needs very much an expansion on like not just being a first-come, first-served lottery or people that, you know, can be a get into a queue. The turnaround time for it is just not helpful. You need a lot more resources put into, as you guys were saying, like trying to prevent something is more important than trying to catch it on the back end when it's a bigger problem.

And we need to put more money into more safety nets, more support for our community, and Not so much the policing aspect force of it We want prevention not penalization You know so I mean if the police want more funding they can take it out of their pension Elizabeth Gonzalez. Hello, council members and police department. I am a resident of San San Valley. I don't even live in the Phoenix area, and yet I can still see how the effects are nationwide.

I understand the programs and the placements of the regulations are important, and I can see that that's the thought behind everything that was presented today. But this has been proven prevention does not need more policing and it does not mean such. In 2024 Phoenix police punched and tased Tyson Tyrone McAlphin, a deaf black man with cerebral prosely. In August a South Phoenix couple recorded assault and tasing at an unreported stop. Cameras were off, DOG warned you, we warned you.

Before advancing a police-for-insergedic plan, get your cops under control. The idea of accountability and being nice, here's a strategy. Divest from police and invest in real safety, mental health services and reliable transportation. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public comment. Council comments. Councilman Hernandez. Thank you, Mayor.

First, I want to take a quick second to respond to a comment that was made, I think in our previous meeting, by one of my colleagues in relation to police violence. I believe the comment was exactly that police violence is not a thing and things just happen. And I think that that's very dismissive of the reality of a lot of families have experience here in the city of Phoenix and not just my own. We just heard public comment from someone who also shares that same experience.

So Council Member Robinson, I would really encourage you to talk to families that have been impacted by police violence, especially in your own district. You can speak to the family of Ryan Whitaker and they can walk you exactly through how violent their loved one was. was killed by our department. You can talk to my family, you can talk to families in District 8, you can talk to families in District 4, in District 5, and in District 7. You have your option to pick.

Secondly, I want to request that my office get a copy of that Ballard SPAR report that was mentioned by one of our speakers, because I have not seen that, and I'm very concerned that there are things that were guidance that was provided in that report that we are not following. So I would like that report ASAP to my office, please. Okay, sorry, this is a very emotional topic for so many people, but I do have a couple questions.

And I don't know if this is Chief Orender or for you, Laurie, or even you, Ed, but I know that in the strategic plan, right, I want to focus on that part. We get quarterly updates in this public safety meeting on so many things. What is the thought process on how we will get updates on the strategic plan? Would those updates be yearly or would those updates also be quarterly? Mayor, members of the council, Councilman Hernandez, I can speak to that.

So the intention is to have formal written updates on the plan on an annual basis. However, we would incorporate the updates on the plan itself in these quarterly updates to the mayor and council. at policy meetings. So it would be both. Okay, thank you. And I know that Chief Waringer, you talked a little bit about the engagement that's already happened on the strategic plan piece. Can you elaborate a little bit more on who exactly has been engaged outside of council offices or city departments?

I'm specifically wanting to know what engagement has already started out in the community with state stakeholders or impacted families. Mayor and members of council, Councilwoman Hernandez, I have done a presentation myself in District 5 and I know Chief Giordano has also done a presentation, but we do plan to go out and do additional community engagement.

I can tell you that Chief Giordano and this entire exec team is committed to building this plan not for this community but with the community. So I will stand here today and say the Chief Giordano and our entire team along with city leadership. committed to that endeavor. Okay thank you. The chief joined us from whatever he was dealing with earlier. I see him here.

I don't know if you want to step to the front but, well in you know on that point, if this plan is gonna go, I think the presentation said that the goal is to have the final draft out in January of 2027, with it going opening up for public comment period in November. I want to recognize that this is during the holidays. Community members travel are I think we can certainly make sure that we want to encompass as much time and as much time as we are.

And as we are now, we are now going to be able to do a lot of time for community input, considering we are faced up against the holidays during November and December. Mayor, members of council, Councilwoman Hernandez, we will certainly take direction from council and city leadership. If that needs to be pushed out, that's probably a decision that's above my pay grade.

But I think we can certainly make sure that we want to encompass as much time and as much engagement as we possibly can to get everybody involved. Like I said, we are committed to developing this plan with the community, not for community. Okay, thank you. I mean, that would be my suggestion. I would like to see a further timeline to allow us to engage with the community.

I mean, we just heard today how important and how urgent, how important it is to make sure that community is the ones that are developing our strategic plan. I would like to request that to look at a further than 45-day public comment period and open up that farther out so we have the right opportunity to capture as much feedback as possible. Because what happens a lot is that we say we're going to take community engagement, but we don't always see those changes, right?

Those changes and that feedback is not reflected in our policies, and that's a big part of the problem. So I would like to, you know, offer and request that we do look at expanding that window and pushing back the presentation on the final plan, because I think it is really, really important to talk to as many people as possible, especially impacted families, because they're the ones that are living with the consequences of these policies every single day.

So would love to have more conversations on that. My other question is I know as a council we have voted on different plans right we've voted on the food safety plan, the climate action plan, housing plan. What makes this different that the Phoenix police strategic plan would not be up for a mayor and council vote? Mayor, members of the council, Councilman Hernandez, there's nothing that precludes the council from voting on the plan should they desire to.

It is just not a typical practice that a department strategic plan would be voted on by the council. However, we certainly are engaged with your offices as well as planning to engage further with the community to ensure that we have a plan that is agreed to. agreed upon by all parties involved. Okay, I you know this is such an important topic. I think it is the more I mean it's also a plan right that involves a department that takes up the biggest part of our general fund.

I think it is so important that may us as mayor and council should have a voting option on this plan. That's just my my humble opinion. I know that in the presentation Chief Venza you spoke about the decreased trend in officer involved shootings. I'm really struggling with this piece and the framing of it because while the number might be lower, the incidents themselves are very, very egregious in the ones that are happening.

I think that when we are still having residents being killed by our sworn officers, when they are in crises, we are still doing something wrong. So I don't know what the answer is right now, but I know that I, for one, want to see us maybe, I don't think police should be responding to any crisis calls, right? Because it is still resulting in our residents being killed. I mean, we just heard about Andre that was on October 10th in District 7.

So I take that one's very triggering for me personally. So we still have a problem. So even though the numbers show that we are on a downward trend, to me, any resident being killed by our sworn officers is still a problem. So I would challenge you all to really aim for zero officer involved shootings, especially on the calls where there's crisis involved, because this is still we're still failing our people.

So I want to point to that Also was there a reason why these numbers are from 2020 through 2026 I know 2018 and 2019 had very very high numbers Are we looking at just the six years window for a reason Mayor, members of council, Councilman Hernandez, we selected those as the most recent years. We certainly do pay attention to what's happened in the past. We try to learn from each incident to improve our service to the community, so we do take those into account. Okay, thank you.

I know that sometimes there's folks that want to dismiss a lot of the things that we hear here in these chambers around police and public safety. I have not stepped away from the belief that investing into people and investing into the root cause of the issues our residents are facing is the true way to build safe communities and thriving communities. I will never step off of that position.

We just sat through a meeting where we are continuing to hear from our residents that have so much concern about how decisions within the department are happening because they are the ones living with the consequences. I know that, Chief, we've talked with your department for hours. So between you, Jody, and Chief Benza, and I don't even know who else, we've spoken at links about the strategic plan. And there are issues that I will continue to have concerns.

I am also in, you know, I don't believe that our officers should be engaging with our youth, considering what we're seeing happen, especially by some of our school resource officers, not just in the city of Phoenix, but across the state of Arizona and across the country. There's examples that point to police, like we're still putting the onus on our youth to be the ones to properly engage with our adult officers that cannot regulate their emotions. So I have a huge issue with that.

And then increasing just the interaction between our residents and our sworn officers is always going to be an issue for me because when we're talking about issues like homelessness, right, when we're talking about issues that your department just cannot literally solve, It is not your job to solve homelessness. It is not your job to provide mental health care. It is not your job to provide some of the resources that our people are in need of that will truly get them to a stable path.

And I think that parts of this plan continue to expand that opportunity for interaction that ends up in criminalizing our residents for things that they shouldn't be criminalized for. They're dealing with poverty or they're dealing with other actions by federal administration that is cutting away social services. So that's a lot of concern with that. The use of more surveillance. I'm always, as a firm believer in my constitutional rights, I for one do not want to exchange my privacy for safety.

And I think that a lot of the surveillance tools that we are looking to utilize or expand really infringe on our rights to privacy. So I have a huge concern about expanding the surveillance state here in the city of Phoenix for our residents. And I know that, you know, Chief, you're planning to take this plan out for public comment. I would ask, again, I would reiterate my ask that it is for a longer amount than 45 days to allow for more engagement with the community.

I think that that is a good thing and I really will push you to hopefully find a path to that. And lastly, I just want to take a quick second. I'm so sorry for your loss. You should not be experiencing this. And we failed you. So I'm sorry. Council comments? Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a couple of questions. I just want to make sure I understand. What respect is because the strategic plan was added more of as an update to what we were already the the reforms we were reviewing.

Can you tell me where we are with the community? community of input. Like, how long has the survey been out? What has been the—how many people have actually responded to the survey? Is that available? Mayor, members of the council, vice mayor, are you speaking to the survey regarding the strategic plan specifically? That is correct, yeah.

So to answer your question the survey has not been sent out yet What we are doing is making the council and the public aware that the survey will be sent out And we will be sharing the draft plan as well as the survey which asks questions about what important to the community To Councilman Hernandez point we are open to meeting with any community group that would like to invite us to meet with them to discuss the community I sorry to discuss the strategic plan in depth We are happy to do that We do want to receive feedback from community members and so that process will be both an online process as well as an in-person process that we will go through before finalizing the draft of the strategic plan, or I'm sorry, finalizing the strategic plan out of draft form, but I will also emphasize that this will be a document that we will update over time.

It will not be something that we create once and then, you know, simply update on an annual basis. We want to grow and change with the needs of the community and if there are things that we need to adjust or performance metrics we need to add, we can absolutely do that as we go forward even past January. Okay. Thank you for that information, explanation.

I truly wanted to ask a question because I want to make sure that the survey is not just a survey for survey purposes, that we are truly getting the genuine type of engagement that we expect. I don't have a number in mind right now, but I would encourage us to have a threshold as to how many completed surveys we need to receive in order to view this as really been reviewed and signed off by our community.

And I also would encourage us to consider ensuring that we are actively soliciting the feedback of those who have been impacted by a negative experience by our law enforcement, Because I think that's one of the ways you can make true corrections. Because sometimes if you have not walked in their shoes, you don't really understand it. So I would definitely encourage that we definitely take those steps. I think the thing that we have to address is there has been a loss of community trust.

And if we're being candid and honest with ourselves, it has taken a hit. The incident that we saw in South Mountain Precinct, we can't pretend that that didn't have the ramifications that it did. I will say I do respect the steps that we have taken as a city and as a department. I commend the chief for his prompt handling of that matter, but it doesn't go, it doesn't take away some of the concerns that our community has about this. And I don't think that trust is regained by a survey.

Trust is regained by intentional and strategic actions that tell people that their voice is heard. and their feedback is important. So I just wanted to echo that to make sure that we don't think that this is just a document, but we recognize that there are people who are truly impacted by this document, and for them to ensure that they are part of the process. So I just wanted to say that. My next question is regarding the—I would ask us also—there was a question asked about the CTI responses.

I would ask, what are we doing to reassess and review those and to ensure that we are learning from every negative interaction? I mean of course we want to learn from our positive as well, but what are we doing to ensure that every time we have a negative interaction we are taking away something from it versus saying it just happened and it was justified or something along that line.

Mayor, members of council, Councilman Hodge Washington, sorry Vice Mayor Hodge Washington, are you speaking specifically to the Crisis intervention? Yes, I'm sorry. I meant CIT. I have a question about CTI, too, but sorry, go ahead. Thank you, ma'am.

What we're doing with our crisis intervention team is we are sharing information amongst the crisis intervention officers, the ones who are trained, sharing positive stories, sharing best practices, so that each one learns from each event that they go on the calls for service.

I get learning from the positives, but I also want to encourage us to answer what are we learning from those negative experiences and how are we using those to ensure that we're not I don't want to get into a specific case because I know there are legal ramifications, there are all these different consequences, but I want to at least challenge us to look at where our performance has not been, it doesn't align with public expectation.

What do we learn from that and how do we ensure that we don't repeat the same mistake going forward?

It like if I stump my toe every time I walk up the stairs I either learn to put a highlighted slip on the on the strip on the steps so I don bump my toe or I step higher Like I learned from my mistake and I incur I asking how are we learning from those negative interactions Mayor members of council vice mayor hodge Washington That a great question And I would say that we are continuously learning when we come across those incidents Oftentimes we see them at exec staff level on a body worn camera video or a supervisor may forward it to us to take a look at If we see incidents where maybe policy wasn followed obviously there the professional standards bureau investigation route Sometimes it could be a training component that we missed.

If we recognize that it's something that is an anomaly, we will pull that person offline, coach them, train them. If we see it's something bigger than that, then we can certainly incorporate, and we have incorporated those lessons in our academy training, either in module or in basic training, aside from the easy post training that's required. So when we see those incidents, we do take those and try to push those out in a training environment so that those types of incidents are not repeated.

I appreciate to hear that you're doing that. I would just also encourage that that sometimes needs to be shared with the greater public at large because we ask our community to trust that we are self-policing, self-correcting, and if they don't hear or learn of those situations, to give them some evidence in which to believe that is a valid statement. So thank you for that. My next question was regarding the CTI. I know the on...

I can't find the slide at the moment, but there was a slide that talked about, here it is, on slide, you don't need to turn to it, slide 66, it was about documenting the federal enforcement complaints that we've received. It said we've received 30 reports to date. I'm curious whether or not these are 30 individual separate instances or were they involved in—can you give me a little bit more information about whether or not there were multiple instances that occurred that we learned about?

Mayor, members of Council, Vice Mayor Hodge-Washington, that's the number of contacts we've had with the CTI portal or that staff have entered. entered. 17 of those, I believe, is the number that have actually been documented complaints regarding federal law enforcement. So we've received contacts just with commentary or things that didn't relate to federal law enforcement. So that's where those other 13 come in. So thank you for that clarification.

So are we saying that there were 17 individuals or 17 separate instances? When I say instances, like 17 different—I don't want to use the word—read or something like that, but there were 17. Do you know how many people were involved as a result of these 17 cases? I do believe it's 17 separate incidents that were referred over to SID. So the 13 that were designated as not federal law enforcement complaints, SID has access, but those weren't forwarded for investigation.

Those 17 are individual and distinct incidents. I can't give you the number of people that were involved in each. There may, obviously everyone has at least one, but some may They may also have multiple folks that were involved. And then my second question or follow-up question is for these cases, what is our level of follow-up or just updates provided to these individuals regarding the investigation?

Do we provide any type of—in a traditional criminal investigation, they have a victim's advocate. Do they get any level of support as this matter is proceeded? Mayor, members of Council, Vice Mayor Hatch-Washington, Oates. role is simply to do the intake of those. We don't do follow-up because it does involve a criminal investigation and that's outside the scope of our authority. So a PD would be the best to answer that in terms of what happens is follow-up on those.

Mayor, members of council, Vice Mayor Hodge Washington, what we do is we look at those incidents, we send those over to our special investigations division. Those detectives review those cases for criminal matters. If they're in criminal nature, then they send them to the attorney general's office for follow-up by the attorney The attorney general through an MOU we have with their office. Okay.

And as a part of that MOU with the attorney general's office, do we get any information back to say, like, of the 17 that have been submitted, 13 are still under review? I'm just making up numbers. Or do we know anything about the status of the claim after it's submitted to SID for investigation? Mayor, members of council, Vice Mayor Hutch Washington, I think we can ask and request that information to everybody want, but I don't think there's natural or normal reporting.

from back to us from the EG's office on those cases. Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council, some of these are still in progress and so the disposition of the case is not known yet, but we do not have a an automatic feedback loop from the AG's office to us to let us know what they've done with the case at this point.

And we'd so we don't we don't have a I think I see an opportunity for us to be a little bit more supportive to the residents that have may have submitted the client to oath and that is by possibly closing that communication loop if we have the consent of the the resident.

just to kind of feel like they have we said submit the information here and then we're going to transfer someone else but then we never tell them anything else so I see this as possibly an opportunity for improvement I don't know if the uh sorry the ig would have to be amended for that but I would just put that out there as a possible avenue for um improvement.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council we can certainly look into that I think as long as the volume of cases remains small that's a viable thing to do if we were to be If you're inundated with a large number of cases, that would be much more difficult, but we can certainly look into that as it stands now. The case count remains small. The other thing I would note is that there are some of the cases that have been reported to us anonymously.

That is an option for community members to report anonymously, which would mean that we wouldn't have a mechanism for getting information back to the complainant. I would be perfectly fine with that if they've chosen to do it anonymously. I should have started off by saying thank you for the presentation. I know it was a very detailed presentation, so I wanted to thank staff for that.

There was a couple things I had specifically to the presentation, and this one is for Community Assistance Program. The report shows that we had like a significant growth in behavioral health call transfers. Are there opportunities to further expand the co-response or the alternative response program? And is there a plan for an alternative way to access CAP other than 9-1-1? Mayor, Council, Vice Mayor, thank you for the question.

Just for clarification, are you referring to increasing the calls for the crisis response units versus the behavioral health units or both? Both actually. Sorry, I looped it all together. I apologize. No, thank you for the clarification. Yes, we are looking and evaluating all the time on how we can increase our impact in our community and respond to calls specifically crisis-related co-response with fire or PD.

The role of the individual that we have in PD communication is to help identify even the co-response with PD so that we can ensure that if there is a reason why it did not come to us initially, maybe weapons or just typically the reason that they would not send us out alone, that we attempt to make sure that that is a co-response. But we are in communication to look at other ways that we can continue to have our program expand the services.

We actually have a fellow who started today who is looking at the continuation of how do we access or how do we create an access for our community to reach us through an alternative, the 911. So we're looking forward to that fellow's report, which should be beginning of next year, first quarter of next year. I'm grateful to hear that.

I think one of the things is—sorry—one statement probably is worth repeating or clarifying is it appears that our policy as a city between CAP and PD is that if there's the existence of a weapon, it's generally a co-response situation? That is correct. Okay. Sorry, Mayor, Council. Thank you. I have another question for PD. I'm trying not to duplicate the questions that have already been asked.

One of the questions I had was, do we have any data regarding resident satisfaction with the call triage non-emergency AI tool? And the reason I'm asking is because I've heard some of the residents about a little frustration. We're talking to the AI bot. and their frustration about whether or not it responds properly to a worded response versus a yes or no response. Mayor, members of council, Vice Mayor Hodge-Washington, I took Jody's seat, the expert in this area. She's going to come back up.

Thank you.

Mayor members of council Vice Mayor Hodge Washington specific to feedback related to the use of call triage on our non line which is where it used not in the emergency line We do not have specific feedback like we would with the 911 system that we utilize through Community Connect However anecdotally we receive feedback through users that have used that system I would echo the same feedback that you have communicated and shared that some do end up being frustrated I think that we could all relate to experiences when we call into a system We don't necessarily hear a human voice on the other end when we expect one.

And for those that may be challenged with a related to making selections in menus, it may be challenging for those individuals. We continue to work with the vendor to improve the system and we're hopeful that we're able to make it more conversational as opposed to something where you choose a menu or the system is looking for specific words that trigger it to route the call a certain way.

On the other side of that, it has afforded the department benefit in that 10% to 15% of those non-emergency calls are handled by the system alone, which frees up call takers to take 911 calls. So I am the person that yells representative after... And I just say that, and we all laugh, but I think we need to remember that many times when people are calling the non-emergency line, it's not usually to say, hey, everything is going great in my neighborhood.

They've just had some level of something that happened that frustrated them. So for our method of communication to add to the frustration definitely is not what we want to hear. And that's just some of the feedback that I have been receiving. So I don't know if we want to consider working with the vendor for an option that if they're not getting further through the system that they can transfer to a live individual if that doesn't already exist.

I'm raising the suggestion because it does not appear to have exist based on the feedback and some of the concerns that I have heard at different community meetings regarding the tool. I definitely understand the need to try and be as efficient and utilize our resources as adequately as possible. But at the same time, I don't want a resident feeling frustrated with the process that they just hang up the phone.

And we don't get that because there is no survey for them to fill out about how was their interaction because they did not have a full interaction. So thank you for that. uh let's see I had a question for OHS on slide 61 regarding property service a property storage program it seems like from my perspective that our reunification rate is a little low when it comes to individuals getting their um their items back what are we doing to address some of that?

Mayor, members of council, vice mayor Hodge Washington. So the way that the process works is this is for unattended property. So when my team comes across unattended property, we leave an initial notice saying we will be back 24 hours later. And if the property is still there, we will collect it at that time. If when we go back after 24 hours, the property is there, we collect the property and leave a second notice describing how to get back in touch with us to be reconnected with that property.

So we often don't know where these individuals are or where they were. We are completely reliant on them getting that second notice and calling us at that time. So whereas, yes, the number is lower than we'd like, we do take full advantage of those individuals that do call us as another opportunity to reconnect and get them connected with services at that time. I will say for property that is not collected, we do keep it for 45 days before disposing of it.

We do go through it and make sure we're keeping any personal licenses, Social Security cards or anything like that in case they were to reconnect at that time. Okay. And is there a place where someone who is missing their personal property can see a list of the inventory?

the Office of Homeless Solutions may have to determine whether or not their items may be a part of it Vice Mayor Hodge Washington we don publish a list but if someone calls us and describes their items we would be able to go through our inventory yes Or even if they knew approximately where they left their items we keep all of that information Okay thank you That great to hear I think Just review my questions My last question is probably for Chief again and because I start I mentioned this in my kind of monologue when I started and I mentioned regarding the South Mountain precinct incident And you said this publicly that we are doing a full audit of the precinct And I think it might be helpful for you to share the next steps Like when will it be complete Will it be made available to the public Those types of questions I think again that goes towards a transparency.

Mayor, Members, Council, Vice Mayor Hodge-Washington, we're working through that now. I talked to Chief Benza earlier today, that's his unit that's doing it, and we hope to have it in December, have that prepared, ready to go. And there was a question in the back about whether or not it was independent, and because I heard you just said Chief Benza will be the one doing that, it's internal audit. That is correct. Okay. Okay, thank you.

And there was—and I've shared this frustration with you in other capacities—this is one, this incident I think is very troubling because we have established policies and we have a scenario where it appears that some of the officers—and I say appears because they have not been criminally convicted and I am going to respect their due process rights—but who appear to have not followed The established policies, and there is some frustration because these are type of litigation that the city of Phoenix taxpayers have to fund.

And I had this conversation with you, Laurie, about this, and you—I think it was helpful—it might be helpful to share a little bit of our conversation. If these officers are actually convicted of a felony related to misconduct while serving in their official capacity, what implications, because someone brought it up in one of the testimony, what implications, if any, could that have on their pension eligibility or benefits?

Mayor, members of the council, Vice Mayor Hodge Washington, there is a provision in state law where a court may order that pension benefits are forfeited for someone who commits a felony and is convicted of a felony under the color of authority. The, there are caveats and provisions for appeal processes, funds that are paid into that account may be reimbursed to the individual as well as spousal provisions. However, that does exist in state law.

But again, it would be up to the judge to order that. Okay. Thank you so much for that clarification. Thank you, Mayor. Those are my questions. Thank you. Councilman Gordaro. Thank you, Mayor. And again, thank you everyone for your time, for being here, for putting this together. I know Chief Orender, you were in District 5 and did this presentation and you got a lot of feedback from folks in that meeting.

So we're hoping to continue to work with the department to continue to better what we're seeing here today. But for me, I think part of the reason why we're here and we have this document in front of us is because trust has been broken. Every single officer involved shooting, in my opinion, and I'm hoping that an opinion of everyone sitting up here today is unacceptable. All of these incidents that we've seen, at least since I've been here in 2019, it has been unacceptable.

We have a lot of people, every single one of them. And I think it's part of the reason why we have this document in front of us today, because we're trying to be better. We're trying to do things differently. In 2019, when I took office, Rachel wasn't sitting at the table. Oates wasn't sitting at the table. Right? And we didn't have a CAP program either to try to help us, you know, flush out a lot of these challenges and a lot of these issues.

If I look at page 33 on public safety improvement updates, seeing all of the different calls that are now being transferred to a different department, you know, calls that I'm thankful that police is no longer responding to. I'm not exactly sure how many more officer-involved shootings we would actually have if we wouldn't have created all of these different departments that we now have.

But clearly we still have issues We saw what happened at the South Mountain Precinct We see what continues to happen in some of these shootings Yeah and there is a culture that we still in the process of changing right The culture hasn changed completely in the police department right In the past we hadn had a leadership within the police department that actually accepted that And I think now we in that process like Chief Giordano like I appreciate how swiftly you have acted on some of these incidents I know that it wasn it hasn been an easy process for you as well as we continue to move forward And we not perfect And a lot of the things that are happening are not right As a Latina, as a Mexican, as a mom of two young boys, right, I know that this is hard and I know that this is not easy, but we do have to go through all of these processes.

Like we do need to make sure, Jeff Pensa and I am going to ask you or Lori, whomever, about the engagement that we need to have with our youth. Right to me that's important not just for my own children but for the people that I represent in district 5. Can you talk to us a little bit about the e-learning that we're developing within the department or Lori, whomever?

Mayor, members of council, Councilman Leonardo, with respect to the e-learning for our different platforms and different training, excuse me, I have some allergy issues today.

What we're doing is we're training all of our employees by video, by computer video, and It's instruction and then there's quizzes that the officer or employee has to pass in order to keep moving forward with that and that officer or employee is required or is held accountable to that policy or the train that they've taken. The purpose for that is to make it faster, to get that delivery faster and to make it consistent amongst the employees who are receiving it.

With respect to the youth advisory, the youth training, we are working in December, the company is coming out to work with our department to learn about the department, to visit and see how we do business. And then in February we're going to start the training.

And the training is designed to teach our officers about youth brain development, what different actions in the youth behavior is different from adults and how that manifests, whether it's the standoffish from the officers or how they react and how that is related to their brain development, their age and their life experience so that our officers have better training and better tools to deal with our youth. The purpose of that is to get a better product, better interaction with our youth.

We're hoping to see the results that other agencies have seen and that this company purports to offer us. And how do you think that the work that you're doing with the youth program and the work that Shannon is doing, how will these two programs complement each other? Mayor, members of council, Councilman Eduardo, our training is different than theirs.

Ours is teaching our officers how to deal with youth, and as I understand it's the same company, but it's how youth would interact when spoken by the police. I don't know the details of the OATS program. I will tell you that we're going to use OATS staff to do some of our training. So that's different voices. We're going to utilize youth from our community.

We're going to utilize attorneys from our community as well as the company to do our training so that we have different voices than just the police department to do the presentations. So the youth program that you're putting together, it's more about our police officers being able to connect with our youth and for them to be able to understand where our youth is coming from? Mayor, members of council, Councilman Rodardo, exactly if that's what that is. Great. Well, thank you.

Thank you so much for that and thank you for all of your work and all of the meetings that we've had and all the back and forth that we've had on this issue Thank you and looking forward with everything else that's coming up with our youth program and hoping to continue to work with all of you on this. Thank you, Lori, for all of your hard work. And Shannon, can you talk a little bit about the program that we're going to start running at Mariba High School in the spring?

Mayor, members of council, Councilwoman Guardado. Yes, I can. So just a point of clarification about what Chief Benza talked about. Yes, we've used the same company, which is called Strategies for Youth, but Oates' interaction with Strategies for Youth was a one-time facilitation of helping us build what's called juvenile justice jeopardy, and that teaches kids on five different areas related to civic engagement, policing, and those types of things.

So that's been our involvement with the organization. Chief Benza did reach out about having some of our staff help support their separate program about that he described relating to policing and teams. Our specific program is called Reform Rising. So that was the one that we piloted last fall and that we're running again this semester at South Mountain and that we'll bring to Maryvale and again to South Mountain in the spring. That is going to be a six or 11 week program.

We're trying to figure out the best way to structure it so we can provide the most scalability and sustainability of the program. But what that involves is a combination of facilities So, we're also facilitating that Juvenile Justice Jeopardy, which is an interactive learning platform that's research supports. That's the best way for kids to learn is in an interactive way rather than being lectured at. I think is probably the best way for all of us to learn.

So, one week is, or one session usually centers around that Juvenile Justice Jeopardy, and then the other weeks are centered on what the kids' interests are in terms of all sorts of things. So, surveys are done at the beginning of the semester to see what their particular interests are. Both times we've been at South Mountain, the students have expressed an interest in understanding more about immigration issues.

So we bring an immigration attorney in to answer their questions and talk to them about those types of things. We do have a police week. I know that that's not been a favorite by some folks, but what that is is that gives the students an opportunity to interact with police in a non-escalated setting, not when they're responding to a call, and they can ask all the questions that they want to ask of an officer in the room. We also do have folks come from Not My Kid and from Axiom.

We talk about mental health. We talk about connections. We have connections with both GCU, UTI, all of those sorts of organizations to help not only support higher education, but also job development.

So the way that I see our programs up tailing into the interest that you have and youth engagement and advancement in the city is that we have a connection to kids in the community, both South Mountain, Maryvale, and then also through their friends to help connect them through opportunities within the city and so we have these kids that are interested in learning more, they're interested in civic engagement, and so there are different opportunities that they can engage with through the city.

So one of the things that you've talked about is the internship and apprenticeship programs. How do we help these kids understand the opportunities that exist for them when they're done with high school? Because we already have a connection there, it's a natural partnership to work with you.

I know that we're also working with HR, Office of Youth and Education, to coordinate all the ways that our different departments and our different areas of expertise can contribute to really bringing in youth and supporting them through all the resources that the city has. Thank you. Thank you for that. I guess that's what I was getting to, right?

That hoping that everything that we're doing with our youth, you know, will set a path for them to have a career, for them to either to look at all the different departments that we have throughout the city of Phoenix and anything that's in their interest. I know that right now my team is right now, with a group of students and they're putting together a campaign on how to, on speeding, right?

They're talking about speeding, they're talking about speed humps, they're getting trained on how to collect signatures to add more speed humps in that community. And they could have been doing something different, right? And they're out there and they're engaged in the community. And I think that's important. And I know that we're not perfect. I know none of you guys are not perfect. We're not perfect.

We need to continue to evolve in what we're doing around CTI for us to be able to get out there and say what we said around when it comes to all the rates that were happening throughout the city and for us to be able to do what we did in our parks and in our public facilities. I think that was incredibly important.

And I know that's not the one thing that's going to fix all the challenges going on through our state, but I think that it was important for us to take action and that we continue to take action a lot faster than what we have in the past. And I think that's important. And I guess my last question is this once we go to the community and we talk to folks and I know that we've already been doing that and we do the survey, Lori, will this continue to be a working document or is this the end of it?

Mayor, members of the council, Councilwoman Guardado, it will be a working document. We will continue to adjust it and add to it and subtract from it if necessary as we move forward and provide updates both to the community and to the council. We want to make sure that we are meeting the needs of the community through this document and it will be an ongoing iterative process. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. And just final comments.

I think accountability is important and that's part of the reason why we've added all the different departments that we've added in the last seven years. But a lot of our residents, there's still a lot of residents that continue to say that they want their streets to be safe. I still hear from a lot of residents that they feel that we don't have enough police officers, that we don't have enough people policing the streets.

We have a balance that we have to strike here And as much as accountability is important and I feel for every single officer involved shooting That has happened throughout the city and when you go and you talk to the general public they want to see this document they want to see you guys do better because they want their streets to be safer and not just safer by saying we want more police but safer by everything that we're doing and that we're going to continue to do and continue to involve community and I am grateful to all of I think that that has been key this whole time.

I've had my frustrations. I think Chief Benz, I've shared a lot of those with you, and I think Chief Ornder, you've heard me as well. And Chief Giordano, I think, you know, we had a little bit of a rough beginning, but I think that, you know, that you guys are definitely in a much better place than where we were eight years ago. And that we're hopeful that we continue to get better because we're not there. I'm not trying to say that we're there.

I'm not trying to say that every single problem is fixed. And that's the reason that I'm grateful that this is a working document so we can continue to work on these issues and we continue to be a better city for everyone. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Stark. Thank you, Mayor. I too am glad to hear that it's still a working document and I know that the police department continues to strive and improve themselves.

But I will tell you, I for one am glad we do have a police department. And quite frankly, I am a big supporter of police interaction with children. As a matter of fact, 30 years ago I wish we had school resource officers because the elementary school that my son and daughter went to, one of the coaches molested 24 young boys under the age of 11. And their lives were changed. I'm sure their parents' lives were changed.

Had there been better social programs, better mental health, maybe someone could have helped that coach. But he did what he did. And there really wasn't a police officer there that might have been able to hone in on the problem, may have understood that there was a molester in that school, understood youth crimes and children that are victimized. There might have been hope for 24 young boys.

So I know and I appreciate what you've gone through, but there is also a need for our police department and I do appreciate that you continue to improve and they want to work with the residents and the businesses in the city of Phoenix. And I know you can do better, but let me tell you, I'm glad you're around. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Powerful words and comes on a day where the police family is feeling a lot of complicated motions. Thank you for supporting Tyler and his family today.

This is a complicated issue and we got to understand it's not two sides. There are a whole lot of families impacted in a variety of ways, including officers, victims, and so many others. Does anyone else wish to comment? Vice Mayor. Vice Mayor Mrakas- Thank you, Mayor. I just thought it was helpful to maybe kind of, I don't want to say wrap it up, but I think having these quarterly updates are very helpful. It definitely shows us that accountability is not a one-time conversation.

It requires the constant updates so that council members and residents can track progress, ask questions, and understand where additional work is needed. I don't want to over—I don't want us to overlook that we've made meaningful progress. The presentation and the report showed that thank you to staff that we've completed 29 of the 37 action items. We've expanded the community assistance program and increased the call diversion from the police department to the behavioral health units.

We've improved the shelter access, prevention programs, housing pathways, and outreach efforts by the Office of Homeless Solutions. We've seen a reduction in crime. We have increased the number of complaints by oath while moving forward with a youth program, and we have implemented the community transparency initiative that was demanded by our community. So I say all that to say that I don't want us to overshadow what we have accomplished, the progress that we have made. Are we perfect?

Are we there yet? No, but we have been moving towards the goal. I just want to say thank you for that.

My comments were not were hopefully not intended to just simply be a condemnation I was just trying to acknowledge what we were seeing here But I do want to applaud the efforts of all the departments in helping us to continue to meet the goals and the challenges of our community And I think we have made progress and we just need to continue to build on that So thank you Mayor for allowing me to say that Thank you. Councilwoman Pastor. Thank you.

If anything, Ed, you know this well, the speed of trust. And the speed of trust starts with integrity. And it also starts with conversation, It also starts with building trust. And I think one of the pieces that needs to be built upon in this plan or update is trust. So I'm going to lead to a question as to who drafted the survey that is going to the community. So, Mississimi police drafted the survey.

Mayor, members of council, councilwoman Pastor, if I may, it was a collaborative effort on the part of multiple entities, most of which were within the department with experience in developing surveys, but it wasn't an exclusive department effort, it was collaborative. One of the entities involved is a company that is experts in putting together surveys so that the representative obviously we are always looking to be able to produce the best possible tool to solicit feedback.

So the reason why I'm asking that is I'm looking for community input in the survey. So the survey's been drafted, that's fine, it's been internal. A company helped you. So what I would like to see is a group of community people looking at the survey before it's even released. And the reason why I'm saying that is because of cultural awareness and language.

As a teacher, we're very cautious and we're very open in the sense of when we write surveys, that it can reflect the whole community in the classroom. and there are cultural awarenesses around questions that are being asked. That's all I'm saying. That's what I'm asking. Because trust comes from both sides. And if there is a collective that can help, or at least provide some guidance to a survey that we're going to release all over the city, I think that's worth looking at.

The other thing is I do believe that 45 days needs to be extended. So who makes that decision on the extension of how long a survey is out? I have 45 days on my notes. So Mayor, members of the council, Councilman Pastor, the 45 days comes from the police department standard that's been established for updated policy reviews and other items that we request public input on.

And we have said at least 45 days for this particular survey and public comment period, given the fact that the strategic plan is so extensive. And so we have intentionally been vague on that, saying at a minimum 45 days, but it can be longer than that. And that's a decision that I can make with the team. Okay, I'm just curious if, and the reason why I'm asking that is it's correct that the holidays are hitting. And I'm not sure how you get that type of survey out to the whole community.

And so I would like to see really true community involvement in this piece and results of being able to see across the city the different results that are needed in order to make a decision. That was one of my statements. We talked about youth. And there seems like there's two proponents, and I don't think it's two proponents on youth. There's one in particular, a program specifically for youth and in high school.

And then it sounds like police are getting trained on how teenagers react or behave. Am I correct or am I wrong?

Mayor members of the council Councilman Pastor Ari you are correct Those are two of the components that we discussed So in the police training obviously they training about the brain I assuming but I think we know if most of us have families and have teenagers how most kids react And I think it good that we getting training But what other training are you getting on youth Mayor members of council Councilman Pastor the training that we have planned for February The first thing that we have in February is to, as you said, to train our officers on how to deal with youth, how to interact with them appropriately.

That's specific to what we have in terms of our upcoming training with the rest of the youth. We have advisory boards that help us with our policies, that help us with our procedures. We have our youth interaction through our cadet program. We don't have any specific training outside of the youth program that coming in February that is on the calendar for officers. Okay, thank you. You spoke of service engagement in something rising. I don't know what it's called.

I actually think it should really be, or some engagement, I really think civic engagement and service engagement are two different things. And in particular, in what this type of training is requiring or doing for youth. And those are two different components altogether of what civic engagement is and what service engagement is. And so I would like to see that and understand what is happening with the reform rising. I think that's what it is.

Because there seems to be some other components in it. And I'm just curious of what they look like. Mayor members of council, Councilwoman Pastor, may I ask a clarifying question? Sure. So what I spoke about was they do learn about civic engagement, but then there's also a project that they determine. It's based on what the kids identify as issues in their community. So each student, sometimes they pair up if they have similar things, they identify an issue of concern in their community.

They address what that concern is. One of the things that we've talked about is we're going to put together those lists of reports and present those to mayor and council. And then we're also working on building programs. So for example, I think I've given this example before, And so, one of the things that one of the students brought up last year was shade equity. So fortunately, we work in a city that has lots of opportunities to facilitate those types of things.

So in those, one of the ways that we're working on expanding our program and our connection is that with those ideas, bringing them to y'all to take action on if those are things that you want to adopt, but then also connecting them through city leadership and city programs that can facilitate those things. So they talked about shade equity, they talked about lighting, they talked about the buses and the public transportation that they have. right on being dirty and feeling unsafe.

So helping them advocate through their elected officials, through their government access and those programs to be able to make those changes in their community. So that's what I was talking about in terms of civic engagement. So what I'm hearing is you are, they are doing a project through this process to demonstrate or learn civic engagement and then building advocacy. That is correct. Okay. And I'll just ask further questions later. I don't want to go down.

The question about, there was a question about the audit and if the audit was independent. and it was stated that it was being it was an internal my question and I just I want it for the record why couldn't we do it why couldn't we do an independent audit?

Mayor, member, council councilman, Pastor we chose to do it in inside our own agency for a variety of reasons one it involves a tremendous amount of data extraction using our current systems Jeff's team are tracking our automatic We have a locator system looking at our CAD data, and we just thought it would be easier for us to do it internally. But we will be completely transparent when it's done. It'll be open for inspection for anyone who wants to look at it.

Okay, but we do have the ability to do an independent audit if we wanted to. We could do that, certainly. I'm just asking. Correct. Okay. My final comment is the AI. I have used that non-emergency. I do not like it. either do my constituents. We have had a discussion about what is the possibility of going back to live or be able to get onto AI and then move to a live person in order to get what community needs and is experiencing at that moment. And that's just my comment. Thank you.

Appreciate everything you have done. I'm hoping to see more pieces in how we build trust with the community. Thank you. Councilman Waring. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate it. I have confidence in the Phoenix Police Department. I appreciate everything the individual officers do. That doesn't mean every officer will always act appropriately and some will act egregiously. That's what you're going to get when you have a 2,500 to 3,000 person organization.

In tough circumstances, short-staffed, lots of stress, yada yada. I have confidence in the command staff. That doesn't mean everything they say ought to be carved into a stone.

I not a stone tablet and kept for all time but I do believe you trying to do the right thing you trying to do it in the right way Ultimately we going to have a police department I hear lots of complaints about the police department so I said this before You know if there are areas that don want police and that kind of what come across here at some point send them back to District 2 Because you guys have been rotating people out of District 2 for the whole time I've been on the council because it's low crime.

No crime. Frankly, I find it, I understand why you do it. So I understand your short staff. It's not really acceptable. We have a lot of big areas to cover. And maybe you've got one officer driving around. If there's ever a situation at a school or something, it could be a long time before you guys are doing what you do, to use some jargon, setting up a perimeter or whatever. That's going to be embarrassing as hell when that day comes. If it does.

I hope it doesn't, but I've got to say, You don have a lot of officers up there So it good that the citizens in District 2 by and large aren committing crimes It shocking when you look at the statistics But I feel like we being punished frankly for good behavior I don know what else to say So at some level if people want to send officers back our way I think you find that Tatum Ranch Desert Ridge Tremonto yada yada would all be happy to take them I know I would I live there too So if that's something someone wants to entertain, if that's going to be something in your report, but I certainly hope when you do your audits and everything, that you take into account the people I just mentioned who live in North Phoenix.

Because they might have a very different perspective than what you heard here. I respect the fact that people come and say their opinions, but I got to tell you, that's not the community. That's a few individuals in a 1.7 million person city. Are we going to audit or ask the opinions of people who live in Scottsdale, Glendale, Tempe, whatever, who work downtown? They could be a victim of crime here, too. I'd like to know their opinion. I bet they're anti-crime. That's just my hunch.

Could be wrong. Who knows?

But I wish you would take that stuff into account too because I think there going to be a lot of pro feedback from the places I just mentioned And I like that reflected in the reports It never reflected in these meetings unless I spout off like I am right now Happy news only six months of me left so you won have to listen to this for much longer But maybe my successor will spout off too and you be like oh god 12 more years of this But I hope you take my point Love to have those officers rotated out back We lost a lot of time A lot of them, good people, love to have them back.

Thank you. Thank you. We are adjourned. The FAA with this building, and when he caught off fire, the city and the FAA were in a partnership, so Chad had to get the FAA to release the building. So it was very, very challenging. Chad, he hung in there.