REGULAR MEETING OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF NOVI
MONDAY, JUNE 15, 2009 AT 7:00 P.M.
COUNCIL CHAMBERS – NOVI CIVIC CENTER – 45175 W, TEN MILE ROAD

Mayor Landry called the meeting to order at 7:00 P.M.

ROLL CALL: Mayor Landry, Mayor Pro Tem Gatt, Council Members Burke, Crawford, Margolis, Mutch, Staudt

ALSO PRESENT: Clay Pearson, City Manager

Pamela Antil, Assistant City Manger

Tom Schultz, City Attorney

Member Margolis add to Mayor and Council issues, 1. Review of the Liquor License Ordinance.

Mr. Baratta noted there had been no controversial issues in the past three months. He would like to see some intricate plans such as larger commercial development come to Novi, but because of the economy they wouldn’t see it for a few years. He said the biggest problem facing the Planning Commission was the economy. Members Margolis, Burke and Mutch had no questions. Mayor Landry asked about the business environment here. Mr. Baratta noted that the City was very friendly to business development.

Mr. Dooley felt that the strengths of the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services began with Director Auler and said Mr. Auler made the experience a positive one for Commissioners. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt and Member Margolis had no questions. Member Mutch asked about the goals he set for the next three years. Mr. Dooley replied he wanted to see the ITC Sports Park have the top fields in the area; it had been a priority and would continue to be. He said the Commission would also make it a priority. He noted if an emergency happened anywhere in the park, special numbers had been posted to reach emergency personnel. Member Staudt had no questions. Mayor Landry asked about the success of the on-line registration. Mr. Dooley thought the numbers had increased.

Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked whether he should have recused himself regarding rezoning at Ten Mile and Wixom Roads. Mr. Lynch said he had spoken with counsel and since he had no interest in the property, he was asked to stay in the Planning Commission meeting. Member Margolis asked what he’s learned in the last 3 years. Mr. Lynch noted that now was a good time to attract more young people to the community and keep seniors in the City of Novi. Member Burke asked what he thought would happen in the southwest quadrant of the City. Mr. Lynch replied he didn’t see a change coming any time soon. The City of Novi had a good Master Plan and many people would look at it before they purchased and he thought eventually the southwest quadrant would evolve. The proposal had some good elements as well as some that were not as desirable. Mr. Lynch said the area of 10 Mile and Beck Roads would change somewhat as well as the area proposed for the park. He said the dilemma would be to accommodate both youth as well as seniors. Member Mutch asked where the City was going in terms of planning concepts to encourage development or re-development in the Novi. Mr. Lynch noted the importance of building the infrastructure. Members Staudt and Crawford noted they appreciated the time he spent on the Commission. Mayor Landry commented Mr. Lynch had a great deal of experience with people from all over the globe and appreciated the way he treated applicants.

Member Margolis asked Mr. Pehrson about his thoughts on the down time of the Planning Commission. Mr. Pehrson noted they should be using the time to plan for coming out of the recession. Member Mutch asked what he’s accomplished on the Commission. Mr. Pehrson replied the term of being pro-business but they like to think of it as being pro-Novi. They are pro-business oriented because they have business oriented residents on the Planning Commission. Member Crawford, Mayor Pro Tem Gatt and Mayor Landry had no questions.

Member Burke asked how Novi differed from his experience in South Lyon. Mr. Qadeer responded that the City of Novi had the potential for growth and to attract business to Novi. Member Mutch asked about his request for Construction Board of Appeals. Member Staudt asked about his interest in the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services Commission. Mr. Qadeer spoke about his concerns for the community with the loss of students. Member Crawford asked what he liked best about the City of Novi. Mr. Qadeer said being able to do everything he needed to do within the City of Novi limits. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked him about what he didn’t like in the City. Mr. Qadeer responded there was nothing he didn’t like because he felt the City was running quite well.

Mr. Staab notified Council he was unable to attend as his business took him out of state.

7. Gerald Jewell – Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services Commission

Mr. Jewell said he had lived in Novi for over 20 years and was President of the Novi Athletic Boosters. Member Mutch asked what he would like to see in the future. Mr. Jewell responded he would like to continue park improvements. Member Staudt asked him about some of the specifics at the parks. Mr. Jewell felt the City could go to the next level with the parks, as attracting more kids to the parks would bring more people to the community. Member Crawford asked about the combination of parks and senior services and how to promote Cultural Services and Mr. Jewell replied making more people aware of this aspect. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked what he would do with the senior citizens in the community. Mr. Jewell noted that having programs for seniors would make the community more like a family. Member Margolis asked about combining the types of things they do for Athletic Boosters. Mr. Jewell stated he would market and build awareness with websites, email, etc. as a way to communicate with the residents. Member Burke asked about the cultural services aspect of the Parks Department. Mr. Jewell responded that by utilizing the information from all the on-line registrants, it would assist in getting information out to the public through email. Mayor Landry noted the buzzwords were "shared services" and asked if he saw this happening with the schools. Mr. Jewell responded they had met with the schools to collaboratively communicate their effort to build the brand better for the future.

Mr. Pearson said Tom Wieczorek of ICMA Consulting was present and was one of the lead members of the team they had engaged and process had been quite involved with many meetings on the part of the consulting team and staff at all different levels. He said they had recommended this firm to Council because they had taken the raw information from the computer aided dispatch system and analyzed, sorted and organized that data. Mr. Pearson said the report Council had was the data over the last year in terms of how they had been using their time and their recommendation was based upon that. He said they took this course of action, the report, because they wanted to move from a very high level service to a higher level of service.

Mr. Wieczorek said coming to a community in Michigan that wasn’t under financial duress was enjoyable. He said it was pleasant to come in and find facilities that were excellent and a community, staff and a Council who were looking at the future and how to improve services and not how to pay the bills tomorrow. He thought that was a testament to Council and why the study was done in the first place and complimented them and staff for looking forward.

Mr. Wieczorek said there were a number of striking things as they looked at the operations. One of them was the professionalism of the staff from Administration through all the ranks to the paid on call and there were some excellent people serving Novi. He said they were also impressed with the quality of the facilities and equipment and said they were state of the art and excellent. He thought Novi was well positioned for the future when looking at how and when the City would grow because Novi had the infrastructure in place and today that could be a huge cost, if those things had to be duplicated. He said they had made some very wise decisions and hopefully they could point to policy changes they could enact. Mr. Wieczorek said the goal of ICMA Consulting was not to make the decision but to provide a range of policy options that Council could chose to enact fully, partially or ignore completely. He said they would try to present a range of policies that they had seen work in other parts of the country that would be applicable to Novi to make better services available. He said they compiled all the information into the reports but didn’t expect it to be enacted tomorrow, as many of the things were long range and would take years to accomplish. He noted that working with Novi Administrators in both the Police and Fire, they had provided some matrixes, assigned tasks and had begun making some of the changes they had talked about before the report was done. He said Novi’s Administration and staff seemed very positive and enjoyed their jobs and really understood that it was a service level. He said they provided an extremely high level of service to residents.

Mr. Wieczorek said he would take the Police first and one of the things they looked at in the police report that was indicative of the work being done was where calls were initiated. He said, on page 21, 70.5% of calls coming into the Police Department were initiated by the Police Officers on the road and that told them the Police Officers were out there and not in the station, donut shop, etc. They were initiating calls, arrests and writing tickets and seeing that level of activity was extremely good and a good indicator to Council they were not just sitting and waiting for the next call. He said, on page 23, a lot of the officer’s time was spent on traffic, initiated by them, and writing tickets. He said, on page 46, one question that often came up with Councils was how to position themselves for the future, how they were staffed today, were there enough officers per 1,000, and did they have enough officers for complaints. Mr. Wieczorek said there was no good indicator of officers per 1,000. He said communities that were using that type of number were fooling themselves because the 1,000 people in Novi might be law abiding citizens and in another community those 1,000 people might be miscreants and causing problems. Therefore, those numbers could be deceiving and could get them into trouble because they weren’t comparing apples to apples when looking at thousands. He said the other one that was thrown out was "we handle 200 complaints per officer" and this year they handled 400 complaints per officer, so they needed twice as many officers. Mr. Wieczorek said this would be a logical approach but the problem was what were the complaints they handled. He noted when he was a Police Officer a bike larceny didn’t take as long as a homicide investigation, so if those 200 complaints were all bike larcenies it wouldn’t take long to fill out those complaints. However, if there were 200 homicides they would quickly eat up all their staff time and then some. So, just looking at a complaint load could be deceptive. He said, on page 46, they liked to look at two different factors and they looked at the total number of hours paid for deployment. He said they looked at how many hours were being paid over a 24 hour period and they looked at spring and fall because in a lot of communities there was a difference. He said Novi didn’t vary a whole lot during the season, which was a good thing, and Novi had a pretty stable population. Mr. Wieczorek said looking at the top number, which was deployed hours, and then looking at the bottom of the chart it showed the total number of hours required to do the job. He said they looked at the difference or space between those two lines and that was how they advised cities to look at managing their time now, in the future and as they grew as a community. He said as the community saw more restaurants, clubs and bars that cater to a night life, they might see spikes in service during that time. So, deploying the number of officers and the time and space in between was really a policy decision. He said how much time they wanted available to do things like community policing, and provide officers extra time to give that excellent citizen support. He said what they didn’t want was for the green line and the deployment line to cross because at the point where they crossed each other they would be running out of time. Then, they would have people waiting on the phone or that had hung up that were waiting for a Police Officer to arrive. Mr. Wieczorek said that’s when they would receive complaints because people called to find out why they waited 35 minutes for a Police Officer. He said it was because the queue was getting bigger and there were not enough deployed hours to meet the call volume. He said what they had provided was the methodology to begin comparing those two things. As the City grew or even if it didn’t pick up, if they suddenly saw a change in criminal activity, as other communities around Novi saw a high unemployment rate, Novi would be a very attractive market. He said Novi had shopping, retail and people coming to spend money and those were attractions. He said matching those two lines might not all be indicative of growth and might be changes in the economy. So, how to staff today and in the future was to look at those two lines to see if they were getting close to that deployment level. He said sometimes that could be handled by changing schedules and starting the 12 hour shift a little later or earlier or staggering some shifts to accommodate time. However, it might, at some point in the future, require additional officers. He said now, when they looked at the two lines, Novi had about six to eight personnel available there to look at whether they could concentrate on other resources. He thought there were some areas where they could improve and provide an even higher level of service. For instance, forming a strike force, because they saw three criminal areas, burglary, car theft and larcenies, which were starting to spike. He said if they had not concentrated on those, they were sometimes hard to deal with and they could be in and out of Novi so quick, which was a down side of expressways and the transportation system. He said usually the most successful crime prevention strategy was to move them to the next community and a lot of times that was what they did. Mr. Wieczorek said in this area there was an easy transportation system to move so when they looked at calls for service, those three areas stuck out and there were some fairly significant increases in those areas. He said as the criminals were caught, the green line went down because now the officers weren’t handling the calls after they happened, because they had preempted them and taken a different role. He said rather than just having a reaction to crime, they would be preventing crime and freeing up additional hours in patrol time. Mr. Wieczorek said they had looked at reallocating some of the resources into that area and at moving into some of the Administration areas because they found Novi was doing a lot with a very flat organization. He said by flat he meant Novi didn’t have a huge top heavy organization in Police or Fire. They were very lean and it might be because Novi was still an evolving community. He said they started to see some issues where they couldn’t look at daily statistical reports and make deployment changes. He said going forward it was critical that they look at performance measures, how they were doing and getting on it right away. If looking at statistics on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis, they would be almost better off not doing it; especially today when people could move and things could change so quickly. He said by the time the statistics were looked at, they were out of date and they might be reacting to a problem that didn’t exist anymore.

Mr. Wieczorek said it was important to look at performance measures and quality control; to do that they looked at the creation of a second Deputy Chief position to handle the administrative function and one to handle personnel. He said then the other Lieutenant would come out of the excess capacity so there was supervision on both shifts making command decisions. He stated it was still not hugely top heavy but they thought it was a better model than now with some blank gaps. He said since they had looked at this, changes had been made that freed up some of the sergeants. He said when they were paying for officers to be sworn, they should be out in the field not in the station watching inmates that could be done by civilians or non-sworn personnel at a much cheaper cost. He said they had already implemented some of those things and they had complimented the Chief. He said going forward they would position the department by continuing to monitor the two lines and the calls for service. Mr. Wieczorek said not to worry if calls went up 100. The question was did they go up in traffic tickets, larcenies or armed robberies 100. He said armed robbery would eat the difference up very quickly as they would use detective time, officer time, interview, and court time etc.; so it was really looking at the trends and following them. He said they cautioned cities not to get tied into a magic number that if they got 15 more crimes, they would add an officer. He said that was probably the most dangerous thing because the crimes might not justify that and if they were managing where they were targeting and taking the serious crimes out of their queue, this would free the officers time up. He said the mundane tasks would always be there He said it was getting the serious ones out that were really draining their time, coordinating with the Detective Bureau and everything else to make that patrol time as efficient and effective as possible.

Mr. Wieczorek said, in the first section under Administration, the other model they recommended for both Police and Fire was to use the COMPSTAT model. He said the COMPSTAT model had been used on the east coast pretty extensively and they had been doing a lot of research through the National Institute of Justice and different groups. He said the beauty of the COMPSTAT model was that it was always looking at the comparative statistics and gave them almost real time when they were looking at data. So, they could make those transitions and changes quickly and hopefully head it off before it became a problem, or before the citizenry was victimized. He said the goal was to protect the citizens from ever having to be a victim of crime in the first place. The COMPSTAT model worked well because it was not only using the Police or the Fire Departments, it was using the resources of both departments, as well as the DPS and Parks and Recreation. He said people didn’t think of Parks and Recreation but who else had access to citizens who might provide information, they might hear from or who might see things. He said when he was a City Manager, they trained some of the DPW workers and when they had serious crimes they would broadcast to them the description of the vehicle. In two cases they had a bank robbery that the DPW guys spotted and called in. He said they would be shocked at how much information the senior citizens and youth programs had and it was how they tapped that information and how they got it to the Police and Fire Departments. It also gave them a good indication of how the dollars they were spending were effective or could things be done better. He said one of the challenges in communities across the board was how to market their service, how they get the message out when to doing crime prevention and trying to tell people they were seeing a trend, such as cars broken into. Mr. Wieczorek said the answer was to keep in touch with the marketing and what Charlottesville found was they were spending a lot of money trying to advertise with old methods, such as ads in papers, etc. He said they bought a demographic study that Walgreens and a lot of retailers used through GIS. They did a lot of studies and used GIS location and found that in the evening, the Golf Channel was the most watched channel in Charlottesville. So they started advertising all their community activities during that period of time as public service announcements and their service and requests went through the roof. He said so, as he and communities challenged Police and Fire, it was looking at things they traditionally had not done. He said people now were using face book, twitter, etc. so it was how they reached those people. If they were going to try to make changes in preventing crime and preventing people from being victims of crime, and in the fire area how to make them aware it’s time to change the smoke detector batteries, how do they get the message out to prompt that reminder. Mr. Wieczorek said it might be as simple as sending out an email or text alert at night using some of the email lists they already had. He encouraged them to ask their kids how they were communicating and sharing information. He said after the Virginia Tech shootings they alerted the student body. They tried the reverse 911 and found that a lot of the phones were off, or they were talking or that they never got the message. So, they sent out a massive text alert and that was how they communicated the last time they had an incident at the college and it took them 8 to 10 minutes. He said they heard complaints that it took too long to communicate with 40,000 students. He said there was a difference in philosophy between what they had been doing and what they would be going to. So, he challenged both Chiefs to look at how they were marketing because it was all about how they were communicating and how successful they were.

Mr. Wieczorek said in the fire area it had been a growing department and had gone from a smaller more of a volunteer tradition, to adding more of a career function and it was how they blend the two. He said the other problem that they saw was there were almost two levels of service provided by Fire and EMS Department. He said there were very few Fire Departments around the country today that were pure Fire Departments; most Fire Departments today had the majority of their calls being EMS and Novi was no different. He said the bulk of calls for service in Novi rest with EMS. He said how do they deploy their resources to meet the time challenges that exist in EMS, as well as, how do they blend the two functions because there are paid on call and the career department. He said there were a lot of talented people and the tendency they saw was that at 6 PM it changed and reverted to a different department and then at 6 AM they reverted back to another department. He said it was really about trying to blend those two and taking advantage because the fires didn’t stop at 6 PM. Mr. Wieczorek said the paid on call were going on a lot of fire calls and needed to be as informed on buildings and building construction as the full time people because their chances of going on a fire run were just as great or higher than during the daytime. He said it was really critical to go out and look at building construction and be involved in knowing what the hazards were in their community and it could also help the Police Department manage some problems before they developed. He said fire did not say it couldn’t burn after 6 PM because there’s a paid on call department; fires happen anytime and any place. He said it was the same with EMS. So trying to mix the two was the best solution they saw, trying to concentrate and focus on how the same level of service could be provided across the board and still deploy without additional resources. He said it was using the 12 hour shift but providing a mix of paid on call and full time but again one of the questions that came up was what was there to do at night. He said they should be inspecting all the activities that were happening at night; if there were bars and clubs, he could guarantee there were Fire Code violations. He said it was a lot easier to tell them they had fire violations than it was to go back, as in the case in Rhode Island and fight the law suits they are fighting after 100 people died. He said it was important to have people inspecting at 11 PM. The other places that could be inspected were malls and shopping areas because a lot of times they would prefer they come in at night because there are no people, some industries prefer later at night. He said they could offer inspections to residents on a voluntary basis for those who sleep during the day.

Mr. Wieczorek said they encourage communities to look at a paradigm shift in how they evaluate their fire service. He guessed that at the end of the year they look at fire loss, injuries and deaths; he said all of those things were failures. He said this was not just in Novi, as the fire service across the country had always been evaluated on what they lost. He said they really needed to make a paradigm shift and say what they were preventing and what they were saving and could they prevent an incident from happening in the first place. He said Scottsdale Arizona extended their service to seniors to not just look for fire hazards but for trip and fall hazards because there had been a 17% increase in hip fractures. They found that seniors that had hip fractures often didn’t recover and usually within two years they had a high mortality rate. He said they had decided that when they were inspecting for fire hazards, they would also inspect for trip and fall hazards and the 17% actually dropped. Now they weren’t going on trip and fall calls, residents weren’t having those hip injuries, they were seeing a better quality of life and a lot of other spin offs by preventing the incident from happening in the first place. He said what they encouraged and recommended was adopting a whole different philosophy that they were not going to sit at the station and wait for the bell to ring, rather they would go out and prevent the bell from ringing in the first place. He commented it would never be 100% as there would always be fires, traffic accidents and situations beyond their control but there was a lot that could be prevented. Again, as they were looking at data and trends in the community were they seeing a lot of juvenile fire setting? If so, they could have programs in schools working with kids not to play with matches or with the juvenile fire setter program but if not looking at the data in the first place, it would be hard to see the trends and react. Mr. Wieczorek said they recommended doing the same thing with the Police Department regarding trends that call for service, that they attack the problem before it got out of hand and eliminated it. He said it was all about looking at what caused the calls for service and could something be done about it.

Mr. Wieczorek said the bulk of the calls come in during the daytime, Novi had a 12 hour peak in Fire and EMS during the daytime, which was pretty uniform across the country. He said it was because there was a huge influx of people coming into Novi everyday to work and shop and there would be calls for service. He said they tried to envision how to put enough personnel on days, as well as at night, to handle the basic incident. He said there could never be enough and if they staffed for the worst case scenario, he guaranteed there wouldn’t be enough paid on call or enough money to do that. He said Novi didn’t have a lot of major incidents; so having huge amounts of people around was wasteful. He said now there were 19 people on days and that dropped down to four and two Captains at night. The fire didn’t burn any different on days than it did at night so how could they even that out more to get a flatter curve. Then for bigger events, they would have to rely on paid on call, which was the most economical. Mr. Wieczorek said as he talked with many City staff, he found that Novi had a very economical system. He said using the combination of paid on call and career was extremely economical and the challenge was managing it, keeping that level of service and staffing for peaks. The other area they looked at was equipment and whether the right equipment was bought, could money be saved or could they get a better bang for the buck. He said they made recommendations regarding the ambulance because the City was buying transport vehicles or ambulances. They might want to look at something different and faster because the idea of EMS was to get to the scene within 10 minutes. Ideally, the first responders from the Fire Department would get there in four minutes; after 10 minutes it’s a zero probability on heart deliberation. He commented they had identified some areas that they could do cheaper, better and provide a higher level of service. He said looking at Station 3, as the changes go forward with the railroad tracks and rerouting, most of the calls in that area were EMS. He asked if they could get the ambulance company to locate in that part of town, and take a lot of the call load off, which would save them from rebuilding that station. He suggested putting Station 1 in a more ideal location, if they decided to move it. He asked if anyone knew how they locate fire stations in this country. He said it was how far a horse could run before it dropped over from exhaustion pulling the coal tender, which was a mile and a half. Mr. Wieczorek said the problem with that was Novi didn’t have fires, it had an EMS problem and EMS might take a quicker response. He said the approach they had used traditionally to locate fire stations was that same approach and it had not changed in over 104 years. He said if they were receiving all EMS calls in a part of the community, they might deploy an EMS unit. He said in a lot of cities what they were seeing was a homeowner or homeowner’s association that had a garage, and would allow them to park a unit there and staff it for periods of time. He said he was in Fargo/Moorhead during the floods, and they were deploying all of their EMS resources out of two stations, one in Fargo and one in Moorhead using the predicted models and data with mobile stations, they don’t build fixed stations. He said going to a mobile deployment was more economical until they saw a true trend line developing.

Mr. Wieczorek said another idea they could discuss with the Chief were automatic aid agreements with surrounding departments. He said did it make sense that Station 4 was less than a mile away from a station in South Lyon causing an overlap of service. He asked if Novi could sell service to them in the future and utilize some of those services. He noted Chicago had done that extensively in the suburbs and had automatic aid agreements all the way up to Wisconsin and St. Joe Michigan, and they aren’t building stations. He asked if it made sense to build a $1.5 to $2 million station in Novi when in the next city, less than a mile away, there was another station when they could have shared resources with aid agreements. He encouraged Council to look at the data, trends and analysis before locating the next stations. Mr. Wieczorek noted there were charts on pages 54, 55 and 56. He said they wanted to deploy a resource so there was a uniform response and service delivery across the board. Now, there’s an increase at night and that was nothing against the paid on call. If people were sleeping in the station the times were going to increase. He said it wasn’t just Novi but was uniform across the country that response times increased at night because it took longer to get going. He noted that by deploying, using different models and having those people up during the night doing inspections, they could lower the response times. Then, they would be providing a better level of service, even at night, across the board. He said they had looked at all those deployments as revenue and expense neutral and weren’t looking at cost and additional money, but were trying to blend the two to become more of a team. He said there were great people on both parts of the department that were really capable. Another thing about blending the two was the paid on call people had some very significant talents. He said exploiting that talent would be getting the best bang for the buck whether it was administration planning the department strategic plan. A lot of resources were lost when they didn’t look that deep into the employees. He said the same thing with the career people and the possibility of them going to the night shift where they could study to complete some degree work, which would bring a knowledge based service back to the City whether GIS, EMS, etc. He said to build that department of the future was hopefully building a data driven, data analyzing department both in Police, Fire and EMS to look at trends and deploying resources based on data and not on an out dated model.

Member Mutch started with the police report first. He said while discussing this, at the Council level, one of the things they focused on was as they grew as a City, how they would best determine the form of department growth to best address the needs of the community and continue to provide a very high level of service. Member Mutch asked them to expand on the kind of things that would say to them it was time to change how they were organizing personnel in terms of adding command leadership or middle level management. Also, in terms of expanding the kind of services that might be required in the future.

Mr. Wieczorek said first would be not to take their eyes off prevention. He said the first thing that went in a tight budget time was prevention and for every dollar spent on prevention they saved $4 to $7 on response areas. He said, for example, it would have cost about $5 billion to build the dikes up ahead of Katrina but instead hundreds of billions of dollars had been spent in reaction; that did not count the loss of lives, etc. It would have been far less costly to have prevented it in the first place. He said it would be a lot better to get rid of the car thieves in town than to add people to take more reports and follow up. The critical thing was to track it on a regular basis, not yearly but weekly to look at the trend lines because it might be something they could handle with simple schedule changes. They could possibly stagger shifts, which would give the resources needed when the calls for service came in. He said in August between 6 and 10 a.m. the two lines were close and it might be just staggering the start times to handle that. He said part of the reason that happened was vacations; it might help to hire part time people for coverage until trends justify adding a full time person. He said it was the same thing on the Fire Department and they could use paid on call people, who were a great resource, to work four hour shifts instead of 12. He said when they built a 24 hour shift in, they were staffing for the worst case of the day, which was a little after noon. The other times of the day it was dropping off and very few businesses would staff at the same level with one third of the calls or activity. He said they would drop the staffing off accordingly and match those two. He said they should do these things on a regular basis, and give Council and the City Manager the information so that those decisions could be made timely. He noted another important thing to look at on a weekly basis was did the wrong people move in, causing a crime spree, or was it something that was anchored in the community and that they needed to get rid of. He said if looking at the trend analysis, and there was a car theft problem at the mall, put Police Officers out there in plain clothes to get it under control. If it’s a long term trend, they needed to add people. If it wasn’t going down with those efforts, then it was time to discuss adding staff.

Member Mutch said the report focused on using COMPSTAT and the statistical analysis that would give them an idea of how they were doing from a trend perspective. He asked what other benchmarks they should be looking at to measure the effectiveness of these changes. He said when he looked at the response rate of Police and Fire, success rate in closing crimes and addressing service calls, they do a pretty good job. He said when looking at the resident’s satisfaction, it was very high. He said obviously Novi was a high performing organization that did a good job, wanted to do better and show the residents they were using the resources to the best of their ability. He asked what other things they could be looking at that would tell them they were moving beyond what they were already accomplishing.

Mr. Wieczorek responded they could look at how long it took individual officers and personnel to take complaints. Also, look at officer performance; were there under and over performers. He said were some people writing traffic tickets, taking complaints and handling situations or were they taking one or two complaints the entire shift. The other part of COMPSTAT was that as it fed up, it gave the road officer a day to day or regular report on what they were seeing in the department. For example, if the detectives were closing out a case, or there was a hot lead on the case, etc. COMPSTAT also shared information among officers that made them more effective on patrol. He said it was a challenge in all departments, because the Police Department was staffing for 24 hours and how would information get shared across 24 hours to get the biggest bang for the buck. He said they had invested in all the technology but how they should use that technology, COMPSTAT helped to share that across the board as well. He said then they could look at performance measures and how long people were taking on traffic stops; for example, were officers taking two minutes and others taking twenty. He asked if Council wanted more personal service regarding people who called regularly for certain incidents; they might be able to intervene with that. In Washington, DC they found with senior populations, especially as they got older, a lot of them had no family left so they called Police and Fire knowing they would respond. He said it was kind of frightening in some aspects because they were all alone. So, he asked if there were things they could do using the CERT volunteers to make calls to the senior population everyday to ask how and what they were doing, did they take their medication, were there any issues, etc. He said sometimes it was just the reassurance they needed and they were not calling into the system. He said the most successful program of this type was in Arizona and their initial calls were taking five minutes. Now their CERT volunteers were taking 22 minutes to talk to the seniors because they said the seniors were so nice and they really enjoy doing this every day. He said what was not happening was they were not calling into the system, the customer’s happy because the citizen had someone checking on them, it was a better overall system and they weren’t spending any more money. Mr. Wieczorek said it was looking at those type of performance issues, were they seeing the same address call over and over, were their things the building inspector could get involved with, or they could get the Fire Department involved because the home was overloaded or there were 40 people in a house meant for 20, etc. It could be something as simple as an arrest was needed because they were going to the same home every night for domestic violence. He said another performance to look at were they closing cases by arrest or were they just closing cases. He said time spent on different calls was a big indicator and they could give Council some other calls for service in looking at performance measurement.

Member Mutch said one of the bigger changes recommended was the addition of two new positions, Deputy Chief and Lieutenant, in the Police Department. He thought people in the field and the residents would look at that as, in this time of cutting back, the City was adding management. He asked what deficiencies that would address.

Mr. Wieczorek said two of the key points they looked at was take an existing personnel out and the other one that would be taken out would be eliminating some overtime because the positions weren’t union positions. He said overall between not having take home vehicles and in other areas they would become much less costly. The improvements would be in supervision and in the depth of the Administration of the organization. He said now when the Chief and Deputy Chief were unavailable there was no command. He said they needed some depth there because the department was pretty skinny at the top. Mr. Wieczorek said Council would like someone in charge at all times of the day; they were running a 24-7, 365 day a year operation. He said a Deputy Chief in administrative areas was important because they were a bigger department than they were years ago. They had to manage all the volunteers to be effective in achieving some overall result and that took paid people and they could manage that by taking the excess people that the Police Department had and promoting those two up with the other changes of non-union, saving overtime and the take-home vehicles. He said it was minimal as far as the overall cost, but in performance issues it would improve substantially. He noted they normally recommended hiring a lot of layers, but in this case there were so few layers they felt there were some huge deficiencies.

Member Mutch said one of the recommendations was the idea of having a targeted group that would deal with enforcement kinds of issues like a small team. He asked how they saw that as being different from what they were already doing with the directed patrol.

Mr. Wieczorek said it was actually putting a real direct focus on what they were doing, looking at the data, seeing if there was an area like auto thefts, at the mall. He said in a lot of cases they would have to put undercover police in the parking lot to see what was happening. He said they might be sitting in their own vehicle with a decoy vehicle they were watching; the complaint would be closed by arrest and prevent anymore from happening. He commented that would ultimately impact the overall deployment of resources because now the work load would go down once those people were taken out of the system and they wouldn’t be back.

Member Mutch asked since a certain number of officer hours were going towards this directed patrol concept, was this on top of that or was it a redirection of resources.

Mr. Wieczorek said it would be a redirection of existing resources that would really focus in on major problem areas as they developed. As the problem disappeared those people would go back into patrol.

Member Mutch said one of the recommendations for the Fire Department was an additional management position of a second Deputy Chief, and the City Administration had said they were not looking at adding that position but kind of blend it in with the existing Fire Marshal position. He asked how that position would be different from a Fire Marshal position. Also, if as the community grew, would there be a need for the second Deputy Chief position as staff was added or demand for services increased.

Mr. Wieczorek said they focused on the quality and prevention aspect of which the Fire Marshal was a key player on how to prevent fires from happening through building codes. He said when it would rise to a level that they would want to step up prevention with perhaps directed volunteers doing inspections, etc. He said at that point they might raise it to the Deputy Chief just for the sake of command and authority, then they could make decisions regarding hiring and firing, disciplinary action, etc. They would look at when that cut would be necessary and would evaluate it with the Chief. He said right now Novi had a great Fire Marshal who was doing a good job and if the City grew, they would have to see when they reached that trip line.

Member Mutch said he had touched on the concept of mobile deployment instead of investing in a new fire station and personnel would be stationed out in the field. He asked how that worked and if they would be out there for a full shift, in a vehicle waiting to respond to a call.

Mr. Wieczorek said Fargo did it and they used the predictive models. They actually try to locate the times of day when the computers projected they needed a unit in the area doing building inspections, they knocked off other issues while they were there, doing fire inspections of buildings. If it was strictly an EMS problem, they would put them on a corner. He said a lot of private ambulance services were doing that and were not investing in a fixed space because of the cost. He said the predictive models being used in the United States were developed in the UK and they claimed about a 95%-99% effective rate, and had been doing this for about 40 years more than the United States had. The UK had theirs down to a science; they deployed all their fire vehicles getting them out of the station. In Fargo and in Oxford, North Carolina their people could not be in the station during the day. He said there had been community policing since the eighties and it had been very successful; it’s now adopting that same process in fire, that they’re preventing and hopefully not even going on the call.

Member Mutch said the major change in the Fire Department that Mr. Wieczorek suggested and recommended was in terms of staffing, changing the levels of staffing and also the distribution of the staffing. He said also, bringing the paid on call firefighters onto the day shift and the full time firefighters onto the evening or night shift. He asked what kind of reaction Mr. Wieczorek received when discussing this with both groups and particularly with paid on call.

Member Mutch said the first question he had was what kind of availability they would have from paid on call personnel to be able to work those kinds of hours. He said typically paid on call personnel were working full time or had full time commitments. He asked what the feedback was on this.

Mr. Wieczorek said they had those discussions and the biggest challenge they had with paid on call was if they finished work at 6 PM and then came out and were busy all night long, they were not sleeping. He said hopefully they would structure their volunteer time as paid on call, so that they were getting their sleep. He said whether or not there was enough paid on call, capacity would have to be evaluated and they could possibly change some of the hours around or work 6 hours instead of 12. They might have to put more full time on days and fewer at night. He said now the Fire Department was running at 19 and 4 and that was a huge difference when Fire and EMS didn’t change after 6 PM. He said it would flatten that out a little and would take advantage of the training and education they had and hopefully the full time could train with the paid on call and likewise on days. He said now there was one training person trying to do it around the clock, which was difficult.

Member Margolis said it was really important to her to get this done and she thought what was provided was a great resource because data and information was valuable. One of the things she struggled with on Council was the fact that public safety was the most important service the City provided. So, she and Council were making decisions on budget and priorities without the information needed to do the analysis that they owed the community. She said one of the hallmarks of this City and the reason they had continued to improve was being able to open themselves up like this. She said the key to excellence in any organization was looking at themselves, taking the information, not pointing fingers or blaming, but asking what they could do with the information to provide a greater level of service. Member Margolis commented she saw the very clear recommendation about making this a fully integrated department for a number of reasons. She said the commitment to work together from rank, structure, uniforms, mixing of units and all those kinds of things to up the level and creating one cohesive team that could work together on issues. She also liked the outcome based performance measures, which was information to Council and everybody as to how they were doing and where they were going. Member Margolis said, on page 19 of the Fire Report, it talked about private EMS. She said it talked about "the private firm should have a negotiated franchise agreement to operate within the City that includes performance measures". She thought they had some of those now but they were suggesting a higher level of performance measure.

Mr. Wieczorek said one of the issues that came up was that the City needed all the transport vehicles because they didn’t have the units or weren’t sending them. There were 19 runs last year and they were looking to replace three vehicles, which would cost $450,000. He asked if that could be done with a franchise change, telling them Council expected this performance level and if they weren’t going to have an ambulance available, Council needed, as the franchisee, to get somebody on standby, from Farmington Hills, South Lyon, etc. Instead of investing $450,000, they would just have the ambulance and then they wouldn’t have to worry about transport, liability, insurance and everything else they were paying. He said if they only transported 19 people a year, couldn’t that be handled by a franchise change. He said it could and would be simple and they could improve their speed of response by getting a lighter vehicle that was more mobile and easier to maneuver than the very large boxes that had a short life and were costly to operate. He said the City Manager had been talking about that, too. He said there could be some Station 3 tradeoffs that would save the City from having to invest millions by simply stationing an ambulance there. He said those were things that could be done quickly and easily and save long term money.

Member Margolis said COMPSTAT would provide a dashboard of performance measures that everybody could easily access, look at quickly and make decisions. Mr. Wieczorek said they would all share the same data and all look at the same page. He said when they logged into their computers, they could see what had been done during the last 24 hours.

Member Margolis said Mr. Wieczorek talked about, both the Fire and Police regarding data issues and getting information. Then, later in the report he had talked about the CAD RMS and she asked if that was a recommendation, to help with the data issues. He said yes, it was making some changes where they could position themselves better for it. She said she was very interested in the performance measures and she asked how good was good enough. She said from what she was reading, the ideal they should go for was the trained citizen and dispatch would tell them where the closest AED was. Mr. Wieczorek said that was important because they had found in study after study that a lot of times someone in the room would be having a heart attack and CPR was given when there was an AED near by. He said they recommend putting another layer in the Dispatch CAD system, which would be a GIS layer that the Fire and Police could work with to locate where the AED’s were. Then Dispatch could tell the first responder where the AED was located. He said in cases that were now successful, it improved the efficiency 3,500% on the use of the AED’s.

Member Margolis said the goal was for the first responder to get to the scene within four minutes and the national best standard was to get there 90% of the time within four minutes. If responders were trained, they would deliver a viable patient to the City responder who would help stabilize them and deliver a viable patient to the transport agency with paramedics. She said EMS should be there within 8 minutes.

Member Margolis said a big issue for response is variation; it wasn’t so much the average, it was really that there were big differences in the amount of time, and narrowing that variation would really help in the response rate. Mr. Wieczorek said she was correct. Member Margolis said a lot of that was what he was recommending in terms of trying to smooth the staffing along the whole 24 hours and the weekends. Mr. Wieczorek said right, having a big bulk on days and being skinny at night and on weekends. He said the levels and severity didn’t decrease during those times. So it’s spreading the existing resources out and augmenting with truly paid on call who were coming back in just to handle those big cases. He said it was the best of both worlds and the City had the capability and capacity to do that. Member Margolis assumed that their performance measure on knowing if the smoothing was working, because they would need to work with it and watch the variation, be reduced and make changes as needed based on the information. He said to watch for the times that 3 or 4 calls were coming in at the same time because maybe they should beef up the times during that period, so they weren’t building up calls. Member Margolis said the idea of the combined and 12 hour shift was to help standardize the response and work with it using the full time firefighters day and evening. She said she was really interested in the "community firefighters" that could use their time both day and night. She said especially night time when the calls weren’t as often, to do the kinds of inspections that were needed like such as senior trip and fall hazards, helping relieve the Police for storms and power outages, etc. She said she loved the idea of not needing Station 3 because of a mobile patrol. As a Council who had struggled with how to deal with the cost of adding a station, it was very helpful information. Mr. Wieczorek said with the hotels in that area, perhaps they could train their staff to be the first responders. He said the best place to have a heart attack was Las Vegas because they trained all of their staff, down to the people who made the beds, on how to intervene so they were delivering viable patients when the medical people got there for transport. He said they had AED’s all over the place and teams that rush in, if there was a medical emergency. He said the Station 3 coverage area, especially around Novi’s borders, had some fairly significant hotel development. She said they would be shifting the bulk of the work of the firefighters to this kind of training prevention inspection. Mr. Wieczorek said yes, so a viable patient was being delivered to them because if they were getting there, and there was no patient or no expectancy of life, they needed to change something. He said that was the key, focusing on outcomes was getting that information back from the hospital on what care the patient received and the results.

Member Margolis asked if she understood correctly, they recommended taking the Fire Marshal position and making it more of a manager of the inspection function versus having to do all of the inspections himself. Mr. Wieczorek said correct, because then they would have 12 or 18 people on a shift doing what one person was doing now. He said, hopefully, this would allow them to do inspections more frequently, taking care of more problems, providing more service and hopefully eliminating ever having a call in the first place.

Member Margolis said in the data about Station 1, it seemed like they were the busiest station, with the shortest response and the first on the scene. She asked if there was a reason for this. Mr. Wieczorek responded they were staffed around the clock and the other stations were not and the concentration, location and the proximity to where the calls were coming in was a critical piece. She said they used that as a basis for suggesting the staffing, even for that facility. He said when they looked at the model and beefing that up with a higher concentration, if they were taking all the calls, which might have to be adjusted, they would find some of the others, like Station 4, didn’t have as many calls. He said they could even redeploy during periods back to Station 1, so that they weren’t burning people out by running constantly through their shift.

Member Margolis said she had comments on the Police study. She said they had stated in the report that the Police Department was one of the better departments they had looked at and staffing was good. She was really interested in the information, and the community needed to know that they clear cases in two categories Part A, which was more severe than Part B. She said the report said they cleared 32% of Part A crimes in a year and 87% of Part B, and the national average was 19%. Member Margolis commented she was pleased with the comments about the facility. She said Council had concerns about the facility and they said it was well designed to meet the needs well into the future. Mr. Wieczorek said if there was an area that was needed, they could always relocate the maintenance staff and build on the garage and reclaim that space. He said it wasn’t necessary now but would give them some growing room, if it became necessary to expand. Member Margolis commended the Administration and the Chiefs because Council had received their list of recommendations and how they would approach them.

Member Margolis commented she was pleased with the report and looked forward to continual reports from Administration. She said she supported the recommendations in the document, and thought they absolutely needed to keep looking at this and use the data to make sure they continually provided a better level of service to the residents. She noted that very clearly, this didn’t require any more resources in terms of budget. In fact, they found ways to save money while providing a higher level of service.

Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said he concurred with his colleagues that public safety was the reason government existed at all levels. He said without public safety there would be no reason to come to the City of Novi or any other City and that included Police, Fire, DPW and Water and Sewer.

Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said they were recommending a 24 hour operation with no sleeping, no beds, no televisions and when they were not responding to calls they, would be out being the "eyes and ears" of the Police Department or doing inspections, etc. Mr. Wieczorek said he was correct and they could also assist the Administration and augment services they were doing such as GIS, data analysis and some of the functions that had to be cut. He said they paid for those hours so they could better deploy those hours and get a better return for them. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said presently there were two Captains on 24 hour shifts and asked what they would recommend. Mr. Wieczorek said they looked at Captains in charge of each squad and they would be working the 12 hour shift so they would be with their squad. Again, if the Captain was up and managing, they weren’t getting any sleep either and it was hard to work a 24 hour shift. Member Gatt asked if they had talked to the paid on call people about their wants, desires and needs regarding staying up all night. Mr. Wieczorek replied he didn’t know if they got into that exact question but they did talk to them all and they talked about different issues and they met with some of them individually, their union and looked at bridging the gap. He said they talked today about how they would fill those spots and how they would work all day and stay up all night. He said it was one of their concerns and whether they would have enough people. Mr. Wieczorek said again, they might look at recruiting or staggering the shifts with 6 hour blocks. He said that was something they would have to look at after getting more in depth with each of them. He said there were 60 people and they had to find out if there were enough to fill those positions, especially if they could schedule out two or three months. They needed to find out if they could work their weekends off, or do they have a schedule that could be accommodating. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said it would be a dramatic change in the way the Fire Department was staffed. He asked if the change, if implemented, would cause a number of paid on call people to resign their position. Mr. Wieczorek said no, because if they couldn’t work the regular schedule, they would still continue be called in for the major incidents at their availability. He said they would not be getting rid of anyone; they might not have to be called as frequently at night, but there would still be a need for paid on call. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said then the paid on call people, who could not work the shifts they were accustomed to working would still be a part of the department. Mr. Wieczorek said hopefully they would, as well as there might be additional paid on call on days and other things to augment. So, they might even have additional times they would be called for events. He said hopefully it would allow them to schedule their time and provide a uniform service versus now they had no idea when they would be called in. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked if that was part of their union contract. Mr. Wieczorek said it would require negotiating some of their times in the union contract. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said then it would have to be bargained for and Mr. Wieczorek said yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said he found the report to be rather incendiary. He said there were phrases, words and statements that got his rancor up because the City had done a couple studies in the past asking the citizens what they thought about the Police and Fire Departments. He said they both got excellent, grade A plus and he believed that. He said he retired from the Police Department, so when he read statements in the report that weren’t very nice, it concerned him. He said one of the statements, page 4, was "part of the dysfunction in the Fire Department could be traced back to a change of leadership in the department. The former administrative team was not aggressive and written documents had not been kept current with processes communicated to employees." He said there had only been one Administrative change in the last several years so they were talking about one person. He said that person had a statue dedicated to him just outside the Civic Center doors. He asked Mr. Wieczorek if he talked with this person and received his side of the story. Mr. Wieczorek responded that information came from personnel and it wasn’t meant to be a negative as much as it reflected a change in how the Department operated. He said it was a volunteer department and they operated much differently than a career department did. He said the current Chief had implemented a number of policies and regulations because it was a career department. He said it had not always been understood by the former members who were used to the way it was always run. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said when the former Chief was here, they had a blended Fire Department just like it was now. He said the former Chief had been gone for 3 ½ years and to trace the dysfunction back to him because he didn’t follow the rules or write the rules, was unfair when Mr. Wieczorek didn’t talk to him. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said he did talk to him and he took great exception to what was written; let’s just let it be said that the former Chief challenged that statement with documentation.

Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said as far as their recommendations for both departments, he couldn’t agree more. He said it’s 2009 and everyday things change and technology changes and they should stay current with that, and to his knowledge they were. He commented that Mr. Wieczorek said "it was beautiful to be in a City that wasn’t under financial duress". He was surprised that some of his colleagues didn’t mention that because they just got done with a budget where a couple of Council people said they were in deep financial duress. He said they were not the Novi of 5 years ago and probably wouldn’t be for many years to come. He noted tax revenues were down and there was no prognosis of something healing quickly in that regard. He said they were a City under some financial duress right now, so he took exception to that. However, they were a City that seemed to do the most with what they had. He said they always had done that and it was why Novi had the state of the art facilities they talked about in both the Police and Fire studies. He said it was why the Police and Fire Departments had a grade A report card.

Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said he was not opposed to a lot of their conclusions in the Fire Department and was not opposed to what they recommended doing, but didn’t think it would work. He said the paid on call people were dedicated people who lived in Novi and the City needed them. He didn’t think if they left in mass, they would be able to recruit enough replacements. He said they had been diligently trying to recruit over the last several years and didn’t have the ability to do it. He said what would come next would be the conclusion from the Administration that there weren’t enough paid on call people and they were sorely lacking in protection. Therefore, they would have to hire more full time people. He commented he didn’t see any time in the foreseeable future that they would add full time Police or Fire to the City. He said as intriguing as it sounded, he didn’t think 12 hour shifts with a blend were feasible in Novi.

Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said on page 4 it said, "this was clearly a department of which the City’s residents and elected officials can be proud." He said it was no secret that Novi had the best Police Department in Michigan and maybe the country. He said that was their conclusion right away and just like they didn’t talk to the old Fire Chief, he would suspect they didn’t talk to the old Police Chief. Mr. Wieczorek said not that he knew of. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said Lee BeGole started the Police Department in 1954, he was an attorney, and very educated beyond the norms and standards of that time. He said he could have started the Police Department with commandants, generals, lieutenants and Captains etc., because he was the City Manager and Fire Chief, at the same time. He was everything to Novi and what he chose to do was to make it the non top heavy department that existed today. He noted because he chose that from 1954 to 2009 the Novi Police Department was the top notch Police Department it was. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt thought that unless they went back in history to see how Novi got to where it was, he thought they missed something. He said he wished they had talked to him because Chief BeGole was just as important to the Police Department as Chief Molloy was today. Chief BeGole could have told them why they got to where they were. Mayor Pro Gatt said they now had the brightest Chief in Michigan in Chief Molloy and it was no secret that they were friends and that he felt that way. However, his thoughts of Chief Molloy were not fiction but fact. He said Mr. Wieczorek said that the recommendations put forward would make the Department better and it wouldn’t cost money and would be cost savings. He said it was confusing to him because, as he read the study, they wanted to promote five people to make one more Deputy Chief and one more Lieutenant and that was a total of five promotions to backfill those spots. Mr. Wieczorek said they might have promotions up but they were already paying for three of those positions, so it would be a net zero. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said but they were promoting 5 people and they would get salary increases. Mr. Wieczorek said no, two would get salary increases because they were only creating two positions. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said now lets talk about the net negative line with two people being taken away from the road patrol. Then they want to take 3 or 5 more to go on directed patrol, which would not be permanent. He said they did that nine years ago. He said whenever there was a problem in a sub, the bicycle patrol would go out and he thought it was something that was already being done. So he didn’t see that as new or innovative; it was just something that every great police department did.

Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said the need for another Deputy Chief concerned him because on the one hand, they were telling everybody that this was the greatest department since sliced bread, and he agreed. However, on the other hand, they were telling people that change was needed and they needed more layers of management. He said the report said not having take home cars would save money and asked Mr. Wieczorek to explain. Mr. Wieczorek said some of the positions had take home vehicles that they wouldn’t necessarily need, and the purely administrative vehicles could be reassigned. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked if he knew who had the take home vehicles in the department now. Mr. Wieczorek said two Lieutenants and a Detective Sergeant. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said the Chief and Deputy Chief didn’t have a vehicle but received a car allowance. He asked if the new Deputy Chief would get a car allowance. Mr. Wieczorek said that was negotiable because they were not in the union. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked if they planned on giving the new Deputy Chief a car allowance, and Mr. Wieczorek said no. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked about the new Lieutenant and Mr. Wieczorek said no. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said then one Lieutenant would but the second Lieutenant wouldn’t. Mr. Wieczorek said yes. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked if they were going to take away the take home cars. Mr. Wieczorek said only the person on call to come back in, would need a take home car. He said if they weren’t required to come back in they would not need a take home vehicle. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said wouldn’t all of the command staff be required to come back in the event of an incident. He said one person would be on call and the other two or three would not. Mr. Wieczorek said once there was command, they wouldn’t have to call back as much.

Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked if his goal was to elevate people out of the union. Mr. Wieczorek said no. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked then why would it make the Department more efficient to take the same person from here to there and say they had to do more work. Mr. Wieczorek said the biggest change was then they had the ability to hire, fire or do everything the Chief did that the union person couldn’t do. So, now they had the Chief and two Deputies that could act in the absence of the Chief 24-7 and 365 days a year. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked if one deputy was sufficient for that. Mr. Wieczorek said there were times when Command Officers were not there and duties currently envisioned with the Deputy Chief fell to the Lieutenant. The Lieutenant was in the union and it wasn’t a good idea to have a union person fire another union person. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said he didn’t think anyone below the rank of Chief could fire someone per the contract, correct. Mr. Wieczorek said if they were made a Commanding Officer, they had the same ability as the Chief and they act in his absence. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said a command officer in the union could suspend someone and send them home. Mr. Wieczorek said he wasn’t sure if the contract allowed that or not; and Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said it did. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked if he was saying there were times when the Chief and the Deputy Chief were both out of town. Mr. Wieczorek said they could be on vacation, have time off, have training or at meetings. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked what if they had a second Deputy Chief and all three were on vacation. Mr. Wieczorek said that could happen and again they were not locked into adding the Deputy Chief if they chose to keep it a Lieutenant, that was Council’s choice. He said they were giving them a range of options. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked if it would accomplish the same goal to take the two Lieutenants they had today and promote them to the rank of Captains, which put them out of the union, with the caveat that their union benefits would expire and they would become Administrative employees. Also, their Defined Benefit Program would go away and they would be under the Defined Contribution Plan. He said then take these two people and divvy up the Department just like they recommended in the study; would that work? Mr. Wieczorek said it seemed like they would be creating the same position they were looking at now. He said they would end up with the same outcome except they would have a Deputy Chief in the middle and two Captains, which meant they would actually end up with the equivalent of three Deputy Chiefs. He said because they would all be out of the union, he assumed they would all have the same responsibilities and command ability. He said now instead of one or two Deputy Chiefs there would be three, two with a lesser rank than the Deputy Chief; so now he had actually elongated that where Mr. Wieczorek was trying to keep it relatively flat. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said not really because now there would be a Chief, Deputy Chief and two Captains and in Mr. Wieczorek’s scenario a Chief, two Deputy Chiefs, and two Lieutenants. Mr. Wieczorek said the two Deputy Chiefs would be looking at totally different functions in the Department with one being operations and one being support. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt asked if that could be done with two Captains. Mr. Wieczorek said he could call them whatever he’d like as it was just a matter of naming something. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said they could accomplish the same goal without a second Deputy Chief because now there were two command officers out of the union. Mr. Wieczorek said they would look at that, but it was just negotiating out of the union, out of agreements and coming up with the job descriptions and the functions. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt agreed and said the trick was negotiating that out of the union just like negotiating the paid on call people to change. He said this was a union City and State, and he commented he would be very surprised if it worked. He said this very scenario had been introduced to the Police Department at least three times in the past 25 years and the union said no. He said maybe the union was small and they would go for something like that, but it would accomplish the same thing he wanted to do with a lot less cost involved. He thought it would maintain the integrity of the Deputy Chief who tested for that position and he believed he belonged in that position. He said to elevate someone to his equal, for no obvious reason, didn’t make sense. He said to promote five people when they could promote two didn’t make sense. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said he was all for the guys but as a tax payer they had to do what was best, most prudent and most economical. He was very concerned with taking two people from the road patrol without replacing them. He said why take away from the people who go out there and keep the City and streets the safest. He said everyone had a function in the Police Department but the road patrol was the backbone and they should never take from the road patrol, unless they could backfill those people.

Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said the study mentioned that officers were assigned outside. One officer was with the DEA and one with a local narcotics team; he asked if they would be benefitting the City. Mr. Wieczorek said he thought today the City received $300,000 in forfeiture money and he would say they were benefitting the City. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said that whole bust came from a road patrol function and not an undercover function and subsequent arrests came from the investigation. Mr. Wieczorek said most road patrols were where the tips came from and then they worked the tips up the line. He said they had done very well on forfeitures. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said then in his opinion the officers assigned outside were worthwhile and beneficial. He asked about the shifts and whether the 12 hour shifts were efficient and effective. Mr. Wieczorek said they were and Novi’s periods of activity again followed that same Bell Curve, other than the 2 AM period. He said the 12 hour on law enforcement was probably the most efficient shift because if they worked a 10 hour shift, they had a period of overlap. He said they’ll never find a City where crime doubled in a period of time. No matter how they worked a 10 hour shift, there was a period where there were twice as many officers coming on duty, no matter how they staged it. He said the problem with an 8 hour shift was continuity of supervision, because it took three supervisors to work the 8 hour shift where it took two on the 12 hour. So, what they found across the country was that 12 hour shifts were usually the best. He said the only issue they had to watch was activity and burnout because they can tire when on the go 12 full hours of the shift. He said that was something they could manage and watch but usually people liked 12 hours because they got every other weekend off, they worked less days and it provided additional benefits.

Mayor Pro Tem Gatt said on page 72 of the study they said that the City should move toward becoming accredited with CALEA. He asked if he was aware that the Police Department attempted that at least once and probably twice in the past 25 or 30 years. Mr. Wieczorek said he actually headed up the Fire Accreditation for a period of time and encouraged communities not to look at the accreditation. He said if all they were going to do was get a plaque on the wall, save your money. However, if they were using it as a process to better their department to make sure they had all of the current policies, procedures and everything covered, then the accreditation process was good. He said it was a continuous improvement methodology. They could do everything in the accreditation model without going for accreditation and save themselves a great deal of money. Also, they needed to be sure, as a Council, they had tackled everything on the check out list, and they had experts around the world that were updating that list continually for them. So, they knew they had all their bases covered. Mayor Pro Tem Gatt trusted that the Administration in City Hall and the Police Department did exactly that. He said on page 68, they recommended a change to the civilian input property and evidence, traffic investigators and training. Again, this was a union and he couldn’t imagine that too many officers in the union would want to let the senior citizens come in and do these things. He concurred that anytime they could use private citizens was great and the Police Department did that with the Handicap Patrol and Cadet Program. He said it was a union shop and a lot of these recommendations were wonderful but he thought if they were pragmatic and honest with each other, there were not a lot of carrots to give the union to do this and there wasn’t much money. He agreed with a lot of what Mr. Wieczorek said and took exception to what was said about the Fire Chief. He said he’s a great man and to blame him for any problems that might or might not exist today was way off base and out of line. The Police Department was great and if changes could be made to make it greater, he was all for it. However, he didn’t think they needed five promotions to accomplish what they wanted to do. He thought it could be done in a much less costly manner.

Member Burke said he agreed with the previous speaker that perhaps they could streamline some of what they wanted to do. He said relative to the Fire Report on page 4 "Department provides a high level of specialized services to the citizens of and visitors to the City at a very affordable cost." He said similar things were said in the Police Report on page 4 as well, "the Department provides a high level of specialized services to the citizens of and visitors to the City." He said it was important to maintain and make certain that everyone was aware that nothing was broken here. Mr. Wieczorek agreed. Member Burke said that the citizen’s surveys commended the City in these two areas. He said this was just an opportunity to see what they might be able to do to make it a little better when they head toward an increased population and build out.

Member Burke said on, page 67, it said "In a review for calls or services involving weather related instances such as storms, power outages, high winds, they found that the Police Department resources were stretched very thin, it was related to the ICMA Team. It was thought that the Fire Department unit should play more of an active role in assisting the Police Department during these events." He asked if it wouldn’t be just as taxing in the Fire Department under the same circumstances mentioned above, they might be very busy themselves. Member Burke said he believed there might have been some CERT Training involved, but perhaps they would look at something more along those lines rather than taking a 30 member force with up to 60 paid on calls and having them dispatch for that. Mr. Wieczorek said staff thought it could be better coordinated through one versus spreading it across both areas. Ideally, if it was going to be anything of longer term, the CERT was a perfect use of that resource because they would be babysitting wires until the power company could get there. He said that was an expensive tie up of resources and it drew down in resources.

Member Burke said, on page 24, related to vehicles that the City operated in the police force, they stated that they were running some Crown Victorias. He said they touched on the power train warranties and mentioned New York and Philadelphia that used the Chevrolets with the longer power train warranty. Mr. Wieczorek said because of the situation of the car companies it was unclear as to what choices would be available as the fuel economy changed. He said the first thing they usually dropped were the police fleet because they were the worst fuel users and if they were really looking to boost their overall fuel levels, they usually drop the police packages. He said Chrysler had, off and on, dropped their police package because they were looking over the overall fuel economy of their fleet, which was what they were rated on and now we’re going to raise it up to 28. He said that could change very quickly. Member Burke said he didn’t know if these models would be included in the CAFE ratings. Mr. Wieczorek said they had actually come in and that was why Chrysler stopped making their Interceptor for awhile. They used to be the bulk of most police vehicles and they dropped it because it was impacting their overall fleet. Member Burke said they also recommended that the service life of a patrol vehicle should be 125,000 miles, which by union contract was 80,000. He said looking at the vehicles, the warranty and a very, very well run maintenance program, was key to getting a longer life out of the vehicles.

Member Crawford said she wanted to say that this was a lot of information and a lot to understand. She thought it was a little too early to tell whether the recommendations were wise or prudent. She knew that the Administration and staff would look at everything, and she was shocked to have already received information from them that they had looked at all the recommendations and some were under advisement. She said this was important for Council to do to help them understand what the departments were going through and were faced with. She commended staff for having an open mind about it and not taking it as criticism of what they did. She thought they did a fine job and the City was very fortunate to have the quality people that it had. She thought it was a little too early to tell, but was confident that they would consider all the recommendations and use the data wisely.

Member Staudt said he was at a homeowner’s association meeting and had talked about AED’s and many of the board members were concerned about where they could purchase them and training because they had a large clubhouse and pool. Member Staudt thought it could be a service provided through the Fire Department where they could be trained and have a place to purchase them and help alleviate some of the liability issues that people seemed to have. Mr. Wieczorek said that was an excellent resource and there was a National Registry that they, as a club or organization could register with that the Fire, Police and Dispatch could then download. He said he would provide the information to the City Manager. He said they’ve got the training down so that almost anyone could do it with nominal training. He said a pool was the highest area where they were used because people got into the pool thinking it was great exercise and low stress and there were more heart attacks, at least in defibrillation. The problem with it was they pulled people out of the pool, did CPR and it was totally ineffective and caused more heart damage. Member Staudt asked if what he described as service was generally provided through any Fire Department, or were they on their own to figure out where to buy the AED’s. Mr. Wieczorek said if he looked at King County in the Seattle area, they had one of the highest outcome success rates of defibrillation and that was what they did through their Fire Department. They coordinate the training, the location and then work with the groups to keep it up. He said they train third graders and up in schools how to use the AED’s because they are so common place.

Member Staudt asked if they really needed Fire Station #3. Mr. Wieczorek said no. He thought they could manage without it using the deployment of resources and the EMS function, which was what the calls were. He said there were a couple of caveats, the relocation of the railroad. If that were messed up, it might take longer but right now the call volume out there was EMS related. Member Staudt asked what he would consider as some of the primary barriers in the Fire Department for communication. He said they had talked a lot about it and he would like his subjective opinion. Mr. Wieczorek said the City had been moving into the career area there was a natural tendency for some issues. They were dealing with two unions and the problem was sharing information across that spectrum and that’s why the COMPSTAT process was needed. He said much like in the Police Department, it’s great if the Administration was keeping in touch, but it was how do they share the information back down and include everyone. He said it was much harder with two separate shifts, like it was now, with no mixing of the two. It would be like half of the Council coming in on the first and second Thursdays and the other half coming in the other Thursdays. He said there would not be a lot of continuity in decision making. It was only when they came together as a group and began to debate all of these issues and problems that it really worked out. He said it was the same thing that had happened in the Fire Department. He apologized if he came across as offensive against the former Fire Chief, but it was really evolving, sharing information and implementing new policies and procedures. Sometimes policies and procedures, in particular in the Fire Department, because he had worked around the country on that and the fire service saw a lot of the policy procedures, rules and regulations as punitive sometimes. Law Enforcement had been dealing with it for 30 or 40 years. He commented he explained it to the paid on call people that rules, regulations, policy and procedures were designed not only to protect Administration and the City but also to protect them. He said if they were operating within the framework of accepted norms and in what’s been articulated and defined, they were covered as well, liability wise. He said it was a growing, maturing team process and a team building exercise to build that relationship. He said he was looking at how to begin building that team so they could share those resources and values. He said they were both great groups, Novi had some excellent people and it was getting the two groups together and having two unions made it a little more difficult. He said they needed to negotiate and get both interests looking out for each other. He said there had been some decisions in the past that the groups individually made and were viewed suspiciously and now everything was to be suspicious. He said they had to break down those barriers. It would be nice to take them away on a team building weekend but then there would be coverage issues. How do you build that team recognizing they had a 24-7 operation that they still had to provide service for. Member Staudt said the question on command structure and the paid on call Captain, multiple full time Captains, it appeared that the paid on call Captain didn’t have any authority on other full time firefighters. He asked if it was something unusual or was it unique to this situation. He said Mr. Wieczorek talked about it in the study in some depth. Mr. Wieczorek thought it was because it was an evolved process, but it was coming up with if they’re a Captain, they’re a Captain and if they hold the rank they should hold the rank. If they didn’t have the qualifications for it then they shouldn’t hold the rank. He said if they were going to empower them and put that rank on, then it should be carrying with it all of the authority, responsibility and everything else. Otherwise, they would begin to say OK he’s a Captain but only on Tuesday or on emergencies. He said where did the rank stop and, again, that’s a maturation process as they went through this and possibly a testing process. He said if they were going to be ranked, they should have the power and in the Fire Department they usually operated on an instant command structure where a Captain didn’t have to assume a command. He said when he was Director of Public Safety, he didn’t always assume command. A lot of times the firefighter who was first on the scene and declared command, maintained it. He said he would look over their shoulder because he wouldn’t let them make mistakes, but it was a great way for succession building. He said one of those people took his Director spot, who he promoted, just before he left and one was the Deputy Director. He said they had to build some succession into the Department because everybody sooner or later would leave. Member Staudt asked if he was seeing a movement towards communities collectively sharing the responsibilities of very expensive and large pieces of fire apparatus. He said he couldn’t imagine that Novi was taking a ladder out to a fire very often and was assuming there were other communities around with the same issue. He said instead of replacing these pieces of equipment independently, get together and make some kind of a joint purchase and centrally locate that equipment. He asked if that was an option in the future.

Mr. Wieczorek said that was actually what communities should be looking at. He said most ladder trucks should be painted yellow as they usually have a lot of issues when they come because they were all hydraulic. He said the first year they work to get the bugs out of them and some they never get the bugs out. He said they were expensive to operate and were a manpower drain because they would need to commit three to five people. He said on a smaller department they could respond with 12 to 15 people and if they were taking five to run one piece of apparatus, who did the rest of the functions. He said Mr. Staudt was right, sharing resources, being able to call resources to operate that equipment so staff wasn’t being drained so they could perform ventilation, rescue, rehab, etc. Mr. Wieczorek said the United States was just catching on to that; it was much more common place in Europe, where it was done regularly and they joint purchased. He said in the UK everything was standardized; nozzles, trucks, etc. so no matter where they went they could perform the same functions. Member Staudt asked how he viewed the cadet program at Police Departments. Mr. Wieczorek said Novi’s was a great resource because it freed some very expensive people. He said the sergeants were serving trays, etc. and were basically running a mini jail and that was an expensive overhead to have personnel doing what a cadet, as a civilian, could do. Then the officers could be out on the road to supervise people. He said when he interviewed the sergeants, it was frustrating for them because they didn’t see that they could do their job effectively either. Member Staudt asked, short of personnel reductions, what other methods and means of cost reductions could be done. Mr. Wieczorek commented the biggest was managing their risk. Again, what could be done to use civilians in some positions so that the level of service was kept? He mentioned crime prevention, public education for instance and in a lot of cases those don’t require a sworn person. He said they could get retired teachers and there were some very active seniors in the community. He commented seniors usually loved doing those things because it kept them active in the community over the years, so use them. Mr. Wieczorek said they might be able to use civilians through attrition. If a position didn’t have to be sworn and making arrests, were there other alternatives, crime prevention, public education, records management, data analysis as all of those types of things didn’t require a sworn police officer. He questioned whether they could use some of the Fire time because there were some very educated people there to do that on those other shifts. He said it would be a real balancing act and it was also looking at having the data, if they needed to go out and sell a program. He suggested having the numbers of how many people they impacted and the business might want to sponsor that. They were starting to see a lot more communities getting sponsorships for specific areas of programs. He said also making claims against those that the City was paying anyway, such as medical on care insurance; if there’s an injury send the bill to the insurance company and help offset some of the costs. He said it started with data because if they were going to go out and sell it the question would be, what they were going to get out of it.

Member Staudt said the paid on call people had made considerable financial sacrifices to take these positions and he would be concerned if Council limited their opportunities, because a lot of them were working. He said this was a real part time job, others do it for the love of the job and he would be very interested in seeing what portion of them had the opportunity to take on the 12 hour shifts. He said it sounded good on paper but sometimes people and things get in the way.

Mr. Wieczorek said it could be three fours and said he was very sensitive on paid on call and had run a paid on call full/time combination department. He said the paid on call don’t always do it for the money. They were usually giving a level of service back, so how could they keep those people active and interested in the community.

Mayor Landry said self analysis was never easy and was almost always painful. One should never engage in it unless they were willing to realize that they might find something out they didn’t want to know and they had to make changes. He said the Council and Administration were obligated to do that because they served the public. So, they were obligated to look in the mirror, to periodically hire someone from the outside, look from the inside on how they could improve this, because it was their job. He said when they engaged in that, they looked at a goal. He said the Fire Department could not lose sight of the goal. How do they reduce response time? If they find that it was so many minutes during the day and a minute longer at night, it had to change. He said to obtain a different goal, they had to do something different. If they wanted a different outcome, they had to change the way they did things. However, when he looked at the Fire report and he saw things like division within the department, two types of command, this had to stop and it had to be resolved. Different uniforms? Command staff? If they’re a Captain they’re a Captain and he didn’t care whether they were paid on call or full time and if they didn’t deserve to be a Captain, then they shouldn’t be a Captain. He said this had to change as they couldn’t have two types of commands. It certainly seemed that 12 hour shifts was the way to do it. If they wanted equality, here’s equality, everybody work the same shifts. If paid on call, they might work one day every two weeks or so. Now, they got into the difficulty. He said had they asked the paid on call people if they could do it, and the answer received tonight was no. He said now they got into the problem of would the system be designed and then find the people to staff it or design the system around the people they had. He said what he heard tonight was maybe they shouldn’t go to 12 hour shifts, maybe 6 hours. Or, maybe they staff 12 hours of every shift with paid on call but do it with two six hour shifts instead of one person working 12 hours. He said maybe that was the way to do it to accommodate the existing people they had. He thought they needed to find out how many people would be able or want to do the 12 hour shift but now they were into whether they designed the system around the people or do they design the system to obtain the goal and find the people to staff it. He said these were not easy decisions but what he was taking from this was division within a department, no, different uniforms, no, different command, no. He said if he was having a heart attack, he didn’t care if they were paid on call or full time. If his house was on fire, he wasn’t asking the question, he just wanted the service. He said he would be equally thankful if it was a paid on call person that saved him or a full time person. He didn’t care and as a City, they couldn’t afford a full time Fire Department. He said it was never going to happen. So, he thought, the paid on call system blended with the full time people was the way to go but there had to be equality. Mayor Landry said what he was taking from all this was they had to fix it. He said there were unions to deal with but they had to fix it. If it was equality they needed, there would have to be some changes on everyone’s side. They could not achieve this without change by everybody. He said don’t take this task on unless they were willing to find something out that they might not like or if they weren’t willing to make changes. He thought they had to take the task on because that was their job. Mayor Landry said, unfortunately, Mr. Wieczorek as a consultant, was often times perceived as the bearer of bad news. He said they brought this on themselves, meaning they engaged in the effort so let’s look in the mirror. He said the information had to be digested by everybody, by the rank and file, by the Chiefs, Administration and Council. He said everything wouldn’t be implemented but they could implement one or two things here or there and constantly look at this and make themselves better. Mayor Landry said the ultimate goal was to serve the citizens better. He thanked everyone and said this had been talked about at goal sessions for eight years and ultimately they decided to get a consultant. He thought they would become a better Police and Fire Department because of the reports. It might be a little painful to get there, but he thought they would ultimately get there. He thought this was a great starting point to achieving the goal.

Mr. Pearson said the grand opening of Ella Mae Power Park was this evening and there were some very nice improvements. He thanked Council for their support. He said it would pay benefits for the people who use that park and would be an attraction to get more people into Novi from outside. Mr. Pearson thanked Mr. Auler and the staff.

A. Approve Minutes of:

June 1, 2009 – Regular meeting

B. Enter Executive Session immediately following the regular meeting of June 15, 2009 in the Council Annex for the purpose of discussing labor negotiations and privileged correspondence from legal counsel.

C. Approval of recommendation from Ordinance Review Committee for Sign Ordinance Text Amendment 09-100.38, to amend Chapter 28, "Signs" of the City of Novi Code, to update, clarify, and provide new substantive regulations concerning the placement of signs within and throughout the City. Second Reading　 　　

D. Approval of the 2009/2010 Oakland Livingston Human Service Agency (OLHSA) contract for the Senior Center Coordinator position in the amount of $47,795.

F. Approval to award an amendment to the engineering services contract for construction engineering related to the West Oaks Regional Detention Basin Improvements project, to Spalding DeDecker & Associates, Inc., for a fee equal to 7.3% of construction costs, or $7,290.55.

G. Approval to award an amendment to the engineering services contract for construction engineering services related to the 2009 Neighborhood Roads project, to Anderson, Eckstein and Westrick, Inc. (AEW), for a not-to-exceed fee of $73,700.

H. Approval of the Oakland County Building Officials Association Damage Assessment Mutual Aid Agreement, an inter-governmental agreement between Oakland County communities outlining the terms by which member communities will assist each other in the evaluation of buildings and structures to determine the nature and extent of damage and the cost of repairs in the event of a disaster or emergency.

I. Approval to award a construction contract for the West Oaks Regional Detention Basin Improvements project to Matzak, Inc., the low bidder, in the amount of $99,870.50.

J. Approval of a two year Personal Property Assessment Contract with Oakland County Equalization, at a cost of $13.80 per parcel, for an estimated annual cost of $40,000.

K. Approval of Proposed Water & Sewer Rate Resolutions for 2009-2010.

L. Approval of Claims and Accounts – Warrant No. 795 & 796

Member Crawford suggest she give her report be at the next meeting and Council agreed.

MAYOR AND COUNCIL ISSUES

Member Margolis said when the Quota Liquor License requests came to Council the requirements seemed quite narrow. She said she didn’t have information on what other cities did and what Novi did. She commented she wanted to be sure the Quota Liquor Licenses were being used appropriately and to encourage development. She asked if Council was in favor of sending this to Ordinance Review to look at. Council agreed to send it to Ordinance Review for discussion.

There being no further business to come before Council, the meeting was adjourned at 10:34 P.M.

________________________________ _______________________________
David Landry, Mayor                                      Maryanne Cornelius, City Clerk

________________________________ Date approved: July 6, 2009

Transcribed by Charlene Mc Lean