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HomeMy WebLinkAbout07-12-17 Information and Technology & Health and Public Safety o4Sp1U TF1 � d U C W PEACE r" 9 s 1865 OFFICE OF THE CITY CLERK KAREEMAH FOWLER,CITY CLERK INFORMATION & TECHNOLOGY JULY 12, 2017 5:30 P.M. HEALTH AND PUBLIC SAFETY JOINT COMMITTEE MEETING Committee Members Present: Tim Scott, Karen White, Jo M. Broden, Derrik Campau, John Voorde (late) Committee Members Absent: Gavin Ferlic, Dr. David Varner, Randy Kelly, Oliver Davis Other Council Present: None Other Council Absent: Regina Williams-Preston Others Present: Kareemah Fowler, Graham Sparks Presenters: Brent Croymans, Carly Etter, Diane Villa, Steve Cox, Dan O'Connor, Michael Clayton Agenda: Update on the 911 PSAP Center and Performance- Brent Croymans,Executive Director Miscellaneous Committee Chair Tim Scott called to order the joint Information and Technology and Health and Public Safety Committee meeting at 5:30 p.m. He introduced members of the committee and proceeded to give the floor to the presenters. Update on the 911 PSAP Center and Performance- Brent Croymans, Executive Director Brent Croymans, Executive Director of the 911 Center introduced himself. Carly Etter, Administrative Officer of the 911 Center also introduced herself. Mr. Croymans stated, We successfully moved into the building back in January. As you all may remember we were originally at the South Bend Police Department. The Police Department was originally designed to be our backup site. We have been working in what is called a co-located fashion for the past several months until two (2) weeks ago when we got our CAD System online. We are bringing up systems slowly and methodically. We moved into the building and that brought us onto a new telephone system which has given us a little bit more efficiency in our operation. We moved to the CAD system about fifteen(15) days ago and it was a very successful 455 County-City Building•227 W.Jefferson Boulevard•South Bend,Indiana 46601 Phone 574-235-9221 •Fax 574-235-9173-TDD 574-235-5567•www.SouthBend[N.gov JENNIFER M.COFFMAN ALKEYNA M.ALDRIDGE JOSEPH MOLNAR CHIEF DEPUTY/DIRECTOR OF DEPUTY/DIRECTOR OF POLICY ORDINANCE VIOLATION CLERK OPERATIONS move. We were able to transition South Bend Police and Fire, at the County Police and Fire, and Mishawaka Police and Fire all from their old legacy CAD systems and into one (1)platform. That was a big change not only for the 911 Center but for those departments as well. We had a lot of support from the South Bend IT Department and they played a critical role in this rollout. I want to thank them for that assistance. We also brought in all the agencies to get on the same page. We are currently fully staffed for the first time at sixty-four(64)people. Of those sixty- four(64)people, there are nine (9)people that are in various phases of training. We have about four(4) different groups of training right now. Most will be trained in about three (3)to four(4) weeks. We've turned on all of our technology with the exception of the radio upgrade. That is a very lengthy process. We combined not only the 911 Center but we put everyone on a single radio platform, with the exception of Mishawaka. We are waiting for all their tower buildings to be finalized. We're expecting to have everyone on that radio platform by October. At that point, we will have the largest radio system in the State. It should be a very reliable radio system. We are also in the process of building a new tower and modifying the two (2) in Mishawaka. That was a very lengthy process because we had to secure land from INDOT. We will own the tower and have leasing options for the tower. The tower is located at the new 931 bypass and the State Road Four(4) exit. Mr. Croymans continued, The other open products we still have going on is LOQUTION, which is our Fire Learning System. That is a very nice system to have. It will allow the call-taker to enter in an address and it will electronically notify the fire departments of the call, tone them out, and depending on the technology of the station, it could turn the lights on, open the garage doors and execute other steps that make it faster to respond. We will be putting a tower on top of one (1) of the buildings at Notre Dame which will increase our coverage and give us good coverage for football games. Our staffing levels is another area we are focusing on. As I said earlier, for the first time we are fully staffed. Once everyone is trained in the basics, it'll be important to look at cross-training. Obviously we have dispatchers that are trained at certain levels, for certain agencies and in certain disciplines. We haven't fully reached full efficiency. I expect that to be a continually ongoing process. Part of the staffing analysis we did, which you have copies of, came in at a much higher level than anticipated. The Executive Board prioritized the technology side of things. Once we have the new CAD system turned on, within thirty (30) days we will have good statistical information on how call processing is going. The Board first wanted to see what efficiencies could be gained by new technology before we address the staffing level numbers. By July 27th we will have had one (1) month worth of data. Mr. Croymans went on, In the past, our GIS was used more for informational purposes. We would have a stand-alone computer of the mapping we use as a reference. With the new CAD system, it's actually an Ezery-based CAD system so it requires a proper GIS. If GIS is not proper, it would not recommend the proper police and fire cars. That is still the struggle of going to the new CAD system. It's always anticipated whenever a new system is turned on to have a learning curve. With the GIS, we are still seeing a number of errors. The positive side of the GIS is the City of South Bend has resources that are GIS knowledgeable and they've given a lot of those resources to the County to make those address corrections. Before we started this project, in the initial run we had about 344,000 errors in GIS. That was everything from address point failure to overlapping addresses. The last I heard, it has been brought down to only 6,000 errors. 2 Mr. Croymans explained, GIS is a mapping software. That is everything you see from your phones like Google Maps. It takes every street name and every address point within the street name and identifies it on a map layer and determines whether it's for a police, fire or EMS response. It is a very big project. The South Bend IT Department has thrown in a lot of resources to help us. This benefits all the local police, fire and EMS agencies. We can also launch and monitor all the police and fire cars driving around on the map system so we are able to send the closest responders. It is a very high-level program. A common error for the GIS system would be, for instance, if we type in a street name, it may plot to the other side of the road. The biggest thing is the learning curve. For example, we had four(4) different CAD systems from the previous agencies. All four(4) of them entered information differently. Some may have taken an intersection of Kern Roard and York Road and typed in as Kern/York and left it at that. Because we combined all of them, it is now uniformly labeled as Kern Road/South York Drive. There is definitely a learning curve and we have to learn the geographical naming. Lincolnway may be spelt one (1) way on the Mishawaka system and another way on South Bend's system. The GIS system has to have all those errors corrected for not just the cities but also the small towns in the County. It is a very big task. However, it is reasonable to except zero (0) errors, as that is the ultimate goal. There is no estimated date on achieving that, but we are aggressively working toward it. At the current pace of taking this on,realistically a in a few months this goal is a possibility. Ms. Etter stated, Going through the questions that have been asked prior to this meeting, I'm not sure if you wanted to know specifically how much the City of South Bend has paid in or if you just wanted to know about our overall budget. So far, we are forty-two point one four percent (42.14%) spent through our budget as of June 1. 1 haven't received my report yet for the end of June. That is for the operating budget. That is everything from the utility bills,technology, maintenance and support. We are thirty-eight point three percent(38.3%) spent through our statewide e-911 Fund. That includes a lot of the salaries and overtime. The projected budget for 2018 with our Dispatch Operating Fund is $6.2 million. That is approximately $500,000 more than 2017. The e-911 Fund will be at $2.1 million for 2018 which is $490,000 less than 2017. Our Capital Non-Reverting Fund will stay the same at$200,000. Our Dispatch Bond will also stay the same. We are paying roughly $50,000 more for 2018 than 2017 due to our group liability insurance coverage which increased. It is more than a$50,000 increase so we had cost savings between 2017 and 2018. As new technology came on, we were able to shut some of the old technology off, which saved us some money. The increase in liability insurance comes from the County Auditor's office. Other than that change, we would actually be coming in about $10,000 under our 2017 budget for 2018. As far as that's concerned,the increase in your South Bend share that you are paying in would come directly from the data from call-volumes. There should be no change to the percentage of contribution to the inner-local for the City of South Bend. The tower that is coming came out of our$12 million lease which we took from US Bank Corp. We increased that lease last year for 2017,which was already approved by both Councils and our Executive Board. We are in the process of financing it now because we had a cost savings with that as well. So we actually won't be spending or financing as much as we thought we would. We will be spending less on that as well. If we do get new users with the new tower, they will pay into it. 3 Committee Chair Scott asked, Were you looking for a personnel increase, or an overall budget increase for the 2018 budget? Mr. Croymans replied, We submitted the exact same personnel in the budget. Personally, I do think having an additional fourteen(14) staff would cover us not only on the call processing, but also for the operational needs of the center. One (1) of the things we really struggle with at the center is covering benefit time. When someone calls off sick or takes vacation, we aren't able to cover that with our normal staffing numbers. It always resorts to overtime. There is approximately $600,000 spent annually on overtime. The fourteen(14) extra people would help us also on the operational side. They would help provide those resources to the departments to handle the closed channels for burglaries, robberies and commercial structure fires. We don't have the staff right now to dedicate anyone to handle those isolated, critical incidents. The biggest thing is covering bathroom and lunch breaks without the staff. The dispatchers are typically working two (2) or three (3) days a week on overtime. Typically they work eight(8) hour shifts but there are at least two (2)to three (3) days where almost every dispatcher in the center is working a twelve (12) hour day. Training programs are typically six (6)to nine (9) months depending on what agency they are training for. Some agencies have better training material and some places have no training material. We are in the process of standardizing that. The biggest thing about turning the CAD system on is it gives us the ability to have one (1) structured program. The training manual is being developed and should be done within the next sixty(60) to ninety(90) days. Ms. Etter stated, Our current budget for overtime in 2017 was $160,000. As of June 1, 2017 we are currently at $287,000 in overtime. When our 2017 budget was discussed with our Board, it was clear that we were going to be way over what we budgeted for. The coverage comes out of our reserves and that's what has been done for the past couple of years. We are almost at the end of that rope. Projected monies spent on overtime in total, if we keep this pace,will be around $740,000, which is not much different from 2015 or 2016. A lot of the overtime costs for 2017 are natural. Our six (6) and three (3) rotation we have has a dispatcher work six (6) days and have off three (3) days. That sixth(6t') day of the week, because of labor laws, costs us $193,000 annually for our sixty-four(64) employees. We cannot get rid of that overtime expense. Another issue is the benefit time. Every time someone calls in sick,takes vacation or personal time, we simply don't have the employees to cover it. Based on the employees we have now and their current seniority, we are looking at $500,000 remaining to be spent in 2017. Ten(10) additional employees would bring it to neutral, and four (4)more would bring it down. With the minimum twelve (12) employees on the floor, if somebody takes a day off it causes overtime. Committeemember White stated, I was shocked when we came to the budget last year and we had all the additional monies we had to put in to this as the City. Mr. Croymans replied, During the consolidation, a lot of our cost savings came from capital expenses, especially now being in one (1) building and improving technology expenses. If we didn't consolidate, we would still have four(4) separate CAD systems and CAD systems can cost up to $2 million each. So there were cost savings on the capital expense side, but we are not seeing the savings on the personnel side. 4 Committee Chair Scott stated, This didn't roll out easy and here we are now three (3)years later and we still have a long way to go. I think this lies with the Executive level. They need to take a hard look at this. Mr. Croymans replied, Part of our built process was we had sub-committees for police, fire and technical workers that met on a weekly basis. A large part of the operations team went to those meetings. During those meetings,the operations board had been supportive of those additional fourteen(14) and they actually approved it. It was stricken at the executive level because they wanted to see the efficiency technology would bring first. I think we are at that point where it is now justifiable. Both Committee Chair Scott and Councilmember White expressed their concerns on the financial necessity created by the 911 Center budget. Committeemembers then briefly discussed a few numbers on the handouts (available in the City Clerk's Office) to clarify a few minor questions. Mr. Croymans stated, Based on the numbers DLZ provided initially, and before my time, the ideal number of dispatchers was actually eighty-one (81). So seventy-eight(78) is still technically three (3) or four(4)under. Diane Villa, Systems Specialist of the South Bend Police Department, stated, Back when we were our own center, I know the South Bend Fire Department asked for additional personnel because they needed closed channels monitored. The instance we had was you would have a dispatcher who might be managing two (2) or three (3) closed channels and answering 911 at the same time. That can be a safety risk to the responders that are out there. We asked at that time for more additional staffing. We were having staffing issues at that time as well. Mr. Croymans reiterated,And the seventy-eight(78) is just for the operations side of things. Committee Chair Jo M. Broden asked, What is the running tab and what was budgeted with regard to IT support from the City of South Bend? Mr. Croymans replied, It wasn't budgeted. Committee Chair Broden followed up, So when I hear about the considerable help with the CAD conversion and also the LOQUTION,how much help was there specifically? Committee Chair Scott replied, It is gratis to the Center but it is time taken away from IT on other people. I have heard nothing but good things about the IT Department for helping out. When this started, it was a nuts and bolt technology disaster to be honest. To be where we are now, I'm nothing but impressed because I wasn't so sure at the very beginning. We are getting there now with the personnel issue being addressed, but we don't know when that light of day is until the budget is approved or the Executive Board talks about that personnel. 5 Committee Chair Broden followed up, Could someone quantify those IT hours and value for our benefit? Dan O'Connor confirmed he would attempt to create something to that nature and provide it to Committee Chair Broden. Mr. Croymans continued, For 2014 the Abandoned Call Rate was six point two eight percent (6.28%). In both 2015 and 2016, which is when we started the co-location of the 911 Centers,the call rates were roughly the same. In 2015 the rate was seven point two percent(7.2%), and it was seven point two three percent(7.23%) in 2016. I was able to run some statistics for the one (1) unified telephone system. That actually changed the call percentage in the first six months down to three point nine eight percent(3.98%) for the Abandoned Call Rate. Since we went live on the CAD system,the Abandoned Call Rate went up to four point three five percent(4.35%), which I attribute to the learning curve. If we look at the first six (6)months on the new phone system, we are answering ninety percent(90%) of calls within ten(10) seconds. Steve Cox, Chief of the South Bend Fire Department with offices at 1222 S Michigan St, stated, I believe the study that was done by the Office of Innovation talked about the NINA Standard. That standard requires that ninety percent(90%) of calls should be answered within ten(10) seconds and ninety-five percent(95%) should be answered within twenty (20) seconds. In some of the discussions had along the way people were asking for a benchmark statistic for different communities and for different issues. I'm not certain that's able to be achieved because there are so many differences between different communities. There's some amount of nuance that doesn't maybe apply to both communities at the same time. Ms. Villa added, We did look into whether or not there was an industry standard for Abandoned Call Rates and there is none. That is because the standard is the calls would be answered. Mr. Croymans stated, Based on the six (6)months we've been in the new building, we've had 162,000 telephone calls. Only about five hundred(500) phone calls have had to wait over thirty (30) seconds. Every other call has been answered under thirty (30) seconds. The majority were answered within zero (0)to ten(10) seconds, and about 13,000 were answered within eleven (11)to twenty (20) seconds. We have seen some definite improvement thanks to the new technology. It is hard to quantify the Abandoned Calls Rate. An Abandoned Call includes a caller dialing 911 and disconnecting. We call those calls back. We've never had an incident where someone has called 911 and no one showed up. Ms. Villa stated, When I was with South Bend, we did track that number as well. We never had zero (0) but it could have been someone that called and hung up. There is no way to quantify that number for many reasons. We look at times when, for instance, we've had tornados in the area. We had six hundred and seventy-nine (679) 911 calls come in within a twenty(20) minute period while there are only four(4) or five (5) dispatchers to take those calls. It's obvious that everyone is calling on the same thing and you simply cannot get to all of them. Mr. Croymans followed up, What we want to do with additional staffing is facilitate the ability and efficiency of calling that caller back. The 10,000 is reflected on the County side. We have 6 figures separated for Abandoned Calls for South Bend, Mishawaka and County. The total Abandoned Calls were 27,000. Committeemember John Voorde arrived at the meeting at 6:20 p.m. Committeemember White asked, As we move forward, what do you identify as the two (2)top financial needs? Mr. Croymans replied, Staffing is number one (1). I think we are also a little light on our Administration staffing, which provides the training. One (1) of the big things to note is that the 911 Center is a customer service based center. I want to continue on with our quality control assurance programs. That's where we go in and audit the calls to make sure we are actually asking the proper directive questions. That also goes back to the training and if we find out they're not doing it right, they enter into remedial training. Committeemember White followed up, If you did not have the support from the City IT, what would be the impact on your ability to continue to function? Mr. Croymans replied, There would be a large impact. Dan O'Connor's group is still taking a very aggressive role with the GIS, which is our largest outstanding issue. The support from the IT has dealt more with the communication side of things. There hasn't been any involvement from the City IT on the servers or network side of things. Committee Chair Broden asked, Do you continue to meet weekly? Mr. Croymans replied, We have police, fire and technical working groups that meet weekly. Eventually as we bring all the systems online, we will probably still continue that weekly but it will change from a working group to more of a quality assurance review process. But yes, I plan to continue that. Committee Chair Broden followed up, Are those available for Councilmembers to come and sit in? Mr. Croymans confirmed, Yes, absolutely. Committeemember Derrik Campau stated, I do the telecommunications for South Bend Schools and we turned up a similar phone system in the Fall of 2016. We have had considerable issues with AT&T of accurately updating the master street address. We went several months with actually no data. Then it took a few weeks where they finally scheduled the so-called `hot-cut.' They should have been correctly populated in the system and I gave them all the correct information. We did random testing and found a few were wrong and I submitted a change request through our account manager and through the AT&T National 911 resolution center. Then all of our records were all at 215 S Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.,which nobody from my team had directed AT&T to do that. I have not been able to get anything out of AT&T as to how that happened. Every time I ask them, it has been six (6) or seven(7)times at this point, they don't answer it. I have a customer advocate that I told and still wasn't able to get anything. 7 At this point, I think only thirty-three (33) addresses are correct but most don't have the right school name. I've been pushing them since January and it's not where it should be. Ms. Villa stated, There is a specific form on our site that we can send in for incorrect information. I will work with you and get that done. Committee Chair Broden asked, Can you translate what you were just saying? Ms. Villa replied, Every phone landline in the country has to be validated through this national 911 database, it's called the MSAG,the Master Street Address Guide. So when you get a landline in a new house,they would send it through to the community MSAG and register that address. They work with GIS and the Engineer's Office to make sure we aren't building in an address that isn't correct. Little things like mistaking a Drive for a Court could be a problem. The first ring the caller hears is what is going to that switch. The second ring makes sure it is routing to the correct 911 Center. The third ring the caller hears is the first ring the dispatcher hears. If there is an emergency at a school and they can't talk, and the address is wrong, we would send units to the wrong address. Committeemember Campau stated, We were advised by a County committee to change our dialing prefix from nine (9) to eight (8). We did that last week because of the number of misdials we were getting. Ms. Villa stated, Back in the day when everyone had the same phone company, there was no problem but now everyone has a different company. It's hard to get cooperation from them to change the addresses to the satellites. Mr. Croymans stated, This is one (1) of multiple examples of where the phone company and the business need to cooperate for the safety of us all. Bob Kruszynski, Offices at 227 W. Jefferson Blvd, stated, To clarify, I attended some Executive Board meetings last year and at the end of the budget process I recall hearing that they didn't want to address the personnel because the budget had already been set.Now I'm hearing fourteen(14)people are needed. Correct me if I'm wrong,but those additional people have to be approved by the Executive Board. Isn't there a shared cost with the personnel? The Executive Board has to make that decision and there is a formula to share that cost. I recall going through budget time last year when the discussion came up. That was quite a discussion. Is there another Executive Board meeting set? Mr. Croymans replied, I made a request today to have one (1) on the first available day in August. We needed to have the data to prove the efficiencies gained with the technology and we needed at least thirty (30) days of data to warrant those additional staff. Committeemember White thanked Mr. Croymans and Ms. Etter and all others involved in this process. 8 Michael Clayton, 32 South Pearview, stated, From the employee perspective, the problem is the time we have waited for something to change. These numbers are not a surprise, as far as the call volume, inbound and outbound calls. They've been there. The frustration lies in the fact that we are getting killed with overtime. We have several overtime shifts per six (6) day rotation. I'm on my fourth day of twelve (12)hours and there are others that have done six(6)twelve (12) hour days. Some have even volunteered or been mandated to come in on their days off. I can't stress enough to your board that this is an important issue on two (2) fronts. One (1), that Abandoned Call Rate will go down if you allocate fourteen (14) new members to the dispatch core. Number two (2), if it's not going to happen this year or gets pushed off any longer, you will have employees that don't see the light at the end of the tunnel and they will find work elsewhere. That is where you are at right now is that you have employees that are good dispatchers that would be better off elsewhere. Those in charge are not making moves for their welfare. Dispatchers need time off. A lot of dispatchers are tired. I appreciate the work of Brent and Carly. We need fourteen(14) as a minimum because we are not taking into account the attrition rate over the last two (2) years which pushes that number up to ninety-nine (99). We agree, seventy-eight(78) knocks down the overtime to a considerable level but we need to be prepared for the experienced dispatchers to leave. Committeemember Campau asked, In your opinion, how long do we have until we would start seeing increased turnover. Mr. Clayton replied, Honestly, I have spoken to ten(10) employees in the past couple weeks that are ready to walk. If they find an opportunity,they are gone. Committeemember Campau followed up, And we have a six (6)to nine (9) month training period? Mr. Croymans confirmed, That is correct. Mr. Clayton continued, Another thing I have noticed is that while I get this is all new, we have to start treating this as a large-scale center. We can't do the same things we did in all the other smaller centers. We have to start looking at it as the St. Joseph County 911 Call Center. You have a great opportunity to have a great 911 Center. There is a new building, new technology, a new CAD System, but the staffing has to be at accurate levels. Mr. O'Connor asked, How much do you think cross-training will help? Mr. Clayton replied, It will help tremendously. There would be times when a phone call would come and I'm not trained in that area. It will help but it won't fix the staffing problem. Ms. Villa clarified, Every dispatcher is qualified to answer a call. The discrepancy comes when certain calls come in that need certain medical directives. Committee Chair Broden stated, It seems like timing is everything on this because of the long stretch of training needed to get people up and ready. 9 Mr. Croymans stated, Even if fourteen(14)people got approved,the benefit wouldn't come until 2018. It really is something that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Committee Chair Scott stated, I am very passionate about this. I want to thank everyone working the 911 Center because it is appreciated and necessary. We depend on that and we take it for granted sometimes. We are going to stay on top of this and I think a lot of things came out of this. Committee Chair Broden stated, I want to make sure our information streams keep coming like the minutes to the Executive Board meeting and that we are made aware. I want to emphasize that we are all trying to get to a solution. If we could tour the facility, that would be beneficial too. There is a tour July 19' and I encourage everyone to go. With no further discussion, Committee Chair Scott adjourned the meeting at 6:50 p.m. Respectfully Submitted, Tim Scott, Chairperson 10