Like the Education Committee, the Public Safety Review Committee is determining what to focus on in the next year? What would you say?I have tons of opinions I am bursting to share, but as the chair of the Public Safety Review Committee I’m waiting for the process to unfold. Here’s where the committee is at, in my probably not so humble opinion.
COMMITTEE IGNORED/UNSUPPORTED
For years, as the Council created a Police Policy Committee of Alders and the Ad Hoc Police Policy and Procedure committee, as debates about how many police we need, should we have a new police station, what should we do about downtown safety issues, do we need a new fire station, a new ambulance, etc, etc, etc the Public Safety Review Committee has been absolutely missing in action. Passed over by the council and staff in referrals for major items and not taking initiative to make their own recommendations.
Until now . . . for the last 6 or so council agendas, when there are police and fire related matters that were not referred to out committee, I emailed the alders involved and council leadership to suggest that it should be referred to our committee – and they did. And our agenda filled up FAST! Our last agenda was PACKED!
The next issue I ran into tho was that our recommendations that we made at the meeting weren’t showing up in legistar, so the committees that made decisions after us didn’t know what we recommended. Again, I had to contact the alders to let them know what we had decided and the committees and council adopted our recommendations.
I have the advantage of having been an alder for 8 years, the council president for one year and I’ve been blogging about local government for 15 years, so I know how things should work, in theory. What I’ve found in the last three months is that there is no training for new committee chairs, no training for staff, no training for new committee members and no one person or department or office to turn to in order to get assistance. I happen to have relationships and insider knowledge and know how to get things done, but I’m guessing there are other committees out there that don’t have the same advantages to get their voices heard.
MISSION OF THE PSRC?
Recommendation number 13 of the President’s Work Group on Police and Community Relations was adopted 2.5 years ago.
Review the Ordinance and Revise the Charge of the Public Safety Review Committee
The Public Safety Review Committee (PSRC) is a City of Madison Committee established to provide advice to the Mayor and Common Council related to public safety. The PSRC has the authority to “review and make recommendations concerning departmental budgets; review service priorities and capital budget priorities of the Police and Fire Departments; serve as liaison between the community and the city on public safety issues; and review annually and make recommendations to the Common Council regarding the annual work plans and long- range goals of the departments.” [Madison General Ordinance Sec. 33.22]
The President’s Work Group discussed the important role the PSRC could play in ensuring that a permanent city committee regularly examines public safety issues, as well as police and community relations, and provides advice on these issues to the Mayor and the Common Council.
Action Item 13: The Common Council directs the Common Council Executive Committee to undertake a review of the role, membership and charges under ordinance(s) for the Public Safety Review Committee.
That still hasn’t happened.
The committee reviewed its mission in August, and in September, this appeared on the agenda as a summary of that disucssion.
Duties of the Public Safety Review Committee
Madison General Ordinance 33.22
(4) Duties . The work of the Public Safety Review Committee shall be advisory to the Mayor and the Common Council to assist them in the performance of their statutory duties regarding the police and fire departments. The role of the Public Safety Review Committee shall in no way interfere with the lawfully prescribed powers and duties of the Common Council, the Police and Fire Commission, the Mayor, or the Chiefs of the respective Police or Fire Departments. The Public Safety Review Committee may, in the performance of its duties:
(a) Review service priorities1 and capital budget priorities of the Police and Fire departments;
(b) Serve as liaison between the community and the City on public safety issues;
(c) Review annually and make recommendations to the Mayor and the Common Council5 regarding the annual work plans3 and long-range goals4 of the departments.
Legistar description of PSRC, Description in President’s Work Group Report:
Madison General Ordinance Sec. 33.22 – The board shall be advisory to the mayor and Common Council to assist them in the performance of their statutory duties. The board may “review and make recommendations concerning departmental budgets6; review service priorities and capital budget priorities of the Police and Fire Departments; serve as liaison between the community and the city on public safety issues; and review annually and make recommendations to the Common Council regarding the annual work plans and long-range goals of the departments.”
PSRC COMMENTS
We seek clarification on the following phrases:
- “Service priorities” – because this is in the same sentence with the “capital budget priorities” is this referring to the operating budget?
- “Public safety” – is this limited to the functions of the police and fire department, or could it be considered
- broader and include public health, emergency preparedness and other issues?
- “annual work plans” – What is this phrase referring to? Do the departments have “annual work plans” and if so, how do we access them? Does this relate to the Performance Excellence initiative? Or budget priorities? Or department head contract language? What happened to the strategic planning the Police Department was doing? Does the Fire Department have a work plan?
- “long range goals” – Where do we find these for the police and fire departments?
- “recommendations to the Mayor and Common Council” How would we make these annual recommendations to the Mayor and Common Council? Or should they be made to the police and fire departments? Does the Mayor and Common Council review these annual work plans and long range goals? Or is that just in the context of the budget?
- “review and make recommendations concerning departmental budgets” Is this referring to department budget requests, or the entire budget process?
We decided to form a subcommittee to review further and make recommendations. That committee didn’t meet in November, but it will be meeting tonight.
WHAT SHOULD PSRC WORK ON?
The committee meeting tonight is also supposed to come up with recommendations about what we want in the Police and Fire staff reports to our committee. Here’s a summary I put together of what they have been reporting.
This is a list that I put together that lists issues people were interested in and what the goal of working on each item is. Is it to “raise awareness”, information for PSRC or make a recommendation to council.
The exercise for tonight is to determine what is missing from the list and to make recommendations to the committee about what to work on.
This is the list put together in July 2019 before I was on the committee:
PSRC Committee Items of interest remaining in priority order:
- Review of the OIR report
- Police and Fire overtime
- Strategic planning for the committee/development of annual and long-range goals
- Joint ALRC
- Madison Police Department data collection and Dane County Sheriff discussion on jail (Tye at #2)
- Human Trafficking in Madison
- Dane County District Attorney on his role and information on the diversion program
- Madison Police Department Traffic Enforcement Safety Team
- Madison Fire Department Integrated Health program
- Public safety workers stress
- Madison Police Department Training and the process on accelerated verses fast track in the academy
- Madison School District Safety Director and public safety learning with the youth in elementary/middle schools.
- A suggestion on the priority item list is to look at the items and answer the following questions – (Is there a problem? What is it? What are the causes of the problem? Can we contribute to solving the problem? What are the solutions that Madison or other cities around the country could use to reduce the problem? Which ones do we recommend?)
Added items of interest (not in priority order) – July 2019
- Madison School Safety/ERO Contract (Quarterly SRO reports from MPD/MMSD that are now part of the MPD/MMSD SRO contract.
- Report of the AdHoc Committee
- Organizing a series of community listening sessions
- Mental Health (Response to someone in a mental health crisis)
- Disability rights
- Aging population safety and risk assessment
- Combatting crime against the LGBTQ community
- Home safety
- Tracking guns and violence
- What measures can the PSRC take to influence public policy (i.e. develop city ordinances, city council, etc.)
- Madison Police Department Personnel and Training Team to present/discuss on recruitment, retention, and retirement.
- MPD/MFD – Emergency preparedness for flooding, weather, disaster related items
- Workshop on opioid crisis
- Develop an African American youth program similar to Amigos en Azul
- Small projects to involve neighborhood residents to take roles in-school/after school activities.
Completed Items:
- Madison Fire Department Public Information Officer
- Madison Police Department Public Information Officer
THERE IS AN OPENING ON PSRC
We just got two new members Matthew Mittnick who ran for alder for District 8 and Al Rickey, a former Madison Police officer.
Sara Petzold just informed us that she will be resigning because she is often out of the country and cannot attend. So there is an opening if you wish to apply!
PUBLIC COMMENT WELCOME
The meeting of the subcommittee will start at 6:15 tonight, or right after the full committee meeting at 5:00.
You could also submit public comment to our staff person at EHardiman@cityofmadison.com
Or you can leave comments here on this blog, on my facebook page or email me at brendakonkel@gmail.com but submitting them to the staff person will get your comments to all the committee members. The last ways will just be input for me as a committee member.
IF I RULED THE WORLD?
Ok, I can’t help myself. If I had a magic wand and could work on whatever I wanted, this would be my list, in no particular order, off the top of my head for starters:
- Look at police staffing/overtime and figure out how we control the mushrooming police department budget
- Look at fire staffing/overtime, if we need more ambulances and fire stations, how will we possibly be able to staff them within the state imposed budget constraints
- Mental health ambulances
- Police role in housing (evictions!) and homelessness (particularly the horrible solutions for the top of State St.)
- Police role in Traffic Safety and Vision Zero
- Madison’s role in the county discussions on reducing the jail population
- Why don’t we have an Office of Emergency Management for the city?
- Continue to monitor policies and reports for disparate impacts on people of color and other marginalized communities
I also think we won’t be able to avoid the whole discussion about the OIR report and which committees should work with the Independent Police Auditor, but it feels like that train left the station years ago. I think we will have to have some role in determining how to clearly define the differing roles between the Police and Fire Commission (Personnel), Public Safety Review Committee (Policy and Budget) and the new Oversight Committee that works with the Independent Auditor. I’m still listening to opinions on what the structure should look like moving forward. Does PSRC just go away?
