WEBVTT

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Video-Count: 2
Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=m09z5DPYM-g
Video-2: youtube.com/watch?v=PP_Uco79ZNs

Part: 1

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--------- Good morning everyone. We are on the record. Today is Tuesday, the 21st day of July, 2026. This is a municipal council budget hearing. The first department on the agenda is the Department of Public Safety. We had a

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scheduled 10:00 a.m. start and my watch is showing 10:12 a.m. We have a roll call for the commencement of this budget hearing. Council person Brooks >> present. Council person Zupa, Council Person Efos, >> present.

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>> Council person Little, >> present. >> Council person Gilmore, >> present. >> Council person Griffin, >> Council Person Lavaro, >> here. >> Council person Singh and Council President Ridley >> here. We have eight council members

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present at 10:13 a.m. At the time of its preparation, the notice of this meeting was disseminated on Friday, July 17th at 3 p.m. to the mayor, municipal council, business administrator, corporation council, and to the local newspapers so

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I can certify as to our total compliance with the Sunshine Law. Be turning it over now to Department of Public Safety, and there will be a slide presentation then. Well, John, one second. You're going to turn it over to us first. Okay. So, President,

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>> uh, good morning. Thank you all for being here. As other years, we, uh, assign different council people to head up each of the budget hearings this morning. Uh, Councilman Frank Gilmore is going to oversee the public safety budget

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hearing. So, I'm going to turn it over to him. >> Thank you, um, Council President. So, greetings, good people. Today we are going to be reviewing the largest portion of the municipal budget public safety. This is not just about what we

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spend is about what we are getting in return. We will focus on outcomes, accountability, sustainability, um not just activity. So at this point, we'll turn it over to uh the public safety department for their

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presentation. Um, really quickly, if I may, um, before before we get started, um, several of us were were reviewing this. I was reviewing this with my staff. Um, and as you know, this is by far the most complex and the largest

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department in all of Jersey City. It has intricacies that are different from other civilian departments. And um we are I I had requested the possibility of a second hearing because I'm concerned that two hours is simply not enough for

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s such a complex department, such a large department. Um is that something you might be amenable to? >> Second, >> director. >> Yeah, grab the mic so we can hear you. Uh yes, but I'll be out of the

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unavailable from the 22nd of July to August 3rd. >> To August 3rd. Okay. So, it is possible that we could work with the council president and you to schedule something um in early August then, >> if need be. Yes. >> Thank you so much. I really appreciate your flexibility and I hope you enjoy

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your vacation. >> Thank you. You going to the presentation now? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Morning everyone. Thank you uh for having us come before you today because of a planned vacation that I did have. So I very well appreciate it. Uh today

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before I begin, I just like to introduce to my left uh is uh assistant deputy director Lauren Hart. His left is Chief Bobby Karns of the police department, director of OEM, Greg

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Kierce, Lieutenant Travis Raglin. the left my to my right as you know the business administrator to her right uh is my chief of staff Jocelyn Roland uh the physical manager Bob Baker and

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Sergeant James Wood communications uh information and technology public safety uh we'll begin I'll give you an overview of the slides and at any time uh deputy director Hart for the chief or secure

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from OEM will also speak. Uh so the Department of Public Safety coordinates four operating divisions that protect New Jerseyy's uh second largest city. Uh one mission across four sub offices. The Division of Police patrol, traffic

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enforcement, investigations, community policing, port security, quality of life initiatives, emergency management, disaster planning, emergency coordination, public safety training, facility, drone operations, and UASI grant oversight.

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Uh, Division of Fire has 28 suppression companies answering 20,000 calls a year. Fire rescue, hazmat, EMS, plus uniform fire code enforcement. >> Excuse me. I'm sorry, director interrupt. Can we get this on our

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screen? The the slides. >> Yeah. >> Did they fix it? >> I don't know. I just walked in the room. Okay. I I apologize. I'm sorry. >> No, I Councilman Lavaro, I think this is a good point because I think the people watching online can't see if it's not on

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our screens. I think the people >> Yeah. Oh, there we go. Good job, Sean. Thank you. >> Continue. Director. information technology and communications, the 911 uh call center, that next generation dispatch, and the citywide radio and

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communications backbone uh for first responders, central nervous system of public safety. Next slide. what we accomplished. I will speak about the division of police first recreated the traffic bureau and returned motorcycle units

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service uh using federal forfeite funds at no cost to the taxpayers. That's 10 new motorcycles that were purchased and thank you because you approved it. Uh deployed off to citywide hotspots via $158,000 BJA grant uh that we're using. expanded

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the DWI enforcement, a $58,000 grant on certain nights of the week, created a domestic violence unit. Last year, we had over 5,500 domestic violence uh victims. Uh we're now centralized dealing with domestic violence. Started

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that on the 1st of July. Expanded the arrive from two days to four days response uh to uh various uh mental health needs. We moved the east district precinct out of trailers to Bishop Street. We saved $66,000

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annually. Uh we implemented walking posts around Pedestrian Plaza uh in Norc Avenue uh and also up in Indian Square. Also uh directed patrols on Ocean MLK and Bergen. And with the class

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graduating, I intend to have walking patrols on them streets also. Uh division of fire. Uh, I'm going to ask u I'll speak about it any questions the uh deputy director can answer. Created a non-lifehazard task force using existing staff and reassign deputy chiefs to

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oversee multiple divisions. Re-examined all major vendor contracts including uh SCBA and and gear cleaning. Uh built in multi-year apparatus purchasing plan for fleet and replacement. Revised

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purchasing practices to limit self-life inventory is no longer bought unnecessarily. Next slide. What we are accomplished OEM and communications highlights delivered this year across the division. What was fixed, streamlined, and improved

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emergency management homeland security provided unified command for the April 14th uh freight train derailment in North Bergen at NJSP. New Jersey State Police request, the citywide marathon, FIFA Black City festivals, Fourth of

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July festivals, as well as you know, coordinating responses to extreme weather as we're having today. Uh, develop public safety drones supporting warrant and multi- agency narcotics operations, coordinated citywide snow operations during winter storm 26, uh,

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and gave uh, mutual aid on 14 multiple alarm fires. It modernized the 911 call center, the next generation of technology. Built legacy 911 lines for $82,000

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per year. Saved by retiring the legacy Verizon service. Replaced uh a 16-year-old public safety server system and a 20-year-old uh phone system. began replacing the 25-year-old

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citywide radio system. We began that instituted a new 911 uh methods and procedures that improve standards and response time. Police crime enforcement crime is down while

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enforcement activity is up sharply. A smaller force covering more ground. And I and I give kudos to the men and women of the Jersey City Police Department. Uh crime complaints were down 13% 3208 last year year to date versus uh

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I'm sorry last year this year is 3208 versus last year 3708. Uh auto theft aggravated assault uh it has the declines. Uh we instituted bimonthly comstat we call it impact meetings with our commanders in our uh

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upper echelon to hold them accountable and transparent. Uh arrests are up 15% 650 last year versus this year versus 563. Uh it's driven by hotspot deployment.

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intelligence-led policing uh under the $158,000 BJA grant is being utilized also to uh for deployment to reduce overtime. Operation All Out places uh weekday staff on patrol which is going to start

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in September uh where staff personnel one day a week will be put into neighborhoods. Uh, traffic stops are up 176% compared to last year, 3,475 versus,58

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a year ago. Uh, as I indicated, we rebuilt the traffic bureau and returned motorcycle units. Uh, I must say, since we since we started the traffic unit on May 1st, uh, we saw a decrease in car crashes down 12%.

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uh DWI enforcement expanded with a $58,000 state uh grant. Our moving violations is up 849% 8,520 moving violations which is 897 last

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year. Uh the traffic division summons up 37% year to day over over June I should say. Um people when we talk about moving violations that's unregistered uninsured careless driving radar uh they were the tickets that were summones that were

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given by the officers. Uh I'm going to turn it over to the fire fire stats. I'm going to give it to uh deputy director uh good afternoon council fire department statistics for 2025 versus 2026. the

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year-over-year operational and prevention performance. The 2026 figures are year-to- date or projected as noted with regards to the total number of incidents the Jersey City Fire Department's had 2025 versus 2026, you know, a 5.3%

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33% increase uh projected for the total of runs bringing us to 21,422 by the end of this year. Um with regards to our working fires, structure fires in 2024,

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in 2025 we had 104. Uh at this point now 59 projected to break 120 by the end of the year with regards to fire prevention revenue. We've seen a 51% increase in revenue at this point this year compared

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to 2025 with 598,966 pulled in so far this year through revenue for the heroic efforts of the fire prevention inspectors. Part of that's attributed to the non-life hazard inspections which we've created a task

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force that's yielding a 400% increase in non-life hazard use inspections citywide. Just of note, unfortunately some of our residents um perished in fires. We had one fatality in 2025 and 2026 we had two

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to date. Um to some staffing, our uniform personnel is down from 685 to 679, which is a decrease in 10 people along with our civilian personnel having

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29 civilian personnel in 2025. And in 2026, we're down to 27 civilian personnel. As you can see, there is a increase in our budget compared to last year. Again, most of

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those increases are due to contractually obligated raises uh that we have no control over. >> Thank you. Introducing uh JC impact uh moving forward something that started in January uh integrated metrics for public

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accountability and community trust. Uh it's basically for accountability and transparency. Uh is built on uh three commitments and that's what we follow. Uh we have bimonthly meetings with the commanders uh where they have to come in and we have to speak about uh their

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crime, quality of life uh internal affairs, sick time and staffing over time. Uh the bimonthly stats meeting with the district commanders performance measured against district level trends uh not citywide averages. Employment

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decisions uh tied directly to what the data shows. Uh transparency crime data is shared publicly. Crime stats are published on a regular uh basis. A clear reporting on where crime is rising, where it is falling. Uh same numbers

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used internally are the same numbers that the residents see. A community engagement in the uh conversation 100 plus community engagements our community service officers participated in logged

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across all four districts across the city January to July. handing forums for residents to raise uh conditions in their neighborhoods and that's they meet with the captain's meeting. Uh also there's community meetings held by yourselves where

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captains uh do attend follow-ups are reported back at the next bimonthly cycle at all of our uh impact meetings. Next, this is just a copy of the dashboard uh that the residents can see.

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Um and this changes uh weekly. Post budget uh consolidated requests across all four divisions. Personnel drives 94% of the budget is human resources. Lease is 105,553714. Fire and fire prevention is 81 million

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uh 938161. It is 13,4759. Emergency management is $845 uh and $652 for a total of $217 million 83867.

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The current uniform headcount for the police department, 769. Currently, we have 20 of three that are in the police academy to graduate on August 25th.

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Um, fire department has 681 firefighters. 39 are eligible for retirement uh today. They can retire if they want. Combined uniform workforce of 1450 excluded the

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24 23 that are graduating. The police division uh it's concerning with the attrition rate. Um in the last 5 years we've lost 111 police officers, supervisors and police officers. Um

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2028 there's a class of 42 that are eligible for a retirement. 42 police officers could retire in 2028. Takes at least a year and a half to two years to hire a police officer and train

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them. 2029 22 police officer eligible for retirement. This year alone we had 25 police officers retire or resign. I must say that four M1 lieutenants, superior officers, two

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captains, two deputy chiefs and 17 police officers. Um I I am find seeing that a lot of the police officers, young police officers are leaving uh going to other departments uh where they uh definitely

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we have 10 steps here. They start with $45,000 and they go to 10 steps up to 115 in 10 years. Um I do see a lot of the officers, young officers leaving. There's an app that they go on to find out hiring and who's paying more money.

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Uh so it's concerning to the residents and to everyone uh that keep our levels of police officers up uh so when people call 911 were readily available and we could respond. Um

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45 people left in 25 last year. I just want to put that bring that out there. our overtime trend and high-profile. I'd like to first start with FIFA. FIFA would cost 671 uh,000 thousand dollars. Uh, but I will

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say is it's completely covered by sponsors, so it'll be reimburable over time uh for that. Um, for Fourth of July, uh, we spent in 2026, we spent 284,000 with fire, police, and

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OEM. We had 80 more officers work because of sale 250 and we had a lot more people in the city. Uh we also up in the north side up in the heights of Riverview Park. We staffed it because we have large crowds that had come up

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there. So we had 85% were in the down in the east side east district. We had some people up in the north. Uh we were able to getund we saved $145,000 uh using uh mutual aid other cities such

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as Norc, East Orange, Essex County towns that I were able to have them come over to assist us uh on Fourth of July. Uh so that was a big help. A lot of our overtime is uh it's anticipated overtime. You're always going to have overtime, but we have to

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keep it control it. You have anticipated and unanticipated. and some of the unanticipated are staffing uh contractual special weather events and special events. Um and also uh supervision

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uh supervision overtime for mainly for lieutenants and for sergeants mainly for lieutenants. But we've cut already major reduction in savings already realized across the department of our division. Uh police

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1.5 million in unfilled retirey vacancies redirected to priorities. Tomahawk contract not renewed $172,000. Santilli is a uh phone and uh and a

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scheduling software. Uh we cut it from 56 to 29. Uh, North Arlington we use for the range for our emergency services unit from 17 to four uh or thousand eliminated fixed post uh for

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intelligenceled policing deployment. Uh I think we all heard fixed post. Fixed post is where a police officer is uh positioned at one location 24/7 orever however long you want it to be. Um, historically there were six six posts

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throughout the north, excuse me, the south and the west districts. Um, that was lifted in late January. Uh, the majority of this was funded over the years with overtime or somebody taken out of answering 911

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calls and placed at these locations. Very rarely that, mainly overtime. fire in-house gear gear cleaning a new vendor $150,000. Uh you want to speak on that?

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Recognizing the issues with the budget, we try to take a closer look at seeing where we can cost save. Um in terms of gear cleaning, our turnout gear has to be laundered at least twice a year. Uh we had a contract with a more expensive vendor. We we found another vendor that do it at much less cost as well as doing some of the uh cleaning in-house as well

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for the less contaminated gear. With regards to our upcoming SCBA purchase, uh we found a new vendor that allowed us to not rely as heavily on uh the visits they had to come to the firehouse to service the equipment, which is going to be another $400,000 in the upcoming

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purchase. And additionally, we were able to secure a grant uh that will enable our fire prevention bureau to hand carbon monoxide smoke detectors out uh to the tune of $10,000, which previously was held over in our budget. Thank you.

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It $529,000 eliminated outsource contracts 330,000 drop 16year-old server maintenance 117,000 reduced and eliminated overtime on the 911 line saving 82,000

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emergency management I would ask director kir to elaborate on Council members, uh, my office has significantly reduced our budget by $124,8. Uh, we're down three labor positions. As you may know, we deploy most of the

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heavy equipment that's responsible for um intelligence-based policing, light towers, generators, and things like that. So the labor positions um with eliminating them just creates uh a situation where we have to do more with

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less obviously with the budget we are trying to do. So vacant positions create ongoing salary savings at $41,600 each equates to a savings of $124,800. Looking ahead, new revenue, external fundings and self-d delivery initiatives

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in motion across the department. First is revenue and savings. A new revenue and cost savings ideas. Fire prevention inspections expansion 200k 200,000 in revenue. New fire prevention inspection software 200 to 300 thou

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uh,000. police training facility on pace uh to meet exceed 50,000 50k uh 40k by June already grant and fundings port authority uh wants to enter an agreement

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as you're aware for 10 years using our training firing range for 2000 uh it would be 200 $2 million uh a year over the 10-year period. Uh, also the AFG apparatus and equipment grant

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2.58 million requested. Uh, RPF smoke and uh, CO detector grant $20,000 impending CD uh, BG for apparatus and firehouse 4 to7 million.

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Let's speak about that. I know that uh I had at least one or two council people over the weekend request if we had that high water vehicle we put in for we'd been in a much better place for those rescues that we had. Uh the community development block grants is uh money that we're going to utilize to

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purchase that high water vehicle. I think uh for the fire department it's been an unutilized resource. So we're hoping that over the next year or two we can work with department to ensure that we can secure some apparatus as well as necessary firehouse repairs hopefully to

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the tune of 4 million to $7 million. Uh the director mentioned the FPS that's a fire prevention and safety grant we submitted for one of those earlier this year. Uh and the assistance to firef fire grant AFG grants we also put in for apparatus and some additional equipment.

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We're very successful in the past in securing equipment. I think we have $650,000 that should be coming to us towards the end of the year that will help us purchase those SCBAs that we referred to earlier. And I'll I'll just go ahead and jump to slide number three. Uh new ways of delivering services. Uh

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with regards to um EMR training, that's the emergency medical response calls. Uh after CO, we kind of declined on the number of uh first responders calls we did to assist the medical center. Um so some of our certifications um expired. Uh we worked very diligently last year

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in securing money to retrain the entire department on these first responder calls. Our our certifications are up this year. Instead of uh conducting this retraining with a vendor that would cost us somewhere to the tune of $18,000, we found a very creative way to do it

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in-house. So we'll be saving the city approximately $150,000 and we'll continue to be able to provide those medical services where the uh medical center requires an additional assistance. Uh I'm moving parking authority to the MUA reopen new

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uh on route 440 for more room. Uh also Newport Mall mini precinct. Uh we're going to be putting uh police officers down in the area of exchange place working out of the mini mall consolidate IT contract citywide. um and pursue

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inter interoperability and technology grants. You if you have any questions you do we don't have the questions we'll get back to you. >> Yes, there's there's tons of questions. I think we could do the questions. We

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could um we'll start from this way over >> one at a time. >> Yeah, just one at a time. >> Um I just want to be respectful time limits uh number of questions. >> Well, if we so just to make sure everyone can get their questions if we

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could go with like two to three questions and then if you have additional and we have time we could go there because I want to make sure everyone get their questions in. Um the first question I have is is really to the administration BA's

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office. So we have the um the spreadsheets that show the 2025 adopted um and then also the 2026 request 2026 draft um

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which is the mayor's approved amount I assume. Correct. Um and then the change um the delta between it looks like the the draft column 2026 draft

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less the 2025 adopted. Um, this might have changed during the period I was no longer on council, but there used to be kind of a dot matrix type looking sheet that had the 2025

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introduced, 2025 adopted versus the 2026 introduced, 2026 adopted. Um, can we get that information as well? Um and for the is all of this information also public

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shared with the public these um spreadsheets and and whatnot. >> So I'll I'll start with your first question about the previous format. Um I'm not aware of what was previously

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sent but in previous council years. Um, but I will connect with the finance department to see if we can get the 2025 introduced budget data in addition to what you see in the spreadsheet today. Is that right? >> Correct. Yeah.

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>> Okay. >> And and just again because the public is watching and people are watching just to clarify why I'm asking for that. I think it's a more fairer comparison to look at what was introduced as opposed to adopted ultimately because the council um adopted means the council approved

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it. After this process is over, there'll be a 2026 adopted and then you can fairly kind of apples to apples comparison to say 2025 adopted versus 2026 adopted versus the introduced. So, um that's why I'm asking for that. Um

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that that's one question and I I'll limit mine to to three if I may. Um and um I just want to look at the thank you for the presentation first of all. Thank you director AMP. Um so if I can just uh

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look at your director's office we have um spreadsheets around that. Um it looks like uh there were six transfers um of fiscal officers um into the different division units

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um and then three new hires um added to the payroll or sorry transfers two transfers and one new hire. Could you speak to all of those um personnel changes within your office um and the

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rationale behind those changes? >> We had transferred some personnel to the fiscal that they are currently in the fiscal office. They do police fiscal so we transferred them to the police budget. That's where you'll see some of those changes. >> Right. I'm asking what's the rationale?

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Why change it from director's office to the the division office? I'm not questioning I'm just I mean I'm not questioning the rationale. I just want to understand the rationale. >> We're just trying to put people where they belong relative to the department

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as we're also currently looking at some out of title personnel and putting them in the proper budget. And so again, um, given past history, prior to kind of decentralizing fiscal officers, I

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believe at one time a lot of the fiscal officers were all housed under finance. Uh, so that's what I'm trying to get at as well is just in terms of reorganizing the the city and finding efficiencies and cost efficiencies um by decentralizing

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um are we being more efficient or could we find more efficiencies in trying to centralize our fiscal officers under one under one house? I >> I think the last one is correct. I made a decision to put them all under one one house. Uh they were scattered in my office. They were scattered on different

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floors. they were scattered in on their responsibility and also uh on in the budget. I made a decision to put them all under one roof. >> Then my my last question and then I'll turn it over is just um there were plans

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um I think going into the year before kind of a fiscal crisis um was and and the level and depth of this budget crisis that we have in the city to separate police and fire. if could speak to that and whether those plans are still um continuing and whether this

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budget um reflects a progression towards that or um or or what what the plans are moving forward. >> Uh yes uh we we did speak about it uh in fact uh deputy director Hart was taken you know board on board uh in overseas

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fires day-to-day operation and and and the fire department. Uh it's something that once the budget's approved uh that we are going back and talk to the administration about and they're going to have to talk to you about it. >> Any timetable in terms of >> No.

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>> No. Okay. >> Is it okay if I ask question? >> Yes. >> Director Rose, good morning and thank you for the presentation. Just curious to know if we separate two departments isn't it going to be extra expense

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because we will have two directors and we'll have more senior positions if we are separating the two departments. >> From what I can see, you would you would you would need a director director of

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fire and a director of police. So, you definitely need another director, but I could have the administration speak to it. >> I would just say that um because the director said we need some time after the budget is done to do that analysis, um I think this is something that we'll

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take a look at to see the cost benefit of separating the divisions. Okay. So much. >> All right. Um Joel, >> thank you chairman. Um and thank you uh everyone for coming here today and for

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the presentation. Um I have three questions. Uh so well that's to start. Um first question um the last uh table of organization that was presented to

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the council was in 2014. Um is there an updated version of that or is the uh um organizational chart does that correspond to the most recent um TM?

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>> So um we had shared the latest uh organization chart with council president's office want to say last week. Um that is the latest. So I'm not sure if that is the document you're referring to.

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Um, I think the table of organization I I'll get back to you. I believe that I don't know if it's a municipal ordinance. Um, council president or chairman, not to put you on the spot. >> That's okay. I apologize. Well, first I

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didn't hear the first question you asked. I heard her say she sent the org chart. What was the question? >> Um, the table of organization. Is that the same thing I guess in the administration's uh eyes as the org chart that was

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presented to us? >> Uh I believe so in my eyes >> my interpretation but if I'm saying I'm new here so if there's something else I'm supposed to provide I I apologize. >> No no ap let's we'll I'll keep it moving and we'll >> okay and we can circle back to that but

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as far as I know it's the same thing. >> Got it. >> So Councilman, just so you know I've been here pretty long. Um the table of organization is equivalent to the organizational chart. Same thing. >> Perfect. Thank you. Okay. Um second

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question. Um coming into this year, uh I'll just speak for myself as a council person. I was under the impression there were um in excess of 23 deputy chiefs for the division of police. That is not the

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case. Um could you speak to obviously the accurate number the current number is here it's provided in the the census as well um could you speak to what their roles and responsibilities are >> yes currently we uh in Jan January we

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had 10 two retired we have eight currently um right now that fits the the current currently it fits the structure uh of the uh police department uh we have we have the patrol division the investigative division support services.

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Um, we have professional standards. Um, help me out here if I'm missing one. We have two in the comm one in the uh 911 in charge of the 911 call center. And we have two more uh that work uh

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nights from uh 2 o'clock in the afternoon till 6 o'clock in the morning uh in the command center. Thank you. Um and then my last question is uh in the

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PowerPoint presentation on IT and communications on the third page. Um, under IT and communications, the last bullet point, uh, improved or instituted

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new 911 methods and procedures that improved standards and response times. Um, could you speak to what the response times were and what they are now? >> I cannot necessarily uh

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100% certainty say how we've improved the response times. The reason I say that is because we're still bringing parking authority on board with the police department's computer system. What we did do uh back when the 911 system went live back in May was bring

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those personnel from a separate part of the building into there. And I can speak to the amount of calls that they've answered. Also, if I may say that um we're prioritizing uh the calls. Uh there was either e either minimal or no

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prioritization. Uh so they're being prioritized. Um also when we talk about the parking authority uh enforcement moving to the communication center, their dispatch now uh works out of out of the same floor with the police and fire dispatch. So

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when people call for a blocked driveway or a blocked hydrant, uh we can now send parking authority right from there and we could save the police car for a more productive assignment. >> And that number that you uh asked for, we're actually receiving almost 4,200

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parking authority calls now in the communication center handed handled, excuse me, by dedicated parking authority employees. The goal of that in the future is to bring that all onto one system and that'll result in some cost savings and then we'll have the real numbers of how we've reduced response

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times. >> And one thing I'd like to we have a new radio system uh call in the call center uh when I have monthly meetings. What I like to have a and make it known to the public is from the time the call is

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received the time the call is dispatched to the time the police car is at the scene. uh and put Q goals that the priorities and then the the length of time that they're allowed to uh get to the to the assignment. So naturally the more the emergency is it would be uh the

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higher that be the lower number uh to response and that's something that we're working on with the new system. >> Thank you. Just a one quick question uh followup and do you you use the um event number system? That's how you track. Uh,

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and I asked that because um, when I when residents contact me and say, you know, I called uh, I called and quote unquote no one came. What I say to them is you need to ask for an event number. Um, so they no

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>> unnecessarily. You just need to know the uh the address because it's put into the CAD system which is the computer computerated uh, dispatch. Uh once you give us the address then we could look it up. >> Okay. All right. Thank you.

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>> Chairman, I'm sorry. Can I a follow up on his table of Oregon question? >> Yeah. Um so I'm just just looking at the division of police for example. Um there there are UCR, BCI, records, chaplain, internal

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affairs, district clerks, etc. Um we you just you you referenced the domestic violence unit, um traffic enforcement, etc. Where do they all fall in this uh this org chart? To be very candid with you, that's a work in progress for a new

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org chart that that will mirror the current organization. Um, but domestic violence to your question would be under the investigative uh branch of the department. >> Investigative >> investigative

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BCI. >> That would be criminal investigation or uh detective criminal investigation. Sure. >> CJS again I say that that org chart that's been something uh in the last seven months that you know we move things

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around that we have to get uh it's a work in progress. We definitely need a better org chart. >> Thank you. >> My turn. >> Yes. >> Morning everyone. Um Director Ambrose. Uh, I would like to start off by

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thanking you and um all the district captains for working with our office to push the captain's meetings back from 4:30 to 6:30 so more people can attend. Um, and from now I'll just go ahead and um start asking. I got a couple of questions. Um, so the public safety

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organizational chart um page three division of police um chaplain's department. has three positions, but it's two of them are management and one is chaplain. Um, so I guess my question is why do we

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need two managers if there's one chaplain? Uh, Councilman, I believe currently there is no paid chaplain. Uh, there is no chaplain. Uh that's something that uh is on my to-do list with the community engagement is to

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start a chaplain uh a chaplain uh unit and also a uh clergy community police academy uh for uh and seniors. So that's something that's on my list, but there's a lot of priorities in front of it. >> Okay, great. Um, and then, uh,

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Department of Public Safety on the Excel sheet. Uh, police sheet, other expenses, line 103. Um, police supplies, $200,000. Uh, what are these supplies? Um, other line items lay out specific supplies,

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but this catch all is unexplained there. Did you repeat that, uh, Councilman? >> Line line 103. >> 103. >> Yeah. Police supplies 200,000. I'm sorry. Um, police supplies. Is that

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line 218? >> Sorry. Can you repeat? Police supplies is line 218 and that's uh ammunition, gun evidence boxes, flares and range supplies by companies Lawman

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Supply things um and Standard Fusy Corporation. >> Thank you. Um and then um we have uh Department of Public Safety Excel police sheet other expenses line 109 professional consultant and specialized

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services $89 uh,000 $169. What specialized services are needed and what was cut for the 10,000 in reduction in budget from the 2025 ex expended expended total expected total.

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Sorry. >> Um just just to clarify when you say um row 109 we also refer to it by the line item 312. >> Okay. >> Professional consultant and specialized services.

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So for line 312, that's for our K9 training with Dennis Mcweeny, our X-ray zostimeter, which is utilized by ESU. We also um K9 medical checkups as well as psych evaluations for our recruits

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and for our uh officers. And in the beginning you said K9 training, correct? >> I'm sorry. >> Said K9 training as well. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Um, if I can just jump in and piggyback off of one of Mike's questions. Um, I I

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had a followup to the chaplain question that he asked. You said there's no paid chaplain currently. Um, but there are two um management positions in the chaplain division. So, if there's no chaplain currently, who are they managing? Uh

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I'm here. I'm um never there there are no chaplain to my knowledge. A lot of people that call my office that are looking to be chaplain. >> There is um because that was actually going to be my question. I was waiting for uh sorry Councilman Griffin to to

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finish. But in the itemized budget, like Councilwoman Little said, there is a chaplain position under the do under the director's office for Brian Page. >> I would definitely have to look at look into it and get back to you because

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>> Okay. And then also in the police budget, we still have uh Bishop Rodriguez listed as the chaplain uh with a line item. And I believe there might be one more

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chaplain position, but I don't think it's filled. Um but I know at some point during the last administration, we had chaplain that were assigned to each police precinct. Now, I don't know if they were paid or volunteered, but each

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police precinct had their own chaplain. Um, but there are two paid chaplain, one in the director's office and one in the police uh division on this budget. >> Yeah. So, we'll follow up with you on the discrepancy between the orchard and

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the budget worksheet, and we'll get back to you on the two staff that are listed there and what their responsibilities are. And also as it relates to I know there's the paid chaplain and then we had like volunteer chap. So what is going on with

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that portion of the chaplain program? >> Oh council me before I'd like to start a a chaplain association uh as you were talking about. So it can be districtwide and citywide and they could be involved. Uh it's on my list to do to start it.

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Uh, it was very I had a very robust one in New York and I like to do the same thing here. I just didn't get to it to be very candid. >> Do you have an anticipated um time when you you guys will embark on that journey? >> Excuse me. I can hear you.

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>> You have an anticipated time because you say you haven't you haven't gotten time to do it. So, do you like have a can you say in the next quarter the next 90 days? I would say I would say in the next 90 days >> also director are we um in that program

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>> is that just for the police chaplain or are we also incorporating fire chaplain? >> I would talk to director Hart and have public safety chaplain. >> Okay. All right. So we'll we'll circle back on the whole chaplain discussion. So, just for the record, you're going to

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get back to us as it relates to the paid portion of the chaplain. Um, we've identified two I I think it may be more than that. Um, but if we can get we can get a followup on that. Um,

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that'll be great. head. >> Okay. Um, this is probably I guess more of a question for the administration. Are we or what is the status of our uh search for a municipal prosecutor?

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So, I believe we have um we currently have a municipal forseecutor um and um I can follow up with you on the appointment process, but um law department Sarah Luminina is up this afternoon. She can speak more um about

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that process. >> Okay. because we have the municipal prosecutor listed on the quality of life budget and it's listed as a vacancy and it says uh we need a replacement for Jake Hudnut. So I don't know if it

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should be in the law department or not but yes so um there there are uh line items for the municipal prosecutor's office under quality of life for public safety. Um however the staffing of those

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um those lines um I think law department corp counsel can speak to it best. >> Okay. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I I just want to uh I just checked on my staff. There's one paid uh Father

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Bryant. Father Brian he's the only one uh chaplain that's paid. I mean the the org chart does list Joshua Rodriguez as well. >> The the the or chart the or chart for

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public safety and for uh the police and fire needs some as a work in progress. the budget spreadsheet also lists him um >> making's there's a yeah there's a line items associated with the actual salary

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next to it um as it relates to >> yeah let's let's follow up on that one I have it jotted down >> okay all right um I want to f focus a little bit um on overtime

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um and vacancies so for police and flyer. Um, how many funded positions are currently vacant? I'll go ahead and start with fire just as a frame of reference. 2024 we had 13

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retirements. 2025 we had 13 retirements. Year to date so far this year, four retirements. Operational vacancies for firefighters project 30 vacancies based on the number of people that are being retiring by the end of this year. Operational vacancies for captains would

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be zero. Operational vacancies for battalion chief would be six. Operational vacancies for deputy chief would be four. >> That's for year end. >> This is for the current vacancies that we recognize as operational vacancies

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for the fire division for 2026. >> Okay. What about police? Okay. Um, I can start with police officers. We have 462. We have 42 that are eligible for retirement.

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2028. 2029, we have 22 that's eligible for retirement. And we have 25 that left since January of this year. Uh, we had 45 that left the Jersey City Police Department last year. Since last year,

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we only hired 24 police officers. So, we lost um this year and last year, we lost uh 70 people and we we hired 24. We have vacancies for police lieutenant

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that that we're paying overtime for. Uh also, we had captains that retire. Uh we have vacancies for captain operational vacancies. >> So that's great segue for my next question. Um

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with respect to the vacancies, um how much of the overtime is being used to compensate for those vacancies? >> So our our our our staffing uh our overtime is being utilized for there's

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some contractual obligations. Uh, so if we want police officers, most of our calls for service come in from about 4:00 in the afternoon to about 2:00 in the morning and on the weekend 3:00 in the morning. So if we want to have more officers working, we have to pay overtime because in their contract they

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work uh they work 2 to 10, 10 to 6, 6:2. So um we have to pay overtime for that. We have to pay overtime for officers if they're out sick, if they're out injured, um if they're on vacation. Uh when we talk that we have 792 sworn

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officers, a 2/3 only work, a third is always off because of the configuration of the schedule. Um so that that's another that's another issue. There's always going to be overtime. It's to us decrease over, you know, to keep overtime controlled. So, uh, most of our

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overtime now, a lot of overtime is being spent for staffing and supervision. >> So, there's I guess I'm trying to figure out with correlation with the vacancies and overtime, is there a huge is there a

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huge portion of the 12 million that's trying to compensate for vacancies and overtime >> portion of that? Yes. So, in light of all that, um

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I guess from a financial standpoint, is it cheaper to hire people to replace the vacancies versus doing overtime? Well, I just want to I just want to say that uh you know, if you look at it as as a

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overtime is overtime. If you hire a new person, there's fringe benefits, there's u, you know, benefits, there's pension. The thing is I'm I'm concerned about is burnout. Uh, when you're asking the police officer to continue to work the overtime or the supervisor, it's

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burnout. Uh, where, you know, you just they're just freshening out. So, it's a concern for their wellness. Uh but a majority uh of the overtime is for staffing uh for uh a variety of uh

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openings. >> Yeah. Uh Griff, Councilman Griffin, then >> thank you. So, um based on uh uh public safety Excel sheet, uh police sheet, salaries and wages, I'm sorry, I got the lines wrong. I have lines 70 through 79.

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Um there are 10 unnamed police aids at 45,000 um labeled as replaced through retirement. Um so my question is are these aids already hired? If not um what

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has been the noticeable shortfalls uh that have occurred without these positions filled since the retirements caused that vacancy? >> So they were not hired. Uh that's something I requested to do a civilianization. Uh we have sworn police officers in positions in the police

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department that we can put sworn uh personnel, not nonsworn personnel to free up. Uh these police aids are something that I recommend uh that we start hiring to free up 10 police officers so we could put them in the street and we could free up some overtime also.

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>> Okay. And we have the money in place for that. >> Uh I believe so. >> Council person. So just um speaking on the um overtime um I I Councilman Zupa has advocated for

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um specials uh the class class 2 special law enforcement officers. Um so I'm not not claiming his idea. I think it's a good one. Um the if the administration has considered that um bringing in specials as you talked about the

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additional cost of of benefits um if we were to hire new hires but specials could be part-time paid an hourly basis no benefits um we could fill some of these areas not necessarily everything I'm not sure exactly qualifies under

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specials um but I I wonder for example we've created a traffic enforcement unit um and So, could they be used to uh within that traffic enforcement unit get similar results um there, but then officers who are there then reassigned

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to um fill these other areas where overtime is needed. um if you could speak to that and what whether the what the administration's um position is on specials and whether there's um and looking into that uh and

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bringing that uh special class into into Jersey City. Oh, your answer. Yes. Uh, as we as we speak, one of my special assistants are writing up a u a a um a council resolution to come before you

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uh and be reviewed by the law department for the hiring of special police officers. Special police officers to be hired on a part-time basis. You hit it right on on the nose. uh in our courts. Presently, we have uh six police officers that work the courts. Uh and at

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night, we have to pull the police car to save overtime. We pull it out of one of the of the districts to work the court, night court. So, our first start is to hire at least 10 uh special police officers. Uh so, that'll be coming towards you. Uh the other thing is we

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have a robust uh security contracts throughout the city uh in here and in my building. I'd like to see special police officers also working in in them sites in public safety. So your answer yes and that's what I plan on using them for. >> Is that is that in this current budget

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that we have before us? >> Uh yes. I was told yes. >> Where where do we find that? If the administration can point us to that. >> So So that brings me >> I don't think I didn't I don't think that's what

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>> Okay. So I'm just I'm just informed they're not in the budget and the police aids were removed from the budget. So earlier when I spoke about the police aids, they were removed from the budget uh on the civilianization and on the special police officers that wasn't in

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the budget. Can I just add that um you know as we were looking at the 2026 uh budget and considering our um resource constraints, we didn't have

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enough time to do the analysis on the ideas that you guys are bringing forward. Um so it did not make it into the proposed budget that you see. So, I'm working closely with Director Ambers's team and the finance department

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as well as the law department to um analyze and um make a cost estimate for what should be included in the 2027 budget based on these ideas. >> Yes. And um I guess by the time the

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second meeting is going to be after that August date, so it we should have more information as it relates to that. just to focus um to Councilman Rolando's point as it relates to specials, if you

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guys can just identify what specials is um what benefits is associated because you know the public is watching and when people start to hear us being in a deficit and us hiring new people um

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people get a little uneasy. So if you can explain what the specials is uh what are the benefit of having these type of individuals working in these positions. >> So special police officers as I indicated would start working in the courts. We have six courts in the

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daytime or one court at night. Uh so that would be seven. Right now we're using seven police officers that we take off the street uh that can be working in the street that we might be paying overtime for staffing. Uh, we were paying overtime in the courts to staff the courts, but I'm I'm actually robbing

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from Peter to pay Paul. I'm taking police officers from the district, putting them into the courts to make sure that the courts are secured and the judge is secured. Special police officers will be hired uh that will be part-time, no benefits. Uh, and they'll be working the court. So, I could free

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up the seven police officers that could remain to street duty and answer 911 calls and proactive policing. >> Okay. So these special officers just for the public is privy. These people are trained, right? Just not hiring anybody. These are people who have the well with

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thought to understand and are eligibility to be in law enforcement officers. It essentially from a hiring standpoint, it eliminates them getting the extra benefits which add a extra cost.

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>> That's correct. Also, they have to be uh a lot of them are retired police officers. It can be uh that could be hired. There could be new new ones that want to become police officers have to go to the academy to be a special. Uh it's a few months shy than a regular police officer. Uh they are certified by

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the police training commission. Uh they can they have arrest powers, arrest, search and seizure powers. Um so they are a police officer. uh a special two uh is is has full powers of a police officer and it would be on a part-time

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basis uh utilized uh within the city that could free up the other officers. Uh and there's no there's no health benefits. There's no uh uh other any fringe benefits that have to be paid to special police officers. >> All right. Thank you. So, Councilman Griffin got a followup. >> Yeah, I just have a followup on that.

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So, when it comes to the courts, um, is there any way we can work with partner with uh the county to use sheriffs? No, because it's it's a city municipal court, not a county court. The sheriff is in charge of all superior courts. Uh,

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the municipal court is under the city government. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Good morning. Thank you. Um just to continue on the the personnel question. Um

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we have eight chiefs uh and 20 captains listed in the spreadsheet. Uh the personnel list that we got last week uh lists 11 um deputy chiefs instead of eight. And then the uh personnel lists

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uh 21 captains. But then on the presentation before us today, there were 19. So if we could just get clarification on the number of actual deputy chiefs and the number of actual captains, um that would be very helpful.

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And an explanation of I know Councilman Brooks asked about the role of the deputy chiefs. If you could talk about the role of the captains, that would be helpful. So the actual numbers are one chief of police, eight deputy chiefs,

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19 captains, 44 lieutenants, 106 sergeants, 129 detectives, and 462 police officers for a total of 792. And we have 23 also included uh 23 that are

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in the police academy to graduate. Captain is a command rank uh officer one above one rank above the lieutenant. He oversees uh a a division. For instance, the districts, the four districts, there's a captain in each one. Uh

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there's a captain in charge of internal affairs. There's a captain that's in communications also. Uh so it's it's the link between a a lieutenant and the deputy chief. also like to make mention that there is another rank that's not utilized here is the inspector of

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police. Inspector of police was eliminated as a civil service title. It comes after captain. Uh this department uh doesn't use it. They go from captain right to deputy chief. Uh oh. Uh that's that that's that's the structure. The

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lieutenant is a mid manager um that supervises the the units or in in a in a precinct. They they're are in a district right now. They're currently a tour command. They're on the street. Um as as I am talking about personnel and in and

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Councilman Gilmore asked before about the overtime. We spend a significant amount of overtime uh for lieutenants. Uh there is a shortage of lieutenants in the precincts in the districts. So uh right now that's that's that's the structure of how how we a sergeant

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oversees the squad. Uh a lieutenant is also oversees it. So that's the uh you know the the structure of the department. >> Thank you. Um, may I request an updated personnel list reflecting the accurate

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uh active personnel and then also the assignments of each of those ranks and and you're you're explaining various assignments for the captains and the deputy chiefs. I'm not able to list them all right here right now. So, if I can request that document um that would be

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very helpful. Um, >> director uh just so that I want to understand it. Right now we have 44 lieutenant and over 462 police officers. Can you please tell me more about it?

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How does it work? Why do we need so many lieutenant when we have 62 police officer? What's the system here? So 462 police officers. Uh there's 53 components of the police department.

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Okay. So there's the four priest the four districts. Then you have district detective squads. Okay. Then you have community service departments in there. Then you go to the investigative. Okay. You have each squad. You have every district has a detective squad to

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investigate the robber the robbery or a theft or or or a burglary. Uh then you have internal affairs. You have to have you have to have a superior officers uh in internal affairs. So you have people in there internal affairs. So uh that's

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that's basically but I think an org chart uh that we're working on. There's 53 components of the police department. We can show you where everyone is. And just on that, so in 2025, 2024, we have the same number of lieutenant.

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>> Would you repeat that? >> 2524. Is that the number was same as 2026 >> people that left? >> No. The number of lieutenant. Do we have the same number as 24 25?

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No. We can get back to you that we don't have we don't have Thank you. >> Uh just to continue. Um yeah, certainly updated or terar and personnel list. Uh we >> Oh, excuse me. On on the lieutenants.

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All right. Uh we've had we have 44 now. We had four retire. So we had 48 last year. We were still short last year. So you need just for the just for the the district commands, you need 36 lieutenants in the district commands.

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Currently, you only we only have about uh seven. So we're paying overtime. >> So it what is the what what's is it an issue with promotions? It like what's what's the issue of why we can't get to

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the number? Uh I I think that we wanted to, you know, get our get the budget uh get the budget straightened out and then uh do the promotions. Uh I've been talking to the administration uh and and to the

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business administrator to to do it. So hopefully we can get it done now. >> Yeah. I mean, if we cuz if I'm hearing this correctly, where what's you what's the number we need to be at? Uh well, if we promote my my my

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recommendation, we promote 20 to 25 uh lieutenants. Now, it will definitely put a you know, cost us about maybe $300,000 and we'll probably save about $800,000 in overtime. >> The point >> um just one more note about

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discrepancies in the workbook. um for large departments like public safety, there could be discrepancies every day. So the budget workbook was compiled uh June 30th. So that might be some of

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the reasons why it might be slightly different than what um the director is is uh reporting in terms of personnel. >> Okay. So just to follow up on that, there are eight in the as of June 30th

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um eight deputy chiefs for instance in the active personnel list that we received after June 30th there were 11. So there were 11 deputy police chiefs and in the personnel list that we

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received after. So can you explain? Trust me when I tell you we only have eight deputy chiefs. The only thing that can be this could could be a problem is one left May 1st, one or June 1st, and

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one left July 1st. Maybe they're still on on the on the on the rolls because they have acrruled money that they're owed, but operationally they're not working. They're tired. >> Yeah. And I'll just say that you're referring to the active employees um

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spreadsheet that we sent over say last week that's based on payroll. So like the director said there may be a reason why they are still on the payroll but in terms of operations this is the data that the director is reporting.

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>> Okay. Thank you. Um I just have a a couple more outside of the organizational stuff. Um item uh line item 316 leasing of vehicles and equipment uh in the division of police. Um that's just

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over a million dollars and um the justification comments section notes that this money was shifted to municipal debt service. Could you please explain what that means and then could you give some description of what kind of

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vehicles and equipment we're talking about here? This is police uh item 316 leasing of vehicles and equipment. >> Yes, I see the line item. Um going to

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ask our finance department to explain. >> So these are uh multi-year capital leases uh that the city has financed through a third party. Uh historically, police and fire have included those annual paydowns in their budget. They are permissible debt service

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appropriations which puts that uh spending outside of the budget cap. So that's why we have corrected the public safety budget to to reflect that. These are debt payments. Um and you'll see when we go through the entire budget, there are similar capital leases for

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public works as well. So we just made sure to capture everything in one place where it belongs. Um and I said this gives you flexibility um staying under that appropriation cap uh for you know daily operations. >> So So the idea is shifted to municipal

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debt service. It's being paid for not by operational expenses. >> It's it's still an operational expense. It's just not in public safety's uh line items. >> I see. Okay. So where does this line item now exist in the >> municipal debt service? So that is sheet 27 of the budget document.

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>> Okay. >> You'll see capital lease principal, capital lease interest, and that covers all the city's uh capital lease um equipment, vehicles for every department, not just public safety. >> Thank you. And then could we just get some description of what kinds of

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vehicles and equipment are in >> Yeah, thank you. Um and then uh I guess I'll I'll ask my third kind of bucket of questions before I uh pass it along here. But um it looks like in the 2018

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to 2019 year, the July 2018 through June 2019 year, there about 5,000 um filings for traffic violations. uh and just wanted to see um if we could get a sense of that that was going on or excuse me I

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think per month um not just the whole year per month and that was without the traffic enforcement division at the time. So, I'm wondering if you can talk to the goals that we have. Um, is that a kind of goal, a metric that we want to get back to of 5,000 per month or what

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is the ambition of the traffic enforcement division and how was the department accomplishing those kinds of numbers without the traffic enforcement division back then? should be green when you turn it on. >> Got it. So, you're saying 5,000 summones

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issued. That is that you're talking about? >> Yeah, about that's about the number that were filed, >> right? So, I I can't I obviously I wasn't here in 18 or 19, but I could tell you this what I could we could tell you. I think that um over the years

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there was there was none or limited traffic enforcement uh since the motorcycle squad since traffic was uh done away with you had a you had the district commanders the the district when the when the police officers weren't involved in a 911 call they were

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given out a ticket or they were reacting to it. I think what you're seeing now is with the traffic unit. That is their primary responsibility is to be proactive and enforce the traffic laws. Um I intend somehow to add to the traffic unit uh in September. Uh so I

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think you'll definitely you saw 12% accidents went down since May since we started the uh uh the traffic unit. I think drivers were aware that police officers weren't out there enforcing traffic laws. Um, and they were doing whatever they wanted, driving they want,

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like they were driving bumper cars. Uh, I think that you'll definitely see more summones issued. You could see uh the way it's going in in traffic. Uh, so to your to your answer, yes, I think you're going to see definitely more summones issued. Uh, more education. Uh we we we

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we also get trying to get into the schools in September with the young with the new ebike laws and talk about that. Uh so uh your answer is yes >> and yeah I appreciate the answer. Just um I think it's worthwhile taking a look. I understand that that was before

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your time as director. Um but I think it's worthwhile taking a look at if there are documents of what was going on, what kinds of practices were going on at the time to see what was working. if those if those numbers are reflective of just increased traffic enforcement and what we can integrate into the new

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traffic enforcement division. But appreciate >> well what whatever we can that's available uh from 2018 any practices or best practices that were used. I could sure rest assure you that some of the men and women are are available that are in the traffic unit. So we're following

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that same path u that they did. So um we can we can take another look but we're following what they you know there was a lapse for about 9 years or 10 years uh with traffic enforcement. Uh so it's not going to happen overnight >> but I think you're definitely going to

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see a change uh with saving lives uh less accidents uh and and less people being struck by cars. >> Yeah. Director um if >> council I'm sorry if I may add the 2018 and 19 numbers included parking

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enforcement summones whereas the summones that you're looking at now are strictly traffic bureau and do not include parking. >> I I see. So what's listed under traffic violations is inclusive of non-moving violations as parking. >> Sorry, can you repeat that? So the now

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we're separating traffic as moving violations versus parking non-moving violations, but they were lumped in together during that range that I referenced. >> Okay, that's >> respectfully that's not what the municipal court statistics show. I have

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it out here. Um for here we have July 2018 to June 2019 we have >> for the for the year we have 59,528 moving violations and 47,026

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um parking violations. >> If um if you'd like you can send the the stats that you have right there to the VA's office and we will work with um public safety to provide a response. >> Thank you. If um directive, if this

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council can get um a breakdown on all of the citations that were issued, if not by ward, at least by uh precinct um and two, if we can also have

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I guess the outcomes because it's one thing to issue violations and is another thing to um get adjudications for those violations. I know we've been having a host of issues as it relates to rent control enforcement and things of that

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nature. So, if we can get a clear picture of how many like what are the outcomes of these infractions that's issued um and then two uh just light of because the overall objective is not to

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really penalize people is to create a safer city. Um, but we do want to make sure it's equitable dispersement of violations across the entire city versus concentrating in a certain area. So, we can get that. I know, like I said, by

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ward it may be a little harder, but by precent um that that that data should be a little easier to compose. >> So, I have I've jotted that down. I think this is data that we're going to get from the municipal court um not directly from public safety.

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>> Okay. And and is there any way we can get a um a capture rate on how much money is being collected annually on this? >> I can ask the courts. >> Thank you. And and and and not just not how many tickets are not the amount of

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tickets, but the actual payments. Thank you. >> Oh, hold on. Wait. So, just correct me if I'm wrong. when we when we're issuing these infractions, a portion of the money go to the state

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as well, right? >> And I think >> so anything under title 39 >> goes to the >> the state, but any anything under city ordinances comes to the city. >> Oh, even in title, we still get the court cost no matter. >> Yes. >> Okay.

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>> Get a portion. >> I think the >> better off under our ordinances to get all the money. So I think the data as it relates to um actual outcomes be yeah the data as it relates to the

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actual outcomes. All right. So we'll go to council um person little and then sing uh because we're 20 minutes now is two hours in a word. >> I know I know. So, on on that note, I

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want to thank you again for your flexibility with um putting together a second hearing um when you return from vacation and and I I truly do hope you have a relaxing vacation. >> Me, too. >> Um but I mean, you know, to some of my

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colleagues points, there are just so many discrepancies um where we see like line items for someone a line item for someone in the budget that is no longer working here. And I'm not accusing anyone of malfeasants or or anything of that nature. I just think this is such a

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complex budget and um such a complex department that I really want to make sure that we get these numbers accurate. So if it would be possible maybe um while you're on vacation maybe deputy director Hart and um BA Choy maybe you could work together to kind of

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address those discrepancies and make sure we have updated numbers. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you so much. I appreciate it. >> I'll just make a request. If there are specific discrepancies, can you list them out for me and then I can work with the various departments and get that?

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>> Yes. Um, I will definitely be sending you a follow-up email. So, thank you. Um, so I did want to circle back to the overtime discussion. Um, that uh thank you. Um, from the

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presentation we see that um, you have already been making significant progress in in reducing the amount of overtime spending. Um, and uh, you're projected to be under budget for overtime. Yeah, in the budget that was submitted to us,

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um the um we are seeing a uh a 3 million increase in overtime spending. Is that just a is that just because in the past it was previously underbudgeted for

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>> reduction in the overtime? I I >> Sorry. Sorry. So, so in your presentation you detailed how you're rejecting overtime spending and we can see here um in police it's um it's down 11.4%

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versus 2025 at the same point in time in the year. Um, and we also actually at last caucus we heard about how you're uh moving to an electronic overtime request system which should should hopefully help streamline and um identify

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inefficiencies and improve improve our budgeting on that even further um which I'm really looking forward to uh seeing that. that um the there is 12 million being requested in the 2026 budget for

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overtime spending um and in 2025 only 9 million was requested. Is that because 2025 was severely underbudgeted? Can you explain that discrepancy? >> Yes, I can under I can explain this one.

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Um so that is correct. For police overtime, it was underfunded in 2025. Um in the adopted budget for 2025 it says 9 million but the actual expenditure was 12.5 million.

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>> Okay. >> So we adjusted that in our 2026 estimate. >> Okay. So, our 2026 estimate is not reflecting the progress you have already made up until this point in reducing overtime spending because I'm I'm seeing

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from your presentation that you have made progress and um that's a good thing and you know 58% of the year has elapsed but only 49.9% of the police overtime budget has been spent and only 50.3% of the division of

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fire um budget has been overspent. So, I guess my hope is that um as as these improved overtime scheduling practices take effect um because I know that is a priority for the leadership um our our new leadership um

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my my hope is that we won't need to budget that full 12 million going forward. Would you say that's accurate? >> Yes, we >> Okay. So, um I think first let me begin by saying that usually it was we were budgeted police was budgeted 9 million

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and it would always go to 12 million. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Um this you're what you're saying you're you're right. We're right now we're under budget but we don't know any unanticipated overtime. Uh know we may even do better because we have uh reimburseable monies coming in for for

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different uh events that we had. Uh, but if we don't hire, if if we don't if we have a crime problem, if we have a special event, a weather emergency, that's how that eats up overtime. So, I can't forecast I'm I'm forecasting with 12 right now.

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>> Okay. And that's that's because you would rather overbudget than underbudget. >> Exactly. >> Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. Um, but I am hopeful once we implement the electronic system, maybe in future years that can be lowered. >> Me, too. Um, so looking forward to that.

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Thank you. Um, I also was hoping to talk about um, I know my colleague Councilman Ef asked about traffic enforcement. I'm also hoping to talk about parking enforcement. Um, do we have a number on how much money we are currently losing or making um, from the parking

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enforcement division uh, in terms of you know how much salary and wages are and and how much running that division costs versus um, how much we are bringing in. Um because previously as the parking authority before it was rolled into

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public safety, it sent this general budget se several millions of dollars a year. And so my hope is that this would be a uh revenue positive division. But I'm curious about the numbers and if it's not a revenue positive division, um you know, what is what is the plan for

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improving it? Because I I certainly do not believe that people are doing a better job at parking. that is that is not the case. So, yeah, I'm just wondering if you have those numbers. >> So, I I can touch on a little bit about salary and wages. I think we're

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currently the same as we were. Um, but to Councilman Gilmore's point as far as the municipal courts, we can't account for what tickets have actually been paid. So, the revenue is just projected and we can't say if we're positive, negative. I think we're fairly equal at this point. until we can get those

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numbers from the courts as far as how many summoners are actually paid for and what's actually coming back in, uh, we won't have those numbers for you. >> Okay, great. Um, I mean, if if it is not generating revenue, I I am just kind of

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thinking out loud here, but um I'm wondering if there might be a way to improve performance because I've gotten a number of complaints from constituents where they will submit a parking they will submit a parking complaint in the word on the street app. Uh, and then

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someone parked illegally, too close to a crosswalk, something of that nature. and um then it just gets closed out without um without a ticket being issued. So, is is there, you know, given that the um given that the parking authority used to

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generate several million dollars a year when it was separate, um you know, if if there if there are more tickets that could be being issued and are not being issued, is that something that could be changed? >> So, in doing the 2025 projected revenue,

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per se, $12 million was projected revenue, $9 million was the budget, that's 3 million over. Now I'm not sure in previous years uh and the other administration what their whether whether that was projected or actual revenue that they were giving us. Right? So now I can only

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go by 2026 and what we have now projected 12 million 3 million positive. That's if people pay the fines the courts hold people accountable and we actually collect the revenue that's due. We write the summones. The summones are up projected 37% uh year to date in in

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parking enforcement summones. So we're writing roughly 40,000 a month. Uh it's just a matter of now collecting that revenue. >> So let me ask uh so um are with that revenue is like bench warrants um projected in those numbers.

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>> That's correct. So we have from the sign department your emergency signs. You have scoff law booting which is your your bench warrants essentially of people who don't pay fines and get booted. We have revenue for that. We have the the permits division for parking. uh zone permitting. So there's

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revenue incurred or we get from that. Um and naturally the summones, right? Summones are your main street sweeping, uh prohibited areas, double parking, things like that. They're issuing the summones. Summones are up. It's just a matter of actually collecting.

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>> And and what about towing? >> Towing is is separate for us. We get revenue for for booting. Towing does come into the city through the compound. Now towing is storage is through the compound.

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>> Um can I also just add the um automated parking enforcement initiative which director Kaplan had presented on will also help with the um the summoning and the hopefully the revenue collection. >> Yeah.

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>> Thank you. Um, and then my last question before I pass it off to councilwoman Singh. Um, in the comi other expenses line 151, it lists contractual services as

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3,887,99 with the comment partial shift from capital budget plus contractual increases. So, I'm hoping you can just be that that is not a particularly descriptive um comment or or description. So, and this

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is a large amount of money. It's nearly nearly $4 million. So, I'm hoping you can expand a little on the contractual services that are anticipated for 2026. Uh what contractual services were utilized in 2025 and if you can expand on the details on the shift from the

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capital funds. believe uh similar to the vehicles that equipment question, the vehicles were moved to the debt service. The loans for the 911 system, the new radio replacement project, and the new firehouse alerting system was also moved to debt services. So that puts us back

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to just the contracts that we pay out of our operating budget. The communications has been the collection ground for software for all of dispatch as well as the police and fire CAD. That's the computerated dispatch system as well as their report management system. So if we

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break those out into the actual line items per contract, um obviously you guys are just looking at the summary there, but there is a contractor list here or contractual list. The CAD itself is 1.6 million per year. That's the actual computer program that keeps track

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of everything, police and fire. So, while the communications budget appears to have these very big contractual services, we hold the software costs for both the police and fire department. Um, we have two server rooms right now. We

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have one at our legacy communication center at Bishop Street as well as the new one at the public safety headquarters on to Jackson. So, we are currently paying for services at both of those while we continue to bring everything over to the new building. Unfortunately, a lot of that's out of

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our control. It's taking much longer than we'd like to bring all of that over. The 911 system that we spoke about back in the spring was the first thing to come over. The radios are coming over shortly. It should be done by the end of the year. And in addition to that, that

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budget also houses all of the CCTV camera services throughout the entire city. While the majority of the cameras are supported by individual departments, we house the majority of that maintenance cost. >> Thank you for clarifying. Uh would it be

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possible to send us a list of these contracts just so we have the breakdown? >> Absolutely. >> Awesome. Thank you so much. >> Yes. Um it's we have 10 minutes left. Um, so council council person sing is going to ask our questions, but before

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that ba if we can um also and I hate to be a stickler, but I'm trying to overturn every stone. I promise you. Um, if we can get a list of all cityowned vehicles that are driven home by

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personnel for whatever reason, um, just so we could have access to that. I'm trying to save on gas. I'm trying to save on vehicles. We we just have to overturn every stone to try to save money. >> Just so you know, we have asked for the same information and they are working on

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it. Vehicle information. Yes. Beautiful. Thank you. >> Okay. >> Thank you everyone for being here and answering our questions. Director Ambrose, um you have talked uh you have mentioned uh and uh council minister also talked about it uh domestic

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violence. So you are saying that earlier administration did not have domestic violence unit. Uh no they did not. It they they investigated domestic violence. It was it was just it was decentralized. So if if you got into a domestic violence in

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the north district uh the north district detectives handled it. If you got in in the in the east district, they investigated it. What I did was centralized it because a lot of times what you see with domestic violence that you get the same victim or you get the same suspect with different victims and

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uh also I like to bring social services together with them uh for for the victims. So that's that was my uh whole thing on putting a centralized domestic violence unit. >> How do you plan to do it? How many uh officers will be there? Do you think

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there are grants, federal grants and state grants for domestic violence unit? Can >> can you just so >> how do you see it? How many officers will be there? What's what's overall plan with that? >> So there was there was no cost to the taxpayers just reassignment of personnel

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after a workload analysis was done in each uh of the districts. We reassigned uh six detectives uh two sergeants and a captain. Uh there was a lieutenant already. So the lieutenant that oversees the sexual assault unit oversees the

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domestic violence unit. It's special victim's unit. Uh so we yes we do we we monitor and seek any type of grants grant funding uh that that is available. Uh currently uh there is none that came our way so far. Okay. But our commander

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that's in charge of domestic violence test with that >> as there are overall 5,500 or some domestic violence cases yearly. I >> there was there was u about 5,400 last year domestic violence cases within the city of Jersey City

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>> and I will say that um our homicides are are are down. However, uh twothirds of our homicides uh are domestic violence related. director. Um, there are two new

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positions in your office. Uh, assistant public information officer and a senior public information assistant. Can you please tell us more about their roles? Yes, I have I have a public information officer uh that handles any and

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coordinates with the administration any under public safety and then there's an assistant public information officer that handles all social media all social media and the dashboard for impact. My last question is um in the revenue

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ideas you have mentioned move parking authority to MUA reopen Newport Mall Singh. Can you please talk more about it about the revenue ideas you have mentioned about parking at Newport Mall? Can you talk more about

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it? >> So I'll talk to you about the Newport Mall and I'll talk to you about the MUA. The MUA move is strictly to uh they're they're currently in the Jackson Square building, the new building. Uh they're cramped in. Uh we can utilize it for

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smaller fuller units to go in there. They could be uh spread out. They can, you know, their vehicles could be parked better. They're there's no parking. They park in the uh parking deck. They park on the streets because there's no park inside. The mo the MUA would definitely be uh suitable for that. As far as the

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mall, doesn't cost us no money. Uh the mall entered agreement with us as long as they gave us an area to mall. Jersey City Police, uh we can there's a bathroom there for the officers. There's typing uh an area for typing our computers. Uh so when they're down in

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that exchange exchange place and then that area, I see >> they could use that as a substation. >> Thank you, director. >> Uh okay. Um I think council president have information requests. >> Okay.

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>> Okay. My um question is is simple. It's on police budget line item 304 on the rents and you did address it um director in your presentation saying that you reduce the contract for uh the range in North Arlington. Um small line item, not

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a whole lot of money. But my question is, what are what are the services that they're offering at the range in North Arlington that we currently um can't satisfy at our range down on Lyndon? >> So, our emergency service unit uh they

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have special weaponry that our range cannot handle. Only the range at North Dink can handle it. >> Okay. Um, council me person >> just um we have a spreadsheet that has all the employees and details um their

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hire dates and things of that nature. Um the they have we have school um crossing guards on that list. Um but in the departmental public safety spreadsheet um I don't see them in my in my

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spreadsheets um detailed out. I have only three supervising school traffic guards listed under traffic but none of the crossing guards. So if we can get that information um as part of the

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departmental budget and where that falls >> um councilman I think they're just listed collectively I think it's about $2.5 million or um >> where is it 2025 under traffic and it's um because I had the same question

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earlier it is I can try and >> it's under part-time time >> under part-time >> under part-time there are part-time employees. Um, if you're looking at the spreadsheet, row 118

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>> under traffic >> traffic. >> See, row 118. Okay, >> I guess >> it's fine. Um, the other thing I would ask for is um with all of the employee that that

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information that was provided to the council um and included the start date. I I'd like to see the um the starting salaries at that start date. So, and I've have tons of questions, but

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I'll save it for another time and another date. >> Yeah. Well, I want to take advantage of having two minutes left. Um so, as um director Hart, if you can speak to because um the data is showing that fire

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instance um are increasing um and it's also showing that manpower is decreasing. So I want to speak about um your contingency plan as it relates to the increase in fire and decrease in

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manpower. So I mean historically we've seen fluctuations over 10 year period increases of fire increases of the size of fires, multiple alarms. You know in Jersey City we've strived to staff 28 companies day in and day out. I know with the budget constraints, we've had some conversations about possibly

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reducing the minimum staffing to 26 to ensure that we still have a relatively adequate way of covering the entire city. Um the the the specifics of of your question, though, I'm not quite sure what you're um I'm just trying to

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see like if because you got 39 people eligible right now, right? um at any given time those people could leave like so what are our like what are our recruiting practices our promotion practices to to fill in the gap

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>> so to to speak to the uh recruitment practices um historically we've had a recruitment officer that kind of was done away with during co uh and what we do is during this period that we have right now where the application's out the next two or three months we'll work on trying to get out into the community

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unfortunately a captive audience is schools, but they're out for the summer. Um, the application deadlines are in August. So, we kind of we lose that that population of students that we try to get to, but we rely heavily on some of our community partners to get the word out with, you know, posts, Facebook,

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different things to highlight the fact we try to have at least one or two information sessions uh that will advertise somehow to get information out to the public on the hiring practices. Uh in terms of getting classes on, historically we've done 20 to 30 firefighters per year. Uh we had

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previously budgeted for this cycle at least background checks and and uh consulting services to do the psychological examinations. That's kind of been washed away. So, we're hoping that with a more um uh better planning for our budget for 2027, we could look

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to hire because historically we lose about 20 to 30 firefighters per year and we can turn around a class usually in within about about 6 months with the background checks getting them in and out of the academy. So, as firefighters retire doesn't take that much time to

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get them replenished. Um we're pretty efficient at getting that done. Um because we have 41 that could retire today doesn't mean they're going to retire today. Our firefighters love to come to work. They don't want to retire. So there are there are historically some amount of attrition over the course of a

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year, but that number is not always accurate because people will stay beyond the 25-y year window when they could retire. >> All right. Well, it's 12:00. And just to add on to what the deputy director was saying, >> um my office has been working with him and some of the firefighters to get the

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applications out and um turn back in. So it's been a you know just an effort. >> Okay. Well, we we don't want to um hold anybody over as >> just a follow-up question curious to learn. Director Hart, do you think we

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can also have special unit for firefighters like part- timerrs? >> It doesn't work in in a city like this where you have volunteers because there's a delay in response, right? The alarm comes in. We want to get people out the door within 30 seconds to the

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house where the emergency is within 4 minutes. We can't rely on volunteers to show up driving across the city in in major municipalities. It just doesn't work. So it doesn't work where they show up every single day for few hours. That does not work in fire department.

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>> Not not really. We do a 24-hour shift and during the course of that 24 hours, we do our training. We do all our prep work. But to have people come in at off hours, it would still cost the same amount of money unless you had it by a volunteer basis, which again, there'll be a delay in them coming to respond to

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an incident. >> I see. Okay. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. Um ladies and gentlemen for presentate uh presentation today. Um turn it back to Sean.

Part: 2

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Okay. Good afternoon everyone. We are back on the record. Today is Tuesday, the 21st day of July in the year 2026. This is a budget hearing for the law department. >> Oh, I see. >> With the Jersey City Municipal Council. We had a scheduled 1 p.m. start. The

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clock on my cell phone is showing 10:04 p.m. May we have a roll call for the commencement of this budget hearing. Council person Brooks here. >> Council person Zuper is not here. Council person Ephro. >> Council person Little.

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>> Council person Gilmore for the day. >> Oh, thank you. Council person Singh, >> I'm here. >> Oh, we can really hear you now. >> Council person Griffin >> here. Council Person Lavaro >> here >> and Council President Ridley

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>> here. >> We have seven council members in attendance at 10:04 p.m. In addition, at its time of its preparation, the notice of this meeting was similarly disseminated on Friday, July 17th, 2026

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at 3 p.m. to the mayor, municipal council, business administrator, corporation council, and the newspapers. And so I can certify as the total compliance with the sunshine law. I'm gonna turn it over to council president and you could tell me who is cheering the main.

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>> Okay. Uh here we are session two. Thank you all uh for joining us and I will chair this uh budget hearing. >> Thank you. >> Um I'm going to ask the council that we let the law department go through the

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entire presentation and we hold our questions to the end. Um, so we'll jump right in and I'll turn it over to Sarah. >> Thank you, Council President. This is my first one of these, so I'll run through this presentation. I think that it will be

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>> mine, too. >> Brief, commensurate with the size of my department's budget and then I'm happy to follow the council president's lead in terms of what you would like to use the rest of our time to discuss. Let's go ahead to the first slide. Thank you, Lisa.

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Um, so the law department has six core teams. I'm going to quickly run through our functions and our staffing levels just as an orientation to our overall budget. In no particular order, we have a litigation team. So, this is the team that handles all pending and threatened

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litigations in state and federal court. The law department as the general council's office for the city only defends and represents the city in state and federal court, not in municipal court, which is the domain of the municipal prosecutor. Our litigation team currently has four attorneys, one

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of whom is on leave at the moment. And so between those three active folks, they are splitting uh around 125 litigations at any given time. That is a highly unusual case volume and load for an attorney to handle. In every other government office I have worked in where

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folks are litigating comparable cases in terms of complexity. Um there has generally been a case load of about 20 cases per attorney. That number 125 also is inclusive of cases that outside council is handling and we'll talk a bit more about that at the end. Our next

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team is the governance team. This is the team that the city council likely interfaces with most. This is the team that drafts all legislation, ordinances, resolutions, executive orders, and the like for the city council and all other municipal departments as well as the

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administration. They also serve as the day-to-day go-to for legal advice for departments. And they advise all city boards and entities except those that are independent. So, for example, they advise the rent leveling board and the ABC board and the like. That team currently has two and a half attorneys.

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So, two full-time and one part-time attorney. I think it's fair to say that at any given matter just based any given time just based on uh the tracker that we have to maintain matters that come to this team they have about 30 at least active matters at a time and that could

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be substantial projects like rehauling provisions of our code or it could be more minor projects like advising a city department on the interpretation of our code. Next, we have our tax team. Our tax team litigates all tax appeals that are filed each year and they also

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litigate reverse tax appeals which is where the city itself contests the valuation of a property. At any given time we have nearly 2,500 pending tax appeals which is an enormous volume. We have two and a half attorneys on that team. So two full-time and one part-time

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attorneys. Next we have our labor team. Our labor team is responsible for handling all labor employment and personnel legal matters across the entire city across our thousands of employees. We currently have one attorney and no supervisor in

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this team. So this is an area where we lean heavily on outside council to support the city. Next we have our transactional team which advises all transactions. So anything that is procurement related, contract related, any agreements,

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MOAS or the like, many of which comes before the council, some of which does not. This team also manages our OPRA open public records act um requests when they rise to the level of legal review. So, the clerk's office receives OPER requests in the first instance and

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handles matters routinely, but where legal questions arise about what exemptions apply, what documents need to be disclosed, or when someone disputes a position that the clerk has taken, that's when the law department steps in, advises the clerk's office, or in the extreme cases will actually defend the

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city in litigation over requests. Uh the transactional team is currently two and a half attorneys. So two full-time attorneys and one attorney who splits time with the governance section. And lastly, we have our investigative team. This is our only team that doesn't

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have any full-time attorneys who are working on it. This is the team that investigates anything that arises across the whole city. So they investigate notice of claims, which are um notices of insurance claims against the city. They are often the first step before litigation. It's the way that a

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plaintiff can put the city on notice that uh it thinks they have a claim and we have an opportunity to resolve it in the first instance before it might proceed to court. So, we lean heavily on our investigative team to uh look into all of those notice of claims. They also support the HR department significantly

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by investigating employment complaints, HR complaints, and our lead investigator is currently the city's acting EEO officer, and so he handles all EEO matters. They also support the litigation team in discovery um which is the process by which the parties

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exchange information. So our investigators are constantly working with every department in the city to collect documents in their possession that we have an obligation to share with our adversaries in court. They also respond to all subpoenas that are served on any city department. Currently we

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have three investigators. So one supervising investigator and and two investigators in that team. Let's go to the next slide. Um so things we have been focused on in 2026. Um suffice it

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to say the law department in my view is profoundly understaffed for a city of our size with the magnitude of legal challenges that we have. So we are trying to do the most with the least. It is my impression that in years past before I was in this role every time an

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attorney resigned from the law department they were not replaced. Um, I understand from my predecessor that there were efforts to find replacements. Uh, and for whatever reason, the law department was not permitted to even maintain its former level, much less expand, consistent with the expanding

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legal demands of the city. Um, given that and given how understaffed and overworked my department has been for years when I came into this role, it was my judgment that there were significant needs for injecting process and systems reforms so that we can do the most with

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the least. And so a lot of what we have prioritized in my first six months in this role is injecting organization and structure and systems where it did not exist previously. So that has occurred at the most mundane level from making sure that we have adequate case tracking

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procedures um to more important and substantive levels like making sure that we are making the most of all of our city's insurance coverage that we are getting coverage for any claim that is eligible that we are getting reimbursement whether it's for settlements or for defense council litigation costs when we are eligible to

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um those are the things that can fall through the cracks when folks are overworked and you don't have systems in place and they can be really expensive on the back end. So, those have not necessarily been the sexiest developments, but I think they have been a really important use of my time as I get up to speed in this role. Um, we

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have been litigating cases in the normal course and we have uh generated a number of settlements that I think are great deals for the city, many of which have come before the city council. We have been able to resolve a number of litigations without paying any costs, whether through dismissals or through

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negotiated settlements without any monetary terms. And all of that has been important progress and has reduced what our total outside council cost will be for this year. Um in terms of impact delivered, another problem that we inherited that we are

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making very good progress in resolving is outstanding bills. And so in addition to inheriting um some bad practices in terms of contract management and managing vendors, we inherited nearly I think more than $300,000 worth of unpaid

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legal bills. not just from 2025 but from years dating back to 2022. And so we have undertaken an exhaustive review of all outstanding invoices to make sure that we are only paying invoices that are legitimate, that were properly documented, that were at least provided

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to the city timely, even if they weren't paid timely. And we've taken that as an opportunity in some instances to negotiate down how much we owe and to exert more supervision over our vendors to make sure that we are really getting our dollars worth. Um, and through that

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process, there are some vendors that we have decided not to continue working with because think we can get a better deal and we think we can get better communication and service with others. This is an overview of our total department budget. It's just over $4 million. The vast majority of which is

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personnel cost. Um, and the second largest portion of which is uh the amount that we spend on outside counsel each year. I do want to flag an important nuance here, which is that the number that you see in my department budget associated with outside council

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costs, this $875,000, that is not the total amount that the city pays for outside counsel in a given year. There are two different budgets that help pay for outside council costs. Our self-insurance fund, so the insurance fund commission is the entity

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that pays out defensive litigation council costs. So when the city gets sued and we need to engage outside council to defend those cases that gets paid out of our insurance fund. Often those amounts are reimbursed by our insurance carriers if we have coverage

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on those claims. Not always, but often. That is separate from the law department's budget. So, what you are seeing in this 875 that comes out of my budget is the amounts that we pay for vendors we engage typically for not defensive litigation purposes. And so,

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this covers all of our labor, employment, and EEO contract costs. This covers our affirmative litigation costs. And so if we want to go to court to enforce a claim that the city is bringing or to enforce a right that we have that gets paid out of this budget

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line item. There are other support vendors and services that we pay for out of this line item. For example, we engage a law firm that serves as third-party hearing officers in disciplinary cases for personnel. That is something that we outsource in the city and that comes out of this line

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item. I'm happy to provide the council with a breakdown of all of our current outside council costs and which account is paying those bills, but that's the high level way to think about what comes out of my department budget versus is budgeted in the IFC. Lastly, I've touched on some of this

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already, but things that we are heavily focused on as a department in order to reduce costs yearover-year. Um, the biggest one is staffing. Our second biggest cost compared to personnel is our outside council expenses. And the only way that number comes down is if we

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can handle more cases in house. Our attorneys inhouse are dramatically cheaper than outside counsel. We pay our attorneys on average of around $120 $125,000 a year depending on their experience. When we engage an outside

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firm to represent the city in litigation, we pay them $175,000. Sorry, $175 an hour. And we normally budget, this is a little bit of an art and not a science, anywhere between 4050 in some cases even $60,000 a year for a

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single litigation. Now, that depends on the stage that the litigation is in. If it is a heavy discovery case, then that can easily cost tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars. If a case goes to trial, that can be very expensive. Those costs add up right away. So the

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bottom line is it is much cheaper for us to expand and hire more attorneys in house than it is to bring on outside vendors. Um that is something that is contemplated and the draft budget that is before all of you. It is something that is candidly challenging. It is

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difficult to retain attorneys who have the ability level that we need for the amount of compensation that we offer. So that is always the challenge. I am cautiously optimistic that the city's telework pilot program that has recently been rolled out will help us with our

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recruiting efforts. Um but but that remains a challenge. Looking ahead, some things that we are prioritizing are emphasizing cutting costs and prioritizing revenue. So staffing is just one piece of that. I referred to our efforts to get our

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vendors in line and make sure that we are getting the most for every dollar that we pay. That also includes making sure that we're maximizing our insurance coverage where possible. It also makes sure ensures that we are supporting municipal court in collecting any judgments that are issued, supporting

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them by docketing those judgments, making sure that we're collecting as much as possible any dollars um that the municipal court awards. We are also invested in supporting city departments so that we reduce the city's overall exposure and can gradually

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hopefully over time bring down that number of total pending litigations in any year. We can do that by supporting um HR making sure that we are making principled employment decisions and reducing the number of litigations that we face in that arena. We can do that by

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supporting finance and purchasing to make sure that we're being compliant and lawful and fair in all of our contract awards. That can reduce our total exposure and the number of litigations that we face. Um it can mean supporting every city department and how they engage with their vendors and their staff. So there's a lot of work that

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we're doing proactively to support our departments ideally to reduce the number of cases that we face down the line. Um lastly, serving residents better. I think we've touched on these but there are a number of areas where we think

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training can be useful in terms of supporting departments again making sure that we are not inviting lawsuits um improving some of our processes so engaging whether it is software or best practices to support every aspect of our

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department's functioning so how we review oper matters how we review bodywn camera footage which is far and away the most timeconsuming aspect of our oper review and our discovery review that our department undertakes. Um, all to make us more efficient and like I've said do

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the most with the least that we have. So, I'll stop there and I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay. Thank you. Uh, council, I think this budget is a little more streamlined than our last session. So, I am going to

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ask that we are just court courteous of each other uh with our questions. Um, so we don't have to go in any particular order, but I do have a question. I'll start so that I can take notes on your questions in case we have follow-ups.

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But I noticed that um the other expenses portion of your budget has increased. Um, we spent 717,000 in 2025,

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but now we're requesting over a million. What are I guess some of the reasons for that increase? And then I have some questions on particular um line items and those other expenses, but if you just want to talk in general about why that has increased so much.

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>> Absolutely. So when I arrived in this role, one of the first things that I aspired to do was put together a list of all of the extent contracts with vendors that were providing legal services for any part of the city for any function. And for whatever reason in past years,

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it was not the law department that directly engaged all of the law firms that provide services for the city. Different departments, a number of different departments had their own law firm contracts. So for example, our contract for the firm that was previously doing labor negotiations,

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labor work, employment litigation for the city was engaged through the BA's office and was supervised by HR. Um, similarly, the law firms that support our EEO officials, so they help out with doing investigations, writing reports, assessing the city's potential

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liability, they were engaged through HR as well. There were a number of different firms that provide services that were engaged through other city departments as well. So, one thing that I determined it was important to do is consolidate all of those contracts within the law department. I view it as

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part of my obligation within my title under our code of ordinances to oversee any vendors that are providing legal services for the city. And so, this budget reflects that. Um, so for example, the biggest line item in other expenses is the 312 professional consultant and specialized services line

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item. That's mostly outside council costs. There are some other consultants that fall in there like expert witnesses when we need to pay for those in litigation. That line item has now subsumed a number of contracts that used to fall into other departments budgets. So we now pay for our labor council

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which is $150,000 contract out of this line item instead of out of the BA's office. We're also paying for our EEO and other support services. So that increase 100% just reflects a reorganization of those contracts into my department.

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While you're there on the consultant services 312, can you speak to the difference between line line item 312 and 314? The contractual services in 314. Uh how is that different from the 312 line item?

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Yes. So 312 is vendors. So, it's outside council firms and expert witnesses and in some cases medical examiners where we need medical examinations for litigation in the course of discovery. 314 is two very specific things. The vast majority

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of it is our contract for Lexus Nexus, which is our case law database. That's about a $75,000 contract. Um, that is something where annually we get quotes. It is a service that we need. There are very few vendors that provide that service. That's something that we interact with every day to pull up statutes and regulations and case law.

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So that is key. That is the vast majority of that line item. There is a small remainder that is additional software that we use to support our teams. Um in particular with our over review. >> Can I ask a follow up on that? Go ahead. >> Um is there any uh possibility of doing

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shared services for something like Plexus Nexus with other Hudson County municipalities for instance? We could explore that. To my knowledge, that is not something that has been explored previously. Generally, the way Lexus and all comparable case law

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database services function is they come up with a cost that is per the size of the law department or the law firm. So, my sense is that these third parties, these these are lucrative services would be loathed to engage with any kind of regional aggregation for cost sharing.

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It's certainly something I'm happy to talk to county council or some of our other offices about. Um, but ultimately these are pretty expensive services and we have done our best to negotiate them with them to keep costs low, but we are limited by what vendors are are willing

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to consider. >> Okay. Then I'll ask one more and then I'll let everyone else jump in. um cleaning and sanitary supply line. What I guess what does that cover and why isn't that being covered by general

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maintenance? Why do you have to budget for that? >> That is a great question. My understanding is that the reason that number has increased is because looking at the spend from last year, there were some things that fell into the office supply line that were moved into the

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cleaning and and sanitary supply line. There are a number of things that a law department needs to function. That is everything from ink to file folders or red wells, which is a standard law firm organization practice, whiteboards,

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erasers, things like that. And so I'd be happy to provide you all with an itemized list of what our expenses were in past years. Um, but I think that they are relatively minor costs and uh we are, like I said, doing the best we can with the limited resources that we have

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up there. I will also note that if anyone on the council would like a tour of the third floor, I would be very happy to walk you down the hallway that it rains inside every time it rains outside. And so I would venture to say cleaning and

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sanitary supplies covers our costs of cleaning up the drywall that drips into our hallway every time it rains. >> Okay. Go ahead, council. and some information requests um to the business

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administrator. Um if we could get to the the spend for 2026 to date on line items. Um so the 200s, the 300s, 400s, whatever,

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how much has been spent to date. Then um and also how much was the comparable amount in 2025? This is not just for the law department. I'm going to ask for that for every department moving forward including public safety which we just had. >> So just to clarify, spend to date on

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each of the line items in this budget workbook as of what date? >> Today. >> As of the the day that you produce it. Yeah. >> Introduce the budget. Yeah. July >> dance department. Do you have any

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questions? >> July, >> we can do that. >> Okay. >> Um and then as far as questions go, thank you um corporation council and staff um for appearing and uh um

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answering questions. Um, w with regard to the new hires, um, can you speak to I see you requested four attorneys, one parallegal, and the administration approved, two, um, but denied the other two attorneys and one parallegal. if you

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could just speak to the two that uh um the administration approved and what what their role would be and then um the two not approved I guess as well as the parallegal and >> absolutely that impact is

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>> if you're amendable councilman I just want to first offer a couple notes that will inform how I think you should interpret the spend to date information that finance will compile for you estimating How much it will cost for a law firm to represent the city in a

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single case in a given year is not an exact science. And that's because there are a number of things that are fundamentally unpredictable about how a litigation will evolve. So, we don't know at the outset of a year when we get a new lawsuit whether it's one that will be dismissed in the first instance,

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whether it's one that will proceed to discovery, whether it will be a high volume discovery case, for example, whether we'll need multiple medical examinations, depositions of dozens of employees, whether there will be motions practice around legal issues. We don't know whether a case will proceed to

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summary judgement, which is a very expensive paper researchheavy stage of a case. We don't know if settlement will be on the table. A case could settle in March and then we have allocated money to that law firm through the end of the year. We don't pay for more than we spend, but when we estimate at the

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outset of a year how much a case will cost, there are an enormous number of unknowns. And so I would caution the council in reviewing the spend year to date that if you find what I suspect you will find, which is that there are firms we have allocated a total contract to that it doesn't look like we will spend

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all of throughout this year. I would caution against the idea that you can trim the fat contract by contract in a safe way without compromising our ability to be able to defend all of those cases in a given year. In an ideal world, I would have data from years past

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on how much we have spent per firm per case based on the posture of those cases. And I would be in a better position to calibrate over time how much I think we will actually need based on how cases are proceeding. And that's something that I hope to do in future

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years. That is not something that I have inherited comprehensive records of. So, it's something I'm committed to moving forward. But I would just caution council about uh coming in with with a scalpel on those cases because we really can't anticipate how they will proceed. Um that said to address your questions

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about personnel. So the two positions in the budget that the administration is supporting hiring for this year and their salaries are being budgeted on a pro-rated basis given that we're already in July. Um I see them as filling two desperately critical needs in our

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department. So the first thing I'm seeking to do is hire another litigator. We need to reduce those case loads uh those assignments to our current attorneys. If we hire another litigator, we will be able to release the pressure to responsible levels for some of our

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existing folks. We will maybe be able to take a few more cases back from outside counsel, but not many just given how much we are already overburdened. We need to hire one more litigator before we're even in stasis, much less in a position where we're able to take cases back from outside counsel. That is

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priority number one. We have a terrific litigation supervisor. So, we're looking for what is often called a line attorney. So, someone who um cannot be a particularly junior attorney because we definitely need someone who knows how to litigate and can show up day one and take their own docket of cases and run

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with them. But that doesn't need to be um someone who's dramatically experienced or expensive. >> That would be the higher salaried position. >> I'm sorry. >> Would that be the higher salaried position among the new hires? >> That would be the lower salary position. So, it's budgeted at 120, which is the

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average for entry- level attorneys. And so, the prrated amount is 60. The more expensive position, which is my second, I won't even say, you know, number two priority. It is equally high priority, is hiring a labor supervisor. Our labor team has not had a supervisor. We have

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one attorney who is holding down the fort as best that she can with an enormous amount of disciplinary and other matters that she handles personally. Um so that budget is being uh the ask there is to hire someone at 149 which is commensurate with what we

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pay most of our supervisors and so per rrated that number would be 70. Obviously, all of this is subject to fluctuation based on the experience of the seniority of whoever we hire. And so, there's a little bit of flexibility built in, but that's where I anticipate

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those two roles going. >> And the positions that were not um moved by the administration. >> So, the other two attorney positions um again, this would be subject to who we can find who is willing to work in a

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municipal law department, but I think we need another litigator. I think we could easily have five or six litigators and still be sending a number of cases to outside counsel, not because of conflicts, but just because of our ability to staff those cases. So, I would absolutely slot another person

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into our litigation team. Lastly, I think we could likewise hire another labor attorney even if we do find a labor supervisor. Ultimately, that is just money that we would be able to claw back from outside counsel. Right now, our most significant outside council contract is with the firm that is doing

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all of our labor unemployment advising. So, they will be doing all contract negotiations with all of the unions that are out of contract. They are advising on all matters before the Civil Service Commission. They advise on union grievances. That's just an enormous amount of work for a city of our size.

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So, again, labor and litigation is where I would invest in the first instance. But to be candid, every single one of our teams could use more support. Having two and a half attorneys litigate 2500 tax appeals is this is a technical term cuckoo bananas. It is really wild. That

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is another area where we could absolutely use more attorneys in house to support that case volume. Likewise, we have an enormous amount of governance and transactional work. Every single thing that you see that comes before the city council is just a fraction of the work that we do to support city

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departments. I think you all have experienced the challenges of turnaround time when you have requests for legislative drafting or legal advice and ultimately the limiting factor there is personnel. Um so I will be coming back before you all in future years and advocating that we need to staff up

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every single one of my teams even once we've stopped the bleeding so to speak in the litigation and labor arenas. On on the note of hiring, uh would you just describe a bit more detail in a bit more detail some of the challenges in

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hiring and recruitment? Um sounds like the telework pilot might be a way to overcome one of those obstacles, but even given the money, could you just describe some of the other challenges you're facing?

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>> I think compensation is a huge challenge. It is incredibly expensive to become an attorney. The average cost of going to law school in 2026 is over a quarter of a million dollars. The vast majority of attorneys in our department

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who have pursued public service work have an enormous amount of student loan debt. I would venture to guess that the combined student loan debt of attorneys in my department rivals the total personnel cost of my department. And so it is very very difficult to engage

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someone for whether it's 115, 120, max 130 to be a line attorney when they could have monthly student loan bills of over $1,000 and they could have six figures worth of student loan debt. And that would be one thing if what we were offering people was a very comfortable

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quality of life 40hour a week job. No one in my department works 40 hours a week. They do not work typical government hours. I don't really believe that typical government hours exist. I know how hard everyone in every department in the city works. But my attorneys routinely work evenings and

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weekends. So do our support staff to support those attorneys. So it is a very difficult proposition to tell someone, "Come here. You will work nearly as hard as if you were at a White Shoe law firm. You will make less than a third and maybe someday in 10 years you'll get

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student loan forgiveness if you're eligible." That is just a tough proposition. um a couple more questions. Uh I know uh your office is going to send over um the

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spend on these different line items. If you would just talk about uh 310 equipment maintenance and repair. Um it's a big difference between the requested 200k and the uh draft of $250. If you just explain what you were

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requesting and the discrepancy. >> Yeah. So, another thing that makes it hard to recruit attorneys is that we literally don't have comfortable chairs for them to sit on. Our department has not gotten new furniture since the8s. Uh, the chair that was behind my desk

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when I arrived in this job had a coil sticking out of it into my thigh. And so, I have traded what was once, I'm sure, a very nice chair, however many decades ago, for one of the chairs that was in our conference room, which is a standard office chair. Um, but it is the Hunger Games on the third floor of

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looking for desks and comfortable chairs. We are the last floor that was renovated through the renovations process. Clearly, there are still some limitations to that process. Once again, I'll be happy to show you the hole in the ceiling that it rains through. Um, and we do have beautiful new hardwood

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floors in about half of our attorney's offices. The problem is when you don't have furniture in those rooms and you don't have rugs to put in them, the acoustics are booming. And so we have tried to do our best to assemble corkboards, to assemble whatever textiles we can to put in those rooms to

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absorb sound, but we are shuffling around. We are begging the BA's office for a new desk. We have had two new hires since I've been here, and we needed to fight for furniture for them. So 2,000 $200,000 was the amount that my predecessor estimated it would take to

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replace all of the broken desks and chairs in the department. We were originally instructed um that we should include that in our budget and we have since been told that that's going to be budgeted elsewhere. So we will see what we can get. We are doing our best. We in many cases are paying out of pocket for

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the office infrastructure that we need to be comfortable. Um but that is why that reduction is from six figures to three. >> Just thank you for answering the questions, Miss Levine. >> I'm sorry that

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you know you are struggling with the furniture but there are other offices in the city they might have extra furniture do you think you can borrow from them the meantime >> we have been working on that and that is what we have been doing and I will say I'm immensely grateful to the BA's

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office for being a partner in this and working with us to scrge every time there is uh an office that is redone every time they discover a chair upstairs on the fourth floor they will reach out and offer it to us um so we have been working, but but ultimately

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it's just musical chairs. There's not enough to go around. I know I'm not the only department that has very out-of-date, you know, basic office supplies and infrastructure. >> Just a note, in the um basement of 394 Central Avenue, the Y Municipal Services

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Center, um walking through there, there's a lot of abandoned city office furniture. Um, I don't know what is uh marked to be sold off or auctioned off or just trashed, but um there seems

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to be some inventory still there. So, I'm curious what's uh salvageable. >> I'll I'll send you the address. Yeah, >> same. I feel that um the the southside office we have I have seen couple of offices have extra

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furniture. So if you can reach out to internal departments to find out we have extra furniture. I think this is something we we we can coordinate with other offices to have. Yeah, >> I we will take any donations, anything

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that anyone um has identified as extra furniture. >> I think it's it's the communication within the departments where uh if you don't mind if you can initiate that whoever sees extra furniture there, you know, within departments that it's

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something it out put it on my my list of information requests. I don't think this is a long-term solution, but in the short term, if you have a chair that like is completely broken, you can feel free to take my chair from the deis here

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when I'm not here because take it up the elevator. These chairs are not used 24/7. >> I appreciate that and I think that these are good ideas and many of these conversations are already happening. Our department is about 30 people and so the

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idea of one chair borrowed from here, another borrowed from elsewhere, I don't think is going to solve the structural problem. We will continue to make do. We will continue to work with our neighbors and other departments to make the most of what is available to us. Um, but this

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is an area where when you neglect investing in your departments decade over decade, eventually things break. And so we will continue to to do our best. Um, I'm more than happy to to give you all a tour and you're welcome to inspect the premises, but at some point

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when we are in a better budget position, I am hopeful that this is something we will be able to invest in. In every previous job I've worked in, and again, I have only ever worked in government. I have never worked in the private sector. Municipal attorneys, government attorneys, state attorneys have had

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things like standing desks when they need that. When you work 12, 14 hours a day, it's really nice to be able to stand while you type. that is years out of the question. We are talking about getting comfortable chairs. And so again, just just want to flag that I think we are really lagging behind our

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peers in terms of the support, the resources, the infrastructure that we have for our own staff. And that just comes back again to the challenge of recruiting and retention. >> Thank you. I I just have a few more questions if that's all right. Um on the note of just the infrastructure of the

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third floor, is there a plan BA to um do the necessary repairs regarding the rain coming inside? >> I was not prepared to speak about that today, but I am happy to take that back and ask. >> I appreciate it. >> It's something that I've had

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conversations with the administration about and I believe that it is one of many priorities for the upcoming capital improvement plan. um those can be capital costs. So that shouldn't have to come from from my budget or any other operating budget. But those those conversations are in the works. Unfortunately, I am aware that I'm not the only department where it rains

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inside sometimes. So we will wait our turn. >> Right after the council chambers, >> um I was about to say almost all our offices have a leak, but >> just remember the roof has got to be at

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least over 30 years old. So not making excuses. I'm just letting you know I've been here a long time. The last mayor where the roof was touched was Brett Shundler and he hasn't been here in quite some time.

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>> Another question around the tax appeals. Um what's the breakdown of uh the reverse uh appeals that we're doing versus the the rest of the appeals that we're receiving? >> We do dramatically more tax appeals. Any property owner has a right to file an

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appeal and contest their valuation. Many of them take advantage of that right. More than 2,000 of those cases are tax appeals. We do somewhere between 100 and 200 reverse tax appeals a year. Those cases take more support time, more staff time to litigate. We have to identify

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them. We have to come up with principal debases for identifying those targets. Um we have to have resources in some cases even expert witnesses to be able to support our claim. And so it is much more difficult to bring and litigate those cases in the normal course than our tax appeals which we can't opt out of. The reverse appeals it's

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discretionary whether we file any or none. So there it's about 200 to 2,300 is the ratio. >> Right. And did you say that we have we have two and a half uh staff for tax appeals in total. Um do we also employ outside counsel or is is that a place

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where we we aren't able to use outside counsel? just have to rely on the two and a half. >> We have two firms that support our tax practice. We have one firm that we have a pretty modest contract with that supports our tax appeal cases. They plug in in tricky cases. Um often they're

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helpful when we do need special reports, special experts or investigations. So, we have one firm on contract for that. We have another firm that we contract with to support reverse tax appeals and they do that work on contingency. >> How much is those

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>> contracts? Councilman, my Wi-Fi is not being responsive right now. I believe it's around $60,000 for support and the contingency for reverse tax appeals is 30%. Which is a fairly standard contingency across legal

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practice. >> I'm also just wondering if we can hear from administration a bit on the calculation given this is a budget crisis is really hard to figure out where to allocate extremely limited resources every year,

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especially this year. Given the incredibly high cost of outside counsel and our city's early dependence on outside counsel, um yeah, if administration could just share some of the decision- making around uh not

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granting the requests for the other two attorneys and the parallegal. There's a little bit of a delay when you turn it on. It's like two or 3 seconds. Okay. Can you hear me? Good. Okay. So, I

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I think we work very closely with every department that has a hiring need. Um we spend every week talking about uh personnel needs. And so it um the analysis that

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you're talking about, we have weekly meetings with our finance department with timely um with our department directors, the BA's office. We go back and forth in trying to analyze the cost benefit of

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um consultant contract support versus um hiring an in-house. We had a whole conversation earlier today with public safety, right? Um I think uh in this case um Sarah also described a challenge

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with recruitment. So sometimes, not all the time, we um make a tradeoff with priorities knowing that even if we budgeted 10 lines, I don't know if we could find those 10

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people. And so we make a decision to prioritize two and then the other lines we're we're allocating to other departments that are in need. So I hope that helps you understand a little bit how the administration goes through

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these conversations and they're they're all very very challenging and I personally am in all of these conversations. So I can speak to that specifically. >> I I'll just cosign that response. Also, Councilman Labaro, the number is 50,000, not 60,000. and I was able to get my sheet to load and I'm happy to circulate

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that to to all of you. Um, I I support everything that the BA shared. If I had my brothers, we would have 10 more attorneys tomorrow and that would be the law department returning to the size that it was at its largest about 15 years ago. I think realistically, even

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if you gave me the opportunity to hire five more people this year, based on my experience with putting up a job posting and spending a lot of time and energy to recruit, whether it's by talking to local law schools and alumni associations, going to events, sharing with public interest list serves, leaning on allies to circulate those job

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postings. Um, based on what we're we're getting back at the moment, I'm not optimistic that I would be able to hire as many people as I would like to, certainly not by the end of the year. So two I think is a realistic goal to shoot for hiring through the end of the year. We have also already been able to hire

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three people so far this year. Um they were all backfills but one was Lisa Scorscelini our new first assistant who has been a tremendous addition. We've also been able to bring on one more litigator who was a transfer from HEDC and we've been able to hire one new person who's supporting our transactional and governance groups. And

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so we've been able to hire three over six months. I'm optimistic that with teleawwork we could hire two more by the end of the year. I will definitely be back and asking for more next year. >> Thank you madam president. um question

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um I guess it's more about the the full process um and uh not specifically to the law department but um what role does DLGS have in uh or did they have in

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preparing for today? Did they have any kind of oversight of the budgets that were prepared? and share that the city needed to provide a draft budget in connection with its application for transitional

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aid. The budget workbooks before you I presume are different from that draft budget that was submitted based on everything that has evolved over recent months based on assumptions about the tax rate etc. So they have had some preliminary involvement in review and my understanding is that under the terms of

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the loan agreement that was authorized at the last council meeting all of this will be subject to final review by DGS. Beyond that I would need to defer to finance in terms of whether DGS has given specific feedback or made any recommendations or proposed amendments to date.

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>> Okay. Yeah. And I was asking you, the public is watching and there's been a lot of uh public energy around uh theou and the vote uh as you saw last week. So I just wanted to get that on the record in terms of what their involvement has

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been to date. >> So >> appreciate that. And also since you note the public is watching, I'll take this opportunity to thank you, Councilman Brooks, because you have reached out to talk with the law department to ask some very thoughtful questions about what the

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legal implications of various budget decisions by the council would be. You cannot simply through the budget process make employment decisions about who to fire and fire and fire on an ad hoc basis. You cannot simply make decisions through the budget process about which valid contracts you want to terminate.

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So where there are hard choices to make about cutting back in the budget, there's also going to need to be a conversation with the law department about what is feasible and what is actually going to reduce costs versus result in exposure on the back end. And so I I'm very grateful to you, Councilman, for initiating that

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conversation and being mindful about that component here. >> Thank you. Yep. I have a couple years in uh the labor world. So was uh grateful for the opportunity to have that conversation. Um

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one a couple other questions. One in terms of the nature of the role of a of a staff attorney. I did hear you say that they're they're long hours, evenings, weekends. Um, do you have any kind of comp time policy or is it uh how

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does how does that work? >> We do not. >> Okay. Um, and then uh last question. Does the finance team need ponchos? Are they going to be they're going to be okay? Okay, that's it.

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>> Um, sorry. Okay. Um, I just want to thank you Sarah, Lisa, and your entire department. You do so much on a shoestring. Um, and that does not go unnoticed. So, I wanted to start by thanking you. Um,

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I appreciate that and I appreciate this council's patience and generosity as we are sincerely trying to do our best and support you all. When the law department is not properly staffed or invested in, everyone feels it because everyone who works in the city at some point needs

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legal advice and how much we are able to give you um the attention that you all deserve and and should have in a properly staffed city as a direct function of of our personnel limitations. So, I appreciate that you all have been very mindful about that. >> You um I had a couple other questions.

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My first is now that all the outstanding bills have been reviewed, how is the workload for the department changing moving forward? Will that allow attorneys more time to focus on their case load than they had previously with the recognition that you're still understaffed?

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>> Not necessarily. Most of that work was being undertaken by the fiscal officer who is assigned to our department under the supervision of Lisa who has been a terrific project manager for that. I I think it's fair to say thankless task. In some cases, the attorneys who are

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supervising litigations that we have outstanding invoices from have left the department two or three years ago. And so we have pulled our knowledge where possible to make sure that when we're signing off on invoices and paying them, it it makes sense. We know what work was performed. But for the most part, that

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has been a task that our fiscal team has undertaken, not our attorneys. >> You um that that is helpful. Um, my next question I I think I'm not sure if it's for you or for the BA, but um, understanding that having the attorneys

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inhouse is cheaper than relying on outside counsel, um, but understanding the limitations of being able to recruit this year, um, I see we are looking to have two new hires this year, one in litigation and,

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um, one as the the lead of the labor division. Should we expect in next year's budget to have line items for an and in next year's emergency temporary appropriations even to have line items for these other three positions the two two attorney and one parallegal position

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that um that corporation council has requested? Yes. I don't know whether the administration will support that request, but I will definitely be making it. Every single one of these new higher line items that you see is a backfill for someone who has left in the past 5

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years. So again, this is just about staffing back up to functional levels. This is not about expanding. I don't know if there will be a request in the temporary budget. I promise to be realistic and transparent about what our ability to hire is. I'm not going to ask

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for 300 grand to hire two or three more people who I don't realistically have an expectation. I'll be able to hire and onboard, but I will continue to make that request at the pace that we can realistically expand as long as the administration and council will support it. >> Okay. I thank you. I think um in terms

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of cost savings, that's something I would definitely support. Just speaking for myself, not speaking for anyone else, but um if it is if it is more cost-effective to have the attorneys in house and it is best practice to have the attorneys in house and we are wasting money on on outside counsel, I see no reason not to support that

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request in the future. Um I I did also have a couple additional questions for the VA um as it pertains to the law department budget. Uh I understand here we see the in-house attorney is

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approximately 120k per year on average. Um and the outside firm is 45k per year per case for single litigation. And meanwhile our in-house attorneys can handle about 20 cases at a time. Now, um I understand

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and and and I don't think this would change the overall calculus on um the in-house attorneys being more cost-effective than outside counsel, but um I would love to see an analysis of because because we pay these attorneys health insurance, right? So, I would

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love to see an analysis that that includes the health insurance costs. Um while recognizing that health insurance costs have been ballooning, um our our finance director says we need to expect them to go up 15% a year every year, which is frankly outrageous. And um I I

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really hope the state can figure something out because we are not the only municipality struggling with these costs. So if they continue to go up 15% every year, I imagine there might come a point at some point in the future where it, you know, it was no longer substantially cheaper to have the

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attorneys in house. But I think we are a long way from that point. So um I you know just wanted to speak to the health insurance cost and if we can get some of those numbers that would that would be great as well. >> I noted that request and I'm also going

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to work closely with finance and HR to gather that data just to manage expectations. We have a lot of information requests and a lot of asks for analysis. there's not a lot of people to do the analysis. So I will try to do my

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estimate on how long it will take and >> this is a low priority question. Um it can wait till after the budget season because I recognize it will not change the calculus in the next few years. >> So thank you. >> I will flag two other things. The first is that when I circulate to the council

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the list of our extent contracts and firms and which cases they're handling, I will note in that list which cases are conflict cases. So those are cases that we have to send out no matter how many attorneys we have in house. I would not think of that as the target in terms of

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the right balance between staffing and outside counsel because there will always be some cases that are either specialty niche areas of law or are so complex that we need outside support. So it's not going to be exactly striving towards the bare minimum. But I think that will give you a sense of a target

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of a better balance between in-house and external. The other thing that I'll flag is I am open to any hiring arrangements that could be beneficial for the city. Something I have tried to pursue is recruiting part-time attorneys. In many

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cases, there are small firms or even solo practitioners who appreciate the consistency of work and pay of a part-time arrangement. We have two very successful part-time attorneys who work in the department and that's something that can be cheaper for the city but also increase our resources. I am open

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to that. I am open to proono work. I am open to fellowships. All of that does require that we have appropriate supervisory and management levels in the law department so that when we're absorbing people, we are overseeing them responsibly. But all of that is something that we are actively considering and pursuing.

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>> Thank you so much. Um and can you talk a little bit about the cost of the of turnover? For example, if if we cannot retain the attorneys that we hire, how does that hurt us? How does that affect us? I don't have any economic analysis to

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present but I can tell you for example if we have a litigator who leaves the department let's say there's about 30 35 some odd cases that they're handling there is always a cost to getting back up to speed on those cases. There's always a cost whether we send it to an

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outside firm or have someone else come new. When we have a litigation and this is not even a complex litigation. This is a relatively straightforward litigation. Let's say it's it's a trip and fall or it's a motor vehicle accident. It's a they're called title 59 cases. We get a lot of those. There can be thousands and thousands of pages of

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discovery in those cases. There can be hundreds of pages of transcripts of depositions or medical examinations that were done. So having one pick up a case file in the middle of a litigation and be able to litigate it requires that they spend the time that it takes, which

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is ultimately money, to be able to get back up to speed. I will also say sometimes we just don't have the capacity to do this. I'm I am proud that this has not happened in my tenure as corp council, but it is my judgment in reviewing records of our cases from last

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year that there were a number of cases where the city again because of resource limitations not because of any failure on attorney's parts missed important deadlines and that's expensive too. There were many instances where the city missed the opportunity to file for summary judgement, which is the final

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opportunity to throw out a case before trial. And so there were cases that either proceeded to trial or that resulted in settlements that were likely higher than necessary again because we simply didn't have the coverage to write as many briefs as needed to be written. And so there's always going to be a

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cost. It can range from, you know, duplicative attorney time all the way to significantly increased exposure in a litigation that hasn't been handled well with the right amount of attention. >> Thank you so much. So, so given that it

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seems recruiting it is a is is has been a struggle, right? Because um attorneys, municipal attorneys are are underpaid drastically relative to the private sector. And given that we just heard about the,

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you know, the difficulties association associated with turnover, um, it would seem like we should be doing as much as we can to not only attract but retain attorneys

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and employees at the law department. Um given that you know we can expect this will save us money uh on outside counsel and I know we discussed earlier um business administrator we discussed earlier about

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over email about the rolling out of the pilot teleawwork program and uh I was really encouraged to see it but I you know at the time I advocated that um you know the so for people watching

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online the pilot telework program um allows people to work from home um on Fridays and in many of these cases in especially sorry oh ceiling Okay.

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Um, and you know, at the time I expressed a hope that in the future we could we could make the telework program more more of a hybrid, right? So people can work from home maybe two or three days a week because I think especially postcoid in the private sector many

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people enjoy hybrid work arrangements um in in the professional sectors and um you know to the extent that we have this desperate need to attract and retain uh talent here that it seems like it might be an easy change to make and at the time you said you were looking forward

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to evaluating it at the end of the summer and hopefully looking to expand it in the future and I just wanted to see you know the summer is half over. I wanted to see if you had any um insight into that and if we can look forward to the the telework program expanding more

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to help us with this. >> So, uh as I explained to you in email and also shared with all the staff here in the city government, we are going through this pilot. We're expected to begin the evaluation in August. Um, I also have regular check-ins with

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department directors and I get feedback and we discuss how things are going. But right now we don't have a evaluation to present yet um or lessons to learn if we choose to expand the program. >> Just share from my part I think it has been wildly successful for the law

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department. The roll out has been seamless. My team has been terrific, very responsible. We've instilled some reasonable management practices to make sure we're paying attention to what folks are doing all day long, but I do think it has been a very successful operation upstairs. A number of our

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attorneys and also our parallegals will commute to work to spend the day logged into virtual court appearances or virtual depositions. And to me, that's just silly. So, I will absolutely take advantage of any flexibility that we are afforded by the administration and and thus far, it's been very effective.

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>> All right, great. Thank you. Mr. President, if I may. >> Yes. >> Um, so, so this wasn't the reason why I wanted to speak, but I'm going to speak to the telework. I've never publicly spoken to it. Um, and this is really just for the record. I'm not necessarily looking for um, feedback on it. So, I

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don't share everyone's necessarily their um, enthusiasm about it, not knowing what how it's being executed or implemented, knowing that we don't have an HR director appointed and there continues to be a search. um without that sort of leadership to be able to um

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guide that program citywide um I think uh for this part this councilman and I'd urge all the council people to scrutinize it closely to make sure that it's rolled out effectively um on a citywide basis. Um the second thing I'll

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also add to that is that uh um unless uh something else gets presented here later on um through this process um there has not been effective performance management or monitoring performance reviews um in the city for for decades

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frankly right so um putting in a a telework program that uh um where there are fewer eyes on what workers are doing and this is not not the law department I want to be clear. Um but citywide um so I'm not against it but um definitely

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want to see more than just kind of uh the email that announces that and then um and sharing that information citywide just hasn't been something that's had an opportunity at this point to kind of put my teeth into. Um that being said um I I want to return back to the fiscal

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matters um as it relates to the law department. um you're you're going to provide us the information about the professional contracts um in line 312 in terms of what they're assigned to and their cases. Um if you

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can provide the specific dollars that are appropriated, how and I already asked this already about the spend for 312 and 314. Um and kind of itemize those items as well as item line item 306, memberships and subscriptions. Um,

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this is not me saying that they're not um, uh, valid expenses. I just want to see the details. That's my job as a councilman to scrutinize that. >> Sure. That's a very simple breakdown. I can provide you that right now if the council is interested. $20,000 of that line item is our subscription for PLI,

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the practicing law institute. That is an online database of trainings for attorneys. It covers the cost of maintaining professional certifications for every attorney in our department. Every year we have mandatory number of hours, dozens in New Jersey that are required for maintaining our bar

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membership. Normally that's something that attorneys would have to pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars out of pocket to be able to maintain those certifications. It is standard across the legal practice for employers to pay for maintaining those certifications. This is the most cost-effective way for

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us to do it. The remaining 20 grand covers all of the annual bar fees, memberships, court admissions fees for our attorneys. Okay. And and I'd like to see the spend down again to the BA on all of the line items, frankly. Um that being said, the

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other thing I just also want to address, it's not necessarily a fiscal issue, was the idea of theou um and uh while we approved anou and I I know that um there there are limitations to what we can do um and it was discussed far earlier in this forum that

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uh in this session that uh um that the council is limited as as I understand it in my conversations with division of local government services around this and in the brief conversation that the city council had. Um certain city council members had the opportunity

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there is an opportunity to still make cost savings and efficiencies to look for durable reforms that address the structural budget deficit and that uh division of local government services would be willing to uh contemplate those, consider them and possibly

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approve them. Um hopefully my my hope is that they do that without penalizing us for um with regard to the actual loan itself. Um particularly if it leads to some sort of reduced um tax rate um which is the my objective which I'll put

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on the record here. My objective through all these hearings is looking for those cost savings and efficiencies and getting to some durable reforms that will save us money over time so that we're able to uh be able to reduce this tax rate in this fiscal cycle. I am not

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satisfied for the members of the public for the 15% and if I can find ways to be able to find that reduction without harming our loan and harming the people of Jersey City, I have every intention of exploring it. Um am undeterred in that regard. Um that being said, the la

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the real the other question I have as it pertains to um the fiscal numbers before us is that there's a line here around payroll tax administration 75% payroll tax um for potentially a new hire. If

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you could speak to that funding source and what this comment or remark means in in the spreadsheet, um I'd appreciate that. >> Absolutely. So under state law and our municipal code, one of the enforcement

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mechanisms that we have against non-compliance with the payroll tax is for the city through the law department to file suits directly in superior court. We do have the ability to issue summones for violations just like we would for other code violations, but as

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this council is very aware, there are real limitations to our ability, one in municipal court to process those cases, and two, to how much the city can charge through violations for some. There's a $2,000 penalty. That is the ceiling. So

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having the enforcement ability to file directly in superior court in a state court venue and seek any remedies including coming into compliance paying any amounts owed is a very powerful enforcement tool that the state has given us. As you know under state law

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there were recent changes just this year that have been adopted into our code that permit the city to use payroll tax collection to offset the costs of administration and enforcement. So given that it is ultimately going to fall on personnel of the law department to go to

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court to enforce in cases where there are violations, the administration in concert with the law department has determined that it would be appropriate to budget an offset for the personnel who will be doing that enforcement work which will hopefully include a new litigator this year if we're able to hire one.

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>> And we only think we can do it at 75% level. Ultimately, it's just the unknown unknown, Councilman. And I hope that in future budget years, we will have a better idea of how much payroll tax enforcement we are able to do. I would love to do infinite payroll tax

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enforcement until there is none to do because we have achieved perfect deterrence and everyone is in compliance. This year, while we are still ramping up, there remains a question as to how many targets we'll be able to identify, how many cases we'll be able to file. We will have to learn through that process what those cases

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look like and how quickly they resolve. So I think this is something where we're hoping not to go low and slow necessarily, but to learn as we go about how how many resources we can allocate, what portion of those attorneys times it's reasonable and credible to offset. If we hire a new litigator, I am not

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going to be willing to assign them 100% payroll tax enforcement because we have so many other cases that we still need to distribute and assign. So, if we hire one more person, my hope is that I'll be able to distribute some cases to them from our existing litigators, from our outside council, and then they will have

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some bandwidth to start to do some payroll tax enforcement. >> So, with that in mind, and I think it's a good idea, great idea to use the payroll tax offset. Um, have we explored other um revenue offsets uh to be able to fund

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some of the other legal services that we provide whether it's in-house legal services or external. >> So the law department does not engage in revenue generation. That is not something that the court is an appropriate avenue for. There are things

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that we do that bring in money for the city. There are types of enforcement that we do that bring in money. So, payroll tax enforcement will be one type. Doing reverse tax appeals is another type. But it is very, very important that we're clear legally and in fact that we're not generating

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revenue. We're enforcing the law equally against everyone. There may be opportunities for other departments that are engaged in revenue generation to earn money that does offset the costs of enforcement. I don't think there will be a onetoone there. There are things that my department can do to bring in more

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money for the city. So, one thing we are focused on is actually filing suits to recoup damages where there is damage to city property. Ultimately, that takes adequate personnel and staffing levels so that we're not just doing defensive work, but we're actually going to court and filing cases. Whether it's every

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time there's a motor vehicle accident and city sidewalk is damaged or a bus shelter that the city is responsible for is damaged. Making sure that we're going after those costs and recouping them. making sure that we're going after our vendors where they breach contracts. All of that is work that we can do in house that that does raise money for the city

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in a certain sense. Um, but again, that's just not a one-to-one offset with personnel costs. There may be creative ideas that the administration has as to other levers that other departments >> who who came up with the creative idea for payroll tax. >> I did. >> You did. That's great. I love it. So,

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I'd like to offer an idea, right? We have the development fees that we gone to going to. We've talked a lot about right to council. um and it goes into the affordable housing trust fund. Have we explored the idea of using um those development fees as offsets for um legal

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services to enforce um rent control laws, housing preservation, whether it be municipal prosecutors um or other uh legal um whether it's somebody advising on uh in in the office of of affordable

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housing um on affordable housing agreements and the um and other things like uh tax abatements that might generate affordable housing um as well. Have we explored those opportunities to use that source of

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funds um to provide a budget relief to the taxpayers of Jersey City? And then it would be a durable reform potentially if it was I know it has to be approved by the courts. Um, but has anyone explored that to actually bring it

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forward to the courts and whoever else needs to do that to do the approvals? Um, and possibly because the development fees are continuing into the future, it could be one of those potential durable reforms that DCA, Division of Local Government Services may consider um in

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providing us uh approvals for um tax reductions. >> That is a very good idea. It is a good idea that council person Ephro and myself had about three years ago and at the time we approached then councilman Solomon to talk to him about introducing

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legislation that would not only permit the city to collect maximum development fees that we can collect under the law but use a portion of state law that permits us to use 20% of those fees for certain administrative costs. There are other limitations about what administrative costs we can use those

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fees for and the city is being mindful of those limitations, but that is already the mechanism that is in place to in no small part fund the office of right to counsel. There may well be other administrative costs that are permissible outside of the office of right to counsel. I will note currently

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my understanding is that based on the revenue that is coming in from those development fees and the amount that is in the affordable housing trust fund we are not yet at the level where we are able to fund to the level that we would like the need for legal services through the office of right to counsel. So,

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while we are expanding collection of those development fees, there may be a period where we just have to make some choices about what we allocate dollars in that fund to. But I'm more than happy to have a conversation with anyone on the council about whether it is this mechanism or any other alternate funding

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mechanisms that could be available to support the work of my department or frankly others. The right to council is not in the law department, but I think it is an excellent use of those development fees. Where >> where is right to council? It's HDC. >> That's correct. We're waiting for the affordable housing

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trust fund committee to have a meeting. Um we were appointed few of us were appointed earlier this year. There has not yet been a meeting of the uh commission this year. Anxiously awaiting so we can discuss the use of those funds.

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>> I'd urge I I believe you're on the committee, right? And who else is Brooks >> speak Gilmore as well? Yeah, >> Gilmore. I urge you all to consider and look at that very creatively um to see how else we can use these funds um to be

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able again to provide offsets in our budget. >> We have to meet first. We haven't met this year. We've requested to have the board constituted and meet and so when that happens we will of course you know be sunshine notification all that good

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stuff. So we'll we'll take a look at that. Thank you council. >> Um so I want to echo the what um council women little said

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about the in-house attorney because I feel that not only will we'll be can you can you all hear me? No. Okay. I thought I just learned how to use this. Okay. uh so not only we will save money but also

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um the quality of cases and the number of cases can be handled by that. So I want to say this is something if you can look into this and I also want to talk about uh we have this

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so different department couple of departments I don't know how many departments are using Lexus Nexus and we are paying subscription for that so is it possible to combine all of that and paying the subscription

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instead of different department paying the subscription fees. It can be multiple department using and paying for it. >> That is something that we're exploring and we're having conversations with the other departments that use Lexus to see if there is an opportunity for cost

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savings by aggregating. I will note that different departments use different tools that are offered through Lexus. So, for example, while the law department heavily uses the case law and statutory database, there are other city departments that use other features of

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Lexus. For example, Lexus also has services to search databases of personnel and property information. Those are often heavily used by HEDC or by our code enforcement offices to make sure that we're identifying appropriate property owners, that we're, you know,

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achieving lawful service whenever we issue a summon. So, there are sometimes different needs and different specific tools that different departments need. So, that's one of the challenges. is it's not as simple as just one contract for all of the same services but it is absolutely a conversation that's happening.

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>> Subscription fees can be combined if the tools different department have to pay separately for different tools but the subscription can be combined and you >> potentially the subscription usually varies based on what the vendor

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determines to be the size of the office and the number of tools that you want access to and the types of tools that you want access to. So, if there are any efficiencies to be gained there, I'm absolutely open to it. I am 0% territorial about our contract with Lexus. It's just not clear to me yet

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that there actually is going to be that opportunity, but I'm happy to keep you posted on that and send you an update from the folks that we're talking to. >> Thank you. And I think BA also can look into this. Thank you. Um, also, Miss Lavine, can you please speak about

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municipal prosecutors since public safety is redirected that? >> Uh, sure. Specifically, the hiring of the municipal prosecutor. Sure. So, currently we have an acting municipal prosecutor, uh, prosecutor Vishnu Camra.

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Um, the mayor has asked that I participate in the hiring process for a full-time municipal prosecutor just because ultimately you need an attorney in order to vet another attorney's qualifications and relevant experiences, although that is only one part of the

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hiring decision. We have received a number of applications. We are not proceeding with any particular candidates at this time. I will only speak for myself, but I have really valued my partnership with and my communication with acting chief prosecutor Vishnu Kimraj. I think he has been doing an excellent job under

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difficult circumstances. Um, and that's a process that's just continuing at this point. >> Thank you. Okay, I have two more questions. Under um other expenses, communications,

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is that just like mailings or what is that covering? >> That is something very specific. Those are our lookup and filing fees through Pacer. Pacer is the federal court database system. That is something that we need to pay fees every time we access

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a document on a federal docket. That is something that we do stringently and scrupulously. We make sure that we save all of our filings in a folder so that we're not paying two or three times to access the same materials. But that is not an open database. That is something that every law firm that does federal

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practice needs to pay to access. We also need to pay every time we need to file something on a docket. So whether it's a complaint or a motion or changing which attorney is representing the city, that's something that we have to pay filing fees for. And this comes out of that budget line.

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Then I have one last question in regards to the part-time. you have two part-time employees and it looks like we're increasing one by about 16,000 and the

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other by about 39,000. And I know when you were going through your presentation, you mentioned that the investigative committee doesn't currently have any full-time employees. Are these two employees or did I misunderstand you?

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>> So, these are two part-time attorneys. One of them serves on our governance team. One of them serves on our tax team. The investigative team doesn't need any attorneys to staff it. That is just full-time investigators. They serve a different function. They coordinate with our attorneys where they need legal

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advice or interpretation. But even fully staffed, that team would just be investigators. As for these part-time folks, I'll let finance correct me if I'm misspeaking, but these folks are paid based on how much work they do in a given year. And so my understanding is

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that the previous budget that I inherited reflected a year when both had some leave. And so what you are seeing in the current budget is what we will pay for them to work the full amount of an annual part-time workload. And so

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they expect to work part-time for the entire year. There's no plan for them to be absent for any long periods. And we will ultimately wind up paying them for as much work as they do. >> Okay? because what we adopted in 2025 and what you requested this year um

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isn't far off. But when we look on the active employee lists, that's where I'm getting that increase from. I don't have the active employee list in front of me. What I've been given is is the budget workbook, which comports with my understanding of what folks are actually being paid. I will

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talk with the BA and the finance team and make sure we run that down. Okay. Council members, any additional questions? >> Just just one more information request. Um, on this sheet, the 300,000,

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we get an itemization on all of that that were bills paid and what the source of funds were. >> I don't know about the source of funds. We can work on getting you the list of the 300,000. It is not one discrete list. That has been an iterative process

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where we've gone vendor by vendor because in addition to making sure that we're paying legitimate outstanding invoices. We identified a number of duplicate payments over the years or overpayments and in every instance we have applied those towards a credit. So we're only paying money that we haven't

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already prepaid. And so there is a large volume of records that are responsive to this. It would take staff time in order to compile them into a single spreadsheet that is intelligible for you all. So, we will put our heads together and think about what work product will help you understand that breakdown in

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costs and from what years those bills come from without taking an unreasonable amount of of staff time. But I do want to flag that that is not an easy request to fulfill. And >> can I ask you, do you do you do you feel

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that you'll continue Do you still feel that you'll continue the auditing? Uh, >> okay. Completely. So, what we do now is we get invoices every month from every vendor that is doing work for us. If we don't get an invoice in a month, we

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follow up with that vendor and we say, "Did you not do any work this month or can we get an invoice by the end of the week?" We immediately have the attorney who is supervising outside council in that matter look at every line item and make sure that it makes sense given what work we think these firms should be

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doing that it's not an amount that appears inflated based on how much work we understand there is to do and that the invoices comport with our contract terms. We have extremely stringent contract terms with our outside council vendors. We expect by contract that our

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vendors bill us to increments of the tenth of the hour. That is six minute increments. So there should never be a line item in an invoice that repeats, you know, 5 hours for this particular service, 10 hours for this particular service. It should really say to the tenth of a minute, this is what we were

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working on in each case. So we look at those, we make sure that that's how they're formatting their invoices. We make sure that that makes sense. We sign off on them and then we work every month with our fiscal officer to make sure that those are approved and paid timely. What happened in previous years is that there wasn't enough money in the account

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to pay the bills and so they would get backed up and attorneys very reasonably felt like why am I going to review this invoice if I know it's not going to be paid for 6 months and eventually when we started reviewing these invoices there were things that fell through the cracks entirely. Invoices that were sent to attorneys who had already left the

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department so no one had any record of them. So that's why it's been frankly such a forensic exercise to figure out what was outstanding. But now that we are up to date and now that we have a reasonable monthly cadence of reviewing and paying those invoices and we hopefully are appropriately budgeting

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for my department and for the IFC to make sure that we can issue those payments on time. We expect this to be a problem of the past. >> So no 2025 pending uh bills cases any I mean bills anymore. I don't want to give

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any hard and fast answers because we don't know what we don't know. All of the invoices we have been able to identify and review to date. We have paid and we have been having conversations with all of our vendors to get them to tell us what they deem outstanding. Of course, we don't just

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take their word for it. So, I don't want to promise that there is nothing else that we will discover, but I do expect that the vast majority of the outstanding amounts have been identified and paid. Thank you. Okay council if there are no other questions

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I am going >> can I um ask unrelated to law department um just about budget hearings I know we briefly talked about but tax collector where will that fall under it's not on the list sorry about That that's under finance

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department. >> Thank you. >> Okay. I will motion to adjurnn. >> Motion to adjourn. Made by council president Ridley. >> Second council person Singh to adjourn

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at 2:31 p.m. How do you vote? Council person Brooks. Council person Zupa not here. Council person Efos. >> I. >> Council person Little. >> Hi. Council person Gilmore not here. Council person Singh >> I. >> Council person Griffin not here. Council

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person Lavaro >> here. >> And C and Council President Ridley. >> I want to have to be here. >> We are adjourned at 2:32 p.m. >> Thank you. Law department. >> Thank you, John. >> Thank you everyone. Teamwork makes your

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Thank you, council.