City public-safety leaders presented budget priorities and operational changes to the governing body on Aug. 12 as part of the 2026 budget review.

Police: Chief Chris Vallejo outlined a request for $150,000 for a staffing study to assess required sworn and civilian staffing based on call volumes and service demands and to guide future hiring. Vallejo said the department is proposing to add Lexipol (policy and training services) and to civilianize parts of the investigative workload. Specifically, Vallejo described adding six civilian positions for the Police Activities League and community-policing work, one civilian TCALC officer position (school/community liaison), and three civilian positions for crime-scene and crime-prevention duties. He also described proposed eliminations and adjustments that would remove 11 positions across ranks and units; staff said many of the positions under consideration have been held vacant during 2025 as part of vacancy-management steps. Vallejo said the departmenthas 260 sworn full-time equivalents currently and a recent academy class of 23 recruits is in training.

Concerns from council members focused on the operational impact of eliminating positions in animal control, records and property-evidence handling. Council members asked staff to detail which vacancies had been held and how the reductions would affect service delivery; staff said they would provide those details and noted some positions proposed for removal had been vacant for extended periods.

Property Maintenance Unit: Director John Chardine reported increased enforcement activity in 2024 (8,822 initial inspections covering 5,132 properties, a 27% increase over 2023) and a reduced average time to resolve cases. He said the unit had cleared about 70 homeless encampments in two years and removed 130 tons of debris. Chardine asked the council to consider predictable demolition funding and to avoid rolling demolition allocations into general balances so the unit can maintain progress on blight removal.

Fire: Interim Chief Chad Longstaff and Deputy Chief Anthony Stanford presented the Fire Department's budget and operational priorities. The department requested replacement breathing-air compressors for self-contained-breathing-apparatus (SCBA) refill stations and listed two proposed FTE reductions (a training officer and a division chief) tied to operational adjustments; staff also flagged a proposed fire-station relocation in the 2026 CIP to replace aging infrastructure and improve response times. The department reported an expansion of HAZMAT-trained personnel and new federal reporting and data systems (NERIS) and said it delivered more than 60,000 hours of combined fire and EMS training to personnel.

Municipal Court: Administrative Judge Karan Thadani said the court will implement electronic ticketing (e-ticketing) in 2026 through Tyler Technologies, funded largely from the court's technology fund (approximately $130,000). Thadani said e-ticketing will let officers submit citations digitally, speed processing and reduce manual entry errors. He also noted the municipal court's probation workload averages roughly 135 clients per month and that the court has used LLC-judgment enforcement in property-maintenance cases.

Council members asked for follow-up details on staffing changes, the list of vacancies that informed personnel reductions, and the property-maintenance demolition pipeline. Staff agreed to provide additional breakdowns and to discuss options for demotion/demolition funding and timelines.