Director of Public Safety outlines $63,000 mental-health grant and body-camera funding at council briefing

At a Feb. 10 city council briefing, Director of Public Safety Eli Reyes presented two public-safety grant awards on the council agenda and described how the funds would be used.

Reyes said the first is a second-year first-responder mental-health program grant worth $63,000 to support counseling for police and fire personnel, and he stated the award requires no city matching funds. "This is the second year, of this program. It's $63,000 this year," Reyes said.

He also described a body-worn camera grant tied to the city's ongoing camera program. Reyes said the program's total cost was described in the briefing as about $80,000–$82,000; the grant will provide $65,000 toward that amount and the city will provide a cash match of $16,400 that is already budgeted. "With grant funding, you can't budget for the grant amount...so we budgeted for the cash match amount," Reyes told the mayor during a follow-up question.

Reyes told the council the department has leveraged grant funding across programs and, over the last three years, those efforts have saved taxpayers "over $300,000." He framed the grants as a way to expand mental-health resources and to continue the body-worn camera program with limited additional local expense.

No council vote on these grants is recorded in the briefing transcript; Reyes described the items as being on the agenda for consideration. The mayor asked whether the grant fully offset the budgeted amount for cameras; Reyes replied the municipality budgets the match and cannot budget for award amounts themselves. The briefing concluded with the mayor acknowledging the information and thanking Reyes.

What happens next: both grant awards were presented as agenda items for council consideration at the upcoming regular meeting; the transcript of this briefing does not record a formal council vote.