started right away with item three that is gonna be the state of our courts i have scott hefty as who's gonna kick it off it looks like jugs judge staffing is gonna kick it off good evening welcome thank right first of all i want to express my great thanks to all of you for your support and your encouragement i have very much appreciated that well you understand that what we do is really handle all the the tickets written by the liquid police and code enforcement and animal control that that you really do encourage us to do what we can to help the community and help make people's lives better help people find happier better ways to live their lives and i've so appreciated your your support with that so we try to address the root causes of criminal behavior and we continue to be a leader among the municipal courts in colorado with innovative programs that approaches and and i really do thank you because i think you've given us the support and the ability to do that i want to introduce my colleagues who have come with me tonight and first of all judge dan ramsey who has been with the lakewood municipal court for twenty nine years judge corrine flanagan who has been with us for five years chief deedle who has been with the court for nine and a half years he was with the lakewood police department for twenty five years as you remember we have our chief court operations manager tammy smith who's been with the court for twenty six years and then chief probation officer jennifer's oobleck who's been with the court for thirteen years two years as chief probation officer and then eleven years as the  as a probation officer in one year as an intern she took scuffed got hefty's place scott unfortunately his home and under the weather and i'm sure he's watching us and we miss you scott and wish wish that you were here with us but he'll he'll be fine our really big news is the retirement of judge dan ramsey and he announced his retirement on friday after twenty nine years with the  city he has been very dedicated and loyal colleague he's never lost focus he's always really emphasized justice and fairness he's always had a very calm and reflective demeanor he listens to every person who appears in front of him and he never runs out of compassion for the offenders that appear there i will very much miss his steady and very kind leadership he's had a great deal of concern for the community both in public safety but also in the health and well being of our offenders and our staff for that matter i've really appreciated his help in in just managing the court losing a friend and colleague who never misses a chance to sing happy birthday comes to every major event that staff has and i'm very happy that he will stay on and be one of our relief judges so we're not losing him entirely he'll be coming in when we need him but it's a momentous change after twenty nine years with the court and i certainly want to thank him he's had an outstanding career so thank you and what will happen now is that this is going to be turned over to you and so the city council will ultimately decide who takes  judge ramsey's place there well there is a judicial review commission and this is a group of people who have had this title for eleven years they haven't met since they appointed me  two jobs are basically to appoint judges and then also to deal with any complaints that we've had and i'm pleased to say we've never had a complaint but that also means that they haven't had any work and so what they do is that they'll they'll meet and they're led by chief judge of the district court in jefferson county phil mcnulty and so he's the one that basically runs the first part of this the getting out the applications and then reviewing those they will interview all the candidates and then they will pick three candidates and we'll send them to you city council who will vote and and and ultimately decide on a replacement for for ramsey the other new announcements we've actually had a lot of changes among the judges i'm absolutely thrilled with the five new judges that we've hired we were really needing more coverage and we did have three the left this year but i found it almost hard to believe the people that applied and the people that we got lucky enough to a point so our five new judges and these are the part time fill in judges so they they actually only get paid by the hour and they come in and work and they they come in and just when we need some extra help but we hired a man to bail hache she's been with the boulder public defender's office since two thousand and six she was appointed the presiding judge at the northglenn municipal court and then also has been appointed as a relief judge in the westminster municipal and so she she's in those two courts and it seemed only appropriate to also bring her on in lakewood when we need her susan fish has been a jefferson county judge since two thousand and eight and just retired in june she also worked for many years in the state public defender's office and if i have to admit we we often had cases against each other back when i was doing that kind of work also and so it's to her credit that she's i mean that we thought so much of each other even being on opposite sides that that she was willing to come work with me and i was thrilled to get her to work with so she brings great experience and then we've got frederick michael good b who's been an adams county district court judge since two thousand and eight and he was recently appointed the presiding judge in golden he has had so many different hats he was the elected da in the fifth judicial district after working as a d da in that office  some other offices in the state and then he also served did time at the time it sounds like he went to jail but at the attorney general's office i think he was number one of the top management at the attorney general's office for a while and then worked at the adams county da's office but like i said has been a district court judge in adams county and just recently retired there so we're thrilled to have him marcus iv has been a magistrate for the city of aurora since two thousand and sixteen he's also worked in criminal defense he worked at the state public defender's office he's the president of the board of education for the aurora public schools so he brings a totally different kind of experience to to our bench and then carolyn moore has been a boulder county judge since two thousand and eleven and just retired in january and she has also worked as a da in jefferson county in boulder county and were thrilled to have her as well so i'm just stunned at the decades of criminal experience that were suddenly adding to our bench and i and i'm just really really pleased that that they see lakewood is such a good place to work i think it's it's very flattering to the city that that these really high powered judges are coming to be municipal judges with us i'm really excited about that we are sad to lose several judges judge olson who was a long term county court judge in jefferson county and started right after i started he is one of my very first hires and he just said you know i'm just ready to retire so he he retired this year and then lockrey and you'll remember that he's been off and on with going with the state department to afghanistan and most recently bangladesh and and so he's taken a few leave of absences he's finally decided to stay in colorado and i thought we were going to get him more here but then he applied for the district court in jefferson county and did did get that position so he he's now serving there and then judge kristen wheeler  appointed as a district court magistrate in adams county and so we're very proud of both of them and and very proud that it does appear that the lakewood municipal court seems to be a good training ground or a breeding ground for these  these more elevated and i should say more important but court positions certainly the district court and county court around the state so so i'm finding that all all very exciting  this year has been a little different from most of our years so i feel like this is going to be a little bit different presentation we've had a pretty big challenge and that is a new computer system and we have gone paperless and so the old system was on its last legs i think that it was just really happy that it stayed working until we got the new system going and it but  it has certainly been a challenge i do want to give some very special recognition to our chief court operating officer tammy smith who was involved in researching all the different systems and she is the one that absolutely knows everything about it it's been a full time job for tammy to get this going and get everybody trained she's really been the liaison with it and i do want than a full time job on top of managing the violations bureau and then she did get a new a new title and she's the chief operations manager rather than simply the manager of the violations bureau and that's in recognition of the fact that her management and her her training and work really involves the entire office but she's done just an amazing job with i can't even imagine the thousands of hours that she's put in getting this th system going it's like i said it's been challenging we finally did go live in april two thousand and nineteen we were ready to go live three times and at the last minute and i'm so grateful to tammy and to olga and and the others who really were able to realize that it wasn't just quite right and i don't know if you had experience with new computers but they tend to have bugs and things that you don't really know until you start using them and so luckily they they caught it several times so that when we finally did go live in april that was that was it was okay i mean it was it was working pretty well and they made sure that the financials in particular were we're working the staff has just been amazing that's on top of their ordinary full time jobs they've had to learn this new system and you know for the the judges and the court staff it really means that absolutely everything is on the computer so we're looking at the police reports in the criminal histories and and then we have to type in on the docket sheets and do everything on the computer now and this happened to coincide i'm not sure if it's good or bad it did mean that we had a lot of empathy for each other but with nish coming on with the police department and so the two systems have been trying to talk to each other and connect and it's it's it's been challenging and i'm pleased to say that there are no major disasters or big mistakes and everything it may have slowed down quite a bit but everything did seem to go along ok nothing nothing really fell through the cracks but what it does mean is is that we're all getting used to trying to be on the computer and and remember that our purpose is really to talk to people and we're all trying to remind ourselves that we need to connect with those defendants that are in our courtroom and we need to make sure that they understand what we're trying to talk to them about and that we're really listening and i have to admit the first few weeks of doing this i felt like i was on the computer and i i did have won few defendants say are you listening to me it's just yes we need to really make sure we remember what were there for but we're getting better at that i'm told that it's gonna get faster and and i t worked so hard we we cheer whenever we reduce a process by even one click because it saves time and and there are some some very good features we have public portals now on the on the computer so that some traffic and parking cases can just be paid for online and that makes it a lot easier for people the collections can be people could pay to get themselves out of collections online for most of the traffic and parking we're probably going to be able to may have people make all their payments online eventually but they're still doing the software for that they can check to see if they have an active warrant which is good because then they can come in instead of being arrested for it and we can have electronic filings from attorneys as well just to i won't try to beat the dead horse too much but the the challenge that the staff face was just incredible we had twenty thousand actually was well over twenty zero paper files that had to be put into the system in our old system in our new system didn't talk to each other and so those had to be scanned by hand which meant breaking them down you know putting him in the computer uploading the file naming the file and then moving the file to another computer and then getting it all organized that way so that was over twenty zero cases and i have to really give credit for my managers i mean they really divided up the work and we tried to have little parties here and there and celebrations and rewards and and i have to say morale was really pretty good i mean everybody was just trying to go as fast as they could and work as hard as they could and when somebody was starting to feel down about it which there was good reason for it it seemed that the others were there to really pick them up so i'm just really appreciate the the managers and and how they handled all of this it's it's still a little slower in court and we're like i said we're getting used to it and i think that this will be better and we're hoping that soon we can really get back to just focusing on crime prevention and the kinds of things that we really like to be doing and that's and that's coming slowly we're also really trying to make sure that people don't get too isolated in the court i think one of my big concerns right now is that people don't have to talk to each other and they don't have to walk around with files and so it's trying to encourage people to still do some you know have conversations and get up and walk and not sit at their desks for eight hours a day and so we're trying to be creative to make sure that we keep keep our morale up and keep a happy place it's like i said we're happy to be be able to start focusing again on the crimes the municipal crimes in the in the city i was a little surprised that the numbers stayed as high as they wore this is just a projection actually i need to give you a really really big caveat with all of the numbers i'm giving you tonight that's part of the software that they haven't quite gotten down yet  so this was and i'm gonna try to explain but there it's very unlikely to be entirely accurate i'm hoping that next year and i'm hoping even next spring that i'll be able to come and say we know these numbers are right and this is how we got them but the the computer wasn't cooperating and we got enough different results depending on which buttons you pushed that i'm not completely confident we think it's right around seventeen thousand three hundred and sixty six and and which is up a little from last year and that's what surprised me a little bit because i know with with the police department computer that they you know they had to learn how to use that before they could really get summons issued so but i see numbers going up mainly because the police department has just hired a lot of new patrol agents as you know and they're all getting trained and and so i  think that and they're all getting used to the system so i think these probably will will be rising part of summonses is if you have the traffic team out they're going to be catching the people who are speeding and so it's not just the crime is going up when we look at these increases in numbers it's that they're out actually patrolling and writing tickets as you can see most of what we do that the blue number up there are the the traffic summonses and that's both the offenses which we see in court and then also the infractions and those are the mailings so that's the vast majority of what we what we see parking tickets are also mail and those are the green ones the the cases that we spend all of our time on are really the penal cases the red and then the juvie penal cases and there's six hundred and eighty one juvenile cases again and we've got four thousand forty eight adult penal cases that includes one hundred and ninety two domestic violence cases so and actually those numbers i'm pretty confident of the domestic violence numbers we were pretty sure of  it looks like the projected looking at how things have gone for the first three quarters of the year so we should have about ninety three trials to the court and twenty seven jury trials those are all day trials that we do on fridays that's when we see all of your citizens and then over seven thousand court arraignments the prisoner video hearings and public defender hearings again those  those are significant this is like i said what we really do spend our time on the hearing numbers have gone up a little bit a lot of cases take more than one hearing a lot of the traffic and less serious cases we can handle just in one but the the number of hearings that we spend our time on really shows how busy the court is because those are the ones that we're spending time in in court with the five thousand and and some arrest warrants those end up becoming being bond hearings once somebody's arrested or if they just show up to court on their own then their failure to appear fairly steady and again tammy smith manages the violations bureau they touch every single summons and they're responsible for every every single fine that's paid and that should get easier as go along we are the fines and costs do depend on the number of summonses and  i do want to let you know that we just in the last couple of months have decided to change the the way that we give traffic phibes and this is in a response to a lot of the fatalities that we're seeing and then the just crazy number of really fast drivers on six avenue and i don't know how much you all hear about it but we've been stunned to see how many people are driving even over a hundred miles an hour on six avenue and so after looking at the things that we could possibly do it seems that we should raise those fines and actually what we're what we're doing is we're going to be finding people on their original charge as well as taking into account once it gets to be frankly lethal i mean if there's an accident at that kind of speed somebody's going to die and so all of the fines are going to be going up with the traffic cases and the  fines on those high ones they've been high we've always hit them pretty hard but we're just encouraging all the judges to really make sure that that is going to discourage people from driving so fast or driving so recklessly well the way that we're going to be structuring it is in line with what quite a few of the jurisdictions do so it's like i said it's looking at the original charge as opposed to any plea bargain and so it's it's in line with what other courts do so i feel very comfortable that we're doing this to promote safety and lawful behavior and that this isn't just a revenue raising kind of kind of maneuver it really is to address public safety so though i'm sure if there's a little more money in the coffers that doesn't make people unhappy but that's not our intention it really is to stop the bad driving  actually i'm gonna wait on that well we'll talk a little bit more about what we're doing in the court we have some we do have some new exciting things going on with with the courts grant with community first foundation and we just learned last week that we got that grant and it's eighty thousand dollars it's called most which is the municipal opioid stream line to treatment program and so it's a special program that's going to be helping with opioid addiction and we're just absolutely thrilled to get this money from them and it was it really just doing the grant helped us to research and look at what this program needed to to be and so it's we're basically going to be looking at thirty offenders at any given time if someone isn't working out we can we can feel somebody with their spot fill that spot with somebody else it needs to be somebody who doesn't have the finances to pay for treatment who's disclosing that they are addicted and that they do have a problem they want to get treatment and then we'll be looking at their criminal history we're going to give priority to somebody who's actually committing crimes and causing problems in the criminal justice system so sadly i'm afraid we're going to be able to fill that up pretty quickly and but we're really excited to to have that money the grant is going to pay for the assessments and treatment the random uae's mental health assessments and treatment and they're willing to pay for bus passes so that they can get to the treatment which unbelievably is often the big critical problem for a lot of these offenders they don't have any way to get around they are requiring us to have a very measurable idea of success so after one year they that at least twenty five percent of our clients or eight people most of completed treatment must prove that they're sober with uae's they have to have a job they have to have insurance and they must successfully complete probation or diversion so it's i hope i'm giving you great news that we met that goal next year and i think that's what may allow us to get more funding if we're able to meet that so we're certainly optimistic at this point the domestic violence cases are still our highest priority like i said we have one hundred and two or one hundred and ninety two cases projected for two thousand and nineteen and they as you know they're our highest priority because they have the highest potential for for violent and possibly lethal outcomes and so we very strictly follow the dv omb standards that's a domestic violence offender management board standards and again are based on very well researched principles we fast tracked those cases meaning that once they're arrested we get them in the next day we get trials said almost immediately that really assists in getting the victim cooperation that can sometimes wane of cases dragged on too long and we have very heavy emphasis once there is a conviction on substance abuse and mental health treatment as well as domestic violence  treatment the big thing that we do that i think is a little bit different from the county as we we don't give up on them the way we look at this group of offenders is that they're they're living here typically i mean they usually are lakewood residents and they often relapse if drugs or alcohol or the problem they often have difficulties just getting motivated to get all this done and so we give them a lot of smaller consequences  a little bit of time in jail or whatever appears to be appropriate and really stay with them until they they get sober and clean and they finish their domestic violence treatment it's really surprised how many defendants tell me as they're coming to the end of their their treatment time and they're under their probation that they think that this has been great i've had several people say they think everybody ought to be in domestic violence treatment because it's such a such good life lessons that they end up learning and so i i'm feeling really good about our treatment providers and and the vast majority if them do succeed some of them take a few more years than others but we we figure  it doesn't help just to to close the case and punish them so we really do stick with them and that's why our probation officers are often quite busy just maintaining those cases sometimes for years sometimes people finish it quickly and on time but they they can tend to be pretty pretty tough clients we're also just starting with a risk assessment tool and again jennifer zubik our chief probation officer has been researching different risk assessment tools for adults and i think you all probably remember that i've shown you a lot and talked a lot about the risk assessment tools for juveniles which we've relied on very heavily and i'm actually not going to get into that much again because i've talked to you about that a lot but we're looking for the same kind of tool that we can use for adults so that we can better focus on on what they need and and decide who is the more dangerous  amongst our our offenders probation has a good amount of of our offenders but they really focus on the domestic violence and so it is the judges and  moreso the city attorneys who supervise most of our adult offenders and so we really try to look and see what what was involved in the crime sometimes it's very obvious when they're drunk and violent or whatever i mean sometimes we can get a pretty good idea of what what the issues are but the assessment tool will give us more than just that idea and then the city attorney's i mean and i i do want to give them special thanks to because not every city attorney's office does this kind of monitoring not every city attorney's office takes such responsibility for cases after they've played guilty and after they've been sentenced but our our city attorney's office  makes sure that they're going to their classes their drug and alcohol anger management you know cognitive classes their theft classes they get the ua results they make sure they've run their criminal histories to make sure there aren't any if new offenses and so we we do get supervision and make changes with people who even who are not on probation in fact that that really is the majority of of our cases some people have such minor crimes that they might just get a fine or get some community service but if it looks like there's something to address we do that and most often like i said it's the city attorneys who or who are looking at those i did just get and again i can feel confident about these numbers because one of our marshals one of chief doodles marshals got these together for me just today and so far in two thousand and nineteen we have three hundred and thirty two homeless people who've received tickets in lakewood and they have received amongst them six hundred and fifty six tickets and so as we're getting used to the computer i have to say this is one of my top priorities and i've been in conversations and we've had a lot of meetings and stakeholder meetings we've been meeting with the lakewood police the cat team and and trying to really figure out how the courts can support what the police are doing and how the courts can try to intervene and provide resources we have a lot of that going on already i mean whenever somebody as homeless we've got a whole packet of resources for them we try to follow up and see if they need the treatment and just try to figure out what it is that's causing the the homeless situation but that is going to be a big focus and and i think we're gonna i'm hope that i can come and tell you we've got this great program or several programs because i know it's not one size fits all but i'm hoping that next year we'll we'll have really moved on that and that's that's been a lot of effort on the part of the marshals in particular and and just unless he could keep that court so he's just so devoted to that incident of course he'd keep that and then they have audrey smith as the probation officer who works with them they have been working on sobriety mental health reintegrating them into the the community i think in past years we've talked a lot about the homeless vets and and that has been a big push is to try to get homes and we've done really well and tried to get them to a place where they're stable and working and getting homes it's changed a little this year we did house three homeless veterans this year but right now seven out of our nine veterans are charged with domestic violence and so we're finding that it's i don't know why but it's just a it's just a different group of people and so we've got a bit of a different focus now it's it's a group that that i think you know we use weekly mental health treatment they meet every other week they get a lot of supervision a lot of contact a lot of hand holding one in particular one veteran that i wanted to tell you about just before being placed on that court for domestic violence i had  tried to kill himself commit suicide six times in the past twelve months and so he was just seriously high risk mostly to himself they got him on on that court he started mental health treatment started as domestic violence treatment they found him housing they got him connected with that he got a job he got into some pro social activities and he ended up completing veterans court after the original one year sentence so it just it's amazing sometimes to see what that structure and support can really do for somebody and so it's just been a great success and we hope that somebody like that can go out and pass it on to other veterans as well we had our seventh annual west metro veterans fair this year and that was just a great success each year they get bigger and that's just been very support for that we did hosts the annual colorado veteran's treatment court conference which is kind of funny because most of our district courts there are only a couple of municipal courts that have have veteran treatment courts and that we hosted that a few weeks ago and that went well as far as the probation numbers again we we had a little over a thousand cases referred in two thousand and nineteen or that we project to be referred in two thousand and nineteen we have roughly eighty percent success rate of people who successfully complete probation or diversion  it doesn't mean that the twenty percent are out committing heinous crimes necessarily it just means they didn't follow through what they were supposed to we do give them lots of chances to even the ones that aren't on tv but at some point we tend to give them consequences and and have to close unsuccessfully but about eighty percent follow through and really do what they're supposed to do and in stay out of trouble and i think that's the big thing they don't commit any more offenses of the twenty percent a lot of the ones that fail end up getting charged in county or district courts as they they move on they graduate to other other levels of court we do have a juvenile program i think i mentioned to you last year because it just started last year and that's the yes program and that's the youth enrichment support program and this is a fun one because it's the lakewood community center's who partnered with us of the rec centers basically and again chief probation officer jennifer's oobleck and then fred peters who was a lakewood police agent and is now in our juvenile division he was a juvenile agent with a police department and the two of them had just been talking about house there's a there's a group of our probation kids that just don't have the opportunities to ever try things and their families just don't give them the ability to to try sports or try different activities and so they thought well let's let's try taking groups of kids to rec centers and playing games with them and so each week they go and have i guess its monthly the girls that had never played basketball before i thought it was so much fun that she went to her high school and tried out for the high school team and she actually made it so she's now on the high school basketball team which is fun but we've had forty three kids doing that so far and we're kind of learning as we go what's effective if they actually played pickleball when we came to which was a new one but it seems to just give kids another idea of what they can do and so we're just trying to throw some positive sorts of experiences in there too we still work hard with our leap kids those are the the kids that have diagnosed behavioral health issues and we're really pleased that that last year we were made part of the court support jeffco and so they're giving us i think this year it was one thousand six hundred and ninety three dollars and that's to help with the treatment that the kids can't pay for uae's or something that that they often can't pay for and just giving positive incentives because with that group of kids we often do give them you know if they do really well in a month we want to give them you know a five dollar little gift certificate or something and the positive incentives almost seem to have more of an effect than the negative ones some of these kids get so much negative so when they get it get a treat it makes them want to get another one the next time and they like praise and they like the rewards so to get that from court support jeffco and that if you're not familiar with that that's the group that basically gives monetary support to all the the special treatment courts and again usually in the district court in county court we have we work very closely again with the lakewood police they're involved with the leap program and it's be terribly serious but the the diagnosis and and behavior tells us that they really do need an awful lot of attention and so i feel that it's an important program just because they it's the most intensive supervision we really do and with teachers and therapists and everybody collaborating and making sure that we're all on the same page with these kids and then if they have to be in the mental health treatment and and we really work closely with those treatment providers chief mart deedle is still on the board with the jefferson center of mental health so he's our relationships with those different providers are very close and then of course we we have the assessment for substance abuse and making sure that that's that's not part of it our graffiti cleanup in community service we still have shane littleton and i know a lot of you know shane he's he responds to a lot of city requests that the key had his kids clean up or respond to two hundred and seventy eight city requests this  year he helps them do four hundred and sixty eight hours and there were two hundred and seventy five different kids that went through his program and so he basically takes them out in a van and gets them working they've done trash pickup at bear creek in lakewood high school's at the the parks they they do do graffiti cleanup and in fact it's almost nine hundred and over nine hundred and thirty surfaces that were cleaned this year are projected to cleaned i think it is and he also just tries to mentor them and give him a pretty positive experience while they're doing that i went twenty six shopping carts were taken back to where they belong as well  we still have i think i've talked a lot to all of you about the the various effective programs that we have i'm not going to get into details about the girls circle program our team core program are yet education program  fact that we really do monitor their their school portals so we could see if they're going to school every day in their grades and i think we're just doing good work and with our juvenile juvenile probation and i do want to thank you again for the money that you have allowed us for uae's and for our work program so it's it's taken that excuse away because those are it's coming down to those are the the things that we really can require them to do and since you all gave us some funding we can keep track of who really is sober and and don't have to you know don't have to send them out to get a job and yeah and and also with the work program too that's just been very successful so so thank you certainly appreciate that like i said we've had a number of challenges this year on top of the computer system this is what this slide is actually about  told us they meaning some of the jail officials notified us that the lakewood municipal court was going to have to dramatically reduce its beds if not eliminate them because they saw us as the the bottom of the totem pole so i've i've been to a lot of meetings and i've been talking to an awful lot of people and i think that everybody is persuaded at this point that we have to have some jail beds i mean if we usually don't give jail we do we try to be so creative to have positive interventions but if you don't have that ultimate bad thing that could happen if you don't follow a court order they're going to ignore the court orders and and the other thing that that i've really been impressing upon them is that we have about five to six thousand criminal cases a year those aren't people who are just going away if yeah i mean if if  if we're not able to intervene effectively and i really do think the possibility of jail is the only way we can intervene effectively or that we're able to then the lakewood police agents will start filing all those cases in jefferson county they're the same people that will go to jail there as they will here i think we actually work much harder in trying to find altar and so i have really argued that their jail bed space is going to get even worse if they try to take away our criminal cases because i think we work awfully hard to find alternatives so so they've they haven't mentioned it as much lately i know they're talking about dramatically reducing jail bed space i also know just reading in the the post today that there's more discussion and and i'm aware of the the agreement of the early release program we actually i don't remember if it was my predecessor but the the judges have signed out and i've signed one of those as well so that does liquid is under that agreement as well and it's basically that we can designate certain prisoners who cannot be released because they're just too dangerous but if the if the jail gets full we've agreed that they can go through and and based on you know all kinds of assessment as to community safety et c we're allowing them to release it at fifty percent of the of their sentence so i i think that we're gonna keep arguing i may need your help at some point if that if it starts looking like we're gonna lose our ability to follow through and so i certainly keep you posted on this because the fellow through with sentences because we i really do think that that's absolutely necessary for being able to conduct business but as i said lately lately it's just been that we all need to work hard to keep our jail numbers down we have done a lot to get our numbers down in fact i've been very proud of the work we've done chief deedle and his marshals have been keeping very close track of where our prisoners are when they get arrested in other parts of the state we look at who's dangerous who's not we transport people to court in fact that happens almost every day instead of taking them to the jefferson county jail and we try to handle cases right away an awful lot of the people in the jail aren't there because they're dangerous or there because they don't come to court and they fail to appear and so if we can just get them into court take care of the case then they don't need to take up a bed so we're doing more plea bargains by mail when people are particularly in department department of corrections or in other jails we'll try to just take care of their cases by mail we're doing more plea bargaining or actually handling here cases over the telephone speakerphone open court and just handling cases before we get them to the jail and i'm actually very proud of what we've done just in the last six months or so we were running about somewhere between twenty and thirty cases or twenty or thirty inmates back in april and that's when the sheriff really put his foot down and said we've got to do something about it we decided that we'd show him that with a lot of really intense management and like i said the marshals have worked awfully hard and driven around the state a lot too to do this but we're down to you can see it's ten is is a very typical number and i think that's part of the reason that the sheriff's realized that no we're really working to make make this happen and you can see if we only have ten inmates in there those are the ones that really need to be there and so i think that they were i think they've appreciated our efforts on all of this i'm hoping that that protects us a little bit that it stand out of where they have one thousand two hundred beds out there if we're only using ten it seems like that's that's well well worth our our time just a couple more you know the the challenges of the jail delay bill again the marshals have had to work hard to make sure that nobody sits in any jail for more than two days without being advised and that's they've done a great job keeping track of all that and i don't think we've had anybody released of the the jail delay bill we they've worked hard to control that we are still very involved with the cmj the colorado municipal judges association board  as you know i was president for a while and on that board and now judge flanagan is on that board and we're still very active and trying to make sure that that we keep track of the bills that are really going to cost the city money and that's been that's been a big issue in the past few years as you know i mean the public defender costs after the bill that required the public defenders to be at every single hearing  ere were really excessive though the legislature did did pass a bill that allowed us to get grant money for paying for those and scott hefty has done an excellent job keeping up with  with applying for those grants and so we've gotten reimbursed for over twenty six thousand dollars in public defender payments and so that is really soften the blow for that quite a bit we also started a legislative action committee and judge flanagan is the de facto leader of that she's someone that's been dealing with the legislators and then every week she sends out items on the lists are basically telling us what's coming what they're doing about it and and has just really taken a great leadership role and trying to make sure that we don't have anything that's going to really make it hard to enforce laws the  colorado municipal league the judge kristin wheeler was the lakewood judge who just left to go to adams county she was the cmj a representative and now it's yet another lakewood judge who's going to be the new representative and that's judge  kurtz also lakewood so so we kind of have all these leadership roles and i'm pleased that lakewood is is such a leader with all of this finally and we are getting getting to the end of these but we've got an important committee and this is judge flanagan's committee she's one of the leading members so also mark deedle has been on this committee and it's the committee studying disproportionate minority over representation and i think i've mentioned this to you before since lakewood is the largest jurisdiction in in jefferson county we volunteered to lead the data collection and the research and and this committee has been meetings really trying to figure out why why there's minority over representation this is for juveniles and they have just recently come to the point where they've they've have some conclusion and they have some plans the lakewood police department's been very involved in fact they they really got started on all of this and we we jumped on with them so it was impressive that they wanted to look at what was going on with this and try to figure out why they added ethnicity field on the police tickets so that we can monitor and just follow and get the data the lakewood probation officers have been educating school staff and principals on alternatives to law enforcement they're trying to decrease law enforcement involvement in the schools and so they're doing training and the lakewood police have been involved with that as well just how to handle these things so they don't get to the point of needing the ticket all the liquid school started a handle with care program which is a trauma informed approach to engage students who are having difficulties outside of school and so that's that's a direct result of the work that this committees been doing there's a truancy diversion program and they are working to bring bilingual mental health services for families with spanish speaking kids so that the mental health services can be used and is bilingual in a bilingual fashion so that that has been started and then the police are also training on implicit bias they've got in service trainings and roll call training anyway the lakewood police department has been they've really taken a leadership role in trying to address this issue so i'm hoping that'll be very interesting and and and productive and hope that this is successful but they've they've done some good work we still we had a law school intern this summer who did good work we've had five college interns eight high school interns this year it's great for them because they get experience we actually six of our paid staff started as interns so it's just a great way to get to know people and it's it's free for us so it's been nice to get some of our our work done that way we did another survey where we put the customer experience surveys out so that defendants could that get those i'm always a little nervous about this because our defendants don't want to be there and they're usually not hearing the best things from us and they're getting their consequences but we've again gotten really pretty good pretty good results all all of the the results were over three point five except for the time to complete business and i know that's because of our new computer system so i'm hoping that once we get more used to that that will our scores on that'll be a little bit higher so so anyway thank you for your time i really appreciate your willingness to listen and to find out what what's going on with us and i'm happy to answer any questions okay thank you your honor much appreciated and thank you to your staff i think there's gonna be a few questions two quick things i want to just thank you for the creativity that you show and that your team shows for dealing with different populations and really trying to be firm when needed but try to just get people back to their normal lives and get them back on the road so i appreciate that whether it's veterans whether it's youth whether it's folks who are dealing with substance abuse or homelessness so that's fantastic quick question so when the legislature did do some mandates they set aside some money to assist now was that temporary dollars or are those dollars still in existence that's when i talk about the scot hefty going through and and keeping track of really by the minute how much how much time we're spending on the public defender's that was a bad and you know i think that's the twenty six  but i think it was i thought last year's number was quite a bit better than that the i thought we got around seventy thousand last year but that money had a yearly appropriation or was that a two year lobbying our our folks as well to ensure that those dollars are being backfilled i know you're all very active i know our legislative committee is very active as well so that's good and i've appreciated their their help on all this yeah do you see anything else do you see the continuation or what what does the future hold criminal justice reform is very big this year and so we've already been told that there will be a number of different items y them look great and we'll welcome them some of them look like they could be costly entire hands a bit so we're just gonna keep track of it and again judge flanagan is watching each week as the bills come  down i think the the money bond issue will be will be something that that was passed this year actually that i have to say hasn't affected us in any any big bad way because we still get to see the defendants and  we were doing a lot of holding homeless people anyway we really don't use the jail a lot for them so so most of we're doing okay and i i'm hoping that it'll continue but we may be asking for some assistance this next year thank you mister betta thank you mayor thank you judge first of all for your report tonight it was very thorough and complete and we really appreciate it  i want to tell you that i'm well aware of the situation with county jail and i'm gonna make some comments later in the meeting i don't know that it's appropriate right now but i do have some comments i want to make in that regard and the last thing i want to say i want to thank you and your staff for the fine job that you do managing our courts thank you very much you know we don't hear much from about the courts and in many ways you're sort of the unsung heroes of what's going on in our city what's good about our city because we don't hear much about you but that's probably a good thing you know no complaints but between you and our police department you are number one in terms of thank you judge tabak i'm always in such appreciation of all the ways that you're reaching out to such high risk populations and all the innovative ways that you're doing to help people i just have a question on the most program that involves opioid addiction i've really gotten kind of pulled into that topic and finding too that there is a genetic component to it which just complicates things even more actually for treatment the amount of money that you're getting with that grant is great eighty thousand dollars frankly doesn't go very far and you're talking about assessment and treatment and bus passes it's sounds like it's more outpatient or what about impatient talk to me about that how does that work i inpatient facilities available and that that is just it's tragic really that we don't have more available for people this would almost certainly be help to cover some of the costs of medication and transportation and and so that that's how we'll have to spread it out and and use it and then also the  monitoring and that kind of thing which actually and be an important part of all of this as well but no you're absolutely right it won't come anywhere near to covering i mean the eighty zero could maybe give one person some time and residential treatment but exactly yeah and so this will be to supplement what what often medicaid will do or if you know if there are other resources certainly  it'll supplement that as well if during the assessment piece of it it appears that actually outpatient is not going to to work for that individual talk to me how do you go what what what's the next steps where do we go with this there are a few places fort lyons which used to be a prison is now a great huge residential  drug and alcohol treatment facility and they take three hundred and some i don't want to call them inmates because they're residents they have a pretty good waiting list people want to go and usually it is homeless people that want to to go there but that that has been very successful it's a two year program and since we only have juris people for one year we basically have them you know you need to do your first year on probation they are usually they stay  complete the program but that bat has been one option but like i said there there are waiting lists there there are a lot of things springing up and and there are a lot of treatment facilities who are really trying to address these needs and and it's not a one size fits all so a lot of it we're hoping with with more assessment we can we can try to help find the ones that that most can use this money and be successful on and they need to want to make the changes or else we just can't you know me for it but we have an awful lot of other addicts that that we work with and that probation works with and and we've we've made it a priority to try to help them you know whether they have family support whether they've got other friends whether we can find facilities i mean we there are a lot of things that we can try and we do have a fair amount of success but it's it's a struggle there there isn't enough money for for treatment there's no question and that's the point a lot of it is a state level fix with the legislature and perhaps we as a body as a city need to be advocating and lobbying for that kind of impatient thing i have learned through new hope church actually they have follow up regarding inpatient they are very closely watching folks that come out of that and they have a higher level of success a lot of it depends on the follow up and keeping people engaged  i know it's it's a tough issue thank you for what you're doing and i am particularly appreciative of all the time and care and interest that you're putting in with legislative type  issues that come up you're a real a real asset for our city thank you judge thank you you mister skilling thank you your honor and i'll echo what everyone has said thus far i wanted to focus in on something that you'd said earlier you mentioned and i don't know if everyone at home or the audience caught it when you refer to them as clients these aren't you refer to them as defendants or any of that that they're actually clients which i think reflects the program that you're all about diversion treatment counseling not just jail time and then the recidivism and everything that comes from that so i commend you on using that type of language and really treating them as clients and i slide this up here now i think  well these are pretty high marks to give you do it the client would give to a judge so i appreciate that i have kind of a tougher question for you and it been said somewhat but is there an ask from us in this coming year i know that we're kind of past the budget period obviously but if there's a policy asked you mentioned some grants that you received is there anything else like we have our planning retreat coming up is there something that maybe we could do policy wise that would help you think what does frustrate us is the the treatment issue is just not not having enough places particularly if we have clients who want to get better and and not being able to afford some of that we're we're just in initial talks with some people who are considering helping us out with domestic violence treatment and so i don't want to say too much because we're just starting that conversation but those are just popular as some of the certainly the juveniles and some of the other people with addiction problems but that that's a hard population to get funds for again because it's not as palatable i guess some of the criminal crime you know some of the other kinds of crimes that we have so so that's certainly an area but but yeah i'd love to get back to you if i can get my staff thinking about things so  a moment that i i need to ask this question when someone is arrested in lakewood but the jurisdiction for that particular let's say it's a murder you don't sit in judgment of that murder the county does correct is that considered a liquid bed or is that considered a jefferson county bed it's not a liquid municipal court bed we we keep track of the numbers just for the lakewood municipal court cases and we only handle the misdemeanors rather the ordinances so and the the lakewood police have discretion as to whether to file them here or file them out they are if we wanted to let you know we're talking about ten beds that were using but it's probably about eight hundred beds that are actually lakewood beds mm hmm that's why i was i would that's the aha moment that i had is you were showing ten and yet we had heard from both mackowski and also a sheriff schrader that we had a lot more than that involved and i wanted to make sure that i understood the difference so thank you for doing that and i should have been more precise no your municipal bed thank you yeah vincent yes a little different note i thank you for everything you've done but i also want to say best wishes to judge ramsey i've had the great pleasure to work with you on the community corrections board and i've always enjoyed that and i've enjoyed your comments and your wisdom that you bring to that and your many years of service and also your passion for that also i'm sure you'll miss  something else so you want to okay you know in during our reports right thank you so yes so thank you very much and and i also want to just wish judge ramsey all the best and  the ability that you actually have to change lives i know firsthand and your honor you changed one of my best friend's lives and he credits you with probably being alive today and that was a long time ago probably twenty two years ago but you were tough and you set him on a trajectory that changed his life and he still to this day credit to you so thank you for all you've done and i'm sure that that's not the only story and we wish you all the best yes all right  so now we have the opportunity for public input public input is geared specifically towards the topic at hand this is your opportunity to ask any questions or be part of the conversation like a regular council member is up here you have three minutes two and a half will be green thirty seconds yellow and at the end your time will be up and i'll politely try to wrap you up first up we have brian loma notes and then hopefully we can have some q and a come off of that i've learned recently about a dea compliance and i'm concerned that paperless systems are not a dea compliance  because people with like traumatic brain injuries getting timed out of a system that might you know they might have to participate in just one example i'm very concerned that the city of lakewood b would be using my tax dollars to hire retired judge susan we call her clown fish she has a history of high bond as in enslaving people in the court system and that's something that our state legislature has deemed inappropriate so i do know that that she has a history of ten thousand dollars cash bonds on misdemeanors level three which is considered excessive   live on my own channel and a lot of people are asking why only three veterans to be housed that were homeless their diversion program in the courts if the municipal level of things are more those ordinances like moving along and not being able to sit and rest then there should probably be a lot more than three veterans in the system so when we say what else can we do i would suggest that making sure that we have enough housing so that people are not facing drug addiction on the streets things like that i also heard something about once every other week bi weekly for sobriety or some other kind of program and as a coming on fifteen years crack thing we having crews cleaning up colfax and really seeing what life's like and i appreciate that we're keep being creative to keep people from going directly to jail the courts most of the time  not the people that would be making that determination it's a police officer writing a probable cause statement on the spot makes it determine if somebody is going to lakewood county jail or if they're getting a citation in someone or jefferson county jail or site and summons i do want to end my comments on this very positive note councilors not cops in schools is absolutely the way to go thank you thank you  i was wondering what the procedure was for if if the police picked up a legal i'm not very politically correct as all you all know but if they pick up an illegal immigrant and what is the procedure and how many people have we sent to jefferson county and ice i just out of curiosity or are they bonded out immediately so they and we're not taking them up to jefferson county i just like to know that the second thing is on the diversion for the drug treatment plan kid we use the drug money that's collected or the seized vehicles or that even the seized homes to start treatment use that money for treatment i don't care what you charge a drug dealer you can you take every flip and penny he's got because there is nothing you can do to a drug dealer that would be too much the next thing i was asking when she when the judge and i appreciate everything she does but she said it was not a revenue producing organization i beg to produces a lot of money i'd love to know how much money it produces and the the sad part about it is a policeman if he stops to people maybe a kid in a car that he's put more money into than most of us make a year into a hot rod do you think that a high fine on a traffic ticket is gonna bother him or somebody just driving around in a hundred thousand dollar corvette is that gonna bother him no it's gonna be the poor guy with three kids a wife and his car is put together with baling wire and duct tape you put a big big ticket on him he can't pay that he gets a warrant put out on him he gets thrown in jail he has to pay a huge amount bail money that puts him farther in debt he loses a job because he's in jail now who's it affecting what a big fines do does it really stop anybody from speeding i haven't gotten a ticket in years but i don't see i don't see where these huge fines really stop speeding i just think it hurts people that can't afford it low income people get beat up by the cops enough and when you got road pirates they're taking their money just so they can give it to the city that's not justice it's extortion thank you very much thank you anybody else okay i'll close public input your honor and there were quite a few questions i don't know if you if you're certainly not prepared to answer we can try to get follow up information from from these gentlemen and try to get that those questions answered the best we can if that's easier if you feel comfortable and i'd rather make sure that you have an opportunity to to dig in more if you feel comfortable to respond to some that's certainly up to you okay first of all i'm talking about the the veterans i know that there was and i appreciate the comments and you know certainly appreciate getting some feedback with the veterans saying that there were just three that we were able to get housed our veterans program only takes eight at a time and so they're fairly carefully selected like i said they used to be  mostly homeless but the the ones that have we felt that we've needed to intervene with this year had been one that they have domestic violence charges and and fewer homeless veterans i'm not i'm certainly not saying there aren't homeless veterans out there we have other programs and other ways that we try to help them but as far as this program we only deal with eight at a time just because the resources of the courts or are not sufficient we could always get a whole bunch more probation officers if with mister skilling's offer of things my wish list and i start thinking we can you know get a lot more probation officers so that we could could deal with more we with deciding who goes to jail the municipal court summonses are almost always summonses the domestic violence defendants get arrested probably just a few a month few defendants a month get arrested and then are given municipal tickets after they're jailed but for the most part the police do not arrest the municipal defendants they're giving them tickets and sending them to municipal court because they think we can deal with them at most of the people who are arrested end up being filed in county court so that's that sort of answers that and i think most of these maybe we can go ahead and i can spend a little more time looking at them they're mostly as i think i could answer but i don't want to just be all just forgot it or take too much time so we'll we'll address those and all right thank you very much mayor your honor thank you again for helping all our veterans and thank you for helping or you have a program that is awesome eight eight veterans at a time but i also want to bring out to the public and notification but that's only one program we have another one here in lakewood and we have been bestowed the honor from department of veterans affairs that they have forty beds for  veterans that are homeless it's thirty male ten female and it's here in lakewood and the va has taken responsibility to help our veterans and this is the  first veterans program in the nation and we've been honored to have them host them here in the city of lakewood and i just wanted to bring that out and let everybody know and the program it's called valor point door mesial so you can google it look it up there it is thank you thank you sir all right we will move on to item four and i'll turn it over to miss hudson mayor the next item of conversation is around the city attorney office review and although we don't have a presentation prepared what i what i wanted to do is just review with you this the  chronology of opportunities that you've had to address this particular issue and to remind you of the journey that brings you to where we are today first of all on october  it is prudent to revisit the outsourcing decision so in other words just wanting to take a look at the month at the model slash function of the city attorney's office that was october st i personally met with councillor frank's  january for clarification to make sure the subsequent study session would meet all the points that she was interested in discussing on april th we had a city council study session and it  our then human resources director jeff doland so that was on april fifteen two thousand and nineteen and that was called that was titled a city attorney assessment then on june seventeen two thousand nineteen as a result of you requesting staff to do some work in terms of what other type of alternatives there might be to the model that we currently employ the staff  under my name submitted a pretty thorough email to you again that was june th describing what that might be and it was entitled city attorney follow up  that was resent to you on september th the exact same document you received again and some of you asked for it again so i sent it again nothing personal counselor vincent so then sound kidding request to follow up on prior discussions regarding the city attorney office and information contained within the process document which is the one that was created june th sorry june th within the process document that was prepared by staff and provided to counsel to assist with the dialogue so that brings us to where we are today october twenty one two thousand and nineteen so i just wanted to summarize what that's been for you and remember it's important to delineate on the conversation around talking about the function of the city attorney office and that model compared to performance in you received the city attorney annual report that covered two thousand and eighteen up until april two thousand and nineteen and then on may six you did a city attorney performance review the point of me saying that is to bifurcate those two things this today's are the conversations been around really looking at the model and the functionality of the city attorney office function not the performance so if we can be just really mindful of talking about the model itself i think that would be helpful in the conversation so with that there's no presentation and i just like to hand it to you for conversation and we'll follow up with whatever your direction is thank you thank you thank you miss ho for the quick review and just to reiterate so some communities have a model where there's a contract city manager which is what we have with mister arab city attorney now maybe they do city managers i don't know but they do so some some communities do utilize that some have what they would call an in house city attorney and so we have the the first model mentioned and that is where we're at tonight to discuss that based upon the request and i won't rehash the study sessions that we've had on this as miss austin just alluded to this has been an ongoing discussion now for quite some time given and again going back to councilor frank's his original request way back when given that we're a city now of one hundred fifty hundred sixty thousand folks would it be more prudent to and more efficient sand for a number of reasons to have an in house model so that we similar to our city attorney who's an employer a deputy city attorney and and all of our high level folks are employees of the city would it make more sense to bring that in house and have that person as employee that according to i believe the charter answers directly to this council and that wouldn't necessarily change from the existing model but it would make it more of that employee employer relationship rather than the one that we've had in place for many years as the mayor alluded to with m cox's law firm to that and i along with councilor frank's have been trying to find the best way to approach this night  you'd have to be blind not to understand that there are some implications of making this type of decision we've had a law firms as relied on this relationship for some years that law firm employees mister cox mister cox is  an asset to the organization and so you're trying to as miss hudson said separate out the two things and taking that into account it still in my opinion is a good policy to make it an in house position i think that makes sense with a city our size and we do know and i understand that making this switch almost feels midstream if you were to just make the switch right away considering that you have just spoken to have relied on this relationship not only that but as i mean this counsel obviously we see a small part of what this city attorney's office does it's a very large office we heard judge static refer to some of the all the great work that the city attorney's are doing that is all under the purview of the city attorney's office and so they handle everything and all the mundane things we never see all the research projects everything we get some of the bigger items maybe especially a lot of the land use stuff but you know they're handling some of our bigger litigation cases that are big litigation cases and i raise that point because litigation especially in the city of this size and the ongoing cases institutional knowledge all of those things are not easily transferred and we would not want to hurt the city by making any any type of change that would affect that or or detriment the  cases in any way with that i do have proposals that i would like the council to consider for consensus and it's three proposals three pillars of basically one proposal to switch the existing model a contract model to an in house model with the transition to to be completed no later than eighteen months from now so that would be in tw twenty one that would not and i want to be very clear on this point just because there's a backstop of eighteen months does not supersede the terms of the existing agreement that the city has with the firm meaning the firm has certain rights under an existing contract the city has certain rights and this would not supersede the rights of either party under that contract the second part of the proposal would be that a ad hoc committee of council members is formed with a staff designee preferably  the city manager's office to create a profile for the candidate and determine a high level transition strategy i've spoken to some of the pitfalls that could occur in a transition when there's a lot of litigation when there's an institutional knowledge the third pillar would be the work performance and the expectations that we had miss hassan alluded to the when we had the city attorney's review and there was out of that there was a work performance of elitism metric or whatever you call it that that roadmap would still be in place going forward that's not disappearing just because we're doing this because the city does still have business over the next eighteen months certainly so with that that would be the proposal that i would seek consensus on and again another reason the  long runway to make this happen so with that that would be the proposal thank you is there any discussion from council about when we i believe our contracted attorney is a generalist and when we have special cases aiding special expertise we hire from the outside any idea of the budget ramifications of this the first part of your question i believe is answered in mister dolan's presentation so if we have there flipping through slides now i don't have the slides right in front of me but i believe that was part of the ongoing discussions that we had had when we were looking at the various models which brings me to the second question which was what were the budget implications to be clear regardless of the system that's used our generalists and that's not a poor way of putting it our generalist city attorney whether it's in a contract model or in house model will still be outsourcing to other law firms that is all of the outside firms i think that every expectation would be mister cox's firm other firms are all part of the cit rolodex we use a lot of different folks from a lot of different firms for our outside litigation we don't handle for those bigger cases mister cox can correct me if i'm wrong examples even outside of litigation when we had the campaign finance we we had you know the top attorneys in the state mr gru's can came in on that that doesn't change regardless of the model that will still be in place we will pay the our top line city attorney it becomes an employee a salaried position similar to our city attorney so i'm sorry that's the second time tonight i apologize our the under a under the current situation i believe we have the benefit of the expertise of other attorneys on mister cox's st cost and we would what what do you envision as the city attorney's staff needs so the the second pillar of this the reason that i went as far and we went as far as to say an ad hoc committee formed of counsel numbers and ass and a staff member is because this is exactly the type of transition questions that will need to be answered i think the model we have now for the most part for example we have mister graham with us tonight is a deputy city attorney he's a city employee the city attorneys i believe that the staffing would probably remain the same although i don't want to speak out of turn on that so i think the numbers remain similar because again any outsourcing is the same now as it would be then but again i don't think anyone's under any illusion that this task isn't without it pitfalls and that's why i think it's important to have a committee based of members of this council based of the staff to come up with those types of answers because that will be impactful on the type of candidate that you are seeking and i believe our city attorney now is in the building four days a week is that correct would you be envisioning a five day a week  and house legal legal expert for consultations they do need to come into work i would say seven days but that may scare some folks off the yes i envision a full time employee like our city but this similar type relationship that it's a full time employee we are attorneys so there is there is working hours involved in that so certainly a full time position five days a week or whatever the job requires and would you see it as a salaried position are in in cases where they might need to be here seven days a week would you see that as an overtime kind of position or just flat salary they would be an exempt salaried employee similar against who are sitting at night yep okay thank you presented in april so i can answer that fourteen colorado governmental entities responded to the request you might remember this thirteen out of state governmental entities responded i have the list of who that included  here's here are the results of the organizations who responded approximately forty five percent contract the chief legal counsel the remaining fifty five percent utilized an in house chief legal counsel with a hybrid staffing model several out of state larger organizations utilize an in house model and one hundred percent of cities utilize some outsourced and specialized legal services i am happy to find this somehow and to resend it to you if you're mary so we've been over this and had a number of discussions on this study sessions and so forth and i don't know that we need to go through all the details again i do think in my judgment after reviewing what we've been through that it would be in the best interest of our city to go to a in house model as we're calling it i think it would be more efficient financially economically legally i think that it would one of the issues that concern me is the our city attorney is responsible for under our laws and under our charter  for managing the other members of the department in this case we have a contractor who is responsible for managing in our employees and that's problematic in and of itself  it becomes even more problematic i think when there are there's a clause in the contract with our with our contractor that disclaims any responsibility for for the actions of our manager of our city employees  basically in the legal department so i think that creates some some problems it's problematic and i think to have a city attorney who's an employee will be a much cleaner in terms of the chain of command and that's just one of many reasons decision without any more information just to go ahead to an in house legal team and in house counsel because you're saying eighteen months but then what i'm hearing is a lot of unanswered questions and i don't know if that would impact a decision is that make are you understanding where i'm born with that yes i think the information that we've received over the the study session and the work sessions everything that we've had up to this point since the beginning of the conversation is the underlying information to make the decision whether to switch to a in house counsel then there's the second part then there's the part of okay if we're gonna do this long transition period and give everyone a chance to  to transition all the parties involved the next part of that is okay what what next what is who what will that rfp and that might be a little inarticulate but what will that job profile look like for this city attorney we've already met and we have certain metrics roadmaps all of that this council since this is the position that answers directly to us this council will have direct input on who they would like for their attorney and what he or she looks like qualifications what have you i suspect that along the way that there may be other challenges there could be things certain cases that may last longer what if  what if the mister cox's law firm decides to separate earlier than maybe anticipated or something of that nature these are all things that should be contemplated by the body and that's why i think the committee is really important there are a lot of questions with as i said earlier the the ongoing litigation if it does take longer than the eighteen months if it takes two years you know a lot of complex stuff that could come up and and i think that  er cox can probably best identify that in working with the transition on how that would work also important to have the cmo involved as well so i think the the underlying decision now is do we switch to the in house model and then knowing that on a going forward basis there is a lot of work for this council to do in establishing what that model looks like because we don't have obviously up until now we don't that model available to us so we need to create that it is our attorney and we need to create what that will look like okay because that was my fears there could be cases that are continuing on past this eighteen months so or new ones that come out in the transition while we're trying to do that so thank  ms harrison thank you um this is a really big i think possible change for the city to consider this and we're right in the middle of the silly  season i would feel much more comfortable if we would consider delaying this until after we have a new council seated before we would make this decision this is this is a big deal for us to try to make a decision and then you know two weeks down the road we might have some different people sitting up here so i would i'm not saying no to the conversation i'm just saying no to the timing i feel like we may want to wait on this and maybe have another discussion at retreat and then bring it up next year but i'm not i'm not comfortable in taking this forward right now until we have you know the same people that are going to have to be on the committee and making that decision need to kind of be in the room when we're having this discussion and we've got some changes possibly  thanks mayor paul well i guess i wanted to start out by saying i brought the first council request for action a year ago so i certainly don't think the pace has been too aggressive and a have said we don't stop working even if you know if some of us aren't here the job is the job and to keep working so i certainly appreciate councillor harrison's a point but again the request was brought forth a year ago as our city manager said you know the work product that we asked them to prepare our road map was mid year and then we i talked to our city manager no one was giving feedback no one was having questions so the assumption was there were no questions and then that was sent out multiple times so i think that if you've looked at the road map i think our staff did an amazing job really laid out the guidelines of which then that ad committee could take a look at each of those things and make sure that we're doing our due diligence you know you always do need to mitigate risk and i think that with the eighteen months certainly allows us to start talking through and mitigating that risk but that doesn't mean you don't have risk every day there should be you know at some point again each that contract does have a ninety day clause i believe so again you're never as safe as you think you are things can happen and there can be turnover so i am my position hasn't changed i think the in house the employee model takes us from being a client to being a part of a team and a part of the employee relationship and so i appreciate all the work that the city staff has done and i certainly would be supporting moving to the in house model thank you um so i do i do want to acknowledge and appreciate that the proposal that you're mentioning i think is thoughtful and i in terms of transition plan and it leaves us without making too rash of a decision however this is the first i'm really having a chance to think  certainly of course wasn't in the packet which is fine but i think that i'm i'm not prepared to make a decision to switch from switch models at this point in all of our discussions i i we've you know we've discussed this for a year as mentioned and we've talked about all the different kinds of roles that the city manager plays and then  city attorney that the city attorney plays not just with us making policies but then also just the integral part of every department my concern is that we are as councillor harrison mentioned about to have potentially quite a few new council members up here there's onboarding there's training for those people there's a significant level of learning curve for what each department does what we're able to do but then we also have question two hundred which we're implementing and you know i think that that is a real priority for our community i'm concerned about how this additional transition is going to impact that so i just i haven't heard a very compelling reason in my opinion to change models  i i think that the amount of time that we've had a relationship with our current city attorney shows to me that there there is a team  so i know we're you know we don't want to go into the person versus the function but i just want to make it clear to the community that the model that we have been operating in is one that we've been operating in for a long time and i don't think that we are putting our community at risk in any way i think that we also you know as councillor able mentioned have the opportunity to  work with other experts depending on what we're you know what we're dealing with so i am not comfortable moving this forward at this moment i if i am up here little bit on what councillor vincent said i i don't feel comfortable with moving forward with focusing on the model first and then finding out all the the information the details and a committee after the fact i think we should do it the other way fact i have some experience being on the performance evaluations committee on the denver regional council of governments that's something where we're regularly meeting and learning about the performance and following a sort of plan of how things are being implemented with our directors and and we're doing that on an ongoing basis in a committee setting and i think had we had something like that you know here in the city of lakewood it might have helped flesh out some of th answers and questions throughout the last few years when over the last year whenever this discussion started and i think that my might have been illuminating and and if we actually had a need for changing the structure or not i piggyback on councilor gut one what she said i haven't heard some sort of convincing reason that we need to change the entire model at this point in time however i'm abel as has been repeatedly said tonight we've heard about this model for the last year we've had plenty of time to think it over if we wait until new folks are seated we'll have to repeat the whole process four years from now we'll still be talking about the same dame team we have the information  the information is not going to change and i believe it's time to make a decision i'll be supporting mister skilling's ask was johnson think about the way this would would shape itself up i appreciate the idea that having in house creates more of a team i am concerned as councilman beetus said to have an outside contractor who's actually directing staff that's city staff there's many reasons to go forward with this and i appreciate you bringing it and i am supportive thank you so i'll just say a couple things here councillor skilling i appreciate i know that you've worked hard on this and certainly i think there's great merit to the three different pillars and the opportunity for  us to learn and there's a lot that you know we may interact five percent of the time with the city attorney whereas the flipside is four hundred and eighty and across the street interacts probably ninety five percent of the time and there's a lot more of those th ings that happen a lot of you know mundane things criminal things you name it i kind of see more of it because i think i'm named on every lawsuit that happens at the city so i certainly get to see more and i don't i would say one thing i would challenge is i don't want a teammate i want a city attorney that's going to protect and uphold the law and protect the city and that that's the most important part of this process for me so you know i think at this point you know we've gone back and forth for years it's kind of a political football some people when they see an election coming they use it to say we shouldn't make this decision now or some say we should and i can hearken back to  different elections where that's been used to argue each way and i don't think that should be the argument i should i think it should be what is best for the city what's the best for our residents and we also have a fiduciary responsibility and that's where i do have one concern we did talk and and mister skilling you talked about how we would still quarterback but if we're putting together an ad hoc committee i don't know what i don't know we may not still if we bring in an in house model right we may be looking at hiring one or two or three more attorneys depending upon what we hear and what we really know and so that is one concern that i have i know it's been out there for a year but it's just been information that's been given to us there's not been the next step of saying okay this is what this looks like this is the next step this is what the cost would be that are involved this would be a potential savings to the city and there could very well be a real savings and we know that's important at this time so i am not a hundred percent comfortable but i think that what you proposed is the next best alternative to to bring that forward if we need to do that and with those eighteen months and sharing one that we have some continuity that we can continue to deal with some of the legal issues all the legal issues we have and so be it if we do get to that point we have a great opportunity for kind of i don't think dual trainings of the word but where we have you know kind of a nice handoff from a very important role to somebody else who may be taking that role that's going to be really important so you know a couple months worth if possible so that that's where i'm at and  i know this is not easy for a lot of people so i appreciate everybody's thoughtfulness with this matter mister roybal thank you mayor you know a lot of thought went into this our city is growing we need to change change is hard councillor franks and councillor skilling thank you for bringing us forward thank you for thinking outside the box i just wanted to say counselor abita said it the best and i and i echo that and i'm going to be supporting this measure thank you  keep in mind then that this next council will be the ones that then take this forward because ad hoc committee would need to be formed and that all that would not be seated until well into december january based upon our calendar with one business meeting left mister libr do that i have a process question is this is this a resolution that's coming back to us to talk about changing the model or what does that look like graham yeah so under the charter if you want to create an ad hoc committee to make these decisions it does take a resolution so that would be something you'd have to do at a regular meeting and then you can move forward  that's pretty much the process miss vincent so then with the timing on that be after a new council is in place naturally with the whole thing so okay one more thing is there any modification that we can do that we can establish an ad hoc committee to look at some of these questions less than eighteen months but then to come back with with some facts and yes i'm looking at councillor skilling sorry cuz it was your okay and i'm looking at you okay okay good the i think at this point the two i'll answer both questions the council the beers point the we don't vote at the study session obviously this is just a consensus to move this forward i am bring it and this may seem the timing of it it's meant to not be political and i think you all probably know me by now that i'm trying to avoid political nests and that was part of you know a lot of the thought that went into this and the conversations the i think the process part is we as a council as the board have to vote to do anything with this i mean period so we can't vote tonight but what we can do is give consensus that this is what we're going to do that we are going to move forward with this model with then they would bring back a resolution to change the model part of that resolution would then have to be either a separate resolution to establish an ad hoc committee that will do the ideal candidate profile and so forth but one way or another the the board of the council has to has to take a vote that this will happen and what i'm trying to do now is make it so that it's not a political thing that the folks because we do have an election coming up so if this body that has been looking at this issue for over a year however long it's been if we can make  determination to move it forward and if not i don't want to have an even more political conversation or what have you when it comes back i don't i want to have consensus and if not everyone agrees well okay we oftentimes don't all agree but at least we're either moving it forward or not moving it forward but there will have to be a vote at some later time i think unless somebody can correct me that would necessarily be after the election that's correct there's nothing that can change that so that's where we are but this body has been looking at this issue and i do want to come full circle with it so mister skilling your light was on did you want to address anything else or did you have another comment or something secondary your speak lights on yeah i think i was speaking to i think mister lapierre had asked that question about process and i think i knew the answer so i okay great things miss frank's this is more of a process thing for me my understanding and please correct me if i'm wrong would be the consensus to either move forward or not and if the consensus is to move forward it would be a resolution to change the model but it would be an ordinance to create the commission but maybe that's only because the housing one was a permanent one and that required an ordinance so is it just a resolution if it's an ad hoc and i'd hoc committee requires just a resolution i just want to get myself clear so it's a resolution and a resolution okay thank you m because it hasn't been properly noticed it won't waste to do so that is an adequate time for it to be noticed we used to give notice on a three day basis i'm sorry the packet has already gone out for next week's meeting we used to do that on a three day basis send it out on friday for monday's meeting well this is something that was changed i want to say two years ago as a result of a recommendation an agreement we came to about procedure i think it's in councils policies and procedures i believe that it is so it was a decision that council made as a result of a conversation we had at the retreat and it i think it was i'm thinking i'm looking at councillor franks i think it was two years ago councillor frank's made i'm sorry yeah it's a ten day notice yeah i was just gonna think counselor skilling for his comments on can't remember all of his comments are amazing sorry i lost my a thank you mister mayor yeah i wasn't necessarily planning to speak but i having heard the discussion i wanted to clarify a few things just from the perspective of the the current city attorney  and and my initial comments will be from that perspective as a city attorney looking at the proposal looking at the concept and as objectively as possible thinking about how it would play out and just a couple of comments in that regard for the process as miss hudson outlined at the beginning here there have been several steps along the way leading up to this beginning apparently a year ago today today so there's this impression that there's been a long process my my sense is the person sitting in that office is that it has been a question of fits and starts it's been a proposal here a study session a few months later further a further action after that the report from the hr department which is probably fine but from  productivity standpoint from a efficiency standpoint it's it can be difficult to work under those circumstances where you think okay we've talked about that there's been no follow up there's been no presentation to us about concerns arising out of that step in the process so you just about get to the point of thinking okay we can focus on other things and then it would be scheduled again but be that as it may it has been a year  the material that miss hudson was looking at earlier i have not seen any information that would project a more efficient more economically  sustainable situation under that model it may be i just don't think that the information that we've seen so far confirms that or suggests that and there are going to be expenses on both on both sides that could tilt that scale but just looking at where we are at this point i haven't seen anything tangible that would say this is a better situation you want to add staff as has been suggested  that could happen now we'd love to have additional attorneys supporting the city because the workload has been increased in recent years but if if it's to remain the same structure the same staffing levels  i don't know whether that will save the city any money or not and some of the questions that are outlined in the materials that hr presented back in june ask those questions what's the business  motivation justification for the change what will change as a result of this revision to the model and those seemed to me i think as councilman lebih or suggested those seem like questions that should be answered before the decision is made to go in a particular direction that said it's entirely the council's prerogative no quarrel with the council's right to make this decision at any time  t well let me let me shift at this point from the from the position to the to the individual and just say that  there are some considerations that i would have anticipated would get a little bit more attention as far as i know there's never been an outreach to city staff to find out how the people we work with every day feel about the current model that seems to me to be important information we've got people in the city attorney's staff who were serving the city when they worked on a contract basis with the firm of course that scourge as many years ago those same  people were on the staff when all of those folks were brought in house because that firm collapsed and there are people who are still on the city staff now that we're in the current situation where their employees and the city attorney is not i think there are opportunities to consult with those folks consult with other departments and get some information i don't know if it would have changed the outcome or not but be that as it may i think there's there's some valuable information available there it's been twelve years in this role a little bit over twelve years which from a trivia standpoint is interesting when you consider that my predecessor roger noonan between the two of us we've represented lakewood for about forty of the fifty years  celebrating this year he gets most of them of course but at least i made double figures and and finally and i have a lot of other notes have taken down but in the interest of time and an efficiency i talked as i thought about the the possibility of this transition it it led me to think a little bit more about my career aspirations my long term medium term short term goals hoped still time for long term goals and in a sense i think we've kind of reached the same point almost at the same time you know when you're in a role like this there are days when you think this is what i'm go do for the rest of my career there are other days when you think i may not want to do this tomorrow or tonight even but you but you're when you're forced to say what's what's my plan when when do i think my time with lakewood might come to an end and i can't answer that but a year and a half maybe sounds about right this is a stressful position  a lot of work a lot of bosses to please or at least explain things to when we when we need to it's hard to get consensus when there are divisions among the council and therefore the advice we present sometimes is met favorably and what by one group and not so much by another and that can be stressful greg had a full head of hair when he started here yeah so i guess this indication that we're about at that point where through that eighteen month transition i can assist the city in that process and then focus on where my career goes next whether it's another community i  we're proud of the firm that we built we built it to serve our municipal clients that's all we do we now have a de tourny some of them were hired in large part to help with the backlog of work the liquid has produced but we have other ways to keep them busy but i will remain with my firm in some capacity and we'll figure it out and as so often happens these situations maybe it turns out to be a blessing in disguise so you mayor so as i understand if i'm counting right we have a majority consensus here to move that mister skilling's proposal forward and i understand that's where we're at sir and take it to the next step i was going to get into some of the pertaining to this conversation and mister henderson your first good evening good to see you all and thank you very much for the conversation that you've shared with us it's been a reflection of a year's worth of work a lot of thought a lot of debate i'm sure a lot of conversation i'd like to submit two thoughts with respect to the issues that you all have raised first of all with respect to the timing i served as a public official i served as a private attorney and a medium and a large firm large firm five hundred attorneys and i've also served as an in house counsel for a billion dollar company in that billion dollar company we moved from outside counsel to in house counsel nationwide involving ten class action pieces of litigation in less than thirty days in less than thirty days you can do this in less than thirty days you have a couple of key pieces of litigation you have outside counsel handling those litigation mister cox's firm is not handling that i've been to court i've seen the attorneys handling it and it's not mister cox with all due respect it's other counsel you can go in house in thirty days without a blip and the screen without any interruption in the representation of the city my second point i know you're trying to keep separate the evaluation the performance and the model i respectfully suggest to you as an attorney with over thirty five years of experience much of which has been managing other attorneys there is a difference it's the same difference between serving the public and making as much money for your firm as you can i've been in those firms medium and small and lord firm your performance as an attorney is measured by how much money you bring into the firm as a rainmaker bringing in other clients or in doing the work yourself it has an impact it has an impact on your ultimate loyalties i suggest to you that the collusion that we experienced here in the big sky evaluation between mister cox and the big sky attorney in basically riding this city's opinion which was in effect written by big sky wouldn't have happened if we had in brian do you wish to speak okay  good evening hello again i'm blown away that i've spent like last half hour listen you guys decide whether or not you need to have your own legal representation in the house it sounds like the most logical thing that i could ever imagine right outside liabilities billing hours  there's there's so much that goes on there but realistically if you're city attorney isn't helping to mitigate the things that are going on inside the city because he's an active like employee that pays attention knows what's going on and how are they being effective i mean you have an outside outside agency they're always looking at their pocketbook or that and the city council meetings in another community where i was a member and for three years they argued about whether to buy their own water or to let a foreign company run it and it's always gonna get more expensive the longer you wait to jump on something like this smaller okay is anybody gonna be surprised if i say i agree with you but i'm i'm afraid that eighteen months is completely out of the question if you can't get things switched over within thirty to sixty days you know you get you guys are like a board of directors you make decisions on personnel you make decisions on everything it's for you guys to decide and to activate it and get it done quickly you know you can kill a man with a thousand stabs but you he's still gonna die so make it quick all right the reason why i say this is that you don't want to ask the employees what they and i can go through this whole list of stuff that didn't get completed but the thing about it is is that we need somebody that concentrates that isn't diverted by other projects his law firm may be working on morrison or this or that or this i don't i don't care about that i care about lakewood and i care about the board of directors handling things for the people who are the stockholders weird stockholders it costs us money for him to be here for eighteen months and is unrealistic sixty days that's it as a stockholder i'm saying sixty days done thank you thank you all right i will close a public input and thank you for the for everybody we so i don't think there's anything else left here so i'll turn it over to council reports unless there's something that we need from this hot sun or methodist church and it starts at nine o'clock thank you but just to be clear because i think that the city manager was just counting just to be clear for the tape do we have consensus is that because i just want to be clear i yes there's consensus okay thank you oh i do have a report november's ward four meeting will not be occurring in november we are canceling this meeting as your councilors are out of town is johnson no report subito yes i do and as i indicated during our report on the courts i do have a report and some comments i want to make but i been doing them i felt that they involve some policy options and questions that our council needs to think about and consider for the future and that's why i felt it was best to bring it up here as opposed to there so let me start by saying that this is a very timely given our our chief judge's report today last week we heard from the county sheriff the district attorney and the county commission are all elected officials telling us if proposition eight did not pass we would be facing a closing of a large portion of our county jail early release of prisoners sentenced by our lakewood municipal judges judges and a loss of ability to accept future tonight to speak either in favor or against this proposition instead i'm quite concerned how these suggested actions would affect our city and the ability of our courts to deal with serious offenders especially domestic violence and offenders and repeat offenders where jail sentences are not only mandated by law but in some cases they're very appropriate for the safety and protection of our lakewood residents i've done some of my own research on these issues and i want to state to our citizens that as a member of this council i tend to resist any such attempt by jefferson county to take these actions i have great concern and objection to the to the fact that our offenders that are sentenced by our municipal judges to the county jail  bottom priority in terms of jail space and that was confirmed by the my judge tonight this is not acceptable in any way to me or and it should not be acceptable to our to our city council our lakewood taxpayers pay millions of dollars in sales taxes as well as mill levies and property taxes to the county of jefferson and for the purposes of funding this jail and i think it's very necessary for our municipal judges to be able to enforce elsens when eight determine is appropriate by law or under the circumstances without that they become virtually powers powerless to enforce our laws moreover i must seriously question the county's legal ability to take the actions they've  suggested as well as the propriety of these actions first let me say it is clear in the colorado law that one of the primary duties of a county is to provide and pay for a jail to house prisoner and inmates this is clearly set forth in colorado revised statutes seventeen twenty six one hundred and one and the title of that statute is jail in each county you can google it and read it for yourself it's very simple clear and straightforward secondly contrary to the statements we heard on monday no state judge has the authority or the jurisdiction to modify a sentence imposed by a lakewood municipal judge only in lakewood judge can modify a jail sentence loffley imposed by a lakewood judge on an infant on an offender like a domestic violence offender where the sheriff except for the awarding of good time under colorado law has no other has no other authority to release or eliminate a sentence imposed by a lakewood judge except under the circumstances we heard tonight one of the judges have agreed by agreement to give him that  authority but otherwise he does not have that authority next as a home rule city we have options we as you heard tonight we can instruct our police agents to write the summonses for all domestic violence charges in the county court instead of court thereby forcing the county and the state prosecutors to sentence and imprison these offenders through the state courts thereby putting them at the top of their priority list instead of at the bar as as  our sentences are we can also contract with other counties like bloomfield county to house our prisoners in their jail currently they are accepting prisoners from other counties like boulder county of course in that case we would expect a full refund to the city of lakewood all the millions of dollars in taxes that are liquid residents currently paid at jefferson county for the jail i would also point out that the county manager has quietly filed a budget that restores all funding and even increases to the sheriff's budget for through tip for two thousand and twenty even proposition a is defeated by the voters this comes on research that was recently done by the centennial institute and is a matter of public record finally if the good citizens of lakewood should determine that they are not getting their money's worth from jefferson county perhaps it's time to consider drastic proposals from the county that threaten our residents safety and well being based upon this information i'm calling on our elected county officials to disclaim in total and immediately these options that were that were proposed last week and to immediately release publicly a statement that these options are no longer being considered by the county enough said thank you  when we passed the hotel motel ordinance there was a clause in there that if something serious happened it would go to a hearing we wouldn't have to do all the other steps to that so we've had two murders since that hotel motel ordinance was passed so i did not know if those hearings had been scheduled yet and if so  when we don't thank you for that we don't have that information and as soon as that is available i'll make sure that all of city council is aware of when when those hearings will be scheduled okay perfect thank you all right thank you and again i want to a couple thanks mister skilling thank you for your thoughtful work in putting a lot of this together as well as your conversations with mister cox and mister cox again you're a true gentleman a class act and fortunately a lot of folks don't know exactly what what you do and the dual reality of not only having this side of the building but what goes on on the other side with the whole court system and everything that's involved so i want to thank you out so make sure that you get those turned in and there's five locations now where you can actually drop your ballots off which is really important and then just something i'll share you know one of the great joys of this job is meeting with our kids and our youth and we have always wonderful opportunities miss millar does a great job bringing them in and they do a mock city council meeting where they potentially are gonna ban halloween candy or not but today we had a group from lasley elementary and  a young man probably third grader was here with everybody else and he was dressed up in his little bowtie and was his day at city hall and he started asking me questions in front of all of his classmates and finally told me that he is about to lose his house and his family is about to be homeless so that little boy is a very brave young man to share that with all of his classmates and all of this city and hopefully i mentioned that his teacher should get in touch with us and maybe we can find them the resources but that's the reality of the life of many people that are living in our community and i don't ever want to forget that and i just want to say that little guy is a hero of mine today for having the honesty to talk about something that's so complicated and he did it with a smile so i wish him and his family blessings michelle