Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the special City Council session. Today is March 28, 2023. City Clerk, please take roll. Councilmember Blower is absent. Councilmember Padilla? Present. Councilmember Lenz? Present. Councilmember Wormsley? Present. Councilmember Wright? Present. Councilmember Villapudwa? Present. Mayor Lincoln? Present. We have a quorum. Thank you. Public comments? Are there any public comments this afternoon? We have none, Mayor. Okay. Item for discussion today, item 3.1, emergency management training for elected officials. Chief Edwards, you have the podium. Thank you, Mayor. Council members, good afternoon. Rick Edwards, fire chief. So as we start your emergency management training today, I wanted to give you a little bit of a background and history on emergency management here within the city and how we've evolved over the last couple of decades. So the emergency management function and emergency preparedness is a task that's been assigned to the fire department. It's one we've had for several decades. And prior to 2012, we had a staff member assigned to that role for emergency office emergency services and emergency management. They'd oversee that, our city's emergency plan. But after the fiscal crisis, that was an ancillary duty that was assigned to someone else. capacity and competing interest that was one of those lower priorities fast forward to 2020 and we had this the scary virus that that crept up in February the coronavirus and lo and behold that we needed to activate our Emergency Operations Center and at the time our Emergency Operations Center was essentially a bunch of totes with laptop computers and phones and notepads and checklists for positions And then we used a conference room in the police department. And when we went to activate, our conference room was being used as a temporary locker for the women's locker room as they were doing a construction project. So we had to relocate quickly because we needed that information technology. We needed phone service. We needed internet. So we relocated here within this building on the third floor where we stayed for the better part of five weeks. seven days a week, 10, 12 hours a day to help navigate our response, the city's response to the coronavirus pandemic. And then for upwards of almost 12 months beyond that, we were in a virtual capacity where we were continuing to meet almost daily to discuss updated information and how to continue to keep our community safe and support citywide functions and operations as we continue to navigate that. we now we move forward a little bit uh more and we go into 2021 and we we celebrated a ribbon cutting where we were able to procure a physical location for emergency operations center with all the state-of-the-art technology to support city-wide operations during a major disaster and then in 2022 this last year we we actually rolled out EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT TRAINING FOR MORE THAN 30 STAFF. WE PROVIDED OVER 40 HOURS OF THAT BASIC FOUNDATIONAL TRAINING OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT SO THAT WE CAN BETTER SUPPORT EMERGENCY FUNCTIONS WITHIN THE CITY. AND THEN WE FAST FORWARD TO 2023 AND IN JANUARY WE HAD OUR FIRST ACTIVATION OF OUR EMERGENCY OPERATION CENTER IN RESPONSE TO THE JANUARY WINTER STORM EVENT THAT BEGAN ACTUALLY ON NEW YEAR'S EVE. OUR EOC WAS ACTIVATED FOR THE BETTER PART OF TWO WEEKS. And some of those were 24 hour shifts in there to support ongoing operations, to support the different city departments in response to the flooding, the power outages and so forth that were impacting the city. This year we also surpassed a really big milestone in hiring an official emergency manager assigned to the fire department. So I'd like to introduce you to Tim Romero. He is our emergency manager now who will oversee the emergency operations center the technology there the updating of our city's emergency operation plans the various annexes and then he will also be developing and delivering regular training to our city staff to make sure that we're prepared to handle any disaster that may be coming our way in the future mr romero brings a background in local government And he's also a commissioned officer in our Army National Guard here. So he has a pretty extensive background in emergency management. Will we be hearing from Mr. Romero or Romo? Romero. Romero. And you won't today. Okay. But I wanted to introduce him here. He's still getting his feet wet and understanding our processes and how we operate here. So, Chief, it may be also helpful for you to – communicate the distinction between his role in the EOC and the director of emergency management for the city abs absolutely so there's no confusion absolutely so as the director of emergency management that that rests with the city manager and we work under that umbrella as part of the overall organizational structure so Mr. Romero reports to me as the fire chief and the coordinator of the Emergency Operations Center, and he's really the backbone to emergency management for the city. So providing that instruction, making sure our plans are updated, and then making sure that our staff within the Emergency Operations Center maintain their training and readiness at all times and that preparedness to respond. Basically what you're saying is we're building out the organizational structure to effectively manage, uh, operation, you know, emergencies and operations on many different levels. Yeah, absolutely. And, and that's, that's really what's been lost over the last decade is, um, employee turnover and so forth is having depth of bench of people that can that are trained and readily able to move into that emergency operations center to function within that emergency organization so before you continue chief um how would you like would you like to just get through the presentation first before we ask questions um or are you fine with council members kind of maybe chiming in throughout the presentation. I think I'll introduce Mr. Green here in a second, and he'll give the presentation, and then we'll open it up to questions at the end if that works. Perfect. All right. So with that, I'd like to go ahead and introduce Mr. Jacob Green for your presentation. Thank you, Chief. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, Mr. City Manager. Very nice to be here in Stockton. Thank you so much for having me this afternoon. Um, really always appreciate working with your fire department, your team, uh, absolutely, uh, privileged to work with your staff and, uh, welcome to Mr. Romero. We're excited to work with you as well. Uh, my name is Jacob Green, uh, from Jacob Green and Associates. There's about 25 of us on the team and we all come from the public sector. I spent 18 years in the public sector, the majority of my career in emergency management and different public safety roles, police and fire department, and then economic development agency, and then city manager's office my last six years, uh, in local government before I over to the private side because I decided I really love doing this stuff and wanted to work with communities throughout the state. So appreciate the opportunity to be here and provide you training today for elected officials in emergency management. So that the mayor and the council, a lot of this may be review for many of you. You've certainly been through a lot in the community and managed a lot of challenging situations and disasters here successfully. But we'll be providing some additional information. Hopefully today that will be able to serve to help you as you move forward here in the community. So the purpose really is to understand the emergency management system that we work under here in the state of California and also in the United States, and to clarify the city council's role in an emergency. The more role clarity we have about the staff and the council, the better we can work together successfully to manage whatever happens in our community. I'll be breaking down today's presentation in three segments to make sure we reach those objectives. The first, we'll talk about the emergency management structure. Then we'll move into the emergency operations center or the place where we manage disasters and incidents in the city. And then finally, we'll end with the policy group, which is the role of the elected officials, the mayor and the city council here in the city. So part one, the emergency management structure. There we go. All right, so the emergency management structure that we operate under today really started back in 1970. In 1970, in Southern California, there was a series of significant wildfires that hit Southern California. And literally, you had in that situation fires burning all over the place and engines going north and engines going south and command posts being set up all over the place and resources being ordered and double-ordered and triple-ordered. and no coordination in the field environment. And so as a result of these wildfires, 16 lives were lost and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage and impact and millions of dollars in impact, structures lost. And so after the 1970 firestorm, many of the main organizations and entities in California came together to debrief what happened in Southern California. And what they realized after debriefing and reflecting on those firestorms in 1970 was that there was no system for command and control and coordination during a large incident. And that because there was no system for command and control, lives were lost, structures were lost, et cetera. And so those entities came together in 1971, 1972 under a program called Firescope and formed ultimately the Incident Command System by about 1973, 74. And that system created a way in which the field could coordinate their response to an incident or multiple incidents without having duplication of resources, without literally crossing paths on the freeway system, and being able to make sure that they communicated effectively with each other no matter the type of disaster. So that rolls out here in the early 1970s by about 1974, the incident command system. Then we have the Oakland Hills fires in 1991. The same problems surfaced in 1991 in the Oakland Hills fires except for now we involve the problem of various communities and various government agencies having difficulties coordinating the incident response with each other. And so this resulted in duplication of efforts. This resulted in resource management control issues and challenges. And so once again after a major disaster the big entities get together They do a reflection, they do a debrief, and they decide that some legislation needs to be introduced to create a system by which all entities, all public entities in California need to commit to operate. And so legislation is introduced under SB 1841, which placed into the government code the Standardized Emergency Management System, or SEMS. And that system was a requirement for all state agencies. And at the local level, while the state couldn't say, you will use this, they said, you will use this if you want dollars, if you want cash. And so they tied our local agencies into this system. in order to receive reimbursement after disaster, specifically in the area of overtime for personnel costs and reimbursement for certain infrastructure impacts. And so SB 1841 requires that if we want that money and we want recovery, we will use the standardized emergency management system. And so agencies throughout California adopted the standardized emergency management system by 1994. Then you have the third and final event that essentially places us where we are today in emergency management in California, which is September 11th, 2001. Same situation now occurred except for not only was there a problem in the local areas, now you have national agencies responding, creating separate command posts, command and control issues, resource control issues, all because of this very large scale incident and there was no national system at the time that all the responding agencies had to use. So they introduced Homeland Security Presidential Directive Number 5, which indicated that you had to implement the National Incident Management System, or NIMS, in order to receive all those federal funds pre- and post-disaster. And the good news for us in California was that when the federal government after September 11th was looking for a national system to implement, they look to California. And essentially the NIMS system is just like the SEM system and it's just like ICS adopts and incorporates those elements. So we in California were quite familiar when NIMS rolled out and Homeland Security Presidential Directive number five gave us access to a lot of pre and post disaster funding opportunities as long as we implement and stay within the system of emergency management. And we'll talk about what that actually looked like here. These systems, the ICS system, the SEMS system, the NIMS system, these are tried and proven systems. ICS in use for over 50 years. And so the good news here in Stockton, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, nor should you. Because actually if you try to reinvent the wheel here in Stockton, you'll impact lives and property. Which I know because I spent a majority of my career working with elected officials, you are in this business to help your constituents, to help your community, to help businesses. You want only the best for your community and so operating within the system is not only part of the government code, it's not only a requirement to get money, it's a way to make sure we can save lives and properties during a disaster. Now the city of Stockton went a step further and in your municipal code has outstanding guidance for the oversight and operation of a disaster. Title II, administration and personnel, Chapter 2.82, the emergency organization and functions. You don't have to, again, guess what you're supposed to do at 2 o'clock in the morning. It is all laid out very clearly as mentioned here in Chapter 2.82 in your municipal code. All the different roles and responsibilities and all the elements, including the fact that violation of these systems violation of this municipal code and the structure in which we're supposed to operate is subject to a misdemeanor. So there are certain consequences for not following these systems of emergency management here in Stockton. And that is best practice to incorporate that kind of language into your municipal code. So you're already ahead of the game. I want to drill down a little bit into chapter 2.82.050 through 80, which is in that same Title II under your emergency organization and functions. but it's specific to the director of emergency management or director of emergency services as Mr. Black and Chief Edwards mentioned earlier because one of the number one questions that I get from council in doing this on a very regular basis with councils is, okay, so who's in charge under these systems and how does this work and, you know, where do we all fall in? So this section gives very specific orders and direction to your director of emergency management or director of emergency services, which is named as your city manager. And here's the different elements that I'll cover with the mayor and city council. The first is that the director of emergency services, the city manager, can request or proclaim a local emergency. So when the city manager feels like conditions are starting to exceed the local jurisdiction's ability to manage that incident, the city manager on his own, in this case his own, can go ahead and proclaim a local emergency. The code also indicates that the council can ratify that proclamation in seven days. So the council would be gathering under a public meeting to go ahead and ratify that local emergency. The director of emergency services, the city manager, can also request a state of emergency from the governor, sort of to escalate the seriousness of the disaster and make sure that in a situation where the region might be impacted, the jurisdiction might be significantly impacted, the state is also aware and the state can release some of those additional support mechanisms to help the community here in Stockton. The municipal code also gives very specific language about the city manager or the director of emergency services responsibility to direct the actual incident and to oversee the incident. It says, quote, control and direct the efforts of the emergency management, emergency organization of the city for the accomplishment of the purposes set forth herein. The city manager is also authorized to implement various rules and regulations as they pertain to the disaster. obtain resources that otherwise may not be able to be obtained. That's one of the great advantages of proclaiming a local emergency is you can more rapidly order your resources and implement your emergency ordering procedures in your city. And finally, I just want to reiterate this punishment for violation that's outlined again in the municipal code which says that ANY INTERFERENCE BY STAFF OR COMMUNITY MEMBERS, ET CETERA, INTO THIS STRUCTURE AND SYSTEM GOES BACK TO THAT VIOLATION SECTION. SO YOUR MUNICIPAL CODE TAKES THIS QUITE SERIOUSLY, ENSURING THAT YOU FOLLOW THE BEST PRACTICE OF ICS, CEMS AND NIMS IN THE UNITED STATES. SO I KNOW THAT WAS QUICK, BUT FOR MOST OF MAYOR AND COUNCIL, I KNOW THAT WAS AN OVERVIEW FOR YOU. AGAIN, YOU'RE A VERY EXPERIENCED CITY IN SUCCESSFULLY NAVIGATING THESE THINGS. So I'll move on to part two, which is the Emergency Operations Center. Now, the Emergency Operations Center, it sounds like a place, and that's true. It's the place at which the emergency is managed at a higher level, something that requires more of a city support level. However, it doesn't have to be in a specific room or a specific building. I've worked in 10, $15 million EOCs. And the best EOC that I ever worked in was a parking lot. It was a three-day firestorm. We had tables and chairs set up. We had some vehicles set up. And it was a phenomenal EOC operation. Why? Because a great emergency management operation is about what you're doing today. It's about the people and the staff and the training. I mean, the equipment's important. I'm not discounting the importance of what Stockton's invested in. But it's really about making sure your people are ready. And that's why that parking lot on those three days with such a wonderful EOC operation. So, you know, what happens in an emergency operations center? It's this place where city staff members throughout lots of different departments come to support the field operations of what's ever happening in the field. So what's going on in this place? Either a parking lot or a room or a facility where those four main responsibilities of the emergency operations center. It's a place where prioritization takes place. So literally when your staff are responding to the Emergency Operations Center, they're giving reports about what they saw on the way in and what they're hearing on their radios and what's taking place. And your director of emergency services working with your director of emergency services, your city manager, staff are starting to prioritize what needs to take place in conjunction with your fire chief, police chief, whatever the disaster might be. They're then coordinating the overall response. and coordinating those resources that might be coming in and coordinating the response to certain areas. They're ordering resources at various levels of government and doing resource management. And they're also responsible for alerting and warning. So notification of the public and making sure that evacuations are taking place successfully and conducting that function from the Emergency Operations Center. And I'll just call your attention to the slide. This emergency management structure that you see has five sections. There's a management section at the top in the Emergency Operations Center. There's an operations section, which are the people that are doing the stuff. There's a logistics section, which is the folks in your city that are buying the stuff. There's a finance section that are paying for your stuff. And a planning and intelligence section that are planning and forecasting in the overall operation. You could walk into any Emergency Operations Center pretty much in the country, and you will see the same setup. And the reason for that is your fire chief has worked all over the state, probably all over the United States, and we've created this system now by which your fire chief can walk into any emergency operations center, understand the role, understand the responsibility, and feel right at home. Fair? And so that's the same for any staff. If you have a librarian that may be assigned to shelter support, they can walk into any EOC and assume that responsibility. You'll see that red circle up there. That red circle is circling the policy group. The policy group is comprised of the elected officials in your organization, the mayor and the council, usually supported by the city attorney, can be supported by the city clerk. And they are providing policy support to the director of emergency services, to your city manager upon request. And in section three of this training, we're going to talk a little bit more about what that looks like and what the specifics are behind the policy group. But this should give you kind of a big picture of what every single emergency operation center structure looks like. That policy group is always just basically there in that same place. Now, the nice part about what was created in the early 1970s under the incident command system is they said, you know what? We should use this on every incident, on every disaster, but we don't have to have everybody and your mother showing up on every single traffic collision, right? You don't need 80 responders in a traffic collision. So the system can expand and contract depending on the needs of that particular incident. And so when SEMS was adopted and NIMS was adopted, they said the same thing. Let's make sure that we don't... Activating the EOC, you know, doesn't mean necessarily that you have everybody responding in. Maybe you're acting your EOC at what's called a level three or a monitoring. And let me give you an example of this. Maybe the city of Oakland had some sort of a terrorist activity take place. And you want to make sure that you in the city of Stockton are following what's taking place, are aware of the situation, So you may call for a level three EOC activation under your city manager or your fire chief or any of your leadership. And that just means a few people might gather into the Emergency Operations Center and start monitoring and following what took place. Now let's say we have an incident that more impacts the city of Stockton and it's growing a little bit, maybe a regional flood kind of situation. We may have a level two. Lots of department and personnel respond in. But not every single staff member is dedicated to this disaster, but you have a larger response. And then level one, maybe you have an earthquake, a long duration event, some of the things that the chief described earlier. That's where you have a fully staffed, sometimes 24-7 operation. But the whole thing can expand and contract based on the needs of your local community. It's one of the beauties of what was created in the early 1970s under ICS. Okay, so continuing at Mach 6, I hope the speed's okay for the mayor and the council. I want to be very respectful of your time. I'm doing just fine. Okay, thank you, Mr. Mayor. We'll head into part three. My favorite part here, which is the role of the policy group, the role of the mayor and the council in supporting the disaster operation here in Stockton, which by the way looks very similar to every single other organization. So the role of policy group, number one, is to assemble separate from the Emergency Operations Center if required. It would really take a very large incident for the city manager to request the assembly of the policy group because you're not declaring local emergencies on a regular basis. You're not creating curfews on a regular basis. But if the policy group were to be assembled, you want to assemble separate from the Emergency Operations Center. And I'll just add a few notes about why that's important. I'm going to mention it a few more times today. But I can speak from 18 years of working in EOCs as a staff member. If a council member or a mayor shows up into an EOC, it just changes everything, right? Oh, my gosh, what's going on? Council member is here. Oh, my gosh. And now you have staff that are taking their attention away from your constituents and your people and your businesses and your visitors, and now they're starting to – How can we take care of the mayor? How can we take care of the council member? And attention is being diverted. And it's not what you want. You want to make sure your staff are totally dedicated because your community and your constituents rely on that dedication. So you'll assemble as a policy group separate from your EOC room where all of the staff are managing the actual disaster. If you're required. It's required. Again, it's very rare. But if the actual incident requires assembly of the policy group, the city manager would then recommend to the council where that assembly would take place. A lot of times it's in a council chambers or in a closed session chambers, depending on the situation. The key item for the policy group once assembled is to make major policy strategic or resource recommendations upon the request from the city manager slash director of emergency services. So for example, in COVID, you had to do a lot of this. You know, when are we going to shut down facilities? Are we going to shut down facilities? Are we going to restrict access? These are major policy-level decisions that require the engagement of the policy group of the mayor and the council. A curfew is another example of something that, for safety reasons, may need to be implemented immediately, but is likely going to be discussed by the city manager with the policy group as part of policy group assembly later on. Number three is to proclaim or ratify a local emergency or disaster policies. So if the council is not in session, the city manager as the director of emergency services has the ability to proclaim a local emergency and set certain disaster purchasing policies, et cetera, on their own. Again, within seven days, disaster permitting, the city council, the mayor and the city council should ratify that proclamation. However, as has been done in a lot of communities, sometimes with things like COVID, the council meets at an emergency meeting or a regular council meeting and may do that proclamation as the first step. It really depends on the nature of the incident. In COVID, sometimes it was the director of emergency services, sometimes the council met right away to proclaim. It really depends on the nature of the incident. The policy group also can make a really positive impact by liaisoning with elected officials at all levels of government. You have a unique and special relationship with Sacramento, with DC, you have relationships that become very important in a disaster. And those relationships are often leveraged at the request of the Director of Emergency Services and can be very helpful and beneficial. What we want to make sure of is that those relationships and those communications are being coordinated with the EOC and the Director of Emergency Services. And here's the reason why. You often have legislative staff that are working with city staff on various issues, and you want to make sure that whatever conversations you're having with the congressional representative or whoever in Sacramento or DC are aligned with those requests. So by coordinating with your city manager, you're making sure that whatever you're requesting or communicating is the same thing that the staffers are also doing. Otherwise, I've seen this many times before, you have a whole staff team that is now diverted just to undo and support and help clarify the messaging. And so always kind of going back to coordinating through all the work that is being done, really make sure that those signals are being coordinated as best practice. But at the end of the day, you have those really critical relationships, the mayor and the council, that will help ultimately this community through and after a disaster. Five is to support staff well-being. I can share stories and point out every time right now that I remember very specifically where a mayor or council member, after three or four days of operating around the clock and not sleeping, recharged everyone's tank with a simple thank you and a handshake. And what that means is talking to your city manager, now we're talking big incidents, talking to your city manager about, you know, it's day two, If you have an interest in the scene or have an interest in the operation of the EOC, would this be a good time to come in and thank staff for the work that they're doing? I'm an outside consultant, so I can say this kind of stuff. Your staff will never say this to you, so this is one of the advantages that I have. But the city manager will let you know, in coordination with the fire chief who's running the EOC, what the appropriate and best time is. And then if you get a tour of the incident or get a tour of the EOC by the city manager, Usually it's done one-on-one so that it doesn't overwhelm staff. But saying thank you and extending that hand, huge impact. I mean, it sounds very cheesy, but it is a big deal when a council member, you know, says, thanks for the work that you're doing. We appreciate it. We recognize what you're doing for our constituents, for our people. So that's a way that you can really, really be helpful. I can tell you story after story. I can remember those. I don't remember a lot from the disasters, but I remember those council members that came out and genuinely thanked. staff that were either out in the field or in the EOC on those tours with the city manager. And six is communicating with the public only in conjunction with the EOC and the request of the director of emergency services. So all of the entities, all those boxes, all those branches, all the staff, they all work at the request and in coordination with the EOC. And so like I mentioned, alerting and warning. It's one of the things that's taking place in your EOC. What we don't want to have happen is the messages that are being communicated by the council to your constituents and people ends up conflicting with the information that's being collected and disseminated. And so really making sure that all of our information, just like everything else in our EOC, is being streamlined and run through the direction of your director of emergency services. What we don't want to have happen, and what I, as someone who has had the good fortune of serving your community for many years now and cares a lot about this community, we want to try to think about how do we prevent those things from coming up in the after action reports. Because every large disaster, you're required by the state of California to submit an after action report 90 days after the close of the incident. And so that means every action and every resource and all these public information things, all these things that we talked about, reviewed and we don't want it to be identified that well the message was going out here but not here one of the greatest things that you can help with in public messaging as an elected official is you have a lot of followers right probably a lot of you are on social media your people look to you for messages reposting what the city puts out reposting the official information and messaging from the city's social media is great And reposting it with a message, something to the effect of, you know, please see below for the latest information, the greatest information coming directly from the city. Elected officials that can repost can really help with the widespread dissemination. You likely have a lot of followers and a lot of folks that believe what you put out. And so reposting the information from the city makes sure that your folks are receiving the most accurate and up-to-date information from the city. and even throwing some support messages in because they're gonna be looking to you to see if you trust what the city is doing. So I always encourage elected officials during a disaster, make sure you're saying, hey, staff is working hard, this is good information, we're working on that neighborhood issue, see the information below from the city. It's a good way to show alignment between the elected and the staff in the organization. Sometimes you will be asked, and I know, Mr. Mayor, you're very experienced in this and other council members, to speak at press conferences and to address the public. Because again, at the end of the day, while your staff are your experts in implementation and we bring expertise, you bring a unique knowledge of the public, trust from the public, and partnership with the public. And so there are many incidents that will require or will do better with the mayor or an elected official or multiple speaking at a press conference. And so when we're communicating to the public, best practice is that you always have staff members that are helping with the setup of your press conference. I think in watching former Stockton press conferences, I've seen the really strong collaboration and coordination that took place, at least from a viewer from the outside. That was my impression from the outside. But there's some very specific things that we want to make sure that a city conveys during a disaster situation. And there are things that I recommend that you work with your city manager on when forming your message at a press conference. So what do we say? Number one, we want to let the public know that all available resources have been committed. I've actually heard you say this before at your press conferences in the last year, that all of our resources are committed to this incident, to this investigation. Now, you can only say that if it's true, right? We want to make sure that it's true. but it's certainly true in the situations that you've been through and in most disaster situations. So one is reassuring the public. We have dedicated all available resources to serve this community in this disaster. Two, what happened and what we know. Oftentimes this element will be provided by a member of the staff, by a fire chief, by the city manager, by the police chief, depending on the nature of the incident. Number three, what we are doing about it. Again, this is often provided by your staff member, someone that is actually taking those actions. And number four, what we need them to do. This resonates really well from the mayor and the council. The examples of this are if you don't tell your constituents what to do during a disaster, they will drop tons and tons and tons of clothing at your local parks. And now you will have a whole team of staff members diverted to figure out what to do with the 300 tons of clothing that just showed up at your local park. So your public wants to help. They trust you. When you let them know what they can do, they tend to follow. They tend to follow. So that's an area where you can be very effective as an elected official, helping them understand where you need their efforts to be focused. And the final note on here is, Public messaging has got to be truthful, it's got to be clear, it's got to be concise and in sound bites. I feel a little bit odd giving this conversation to this council because you're very experienced in this area so I'll zoom through that. The other opportunity that we have in a disaster as part of a policy group is to think way out of the box and provide your diverse backgrounds and diverse thinking in that policy group environment if it might be needed. So I was sent to Christchurch, New Zealand back when I was in the city manager's office with the International City Manager's Association to study the Christchurch earthquake, which in a city population over 300,000 completely and totally leveled that city. I mean leveled that city. Two earthquakes, they thought the first earthquake was the big one, it wasn't. The second earthquake several months later was the big one that took down the city. And so I was sent out there from ICMA to study the earthquake and specifically leadership's response to that earthquake to see if we could learn any lessons coming back. And that's a whole other, you know, where I can nerd out on all that other kind of stuff. But I think this one is particularly relevant. What you see here is one of many, many buildings in Christchurch. And they were having a discussion in the Emergency Operations Center. with the policy group about the problem of the building facades continuing to fall from the aftershocks in the weeks that followed the earthquake and blocking the roadways and literally harming people and killing people and injuring people as a result of the facades on the building falling over. And it was the policy group, it was a member of the policy group, the electeds, that came up with the idea of they had access to cargo containers. And what about if we could stack up cargo containers against the facades of the buildings in the city of Christchurch, no matter what aftershock came, we could maintain the open roadways and we could protect lives at the same time. And that was not only a brilliant idea, that was an idea that saved who knows how many lives. Because those cargo containers became stacked up all over the city and maintained the facades of hundreds of buildings throughout Christchurch. And then when the organization worked collectively to move to the recovery phase of the earthquake, they were inspired by those cargo containers and they created the world's first cargo container mall. Working together, the electeds and the staff, they figured out how do you get commerce going right away? How do you get small business going away? How do you get that barber right back into that barber shop right away? You do it in a cargo container. You do it quickly. You do it effectively. And not only do you move those small businesses in into this cargo container, but you also become a tourist attraction for travelers throughout the world who desperately want to come and shop and see the world's first and only cargo container mall. Which, for those of you that have been to North Las Vegas, that's where the model came and was taken from. It was taken from Christchurch, New Zealand. So working together, the elected officials with your understanding of the community, your knowledge, your resources, working under the request of the director of emergency services, the city manager, and all the staff and all the functions that are reporting up in the organization, you can really effectively work together to take your community through a disaster. And so before the next crisis, a couple recommendations for you. Number one is FEMA has a free online class called IS908, that stands for Independent Study 908. That's emergency management for senior officials, including elected officials. And it's an online training course, just a couple hours, take at your own pace whenever you want, whenever you can't sleep at night or something like that. And you can understand the emergency management mission, review your authorities, learn about the city manager and the director of emergency services, and talks about how you as an elected official can promote an environment of community readiness and resilience. And then also from my team and our emergency management division, our team, in working with elected officials, while your family members or partners or roommates, et cetera, may understand that you're gone a lot and that you're working a lot and serving a lot, they may not understand that when an earthquake happens or a large disaster happens, they may be alone because you may be in service. And so having a conversation with your family about what that may look like So you can focus on your press conference, or you can focus on your policy group discussions, as opposed to worrying about what your family is doing. Prepare your personal preparedness needs. I won't ask you to raise your hands, but, you know, thinking about the fact that, you know, do I have in my trunk enough clothing and supplies so I can come here and do the business of the city during a disaster? I'll just share with you my personal story, which is, being an emergency manager for many years and being prepared, I thought my trunk was great. Well, I had put all my giveaway clothes in my trunk. So when it was time for my press conference, I ran to my trunk and I grabbed all those clothes that were too small and not the clothes you want to wear when you're appearing before a camera. That was a really good lesson learned about what needs to be in the trunk versus what I thought should be in the trunk. So making sure your personal preparedness needs are handled and then continue to do what this council in Stockton is uniquely doing which the chief talked about which is investing in your emergency management program you are literally staffing the emergency management function you're bringing that back to the city and under chief edwards and the team that we've had the good fortune of working with your team has been doing a whole lot of work as you know in the post uh covet era here ish and always scared to say that to really level up your emergency management program and system. So to have a council that understands the time to invest is not after a disaster, but it's before, and you're setting that model already. So some final takeaways. Number one, we are required to use our tried and proven systems during an emergency. Only respond to a scene or the EOC at the request or in coordination with the director of emergency services, the city manager. We don't want to cause any additional harm to a scene. We are only there as elected officials to help. Three, ensure that public messaging is coordinated with the city manager and designated staff. Remember that reposting of social media for the city can be very, very helpful and is a need that we as staff can't reach. You have a much wider reach to be able to repost what's coming from the city. Four is to prepare before the next crisis. And five, embrace the positive impact that you can have working collaboratively with staff during a crisis. I've seen it. I've been there. I know that the mayor and the council can have a very, very positive impact on the outcomes of disaster, and that's something that in your service you have the opportunity to positively affect. So that concludes my presentation, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. I'm available for any questions you may have. And I think we do have some questions for you. Council Member Wormsley. Thank you so much, Mayor. I think that the two takeaways that I got was making sure that we as leaders prepare for our own self. I found myself during the flooding or the, you know, the rain, filling sandbags, putting all these messages out, and then went home going, oh. I forgot to grab some, so thank you for that and definitely embracing the positive impact that our first responders and city staff has proven to this community is big and I just want to elevate that and reiterate that again. So a couple questions that I have, it appears as we're talking about this organizational structure and the improvements, It seems like we're still flying the airplane and kind of building it out as we are moving forward. One key thing that you brought up is the debrief. And I'm kind of wrestling with myself to really discern, is that happening in real time? And I'll just kind of use the current natural disaster that we're in. and how to kind of improve the communication with constituents and community. I feel like we turn it on great, but we're not at a place where we kind of turn it off and give community kind of a sense of security, especially right now with the rain that's coming out. Again, people are concerned about snow melts, and I don't... I think that we can kind of improve on how we're debriefing the community and giving them like what steps to embrace in real time. And even with the pandemic and the endemic I think that debriefing the community about what that meant could have just you know just looking outside the box in ways of improving. I didn't really see that happening. So I don't know if we're kind of missing the bar on that. And what does a proper debrief mean to the community? Rather, it was COVID, endemic, and now that we're moving into natural disasters. If I may, Chief Edwards, can you please come and talk about what you've been doing in that regard? Yeah, thank you. So you're absolutely right. We ramp up really quick to get that emergency messaging out so people can prepare for themselves, take care of themselves, provide for the safety of their families and their possessions and so forth. And then as that incident de-escalates, we also ramp back that messaging too as to not keep that in the forefront of everyone's mind. So I hear what you're saying about that. Right now, especially with the storms and the snow melt, We're waiting to put out any information because we wait on the experts to provide that information. So basic messaging such as staying clear of the waterways, that's a message that we share out regularly with our unsheltered population, especially around our sloughs and the rivers. We really don't have the forecast as to what the overall impacts are going to be of the snow melt in our local waterways. So that's something we're watching very closely. We're in constant communication with our county and our statewide partners that provide that information. And when there's relevant information that is pertinent to community safety, we absolutely put that out. But by all means, we continually monitor those communication streams. So we've had daily meetings with our county partners and the county OES for probably going on better part of three weeks now. So I'm sure as everyone's heard in the lower part of the county here, the southern part of the county near the county line, they've had evacuations, they've had some concerns with the levees and so forth. We're not experiencing that, those impacts here within the city or within our geographic area. So that's something we'll work on in the future to provide some more of that information as it becomes available. Chief, if I may, Councilwoman, the other part of that we need you to talk about, Chief, is what are we doing in terms of the after action reporting component of this? Absolutely. So we are actually out to RFP right now for an after action report. So we'll bring in a consultant to actually look at our response to the COVID pandemic and the January winter storms event. So a third party will come in under contract and provide their recommendations and do an examination of where we were successful, where we have room for improvement. actionable items that we can then bring back and to make ourselves better. So no different than any other emergency we respond to afterwards, we always kind of sit back and do a tailgate session and look at, you know, where were we successful? Where could we do better? Because that next alarm could hit at any time and be ready to go back and respond and make those improvements. Obviously an event such as an EOC activation with a major winter storm event that went on for three weeks, COVID that went on for 18 months that we're still dealing with after effects of a lot more opportunities for highlighting our successes and opportunities for improvement. And I appreciate that. I think that one of the things that hopefully I feel like consistently talked about which is like the trust in the community and the fact that unfortunately we live in a society where social media is the news and so when there's an evacuation even though the areas is not directly in Stockton it impacts Stockton because they're like hey they're evacuating Manteca what about Stockton especially in those areas or corridors that are centered around levees so just something to to elevate on that. My next question is, I'm just trying to discern if events like a spike in homicide or crimes are those circumstances that follow into the previews of whether or not an EOC would be activated. Not typically. So an EOC is activated when we have a strain on multiple city departments, multiple city resources, or we need assistance from outside agencies to provide that assistance to mitigate the emergency. So the examples you provided, that would be handled through the police department or their mutual aid partners for that and their partnerships. More so like the pandemic where it impacted every department citywide or a storm event or earthquake where we're going to impact municipal utilities, the electric companies, the public works, the fire department, the police department. So we're going to need additional resources brought in from outside of the city. That's when we would activate an EOC. So really the EOC activation is helping to coordinate that response effort. helping to procure those additional resources and logistics that we may need to mitigate the emergency. Because as soon as we open up the doors to declaring an emergency or working with our county partners, that's through the County Office of Emergency Services, who then has the direct phone line to the state to help open up the door for all of those additional resources, whether they be a fire apparatus, ambulances, construction equipment. I mean, the list goes on and on, but that's really why that EOC is activated. If I may add to that as well, another way to look at this is in terms of the emergency management function, EOC activation, it's generally going to fall within three categories. One is COVID, public health, something of a major magnitude like COVID, some massive infrastructure failure, bridge collapse, something else related to infrastructure, or a natural disaster, which is, in essence, the winter storms that we just went through. Is that correct? Absolutely. Yeah, I was thinking of the skies of public safety, so that's why I wanted to bring that up. And then my last question relates to slide 16. the role of the policy group and specifically the liaison with elected officials at all levels of government. Just going down memory lane, when the governor pronounced areas of California that fell under the skies of natural disasters, San Joaquin County was left off of that list. This council is very active and involved Many of us have been to D.C. Many of us have established rapports and relationships on all level of federal government. And so I don't know about anyone else, but I got multiple calls from federal partners that were concerned that San Joaquin County was not, you know, initially included in the national the natural disaster proclamation declared by the president which could have really impacted the city of Stockton because we are the biggest city within the county and so just kind of going down memory lane about again opening up those lines of communication as you know I don't think many of us were made aware of when we were included and then also how we could leverage our own personal relationships with other elected officials to kind of move the needle rather it was on the state level through the governor's office and or those federal relationships so kind of wanting to kind of put that out there I know that you're aware that that happened but it was really a little devastating and know that we didn't initially make the list. I appreciate that comment. It actually lends itself to the importance of the communication between the city of Stockton, local government, and the county office of emergency services, and the state of California. So under the county, they are the one that has to proclaim that emergency that goes back to the state and is added to the state declaration. for the presidential declaration. So we won't get a presidential declaration for an emergency necessarily. It would take a major incident that significantly only impacted the city of Stockton under That example. But under this one, it was a procedural issue that paperwork wasn't filed in time. So they were able to rectify that pretty quickly. And a lot of that has to do with damage assessments. So if we can't get damage assessments done in a timely manner, then those declarations are delayed and the funding is sometime put on pause. They've actually changed some of those procedures for this current storm and the March storm. as there's also been a statewide disaster declaration for that, or San Joaquin County has been added to that declaration. And they're working through that right now, and the state and the federal government are actually a little bit more lenient on the damage assessments because they just can't get in. They can't see what the damage is to the levees in the south part of the county right now until that water actually recedes or they have some type of an impact to that levy that would, you know, they can give estimates, but they can't see the totality of the damage and provide an accurate assessment. So that's kind of why that storm in January was delayed in adding San Joaquin County to the list. And then at this time, do you know whether or not the school systems are involved in OES conversations? And I only bring that up because, again, we're learning. I know that we're building that plane out, we're flying it, and we're learning, just wanting to kind of also elevate the oversight of when the parks were closed and then the school district still had bus stops at the park. And so, again, like bringing in more conversations on how to be more informed collectively as a system. Yeah, absolutely. No different than any other type of government organization. They also have emergency operations centers that are stood up during these different disasters. And then they'll have a liaison. So if they have something that impacts the city or vice versa, there is a mechanism to communicate with them. They are regularly in attendance at the county because of the county office of education. And that's kind of the overarching umbrella for education. And so they are regularly a part of those update phone calls and those meetings. Okay. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Council Member Wright. Wormsley covered a lot of what my questions were, but I'll just speak to that multi-jurisdictional thing that she was talking about at the end there. As an administrator in Stockton Unified, I was everything from EOS director all the way down to, you know, various levels within the EOS strata. But one of the things we always trained on was when multi-jurisdictions were involved and what our role was in those. And we had MOUs, like with SPD and fire, you know, so we knew who was in charge when it involved a bigger area than just our school or our school district. And so, but I guess my question was, because I didn't really see it in the report, Is there a dispute resolution process when you have a multi-jurisdictional dispute? I know there's a hierarchy, but, you know, is there a process where, you know, someone gets on the line and calls the person who's misinterpreting their plan, right? And tells them, hey, this jurisdiction is in charge. So either of you can answer that. I think Chief and I were probably thinking the same thing. So generally, you can have a situation, this is getting a little bit technical, but you can have a situation of unified command when you have, as you know, and as you've probably worked in. Sounds like you have experience in specific situations in which there was some dispute. Generally, you can form a unified command environment where you have those multiple entities working in a unified command situation together. I've not usually seen those go together, too south at that level, but they certainly can. And there's plenty of reports to prove that they can. Well, I think of Uvalde. You know, it jumps immediately to mind as, you know, we worked on active shooter constantly, all right? There was not a school that was not fully clear on what their responsibilities were during active shooter. Yeah. And as well as our district police department and the, and how they would interact with SPD. But as you could see on TV, that there was some very clear, unclear procedures in Uvalde that led to the death of people, and especially the children there. So to me, there were a lot of fingers to point a lot of people that deserve blame for what happened in Uvalde, but the worst thing that can possibly happen is something like that happens and somebody doesn't learn from it. Yes, sir. So I guess that's my question, you know, is if I've got some knucklehead, you know, how does that go down? I mean, because that should have been at the, all the way up to the governor. The governor should have been calling someone and said, somebody get in there now. Generally, and the chief can correct me if I think I'm off base, generally in California, because California has been sort of the model in doing this since the early 1970s, There's a decision made at the incident commander level in the field as to who's predominantly responsible for this type of incident. And California's been doing it for so long, 50 plus years, that if there's some wobblers, they go into unified command and partnership environment. If not, they're really making decisions. Is this more of an investigation, a terrorism kind of event, or is this more of a flood, natural disaster, or does public works really take the primary role? So generally in California, we don't see a lot of after action reports with the finger pointing on If I may also again, we're sort of veering into a different area of the water. You're talking public safety versus emergency management, which is... I'm speaking specifically to the emergency management structure. What I'm getting at is there's a slight differentiation, a police emergency versus... non-police emergency and so the assistant chief here can talk a little bit about that okay good morning every afternoon I'm sorry it's been a long day excuse me just to touch on with the city manager so with ICS not to say it's a stagnant but it's something that is ramped up and evolved to something we can hopefully prepare for active shooter those are policies procedures that are immediate and actionable now So that structure, the failure in Texas of what you're talking about, from my perspective and reading some of the debriefs as we've talked about how important those are, that was more of a training and lack of leadership for better part of that. And you can look at the most recent, unfortunately, school shooting that we just had, completely different result. I think that goes to the training. and the policies in which that department implements and how that works and how the training works with the environment of the surrounding agencies, with the Stockton Unified Police Department. Just recently we had a false alarm, which is good, but that event unfolded exactly how it should. There's no, the event you're talking about in Texas, there was a lack of action. In those situations, a lack of actions is the worst thing we could possibly do, especially when children are safety's at risk. And that lack of action led to more deaths and obviously more tragedy. The recent event, Nashville I believe, I don't know, you can see how actionable things happen and officers respond immediately and they essentially negate that threat. And obviously lives were lost and it's a tragedy, but it could have been much worse. in my opinion, of what we initially are looking at. So just to re-clarify, those are actual media emergencies that ICS can be involved, but more it's immediate reaction that has to happen now. And that command and control could be anywhere from an officer to a sergeant to a lieutenant to a deputy chief, whoever is there. It's not the command structure in ICS is organized and everybody has their role. This is a little different that whoever is there has the training and policies in place, it's immediate. And so that command and oversight, it happens, but it is immediate actionable. So a little bit different. If that's making sense, I hope I'm answering your question. No, I see the nuance. It's not even a nuance. It's a real clear divide there. I do understand that. But generally EOS is going to be activated, you know, sometimes after the fact for reunification and things like that. Yes. and that the three categories that the city manager spoke to prior those are the more categories that that ics and that structure would then be implemented and that and the policies and everything starts rolling from there i would love the presentation on that thank you thank you we spent a little bit of time talking about the after action and the debrief aspect of things, and then it was also commented earlier how comprehensive our municipal code is, and that seems to be more of the exception. Stockton is more of the exception than the norm out there in terms of how our municipal code is worded and the things that we have in there. But one question I have, because I haven't read it yet, but do we have the after action debrief component built in, that requirement built into our current municipal code? mr mayor um i i would look to stockton's municipal code as best practice i think that's it's comprehensive and it covers all the areas um the after action reporting requirements are found in the government code they're not typically found in city codes okay okay so according to the government code there's an expectation that following in an incident there's a there's a after action there's a debrief For typical incidents, the requirement is 90 days after the local proclamation ends, the state wants to submit. It's very different with COVID because of the long duration event and the scope. There's no agency I know of that has done an after action report within 90 days. But yes, you're exactly right. It's outlined. Hence is what we currently have in motion as a city, what the chief mentioned earlier. And I think it's a great best practice, too, to have a third party provide that assessment as well. Yeah, it's great. Council Member Padilla. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. As a new council member, it was very informative. And I'm not going to beat the same topic, and I think you answered my same question. It was in regard with we have several types of disasters, natural disasters, You even mentioned terrorists. We have infrastructure disasters as well. And my main question was how this structure reforms based on those natural disasters. And I think my question was answered perfectly. Just as me being new, this structure is already, there's people assigned and in place if something were to occur. I mean, we have appointed people already in... Okay. Absolutely. So prior to the training that we had last October, a lot of those positions were filled by police and fire department members because they are already accustomed to working under an ICS structure. You can give them an assignment, they wear a certain hat, and they have a certain job responsibility. In October, we delivered training to, I think it was 34... city staff from all different departments so they can also fill into a lot of those roles and so now we're building that depth of bench so our emergency manager is going to continue to provide ongoing training and build the the number of people that can fill those roles so that we have that depth of bench so that if we're going to operate beyond an eight hour or 12 hour shift maybe we need to be in 24 hour shifts that we have two or three different shifts of personnel that can roll in and fill those those spots that's so critical And that's going to take some time to build up. But absolutely, we could have a major incident right now. We can staff all those positions. Okay. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Now, this training that was provided today, is that a requirement? Are we fulfilling a requirement by having this training? Or how did this... Yes, absolutely. So this is part of the overall requirement to make sure that we're CEMS and NEMS compliant and making sure that our policy makers, each of you, have had that training and we can actually go back and document that. The other important part is that additional component, that last slide here that talks about that additional independent study class, to have that on record. So everyone that's going through our training back from October, we keep all those training records. And so that if we're ever audited by the federal government or the California Office of Emergency Services, we have those records on hand to make sure that we're eligible for the funds that are associated with that recovery efforts. And so the frequency of this training is annually? I don't think it's annually. So you can do elected official training annually. It's really up to the city and the structure of the participants. It's really based on your NIMS training plan, and annually can be okay. Mayor, I would say it's probably a good practice to at least do it on an every-two-year basis, particularly as we get or not get new members to this body. And that's where I was going with that. Yeah, at a minimum, we should have this training every two years. You know, we have been tested recently as it relates to the EOC. I mean, I I would say the hope is that you never have to activate an ELC, right? But we've been tested lately and I would say that chief, your leadership and staff's leadership, we've met the moment, right? We've done a great job of meeting the moment and even being proactive with even the resources and the facilities that we have to meet the more recent moments, but the more frequent substantive training that we can have I think the better prepared that we will be as a whole right so minimum two years is is fine by me and even having this information just accessible even you know between those formal training sessions for council would be beneficial as well because things do pop up right midstream and you know if we're not in that moment when it once it's over uh... we forget about it uh... so something may reoccur uh... a year-and-a-half from now before next training session and we need it we need to be able to quickly reference uh... and have a quick refresher so that you know where we make sure on the same page councilmember warmsley and and and uh... in agreeance with all of that marriage is kinda i know that uh... at the city this is an exceptional structure and I'm really proud of that and I'm proud of this training and I'm proud of everything that we've done to mitigate. Living through a pandemic isn't something that people just do in life. That is like a once in a lifetime, maybe twice experience. However, I think that we should continue to raise the bar high. We should continue to raise the bar. And I think that one of the things that this body and staff has identified is that we're going through an organizational structure to make improvements. I think a theme that was brought up by myself and several council members and colleagues is the debrief. The debrief is also the reconciliation to our community. And I think that in order to heal, you have to reconciliate. And, you know, sometimes things don't go the way that we would like because, again, we just, we're building a plane and we're flying. I don't want to let go of the debrief concern and wanting to just kind of put it out there as we're looking at this whole organizational structure and the functions, is there an opportunity to kind of build in how we debrief communities when natural disasters or public health crises occur? So I kind of want to put it out there and open to thoughts about that. Absolutely, I hear your comments and it's something that we'll definitely look at and figure out how we can share the most appropriate information out after the incident. So it's something we'll look at. Thank you. Council Member Blauer. I just had a very quick question about the online training course. Do we just find that on the FEMA website? Do we register? Do they know somebody from the city of Stockton took it? Do we get some kind of credit for that? Yeah, great question. So if you type, even just typing into Google FEMA independent study, and you just type in the course number, it'll ask you to register. It'll register your information. You'll complete the class. You'll take a little mini quiz. It'll send you an email with your certificate. Best practice is to print that certificate out and provide that to your city manager for the NIMS file, or the city clerk for the NIMS file. which is the National Incident Management System training file. So exactly like the chief said on audit, they could tell that you took the class and engaged and participated. And this particular meeting being a recorded meeting is nice. You also have that for the file as well as the roll call. Thank you. Excellent. I think that concludes questioning. Do I have a motion to adjourn? Adjourned. All in favor? All right. All right. Meeting is adjourned. Thank you.