City Council Newsletter - 02/22/07

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to implement a well-designed, urban, mixed-use development. The City received five responses to the RFQ which demonstrate a broad range of redevelopment scenarios. The responses are currently being reviewed by Planning and Development staff and an interdepartmental staff team. The Eugene Redevelopment Advisory Committee (ERAC) is scheduled to review the RFQ responses on February 23. On March 12, the City Council will review the responses. The West Broadway RFQ and an electronic version of each response are available on the “Downtown” page of the City’s web site, www.eugene- or.gov/downtown. For more information, contact Denny Braud, Community Development Division, at 682-5536. Fire & EMS Awarded Federal Grant for Equipment U.S. Senator Gordon Smith’s office announced that the Eugene Fire & EMS Department has been awarded a grant of $770,376 from the Assistance to Firefighters Program, administered by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Grants and Training. The funds will be used to purchase fire suppression and emergency medical services equipment including: structural and wildland firefighting ensembles (turn-out coats and pants); new-generation wildland fire protective shelters to replace aging 1991 shelters; new hose nozzles to replace aging and progressively unreliable equipment; thermal imaging cameras used in search and rescue operations to locate fire victims as well as locate fire hot spots in concealed spaces; and 12-lead cardiac monitors capable of transmitting cardiac rhythms by telemetry from the field to physicians in the hospital emergency department. The equipment acquisitions covered by this grant are needed items that would otherwise have required a multi-year procurement plan funded from the existing budget, which in turn would have necessitated under-funding other areas of the department’s programs and operation. In the case of the cardiac monitors, the department had already been approved for this purchase out of the Telecomm Fund, but the grant award now allows Fire & EMS to release a sizeable portion of the previously allocated funding. For more information, please contact Fire Chief Randy Groves at 682-7130. Laserfiche Software Streamlines Police Records Process Something’s about to change. Each year approximately 35,000 police reports are copied onto paper, manually sorted, and sent to a wide variety of law enforcement and criminal justice agencies by the Eugene Police Records section. Reports average 10 pages in length and require two to eight paper copies each. In addition, only the current year and a portion of the previous year’s reports are easily accessible. The bulk of police reports are stored in City and Police archives requiring extra employee time to locate and retrieve. Beginning March 18, 2007, Records employees will scan one copy of a police report and then electronically distribute it via email or electronic folder to any internal or external customer by using the Laserfiche digital archival system. Using a tool called Weblink, officers in the field can use their mobile data computers to securely view and search reports through the City intranet. Search tools give officers the ability to check a wide variety of information using only limited criteria. During the testing phase, one officer told of how he helped an elderly citizen find his way home. The citizen was disoriented – he could not remember his entire home address. The officer ran a Weblink search of the partial address and was able to locate related information that had the full address. The Laserfiche system allows for secure electronic redaction of non-releasable report information, which improves the timely processing of public records requests. Search tools give the section’s employees the ability to retrieve electronic copies of reports from their workstations instead traveling to Police and City archives. The section has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from other City departments, local law enforcement, and criminal justice agencies that receive copies of reports electronically. The year-long implementation project is near completion and Records section employees are looking for other inventive ways to use the system, such as scanning driver’s licenses, creating electronic folders for court orders, and developing an electronic briefing board to increase the information officers have in the field. For further information, please contact Jean Stronach, Police Records manager, at 682-5492. EUGENE CITY COUNCIL NEWSLETTER PAGE 2 February 22, 2007