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work in the field allows for better evidence collection and might prevent other offenses from occurring. He suggested that the Department monitor that situation, and if adding the first ten officers does not significantly alter the situation, then "clearly another position is required." Mr. Heiss said traffic enforcement was studied quantitatively and comparatively and the study used the Traffic Enforcement Index, which relates "citations for traffic violations to injury accident frequency." The TEl is used to determine traffic enforcement staffing needs by national and local agencies. Mr. Heiss said because of the current Patrol staffing shortages, a significant portion of our Traffic officer's time has been spent in Patrol. "As a result, the contribution of the traffic enforcement unit to that citation and enforcement index has been reduced." He said the Patrol officers issue about 60% of citation volume, and the traffic unit about 40%. He said, however, that the current index is only "a couple of points below the 35-45 range that these professional traffic analysis organizations indicate as a reasonable effectiveness range." Mr. Heiss said if the Patrol staffing is resolved by the recommended additional personnel, "you allow your traffic unit to spend full time on traffic and they produce traffic citations at a level consistent with what they were doing before, which is a reasonable expectation based on the other Departments we looked at. You will have a TEl probably at the lower end of that effectiveness range... To reach the upper end of the range... you would need to add at least one more Traffic enforcement officer. That is a policy issue." Mr. Heiss said the communications function is also critical and like Patrol, can be quantified in terms of workload, demand and staffing needs, which is provided in detail in the Study. He said Dispatch was "staffed relatively close to what was necessary to handle workload." He said the study showed .75 of a persons time would be desirable to add to the twelve full time people currently authorized. He suggested that this function also be monitored. Mr. Heiss said the final issue involved the concept of "overhires." In order to avoid the problems caused by understaffing due to a myriad of reasons, such as officers leaving the Department for other positions, not making probation and retirements the study recommended adopting the policy of "overhiring." Mr. Heiss said the cost of living on the peninsula added to the difficulties of recruiting. He said the vacancies and turn over rate negatively impact the services provided by the Department. Mr. Heiss said to address that problem, "the Department needs flexibility for staff resource planning, so that they can recruit and start to train people in the anticipation of position vacancies, certainly for retirement and other predictable losses... The Department needs the flexibility of overhire positions... to try to moderate the impact. . .. On the sworn officer side, we believe between three and four overhire positions really make sense, should be authorized, and mayor may not actually SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING MINUTE BOOK NO. 55 OCTOBER 13, 1997 MINUTES Page No. 568 PAGE 7