Thank you. Good morning, supervisors. Good morning. I am here today to support the sheriff and his effort to reduce the cost of these collect calls. We provide the representation to 23,000 people a year and 83 percent of the people that are charged are below the federal Poverty Level in San Francisco and the reality is, as the sheriff said, it is if the families that are getting gouged because the inmates for the most part have no money and no resources when they are in custody. And so it is the families who are getting these bills. And it is heart breaking to see. And i have seen this over the years, as the cost of these calls have suddenly increased. What happens is that the first weeks and months that an individual is in custody, there is a lot of phone contact, and the phone bills rise, and rise and rise and rise, and sometimes they are in the thousands of dollars. And i have seen, you know, families or since that we bankrupted by these bills. When you are in custody, the only way
Reason it was mostly medical calls, and that was the person in every instance that had to deal with the situation. Constantly, and i just see that it clearly from my perspective, it seems like it is something that we should begin to look at. And whether, and analyze, and determine whether or not that is a good route for the department to take. Because, it definitely as you know, from your experience, i mean the need is definitely out there, and it may cost money on the front end, but could it be a real cost savings on the back end, and could it be, you know, a savings of efficiency, on the back end . To be able to address this with the department . Right. And supervisor, breed, and i am going to ask him to step in for the next two items and he can certainly weigh in more appropriate than me, but as a certified emergency medical tech nifm i know that the fields that we are trained in are helpful in the field and we have nine receiving hospitals unlike more rural areas, we are able to ge
30 to 40,000 dollars per employee to have fully cross trained workforce. And so that would be one of our main objections or concerns. But do you think that ultimately there could be a cost savings long term with the department in general . I think, that to the requirement to have all of the new hires being trained as a paramedic is something that is not necessary in terms of being able to meet or appropriately staffed and once being able to meet our response requirements and so forth, there are initial costs and ten there are additional training costs with having all paramedics in the department and most urban departments do not and they have a percentage whether it is one quarter, or you know, onethird, to be at an advanced life support level of training. Okay. So, i think that we are going to explore this particular issue a little bit more. But i guess that the question that i have is specifically i know that there are firefighter ems or paramedics in this station, and out of the ent
Able to meet or appropriately staffed and once being able to meet our response requirements and so forth, there are initial costs and ten there are additional training costs with having all paramedics in the department and most urban departments do not and they have a percentage whether it is one quarter, or you know, onethird, to be at an advanced life support level of training. Okay. So, i think that we are going to explore this particular issue a little bit more. But i guess that the question that i have is specifically i know that there are firefighter ems or paramedics in this station, and out of the entire, i guess, Suppression Team that are located specifically at stations, what is the percentage of those who are paramedic firefighters . So, we have 43 fire engines that work per day in the city, and at a minimum we will staff 29 of them with paramedics. It is not all, but, 29, but that does not mean that you only have 29 firefighter paramedics, in the department as a whole . No,
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