Donation from Rocklin Public Safety Foundation for Unmanned Aircraft Program

Adopt a Resolution of the City Council of the City of Rocklin accepting the Rocklin Public Safety Foundation's donation of $25,000  for the Rocklin Police Department's unmanned aircraft program, and appropriating funds.

In April of 2019 Captain Bart Paduveris addressed the Council about developing an Unmanned Aircraft, better known as a drone program. After receiving unanimous support from the council, we set on a mission to find the right equipment and program that would best fit within our community. Lieutenant Adrian Passadore was tasked with reaching out to nearby agencies, who already had these programs in place, to find out what was and was not working in their program. It was determined that each agency used the same unmanned aircraft and that training operators was the largest expense. During this time Chief Butler spoke with the Rocklin Public Safety Foundation and they agreed to partner with us to get the program off the ground.

After months of searching we settled on a company by the name of AXON, a long time business with close ties to the law enforcement community. In December of 2019, the City Manager, at the request of the Chief of Police entered into a three year contract, with an optional two year extension. The contract includes three all-encompassing unmanned aircraft systems, all training and regulatory requirements necessary for ten operators and access into their Evidence.com system that tracks and monitors each unmanned aircraft. One of the highlights of this program is the training component. Axon will come to our department and train our operators in-house at no additional cost, a substantial savings from other models. The most exciting part of this is that on January 22nd the Rocklin Public Safety Foundation agreed to donate $25,000 to our program. With this money we are able to pay for the first year of the contract which includes all of the equipment and pay the annual fees for both the first and second years of operation. We anticipate receiving all the equipment and to begin training by the end of February. We would like to thank the Rocklin Public Safety Foundation for their generosity and their willingness to partner with us on this program.

To accept the donation and utilize the funds for the unmanned aircraft program, staff requests an appropriation of $25,000.

There is no fiscal impact to the general fund for the 2019/2020 or the 2020/2021 budget cycles as the program is fully funded by the generous donation. For fiscal year 2021/2022 and beyond (up to the life of the contract) the fiscal impact would be $6,030.00 to the general fund, for each subsequent fiscal year.