Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Safety & Security Committee, Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Date: Tuesday, October 1, 2024
Place: Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 1h 31m (video)
Official meeting video (Fairfax County): https://video.fairfaxcounty.gov/player/clip/3520
Official Board of Supervisors page (Fairfax County): https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/boardofsupervisors/

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-31. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. I want to welcome you to our October 1st safety and security meeting. We are privileged to have two presentations on the docket today. The first will be an update from the Department of Public Safety Communications.

[00:00:21] They'll talk about some of the innovative work that they're doing around both 911 and then thinking about some of the non-emergency calls as well. And then following that, we'll have an opportunity to hear from our new clerk to the courts, Mr. Christopher Falcon.

[00:00:38] He'll talk about some of the initiatives that he has underway at his court and the work that they're doing to make it more accessible and more inclusive. So with that, let me go ahead and turn to our first presentation speaker, and that is going to be Scott Brillman, who is the director of the department.

[00:00:59] so I will now have him start. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Supervisors, County Executive. Thank you for having me today. I'm Scott Broman, the very proud 911 Director for Fairfax County Department of Public Safety Communications. My presentation today will cover a topic that is near and dear to my heart, which is improving the experience and the technology

[00:01:33] for our residents and visitors when they call 911 and our non-emergency number. And so this morning, I will talk about our emergency and non-emergency calls, future technology that will soon assist us with taking these calls.

[00:01:51] And I will also talk about 911 disruptions that we've seen locally, regionally, and nationally. Some of them we've seen yesterday, and I'll talk a little bit about that. I'll talk a little bit about our backup centers, our backup center, which we're looking at.

[00:02:10] And then I'll talk about, lastly, the future of 9-1-1 and taking calls in Fairfax County. 9-1-1 is the most significant social contract of our lifetime between local government and its residents.

[00:02:26] In Fairfax County, there's nothing more important than a resident or a visitor being able to call for help. And because of 9-1-1, countless lives have been saved, properties protected, criminals apprehended, crimes solved, and crimes prevented in Fairfax County.

[00:02:44] And as a quick overview, Fairfax County 9-1-1 is a nationally recognized 9-1-1 center. It's the largest in the Commonwealth of Virginia and one of the 10th largest in the United States of America. And every day, our first responders handle thousands of calls from our residents and visitors.

[00:03:06] Up on the screen, these are just a handful of the types of emergencies our folks handle every day and every night. There's hundreds of types of emergencies our center handles, and these are just a handful.

[00:03:23] We not only handle calls, but we're providing life-saving instructions over the phone until fire, rescue, and EMS and police arrive at the scene. We're getting kids out of house fires. We're providing CPR instructions.

[00:03:40] We're helping to deliver babies. We're helping callers hide in home invasions. And we're giving quick instructions when cars are sinking in water. This is our bread and butter. We handle emergencies. This is our main job. But we also handle non-emergency calls in our center, which we've been doing for many, many years in Fairfax. These are lower priority calls, but they're equally as important. They're important to us. Residents in Fairfax know to dial 703-691-2131, and they

[00:04:17] dial it over a thousand times a day. But over the past few years, DPSC started facing a new challenge. The 911 center now gets more non-emergency calls than emergency calls. In our center, if I could paint the picture, our 911 call takers are taking non-emergency calls and emergency calls. Of course, we give priority to our emergency calls, which leaves the caller that's calling about a non-emergency case on hold and waiting in a queue, sometimes for a few

[00:04:56] minutes, which is frustrating for that caller, and it's also frustrating for us. Here are the statistics for the past few years. In the blue is our non-emergency calls. In the orange is our emergency calls, or non-emergency calls. And in the gray is our callbacks. And our callbacks are us calling back non-emergency callers. It's us transferring calls to other counties and other

[00:05:32] county services, and it's us three-waying the call to a language interpreter. And so there's a lot of non-emergency call type stuff going on where automation can help us. There's a lot on this screen. These are the type of non-emergency calls that we receive. We not only receive public safety related non-emergency calls, we receive calls where residents and visitors are asking what's

[00:06:07] the phone number to the local school? Or how can I do this in the county? Or how can I look this up? Or how can I make a complaint about this? And we don't let that resident down. We look and we research that information for the resident. And those type of calls take a lot more time than a 911 call. And so up on the screen are the types of calls that we take every day and every night,

[00:06:38] which are more now than our 911 calls. Additionally, this takes a mental toll on our 911 call takers from taking a call for a CPR case, for giving CPR for 10 minutes, hanging up the phone, taking a deep breath, resetting, and then picking up the phone again, and then taking a call about somebody complaining about their neighbor's high grass. It's very frustrating for that. From switching on and off emergency to non-emergency. It does take a toll. So in short, what has worked for Fairfax

[00:07:18] County for so many years, which is taking all these calls by phone, is not sustainable in 2024. I would like to add that this is not a Fairfax challenge. This is a challenge across the country that 6,500 911 centers are trying to figure out what to do. And automation is the way all of them are traveling. They're getting systems to automate these non-emergency calls to help out. The

[00:07:52] solution that we are looking at is AI supportive technology, where when a caller calls Fairfax DPSC with a non-emergency call, they will get an AI voice. And number one, they will be able to immediately translate that call. If it's a non-English speaking caller, they won't have to wait for an interpreter, and that will help the non-English speaking community. But number two, it will help us triage the call. So if that call does not belong at a public safety 911 center,

[00:08:31] if that call belongs in Arlington or Alexandria or DPW or DOT or another agency, this system can route that call to the appropriate agency. If the caller is asking about a phone number, it can provide a phone number. If they're asking about a website, it can provide a website.

[00:08:52] But more importantly, if it is public safety related, we can provide a link to where the resident or visitor can put their information in quickly into our system. So they don't have to wait minutes for somebody to pick up the phone to process the call. It's automated. Just like when you buy something on Amazon, it's automated. This will also help us process calls like alarms.

[00:09:25] So we are getting alarm calls from everywhere. We're getting alarms from medical, we're getting medical alarms, we're getting fire alarms, we're getting alarms from your vehicle now, and they're coming in by voice. And this system will help process that. We're also getting calls every day about hydrants out of service. We're getting calls about buildings testing their fire systems. And these are all calls that are coming through 911 and they're coming through the non-emergency line that take up a lot of time. And so we need to keep these lines open for folks

[00:10:03] that are having true emergencies. Lastly, we are seeing from Hurricane Aline a catastrophe in Georgia and in North Carolina and Tennessee and Florida. And the centers down there don't have systems like this. They're still taking calls by voice and they're unable to handle all the calls coming into their center. All the flooding calls, the trees down calls, the roads blocked calls,

[00:10:36] the calls where people need food, people need fuel for their generators. All those calls are coming into the center by voice. This will help us process those calls if and when we experience a hurricane or some other emergency in Fairfax. This system will help process those type of calls in the future. On this screen here, before I move on, there's a chart on the bottom left. In the blue,

[00:11:09] that is our emergency calls. It looks pretty steady, right? Pretty steady. There's no fluctuation. And in the black, that is our non-emergency calls, where day-to-day, we don't know what we're going to get.

[00:11:25] And if I could guess where it's higher, there could have been a storm that came through Fairfax, or there could have been a bad accident on 495, where people are calling us to go, why am I stuck in traffic?

[00:11:41] I've been here for two hours. And so these are the type of calls we're now getting in our center. So it's very unpredictable the non-emergency calls we're going to get. I'll leave this slide with this.

[00:11:59] Residents and visitors will still be able to talk to a 911 dispatcher or operator if they need to. We won't leave anyone behind. There will definitely be an option in the beginning to talk to a person immediately if they need to.

[00:12:15] And I would like to, if I have a minute, to tell you an anecdotal story about AI. and immediate action. I was in a hotel room with my two-year-old and I needed a crib a few months ago. And so I picked up the phone and I dialed zero and it said, Mr. Brillman, how can I help you? And I said, I need a crib. And the AI voice goes, okay, we'll get you a crib. We sent you a link on your phone. Just click on the link and the options and press order. And I looked on my phone and it said, I clicked on the link, and it said, do you want an extra sheet, and do you want a

[00:12:54] teddy bear, and then order. And so I clicked on both, and I pushed order, and a crib came in five minutes. And this is what I expect this service to have at DPSC, instant service where people can get feedback, and they don't have to be frustrated waiting minutes to get into our center. Lastly, this project could not have come at a better time. We're working with our partners with DIT who have already done amazing work around 311 development and agency workflows. And we look

[00:13:33] forward to continuing that work to making sure we build the best unified system for the county. And so we look forward to that. Switching gears to 911. So we're also using AI technology around 911. And soon, well right now, we're able to identify over 170 languages immediately by text messages, by text. And so if we're having a text exchange with a non-English speaking resident, we can identify what language they're speaking and have an immediate conversation. This is a

[00:14:12] game changer for us. Our residents and visitors no longer have to wait minutes to connect to a third-party service. We're also using AI to organize data. So we're getting a lot of data into our center. When a vehicle crashes, it's sending us how many people are in the vehicle, if the people were seat-belted, how fast the vehicle was going. Your watch is sending us data if you fell. Your laptop is sending us data. Everybody's sending data to the center now,

[00:14:48] And we're using AI to help organize that data so it can be easily digestible in front of our 911 first responders inside of the center. We're also using AI to help with quality assurance. And so in the past, when humans performed quality assurance, which they still do, we were only able to QA around 1% of our calls.

[00:15:13] But using AI and comparing data, we are able to now QA over 90% of our calls. And AI can listen for sentiment and emotion and stress, which is very important to us during 9-1-1 calls.

[00:15:31] So we're pretty excited about that. AI in the future will also help with call spikes. And call spikes are when there's an accident on the highway and everybody driving by that accident is calling 9-1-1.

[00:15:46] So all at once, 200 calls are coming into the center, and we're trying to get through those calls while other folks in the county are trying to call us. AI is going to help us figure that out so we don't leave those other folks in the county behind. And lastly, AI is going to help us listen to the radio.

[00:16:07] Listen to the radio and listen to the calls to help us pick out keywords that maybe the human ear can't pick up. And so when somebody says help, or when somebody says I can't breathe, or when somebody says somebody's here, or gun, or whatever the word is, AI is going to help us listen for it and alert the dispatchers when that word is spoken. And we're pretty excited about that. I want to move into toes. And so we're doing some exciting stuff around toes. First, I want to introduce you to our

[00:16:47] oldest member of our center, which is the brother fax machine. And that fax machine is a workhorse. It takes about 40,000 calls a year. This is how we communicate with our tow company. And let me break down the process. So the tow company fills out a form, faxes the form to us. We process the call into three separate softwares. We have some software over here. We have a CAD system here.

[00:17:18] And then we have a state system over here, and then we file it, and then we give feedback back to the tow company that we are in receipt of that tow. That is an old process, which we want to get rid of. And so we are working with the tow companies and the TVAB board to integrate our software with them.

[00:17:42] So it's a flawless process of sharing data between the tow company and DPSC, where their information can go directly into our system and give feedback back to the tow companies.

[00:17:57] And we look forward to that process. I don't know if you knew this, but DPSC dedicates two dispatchers a day just for tows. It's a lot. It's a lot. So we're looking forward to automating this process. Switching gears to outages. This is a very scary topic, but a very necessary topic to talk about.

[00:18:22] In the past year, we have experienced outages, telecom outages in our region where your phone could probably not make a phone call or a text, or you've noticed your computer not working because of systems like CrowdStrike. We've seen outages across the nation where people couldn't call 911. And so at DPSC, we are preparing for this. We realize that things aren't connected by copper lines anymore, and everything is all interconnected. And so when

[00:18:59] there is an outage, we quickly try to figure out what is working and what is not working. And we're building our backup systems to operate like that. And so the big outage that I want to reference is in Massachusetts, which was a few months ago. And they lost 9-1-1 statewide for a few hours, which is pretty bad. So folks were, the message was go to your local firehouse or go, they still have pool boxes on the street, and to go to your pool box if you have an emergency.

[00:19:35] But we're not doing that here in Fairfax. So we're coming up with other plans for catastrophic emergencies. We are looking to work with other counties and other cities in other regions of the country to take calls if there is a catastrophic emergency. And this is something new in the nation. Five years ago, we wouldn't even be thinking about this. But since our systems are interconnected now, we are thinking about this now. And current events, bringing current

[00:20:10] events in, in Hurricane Aline, we are actually thinking about this and helping North Carolina with processing some of their calls down there. Our systems are connected down there and we could, this is one way we could help them take some relief from what they're going through down there.

[00:20:29] So another effort we're taking is changing public messaging around outages. So in the past 40 years when you couldn't call 9-1-1, we would typically send out a message saying you may not be able to reach 9-1-1 and people would panic. And when people panic, guess what they do? They dial 9-1-1 and we go, the 9-1-1, how can I help you? They go, oh, we're just testing. Sorry. We're just testing to see if it works. We don't want people to do that anymore. And so we want people to prepare

[00:21:03] for outages. So we're changing the way we prepare. So number one, we're going to change your preparedness message. If you can't take or place an 911 call with your cell phone, try another provider or try texting us or try using a landline. Go into a business. Go into a government building.

[00:21:25] If you see a little SOS symbol on the top of your phone, it means you can still dial 911. If you update it to iOS 18 and you see a satellite on your phone, you can still dial 911. So just like you've learned how to stop, drop, and roll when your clothes catch is on fire. We want to prepare this message on, if your phone can't call 911, try these other things so people don't panic anymore.

[00:21:52] So we're working with OPA and the region to take that effort. Backup centers. So we're very proud of our backup center, which was built, the building was built in 1967, but it's at the end of life.

[00:22:10] And so we're exploring, not building our own backup center, we're exploring a regional concept where we're going to ask our partners, not only Fairfax City, Herndon, Vienna, maybe the community colleges, but our regional partners, Alexandra, Arlington, Loudon, Prince William, to join us.

[00:22:32] And for a couple of reasons, it promotes interoperability. We can help each other out in an emergency. And there's state funding and there's federal funding around it. And I think it's better for the taxpayers that eight centers don't build backup centers, but eight nine-one centers build one or two that they can work out of. And so we are going down this path that I know this region has been talking about it for many, many years. And this is the last slide. We've been

[00:23:10] talking about the future of 911 for many years and the word next generation. But the next generation is here. And in the next few months, we will be changing the way we take calls. And it's not only by voice anymore. We'll be able to accept text in multiple ways, back and forth, in multiple languages, Video, pictures, and other multimedia.

[00:23:38] And when we're ready and we turn these systems live, we'll be working with all of you to get that message out to the public because it will be very different and very new. Phone systems have already gone live with this type of technology. And so when phone systems go live, when you go to iOS 18, we're going to start going live with it.

[00:23:59] And so we'll do this together and we'll put messaging out together when we're ready. But but the future is here. And you see a picture of a watch reading someone's heart rate and to see if they're in VTAC or they have another normal heart rate.

[00:24:17] But that's the kind of data that our systems are now going to receive, which we'll be pushing to the fire department. And that's the future. But before I end, all this stuff is not automatic. I have a great team that does ninety nine percent of the work that's in the room.

[00:24:36] They're the smartest team probably in the country that has built this stuff over the last few years. They work day and night. They sit on national committees. They come up with standards that 6,500 centers in the country use.

[00:24:53] And so I just want to acknowledge them all around the room that people look at Fairfax as the gold standard and the way to move forward in 9-1-1. So with that, that is my presentation. Okay. thank you very much that was extremely informative um i'll ask a few questions and i'm going to key in on the ai supported technology slide um so just appreciate the point you made kind of at the close which is you're going to give people the option to wait if they want to talk to someone directly

[00:25:28] in that option will you give them the amount of time they might have to wait to talk to a live person rather than going directly into the automated system yes if they choose to speak to a not a real person they will they will stay in that queue yep but are we going to give them a time that they might be in the queue the question is approximately you will be waiting for two and a half minutes or three minutes I'm just trying to get a sense of are we giving them a little heads up as to how long they might have to wait thank you for that question that is certainly

[00:26:07] something that we can look at with the system okay yeah I think that's helpful and might also have them think about not waiting they might go directly into the automated system if they how long it takes second on the AI platform I know we talked about this in the IT committee hallucinations with AI I know that's more in the open platform is this a closed platform system so we basically crafting all the responses it's not going to be through an open system correct we are crafting the responses we are interviewing the agencies on the typical

[00:26:46] responses that that we're expecting and that's how we're driving the the the callers to that agency okay okay that makes sense I do appreciate the volume of the calls and the kind of diversity of them and I also appreciate a point you made at the end where you referenced the 3-1-1 system, because I think ultimately that's probably where we're going to migrate to at some future point where we'll be able to not have people call in that, you know, Fairfax number that they have to remember. You just have to go

[00:27:23] either 9-1-1 or 3-1-1. So I'll look forward to the continuation of the discussion around that. Quickly, I'll note, really surprised by that tow faxing capability. I didn't realize we were still using fax machines.

[00:27:41] I mean, that's a little bit of a surprise. I know. It's really never failed us. That's amazing, though. That's right. Okay. It's a surprise to me, I would just say. As a person who's worked in the county for so long, and we're on the cutting edge of technology in so many ways.

[00:27:58] We're talking about AI, but yet we're using, And I'm not just surprised that that's the platform that we have been using for all these years. And it's not around, I think it's around governance that we still use. Just a surprise.

[00:28:14] That's always the only point I'm making. I'm not saying it's bad. Just a surprise. And then also appreciate the point about having the regional backup and then having out-of-area backups too. So being able to partner with other jurisdictions to ensure that we don't have kind of like a massive outage where we can't provide service.

[00:28:32] there's a way for people to still get support in that time of emergency. So just really appreciated that. So with that, I will turn it over to the chairman, and then I'll get my colleagues after. Thank you, Supervisor Lusk and Scott.

[00:28:48] Great, great presentation and amazing team that you have. We definitely appreciate that. I have just a couple quick questions. First, on the online chat and AI translations in particular, Are we getting any, is there a way to get community feedback on how that service has worked or not worked to maybe identify bugs that are in it?

[00:29:13] Thank you for that question. I think there is a way. I think surveys and feedback is a standard now that 911 really hasn't used in the past. But I think with the platform that we're bringing on, I think we can go live with the survey, provide some feedback to see how we're doing, if this system is working, if we're not doing so well, if we're doing well, if we need to improve.

[00:29:40] I think that can be a part of this process. I think it would be good. You know, one of the things, I know police will, they have an automated system that calls people after someone calls 911. I know because I got one of those, where they do an instant feedback thing and maybe just utilizing what they have to dial back and say, you use the AI option.

[00:30:01] You know, what did you think of it? It might be a good thing to do just so that we can collect some data on the customer experience part. I appreciate what Supervisor Lust said about the time waiting. I think we need to weigh that against, if it sounds long to you, you just hang up and call 911, which is what we don't want to have happen.

[00:30:19] So I think we need to think about what people's reaction to that might be. We would hope that they would stay on the line or use the AI function. What we don't want them to do is say, 10 minutes, hang up, and then just call 911. So I think we need to weigh that. On the outages piece, I think this is really important about preparing people for outages.

[00:30:40] And it's imperfect in so many ways because most people don't think about an outage until it happens. And so it's a huge hill to climb to think we're going to be able to do that. But I'm wondering, is there a different messaging point for perceived potential weaknesses where an outage might occur versus just everyday messaging?

[00:31:02] I mean, I'm just trying to think of things like, I don't know, November 5th and 6th are days a lot of people are worried about. But there are days where, you know, moving forward, there's a week ahead of time of a storm maybe that's being forecasted.

[00:31:19] Then there are the outages that happen technologically that there's absolutely no way to predict. They just happen. And so I don't know in terms of messaging when the right time to message is. There's probably not a perfect time, but maybe in advance of an event that's occurring that might present a security weakness or a fault potentially or a storm might be the time to do it.

[00:31:42] Because most people aren't going to pay attention to that unless there's some reason for them to pay attention to it. So I love the idea of doing it. I just think we need to really work with OPA on, and they do a really good job of this, being strategic about how that gets communicated. And lastly, I agree with what Supervisor Lust said on the regional piece.

[00:32:03] I think that is absolutely the way to go for leveraging resources, you know, for making it easier on everybody. Appreciate that you're doing that and you think that same way because it makes sense. And obviously, as the biggest jurisdiction in the area, we want to play a lead role in how that gets situated and using the amazing talent we have to provide input.

[00:32:25] But at the end of the day, that needs to be a regional effort, and I appreciate your working on that. So thank you. Okay. Thank you, Chairman. I'd like to now open up the questions from my colleagues. The first will be Vice Chair Smith. Thank you. It is a little distressing to see how many calls aren't emergency calls.

[00:32:46] So definitely something I want to make sure I message with people when I talk with them. Can you kind of walk me through what happens? I'm having an emergency when you have this AI and I call 9-1-1, what will I experience?

[00:33:03] So if you call 9-1-1, you're immediately going to get one of our 9-1-1 first responders. And so you'll get somebody by voice that will stay on the line with you until first responders arrive. That will never go away. Okay. Yep.

[00:33:19] Absolutely. And then, I'm sorry, it was a few minutes late. Explain to me the piece with the assistive technology for 9-1. So there's assistive technology to help the call taker organize all the data coming into our center now.

[00:33:34] We're getting data from watches. Your refrigerator will eventually send us data. If it notices, nobody opened it up in two weeks, so we check on your house. There's a lot of stuff that people are inventing to call 911. Your car is sending us data.

[00:33:51] And so we need help organizing this data. So that's the piece that's going to deal with. And language translation, which is a game-changer for us. When a non-English-speaking caller calls us, we have to three-way the call to an interpreter, and they're short-staffed, and that can take minutes.

[00:34:09] It's very frustrating when somebody's experiencing an emergency to wait. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Vice Chair Smith. I'll now move to Supervisor Harry. Let me start for saying thank you for everything you and your team do, Because, you know, you don't have to watch the news very often to see what happens when it goes wrong.

[00:34:28] And it's dangerous and deadly when it goes wrong. So I want to start with thanking you for that. On the transfer options with the AI, will they have the option to transfer to 911, which absolutely needs to be there if it's an emergency?

[00:34:45] But will they have an option for a live operator? Yep, that would be one of the first options. Okay, so live operator or 911. Because, you know, again, I think we need to stay customer-focused. There's a lot of people who get frustrated with those long chains.

[00:35:01] We've all been in AI. Would you call for who knows what? I like to thank you, the chairman, for the survey at the end. I think it's important that that get included because we want to know how we're doing. And checking with our customers is the best way to do that.

[00:35:17] The other thing that is sometimes helpful in addition to the wait time is the option to call back. And I assume that'll be an option on there, too, so that you'll get a call back so you can report whatever it is at your convenience when they call you back. I never choose that option, but I like the fact that it's there.

[00:35:37] How does our current non-emergency triage wait times compare to our surrounding jurisdictions? Do we have a chart on how we're doing against other jurisdictions on the non-emergency side? We don't.

[00:35:53] I would say that a lot of the larger jurisdictions across the country have a separate call center that has a 3-1-1 call handling system that was built in the 90s and early 2000s. And so we are still taking those calls by voice.

[00:36:12] And so the most recent system to go live is Arlington, which adopted an AI-supportive technology to handle non-emergency calls, and they're having great success with it. Okay.

[00:36:28] Do we have any information on our wait times? We have some information. I would say day-to-day folks during the day are waiting five to ten minutes for us to answer.

[00:36:45] And that's some of the feedback that I've gotten has been. It's been on the non-emergency side, clearly, not on the 911 side, which is where you want it if you're going to have it either way. And we think the AI will help clear a lot of that up. Clear almost all of it up, yeah. All right.

[00:37:00] That's all I have. Okay. Thank you, Supervisor Herity. Supervisor Palchek. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. thank you so much, Scott. Actually, one of my questions was I was doing a little research and seeing that Arlington was one of the national pilots. I think they did it through Amazon. And so if you could share a little bit more, because they, as you know, not only are in our region, but also have probably very similar demographics to ours. And that's one of my questions as well.

[00:37:27] It's great that there's language, right? What happens, you know, if that doesn't work, If someone then needs a live operator, does it take longer to get an interpreter? I had a few questions about how that's going to work. It doesn't.

[00:37:42] So the system will be programmed where if immediately they say live operator, they're connected to a live operator. We're not creating something where in the private sector, you're going down a long path to nowhere. That's very frustrating.

[00:37:58] That's not our purpose. Our purpose is either you get a live operator or we give you the opportunity to give us your info in another way, which is a link to your phone. And you can put in you could take a picture of the illegally parked car and send it to us or or we send you to the website at the police website to put in a report there.

[00:38:25] We want to get you instant gratification. And our purpose is not to send people around a phone tree. Okay. No, that's it. I guess, yeah, it would be interesting to know if someone, let's say, is no longer in line and then they need an operator and they need interpreting for the operator, how that gets handled.

[00:38:44] Oh, within the AI. They would have to, if they need a live operator, they would go back to a 911 operator. With an interpreter. Interpreter. Or they could do it by test. By test.

[00:38:56] Okay. I just want to make sure as we're doing that, hopefully we can learn a lot from Arlington again, because they do have, I think it's a great pilot, and just want to make sure, as you know, with AI or other pilots, that the populations and the communities that maybe have not been included in some of those technology pilots are included, whether it's through our chief equity officer, OPA does have our team that is doing language interpretation, or through NCS, I think would be helpful.

[00:39:26] And then my other question, I love the idea of doing training the community. It seems like a heavy lift. So I assume as you're going through how to retrain us and how to do that, that we are working with stakeholders like the schools, like NCS.

[00:39:47] I think in L.A. they even did like camps for teenagers on emergency management and really training our community. And I think that's a great idea with our teens to really train them at things we didn't learn when we were probably more trainable on how to be leaders.

[00:40:04] Because I think you're right. We need like a whole new generation of how we deal, assuming there will always be some big emergency. Yeah, we are a small but powerful shop. And we do have a pretty strong outreach program. And we are in the schools.

[00:40:19] And so we do have a school program that's growing, and we look to expanding that and leveraging police and fires assets to teach 9-1-1 and how to call 9-1-1 in the future. Excellent. Thank you. I think we could probably all go through that training ourselves.

[00:40:37] We'd be happy to. So I appreciate your work on that. Supervisor, on that point, one of the things maybe to talk about schools, on the back of every school student's ID is really good information about the suicide prevention hotline, what to do. That might be a good place next school year to also include something about this because the students carry those.

[00:40:58] They use them every single day. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Palchuk. Supervisor Walkinshaw. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Scott, thank you and your team for your professionalism. Like most of us, I had the chance not too long ago to sit down with a call taker and listen in and experience it, and it is a stressful, stressful job.

[00:41:20] A couple of questions. First, on the translation, I'm going to anger all of the professional interpreters here, but it sounded like you were saying, you know, we're able to or will be able to use AI to translate text.

[00:41:40] how far are we from live voice translation via AI? Obviously, you know, that's a kind of translation for 911, especially that you don't want to go wrong, but that technology exists, and how far do we think that is from being implemented?

[00:42:00] Yeah, so regarding text translation, we're already live with that, and so we can provide an outbound text and have a flawless conversation in that aspect. And you're right, voice transcription is already here that can identify different languages.

[00:42:21] And my best guess is within the next year, we would have that live in our center where our systems will identify voice transcription and automatically translate that call live.

[00:42:40] Okay. Second question in terms of outages, you know, one of the, I think, technological success stories coming out of the terrible hurricane has been the iPhone emergency SOS satellite capability that you mentioned. So, and presumably that capability, I would think or hope will before too long be available to non-Apple iPhone iOS users, I would think or hope. So on the citizen

[00:43:18] end, the outage problem is a solved problem technologically. But on the 911 call center side, it's obviously a much more complex problem to solve. And I guess I'm trying to, and that's probably a two-hour briefing to understand what can cause an outage of a 911 center. But does the technology not exist either via satellite, a la the iPhone SOS system, or other technologies to

[00:43:48] solve the outage problem for 911 call centers? Yes. The question is, we have built the technology in the past 10 years, and Fairfax happened to be one of the first to build what is called an Ezinet to connect all of our 911 phone systems together in a safe way. And so our systems are connected to systems out in California, where somebody out in California said, hey,

[00:44:22] we need help. Could you take some of our calls? Calls can be rerouted through networks and through IP. And I'm not a technologist. I have very smart people in this room. But we've built systems over the years to to fix that problem of if our center goes down that's it and and and if if center and when centers go down because of hurricanes those calls automatically get routed to a center that's working and that's so so why and maybe we should have a longer conversation why is it that we need

[00:45:00] a new backup center if if that's a solved problem technologically yes because that's only uh that's only a technological emergency. But when we have emergencies around systems, the generators, power, ceilings coming down, flooding, then we have to evacuate.

[00:45:21] So from a technology perspective, it is a solved problem. It's a solved problem. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Walkinshaw. Supervisor Jimenez. Thank you for that presentation, Mr. Billman, and thank you to your team. I have a couple quick questions. On the emergency versus non-emergency, do you think your office could put together like a social media toolkit? I think that'd be really helpful for all the supervisor offices to be able to push that either in their newsletter or as a standalone or you know pushing it out on whatever platforms we have. The

[00:45:58] second one is as you start implementing the AI, one, what kind of hurdles do you see, and does that include potential security breaches? So, first question, yes, absolutely.

[00:46:17] We will certainly do that and provide updates to the board. In terms of security, we are always worried about security. And so, anytime we implement a new system, we work with DIT and we work with our vendors to make sure we have security at the highest level.

[00:46:39] But I can't sit here and say we're not worried about it. We're always worried about it. And we're always – we always have a fail-safe in the event a security issue happens. So – and if you would repeat the last question to get at the end.

[00:47:01] It was just talking about any hurdles during implementation. Yes. And it was kind of just tied in with security. I think building a non-emergency call system, the biggest challenge and hurdle is continuously working with our agencies to update the information.

[00:47:21] And that's something that we'll work with OPA and DIT to come up with a system where when information changes in the agency, we can update it in our system. I think that is the biggest hurdle that we have to organize around.

[00:47:38] So a lot of it dealing with just communication, making sure that that communication is part of working with every different agency. And going back to your question on security, it's sort of like a three-pronged approach. You have the vendor, we have a DPSC, and then we have DIT.

[00:47:56] The backbone is what we have to protect. And in cybersecurity, they're doing a really good job of protecting the backbone before there is a breach. So those are the types of things that we're installing with this system. Obviously, it's new, and we're taking our time making sure that it doesn't get penetrated like other systems.

[00:48:14] And a good example is we use a technology that didn't bring down our systems, but it did bring down folks that use CrowdStrike. Remember that day, we were continuously running because of the system that we had put in place. So we're trying to do it that way.

[00:48:31] Thank you very much. Thank you, Supervisor Jimenez. Supervisor Stewart. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I'll thank you all very much for the work you're doing. It is excellent, and clearly we've earned the reputation because of the work that you and your team is doing and obviously the foresight that we've had along the way, so I appreciate that.

[00:48:53] Is there a downside to the regional? I mean, I can't see one. Can you identify what are the downsides? Maybe that's the question for you. What are we missing here if we were to go that route? I appreciate the question. I can't think of many downsides besides somebody having to drive farther.

[00:49:15] But employees from all over the centers live all over the place. And so that is not the case anymore where people live right next to the center. And so when I do come up with downsides to building a collaborative regional center, we'll certainly let you know.

[00:49:35] Great. Appreciate that. Aren't you also trying to implement a different type of regional center where folks are doing it telework-wise? That's correct. So I did not mention that. Even that downside could be addressed. It's an upside. But our new system will come with remote capabilities that are very different than our older system, where folks can work anywhere, I should say in the world, but certainly in the United States, where they could just log into a computer and start taking calls.

[00:50:10] And this really enhances our backup plans. We call it continuity of operations plans, where if something does happen in our center, we can send a page out to say log in, and we can continue to operate from anywhere in the country.

[00:50:27] I realize the issue of SWATing is more of a 911 issue, but AI, are we seeing, is there elements out there that we're using I don't I have no idea how many swatting calls we might get I know they exist because we hear about them can you maybe just address that a little bit yeah I mean just maybe explain what swatting is so yeah swatting is a caller calling in and and and fake call in our county and most of those calls are coming in not through 9-1-1 and so we

[00:51:03] are working with our telecom companies to help identify those callers and we work with the Fairfax police to identify swatting calls and our our 911 call takers are really good at identifying where the number is coming from what the call is about and when they interview the caller they can they're really good identifying if it alludes to a swatting call or not.

[00:51:36] And we don't say it's a fake call, but we give the first responders a heads up to say, hey, we're getting this information and use caution. And then last is, I know some jurisdictions do it, and I don't need an answer today, but charging for 911 calls from alarm companies, et cetera, I don't think we do that.

[00:52:00] So is that something that we've ever looked at? And because, I mean, if an alarm company is not screening those calls and we're just getting them, then we're basically providing them with free service. And our screening process obviously is going to be far more intensive than they might otherwise use.

[00:52:16] That's something that our industry has never looked at. We receive funding through a 911 service charge through telecom bills, And we get charged, we get, I think, $0.75 per line.

[00:52:33] And that model hasn't changed since 2003. So we're being funded off of a 2003 model. But that's how we receive our funding, some of our funding. All right.

[00:52:49] Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Stork. And last, Supervisor Bierman. Chairman McKay actually took my point earlier. i noticed that on the middle of the non-emergency calls there was transfer me to 988 a number of us on the border sorry on the board took part in the out of darkness suicide prevention walk so to what supervisor herity was saying about connect me to an operator connect me in 911 we may also want to consider connect me to 988 but that also may be way too long so it may be part

[00:53:24] of what Supervisor Jimenez was saying about social media campaigns, other informational campaigns to, again, make sure people know about 988, the suicide prevention hotline. And thank you for all you do.

[00:53:39] I mean, I think what you said about the most important social contract between local government and residents is 9-1-1, and I think that's really accurate and correct, and we thank you. Thanks. Okay. Thank you, Supervisor Biermann, and thank you also. Appreciate, Mr. Brillman, your presentation today and the work that you're doing.

[00:54:00] Thank you. So as we transition to our next speaker, again, that will be Mr. Christopher Falcone. He is the clerk of the circuit court, and we're delighted to have him talk about some of the initiatives that they are proposing in the courts, and he's got some innovative ideas.

[00:54:33] and this will be an opportunity for the board to become aware of that and ask any questions that they have. So with that, I'll turn it over to you, Mr. Falcon. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Luss. Good morning, members of the Board of Supervisors, county staff. I appreciate the invitation to come in and speak about the Fairfax Circuit Court and Records.

[00:54:52] Again, my name is Chris Falcon. I am the elected county clerk of court. I have been in office, and I was sworn in effective January 1st of this year. We've been very busy these past nine months at Circuit Court and Records. I'm excited to tell you a little bit about our office, brief overview about our office, but then about the projects we've been working on, and more importantly, about the initiatives and opportunities we see coming down the road.

[00:55:17] Thank you. So first off, I think it's helpful to just know a little bit about our mission, which is to provide equitable access to justice in court services, to provide administrative support to the 19th Judicial Circuit and to preserve, maintain, and protect the court's public records.

[00:55:34] You have a small version of our org chart there. I won't spend too much time on that, but as you can see, there are different divisions that come under my authority, and we're going to talk a little bit about what each of those divisions does every single day at your circuit court.

[00:55:50] So the principal duty of the circuit court clerk, in my opinion, is maintaining the court record and the record of proceedings that's going on every single day. that means maintaining the court record for your civil cases, for your criminal hearings that are happening daily in the courthouse, maintaining the file. So I have some breaking news to report today. Today, we launched e-file in our criminal division. So starting today, we no longer create paper files for our criminal cases in Fairfax County. Those are now digital files. I'm very

[00:56:25] Very excited to be announcing that here, very first place I'm talking about it. That will allow us to access the criminal files from our computers, from courtrooms, not having to go pull the physical files every time we have motions, hearings, and trials. So that is a huge accomplishment, and it would not have been made possible without the work of the staff that are back at the courthouse right now.

[00:56:48] Huge thanks to Matt Kunkel, Julie Hamilton, Magda Mayangos, and all the courtroom clerks that really leaned in and made this possible when their crazy new boss announced in January that he wanted to do this. But the other very important duty is we handle all the land records for Fairfax County.

[00:57:06] So every time there's a transaction, sale and purchase, residential and commercial, those deeds and property records are coming through our office. A vast majority are e-filed at this point, but that keeps us very busy. So administrating of the court proceedings, staffing the courtrooms, We have 15 circuit court judges in Fairfax County.

[00:57:26] We are by far the largest circuit court. We are the busiest trial circuit court. So our staff support those judges, the courtroom clerks, the law clerks that support them daily. Also, the probating wills and trusts, or wills and estates.

[00:57:42] So anytime someone passes away in Fairfax County, their will is coming to our courthouse and is being probated. So the probate division is staying very busy. And this year, we also allowed the folks that work in probate and on their request to provide telework options for them.

[00:58:01] They were one of our divisions that had not been teleworking yet, and that did not sit right with me. So they are now teleworking. They're answering the phone calls on their telework day and doing a lot of the work on the back end. It doesn't have to happen at the courthouse. So I've been hearing good things about how that's gone in its first month.

[00:58:17] We also take in all the court funds and fines and costs. So we're collecting filing fees every time civil actions get filed, every time there's a recording on land records, fines and costs and criminal matters. Those come through our office and is one of our principal duties.

[00:58:34] We also are where all of our residents come to apply for their marriage licenses. We, it's important to note, offer marriage licenses on a walk-in basis in Fairfax County. So you can walk in anytime, 8 to 4, and apply for a marriage license.

[00:58:50] and it's not just limited to Fairfax County residents. We'll serve anyone. That is not happening in all jurisdictions around Northern Virginia. There are plenty of circuit courts in other counties around here who don't offer walk-in service, who don't allow any resident and not just residents of their county to apply for marriage licenses. So this is just another way, I believe, that we're delivering on one Fairfax at the Fairfax Circuit Court and Records right now.

[00:59:16] I'm very proud that prior to coming to Fairfax, I was the leader of implementing online marriage appointments during COVID in Arlington County when I was deputy clerk of the court there. I had come back from my paternity leave and heard that we were having some issues with serving our residents and having problems during that time when we all couldn't leave our home as freely as we would have liked.

[00:59:40] So I created marriage license appointments by Microsoft Teams, but huge thanks to the people in our public services division. We're also responsible for administering the oaths of office, and I said this the other night. It is one of my proudest moments when I go to our criminal justice academy and swear in all of our new police officers for Fairfax County, City of Fairfax, and the other jurisdictions.

[01:00:04] But this morning, back at the courthouse, we're swearing in new sheriff's deputies. So one of our principal duties is the administration of oaths, and we take it very seriously. Also, we hold the historic records of our county, and I know that many of you have had an opportunity to stop by and see our historic archives and the historic courthouse, but maybe not everyone watching at home knows that the Fairfax County Historic Courthouse and Historic Archives are open to tours on Fridays.

[01:00:34] We welcome you to come visit us. We have records in our possession that date back to the founding of this county in 1742. So I invite you to come and see it. But it's also important to note that we've identified some major equity gaps in Fairfax County.

[01:00:51] So let me go to that one. As a practicing attorney in Fairfax, I came back from Pennsylvania from law school and started noticing some disturbing things that were happening in terms of access to justice in Fairfax County. One of the main ones I saw was that we had entirely too many unrepresented parties, people who could not afford legal counsel, who were doing the best they could representing themselves in our court system.

[01:01:19] I did some research, and there was an unrepresented study done a few years ago in Virginia, and that determined that 62% of civil cases in the circuit court system include at least one unrepresented party. And that is important to see that it can happen in divorce cases, in custody matters over someone's children, in child support cases, in evictions, and also in protective order cases.

[01:01:45] I want to say thank you to the board also for approving the pilot program that's been working in Fairfax County to provide representation for our tenants. It's very important, and I know that when I talk to attorneys that are members of the bar, if I have a chance to tell them, that is an opportunity to really give back to their community and participate in that program, and it includes a $500 stipend for someone that agrees to take on a tenant eviction case.

[01:02:14] Language access is also a major equity gap. So we have a very diverse county where over 38% of our residents speak a language other than English at home. I'm one of them. I grew up in a home where Spanish was our primary language, and that was the first language I spoke.

[01:02:30] So, at the circuit court, we are aware of this, and we are responding to this moment. And I have made it a point to say I always, during the hiring process, look at the language skills that our applicants are bringing in. And we have a very, very diverse workforce at circuit court and records, and it is always a pleasure for me to see the people at our counters or on the phones helping their neighbors in other languages other than English, but there is issues that occur when there are not court interpreters or translated documents.

[01:03:03] I was just speaking with one of our judges about this yesterday morning where we had a case where an unrepresented party also was not, English is not their first language, had issues with understanding an English-only order, and so the judge and I kind of problem solved this, and I said, "Well, I think we might be able to upload this sample order the Fairfax website and then use the translation tools that Fairfax County provides so that they can then translate it into other languages so I'll be working with the county and Brian to see if we can make that happen but there's all sorts of opportunities I believe to close these equity gaps and then that

[01:03:41] takes me to the one that I believe we have done substantial work closing which is access to case information when I became an attorney and started practicing practicing in Fairfax, it was always a little disappointing to me that Fairfax was the one county in Virginia where I could not just go on the public website that the Commonwealth runs to find case information, to find what had been filed in cases, to find hearings of upcoming court hearings and court cases.

[01:04:10] To find that information, I had to physically go to the courthouse or call up and hope that a clerk would answer my questions. But I did not have free online access to that information that Prince William provided and that Loudon provided and every other county provided. It was always a bit of a head scratcher for me, but it really became disturbing once I got involved more with legal services of Northern Virginia and other pro bono programs. And I started realizing if you are trying to get legal assistance on a weekend or on a night and the court is closed, you can't answer the question what's happening in that case to that person that's come in getting legal assistance

[01:04:48] and many times i found that i had to give an answer well i don't pay for the subscription program that fairfax circuit has so i can't answer that for you right now but let me give you a call in the morning when they reopen for business so i got to work on this it was a actual key component of my campaign last year to bring us to a free access case information system like every other County has in Virginia. I believe that we've eliminated that barrier and I'll get to that in the next slide. But before we get there, one of the other major equity gaps we have in Fairfax

[01:05:23] County, and I think everyone here will agree, is transportation. We live in a huge county and it takes a long time to get from Supervisor Stork's district all the way to the courthouse, right? So we are aware of that. We are working to try to bring the services of the court out to the community more often. And we'll talk about our satellite initiative in a little bit. But the answer to residents when they need a copy of a document that's kept with our court should not always be, come and see us. We're open for business. Come on in and get it. It should not always be, send us a request with a self-addressed stamped envelope and a money order. I think we

[01:06:01] need to be making life a little bit easier for our residents. And I'll talk about that in just a moment. So because of some of the initiatives that we've taken on, such as our satellite program, I think most of you all know, but maybe not everyone is aware, we started satellite service the second Tuesday of every single month in Reston.

[01:06:22] That means now that on that second Tuesday, people that live in Reston or Herndon or anywhere near there can come in and get copies of court records, come in and get free notary service, come and apply for marriage licenses, and starting last month, they can also file things into active civil cases.

[01:06:40] So that is our satellite pop-up office. And we've heard from residents who cited the convenience of this and that it was closer for them to just go to the Kathy Hutchins Community Center in Reston, where we're holding the program, 9:00 AM to noon, the second Tuesday.

[01:06:55] So I'm actively continuing to market that program. It's growing. And we look forward to seeing where it goes. But also, we've heard from people who have used our e-case search program I'll talk about momentarily that it's simple to use. They can now find their information online remotely and it's saving them time and money. So that's music to my ears. We're in the business of trying to make things a little bit easier for our residents here, but those are just some of the comments we've heard. I know there was someone that I talked to recently who we were able to save a

[01:07:28] trip to from from the Mount Vernon area actually, and I was glad to hear that. So EK Search, our flagship program that we developed this year, let me tell you a little story. This is the program that, as I was mentioning earlier, really dates back to my frustration beginning in 2008 that residents, litigants, anyone really did not have access to case information in our Fairfax Circuit Court. As I, you know, proceeded, and then also last year out on the campaign trail, I also heard

[01:08:06] that it was difficult for people that wanted to find out what was going on in their community, to be honest. People that wanted to know what's happening with that case in Oakton that happened here. What's going on? So it also made me realize it's not just the litigants, it's not just the attorneys, but I will mention court-appointed lawyers are using this. I hadn't thought about that, but court-appointed counsel in criminal cases representing our neighbors utilize this system that we've created because they weren't paying for the prior program, the Courts Public Access Network, CPAN, which costs $150 every three months. But it's been a huge accomplishment

[01:08:45] to create a program. So let me tell you about it. I come into office and I talk to the new staff and I had said that we were going to move ourselves to a free system. My initial intention was to try to see if we could do that with others or vendors or the state. But the wonderful staff at Fairfax Circuit Court and Records said, Mr. Falcon, how about we try to create something better? So instead, in our typical Fairfax way, we made it, okay? We created eCaseSearch and created a program that talks to our case management system and offers a 24-7 window to

[01:09:24] the public case information in our criminal cases and in our civil cases, so that people can now go on their phones any time of day or night and find out what courtroom they need to be in, who their judge is, who the lawyers are, what's being filed. So that would not have been made possible without members of our team, so I've asked a few of them to be here today.

[01:09:46] If I could have Laura Stokes, Sam Davila, and Irene Nash, please stand. Thank you, guys. Appreciate you. This was only made possible by staff. I am the guy with the ideas. They are the ones that made it happen.

[01:10:02] But I'd also completely be remiss if I didn't say thank you to DIT, to the Department of Information Technology. DIT partnered with us and with Fairfax Circuit Court and Records IT Department to create this program that went live July 1st and has been utilized.

[01:10:19] But as you can see, in two months, over 52,000 searches, over 23,000 total users, and 882 in those first two months were people from Fairfax County who conducted 2,524 searches.

[01:10:35] So it's gotten wide usage, and that's not even with me really truly marketing it the way it needs to be. So, I mean, we can get into that during the question and answer, but we're putting our flyers up around the courthouse now to let people know. The staff are great about, you know, telling us ideas, and one of them was, why don't we have flyers yet about this program in the courthouse?

[01:10:55] And I said, you're right, that's on me. Sorry we didn't have that up yet. So we're getting those put up, and I think it's going to continue to get used the more people find out about it, because I still run into people too often in the courthouse who came in to check something and are standing in line and didn't know that they could find that out on their phones.

[01:11:11] So we're going to change that. But the part that I was reminded of by one of our, by my staff, by Sam this morning is don't forget the language piece, Mr. Falcon. So we were going to create this and it hadn't occurred to me that we could offer it in other languages until our staff spoke up and said, can we do it in, can we make the program also available in the other often spoken at home languages?

[01:11:34] So we're doing that. We're also not just offering it in English, but if you're in the program, which can be found on the Fairfax Circuit Court website by going to EK search, you can choose the other six most frequently spoken at home languages according to FCPS last year.

[01:11:49] And that is obviously personal to many of us, but what's really neat about it is that Fairfax County staff utilized their native spoken languages to help us translate it into Spanish, into Arabic, Korean, Mandarin, Vietnamese, and Amharic.

[01:12:08] And that was not just our staff, but DIT, thank you, who coordinated with their programming and their language skills. So we should all be very, very proud about this program, and I just can't say enough about it. So I know I've gone on a long time, but we have some cool things coming down the road.

[01:12:29] One of the ones that I know I've spoken a lot with Supervisor Lusk about is the expungement clinics. So my previous home was the Allentown Circuit Court, and I know that the opportunity is there for us to do what all the other counties in Northern Virginia are currently doing, which is offering expungement clinics on Saturdays so that our residents can come in and get some assistance with the process to remove criminal charges from their record for things that they were not ever convicted of, things that ended in a finding of not guilt, that were not prosecuted by the prosecutor's office, or that were dismissed, stay on their record in Virginia.

[01:13:05] I hope the day comes where those things are automatically expunged, but until then, I believe we have a duty to act, and that's to help our neighbors be able to get those charges off their record. Why is it important? It's important because those charges pop up when they apply for jobs and apply for credit and in the most inopportune times.

[01:13:23] So I held two expungement clinics that I organized in Arlington before I left. I know that there's a need here, And I look forward to working with you all next year to do our first one here in Fairfax County. Also important, I really enjoyed Scott's presentation.

[01:13:39] And I wish we were doing more with AI. I know we will get there. My IT team is like, ah, Chris. But we are utilizing it with FTR, which is a new program that we are initiating called For the Record. It is speech-to-text AI technology in our courtrooms.

[01:13:56] And it is a program that will allow us to listen in on the proceedings and then create a text record. Now, Virginia does not currently allow that to be utilized as the official transcript in court actions. But I don't think we're that far off from that day coming.

[01:14:12] And it has other uses. In civil cases, you may all not be aware, there is no guarantee of court reporters in civil proceedings. So unfortunately, sometimes people will have their whole trial and not have a court reporter present. And then they don't have a record when they try to appeal their case to the Court of Appeals.

[01:14:30] Our court, thanks to our awesome Chief Judge Penny Oscarati, has said, you could, if the parties agree, use the transcript from this program if both sides agree and the judge signs off as a statement of facts. So now there is a court record for that person.

[01:14:45] In addition, thank you, Laura, for reminding me, it also assists our people who are deaf and hard of hearing. And it's been utilized already in that capacity for our hearings here in Fairfax County. So this is a good thing. As I also talked about satellite service, the plan is to also expand it next year down the Route 1 corridor.

[01:15:04] I know the Jerry Highland Government Center is a great place that Supervisor Stork and I and Supervisor Lusk have talked about. But there is need, and it's also been heartening to hear from our nonprofit partners that they're willing to help get the word out and bring this service down to another part of the county.

[01:15:22] One thing also that I'm very excited about is a judicial learning center. What that means is we currently have a court tour program where eighth grade students from the Fairfax County Public Schools and others come to the courthouse to see our proceedings. This would be a supplement to that program and include some exhibits from historic cases that happened here in Fairfax County.

[01:15:42] That is actually how I got interested in the law during my eighth grade mock trial unit at Frost Middle School. So I think there's an excellent opportunity here to highlight some historic cases in one of which Fairfax got wrong in terms of racial covenants that wouldn't allow people to use facilities that were in their home area.

[01:16:02] So I think there's a great opportunity there to have some of these exhibits, to expand that, to highlight the things that we have in the Historic Records Center. And I appreciate the support of the board for coming and hearing our ideas about the creation of a Judicial Learning Center.

[01:16:18] We would be the first circuit court in the United States to have a Judicial Learning Center. The JLC, for short, that I've visited in Richmond at the Supreme Court is awesome. I highly recommend it if you guys are down there. When you walk into it, the first exhibit that you see is the Loving v. Virginia case.

[01:16:37] And it's just fantastic. It's moving. I think there's a real opportunity for us to do that here. We're currently in the design phase and coming up with the exhibits that we want to highlight to act as a supplement to the eighth grade tour. We are also working hard on our auto sealing of criminal charges. So law went into effect a couple years ago that will seal now certain criminal charges. As the law is written And right now, that becomes active July 1st of this coming year, 2025.

[01:17:09] So we have been working with our state partners and others to identify the cases that we have in Fairfax Circuit Court that qualify for this. I will be very honest, we do not have the staff right now to do all the work that's being put on us, but I appreciate we're reaching out to the county, to the state, to let them know that we need additional resources for this to be able to happen.

[01:17:31] I stand behind the policy, but we do need help to be able to seal approximately something around the range of 400,000 charges dating back. But that's still in the works, and I look forward to seeing where that goes.

[01:17:46] One of the other things that was surprising to me is that a lot of residents in Fairfax County are being subject to property fraud schemes. And this is something I did not know was happening. And so I have been working with DTA, the Department of Tax Administration, with the Fairfax County Police and formed a work group where we are looking to create a notification system so that Fairfax County residents can be notified if there's any kind of action or inquiry into their property records and then receive something through my Fairfax.

[01:18:20] So I know I'm going to be working on that the rest of this calendar year, but that's a real need. We get multiple calls per week at the Fairfax Circuit Court from residents who are concerned that they're being contacted about, and when it really happens is vacant properties that are down in the Lorton area, Mount Vernon area, where they've been contacted by someone or they have found their property listed for sale unbeknownst to them.

[01:18:46] So there's work to be done in that, but I've identified that that's a problem that we need to be working on. So we're also going to be working to upgrade our financial accounting systems. I know that's not the most interesting thing, but it's important to us. We want to make sure we have a streamlined system and not one that's stuck in the last century.

[01:19:05] And the last thing I'll also say is digitizing records. That is a lot of work, my friends. I have decades and decades and decades of physical case files, but they frankly need to be digitized. It is not cheap and it is not fast to do, but I like a problem and I like getting to work on them.

[01:19:26] So right now I'll be working to get estimates and to get a real scope on this project. I don't think we should be taking as much real estate of Fairfax County up with holding physical files as we currently are, but this will be a huge, huge undertaking to be able to digitize our files, but I know we'll get there.

[01:19:48] But as you've heard, we've been very busy, but there's a lot of opportunity and a lot of work in the future. And I just thank you all for having me here today and happy to take any questions. So let me start by saying I appreciate your leadership and just want to thank you for all the innovative things that you're doing in the circuit courts.

[01:20:05] This is tremendous. Thank you. There's a couple things I'll go very quickly. I wanted to acknowledge there was a recent board matter that Supervisor Stork and I were involved with around the racial covenants for the deeds and land records.

[01:20:21] I know we're going to be engaged with your office, and I want to just acknowledge we signed you on to that board matter in addition to the county attorney's office. But I just want to give you maybe a second here to talk about maybe a couple of thoughts you have around that as well. Absolutely. So I think the Fairfax Circuit Court and Records, and I can speak for myself, want to be a willing partner to help our residents know what information they need in terms of removing racial covenants.

[01:20:47] So I know that I've spoken to you that our website can be a good landing spot for information, and I'm also always willing to go around and talk to people about this. Because I don't know that it's really known widespread yet by people, honestly, how many of their deeds in Fairfax County have these in them.

[01:21:04] That's right. And it's important that we have the collaboration. So I just want to acknowledge that we appreciate your engagement here as well. And then on the expungement clinic, I just appreciate the point that you made about how it impacts people's ability to get employment. And I believe the first one is going to be in South County as well. I'll say Hypo Valley Community Center.

[01:21:24] That's correct. So the beauty here, as we know, that as folks in that community have gone out and tried to get jobs, this has come back. This has been an issue. So I look forward to working with you and the community to host that first program, and I think it will be a model for certainly other parts of Fairfax.

[01:21:44] I just want to, again, acknowledge your leadership there and thank you for that as well. So with those points, I'll turn it over to the chairman, and then I'll ask my colleagues.

[01:21:54] Thank you and since we only have seven minutes left, let me thank you so the rest of the board doesn't have to thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So that they can just go to their questions because this has been an amazing presentation and a huge amount of progress made on things that have been a challenge for this community for a long time and you've done and fixed a lot of these things in a short time and I think that's a tribute to you but also to your amazing staff and as you mentioned to me repeatedly when you were generous enough to take me on a tour throughout all of your operations in August, and I know my colleagues got that opportunity too,

[01:22:33] the collaboration with DIT and the other county agencies that you work with has been phenomenal. Two things I just want to raise attention to. One, when we talk about satellite service and bringing that to South County, I think that's huge. One of the things that you and I spoke about that has been lost in all the time that has passed since the original South County building got built is that that building, the ground floor of that building, was originally built to be a satellite court facility, a full court facility providing as a starting point maybe just basic traffic or civil cases

[01:23:11] for people in Mason and Franconia and Mount Vernon that might have a difficult time getting to the courthouse. I know that's a huge undertaking. The challenge at the time, why it never opened, was because we couldn't find a judge willing to take cases down there.

[01:23:29] And more importantly, the concept of maybe even doing those on evenings or on Saturdays for working people that couldn't take off during the week. And so I just want to keep hope alive on that. I mean, with this amazing chief judge that we have, it may be one of those things to ask the question again of the judges.

[01:23:47] would there be anyone willing to do that and willing to take on maybe a night docket or a weekend docket and to be able to do that at a satellite facility. The space was there. The building was there. We didn't have a judge who was willing to do it. That really bottom line is what sank that. But as we have Old Mount Vernon High School progress being made and new technology and things, I am sure the space in that building could be freed up to do that if we were able to revisit that. And so I just want to keep that on the radar. It's a longer term thing, but I still

[01:24:22] think it's something important. And then lastly, I just want to emphasize something with the online case info and why this is such a big deal. You emphasized it, but we get a really good report from police PIO or a public safety agencies when something happens and someone gets charged with a high-profile crime in the county, or there's a real tragic accident that occurs. And what we never get is what you acknowledge, which is, well, what actually happened with that case when it went to court? And so the online case info piece is so important just from a pure transparency standpoint.

[01:25:02] You know, we don't know who needs access to this. For the longest time, I was convinced that only attorneys would go on and look for that. But increasingly, people come up to me and say, in particular, I raise this one with you, with the accident, pedestrian accident that occurred in Oakton. Were those people held accountable for killing pedestrians because they were recklessly driving down the road? And unless the TV media covered that, our residents don't know what was the end result of a very good police response, investigation, and then what happened

[01:25:38] in court. And so I just want to lay that out there because this is Transparency 101 and I'm just really glad that we're at a point now where people can access that without having to pay. And so well done on that point and look forward to continuing to work with you. Thank you, Chairman.

[01:25:55] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll now move to Supervisor Stewart. Thank you, and I agree with everything both of them said. So I'm going to then move on to the other piece, which is this is an amazing improvement with the E-case. As somebody who lived this challenge a couple decades ago and how hard it was, and frankly, it's kind of like the iPhone.

[01:26:16] I didn't know how much this could benefit me until I got it, but it was a torturous process to find out what was going on in court on a regular basis. So that's huge. I'm all in.

[01:26:29] I pretty much wanted to see more obviously done satellite and more at the Highland Center and I know you have three people who feel strongly about that. I think and I know Judge Esquerda is very much on. I've talked to the juvenile judge before, family judge as well and was very supportive. So all in on all those. Last point is communication package, the campaign. I am all in. What can you share with us?

[01:26:56] happy to take that and push it out and have lots of events to do that in. But especially, I know we all have newsletters and other communication media to do that. And I know there's a huge demand and interest in it. So please help us with that. Absolutely. Supervisor Stork, I appreciate that. So I'll be completely honest right now. The deed issue is the one that I'm deed fraud. Property fraud is the one that I'm currently on. But I will certainly have our office reach out to you and i'll reach out to you personally about timing on the south county expansion and i would say a regular i mean i know the the police have really done really stepped up

[01:27:34] their game the last couple years the pio office is really getting that information out i would urge you to do the same i know it takes time and staff but but even a monthly you know here's what's happening i we would welcome that i know that my communications people would welcome the opportunity to include that. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Stork. Supervisor Bierman. Thank you for everything you're doing. Not to show my age, but I remember when you couldn't even e-file in Fairfax County.

[01:28:03] It used to be the wild, wild west, and a lot of these things started to change before you got in with Judge Askerati, with the judges coming over. But I feel like this is just the cherry on top, being able to have full access to everything.

[01:28:19] And so thank you for everything. Sorry to repeat, Chairman McKay. But I'll just end by saying I'd be happy to volunteer at your expungement clinic. My law license is still good. Thanks. Thank you, Supervisor Bierman. I'm going to take you up on that. Thank you, Supervisor Bierman.

[01:28:34] Supervisor Jimenez. Mr. Falcon, great to see you and a great presentation. Thank you so much. Nine months, what you've done in the last nine months is just fantastic. modernization, the openness, the transparency. And I think letting folks know exactly what it is your office does, because for the longest time, I don't think residents actually knew what the office did. And with your staff and with your team giving tours, you know, getting out there and just letting folks know the resources has been wonderful for the county. I will say you

[01:29:11] are actually putting one Fairfax to work. And I think that needs to be applauded. We always talk about one in Fairfax, but you are actually doing it every day. You are making sure that your office and the county are living by the principles that we try to follow. So thank you for that. And I really hope to see a satellite office in Mason District at some point. So thank you, sir.

[01:29:32] Thank you so much. Thank you, Supervisor Jimenez. Supervisor Herity. Yeah, and I've said at the Asian Chamber, the e-file stuff has been incredible to a lot of people that I didn't know needed it or could have used it. Debt fraud, big problem.

[01:29:48] Especially in our elderly, as the former chairman of our Older Adults Committee, that was an issue that was popping up, visibility. The Area Agency for Aging, I'd suggest you go talk to them about that as a part of your work. And as we discussed on the tour, happy to set up one of your satellite visits out in West Springfield.

[01:30:09] Thank you, Supervisor Herity. Thank you, Supervisor Herity. And last, Supervisor Palchuk. So good to see you, Mr. Falcon. And a lot of things were mentioned, and in addition to thanking you, the one in here that I'm super excited to work with you on is that while you are, I think, putting things that need to be online online, you're also focused on that physical space, right?

[01:30:29] And it's a great time, as you know, those of you who have not had a chance to see the planning of the future judicial complex and the current improvement and renovation of the historic building. Because I do think, as you mentioned, there is so much history right here in Fairfax County.

[01:30:45] And I'm excited to be able to partner with you and to ensure that that turns into a living place. As someone who went from Frost to visit the courthouse, I remember meeting with the inmates. And I think that led to my love for actually for human services.

[01:31:02] So I love that out of it, you got your love for the law and hope that through the Judicial Learning Center, we can inspire future generations, especially Latinos like us who grew up here. So thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Palachick. I look forward to working with you on this. Okay, thank you, Supervisor Palchuk.

[01:31:19] And with that, thank you very much, Mr. Falcon, for your presentation and coming over. It was a delight to have you. And the meeting is adjourned at 11.03.

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