 Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Thank you. Would you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much. I entertain a motion for the approval of the minutes of the July 25th meeting. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Seeing none, I'll signify by saying aye. Aye. Those of course. Thank you. Item 15, public forum on agenda items. Is anybody here that would like to speak to the Committee of the Hall? No. Well thank you. Okay, then we're going to go down to item 21. And this is a resolution 131-1617 by law and licensing charter ordinance number 1617 by Lewandowski. Alderman Lewandowski, Herman Robb, being subject to the home rule provision of section 66.0101 of the Wisconsin Statutes to maintain the number of older persons in the city of Sheboygan at 16. Alderman Lewandowski. I just want to give a little speech. I think all of us have heard or had to learn Lincoln's Gettysburg address in school. In part of the Gettysburg address, Lincoln also memorized the sacrifices of those who gave their lives at Gettysburg, annexed all the virtues for the listeners and a nation to ensure the survival of America's representative democracy that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from this earth. By reducing the council to only 10 older persons and removing older persons and citizen members from reduced committees, we are taking away Sheboygan representative democracy of government by the people, for the people of Sheboygan. 16 older persons give the people of Sheboygan more representation than only 10 older persons. In 1941, according to a Sheboygan press article, Alderman Fairweather of the Common Council introduced a proposal for a referendum to have eight Alderman or leave it at the then 16. The Common Council decided against going down to eight. Among the reasons given were a large majority of the people were against it. There would be better representation with 16 Alderman. The city was growing in size and population and the Alderman had to represent more people with more work involved. In 1941, the population of Sheboygan was 40,638. The city limits on the north was North Avenue, on the south was Union Avenue, on the west was mainly 18th Street. The same reasons in 1941 still apply today because the city is larger in size and population. Going down to 10 older persons would mean that fewer people would run for Alderman because most people that run won't run against an incumbent. It would also lower voter turnout because many people won't make an effort to vote if there are no interesting offices to vote for. For example, last February's primary election, when there was only one election to vote for, and that was a primary for state supreme court justice, and the voter turnout was very low. If the citizens only had to vote for an Alderman every other year, voter turnout will decline. The people of Sheboygan have already had their government by the people taken away by not being able to vote for the person who runs the city. Now going down to only 10 older persons would take away even more government for the people by the people. It would also mean that a smaller percentage of Alderman would be controlling the whole common council. Reducing the number of older persons would also mean fewer older persons for committees. Each older person would have to serve on two standing committees in order, in addition to other committees. Some committees would need to be reduced to three members instead of the current five. This would mean a phone call between two older persons on the same committee could result in a walking quorum, and they could block anything on the committee they wanted to, or pass anything you wanted to on the committee. All the person Donna Hew has said a few weeks ago that the people on the council now can be trusted, not to do that. But can we say that the people on the council three years from now will be trust worthy? Three years ago we had an Alderman on the council, Kevin Maddichek, who played it no contest to a charge of a public official accepting a bribe when he tried to prevent the Sheboygan Tavern owner from getting his license renewed. Five older persons on the committee made this more difficult to do, but if there had just been three it would have been easier to get one more to join him. More committee meetings would need to be cancelled because with the committee composed of three members two missing members would mean no quorum is present and no meeting could be held. With the current five member committees two missing members would still leave a quorum and the committee meeting could be held. I saw this a few weeks ago when one committee was down to only two members, when one committee member was not able to be at the meeting, a second older person had to leave early and a third member had to leave for a few minutes leaving only two members out of five and no quorum. I have heard from many people in Sheboygan that they called out, called one of their Alderman but were never called back. If they only have one Alderman in their district and that Alderman doesn't return their phone calls who do they speak to? Especially when one Alderman has answered emails from Sheboygan citizens saying he is not interested in what the citizens think because they don't live in his district. A larger council would also provide more knowledge and life experiences that may be important for the council to know and considering a vote. I ask all the older persons to vote to retain the current 16 older persons so that the people of Sheboygan can truly have a government for the people by the people. Thank you Scott. Are there any other comments? Any other Alderman? Are we going to, is there going to be further discussion or are you going to just go to vote without a first or a second or anything? Nobody's made a motion to adopt or anything yet. I was going to speak after it was seconded. Okay, well we can, do we have a motion to approve that would be sending this resolution to the common council with a favorable recommendation? I made a motion. Second. Right, so there's been a motion and a second. Under discussion Alderman was in. Because I was just curious. But for the Alderman that voted to reduce the council from 16 to 10 which does increase the work burden for the other Alderman have in less than a year since voting to do so either resign their position or let their term expire and did not run for re-election. So if you take those four Alderman out this resolution wouldn't even pass. Thank you. Alderman Herman. The more I think of this, the more I believe we should keep it at 16. Even if I was not on the council I would still think 16 is an appropriate number because then you always have enough people to help constituents if older person A is not available or person B is available. I think that my tenure, anybody else's tenure here should be decided by the people that pay or salary by the tax payers. I mean if they want somebody out they should vote us out. It shouldn't be determined by somebody who proposed an ordinance which was no longer on the council I would prefer that it stay at 16 because I think if you don't have 16 you're opening up a can of worms that doesn't necessarily need to be open. You're not going to have enough people to fill a committee you're not going to have enough people to answer phone calls. Let's say you have an older person who's ill for an extended period of time or on vacation and constituent A can't get a hold of that person. The older person is available to take on that responsibility. That's what I truly believe if the taxpayer wants 10 they should have 10. If they want 16 they should have 16 but I think it should be decided by the people that vote is in. I think if you do reduce the council you should reduce it by 2 or 4 but I think if you reduce it from 16 to 10 you're in big trouble because let's say 6 can't make it to a regular council meeting. You just don't have enough people you have 10 and 6 can't make it then you have 4 you just have enough for a quorum and you can't have that well rounded broad discussion that you could have with 16. So I would really prefer that it stay at 16. Thank you all. My concern is that we are here we are elected by the people of Sheboygan to do a job. Now we decide amongst ourselves that we are no longer going to have 16 but 8. It was never brought to a referendum and according to this paper here it says the public did not object and there were no petitions presented Well I was the public when this was voted on never heard anything about the fact that this council was planning on reducing the number from 16 to 10 and I think that if you're going to do anything to reduce the number of this council it should be by referendum vote. The people voted us in they should be the ones to say yes we need to downsize the council a little bit or no we want the 16 members to stand. Thank you very much. Is there anybody that I missed? I want to make a comment. Thank you. I too have changed my mind about the number of Alderman I believe we need to maintain the 16. I think I can validate that by the number of meetings that I attend that I'm worried if a quorum is even going to be happening. The number of calls I get from people outside my district that their older persons aren't answering their phone calls and I think it's important that we all answer any call that comes our way and just in mind of the flavor how I feel things have been changing within the council I'm curious I mean I don't know how many of you were here when the vote was to reduce it but I imagine the vote on this will give me my answer but I'm curious as to what the flavor is of this current council as to how everyone feels about it being either 16 or 10. Thank you. Anybody else? Alderman Thank you. I was here. I originally voted in favor of the reduction myself mainly because I wanted to see how the committee structure was going to happen because we really didn't have an idea on that. It sounded good on paper let's take it to the next step to see what it's going to look like. After taking a look at how committee assignments are going to line up how other people are going to line up that's where I now have a concern of going down to that number. One is I look at combining a couple committees that I sat on both of law and licensing and now currently public protection and safety you can mine those two meetings I know they're talking about taking some things out of there so it wouldn't be as long that's going to be a pretty long meeting. I really feel sorry for that last person on that agenda let's say it's one of the public protection and safety ones that's last on the agenda they've sat there for two hours maybe more waiting for their item to come I'm seeing three older people here who really don't want to be sitting here for three hours and I'm sure they wouldn't be are they going to get a fair shot at what they want their argument to be I have a little concern for that also with the number I can't see three people taking on both of those committees at one time I think both of those committees need to have five older people on it to make a decision we're voting on somebody's livelihood at some times and I don't think it's fair to the public to give three people or maybe even possibly two if somebody can't show up you know you're telling let's say it's Alderman bitters and I run in the whole show for how many people trying to decide their livelihood that's not an easy thing to do I don't think that's fair to the older people or is it fair to the public who is coming before us so now that I've seen what is proposed I'm definitely now in favor of sticking with the 16 older persons I am in favor of still reducing some committees I think we have way too many committees I think some of those could be either eliminated or combined with something else thank you thank you I also agree with Alderman feel I think that we can still eliminate a few committees or combine a couple committees but still stay at the 16 older men thank you Alderman Tresser I have to agree that I can see where some of those committees could be eliminated some could be combined not on licensing and public protection safety because law and licensing goes two and a half hours sometimes but I could see where some could be combined but cutting down the size of the council for me is just not a not good planning thank you any other comments Alderman Robb I am in favor of keeping the Alderman to 16 versus reducing it to 10 I think being a time position and working full time as we all have professional positions outside of this it's really a hard balance between work and family so I think if you reduce it to 10 something's going to fall off either you're going to fall off and you're going to have to resign your position or you're going to have problems at home in your family life so I think keeping it to 16 is a good balance if in the future you know a possibility would be where you would want to reduce it I only see the only way to make that happen is to make it a full time paid position I don't think the budget's there I don't think that's even part of the conversation but I think in the long term 5, 7, 8, 10 years from now that might be a consideration but today I think keeping it to 16 is a good number thank you very much Alderman Billinger thank you Chairman I've got a question I don't know if it's for you or for somebody that's on the subcommittee that was checking to find out from the strategic fiscal planning who was going to reduce the committee structure but I haven't seen anything on that and so I don't know what these other people have seen or you know I mean I didn't I don't know if anything has been disseminated to the rest of the council it was attached to your materials okay I'm sorry I didn't see that so I will look that over but my other question would be what are the legal ramifications of taking this vote because wasn't there a timing issue of doing this and it being a charter ordinance and things associated with that okay attorney thank you yes there is a timing issue our recommendation at the city attorney's office that you not pass this charter ordinance there are some significant problems that you run into if you do so two things basically any charter ordinance before it goes into effect must go through a 60 day waiting period to give the public the opportunity to object that happened with the prior charter ordinance that 60 day period if you would approve this at the September meeting gets you now into November now potentially during that time someone could already take out their papers to run for Alderman if they're taking out their papers to run for Alderman they'll be taking out papers for a one year term because the current charter ordinance that is in effect indicates that anyone who's running for office of Alderman in the next election will be running for a one year term you now potentially make this change and it turns it into a two year term even more seriously if during that 60 day period there is an objection and there are petitions that are filed there needs to be some time to consider those petitions to make sure that they're appropriate that they're verified but then it would go on the ballot the next it would go up for referendum the current charter ordinance that you have in front of you to reduce or to increase from 10 to 16 the problem with that is it would be on the April ballot and you will already have people running for a one year term in the February primary and the April election and you will also have on the ballot charter ordinance that purports to go back to what happened before and increase the Aldermanic term from one year to two years you can't do that so if you continue to wish to move from 10 to 16 the proper way to do it would not be to approve this ordinance but really to put together a charter ordinance after the next Aldermanic election or at least that goes into effect after the next Aldermanic election that takes into account the fact that you are going to have a class of Alderman that are in office for only one year I did indicate that issue to the Alderman who came and visited me on this but certainly your prerogative to continue to vote on it but it's going to be a real legal problem if you do it and I would not recommend you do that thank you Alderman Lozane I don't see the legal problem my math is maybe a little fuzzy but I think from September 5th to December 1st there's 86 days I could be wrong about that we got the entire month of October the entire month of November and at least 25 days in September and you can't circulate nomination papers before December 1st so unless has that changed I think that's the same isn't it so since you can't take out papers and at the day you take them out is when they define what goes on that paper there's not only 60 days for the public after the next regular council meeting to object there's another 25 days after that thank you Alderman Tresser I think what's important here too is that in this room there are 16 Alderman well 15 right now each one of them have the right to be heard by taking this vote we are stating our position on how we feel and I believe that everything else can be worked out I don't believe it's as cut and dry as what it may seem to be and I would like to see this vote can be carried out I'd like to see it be put on the as a referendum vote and I'd like to see the people of Sir Boyan choose thank you very much Alderman Witters thank you chair I have a problem with the theorization that somehow this body came up with this secretly stealthily that the public wasn't given notice we followed all of the rules the 60 day period it made it through this body it made it through common council voted on it we agreed to it if you're having second thoughts that's fine but I don't want anyone to feel like we got away with something because we really weren't trying to do that there was a 2010 or 2012 study where they compared us to similar bodies in other cities and they said wow your council is bigger than everybody else's that was kind of the prevailing thoughts behind it as to the recommendations for the new committee levels and the number of committees fine it was a recommendation there's certainly tweaking that could be done to it but it doesn't have to be decided today I would stand by we did what we thought was right when we voted on it at the previous council and there was a public comment period someone could have objected we could have got it on a referendum it didn't happen saying we didn't know it doesn't quite register for me and just personally I'm going to stick with the what we voted on in the previous council to go to 10 people I took what attorney Adams wrote to heart in his background that this is going to cause larger issues if we suddenly say we were we changed our mind we're opening ourselves up for a large mess if at some point they want to bring this back after the nomination and election period alright I have a problem with arguing the same issues over and over again thank you chair thank you Alderman Crescer first to say that other cities have councils smaller than ours we could say well other fire departments have more people per engine than ours do we want to go that route seriously we're here to represent the people not ourselves not the people that wrote this back then that aren't even on the council anymore I represent the people of Sheboygan I think this is just a polite way of saying it's a bunch of poppycock I think we can handle it if we can't handle a little bump in the road it might happen by passing this ordinance then we don't deserve to be here anyway Alderman Jose first and then Alderman Belcher I have confidence in the city clerk's office that they can handle anything that has to be done and I disagree we should wait because if we really need to 60 days right now we have 86 and if we delay and wait we're pushing ourselves too close to where we won't be able to do it I'm going to be voting for the resolution to change it back to 16 Alderman I would just like the city attorney to address Alderman Jose's math question Attorney Adams his math is correct for one half of everybody forgot about the rest of what I said because if you now get people who sent in a verified petition now that gets put on the ballot in April the same time that people are running for election you can't do that so conceivably you could just sort of hope and pray that nobody objects to it in which case you'll probably be okay the better way to do it of course is you can have a charter ordinance that actually deals with the issues rather than passing the flawed one I guess is the way I would put it I have a question for you how hard would it be for someone that's running for one year know that if this thing passes it's going to be a two year term to me that's easy maybe easy but it's not legal we can't do it well how can we cut down size of council without the people having a voice in this and don't tell me that nobody passed the petition because I don't know where it was advertised but just like this survey that the city just did we got 700 people that returned the survey or that answered the survey at a 49,000 so how many really paid attention to what was going on you can't answer that so I'm saying we pass the ordinance tonight and let the people have a voice in what's going on I mean that's just the way it is I just want to make sure I heard you correct you said don't pass this charter because there's a better way to write the charter what is the better what is what can we do that's legal you accept that the time has passed for the next set of elections so that you're going to be electing a set of alderman who are in office for one year and you create a charter ordinance that acknowledges that retains the number at 16 and determines how that gets divided up after the next election so you will have in 2018-16 alderman up for election half of them for one year terms half of them for two year terms that's how you do it it's really the only legal way to do it why wasn't that suggested to the people that drew up this in the first place well I indicated that there was a problem with the timing and but was it explained fully at that time it was thank you Alderman Jose I think it's worth I think it's worth the risk to see whether anybody's I don't think anybody's going to object and put forth a petition I think people I think the citizens of Sheboygan like it with 16 people and I just don't think that's going to happen there are other remedies once again I think you're coming forth with a scare tactic now it's not on money it's on how the elections are run people die and special elections are held there are ways around everything and we can hold a special election if that's what's necessary to remedy the situation but you're talking about maybes maybe if we do this somebody will object to not going down from 16 alderman to 10 thank you there are any Alderman Bellinger what is the petition how many people have to sign it it's a percentage of the I don't remember the exact number but it's a percentage of the vote at the last gubernatorial election it's not a small number it's not like so it's a gubernatorial election so it's a high turnout election yeah it's 7% or something of the people who voted in the last gubernatorial election Alderman I'll start first tonight and there and we go through the time frame and there is no objections to going from 16 or from 10 back to 16 are we legal then two points first of all you won't be passing it tonight tonight you'll simply prefer recommending it to council if a two thirds majority vote of the council approves it in September and no one objects and no one takes out papers because again there's a difference between taking out papers and actually getting signatures you know you can already take out papers for Alderman from there that's already happened I'm not aware of any Alderman but if someone actually takes out papers you conceivably have a problem because they've taken out papers for a one year term is it as great a problem as if we have objection via petitions it's not as great of a problem but as your attorney I think I have to tell you you have to do things right rather than let's just do it and then fix the problem if we get it I would prefer that you do things right the first time around thank you Alderman Jose it's almost a statistical impossibility almost never is it the amount of signatures request if it's 15% or whatever the last gubernatorial is that almost never happens they tried it against Judge Anderson 30 some years ago when he voted in favor of the Muth Company and against the people that didn't like the smell around there they tried to recall him couldn't get enough signatures in the last couple years somebody tried to do that couldn't get enough signatures statistically I think about 90% of the time that fails I mean the people that are opposing the Aurora Medical Center I think they tried and couldn't get enough signatures it's almost never it's you got about a 1 in 10 shot of somebody getting enough signatures to equal that percentage of the gubernatorial race and on this issue especially like I say I believe that the people in this committee favor 16 Alderman be able to get a whole of an Alderman then reducing the number of Alderman by 6 but only locally the percentage is lower for this than some of the ones that you refer to the most similar situation where a number of decades ago some attempts to make certain positions including the city attorney's office non-elected positions in which they were successful petition drives thank you Alderman Zanio in terms of closing up the discussion just a few points from my perspective I do want to thank Alderman Vitters for pointing out that we didn't do this in secret we didn't hide it sadly people are not particularly interested is my perception as to whether there are 16 or 10 of us I don't think our constituents live or die by that I could be wrong but I certainly had zero interest from any constituents about the vote that we took 12 to 4 last November remember that if you change this now and you rely on it now in a year from now there are different people sitting around your action can be undone as well there is some respect for precedent I'm not saying it has to be controlling but I think before you overturn a 12 to 4 vote that was taken a mere 8 months ago we should give long hard thought to what was brought to the table at that time what was discussed at that time because if serious charter ordinances can be flipped every single year that's not a good thing for the city in terms of government and reliability Fond du Lac which is a little smaller than Sheboygan has 7 Alders Oshkosh which I think is 10 to 15,000 citizens more has 7 Alders Manitowoc which is somewhat smaller has 10 as the outlier at 15 they do have 25,000 more people than we do they also used to have the largest county board in the state they had remarkably 48 people on their county board it's been reduced somewhat it appears out of gamey county likes to have a lot of people around here the advantages to remaining with the ordinances we have it now first of all we will have consistent districts and wards the plan is to follow the county supervisory districts so that there won't be city districts and county districts so when you ask your friends do you know who your county board supervisor is your alderman that person will be able to respond because it will be in the same district we've talked about several alders have talked about buy and oven for the people here's the problem with having two alders per district is our votes can cancel each other out it's like the tragic husband and wife who can't agree on who to elect for president they both vote the way they want to it's good but it has a net zero effect now this doesn't come up all that often although in my particular circumstance in district 4 our constituents don't really have a vote because the two alders and in our district are fairly consistently voting different ways so in district 4 on a number of issues there's a zero net effect because we have people voting against each other I mean that's just one of the weird in build problems with having two people in one district why do we have two people you'll remember city historian bill wangeman talking about the fact that we had these wards and there was an alder for each ward and every night it was the alder's duty to light the gas lamps and that's why we have an alder for each ward or now two alders per district also crimes reported to the alders instead of to the police and then the alders went to the police sounds a little old fashioned but that's the reason we have 16 of us I find just an inbuilt confusion in terms of constituent services for a number of years my first four years on the council I had a fellow alder who from what I could determine never responded to constituents so I knew when someone was calling me I was the first phone call and I would be the person dealing with that issue I would I didn't have to figure out whether the other alder was involved or whether we were giving conflicting advice or sending people in different directions that is not the case now my fellow alder I think is very responsive to constituent claims but we don't know who's done what where and how so sometimes in calling your alder you don't know which one to call and I've had people say I don't know who to call but I called you and that's fine if there's one alder per district that's completely clear that alder is responsible not only for lighting the gas lamps but also for responding to constituent requests in a timely fashion in other words staying at 10 people more representation rather than less and we need to think about it in that respect now our committee restructuring subcommittee has worked very hard to present and I should actually say our city administrator who did most of the work has worked hard to figure out how do you do this because it is a reduction how do you do this and make sure that everything gets done efficiently what you had before you in your materials is our proposal it is a proposal it is just a proposal things can be changed in different ways I would suggest when there are 10 of us will have a much better sense of how things are going we need to be very careful about crying about quorums because it is our job to come to these meetings and be present and when we decide to run for alder we do that knowing that it is going to make a demand on our time and then we are getting paid for it not a lot but we are getting paid I figure at about 20 hours of service per month some of us do more some of us do less that is about $18 an hour so we are getting paid and we need to appear at committee meetings we need to respond to constituent calls and the like that the particular model that we have suggested can be changed it can be tweaked we can go to five members five alders per standing committee once we unite them our idea is that a lot of things that alders do are things that staff ought to be doing there is a lot of footwork that staff members can do so that law and license and public protection and safety in particular but also other places those meetings can be more efficiently done alders can focus on the policy things that we are here for not for not the sort of quasi judicial deciding on individual cases so we can make these committees work smarter and more efficiently and here is my final point and I know you are glad here is the deal if we are not willing to change we can't ask our department heads to there is not a department head in this city that has not looked hard and long at how his or her department does business how they can be more efficient how they can service constituents better how they can get more bang for the buck if you will and each and every department at least as far as I know has taken major reorganizational steps in order to make sure that our tax dollars are used more efficiently is a way for this council to act more efficiently in the interest not in the disinterest in the interest of our constituents and if we can't do that then I don't see how we are able to ask our department heads and our departments to do the same thing. I'm asking you to honor the vote that was taken 12 to four eight months ago. I only had one point but now I have two in the last 30 seconds. If crunching only $2,700 is going to be saved by eliminating six alderman. I was on the department of public works committee last year if somebody slides on the ice and knocks down a street pole that's $2,700 I mean that's nothing in terms I don't think it's one tenth of one percent of the city budget $2,700 but that's not the point I want to make. Less representation is never better saying that they can't see each other. That's a good thing. Do you realize that we would have Tammy Baldwin would be the voice for the state of Wisconsin if there was only one U.S. senator? How awful would that be if Tammy Baldwin being the only voice? Let's keep to the subject here. Well that's part of the subject. She's talking about one being better and two it's not. Less representation is never better. This country would not exist if there were not two U.S. senators per state. Rhode Island and Virginia and a few other smaller states were not going to get on board. They were not going to get on board without a free mason by the name of Benjamin Franklin authoring the great compromise and because there were two senators for every state not one, two, that got the constitution signed and got this country formed. Thank you very much. Alderman Tresser and Alderman Belger. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a courtroom and I'll just listen to closing statements. I'm not a jury. I'm a member of this council. I work to serve the people and I feel with all my heart probably as strongly as Alderman Donahue feels in her position that we should stay at 16. Just because there is one strong opinion in one way doesn't mean that we all have to be like sheep and follow. And I for one am going to vote for 16. Thank you very much. Alderman Belger. I just have a procedural question. I'm wondering the changes of committee structure. That was a subset of the strategic fiscal planning meeting or committee. Wouldn't that flow back through there? How are we to approve these proposed changes or are they just as is and shouldn't it go back through strategic fiscal and then come back out that way as seen as how it went. That's the way it was created. I believe we would have to go back to the committee and then they would make the recommendations of the council. There was a specific resolution that created this subcommittee and I believe we have until September 30th to present a report and that would be in the form of a resolution to the council as a whole. I don't think that there's a re-referral to strategic fiscal. I think it's a freestanding committee that goes back to council then. I'll have to look at the ordinance again but I think that's how it's done. Are there any other Alderman Lussard? I think just in listening to different people speak, I'm changing my vote from 10 back to 16 because I've sat on the council. This is my fifth year and not everybody comes to the meeting. I know it. Everyone else knows it. You count on one person and they don't show up. What are you going to do about it? Nothing. You can't do a thing about it. That's how this is all set up. When we had older persons that had some question behavior, we could do nothing about it. If we have 10 Alderman and three decide not to show up and go to committee meetings, nothing you can do about it. We can't do anything about getting, we have 16 Alderman. Do anything about getting everyone to come to the meetings as it stands right now. So I think that the possibility to have our constituents be able to reach 16 people is better than to reach 10 and I don't feel I feel I truly made an error when I voted the way that I did to reduce the council. I just think there's just a small group that it's like a control plan. I'm just not in favor of it. Thank you very much. Alderman Dodowski. I just want to say that I think 16 Alderman is a lot better than 10. Also getting back to the city attorney and people could bring up a petition to block this if they don't like it. The required number of votes or signatures on the petition would be over 1,000. I'm not sure how many exactly but I do know that it's over 1,000 and I think everybody in this room knows how difficult it is to get anybody to run for Alderman when they only need 20 signatures. So a group trying to get 1,000 I don't think they're even going to try. Thank you very much. Alderman Othiel and Alderman Robb. Thank you Chairman. I am in favor obviously of keeping it at the 16 because I feel I did make a mistake also but I do believe I want to do things legally also. I did not hear Chuck Adams response to that in the committee because I wasn't there so I appreciate it. So as much as I do want to keep it at 16 I think we do need to do it correctly also. So it might be hard for me to vote for it today but definitely in the future when we can do it the right way it does have my vote. Thank you. Alderman Robb. What other cities are doing and what their numbers are I think what we have to do is focus on Sheboygan. We have a lot of great things happening and I think the only reason why that's happening is because we work together well as a team. If we reduce it to 10 you're going to have less team members and less coverage overall and as a matter of fact just to point out while we're sitting here in the last 45 minutes I've had three people contact me from my district and I can just see the messages come up so it you know it does work and if you have two people per district we can share those things right now. So I think we keep it at 16. Thank you very much. Just to be clear a yes vote is to pass it to go back to 16. A yes vote would be to make the recommendation that it's going to go to the common council with a favorable recommendation. Seeing no other discussion I'll entertain a vote. Roll call. Thank you very much. Okay then we're going to go to item 22 on the agenda from Public Protection of Safety to refer to RO number 79-16-17 by the fire chiefs submitting the following a letter from Chase Longmiller President of the Sheboygan Firefighters Local 483 a letter from the International Association of Firefighters the economic impact of the successful commercial fire intervention for the Phoenix Fire Department June August 2012 geographic information systems energy emergency service response capabilities analysis final report of the fire Sheboygan Fire Department dated June 16, 2016 Please Chase, take as much time as you want. Thank you. Is the TV just on? That's it right there. Good evening hello my name is Chase Longmiller President of Sheboygan Firefighters Local 483 Alongside me I have executive board member of Local 43 Brendan Hughes We have a brief little slide presentation I know you guys were able to go over over the last month I'm not going to take up all your time tonight we could spend hours going through this study but tonight we're just going to go through a set of topics that we want to hit a couple bullet points and answer any questions that you guys may have had after reading our study and if you have any questions of the fire chiefs. So tonight what we'd like to talk about is some of the staffing deficiencies that we feel are occurring within the fire department the findings that we feel are most important that came out of our study some recommendations that Local 43 would like to put forth and we'll take any questions I've already introduced myself and Cal Hughes here I got a little background on why we did this study primarily the study was came after we didn't get the three members that we lost at the beginning of this year we lost an additional three firefighters after the last budget that were taken out and that's what kind of started the process to us to look forward and get some take the data that the department has and send it to somebody who could put it into a form that could either show where our deficiencies were where we're lacking improved what we've been saying all along that we need some more people to help us out so with that when we talk about our staffing deficiencies we'll just cover a few things just in just since 2010 we've lost nine members of the fire department and again we lost those three in 2016 what this is really resulted in and that's why we're gonna what we're gonna focus on here tonight is the fact that we're running most of our engine companies most of all all of our fire companies engines and our truck companies with two personnel daily basis that means two guys two members are always on those engines and that's where we're gonna focus on tonight and kind of show you where that deficiency and what the study had to say about it another problem that we need to bring up that is causing to the loss of people on the street is the current battalion chief schedule and this schedule right now to give a little background and it may not have been in the your study packet as much but we'll take any questions and I'm sure the chief will as well we act up into the battalion chief role almost half the year as of right now we take a member off our line to fill the current schedule of the chiefs which is that that position is there to pretty much lead the city they're in charge of all five stations and over 50 about 50% of the time we are acting in that capacity one of our officers is put in that role therefore reducing one of our trucks and one of our engine companies who are out there doing the services you know when we talk about that battalion chief schedule that is pretty much unheard of anywhere in the state of Wisconsin and I know I just listened where we don't want to compare ourselves to cities and I heard that but when it comes to firefighting there's a reason things have done certain ways and having one person that we have on a regular basis is very important for leadership for anybody here who's been in the service having that officer having that leadership is very important as you do anything especially in our organization as a quasi military unit so and one other last thing I'd like to say on the BC thing before I move on to the I may refer to it as BC is that it's created a huge disconnect between the men the people on the line the labor and our management team I started back in 1997 back then we had our 24 hour battalion chiefs and they were always in between our go between between the guys on the line and our and the bosses up in the front office they're the ones we could go to with our issues they would come back they would go to the stations on a regular daily basis travel around the city how are you guys doing what can we do what's broken what needs to get fixed today giving concerns what can I answer are the rumors out there that we need to squash and losing that has been a huge problem and I'm sure that chief Romas we've talked about it many times in his office as he was a former battalion chief in Milwaukee and he knows that connection between the line personnel and the management getting to the study here I'm going to kind of let Cal say a few words here because Cal did primarily all the submission of all the information from our department working with our management so Cal if you want to talk a little bit about the staffing findings or the study findings sure again hi Cal in case anybody didn't know when we contacted the IFF to do this study I would like to build off of what Chase said it wasn't not just when we lost the three people we actually started looking into this process when the proposal to lose a station to convert from a five station fire department to a four station fire department and like I like we said in the cover letter to you we weren't initially opposed to it but we were curious as to what that would do to response times one of the things that I believe Chief Romas has always been proud of with us is our response times and our response capabilities we have very low unheard of staffing levels across the city across like cities across NFPA standards we're at about half of what we should be according to NFPA standards so having that fast response that fast capability is sort of integral to the process of our firefighting and by taking that and diminishing it you're compounding the problem of bad staffing and then we would now have bad timing to go along with it so that was another thing that we looked at and when you look in your packet you'll see what the study findings were we do have some additional mapping that goes out and talks to how many stations should be in a city like with the layout it's unique to every city it's a computer modeling program that actually goes through it I would get lost as you would following my tangent if I just kept going that way the NFPA 1710 standards for crew size the minimum number of firefighters in a structure and the two out to risk as this says the minimum crew per NFPA after they've done extensive research with the NIST National Institute for Safety and Technology I believe I hope I got that right along with the ICHEAPS which is the chief's organization the international firefighters organization and other organizations out there that do these kinds of studies NIOSH I believe is another one if it's an acronym and it's in the federal government and it has to do with safety they helped study this thing they found that the optimum crew size for a fire department for an engine company or a truck company is four and that 15 for a small or low risk fire was also the minimum the SFD does not manage to meet this requirement with current staffing despite having 16 people on per day I dug through the numbers last year and looked at all of our responses all of our responses to structure fires and found that two times out of I can't remember how many it was but only two times which turned out to be 7% of the time now the minimum is 90 according to NFPA but 7% of the time we were getting 15 firefighters on scene within that eight minute time period and both of those fires happened to be we had three engine companies with three people on there that day for both of those we did have one outlier that did not meet that that did have three firefighters on and I would have to go back and listen to the tape but it looked like there was a dispatching error just by the way the rigs were staggered out as far as their dispatching goes so I did not do that I apologize for not researching that but it did look like it was the outlier so really what I guess I'm saying is that we only meet the standard by NFPA when we have more people on the streets this slide just talks about the NFPA essentially said all that stuff crew size and the effect on the fire attack time study what I did was we also went through and we sort of modeled some of the things that we did when we did it locally not just relying on the NIST studies but we did a time to task survey from our department within our department and what it found was that on average that a split crew of two and two which is two firefighters on an ambulance two firefighters on an engine or a truck company that it took a minute and thirty five one minute thirty five seconds longer to perform the task of deploying a hose to the front door of a structure so when we had four people on the engine company it took a minute thirty five less to have that hose to the door now along with that we also not only pulled the hose to the door but we also connected that truck to the fire hydrant so you had a ready source of water you had two people ready to go in the fire you had two people outside of the fire which is meets all of the standards that we would ever be able to talk about so that minute thirty five as we'll show you in neck and one of the slides forthcoming is a very important amount of time I kind of glossed over it which is my poor communication but it also found that the communication deteriorated with a split crew essentially when you have two people on a rig when we have two people on an engine company you have an officer and you have a driver their tasks are pretty much delegated once they get onto a scene they know the officer knows that he's going to be doing a size up he's going to be looking at everything he's going to be talking making sure that citizens are out if they're not out where they are giving and ordering different tasks to the next incoming fire apparatus and fire officers so they know what they're going to do the problem was that they didn't have time to talk about what the other two guys were going to do especially once they got on scene so scenes are dynamic they change they're not all the same an officer may or may not choose to have a certain tactic at one fire versus the other so when you had two guys that are parking about 150 to 250 feet away having to get out get their air packs on walk up that officer could be lost and those guys won't really have any idea right away as to what the tactic is going to be when they roll up on scene it's sort of a secondary thing but it does it is important and it does it does deteriorate the crew and the crew is the crew's integrity so there's no real time I know it's hard to quantify that time so I didn't so when Cal have been talking about FBA and we talked about the 15 personnel on scene in the first eight minutes that right there per FBA the standard is a 2,000 square foot single story residence no basement so when you hear that standard and you hear about what kind of house that they've decided there is not many houses like that that you're going to find in the city of Sheboygan everybody almost has a basement and to find a single story and no exposures and we're going to show you some slides of some pictures here and I know everybody here knows what Sheboygan looks like in their homes but we wanted to just give you an idea truly when we talk about exposures what we're looking at so I took this picture today on 8th street those are about three three foot exposures three foot paths in between those houses maybe a little narrow on one side or the other if one of those houses goes up that's where it says we're having 15 people for a house with no exposure that house has got exposure both of those houses on either side right there are definitely in danger of starting on fire through direct either direct flame contact convection whatever way the fire is going to travel to that to that next home and to prevent that we're going to need additional people to put up more lines to spray water to make sure that those two homes are not lost here this house has got is a newer home which we don't have many you know we have some newer home subdivisions in our city but this isn't as prevalent with the big 15 20 30 foot setbacks between the homes where you're not going to have any sort of fire impingement if there's a house fire right there and this is this is where I want to show you the exposure issue here's Oakland Avenue you probably know we've seen a rash of fires just in the last week I ended up at this fire get a call and on Friday morning before I had to come in and this was Oakland Avenue and as you see up on the left you'll see a garage that's standing and then on the right you see a house but what you don't see is in the middle there was another garage which is gone so when we talk about exposures that's how quickly that fire moved from the first call that they got and when I do believe when the officers came I believe SPD was there first you know there was already fire on the outside but that's how quickly it moves so when we talk about exposures and they need to have enough people there quickly to prevent that to continue to roll down the street or roll from garage to garage in some of these neighborhoods where we don't have the new city code setbacks that we have in new subdivisions some of the other challenges that we'll just bring up quickly that were in your study packet that you know these are some things that you know no matter unless you're a very large city it's going to be hard to meet but when we talk about high rises we have a lot of commercial structure assisted living facilities each one of these kind of facilities need additional people and they need them quickly they need them within that eight minutes as that fire is progressing now most of some of these are going to be sprinkled and are going to have fire prevention measures in place to help slow down that fire as you've seen in history it doesn't always work sprinklers can get overcome and we need to hook up and also boost that pressure system and one of the other things that we found that you saw in your packet from the University of Arizona study was the fact about economic loss you know when we think about a single family residents burning down the economic loss is really that family took a really huge economic loss they took a real hit to them but they may with insurance be able to rebuild their now downtown we've seen homes that we've lost in the downtown area it's hard to rebuild downtown because new codes prevent us from building new homes down there there's another tax a little bit of taxes that are off the tax roll but when you lose a big commercial structure or you have a big commercial fire you don't know if that company is going to rebuild you don't know what they're going to do they could be gone and those economic losses can have serious impact when it pertains to your city and your tax base just quickly to go over the NFPA on high rises take Wasserman I'm very familiar I work out of engine 1 right in the alley here so I'm there a lot you know 8 floors I've been to multiple fires at that place and I remember a fire just 10 years ago and I probably had 20 people wandering around smoke filled structure trying to get out and there was about 6 of us trying to shuttle people out of there and having one or two people trying to put water on the fire but right there NFPA 1710 states you need 43 people within 8 minutes to protect that building and to actually start working to evacuate that kind of building commercial same thing 43 firefighters we have a brand new beautiful building down there at acuity you know they're an insurance company but I know that they and they've done a really good job with their fire prevention I've seen that you know with all their new sprinklers and they've done a great job so they're well protected but even well protected buildings need proper fire support assisted living NFPA says you need 26 firefighters minimum with 8 minutes this is the Eisner up by Eisner there we have many of these facilities within the community who would need quick response of firefighters now we got a little chart up here I'm going to let Cal talk a little bit about this and then we'll show a video to kind of correspond what we're trying to get at with the fire tap you know this was in these are part of the findings that the NIST had when they did the NIOSH report when they looked at four firefighter companies three firefighter companies two firefighter companies they also looked at which is not listed on here but five and six company personnel companies the gains that you had on five and six were pretty low but they still do you know we talked about the only reason we really talked about high-rise is just to remember that they are those buildings there but the NFPA doesn't make any distinction between a high-rise property which is a high risk property and a building the size of like NEMAC they don't make any distinction because essentially you're taking a high-rise and you're putting it on its side it's just a giant building so that's why they don't make a distinction which is kind of one of the reasons we brought that up but they do in larger high-rise districts you know again you're Milwaukee's you're Chicago's not you're Sheboygan's but they do have five and six recommendations for personnel companies so four isn't the only one that they have but when they looked at four firefighters and they did time to task surveys on it as you can see they found that advancing an attack line took about 327 which I didn't even remember that this existed because this would have made my job in that survey that I told you before that time to task survey a lot easier and as you can see when it goes from four down to two they are kind of similar I mean it's a minute 26 on their survey and it was a minute 35 for us so it does make a difference you'll see three firefighter companies and four firefighter companies are much more efficient at some of the things that need to be done immediately once you get on scene now we talk about having 15 people within eight minutes that's nice yes that's true we do need at least that on small structures that are small low-risk on larger more medium risk structures again a medium risk would be more of the same small structure so your same single family house now wedged in between two buildings that had like that slide we showed you that becomes now sort of a medium risk building because your risk now is to fire extension and conflagration which on a small scale which is exactly what we had on Oakland a very small scale but it was a conflagration it went from one building to another building to another building you know only through the efforts of good tactics and quick water were those buildings gone out but as far as I know at least two of them are probably total losses if not all three of them which is bad we don't want that to happen we want quicker responses we want better more efficient responses and as you can see this graph this graphic shows you how much more efficient more people staffed correctly can lead towards efficiencies if this video ends up playing if it doesn't I'll send a link to your email but what it is is it's a UL NIST study and it compares two model homes that are built one with legacy furniture a lot like the desks and hardwood furniture that are in this room and you'll see on the right is modern modern furnishings that's the gas can of gasoline that we all sit on at night on our couches and our nice chairs and our beds that's all based on oil based products and if you'll see I don't know we're at but we're at two minutes already since the time they started it two minutes is probably when they're getting that first smoke detector maybe a little bit before it's gone off and they've made their first call to 9-1-1 now remember we got we have 80 seconds to get from where we are in the station to in the rig to be en route so that's 80 seconds it's a minute and 20 and then we have to be on scene within that four minutes but as you can see and I'll have Cal just speed it up maybe to there we're at three minutes survivability in that room is going way down on the one on the right and it's amazing when you look at this video when you think about the products of yesteryear how hardy they were to fire and if you wouldn't mind Cal let's just jump up to is it three look at 342 from the time that started and now look at our fire over at the legacy furnishings I mean that's still a tenable room right there people are still moving around but you're not moving around in modern that's flashed over everything in that room has now hit its ignition point and has flashed over and that's going to it's tough every fire department faces that now and the key to firefighting with that kind of with those kind of products is to make sure that if that's in one room we're arriving on scene to keep that to a one bedroom fire a living room fire so that the rest of the house or the rest of the bedrooms where people are just get it you know here in the smoke alarms are upstairs they are taking the task to shut their doors and we can go up there and effectively rescue them and put the fire out simultaneously simultaneously and that's the key we want to rescue and we want to put that fire out because the best way to rescue people is to be putting the fire out and it's just when you look at it you'll see that's the best way to do it because that fire is going to keep going if you leave it unchecked I know there's always a lot of talk when it comes to the council about EMS, fire based EMS and while we didn't really we didn't talk a lot about it in our study we did want to bring it up tonight and it's just about the importance of people people it's the firefighters and the amount of people it takes to do a job and when you go to the ER you don't show up and just have one or two nurses working on you when you call 911 and you're sick and you're hurt it's nice to have four or five people show up to get you out if that means two of our paramedics plus an officer or another paramedic are working on the patient in the house and two guys are outside in the middle of winter shoveling the driveway so we can get the cot out or doing those kind of things or making sure that we balance the cot so that no patient falls carrying bags to effectively get the patient to the hospital in a quicker situation it's all about people people and we know people are expensive I mean it's true I mean that you guys have to make those judgments and that's what the budget's set forth but I can give you a quick instance just yesterday when I worked yesterday 12 calls out of that station yesterday and we had a code and two guys myself and my driver showed up and a gentleman had a heart attack in his car and 250 270 and it was all we could do just to pull him out of the car by ourselves just to get him on the ground in a parking lot to start CPR and then our paramedics arrived on scene coming from the fire the four of us we left the engine and four of us it took three of us in the back of the ambulance to work on the patient and one to drive happy to find out that they actually we got a heartbeat back and I believe he's at a hospital in Milwaukee as of today so hopefully everything goes well but I mean I just I guess what I'm trying to get through is it's people needed to perform those immediate right on the spot functions to ensure life safety and property conservation so we've come up with a few recommendations that we believe will get us started. We understand that and I guess I like to think I know probably just as well as anybody in the department of where we've been I've been on the executive board for 16 years doing contracts I've sat before different members of council the mayor different HR directors tweaking our contracts so that we wouldn't lose people over the years because we knew how important it was to have the people on the streets and that to us was one of the biggest things however when we talk about people right now ladder four and ladder five your far north side and your far south side ladder companies where there's no ambulance in those stations are staffed on a daily basis with only two people there's only two people in those stations and I can tell you I live on the far north side I know there's some people in this room who live on the far south side your first rig that's coming into that your home is coming with two people and they need an additional person on that truck to help perform and get that line to that front door if there's a fire I mean in station fives area on the south side they were just at a couple of fires just in the last few days the other immediate action that we're looking at we would like to see our daily staffing go to 18 right now our time is at 16 we'd like to see that go up to 18 a day that would be those two to have those three people on those two truck companies doesn't take care of having engine one or the other three engines only with two because they have that ambulance in the bay right now but we'd like to have those truck companies go up to three people three members a day and the other big thing would be return the battalion chiefs to that 24 hour schedule to eliminate us having to take a body off the line and work into that work into that position and reducing our minimum daily staffing and for down the road we'd like to just see the department our chiefs create an operational plan that works to increase our daily minimum staffing of three personnel on every engine and every truck I'll go ahead Cal if you want to just touch on this quickly sure we did we did work with and develop the develop the plan really what it was was mainly a proof of concept and the proof of concept came from knowing that budgets are limited and seeing what it was that we could do to tweak to tweak personnel from station to station where the minimum number of people that would need to be added to the TO would do the most good so we do have a couple of scenarios that do increase our minimum daily staffing but they do it in a way that as you'll see when you looked in through your presentation or the report that we gave everybody the IAFF recommendation was 27 minimum daily staffing which would make a 431 overall which would be 93 plus so about 100 people and currently we have 70 70.5 so currently we have 70 so obviously that's not a realistic scenario and we realize that so we worked with them and we worked with the mapping team and we worked with some of their analysts to try to come up with a plan that would do the most good for the most people while costing the least so we do have those plans we did have some stuff we would prefer to talk it over with the chief before we would produce anything publicly but the plan does take into account call data response times and community risk it's we feel we feel that they're really too bulletproof plans but they do take a reinvestment in our department and a reinvestment in the community. So that's I know you guys have been here a while tonight and we really do appreciate the fact that you guys forwarded this on the committee the whole so that we could speak to all the older persons. We're pretty passionate about it as long as I've been here we've done our best to continue to hold our staffing where it is I know the chief's been quoted that we have an incredible department and we do our guys you don't see us in the newspaper very often for fires because the press and the news typically the fires that make it are fires that have significant value loss or big fires but we had a fire on Bluff Avenue on Saturday night an attic fire we have a lot of one-bedroom fires and that's because our guys even with the limited resources we have we really work hard and we're very aggressive we try to get in there and get it done as fast as we can so we can limit the damage however it's catching up to us because things are burning hotter things are burning faster and we're teetering on that level with losing these last three guys that we just can't sit back and that aggressiveness is sooner or later going to get somebody hurt so it's why we wanted to give you the study I know that there's some not there's always someone who you know some people may think well this came from the union it's their union study but I'll tell you that the group that did this out of Washington D.C. they put a lot of hard work you know it took over six months something like this in this private sector it cost about seventy-five to a hundred thousand dollars it was it was narrow I know that we only focused on two areas but those were the two areas that were pretty much brought up we wanted staffing and working with the chief he would like he wanted to know where the fire station should be put and I don't think you'll find a GIS system that's you know much better than what we were able to provide and we have additional maps if you would like to see them tonight if you have questions on that even some green field mapping so we thank you for your time and we'd be happy to answer questions from anyone tonight mayor are you first then first of all thank you so much for being here tonight I really appreciate the business like way that you and your union have approached the city and trying to get your point across the study that was done was you know very complete and while we still may consider getting some additional information you know it gave us a real good picture of the four station model and what the challenges are I was wondering if you could go back to the slide with your recommendations and could you give us an idea just an FTE as to what those recommendations are you know with your staffing schedule and everything else it's a little different than most other you know shift jobs and I'm just wondering if you could you know tell us what those recommendations are and FTE's you have a full time equivalent for employees yes well the first recommendation of course is getting those three back so the three that we lost in 2016 right so that's three FTE's right and then the battalion chiefs what does that mean so that'll bring us up to 17 a day the three would bring us at a minimum of 17 and then we probably need to get to one more to get to our 18 but however if we lost in fact that half the year if we didn't have to work up into the battalion chief role we'd already be at those levels because we've lost that spot because right now if you look at it actually when you look at our daily staffing we're at 21 a day is that correct chief 21 we have a sign per shift by contract which I think you may be going this way a little bit with benefits in that we're allowed up to four firefighters off a day we can have up to four off a day that puts us at 17 a day right there so with our getting our three back at our four off a day would put us at 18 so you'd be back there just with those three now that doesn't take into effect of course when we have somebody on sick leave or if we act up into the battalion chief but just like any other profession and when I first started you know you when someone calls in sick sometimes even hospitals and everywhere else that has service jobs somebody else is typically called in to fill that role our fight department over the last since I've been here in 20 years has done very well I believe when it comes to sick leave workers comp if Sandy were if HR director Roark was here I think she would reaffirm that this year was a little different we had some on duty injuries that were a little long standing however our guys have prided themselves of a saying physically fit taking care of themselves and they love coming to work so we don't see that but I believe if my math is right if we got our three guys back up to 66 which puts us at 22 a day minus four if you had up to four guys on leave that day for their vacations so they could get their vacations in for the year that would put us at 18 a day which would accomplish those truck companies on the north and south side immediately going back to three personnel now on the battalion chiefs are we looking at adding any other battalion chiefs or is that just changing it to a 24 hour schedule that's just taking them from their hybrid schedule that was created four or five years ago by chief Herman and moving them back to the 24 hour shift schedule any additional personnel in front office that that's not coming from me and then you talked a little bit about the vacation schedule and that's a union contract issue is that something that we might be able to develop a memorandum of understanding on and possibly look at any changes there yeah I don't think this would be the time and place to start talking contract it's just not our place to go there so I'm not going to go there but there are logistics that go in that with when the amount of people you have and the amount of time that people have to take their own vacation you severely limit their ability to take off if you reduce the amount of people off on a day just like any other body any other job that you work on your private day that they limited the amount of people off so as far as a contract negotiating we're not even in negotiation so it wouldn't be something we talk about but in the future I'm sure we'll discuss it thank you very much and just we all got our big three ring binders and I know and I want to thank you guys this is an excellent presentation and chasing Cal already know this but the proposed budget from the chief administrative officer chief administrator does fold three firefighters and a battalion chief into the budget so I think we have we didn't know that but I'm glad to hear that and just as you're starting to review just to ensure and it is our hope because those national fire protection safety standards are important and we can get there we need your help we need that contract reopened we need to talk about vacation time so it's my hope that with our show of good faith and your show of good faith that we really can meet those standards and have a really good result here so that so that we can get up to those you know to those basic those basic standards which I think are very important we only had 77 structure fires last year but a fire is a fire is a fire and it can be a terrifying and horrible experience for anybody who's involved in it so some of us have had that experience some of us have not but at least I'm glad that we're really getting back up to a strength that I think we can defend here I'd say just to the structure fires as you said yes 77 structure fires but we are firefighters and we do a lot more than just firefighting which I'm sure Alderman, Alderperson Donning you realize that but you know we're involved in technical rescue gas calls anything that the people that Chief Domagowski's department you know between our two departments we're dealing with anybody who's calling 911 with whatever problem they may have even from sewer backups or backups in their homes when their basement's filled with water you know where the fire department goes into empty people's basement so there's a lot of things we do but yes structure fires we're firefighters and that's what we do but just in the last three days if you think about we haven't had a lot of fires and I know some people have brought it up there is as many fires well Sheboygan's been you know it's lucky you know just like any other community you don't want to have fires but just in the last couple weeks we've had maybe almost 10 structure fires and we've also had three days in a row Thursday night Friday night Saturday night all three major good sized structure fires that people were having to get called back on three days in a row so it does happen and we need the people to be there just to get to that just to get to that minimum standard and like the Alderperson said when we talk about standards yeah it's not a law but it's a standard and it's going to be what's looked at in the future when something happens in our community and people say well did you meet the standard there's got they got to go somewhere the city attorney is still here but Alderman Donahue is an attorney right Alderman Aldersky I know you talked about with a smaller crew you can't get to the front door and get water on the fire as fast correct and I was just wondering how much difference that made yesterday at the embers because I know somebody that lived in the building and he told me he did not know that the building was on fire until police officer or firefighter knocked on his door yeah I appreciate the question but that's something I couldn't answer first off I wasn't at the scene and I believe that the building from what I've heard and it's all second hand was pretty full whatever room was fully involved at that point by the time even the first police officer arrived on scene to give their first and report of what they saw so you know not every fire is going to be there but I've been to plenty of fires just in the last year we're even up in Gilea Avenue and north 7th street where a fire was blown out the window and do the fact that it just happened to be we were moving pretty quick out of engine on not to pat ourselves on the back but we got there with the ladder company on the north side in between the four of us we were able to get a line into that room a heavily fully charged room and keep it to a one bedroom fire so again those are the houses that we don't hear about a lot in the city because we keep them to one bedroom structure fires not entire house loss for a family or their possessions I have a couple things I'd like to ask a free fireman that I didn't have privy to this but I didn't know that we were going to be approving that we're already approved in last year's budget so I'm not certain as to who made the decision not to hire three more firemen the full council didn't talk about it we didn't know about it but it was already budgeted it's already in the budget we weren't asking for anything more than what was already discovered and decided upon by full council in 2016 for the 2016 budget so I'm real curious who makes those decisions when the council approves the budget who makes the decisions not to follow through with the projected approval of the budget who made the decision not to hire the three firemen that we had already allocated and making this such a struggle and making it feel like we have to fight for the safety of our constituents I find it offensive and I don't understand you know I didn't have privy to this you knew that they were approved we certainly didn't and it's a constant battle sometimes to try to understand what one hand does and the other hand does I'm all for transparency and I'm finding that it's a bit lax when it comes to just this particular issue of the fireman who made the decision can anyone answer that question who made the decision not to hire those three firemen last year if I can respond to the best of my knowledge there were six retirements and so the question became whether or not those positions would be replaced and apparently the city administrator at that time decided to not to replace three of them how do you know that that's what happened I mean how come we all don't know that well I think that's what we were told that's what I remember hearing I think you should ask chief Romans who told him that he couldn't hire those positions can I open up for him? I can answer that question I can't answer that I mean we had a budget it was passed and then we had seven openings one resignation six retirements and I was told a month after the budget was passed that we could only hire four people who told you that you could only hire three people I hate to say and I don't mean to interrupt you and I know you want to get an answer but again this was a presentation by the union to us with their recommendations the asking of the questions whether they're budgetary issues or whatever it's not what's in this presentation I mean we weren't going to and again I'd like to have a discussion on it and I think there's a format or a way of doing that through public protection and safety other than the committee of the whole because tonight the union gave us a presentation and I very much appreciated it and I believe that's we have to stick to that topic as opposed to going into budgetary issues that aren't actually on the agenda I don't want to get into a position where all of a sudden we're talking about stuff that shouldn't be talked about because it's not part of the agenda okay thank you thank you chairman I'd like to thank you guys for everything you guys do I am really excited that we are keeping the three we get what you guys need I believe you can't put a price on live safety you guys are the ones who are there on the scene to take care of things and I do really appreciate what you guys do can I just answer as soon as you start I think what we can do is when the budget comes to the public protection and safety we can bring those questions aboard then it's really about the previous budget so I don't it's still going to be about the budget I think we should be able to bring it up but I just want to say thank you guys I've seen your response times even at where I work I've seen you guys come take care of the people you guys are right there you guys do a great job I'm behind you guys 100% so thank you thank you very much thank you are there any other questions Alderman Bellinger thank you chairman again on behalf of the council thanks for the report it was obviously very thorough and you guys have done a nice job so thanks for that I just want to get your opinion on you're aware of the study in that issue and putting a request for proposal for that if you have any objections to that I mean we've talked I've talked to both of you prior to doing that I've talked to the chief and you know I just want to you know just think sure you know that you say you say to yourself that this was kind of narrow in scope and I think we need to get something you know a five or ten year plan I like the word focused but you're right you know we have spoke and when you think about our study narrow our focus we focused on the two areas that we thought were most important for the city for staffing and the department want to know where to put a firehouse and we're able to do that I've spoke to you I'm not afraid I'm not I'm in support of a thorough study to be done if you want to do a study that's thoroughly done as I said to you my only fear is with any study is that how much money do you put into it and how does the council act on the results especially if they use the same data and same standards that should be used if everybody apples to apples and that's kind of what I expressed you making sure that it was apples to apples because I think we can go anywhere and find somebody to do a study on anything we really want and I we talked about that and I trust that it would be a fair study my concern would be that knowing what our study cost the study to get a complete very thorough study on all the things that the great things that you brought up I'm all for it I would just hope that if they came back and said okay yeah we agree to you need seven more firemen per shift or whatever that the city council would have to really seriously think about it and I those are pretty much my only concerns is to make sure that it would be a fair study done by a very reputable firm that would be out there to be able to cover all the bullet points that you had listed. Yeah and great presentation guys in your key findings and some of your background you mentioned the A-1710 a lot it's a standard it's brand standard industry wide you also mentioned OSHA now we're into the regulatory portion I don't I'm not aware of it and maybe you can answer this or maybe not have we run into any citations warnings recommendations from OSHA. We wouldn't have that unless there was an injury or a death where they would have to come and investigate and really where that OSHA or COM 30 issues going to come up is the two in and two out rule is and for anybody who doesn't know what two in and two out is is that the state of Wisconsin requires that before anybody enters a structure fire with on a mask with a hose line that there must be two firefighters outside ready to go with a backup line to protect those two firefighters so that's where OSHA or COM 30 of the state of Wisconsin would come in if say somebody got hurt at a structure fire and we had to file a claim and they come in they say did you have the two were you able to meet the two in two out rule when these two people went in that's where that issue would come up you know if I don't know if that answers your question well it understand it answers it to the point of have we officially been no we've never staffing levels correct I mean we've had a lot of people in the department if as we say it's not a marshmallow factory that we work in so people get hurt and you know stuff happens so you know but we haven't had the issues where OSHA's had to come in and deal with that kind of stuff you know we talk about and I'm kind of glad you brought it up and just to kind of rehash and I know button up to time here but you know we one fail one bullet point that we failed to speak on tonight was the you probably saw it was called the rapid rapid intervention team problem that we see there's supposed to be two firefighters outside the building who are ready to respond for any down firefighter who may run into trouble they lost their air they got hurt they get trapped studies have already shown that it takes a minimum of 12 firefighters of being one firefighter out of a building they need 12 alone just to get that firefighter out of a building so you could see where that would put a stress on our capabilities and it'd be hard to get to that point that's why you know we do the best we can but 10 years ago Arnie Wolf died in Green Bay I don't know if anybody remembers when Arnie passed away in the house fire up there it fell through a floor but the amount of resources it took that department just to get Arnie out of there they were luckily able to get his partner out but unfortunately they were not able to get to Arnie in time so that's where a lot of those injury things would come up and that's where OSHA and Wisconsin came in was like in a death like Arnie's Thank you Chairman we talked a lot about staffing and everything I know the other part of your report was as far as how many fire stations we need if we go to four where you'd place it can you give a share of your recommendation you know other than what we read Well we still believe you know at first we were as I spoke with the Chief we were kind of leaning towards that four firehouse model but that was before the study came back and showed us what the response times would really be for a lot of these outlying areas in town I mean if you take one of the recommendations it should be to close engine one downtown station one and as we talked to the people doing the GIS in that and we talked about response the main part of Sheboygan that you as city leaders are trying to build is our downtown area we have over 300 new condo units going in we're building an amphitheater we have the blue harbor we pride ourselves on the lake and yet we're going to take our water rescue team in that and move it further away from the lake in response times by even relocating where engine one is now or engine two, station two, which is rescue two by shutting that it was the other proposed thought that would really hurt the south side residents so I'll let Cal just quickly just because you brought up the map here's Cal can you give me a little... this is where it gets really nerdy I had the mapping software I had them do what's referred to as a green field analysis all the fire stations in Sheboygan they wiped them away they said they don't exist then they took the three years of call data that we provided that the department provided for them and they plugged all that call data in and then they took and they optimized what how many stations it would take and their computer program I believe it was explained to me and I've explained it a couple of times and I hope I'm not speaking out of school on this they have to limit the number so like I had them limit the number of stations to five so it could have come back as one it could have come back as five but what they did was then they optimized the call data into four minute response times and to get to the four minute response times which again is an NFPA standard to get to the four minute response times they came up with five different station locations and again that's using call data and that is also utilizing not only call data but it's also getting rid of ten percent so it's ninety percent of the time you're getting to these calls within four minutes with this five station model and it's tough to it was kind of tough with that other with all those purple lines going on to figure out where those stations are but as you can see most of those stations are essentially station one station four and station three are relatively within you know stone throwing distance of one another and talking with their GIS analysts they said moving a station a block here a block there it doesn't really statistically it's not statistically significant so essentially our station one and our station four are on the dime for how the for how GIS analysts would identify stations today so a hundred years later station one's right where it needs to be thirty years later station four is right where it needs to be station three is a few blocks out of the way but I think with development especially if you have Aurora up there if that ends up becoming coming into fruition and maybe other growth over there the argument could be to have it stay right where it is the only the outliers there are stations two and stations five station five moves quite a bit north it moves about eight to ten blocks north which does make it kind of statistically significant and station five really moves however when talking with them they said that that is only via a snapshot in time that only accounts for the calls the last three years I don't know because I'm not Chad Peleshek which way the city is moving but if I had to gamble I would say south so having station five where it is and remaining in place instead of you know if we were if money was no object and just move the station tomorrow I would still say it's probably an unwise use of resources because it could be inevitable that you would move it back down there anyway so yeah it just so happens and I had I really had no idea how this was going to come out and it came out actually way more on spot than I thought it was going to be especially for stations one three and four so to answer your question we still oh sorry we still believe in the five station model but you know trying to up that those two ladder companies are staffed with three people to give because they're they're outliers to give them the optimal chance to provide immediate search and rescue or immediate fire tack having two people on that hose line thank you very much since there's no other further questions for you again thank you very much gentlemen okay I will entertain a motion to adjourn all those in favor say aye thank you very much for coming