 Column meter or money into order at 630 and The first thing on the agenda as always is public comment So if there's anyone in the audience either here or on zoom who wishes to make any public comment on any issue That they have in mind. This is your time Eric. Anybody on Zoom wishes to speak Sorry, no, but I don't see anyone on zoom wishing to make a public comment Anyone in the audience wishes to make a public comment tonight See and no one then we'll move on then to What the meeting is really about? That's the fire services analysis study overview and discussion I'll turn it over to Eric who will introduce chief Colette, and then we'll have Representatives from AP Shrighton who will be going through the report with us. So Eric, that's your Thanks, Terry and good evening everyone. Unfortunately, I'm under the weather this evening. So I'm joining from home tonight Just just to set things off here. The retreat this evening is to take a close look at the service delivery pressures face Facing the fire department that is being encountered and service demands facing Wilson move forward Here tonight about the decrease in volunteers for accommodation departments is a challenge faced by many agencies nationwide Presents a need for the systems of service delivery to be reexamined in conjunction with what the future needs are I just want to commend the hard work our fire department staff does on a daily basis. They're they're extremely dedicated. I Know it's a lot of information data look at nights and tend to be an overview We'll start with a presentation from chief Colette and then as Terry mentioned our consulting team from AP Shrighton We'll walk the board through the study conducted and take questions. I think with that I'll turn over to fire chief Aaron Collette Great. Thank you all for having us here. I know that this is valuable time and I sit at home and When I'm not here in the room to watch you folks and see the work you do day in and day out so I think it's a great opportunity for us to actually sit in this spot for your retreat because it is a Subject that I find very important And I'd like to just give you a little bit of history tonight about how we got to the point By reaching out to an independent consultant to evaluate our fire services So for those people that may be viewing at home, I apologize my camera worked at the firehouse I get here. It doesn't work. So you're gonna get to see me through the town meeting but I've served as your fire chief for a year now back since September of 2020 and I came in with open eyes open years Hoping to learn as much every day as I could from the staff that you see behind me from the the lay citizenry through the the business owners the community as a whole and yourselves and Over that year. There were some items that I started to see And I they caused me pause to say wait a minute It's it's almost like we're presenting ourselves in some sort of a false advertisement And what I mean by that is I'm not sure that we are Prepared or as well equipped as many of our citizens may think we And that comes down to staffing So I'm going to take you through a little bit of a presentation here to talk to you about the the red flags if you will that I saw during that time and why we Elected to go with it So these are some of the operational challenges that we encountered and if I were to put them in buckets These were the top buckets that we saw at the fire department that I saw in that we had a limited career staffing a decline in call staff personnel and Increase in the demand for emergency medical services in our ambulance and increased community risk and We're unable to meet the current demand for service and I'll talk more about that in a minute and Increased to the public and our firefighters So for those that aren't aware this is our current career staffing for the 24-hour shift So the minimum daily staffing is three people we prioritize the staffing on the ambulance So we'll have two members staff the ambulance and a single member will staff the engine If we are at full staffing per shift for the 24-hour shift We have four person personnel assigned to that shift For that 24-hour period so that will give us two members on the engine and two members on one of our ambulances During the daytime. We do increase that staffing with the captain the deputy chief and myself so We work Monday through Friday Our schedule is around 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. It often Gets muddied and takes a little bit different view as called the man increases We run a combination fire department and what that means is that we have volunteer staff that are compensated for their time and That number is represented on this chart what this chart actually shows you is our call staff payroll And that shows you I thought I thought this was a good metric to show you the decline in activity in our call staff In the peak of the organization and maybe the staff behind me can talk to you about what that number looked like in 2016 it appeared that there was about 30 plus members on that call staff and You can see the decline to where we're at here and today I sit in front of you with eight active members on the call Eight out of those eight people that may show up on a callback or on an emergency incident I'll show you that the graph that represents that but the Most traditional incidents for such as a motor vehicle crash will either get one or two of the cost of responders This slide shows you an average of the last four quarters of participation in the organization and this is per emergency incidents so the blue columns that you see shows members that were staffing apparatus that includes our career staff and Our combination our call staff members So we averaged 3.4 in quarter four of 2020 with a high of 3.9 personnel in quarter one of 2021 and we the last two quarters of it 3.5 3.5 persons are responding on average to our emergency incidents Which you can't see is there's actually supposed to be a second column in this chart That second column you can see only in quarter four and you see a little blip of orange And that's personnel that respond to the station for station coverage on that incident for an incident And in quarters one through three of 2021 The metric was so minuscule that it would not measure It would not produce an average So that means there was no one back in the firehouse to answer Concurrent calls meaning calls the second or third in a row for the department It slightly measured in quarter four. We actually had personnel come back to the station But that's a point one average. I spoke earlier about the demand for EMS as We continue to see more people in our community our demands for EMS go up in our community This is the 2021 projection Showing that we estimate to be around 12 to 1200 calls this year We saw a bit of a decline actually in our incident responses in 2020 But I'll let the third party consultant take you down that road a little bit further But our demands for EMS continue to rise every year What I'd like you to think about is for most of those calls for every one of those calls that we do an emergency Medical services transport to the hospital. I spoke to you earlier about the on-duty staffing in the fire department So on the minimum staffing on the 24-hour shift that means that two of the members Have gone to the with the ambulance with the patient to the hospital That leaves a single career firefighter staffing in apparatus for the community if we're fully staffed that leaves two So that's after hours after the day staff has gone home. You have two firefighters every time the ambulance transports They are supported by the call staff But the call staff decline has me concerned The other component that would like you to think about is the risk here in the community And those factors that I threw again into some buckets Were the increased population the increased traffic So the more we add the more businesses the more residential buildings the more private dwellings the more we add The more our demand for service goes up. We're building larger buildings. That's evident by as you can see now in that tax corners hotel That that building is four plus stories That's an another floor of Almost 30 rooms of an occupied dwelling on the upper floor The higher occupancy hazards is also listed here. And what I mean by that is we are unique. We have a Footprint in my opinion that ranges from The rural farm area that we know that was Williston that I've come to be educated on with Through my family that go Terri as you know that have lived here for for a number of years and now we have technology we have Cutting-edge industry in our community. We we are flying we have businesses building battery-powered helicopters in our community Guess what we went there for a fire For that technology Those are big buildings. Those are big liabilities Those are things that caused me to try to get the town manager's eye and He thankfully agreed and saw where we were coming from for the perspective of staffing the firehouse fire station And that's why some of the factors why we went with a third party So it wasn't just me as the new fire chief coming into the community to tell you hey These are what my concerns are. Let's get somebody that's independent as no bias We talked about Concurrent calls What does that mean that means that almost? 20% of the time on average 20% of the time when we're on one call a second call comes in So who answers that call if there's no one else in the firehouse Who's there? I'm Fortunate to be surrounded by the firefighters met several of the firefighters of the department here tonight These are the people That have been able to figure out how to meet them They may leave the ambulance on scene if the patient's not critically ill and send the single firefighter in the engine Or two firefighters off of another call if they can break them free to go answer that second call As recently as it this Friday this past Friday We were three calls deep for medical calls in the afternoon It was only fortunate that we were returning from a training event That we were able to take that third call. We were off-duty. We had been doing live fire training at 12 hours that day already and we Were just happenstance. We were in town and we were able to help take that call Later that night a motor vehicle crash comes in the on-duty crew goes to the motor vehicle crash Four minutes later a building fire alarm comes in No one was able to answer that call The incident commander requested from the dispatch center that the sx junction fire department respond to the incident After they mitigated the car crash they determined that there was no injuries The officer turned over the scene command to the members on the ambulance and went and responded to the fire alarm This is an everyday occurrence for us this juggling of calls and so These are again the items that Concerned I want to talk a little bit about what we do every day in the job and that's critical Tasking that says how we do what it takes for the people to help solve the problems that we encounter in the streets That's essentially what this is about. I think it's important to understand a little bit about Incident response time and what incident response time has to do with is two things and I put it in this this graph For medical patients its patient survival We have to arrive To the left side of that green arrow that green vertical line. We need to arrive within that six minutes Or eight minutes excuse me so we can show on location and initiate emergency medical care to a patient If we arrive after that our patient survival chances of survival if they're critically ill decreases I Run a parallel in the response to fires on this this graph That parallel shows that the fire grows For any minute every minute that is unchecked and as that fire continues to develop and We are not on the scene it takes it from a fire that may be confined to a bedroom and maybe We can get a line in operation So it's a single room fire Anything on the other side of that line doesn't mean that it's necessarily a single room fire And that's only in a 2,000 square foot private dwelling. That's in a residential home If we encounter a fire and some of the industrial industrial facilities that we have that's an entirely different risk Which we may not be able to prepare to take We need to arrive within a certain given amount of time Take you briefly through What I would our traditional responses this one here is a basic life support medical call What do we have to do? We have a primary care attendant writing the as the primary caregiver of the ambulance And then the ambulance of course has a driver. What does that caregiver do? They provide medical care They get the patient history they help with ALS intervention BLS interventions they may be splinting they may be controlling the bleeding and they do the patient care documentation The driver of the ambulance will of course drive the ambulance transport the patient to the hospital work to get equipment back in service Decon the ambulance and ready it for the next call The person if we only have a single person on the engine that person assists with patient movement So we often have to put patients in stair chairs or on the stretcher that provides a level of safety helps us reduce back injuries to our providers Helps transfer the patient out of their bed or out of their home and another set of hands for on-scene care Maybe they're doing vitals or Providing information to the to the other public if it's a family member or what have you about what we're doing as Call acuity increases we see this is an advanced life support call We need a primary care attendant who does the same things But now we need a secondary patient care attendant So while we have all the initial work going in the patient history exam We need somebody to do vitals maybe other interventions such as started IV maybe get a 12V DKG The ambulance driver continues to do those duties and the engine driver Now is absent because all three members are going to be on the ambulance And we may have to abandon the engine on scene on a medical call and we'll park it there until we come back from the hospital If we're staffed at three That's a reality that we encounter several times a month For again a more serious EMS call probably one of our greatest liabilities outside of a traumatic patient is a cardiac arrest And how do we manage that cardiac arrest? It's a team-based approach It is a new proven. It's a proven concept that we take to this called high-performance CPR Every person knows their role in cardiac arrest management, and we're seeing great success with that if we have every all the players in the room We need somebody to initiate patient care coordinate the care, and that's usually a lead paramedic We have someone managing the airway and working on ventilation or intubation Placing an advanced airway someone providing chest compressions We need somebody to help with patient transfer equipment ready as decon and then patient transfer Psychological first aid to family members and bystanders if we're staffed at three, which our minimum staffing is Who drives the ambulance or which one of the above tasks? Don't we do? So we're focused Here to make some decisions and I highlight them in red for the Areas that we struggle to meet on a motor vehicle crash with injuries We need a patient care attendant again the ambulance driver We need an instant commander who is coordinating the scene helping with traffic and responder safety The engine driver would provide fire protection and people and personnel to coordinate the extrication of patients from the vehicle And this may be as simple as court moving them with C spine precautions placing them on a backboard with a cervical collar Or in a more complex incident running Sophisticated hydraulic rescue tools to extricate the vehicle from the patient Are we able to meet those other items? Not necessarily For a building fire How many personnel do we need we need the incident commander to coordinate the activities on? On the fire ground the pump operator Make sure that the members are getting water on the hose lines. We need two members to afford to stretch it a attack line So they are out and operating That's it now. We need persons to do search and rescue who's going to do this the search who's going to do ventilation we have a clause in OSHA that requires that when we operate in an Environment that is immediately dangerous to life and health and that's what the IDLH accurate acronym that you see is there It requires this for the two persons that were inside the building We have two persons who are outside trained and equipped to affect that rescue Can we meet that? No, we cannot we don't have a backup line nor a safety officer as a note Here that violates OSHA 29 CFR 1910 134 a building fire in a non-hydrogen area All the components that I listed above and now we add the requirements to provide a rural water supply or a tanker task force Where we bring in water on wheels We need at least four additional personnel to help affect that either Personnel at a water source that are drafting and personnel to staff our tanker truck Unable to meet that other call types that I haven't gone down through I just thought it would be a little bit mundane for you to continue to hear my soliloquy But our hazardous materials instance We haven't talked about rope rescue confined space rescue Trent's rescue water and ice rescue machinery rescue and wildland fires These all pose a risk to us. These are all areas that we're unable to meet an ERF or effective response force So what have we done about it? We initiated we we brainstormed we met with all of our staff and said let's come up with a Campaign to try to recruit calls So as you may have seen in the in the July 4th parade We put this banner on our truck and then we started it also on social media or on our department website and Kicked off this campaign trying to recruit personnel We held a what it takes orientation night We had actually two nights scheduled and our enrollment was so low that we actually Canceled the first night and went to just a single night We had ten persons show up That we we accepted applications for and we met with them and took them through the responsibilities and the expectations of the job Today I sit before you out of those ten We have three personnel that are sitting in the firefighter one program tonight at our fire academy Excuse me at our fire station, which is presented by the Vermont State Fire Academy We shot for the moon and we got three Those are three candidate firefighters that are not included in the eight that I spoke to you about earlier They're just getting their training now. They have not been hired by the department and their official capacity Say well, we're surrounded by fire departments. We have mutual aid challenges. We have prolonged response times And no this isn't a dispatch Lecture, but for us to request mutual aid out of either the city of South Burlington or as extension fire department The Shelburne Dispatch Center has to make a phone call and they'll call out the Essex PD or to South Burlington And say we need a fire department Response over to our community that takes time In turn those members if they're coming from Essex Junction have to respond from their home the station's not staff That takes time and then they get to their firehouse They have to don their PPE get on their apparatus and then go en route to our community and then it's travel time to the distance That time frame for mutual aid responses in my opinion seems to fall outside of that patient survivability zone And the time for fire growth and it brings fire growth up to a higher liability than we want Limited responder availability staffing challenges you've seen through that graph early on in that our call staff Continues to decline despite our efforts for recruitment The call volume of mutual aid in agencies is increasing for instance the South Burlington fire department They continue to get busier and busier in their own community And then I my opinion is that we have a local responsibility for our public safety of our own community We shouldn't be relying on outside agencies to handle our Liability so what were the triggers for action the triggers for action requesting an outside fire services analysis Where we were unable to meet the current demand unable to meet service expectation our reliability of service which I Causes me concern because we pride ourselves in the service that we deliver to you we work hard the staff behind me works harder than Most people that I've seen in the career fire service and the combination fire service they give what they can But unfortunately if we're already on another call and the second call comes in There's not much we can do about that. I think there's a difference between the community expectation and the reality I think a lot of folks drive by our firehouse and see all the the vehicles and Assume that every one of those vehicles is staffed and we have members ready to respond and unfortunately, that's not the reality That poses a risk to our firefighters when they go out When when last November they showed on location at Vermont commercial warehouse with a actual fire and the one of the largest facilities in the town of Williston They showed up with four personnel Property conservation is at risk The liability that we would have to save property in the community because of our delay or availability and the reliability of number of staff on duty and Citizen life safety is going to be potentially compromised if our ambulance is out at the hospital as we continue to see demands for service Who's going to answer that call? We're relying on outside agencies. So these were the triggers that Were the impetus behind going to an outside independent third-party vendor to have a consultant come in and give their opinion of Our fire services. So it wasn't my gut feeling sitting in front of you It was somebody that had no bias Thank you chief. Any questions from the board before we move on to the consultants Chief the only sorry the only question I had is one of the slides you had it actually showed Decreasing, what was the word you used when you have simultaneous calls? Concurrent calls concurrent. That's the word. I'm looking for and I just want to make sure I heard you correctly I think you attributed that decrease even though we would expect that to be increasing based on what you've been telling us is Because of the staff you work with the reason that's actually decreasing Jeff is because we Have changed the way we document incidents. We were some of the incidents in the previous years We were taking were not didn't fall in the national fire and sir reporting system as a qualified incident Okay, it was a public service that maybe we were doing that wasn't necessarily an emergency incident and since so my arrival We've kind of leveled that out So that's what it looks like then the other question. I mean this is a simple math thing But if I looked at the chart that you'd show that showed the number of non-traffic related I think it was emergencies. It's between two and three a day Easily, okay That's a lot So okay Aaron just for historical reference. We're down to eight Volunteer Eight active. There are a couple of members that are on there that are on leave of absence. I don't want to misrepresent Yeah, I mean I grew up in Richmond and That was it still is all volunteer I know the culture is changing. I know the economics of the town are changing But when when did that really start to become just just for historical reference? When did that really become a kind of a critical issue last year two years ago prior to my arrival? And it's been a relatively steady decline correct Other questions One one quick thing is who is AP try time? They will introduce themselves here in a moment. Okay They'll be right here So Eric will push you back on as far as introducing the consultants Yep, I'll get them connected. Uh, Kurt um I'll get you connected and if you let me know everybody else to connect here being promoted to a panelist Kurt So be able to share your uh camera and audio here in just a moment. What happened when you invited me to a panelist everything went haywire You see it now Kurt should I connect anyone else at this point or are you gonna? Yes, please please connect Randy Parr Michelle Crowley And Joe parrot No, Michelle and Randy just be a moment here that everybody connected here like they're in there Turn over to you Kurt all right, let me uh screen share going here presentation mode Okay, can can everybody see my first slide there? Yes, we can Thank you very much and and chief that was a an excellent Uh laying of the foundation and we were almost tempted to say thank you very much. Are there any questions? But uh, so I'd like to start off with a big thank you and and to the select board the town manager the chief and his staff and all the members of the department and the community and particularly We had a lot of participation during the On-site interviews that Jim searing a member of our team conducted And you'll see there's something like 30 some odd interviews and those are in the appendix and there are some very interesting Comments that were summarized in there and I would hopefully you would have the opportunity to take a look at that The team that's on the call tonight is not the entire team, but most of them Randy Parr is our lead Finance subject matter expert randy is in fact a cpa We're practicing cpa and a recently retired fire chief from tom ball, texas Go parrot is also a retired fire chief with uh I seldom like to highlight our years because it adds up to a lot makes us feel a little old Um, but almost everyone on the call with the exception michelle's got well over 40 years in the service Uh, michelle crawley retired chief officer of bloxy So joe is our gis analyst And all things that you can imagine And his background is extensive Michelle did our risk analysis and staffing components on on your study I also want to emphasize That any study is a snapshot in time At some point you have to say okay, we're going to stop the data collection here And and finish the report Now given the dynamics of the fire service that does not mean the challenge is stopped And it does not mean that the calls stopped being run And it certainly does not mean that the calls stop at call numbers stop stop to escalate And I would just like to capture that so The purpose and approach is pretty much right out of the study AP Triton is a public safety consulting firm. We consult throughout the nation Some of our associates have actually worked up in canada And we pride ourselves on being neutral third party no bias We develop the findings and the recommendations Utilizing data that's provided by the agency by electronic means such as the computer aided dispatch Center as well as the fire records management system And we rely on the science of public safety and fire We also utilize nationally recognized and accepted standards We don't pull anything out of the hat. We try to have reference points and everything that we do um The comprehensive analysis of the wiliston fire department as the title of the study Has a very very strong emphasis on the current and future staffing needs of the department It actually started off in the rfp as a staffing study We looked at identifying risks and vulnerabilities within the town's current staffing structure and identifying models that might align with the future and they are recommendations They're not mandates. They're recommendations You'll see in the report the way we've structured it. It begins with the overview of the community risk assessment critical task analysis agency level goals and distribution And and joe has as he always does Has done an excellent job analyzing the historical performance and we conclude with policy and operational recommendations There's also embedded in your report a financial overview, which is extremely important because as you see in the recommendations and you'll see some highlights We believe that it's important for us to include in a recommendation if it's appropriate if it's warranted a financial analysis This is your town you already know this is your town you've got 31 square miles the breakdown is interesting The references are end Endnoted within your within your study as to where these came from Your population as of your 2020 census Was right at about 10 000 and some change As the chief has already mentioned you have a one station fire department your minimum daily staffing is minimal Three plus call staff and and some 40 hour personnel if they're available Overview of the services provided and chief has has already set the stage in this area and Given your level of staffing and administrative support Here's your service area that's Those are the confines of the of the township if you will And this is the area that we study Your organizational structure is a basic hierarchy that we're very familiar with in the fire service And I I'll point out again in a minute. You are extremely lean Your administrative and staffing support This is it. It's your chief deputy chief fire captain administrative assistant and volunteer clergy member That's off to you guys. I have always included in my organizations the importance of having clergy involved This is extremely lean given the department's workload And also when you look at the complexity of today's fire service things have changed a lot From the days of I like to refer to the days of ben franklin, but i'm not that old Your minimum daily staffing the chief has already highlighted this for you This is also embedded within your report And uh the chief has articulated that Once you're out you're out of resources until the call staff come in If the 40-hour staffing is available they can augment However, given your your call load and we talk about that in a minute It gets it gets pretty lean when we start having simultaneous calls and joe will go into those We uh You know when michelle was writing the staffing section and and she'll talk about risk in a few minutes Uh, we also took a look at your career staffing and your call staff and compared it to to national standards As I said, this is a snapshot in time. It was a bit of a moving target because we were tracking As you started to See the some of your call staff resigned So this is where we ended up. This is before the chief's recent recruitment So the chief did a really good job of highlighting some of these I just want to reinforce it because it really shows you where you're at and this is a moderate risk ALS advanced life support call Critical tasking identified you should have a minimum of five Your your staffing level comes up a little short Water vehicle collisions with entrapment This is a lot. I mean our job is very labor intense our service of jobs labor intense and in vehicle entrapment is there's no difference uh You're able to at times Staff up with your 40 hour personnel and call staff five to six folks Whereas if you're going to cover all the critical tasks that are typically identified For this type of an incident you really have a demand for nine A structure fire private dwelling Of two floors and less some folks refer to this is our bread and bread and butter if you will on a working structure fire Uh the number of personnel that's been identified in critical tasking is very consistent with nationally recognized standards such as the center for public safety excellence uh If the 40 hour personnel are available and call staff come in Then uh, you can come up with six and and what joe's going to show you one of the maps Relying on your mutual aid companies Um, they are a bit far out And uh, when we talk about the time temperature curve, which joe will you'll see the the risk that evolves Uh rapid intervention the chief talked about 29 cfr 29 cfr basically Is what we refer to as the two end to out move before you can make entry into a burning structure be Beyond the incipient stage You need to have two folks on the inside two folks on the out the rescue and once you evolve into a more complex What type of the fire you need to start you need to set up a rapid intervention team commercial, uh structures moderate risk we have a lot of these in your community As you see the numbers simply start to multiply three stories or more and joe's going to show you a pretty impressive map of of your structures that are 32 feet or greater in height Um, and you've got several of them And as again the critical passing just simply increases to mitigate an incident in in one of these structures So when we when we do the analysis we look at your indicators for growth And uh, you're actually from a report card perspective. You're checking all these boxes Uh growth and services because of more people more business, etc. So as we see communities grow The demand starts to increase You're starting to see a bit of an aging in the population It's not it doesn't jump out at you in the demographics that are reported But we do know for a fact that as our communities age Uh, the department's ability to recruit new members is directly directly related to the aging of the community It's also directly related to a bedroom type of an atmosphere where candidates to be volunteers or to be paid call staff paid call staff Will diminish because the folks are leaving town to go to work And then by the time they get back we're competing with Stated these are facts We compete with with church. We compete with new sports And other activities and that is one of the some of the factors That are adding to the decrease in our volunteer forces throughout the nation Another indicator for growth is missed calls We have seen and I've personally experienced this that once an agency Starts getting past a thousand calls a year The volunteer forces have a hard time keeping up with that level of call volume for all the reasons I previously stated And you guys are knocking on the door Of just under 2000 and that was during a covid year and it's probably starting to increase again other indicators That you're that you're seeing the chief highlighted extended response times reduced staffing Responsibilities outpace your capabilities. There's a lot of collateral duties going on In this organization and officers are filling lower operational positions So with that I'm going to hand it over to Joe parrot and Joe. Just let me know where you want me to go next Okay, thank you very much. We did a as an extensive analysis on service delivery and performance as we could There were some limitations on our ability to do that. I will share why as we go through this next slide So this shows for the most recent year the number of calls by call type 15 structure fires 22 other fires over a thousand the emergency medical incidents And the variety of others next slide Those calls don't happen uniformly across the clock most most calls are occurring when public is up and active and moving around Not to be too humorous but starting fires and getting hurt And at night when they're in bed, they're not as active and not doing that as much so the The predominance of your workload occurs from about 8 a.m. Until about 7 or 8 p.m. Also is very different across the service area as you can see by the the darker blue That is the most dense In terms of calls per square mile So that area North and west of station one and to some degree around station one Is the most active and significantly so in the balance of the service area not so much This is for all incident types next slide For emergency medical incidents no change just not as many because there's Medical incidents than total incidents, but again the same pattern where where population is is where Particularly emergency medical calls will occur. And so the greater the density of population the greater the number of calls next Fire incidents are a little more distributed But still to a degree concentrated in that more heavily populated area next Response units are busy But not overly busy When we start creeping up and seeing An individual response unit pushing 2,500 to 3,000 calls per year, then we we start getting concerned about being overworked That's not the case in williston There are there is still capacity within the two response units that are staffed The biggest problem is is the number of staff available to serve the community Want to talk just a bit about why we seem to care so much about response time Uh, and it really boils down in our analysis to a fairly simple equation The complex and its implementation, but if we can get enough people well-trained people With right kinds of tools apparatus and equipment to an incident quickly enough then we can be effective and effective means the degree To which the harm caused by the event is limited Next so as we look at a fire And chief plet mention this in his presentation, but I do want to go into a little bit more detail so from the time of ignition, let's say a waste paper basket in the corner and Somebody threw a lit cigarette in there and it starts a fire in unrestrained It continues to build and it continues to consume flammable combustible materials within that room Is this doing that? It's generating flammable gases that accumulate at the ceiling and eventually at the five to seven Not much longer than that 10 minute mark an event called flash over occurs And that's when everything within that room has superheated enough and those combustible flammable gases at the ceiling have It reached their ignition temperature and if you have sudden ignition of everything in the room There's two realities about that one is That fire is no longer a room in contents fire It's now extended into at least the floor of origin if not the entire building of origin The other reality is anybody who is within that space is no longer alive The temperatures are far too extreme and there we've gone from rescue to recovery And if you look At the the data that's gathered by the national fire protection association If we can keep that fire confined to a room of origin or smaller The civilian death rate the entry rate and the average loss per fire is relatively low Once it escapes the room you can see there's a an eight-fold increase in A death rate and a significant increase in injury and average dollar loss per fire So getting the water on the fire the wet stuff on the hot stuff before Flash over is the critical effort that we do in a building fire That requires enough people to Do those things that have to be done within that time frame and being able to put enough resources on incident within The amount of time that's necessary to make that happen Hey Chief clad also mentioned the the cardiac survival After about four minutes you're about a 50 50 chance of surviving and after that Not so much the magic is early cpr particularly early defibrillation and there's with automatic external defibrillators so available and That that can really improve a community's death rate from cardiac arrest. There's also other things that we we Really pay attention to time on trauma significant trauma The rule is from injury to surgery within an hour that requires skilled response and quick transport to get that patient into surgery so they can Be be saved stemmy st. I elevated myocardial infarction The quicker we can get that a person Experiencing that into a cath lab and get stents installed or whatever it takes to improve the circulation through the heart muscle Respiratory compromise during entrapments physical environmental harm from hazardous materials releases not all responses the fire department makes are Critical time critical, but a lot of them are and that's why we need to really pay attention to making that happen Okay So we reviewed as much as we could given the available information Detection is how long it takes for the person to detect and Make contact with the dispatch center once the contact made how long did the dispatch center take to process that call? How long did it take to notify the response crews? How long did it take for the response crews to assemble on the vehicle and begin movement towards the incident? travel time from the fire station or whatever location to the incident itself Set up time we did not evaluate in incident control time again lack of data was Handicapped us and from taking a look at that so next slide Let's start with call processing time. This is from the time you dial 911 until the dispatch center is notifying response personnel that there's an incident progress Dispatch center doesn't keep in doesn't keep records that allowed us to evaluate that time and that that's a deficiency that needs to be corrected That's again part of the customer's experience in the emergency response system is Their experience with the dispatch center and and how long that Dispatch center takes to process and notify crews of the incident is a significant factor in overall response time Turn out time that's from notification until movement towards the incident National standards suggest that should be 80 seconds for those calls that require Full protective equipment fires and other special operations times type incidents in 60 seconds for EMS incidents as you can see the Current performance is is well in excess of both of those Turn out time by hour of day It's longer at night. That's somewhat predictable Crews are sleeping have to wake up be dressed suited up get on the vehicle and initiate movement that takes a little longer Than it does during the day Because they're already up and around and moving However, this still represents an opportunity for for overall response time improvement Travel time we modeled travel capability using posted road speeds and accounting for returning movements and such the kind of light green is where Are the all the road segments the response unit from station one can reach within four minutes The red is within six minutes and the more purple color is within eight minutes So as you can see coverage within that high activity area To the north and west of station one Is good as well as it is to to the east You get out into the more suburban rural areas if the response times are much or travel times are much longer So we also looked at next the capability of the closest mutual aid company south burlington and it Struggles to get it has a little bit of six minute coverage within the far western portion But most of it's eight minute and by the time it hits the fire station. They're done in terms of providing any effective response performance Okay travel times For different call types. We're running in the seven to eight minute range And which is Beyond really what you would like to see especially in the urban portion where most of the calls are happening Next Time of day. It's a little longer at night. That's that's not surprising. There's a little bump at the 8 a.m 7 to 8 a.m rush hour Not much of a bump at the in the afternoon rush hour So traffic might be influencing morning travel times but but not Influencing much of the rest Okay This is from the time the crews are dispatched until they arrive at an incident National standards would recommend in urban environments that this be five minutes 20 seconds for fire and special operations And five minutes for emergency medical and other Priorities that don't require full protective equipment as you can see times are longer than that So there's again, we have an opportunity to try and improve service and remember back to my discussion of The time temperature and flash over and we need to get resources on an incident as quickly as we can same with some of the medical types At present response times are not Going to achieve those effective outcomes that we would really like to be Next Same same concerns about hour of day The travel times and extended turnout times are affecting the middle of the night performance And fairly consistent at the eight minute range during the day okay We wanted to be able to evaluate how long it takes to deliver the full effective response force We could not because again, she'll warn dispatch does not keep data beyond respond time data beyond the first arriving unit That's unfortunate because that's a big missing piece of information. That's really important Um, and as a result of this and the other ones I've talked about we have a strong recommendation to improve that Um, but I would suspect just based on experience that there would have been no building fire for in particular That a full effective response force was delivered to within a requisite time to be effective next You've talked about concurrent incidents His method or his math my math are a little different. So you're going to see some differences in numbers but still with the limitation and the number of available units these these Two incident three incident four incident concurrences Are concerning particularly since your mutual aid support other agency fire departments are so far away Uh, this really argues for having more than one fully capable unit Next thank you pass it on to others so Now we went on earlier and introduced michelle carly michelle I did double duty on this project and my hats off to her She did a really deep dive lots of conversations with staff Throughout the project Community risk She's going to give you a high flight of community risk very seldom Do we do a study in this day and age without some level of community risk analysis? And I asked michelle to join us on this project because of her background in this area It's all yours michelle Eric do we still have michelle? Michelle you'll just need to unmute. I'm sorry. Thank you kurt Uh, we're going to discuss risk as part of the staffing study to understand The alignment of enhanced preparedness some of the aspects that chief collette and also joe parrot have talked about already staffing resources and response capabilities and consider What the current fire department staffing model can provide to mitigate the overall impact of these of these identified risk Although the study examines additional risk factors including some of the demographics Tonight, we're only going to highlight some of the significant risks that wiliston fire department has to respond to daily next So here you're going to see relative risk Land use within the wiliston translate into this relative fire risk Normally, we see low medium and high risk however in in the In the in wiliston's case, you only see a moderate and high risk moderate risk is for medium density single family dwellings and agricultural buildings Where your high risk is shown for like business districts mixed used areas and high density residential areas Industrial and large mercantile centers are also included in these high risk areas next Our schools wiliston provides education for students in kindergarten through high school These schools create a special risk because of the number of students in a specific location A fire in these type of facilities requires more staffing and resources For search and rescue as well as fire extinguishment and water supply next Our long-term cape our long-term care facilities have the same type of risk issues because As the schools because of the number of residence center in specific locations of the building However, we have to consider that These people often are not capable of evacuating a building without assistance So currently like we talked about earlier, we have about 70 17 percent of your population is 65 and older Which is about average Of as the population in the list in ages though, uh, I know chief collett talked about there's another plan review for a long-term care facility So they may need to provide additional services within the community and especially for the baby boomer population Just like me And everyone else on this call uh That's currently uh 56 to 74 years of age next Okay This is another map of buildings 32 feet or higher in wiliston and thank you joe for this excellent map This is another risk that requires additional staffing and truck company operations that we need to consider The number of dots on the map have the opportunity for fires And there's a lot of dots The these buildings are often high occupancy as chief collett referred to earlier They require additional crews for search and rescue of fire floors And the floors below and above those fire floors Establishing a water supply is often labor intense as well Especially in older buildings that may not be equipped with sprinklers Which may require personnel to almost hand lay a supply line through the stairwell to the upper floors Those buildings equipped with the sprinklers require an additional engine To secure the water supply to the fire department connection at the building next Finally, we have buildings that are greater than 25 000 square feet Williston has over 90 buildings that range in size from 25 000 to 600 and 60 000 square feet Additional fire flow demand of 500 to 6 000 gallon per minute may be needed to extinguish these types of fires These fires require ladder truck apparatus that can flow a master stream device Which carries can produce about 1 000 gallons per minute or more Thank you I'm sorry In summary We have to understand that all these types of buildings discuss a greater level of staffing to mitigate a fire These fires create greater challenges for incident command operations Evacuation search and rescue search and rescue and fire floor extinguishment Additional staffing is is needed as these emergency claws are labor intense and fire flow intense They are large areas to search and this task is really takes a lot of time and it's energy and energy to perform Properly staff ladder trucks are needed to assist as well And provide additional means of egress for the occupants as As well as fire fires, especially in the early stages of arrival In the event of a mass casualty incident for EMS EMS and fire personnel will have to provide triage and treatment for a large number of injured civilians And these events also include require additional ambulances for transport to area hospitals With the number of staff currently available, you can see why we are reporting the fire department is understaffed based on community risk Thank you Kurt Thanks, michelle. I'm sorry. I jumped in a little too quickly. It's okay I'm trying to keep on that time limit that that we talked about I am so findings So the next two sections are highlights As as you've seen This is a rather extensive report. There's a lot of pages Even though they're double-sided And so we're only going to hit some highlights. I'm not saying that this is the only ones that are in there I'm saying this is just a sampling So We we we try to you know balance our findings so to speak and when randy did the overview of the finances He made this comment and uh, you know, you've concert you got conservative financial practices You have accumulated a healthy unrestricted government funds And this is reported with within the finance overview section of the report Uh, michelle already had a disc already shared with you some of the demographics It's just you know, it's interesting being on the consulting side going from the fire chief side to the consulting side Um, we rarely unearth anything that you you don't have a gut feeling for Or uh, haven't experienced already You live there. You know that your daytime population increases It increases to 23 000 people daily from from a base of 10 000 As your population continues to grow Your your classification of the town is is going to change Is going to change as well and the demand on services will do nothing but increase um something that that Triton actually cut its teeth on is developing and optimizing ems systems And uh, every time we have an opportunity to look at a at a Apartment that also does ems transport. We take a look at their fee schedules And randy has done that It's no secret that inadequate staffing levels can compromise firefighter safety and civilian and hats off To the chief and his crew Or taking firefighter safety and civilian safety into consideration in the way they set the stage in their operations You you know, joe hit on this Right now today And the chief and I talked I think was a few days ago That they had to wait for quite an extended period of time for a ladder truck to respond from an outside agency You know, one of our recommendations is that the mutual aid agreements be transitioned into automatic aid That's not really going to help you a lot because of how far away they are as well And their call loads as well So to some degree and you'll hear this from us in just a few minutes There needs to be some level of self-dependency We already went through some of the indicators of change all those boxes are being checked Your officers including your chief officers Uh are also filling lower operation positions to try to come up with an adequate response that results in numerous collateral duties and the The struggle to provide service at a high level Now joe hit on this Uh, I really don't like you know to highlight too much But there needs to something needs to change in your communication center We did this this study is not The communication study it's not an analysis of the emergency communication center. However When we are unable to get data out of the communication center It's hard for us to do a really good analysis for you and joe really already highlighted these as well The response workload has increased over 14 percent in the last 10 years and just like So well over 80 90 percent in the fire service throughout the nation as an EMS component No different than williston fire joe already highlighted the effective response force is not happening due to lack of staffing Internally, but also the distance for your automatic mutual aid companies The recommendations again, these are highlights. I I pulled because it's a staffing study. You'll see some influence That leans heavily on the staffing But there are numerous recommendations for staffing as well as general recommendations For your consideration within the study we believe That the department should Evaluate the cost to develop the first responder fee And the more important part of the evaluation is what it actually takes to deliver service and whether or not Your cost recovery methods are are helping to offset the cost of service delivery And such as a first responder fee The department currently doesn't have formally identified benchmarks to measure itself by So there's actually a couple of recommendations. This is one of them within the document Initially, we recommend that you consider adopting NFPA 1720 which is designed for You know volunteering combination paid on called departments So you'll at least have a measurement to start benchmarking your progress Towards some of the response criteria, etc We also believe that as you start to add staffing there's another recommendation that's not highlighted here But there is a recommendation within the study that once you start adding staffing That you consider embracing another set of benchmark recommendations That that will get you beyond 1720 no Given the analysis the risk and some of the information we've shared with you We believe it's important to use the term immediately Um, and we don't use that very often But at a minimum, we are recommending that that you increase by three additional paid staff per shift for a total of nine and this really to some degree As you look back historically and where you're at right now and I think the chief has done an excellent job of laying the foundation if you will for that history To some degree you're at a point where you're playing catch up Andy would you give us a quick overview of this slide? You know certainly This slide is figure 70 in the body of the report Figure 70 all the explanations are in the report, but We're recommending We add at the firefighter to emt step one level Based on your current Compensation schedule that would be 43,600 dollars per person Benefits are calculated at 22995 so total wages and benefits Are 66,555 there's other costs that go along with that certifications training, etc So the total cost per position Would be 67,355 per year Nine positions would bring that to a total of 606,195 per year There's also some one-time costs I say one time because under the NFPA guidelines you have to replace gear every 10 years But you turn out gear would be about 4500 dollars per set Nine sets would be 40,500 to outfit nine additional positions Now there would also be some Costs associated with the background checks and the standard things that you would do to hire an employee Thank you, Randy Yeah, you've heard from the chief the the diminishing number and the call staff and there's multiple reasons for that As you read some of the publications coming out of the international chief's volunteer combination officer section It's something that we've studied for for quite some time However, we also we we do believe it's important and recommend That a predefined level or a target if you will Be determined of call staff necessary to meet service demand and and to augment Your paid staff We talked about some of the challenges that that your call staff have In responding In and remaining available within the community But it's important that you set a target for what those numbers could be So you can budget for them and you can recruit to that level As you move forward with adding staffing The call staff are As an excellent program Not just to augment your on-duty crews, but also as a feeder group As you increase your paid staffing because you have an opportunity to look at the qualifications Of folks and get basically do a test run before they get hired so What michelle has highlighted And what we've been walking through So far in the overview as you have a You have a growing level of risk The number of buildings above 32 feet is Actually quite amazing You guys live there. You drive it all the time. You see these buildings going up It's a known fact that once you get past a certain height Aerial operations become critical and it's aerial operations for rescue and aerial operations for Uh application of elevated master streams We are recommending that you consider And this would be a midterm one to three years is what michelle is recommending here That you consider adding enough staff to To put that aerial apparatus and play in in service and make it part of your run card Part of your run assignment. So you don't have to wait for 15 20 minutes on a working fire For for a surrounding agency to show up Randy Yes, sir The the staffing model for An additional apparatus, especially an aerial apparatus Would require an officer With extensive experience In your in your situation it would be a lieutenant Senior firefighter who would also operate as either an engineer or operator And then two firefighter two emt's The um the latter company is typically one That operates in the most hazardous environments. They operate on top of the building They operate above the fire to perform ventilation So it takes folks that have got some level of experience above that of a basic firefighter Total wages per shift would be 183,247 Benefits per shift again based on that prior calculation. We showed 96,480. So wages and benefits per shift 297,000 annual cost per shift Again, $800 per shift or $800 per person Um bring a total cost uh the 282,000 Hmm, that's interesting I see there's a math error there. I'll have to go back and look at that but Now total annual personnel cost 848,781 And again turnout uh cost for initial turnout deer would be 54,000 I apologize for the math error. I'm trying to figure out Uh, I think the 297 should be the total annual cost per shift To get to the 848,781 If we need to add it will provide you with a new master chief Again, this is on the power point. I believe that the the actual report itself will be correct okay so another I another recommendation is uh consider Applying for assistance to firefighter grant We have to be really careful when we make this type of a recommendation because it should be viewed as as a bridge if you will Not as an end all You know if you remember we recommend you immediately at three staffing per shift I would recommend you you consider doing that and then once that's accomplished We believe there's enough foundation within this study Or you to have a really excellent chance at at applying for assistance to firefighter grant One of the things I always caution folks on is when you're making the decision to apply Understand that the intent of the grant is a bridge It's it's intended to get you from if you will point a to point b And there there's always discussion of what's going to happen when that grant runs out Personally when I used to apply for these grants Before I even asked for a signature. I already started planning For the expiration of the grant and how I was going to maintain the staffing. I believe We believe that as you look at some of these recommendations, this would be a natural progression For you to go to once you staff up It's important that that at some point you become somewhat self-sufficient for initial attack And we believe this will help you get there, but it is not the end all and it will and they do expire Kurt could I interject something here back on my slide? It's a transposition error the wages and benefits per shift should be 279 727 not 297 So the 848 annual personnel cost is correct Thanks randy the human calculator so You know we can't because the focus was so much on staffing Obviously a lot of the highlights related to staffing but we also believe As you have the opportunity to transition into more of a community risk reduction strategy And the risk reduction strategy will help manage the risk. It's not it's not going to neutralize the risk But it's it combines your emergency operation your prevention strategies to reduce your community risk and well-designed programs which Michelle has done these and some of our other subject matter experts on our team Will embrace all the partners in the community your nonprofits and others To sensitize them to the risk and come up with ways to better manage those risks and actually make them partners as part of the strategy and we talked a lot about um We talked a lot about bringing people on We we encourage the NFBA 1582 physical exams annually We know that We're at high risk our profession Is it high risk for several issues such as cancer? It's been well documented I've personally lost friends for job related cancer As well as stroke etc We encourage a very proactive approach To protecting your your personnel And not just at the entry point, but also on an annual point an NFBA 1582 Actually has some recommendations for at what point you would kick in some of the higher level Analysis or testing but without a doubt onboarding folks knowing what is going on as you develop your baselines So you can track them throughout their career is extremely important And hats off to the chief and his team for taking care of your firefighters That's a very high flight. I think I stayed Within the the one hour I committed to Uh, we we would attempt we will make ourselves available and attempt to answer any questions you may have Would you like the screen back Eric? Yeah, that sounds good. Thank you Thank you so much for the opportunity to present and uh, we will attempt to answer questions you may have I don't know a whole bunch of stuff, so I'm sure you'll get some questions Who would like to start? Well, I'll just start with um Staffing costs are probably going to be one of the biggest costs that um, you're asking us to consider And I just want to make sure I heard correct and it's uh, 21 new staff in the next, uh, immediately to three years Are you asking me or I just want to make sure I I understood correct and I didn't get that either right you So Kurt, I think your recommendation is not more aggressive than that correct in a five-year plan You didn't highlight all that Didn't highlight all of it. No, there's more in there So I think the total number of personnel if I remember right is 37 At the end of the five-year recommendation I'm not disagreeing. I'm not um Um, this is no way indicates how I'll ultimately feel out, but I I must admit I'm in a sticker shock type right now The the other question I have at least immediately is it appears that We talked about a ladder company, you know an aerial apparatus and then I think the word company was associated with that Is that a change in how the fire department might be organized or is that Am I looking at that incorrectly? We currently don't staff it We don't have an ability to staff a ladder truck Could you explain further because what I just heard you say is we can't use it, but I know that's probably not the case There's there's no one to staff the ladder truck So right now if there was a fire where the ladder truck was needed at What would happen? It would sit in the fire station until mutual aid got here or we increased the number of staff. Yeah Okay Wow so the call firefighters aren't An option to help get the ladder truck out of the station You have one person that's going to be trained in that truck at this point out of the call department Is there ever been anybody trained on that? Yes But they're not those people have kind of left And again, I'm not I'm not I'm not trying to be negative, but The fact that we if you want me to be realistic then I guess the absolutely I could ask the deputy chief to drive it Yeah, but I mean bottom line is we have somewhere around a million dollar piece of equipment That we can't use the way we should be able to use it. Correct Okay, thank you I mean, I'm glad I know that I'm not pleased I know that but I'm glad I know that Figure, I'm sorry So the bigger other implications of Kind of this so adding this kind of staff is our current facility capable of Of of working with that capacity of staff if we you know decided to to work towards that goal So Kurt you your team want to answer that because I know you folks analyze that Run that by me again. So I can give it to the right team member, please The staffing recommendations, how would we with the facility accommodate the staffing recommendation? Thank you Uh, the facility has some capability to accommodate some of the recommendations, but not all There is a recommendation within the report That consideration be given to expansion of the current facility as as needed Obviously, you need a space planner. You need an architect Jim Searing and I talked about the footprint currently of your building and the available land And it's his opinion that you do have the ability to expand if you do not then the recommendation is utilizing GIS analytics That you identify the the next most likely place for a second station Your station and and joe jump in if i'm wrong the station right now seems Pretty well placed If you can expand to add the additional staff to staff the apparatus joe you want to comment on the location Location of the existing station is ideal If you remember back to the incident density slides It it's right there That doesn't doesn't take away from the fact that the rest of the The town is well beyond you know much of the rest of the town is well beyond the reach of that fire station And so if you if you want to try and improve service into the more rural areas It will take another facility somewhere out there Let me answer your questions comments so I guess i'm in i'm in shock here myself because i you know, I How do we get here? I guess I mean I I know that you know staff is aged and and people have moved on and People need to be trained, but i'm just thinking about you know the Pretty high-tech equipment that we have access to But we don't because we don't have people in place that can either Healed it or run it. I know what to do like it just seems like over time like we're we uh Blind was our was our eye blind to this and how did this Just kind of felt like it just kind of we just got hit like a Mack truck here tonight For me. I I don't know So I think uh, gordon a lot of that comes before me, right? So I've had a year to digest this and this team Kurt your team's been working on this for several months. So maybe half of that year anyway They've been doing this work. So that's why we that's why we're here. Yeah, right? I came in here and my eyes like I started the program were We're concerned like when I said my eyes were open or my eyes open and I was watching and I was listening I was taking back just like you're taking back now So this is the approach that we took No, I have to educate you certainly yeah onto that. So I can't tell you what You know what happened Uh from the staffing where we saw that you know the call staff being so robust to the point we're at today But it just feels like to me we had a very good eye on what what we needed for for equipment and what types of services this town needed to be offered but the planning on which People that needed to be in place to execute all of these things as we continue to grow in population and types of businesses and residences Whatever you want to call it the need is there but it doesn't feel like we had a A scope of planning that was going to support that need I mean, there's there's a lot of history here behind me that if you want to welcome them to speak Yeah, I understand that But I know I just I mean, obviously this is super thorough I think your presentation of where we're at currently is just that's an eye-opener and I you know, I certainly appreciate the consulting firm really echoing what What you feel is just like where this feels like this is crisis here. Well, we live this every day. Yeah, they live this every day I mean, I've uh You know personally myself I've used services in this town that I've been super impressed with and like so fortunate that we have them And I know people like what you have behind you are going way above and beyond What's really being asked of them to do? And thank you all for that I just wonder what what's the way out and and how do we start to dig out? of this problem So I mean to the point about the aerial truck the aerial truck is like Jeff points out a million dollar plus piece of So I couldn't take one of our new hires and ask them to train and just start suddenly drive that It's going to take that member months if not years to be ready to do that And I think AP Triton points that out is that you've got to put a seasoned and tenured team in there And that's why they recommend that you have a senior firefighter rank or a designated driver operator rank Assigned to do that if I were to take a one-year member and put them behind the wheel of that truck It's it's a liability. Sure. I can't do that. I get that. Yeah chief if I might We're it's more than just the drivers more than just the operator truck ops truck operations or specialized training And just having the ladder truck show up will will not Not negate will not mitigate the challenge So chief is there any fire department in vermont that has the level of staffing That's recommended by the consultants It would be subjective for me to try to answer that question And so Doesn't matter how we got here where we got here to the point where we have a crisis to take care of And there's an old Question and answer. How do you need an elephant one bite at a time? And it seems like we have to start doing the bites at this point and It looks to me like the most critical bite we need to take is the increased staffing of the three per shift And I think that's probably doable with the opportunities to get a grant safer grant and Proceed from there, but When we wrap this up we'll ask to eric to Talk about next steps that we may wish to proceed with Other questions or comments chief can I go back to how many um What's the total number that that would be asked for in this proposal a total number of new personnel? 34 is it I think there's Curt is there's 37 in your entire recommendation at five years. Is that accurate? Yeah, can you pull that out? And I'm scanning Yes, so there's Three per shift. That's nine and then 12 total that would be 21 So that's for the latter and then they recommend to staff the second engine company Yes, sir, which is another 12 There's a recommendation for Administrative staff and community risk reduction staff such as a fire marshal a fire inspector Correct in a shift command. So what would the total cost of that be? per year I don't have that information. Do you something else sketch ballpark? I I would have to do it. I haven't done it out of the out of the 37. How many are firefighters? Can serve in suppression capability Sure, all of it Okay, well, I'm actually they're made they're an administrative until it may be 36 I think there's an administrative another administrator and just What's the average cost of a firefighter per year? Starting solid start starting is uh, joe and showed you was around 70 000 Total cost At the entry level We'll comp we'll comp right randy Yes, uh You're a firefighter too at a step one's 43 six benefits for about 23. So you're just under 70 per per position Again, that that's for an entry level position that doesn't uh account for driver operators that are more experienced as well as your officers it would be uh leading each of the other crews So that's what I'm sorry go ahead That's one of the items that I discussed also is that you have two concepts here Redundancy concept that you don't have in other words Your engine company goes out with one firefighter. They are Doing multiple jobs that they should not be doing Or your ambulance goes out and there's not enough people to answer that second call So you create redundancies within that system so that you have Even available to firefighters if possible to go to that fire call and augment That incident while the other incident is going on So you create those redundancies quickly within within your own system Just the the challenge that i'm seeing here though is that you know are the the general fund budget of the town of williston is 11 660 540 a year right now um This proposal would add two million five hundred twenty thousand dollars Plus that's a very conservative number is 2.5 million dollars to an 11 million dollar budget And that's just the fire department You know, we do have other things we have to fund Police parks and rec highways I'm just wondering if it's if it's possible and again i'm i'm This is a crisis. I take it very seriously. We need to do something about it immediately But that's that's a huge number for an 11 million dollar budget and i'm wondering if there's any you know If if you can't have that what do you need? and terry mentioned The additional staffing per shift. I think that's a bare minimum but is there you know I guess that's that's a question i don't expect an answer right now But that's that's a question that I would have going forward as we continue to hammer this out Yeah, I think that works Really to the chair's point earlier about fire departments being able to meet it So a community will make the decision on what level of risk we're willing to accept And the level of staffing that's going to complement that Yeah, and so This report becomes the 37 is not my number 37 is coming from an independent consultant. Okay, right? It's nothing that I fed them and said then you know asked them to come up with This when when I saw the report at 37, I was in your shoes Believe I was in your shoes Thinking there's no way we're going to be able to meet this I understand that so I think your task our task is to now Determine what level of risk are we willing to take Compared to the potential liability And how are we going to get there with the staff? So how would you I'm going to take you back on on ted's comment. So what would you prioritize? Next after additional staffing for ranking things as priority two three so on I don't understand the question. I'm sorry So we're going to we're going to put more people in place because obviously there's a shortfall What what would be what would be the next step after you have additional personnel like what what do you foresee like is the Next piece of crisis that needs to be addressed. I mean, there's obviously several I would I would expect that our demand for ems is going to increase and we're going to need to stop a second ambulance That's what I thought your head might be at chief are there difficulties in recruiting? Nationwide difficulties is that the same with the fire? There are we visited? The captain of myself visited the burlington fire department earlier today on a training project They had just hired some new folks to staff their second ambulance that you saw that went in service here Earlier this year. Excuse me. They're 30 minutes at one service earlier this year They've already started a new recruit academy that started two weeks ago because they've already lost folks And they're seeing people with less than five years move on out of the profession So they just hired eight more Even though they had hired an initial round earlier in the year so In the same way that I think general industry is struggling to find personnel I can only infer that that's why we're not seeing the increase in call staff personnel Because they're already cast out We stole you from burlington. You did steal me from burlington Yeah, I mean that that worked out really well, and I'm just thinking it might be a model for the future It's Could I also discuss the reason that we Acclimated these firefighters in on a kind of a schedule that of three to five years You have to consider also. I don't know chief collette. I can't remember off hand what your retirement is One thing that we ran into in Biloxi when they began to have casinos there was Large influx of firefighters that all retired at the same time So you want to stagger these firefighters being hired so that you don't have to concern yourself with So many firefighters retiring it with experience at the same time And that may be a good lead in for a question. I have and I think this question is primarily for the folks at triton We I've heard you mentioned that this is a five-year plan Is it would it be possible for you to provide a map of how that plan would be achieved? In other words, what would happen immediately year one year two year three year four year five It at least would give us an indication of how things would have to In order to achieve the recommendations What it would what will listen would have to commit to let's say on a on a year-by-year basis commit you may not be the best word It's not a five-year plan However, what the team tried to do was stagger some of the recommendations We know it's a heavy lift Some of us have been in one of the chief's shoes before The The way it's laid out. However, I think it does screen for a strategic approach. I'm not going to upsell you folks um, but that's what you just What you just mentioned Is pretty much what we do with strategic planning or an organization will do with strategic planning Our task was not to try to match the recommendations with your budget even though We do pride ourselves on trying to give you some cost analysis so And the chief made a really good comment because this is something we talk about in workshops all the time and that's What can you afford? What is a community willing to accept as a risk and from your perspective as policymakers? You're in a really tough spot um When you do strategic planning That's where you really pull it back even further and this is where you do get into the hardcore Okay, what can we afford to do this year what we afford to do next year? And who's going to be doing what and how you're going to get there? That was not part of the scope of work Obviously, we'd love to do that work For you guys we have we have team members that do that but i'm not going to sit here and upsell you We did try to soften the blow a little bit with the one two three I'm sorry. I didn't understand the reference to one two three The year stretch out. Oh, I see. Okay. Okay Any further questions for the consultants? Well, I don't know if this is for the chief or the consultants Is it and I know this was done to a degree But is it possible to rank the various recommendations in terms of critical important and needed? I'm not going to put any of them and oh, they can wait because it doesn't sound like you feel any of them can wait, but Do that kind of a A sorting of things for us that would be helpful Well, I think oh Go ahead chief No, go ahead I think with anything those that we can enact at the operations level at the department We can certainly start tackling now And we can start moving that forward But the financials are really going to be dependent on your posture Okay And then let let me ask one nuanced question. Um, the 12 firefighters Is I hear that's an immediate need I think I'll correct you and say that it's nine is the immediate nine. I'm sorry. I got the wrong It's all right nine the nine that are the immediate need What is meant by immediate? I don't mean to be crass there What I mean by that is that something that has to happen before the next budget season Or something that can happen during the next budget season I would have liked to see it happen last a lot Okay, so you would you would argue I don't mean to put words in your mouth that we need to do that now But for the next not for fiscal year 22, but part of fiscal year 21 No, not for fiscal year 23, but part of fiscal year 22 So the report that you saw here tonight talks about Command officers operating outside of their grade Myself the deputy and the captain will the captain works on the engine But myself and the deputy respond to medical calls second medical calls and fire alarms All throughout the day in our in our car So Where you would think that we're sitting there being administrators As an example of the day that we had the hazardous materials released the bear spray incident at the hotel The on-duty members the first call the on-duty members went to Within a minute. There was a second emergency medical call That was myself because the deputy had left the station ahead of me actually the deputy was on the road And so he went to the first incident and signed on location It was myself taking the emergency medical call by myself And initiating patient care out of my car To that patient while I waited a mutual aid ambulance to come into the community On the bear spray call they requested three additional ambulances So the Richmond ambulance a Burlington fire department ambulance and an Essex ambulance were on that initial call And the medical call that I was on was an ambulance out of the city of south Burlington fire department These situations are happening daily I think Eric Eric can probably tell a little bit about process when we get to that point As far as hiring and what needs to happen with the budget process Just wanted to follow up just for clarification too. Obviously, so the need is imperative to get the these nine on board It as quickly as possible What does what is the time frame for your onboarding just so we you know have a have a sense of You know what it takes to get somebody up and running within the department It would be about a 12 week training academy that we would have to get them through Uh, we could hopefully fast-track that To try to get them if they if we hired incumbents on a lateral transfer then that training time that training need is less But for a new hire We would look to hire a baseline and put them through our own training academy So minimum 12 I would say around 12 weeks point of hire from the point of hire That's not even the background right and all that And anything else for the consultants Before they sign off No if not, uh, Eric, um You want to step back in and We thank the consultants for the report and uh It's been a fascinating read over the course of a week for me Thank you. Thank you very much for the opportunity Thank you If I could close Eric, is that all right with you? Yes, sir. Come on I want to really You know again compliment the entire team there in the town and thank you very much for the cooperation and the back and forth We've had we realize that these are some pretty heavy Recommendations and they are just that their recommendations However, we wouldn't be doing our job had we not been brutally honest with those recommendations But thank you very much for choosing us as your consultant. We hope to work with you in the future And I always leave the door open Eric and chief if there's any follow-up questions you can shoot us in writing we will We're not going away. We believe in long-term relationships Good, thank you very much So, Eric, um Also to me Yeah, I'm still here. I was uh, I was listening and About next steps Yeah, and I'll I'll echo the board and the chief's reaction The chief brought a number to my office maybe about four or six weeks ago and Was you know, I understood we were we had a staffing challenge, but I wasn't I wasn't prepared Honestly for that number, but I I agree with everything that's been said It's uh, it's a level of service the community needs to decide what level of service the community wants to provide and what level of risk some strategically when we were thinking about this work and Um We've brought this before the start of our f y 23 budget process as this is a A major item to for the board to consider moving forward Both in the short term and and with and with the budget work moving ahead um, I think what I what I could Propose for the board tonight is staff can dig into the numbers a little bit more and think about those metruses for for risk You know, it might be something our consultant could also assist with but um, I think like you said Terry it's So one step at a time and and trying to think of how we how we approach it and what the board can consider In both the short medium and and long term horizon here Any questions for your before we sign off? If not, thank you everybody for attending tonight and Thanks, Eric for orchestrating this for the consultants and That's the end of our agenda. So We are adjourned