 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. Welcome to this small but enthusiastic and energetic crowd. Alder's, Truster Wolfe, Bitter's, Damro, Schneider, and Rin Fleischer excused. I would ask for a motion to approve the minutes from our March 28, 2017 meeting. Make a motion to approve the minutes from the March 28, 17 meeting. Is there a second? Second. And discussion. Hearing none, all in favor, state aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye. We do provide for a public forum on agenda items only. Three minutes, there is no need to sign up in advance. Do we have any speakers this evening? We do not. Let's move on to 2.1, which is a fire department job description review. And I think we'd have Chief Romus and Sandy Roura come to join us. Madam Chair, would you like me to say something? I don't know. That's totally up to you. Yeah, I think so. We've been up here before. We explained everything to you. You have all the documents. Does anyone have any questions at all about anything? We'd be more than happy to answer them. Yes, please. I have a few questions. I was unable to be here through some of your chats. But I read the same, the city survey. There were 60 complaints from the people who had worked within the fire department in that study. And everybody was complaining about stuff. But when you guys went and did this whole study, everything was peaches and cream. And could I just interrupt to say we are recording? So if you could use your microphones. You can't hear me? Well, I can certainly hear you, but our fans at home may have some trouble. So I guess I'm in a quandary. If everything is so perfect when you guys did all your checking, and Sandy, we had this discussion, everything was so perfect, where do you feel that those complaints were based on? I appreciate your question. However, I think you're wrong. I went through all 406 comments. There were 11 that pertain to the fire department. And of those 11, there were four categories. And none of them were about morale. None of them were about budget. None of them. So I don't know. Sandy, could you interject? Because you gave me pages and pages and pages that were just from the fire department. Are you talking about the 2017 study? I'm not talking about where everybody chipped. I'm talking about the employee. The employee survey. I apologize if I didn't make my point clear. OK, I need to have a little bit of time then. You are referring to specific answers or comments that came out of the 2017 study. You are referring to the 2016 study. If that's the one you gave me. The employee survey. Yeah, there's been an updated survey that's done annually. The study does talk about morale issues. It does not say everyone, because I think it's an overstatement to say that everyone in the department has morale issues. There are some people that absolutely had morale issues when I was doing this study. But I believe I refer to morale issues having to do with accountability. Some of the findings that I came up with, accountability was the biggest recommendation from some of the strongest opinions, is that they don't feel that there's accountability or follow through. And that was addressed in this study. Thanks. Mr. Nelson. I just have a couple of questions on some of the job descriptions. And I might not have the most recent ones. I thought they were the most recent one. I got them. Basically, the assistant fire chief and the deputy fire chief. And some of these are kind of, I don't want to say picky, but they're a little picky questions. But I was kind of thinking that there'd be a consistency among the descriptions. And some of them, they talk about shift commander, and some of them talk about battalion chief, which I understand is really the same thing now. They are one and the same. So should not these descriptions be consistent? I mean, one says shift commander, the next one says battalion chief. And as I say, I understand it's picky, but it kind of confuses me. And as long as we're writing new descriptions, they should be consistent. The other question I had had to do with the deputy fire chief versus the assistant fire chief, and I was trying to get a handle on it. Because when I read the descriptions, and I understand that probably a lot of it overlaps, but I don't really understand the big difference between them. Some of the primary differences in the state is the rank. Assistant fire chief is second command. Deputy fire chief is traditionally third. Some cities, about 20%, are flip-flop, but that's the majority. And the staffing, the shift commanders in about 2013, when you came on board, were modified. So you see some language in the past that said shift commanders. All of that has been converted. So you say the most recent ones now? Yes. Battalion? Assistant internally consistent. Yes. OK, because I don't think I got a copy of those newest ones. I can provide those to you. Great. Thank you. You're welcome. Alderman Gordon. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chief, I talked to you about this a month or two ago. In this report, under 4.6 paramedic rotations. And I was somewhat surprised to see that there was a recommendation here that there be a program where the staff is rotating. For example, if you've got, it says here, 40, possibly 40 paramedics, but only 20 of them are actually doing paramedic work. And it says here that that means that department paramedics are not receiving hands on experience that keeps them current. Currently, no program exists to support ongoing hands on experience for all EMS providers. And the recommendation is I recommend that mandatory program to keep. I was a little bit shocked in that you mentioned that it's the newest members of the department that go out on most of the EMS calls. And you've got the other paramedics who are very, very experienced. And it seems to me that maybe a good, maybe you're already doing this already, but a good way of doing this would be to have an experienced person on the ambulance. And then a newer person. And I think that the citizens, I shouldn't say they're being shortchains that I'm not trying to say that, but if you've got these other persons that are so experienced, and they're no longer on the ambulance calls, don't you feel that the ambulance service is missing out on something by not using these people that are very, very experienced and only having the newbies on the EMS calls? Let me clarify that. The paramedic rotation, that's my recommendation. And some of it has to do with contractual obligations. We can't force the more senior people to take those calls. They can choose to pass it to the next least senior in some cases. In some cases, but several of those positions are promoted, promotions, drivers, lieutenants, captains. And that experience that they had when they were young is great because on every run they go on, they have that experience. They still, many of them still maintain their certification. So it's a plus. And we're looking into that. That's something that we wanted to look into. But you're not using your most experienced people on the EMS calls. We are because an engine and a truck goes, and a paramedic unit and an engine often go together because of the staffing needs and to move patients and things like that. So these people are still on the scene and can mentor and oversee people on the runs. But our youngest members start on the ambulance. That's the way it works. They go on the most runs. They need the most experience, and that's where it's at. So it's a natural progression for them to start there and then work their way up after a few years. I guess my point is the more senior paramedics would have seen more things and have more experience than the newbies that are just coming on the job. And if you could match up some of the more experienced people with some of the newbies, the experienced ones have seen a lot of different types of calls over the years, know how to handle certain things. And the new ones in many cases are maybe just coming out of school. Maybe they work for another department. Maybe they haven't. But I just feel that this recommendation should be a priority to utilize the experience. I just think, is it that after they've been on the ambulance for a while, they don't want to be on it anymore? Or why aren't we utilizing all this experience? We are, every paramedic, you don't have two members on it, a senior member and a new member. So they are getting that experience. We don't just put two brand new members together on an ambulance. That would be, I mean, I think they do fine, but it's not the best situation. So we don't do that. So they do get, but eventually those people, the senior paramedics, get promoted and move off. However, they still came from being a paramedic to have that knowledge. So when they go on runs with the med unit, they're still there with the senior paramedic and the young paramedic. Then if I could just follow up, I have one more question. And then on your various bullet points here with finding recommendations, I don't see anything about a succession plan in place or contemplated. And I know we've talked about that. In fact, this goes all the way back when Chief Herman was first hired. I wasn't on the Salary and Grievance Committee, but I attended some meetings. And that Salary and Grievance Committee advised Chief Herman to identify talent in the department and try to encourage the talent to get the necessary credentials to someday become an assistant chief or the chief. And has anything like that been happening where the fire department has its accession plan? Part of the first six months that you came, that Chief was hired, we put a questionnaire out with regards to a skills analysis, which also identified education levels. So that didn't make this report because it's already in process. There is a disconnect between most firefighter paramedics get a two-year degree. Some choose to go on into the bachelors, but to your point, we do have a void down the road of a good amount of qualified candidates to take promotion. So we've identified it. It was really interesting. When you came on board, Chief, I happened to go to the Milwaukee Fire Department website, and I was impressed with your credentials, of course, but I was amazed. And of course, the Milwaukee Fire Department is a much bigger department than the Sheboygan Department. But I was amazed and I guess somewhat surprised that the majority of the leadership in the Milwaukee Fire Department at a minimum has a bachelors and a lot of them have degrees in public administration. That's almost all the way through the leadership of the Milwaukee Fire Department. And that's certainly not the case in our department. And I realize, I don't want to, I can't compare the Milwaukee Fire Department to the Sheboygan Fire Department, but I just found it interesting that is there a different culture in the Milwaukee Fire Department that encourages or do they have a succession plan where they encourage people to go back and get a degree if they don't have one? Why is it that there's such a disparity in leadership here compared to Milwaukee in academic credentials? I think that's perception. The younger members coming on are more educated. A higher percentage of the paramedics we have with just a few more classes or maybe another semester, not even can achieve that associate degree. People, once the bar's been set in this council, the council members have set the bar high for the fire chief's position in terms of educational minimum qualifications. Everybody knows that now. And they know that if they want that, they have to get it. There's no question. It's not even a question anymore. Nobody even talks about it, argues it or does anything because they know it's there. And to get promoted in the fire department, even in Sheboygan, also Milwaukee, a lot of it's on you. It's up to you. And to set yourself apart from the group, you have to excel in different areas, academics, your job performance, how you do your job. I always say the best lieutenants make the best captains. The best captains make the best chiefs, the best battalion chiefs. You know what I mean? And that just holds their first stare, the last to leave. They're the best at what they do. And that carries through all the ranks. So we have people in school. We have more people in finishing college degrees now than we ever have on this department. I don't know that for a fact. And they'll be ready. So I think that's happening. And it's a part of succession planning. They know the bar's been set. They'll meet it. They know what they need to do. Was it all self-motivation in the Milwaukee Fire Department? Or was leadership identifying people and encouraging them to get, besides the fire department experience, to get the academic requirements to move up in the Milwaukee Fire Department? Yes. It's really internal. It's on you. There's no minimum requirement to take a promotional exam for lieutenant or captain or battalion chief. Obviously, for the chief of the department, in Milwaukee, minimum would be a master's degree. Now, minimum. And in fact, we had people applied at a PhD. So, and the same's going on here, all right? And it's really internal. It's up to you. What can you do? And it's a totally personal matter. My children are gone. They're out of school and they're working. They're not home. When I had a young family, I did go to school. It was tough, but my wife at the time said, you can do it. So we worked it out. So it's very case by case and people put their families first, but when they can, they are going back to school and finishing up their degrees. One more to follow up in that is, is the disincentive gone? I know we had a disincentive, I think, was it with the lieutenants or something or going up to captains where it was more advantageous for salary and benefits to stay in the union rather than move up? Has that obstacle been removed where now, if somebody does wanna move up and they get promoted to a captain and they're no longer in the union, they're not gonna lose anything benefits-wise? It's definitely improved. It's never a guarantee at this point, but it is approved because they can be frozen at their rate when they left the union to take a promotion. So we've definitely made some good strides there. Any more comments or questions? We really need to keep our discussion on 2.1, which is a job description review. Any other comments, questions? I think the proper motion, although I'm open to correction, would be a motion to accept and file. Madam Chair, I'll make a motion to accept and file. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. All right. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, state aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye. We'll move on to 2.2, which is a fire department operational review. Bye. And Chief Romus, I think, again, we've seen most of this in your, just as an introductory question, in your job description review, in your operational review, have you identified any particular areas where job descriptions could be changed, organizational structures could be modified, or other ways of doing business might be pursued? You wanna share that? Yeah, we're doing that now. We added up Italian Chief July 1st, and things were reorganized, positions were added to increase accountability and management within the fire department for EMS and for inspection, that was done. When it comes to the job descriptions, this in preparation for the study with Sandy, that was the third time that I personally, as Chief, have reviewed the job description since I've been here. I mean, any Chief, any, especially new Chief's gonna come in and that's one of the first things they're gonna do is look at the job descriptions and see how they line up and you're always thinking about how can you reorganize and make things more efficient than better and maybe save some money or whatever, anywhere. You're looking for that. So I started out with that. I wasn't even here two months and I did that. And then after that, then there was the issue of the captains and the Chiefs and overlapping duties and responsibilities. So I once again, with Sandy's help on occasion, we talked and looked at them and looked to update and modify those job descriptions. And in some cases we did, I think in one or two we did. And then again, I did it for the third time for in preparation for these things, for this study and along those lines. So it's been extensive, yeah. Okay, but your table of organization has remained essentially the same? No, I wanted to change. And next year I'm asking for three more firefighters and another battalion chief. And then I'm gonna put my battalion chiefs that were on the hybrid schedule back on shift. If I can get that second chief, I believe that it is possible to do that then. So there's a change and then in 19 I'm asking, in my plan I'm asking for three more firefighters. Captains are doing the same thing, lieutenants are doing the same thing, assistant chief is doing the same thing, deputy chief is doing the same thing. No, there are some tweaks like when we added that battalion chief, we took some of the responsibilities off the deputy chief so that he can focus on what he's supposed to be doing like. Job, not job descriptions, SOGs, SOPs, strategic things, efficiencies, operations, management, oversight, quality control. A lot of those things were falling by the wayside and that needed to be stepped up. And I knew that, but I needed somebody to be able to do it. Now that person has the time because those other jobs have been given to the other battalion chiefs. Any other questions or comments? Alderman Sorensen. Thank you. Chief Romas, so in your plan that you said you wanna hire more battalion chiefs and firefighters as well. Yes. And did you look at any reviewing of the scheduling of firefighters? I know it's like they worked three days, have a few days off. Did you look at possibly changing that as well when adding the additional head counts? Yes, I mean, not changing the shift. I mean, the shift is, I looked, I mean, there's different ways to do it. I came from a shift where there was one day on two days off. Our department runs under, we call it, I call it the California system, that's what we call it for decades. But it's in essence the same work shift in a 27 day cycle. Both schedules work the same number of days in 27, just differently, that's all. So that I don't see changing. I don't see going to 10, 14s, 12, 12s, changing it one day on two days off. I don't see that happening at all. I don't think that would be very efficient or would work out for a department in a city our size. Alder Hoshu. I just wanna make sure I understood you. When you, you're putting into hire some more firefighters and a battalion chief, then they're going to shift. Does that mean your battalion chiefs are gonna be going to 24 hour? Three of them will be. And that's the one thing that we have kind of been talking about for months and months and months and months. I believe so, yes. So now once we get these new ones in, then we'll be able to put the battalion chiefs on 24 hour shifts, leaving one for administrative duties then. There'll be two extras on a 40 hour week, yes. Now how is this all fitting into the footprint of the annexation of the town of Wilson? The properties from the town of Wilson that we're annexing into our city, which is very close to my district. Station number five. Wondering how is that gonna change the outlook of station number five? The plan was in place before we did any annexation before anything was even talked about. So the plan's gonna help us to begin with. It's gonna help us with the annexation though also. Okay, it just goes hand in hand. The plan is, and I would like to hire three more firefighters next year, raise the daily staffing from 22 to 23. We're gonna add one person per shift, okay? So we'll start with 23 and then come the vacations and sick leaves and injury leaves or whatever eats up the extra people. Right now the daily minimum is 16, which leaves us with three firefighters at truck four on the north side and three firefighters at truck five on the south side by themselves alone on the apparatus. And they can go down as low as two, all right? I believe that there should be at least three people on those apparatus. So I'd like to raise the daily minimums to 17 and ladder four right now is busier and a higher density population. So I was gonna add a person to that firehouse and have them run with a minimum of three because they're by themselves. But then they'd have at least three people on every run. Then in the following year in 19, I wanted to add another three and then increase the staffing at station five from a minimum of two to a minimum of three. Now the NFPA standard states it should be four. NFPA says we should have four in every rig. Well, that's not possible. And I don't believe that it's unsafe but I think two is, it's not unsafe but it's not an ideal situation. So I just want to understand this correctly. With this annexation coming forth, possibility of more ambulance calls in that arena, you're still going to manpower the north side station with three versus the south side station. Right now that's the way I see it because I mean, we just annexed, I don't know how many single family homes that included but I don't think it was a whole lot and there's no development there yet. There will be a new industrial park. I'm sure there's going to be other additions or building going on but that won't happen for a little while so by the time 19, don't forget we're looking at January 1st of 19, then we'd hit the ground running and we'd be where I want to be and I think we'll be fine on the south side also. Where do you feel that that extra ambulance that we don't use should be placed? That's also something we discuss and look at. We're looking at, and this is all, we're just conjecture, we're looking at runs, we're looking at where they're located. We just adjusted the paramedic units to spread out the workload among them and it worked. What we thought was going to happen happened and we spread out the workload by moving med four from station four over to engine one and making it med one right downtown where the majority of the runs were. That's all spread out but we're looking into possibly putting a fourth one in service and if we have these other two people that we're talking about there'd be a little more staffing give and take so that we maybe be able to staff a med unit but then we'd be right back where we were with the vehicles, the trucks with the staffing minimum of two and that's something I don't want to do if I ask for this, I want to go through with it and stick with it. I'm just concerned with the railroad, I mean railroad tracks, we've had this issue non-stop. I've been fighting for this non-stop for more years than I care to remember. The railroad tracks aren't going anywhere. No, they're not. The population is growing on the cells especially with the industrial park and now this annexation. I don't think it should be poo pooed. I'm not at poo pooing. They're today taxes just like everybody else does. Right, but that's, we have station five there. We do. We do, that was a big, big thing. It was huge, tremendous. You're telling me. It was closed down or browned out and I know the citizens spoke and it was overturned and we staffed it again and things like that happen. And so don't forget, we have two minimum of two, possibly three people working down there all the time and their EMTs and some of them possibly ex-paramedics or currently certified paramedics, they're not on the med ring, but they're still paramedics, they're there and they can initiate all kinds of care until that med ring gets there. So they're not waiting for a med ring. They're taking care of the patient right away as soon as possible. I'd just like you to give that some consideration when you're making your decisions for my district. I will, I hear you. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other comments, questions? Dr. Sorenson? I kind of went back to the hiring of the additional battalion chief. And you said in response, I think believed to Alderman Bourne's comment that essentially one would be kind of left behind for more administrative tasks. Can you kind of give me a walkthrough about what those administrative tasks would be? What's the normal, essentially not nine to five, but what's the normal work? What do you envision the normal work day would look like? That the deputy fire chief couldn't do the assistant fire chief, any of the current battalion chiefs or any of the secretary or data entry clerk could do. That there's such a need for a full-time position. That's an excellent question. The first thing is these chiefs, the two administrative chiefs that I want. We have one now, starting July 1st, we started two months ago. They're on a 40-hour week. And believe it or not, that's huge for our department and our office. When somebody's on shift, they're on shift. So they work one day and then they're off and they work and they're off and they work and then they're off four days. So if there's vacations in there, they could be gone a week or two. Now these administrative duties where people, see everybody else operates Monday through Friday, nine to five. All the builders, hospital staff, anybody else we deal with outside, even in the city but outside the fire department is nine to five, Monday through Friday, eight-hour shifts. So when they call, they want a response. They want to be taken care of and I want that too. So them being there just eight hours a day adds another person to the shift at the battalion chief level. So they supervise everybody. A chief on a 40 can call up of captain and say, you know what, I need you to take the rig down here. We have to go and meet somebody to do a sprinkler test or whatever, all right? So that's a huge plus right there. It's already, I see it happening now with Bob, our battalion chief on the 40, working in inspection right now. So I see a change there. They're also available at that level and they can fill in as a chief. They can go to fires. They're available for recall at home. They can come in. So that's another nice added thing because we lost, we lost four staff members. Between, well between 2004 and 2017 we lost, we went from 14 people that were doing jobs to 7.5, doing the same stuff. So it's providing a relief. What's happened was we're just able to maintain, we're doing things right. We're not breaking, you know, we're following all the laws of the state and we're giving good service. But the things that really need to be done to take us to another level just weren't being done. We're just treading water. And we need, we need to advance. We need to move forward. I wanna, I wanna make us the best we can be. So to do that, I'm not saying go back to those pre level staff, but a few more would really help. And I have a plan to make it all work. So I don't know if I answered your question. Did I? I gave you two examples, but there's probably others. Thank you. Other questions, comments? Alder, Nelson? Well, we're talking about today and we're talking as far as 2019. Do we do any strategic thinking towards the future specifically where I'm thinking in my mind is the, we know that like volunteer fire departments out in the country are withering away because of demands of training and that sort of thing and people just aren't interested in it. And so there's potential to go from a city fire department to fire districts. Is that the correct term? Yes, it can be, yes. Fire service areas, fire service areas. So I would hope that the goal is any planning and tactical things that we do now might fit into a future strategic plan of what might it look like in 25 or 2030 in terms of a fire service area. Right, and I agree. And we've gone a long way when Daryl got here and we started doing the city strategic plan because if you think about it, that's where it has to start. Because we're one of whatever 12, 13, 14 departments in this city and our strategic plan needs to fit into the city strategic plan but there wasn't one. So there's nowhere to go with that and everybody's kind of spinning around but that's not the case anymore. And through that, we're held accountable with metrics and we're always checked over and looked at every quarter and things like that. So that's happening and that's critical and we do do that. We're always looking ahead, we're growing. We knew we were gonna grow before we even grew and we're always talking about that at staff. What can we do? I went to a seminar for a certificate and I sat next to a guy from, I think it was Toronto, Canada. Their city had a hundred year plan. I said, that's impossible. He goes, no, it's not, we got it. I said, cut it out. So I don't know how they forecasted that or they made a lot of assumptions and guesses but they had one. They had one. So I found that to be unbelievable. But yes, that's my job as the chief. I try to think strategically. Everybody else is down here and I'm up here and Darrell and the mayor and you are up here and you're thinking about everything and what are we gonna do and how are we gonna make this last and all that and I get it because I'm below that but I'm still above the captains and the lieutenants and the chiefs and things like that. So that definitely has to be and it's being addressed and it's working. I mean, things are happening positively and the big thing is day in, day out fires. We just had another fire. We performed outstandingly at it. We kept it to the room of origin. EMS runs, heart attacks, everything. We just were always there and we always do it right every single time. That's what I strive for. If I can do anything, that would be what I want and we are doing that but you're right, we need to take it to another level. Other comments, questions? I just have a final question. The possibility of adding six additional staff from a budget perspective is a stretch at best. What tools or assistance will you need in the next two years if those six firefighters don't become a reality in order to think through better ways of doing business? In other words, if you are a zero sum game because governments are zero sum games these days, what will you need to help you address the needs of the city without that really substantial expansion? I would like to increase the management staff level even a little bit. That would be very, very helpful to help us manage the department better. Would you have a chief, an assistant chief, a deputy chief, three, four battalion chiefs, five captains, 10 lieutenants and you want to increase that? Yeah, I want to increase the staff, yes I do. The management staff as opposed to the line staff. Yes, that would be my first choice. I'm asking for one more chief and three firefighters next year. If you asked me to pick, I'd pick the battalion chief. That would be the thing that would most impact positively both the department and the city. Now don't get me wrong, I still want my firefighters but if you ask me for either or, that's what I would tell you. I don't know how the budget's gonna go. We just submitted our budget, Daryl's budget's in and it doesn't agree with mine. I'll tell you that. So I don't know where this is all gonna end up. I don't know and I understand, I understand but I have to fight what I believe is gonna be the best thing for the department and the city. Very good, anything else? I think we're looking then for a motion to accept and file. Madam Chair, make a motion to accept and file. Is there a second? Second. All right, any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, state aye. Aye. Any opposed, chair votes aye. Very good, now we will move on to 2.3 which is billed as our Fitchin Associates webinar presentation and I think if I can, I'm gonna ask Alder Bellinger just to kind of introduce this and kind of get us situated and I think we have a PowerPoint, correct? Correct, thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to have something like this done about six or seven years ago when I first started on the council. At that point in time, I approached then Chief Herman to see if he would support that. He said, absolutely not, I do not support that and it failed and we never got to the RFP stage. This time around, I went back again seeing as how we have a more recent fire chief and said, you know what, I think it's time that we look at this. My goal was to take the politics of the union out of it, take the politics of the council out of it and get some independent third party consultant to come in here and look at the fire department, being an eight million dollar budget roughly and see if there's some ways that we can do things better, save some money, you know, or look at different staffing, look at how many stations we should have, where they should be located. Is the fire, or is the ambulance service being, the accounting being done correctly? Is there opportunity for a more regional fire department? There's issues with the town of Wilson right now with their fire department. That may be something that could be looked at. Also, is there other funding mechanisms, you know, grants, you know, things like that that we could go after to help us out to fund this and that's what this study would do. When I went in, when I had this idea, I met with the fire chief and some of his leadership and at that time he said, I asked him if he would support it. He said, absolutely I would support it. I'm all for more information. He says, but candidly what you're gonna find out is that what all the information you're gonna get, it's gonna say that the way we're doing things is perfect and it's just gonna validate everything that we're doing, but I'll support it and I'm in favor of it. Just more information is better. I then met with the union and the union said they would support it as long as there were no preconceived outcomes that would come out of this study. If I did not have a direction that I wanted to turn this fire department and I was gonna skew the results to get the outcome that I wanted. I assured him that said I don't know what the outcome's gonna be, I don't care what the outcome's gonna be, I just want a five or 10 year plan presented by an independent third party that is an expert in the field to give us some direction. They said, okay, I will support that. Then it came down to two or three weeks before there was gonna be a vote. The chief comes, sent me an email, says I don't know if I can support it now, I'm feeling a little wishy-washy and I'm not sure what I'm gonna do. And then the union said, you know what, I'm not supporting it anymore either. And then about a week before the vote, the fire chief sent me an email and said, nope, I'm not supporting it. But prior to that, I met with the fire chief, the union and Daryl and we went through and we decided what the scope of work would be for this study. So this was a mutually agreed upon scope of work that we wanted to put in the RFP to put out and so it was agreed upon by the fire chief, the union, Daryl and myself as to what that scope of work would be and what would be contained in that RFP. That was all mutually agreed upon. The RFP went out, six or seven people replied to it and Daryl and his staff and some other people, I'm not sure who I was involved. I was not involved. I don't believe anybody else in the council was involved. Looked at this in a blind fashion and all the proposals without knowing who was presenting what, they ranked them and then they presented the outcome and the outcome was they chose Fitchin Associates. So Fitchin Associates had a two phase plan and the phases could run concurrently and it would be roughly a six month time frame to complete the study at a cost of $59,000. I've been in contact with Steve Knight of Fitch and during this delay in this whole thing and bringing it back up with this new council and I've asked if that pricing still remained valid today and he assured me as long as the scope of work remains the same as the RFP as it was originally laid out that that pricing was still valid. So with that, I would like to introduce Steve. Steve's got a PowerPoint presentation. I believe it's gonna be about 15 minutes and then he will be able to answer any questions and Steve, if I've misstated anything, please correct me. Oh, I think you're right on target. Is audio okay? I think so, if it doesn't turn out as yes. Okay, well, briefly then and I'll try to keep it under 15 minutes. I know you all have a considerable dialogue already this evening. Thank you for allowing us to come before you again and present and kind of give you a brief overview of what we have to offer. So what I'd like to do is just talk a little bit about our firm if you go to the third slide. Our firm has been around for 30 years in the public safety consulting environment and I've been with the firm for just about four years now and in total have probably led somewhere around 40 to 45 independent consultancies with fire and fire-based EMS departments. My background personally, I retired from St. Petersburg Fire and Rescue in Florida as assistant chief. It's a metro-sized department and along the way I earned a PhD from the University of South Florida. I have a master's degree in public administration and my bachelor's degree is in fire safety engineering from the University of Cincinnati. For on the fire side, the credentials, I'm an executive fire officer and actually was brought on as one of their contracted instructors for the executive fire officer program, the National Fire Academy. And I also worked with the commission on fire accreditation international for about 10 years as a peer team leader and assessor of fire departments going for international accreditation. So I have a fairly well-rounded experience in the fire service as well as being a third generation firefighter. So after I retired from the fire department, worked for and ran the ICMA's fire and EMS consulting arm for about a year before I had an opportunity to move over and join Fitch and Associates. So that's just a little bit about me and the firm if you'd switch to the next slide. Mary, I appreciate it. So just a little bit about our experience right now, we're currently working in Waukesha County with four smaller departments that we're looking for shared services. That's really just underway. It's taken us a long time to get their data moving, but I just wanted to give you a sense of, the municipal footprint that we've had across the country. This is all in the last two years across Minnesota, Illinois, Texas, Florida, California, Washington, et cetera. So many of those, I won't go into great detail, but many of those are much larger and many of those are right in the same general size and footprint of your city as far as scope and consciousness. So if we look at your project team just briefly, I already introduced myself, but one of the other members I would bring with me is Chief Bruce Moeller. Dr. Moeller spent his career. He started in Illinois, ended up in Florida, but he was a fire chief of a Metro-sized fire department. Then he was a fire chief of a city very similar to yours. And eventually was city manager of that city. And then when I met him and he'd finally retired, he was the assistant county administrator over all public safety in a large urban county in Florida. And then Chief B.J. Jungman works for the city of Burnsville in Minnesota in a similarly sized city. So all of our consultants that work in the fire and EMS side spent their careers there, but as you can get a sense, we have a well-rounded view of both not only the fire services culture and operational needs, but we also balance all of the political, fiscal, and economic environments to make sure that we provide a well-rounded assessment. And neither data analyses would be completed by Dr. Gong-Wong or Theresa Johnson. Financial analyses would be done by Diane Wright. She retired from the Metro-Date or Miami-Dade fire department many years ago. And then our GIS is done by Brian McGrath, who owns his own CAD consulting issue. So very briefly for the data collection, and I won't read all of these, but I think you can get a sense if you move to the data collection slide, that we have a very robust approach of trying to make sure that we are highly inclusive, highly transparent, and all of our recommendations and observations, alternatives, et cetera, are all grounded in justifiable objective database sources. So we don't come in and try to recreate any previous fire departments or previous projects we've been on. We really let the uniqueness of each community, the political environment, economic environment, the real risk that's occurring in the community. And we let that all drive our decision-making. And the reason we do that is to make sure that we insulate ourselves away from any bias, including allowing any of our clients to influence results as well. So to John's point. And then as far as the objectives, this came right out of the RFP that you all had put out, I guess, maybe a year ago or so now. But the phase one really be an organizational operational review, which is really a top-to-bottom review of the department. We'll look at optimized deployment strategies, your station locations, conditions, functionality, et cetera. We'll look at the service demands, the type of risk, your performance, talk about staffing over time scheduling, which I know is part of your brief discussion prior to me coming on. Then we'll look at future growth, much like your discussion on annexations, demand for services, how to best position yourself for the long-term and then any gaps between where you're at today and any best practices. Because really our strategy from our firm is to bring quality information that's objective and data-based to the policy group so that you can establish policy because we know that that policy is established and set at the local level. It's not our position to tell you how much risk you're willing to assume or not. So the phase two, we'd come back and look at analyses of the financial viability and sustainability ambulance service in particular. And our firm has a steep history in the EMS side. We had our own billing company as well as we manage through management service contracts, we manage several ambulance systems around the country as well. So we not only know the analysis and the analytics, but we also practice what we preach and we continue to refine and learn and grow as we manage different systems ourselves. So you can see cost containment, sustainability, a pathway for the future is really the overtone of bringing all these elements back together to have an objective third-party look to help you along your way. So as far as risk, one of the things if you go to the next one, sorry, about risk-based system design, one of the things that we do is we try to quantify the prospective risk, which is really your potential risk that you have in the community. And that comes in a lot of different manners, but one of the manners is the occupancy level risk, which I'll show you in just a moment. But we wanna do is make sure that we understand and articulate to you the difference between the need for more stations and a defined response time versus much like the chief was alluding to in his request for additional firefighters of having a higher concentration of firefighters at the stations that you currently have. And the way we approach that is really use a risk-based approach so that we can better define how you can achieve at the desired service level in the most efficient and effective manner. So speaking of that, this is just one of the tables that we use, a risk matrix for the occupancies in your community and we would take all the occupancies, whether that's 500,000, 3000, whatever the situation is. And we would classify the occupancies available either through your own records management system or we can use the ISO battery port is generally where we get the first step. And we look at things like the needed fire flow for the structure, the number of stories, square footage, whether or not there's a basement, whether or not there's a sprinkler system, the construction class, the building combustion class, so how quickly will it burn, et cetera. And we all rate that and come out with a numerical score and then we plot each one of those scores not only on a map, but we'll come back and use a three-dimensional model that takes into account the community demand for service, the call concurrency or the rate of simultaneous events. And then we look at all the high and moderate risk occupancies that exist within each fire station area or station demand zone. And the reason we do that is that's the tool that we'll use to really define whether this station needs a single unit, whether it needs multiple units, whether two firefighters is right, three firefighters are right, four firefighters are right, whatever the scenario. So we try to differentiate to the most efficient value based on the risk specific to your community. So in the end, really what we're looking from a policy position is really finding the right balance. So on one hand we have the expectations and the fiscal realities for service, and then on the other we have risk that exists in the community, your performance, your demand, your operations, et cetera. So we have to balance all those. One of the things that we do that's unique to our firm that really has worked probably I would suggest better than anything else I've seen in articulating the return investment for your investment in the fire and ambulance services. And this is a margin utility model that we use, and it's basically like a diminishing return. Now, obviously you don't have this many stations, this is exaggerated if you're on the slide for margin utility. What it shows is out of the 20 fire stations in this community, the first four could get you to the desired performance. And in this particular community, I think it was an eight minute response time. But that's not important because you'll define what level of service or what desired performance you want. But for the sake of the model, what it shows is is that the first four stations could get you to almost 92.2, or 92%. So it's 91.91 in the far right column. And what that shows is each station's contribution to the overall performance of the system as a whole, so your collective number of stations. So if you look at the very first row, it would have the number one up there. So the number one ranked station would be able to capture 50% of all the calls in the community from that one station. And then it's cumulative, if you just focus on the far right, the second station would get you almost to 81%, the next station 88.91. So right now the best practice in the system, both for NFPA 1710 as well as accreditation in the fire service system, measure to the 90th percentile. Really what that means is that you're saying nine out of 10 or 90 out of 100 times, this is the level of service that we can guarantee or better. So when you look at this model, what's significant is if you track