 The 67 Fondle Act spends 50% of his time dedicated to the fire department and 50% of his time, his or her time, to the ambulance service. The three battalion chiefs up until this year, 2010, were split as 70, 30, 70 fire department, 30 ambulance service. As of the first of the year, the three battalion chiefs are 50, 50. The three paramedic lieutenants, 25% fire, 75% ambulance. And this is, I guess, besides the management, this is the other one, and you already said you didn't have a problem with this. But their 26 paramedics are 25% dedicated to the fire department and 75% to the ambulance service. What are they possibly doing different over there, if anything, why our paramedics are just the direct opposite of what theirs are as far as the timeshare? Again, I can't answer to exactly why Fondle Act does what they do, but I know one of the reasons that they record or allocate their manpower the way that they do it is they wanted to get some of those funds out of their general fund so that their ability to raise their tax levy was more beneficial to them. So I can't, and again, I have no problem assigning 100% of our paramedic salary to the ambulance and showing a loss. I have no problem doing that. But you have to subtract it from the fire department budget. The net result is the same. And I think that's always been a question with the citizens here, our constituents, is why not just show the true cost of what it's costing to operate the ambulance service and at the end of the year, if you're putting $500,000 into the general fund, just say that. I mean, I don't know why you have to play the marginal cost thing. I think it would be much more clear in the eyes of the citizens, like apparently they're doing in Fondle Act at the end of the year, hypothetically, if it's costing them $2 million to run their ambulance service, they're telling the citizens that, and oh, by the way, all these people are here anyway, but we're putting $500,000 into our general fund. I think that at least my constituents would be much more on board with this if we did it that way than this marginal cost thing, because a lot of people just simply don't understand it, number one, and just say what it costs to run the ambulance service and at the end of the year, say we put $450,000 or $500,000 into the general fund. Once again, Alderman-Born, there are 50 cities doing it, 50 different ways. I can set those numbers up and allocate 100% of the paramedics salary to the fund and we will lose money. If that's what you want us to do, we can do that. I don't know if that's an accurate way of doing it. In my eyes, you're not losing money, Chief, because you're still putting the $500,000 in the general fund. The people are there anyway. That's always been the contention with the marginal cost. The people are there anyway. The bottom line is the people are there and if you do not have the ambulance service in the city, there's $630,000 that you will not have in your general fund after all expenses are paid minus the labor. Okay, we have a couple of lights on. Hold on, please. Alderman Gysha here next. Thank you. We've been working for the last, I've been on the finance committee for three years. We've been, I think, chairman in the last two years. I think so. We've been working real hard not to mess with our general fund. We had so many things being charged, the general fund moved around the general fund. Instead of having our true general fund cleaned, some of this has to do with expenditure restraint funds. We get from the state and that's why Fondalac actually messes with their kind of stuff. And I understand, I think Jim Alderman-Born is real accurate saying people just don't understand, people just don't understand, but I'll tell you, anybody in business who understands that doing it this way is more clear than doing it the other way. Moving as, and I understand the chief's point, I don't care how you show it, but keep in mind that's the decision of the finance department and not of the chief and I think he would agree with that as well. You start putting money into the general fund. That's how we got all messed up with things like the stormwater fee or things like that where little bits of money have been pulled off here or there, you can't really, you have to go to 25 different sheets of green bar paper to really pull out what your bottom line is. So rather than doing that, putting all the expenses in one spot, putting all the income in one spot and the bottom line is what the bottom line. You can do just what they said, but the difference is, it's exactly the same. The clearest way is the marginal cost way. If you want to play a game and confuse people, you mix it up in the general fund like a deck of cards. And there are people in this room who have business degrees and are much smarter than I am or have masters in business. I would be interested in hearing what they have to say. But just to point on reports, I've had discussions and we've had it in the finance committee with Alderman Hanna from Public Protection and Safety. Right now we have an ambulance quality assurance report that talks about run times and things like that. And then we have the financial report from the finance department. We're looking at combining those two reports for purpose of clarifying for the finance department and for their workload. All of you, you get one report at one time. You can look at run times. You can look at complaints or non-complaints or praises of service and the financial thing. And Alderman Hanna has kind of pledged it. So we're going to try to cross our data back and forth so we end up with one report for some more openness and more streamline. Thank you. I think, going back, Alderman Bowers. Thank you. I believe, just for clarification, I know that some of these reports, there were 1,662 ambulance runs. And I believe, going back to 2008, there were something like 79 fire runs, which actually there was a fire, was it a false alarm? But the allocation of the salaries for all the firemen were like 25% to the paramedics and the ambulance runs and 75% to the fire. And I guess that's where I have trouble digesting these figures that come from the fire department. And I think that's where the question comes in with everything else that we do as a fire department. Do I allocate a percentage of that, all of that to the fire, some of it to the ambulance, some to the fire? That can be debated forever. I don't think there is a definite answer to that question. Can I ask you a question, Chief Herman? Is there a way of tracking the amount of time spent on an ambulance run and the amount of time spent on a fire run, the amount of time spent on an inspection, the amount of time spent on, because you have different people doing it, but there must be an average cost per hour for an ambulance run. Isn't there kind of, you know, there's just three people going out and there's a truck going out. The truck goes there for, you know, half an hour or so just to see that the coast is clear and everything else. And then the ambulance stays and takes care of the person and gets them to the hospital. You know, isn't there some way, just as you mentioned, snow plowing, we know how much it costs an hour to plow the streets. I think we could get that number. And it could be averaged out based on, you know, whether a guy is doing the plows for 20 years for us or a man is doing the plows doing it for six months. I think we could get an average for what does it cost per hour, per fire employee to do ambulance run. I don't know. I mean, it just seems like that would be something that could be worked out. And then someone could say, you know, we did 1,600 runs and, okay, you multiply that by the number of hours we were out there doing ambulance work. And that was how much it cost us in terms of salaries. Salaries is the big thing. I mean, the bandages are the other equipment and things like that. Those are things that are, you know, minor compared to. I mean, had you ever sat down and said, this is what would cost us to run an ambulance across town for an hour? We have never done that. It would be very difficult to get an exact number. We can track our on-scene times through our dispatching for both fire and for ambulance, but there would be no way for us to get an accurate time for you as to how long did it take to clean the equipment up, get it back on service? How long did it take to train for those calls? Those are all subjective numbers. Okay, we have some more lights. I think Alderman Hanna, you might be next. I think Alderman Hanna says an MBA from Fordham. Oh, yeah. And I have an MBA from Manhattan College a little further up the hill, same neighborhood, though. Is that Manhattan and the Dominican Republic? No, it's in the Bronx. It's in the Bronx. So is Fordham. A couple things. And I understand the position that Fondlec has taken. It serves their financial interest to do it that way. Now, when, and may I ask Alderman Borner a question, when Fondlec drops their ambulance, will they be firing all those people that are allocated to the ambulance? You'd have to ask them, Alderman Hanna, what they would do. I think that's a, that's a core question, because fire service. Apparently it must be making money because I haven't heard they're going to drop the ambulance. No, but if they did. But you're asking me a hypothetical. I don't think it's going to happen. Yeah, but if they, if they did, if they allocated those costs and they close it down, I'm assuming they fire them. Now, the question really comes back to, as a city, as a common council, do we believe in having a full-time paid fire department? And if we do, do we, not just ambulance, do we continue to look for the nature of a full-time fire department? Unfortunately, it means it's like, it's like under health insurance. You're not using it all the time. But when you need it, it's real important. But if we can maximize their down hours with some other productive activities, I think those are things we need to continue to explore. If there's a way, if you've got a nucleus of employees that are on call for emergency, and there's ways that we can augment and generate different revenues, not just ambulance, I think we need to keep looking outside of the box for ideas, I think that's the way it allows you to support a full-time fire department and lower your core costs, which I think is what you were getting to all the person, is can we identify those core costs and what activities can we do to drop that? It's never going to be a pure profit center. We can move money all around. But we need to continue to look at activities. And once you discover an activity, we need to do a better job of collecting revenues from those activities. And I want the Fordham graduates are much more succinct. Alderman-Born, I think I can explain to you what Fondalac is doing by looking at the per capita spending that the state puts out for all fire departments and other city departments. And this is, these are some older statistics. I think they're 2006 or 2007. The median per capita spending on a fire department is about a dollar or $141 per capita. Sheboygan is at $133, we're below the medium. Fondalac is the bottom one. They're down at $95 because they are taking a lot of those fire department expenses and shifting them over to the ambulance. If we would take the $1.3 million that I'm speaking of if we cost it out all 18 paramedics and assigned it to the ambulance, that would drop us right down to second from the bottom next to Fondalac in our per capita spending for fire departments. Okay, we're learning a lot this evening. Alderman Bo. Thank you, Madam Chair. I too have an MBA from, but I'll be it from a state school. University of Maryland. Further on down the coast than you good people. And what they taught us in our finance classes was that you would use a marginal cost basis when you are applying it to an incremental scope of work and you would use a total cost basis when you were doing one of two things. When you want to compare the efficiency of your operations to the competition. If you can get great numbers for your competition, total cost makes sense. Or if you're trying to improve your own efficiencies and you want to look at your total set. Those are the two times. So by having this marginal cost conversation, it's exactly the right conversation to have. There's no doubt in anybody's mind. And for those, and as Alderman Boerren points out, it is a hard thing to understand. And without a certain education in that specific thing, it may seem like black magic. But just because people don't understand it doesn't mean it's not the right way to analyze it. And two, we need to do a better job or at least a continuing job of explaining why it is the right thing to do. So that's our obligation. So if you're with me on that, the reason it made marginal sense for us to get in this business, and I need you guys to keep me honest on these numbers. The reason we had either a $1.0 or a $1.8 million cost advantage on our friends at Orange Cross was because they had $1.0 or $1.8 million worth of overhead that we don't suffer from. They had buildings that we already had. You know, we weren't in the ambulance business and we already had buildings that we had space in. We only had higher four people. They had 30, 40, 50, whatever they had. So they had a million eight or a million dollars worth of overhead that we didn't suffer from. And because of that cost advantage on a marginal cost basis, it made sense for us to get in the business. And that was the reason, in addition to some of the emergency numbers or call time numbers that Alderman Hannah referenced, that's what convinced me was because of the $1.8 million cost advantage we had on a marginal cost basis. So that's just a little review. But I'm going to say something now that is going to be music to the ears of a couple of my constituents that are seated in the room. We can get out of the ambulance business tomorrow and here's all it takes. And Chief, you and I can wrestle over whether it's 400,000 or 600,000, but we'll say it's 600,000 because it doesn't matter much. If you assume that there are 50,000 people in Sheboygan and there are three people per family, it's about 16 or 17,000 households in Sheboygan. Take that $600,000 in profit, divide it by 17,000 households. It's 38 bucks. If every household in Sheboygan is willing to give up 38 bucks a year, we can get out of the ambulance business. Now if you're paying $4,000 a year in property taxes just to the city, not to the county and our friends at LTC, but just in the city, if you're paying $4,000, that's a 1% tax increase. So to my friends out there who think that we should get out of the ambulance business, I'm all for it if we can knock on enough doors and get enough citizens to say, raise my taxes by 1% next year, I'll vote to get out of the ambulance business tomorrow. I think it's a beautiful idea and I don't think we've ever really talked about that. So that's my quick analysis, my quick state school analysis. And with that, I would make a motion to file the document, Madam Chair. Okay, this one, second. I want to mention something. In terms of our agenda, as an MBA, I've noticed we may have a big mistake in our agenda. Our numbers are wrong. And I'm sitting here looking and looking and looking. So when we take your motion, it's just going to be a change of the numbers, these numbers in terms of document numbers. Okay. Under number four, it should have been document number 2054. So in the minutes, we're going to say we're filing document 2054. Okay, and I'm going to point of order here soon. And I just also want to change then on number six, it should be 2030. Because 2030 is what a chief Herman's been talking about, ambulance labor costs, that type of thing. Okay. Thank you. So there were, we had a multiple document and that's where the 2054, 2030, 30 got mixed up. So the first number four should be 2054. And we can re-redo this if you want to motion again on 2054. But you're moving to file 2030, which was contained in 1840 originally too. 1840, he had some references as well. Okay. We're talking about two documents here. And 1840, Madam Chair? Yes. And 1840, yeah, that's correct. 2030 and 1840. So moved, ma'am. So, okay. And there was a second on, I believe, to file. Okay. Under discussion. Okay. Under discussion, we have, I'm going to close the lights out on this just to be sure everybody's off. And then, oops. Okay. So discussion. Okay. Did you put your light on again? So it's not blinking. Yeah. I'm going to turn it off. All right. So, on discussion, Alderman Rinflage. Thank you. Madam Chair, it drives me nuts economics. And I'm also working on my Master's degree. I don't have it yet. It's not important for Manhattan. It's a state school, but a little bit further west. So, not only talking about marginal costs, marginal benefits as well as the total cost. And the dollar per household, if you will. As it actually comes down to total costs. So we're going to analyze this versus not having the annual insurance up there. But my degree is not in economics. It's in public administration. Public administration is also a policy. And I'll go back to what Alderman, I mentioned before too, is we can give it of the annual insurance. But from the reports that I have seen previously, we watched our response times to our tax pay resistance increase to where they were previously. Because, well, Orange Cross had three stations. They also covered a good chunk of the town. Those rigs were not always inch to one. Our rigs are here. Response times are better. Complaints are hardly any complaints at all. We have, I think, a better pay and better trained staff that we provide. And so, for that dollar per household, you know, we don't think it's worth any lives of our local tax payers, but not for households as well. So it goes beyond the economics as well. Today, we're discussing that now, far from our total costs and total benefits. But to me, it also goes beyond that. It goes to protecting our citizenry. I think that dollar that we're talking about right now is fantastic steel for the top-notch service. Okay. Okay. Alderman Bowers. Take a miniature. First of all. This is on the resolution, right? Pardon? This is on the resolution that we just said to file. Motion to file. I said that resolution, but motion to file. Well, if we're filing, it means we don't vote. What would we be voting on anyway? To file. To file. We're voting to file. What's the other option? Not to file and stay here forever. I go along with that filing deal. Okay. So my question was for Alderman Giesh. The marginal cost approach. What other approaches are there for us mere mortals that don't have answers? Oh, no, you're not. Sorry. I don't have an MBA. So based on what they described, you have marginal cost basis or total cost basis. Total cost. One of the other. And at the end of the day, both numbers come out to be exactly the same. It's different routes to get to the same answer. Without an MBA. I'm sorry, I asked. Okay. Alderman Bourne on the issue to file. Thank you. I've got a question for Finance Chairman Giesh. I was going to, this document, I believe, was on hold at Finance. We referred to the Committee of the Whole in 1840, but it was on hold. I think we decided to hold it. My question is, if we file this, I was going to make a motion to refer this back to Finance. And the reason for that was, is that we have not made a determination on how we were going to allocate costs yet for maintenance of effort. And if Terry would have been here tonight, I could have asked him the question. Maybe Terry feels that for maintenance of efforts reasons, maintenance of efforts is how, for the people that are watching, is a new budget requirement that we have to supposedly spend the same amount of money in 2010 on fire that we did in 2009. And then there's a form that came out from the Department of Revenue. And there's a separate column on there, I believe, for the fire department for fire and ambulance. And how we're going to report that. Now my question to Terry would be, and we haven't discussed this yet in Finance, and that's why I think this might be a good idea to send this back to Finance rather than the filing, is to get Terry's opinion for maintenance of effort purposes, whether it would be a good idea to put more on the ambulance side than on the fire side. For example, as Chief Herman said, perhaps showing more paramedics in the ambulance service versus the fire department for maintenance of effort reasons. So, I guess my question is Alderman Gysha, if we file this, and then we have to deal with maintenance of effort in the finance committee, can we revive this again, or would it just be better to refer it back to finance rather than filing? Okay, Alderman Gysha. Thanks. I don't see any issue, Jim, on filing this. Director Hanson will come to us regarding the maintenance of effort when he's prepared to do that report and give us a report on that. This really doesn't have anything to do, particularly with the maintenance of effort. I'll guarantee you when he is ready to do such that we will have it on the agenda if he feels maintenance of effort for the allocations. If you feel it's necessary that he reports to us, I don't particularly think it's necessary he reports to us how he dealt with a form for the state, but if you feel it is, we'll make sure it's in his director's report. I do think it is important that he advises us how he's going to do the distribution. Can I ask why? Well, I think it's important for us to know how the final distribution is. Why? He's the finance director. He's a CPA. He's responsible for all the reports. If it's a state mandate and he has to produce a form, I think the finance committee should be advised of what his decision is, and if we have any questions on what he decides to do, we have an opportunity to ask him. He's the finance director. He's not God. We have it right to ask him some questions. I understand that we produce a myriad of reports. I would guess dozens of reports. Nancy, can you help me? Dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of reports every year from the finance department, and we trust them, and they are then audited to do that. I think it's a fair question, a discussion point, and if you're curious about it, to give Terry a call, or I'd be happy to put it on the finance committee agenda. But I just want to avoid us micromanaging our finance department with five aldermen who do part-time work in a finance committee. I have a ton of faith in them, along with the other 100 reports they do a year. But I'll be happy to put it on the agenda. Thank you. Commander Butler, did you want to say something? I just have one quick comment on that. Jim, I think that line that you're talking about, I've seen the form from the state for the allocation for maintenance of effort. We actually would be able to put everything under fire department. The ambulance being a separate department, I believe, is actually for cities that have a third service ambulance, where they have just like an EMS department. It's a whole separate thing. It's not under the fire department. It's like DPW would be. Some places actually have just an EMS department. They're not firefighters. They're just ambulance personnel. I think that's actually why that separate line is there. Because otherwise there's nothing really special about it being separated out. Because most places do include in the fire department that have it. But for services and cities that have a third service, what they call it, then they have a completely separate budget from the fire department. And that's where that would be allocated. Okay. Alderperson Montipiola. Thank you, Madam Chair. If we file this here, it's simply a recommendation to counsel. So it'll come in on a consent agenda. So counsel can file it. It isn't that we're actually recommending to file it. This is a study group. This is not a, you know, whatever we do, we're just recommending back to counsel. We still have another look at it. And it's just for us to get more information. Okay. So there is an action on the floor to file this. And we are over time at this time. Yes. Mr. Richard Shusa, Shusa. Thank you very much. I'm not advocating this whatsoever this evening, but I would like to know the feeling of the new chief and the council about expanding the transports and going out of the city for more service. It's not on the agenda. And he did speak to it. And when he introduced himself this evening. So I don't think it's on the agenda with our documents that we have in front of us. I think that can be a question for later on. We are, let's take an action. Let's close this action right now. How many in favor of filing the document? Hi. Any opposed? Okay. The document is filed. And just as a point in terms of the ambulance fire department, we would like to have a meeting, another committee of the whole meeting in which the fire department would like to demonstrate fighting a fire. And they had asked to do it tonight, but I thought this agenda tonight would be too full to do that. So I am looking at February 3rd, Wednesday, February 3rd. And it will come up. And I was talking about 5.30 here in this room. I'm hoping that that doesn't conflict with any other committees. We've had trouble finding a time for people to be free. 5.30 Wednesday, February 3rd. At this point, I'm going to tentatively say that. The chief hears me with that. He needs to bring in some off-duty firemen to do the project or the demonstration. So he needs to know ahead of time as well. It's been moved and seconded to adjourned. Thank you very much.