and city administrator. Will you please take roll call? [Music] Here. Present. Here. Chief Miller here, myself, Natalie Johnson, and administrative. All right, perfect. Um, so for today, uh, we've we only have one line item on the agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda? Second. Very quick and easy. All in favor of approving the agenda, say I. I. I. Those opposed? Motion carries. Chief, it's up to you. We did the administrative stuff. Um, all right. Hopefully, um, so tonight I'm here to talk to you guys about um city and city council about where I'm at this position. Um, that's okay. So, sorry. I'm here tonight to talk to to the city council and the citizens about um what I've discovered in the four months being here um what I believe um where the fire department needs to go and what we need to do to achieve that. And so, um, as many of you know, I came in here on the first council meeting and talked about liability. And I was really here to talk about reducing liability of the citizens, um, the city council, um, and the firefighters and particularly our firefighters because they're the ones that probably pose the most risk out here, um, doing the job that they do. So, what I've got tonight is just a presentation. I want to talk a little bit about um the history of the fire department and like where we where it started or where we've come from to to the present and then kind of where we want to go to the future. So in front of you, you've got a handout, many handouts. I'll talk about those tonight, but those are for you to follow along if you'd like to. Otherwise, you can follow along on the screen, too. Um and so starting out um 2006 to 2021, the department was operated as kind of a third station with the city of Ramsey. Prior to that, it sounds like from from the history that I gathered from from the individuals on the fire department, it was kind of a before that it was um several cities covered the the uh township at the time. So, um so um Ramsey, it was operated as a third station of Ramsey. Um when they built the new public works building is when they actually started to put equipment into the old public works building which became the fire department. um at that time it didn't have an addition on it. It was just basically a big garage um for the most part. Um and so what we're finding in that um station today is most of the equipment was purchased by the city and now then but through Ramsey. So they kind of Ramsey kind of looked at what they thought the department needed or the city needed and purchased that equipment. So does that sound u pretty historically accurate for those who have been here? So okay. So just bring the the up to speed the ones that haven't. So um we're going to talk about um the opportunities that we have that are in front of us and we have the opportunity to reduce um the liability to we have the the opportunity to incrementally grow the fire department um from where it is today and we have the opportunity to meet the service demand that's that's um kind of increasing as we go along. Um, right now we had we I think it was uh 249 calls last year. Um, we are at uh 25 calls a month right now. 20 to 25 calls a month. If we stay on that pace, we're going to be closer to 300 calls for for the year. So those calls for service keep going up. Um, and so we need to meet that that challenge. Obviously 75% of our calls are medical in nature. 25% are are fire in nature. So, the riskiest calls that we go on are are the fire calls. Um, I think the calls that we make probably the biggest difference are the medical calls. Um, because that impacts people's lives right then and there. So, so we'll talk about those. So, current liabilities, current liabilities we have, and I these are bullet topics. We'll go into these in depth um further down in the slides, but personal protective equipment is a liability. training standards and certification training is a liability for us. We don't have um good personal protective equipment. We don't have good training. We have a liability that's that's hanging over our head. Um we have non-compliant facilities and we'll talk about that. And we have the urgent need to replace some apparatus. We'll talk about that too. So those are our current liabilities. Let's go into depth in those. So compliant personal protective equipment wildland personal protective equipment. Um we fight a lot of grass fires in this community in the in the spring and in the fall. Um and currently we have firefighters that have some wildland firefighting equipment um turnout gear, if you will, for for wildland, which is um a little bit lighter in weight um but still flame retardant. Um and we have firefighters that don't have it. and putting firefighters out fighting a grass fire in, you know, June, July, August, in the heat, um, in full turnout gear that we use for structural firefighting um, is really detrimental to to their health and their well-being. And so, um, we need to outfit um, our firefighters in really two different sets of of of response gear. Um, um, and so right now we have some, but not everybody has it. So, um, fitted and up to-date personal protective equipment. Um, the turnout gear that we're wearing instructional firefighting has to be fitted to the firefighter. Um, if they're going to wear it on a on a regular basis. Um, we do have some that are in gear that isn't exactly fitted for them. It was spare or extra gear that we had that we kind of put them in for the time being until we could um, purchase gear for them or um, budget for that. But um with that said, that's not um it's not detrimental to them and it's very unsafe to have them in to that type of gear for long term. Um you we have one firefighter who who is in a set of turnout gear that's probably about a size and a half too big for that person. Um and that's not safe right now. So we need to work on um updating that. With that said, we need spare turnout gear for when we have a fire because after we have a fire because fire is full of carcinogens and things that that are unhealthy for us, we need to launder that gear and we have the facilities and the equipment to launder it. The problem is is it takes about a day and a half to launder um one set of turnout gear. So, we can do in the equipment we have today, we can launder about two sets a day. Um but it takes a time for us to launder it. tear it apart, dry it on the dryer because it can't be dried in like a commercial dryer or anything like that. Has to be air dried and then put it all back together so it's in service. In that time span, we're going to have a fire department that's out of service because we don't have gear that is laundered and put together. So, um, we need to start looking at how do we get at least spare sets that are closely fitting to the firefighters but not maybe not exactly fitted to them. um they have a main set and they should have at least a spare that they can change into for a temporary basis. And so we need to work on what does that look like. So that's our that's our personal protective equipment liability. Chief, how long does personal protective equipment? 10 years or until it's destroyed. Um, but maximum 10 years or if we have a an incident, um, I can think of a great example of of Northfield had a had a butter plant fire and all of their turnout gear got butter on it and was destroyed because they couldn't clean it because you couldn't get that out. If anyone's had butter on their pants before, it just doesn't come out. And so if we had a fire in and where we got into something like tar or some chemicals or whatever that destroyed that gear, we wouldn't be able to use it. So, but 10 years max on that. Yeah. If say you buy a second set of gear for each firefighter and that second set of gear is hardly used because they're using their primary set and you use that as sort of a replacement set of gear five years in, does that still have just a 10-year lifespan from the date of manufacturer purchase or would the lighter use at the beginning of that period extend the lifespan? Great question. Um, it's 10 years max. doesn't matter um when it was put into service or when we started using it. So theoretically what we would like to do is is get to a point where you know every five years we're buying turnout gear for people so that you know first five years you're using a set you get a new set that that old set turns into a set of backup gear and then that goes 10 years and so you just kind of have this leaprogging cycle. Um, and that just takes um planning and budgeting to do that. What is the typical cost of turnout? Like residential turnout gear, not like the wild the wildfire gear versus um the structural turnout gear. Um structural turnout gear right now just for the coat and the pants. Um $3,700 a set. Um, if we add, you know, helmets, gloves, boots, um, we're closer to about, um, $4,800 by the time we get done with that. Gloves, um, gloves are 10 years, helmets are 10 years, um, our hoods are 10 years, and our boots are 10 years. Everything is 10 years in a cycle. And what out of that needs to be washed to control for carcinogens? Everything. The So, yeah, pretty much everything. Right. So the helmets, even though the helmets are, you know, they're they're fiberglass and they're hard, we wipe them down to make sure that we get all the carcinogens off them. The liners that are in the helmets, those are cloth. They come out. We can wash those. The hoods get washed. The gloves get washed. Pretty much everything when we wipe down the boots. So I know you had your hand up. Okay. Perfect. All right. All right. So, um, so, um, so that kind of that that kind of ends our liability, excuse me, with turnout gear. U, moving on, we have certification and training requirements. So, certification and training requirements. ISO recommends, ISO is a serving uh, insurance service organization that rates us for fire protection. This is what every citizen in the community has for um, a rating for their uh, household insurance. Okay. So, we'll talk about ISO a little bit later, but ISO has recommendations for training. Um, state board of fire training education has a requirement. So, they're two different things. Okay. So, ISO is requiring 192 hours per year of of training per firefighter. Um, I don't know many full-time fire departments that can reach 192 hours a year. That's a lot. But, I just wanted to put this up here to so you understand. um we need to be somewhere in between. So, state board says 72 hours of basic fire training every three years just to maintain your license and certification as a firefighter in the state of Minnesota. Um currently we're right around um our firefighters between our our um our EMT training, medical training, and our fire training, we're right around that 70 um hours a year, 60 to 70 hours a year. Um, that's good, but I think we can do better. And I'll exp I'll explain why we need to do better um when we get down to ISO and ISO rating. Um, the other a huge liability we have right now is emergency vehicle operations uh certification, which is an EVOC course. It's a course that's run by the state of Minnesota. Um, even though firefighters in the state are exempt from lensure requirements as far as what class they have to have to drive vehicles, um, we still put firefighters who are driving Toyotas and Hondas into really big fire equipment um, with some training um, and education behind that. But we don't do a certification course form necessarily that I have found here. And so, um, what I see is is having every one of our firefighters, um, at least have the initial EVOC certification course, which is a course that the state teaches and taught up at St. Cloud, um, on a on a a pad on a track that um, allows us to drive big vehicles and smaller vehicles in dangerous situations and teaches our firefighters how to control them, right? So, at the end of that course, we get the certification. And why is that so important to us? One, we want to train our firefighters to to be able to handle these vehicles in emergency situations. We also, if and when we get into an accident, the first thing that's going to come come back to this the city and the fire department is what training have your have your operators had in emergency vehicle training or vehicle operation, I'm sorry. Um, and I want to, you know, we want to be able to to pull out the certifications. Here's the certifications. Here's our manual training plan. here's what we do. Um so, um hopefully our firefighters are doing everything correct. Um and that takes the blame, the liability off of the the city, the department, and the firefighters. So, yes, the Wednesday, I'm assuming the Wednesday. It does. And um whatever other training, right? training as well. Um is it typical for emergency operations? What is typical for who is driving? Is there any sort of is there some sort of um uh you you have what requirements as far as you in order to drive you have to have been on the department for so many years or it's not a year requirement for us currently. It's it's um it's basically uh skill demonstration. So, we take people out, we drive with them, we have them demonstrate the skills, we run them through a um a technical, we call it a cone course, but it's a technical course for driving and maneuvering. Um, and so once they kind of pass that um initial driving and they've driven with um so many hours with with experienced drivers, then we start to um release them to drive. Now, unfortunately, because we are a paid on call fire department, it's whoever shows up and whoever's got the qualifications has to jump in the truck and drive. Yeah. I I I just know that some other volunteer departments literally go, "Yep, you're on the department, but you're going to have to wait for somebody to to to take the rig out because you haven't been here long enough." Yeah, we do have we do have several individuals right now that aren't cleared for driving that even though they show up, we got to wait for somebody else that can actually drive the truck um before we put it in on the road. Yep. So, does that answer your question? Yeah. I'm just wondering if if this might be something where we we wouldn't necessarily have to have every every everyone on the department take that training immediately or if it might be something that we could phase in over time. Yeah, I don't I'm not proposing that we we go out and um do the um the training immediately, but I think that with the numbers that we have on the the department currently that this is something attainable within the within six, eight months of of uh operation. So, it's not something that has to be done right away. The nice thing about evac class is it's eight hours and usually get it done on a Saturday. So it's fairly easy to do um and schedule. So but it's not mandatory that it has to be done now. So it could nothing is absolutely nothing is mandatory. It's just how much risk and liability do you want to do and take on? Yeah. Absolutely. So okay that answer your question. All right. Um so certified credential uh credentialed education to grow future leaders. Um so right now um what we have is is we have a very young fire department, very inexperienced. Um we need to start um educating our firefighters. We need to give them opportunities to take leadership courses to grow that um to grow our future leaders for this department. We need to onboard more firefighters and and continue that kind of of uh pipeline of of individuals. So, um, so without having credentialed leaders, people that have fire officer one, fire offs two, fire instructor one, fire instructor two, um, investigations, inspections, and things like these these this coursework that builds the knowledge base for them to then um, use their skills um, to better this the city and the department. Um it's, you know, it's we're just doing our firefighters uh in in the community really a disservice by not providing education opportunities for people that are willing and want to do it. So, um and it just hasn't been provided in the past. So, Chief, are you going to talk more about them courses, what that means? Like you said there some leadership courses. Are you going to talk more about it somewhere later in the PowerPoint? No, but I can I definitely answer questions about that. So, just give me an example of one or two. What are these leadership courses? At what point do they attend them? Yeah. So, any idea the cost on them? Yeah. So, generally um generally like a a fire officer one course which is kind of a basic leadership course which gives you um knowledge and skills to start um dealing with personnel issues. um being a captain on the rig, making dis, you know, or making decisions on the fire ground um that are for the crew and the company involved with. Um that's usually about a threemonth course um uh relatively about $1,200 to send someone to that. Um plus their their time spent there. Um and they come out of that with a certification from the state of Minnesota being a fire officer one. So, fire officer 2 graduates to um a little bit more than a captain under an assistant chief level, but now you're starting to deal more with personnel issues, payroll issues, um uh dealing with difficult people, um things like that. Um or we're giving people some leadership skills and abilities so that um so that you know we have leaders within the fire department. And usually those are to to start taking those courses. It's usually a three to five year person is what you want for experience level. Um you know we can send somebody that we just hired after they get through fire one fire two and hazmat ops because they're super excited to to continue their education but then they don't have the experience on the other end of being a firefighter to understand what it takes to actually do the job as a firefighter. So, we really want to wait till that three to five year um piece on the department or or their experience on the department before we start to send them to those courses. We have some individuals who are ready for those courses. So, we just don't have the the funding to send them right now. So, you don't have any budgeted money is what you're saying. Correct. Budget money. Yeah. Thank your question. Yes, sir. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Um, so moving on to uh equipment liabilities, we've got uh mandated radio encryption that's coming down from the county. Um, and what this means is is we basically have to buy some radios um that are encrypted. We don't have radios that are able to be encrypted. Um, and we don't need every firefighter doesn't need to have this encryption. What is what this means is if we want to talk to law enforcement across our our boundaries, we need to have encryption on our radios because law enforcement's moving to encryption. Fire service isn't necessarily moving to encryption, but there are places where we cross over where we need that. And so, um, we're going to have to look at probably investing in some radio equipment that's going to allow at least our officer staff to have that communication with the with the sheriff's office. So, um, and that's just something that that's coming down from Anoka County that, you know, we don't control. So, um, the other piece that that I've come across in in the four months I've been here is we have a lot of commercial vehicle traffic in this community. Um, more than what I thought we did. um being with the crane services here, the trucking companies that are in town, um the the you know, Conor Road 22 and all the different kind of roads that run through this community. So, we have a lot of commercial vehicle traffic. The problem is we don't have commercial vehicle extrication equipment. So, if we do get in an accident with a large vehicle, um we don't really have the equipment to lift those vehicles off of anything or create space to remove people from those vehicles. And so, uh, we need to start looking at capabilities to to do that. And so, that's again, these are liabilities that we have, um, that now that we've we've discovered them, we should probably start to plan for them. So, Chief, what does what does that look like? That looks like a that looks basically like a set of airbags to lift. Right now, we have no way to actually lift anything heavy um heavier than a a a personal vehicle or or kind of a normal um passenger vehicle. Um and so um without that, we would have to call another department that may have that equipment, which you know, our mutual aid units can can help us in the interim. Um but it's really something that we shouldn't have to wait for. Um because you know time is of the essence when it comes to to those kinds of accidents. Is the uh inflation device self-contained within the bag with the bags or is it it is so everything is self-contained with it. We actually run it off of our our air tank bottles that we have for our SCBAs. So we power that with with our compressed air that we already have in the truck um in our SCBAs and um and the lifting capacity can be several tons. And so so we'll be able to if we add that we'll be able to do that um self-contained with our our SCBAs that we currently have. Idea of cost. Um the cost on those are they're about um $20,000 for a set. So it's a it's a it's not a cheap expense by any means. I'm assuming when we're all done you're going to roll this up and say here's our liabilities, here's what I'm recommending, here's the cost, and here's the plan. We're going to talk Yeah. We're we're going to talk where we're where we want to go. All right. Yeah. So, absolutely. Because I'm not taking notes on every individual. No, and you shouldn't. And you shouldn't. We'll talk we'll talk kind of where where we go with next steps. Okay. Um, but this equipment that we don't have, we should be looking at. Um, may I ask May I ask a question? Sure. Are those bags reusable after an accident? Yeah, they they have a they have a 15year lif span on them. It's just a piece of equipment that inflates, deflates, inflates, deflates. It's not a one time use. All right. Um, so let's talk rescue one a little bit. Why it's a liability. A rescue truck um has a engine that is at best on its last legs. Um, they had talked about investing money. Can you tell me what rescue one is first of all? I'm sorry. Yeah, absolutely. So, Rescue One is a truck that has no pump, has no um only has gear on it. We take it to medicals and car accidents. So, it has some extrication equipment on it. It has some medical equipment on it and it carries four fire. So, it looks like a a pickup truck front with a big box on the back. Um but no pump, no water. Okay, that help. Um that truck is is um I believe it's a 2008. Um we bought it used. We as in the city of now then Ramsey is the ones that actually purchased that truck or recommended to purchase that truck. Um, so we bought it used from a department out on the east coast like Pennsylvania. Um, so it was it came to us um, uh, well used and and so in the meantime, we've done some engine work on it. We've done some, uh, suspension work on this. So, we've actually had to to beef up the suspension because the suspension was sagging on it. Um, and and really it's kind of outgrown its useful lifespan. Um, and so the the vehicle actually is it's you know what I'm telling our firefighters is let's drive this carefully um because it has a lot of sway in it because it's big and boxy um and and you know get to the call safely but but um let's not overdrive the vehicle. Um this year we had to replace six tires on that vehicle because they had never been replaced um since um we had bought it. So, um, the recommendation for that is it's not worth putting money into. It's at its end of its life cycle. So, we really need to talk about replacing it and talk about what is the right piece of equipment to replace that with here. Um, shortly. Any questions on the res? Just want to make sure I don't want to go up ahead. Everybody's favorite topic, emergency management. I'll go warning signs. So, we have a liability there. Um, we have a we had a study done in 2004. Um, the study said we needed six outdoor warning signs for this community. Technology changed a little bit. Um, we could talk about what that means for us um in future slides, but but understand that um the recommendation was for six warning sirens. We currently have one. Okay. Um, and then we have the operations center, um, emergency operations center, which is this building that we're standing in. It's a big building. It can accommodate a lot of people, but infrastructure- wise, it doesn't have what it would take to actually operate a uh, an EOC or emergency operations center. Um, uh, the electrical in here wouldn't support enough computers um to to run everything. Um, we don't really have any phone lines in here to really operate off of. Um, certainly I don't think there's a landline in here at all. Well, there is one. Okay, so we have one. We have one landline in here. So, yeah. Yeah. I don't even have a landline in my house, but I don't have an EOC at my house either. So, but so, so if we in the event of emergency where we had to stand up an EOCC, we would probably have to have um some communications help um and it probably wouldn't come from an NOA county. We'd have to probably get it from either a state resource or another county that was not affected because if an county is affected by say a tornado or something like that that takes out several cities, they're not going to be able to help us with an EOC. The guard has a couple. What's that? Minnesota Army National Guard. Yeah. Yep. So we'll definitely have to have outside resources for that. Um and so again make some phone calls for you recover. So absolutely. So so in the event that we we that did occur, we'd struggle standing up in EOCc. Um and so again, this is something for future planning that we need to look at. Chief, is there other alternatives other than this building? How about uh right at the fire station? you know, it's quite small for NEOC, but could we use that other um I'll call it the area where the prep area or the office area, right? Um does that have the requirements necessary? It it doesn't unfortunately because um it's fire station, we have to respond out of it. So, in the event of an emergency, you don't want the EOC at the fire station because people are going to be coming and going. Um we'll have a lot of resources moving through that building. Um, and it's it wouldn't be a secure facility and you wouldn't want the community to try and gather there. Um, because then they'd basically be on their way to try to do our job. So, definitely don't want that. Um, the, you know, public works city hall facility isn't really big enough to accommodate that either. Um, so we're going to struggle, you know. Yes. It is it ever uh done that you use like a local commercial building like bootleggers or something? Wait, churches that or a church maybe that's a better um in a temporary in in temporary we probably could um and again it's you know when we look at planning for the future and what do we do until we get to to whatever that end gap is in the future. there are places that we could probably leverage for that in a short term, right? So, we're talking, you know, five, ten years that you could leverage that. Um, but when you start looking beyond that, um, it, you know, those those businesses change over, those churches may change over, they may not be there anymore. Um, so it it wouldn't be prudent planning to rely on something like that, but definitely, you know, in the interim while you're trying to figure out where you need to go, what you need to build, what you want to do, definitely we can leverage things like that. Yes. Um, do you know, thank you. Do you know what other of the municipalities that are surrounding us have their own EOC? And it are are there EOCC's a separate standing either structure or room within a structure so it doesn't have to be set up in the case of an emergency. Yeah, pretty much nobody has a a separate EOC ready, you know, like like everything is set up ready to go. What a lot of um cities have u municipalities have is they've got a dedicated place whether it be in city hall or um some have like larger fire stations where they can break off um like just take city maple grove because I know that one they have a in their basement of city hall they have an EOC down there that's actually a multi-purpose room but um in a moment's notice they can open up um some closet doors wheel out their computers set everything up and and and actually have a functional EOC probably in about 30 minutes. Um, and then there's others who just, you know, have a a space that might be say the council chambers or things like that that they're like, "Okay, in a an emergency, we're going to dedicate the council chambers to an EOC and we're going to have the equipment there." So, it's it's really vast. Um, the only city I know of, um, on this side of the river is Minneapolis that has their own EOC set up at a separate location from any other city building. Um, and that one's operated almost 247. So, thank you. We're definitely not going to get to that. So, all right. Took us a while to get there. Facilities. So facilities fire station talk about the liabilities that we have from the fire station. It's an inadequate miss. So it's your next page. All right. We'll talk about we'll talk facilities. Yeah. Okay. Um we may have a different topic. So um so fire station um inadequate facilities in space doesn't meet safety standards for separation from equipment meeting space office and apparatus. Um the current station it's not weather resistant. It's susceptible to windtorms, tornadoes, heavy snow. Um if we lose that uh fire station, we lose all our ability to respond. Um there is no storm shelter in it and there's no extended deployment options. So, um, if I need to bring personnel in for a snowstorm or a weather event or something like that and I need to staff that station for a period of time, um, I have no kitchen. Um, I can't cook them food. Um, I have no place to to sleep anybody um, if we needed to do that. And I don't even have places for people to sit down in in comfortable furniture other than plastic chairs for the meeting room. And so it's uh wolffully inadequate to do that. Um and really what's even more important than that is is there's no exhaust system for the for the exhaust for the trucks for the station. The separation between the turnout gear and the the trucks is is inadequate because there's there's no ventilation for that and it's separated by kind of like a plastic um curtain type of thing. Um and so um we really need to have a facility that separates these different components out because again um again we have uh you know we have turnout here with carcinogens and things like that. Even though we're going to wash them, it's still mixed in with the office area close to the to the meeting room um and things like that. And so again, it was a it was a station that was built to try to accommodate what we could at the time. Um but again it's one of those that's kind of uh outlasted its useful life and so we should look at u we need to start planning for what does that look like in the future down the road. So um questions on the stations. So th and this is a forgive me this is a a pretty drastic change from the conversation that the two of us had earlier in the year when I mean the uh staff made arrangements for do a meet and greet and ask questions about the the fire department. So based what changed? Yeah. What changed is is uh I'm four months into this I've been able to really investigate what we have when when we first met. Um I think I did a meet and greet or tried to meet and greet with most of the council. Um that February time frame, January, February, um didn't really allow me a lot of time to really dig into what we had. Um, now that I've had an opportunity to really dig into our our um, our equipment, our stations, kind of where we're at, um, we're finding, you know, deficiencies in in that um, face value. You look at that that station, you walk over there, you're like, well, it's clean, it's nice, it's organized, equipment fits, turn gears in a nice spot. Um, but then when you start looking at everything as a whole, you start to find out, well, that's not safe. That, you know, we have no facilities to cook, we have no facilities to sleep in a weather event. All of a sudden, um, you know, these things start to to um pop up and you start to to get a bigger picture, a clearer picture of what of what we had. So, Chief, yeah. Um, but we have in the past had conversations about the deficiencies in that building. Um, so we it it's not brand new to those to say Dan and I that we've had those conversations. Um, there is changes within OSHA that are going to mandate things that we can't do over there. And and Chief um Dave Schmidt from St. Francis had advised us of some of that in the last couple years, right? Yeah. So, I I I'm sure this probably isn't a new conversation for people, you know, who've been on the council for a while and and have seen, you know, and I I trust that Chief Schmid probably brought these concerns up. Um, you know, and then and then we have the the, you know, the the water supply that's at that station. We, you know, for those who don't know the history of the well and the station and all that, um, we do fill our our, um, our fire trucks off of a 2in well. Um, it literally is like a garden hose. Um, I I went over there tonight and, you know, because I'm like, how much does this thing actually put out? It's about 10 to 15 gallons a minute. And when you're filling a thousand gallon tanker, it's about an hour or so to fill that, even off of a 2in hose that we can run off of that well. So, it's a pretty inadequate water supply. Um, it's good for the station. We can take showers if we need to. We can, you know, drink the water, flush the toilets, things like that. But filling trucks with that takes a while. Definitely. So, all right. Any other questions on the station? Okay, let's get to the good stuff. That's a lot to take in. Um, we're going to start talking about some some solutions. So, first thing I want to talk about is ISO and where we are with um our rating. So, our rating is where ISO puts us on the list. If you look at the the slide in front of you or up on the screen, you'll see 10 being zero to to 9.99 points, one being 90 or more, 90 to 100. Basically, you want the top, you want the top rating, you want one for an ISO rating. Um 10 being you don't even have the fire department. And so if you want to think about who has a class one rating uh across America, LA city, you know, if you want to think about that. So a lot of firefighters, a lot of fire stations, a lot of water. Um that really um you know, dictates a lot of training things like that. Are we ever going to get to one? Absolutely not. Um we want to be somewhere in between. So why I put this up is we need to talk about divergence. And divergence is the score that we can control kind of, but we want to well, we can control for sure, but we want to be able to control it better. So divergence is if I have no water and a lot of firefighters, I'm going to have a divergence score in between. If I have a lot of water and no firefighters, I'm going to have a divergence score. And so what I want is I want some water and I want some firefighters so that I can minimize that divergence score um in the ISO because that's something that that um every department kind of gets knocked for and in in every ISO ring. So we want to try and control that divergence and we'll talk about how to do that. Okay. Um so provisional rating right now for ISO for this community we're seven out of 10. um which isn't bad. Um I thought we would have any worse. Um provisional meanings doesn't come out until May um officially, but this is kind of where we're at. So there's some factors that they're still factoring in. They could go greater probably not less, right? Um and so where we can make up some points and and you see our divergence score of 3.21, right? Right off the top. We're going to lose three 3.21 21 points because you see divergence score down on the bottom left there. Divergence community risk reduction or uh divergence score minus 3.21. Check. Okay. Um so that's that's that water supply firefighter thing that we want to try and control. Okay. So we're losing three points right off the the top because of divergence. So um other places we're losing training. Um if you look at credit for training we have one and a half one.57 points out of nine points for training. So we need to do better job of training to to increase that um that score. Um things like pump capacity is going to be a huge issue and reserve pumping. Right. So I know that we have a tanker um with a pump that's coming. Um for ISO ratings it's either a pump or it's a tanker. It's not both. So even though we have a pump on it, it really only counts for water supply or a tanker at that at that point. Um but we do need the pump on it to operate. Um and so we so we have some water supply coming that'll help us. Um that is coming the end of May. I just confirmed again. I got I actually have pictures um that they sent me today. So we we have a chassis and we have a back end that's starting to take shape. So that's awesome. Um and so when we look at um we have no reserve pumping capacity. um because we only have the one fire engine. So engine 50 that has a a fire rated pump on it. It's 1,250 gallons a minute. That's what counts for us for pumping capacity. Um so we have no reserve capacity. Um as far as uh other things that we control, um water supply is the big one. Um and talk a little bit about water supply. Um there's I gave you guys a there's a map that I passed out of the city. So you'll see that it's got really simple. Okay, perfect. So we have a the one the one dry hydrant we have down east twin lakes. So there's a dry hydrant down east lakes. Um that one we got credit for for ISO. Um that's the only credit we got for water supply under ISO because we don't have a well. We don't have any other way to fill our own trucks. We do. We can go to other cities. We need to make agreements with them. Right now, in an emergency, they'll allow us, but we probably really need to make a formal agreement that says we can go fill off of their hydrant system. Um, but even at that, most of those hydrants are a half a mile to a mile outside of our borders. So, a fire in center of town, we got to run to the end of town plus to get water. So in the interim um until we can really have a discussion about a well um my plan is to look at two more water sources in this community. So Picker Lake has a boat launch that we could put a a dry hydrant in. Um dry hydrants are are around $10,000 to put in um give or take. um which is not a lot of money to invest into a water supply to get us points towards our ISO and give us a stable um water supply that we can use in an emergency um 12 months out of the year. So So it can be used in the winter also. Yeah. So the dry hurried in the ground go out into the lake um and then they're held below the frost line. So then we can drop out of the lake out of that. So we don't have to go up and throw a hose in the lake. We actually go to this pipe that's sticking out of the ground with our fittings on it. We can drop from there. So, um, how many points would you estimate that would move just putting in one dry hydrant? I'd have to honestly I'd have to talk to ISO about that because it really depends on what we can rate that at. So, if it's rated at, you know, if we can rate that at um, you know, 2500 gallons a minute drafting, um, we probably get five, eight points just out of that water supply. Which category would that be under for water supply? So it just goes under flow and flow testing. Oh, really? So along with credits for hydrants. So um so we could gain a lot of points by investing in some. Um the other water supply that that I've discovered um is Barn None. Barnone has hydrants. They have a well. um we would have to negotiate an opportunity for us to use that supply. Um and that sits in our community. So um I didn't realize that they they had that water supply up there, but they actually have three fireheadings on their property. Um and talking to them, speaking with the maintenance personnel, um it is a fairly high capacity well because it actually supports our sprinkler system and it's made for fire protection. So if we have an opportunity to use that site as a water source for ISO rating, that will help us increase that that also. How much water needs to be available at a source in order for it to affect the ISO rating? Usually around that I'm sorry. Usually around that um,000 to 2,000 gallons a minute because you got to be able to fill the tankers. That's the thing. And tankers are are right around 1,000 to 2500 gallons. So you want to fill them quickly. So when they when they get to the water supply, you fill them quickly. They take off to the fire, they dump their supply, they come back. And so you have kind of a chain of of a big bucket brigade on wheels, if you will, um filling or delivering water to the fire in tanks that they dump on the on um what we call them, static tanks on the ground. So they look like these big swimming pools. And so we draft out of those um to fight the fire. Well, and the reason I was asking because I was literally thinking about swimming pools. I'm just thinking about my swimming pool at home. It has a pump system and it pumps pretty fast and you just you open it up and it starts pushing out a ton of water. Are there It's not a thousand gallons a minute. Probably not. I know that. Um and that's that's the difference is being able to fill quickly. Granted, we have a well at our fire station, but it takes us an hour to fill a tank. You know, a thousand gallons of water in a tank takes us an hour. That's too slow. So, we need to be able to turn water around in in five to 10 minutes. not, you know, 30 to 30 minutes to an hour. Is it ever an option to not like put in a water tower, but just get a big plastic tank that holds water and elevate it so that gravity falls in quickly. We live in Minnesota be hard to insulate, right? That was a dumb idea. No, no, no. Absolutely not. I mean, because that is you'd have to insulate it. You have to heat it. You have to do something for it. Now, that doesn't say that that you can't systemist water, which means put it in a tank in the ground, have a well that fills that sistern slower than what you can extract from. So, it's, you know, maybe it's 10 or 20,000 gallons in the ground that's safe from freezing. We put a high-capacity pump on that instead of a high-capacity well, we can draw off of the tank. The tank can fill slowly over time to refill it. So, there are options out there. Yes, Chief. We also have in town Morph Well, and I know that staff has used it for help helping flood the rink. Um, what do they do you know what they have available to be? I don't I mean they I they may have tanks um or something like that, but I don't they have well they have well I but I don't know the I I honestly don't know of any other well around that would have that kind of capacity outside of like farm wells, things like that. Um because I know there was um at one time um one of the farmers on 22 wanted to allow us to to tap into the well. Um which you know great for the farmer but um you know part of that is it's on 22. It's a really hard place to to turn around and fill trucks on especially in the winter time. Um the other piece to that is is you know what happens when either that well breaks down or the farmer decides he doesn't want to let us use it anymore. you know, that's that's a that's an issue. So, we really want to try and get to our own water sources, whether that be, you know, static water sources like the lakes, um, you know, having to agree with Barn on a temporary basis to use them till we can figure out, you know, what we, you know, what we can do for a greater water supply, things like that. And I I just I only mentioned work well because I I don't know what their capacity is, but it would be I think a conversation with them and on a temporary business. Workwell has always been very um gracious to the city. Sure. In the work that they've done for us. Yeah. And um if they could help us, I would I can't speak for them, but I would assume that they would because in a short term Yeah. We can definitely have a conversation, see what what resources they have for us that they could help us out with. Yeah. Thank you. % right the well has the well is not a new discussion it's been talked about quite often and that's has been one of the options was that the challenge we have around here is that the there's actually issues about how much water we can get out so that's why one option that was proposed was to literally drill like five wells and have them all get stored in a tank but that obviously is much more expensive than just one well challenging. So these are things that we need to explore. So options always options. Chief, yes. I have a question on the drywalls. Can you explain how all the weeds and stuff don't go through when they're pulling it? And how do you get the water enough to Yeah. So we try they try and run the pipes beyond the where the weeds are at. So where the weeds commonly grow, they try and get the pipes farther out from there um on a very kind of low plane. Um and then we use strainers at the ends of them. And so um yeah, there's a maintenance issue for those. We have to go out and clean the strainers. We have to have somebody do that. Um our firefighters jokingly said, "Well, we'll just have an old county dive team go out there and practice." Uh which probably makes sense, but um but uh we definitely it's a m it becomes a maintenance issue back flushing those and things like that. It's something that, you know, our maintenance department would probably have to go out and maintenance in the before winter where they and if we use them where they actually reverse pressurize them um to keep the water down below the frost line. So, yeah, there's maintenance with them. Um but it's, you know, dry or sorry, um dry hydrants um are not $200,000 either. So, it's one of the lowest cost options that you've talked about. So it is absolutely. So thank you. All right. Thank you. Um so what we want to do with this ISO is we want to we want to get better and I know we can get better because um ISO came in in November of of last year and did our rating. Um I don't think the department was very prepared for it at the time and I think um we can um request a for them to come and rerate us. um once we kind of have all of our um all of our records um up and and um in order. So, and I think we can do much better than what we we are currently at. So, chief chief I just what was our current rating the area? I don't I don't know the current rating. No, this is the rating that we're going to get in in um in May. Okay. Do you know if it's up or down? I'm assuming it's probably up. I mean, meaning that it's it's better than what it was. Um, because I don't know how they were rating before because we had Ramsey covering, we had St. Francis covering. So, how did they rate that as a department? I'm not sure. So, thank you. What is, and you might be getting to this, but what's what's a reasonable goal for us to achieve for an ISO score? I think we can get to I I honestly think we can get to a low six high five. Yeah. I really do. I think with with with um some moderate investment in the fire department um whether it be equipment training and water supply um I think we can get to to a better ISO rating. Um and that's a great question because my next slide talks about what is that going to save us. Um, so, so example of improved saving in in ISO just going from take the $300,000 home going from the seven that we currently are at from um 1,359 to a six that 1,262. Um, some quick math in there is about $40 $50 somewhere in there, right? So from 1359 to 1262. Yeah. 13 1359 1262. So about 100 bucks. Just a little bit less than Yeah. A little bit less than 100. Going down to five, we're at another about uh 80 90 bucks, you know. So So um and that's on a $300,000 home. Um you know, if we go all the way out to $500,000 homes, there's quite a few of those in this community. Um that's a bigger savings. That's about um about $250 to $300 uh a year in insurance savings. Um these are again not current numbers, not currently what they're charging. Probably um it's probably even greater savings now than than when this um table was developed. But go ahead. Uh I was just going to ask I I sort of see the ISO rating as you know two issues. One, safety for safety's sake. I just want our city to be prepared and be able to do what you guys do. But too, I mean, these insurance rates. And so, to the second point, are there any are there any like cheap quick ways to bump up the ISO ratings? Like, what's the easiest what's the easiest score to pump up with the fewest dollars spent? Would it be the water access? Probably training. Training, right? Because if I'm going to invest in something that's going to pay back very quickly, um, would be training personnel, right? So, we need to hire people. We need to train them. when we start to train them and and get those training numbers up, that's where we're, if you look at our numbers, that's where we're really low in in our in our numbers is training. And if I'm going to invest in anything, it's going to be people before equipment, right? Because if I don't have the people to put on the equipment, I could have the most beautiful fire trucks in the world, but they're not going to go anywhere if I don't have the people. So, Chief, what's our current number of people in the fire department? 13, including myself. So, we went down a few in the last couple months. Yeah. Which is unfortunate. It is very unfortunate. It's not something that that I take lightly. Um, but I plan on we plan on recruiting, you know, and that's just that is the eb and flow of of the fire service right now. Um, and it's a challenge to be a a paid on call firefighter in today's um day and age. You know, who's got time for it? Who wants to who has a desire for it? That's a tough challenge that we have to meet and we're gonna we're going to do our best to to meet that challenge. Um for the ISO score. Um well, so I think you mentioned you're going to sort of break down your proposal, what what you want, what you need, all that good stuff. It it would be helpful to me and I think the community in general if you and this might not be possible to put some estimate on what it might do like each individual proposal to our ISO score so that we can do the math and say all right investing $10,000 here is going to save our citizens $100,000 in homeowners insurance and it'd be easier to present the I mean that's a direct cost savings to our citizens. I would direct Yeah. I would think they would rather spend their money beefing up our fire department than paying more to their homeowners insurance. And so if we could pitch it as, you know, we're going to lower your homeowners by 200 bucks, but might cost you a hundred bucks extra in property taxes. Absolutely. And I think that um through the budget process, I think we can we can parcel that out, right? Um you know, where do we want to spend our money? What's going to be the biggest bang for our buck? um what is that going to cost each homeowner? Um those aren't numbers that I have in front of me tonight I'm prepared to talk about because we haven't started that process. But absolutely um we can do that. And the only caveat to that is is the money we invest today in the department ISO is going to pay off for a number of years. So we're going to be doing some investment. Yeah. Um but I you know we have to get ISO to then come back out and re-evaluate us to to make sure that we can get that score. But we want to make sure that we're meeting all those those um benchmarks so that when they do come out, we're we're going to be solid. So yes. So chief, how on average, how often does ISO come out to rate community? Once every 5 to 10 years, depending on depending on where they're at and because they're a busy organization, but we can request an in between because we've made improvements. So does it cost us money to have them come out and rate us? Only only our time. And it's a lot of time to do an ISO rating. So, but yeah, they don't drive us to to rate us. Are there like ISO consultants that cities can bring in to jack up their ISO ratings? No. No. No. That that'd be a great business. Right. Exactly. So, yeah, it's um you know, it's unfortunate, but this is great information and as we go into our CIP process for capital improvements, I I like your concept. How do we sell this? And we can sell it by if we invest this, here is the result, we can go back to the ISO. Yep. 100%. And that's why I want to get in front of you before the the budget process starts because I think there's there's some um definitely some savings we can we can um get within our budget um and some money that we can spend to to invest. So, all right. Questions? Any other questions on the ISO improvement before I move on? Are we in my package we skipped over the employee health and wellness? Is that coming up in your slideshow? I actually um let me see if I took that on there because I would like to talk about that. We can talk about it. I thought I removed it because it was uh was a topic that the firefighters were they were concerned about. Um we'll talk about that. We can definitely talk about health and wellness. So, sorry. All right. Um, talk about Yeah, thank you. So, um, let's, uh, we'll continue on. I'll touch on health and wellness at the end here. Um, so the incremental growth, we want to talk about PP upgrade um, coming into compliance. And so, you know, we need to invest some money and I kind of talked about that or touched that on under PPE. Um whereas all of our firefighters need a a a fit set of gear. Um not all of them have it today. Um we are going to hire firefighters. So we're going to have to plan for for more turnout gear that needs to be bought. Um I just want to put that on your radar as as we're going to be asking for turnout gear. We're going to talk about turnout gear in the future and that doesn't mean that everybody gets two sets. It means that everybody gets one fitted set and and we'll have sets to um to fit people into. So, okay. Um we want to upgrade our train uh our training to include credential topics and I want to talk about flexible platforms. I talked to the fire department last night about flexible platforms because again I have to get the people that are here their buy in on do they want this? What do they want? And what a flexible platform um looks like for us is an online training component. Firefighters were um uh very receptive to to having a work life balance where I don't have to pull them in, you know, three or four times a month to do training. If I can give them options that they can do training say at home on their own time um through a flexible platform where they can fit it into their schedule um that would help them immensely. And so um that increases our training time that we um that we can record for our firefighters. It increases our knowledge, but it gives them a flexibility to do it when it's convenient for them. um in trying to break away from this 50-year-old model of well, we're a paid on call department and you bring everybody in on Wednesday nights for this training and and you're going to be here or do or die and you're going to miss your kids soccer or whatever that may be. Um I want to give uh more flexible options. So, moving forward, we want to give people opportunities to have credential training, get people out to to different areas that they that we need them in. Um and we want to um uh create or uh get into a platform where they have um these flexible online options. So how does that affect? So currently we we have a training budget of $20,000. Now if we if and we're obviously paying paying time for the firefighters to come come to training on Wednesday nights. How does that offset or does it offset if we change the our training model? it doesn't necessarily offset the the the hours that they're that we're going to pay them for because again if somebody's going to sit at home and and do training just like people work from home get paid we would do the same thing. the offset comes when I don't have to bring in specialized. That's what I'm trying to get at. Is is there is there is there a net balance? Is there a a there could be I have to, you know, again, um I really want to dig into the platform more and dig into what we can eliminate for as far as bringing in specialized instructors. Um, but yes, there there definitely is or can be an offset to that because in theory there's a without having to to hire specialists to come in because those specialists are already built into the right theoretically built into the application. Yep. Absolutely. So there can be an offset for that. So all right um so incremental growth uh my plan my plan would be to retain a part-time fire chief position until such time the department has grown um to sustain its own leadership. What does that look like? I can't tell you today but I'll tell you it's not it's not June of this year um for sure. So um you know if if if you want to keep myself as the part-time fire chief or you want to to look for a different fire chief, um that's completely up to the council. But but I think it would be um I think it'd be shortsighted at the point that we're in with our department to hire a full-time fire chief um or go looking for a full-time fire chief to take on the problems that that we're already solving as a department. Um the members are are I've never seen such dedicated members to a department. um absolutely wonderful firefighters and they want to make this work. And so we're on a good trajectory um and and retaining the part-time position for now saves us money um where we can invest that into the firefighters. So that would be my plan. Um we need to implement a commercial business fire safety inspection program. We don't have one today. And so what does that do for for our city as from a liability standpoint? We are the authority having jurisdiction. We're the ones that are supposed to be inspecting these businesses on a annual semianual basis. Um if a business has a fire, we'll go and put the fire out, but the first thing they're going to do is they're going to request records of when was the last time the building was inspected and were there any violations. And our answer is I don't know. we don't have any records for that. And so we need to fix that problem. And so we need to institute that that inspection program. What does that look like? Um I'm certified as inspector. That's a part of the position that I can take on right now until we can develop people within our department that can do that. So chief, yes. Um are there any how far or how small of a bit commercial business? Where do we stop looking at and then we have home homebased businesses? So any any business that's licensed by the city licensed business. Okay. So anybody operating as a commercial business should be inspected. Home businesses are really um you know the home office isn't really considered a business, right? But say somebody's doing uh daycare, that's a licensed business by the state that should be inspected. Um somebody is running a trucking company out of a big pole barn that they, you know, have a commercial business, that piece of that should be inspected, not the house, but the business itself. So, it's I know it's a a fine line here between what is business, what's not. Um, but we really need to look at uh again if they're if they're insuring their business through a commercial business account, it's a business. So, and that's um that might be something that we're going to have to parcel out what that looks like. I know we I mean we we license tobacco and cig tobacco and cigarettes tobac tobacco and and liquor um but we really don't license every anything else. We have conditional use permits for businesses um and we have interuse business interuse permits for businesses. So maybe we can maybe look at that. And then as you say, if it's a daycare or something that is licensed by another a commercial kitchen, a commercial kitchen like we just approved, Mr. Brownies, Miss Brownies, that would be something we'd have to figure out what what our how do we define a business? What does that look like? What are we going to inspect? We could also just look at the map and say we've got commercial and industrial zone right there. And maybe that is our first round of target. Absolutely. Yeah. Just options. Yep. For sure. Thank you. Um and then we need to strengthen our our public outreach community education programs and that's our recruitment pieces, right? So I know that we have um you know churches and schools within our our community. Um we have several events that we do within our community that the fire department um needs to have a presence at so that you know we can we can interact with the community on a positive note, not when they're having their medical emergencies or when they're having their fires. um and we can recruit from from those events. So um we'll do that by by you know getting more people in the fire department and getting the training to those types of things. So um also uh moving on um we need to um I we need to look at replacing the rescue with a dual response vehicle um that includes an ISO rated pump. And so you've got a handout in front of you that has a shiny red fire truck on it. That's um kind of what we're what we're looking at trying to move to. Um so right now when I send the rescue out on a medical, it could be in the very northwest corner of town on a medical, if we get a fire or anything else, that crew either has to come all the way back and get a different truck or we hopefully have responders at the station that can then bring another truck out. It's difficult during the day right now because we only have like three or four responders during the day. So, we really want to make sure that we put them in the right vehicle to to take care of the job. And so, um we know this rescue is a is is a liability to us. We know it needs to get replaced. What I am recommending is that we replace it with something that has an ISO rated pump. It has water on it. It has rescue equipment. It has everything we need to do with it, but it's not an allout fire engine. Smaller than a fire engine, bigger than a rescue. It's somewhere in between. Um, still carries four firefighters, still carries 400 gallons of water, carries hoses, carries all the medical rescue equipment. So, this would replace rescue one. This would replace rescue one. So, um, we're, you know, through the budget process, we can talk about bonding for that and what that looks like, but but that is that would be the the the replacement that I would recommend for um for rescue loan. So, what is the cost of that? The cost of those vehicles about $500,000. I was scared to ask. I know. Um, but but a so a straight up rescue vehicle with no no water, no pump on it, they're about $300,000. So, you know, do you get your biggest bang for your buck? Do you get that ISO rated pump? Do you get the the pumping capacity, the reserve pumping capacity? Because now we have another truck with a ISO weighted pump on it and water. And so that's what I'm looking is I'm trying to maximize um not only our response um for the vehicle, but you know where can we get our biggest bang for our investment and what what is the lifespan of that? Typically typically those are 20 years, 15 to 20 years depending on how how many calls we've won. Again, our call volume's going up. So um but I would definitely put that out at 15 to 20 years. But I really like the concept as you're tying in the ISO and saying, "All right, hey, for us to lower it, 2026 is what we can plant. The 2027, you said the other vehicles in 2008, it's we're coming approaching that 20-y year lifespan. 2028 might be that truck." So, and then it allows time to budget and but if we're continually reducing or increasing the ISO, I don't know which one to lower we want to lower the insurance costs, right? Well, you might have an exact balance of invest this lowers insurance costs. So, it might be a complete offset. I don't know. We'll have to do the math, right? But this could be really interesting. Yeah. And it's different for it's different for homeowners versus businesses because businesses also, you know, get that benefit of the lower ISO. So, it might be more for the businesses than it is necessarily the homeowners. Well, the homeowners pay the taxes here. So, hopefully it's more for the homeowners. Just saying that kind of goes all around. So, okay. Um, so my recommendation is um in the future we're going to look at installing three warning sirens instead of instead of uh four five sorry five because 2004 they did a study um that we needed six in the community. Um my my recommendation is to do three more which will bring us to four throughout the community. kind of center those around the the center of town because we have sirens on the outside outskirts of town that can cover other communities that can cover us. Plus a combination with the no county communication center that uses cellular um devices to map that out too. So technology has changed since the last study. Um and I think we can do a balance of both. So um but again that's that is probably future future down the road. Um, all federal funding has dried up um for uh there's no grants left. No, there's no grants. There's no federal funding for emergency management. There's no federal funding for AFG, which is assistance to firefighter grants. No safer grants. We can't hire personnel. Um there's nothing. So, we're going to have to we're going have to look at long range planning for general cost for a siren. Is it 40? It depends. uh they're right around um $30 to $60,000 depending on how you power them. Right. So, we're going to drop a power line, it's about $30,000 um plus the meter um and the power source. Um if you go to a battery operated solar, they're about $60,000. But the nice thing about those is they're standalone. So, you just need a square plot of land, plop it in there, you're done. You don't have to run power to it and have have But it's twice almost twice the cost. It is twice the cost. Yeah. And by the time we get around to actually putting these in, hopefully slower, but um but yeah, they are not cheap to put in. Are so Say that again, man. And grants are better. Yeah, grants are great. I love are great if we have them. I would apparently we're like three years off on this phase. I just spoke to Yeah. I just spoke to to Anoka County and and they're scrambling because there's no grant money out there whatsoever. They just got word that everything's cut off. So, and it's one of them things is it's not needed until it's needed. When it's needed and if there is a tornado that comes through here and you have one siren and we have a loss of residence because we didn't have sirens, it'll be shame on us for not actioning even with that cost. Y that's that balance that we got to be able to talk about is risk versus reward. And I don't want to see reward that way, but we have a risk. In this case, you're calling it liability and definitely reduce the liability, you know, having them. So, um, and then we've identified the the sites for potential water sources and and hopefully, um, we can move forward in the future with those. Um, so I'm going to step back and, uh, talk about the the help of well, so I apologize, but so it sounds like a dry well isn't that expensive. If a homeowner decided they want to put in a dry well and they had like a pond or something, would that would that even further affect or decrease their homeowners insurance rates by getting a water source for the fire department? I don't believe that. Unless they are on a lake, like live on a lake, they wouldn't have enough water on the pond. So, we have these we have ponds and things like that that are out there. Um there's not enough water in there to count towards a water source. So, it has to be so many acres. um the depth has to be so deep. Um and so you have to have a a pretty pretty um healthy water source to do that. So also, and they'd actually have to then dedicate to they'd have to dedicate a landing pad for the fire department and you know what I mean, an easement for it so they can use it, that kind of thing. So unfortunately, no, they'd probably be they'd probably be better off just putting sprinklers in the house um run off of a well. So, all right. So, I just want to talk about the health and wellness and recruitment. I apologize for some reason this slide de um wasn't in my my slide deck. Um when the firefighters talked a little bit about it, but um we do need a a health and wellness program within the the city. Um right now, um you know, firefighting is one of the most dangerous jobs that that um any one of our city employees can do. Um and we have no um health and wellness program for them to maintain their their physical fitness, maintain their cardio. Um leading cause of of death and firefighters is cardiac. Um and so not having facilities for them to to um work out um is actually um is a detriment, a liability to us. Um, and so, you know, getting equipment for them to do that or providing memberships for them to do that and time to do that, you know, and encouraging things like that. Um, I think there's a bunch of different things that we can do to look at how do we um provide um health and and wellness for our firefighters. Um, our current facilities don't really accommodate any of that. There's really no place to put equipment. Um um and um talking about our uh our recruitment, our current um program is falling short, but providing those adequate um candidates for retention. Um we look at um our current housing stock doesn't really generate firefighters. So, we're going to have to look at where do we get our firefighters in the future, right? Um and I'm not going to have a land land use discussion with with the council. That's that's for you guys to discuss, but where do you want us to pull firefighters from and how do we do it, right? And so what does that look like future for the community? So, um, is that a land use issue? Is that um, you know, capitalizing on on, you know, surrounding populations to the to the city? I don't know at this point, but I think it's a it it's a should be a jumping off point to to start having bigger discussions on when we're planning out the city, what does this look like for future for the fire department? How do we get employees from from the community? And it's going to get worse and not better. It it is. Yep. And we're trying we're going to move forward with it. So, Chief, um I was trying to think of as far as rec recruitment and what businesses do we currently have that employee where their employees are on site during the day. A lot of ours are they come in, they get a vehicle, they leave, and they come back at 5:00. Yeah, we could think about what businesses do we have that employ on site that maybe would help us through the daytime hours. Um if they would allow their employees to and and then they would have to Yeah. If those employees um would be even willing to to train. Yeah. I mean there are definitely recruitment options for that. Um you know, not to say that it's not possible. I'm just not confident that we probably have the businesses to do that. May only get you get you two people, right? But I just was thinking when you're talking recruitment, how do we start to think outside the box? And yeah, I I'll be honest with you, you know, since I've been here and since the spring has started and we've opened up the doors to the fire station and had, you know, our trucks out and stuff like that, we've had more and more people come up to the fire station and they see us out there, which is, you know, it's awesome. It's amazing. Um, a lot of people don't know that, you know, we have a fire department here. A lot of people don't know it's a paid call that they can join. So, you know, our recruitment effort is going to be really to get out in the community. And so, our recruitment plan is is to um recruit in the fall around the heritage festival. Am I saying that right? Um, around the heritage festival and and really um kind of hit the community at that time. um it doesn't really do us any good to recruit here in the spring and in the summer because people are getting into their busy months, they're vacationing, everything else. So, I think uh I think when we get to the fall, um our plan is to recruit hard. Um if we can get people in the door, the first class we're sending them to is the medical class so that they get that out of the way first. Um tends to be the hardest course that we have. Um and it's it's probably the most grueling as far as mentally and so um our plan to do that in the winter time rather than send them in the the spring or summer to that much better plan. So yes, how is how do we pay compared to surrounding towns like Ramsey is on call paid on call, right? And other surrounding cities that are also paid on call. We're definitely low and and I don't want to compare us to other communities because it really it's irrelevant to to where we're at. Um we definitely need to come up right now. Our our starting pay for a firefighter is $16 an hour. Um and and um we're in now. we're we're you know this is a rural community and so to get people to come out for $16 an hour for a part-time job that seems to be fairly dangerous and and happens to be really odd hours um isn't really a great recruitment tool. Um especially when you know business around us um part-time you know employment around you know is $20 an hour for starting in in some businesses. And so um we probably need to look at what does that look like? um for recruitment and and how do we retain people if if we're only paying, you know, 16 to $18 an hour. Um it's probably not enough to really retain people. And and the pension's there obviously, but you you got to make 10 years for that pension to be anything. And so that's a pretty healthy commitment for $16 an hour. you either have to really love what you're doing um or you know or you're just really trying to get to that 10 years doing so. Do departments ever offer to pay on call part-time folks health insurance through the city? That seems like it could draw young young folks in that Yeah. Um it's expensive. I don't know of departments that do that. Um uh most young folks that are coming in um most of our firefighters who are young are still covered under their parents health plan. Um so a lot of them um it's it's irrelevant to them. Um I I think the I think the wage is probably the biggest thing that that would be a driving factor to get people like, "Hey, we want you to do this. We want you to come in. We want you to get excited about this, but we're only paying $16 an hour." And there's not really a big incentive for that. And so, you know, I I've always joked with with my wife when she's like, "Oh, you're gonna get a part-time job." I'm like, "Yeah, but I don't get out of bed for less than $25 an hour, right? It's not what I'm at saying we should pay people." But but you know, when you look around at other communities um and other part-time employment, $16 an hour is pretty low. Any knowledge of what, say, for instance, Oak Roof is at? I I don't um and again I don't want to compare us to other cities when you look at that because you know that's a community of what 10,000 people or something 9,000 people. Um St. Francis is 9,000 people 9,000. They're twice the size we right um Ramsey 27,000 people. We've got 4500 4600 people in this town. So it's a difference of of population. It's just who can we draw from? And if so, if we're going to try and draw from the the community, we probably have to give them an incentive to come out, right? Um, civic civic-minded people are are kind of a thing of the past. I have I have six kids. Only one of them is in the 911 service and she's a dispatcher. None of them have gone into firefighting. So, you would think if anybody's going to go into firefighting, it's going to be one of my kids because they've seen it for 37 years and uh and not one of them pass. So, um it's a challenge. Um but we're, you know, the department's committed to recruiting. I'm committed to recruiting. We're going to do everything we possibly can to recruit people for this department. We're going to make exciting to be here for people to want to be here. Have you guys considered putting out those calendars that some of those bigger cities put out? We all, we talked about that last night. We all decided we only have one firefighter who could go on to that calendar. Oh, yeah. So, that could be one guy. So, yeah. Well, we Yeah, we've done that before. So, absolutely. Um I I did have a real question. Um back to the employee health and wellness. I guess I I was curious um if you know like how often are there were complaints from the firefighters from either ca has there ever been a cancer one or a cardiac and then just like the straight injuries. So we had um um Chad H, right? Chad Bart Oh, I'm sorry. Bart. Yeah, I'm sorry. Not Chad H. Apologize. Um yeah, Bart um actually our engine 50 that was his badge number and he passed away of cancer. So we've had that here. I I think I is he was that part of Ramsay when we still had Yeah. When we were with Ramsay was that like five years ago or something that was it was it more than that? Yeah. And I apologize just because I don't know that history but I do know that that question why is the engine 50? They're like, "This is why." I'm like, "Okay, totally understand." And and you know, it's completely respectful. But yeah, we we've had that. And so, you know, we just had um Minfire out here in uh I think it was February talking about cancer awareness and um that was one of our trainings. And so, you know, we're really we're really trying to be aware of that. Um, and it it is we are leaps and bounds ahead of when I started in the fire service when it comes to cancer awareness and and you know washing our turnout gear and making sure that everything is clean. You know, when I started in the fire service, we never washed our turnout. It was if it wasn't dirty, you weren't doing your job. And so, you know, that's a huge change um within the within the fire service itself. So, and I agree with you, Chief. My father was a Minneapolis Fire Department employee. He died at age 40 in 1969 of lung cancer. Yeah, absolutely. And it is Yeah, we are leaps and bounds. I think of, you know, fires when you talk about the commercial. We had a fire in Minneapolis where they went in and went down to the basement. They didn't know they were doing auto repair, right? And all the chemicals. And we lost a few of them. the old Dutch fire fire the old Dutch plant the fire we lost probably three firefighters there because we didn't have that information right absolutely and that's why and that's why I'm here you know at this time to talk about we need to start planning for the future you know we look at that fire station that fire station um is got a lot of of uh you know safety issues with it ventilation is probably one of the biggest things you know having those trucks in there not having a ventilation system for them um is not good for our firefighters. It's not good for for the you know, for our personnel to be in and around that stuff all the time. So um but you know, you've identified it, you know, and we're going to plan to to move forward at some point um to to uh improve that. and chief that the health and wellness um for physical and mental health I think we as a council should consider um incorporating our our every our other employee any non-f firefighter employees in that because that's important. Yeah, I think I think all city employees should be should be looked at um as a whole when it comes to to health and wellness and physical fitness and all of that. Um because you know you know we have um you know we have employees that are doing physical jobs. We have employees that are doing you know that are doing more office work that really need um health and wellness too. And so you know it's kind of across the board. So chief, yeah, so it has a mental health on here. Is there certain requirements that the fire department has to do the mental health like when they come across the accident where somebody has passed away like in the tractor? Yeah. So there isn't a there isn't a you know we have to have a mental health program. We we we do through minfire. Um so so if we have a traumatic event, things like that, we have resources that we can reach out to um and and bring specialists in. Um and that's that's been funded by the state by the state park's office that that helps fund that. Um and so we do have some resources out there. Um what we should actually probably be looking at um do we have a health and wellness mental health for for our employees like an EP program in program um where if if employees are struggling for any reason they have a resource that reach out and that's usually through our workers comp that can help provide that. Um I just don't I don't know that we have that in this city um that I know of. But um but definitely we we um we need to invest in to make sure that um our people are are mentally prepared for for what they're going to have to respond to. So I'm in the process right now of renewing work comp so I can check with him and see what that cost of an add-on potentially would be. I was just thinking I have never paid a bill for mental health. So that's why I was asking. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a it's a thing that's that's um become prevalent probably in the last five to seven years um in all um aspects of of city employment. And so um you know having an employee assistance program and having mental health um for employees is is um you know it's it's very important. So, all right. All right. Finally, we're just going to talk about moving forward. I want to go back to just so you guys don't get lost in all this. We need equipment. We need apparatus. We're going to work on the ISO water supply. We need training and certification. Um, we got to start doing fire code safety inspections. And we need to work on recruitment and retention. Those are the big things that we need to work on. What does that look like moving forward? We're g I think we need to sit down and discuss that um through the budgeting cycle come May June um and how we can um save money um spend money um and how does that impact the citizens? So with that I will stand for any questions that you may have. You probably got a quick question. So, it's really um going back to this as we take our CIP and roll it in there, but there I see a bridge needed here in the bridges and say these are the needs. We'll break them down in by year. Here's the costs because everything you're asking for right there has a cost. Absolutely. Um so, it's going to be important for us to understand. So, when we go into our capital investment piece prior to budgeting, we've got a full understanding. we can nest it in there in the necessary lanes and then with that the information coming back on what we what we can do for homeowners and if we can reduce insurance that's a fantastic sell right absolutely if we can if we can reduce insurance to invest in the department um I think it's a I think it's a win-win for everybody absolutely so um and and we would definitely will come back through the budgeting process um so that you can understand where we want to spend the money where we can save the money and what makes sense for for people who are investing in this community. There any other questions for Chief? Yeah, Chief, um now that you've been on the job for just for about a quarter, um and knowing that um we we were last year we were able to to not spend our entire budget and that we added added about $4,000 into the 2025 budget. Have you had a chance to take a look at the budget and go, well, if we kind of did some adjusting here this year now, we theoretically could um make some implement some of these changes. Um I haven't had a real chance to to dive into what we're saving versus what we're spending because I just had to replace 18 18 tires on fire apparatus that um wasn't budgeted for and wasn't expected but was a safety issue. Um so that's definitely something that I can come back with. you know, because yeah, I think that would be good because obviously, you know, we we talk about little wins, there might be some little wins that we can get now that we Absolutely. If there's if there's savings in the budget um that we can to today that we can um implement for a win, definitely we will do that. Which is new rescue one. So, when we um got the last one, we bought all kinds of new tools and different things for it. Is there any carryover of what we currently have? I mean, individual tools, I would think. Is there anything else that's could carry over to go into a new vehicle? So, everything that's on rescue one would go on to the new one. Um, yeah. So, it wouldn't be like we'd have to buy a whole bunch of tools to stock this one because that truck would go away and we would just move tools over another, right? Thank you. you made the comment that obviously we're not ready to go out on our own in six months. Your contract is open in June. Um what is your appetite for extending your contract? So, I have um after after speaking to my family and and and talking to the department because the department um again I don't want to be somewhere where where you know people don't want me or or I'm not doing a good job. Um so, talking to the department last night, speaking with my family, um I have an appetite for extending the contract. I um like I am so dedicated to these firefighters that are here. I want to make sure that I see them succeed. Um, they've been through a lot. Um, they're dedicated. Um, and I want to make sure that I'm here to give them the best opportunity to move forward. And so, um, if that looks like a two-year extension on the contract to get this done, I'm willing to put the time in, um, if the city will have me. So, so, we need to put it on the agenda. Um, I don't know if that means the end of April or beginning of May so we can talk about it as a council. So, it's one of the pieces I was going to bring up tonight. Specific. The chief and I will not be here for the April 24th meeting. Then we won't do it April 24th. Then it'll be May. Um, we just need to have a plan before his contract runs out so we can discuss. That's all I was suggesting. Not specifically what date. Any other questions for Keith? I've done so good with my copy. You know, today it started again. Um I I don't have any questions, but I thank you for your presentation. I mean, Dan, I to me this is the most we've had. And not to be disrespectful to anybody else, but this has been more information than we've had. And so, I truly appreciate it. And I think with this information and um some good conversations um I think we can see ourselves moving forward with um not everything but oh absolutely you know prioritize and um I think we all are committed to having a good fire fire department and in order to have a good fire department you need to support it with the firefighters and the equipment that they need to perform their duties. Absolutely. So thank you. Okay. So, maybe just some feedback for you also is uh I did talk to uh one firefighter today and it just echoed how you've come in and done a great job and provided the leadership and that's one of the key things that uh I wasn't here for the hiring process but that I personally appreciate is when the firefighters call me and say, "Hey, you're chief's good stuff. We really appreciate him." So, just so you know, that's some feedback. I app I appreciate that. Thank you. Um so, that's great information. Um, and then I personally just want to tell you thank you for coming in doing because this is taking time from your family and I know you get paid but thank you for taking this um because it's probably a um probably very much like us. It's a little bit of a thankless job. So um so thank you for doing it. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. Can we talk quickly about the calendar for in two weeks? Chad, so what when what when is the next time we're back here? Let's add that to the agenda for next time for a April 20 budget. Yeah, the 23rd for the CIP with Lori. So what I would do is like to adjourn this and we can talk dates on the next time we come. We'll put it on the agenda. we talk specifically. Well, the one the date the the date in question is actually the 24th. At a at a March meeting, we had actually talked about not scheduling something for that night because council member Brian has a critical uh budgetary meeting. Um and we also had to fit in other things. So that was the So we looked at the calendar and said there's nothing else. We can't fit any more in. um because this was our we had talked about not doing multiple council meetings past April. So the the me the meeting on the 24th is that just to review the personnel policy and um ordinances from the attorney or or are decisions going to be made at that meeting. Um it was to review the policy with the attorney if I remember right. Yeah, it was to review what council's thoughts were, what they wanted to add to. There were six or seven items, I believe, that needed to be addressed that needed a council decision on. So, yeah, that's what he was. The intent was is to have it all done so that you could bring it back, but we could probably schedule another one, but you'll have to decide if you want the attorneys to come back a second time. No, I don't want to pay for them to come back a second time. No, but it's the goal is to try to get everybody on board. So that there's no doubt about it and we would like that everybody to attend and the 24th would be too late to come back and or the 23rd would be too late to come back and discuss that. I do agree with that. So what we could but we've already got them planned. The attorneys are currently planned for the 24th. They are along with Rum River Consultants regarding septic compliance. So, could we ask this? We we don't have to have every council member present. Could we take the information? Is there is it something you could watch the video on and provide information back later on? So, I these are questions I don't know the answer, but maybe we could provide that an option for council member Bryan so we can move forward with the meeting, but at the same time still get make sure we get your feedback. The question would be what would what is the expectation of the council last night? Are we are are we revi re re is the potential there that we're revising or changing the policy or are we specifically just looking at the attorney's recommendations. So there's six points that would be discussed that night is my understanding of it. Six points that we came in and they said hey this is where we need to get feedback and input from everybody. So what do you have going on the 24th sir? We have the the NOA County Fire Protection Council meeting for private protection meeting. That's and and we're talking about the budget. Exactly. So, can we do this? Can we bring back some options and see what else we could do then? Yeah, I can try to reschedule. Could try to reschedule so everybody could do here. I don't know if we could bump it up to next week. Is that possible? I'm I'm gone and I the city's known about that for over a month. So, what what we had said is you said you didn't want multiple meetings. Um, so it's trying to fit that in in the April schedule, but that was the intent. I know we have one on May 1st and then we're back on May 7th or May 8th for the open forum. Can you just send out an email and go ahead? What is May 1st? What is May first? I have to pay him pay my UKare that day. But other than that, May 1st, what I have on my calendar is city council meeting for CIP. That's because it's department had they put numbers together after because we're doing CIP on the 23rd and then it's department had to come together and tell Lori what they think they need based upon what council says we need and put it all together. So you should be invited to that. It'll be in the city office. That's not a council council meeting. I just put on my calendar. Yeah. Right. So that's just so I knew you needed maybe it's not termed correctly. Okay. So we put together some recommendations and throw some dates out and we don't have to make a we have to make a lot of decisions together but I don't think we have to for the dates. It's can we make it work or should we open our calendars right now and see what else is option what is the best way to do it? I think that's easier than asking staff. So everybody please pull out your calendar. I don't think we have any more questions. Fix it. I did. You did. Thank you. Sorry. In the in the past um when it came to purchasing, I know that it was um that there's been opportunities like um talking to um Oakrove or St. Francis, hey, are you guys buying Chernel Gear? And is is there any any uh savings on scale for some for things like that? And I I know there's also there's different brands of turnout gear. I don't know. I mean, at one time I know we were sh I thought we were sharing with Oak, but that using the same brand, but that may or may not have changed. I don't know. Yeah. Currently currently the way that they do turn our gears, it's kind of consortium pricing anyways right now. So there isn't any savings in in going with um you know multiple departments or anything like that because they're all getting consortium pricing. So Chief, I think that I believe that concludes our questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, all the information. All right, if everybody would open their calendars. Um, so you the 24th does not work. Would the 29th work? It could be the 28th, 29th or 30th. Does that work for anybody? 30th is LGO. The 30th is is it what? The local government official meeting. Okay. That's a fifth Thursday. I have a first available. Apparently I don't anymore. Is that at night? Oh, okay. What What time is that at? Right. At noon. Okay. So, maybe we're open that night. There you go. Does that work? The 29th. Uh May 1st. It' be Thursday, May 1st. I have it open. I'm open. I do too. First, uh, I'm gonna be a single parent on first. I could Well, we do have a fire department in case the house catches on fire. So, I can make it. Okay. So, the recommendation is to move the 24th to the first. Does that work for everybody? Mr. Mayor, I would like like two more dates, please, to because there were um the attorneys also have other city m meetings that they go to and Rum River Consultants. So, if I could get you know, first choice, second choice, third choice so that I can So May 1st would be first choice. Can we go to like May 6th, 29th? April. Yeah, I would be fine with 29. I'm good with 29. So do 429 first then because you have a conflict on it. Yeah. First I can make the first work but 429 is better for me. All right. We got to wait for council member. Yeah. For some reason I show that the fire department is using a town hall on that night. That was supposed to be this meeting. Oh, okay then. I'm good. So 29th 29th would be first choice. Everybody good with that? And then the second choice would be May 1st. Do we need a third choice? I propose May. I would guess most people probably the fifth May 8th we're going to be here for the open forum so we already have everybody here May 6th May 7th [Music] would May 7th work for a third option yes works works conf that would be the third option is May 7th and if So can we switch to first for the seventh so that council members 29th 7th and 1st would be the order 297 first. Okay. Thank you emergency adjourn the meeting.