over the work session of the Dayton City Council for October 28th. >> Good evening, mayor, members of council. Um, we have Jerry Strike here who was kind enough to come in and give a presentation on the Minnesota Fire Service in total. Um, take it away, Jerry. Thank you very much. >> All right, mayor, city council. Good evening again. My name's Jerry Strike. I've uh spent well after graduate from high school, I served in the military as a combat medic. Came out went into the fire service at 19. Spent 32 years on the job uh with almost half that time as a career chief in the metro area. I retired early because I had a business and I do have a business known as Capstone and I moved into the private and public sector. So, I've worked for uh communities as close as now then uh to I just got back two days ago from Lincoln, Nebraska where 16 fire stations, 380 firefighters. Um I sat on the strategic plan for the city of Elk River. I spent two years not long ago helping the city of Oseago determine if they're going to move to their own department or continue with contracted services. I have recently worked with the city of East Bethl. I've been all around the country, but my job is primarily to focus on strategy and leadership coun uh culture kind of stuff. In 2020, I was hired by the Minnesota State Fire Department Association on a 4-year contract to travel the state of Minnesota to talk about recruitment and retention issues from International Falls down to Lacrescent in East and West. And we built a recruitment strategy and learned a lot about the challenges communities are facing. And that's why I'm here today. I'm here to sort of be a a guy that someone heard about and here I am giving you the information that I learned. But so today, I hope we can go through some laws and requirements and I can help answer some questions that you may have. Um I haven't been to Dayton other than Dayton River Road. I drive my motorcycle and dune buggy in there all summer long and I can't believe how many homes are in your town now. But we're going to look into the fire service, talk about response time, maybe get rid of some myths and all that kind of stuff. But, um, the state of Minnesota, about 5.6 million people, protected by approximately 20,000 firefighters. Each community has their own fire service model, and we'll talk about what that means. Uh it's interesting because when I was a young chief at 37, I used to think you just follow the model, but every city has their own model. And that is because you have full control over how you want your services to be delivered. Unless you're in some sort of contracted service or you're in a shared delivery model or a joint powers entity or something, you have full control over the delivery model. So, as you look at the screen, you'll see, and I should say that there's two definitions in Minnesota that define a firefighter under state law. There's a full-time firefighter, 40 hours, full benefits, just like you have full-time employees, and then there's the volunteer firefighter. But when you dig into what a volunteer firefighter is, it's all over the place when it comes to what that looks like. But in our minds, we think a volunteer is someone who is not paid. But in state law today, it means it's someone that's not full-time. So you have, with the exception of your fire chief, looking on your website and stuff, you have a a uh volunteer delivery model with a full-time chief. Some will argue, well, that's a combination department because I have some full-time and I have some part-time. FEMA is you need a little bit more than one to be like a combination full-time part-time department, but you're in the paid on call model and we'll go through that delivery system. But what's interesting to note is of the 20,000 firefighters in Minnesota, there's probably today this number is low um because there's a very wide growth going right now in Minnesota related to full-time firefighters. Um but fewer than 4,000 firefighters actually are full-time in Minnesota. So, what law requires a fire department to exist? There isn't one. There's no law that requires a fire department to exist in Dayton. It's certainly in always under the control of the city council. And unless you're in again some sort of contracted service, for example, my first job as a chief, I managed what was then the largest fire district in the state of Minnesota. It was a multi-ity district. I reported to three administrators and nine council members and but they had a unique position. and they decided to share their service with another community to save primarily in shared services, you primarily save on capital costs. So you don't have three aerial apparatuses right on your border and one of your own. So you you can share it. Um, but there are some laws that are required and the city is required to ensure that you have an emergency management plan and that that's updated. And there's a provision in there that you should have training and and explain what the council's role is versus the operation role of emergency management. And emergency management is when there's enough activity in your community occurring from whatever disaster that the resources that you've planned for over all these years are just overwhelmed. So now we're initiating mutual aid and we're regional aid and state aid and statetostate aid and sometimes uh in a millisecond it can go from local aid to federal aid. you know, if we had a school shooting or a fire at a church, believe it or not, even requires the ATF to deploy uh and so on. Under the 299F provisions, you're required to follow the state fire code. Um the state fire code typically puts the onus on the building owner to make sure they're following it. But the reason we're interested in as local officials in enforcing the fire code is we're trying to mitigate fires and explosions from occurring in our community. And we do that through education and through enforcement. And when we when we do that properly, you will see there's a reduction in uh in incidents. But you'll also always hold your tax base because if you have a fire in a in a building, no matter what it is that's being taxed, it will immediately go to probably property tax and that could even be waved if there's no longer a business there for a period of time. So the fire service has long been part of protecting tax base and uh minimizing insurance loss. And when you hear insurance services office and all that kind of stuff, the ISO rating, that's all about having a emergency response plan that includes the fire department that can get there as efficiently as possible to establish and mitigate the incident so it reduces loss. You're required to do a criminal background check on all firefighters. Make sense? firefighters and civilian fire deaths shall be reported to the Minnesota State uh fire marshall's office. Number of years ago, they decided they wanted to do their best in investigating those because what's predictable is preventable. So, if we can conduct an investigation of how people lost their lives in the event of a fire, they can then work to educate people to prevent it. and your firefighters and your chief and staff are filling out reports after every incident that goes into the Minnesota Fire incident reporting system, which collectively through the 725 fire departments tells a story of what the Minnesota fire problem is. And the state fire marshall's office gives a report every year and you can go download them online that says here's what the fire problem is in Minnesota. But that may not be the fire problem in Dayton because you may be having a lot of garage fires, but the fire marshall's office is the leading cause of fires in a in a kitchen, for example. So, we use it as an education tool. And that fire investigations then next to determine how a fire began. Uh, by law, the city is required to investigate all fires with a loss greater than $100. which basically means everything. Why? Because they want to report on what started the fire so they can learn what the fire problem is. And then that in turn helps the educators go out. But it also gives us federal funding if we have we discover we have a ton of losses in our senior citizen um demographic or something. Um you're required to maintain confidential data. It isn't uncommon for council members to ask a lot of questions related to an incident that occurred and I think we just have to respect that some of that data by law can't be shared but you should be in the know of what's going on in your community. You just may not be able to get all the details of what that actually meant. For example, names, you know, what what was the cause? Well, we're not a medical examiner, so we can't determine that, you know. So, so, um, don't be offended if you don't get all the information you're looking for. Uh, but somehow the media gets it in a matter of seconds anyway. So, hazardous materials, investigate and disseminate anything that's hazardous from from any kind of terrace attack to a leak or spill to things that are built in basement. Uh, sky's is the limit. There's you'll be amazed at what you learn when you get involved in the fire department. uh of your community and the things that happen. And then OSHA, of course, OSHA's job, we're in OSHA state, uh OSHA's primary purpose is to ensure that employees are safe. So, we have to file reports when there's injuries and so on. But when you look at the city of Dayton, and I've done my own Googling and got private public data and all that stuff, there's a lot of things that happen in the background that are not response ready. In fact, when people say, "Srek, what do you think the problem is with the recruitment?" Because keep in mind, recruitment and retention are two different things. Okay? Recruitment is inspiring people to want to be on your team and staying here, right? Just like trying to get someone to come into your city. So, we um we get them into the zone. What's the what's the number one way to do it? And that is prepare them to do their job well. and let them do their job well. And the rest of the stuff we have the chief and others in the background working on to make sure they're not buried down with all kinds of things that they weren't planning on cuz most new recruits come in, they have no idea. And council members have no idea. When I say what level of service do you want, you're like, I don't even know what that means. And I respect that. So, we have to teach you. But there's fire incidents that have to be filled out. the emergency medical reports, all types of equipment. I'd imagine you have two stations. I mean, you have you have millions of dollars in equipment that are prepared to respond to the community when they call. Um they they work on investigation reports for every hour you're on the scene of an investigation, there's three hours writing a report. You know, the same is true going on an incident. You don't just go on the incident. You got to come back, make sure the vehicles are equipped and properly prepared for the next incident, which we don't know when it's going to come and um and get ready to respond and make sure our people are ready and prepared to go. So, so there's a lot of things that happen in the background outside of just going to fire calls or looking at those numbers. Recruiting alone can be a full-time job. When you have 75 to 150 people, uh, whatever it is, even 30 people, you need to recruit. It's a long game. It's an everyday game, too, recruiting. And you need to do everything that's required in employment law for an employee because under state law, even though you're a volunteer, you are an employee of the city and you cover their insurance if they get hurt. and they have employee rights and everything else. We got to get them paid. We got to manage their relief association. We've got to do reports. We got to all kinds of stuff happens in the background. Got to prepare a budget. We got to purchase items and all that stuff can be a lot for one person or a group of volunteers who have other things to do in their life. So these are the fire service delivery models I was talking about. For many many years this country fire service been around a couple hundred years in our country. But Dayton is what 60s 60s >> 62. So since 1962 the city of Dayton has had a volunteer department where you did have volunteers. Uh you didn't have to pay them as much as they're paid now. But the reality is time has become the new money. And most people aren't here um unless there's purpose and they can fit it into their lifestyle. So our job is to fit it into their lifestyle. But because we couldn't get people to volunteer, we then started paying them and we came up with the term called paid on call. So they're paid, but they're waiting patiently for their pager to go off. And when their pager goes off, wherever they are in the world, they have to make a decision on if they can respond to the call or not. And they want to make it to the call because we have city policy that says they have to make a certain percentage of calls to be in good standing. And if they're not in good standing, well, then we have decisions to make. Then we write up the volunteer. And if you continue to get written up as a volunteer, it morale goes low because I'm a volunteer, right? But we started paying them. We had increased laws and demands and the training requirements today are are, you know, just phenomenal. The state fire marshall's office just put out a RFP for someone to do um a survey of all of that stuff over the next couple years required by law and funded by the legislature and uh we'll see how that turns out. But there's a lot of requirements to become a firefighter today and that all has to be done while you're going to calls and managing your family. When all that fails, we start to look at a full-time manager. When we can't get all that backend stuff done, we hire a full-time manager. You call him a fire chief, emergency manager. CD of Delano, who I've worked with recently, calls them an emergency services director. There's just different names because you're in control. And uh we call them we call them the same thing. Dan um they're fire chiefs, but they have different titles. So now you have a full-time manager managing the back end of everything that's going. You have the firefighters doing their excellent work, coming to calls when they can, and they're making huge impact in the community. But like I said, time has become the new money. We're seeing a significant shortfall in those who can uh volunteer their time because it is about money today. In most cases, it may cost a firefighter, especially in the distance uh you have to your stations, it may cost them money because they have to pay for gas and the time and whatever loss of time from work or whatever to come. So, so then when we can't find the right people to come to the calls and we have data that says we have an imbalanced delivery system. Imbalanced system. What does that mean? That means at night when everybody's in Dayton, we got enough people coming to calls. But in the daytime, you're not alone. And we don't have the number of people to go to calls. We have an imbalance system. So a taxpayer can say, "How come that truck took 25 minutes to get," which is reality here, to get to my house, and the one at night says, "It took 10 minutes to get here." Why is that fair? Right? I don't know that you've had that discussion, but as your community grows and as your constituent base have other expectations because they may be moving from a Plymouth or a Brooklyn Park or something that has a 3 to six minute response time, they may expect that same delivery model here. So councils have to be aware of that. And I always say it's better to be prepared than not prepared when when they come into the office. So because there's an imbalance in this system to my understanding looking at your data and how many people show up for calls the concept of a duty crew came in. A duty crew is using the same volunteer but you're staffing them at the station during your most critical times. Now, what that does is is it takes some weight off the chief and assistant chief and the officers because, you know, the station is staffed. When there's a call, I guarantee you on staff stations, they save lives. If they don't save lives, like literally doing CPR, saving lives in the first year, there's something wrong. But when we use data in the delivery model that you have that come from home or wherever you are and get to the station and we'll look at the timeline in a little bit. We're brain dead clinically in 6 minutes. Your firefighters may not even be here for 8 minutes. So when you staff them in the station and they're out the door, they're making an impact. They don't have the biggest crew, let per se, but because I have a crew there now who didn't have to drive to the station, we saved the six to eight to 10 minutes getting to the scene and we now are putting water on the fire or cutting the person out of the car much quicker than we would in the service model you have now. So that's the concept of duty crew. And most people love duty crew. There may be some firefighters in here that say, "Ah, I hate duty crew." Well, give it a try. Because when you can now say, "Wow, I get to schedule my time at the fire station and I can work this many shifts and be in good standing, your retention increases because I'm no longer held to a phone or a pager and have to respond whenever it goes off." And we can use some data to say you're most likely to have calls between 6:00 and 10 or whatever. But during the daytime, a lot of the communities and you see it escalate very quickly. You can look at Brooklyn Park not far from here that was in this model six, seven years a fewer than 10 years ago and now they're all career, you know, and it's it's just escalating. But a duty crew is a step to try it to see if that resolves it because you've had these volunteer systems that's very low cost for a long period of time. So the strategy is let's just do these incremental changes over time to see if we can stretch this out as long as we can and then let's plan to put some money aside for 5 years, 10 years, whatever it is to make sure that um as we move forward, we're prepared for that cost that we're going to expect because as your city grows, your call volume is going to increase. So am I here saying Dayton's going to be full-time? not for a long time in my opinion. But what that is, you're going to have to watch your call volume. So when I look at your demographics right now, when you go online and look at it's like this uh basically straight up and down on your growth. So I would expect your call volume to be the same. So when we talk about measuring these models, the service delivery, what service do you want to provide means what types of calls do you want to provide to your communities to your res your constituents, your residents? Do you want your firefighters and do you want to pay for someone who's feeling ill with a with a runny nose? Do you want them to go to a broken femur? Do you want them to go to someone who collapsed and is in full cardiac arrest? Do you want them to go to a bleeding tattoo scab? What level of service are you going to provide the community? And what's the expectation? And when you all know that, then when someone calls and says it took 20 minutes for us to get here, we say, "Yeah, that's the delivery model we have right now. you know, we're working to improve it, but this is why, right? And uh we're just in we're in a very tight growing capacity right now. Call volume is a pretty good indicator of the service delivery that's going on. You can change the call volume, you know, especially on the medical sides. And you can, if you had the duty crew in place during the daytime, you may not have to dispatch everybody to the station like you currently do, two stations dispatched at once, you just have the duty crew go and no one else in the department knows because you got a special pager or tone on your pager. Now, I'm not sure how it's going to be set up, but I'm just giving you some ideas, right? That duty crew can then be used to maintain all the equipment so that we don't have to call people into the station for a maintenance night and take time away from their family. The duty crew can do that. The duty crew I've seen duty crews do hydrant flushing. I've seen them all kinds of stuff they have done. But the idea is when the call comes out, everybody knows there's someone available with the right piece of equipment to respond as quickly as possible to help the community. and it's the same volunteer that's scheduled on a shift and they get to sign up for the shift or there's a lottery system. There's a number of ways of that, too. Um, again, we talked about local expectations. Um, the people that are building our nice homes and what is what are their expectations of a delivery model? And it's really hard to ask them because most people will never use it. Not everyone's dialing 911. But when they do dial 911, I I'll I'll attest to this. They want you there when not. And this is we ask you to think about your family and my family because I've been thinking about this my whole life, my whole career is uh how quickly and what is realistic for a response time knowing that your ambulance provider is not connected to us. They're a third-party entity owned by a private company. So, you know, we're not on the radio talking to them and looking at our phone and are we? I just want to make sure we didn't advance, but we're not looking at the phone and seeing where the ambulance is. We're consistently asking dispatch, can I get an ETA for the ambulance? And ambulances typically arrive for advanced life support, the stuff that you need to go to the hospital for. Um and there's a lot of research that you can get it on the ICMA website and so on that says um you know a very few percent of the people we treat in the medical field are actually going to die if we don't treat them on the scene. Most people get in an ambulance and go to the hospital and wait in the emergency room just like anyone else that's in the emergency room. So, we have to balance out time of our firefighters to make sure they have time. And you know, firefighters love to go on calls. But in order to keep this model the most costefficient as possible for your tax base, we find these little incremental changes that allow us to add value and keep that model running with the same volunteer. If it doesn't work with the volunteers, like you don't get people to sign up for duty crews, um you can look at the Blaine Spring Lake Park Mountains View. They just posted I saw the other day. Um they're they're doing lateral duty crew members. What does that mean? I can be on any duty crew from Eden Prairie to Minnotonka to to Blaine and I could come to Dayton if I want to. And there are people who create a full-time job just basically velcro patching. They're a firefighter, highly trained people that will that can come and they just basically put the Dayton patch on and they make a full-time job out of it because they're hopping from city to city. So, um reduction in insurance costs. We talked about that. Retention is primarily trying to keep our employees as long as we can. And the reason we do that is we spend a lot of money to put these people on. And I'm sure the chief has told you, but we're at eight to10,000 per fire per new firefighter to equip them for all the gear they need just to do the job. Why? OSHA requires it. And when you're wearing a jacket that's $1,700 and pants that are $900 and a helmet that's $600 and $400 boots and 70 or 70 80 $90 hood and I'm speaking like an old guy now because that's probably a lot higher than than it is uh than when I was in. But we're talking fire trucks that are a million dollar fire engines now. >> They're up. >> Go up. Uh >> oh. Okay. 1.2. >> All right. So, you'll you'll see a slide here in a little bit of planning and preparing because costs continue continue to go up. So, when we look at response time from left to right, that question mark is some sort of call. That call when you dial 911 from your home, your number goes to some sort of central location in a community. It could be a little building that recognizes your number and it's like a social security number, let's say. It takes your number and says, "That's a Hannipe County dispatch call." And it sends that call to Hannipin County dispatch. Police and fire 911. How can I help you? What's your emergency? I've got a fire in my house on the second floor. Sir, what's your address? And they know the address if it's coming on a landline, but with uh cell phones now, sometimes it's challenging. They ask a series of questions. So in that red bar, dispatcher are asking all those questions. Are everybody out of the house? What part of the house is on fire? Can you get out? Uh you know, and guiding them uh through the process of trying to escaping, right? Then they dispatch the call. So all of this is adding time. in the pre-911 as an investigator for almost 30 years the digging fire scenes um we can't predict how long it took somebody to call if your loved one goes down for a heart attack there's a high probability not possibility 0 to 50 is possible 51 to 100 is proh probable there's a high probability you're going to take care of that loved one and start CPR for some time you're not going to say, "Stay there, honey. I'm going to dial 911." Which is what we try to train people to do. But then they realize, "Holy crap, I got to dial 911." So then they get up, but that loss of that 3 to 5 minutes, especially related to the brain and oxygen to the brain, is what we can't predict. The same is true with a fire. Most people will try to fight their own fire before they call 911. And uh or there's passerbys who see something happening and they don't want to get involved and they don't even dial 911. So it takes that one person to call 911 and have the courage to uh to make the call. So anything in this this yellow area is what we call turnout time. So the call came in 911 entered it into their computer aated dispatch. They sent it out. It's already preloaded with what trucks and ambulance and police department are going to go to that specific PID which I know you guys know. And uh they already know what units are going to respond to it. The incident type told CAD it needs a fire event because that's preloaded through the chief and dispatch. Fire unit gets dispatched wherever they are in the world. They come to one of your two stations. They then wait and assemble for crews to arrive. One person may get there in 2 minutes. The next one may get there in six or eight or 10 minutes. Um, most departments now, uh, not so much the outstate, but most metro departments have a you don't go and route with one. You're you're at a 40% greater chance of getting in a crash just being in an emergency vehicle. You don't want to do that alone. And what are you going to do when you get there with one person, right? So, now you're in the station and you're waiting, you're assembling, you got your gear on, and you're waiting for people to come. and just look at the time frame. Well, now we have to respond. And I already know in Dayton, if I'm at one of these stations, I I may need a Snickers bar to get all the way to the other end of the community, you know, be with traffic and so on. You just have long runs for your fire station, right? This station, 1980s type station, was built around where probably a lot of people were. And as your community grows, you have to continue to evaluate where's the fast the best response time where all those people are and where all of our development is. Um, and then once the firefighters get on the scene, they have to connect to water. They have to pull lines. They have two minutes according to national standards really to start mitigating the incident, take command, calling for more help, start putting water on the fire, start securing the vehicle, start going in the water, whatever it is, there's a period of time and it can take a long time. So for any of the community members that watch this, um, sometimes it does take a long time because we are not a career department here. Most of the Minnesota uh are are on a volunteer status working to get the best response time they can for their community. Any questions on the response time? The paid on call firefighter when when you start to dive in on what they really need, one of the biggest things they need is they need flexibility. They need the ability to say, "I want to go to Johnny's football game." or to or to you know to to Sammy's dance dance dance program but I have to go to hose training at the fire station. So do I put my family first or do I put the fire department first? And these are the struggles our firefighters have. You know they love their job but they're constantly balancing family and time on the department and work and maybe their part-time job. So uh there's a there's a big focus. They need a mission, vision, core values. They need they need to uh be able to feel like a firefighter, you know, they need equipment so that they actually feel like they're doing their job. And they need the support of the council uh and the support of the administrator and the support of the community because when people of this type who are giving basically a lot of their time and putting in a lot of risk um don't feel like they're respected or that anyone cares about what they're doing. It reduces the morale and that's in that's in any agency any company around the around the globe. So, we call the uh the today's firefighter, we call them the Swiss Army knife. You don't know who to call, just call the fire department. And the beauty of that is everyone in Dayton that's on this department, they have careers that they bring to your community and skills like you got a fire in a Walmart, which will be very hard to evacuate any kind of of of smoke or or chlorine or anything out of. Uh, but there's an HVAC guy on your team and rather than being the chief and saying we don't know how to solve it, we say, "Hey, Johnny knows how to do it and he goes up and fixes it and the community benefits because the skills that they bring from leadership to plumbing to nursing to police officer whatever it is uh they add a lot of value to the community just bringing their skill to us. So the current trends volunteering is no longer a 20-year gig. It's more likely shoot just try to get five years out of them would be nice. Try to build a system that allows them to succeed that they can build into the system. Hold them accountable. Accountability is frequently in any of the surveys I've done. uh we say what's the number one focus this this organization should work on. It isn't buy a 20wheeler ATV or give me that new flashlight or I want the New Yorker leather fire helmet. It's hold people accountable. So that in itself means you know treat them fairly but if they're not following the rules and the work rules we have to have the power to get them back on track. We don't smack them down, but we have to get them back on track so we can count on them because you only have 27 firefighters. And if seven of them aren't showing up, now you have 20 firefighters. So, we have to continually hold people accountable for the good. High five, hug, awards, all that stuff, and for the things that may not work out so well. It's a very dynamic workforce, and it's a very dynamic job. you know, come out as one thing. We get there, it's something totally different. So, you know, that cost will continue to increase everywhere. Um, just, you know, I'm sure in every department, the cost of your fire department budget is probably 90 plus% personnel and benefits, let's say. Uh, it probably is in the city, too, right Zach? >> Quite that high, but close. >> But it's close. It's high. So when councils and community members think, well, the chief's got all this money, there's typically not that much money in there for them to say, I'm going to go buy this widget. It just it isn't there. Most of it is for, you know, electricity, water, or utilities, maintaining equipment, and putting fuel in the trucks and that kind of stuff. The best approach for you, and using my experience, is to be proactive. And now that you understand some of this stuff, and we'll open it up for questions here in a little bit, but being proactive is a long uh you gain a lot of ground rather than being reactive and realizing we're way behind now. Let's try to catch up. And um because the system is changing rapidly from what we used to we I remember just putting a sign out and a you know Dayton sign and we had, you know, 10 people show up. you know, we'd have an open house and we'd put them on all the gear and next thing you know, we have five applications. I don't know if you're seeing that or not, but I don't know anyone that's seeing seeing that. Um, there are some wins, but marketing firms are hired. There's all kinds of stuff happening to get on the flat screens where people are looking to say, "Hey, we need you to come to come join part of our team." And because we're going to do that, the city of Dayton's giving you whatever whatever we can offer. If it's if it's an hourly rate, if it's pension, tuition reimbursement, whatever it is, we try to entice them to fill our stations so we can keep this model the lowest cost model as long as possible. And if it's not working, it's the chief's job to say it's just not working and uh we need to do something different. Um I don't know if you've had a discussion on the level of services you want to provide but that that should be that should happen. Uh strategic plan would be nice. Uh that what a strategic plan does it allows us to discuss what the future will look like and then we can link a line item in the budget to it and we can say okay in three years we're going to have this much more in the budget so that we can buy this or we can hire this. But strategic plan is really important to have um so that we can predict the future and not go backwards like oh now we need this um and then try to find money for it. And then capital equipment's always a challenge um to maintain the equipment and the stations. And if this is a 1980s um facility, you know, just keep it maintained. There's nothing wrong with having a 1980s station as long as it works well and it it's maintained right. Right. So, what do we have for questions based off that information? >> I have a question. Maybe you can clear I shouldn't close my Maybe you can clear up some information for me. [cough] Um because I really honestly don't know, but we are registered um with the Minnesota Emergency Medical Services as a medical response unit. >> Can you tell me what that means? because I don't remember us moving in that. I I don't understand what that means. Can you say more about it? >> Um well, I think I think it could be a lot of answers quite frankly, but if they're listing you as a emergency responder, are you all EMTs or what? >> Most okay. So, >> no, we used to not be. So, we kind of transitioned to that. So, I guess I'm just wondering as I'm like cuz you had said something earlier about like what calls do we want to go on and I think that that's kind of the direction. I have some questions pertaining to that and so I'm just wondering like what does that mean for us and um I guess what does it provide us? Does that make sense? >> Yeah. Yeah. [clears throat] I mean we've had lot of discussions around this area regarding that um uh the the med the response for medicals is under the authority of what's called a primary service area right since the 70s legislature decided these little geographical areas of PSAs around the state and then they assigned the PSA to some sort of delivery model. So St. Paul, they have their they own their own PSA. >> Yes. >> Apparently in the 70s, a letter went out to every town clerk and everybody that said, "Would you like to control your PSA or can you want us to control it for you?" And uh for those who didn't know what they didn't know back then, we sort of gave away the PSA, which gives you control over how your delivery service is is managed. So I don't North Ambulance is your PSA provider here by law. >> Yeah. >> They're responsible for the medical calls and because they own the PSA, they can determine through data, you know, where their busy areas are going to be. So they end up positioning their ambulances where they're likely going to have a call. Just makes sense, right? And essentially they can build a business model out of the predictive measurements to determine how many ambulances they need, how many full-timers they need, what who's an ALS unit, who's a BLS unit. But because they own the PSA, you don't own control over that. However, we do know in Dayton that there may be longer response times for an ambulance to arrive. And when that occurs and it's consistent, communities say, "Well, our firefighters can go and help the community member wrap their bandage or take their blood pressure rather than have them wait a long period of time. Our fire service is trained as EMTs or EMRs >> and they can go there on their behalf." And I think for uh the your size and and I'll tell you um uh it's public data. East Bethl, it just got done off several months over there. We had the same discussion is um they've been providing the same service for years and years and years. So past practice becomes policy in some people's minds, right? So now councils are concerned about changing the level of service because what will happen? What if? But then we use our own data and say um data tells us that these types of calls the top 10 let's say is where we can make the most impact. Do we need to go to a bleeding tattoo stand and what and I'm not downgrading anyone's emergency, right? That's their emergency. But what impact can we make as a firefighter at two in the morning on that? They're going to get an ambulance is going to come. They may not even sign and may take off. So, um, those are discussions you can have with your chief on what he believes. And I assume you're going to every medical. >> Yes. >> Okay. And you can decide if that's going to help. And then if you do decide to change that, you continue to monitor it and you continue to see if there are any outliers or something happens and you can work with North or the council could ask for the north supervisor to come here and ask them what they're do. what can you do to increase your response or to reduce your response times in our area? You know, you provide our ALS for us. So, there's a number of options. >> What are all their incentives either way? Because I got the feeling they they'd like us to take over everything. >> Yeah. >> Um what are their incentives to to do what they're tasked to do? >> Well, they're required by law to do it, >> right? But what does that mean? >> What does that mean? If they get here in an hour, is that good enough? >> Um, there there is sort of a a response matrix >> and and a time frame. I I'm out of what that is today. >> Okay. >> Anybody? >> Ambulance. >> Is that the 18 minutes 59 seconds thing? >> Yes, it is. So, mayor, members of council, um depending upon if you are considered suburban or rural, you've heard me talk about there's a difference basically at at our city border between Maple Grove and Dayton. So, in Dayton, uh North has the ability to respond code three lights and sirens um in 17 minutes and 59 seconds. It's 90% of the time. they can go to Maple Grove and reduce that based on whatever I don't know where these numbers exactly come from but um they are required to be there I think it's in uh 11 minutes and 59 seconds or something like that um so they have a shorter response time to that side of the city >> so financially let's say we were to handle all their calls how does that help or hurt that private business do they get subsidies for a call. Do they get I mean >> if you decided to take it on, you would have to have the law changed that that you own the PSA. >> No, what I mean is clearly they they would like us to handle all medicals. They they've made that clear. >> Okay. >> Um [clears throat] why would they do that if they're a private business? >> Um they may do that because they know that Dayton it takes a long time to get here. >> Well, that's cuz they're not here. >> That's because they're not here. >> Right. >> Right. So there is a there's a system a rotating system in the metro of ambulances >> and I in in the stations that I or the cities that I have managed I've had three or more stations. Um in Minnesota we had an ambulance at each station and that ambulance was sold to the council that we're going to get a faster response time. Most of the time it didn't happen. They were on transfers. If I transfer someone from hospital to hospital, it's one it's it's profit. They typically lose money on emergency response. The reason your staff is Go ahead, Mayor. >> No, that's what I was waiting for. >> Okay. The reason The reason your staff is likely going to all the medicals and just based off other cities I've worked with is because of that length of time. And you can talk to City of Roseville right now, call Pat Trojan. They just bought their own ambulance. They don't own the PSA, but they know it takes it takes the service a long time to get there. So, they bought their own ambulance and they're like, "We need to provide this to our community." And that was sort of pushing the trend a little bit. >> So, that leads me to another question. Um we asked um the fire chief to put together a um severity kind of classification of all of the calls that we go on and ranking them um meaning like non-urgent, urgent but stable and then like like threatening emergencies that we 100% should be getting in the truck and going. So my question along that line is it really is like or I guess backing up a couple slides. The service level is up to us to say the fire department, and we're playing hypotheticals here, is no longer going to go to these severities, which would be your bleeding tattoo. Those things where I believe, I don't want to quote anybody, but it was warm bodies is what the department said. um we're there, we're managing the scene, but we're not actually providing service other than being that calming, warm body there. So, it's up to us to decide, right? Like that's completely in our realm to say if we're going to reduce those and we're not going to go to I just picked one through four severity, right? Because it's ranking one to 10. Does that still then warrant I guess I go back to my first question this whole that classification do we >> I'm not sure what that is >> the >> that that titles you as a medical respond >> medical responding well maybe Jerry Gary can answer that because on November 8th in 2024 um we registered as a medical response unit with the Minnesota Emergency Medical Services and it expires in 2026 six. So, it's a 2year and I just I don't understand what that means and why we would have moved to that classification. >> Mayor, members of council, the reason for that is so that we can do training. It has nothing to do with the level of service that we provide. So, we're registered with the office of emergency medical services. >> So, we can give our own service in house. >> Uh, so we can Yeah. So, we can do our own training for EMT to save cost that way as as well as EMR. >> Okay, that makes sense. >> Perfect. Keep in mind that >> the chief does not have a say in much of the medical stuff. The medical director of your PSA provider manages the license of your firefighters. The EMT and all that stuff that happens, it falls under the protocols of the medical director of that PSA provider. It's not your chief. So, we were mandated to move to EMT as opposed to EMR because we were an EMR department. It was an option and then now we require it. So, I guess I'm wondering is that from the medical director? I know we had to do it to get the variance. We decided that. >> Okay. >> Yes. Mayor, members of council, um I made the decision uh when I came uh just based upon length of time for service for North Memorial to arrive here. >> So, then that leads to if I can. >> Yes, sir. There are you have two levels of license or training. You have emergency medical responder 40 hours let's say. >> Mhm. >> And you have an emergency medical technician 110 120 hours. Right. >> Mhm. >> The difference is oxygen bandage wound protection stabilization and tube down throat epinephrine beasting kit. you know, much more invasive um treatment procedures that the medical director, a medical doctor allows them to perform based off that certification. So, they're going to be able to provide [clears throat] a much uh better form of treatment to a patient who needs that treatment. Typically, EMRs are not allowed to do some of that invasive stuff because they haven't had the training. So the fact that you're not all EMT right now, there's maybe we're working through it or balancing, but there's benefits to being an in EMT as well. >> So I have a question that's a little more I don't know up in the clouds than you know exact service delivery >> kinds of things. It's I think we've been struggling for some time on you know right sizing our department. what's the what's the model that Dayton needs today and over what period of time do we do we make these various moves to go toward I don't know that it's ultimately a a career department but >> I guess that's the end line on on that u on that chart >> what parameters help us decide that I know you said every community does it different so there's no model we can go find and say here it is this is state statute number whatever and we're going implement this, but there has to be things like population, number of calls, service, um, types that we're going to respond to, >> all of that. And, and we, we continue to struggle with what that should look like here, >> right? And that's [clears throat] a great question. based off the information I [clears throat] saw online and so on, you have an imbalance system that already tells me I should be trying to somehow balance that time frame and I would look at what can I do to get people staffed that well I'll talk to the firefighters get them involved would you like to staff the station during these times and while you're here you can do training you can do all our maintenance it'll reduce it should reduce costs in other areas like maintenance and so on right because we're not having firefighters come back to do all this work. It's however the chief works it out. But the fact that the same taxpayer is getting a different level of service tells me we should already be looking at how can it balance that out a little bit, right? And then let's just see how that works for couple years or whatever. You're going to use your chief to help give you data and information on how it's working. Maybe we need to add a couple more. Maybe, you know, whatever. Maybe we need to bring an inspector in and have that person or assistant chief, whatever, to be a full-timer with the chief who can go and handle majority of the calls during the day while there's that uh shortage of staff. Um there's like when I when I say people do it differently, there's a variety of ways to do it, but look at the matrix. Are is the time consistent? How many calls are go you go to? When you start hitting the 600 call volume and you're requiring a volunteer to come to three calls a day, that's a lot. And it's not. When we say three calls a day, we think, well, that's not much. Well, one of those calls lasted six hours and the other one lasted an hour. But when I got back, I had to wash the truck. It would didn't have fuel in it. So, I had to go shop, get fuel, then I had to fill out the report. Now I'm at two hours. So even if it's one call, what are you expecting of your volunteer? So I believe we need to build a system that allows our volunteers to win. That's our responsibility, right? And then uh pay money does matter. Money does matter. And I know and I've I said it publicly before, but the pension system, all that stuff's great, but our newer generations are not worried about a pension right now. Most of the time when I traveled over the last four years, they asked me if they could get that money now. How do I get that money now? Because if I could take the pension money that the state gives me and divert it to hourly rate, most of our firefighters around this area will be in the $50 an hour range. I'm going to have a really good recruitment and retention plan at 50 bucks an hour, right? And then deduct taxes, deduct fuel, firefighter lose clothes. There's a lot of things that, you know, we don't even account for that happens on incidents when I get blood on me and I I throw out my favorite shirt or whatever. Um, so I've been snooping through. There's a couple sites that list a lot of different cities, how many [clears throat] paid on call they have, how many full-time they have. Um, I'm also seeing something termed PPC. Is there models that just pay you for a call? Is that what that is? Payer call. >> Pay per call. Yep. Same same as paid on call. Well, you can go to uh rather than pay them I don't know what you pay them, but let's say 15 bucks an hour, we're going to give you 75 bucks a call. That's it. >> Oh, so it's the call and then pay. >> Oh, got it. Got >> an hourly to call. >> And a lot of those same what I'm seeing is even um sites that places are I don't remember some of the cities I looked at, but they were in the 80,000 population. They still didn't list Arlingi full-time. Are these people that are um moving from or not I shouldn't say moving but basically multiple um they're using multiple fire departments. So they're not showing up as is anything other than paid on call. >> Um well we could look at a Maple Grove. They have like five stations 150 volunteers. 120 volunteers in five stations, but they also have full-time staff in the day. You look at the Blaine, the SBM, fire district. >> Most they have like 20 full 20 responders in the day who are full-time and they're augmented at night by like a battalion chief and a volunteer on duty crew though. >> But those are fairly large areas. >> Yeah. >> I mean, when I look at cities anywhere near us, I say under 30, I'm not seeing hardly any full-time. So that's why I'm wondering. >> Oh, I see where you're going. So let's let's uh compare East Bethl. Very similar population. They have three stations. They have a fire chief. They just through our our study and our past few months, we promoted the assistant chief or the fire inspector to an assistant chief. They just went to duty crew last week and they go to about 1,30 calls was the last number two months ago, but they're reducing their medical calls. They're working on doing that. Not like boom, but over time. >> Yeah. >> And measure it, right? So, you work through this system and measure it and see if it's working or not. >> Was that a response to I know East Bethl had some turmoil at the start of the year where they had a lot of very unhappy firefighters. >> Yeah. >> Was that in a response to that or >> they hired me in response to that? >> Okay. >> Yes. So you're a very similar system. If they reduce their call volume, they will be at about your call volume. And they're going they just started duty group. So they're they're probably eight months ahead of you. That's that's the direction you're going to go. >> So why not reduce and reassess? Why reduce by what sounds like almost half or half and then also implement the duty crew? So why not reduce, reassess, and re re-evaluate what impact that has and then decide what level of duty crew you need. >> So when you decide you're going to go to a duty crew model, different model, but you're going to balance it out because you have people on the station who can get there much quicker than the night kit, right? But now you have people in the station. And because they're in the station, why why get rid of all the calls? Why not let them go to calls and learn the job and train because you're paying them by the hour why they're at the station. They don't get paid by call anymore. They only get paid for the hours they're at the station. >> But is there a world where you maybe moved to a duty crew before you needed to then? So if you had reduced your calls and what you're saying is is you want to give them the opportunity to train and to use their skills. And I'm 100% for that. Repetition is very important. But if you were able to I'm just thinking from like our putting our hats on up here. If you were able to reduce your calls and you didn't you reduced the stress on your firefighters, what you're asking them to do, the number of calls you're going on, the types of calls you're going on, so they feel the value of getting to do work when they get there, >> right? >> And you pushed out having to implement a duty crew again because it worked for the firefighters and it worked for your budget. >> You can do that. >> I guess I'm just wondering like why not why didn't East Beckle do that? like why what was their thought process other than it wasn't really >> they have an imbalanced system they do not have responders in the day to the point and this is not just east bethl there are times and I don't know if it's happened here where no one responds >> I think any small city you're going to see an imbalance it's going to be automatic >> yeah but that's the that's the decision you get to make and it's also the questions you need to answer when the constituents come in and ask right So I think >> I'm I'm ed I'm trying to educate >> just to clarify. So even if we reduce call volume, we're still going to have an imbalance in time with the day. And so therefore going to the duty crew model is they're they're they're addressing two different needs. The duty crew model is more about I should say more, but the duty crew model would address this imbalance in time like getting to the calls during the day versus in the evening. The reducing call volume is just reducing call volume overall. like they're they're not necessarily solving the same >> they they may they may solve some of the same issues but they are in some ways addressing two separate things >> right a lot of times if you reduce the medical calls it may even pay for your duty group program you know what I mean but also think about retention I don't live too far from here and maybe I could sign up to be a duty crew member if you only required me to come here a few times a week I can't respond respond from my house to get here in your 10-minute response time. But maybe you'll offer people in the community to fit it into their life when we can use them and they no longer have to hold the phone all the time. And >> see where I'm going? >> I think we are out of time. I have one last question >> and I think this is where a duty crew model does not require the hiring of full-time people. the duty crew model can work with our current and I think that's where when it has when I was when I first initially saw this the duty crew model came packaged with hiring of full-time people and so it has taken me a little bit of time to realize that that's those are not synonymous we can go to a duty crew model without hiring additional full-time people >> you're changing your delivery model to benefit the fire service which benefits the community using the same volunteer >> just giving I think it's time. Yeah. >> So, but that took me a while to >> No, it's confusing. >> It's confusing. Trust me. >> Any other questions? Otherwise, we're >> we're technically over time right now. >> All right. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. >> Thanks. Yep. >> Uh we need to >> do we have to journ please. >> Oh, yeah. I'll adjourn the work session. Thank you.