Our department goals and priorities in 2027 are to maintain NFPA response times to meet and mitigate emergencies that our residents experience. We need to effectively meet the projected 3 to 5% increase in calls for service in 2027 while maintaining operational effectiveness and service quality. We also need to preserve frontline staffing and unit availability.

I'm I really want to um admire the work that you have done on creating the F-shift in particular. I we've been talking a lot about overtime at this table and um the creative way in which you figured out how to fill those gaps in service with a regular shift that was called an Fshift rather than through overtime. Um I think is something that we should try to emulate in other departments if we can and just really want to credit you for doing that.

Um we have an unseen population which is mostly our highly vis in our highly visible settings uh our homeless people. Uh we're dealing with uh exposure issues uh wounds overdose risk behavioral crisis addiction displacement and repeated system contact. Um what we deal with more more than that is our unseen population and that consists of people with dementia, MS, multiple sclerosis, traumatic injury, stroke related impairment, mental illness and most importantly uh just the inability to manage at home and and people that are disconnected from family members.

And as we think about staffing and the reduction of a budget, meaning reduction of services, I think it's sort of eating at the the fire budget on both ends. And I just really want us to be cognizant that taking the CARES division away creates a strain as the emergent needs go up the ladder for staffing and fire.

Any reduction does have an impact on staffing, on deployment upstream. What that does, it's a domino effect on firefighters uh health and and and their safety. Um but we're we're faced, you know, we're we're all in this at the end of the day. There's only so much money and we had to figure out a way to come up with a budget where we can still provide the same great services that we provide every single day, not lose that knowledge and that experience that we have and try to adjust and do the best we can.

Do you think that, you know, from a budgetary standpoint, it looks like the elimination of the CARES division is like $700,000. Are we going to see that come back potentially? Maybe not all of it, but some of it in overtime as a result of those um services being absorbed by the fire department.

So last year was $3.7 million. $1 million of that was for these special events and for these state teams. So you know you look at it's $2.7 million um with the F shift. Could I be fiscally responsible and find a way to get that down to 2 million? I think we could. I look across the river at at a another fire department about the same size as us and they are annually right around 2.5 2.6 million. So, if you take the special events that we staff off this, we lose the the the money that goes to the general fund, but we'd be in on pace with other departments about our size for overtime spending.

I sincerely hate to hear that especially with the revenues coming in at a higher cost. I I just don't understand the way that we're currently budgeting for fire and for police this budget cycle. Um so that's not a reflection of your work or the work of the department. I I just overall am very confused about how we're actually budgeting for public safety. it doesn't seem like we are taking into account the fact that you know in some departments like when you talk about police and you talk about fire there's distinctive differences um when it comes to just some of the pressures but there are a lot of similarities and I think one common theme that I'm seeing in this budget is we're essentially setting ourselves up for overtime to continue to get worse not better um and so that to me doesn't make much sense and I think with the St. Paul Fire Department in particular, we're having revenue that's coming into the general fund that would solve whatever problem you're just speaking about, but it's not going to you all. It's going to the general fund. So, that to me also I have a lot of questions about.

We always ask for firefighters. Um 14 firefighters would would uh uh be at the expense of 1.2 million. Um but that would allow us to put another super medic in play. So we've Let me just be uh uh transparent and honest about that. We've asked for 14 firefighters in eight of the nine eight of the last nine uh budget cycles. And in that timeline, we've gotten nine FTE firefighters total.

I just got two bids this morning uh for uh from two different um manufacturers for fire engines, and both of them are just under 1 million. Another one that's I hear is coming in uh later this week is at 1.2 million from 400,000 to $1 million for a fire engine. Um medic rigs are 500,000 for a new one. We have been uh doing remounted ones and trying to be again fiscally responsible with the money we have in this budget. Um uh but it's just it's it's it's really tough to keep up with uh to give us to give the firefighters the tools they need to go out and do a job successfully.