it says we're on the air okay we're live we are live M okay good evening everyone and we are now um I will call this a special work session of the Burnsville city council to order and uh this is the uh service discussion to and city manager Lindberg uh your uh opening remarks please thank you Madame mayor members of the council thank you for reconvening tonight um and entering into the second of our planned summer um uh summer I can't think with the feedback sorry I'm totally lost my train of thought um uh the second of what is correct our service conversation uh with you um tonight we are going to focus in in three different departmental areas again uh kind of answering uh or or discussing with you uh how it is that uh our Uh current service aligns with your strategic priorities uh so tonight uh Carissa Larson our director of communications and Community engagement uh will kick off our time uh followed by Tanya Schwarz our police chief and uh BJ junman our fire chief uh will complete the evening uh in order uh uh through each of those three departments so with that uh and my stumbling over wordss completed I'll turn it over to Carissa Larson to do a much better job than I did in the way of well good evening Carissa and you have the stage great thank you um mad mayor members of the council thank you for having me here tonight I am very excited to have the opportunity to tell the story of our amazing Communications and Community engagement team so much like you saw uh at our service presentations last week we're going to go through a little bit about who we are what we do how we do our everyday work to contribute to the city's Vision Values and strategic priorities try to click through my computer and this computer at the same time so we'll see how well I can walk in Chico um our Communications and Community engagement Department uh you know we really call ourselves Bri right we are about making connections in relationships to try to bring the city and the community together through storytelling and engagement in and as most Innovative and efficient ways as we possibly can by way of a little bit of background I wanted to um just kind of show you a little bit about how our story has changed over the last about 15 years or so um going back to 2007 that's where my notes go back to at least um we were brinville we were a joint Powers agreement with Burnsville Egan Community television uh so the e TV had eight full-time staff at that point we were very media heavy at that point in time uh so we had two full-time staff at City Hall that included the communications director and what I believe was the communications specialist position at that time and then eight uh multimedia staff who were dealing with video City didn't have an official engagement function uh and our front counters was uh front counter staff were staffed by they were staff of other departments right I my my best guess I don't have notes but my best guess on that is uh Recreation HR probably all had people up there at that moment in time um in 2008 uh Burnsville leag and Community television separated so we became Burnsville Community television and Egan television uh we lost a lot of Staff in that shuffle and so we ended up with the same two communication staff the director and the communication specialist and ended up with two full-time media staff and we went to kind of a part-time model with some videographers fluctuating anywhere from two to maybe four or five depending on Staffing you know in any given point of the year um that continued so I joined the city of Burnsville in 2012 and that was still the model we were using in 2012 when I got here um we were um fortunate enough to to move some things around and add in another FTE in 2013 that we split between what we called City Hall and the High School right between Communications and multimedia um that was a budget neutral move we did it by bringing uh items that were contracted in house so there there was a lot of discussion about what are we currently spending money on that we could we could be doing and what ended up happening was some of our positions particularly my position as the communication specialist at the time we just took on more so we used to contract out the layout of the binsville bulletin writing all of it and instead that came that came in house and we started doing that ourselves um we continued that way for for another number of years until about 2020 we did our first kind of official Communications Department strategic plan and out of that came the notion that hey we really should have an engagement function in the city um and it makes a lot of sense to to partner with the Communications Department what what might that look like is really what what our plan talked about um based on that and we had some opportunity with some staff turnover we decided to Nyx our part-time model at bctv and take those part-time dollars and turn them into a third full-time multimedia position uh so then we shuffled that position that was kind of splitting time between Communications and media and moved it just to Communications so we were able to have kind of three in three um at that time we added an engagement manager and took on um the front counter staff under our department which we kind of redubbed as the experience department or experience function so again that was just moving pieces right we weren't really adding ft we were shuffling them around to different departments um in 2021 was the kind of for first time we truly kind of added more without um added a new title I guess right we added our digital communication or digital engagement specialist uh we did that from shuffling a FTE from finance that was open at the time so it helped us keep up with some changing needs digital as we'll talk about is a huge change in the last few years for us um and frankly we were doing that to retain staff who were leaving because of how overwhelming our current workload was at the time so we we decided to ease that a little bit by bringing in this um this FTE uh it's also about the time when our front counter staff started to really truly become kind of the experienced team they went from multiple supervisors to centralizing under one supervisor and having more of a focus on experience and engagement um although their first priority is still managing that front counter making sure we have coverage here at City Hall um the director position has also changed in the last couple of years so I have it currently counted under our Communications FTE there um but in reality it's it's no longer contributing to the tactics of the communications function that it once was uh the position is now much more higher level organizational and strategic rather than kind of getting in the weeds of the everyday communication stuff so we've had a lot of a lot of shift uh in terms of our responsibilities if you shake out all the numbers 2007 we had 10 ft now we have 11 right they look very similar at their Base number level but the numbers don't truly tell the whole story because of how much everything has shifted how much needs have shifted over the years um Communications in particular looks a lot bigger than it was in 2015 um but our methods of communications have changed drastically in those years um and I'm sure that uh I'm sure we didn't make many friends in moving some of those ft you know the the truth is we while we're grateful for that relief that we had um we know that we you know kind of robbed Peter to pay Paul in in our organizational movement of those things um in both Communications and engagement um and while we we are doing what we can organizationally unfortunately those moves aren't they were to to kind of help us tread water they're not helping us get ahead um but that is kind of where our where our department shakes out today I think it's an important note Chris this timeline very much tells the story of how communication has evolved into Communications Community engagement um uh and uh the 2021 move uh just just for a note kind of put a pin in that conversation about about the finance FTE moving into Communications um all all joking aside that was not a popular decision nor was it an easy one for me um but it was necessary at the time uh to Carissa's point for us to to just maintain uh some semblance of balance in the department frankly retain a very talented individual who is going to leave the organization and Tred to relieve some pressure uh from that position uh and we had held that Finance vacancy open uh for about a year and a half you you will hear uh from Dan and his team when we get to the finance presentation that that that was a a very detrimental move to the finance operation and there's no there's no question that it was it was a necessary operational decision at the time but I think that's an important part of kind of why we're doing this uh because we have been very efficient with the use of FTE particularly in the administrative functions uh what we've called organizational services for for the past 2 years um and that will be a theme in these departments that you'll hear certainly will hear more about and and as I listen to the story and the timeline Carissa the functionality and the delivery of work is so different from what it was in 2007 and and before that right now you know we have a a lot of social media that we didn't even do not even last year or the year before and when I look at the deliverables on social media on all different platforms you're doing more than we've ever done so I mean for example what happened with the park Nicolet Commons park you very quickly had something on social media on Twitter on Facebook um I think you had it on Instagram as well and so a lot more of our residents understood what was going on which is what we say we need to do is transparent so when I look at the timeline from where we were and where we are now you're delivering a lot more with a lot more functionality with the same number of people yes the the times have changed communication expectations have changed we'll get into that a little bit but we we are still calling ourselves the you know Communications function multimedia function but they are vastly different very they ever used to be because I'm sure all of you you know when you're working together um you have to get the me message out when Ryan says nicholet Park nicholet Commons park is down you have to quickly get it out there yep yep I got Ryan's first email Ryan sent I started getting my Graphics together and pulling it all together yep absolutely and the same is true with with Public Safety because I see that things happen and and your team is on it and it's on all of the different channels then I start retweeting them and sharing them and and I've also noticed it bleeds into areas where we don't have presence like nextdoor.com um there was chatter about that but people specifically referencing our Facebook posts so even though we not directly in those channels because we exist here it's impacting you know those other areas which makes a big difference I think Vince that's a great point and the the demand for responsiveness and timel information and Chris will talk about this uh as you all know as elected officials is extraordinarily High particularly if you compare today 2022 uh back to 2013 uh the the world is just vastly different for us um and one of my greatest concerns in this area area is continuing to try to keep up with um just the the base level expectation of the community that we will have information out there uh much much less internally how are we making sure that each of the five of you have that information in as timely a way as possible to then be able to interact with the community yourselves uh it is a it is a push pull that we admittedly still don't have figured out um in in our current operation we we do our best and we've got some great and talented folks in this in this area um and it's one that I'm incredibly cautious about asking too much of uh because we've we've seen the uh we've seen the downside of of doing that in the past three years yeah well you got a crispy that was going to leave correct Ryan and just they really provide a service to us out there not functional but functional departments the operational like just they asked what do we what do you want to get out there and and they take it all so we're not having to think about how to get it out there we just have to get them the information and they literally take it from there so it truly been a great change and tremendous partnership what they do it's great okay Carissa so this is our team now um some of you know we call ourselves Team Awesome uh we we pride ourselves on being there for the community and for being there for our our fellow employees so you know to Ryan's point we always we talk often internally about how can we make things easy for everyone involved we don't we don't want Ryan's team to have to think about verbiage and wording and Graphics we will absolutely handle that so they can fix broken pipes you know um we all have our our roles to play right um we are split into three work groups as I kind of mentioned Communications multimedia and experience and engagement um ex they they all work hand inand to achieve kind of the the goal that I set out earlier right Making Connections um Building Bridges telling stories but they do each kind of have their unique set of methods that they use to get to achieve those goals uh so our Communications staff they are amazing at collaboration right they collaborate and create um in order to weave the stories for our various audiences uh our multimedia staff you saw a little bit tonight right they are they are Wizards when it comes to trouble shooting they truly perform magic some days um troubleshooting recording broadcasting finding innovative solutions with Innovative Technologies and and our um experience and engagement staff they they Place Excellence above all else when it comes to nurturing relationships and building trust with and the videos they put out that really communicates this our story for instance station one's video was really awesome I thought um so and and there's only two people there I think we with the work that needs to be done y yeah and it all takes time we you know we'll talk about that a little bit but um I think sometimes in today's techn technological fast-paced world it's easy to say I just throw together a video I do it to my team all the time I'm guilty of it as anybody else throw together a video and then and I forget that that takes weeks sometimes you know days to depend even a short video can take days I never do that to you though right never never um we have a a fairly lengthy um strategic plan that guides our work uh these are kind of some of the core things that we that we aim for in that so we are very focused on storytelling we want to get away from info dumping we want clear and concise messages we try to rely on video and infographics as much as we can in order to um kind of help some of those language or or learning barriers um promoting intentional Community engagement we don't just want to throw things at the wall and see what sticks we want to actually talk and deliberate and figure out what would be good for our community and continuously reimagine we we have to continue to reimagine how things look what worked yesterday may it just not work tomorrow so you all kind of alluded to it so much has changed in the past few years I narrowe it down to kind of three but I probably could have gone on forever about this um a lot lot has changed just in the years since I've been here a lot stayed the same right we still produce a quarterly newsletter um we still reach out to people on social media but those things have have grown and evolved as well um we are on far more social media accounts the the kind of information and the um the look and feel of the bullettin has changed so so everything evolves uh someone mentioned the expectations around responsiveness Greg was probably you that's responsive as one of those words that comes up in our Communications a lot um you know members of the community expect to get news faster and they expect to get it in their preferred communication method right and we don't always know what Ryan's preferred communication method is versus Tom's but Ryan and Tom expect news to be where they are um staff also expect that their news will get pushed out faster so we have to be very timely both internally and externally we also have an increased number of Staff who want their news pushed out um when I started here there was we were Marty and I were kind of going door to door begging like no we want your information please help us tell your story uh and now we continuously have staff saying here can you get this out any way you can and can you help us inform the community on this um hopefully that means we've proven the value of communications over the years um but it also means that we have far more to balance so that we don't overwhelm the community right there is a very fine line between getting the news you need and getting more news than you ever wanted um we also have to choose the right tools not every message can can deal with every social media account or every uh method of print and digital and web and face tof face there there are different tools for different purposes and we have to figure those out with each message we get it doesn't necessarily mean jumping ahead first in a new technology but it does mean researching new technology when we learn about it every time there's a new social media platform we spend a lot of time ourselves um first being personal members of that platform and and looking at how it works um figuring out kind of the culture there and determining if it might work for us as a city or not um again it doesn't always mean technology either we reformatted the way the bulletin looks and feels over the years in order to um kind of move away from very text dense pages to more infographics more pictures to try to help engage um our audience and of course it's no surprise that the demographics in our community are continuously shifting and changing so we work hard to keep up with all of those changes um that means not only studying the shifts but also how those shifts affect communication preferences uh how we design things how we engage with people so there's always there's always things to be looked at and and learned and and changed in our work little bit of background we um talked quite a bit last year about our community survey um the 2021 Community the residential survey we asked residents how they prefer to receive information from the city and the kind of the the moral of the story in this chart is that it's everything um you know 56% of people say they still get their news from the bulletin but after that we get about 30% in newspaper email website um 20% say social media 35% say direct mail and then there's kind of 25% of other the moral of the story is we can't just say we're only going to focus on social media people want information in a wide variety of places and so we have to go to where those people are and each and every one of these methods requires it requires different types of text and different types of images and um you have to reformat you can't just copy and paste everywhere you go even from social media platform to social media platform um Wheels versus Stories versus photos versus videos it is all very different and it all takes different different work to get it done um we also study our our demographics like I mentioned so the particular demographics I tossed up here were from um EZ's tapestry segments that look at kind of neighborhood demographics and and tell a different story rather than some other demographic areas we look at um you know Brunsville is a is a varied community and so while each of the these the Bright Young professionals segment Home Improvement segment and old and newcomers segment they each have some commonalities they all are very comfortable with technology um they're kind of up on the latest trends but uh they're on the Go in different ways so capturing their attention is is very different um the old and newcomer segment in particular they still like to read the newspaper so each each population has a different sense that we talk about in our department about well how can we best to meet them and their needs our 2021 Community survey uh we asked a couple questions about communication um as a quick reminder the results from our 2021 survey are in scores not percentages so this is you know a score out of 100 versus 74% of our population um we found that we're doing well in maintaining a website that meets people's needs we're doing well in effec ly communicating uh with the community we're doing we're doing pretty well in communicating the vision and strategic priorities and how tax dollars are used um but we know that those are areas of focus that we want to see scores increase in the future so those are also things that we talk about pretty heavily in our in our or in our department about how do we make sure that that that happens the next time the survey comes around we didn't ask spe specific questions about our engagement function it was really early in the engagement function when we were're doing a survey um we weren't and we wanted to make sure we could Benchmark as much as possible so we chose not to customize too many questions around engagement but there were questions throughout the survey that represent the city as a whole and we believe we can over time as we do this survey again we'll be able to see the impact of placing an organizational emphasis and an organizational lens on engagement um so we're really proud of these engagement scores and I I look forward to see how far we can go in the future when it comes to engagement all right uh I would be remiss not to talk a little bit about some comparisons to some of our um fellow cities around the Metro these were um peers that were identified and interviewed as part of our strategic plan process our Consultants called each and every one of them and talked with them about what their uh Communications and engagement functions look like so as you look through you'll note that some of our fellow cities use contracted media Services which at first blush kind of seems like hey that's maybe compelling U but the truth is that you you're you're never going to get the quality the understanding the commitment to your community as you do with with dedicated staff right we can we can be uniquely Burnsville in multimedia because we have uniquely Burnsville staff um versus Contracting in some joint power with several other cities where we only get x amount of air time we don't get someone here learn learning what's happening being invested right are we comparing Apples to Apples when we you're uh comparing to other cities because when I look at what we deliver and what they deliver it's not Apples to Apples it is hard to compare um the art that comes out of a Communications Department right so when our consultant identified um these cities we did it based on a number of factors right it was a little bit of our Market Market cities and a little bit of who we know kind of internally our you know peers in terms of who we keep up with some of it was folks who have talk to us over the years about um replicating our things and vice versa who we talk to about replicating some of their things but it is hard to compare um the amount or the you know the quality or the quantity of what is produced communication Department to Communications Department everybody is very different like St Louis Park has nine media staff yeah mayor and council member Workman I think you're you're you're drawing the the appropriate conclusion here as I look at this slide and as Chris and I have talked about their strategic plan and what we know about the market uh fact of the matter is our Communications staff is about half of what we would say our most comparable mer to put it more simply the best Apples to Apples we could come up with yeah our communication staff is about half our engagement staff is about half yeah um uh now we're uniquely Burnsville and that's just a market comparison uh but the reality is uh I do think it it Paints the picture of not only how effective our staff are in this area frankly they crank um most days I don't know how they do it um and on the flip side of that there is there is a lot of dreaming uh and kind of responsive conversation about how we want to make connections with our community that frankly we just we not going to be able to do something would have to give uh and that's part of the kind of the push and pull of the conversation of what we're asking for as Chris gets to the end of this presentation we're not anywhere close to suggesting through the organ analysis uh that this department doubles as a matter of fact I believe it's the addition of three ftea um so we're trying to continue the spirit of being uniquely Burnell being effective but but also trying to do the things that we really aspire to do um and do it continue to do it in a way that's reflective of how we've approached it in the past okay okay um many cities are just starting engagement work right so we're not we're in good company there um my one kind of note as I looked through this again uh to put this presentation together was a lot of cities do have staff that are dedicated only to engagement right we we don't have with the exception of of Idina um we don't we don't see a lot of cities who are sharing staff with their front counter and even in Idina their front counter staff are dedicated to the front counter our staff are trying to do do double duty they're trying to you know help people at City Hall they're really good at that and they're trying to learn how to be good engagement staff as well so and that's what I was getting at because when I'm looking at this it's you know they're looking at communication staff and yep not the Eng we have the addition of of you know again we love it we really do love seeing people every day at City Hall but it isn't extra thing that we try to balance yeah yeah um so moving on we'll show you a little bit about um the work we do every day and how we try to help balance the work we do for other departments while also maintaining strategies of our own so um in aligning with the Strategic priority of safety uh I have the great honor of working with BJ and Tanya and their staff every day I wish that the work we did wasn't always around like planning for the worst um sometimes I wish we could just like hang out and have fun and often what we're talking about is well okay what if what if this happens how do we be prepared for that um but the truth is that we do we plan for the worst so that we can be our best when it happens um so that we are just you know we are ready to inform the community of what's going on should something you know a natural disaster a man-made disaster should something happen we're ready to communicate with that Community um so it's a lot of um emergency and crisis communication planning training executing it when it happens uh it never happens in the middle of a workday it always happens on a weekend on an evening you know and so we make sure that we are prepared for how do we do those things at any at any time of day um there's a lot that happens with media relations and that happens daily uh I am often talking with local reporters about any story um as well Raquel yesterday was uh working on in getting a reporter out here to film the goats in Civic Center Park right we do those stories every day so that we build those relationships uh so that there's trust there with the media um when we do have a great need then we need them to help us tell our story uh in our department we manage the mobile volunteer network as well so that's another piece of of safety and emergency communication um we're trying to work with police and fire to make sure that mvn can help um you know again whether it's a a fire or there's a tornado or how can mvnb on the ground uh helping make the worst days maybe at least a little easier for people um Chris Dan I just want to compliment the uh green and gold colors that you used even though it was not on brand it was on my brand wow I was curious why you actually deviated from the city's colors with the green green and gold those colors were for juneth right they're kind of the honor of the um the Pan African colors well good use good use of that and I think they're great colors for a lot of reasons including Jun te um I'm curious what the icons are under your sensory inclusive spaces I can't quite make out what they are I think hands and then trees and a it is it is later in the evening and so I have to do one of these when my when my eyes get tired um so we've got our sensory sensory Lounge has like um hand eye ear and a nose there in the yellow um so we had three we had three spaces at juneth where people could go the sensory Lounge was sensory Lounge was in the building so that was that was much quieter uh it was dark had had some fidget toys um the red is a the quieter Retreat that was if you're familiar with nor North River Hills it was up the hill toward the tennis courts so you could still hear and see everything it was just a just a tad quieter up there so that's a tree and a picnic bench and then um mvta brought a bus and they left the air conditioner on so you could have a so a cooling bus so that's a little icon of a bus y um so sensory inclusive spaces are one of our kind of new initiatives that we're working on our our engagement function is very much community-led which I'll talk about in a in a minute but um that was something that community members brought to us and said hey it would be really nice if events had a a place where we could kind of get away when we need to um and that is you know for us that aligns a lot with our safety and well-being um priority the other thing that we do when it comes to access for all abilities is focus highly on ADA compliance in our digital spaces um we have a lot to learn there it is very hard to keep up with those regulations and best practices so we try as best as we can um but website social media video they all have different different Notions on what you should do with Ada U compliance and so we we try to stay up on all of that as well um I was very tempted to just put everything we did under Community engagement but the truth is we do we do a lot with each of our strategic priorities I could go on and on about our engagement um function but um you know we we've talked before how we really Define community engagement as an active relationship between the community and the city we don't just want to tell the community here's what you need we want this to be community-led we want to listen we want to hear what the community needs and wants from their city and determine what we can do from there you know again it's a balance between desire and capacity uh in terms of what we actually can accomplish um but we we are committed to continuing those community-led strategies as long as we possibly can I mean that would be that would be our dream is to always just go where the community leads us um in right now in this early stage agage of Engagement we are focusing um on populations that are either historically or currently maybe not feeling as connected with the city so that we kind of can aim ourselves in a direction on where to start building relationships right and once we meet people and and go to meetings and hear then we start doing tactics that help to meet those needs but there are so many ways um not just in our engagement work group but in in all of our work groups where we connect with the city um broadcasting public meetings is a big way that we get into people's homes to connect local government with the community uh of course we do a lot of one-on-one meetings um Amber goes to very many uh Community committees 191 has an equity committee they have a 191 Community connections coordinators there's a know your neighbor group I couldn't she's probably sitting at home watching and yelling all of the meetings she goes to constantly I I I couldn't I couldn't bring I couldn't list them all um she goes to a lot and they're of course all in the evening right I mean she spends a lot of her time sitting and listening yep yep um she also um coordinates two groups of her own so she Amber coordinates Our Community Partners group where she brings in organizations from around Burnsville to to ask hey how can we work together on engagement initiatives uh and she coordinates a staff engagement Champions team to try to um kind of cascade engagement ideas and best practices throughout our organization I would say chissa um the community engagement function is a group of people um all of which we reallocated people their positions and FTE to focus on our Collective commitment to to engagement uh really to building relationships and creating connections Beyond how we typically have done business uh this is an area incredibly passionate about you all know that um uh and one where really it's our job uh to create great experiences in and amongst our community and part of that is rethinking how we do things organizationally uh how do we best identify the unique and diverse needs of this community as it continues to evolve uh what are the differences that make a difference how are we building competence not only amongst our community engagement staff but competence across all of our professional staff to best meet the needs of of an Ever growing diverse Community um uh but also really be committed to at the end of the day a similar type of evolution that Carissa has talked about in the communications function where just about 10 years ago uh she and our our director at the time were going around to functional areas of the organization saying hey folks remember us we want to help you tell your story and communicate with the community our organizational lens on community engagement is probably the most important staff operational initiative from my perspective right now Amber's work with our engagement Champions is all about how do we how do we centralize the the leadership and the intention organizationally for us to best connect with the community best meet their needs and create the type of experience where where our community wants to interact with City staff uh and and frankly we're meeting them on their doorstep wherever that might be um uh and that all of our functional departments kind of come around that strategic priority in their own unique way from police to fire to Administration uh uh to Public Works whoever it might be uh for us really to do this work together it's the only way that it's going to be effective for the people that that we get paid to serve uh and this area has been one that I'm I'm very proud of how we've efficent efficiently built it uh and um we're asking them to do an awful lot with a with increasing pressures both from our front counter perspective uh and just in general with the organization what we're hearing from the community um those are the areas that we need to pay particular attention to in this department to really figure out how do we bring our strategic priority in this area to life yep absolutely we are lucky enough to work with staff outside of our department who are um you know committed to this as well they just they may not know exactly what to do in these spaces right so that's where we try to help champion and and encourage Empower where we can um our current staff elections committee is a a great example of you know a group of Staff coming together and saying well how can we how can we make sure that people know how to vote when to vote what to do um you know and take away some of the perhaps fear someone might have as a first-time voter let them know that polling locations have changed so um we've put a a great emphasis and that is a again that's kind of cross- departmental right is its engagement and its Communications and it's multimedia and it's our city clerk staff and it there are a lot of groups that come together to make things like that happen well really and in the in the kind of the the traditional model of delivering local government Service uh the Mantra has been if the community reaches out to to to us how are we reaching right back how are we being responsive and frankly my challenge for staff has been turn that on its head uh at the end of the day how are we reaching out to the community to understand their needs to make connections to build relationships so that the delivery of City service can happen functionally effectively meeting their needs but but most importantly that we're connecting uh with the entirety of our community in meaningful ways uh to really think different about how we deliver service and that really starts with the work of Amber our team and building those relationships and thinking differently about how we how we operate um Amber also spends a lot of her time helping uh being a liaison to community and Legacy events um that is not a small amount of time either those are also evening meetings um but she you know kind of dutifully goes and tries to help those groups figure out how to bring more engagement there um our Communications function also does a lot in terms of event an initiative promotion that's all a part of Engagement is you know education um so it is promotion for our Legacy events or Department programs and events some some of our community partner initiatives it's writing Communications plans doing media relations Billboards posters Flyers social media print ads cable you name it and we We Do It um on top of all of that we are kind of you know getting into the space of Hosting some of our own events in our department and that is not something that communication's ever did before and now with the addition of our engagement function uh we try to do things a little bit differently so we we refer to them as engagement events um versus some of the other events that happen in the city and we try to um kind of tell ourselves that what we're trying to do is provide intentional opportunities to build community so things like juneth and pride um or Community conversations listening sessions those are very much they are less about um how many people did we get at the event and more about did people have meaningful conversations did they make meaningful connections while they were there um our hope is kind of to open the door to let the community know that they are welcome that they belong at the city um that they belong at all City activities right so that they can start coming to other things as well um I will tell you that I hope I mean I I think that these events are already starting to make a difference last last year was our first year doing juneth and pride this year is our second year um those were some of my my best days at work last year we hosting those events uh at juneth last year a woman I was talking with a woman who said I have lived in Burnsville for nearly 20 years and this is the first event I felt like I belong and I I it felt so good to be able to provide that for somebody who has been a part of this community for a very long time and just didn't feel right in the space and now felt a moment of of true Community for her um again I could go on about engagement all day but um our future initiatives um include you know continuing to understand diverse populations and we have a long ways to go we have our our own backgrounds that we come from as staff we need to make sure that we're understanding others um we want to plan for more Community listening opportunities to make sure that we're still moving in the right spaces and championing engagement throughout our organization because we know we know we can't do do it alone no matter how many staff you have you you can't do engagement alone it has to be it has to be an organizational lens um organizational culture um is is all about supporting staff for us so we do a lot of internal staff communication we want to make sure that staff have all the information that they need um because they are ambassadors in the community so we want to make sure that they're well prepared with you know messaging that is consistent and proactive and is in the correct tone and tenor and all of it um so we we try to make sure that we overc communicate for clarity when it comes to our staff uh we do a lot of writing proofing coaching for communications for all departments so uh even some something as simple as emails sometimes we have staff coming to us and saying can you just put some eyes on this because we want to make sure we get it right uh we want to make sure that we are making again making things as easy to support our staff as we can this also includes the the more traditional communication methods in order to tell our story get the word out about what initiatives are happening so we produce the bulletin four times a year each issue of the bulletin takes about six weeks so every time we finish an issue we about pick up the next one again uh we do the recreation times once a year we do the community guide every other year those those are very labor intensive Publications that we put out our multimedia staff are constantly working on video production whether it is um event promotion or recap talking about new initiatives doing recruitment we do a lot of uh staff training videos so can be you know just everyday things but we're we're spending several hours setting up cameras and tearing down cameras and miking everybody up uh and then of course our experienced staff are also doing customer service Lobby Management Facility reservations they accept payments um they're doing administrative support for the entire organization and again researching best practices about customer service things like that in addition to managing uh the mobile the mobile volunteer network we manage the rest of the city's um volunteer staff as well just like HR department has an emphasis on making sure that staff have great experiences we want to make sure that our volunteers have great experiences as well and we we try to make sure we do everything we can to make sure our volunteers feel just as much a part of our organization and as much of our community as possible uh Community vibrancy we spend a lot of time managing brand uh our new brand initiative hopes to manage some of that right to kind of bring us back to a consistent look and feel and and and all it and we know that we will always have to manage it no matter what that is always going to be something our department will have to do um it's everything from Lobby signage to permanent signage to a website to you know flyers and reports all of it um customer service standards writing guides design guides all of those things we've produced in our department in order to help staff uh get their message out we take photographs and videos at all kinds of events in order to show great images of our community it's corny but a picture is a thousand words right I mean that those images are Priceless when it comes to telling our story uh we also do live mob event coverage with our multimedia function so they take the truck and they go to City concerts and school events and um film special public meetings um they do community events that is a unique offering for a community that a lot of communities don't have right now and again we do it with dedicated staff who understand Burnsville in a way that that no one else could for us um our community gets gets a lot of live programming that I think a lot of communities don't have the opportunity to do um part of vibrancy is supporting initiatives from other departments in terms of promoting places and spaces that enhance our community so the Ice Center the golf course Parks Trails Recreation programming home energy Squad housing initiatives I mean you name it right all the good things that our organization does we have to get the word out somehow or those good things don't go anywhere um and so part of telling our story is is making sure that we understand and support all the things that are happening uh you know vibrancy I think often we Define internally as as economic development strategies and certainly we help support the economic development strategic plan that was developed a few years ago there's an entire marketing plan that goes with that um and that is our department does a lot of the executing for that marketing plan so um print digital web bulletin it is kind of all over the board on on helping with those tactics as well and building partnership with business oriented organizations um you know it's it's we talk with the CBB and the Chamber and several other organizations about how we can um help in those spaces where we can we maintain a pretty large digital infrastructure that I think um I didn't really consider to be infrastructure till I started putting this together and realized oh there's a there is a lot there um so we maintain a full service website a full service intrnet we are on six social media platforms we try to post twice a dayish um each platform like I said is very different in their format and what what's required uh we do probably two email blasts today Burnsville in brief is an online report that's produced 12 times a year the annual report focus on Burnsville several story Maps as you know a year um these are all digital platforms that we have to learn and and continue to learn the my Burnsville app and other Tech as it comes up of course we manage all the AV Equipment for the council chambers um cameras microphones lights speakers all of cable management all of it um comes through our multimedia function that used to be very much a direct to you just providing video function now it is very um interactive with the addition of zoom and and other sorts of things that are multimedia function um kind of manages of course our infrastructure is going to expand a little bit this summer with the addition of our community engagement vehicle that we're going to to take around and bring City Hall on the go um we also know that there will be many new communication and engagement platforms that come up in the next few years we I couldn't even imagine what those are now you know um sustainability for us is is thinking about how we can kind of make sure that some of these things can hold their own in the future so we talk a lot think a lot about language translation uh in our department uh it's it is something that is needed and something that we have to make sure we do right we don't want to do something that will um kind of cause us to go backward accidentally in our relationship building it is not as easy as putting things into Google translate right things go wrong when you do that um so we want to develop sound policy to make sure that that our organization is is doing things kind of consist consistently and professionally in one way uh and thinking about both capacity for for material translation but also uh environmentally we don't want to be printing things in multiple languages that that are environmentally unsustainable right um we have to sustain relationships with our cable franchise agreement that is a a you know a big part of um our budget certainly but also you know just the the city's um kind of overall funds maintaining our cable franchise we have to find a way we we are working toward finding a way to sustain our Public Access program in a way that is um relevant and relatable for our community Public Access is no longer the same as it once was you have very few people who come in and say Hey I want to sit down in your studio and film a video for myself um and put it on people have cameras in their pockets right and so they don't necessarily come to public access the same way they did but how could we make sure that we are providing equipment for those who need it or space for those who need it um and just opportunity for those who need it in a way that's relevant to today all right coming up on so can I ask you a quick follow up on that yeah so and this is something that I I think people generally forget about but the access to that equipment I mean could somebody come in and film a campaign video and then um you know edit it there on the spot with our equipment or would it be more of just utilizing the space taking the media home and then you know doing post production that way or and you don't have to dive down the rabbit hole but just kind of yeah and so and the answer I think I think and I was joking about the campaign I was going to say I think it gets a little different with the campaign I that was just a joke but um so things changed a little during covid so our so right now what we're offering is a little different than what we used to because because it we during Co we thought I don't know how we clean all this equipment all the time if people borrow it but yeah I mean currently with our current setup people could um people can come and use the physical Studio or they can borrow equipment they can edit you know right there um you know in our spaces we don't get that many people doing it anymore and so that's part of it too is well what is our return on investment for having and maintaining all of this equipment that maybe people don't need but maybe they need maybe they need something else and we just haven't we don't we haven't heard from the community yet what that is right um but yes right now that is that is the intention is that someone could come in and do start to finish video production y thank you uh what is important to us is is really it is this simple for us we want to ensure that every member of the community feels welcome and we want to be a partner when it comes to finding Solutions we we don't want to be the department that just makes things pretty you know we believe we have much more value to our organization than that um and we want to make sure we are looking out for the community as much as we can our challenges are probably similar and yet unique um you know to other departments we have a number of of uh increases for our time that is a a difficulty uh technology changes very rapidly that is hard for us to keep up on um you know really what what a lot of this boils down to is kind of maintaining some of the consistent brand standards to help make sure that we are doing everything uh in the best way we can right and and I think unfortunately things that appear very simple um take a lot of our time but because they appear simple right it can kind of increase some of those pressures and well can you just can you just quick do this um so we we put up the picture of our of our um goldfish post because it is one of those examples of something that we thought was very innocuous I we we really look at each and every word of a social media post it is not the same as when I post on my own private social media accounts and I can just write it and be done with it we we look at every word and every picture very carefully this one we thought cute done post it uh and this one was a week and a half or two weeks of our time as we fielded you know International media calls about it so you just you never quite know um we say we are a centralized Communications Department but the truth of the matter is that we we are not we don't have the capacity to be a centralized Communications Department we try very hard to be as centralized as we can um there is more we could do organizationally with our voice with our look we could make sure that things are more consistent if we had the capacity aspirationally we just we want to just continue to do right by this organization by this community and we want to be leaders in our spaces we want to make sure that other um City staff have the tools that they need to do communication well without you know kind of worrying about if they're doing it well um and we want we want the chance to be more strategic and proactive we want to make sure that we're not just reacting to things um and we you know kind of want to see what's coming before it hits a square on a little bit that's that would be my dream right so uh Greg mentioned it right in the beginning but um this kind of you know rums up our what the organizational analysis said for our department it calls for us to gain three and a half staff that are spread across all three of our work groups um and we've kind of talked about it a little bit throughout but you know the addition is going to be it would be very helpful for us to relieve some of that pressure to take some of those backlogged projects off of our plates actually get them moving forward um but it mostly kind of stops the bleed right it doesn't necessarily help us um reach those aspirations that I just talked about it it helps relieve some of the the stuff that's piling up so um that is that is all I had I appreciate um appreciate your time great so one of the things that I'm hearing from you as we go forward is that the increase in evening meetings is creating pressures and challenges absolutely and um there's changing technology that you have to be on top of MH uh you're also talking about different social media platform and trying to meet the different needs of the different us um groups that uh we're communicating to and so you're also wanting to make sure that uh uh you have staff uh for this new brand element that we're working through to look at the city brand we our current Communications staff are going to you know sit on the the core team for that project our hope is to make sure that that the outcomes of that project make it easier on all staff um so that we the same we're not yep so we're not always having to change items for people okay so with all of these challenges and your aspirations uh to be a regional leader in community engagement what you're saying to us is that you need three um you need to go from 11 to 14 and a half so you need three more FTE uh to accomplish what you want to accomplish with regard to the aspirations of the communications and Community engagement Division I think it helps us it helps us get there I don't think three and a half will help us suddenly you know standing a national conference right it certainly gets us much much more down the path absolutely okay oh I got to go change this for T so next thank you Communications [Music] F next is police chief T fors get it pulled up here and right excellent so I'm try to page through these now do this y right I have it friends and other I might need you to um I might need you to so uh well first of all just want to say thank you for the opportunity to be here to just have a chance to share with you and the community a little bit more about who we are uh how we serve Burnsville the different challenges and changes that we're experiencing it it's really I do uh really serve with honor as the police chief I'm I'm very grateful for this opportunity and I'm really proud of our police officers the women and men and from sworn to civilian staff that come in and every day and provide excellent service to our community so and we'll talk a little bit about who we are how our services have changed there's been a lot of changes there's been a lot of challenges in policing um over the years and but some key things which I think are really important have remained consistent and I want to talk a little bit about those because those really get into our priorities and our values and you know what we want to do who we are is we want to provide the highest level of Public Safety service that we can to our community that's at the core of what we do and how we do that really is values driven we are focused on our mission our core values procedural Justice how we treat people the the dignity and sanctity of people's lives right so with everything that's changing in law enforcement that has changed we hold to the things that we can control and those are the things that we control and when we do that we do safety and we do safety for our residents we do safety for businesses visitors and we do officer safety so all of that falls into that uh bucket there and then when we do that we also align with the city's priorities and organizational values Innovation collaboration Excellence so I tell our teams focus on the work that we do what we're grounded in and we're going to meet the expectations of the city as well and and that really helped us when we think about the pandemic going through the pandemic all the changes there uh legislative changes historic changes that we saw uh Narrative of defunding police thankfully we never had that here our community really rallied around us the council very much supported us and so but those things that happen in a profession really impact the actual day-to-day operations uh that we were doing so uh we're very grateful to just sort of stay close to those um things that we can control a little bit more about who we are I can't put an organizational chart on here with all of our faces because we would take up the entire screen we're the largest Department in the city so we have 91 uh total employees 75 sworn and then the rest are civilian staff and when you look at this graph just you can kind of see that main bucket there in the beginning so we have operations we have Administration and we have support services and that's spread across uh our whole um department but the bulk of what we do is really in operations so you see our officers our Patrol ision is in there that's our 247 365 emergency response so our investigators are also in there Behavioral Health all of our Specialties so Behavioral Health Community engagement our school resource officers and the 20 plus Specialties that we have with um that are additional duties that our officers um participate in which could be crime scene and um our SWAT team and honor guard and all those services that we provide so those fall in that big bucket um obviously they they spread between all of our um department or all of our divisions but we have also an administrative Division and when you look at that that's really about our Emergency Management how we do um safety in the schools active shooter reunifications um Professional Standards so all of our policies all of our licensing all of our mandates people policy training supervision discipline all that stuff of a really sound organization fall under that uh piece of of that administra Division and then Support Services who are primarily our non sworn staff but are really the backbone of the work that we do so they're doing all behind the scenes work so as officers are working on cases and cases are coming through they're getting things sent electronically to County attorneys and City attorneys and tickets and data and auditing so they are really um doing all that they are also our um front-facing public experience um Folks at our reception so they're providing a service to the community and so all of these Services um run across all of our divisions and of course our leadership team and um just overseeing the executive team seeing everything happen on that larger picture um that's sort of who we are you know so we're we're a big department and we're full service department so we take pride in the services that we give to the community because we can process our own crime scenes and and there's confidence in me as a chief knowing we're doing it uniquely Burnsville to some of the ways like we we've talked about here we have our own staff providing these Services we don't necessarily have to call on other cities to come in and help us for specific things now we will for Mutual Aid and things like that but overall we can run our operations and uh they do excellent job at it and but these things are all above and beyond their everyday responsibilities so but it provides professional development so there's a lot of important U reasons why we do the things that we do as to who we are so so with today's um badging how many sworn officers total do we have so we are with those ones that we just um badged in today we are up to we'll be up to our 75 sworn uh we're down um a Community Service Officer but we have come huge strides over the last two years because if you remember last year you were at a similar badging ceremony where we had six officers and it takes months to train our officers getting them on board and doing the onboarding process months of training and fi training and then for them to get through probation and and you know be on their own so it's a very long process and tell the community what that means Chief because it is very important for the community uh to understand that even when you badge them there is a long process of on boarding so that they can be out there yeah so when they come from you know they have for first of all we require a four-year degree so sometimes they're coming up through our community service officer ranks so we're helping them complete their four-year degrees and then um getting them onboarded other times they come to us laterally from another agency and then sometimes they come right out of school or they come from a career change we've had many people come in a career change but when they come on board they have the licensing requirements that the state requires that they have so they have the basic training they need to have but again how we do it in Burnsville that's different than every other agency you know across the state everyone does it different and we take a lot of Pride and high standards and the training and the professionalism that we have in our department so when they come on we do a two-e onboarding Academy just to get them kind of reacquainted back to this is how we do it in Burnsville they meet with me they spend time with me I talk to them about our culture our values our mission the things that are important to us I talk about our badge how that's represents the trust that we have with the community and the importance of that and just how every interaction we have builds trust or breaks trust with the community so they they hear this from me and they um our staff train in the folks during the onboarding so this Academy goes on and they meet our use of force instructors so then we train them to the way that we do deescalation we train them to the way of our policies we train them to the way of how we're going to interact with people and so it's two weeks of that and then they go into three four months of field training so depending on how long um you know how they're doing in field training they have a trainer that starts out in the beginning where they're working and learning just learning the job and then each phase that they go through after a month's time they go to another field trainer so they go to a different time in the city it maybe a different area of the city so they can learn everything that's going on and then they have to perform a little bit more each time as they go through this process and eventually they get to where they're on their own and they have to be calling on their other partners that are there for them not the person that is their field trainer so it really is it's meant to we want them to succeed so we are not an agency that is like we're trying to find everything wrong with someone and kick them out of the program this is an investment we want people to come here we want people to stay here and so um it's a that's a long process and then if they can get through that then they have a probationary period of another year and then they just begin all the other training that we do just day-to-day to U meet our licensing mandates so post mandates use of force training deescalation autism training all the mandates that we have they're doing that all the time and then they're just getting to know understanding meeting other staff what do we do for Community engagement you know what what are the things that are important to us and again I tell them you focus on the mission you focus on the values and you're going to make the right decisions and you're going to do the right thing and we're not going to have a problem you go outside the bounds then we're going to have a problem and we're going to deal with it and because these are humans and we make mistakes people have bad days and um but then we have to be accountable to that and we have to do the right thing and so um transparent about the process and again want them to be successful yeah good and then I'll just briefly talk about this again with our mission and values this is part of our strategic plan which I'll talk about in just a minute but when I came on as Chief this was something people wanted to do you know there was a desire to where are we going you know what are what are the next steps a new Chief we want a fresh start you know where are we going this way and so when we started look at our strategic planning process we said what grounds us it's our mission it's our core values so this is the basis for how we did that work and then when we did that in 2019 again it was really what I was hearing from staff is we want to know where we're going we want to make sure that we're doing the right things for the community we're doing the right things for the council we're doing the right things you know across the board and so every division in our department was represented when we did the con uh when we did the strategic planning process so we had a consultant come on board and help us took longer than we thought because of covid so we had to go to you know some on um remote work to get that done but everyone was able to provide feedback either by surveys or focus groups or through their teams and what emerged you can see here is our our strategic priorities emerged Community engagement staff Wellness scheduling and Staffing and then training and development and if you look at those and you think about them there are ways that all of those interact with the council strategic priorities and so when looking at this I'm really grateful that we have this opportunity to talk about Staffing and scheduling because that was one of the biggest things that came out of our staffing out of our PD strategic priority planning was we don't have enough people to do the work that we're doing so what what are we expected to do what can we do here's what we want to do we have people that really want to provide excellent service but they're burned out we're we can't do it we're going call to call we don't have the time to do some of those things so I that was something i' pushed for since I became Chief is I want us to do a staffing analysis um specifically for the police department and I was grateful for city manager Lindberg and the council to say we're going to look at this across the entire agency and I know our staff is very grateful as well to know that these conversations are happening so we just really istically know what we're dealing with and where can we go from here so what's changed I think that's a presentation in it's of itself when it comes to the placing world right now and and really across our organization but the job we did 25 years ago when I came on 27 years ago it's not the same job that it is today it's not going to be the same job in six months and it's not you know five 10 20 years down the road it's going to continue to evolve and change and that's good it's good to have change in law enforcement ment in any profession it's good to have changed and we're adaptable and we can overcome and we've been doing that so I think the the things that have changed is the complexities of calls the dangers that there are in calls so the trauma not just the trauma of our community which is great and we see that with the behavioral health unit and is why we launched the behavioral health unit because there was so much um so many calls uh those calls are trip and we have to reach out to the community in different ways and so we just said we're going to do it we didn't have any staff to do it but we said we're going to take some people rob peter to PayPal and we're going to go try to do this and it's been an amazing program and we are seeing a lot of of success with that um but the trauma of our community is one thing the trauma that police officers experience more trauma than ever before I'll say that's what's changed because there's more calls than ever before it's more violent um people are carrying more weapons people have more drugs there's more disrespect for police and in many ways police have become responsible for other system failures that happen across Society because we're the only 247 365 operation that when on your worst day and everything has gone wrong and I don't know who to call I call 911 and we show up and so I'm sorry there we go sorry about that um so those things become increasingly um dangerous and as those failures happen that also falls on police so we're going we're trying to respond we're trying to do what we can do um and again mistakes can happen and we have to be accountable to that but we're also not perfect these are not robots these are human beings that we're dealing with so there's unrealistic expectations in some cases as to what uh police should be responsible for and we're working differently in that way now with the behavioral health unit and we are adapting and pivoting and saying there's a time in place for law enforcement to be here there's a time in place where law enforcement maybe doesn't have to be the first one on the scene and so we're working with social workers I found out we're going to be getting a full-time social worker and a half so we're going to be adding that to our Behavior Health Unit so I'm very excited about that and potential for more um as we as they get into looking at what we're doing so and then you know Recruitment and Retention back when I was applying for jobs 200 people app for one job today 30 50 maybe we're still getting good people it's harder to keep people in the profession for their entire career because uh people think why would I want to do that job again what who wants to do that who wants to put their life on the line every day and um you know have your freedoms possibly taken away your family be bered in the media and other things like that it sometimes it isn't as appealing so we have to to go out and be in the community and show people you know this is who we are um it's an honorable profession and um but it takes work and it takes people to do that so can I ask a quick question Vince Chief how much time I guess is dedicated now or would need to be dedicated with you know cell phones and video cameras in everybody's pockets and you know the tendency for sometimes only part of the story to be told you know if if if police show up and you know I think we kind of ran into this just recently on a on a Case um where we only got part of the story which then can get put out to YouTube or different social media channels where we have to react and and work with Communications and and sometimes I would say even defend ourselves because you know this much happened but this much got put out on social media right uh we spend enormous amounts of time on that but what I'll say is with the body cameras so so you know first in the state second in the country to Institute the body camera years ago and that was because officers wanted to have the full story but it takes time to go through every single video and sort of look at you know look at it from every angle and figure that out and that is common we get more and more and I will say we probably um over the last couple years there's been more and more um complaints allegations filming here's half the story and it just requires us to sit and look at it so yes that takes a lot of time we understand that that um people have questions about what we do and uh so I I understand that and I I would say that the majority of the time there is not an issue there it is um that officers are doing what they're supposed to do and so it yes it it it is an increase in time and then just investigations with cell phones and all of those other things take a lot more time because everybody's basically carrying around a computer and you can't just grab that and take everybody's information out of it so there's that part of Electronics too thank you I think one of the Hallmarks sorry I think one of the Hallmarks of our police department and particularly the women and men who make up our Police Department uh goes back to the values that that Tanya started this presentation with at the end of the day um in my professional career um I I haven't worked with a a group who is as committed to what matters to them what matters to the community and and is as unified uh around those values and really living them out um uh really defining how we do things around here what is the what is the culture um and I believe that that strength helps us to deal with the the pressures of our current reality uh everyone has a cell phone videos and law enforcement are just part of the way that that Service delivery in this Department uh happens um but as we anchor ourselves back to what matters to us and our staff are committed to those things I think that provides us with the real opportunity to be unique uniquely Burnville to continue to do policing in a in a community oriented way that is very specific to to who you who we are and what we know that our our community needs um uh we won't always get it right uh but that that that core commitment to to to what matters really is I think it's quite remarkable of this department and frankly the the leadership that's taken us to this place um I think it makes us not only unique it gives us a competitive advantage and a very difficult Market to find the right people the right talent to continue to do the work um uh but it also means that we need to we need to take care of the department uh Wellness individual and team wellness and well-being in this area is is just critically important as as many of you have have talked about um that will be what continues to allow us to to Really find and retain the right people who are committed to those values to to deliver that that service to the community and what is inarguably one of the hardest jobs out there and part of that is telling our story too and we have to get better at telling our story and that's where we reach out to Communications and Community engagement because that's another thing I heard from our officers when we did the strategic planning process was we want people to know us we want to be out in the community we want to tell them our story you know these are moms and dads and husbands and wives and people that have cancer and have problems in their family they're normal human beings and so to kind of get people to know us right what's behind the badge and I think that's um part of that as well so we also have to get better at that it's the time to do those things I think that's also reflected of the culture that Tanya's built along with her leadership team and and the folks who make the department up and um family is a is a big aspect of what the department does we saw that today in the badging ceremony right that uh the the sacrifice that that these particular public servants are making uh has a has a unique impact on on their friends and family the people that they leave at home when they come to serve the community um and again I think that gets to to our values and the type of culture we're trying to create in order to be uniquely human in in what is a increasingly complex profession um and a dynamic environment where where Community needs are changing okay Dan Keyon from preschool into going into kindergarten grade school and they had a little ceremony I don't think we had that when I was that young but um the uh the class was um probably 15 16 maybe kids and uh part of the whole ceremony was what do you want to be when you grow up and uh there were some real diverse answers but but I would say close to half the class and probably was half the class uh answered I'm sorry BJ they wanted to be police officers really um and and it was they had like a sign and you know police officer or you know uh doctor or lawyer or accountant or you know a um whatever right to all kinds of professions like scientists or whatever and uh but I at least 50% all said I want to be a police officer when I grew up and I thought that was really cool it's a Kinder Care uh in Burnsville and uh great group of kids and and it was really I think you know there was I kind of felt there was a message there these kids really are aspired ing they look at police officers as Heroes and uh obviously that's a good thing right so I love that and you know we know that those connections at the most younger ages to have that connection with police is really important and can kind of break down those barriers and make you know because it's it can be stressful for for people to you know approach somebody in uniform and we have our blue in the school program where we have officers that work in areas is go into the schools to try to you know have those relationships with those kids because it starts very young and we want to again let you know offer that opportunity that they can get to know us as just a human being so um yeah that's cool so you might have to wait about eight yeah it's going to I don't know if I'll still be here I've already been here 27 years so I might not and then they'll be signing up kayen will graduate from college he wants to be a police officer I'm going to keep on that well all right I know some people so there um so um and then just lastly on that from before was just you know our training mandates and the things we have to report on that all has changed too so with legis legislative changes we have to do more reporting more training um and so that puts pressure on staff and but again we we try to adapt and overcome that as much as we can just to give you an idea on average calls for service so this graph uh kind you know parses this out in um decades and we what we tried to do here was remove traffic stops because that can skew and just really look at more apples to apples um comparisons here but you can see that calls for service are increasing and uh you know we're only into 2022 when we already have quite a few more calls as as they compare over the decades and what that means is officers are then going to more calls so they have shorter time between calls that means more cases are likely needing to be investigated that means more cases are likely being charged more Court testimony more times officers uh need to be responding in um for scenes more trauma more trauma on scenes and less time for the brain and the body to recover to recharge to have that time they got to go from zero to 60 in a second or less and then they're doing that you know more consistently as we see more calls coming so it's less time to innovate less time to use their strengths when they're doing that and less time just being proactive getting after you know going into a neighborhood stopping at a park doing traffic safety parking complaints you all know how many complaints we get about all of these things and they just simply cannot get to everything um because it's done in discretionary time which there there's just not enough so and then that just puts you know and that's our operations in those ways but that puts pressure on every division across the whole organization because when there's more of that that means our support staff has to be doing more it's more for leadership to be looking at how are we managing all this how are we managing everyone's stress how are we managing these calls we don't have enough people where are we going to take them from so um just to kind of give you that sort of those average calls for service do continue to increase and then this is um our so weapons Trends Over The Last 5 Years uh looking at this you know we have to we deal with a lot of different weapons and we have to assume that every weapon that uh they encounter on a call for service is a real firearm until they can prove otherwise so until a scene is secure and they can really check that and figure out what that is so as you see here there's there's firearms in red but then there's also you know blunt objects knives uh those weapons are tracked here and then um other replica Firearms so BB guns toy guns Airsoft guns things that sometimes look very much like real weapons and could be so officers have to assume that that's a deadly weapon and uh that could kill me or someone else and so that just raises up a whole level of you know what that call um could become and and so those calls also when possible really require if you can disengage use time and distance and cover and figure out like what the situation is because that can rapidly change in a really quick second and we know that and what's interesting about this chart here as we look at Red is real Firearms so when you look at that you can see already in 2022 we are dealing with more real firearms on calls than all of 2017 so at this pace we'll continue and have doubled just real Firearms not to mention all the other types of weapons that we're dealing with so that's concerning to me and really we're just moving into the summer months which get especially busy there's more people out and um more people have weapons so things are getting increasingly dangerous in in that Realm in doing your analysis because I'm looking at 2020 and Firearms my God and know it's doing covid and then you look at 21 yep the increases a lot of increases and Co sometimes that year we sometimes kind of go okay that's a interesting year and we won't really know the impacts of that as we go along but you can see even in the next year in 2021 then it also rose up and I I am sure that we're going to be Beyond where we are already by the time we get to the end of 2022 so what is that attributed to I mean you go from is that doing FL the um George Floyd also is part of all of that too I mean all of the different factors that come into we would really have to dive into like the details of these specific reports to go okay what in 20 I mean more people were not working or you know more people were out and about maybe outside than inside you know there could have been a lot of factor but I think we see a lot of different spikes in Co years on on some things but um it's something to watch so it's something you know Firearms are always something we're very concerned about of course but this is something to watch and see how we develop here over 2022 if we do in fact double where we're going uh in the coming years because that means we need more we need more officers to make sure that those scenes are safe and we've had times where we have teams of people two different areas dealing with calls where there's weapons whether that's a knife or a fight firearm or whatever and that takes our resources up right away so then we use Mutual Aid or other things but um again those are if we can we want to slow those cases down and figure out do we have to approach this situation what does that look like so we're doing our work differently we're not saying we're not going to respond but we may do things very differently so that's part of all of the changes that have happened and how we're looking at this because of the liabilities and the different things that happen great and then just I wanted to talk a little bit about you know some things that make us unique because we can compare a lot of things and sometimes you can't get the Apples to Apples comparisons and what we do here in Burnsville um I think is unique in a lot of different ways and I talked about it before but high standards we really have high standards and we really focus on being Community orientated and how do we get into the community how do we do our scheduling so officers are working the same areas how do we connect them with their block captains how do we make sure we're at night to unite how do we do the things um that are going to build that trust and with our community so and again Mission values driven that is the main part of who we are because again if we do that to me it's very simple if we're working together to make a difference through excellence and policing we focus on our core values of honor integrity courage knowledge and excellence in every interaction you have with the community we're going to be doing the right things now we can't do that in every instance right away because it could be a dangerous situation but but when it's under control then we say you know what we there is time we're going to treat people with respect we're going to listen to what they have to say we're going to make Fair decisions we're going to explain our actions people have a right to know what's going on and so that's where it's like okay we do what we have to do and then we can slow down and say okay now let's explain why we're doing the things that we're doing so we're very Mission driven on those and and just making sure we're um wrapping around those values and then of course our Behavioral Health Unit team really unique to us and because each Community is different we are doing amazing things for our community because I really believe that we're preventing things so we can't measure everything that doesn't happen but I know I'm confident that from the stories I've heard from families and the emails or the calls that I get that people's lives are changed by the work that is being done in behavioral health unit and so I'm so proud of the work that Sergeant Max and officer Erica are doing and then you know they're supported too by officers and it it's a lot of teamwork but that has really uh made a huge difference and when Chrissa talked about you know how do we engage in the community we did an event where families could come out and meet Behavioral Health Team and just because the families sometimes they're just hurting so much because they're dealing with someone in their family that's just for 20 years had this going on and then they had this experience with our Behavioral Health team and they say I saw my brother in a different way and that is so impactful and I I just feel like that's unique to us and uh I'm really proud proud of that work uh I'll also mention we didn't add any more staff to do that so uh they are again they came from Patrol so that we could do that so we're taking kind of from operations to get into these other things uh that we really want to do and they want to do they want to make that difference in the community so but it's human capital intensive it's a lot of time where you're really slowing down you're working with the social workers and just figuring out I mean these things could go on for hours and hours especially if you have a critical incident or you have someone with a weapon the days of rushing in and saying we're going to go do this and either someone getting hurt or or injured or killed or a police officer getting hurt or injured or killed that's not how we do business and but ours and hours of time these things can take so and then we're just you know we're collaborative we work with all of our City Partners on all of this work we couldn't do it without them so anything that we need they're helping us with all the time whether it's it Carissa's group BJ and I work very closely together of course so um we need each other and I think that's really unique we don't I don't hear about that from some of my colleagues or in different cities I think and ever since I started here it's been like that and that's why I love Burnsville and why I've stayed here this long is because of those relationships otherwise it's just really hard to get things done so um I appreciate that and then a little bit talking about uh how we align with the council's Strategic priorities you know again safety is our core function so you know working with BJ um but at the end of the day we need to protect life we need to protect property people's Liberties and um you know take care of our community so we want to ensure their safety and well-being and that's that's the core of what we do and I think we do that very well with the resources that we have when I think about Community engagement Community vibrancy organizational culture those to me are all about building relationships building that trust investing in our staff and supporting them so that they are well so they can go out and have positive connections with the community so having people healthy more likely going to have healthy positive interactions with our community when we have people that are stressed out burned out tired sleep deprived you know angry because whatever they saw in the media then they we don't want to have that have them have a bad day at work we can't afford to have that happen and so really trying to look at um how do we do those things to support staff and then other things like Citizens Academy and the behavioral health unit team and those senior safety camps you know working with Carissa and all of our groups to get that done sustainability really being again good stewards of our resources not only now but in the future and to me that's about including our staff because it's building that resilience for years to come so that they have lasting health and then building a department that people want to come to in 15 years when they're out of preschool and they're ready to ready to get here so we want to build that for the future and then infrastructure really providing protection of City infrastructure you know that's our job so what are our city assets what are the things we need to be concerned about knowing where those things are at working with Ryan to get that done and you know working across the board so at the end of the day our priorities when I think about our mission and values and the city's organizational values all of these things um are woven in with the council strategic priorities and it's all about creating those great experiences for our community and then to accomplish that we need to be making sure that we have enough staff and healthy and engaged staff so what's important to us safety is important to us of course so we want to be prepared we want to make sure uh our officers have the tools and equipment and the things that they need to provide the best service possible to the community and so want to be prepared again Mission core values I'll say it a 100 times you know that's what's important to us and you'll hear it from from our officers Wellness has been huge over the last 3 years we really looked at how can we be better for our people 25 years ago no one cared if you went to a call and you saw whatever you saw it was just go to the next call and you just figure it out now we know that's not the way to do it and um so we have Wellness providers we have people that will help our staff confidentially and we want them to get the help that they need and to talk about this stuff just like we want people in the community to do it we want to take the stigma out of all of this people just go and talk and I hear people in our hallways I'm going to go talk to Marie this is our Wellness provider I you know I had a bad day and we have a peer support team so we're really uh focusing on that staff Wellness it was one of the big things in our strategic priorities so everything that we do we try to we try to come back to like that's our foundation and and that's what we want to focus on so because people can get burned out then they're going to disengage they're going to leave the profession and we have really good people that I want to be resilient and stay in the profession and provide good service and then we want to understand what the community expects from us we think we know what the community wants what they expect and maybe to some degree we do but our population is changing our community is changing what do people want from us and so I know the officers really want to know what do they want because we're just kind of guessing sometimes and I think we have good experiences but there's more that we can do and again maybe meet people where they're at more so than them having Happ to come to us and sort of taking that mystery out of of who we are so we just have this everchanging community and it really requires a lot of attention so that's important to us we want to make sure that we're doing those things that we're living those values we're focusing on the missions and we're doing what the council expects us to do too that's really important to our teams and it was something that came out in our planning process as well so and of course training Professional Standards making sure we're meeting our mandates and doing all the things that we're required to do uh because there's a lot of liability in public safety so and then I want I wanted to talk a little bit about our staffing minimums as I was thinking about so staff so our staffing minimums you can see here there's different uh minimum amount of officers that we need to be working at certain times of the day that we think can manage you know what happens with all our our calls for service so that's important to us and the the tricky part with minimums is you know there's this and then there's also vacations there's sick time there's FMLA we have people having babies we have Dads going out on paternity leave like never before which is wonderful dads never used to take 12 weeks of you know paternity leave so you know they're gone for long periods of time which is good and we want them to go and we want them to have this time but then we between that and training and injuries you get down to like you're almost always running at a minimum and when I looked at this I went back to look at our historical data like we only have historical data back to 2012 but remember I've worked here for 27 years so I was remembering at least okay conservatively these have been our staffing minimums for 20 years and we so we have not changed that in all of this time even though calls for service and these things are going up um there was a time for six months we tried to increase this number by one in our in a busy time of 11: to 9:00 p.m. and after 6 months it was like we can't do this because we can never get time off and we can never do anything so you're trying to balance safety who how many officers do we need to to operate and respond to 911 emergencies to keeping them healthy and making sure they have time off or dealing with you know life that happens to uh everyone so while all those complexities and the calls happen more more expectations we are at the same number of minimum so it's something that we really have to look at because of all the things I talked about before with what's increasing so when we need to slow things down that takes people that can almost take a whole shift sometimes if you have a major incident your whole shift is there dealing with it and we're calling people in and we're good at that we're good at crisis management we get it done they're amazing when they're at their best sometimes when it's a crisis and we have partners that come and help us but this is something we really um need to take a deep look at because not changing Staffing minimums for over 20 years is it's with everything going on it's a concern Adam here am I reading that timeline right that's 900 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. is when we have um the the most officers on duty on patrol right Fridays and Saturdays right and three one till really about one till um not sure when but is is the lightest right like middle of the day type of thing yeah so from like 3: in the morning 3: to 7:00 there's 4 and then from um 7 to 11: there's 4 so kind of that section is yeah three to so we we try to look at you know when are the most busiest times and that's how how these were created but what I can tell you is that these haven't been looked at in kind of like heat maps and figuring out like when are our busy times you know since this you know for years yeah so I think it it's going to require some more sure time U so it essentially reflects I suppose if there was a a major sort of major shift in in activity it probably would have forced to change but um this is sort of a reflection of where the call volume is today right and has been and maybe traditionally is right thank you I think I would I would add one point to that council member Keeley and that is the most striking reality of any conversation about minimums in the in the PD for me is the fact that there's been no change in 20 years um uh that you just saw T just talked through just the increase in call volume uh we've talked about the complexity of of certainly mental health issues um uh as it relates to that call volume um and this is part of what we want to get a better understanding of through uh a a more detailed Staffing analysis of the PD right what what should this look like based on what we say is important to us uh the the our strategic priorities the Department's values what we know the community needs and what does that mean for a longer term Staffing model um there's some complexities there that we don't know that we have all the answers to right now um but 20 years is a long time given the other change that we've seen sometimes there's ways you can deploy certain things in a different way and so that's what we need to really take a dive and look at it and go okay what do we what are we doing with the staff that we have um sometimes working different schedules you know so there's a lot of things that we really have to look at and not having looked at it for this many years you know we need to do that so follow M um I believe your Staffing recommendation is um uh or from the Staffing report is eight is that correct eight fulltime have you it's 11.5 over five for 2023 yeah yeah for 2023 like if you were to layer on eight more officers how would that because it's hard to say eight officers okay you got seven days a week at 24 hours a day so it it it may get absorbed into the chart and have very little incremental increase in any one number right or day and that's why I say it it's probably not going to have a huge impact because we're where officers would end up of these eight officers are not all going to end up in this exact spot right so and even if they did we still couldn't make the impact um that we want to that's why we have to look at how many staff will we have in 20123 and then what can we do to look at what we're doing is there a different way to do it how do we deploy our resources are there different schedules how do we balance out the need for all of these things we're responsible for with keeping having people have time off in a way to recharge so that requires someone more analytical to me than me to figure that out and really look at the entire operations and that's what I'm working on sure and I I remember in the previous budget presentation you had a fairly significant number or was presented as a sign fairly significant number of you know when we're talking about overtime and when you have these this constant call volume and you're you still have the same number of people right trying to manage those call volumes um it forces overtime and then there's so many other reasons why overtime comes into play with training and special events and all that stuff they just keep piling on and piling on and piling on right I think that historical call volume was really a good chart um to show really historically you know where it's going um and uh and then of course balanced against the same staff since 2006 sorry 10 and a half less full-time equivalents compared to 2006 right so during the time that the call volume was going up you ended up losing staff and it hasn't been backfilled the other thing is is this staff needs supervision so we have to have at least one supervisor on control shift you know 24/7 365 so as it is now you you have one Sergeant on for 12 hours another sergeant on for 12 hours in a lot of cases and sometimes you'll have overlap but we have eight Patrol sergeants so just enough to manage the schedule so we have one that's injured if we have one that's out uh that is really um a lot of overtime that the other sergeants have to cover and then also they get caught up in having to sometimes times take calls so then they're not doing the things we need them to do which is being on calls supervising coaching going to where the Big scenes are they might get involved and we don't that's not their role either so there's there's that as well so council member key uh Bethany was just able to pull up the slide from the April organizational analysis discussion with the council which is on our budget Landing page in list form uh just for the view viewing audience but the statistic that the slide calls out is um there's been a 50% increase 50 50% increase in in PD over time since 2013 um and really over a 5year period of time it's about a 10% year-over-year increase increase yeah just so keeps piling on it's to to your point even earlier tonight it's significant yeah yeah yeah too too high cuz it's it equates to uh burnout factor that is very directly correlated right yeah so the challenges we've been talking about some of them here again we can't measure what doesn't happen so we know there's good work that we're doing that we are preventing things um not everything's a data point but what I'll tell you is lacking is our resources right to support the demand what I've been talking about tonight our facility space and functionality now and in the future also uh a challenge which is going to be a challenge for us but the biggest things right now calls for service are increasing the complexities and the dangers of the calls are increasing weapons calls are increasing mental health calls are increasing crisis calls trauma the officers are experiencing are increasing people leaving the profession are increasing Community expectations increasing liabilities increasing training demands increasing report requirements mandates all increasing staffing has not not increased minimums have not increased over time's increasing so we um are off balance here so we have to write the ship and um think about how we can continue to write it in future years so lot a lot of a lot of changes and a lot of challenges and uh everybody's you know it's teamwork and you're working hard to do it but there's a level of burnout factor and I can see it in people and I can feel it when I'm talking to people and so and I I know that is across you know the organization in different ways and everybody has a lot of responsibility so I it's not lost on me that my partners here also have needs you know for Staffing and things like that too but those are the challenges that you know we are experiencing right now and then just as we move ahead you know we want to keep the relationship strong that we have with the community I think it's special relationship and again we always are feeling very supported by the community we want to make sure we have those strategies in place so we can recruit people so that we can develop people that we can success succession plan so we have people that want to become leaders in the organization and hold on to the values and continue on those Traditions that we have here and we just really need the capacity to do that so and we also have to make sure we're evaluating ourselves and we're looking at you know our performance and our outcomes and our we meeting the community needs or what else do we need to do and we need to be uh looking at U that with the Staffing analysis too what are the things we're trying to accomplish and then really investing in Staffing and in the community that's what's going to keep you know the city safe and um all of us safe now and in the future so a lot of what I've already said that's what we're looking for and um I just think you know the time has come to to think about how we're funding you know the police department this is the uh slide that kind of council member key that you mentioned so this was initially 91 to 102 uh over the 5year period I'm asking what I'll be asking for is eight full-time staff uh that will be sworn staff I can't really even get into funding civilian staff or thinking about putting anyone there but it will have more pressure on them so down the road we're going to need to look at how can we uh support support staff and Leadership staff at at our level uh you know our Command Staff we need help too to be able to run run the organization with all of the different changes that have gone on so really be looking at those eight staff and um yeah just hopefully really hopefully really um getting after Community engagement Behavioral Health those Patrol Those operational standards that we have funding that so because we have been taking people back we've taken people back from drug task force we've taken people back from the jtf The Joint terrorism task force you know we used to have traffic we used to have Street crimes just to run operations so we can't do everything so we either have to stop doing things or we need to fund the things that we want to do okay Dan well um I believe it was our new city manager Greg Lindberg told me once in a conversation about the budget um when you look at what we fund as a city from our property tax revenue um we do a lot of things communication very important um you know infrastructure very important um many other departments Community Development very important but the biggest piece of the pie by a long shot doesn't even it's like number one and then you got to go down the list quite a ways from a dollar standpoint we're in the business of Public Safety and as the backbone of our community vibrancy right you it's a little hard to have Economic Development if you've got a lot of crime it's a little hard to have vibrancy and you know uh businesses opening up it's a lot of it's very I think it's impossible to have Prosperity if you have high crime and and lots of problems so everything revolves around making sure that we have a strong Public Safety department uh police and fire and that people feel safe that's what brings out that's what draws people to a city right they leave the other direction if the city is unsafe as as we've seen around the country uh and they draw to those that are safe and you can't maintain safety um stretching people the way we have I think we in a way in reflecting back we're very fortunate that we've gotten by pretty well but um it's clear that um something has to change and and to hear hear it really put so eloquently when you say we used to have somebody with this task force and we used to have somebody with a drug in it but we had to pull them back in because we can't maintain our core operations and really those should be you know in a way you could think of them as part of core oper operations but you had to pull P people back in to run the core operations of safety because the city call volume the city population kept growing and you're still operating on the same number of people so uh I've said it before I think we have not done Public Safety Justice in the last several years and uh I wish I could turn the clock back and figure out why we didn't but now we have to thank you yeah benie Chief I want you to know my wife's been watching this tonight and she's been very impressed with what you've had to say she just texted me on that uh I agree Public Safety is very important in our community but so is every other part of what we do in this city we we're a service organization and every piece of it is very important and we have to look at every piece to make it work right we can't have one part stronger than the others are all still struggling it's just not going to work I mean we're in my mind and my perspective when we when we're elected to represent the city and uh the citizens and our residents were elected pay attention to the budget it's an important part of what we do but we also need to take care of the needs of the city while we pay attention in the budget you can't neglect one for the other and you can't constantly look at staff or our city managers when they present a budget and say that's not good enough you got to cut it in half all the time either and that's why these things happen to us and we got to quit doing that we just got to bite the bullet and start running to see the way it needs to run and that's that's my perspective well Chief um it's really good this process so Greg I want to tell you that this process in each department telling the story from where you were where we're at and what we need to do and I remember for two years I've been asking for a staff a staffing plan and here we are we do have a staffing plan and it's interesting to also hear that you've been doing an analysis and it is our responsibility as elected officials to look at every part of our organization and and I look in uh for the things that are challenges and Staffing is a big challenge but there is you know facility space functionality and so forth because all of that makes a difference in the life cycle of the people who work in PD why because when you look at all of the analysis all of us spend probably over 90% of our time in work at work and you need that and then you look at the call volume when I was elected mayor in '94 Burnsville is only 8% diverse the last census tells us that we're in the 40s like 40 some per uh diverse um Dr battle told me that 191 is now minority majority in the school there are more um children of color in the school so it is comp complex and that's what you've been driving at this evening you want to know what our community needs from Police Service Mission and service is important and but also how will be meeting the needs with regard to to the mission right and the service so all of that and so when I look at what you're asking for tonight just like Karissa asked for you're asking for 11 full-time to get at the aspirations that we need that you need to run the kind of Department that you're looking for and mayor the the caveat to that would be uh sorry Chief um the caveat with that with that would be we've identified T and I have agreed through the analysis we've identified eight eight FTE as priority for 23 23 uh for a total of 11 and a half additional FTE over the course of the three-year plan period with the very big Aster that this is the one department where I've already authorized an additional Staffing analysis because our Consultants came back and said we don't know what we don't know and we also recognize that internally that we needed some additional outside help really to understand things like conversations from tonight minimums appropr appropriate Staffing structure giv Community needs being very oriented towards those Community needs uh so we're in process of of working through that you'll see an agreement for that work that'll come uh come across a council meeting in the near future but we're we're actively uh engaged in in continuing and wouldn't that include also a better understanding of what the real demands are for the behavioral health unit which I just got started new but it's been sort of we're going to make it happen instead of let's take the time to study put the resources together and do it the way it might have been done right so that should come out of that I would think as well yeah council member key to your point and actually back to council member member Gus's Point um we are very focused on T and I certainly her her leadership team as we work through this on on doing this right to capture uh to capture the real need so you have the information to make whatever policy decision you feel is most appropriate budget and otherwise well and that's why all of this is taking place y for us to understand the story not just us as elected officials but our community because when I'm out talking they're listening they're reading the paper they understand what's going on and when I ask them so what are you looking for and they say looking for candidates that's going to support the budget why why because we have not done the work that we needed to do we have been very conservative to the detriment of where we are today so um you know I know that uh you're identifying a consultant to analyze the current Staffing um deployment model and so there's you've got some next steps here that uh uh you're going to go through but um yeah and you need um your um new part-time FTE is that in in administration or is that the new uh halftime social worker no um the halftime social worker we have right now and then we uh Dakota County we did some interviews so they're going to give us another one I think I believe the halftime staff was more um related to like an investigative Aid perhaps in um to support investigations you know we have a crime analyst but uh that takes a lot of work to do to do that work too so support in that group was where that 0.5 was I believe yeah okay but I'll confirm I'll make sure you get that for sure I think that I think it's a it's a it's a good point to pause and say that although we've put some numbers in front of you that I'm very confident in uh the police department is one where we have more conversation um you know we've said eight FTE in 2023 there's one one FTE in that the tan and I agreed to hold the 2024 that frankly the more we've talked tonight I think I've changed my own mind uh on on whether or not that's a good idea so this is going to be an iterative process very to your point of and this is the reason why I asked Tanya because people don't realize when we when we bring in we badge new officers they don't realize that there're you're still on boarding them they're not out there by themselves doing the work so you still have your original crew doing all of the work so when you look at the minimums that you have and what we have now um it's not the right the true picture is it yeah and that's the reason why I wanted you to talk about how long it takes and uh it so when I look at these numbers that's needed in police or that's needed in other areas I think we start we need to start doing what we need to do for the good of this city and what the city needs in terms of the service that they expect from us well I would just say again I'm going to probably say this every time we have one of these meetings um thank you to Greg and Tanya and all of our staff for presenting this this is the most comprehensive presentation I've seen I know All Of You' have been here longer than I have but um this is all very new to me because we haven't seen this in the last four years yeah um you don't know how to fix something if you don't know it's and I don't want to say it's anything's broken but you don't know how to help if you don't know where the help is needed make the course Corrections so thank you for bringing this to us because again like Public Works in it last week and now this week we're we're finally seeing where some of our blind spots are yeah so thank you yeah Dan g i I would agree with you that this is probably the most comprehensive we've gotten into this but we have been told this before the police chief their fire chief have presented to us before and told us they needed people in the past and we knew that and we chose not to do anything about it last year so it's more in depth now and I we're bringing more visibility to it correct go back to the meetings I can tell you both of them testified they need the people I'm just telling you you're telling us what you heard in your meetings no I sat in the meeting yeah thanks but I think Chief did you presentation to us um May I I just want there was a comment made that you know we've been uh too physically conserv it to our own detriment that's only part true the other part you're well aware of over two years ago you asked for a staffing quite frankly you shouldn't have had to ask for it it should have been done in 2018 or 2019 and it was not and so we were not exposed until fire chief Ben uh J BJ jongin actually gave us a presentation of here's what the needs really are Department it was just his Department it wasn't PD depart we were being filtered what we were being presented and given so we didn't know what PD's need was which was actually significantly worse than than DJ's need or or Ryan's department or or Tom's department so it's like what we had asked for we shouldn't have even had to ask for it should have been something done long before this and thank goodness it finally got done and now we are seeing the real story and because every time we have been given the full story we respond and I don't think we've ever yeah you know we may not have taken action with with fire department when that was first shown to us but we were waiting for the comprehensive no we didn't we didn't have a presentation that said we 10 and a half down and that we helping that yeah no but but to put to Vince's Point wasn't no it wasn't okay to Vince's point he's right two of us that say no yeah he he's right that to have this storytelling for each department right there was a time that we did have Department reports mhm you know we had Department reports but not to the extent that the story is told in this way agreed and so this is the first time that the story is told in its most comprehensive way but we have been told yes there was a time but but each time this the Staffing part was missed because I asked Greg and staff I I talked to Michelle and you know Michelle you told me to dump a lot of the stuff that you didn't want me to bring back to City Hall and I wish I had kept all of those monitoring reports because all of those monitoring reports had the story on each department I still have you still have them yeah good but she I mean I said I'm bringing all of this stuff back and she says no don't bring it back I don't need it so dump it and now I got mad because I don't have my hard copy I'll get you an electronic copy we can even PR for yeah so but the thing is no okay no I was know about the sorry the thing is it's good to have the story told because now our community also has changed and they need to hear the story because in the past maybe some of us who have been here for a while uh have that story but now our community has changed and they need to hear the story because we're living today and into the future yeah I I think back to to January um uh which was a difficult time from a staff perspective in our organization and uh Council me member guses in in mid January said something that will always stick with me and that was uh uh moving forward I I need I need staff to just speak truth to us I realize that we're in positions of power uh and and I need you to tell us the information that as professionals you think that we need speak truth to power is what you said um and that stuck with me uh it certainly has has led to kind of the evolution of of how we're approaching our conversations with you frankly what we're doing tonight um uh but I'll also say that that that one theme that I've carried through with staff is we're moving this organization forward together uh whatever happened in the past it happened yeah uh and it's my commitment to the council to our leadership team and to all of our staff that you all have the information that you need to make good policy decisions uh that we're responsive to the things that you ask for and frankly uh I'm not going to filter uh I'm not going to hesitate to give you the information that we professionally believe that you need and at the end of the day it's it's your job to make policy decisions that you think are best for the the community and that's what we're focused on um so and and Greg I appreciate that because if you don't give us the information we can't make good decisions precise and we can't make good policy so uh with regard to your role and your responsibility you and staff have to give us the the information we can't do this together and and and uh succeed together if we don't have the information to make good policy decisions moving forward so I expect that from all of you and and I like it so you need 11 we're gonna have to work on it hey danty danty focusing here I am yeah I'm listening I have notes okay good I also realized that it might lead us to meetings where I'm Googling uh our mandatory adjournment time so it's okay there's a benefit yeah I think um our mandatory adjournment is 11 10 10 we and we can do this simply because we can make uh a decision to extend the uh adjournment time uh so that we can get through fire the council can make that decision we we probably want to take that up now uh Council we don't want a sure change PJ PJ said it was going to take like five or six minutes so uh BJ's presentation is you remember what said in April yeah so um uh I I need uh a motion to uh move the mandatory adjournment to 10:30 please I'll move second there's a motion in a second all in favor please say I I I oppose say nay and the motion carries Tanya do you want to finish that last slide I closed it not I mean it was really about the it's really about the assessment just that city manager for you no I think we're good okay chief okay thank you very much appreci you need 11 people yes at least I'm just saying at least 11 and a half yeah 11 and a half and it will be more once we once we get through the the current study just just preview it it's not going to be less Chief BJ you're UND that all right good evening mad mayor members of the council thanks for the opportunity tonight um hopefully everybody's awake now ready to go candy bars snack bre right anybody anybody need any caffeine or sugar yeah anybody wants sugar fix uh so we're going to talk a little about the fire department uh you know the routine with how we're presenting things uh I feel very fortunate to lead such a talented group of men and women that uh serve the community in such a great way uh we'll talk about kind of Who We Are uh how things have changed and uh how our service really aligns with the Strategic priorities of the council so when I look at strategic priorities and the six pillars that the council's outlined really we touch on all all six of them I think everybody thinks of police and fire they think safety right they think of you call 911 we show up right or you need a a fire permit for something and we you know we show up and inspect that uh but I will tell you that the other five are also rooted in in what we do as well uh when you look at Community engagement we we interact day in and day out formally and informally with the community you know informally whether we're driving down the road at the grocery store uh running errands wherever we're interacting with the public day in and day out even when we're not even on calls um at many businesses um you know we're a frequent flyer at the hospital a big business in our community uh but formally we also interact with the the public uh at calls for service and that opportunity to engage the public is more than just treating a patient or putting out a fire right uh one of our greatest opportunities is that we are duly trained so when we go in on that medical call for someone that's Fallen we can help assess if they need additional needs whether they need additional help uh whether their smoke alarm is working other risks to them right so there's opportunities to engage and prevent things even when we're responding on those lower Acuity calls from the organizational culture uh we've established and reinforced by the people we hire I'm a huge believer um in making sure we hire the right people and uh that we train them and treat them well and if we if we hire the best of the best we don't have to worry about what they do day in and day out they will be highly trained highly motivated people as I've told people I want to be able to put the reins on people I don't want to have to push the wet noodle and uh it's important and that starts with how we hire people yeah um we promote uh we promote these people and hire the good people and we use policy training and the Investments we make in them um and this has led to high engagement scores in our in our department we're very fortunate to have those great folks Community VI vibrancy with our risk reduction and response efforts uh we keep the community vibrant um council member key just mentioned this about safe communities uh there's been plenty of bladed communities that people don't want to live in you don't want to live in a in a community where there's half bured structures you know I've through these they aren't vibrant communities uh so not only responding to calls but preventing those incidents from happening people feeling safe and they want to come out um and for us it's about advocating for those residents and those businesses our close connection and work with the police department code enforcement uh building department and all the other departments within the city uh Communications to get our messages out help keep the community vibrant from the infrastructure whether it's our physical facilities in the beautiful new fire station that'll serve us well into the future to the water infrastructure that we need to provide service or we need to protect from a hazardous material standpoint we don't want things going into our groundwater right so from a a response perspective uh we protect that infrastructure as part of our duty uh We've also helped improve our infrastructure uh 10 years ago we have private fire hydrant through PR prevalent throughout the city if they're not on the public right away they're a private hydrant and this community has aged and people don't know they own the fire hydrants and they're required to make sure it operates well we found that 177% of our private hydrants particularly in multif family dwellings didn't operate well when you show up to a fire and the fire hydrant doesn't operate that's a problem right now they're annually serviced as they're required by fire code right we have a program in place and now it's become the mainstream and now we don't have the issue of when we show up to an apartment fire that the private fire hydrant doesn't work uh from a sustainability uh we attempt to provide the service in the most efficient economical way it was uh interesting I gave a tour to to the noon rotary yesterday at uh fire station one and someone was comparing our service model to other service models and asked about our efficiency and when you think about it all of our surrounding communities that have private ambulance services send either a fir Tru Andor a police car to every medical ahead of that ambulance right so they're dual responding in our case for those lower acut Medicals we're only sending the ambulance with two firefighter paramedics in it police don't respond the fire engine doesn't respond as the severity of that call increases we start to send more resources or if there's a safety issue PD will definitely come and help us out on those medical calls but the majority or a good chunk of our medical calls you wouldn't even know happen in our community because there's no lights and sirens and they're just driving to the call and You' think oh they're just driving back from the hospital they're going to get whatever supplies no they're actually going on a call so when you think about that from an efficienc efficiency standpoint we are sending the right resource at the right time and only the resource that we need on that um we also uh again fail failure to respond a timely instant degrades a community's uh uh vibrancy leading to a less sustainable future right from a financial standpoint again those blighted buildings don't necessarily help our our uh tax base uh you also see up there the Department's Mission and our values that really uh coincide with with the six pillars the council has right so we have Mission and values again that drives us to hire good people that's what we make our decisions based on I truly believe and I've told our people if they know our cultural values and what our expectations are they need to be familiar with their policy manle but they don't need to know what day and day out because if they make decisions that are align with our values they will make the right decision every time and they will exceed our expectations and our values because we need to hire the right people because when they're out there making decisions they can't be thinking back where do I reference that policy right they don't have time to do that they have to think on their feet make good decisions well that comes with good character right and so it's all about hiring those right people that align with our mission and our values uh we just recently completed a strategic plan as well in the department for the next 3 to 5 years that identified things that are really in our uh Council strategic priorities so again mental health Innovation both supporting our own staff as well as uh the Health Care System PD has a great program with the behavioral health unit we see that from a different lens where we bring them to a hospital and I stopped telling people that there's a broken system the system doesn't exist and how do we help innovate that system that works to treat these mental health people Beyond uh us dropping them off at the hospital and the PD then seeing them you know hours later so continuing that Evolution uh enhanced on shift Staffing we'll talk about that here in a little bit the community risk reduction we'll talk about uh we continue to operationally improve we continue to train to a higher standard and expect more and evolve as we learn more in the fire service an enhancement of our Wellness practices this is one area where I think we've come Leaps and Bounds in the past 5 years we now have a embedded health professional for our own staff that rides with our crews every month and provides training quarterly to them as well as provides them training on what to do with mental health patients on calls and he's also the person that uh does all our debriefings now so we have a consistent person doing debriefings and he's available to navigate our staff 247 so if they're having a personal crisis or an issue with a call they can call him and they're more likely to call and get help from a mental health perspective to what Chief short said we're trying to break down the mental health barriers not just in the public but within our own four walls and uh that has been an invaluable resource to us and it is um it has been utilized higher than I would have ever expected and been welcome with open arms and I will tell you it has saved careers already in the past year so um I I have people coming back from debriefing saying I'm glad I went to that instead of well I went to make sure my buddy was okay right so I mean it's it's a a complete mindset shift in how we're dealing with mental health of our own folks um which we've already seen the the extreme value of I'm going to sound like a bit of a broken record I said something similar uh about about Tanya's Department uh and I believe the same about the fire department both police and fire set a model for living out their values what matters to them and creating culture that is very aligned with our our community commitments our strategic priorities um and I I believe chief that that that frankly that culture change around uh well-being and mental health in your department is a reflect is a reflection of those values of of character of communication of collaboration um uh really being really being lived out in the department and that starts with with BJ and and his assistant Chiefs but it really is um it really is values bringing strategy and and more importantly than strategy just good service to the community to [Music] life so when you look at uh who we are um right now in uh the leadership we have five staff myself three assistant Chiefs and admin assistants uh in the leadership we have an admin captain and six shift captains we have two fire inspectors we have 34 firefighter paramedics that adds up to 48 FTE 45 of those are allocated FTE the other three are um our overc compositions that we use help funded partially out of overtime to help reduce our overtime costs uh for long-term illness and turnover and things so so when you look at what we do it's really risk reduction right and and you saw me present this a while ago the 5es right engineering really the fire code and enforcement of the fire code plan reviews and the equipment we have ahead of the response sets us up for success and these all these preparation steps before we get to the emergency response set us up for success for the safety of the citizen from these incidents not even occurring and for an efficient response when we do have an emergency so those are a couple of the engineering controls as examples from education we focus on that public education that's targeted education of of our youth and our elderly um it's AED and CPR for the the general public it's stop the bleed programs it's all those kind of public Outreach programs to whoever we can to increase that first responder capacity that can get there before week can um public aeds again assistant chief dwi's really run with that program we got great donation from the allance club and we in a in a matter of a month got 12 aeds distributed without throughout the community uh once we got folks engaged Communications help us put the word out and next thing you know the things flew off the shelf and we had great opportunities to engage the public and get more aeds out there I can tell you we have one business that saved two lives with public AED um in a matter of 6 months so uh again the the earlier we can get people doing CPR the earlier we can get them shocking people with an AED the the more likely we are to save people right and we can come and provide the advanced care after that and then I know many of you participated in our fire Ops class and we look forward to doing more of those right give you a real hands-on experience of what does this look like is I can explain it to you here but when you see it and feel it handson it's a different experience a different perspective so again we look forward to continuing to expand that so we can get more of the community experiencing what we do day in and day out at least a piece of it economic incentives right fees for service uh you know fines for failure to comply things like rental licensing all those things help uh Drive compliance and help drive a Vibrant Community by setting a standard enforcement again that's kind of our last preventative option we we'd prefer to do the education role but sometimes we have to do the enforcement role with inspections permits and we try and find collaborative opportunities to to to find Solutions our first goal is to educate someone why this is important right not just tell them you need to fix it but why is it important to fix it and then lastly is the emergency response right we don't want the incident to happen the best one that happens is it never occurs but when it does happen we continue to see an escalating call for service uh we continue to see uh the the use of mutual Aid and the other thing is we're we have an all Hazard response right it doesn't matter what the emergency is we're going to respond to it like Chief Schwarz had said earlier they're going to call 91 if there's a problem right they don't have another solution whether it's their smoke alarm is beeping because there's water leaking through the ceiling or whether there's a gas leak or as we saw in St Paul the other day a tragic trench collapse right I mean so our firefighters can be out doing any of that um day in and day out so we've got to be prepared to respond to a multitude of incidents uh at a moment's notice so when we look at that again um just to speed this up the the engineering the education the economic centers enforcement are all tools to help us prevent that response so all those things before the emergency response help us to really save tragic events from happening and that's really our goal is how how can we keep those from even occurring when you look at at comparisons it's difficult in the fire Service uh there's more and more departments becoming career but over 90% of them in the state are still volunteer um more and more of them are becoming combination like Savage where they have some career and some volunteer but you see like the city of Egan now went full-time but because of our ambulance Licensing Laws again I sound like a broken record you've all heard me talk about people were very intelligent in the city in the the early 80s to grab our ambulance license our cities around us don't have that option so although they went to a full-time fire department they can't have any control over who provides the ambulance service or the quality of that service where we're very fortunate to have that control so for Us Edina and map wood are the closest uh and there's nuances with both of them they're they're both not the same communities and uh don't really have the same expectations that we do so uh we use them as some benchmarks but I wouldn't say they're an Apples to Apples comparison exactly I agree I agree on the emergency response uh front again we want to be response ready uh 247 and and to be response ready before they go on the call is that health and wellness right that fire station is a huge symbol of our commitment to the health and wellness of our folks and I appreciate the commitment of the council and the community to do that uh that that shattered the glass ceiling on taking care of firefighters from a cancer perspective from an emotional Wellness perspective and from a cardiovascular perspective the three big things that are prevalent in the fire service on a health and front give our firefighters the opportunity to mitigate those risks to the best of our ability on the training front again that fire station is the opportunity able as the opportunity but I'd also say a culture of that I would say we have to put the reins in our folks uh for training they are constantly training and preparing themselves to go on calls after they go on a call they debrief so that they're ready to go on the next one and do a better job we talked about the community AED and CPR again making sure we have the right staff and the right capacity to handle the C volume we'll talk about that in a minute the appropriate stations and equipments pre-incident plans how do we what do we know about these buildings before we even get there we need to have the right protocols and we need to have the right medical Direction so that we have we're working on under a medical director's license we need somebody we can collaborate and we've been fortunate to have a good partner over over many years with Alina to provide that medical direction we also have to the right policies because we need to have swim lanes and and guard rails of how we want people to respond and then we've got great Mutual Aid Partners around us that respond on a moment's notice both on the fire and EMS side you look at this um thanks to Communications uh they updated this so it doesn't look like it's from the 80s anymore um uh it's a nice graphic nice very nice well is this Andrew's work yes solid work get the logo on those trucks very nice one step oh now we're getting picky I over tell Andrew we like his work turn out really nice so this is an example of a 2,000 ft home and the firefighters needed on a structure fire for this right so the the real key on a fire is to get assemble a a big team of folks to handle that incident in a short period of time and right now our minimum Staffing uh 247 is nine people during the day it's 11 people in order to do this you need 17 people so we know right off the bat we're short and we need Mutual Aid well that still takes time to get here right so when you see the folks that are circled up there those are the people that we can't Supply right off the bat right so we we don't necessarily have anybody to ventilate the building right away or a second person on the backup crew if something goes wrong right there's there's just things we can't do until we get help there now that's a best case scenario if all of our folks are available I would tell you that given the call volume we have it's rarely that everybody is sitting in the fire station waiting for a call to come out nowadays so that just attracts from that I would also tell you as you get into larger structures like our multif family this is exponential right so we need 15 Personnel uh for a 2,000 slab on grade 2,000 foot house you start looking at three and four story apartment buildings we're looking at triple of that to manage that in a in a safe manner to provide the best outcome for both this the community and for the fire staff so we're never going to be able to handle all this internally completely understand that but to handle an initial response given our call volume we are uh behind the curve on this so it's also important that we work again collaboratively when the call does come in right so when the incident occurs we need the public to know it occurred and we need them to call that's the biggest variable we cannot control at this point so educating people and having them dial on 911 when something occurs right if that fire is burning for 10 minutes before they call us that puts us way behind the eightball um and those detection devices right having apartment buildings that have monitored a fire alarm system so we get notified right away vastly important so we're not behind the eightball once 911 is called our partners at DCC are extremely important that they take the call get the right address get the right information to send the right resources and we're fortunate to have a great system there and great Partners at the DCC and then they dispatch the appropriate resources um again again depending on the severity of the call you could get a a fire Tru an ambulance police car or all the above depending on what what is needed right um it all depends on the the triage at the Dispatch Center and that's where that call taking and that partnership with the DCC is so important when we have a limited pool of resources we want to make sure we're sending them on the right calls for the right reasons right so we we send an ambulance on the calls that need to go on uh ambulance and A firet TRU on the more higher acut stuff then the the highest secut Police Department comes with us um and the interesting thing is that not everybody understands is doesn't matter what truck shows up in front of your house it's got firefighters and paramedics on it so whatever your issue is we can handle it with the first unit that arrives we can start providing care you know so if the ambulances are out on other calls and the firetruck shows up it's got the heart monitor it's got all the medications the breathing tubes so that we can help the public immediately if they're in Cardiac Arrest or have a severe illness the same thing if a fire comes out and the ambulance is closer they have their fire gear and their air pack with them and they can go in and do immediate life- saving uh rescues if they needed to so having those dually trained uh staff helps helps us put us put them in the right place at the right time when uh those incidents occur then once we get there we need to set up and mitigate that incident right we need to have people well trained they need to know their equipment and they need to act again on a moment's notice and that's where that training and preparation becomes so important so that they do mitigate incident and I can tell you the increase in training in the past decade that we've taken in the organization has paid dividends and the injuries we see and the the uh outcomes we see in our fires uh it's it's shown time and time again then you look at the post response we talked about that pre and post response emotional Wellness right to make sure people are supported they have an opportunity to debrief afterwards and they feel uh heard after those incidents happen um which becomes challenging as you start to have more and more calls they have less and less time to decompress between them most calls decontamination I know you've all been through the fire station and understand the importance of decontaminating folks to reduce our cancer risk um doing after Action reviews what can we learn and what should we change we continue to evolve our policy manual our training continues to evolve because we might train on something and we learn a new technique as we go along uh billing we think about this from the ambulance service perspective we are like a clinic right we have our own National provider id and we provide a medical service that we bill for so that means we have to meet all the CMS requirements all the Hippa requirements all the other federal state mandated medical compliance requirements right so the documentation the audit pieces um so all that is part of the process right so when the the the ambulance run is done it's got to be documented well so it can go off our billing company and get sent off for billing so that's a whole another process we deal with um investigating fires or incidents we're required to do any typ there's a lost more than $100 um again we continue to identify changes that are needed and then we continue to analyze our data uh we're learning more as a fire service of how we can use data to prevent more incidents from happening and really uh improve our risk reduction model so what's changed uh well our call volume I I will tell you that I mean this year we're up 21% if we stay on this track we'll be at about 8,600 calls for the year um when I started here as fire chief uh we're a little over half that 11 years ago so when you look at workload that has drastically increased and that is continuing to go up on a steady rate um that is straining our system technology has continued to to evolve whether it's that fire station whether it's the equipment we wear the computers that we have the if you just think in GIS alone what information is available at our finger tips um in the last five years it continues to evolve and Tom's well aware of that and and all the the importance of having it support so that we can do our job effectively uh we talked about demand for service our our demographics and the type of development we see continues to evolve right I mean we don't we're not a community seeing a lot of single family dwellings going in uh we see a lot of compressed uh multif family dwellings and commercial buildings with limited access that creates challenges for us uh training again we continue to train differently right when I started this business we didn't have to worry about active violence now we're trained in how do we respond to active violence incidents we talked about hazardous materials we talked about water rescue there's a a bunch of stuff that we've learned in the past couple of decades that now we can train people on to be safer and more effective the types of incidents we go on continue to evolve the amount of time it takes on some of these calls uh the resources you talk about those mental health calls that we partner with PD on thank goodness we have a great relationship and a great PD those take time to deescalate to get them in a good space to transport them in a back of an ambulance and a confined space to get them to the hospital that all takes time and resources uh our regulations have changed our process have changed and the systems we use all all that has changed right our world's really changed in the past decade so when you look at that um our call volume continues to go up and yet our staffing has been relatively flat so when you go back to 1985 which is our first full year of the ambulance service we were at 1959 calls uh 2010 we were at you know 4700 calls and so now we're going to likely be in the mid 8,000 calls this year and um like I said we've been really really flat on the on the call volume side and if you remember before we put on that 12-hour Ambulance with the safer truck five years ago we were calling Mutual Aid a bunch if we don't act we will be back to that situation and I will tell you the challenge with that right now is most private EMS providers are having trouble managing their own own call volume and not just us but I can tell you horror stories of some of my peers that are supplementing these private ambulance services three times what they were supplementing us and so it's not a great world to be relying on Mutual Aid right now as our buffer to uh being ready so we're going to continue to see concurrent calls right as the as a call volume goes up the number of Vehicles we need available is going to need to increase right we just don't have the resources when there's four calls going on we only have three ambulances staffed it just doesn't work we have to we have to send that to Mutual Aid so uh we continue to see the call volume increase along with the concurrent calls we talked about how things change again the fire environment has changed if we can keep those fires to the room of origin there's less than a a 3% chance of fatality when they go past the room of origin so when they become an apartment fire or a structure fire there's an 81% greater chance of a fatality risk that continues to be challenging as we see larger homes Even in our apartments right more Open Spaces uh evolving fuel loads void spaces what we use to build these are not as structurally sound as they were before they're very engineered and they're fine until they have heat put on them we know that we have smaller lots and we have new technologies all that leads to faster fire propagation or or for uh development of fire uh shorter time to flash over so when that whole room is involved and that leads to Shorter Escape times shorter time till the building collapse or the floor collapses and it really leads to new and unknown problems that we continue to work with so um so really our goal here is to get there quickly right before it gets that flashover so when you look at that times zero on the the left side is when the fire happens it usually takes a minute or two to detect the fire before your fire alarms going off it's going to take you a minute or two to report it it's going to take a minute for them to dispatch here they show a five minute drive time uh generally we're looking at a six- minute drive time and then it's going to take you a minute or so to set up so you're 10 minutes into this incident at best case scenario so again making sure that we have the right resources available and ready to respond is is critically important because we're going to be fighting that fire about the time that it's going to flash over that whole room is involved so through all this analysis um you've seen this before that we've identified a number of resources uh to get us to manage our our workload right and really we need 16 full-time FTE 15 of those are shift staff to to make sure that we staff enough resources and then one data analyst or one additional civilian staff uh to deal with that um what I would tell you is that's based on a 7% call volum increase because that's what we were seeing when we did this and worked on this three years ago I can tell you the last two years that has not been what we've been seeing on average right last year I think was 12 and I think this year we're at 20 17 to 21 so um that's our best estimate right now based on on what we continue to see um it'll be a it'll continue to evolve and we'll uh we'll continue to keep you updated as we learn more but um the the the addition 16 staff will will allow us again to to help the capacity issue right we're not going to be able to fix it all at once um and really it'll help us rightsize the staff for what we're seeing today Chief when you're looking at 16 are you looking at 16 for 23 or 16 in the next five years so how many do you need this year for 23 we talked about so we applied for that safer Grant that's still hanging out there right for six people well it's hanging for how long uh we don't know well that's the thing but we're coming up to September when we have to make a yep a decision I I would hope we would know by then but uh what we talked about uh for the audit was to do three firefighters a year for the the first three years and six in the last year um well I'm sorry we do three three firefighters the first year three firefighters the second year with one civilian so four staff the second year three the third year and six the fourth year well see with what you shared with us tonight and I'm looking at when you have a fire and how deficient you are in fighting that fire um you don't have the people to back up so I'm looking at this yep yep and as I said that's where we rely on our mutual Aid Partners you know and uh some of those tasks just don't get done until we can get people there but right now you are also telling us that uh Mutual Aid is not the most efficient and effective way for us because they've got their own problems yeah particularly on the private ambulance side uh the fire side I will tell you is becoming a little more reliable because some of our neighbors have added full-time staff but some of them that are still volunteer are starting to see challenges particularly depending on times a day and day a week across the entire country but we're seeing it right here at home right Tuesday at 10: a.m. who's available to respond to the fire station to jump on a fire truck yeah you know that's a really small population that's available to do that so yeah it's and and we rely primarily on our our neighboring agencies uh but we make sure that we have a staffed engine from one of the full-time departments coming to help us as well but yeah it's it's a challenge to get reliable Mutual Aid because they're also experiencing their own call volume increase right there's a reason they put full-time staff on because they're dealing with their own commun Community needs um so yeah it's we're in a time right now in uh the Minnesota fire service where there's there's a lot of change going on on Staffing models uh and investing in the fire service because of the demand we're seeing particularly on the medical side and uh the inability to to get a reliable response model whether that's private EMS or whether that's uh volunteer firefighters okay Madam mayor yeah Dad um what percentage of your calls are fire versus Medical so I would say about 80% are medical and then uh 20% are non-medically related so that could be anything from a gas leak to a fire to um a fire alarm things like that so how many actual fires so what percentage of all the calls are actual fire bur we get about a 100 calls a year with active fire in them that includes car fires brush fires structure fires you know all those kind um I would say when you talk about major structure fires where we're talking about things like this it's 12 to 20 roughly of those uh but the hard part is that's that's retrospect 2020 right I will tell you we go on a lot of apartment fires that end up being cooking fires that are smaller but you don't know that until you get there right so you you send enough people assuming that it's a fire because based on the information when they call 911 and say I got heavy smoke in the hallway I can't wait until I get there and say well it's only you know you know it's only a cooking fire all right so um right um so 100 out of over 8,000 this year yep probably so clearly the the demand is in medical yep um and when you shared this three years ago with us I believe we said go after a safer Grant Y and um we were I don't know when did you get the denial last year so took a couple years but we I know that for me my only experience prior to that was the safer grant that we applied for and got back I think you referenced five years ago six years ago when we added the four um I really didn't know until recently when I asked what's the success rate of those because my the only thing I ever remember was we applied and got one and I thought well why wouldn't we get one all the time right why would we ever be turned down right and and in fact and I asked the same of Chief Schwarz and in fact we have a very low percentage of actual success and so that that one instance where we applied and got it was not indicative of future application success and so you know I think had I been really more aware of really that's the the reality of the history um you know we are now right so now we're now we're approaching it from if we get it great nice bonus and it doesn't even pay I think we did the math what was it the 38 or 40% of the total cost or something like that I'm sure maybe it's a little bit cops different yeah cops are uh but it's it's not a majority right of it per se and maybe with fire it's a little bit higher than cops but um uh so for the cops grant that we're going after you know our approach has to be you know if you get it it's a nice little bonus bonus but don't expect it right instead of oh we act we asked for it we got it so we should get it again uh so it's a which sounds trivial but it's a really different approach than to dealing with this from our budget decision standpoint um but I know that to your comment earlier Gus C Gus you know we we knew about the fire we did know about the fire and we did make a decision to go after the Grant and it took a long time to get the answer on the grant but obviously now we're we're approaching it from uh we're going to have to do it oursel right and and the grant is just not something we can rely on which was a bit bit of a chock quite frankly we send a lot of money to DC kind of expect a little bit to come back when we apply for cop and and fire grants but unfortunately it doesn't happen that way no the last uh cops Grant we received Tanya that was back in the 90s yes yeah that was the last time that we received cop cop grants and and if we're fortunate enough to receive either cops or saor grants we have two active applications out there um the council will still see a staff recommendation not to steal Dan Thunder uh that essentially you Levy for and budget for those positions um assuming that we don't have those Grant dollars if we receive them uh we would essentially come back to you and and earmark the additional funding that you might Levy for those positions in in different ways as an offset um to the reality that that frankly we don't know and at the end of the day both of those Grant uh programs require us to to plan for fully funding those FTE uh in the out years so generally speaking after the three-year period of of time that the grant covers I would even say if we did get one of them given the fact that what the Staffing recommendation is from you is actually still under the need we might just add that to the number of being hired right it it help if we get it it helps us get closer to what the end goal is as opposed to yeah restricting I guess the growth of it or or or supporting the need right I'm glad you to hear you say that yeah yeah Vince so BJ 16 gets us out five years but assuming development continues on the path that we've been on with multif family and then a lot of the commercial Redevelopment and a lot of those being 55 plus I mean we're where are we at in 10 years I mean are we at 32 I mean obviously there's always going to be continued need in growth and expansion but I mean where where are we when are we hitting the safe spot where you're uh you know and that's a very hypothetical question forecasting things we don't know but yeah I wouldn't want to forecast that far out I would tell you that really the from my perspective we won't see that demand neutralize until the Baby Boomers generation is uh in the rearview mirror excuse me um that was a great choice of words by the way I'm being very careful waiting on pins and needles to see what he was going to do our demand is driven when you look at it when you look at the EMS Demand right one a lot of our population that uses that is the Aging population well until the population that ages slows down that Demand on the EMS side is not going to decrease years and I think the the demand that we're going to see on the fire side from those those development things tend to again be a legacy of 10 to 20 years after they're built uh we don't see a lot of fire demand I mean we'll see some fire alarms and stuff but you don't see a lot of that until those buildings start to age a little bit Chief what would be your recommendation in terms of an update to the standard of cover assessment to council member workman's question yeah I think that's probably a safer way to go about the question um is I I want to see that standard to cover be a living document that we would overhaul every three to five years but that we update like every other year and provide some some additional data and continue to look five years out I think you know we could project 10 years out but my concern is that it gets a pretty wide net at that point so I I think the three to five years is a safer bet and I think you know if we if we get that 16 in 5 years it'll give us a better idea to start thinking about other things because this this also doesn't address anything on the preventative side this is strictly about response and filling the gap of response you know the question is do we want to engage in uh preventative opportunities particularly on the medical side where we could make some impacts um this doesn't address any of any of those kind of policy decisions so um I would say my hope to to manager lindberg's comment is to make that standard to cover a living document that you can see annually updated uh with projections in there may BEC comes more about maintenance then catch up Cor I think I think a good comparison to that is we've talked with the council three years ago you implemented a comp plan that was a big decision for our total rewards package for our staff frankly best practices every three years we evaluate that we're going into that process again um it is a it is a living iterative process and I would I would compare be it total rewards to how we staff the organization it's something that we're going to have to keep on the the regular cycle of of conversation Chief a lot of our multifam facilities were built in the 70s when we didn't have fire codes how many of those buildings do we still have that are not up to code because that's part of your challenge as well you're asking me all kinds of questions I need to be very careful in my about 60% of them are non-s sprinkler 50 to 60% used to be 70 yeah till we started building new ones yeah I was going to say the denominator continues to grow so um so the same number of buildings are nons sprinkler that were before um and they're not they met code at the time right so there was a limited fire code in the 70s and the only way that they're they would be required to come up to code to be sprinklered is if 51% or more of their building was damaged yeah and these buildings that we have are large enough where that's not going to happen so it's um it is a challenge right because you get these fires that propagate through multiple units um and that's frankly where the rental licensing and inspections of both code enforcement and fire in those buildings has made a huge impact I mean that's why that's important yeah we can show the numbers where we've reduced firefighter injuries civilian injuries all those kinds of things have been mitigated uh through active code enforcement and um I've watched it with my own eyes are these places perfect no but they're they're safer than they were right and if things do happen we know that exit doors work exit lights work things that are important to get people out yeah so I'm looking at the statistics that came out in our uh report that we just saw for for May Y and uh the changes in your medical um rescue and Medical Services you 130% change increase increase yep yeah it continues to to rise and continues to climb yeah I watch both of your reports that come out on a monthly basis so because uh I'm looking at um police's report also and the increases are you know phenomenal so okay thanks for staying awake for my presentation hey and look at you know you got a little bit more time there Chief but it's okay 15 minutes I was trying to keep it to the five but I I didn't I didn't meet that expectation you still should have went with you know what I need right so well thanks for the time and I appreciate the questions and the engagements well actually I I want to just say thank you to all of you to Carissa Tanya and BJ thank you for telling the story that helps our our residents and our businesses to understand the challenges that we have and that we need to make sure that we meet the need that they expect from us in terms of the services that we provide so thank you for taking the time to put this together to inform us to educate us and to ensure that we have the knowledge so that when we start making these decisions as we go through our budget process we have the information so thank you for that any other thoughts comments mayor council just so you're aware um uh the slide decks from tonight along with a a full video of of these conversations will be available on our budget landing page Burnsville mn.gov back budget or forward budgetbudget I'm putting PDFs up right now video will be up in a excellent uh I'll also make sure that the fly decks are um in your weekly update as well yeah thank you everybody and if there's nothing else to come before this body we stand a journ by acclamation thank you everyone