I'll go ahead and call the meeting here. Nichols here. Here councelor Vancamp should be here shortly and we will just jump into it if you got a FDM information. So Matt, thank you Mr. Mayor. Uh, so I'm going to start out and ask that you guys just give me for the first 15 to 20 minutes to drone on what my hope is is to talk about where our plan's at, why we have the plan, how we got the plan, and then hit the wavetops on what the plan is. And so hopefully you guys have had a chance to study a lot of the data, understand it, and if we're going to recalibrate, reorientate, what that would look like going forward. So, um, as I start out, it might sound preachy. This is, but it really is meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. I'm not saying what you have to do. I'm saying why why the process is what it is today. So, I drew this up here to kind of talk about how our fire planning journey has looked at the city. And we began fire planning in earnest in 2014 or 2015. Um, and that was as we're looking at development that's coming in. Um and that's when he started saying we need to start putting some data and some understanding of where we want to go and start looking into the future as our community grows. The growth was on the horizon. We know what's coming. What do we want to look like as a fire service from there 10 day 10 years out 10 years past that 10 years and so on. And you'll notice that the plan is a lot more descriptive close by. We have our local goals, our local objectives on what we're trying to accomplish, but things get a little bit looser as you go out. So, when you saw the work plan you saw, it's kind of an open-ended document because there's a whole lot of things that are happening in our communities that can change path. And so, we need to but what we need to know is what's our vision for our service. And that's what a lot of this this starts getting rooted in is we don't know exactly what we're going to be buying or doing or employing in 20 years, but we what we're trying to deliver. And so as we're here and we're looking at the deliverables, um we can start it's a growing and living plan. This this is one one of the things that I found interesting. So why are we why am I preaching about this plan and why am I invested so much in it? in this time period when we talk about things that impact our fire service and why am I if we're going to make changes or we're not going to follow the plan I'm going to say then let's we need to go back and change the plan here's why in these 10 years we had 16 council me different council members we had three different mayors and we've had three different city administrators That's just here. We have other external factors that are in influencing our fire service and how we operate. In this same time period, our community obviously has grown a bunch. We dealt with COVID. One of our fire departments merged with another fire department. We've had district meetings in two or three different sizes, shapes, forms. Um, and the industry is changing as society is changing. We're looking at changing from paid on call to um duty crews out of necessity. We're not getting the volunteers. They're not getting the staffing. And the industry, even if these weren't happening, the industry is changing. Now, you pile on our community growth, all the other factors that we have going on. All of this change and all of this movement, which is h going to happen. it's going to continue to happen as we go forward is why we have to be really focused on what we're trying to deliver and that as we're doing it, we're meeting what our goals and strategies are as we're going because as we're going, you know, in in perfect world, our journey goes straight from here. We accomplish our goal. We do that by accomplishing our our strategies and our benchmarks that we laid out in our work plan. where we're kind of at right now is taking a little bit of a left turn and we're bumping against the side of not meeting where some of our things in the work plan were. We're not accomplishing the goals that we set out to land here. So, what does that tell us? Do we need to adjust where this is? Does our plan need to shift or do we need to take, you know, look at our steps that we're using to get here? There's there all of these pieces can move, but it's really important that we're intentional following what our vision for service is out here because if all of a sudden we get here and we say, "Holy cow, we wanted to have make up your grandiose idea that started here and started here." And so if we wait until there's a problem and we say, "Oh, we need this resource." Well, congratulations. You're 10 years late. So, um, that's why we're this plan is so important. That's why I refer back to it. Why a lot of the fire context I'll you'll hear me say, "Yeah, but that's not what we talked about." And I know that council members get frustrated because they're like, "Well, it seems like you're making up excuses." No, I'm following the plan that was prescribed by uh these six 16 folks or 19 folks that were elected in this seat before you as to what data matters, what are we trying to or what are we trying to accomplish with our fighter service. So that's my soap box on this plan. Um just a second. Yes. So one of the thing uh that we talked about um so so one of the what are we trying to accomplish with this is that Matt said clarification on what this door section excuse me so clarification might be a change of plan pivot and plan it might be double down and this is the plan that we want we we just need clarity uh because right now we are many years behind the plan that we had elected or had selected and if we don't want to be 20 years behind another 10 years we need to be intentional about our choices and so this is really an opportunity for clarity. There's there's no agenda on the staff's part other than our desire to make sure that there's a common shared understanding of the information and there's a lot of information so that we can provide what's necessary for the next steps decision making. The key decision that we're hoping for tonight is what do we do after whether that's another work session uh whatever that looks like. That's that's the key is what's next for staff so that we can provide what's next for council for decisions. Thanks J. And you know another follow-up conversation for folks who weren't here when this started is why is Matt leading the conversation on this? Um, so despite my I wasn't hired for my good looks and and my police skills, part of the hiring process here was looking at um knowing that we need to um looking at our our services in a growing community. So yes, law enforcement is a part of it. That's a third of the scope of my duties. The other third fire related, the other third emergency management, EMS nests kind of under all of those. But uh my background the first decade or plus of my career was in a um public safety agency with police and fire under the same umbrella. Now I worked in the police lane but I was also the arson investigator, worked with the fire departments um and and worked in that in a shared public safety model. Because of that, I also bring a unique respect for where are the technical boundaries for what lanes people should be working in or not working in and what what guidance can we can we give and and do with what knowledge base. So when we look at that um in addition to coming from the public safety background in the hiring process it was talked about educational background. So my I got my masters in public administration, not in police leadership. It was public administration and it was the emphasis was on how do we integrate our public safety with all areas of our um of our community of our of our government. So community oriented governance. So public safety works integrated with planning, works with public works so that it is you know it really fulfills that one city, one set of services and have that seamless transition. So from the consumer end of it, you don't get the well that's a fire department problem, not mine. It's it's shared responsibility. And the emphasis of my studies was, you know, how do we work effectively and efficiency in efficiently in public safety as we integrated into local government and serve our community? And I think you'll get both the best value out of that and the best service out of that. And so that's really where my passion was going through there. and I graduated as the top student from one of the best programs in the state of Florida Syracuse. Um later and so I'll take Syracuse. So that emphasis of you know along with the the network of of specialists in the joint public safety realm. So when I was when I was tactical I worked with Tate Mills from the state fire marshall's office. He's currently the chief deputy in planning operations. you know, my mentors were Bob Jacobson, who's the community or who's the commissioner of public safety right now. Um, obviously all of the folks in Mano Public Safety, there's a handful of public safety agencies across the state. Um, that really talk about how do we look at public safety globally instead of siloed. So, that was part of what I was hired to do. That was part of the hiring process and part of the expectations. So, when some people look cross-eyed, well, why is the police chief talking so much about fire? Um, it it truly was designed and described as a director of public safety because of the lift that we know was coming as a community. Now, that being said, I don't I haven't pulled hoses. I'm not a firefighter. I don't claim to be the tactical expert, and we'll get into where that where that rubber meets the road as we go down this road. But there are lanes that belong with our fire chiefs, with our um operators, with the folks that are doing the real work. even even at a planning level. So not and and the strategic level there we need all of that collective knowledge to do that. My you know the high level of this is to talk about of this plan is to talk about strategy and to talk about what we want as deliverables for our service and what what we consider our measurables for success. And as we go through this I'll kind of go through a quick guided tour. You'll see that we involved the stakeholders and the and the subject matter experts as we created our city's plan. So why and what are we planning? Um you know we're it's really fire service. We're not planning a fire department. We're not trying to we're not going into this with how do we build a building? How do we buy a ladder truck? This is how do we provide the best service for our residents? And that encompasses a whole lot of areas that we'll that we'll touch on here because once we know what we're trying to deliver, we can we can reverse engineer the steps that we need to do to get there and what we need to make those things happen. So this conversation, the initial um first conversations about fire planning, the first question asked by council was, we have some really high ISO ratings in the community. Why are IO ratings so higher translating to high insurance premiums? Some of this data is outdated and in this ISO report, our couple of our fire partners have been upgraded with their ISO ratings. But one of the important things to know is that if you're outside of 5 miles from a fire department, your rating is a 10. Um because you don't have a fire station within 5 miles. There have been questions of what does the ISO rating look like? And you'll get a flippant answer of it's too complicated to explain. I I have the slides from the council presentation back then and this will kind of give you an idea of not explaining explaining it if that makes sense. Matt, can you uh explain the math for me? I cannot specifically I cannot. Um so you look at that top formula and you see the CEC, CFD, CWS all the CEC is created from a series of formulas. So when you look at note number two, CEC is made up of the CER plus CTC plus CDC. And you can see the formulas for each one of those acronyms below that. The CFD, the next one, you can see all of the formulas that go into creating the credit for fire department analysis. That's the CDC, CRP, CPC, and you can see the formulas that they use to create those. So when you look at this top formula, that is a series of other formulas. It's actuarial data and they get as granular as when they when they site visit they are asking what is the pump volume on that specific truck? What is the how many gallons does it hold? How many you know how many is it stationed? How many firefighters do you roll with? What does that look like? And all of that goes into here. So you see the reserve the credit for reserve pumpers pump capacity ladder service. What do we as a big picture impact as far as a city? What are the the big brush strokes that can make a difference um if we're not operational? Water supply is a big one. What as as our water supply is expanding, as we're adding hydrants, um that's a big help for it. And a fire department will also be really big because if you don't have five miles, you can't even begin to look at the the formula. Um that's not to say that automatically we have to build a fire department. When we t when we started this conversation in 14 and 15, there were community members and some council members who said we need to build a fire department and why haven't we built it and we need to build it tomorrow. We said okay if we're going to do that it should be pursuant to meeting a need and it should be driven by our service that we're trying to deliver. Is that necessary and is that where we find the value? And that's how to clarify that station right um both were said but yes the station was the specific was a specific conversation. So, um, our conversation was, well, where do we where do we go from there as to learn what we don't know? And so, if you'll turn to all of this happened in tab, basically tabs one through five. The city decided to do um a fire service uh comprehensive growth plan. Said, let's consult with the experts. Let's learn how we should grow as a city and what our benchmarks are and let's have some let's have the experts come in and map that out. So as we go to to six sorry real quick. Yes. Is this for the whole city? Does the whole city get one number or is it based on a specific address? Different address would be a different number that's by your insurance company but your rating will be by fire department. So for example um see here the departments will see receive two ratings. So if you're outside the five miles and get the the mag depending on your circumstances generally a 10 but if you're in the west suburban they have two ratings they have a four and a sixy under their last review. Four is in a hydrated area six is in the rural rural area and then those would be the addresses that are within you know the prescribed miles of their fire station. So which which is that? That would be uh West Suburban. So if you're in the Rogers district, there's our if you're within the range of the fire department. Um that's the old that's back when we originally did it. Now Rogers is a they are a three and three and three wide. So if you're within a hydrated area, if your house is within, so you'd have to be in hydrated area, you would have to be within five miles of the fire department. And if those criteria are met, you would be a 3 Y if you're rural and a three if you're plate. So the variables are yes, your address, also which fired district you're served by. Um and then your geographic location. The question is asked, well, what about Maple Grove? Maple Grove does not count for your ISO rating because they are not under contract with the city. We've asked a couple of times. Maple Grove doesn't want to be under contract with our city, but they will help us when we need help and they So, does it matter in our fire service? Absolutely. Does it matter in our when they're out for ISO rating? Okay. It is a they do account for supporting jurisdictions and supporting agencies auto aid. So, they'll part of that is are you auto aiding from other agencies? If you have a structure fire, is dispatch automatically doing that or are you manually doing that? We have box alarms. We have auto aid. We have Plymouth, Maple Grove, um, and all of our partner agencies responding. So, we do check those boxes. We do a good job of that. And we do get some credit. It's not fair to say they mean nothing. They don't do the biggest factors, but they are formulaically included as the supplemental data in those formulas. What about handover? I Dave didn't get back to me with their last review, so I don't know what their ISO ratings are. So, what we learned, you know, and you saw this in the email from the ESCI study, um, is that they didn't lay out a great roadmap for the future. Here's exactly how you build your clarity department. What they did lay out is said, um, you have some questions to answer because for every for every city, a successful fire service looks different. If your paramount value, if your your highly held value for the city is we want the most the cheapest fire service that we can get, then you can do that and you're successful by not investing in fire service. And on the other end of the extreme, we want full-time firefighters, you know, six stations and all the trucks and that's what success looks like to them. Those are two different answers and neither one is wrong. The community decides what is right for it. Now, there are fire code, fire standards that can be adopted, but there's a lot to decipher. So, ESCI said, um, while your agencies, West Suburban Fire, at the time, Lorettto Fire, Rogers Fire, handover has their city mission, vision, values, what they value, and they deliver services accordingly. If Roger says we're going to be as thrifty as we can, um we're going to provide the bare minimum fire support so that we can pro preserve life safety, but we're not going to do more. But West Suburban's philosophy as an agency is everything in the kitchen sink. We're a full service. We're going to hold your hand, walk you across the street. Either one of those is wrong. Their communities are deciding what is right. As a as a collective, as courtroom, we didn't say what is right for us. So they can't tell us what the right service is and what it looks like. So we got a combination of things. They did look at you you saw in there they did do like a heat map to look at where our calls for service, you know, are what our travel times are from stations that serve us. Um but what we really got out of there was six guiding questions that we need to answer for as our city. So if we go to tab number back up as why are we doing it? So if you go to page 14 of the ESCI um this kind of leads into what we did for our subcommittee work pad six study board page 14 foundational management elements and it talks about development of baseline management components in an organization enables it to move forward in an organized and effective manner. In the absence of foundational management elements the organization will tend to operate in a random and generally ineffective manner. The following figure reviews the department's baseline management components. And you'll see that they talk about mission, vision, strategic planning, goals, and objectives. So when we start looking at how are we going to lay out as for corporate, yes, we have it as a city. Yes, Hanover has a version, Loro has a version, Rogers has a version, but we haven't said what our version is for fire service. So when we go to tab 9 and we talked about the subcommittee that the council elected to form. So in between tab six and nine the council appoints a subcommittee. The subcommittee met for a year and a half to start answering the questions from the ESCI um the ESCI study. So if on tab 9 you'll see the six questions that we took that we drew out of the ESCI study that the additional information that we need to do for planning our fire service. So I'm looking at December 12th, 2019 agenda item 10B six questions. How do we form the city's vision for future fire service? How do we effectively solicit community input input for discussions? What are the recommended response times and targets? Are the identified targets currently being achieved? Will the addition of a new fire station corker be necessary to achieve the response standards? And if so, can the city afford to own its own fire station? So, as we look at those, we said, let's get the right people in the room and start going down that road of planning what our service expectations are for our community. If you turn the page, you'll see that the subcommittee members, the people that got hands-on with answering those questions for us were um councelor DJs, councelor Bottom, myself, and our three fire chiefs. So, we met for approximately about a year and a half. Um we met once or twice a month and I think at some point um Mayor McKe had stepped in and there was some substitutes as there was transitions. But if you turn to the next page, you'll see um our vision mission guides was a was the first thing that we did and that goes back to those foundational management principles that ESCI said you're going to be a rudderless ship unless you start defining where you're going. So the first work of the subcommittee was to still down vision. The Corkin Fire Service will provide effective and efficient emergency services at or above industry standards for all residents and be recognized by our community as a source of pride. Mission being the Corkran Fire Service exists to protect the life and property of the people of Corkran by preventing and responding to fires, hazardous material incidents, natural disasters, and medical emergencies. Our service will be focused on the needs of our community and will always be provided with professionalism integrity and pride. And the values the Corkran Fire Service values continuous improvement to maintain a constant state of preparedness in order to serve the needs of our community with honor and bravery. We will further our community's fire prevention through education and adherence to fire safety standards and support the community's fire protection through smart investments in facilities, equipment, training, and staff. So, and again, this subcommittee report was proposed to council and they adopted that vision, mission, and values for the fire service. And what analysis did the subcommittee do? What they spend the other year and a half looking at? So, if you flip the page on the analysis, you'll see the headings. So the subcommittee talked about where's our where's our community at, what are our gaps, and what do we need to do going forward under each of these categories. So they looked at prevention, protection, preparedness, ability to reach all residents, training, community education, response times, and why did they look at those? Because that's what ESDI outlined in their report as all they how they plan fire services. So the it was a combination of analysis of the categories used in the ESCI report. Uh that's why we did our mission, vision, values. We focused on developing a plan for the city in the image of meeting those mission, vision, and values. Um and that's how we arrived at at that analysis. That subcommittee also prescribed there was a lot of conversation about response times and what does that look like? So, for instance, somebody from Hanover Rogers says, "Well, that's not fair because Jeff Lure was working public works. He's in his fire truck and he just shows up on scene." That doesn't mean he's fighting the structure fire just because he showed up in his pickup. So, what the what the three fire chiefs said is, "Let's commit to reporting our functional response time." So, if you're responding to a structure fire, you need two in, two out, you need an engine and water, and once you have those, you've achieved functional response time. Functional response for a medical might be different. And also, we're not going to prescribe what that is because the functional response from Handover might look different than what the functional response from West Suburban is or what Rogers is. We wanted to measure um one of the one of the fundamental themes that came out was um when we asked council at the time, what do you want from our fire service? What do you want it to look like? The answer was it's good. We like it. Okay. Then we need to figure out what we have. start measuring where we're at with response time. So if we start slipping or changing that we know that this is where we want to be. So that's why we started measuring functional response times as to what does it look like and that's what when you see the the data later the fire departments report their functional response times. It is intentionally squishy. This isn't meant to be why did you take 10 minutes to get to that call. This is to identify trends on what is fire versus what's driving our our calls for service. Is it fire? Is it medical? Is it all these new homes or is it little or so we in those in their reporting they're looking at suburban or rural? They're looking at fire or medical. They're looking at emergency or non-emergency calls for service and just looking at how do those things change over time. So we have five years of data now that we can start looking at as we're analyzing those to start tracking how are we doing on meeting what our expectations are. So that was the recommendations of the subcommittee as we page through that the subcommittee recommendations we talked about all these different areas the initial stats that were started being collected in 19. Then the second part of that is the recommendations. The recommendations were broken out into priorities, tier one, tier two under each one of those areas of analysis. So those priorities translated um you know they basically said here's what we need to do under for instance um you know to meet to meet our goals from what we set as our goals pursuant to our mission, vision, values etc. So we have our overarching philosophy. We've said what that looks like. Now we're starting to say, what do we need to accomplish in order to be on track to meet those now and going forward? So those recommendations were translated into a work plan or tasks. So if we go to tab 11, that is after the ESCI study that told us what questions to ask, how we're formulating what our fire service looks like, what service it provides. Um we did the subcommittee work and we identified our our goals. Now we're this is really the task base and you'll see it was it was written as version 1.0. We talked about we completed some of the items while we were in process. They're not heavy lifts. What can we do to complete those items? And then start looking at there's items for ongoing analysis and evaluation. So just keep, you know, keep your finger on the pulse. What are we doing? How are we doing it? um looking at some of the phase one items which some of them have been accomplished um phase two phase three. Now, in the meantime, we're going through COVID fire department mergers and um district discussions um which are impacting some of the deliveries. But also what we found is as we got to the technical part of the tasks to support our goals, there was the way that it was each department was going to accomplish it was in line with their organization's values on how they were doing it. It was, but it wasn't the same as how the other departments were doing and how they were going to achieve it. And one of the things that we talk about is equal access and equal service, especially as you talk about medical response. You shouldn't get a different medical response here versus here. If we have our standard, that should be fair to the community. But there are differences in rural firefighting versus suburban firefighting. It looks different. It functions different. Um, and we have to be able to facilitate that. So, as we got to the taskbased things, um even something as simple as the first conversation about um fire education and inspection visits, the plan was we need to meet with our businesses for two or three years and let them know what they can do better so that they can be educated. We're not going to walk in the door strictly enforce the fire code um because that can be unattainable and and difficult for any business. So, let's how do we educate them? The conversation at the time was very different. So, we have it with West Suburban uh who fire department at the time, they said, "Yeah, we we'll we'll send people out. Sounds good. We'll we can do those visits." When we had the conversation with Chief Bison Rogers at the time, his answer was, "No, well, we will do it, but it will cost a minimum of one FTE to for for us to do that in the Rogers Fire District." And I said, "I'm talking like one one or two days a month. Can we somewhere in between here?" And it was, "No, we're we're beyond capacity with our existing staff and unless we hire a new person." I said, "Well, how about a part-time person?" And no, we need we need one person. So, it it was a non-starter there. And Hanover said, "Yeah, we got some people that we'll we'll send through." Now, the level of certification and training is different. The way that they're doing it is different, not within their agency, but different from each other. Um, now those fire departments are in a lot different time have changed their position on that. So Rogers has said we could probably work something out, but whether that's billable hourly or how we structure that. Um we had to talk about what that looks like. That's not wasn't necessarily included in what our base contract is is providing. Um West Suburban said, "Yeah, we were already doing that, but we also entered an agreement with Dina and we're doing $75 an hour. We could do some kind of agreement with you." So well, are you so you're doing them for free or not doing them in court? Um, but again it was I said, "Well, how how about if we have an inspection team that has a representative from each department, get that consistency. So if there can you guys do one day a month where the where you have a person from each department that does the visits and maybe it's it's one business, they couldn't commit to to overlapping on the same day. So even something as seemingly similar looks very different depending on where you're at. When we rewind, we ran into this especially with planning issues. There was projects that were before Natalie's time, but there was frustrations from Kendra in that a project would come in and we'd meet with the fire chief and they'd say, "I need this, this, and this. It's fine." Project would move to a different location because that site didn't work out. Different fire chief says, "Nope, fire code is these 52 things." And the applicant saying, "You just told me that it was these three and now you've changed it because I moved across the street." We changed that like about nine 10 years ago. We started having public safety plan review where we review all the plans with all three fire chiefs so that we can try and get consistency in expectations especially as it comes to development and fairness. So that's a kind of a microcosm of the larger application. As we see some of the things that seem simpler even as far as messaging, one of the goals was let's have a social media presence. Um we said okay we can do that but we have to be clear about what it is. We still have our three fire partners. we value our fire partners. Um, can they submit the content for it? And you got a different response of, well, just repost the stuff that we put on there. We already manage one page. We're not managing yours. That's a fair answer. Um, but you start seeing why we're not achieving the tasks is because the city is not dictating what the service looks like and standardizing. And this is a technical component. We're not at strategy and vision anymore. or we're at a person who's has the actual expertise to to say here's what this means. Here's what how we're going what this standard looks like that we're trying to accomplish as a city and here's how we're going to work with our partners to deliver on those tasks to achieve those goals in support of our mission vision values and our plan. So as we look at the supporting data um you'll see some at the end of 12 we've tracked the cost by year calls for service by year. Um one of the things that we was a little bit surprising I I did include in here the the latest which was the 2023 state fire marshals report and some of the call data. A fascinating statistic was I said what would it look like if Corkran were one fire department instead of split into three when we look at our calls for service and our call volume. So in 2024 data Corkran had 219 calls for service. If we put that into the list of calls by agency in 2023 um Corkran came out would come out to be like number 127 I think out of 700 and some reporting fire departments. So if CO words was one entity, it would be in the top 25% for call for service by volume of all fire departments in the state. What that tells us is is that our three partners are carrying a heavy load. I mean, we're we're a our community is a legitimate um generator of fire service calls. All three of our partners have active and busy areas as well as it is. Um, when we know that and we know that we're working in a system that is being forced to change models as a changing industry, having to go to duty crews and not finding sustainable response from volunteers, the system is taxed. It's it's functioning and we have really hardworking um partners that are part of our community, but it's changing out of necessity. And when you look at um the right chart that I'm referencing here. So if you look under p tab 12 and we switch to the second page the cost and call for service by year. This is not to scale. This is not saying that this is an exact science but as you look at these numbers um the last one the 219 is actually 2024 data not 25 data. But when we look at the trajectory of our calls for service in the last three years, our calls have gone from 100 to 219. So this is a steep incline. We've doubled our calls for service and our financial contribution has changed by has gone up by 50%. So our calls have gone up by 100%. Our financial contribution has gone up by 50%. On in an industry that is struggling to just to to make sure that they're getting their bases covered. So while it looks good and it's you say well we're getting better value on per call on the on the later number what it's telling us is we're bending and we're we're stressing system that is um going to be changes now what do those changes look like and what are those stressors and that's part of when we talk about external factors what are the pressing issues so as we're trying to bring together resources for consistent technical execution to accomplish our tasks and goals um We're trying to develop those solutions to meet and deliver on our strategies. Some of those are going to include whether it's s whether it's the city of Corkran or whether it's our fire partners that are doing it. There are facility needs, there are staffing needs, there are investments that have to happen in the fire service. We can do that a lot of different ways. Um it doesn't mean that Corkran's starting a fire department. We're not starting a fire department tomorrow, but there's going to be big dollars that need to be spent just in the fire industry as we have potentially new ocean mandates coming down the pipeline. We have staffing model changes and we have when you look at something like West Suburban, they cover a big area. They need stations, at least one. They're they're they're going to go onto a station study. We'll talk about that a little bit more later, but Rogers is hurting for people. They're going to be looking at transition for duty crews. They're looking at station and equipment locations. We're going to pay for that either through contracts as we as we're currently doing or what the previous philosophy from the council was as we begin to tax the system, we should as a city invest and own the investments. Nobody's saying we go buy fire trucks tomorrow, but we're saying if we can mitigate, you know, what we know from this data is that half of those 219 calls were were medicals. Can we mitigate the pressure on the fire service by mitigating medical calls for service? Do we know the breakdown? I think medical to fire is very important. Do we know the breakdown between the fees that we're paying in terms of people versus equipment? Like is the most expensive part of the service the capital that they need to sustain or is it paying to the volunteers? So for the fire department budgets, we can get the fire department breakdowns of the operating budgets on on how they break out capital that all three of them do it differently. Um so you have your annual different ones budget differently for the capital expenditures. How they do their operating is going to depend on how much are they running for duty crews versus how much is for pension. Um so when you're talking about a volunteer fire department, you still have you're still paying hourly on most of your calls. You're still paying into the pension fund. Um, so your question is as the fire department, what are the cost drivers or expenses? Um, we can get the exact breakdown by those budgets. I can send those out to you. But for the city of Corkering, what our cost is is so for Rogers, it is straight is based solely on market value. We pay $440 per million of total market value. Our contract for Handover and West Suburban is a a hybrid model. 50% of our contract that we pay to those is based on our market value in those fire districts. The other 50% is based on calls for service and call hours for service. So, how much are you using the service? Um, one of the cities we have a three-year average on the calls and the other one is a fiveyear average calls. So, as they look at utilization of the fire service. So, our cost drivers are formulaic on how much we're using the service and our market value as a city. The fire department's cost drivers are going to vary depending on how they're structured. So, what I'm hearing with the way that's calculated, if we're looking at a three to five year look back for call volume for half of the cost, we're seeing a little bit of benefit in 2021 and 2022 that'll roll off. Yes. Yes. And the call volumes go up, we should lose the benefit that we're seeing now with cost growing slower than service. We should lose some. It will Yes. How how it will play out will be it'll be dependent. Yes. But there's a lagging market value too if so so as market value hits there's there's we're it's steeper than what we're experiencing because we've had so much growth in the last three years. And so with the three-year look back at our market values could have a significant sh. So the previous philosophy was as we contribute to fire service and we continue to tax on services as we continue to impact the service that our fire departments are providing. How do we mitigate that both from a meeting service expectations that we invest as a community? You know, as I said, about 120 of those 219 were medical calls. Is that how we're going to choose to mitigate our impact on the fire service or are we going to pay our providers and say this is your problem? We're going to be paying for the solutions either way. It's just whether or not we own any of the solutions. And and so that's that's part of the part of the when we talk about the philosophy and the plan of the previous plan on meeting the goals and the benchmarks was really put in place as a matter of we're going to over time. Yes, we're going to incur additional expenses in fire service. Why we're doing that is it matters where we want to be here and there and there as we go along and it might be disproportionate. So you know in that plan we had talked about meeting if you look at meeting the tactical things and the tactical requirements we started sliding off about 2 to 3 years ago that's when we started having a conversation of we need a tactical expert that's going to make sure that you and you and you are doing fire service the same way. Here's how we're going to do it. Here's what it looks like in the area. Not in a way that they're saying this person isn't going to show up and tell the fire chief how to run their fire scene. We have great fire departments. They do a great job. They're they respond quickly. They provide good service. They some of them are having struggles on getting people to respond to calls, but generally speaking, they're they're fairly well functioning. Um they go through their own challenges as any organization does. And the intent of this, you know, as when we when we brought forward, for instance, the the deputy director fire position was really intended as a coordinator for getting the three on the same page. you're they're still going to have the autonomy to be they're still doing the firefighting. They own that full responsibility. It's delivering on the things that we laid out in the plans that what we need to do to improve our preparedness. How do we improve our access to all residents? How do we how do we check all of those boxes? And as we have deferred, we're getting further and further of not accomplishing the technical components because we haven't been able to fund the fire position. Yeah. So, so we've had this conversation and I think this is a really good application of it that uh in terms of how we operate, we use this framework that we have three primary levels that are significantly differentiated and strategic, operational and tactical. So this plan that has been put together intentionally is at the strategic plan and then the the playbook of how to do it pulled it into the operational plan so that you hire somebody who translates your operational strategic intentions into a tactical execution. We stopped somewhere between strategic and operational when we decided when when we decided for whatever reasons to not hire someone and so we aren't able to realize the tactical necessity. So, and and all of these things continue to move forward. Like these are just the ones that Matt identified as complexity now. And the operating environment continues to get tactically more complex. And so having someone who helps translate with our three different partners how to take what they're doing, meet our strategic intentions with an operational plan. That's here you know strategic intention from the council translated into operational plan which we had we need to translate from the operational to the tactical and that's where you need the technical expertise and we don't have that technical expertise on any one of the three fire departments we do but what you have as Matt was identifying they are three different operating environments we we have fantastic experts uh and they are in their operating environments. It's synchronizing all three of them with their different things in order to meet our city operational and strategic objectives. But if if if I can finish, why can't those three operational folks in those three deals get together and put that together along with our public safety? So they help build this plan. So when you look at the plan, I heard that delivery. I'm asking the simple question. We want to hire somebody not in those three. We want to hire an outsider to tell these three what our plan is. Why can't we still work with those three and get somebody from those three to work together to do can can I address that for just I I I'm I'm trying to be simple. I don't want to go so crazy that so the Rogers Fire Department is the city of Rogers Fire Department. The Handover Fire Department is city and then West Suburban is a is a nonprofit. They have in some cases different priorities than what the council identified as strategic priorities. And so the reason you have somebody we're we're aligning those it's been great partners, but there might be a different region. So major maybe it might be in the best interest of Rogers to have if we were going to build a site in a different location or in West Suburban. And so the reason is you you have somebody who is meeting the strategic intention of the of the council by collaborating with those three partners. They're key voices. They're technical experts, but sometimes there's different priorities. So to that point, I've only been here a year and a half, but I I attended several meetings in which the West Suburban Fire Department was meeting with other cities that had competing priorities. So some of them wanted to see a taxing district. This was when I first got here. Some did not want to see a taxing district. And so how do we make sure that the priorities for Corkin are there? We have representation there. But in this case, we have a technical expert that's talking with them. So the example that Matt was giving about fire inspections. Uh we've been trying to have them do fire inspections all the same way. Having somebody who is like, okay, this is the way that we're going to do it for Corkran uh as we partner with them. That would be the intention. What is the Corkran way as desired by the council uh in collaboration with the three partners and as we're you know for instance west suburban their priorities are okay let's talk about a district let's talk about merging with other entities they're not working to check off the boxes about meeting our tactics to to meet our goals and Rogers has the same challenges all three of the fire departments when when the house starts on fire they're responding to it but it's it's creating our service of how do we get them where we're going to be in 10 years. So if you look at, you know, take in your own mind and it's different for all of you, what does Corkran look like in 10 years? What does that fire service look like in 10 years? Because the groundwork for that fire service is happening today. And if the answer is not a thing changes from today and 10 years from now and you know our costs are triple or quadruple and we don't own any part of it, that's cool. You're renting your apartment as opposed to owning. Then then two, we've done nothing to prepare us to make these purchases of a new building or new equipment or anything. And then the ultimate thing that is going to mess everything up, we can have all this but no volunteers. We're not looking for volunteers though, Dean. We want we're partnering with our three partner agencies. I I'm aware of that. I'm just saying that we have three very good groups doing better than any of us know or are smart enough to know about fire period. But yet we're giving them direction on what we want or what we need. Going back to even something as simple as those inspections, they're probably in all inspecting pretty darn close. But to get the three together and say let's get one inspection for we can't even do that. We've tried to do that correct it was not working. And why so the answers it's been different. It's changed over the last few years. The first answer was Roger Spyer said you're going to pay for one FTE if we're going to I'm talking right now. I'm being told all three would love to work together to do this. So what? So why can't you being the director was those three and get that baseline done? Why do we need an outside person or is there a way to get somebody from those three very capable departments to come up with I'm asking you guys. I have no idea. I'm the biggest thing I'm hearing from all three departments is all want to hire somebody from outside our organizations to tell us what to do and where to go and what's going on. That's the last thing I want to do. I want to I I just saw the Ravenia fire. A fiveinut response time from the time the call got in to the truck that got there putting water on a fully engulfed house on on Saturday. That's some pretty good response time from that group. And that's because they did, the way it was explained to me, they have duty crews on Friday and Saturday nights till midnight. Thank God we've got that. Does handover have it? Does Rogers have it? Again, I'm I'm I don't want to go outside those three organizations. They already know the area. They already know what's going on. And I can't understand why the three can't collaborate. to come up with one inspection or one. Can I can I flip? Well, I just make one com the plan that we're asking them to deliver on being that, as you said, we're demanding they do, they vote when we look. So, our expectations are not doing something different or something they're not on board with. It's doing it the same way across the board. And I'm asking why can't the three along with you directing them get that ball on one sword? So, can I hit pause for just a second? So, so the key thing we're getting on one detail of a larger plan. And so, what count what staff really needs from council today is is that's one. There was also discussion about potential facilities. There's discussion about education. There's there's a whole number of things that are part of the overarching plan. what staff needs to know is if we want to deviate from the plan. Uh if we because we haven't been implementing the plan. This has been to your point, this has been the tipping point or a stumbling point on plan. So if we don't want to do that, staff doesn't have uh we're trying to execute what had been directed through the three partners and council. And so if we want to pivot from that, that's fine. Yeah. I'm I'm not interested in pivoting. I'm I'm I'm going after that one thing that seems to be a disconnect. Let's get everybody in the fire on the same type of program. If they wrote this together, then why is there conflict? Why is there issue? And again, in my mind, why do we need to get that other person to do the operational tactical side? So, it hinges. It it isn't you're talking about one nuance but this person also in terms of planning for facility in terms of communicate like like there's many different second and third effects of this and so that's why it's not as simple as just one person. That's why if we want to change the plan the trickle down effects are significant and and if council wants to do that okay um we just need to understand what council wants to do. Uh so so we've had a plan. If we don't like the plan, then we can I want to do a different plan. Uh to to Matt's point too, the operating environment has changed. Uh and it's going to continue to change. It's very dynamic. Yeah. One thing that I noticed as I've reread church's plan is the vision isn't very specific. How do we know when we've achieved effective and efficient emergency services at or above industry standards? So why I kind of gravitated question about the ISO ratings because it kind of gives me a benchmark like can we set understanding where we are today with ratings and the practical effect of where these fire stations are and the open space that we have in the middle of the city like where are we today? How much of the city is at a nine or a 10 because they're too far away. And I feel like we could maybe revise the vision to have like a minimum threshold that we want all of the city to be at. And that would drive in the rest of the plan. When I read the activities, it doesn't tab. I am in four. I'm moving forward. Speak to why you are written the way it is. Um and the intention of it was to be vision is both outline for being for existence. It's supposed to be the higher level and then as you get into your mission becomes forecastable at what level are we providing it? So as you'll see the one of the adopted ones was okay we want to be at industry standards or above or below are we looking for efficiency are we looking for performance and or are we going to say whatever is outlined as an industry standard that's what we want to adopt. So the goal was the vision outlines the the philosophy and and then as we get tactical of saying are we're going to deliver this service at this response time because we decided that this is where we want to benchmark it. So we we we did the umbrella mission and then as we hit values is how you going to accomplish your mission and vision. So I think that was written big picture intentionally to to keep it philosophical. Yeah. as opposed to operational. But do we have like a more precise target? Yes. In place somewhere. Yes. So as we get to um so when you were talking about um was it response times? I was talking about the ISO ratings. The ISO ratings because the formula the formula is so complex you it's not something that you can easily target. So our three fire departments are different. you can't set a community ISO benchmark. So, we know what the big players are. It's water supply, it's access to a fire station, and then it starts becoming very tactical as far as what trucks, how many, you know, gallons per minute, what's their capacity. Um, it's hard because of how many factors go into it to set an ISO rating as a goal. And so that's why it was focused on meeting industry standards as it relates to response time, as it relates to equipment, as it relates to people. All of you know the factors that play into the ISO rating. Your outcome in the end should be a better ISO rating if you're committed to improving all of those factors that go into it. That helps. That's why it doesn't say we're going to try and reach an ISO rating of three or greater. That's a really big three or lesser. Yeah, sorry. three. But I guess what I'm kind of wrestling with is when I look at the service area maps and you know the hole in the eastern side of the city where no department is within 10 minutes, are those areas actually at a 9 or a 10 or is that some intermediate level? Um it's going to I haven't checked with individual homeowners anecdotally with homeowners that live in that area have expressed very high insurance rates. So it would lead me to believe that they are probably up there in those in those nines or tens. But to me that seems like the primary objective now to me should be how do we close that part of the city and get it to a more typical level of support where everybody else is at. Um and if you're focused on that, it might lead to a different conversation about how do you meet that need? It might go beyond how do you standardize inspection and you're talking about a different kind of development. Okay. Um I think that's good. I want to just talk about three more things uh real quickly that um so that wanted to make sure that we got to tonight that we're addressing the plan on how we're doing what the process was for creating the plan what we're trying to do when we we read and spent time looking at the plan revisiting the timeline. Are we meeting the needs outlined in the timeline? Um talking about communication and how do we form what we know and what we believe should our fire service should look like. Um there are, you know, several and this is, you know, we've gone through I've been through 16 council members, so it's not it's not anything different, but I have, you know, I found it common that having council members reach out and meet one-on-one with fire chiefs, but nobody's called to meet with me or when they've met with fire chiefs, I'm not included in the conversations. So, it's really hard for us to deliver a consistent message for for us to say what the plan is when you have you know, elected officials and there's I understand there are different things as far as due diligence and trying to make gather as much information, but there's also as we're expressing what our city plan is and why is our city working the way it is, it's very helpful if I can either meet with the council members and explain and help answer those questions or be present as the fire chiefs are helping answer those questions because otherwise it looks like we're saying different things when we might not be. Sure. Um, so I think that communication for me is one of the one of the things that is really important that we're understanding not just hearing but understanding each other and why we're doing what we're doing. Um, and then some of the the key orientation as we orient the the arrow from here to here, wherever we decide our destination is. Um, some of the big questions on philosophy are who owns the future investments. we're going to be paying either we're paying it to our partners or we're going to try and incrementally as we're as those bills come up try and see how we can um contribute to them. Um another question, West Suburb West Suburban Fire Department is going undergoing a station study. They need to so they're going to be doing some of the same stuff identifying locations, building new stations. Their question to the city of Corkran is how much of Corkran do we include? Do we include just the southern third that we cover now? Do we include all of it? do we include none of it? Um, and we they want some direction as they're doing their their station studies. And that matters because obviously they're a partner agency of ours. Are we going to pay for their depending on what area is? If it includes us, if it includes Maple Plane or not, if it includes, you know, how big they are, whether they're building one station, two stations, three stations, and how much of we're going to be paying a portion of those as a contributing member, but are we going to say we're going to contribute our own, and we'd rather not participate in other ones somehow, or are we going to say, "Please position a station in Corkran that will meet our objectives here, and this is your investment." Um there's a lot of ways to slice that, but those are those are some big overarching philosophical questions that will be um that's a good question. Is is Rogers involved with that too or is it just one fire? Just West Suburban. Just West Suburban. Because like I would be concerned if it's just West Suburban, are they considering that we have a relationship with Rogers and what that might look like? I mean, I'm assuming they would they would look at as the whole city and say it makes sense for you to have a fire garage, whatever we call that, here in X amount of years and have one here because this is where your population growth is. They don't do their station studies dependent on where Roger stations are. They're going to do it to station study their service area. So their question is is are we are we positioning stations? So they might say we're coming to the southern third of Corker and the best station location is in northern Madina and that's where we're going to put our station in Madina and then our contributing agencies will pay for it and then we're going to do one down near Maple Plane. I'm making up data, you know, there the experts are going to come back with their recommendations and we're going to be we're going to be a party to it. But in addition to the station studies and locations and we have to decide how those investments are going to look now once we finish that more complexities. West Suburban has talked about um at some point trying to go to a taxing district. Do we want one-third of our city in a taxing district different than the other two fire districts? Do we want to ask that taxing district if it forms that if we can just contract with them the same way we do with West Suburban or do we want our whole city to be part of a taxing district? um you know that that was a we went years we lost years of our lives talking about different philosophies and taxing districts but um you know and I I think the the follow-up one was that you know as we talked about what service we're providing and soliciting feedback our our partners need to be involved in our planning but as we deliver our plan for our service expectations are we as a city going to tell our service providers what we want our service for our community to look like or are we going to have our providers tell us what service they we need or they're going to provide in the fire districts in their areas. That's a philosophical question for the council and um as Dean said, we have good smart partners. It looks different for each of them. Um th those were the key points that I wanted to get out. So hopefully you guys still have time to now start talking about well philosophically here's the plan. Here's what we've been oriented towards. our arrow has moved off of our target. We confirm that target. Do we move that target? If we're going to re-evaluate, um it's not just saying, I don't like task six. Well, task six was formulated in support of reaching this goal, which was providing preparedness or response time or whichever category we're working in. That was determined by our experts on how we get there. So I really, you know, if we're going to depending on the degree of change that we're looking at, we'll will dictate how far do we rewind in the planning process from do we need to go back to vision and mission and values and reestablish, hey, this I read these this is not what I envision our fire service looking like in 10 years or 20 years. Okay, at that point I think we would need to dial in. We need to bring our fire chiefs back in the ring. We need to get the council representatives involved and myself and start hammering out what that is. Bring it back to the council whether or not there's feedback or endorsement of that idea. Um or do we just adjust timelines or so I'll let you guys start talking about if we can keep it as much philosophical as possible, it will tell us what part of the planning process we need to rewind to to recalibrate what we're looking at going forward. And and another variable in the equation. So, so council rare Tampa had talked about like where does the money come from in our long-term financial plan, a proposed station has been part before I came here has been part of the plan uh coming up here soon and we're about to start our space needs study and so what that space would look like whether it's collaborative partnership for a space whether it's we're providing space and someone else builds it that hasn't been defined but this is an important variable in the equation of what our space needs are going to be in the community. So, so like council member Nichols mentioned, there's a gap right now that could potentially impact the ISO rating that's so complex I can't speak to it. But what is coming up is we're having to look at some sort of civic campus. Is fire service part of that civic campus? Or to Matt's point, do we have potentially a different way of addressing medical? Uh there there's lots of different ways that we can consider skinning that cat, so to speak, but it's an important conversation because it's going to impact what we're trying to build for a civic campus. Uh which which we we're about to start the space need to go offer RFP here in the next three months. Uh and so getting some strategic guidance on is this a very long equation or this isn't on the table. And that's an example of when we need someone on our team who's a technical expert if it is part of the equation to that Jade there is still help me it's been a long day but has there been any funds set aside for fire stations anything like that? We've got nothing. The long-term financial plan has been there's a limited amount in the long-term finance plan, but the plan has been combined. So, a 50 million dollar bond has been as part of the long-term financial plan because I look back for quite a few years. So, there's been a discussion for a long time that this is going to be a need. Uh, and as I've been talking with with different vendors and and paying attention to what other cities, uh, that might impact the scope of what we're able to achieve to just realistically what's happening on the market in the changing world. Um, but we do need a civic campus. Is fire service part of that campus? That's why this is also a very important conversation to get clarified. And if it is, does that change where we put the civic campus? because our partners become then um we we do not well let me rephrase that. I don't want to try and build a fire department in my tenure. So if that's I'll just be fully transparent. If that's a council goal, I'm not your guy for that because I've watched what's happened in a couple other cities and I think we've got fantastic partners and that's not where we're at in the city. But we have to figure out how to partner well. we continue these partnerships so that uh we set them up for success. We I mean to your point, last Saturday's fire, that's exactly what we want. If you drive by and look at it, it was con it was contained to a specific site. The loss was a lot less than it could have been and there was no loss of life. You don't want a fire, but if you want one, that's how you want it to go down. Fantastic. Those are the kind of fun we need. How do we help them perform better? Is it a building? is that that's where we need strategic guidance. And so when we look at how we've grown our other city services, when we had engineering, we had a team of engineers from Wank or Stantech. We had our ones that we worked with. We built up capacity. Then we hired a public works director who was half engineer who directed the engineering. We're still partnered with Stantech. They're still providing technical expertise. He's picking up the gap and starting to own as much as he can for the city and making sure that he's delivering on our specification, saying, "Your street lights will look like this. our roadways will be that you know he's delivering on the technical components still the team of engineers doing it in the planning world before we had Natalie's great expertise we had Kendra here and Kendra managed the projects followed the city's direction and as our services grow we brought in house of planner and Natalie was you know you know still still here and that didn't change Kendra's service provision for the city it didn't say Kendra carried any more or less weight it was how do we bring planning function inhouse so that we're owning our future of what planning looks like and our ability to deliver planning how we want it to look. Now Natalie is the community development director and we have another planner and Kendra is still here providing good service still providing that expertise and I think as we look at how we've grown all of our other areas of service we have done the hybrid approach and it's as we start needing additional capacity or additional delivery in our vision that we have brought in the in-house folks that have still worked with those experts and those partners. We don't want to lose. We want to only gain in what we're doing. That would be the hope, I think, if we So, it seems like we're stuck on hiring someone into that position, feeling like we have three capable fire chiefs that can pull us together and tell us what we need in our city as far as fire services go. Um, I'm kind of aligning with Dean that I think that hiring a person to do that for someone for someone to come in and say and try to figure out, oh yeah, this is what we need when we already have three people that know what we need does not make sense to me because what goes along with that is also going to be some sort of fire vehicle. We're going to be answering fire calls that are running out to sites. There's going to be an additional expense of that. It's not just the salary. So, it grows much bigger. So, because we use contracted services prior to getting full-time people, maybe that's a consideration. It you said it better than I could have is we've got three groups that are extremely devoted to servicing not just their communities but our community also. There should be some ability to collaborate. Those three services tell us what we should be doing in the short term and then help us talk about a campus or another station or something kind of like we've done with with the the planning side or the engineering side and stuff like that. I don't know if that's happening. It sounds like right here they want to do it. I know. But it doesn't sound like it's being done. The three are saying they have ideas, they have thoughts, but we aren't executing. Like I said, we're the last person to say it. I would rather give that group a shot with you being that public service or public safety director and stuff. and what should it be now? But again, and I' I've had conversations with even previous council member Bottom and he was on this and such. I'd rather use those three resources, get them to collaborate together and in conversations they talk with me and stuff unsolicited. We have thoughts and ideas, but they aren't going anywhere. So that's why I'm saying what I'm saying. I'd rather have what changed another conversation going somewhere if it hasn't already. I have no idea. I'm I'm saying I I don't want specifics because I'm so far from the expert even though I've been through this when Maple Grove had three stations. I was there for the 20 years I was there and they built the fourth station and the fifth station. But that's resources. But as they did all those things, they still narrated the issues related to volunteers. They when they got them and kind of dumb and stuff at the time when I was over there, they would get 10 people and they maybe two would make it through the process, the site evaluation, all of the things they needed to do and stuff. We we we've got one of the our neighboring guys here. I hope I'm about right. Am I not? It's difficult to become even a volunteer firefighter. It's not, "Okay, I'm here. Show me how to put out a fire." It is miserable. My wife spent a year and a half getting vetted out and finally got on station five for four and a half, five, four years, nine months. And then when we moved here, Ari, you got to go. Even though she was still second or third person on the first truck. I'm talking very simple things. You guys are talking that plan, love a plan. If if previous councils, even our council, previous mayors and stuff said, "No, forget it. We're good right now." I'll apologize for all those. But I'd really like another turn to get those three departments together along with you to what do we need? Where are we at? What are we missing? And again, it it keeps coming back on something as simple as the fire inspections are three different ways. And one person said it one way and then it's moved to another. Now wait a minute. They said this was good and now it's different. Those three got to get together and on the same page is what I'm saying. Not us telling them what's right. But again, I'd rather see it come from those three groups. This is my thought for tailing those three groups get together. Do we have somebody in our three organizations that we would be able to trust that is knowledgeable as knows and could come up with? So my my only concern with the way that that's framed right there is they were part of every part every step of the process of building this plan along with two on the subcommittee. And so while they may disagree with the plan right now, their fingerprints are all over it. And so so the reason we're here, I don't want to agree with that. I'm just saying it sounds like and so if that's not the recommendation now, then then do we back up and revisit it? Because if if the tipping point is a person, the reason we have a person is because we need a person to help follow through. They have competing demands, you know. So, the reason Kevin got hired as a as an engineer for the city isn't because Wayne wasn't doing a great job and and Wink moved to Stantech and they're still here doing work with us. They're a fantastic partner. We're not wanting to get rid of any partners. We need somebody that does the day-to-day grind that wears the corporate jersey. All of them are show up do great work for us but if they have competing demands their number one priority is to their organization as it should be and I understand it. I'm just saying of the three do they recommend somebody from out of their three organizations to be that person. That's all I'm asking. But we've never I think that would be hard to do to have one of them be like the leader that kind of comes up with a plan. I'm not asking for those three fire chiefs. I'm saying take me being a mediator, me being in between and stuff. I've listing stuff is there somebody that can do that out of that organization. Is the problem those organizations with the plans things that we said we would do but haven't been able to get done or is it the TBD phases that we've never developed? Right. Oh, no. It's it's more the things that the TBD is knowing that more work is going to come out as we accomplish the earlier ones. So, as you talk about bringing together the three folks, if if Corkran was its own fire department, we're in the top 25% of call volume of all fire departments in the state. That's damn near a full-time job getting the three of them as we're accomplishing. I know the numbers. I know that stuff. I'm saying collaborate with those three. If you all can't get together, those three and you can't get together and say yes, we need that. I'm being told, and again, I'm not part of any of the conversations with anybody. I'm being told they're saying, "We're going to somebody else outside come in and they're going to tell us what to do. We aren't going to play that game." I'm telling you what I'm being said. Someone from them. I have no idea. I'm telling you what I'm hearing. I have no solution. The only way you're going to get a solution is you all three get in a room with you. And what what is the plan? What is it? You have a plan, but there's disagreement. There's people not listen to each other. I have no idea. You're being gas lit a little bit on the fact that we're I'm not going to tell anybody anything. I'm telling you all need to get in a room together and hash it out. We not and I'd be happy to be there and start hitting people up alongside the back of the head. Would you listen to each other? That's all I'm saying. Let's go, Matt. If you want to respond, then Michelle. Okay. We meet month minimum monthly. So, I meet with Jeff almost weekly. U we get all of the fire chiefs in the room monthly where we do which is very hard to do. Sometimes they can't. I hear that too that they all can be there and I I push the same way back. It's saying you all got to make the time to get together and sit out and figure it and work it out. But not achieving that. And that's that's where having the it's a full-time job getting that level of production to check those boxes and get those entities on the same page. I just wanted to real quick I feel like maybe just trying saying what Matt's saying a slightly different way. He's saying that it's a full-time job to get this collaboration to work. So you're asking him to lead it when he already has other duties and he's at capacity. So he needs someone who has the technical expertise that can do this full-time because that's how much time it's going to take to do this effectively. I was going to add the same thing or I was going to say the same thing almost identical, but I still think that there needs to be a collaborative piece with maybe an outside entity and not a staff person. I feel like it needs to be someone who's unbiased, who can take a look at what the report comes back from from West Suburban is willing to talk to Rogers and say, "Okay," and has some like fire districting experience, too. Because like I've been doing some research and fire districting where you're you're pulling different pieces together from different departments. You don't necessarily have your own one fire department because one fire department isn't even going to be enough because you might not have all the pieces that you need to service our whole city. We have people on the west side that we're going to have to truck water out to. So, we got to have tanker after tanker rolling. You might need someone that has like in Ravenia need a big ladder to get to the very top of the fire to get the water up there. So, there's so many different needs. We need somebody that's going to have an expertise that can say, "Yep, you're right, Fire Chief from West Suburban. You're right, Rogers. Here's how we can make this happen." And it makes sense for that station to be located there because in in Rogers, they have six other fire stations that are further away. So this one in Corkran, that makes sense. Someone that's looking out for Corkran still, but also trying to pull in the expertise of our fire chief. So we know that the service that we're getting is going to align with what we end up deciding is our vision. one one of the challenges that we have so like in the engineering world but we're routinely having folks come in with an expertise in hey how can I help you how can I partner with you I'm not aware of anybody in the fire service world that is going out there to contract so so that that might be if if what the suggestion is is that we outsource it and we the bottom line I think that was really great Natalie that that it is ultimately a capacity issue with competing demands and and and within need for technical expertise at the tactical level that translates uh those those three departments have competing priorities because they're dealing with different challenges and and one of those like to your point is volunteers are huge. So some departments are having duty groups right now which means our expenses are going to go up. I was going to say too, it would be I think beneficial because if you had someone doing that contracted service, it's important for that piece to also work with the fire department because of the medical aspect of it. Maybe our fire department has to take on more medical, but that would be something that's decided and talked about once we develop this plan. I think it would also be good somebody looking at the efficiency of service delivery. So if a fire department is responding to a medical call, are they coming with a fire truck? Are they bringing more than they need in certain cases? And is there an opportunity to get some savings there? As much of that function that can be funded by savings and averted contract costs, I think would make it easier to get it through. Like if we could point out we're paying $2,000 a call and have Rogers come. We need you know a guy who is the one that given the language of the contract probably is the least maluable the way it's formulated on appraise value but if they don't come I guess maybe that's but the other two are have a strong component of number of calls. So yeah, can I get some clarification on your thought, Michelle, as far as you know, you talk about having an outside independent person? What's the value of having an outside person versus having somebody who has a corporate bias, a city a city council direction bias or as a a city staff person? What do you gain by having the outside consultant versus you having a representative of the city prescribing what the city is trying to accomplish? Sure. I think for me having a staff person in that role because it's it's something that's not well potentially in 10 years I suppose it could still be here but because we're in this middle period of trying to decide where we want to go. It doesn't make sense to hire a staff person to me because you have to then also get like I said before you have to get like a sort of fire vehicle for them to drive. You're going to have things I can't even think of right now that would be expenses on top of what just an annual salary would be. Whereas with the contracted service, you're paying out a specific amount each year. So it's easier to budget. It helps keep our cost down. And I I like that idea just because that's what we've done as we've grown in other departments. And so it makes sense to me. Well, I would say that our contracted providers are three fire departments. I would say that we we do that now as far as contracting for service. I think I don't think there would be let me put it this way. If if there was a city staff person, they won't run out of work in the next hundred years here. There there there will be there is no like hey we have a surge we're trying to get over. We're already very busy community and we're going to get as we travel from where we're at today not meeting our goals and expectations over the next 10 years is exponentially growing and we could see it in the charts. So, I have no worries that they're going to work themselves out of a job. And quite the contrary, as you begin to have success, it opens Pandora's box to other I'd like to see that person be able to point to accumulated reductions in insurance costs for community members and businesses as a metric of their success. H I'm not sure that that can translate as clearly because of the IO ISO complexity but but I think to put a metric to it with half of our calls as medical um so so when I was in CHASA uh the the building inspectors or sorry the fire inspectors were usually the first ones on site. Um so what what if for us this person or persons however it looked like were also helped reduce some of those medical responses so it becomes so you're not sending to your point a fire truck from Lorettto or Hanover or Rogers uh you're sending wherever they were in town a faster response to help with that lift assist for that and and dispatch you know knows whether it's a medical call or whether it's a fire call. And so that could potentially address almost half of our volume with a faster response uh on site um with leveraging that equipment having this expertise that that could potentially provide better quality service, you know, so that or above. And correct me if I if I'm wrong, but it could also potentially even help in calls where maybe they get sent out there. It ends up it's it's a larger problem or it's something that does need a further response. They're still potentially could be there to start triaging and assessing the the site. Lots of medical too that the dish the police department that's usually the first person there is a squad. Uh West Suburban gives us a run for our money. They're all if we're not on a call, yes, the squads will likely be there. We don't have a lot of we don't have a lot of depth of services. So one car on, there's a good chance the cop is the first one there, but you're the boots on the ground and helping dispatch say, "Yes, we need assist. Yes, we need this." Yeah. And if you got a lift assist, I mean, that that gives you most of the time to do. The one one thing I I think is important to realize is that eventually we will need someone like that. But I think right now to get us where we need to be with pulling in the three visions of our police chiefs and trying to get this aligned with what our future vision is going to be. We aren't going to have a person immediately starting to go out on falls in that role. Initially it's going to be setting things up to make sure that our service is what we want it to be. And so it's more of that or actually the tactical piece. I mean we're between that operational and tactical piece. So, it's not physically doing that, helping residents and doing that piece yet. It's just setting it up for us, which is why I think contracted services would be a better option than the staff person. For for the sake of time, if I can make a recommendation, Mr. Mayor, I I think we still have a lot to chew on. And so, my recommendation would be that we um continue this conversation on July 10th with another work session. Yeah. Um, so, uh, that that would be my recommendation at this point unless there's an alternative and I would say I mean if there's one of the things that we really might be two do we have three at least? I can make it. So, so we can move it to July 24th if that would be a preference. I was just templating it for the first meeting. What are the options? 10th through the 29th. 10th through the 23rd of July. 10th through We could meet on an alternative day, but I think it's very convenient to come in early on the day of council meetings rather than trying to schedule another day. I can do either one. So July 24th, we allow anyone to be here. I'm out, but they know we're scheduling. So, uh, again, in in the meantime, when I get calls and stuff, I'm telling folks, I'd rather you call Matt. Wonderful. And talk to him instead of because I'm getting comments from all of them saying, we don't need that person. We can take care of this. But there I I always push back too. There's still continuity that needs to be done between the three. And the response back is yeah, we can take care of that. But it sounds like there's a missing communication. There's a missing part and stuff. And I don't think it's that. As Michelle said, I don't think it's that person yet. It's four people getting together and saying the same thing and agreeing to it and then not leave the room and that person doesn't know what to talk about or that person. I'm trying to be as transparent as possible in every one of these stations, every one of these cities, every one of these supporting people. Goodness, when the alarms go off, they are there. And it don't matter who's who's there first or anything, they're all over. And if if there's if there's any way they can all say yes, we can do this. if that camp is what would have been recommended. Between now and July 24th, council members, if you can provide some clarity for me on on what you'd like to focus on so we can put together a clear agenda because there's a lot of information here. Uh it it seems like the position we we keep coming back to the position, but there's some other really big important decisions uh that relate to our strategic plan. Some of those are contingent on a position, but there's a lot of them that are not contingent on a position that that we still need some feedback on. And so I'd ask you to Here's a few things that I'd like. Um I'd like to understand can we we had the study that showed the service gaps. Can we update that so we can see what where is now configured? What is the gap and to the degree that it's available to us? Can we get the range of the ISO values across the city and how many homes are in each bucket across the We would have to call individual homeowners. I think I don't know if because they all have different insurance companies. I don't know if that's collected by like if you're in you're in the southwest different insurance companies have different so so that's the general standard that's how they apply. Yes. Um, and so I think some of the things that as we're going forward, if you guys could spend time on subcommittee recommendations to see is this Rita is this something that that we're aligning with or does this need to be recalibrated? Can we get an updated version that shows what has been implemented? So this what hasn't. I can last one is the I can do there are some markings on there that I can go through and verify what is or isn't historical information. It's invaluable. We have it. Is there a way we could get down to current state on what needs to be done? I think three things that we'll provide for the next one is service gap update will be conversation. Uh Matt had had some ISO feedback from different departments. We just hadn't heard from handover. So it won't be as specific as you're hoping for, but we can get some general data. Uh and then as far as some committee recommendations, we can review it and provide an update on that. Uh where where we think we're at today. Um and then any other recommendations that you have as I meet with you, if you let me know, we can get those added to the agenda. Start thinking about some of the philosophy stuff that we talked about as far as ownership of any fires or are we paying the providers and their what where do the investments go? The big investments are coming and out of necessity. So what does that look like for our community? Um, we need to figure out on West Suburban Fire, you know, as they're doing their station study, they need direction on how much of our city is or isn't included in their planning. Um, and phil philosophically, what does that dialogue look like with our providers on what the service looks like? So, philosophically, those are thoughts on what how you guys think we should get to um the sub delivery. If we are on board with subcommittee recommendations, we may need to rewind. Have we given them an uh like west suburban, have we given them two scenarios? One, what would it take to do the whole order? And two, what would it take to do what you are responsible now? You I said that actually it's funny that was my when Jeff asked that question. I said I'm I'm hoping to get the last thing in a little bit more conversation with the council, but my answer was I would say that you're contracted for a third of our community. that I said I would say first of all what does the station study look like covering your commitment to our community but it wouldn't hurt to know what it would look like for covering our whole community their answer was those are two different studies and we can't do both so we need to know which one we're going to do so would the whole one encompass them we did include the Rogers area and so what we'll do is move a station from here to here and if they're not going if we're not going to remove Rogers and handover then this would be a incorrect placement for a station. See if their the top line is here versus here moves the ones down costwise. It doubles your cost. With that future date, uh we are all in second. I