Bangor council reviews engineering, stormwater and fire budgets

[0:17] Susan Hawes: We're allowed, all right, so we are going to start tonight's budget work done with engineering and then storm water on our agenda with fire first. I think Jeff is going to be pretty, not even say it out loud, it's actually retract statement, we're going to start with Jeff. [0:41] Jeff Davis: So yeah, go ahead. Okay, so again, I'm Jeff Davis, director of engineering. We're going to be going over the engineering proposed FY27 budget and the stormwater across the flight 27 budget. Some of the core functions for engineering, obviously the plan design review and provide construction inspection for all of our public infrastructure projects. That's everything from the signals to sidewalks, helping with the main maintenance of the streets to the maintenance of the sewer systems, phone drain system. We also provide assistance to most every department, including the airport. We have the engineering administers is the GIS department, which is one person, but we have one GIS administrator and GIS is a extremely important part of the city. Most departments use that function some way or the other and new FY 26 when we moved back in the city hall, city hall maintenance and that division is now under engineering, it was under finance. Some of the recent accomplishments for engineering in FY 26, of course we completed the major freehold of city hall, moved back in, we did some pretty heavily recruiting and got a new engineer and a new director of engineering, Aaron assistant director of an adjourn, sorry, who was in the room with me. I don't know if you've all met Eric Darren, but so we've, we've ramped up that and that we've had, you know, some folks move on, so that helps us get our work done. Of course FY 27 goals and priorities, you know, we can, you know, we're going to continue to try to find grants and apply for grants. That's a big portion of what we do in engineering. I'll offset the cost of all these improvements that we have. Again, we support and facilitate all of the federal requirements with the US EPA, the DEP, the FTA, the MDOT. That's a pretty big portion of our job. The EPA, we have a consent decree. We spend a lot of time on that to make sure we're doing the right reporting requirements, making sure we're moving forward and the long-term control plans that we do. Again, sewer is its own division, of course, but we're very heavily involved in that function as well as the TIF. We're very heavily involved in that as well. So I can go through some of my capital requests, both with the engineering and infrastructure plus City Hall. I think some of the ones I'll point out are some of our BACS projects from the main DOT MPI projects. Those are what I mentioned before, grant projects that we do every year. BACs helps us receive that for that funding they do help us with you know a lot of front-end paperwork and reporting for that and they also help us with you know actually infrastructure capital planning if it's the roadways they have a biolytics program you know that 's similar to what public works uses you know we can actually drive through the roads and get a condition assessment there is a fee associated with backs taxes are a local mpo it's we do pay a yearly fee to be part of that mpo you know i think it's around 26 000 this year which is up slightly but backs provides a lot of support for the city of bangor so we think it's very needed. And then this year, we are putting in for BACS projects, which are 50-50 projects on these, for Ohio Street Phase 2 sidewalk, and then Kandusky Avenue sidewalk, which there's no sidewalk at all. That's a pretty critical area right now. We've already had folks hit kids there. And that usage is great enough in the area. City Hall wise, which I know we just did a big rehaul, but you know, this City Hall, but again, that the project that we just finished was a project that relocated all the public services to the first floor, also real relocated council chambers and some of the meeting rooms. And then I'll obviously put the new elevator shaft in, and then mechanical all three floors, but that on the second, third floor mechanical is pretty much it. So we do have some money to do some renovations, and engineering, as you know, has never been touched. We saw the bestest foreign engineering, I really like to get that out of there. We are seeing broken tiles, which is not good for anybody, so that's why I've included that. The biggest, the biggest component of this budget for the City Hall is repointing the exterior, and the planning stages for this, for the project we just completed, they were hoping to do all four sides, but that didn't happen. They only did the north and east, north and east sides. So in order to prevent future leaks, I think it's imperative that we do every point in either this year or next year. And that's really just the exterior facade. You go in between the CMU blocks or granite blocks and remortar everything so Florida can't penetrate it. Well, that's kind of an overview of some of the capital. [7:13] Susan Deane: For us- Is that something you will do or you will contract to have? We'll contract to have, yeah. [7:20] Jeff Davis: There are a few folks in the area that can handle that, but we would work on the bid, put it out the bid, and then have a contract to actually do it, so. Program requests. requests. So we are requesting one. It's a new position now for an additional engineering assistant to slash inspecting. Right now engineering we have one inspector who has been here for 35 years, but is near retirement. Two years ago, we had three inspectors. We had one retire hire, and one just move on. And those got instead of rehiring, they just got wiped out from the budget, which we knew was going to hurt us in the end. So I'm asking for that back. Right now with only one inspector for the workload that we have in construction, it takes away all the folks in the office that should be myself included, that should be doing capital planning, and design plan review it takes us out into the field and their construction season which is the spring summer and fall maybe we don't we don't get that work done so that's why that's a main reason why i'm asking but also to have some on board and with our long time inspector that's been here 35 plus years to try and you know get a new inspector trained i think if we don't utilize that tim smith is our long-time inspector he has he has seen it all he has done it all for construction in the city of bangor has the vast knowledge of the system you know how things should function in the city how things should be constructed so I think any type of training with him I think would be fantastic that is [9:21] Susan Hawes: that is pretty much we need to make sure I'm about the alternative so if we don't [9:37] Jeff Davis: Have the inspectors that we need. It happens is we include that time on the capital requests for project related, so say if it's a sewer project, you know, we might put another 15 percent of that total project so we can have someone to go and inspect that outside of the city of Bangor, so you know, having in-house inspectors cost less for the city. We have to make sure, you know, contractors are very good, but we have to make sure that we have someone there, especially and especially in some of the you know downtown roads, the busy roads, someone from the city that can help with resident complaints, help with making sure that the plans and specs and details are being constructed in the way that they were attended to us, to help with testing and all that, so it makes for a better product in the end, which a better product lasts [10:36] Susan Deane: longer, so would you have a dollar figure on what you think you spent outsourcing those inspections [10:42] Jeff Davis: in the last fiscal year? So we hired a third-party inspector for city hall that was 200 000 for one project, so [10:53] Michael Beck: is that 15 that if we say no to the position, is that 15 that we'd have to pay for that already budgeted in here as well, or is it if we say no to the position, we're going to see something suddenly come back to us and say, well, now you got to give [11:06] Jeff Davis: us another 15? So when we do capital planning, we add, you know, we add some of that time in there already for contingency and stuff like that, so if we have to spend more on inspection, it's [11:20] Michael Beck: less money for the overall project. Gotcha, so if I'm hearing it right, so whether we take the business or not, we're paying for it, but if we say no, we're paying a premium. You're paying a premium [11:31] Jeff Davis: him for it, and sometimes you have to, you know, you know, an engine environment, you know, we're very good, we have a vast array of knowledge for a lot of things, but we're not specialized in every little thing, so sometimes you have to have someone that knows, you know, if it's a, you know, maybe a pump station, that any type of project that's specialized, you might have to have that anyway, but that's common, but yes, but majority of our projects would, plus you're taken away from staff that should be in the office planning design and review and projects. Sure, so let me [12:05] Michael Beck: ask you this one this way, so if the money is budgeted there, we did, we have a savings, how, where does that dollar that we save and we take that position, what are the dollars we save, how do they end up back to us or back to your department, where they, where does that money end [12:18] Jeff Davis: Up going well one, it's less that we have to account for in the capital project, so it equals goes to what's that we asked for is less for the taxpayers, right? Yeah, but if you know say we put 20% in contingency, but we have to pair, we have to pay 18% of that to an outside inspector, we have an old city, every time we dig a hole the best plan can go out the window, and then there's cost associated with okay this action, you know this new sewer can't go here, we have this issue that we have to deal with. We don't have the money to do it, we have to come back to you and say hey this is what's happening, we don't have enough in this budget, we don't have enough to pull from. [12:59] Michael Beck: Another account, so in other words when finance committee gets these things and say hey we didn't budget for it but we found the money, this is how the rabbits happen, this is where we find it by the savings because we made, if we make the decision to hire the person not pay the premium for not having them, the savings would eventually come back into another project, yes, okay. [13:20] Susan Hawes: Another project sometimes they go to fund the capital reserve funds for the various departments that get carried over, or it could also just wind up in the unassigned fund. [13:31] Daniel Carson: Thank you, I am wondering just to make sure I heard you clearly, you have one inspector, right, one inspector, okay, and close. [13:41] Jeff Davis: To retirement, yes, how close, he could retire tomorrow, yeah, okay, but I don't want to do something. [13:49] Daniel Carson: So what I mean, that's that I'm hearing institutional knowledge and there's a risk of losing that. If that person retired tomorrow, how long would it take you to recoup that institutional knowledge with the new inspector? [14:04] Jeff Davis: Well, you know, certainly myself and the other team members in engineering would have to cover that. Some of it you just lose. No matter what we do, some of it you lose. I don't know how to put a timetable on that, but having someone that has done it consistently for 35 years versus some of us that just go out here and there, you do lose some knowledge with. But the quicker onboard is sitting with somebody, doing it in the field daily while you get up to speed. [14:36] Daniel Carson: Yeah. So I'm just kind of thinking through this and the risks I'm seeing immediately would be that loss of institutional knowledge and that probably is going to cost more in what we have to write outsource bring our money in contractors, right, because if we're missing a piece of that 's going to be more on top of what we already have to do, okay, so i'm hearing cost, yeah, thank you. [15:00] Susan Deane: Say we bring someone new in and they spend maybe six months with your current inspector, he decides to retire, the amount we've budgeted for your current inspector, where does that go, they [15:12] Jeff Davis: Well, that either goes into the reserves or for personnel wise, I think it, I think the city might take that and use that in other places where they need it, you know, for personnel wise, I don't, you know, sometimes in the past that we've been able to, you know, spend as a whole, you know, a whole department together instead of just line item but line item, so if there are needs that the department need in the past we've been okay, new plotter say we've had, we've had some staff turnover so we've had you know somewhat of a surplus, maybe not by 25, we were able to use some of that to buy a new plotter for us, which a new plotter is our large format printer that we print the 24 by 36 inch sheets for plans and specs, so you know there's those options [15:59] Susan Hawes: These ones and then you would if when this real person who were not named Tim we're trying when he retired it won't be, it's it's the intent isn't to have two just for a short period of time, I mean I think the department has a need for two inspectors but it's particularly pressing in this moment because you also have concurrently the loss of institutional knowledge and we're the leaves on when he retires there's no overlap, there's no sort of backup, yeah it's important [16:36] Jeff Davis: I think it is and I think it's hurt us when we just wipe two off the board, you've done a good job [16:42] Susan Hawes: with planning and looking at your projects but ultimately everything is still 100 years plus old under the ground, so who knows when they're going to stick that, you know, the instructor just you [16:55] Jeff Davis: know they actually go and help, well not help, but they actually look at private developments too, you know, if they're tying into our system we like to have someone out there make sure that tie-in is done properly, you know, for a long run so I [17:17] Carolyn Fish: think we've already seen the repercussions options of losing, you know, a staff member that had that knowledge and trying to reinvent or maybe even sustain the level we were at, so that cost us money and time and value that's hard to put a price on it, yes and if we're already down like you said it doesn't really mean if someone retires that position I would hope would be considered to be again replaced, yes especially to be able to, I know you bought an opportunity this year, I don't know if it Was you or the engineer in the field? But it was a development where when you looked at the infrastructure, the sewer connection, there was an opportunity to partner up, I think, where the expense to the city wasn't as much because it just happened to be the right opportunity. [18:17] Jeff Davis: the project down on main street yes yep so that you know that project you know we have a need to separate that second street neighborhood and all that 's still part of a combined system we've never had that conduit so when they were digging up we were able to utilize that you know already construction in place to put a line in there we you know that wasn't you know that's a separate line from the wire though just to reiterate we're not we're not putting in storm drain to treat the wise project But it is just a conversation, but it certainly does help. They're already there building, they're already mobilized. It was a really good opportunity. So, and Rich may actually want a manager. It was a crucial moment, so kudos to them. [19:08] Michael Beck: This might be a question from the city manager. On the back side, the capital improvement program at the top has got the city GIS update 20,000, but under the recommended budget, it looked like it swapped it up for landscaping and amenities. Sorry, the question is, the recommendation is to fund the 20,000 for the GIS update. You know the answer to that, Jeff? [19:30] Jeff Davis: I think that actually is a mistake. So the way, and I'm sorry, I didn't, I didn't even notice that, so thank you. The landscaping amenities is actually out of the, yeah, and it's blank here, so I think that's what it's like, but yes, the, I think that was meant to bring, come down, yeah, just want. [19:58] Michael Beck: To make sure you're getting everything around, so the. [20:03] Jeff Davis: way i do the capital plan and when i send it upstairs to finance you know i have detail sheet the red the black is strictly engineering funded the red is what is from the tiff so some things can get lost in translation so certainly you can do a better job for that and [20:31] Susan Hawes: Then I think there's no other questions on that. [20:34] Jeff Davis: You have a recommendation? Yes, so stormwater is our enterprise fund. If we're out of the stormwater utility that was created in 2014, from around 2014, but let's kind of go through the same process. Some of the core functions of the film water group is to maintain compliance with our MS4 permit, which is our, which is a municipal separate storm sewer system, which is issued by the GDP, and of course that has a lot of systems to go along with that. You know, the stormwater manager also and helps to. Administer and collect the stormwater utility, which I just said funds that funds this enterprise, in cooperation with the Treasury Department. We also do, you know, design for stormwater improvements for the MS4, plus all of our urban repair streams. Some of the recent projects in FY26, you know, we did some major drainage improvements on outer Hammond Street near Hill Drift. That was many years flooded out there, so we use those funds to reduce the flood in our to get rid of all the flooding and put in new storm drain systems. Recently completed a rewrite to the watershed-based plan for one of the urban parent streams, and then George Walk Stream, which is currently waiting for pool by DP. Actually, yeah, since this was written it was accepted. Then again, what Council Fish brought up, the Y project, you know, we used those funds to fund that storm drink line that goes up to the Second Street Park neighborhood to eventually get rid of the combined system. Some of the FY27 goals, again, constantly doing MS4 permanent requirements, that's a main part of that puzzle, but also to design, construct, and inspect, you know, stormwater capital projects and construct structural improvements and the urban paired stream water sheds that are required by the MS4 permits, you know, as well as constantly looking at that funding sources too to help with grants, because as we all know, construction prices, everything has gone up. The stormwater utility fee has never been increased since its establishment in 2012, 2014, so we're over 10 years old, which worked for a while we while the city ramped up this project, you know, those funds sat in the sat in an account for a while. Now, you know, as a department, we're pretty good about spending those funds and getting these projects completed now. So, but again, it costs a lot to meet our permanent requirements in an MS4. [23:45] Susan Hawes: I think it would probably be fair to say that at some point we do need to talk about whether it would be appropriate to increase the fee. [23:53] Jeff Davis: Yes, we think FY28, we were going to come to you and talk to you about increasing that utility fee. And it's a utility fee, not a tax. So everybody gets it if you have impervious on your lot that you own, you get a utility piece [24:10] Joseph Leonard: Just a quick question actually on that particular point. So there are this one on top of some of the parking ticket fees that we do for downtown Bangor park enforcement. A lot of these different types of ways that we put out payments or receipts for people really haven't been updated in quite a while. Inflation has risen quite a bit, and so I mean not only would I be in favor of this, I would actually be very much interested in looking at other fees that we put out to the city that haven't been risen in quite a long time because obviously inflation even before this year had risen quite a bit, but this year is going to be pretty substantial. So maybe this budget year is not the time to bring it up, but certainly next [25:10] Jeff Davis: year I think we should take a larger overhaul. Sorry, no, that's okay. And you know part of the reason we just don't want to throw arbitrarily number at that, we actually want to have data for that, so that's why we haven't really completed that yet. So that's why we're not including this here. So once we're ready for that and actually have numbers for you and why and reasons why we want to increase it, we'll bring that to you. I can go over some capital projects first, stormwater, and you know there's something that I can answer again, Rich man stormwater manager has been in the audience, he can come up to the table and ask anything. You know I think you know we typically shoot for around nine hundred thousand, nine hundred forty thousand dollars a year, but that's what we you know bring in for that fund. So some of the capital projects this year covert replacement on Essex Street, metal corp separation, which is part of our actually EPA consent decree long-term control plan, that's a product that's Cumberland Street, you know that, so stormwater actually double, you know, helps us with not only the MS4 permit but also our consent decree. So that's what that Middlebrook separation project is, to separate the stormwater, and then another large one would be Smith Street avenue upgrades and separation, which Smith Street I believe is just down Hollow Street up the, once you go down Hollow Street across the small bridge before you get to the park in Ballyab, you take a right, you go up the hill and That's up and I'll shoot of that, but we have some major concerns and issues up there. That's Richard's working hard to fix there. So that, you know, those are the type of projects we like to do. So it's MS4 compliance plus the urban insurance, urban impaired stream projects, and then we have none for stormwater. [27:25] Susan Hawes: First department, no, essentially. [27:29] Jeff Davis: so that i mean that's a quick overview of engineering stormwater you know again engineering was also involved with the tiff and sewer so i'll be back for both of those to help those departments answer any questions soon okay thank [27:53] Susan Hawes: You good work, Jefferson. Thank you very much. All right, we'll move on to fire. Good. [28:20] Fire Chief (unidentified): Evening. Yeah, do you want to be sure? Yes, behind me here I have Deputy Chief Eric Pelletier, who is fundamental to the operations of the fire department. Next to him, I have Division Chief Jeremy Ogden, and he's responsible for managing the MS services. So some of the stuff I may defer to them with questions about this because of their area of expertise. So for those of you that are a little newer to the council, I'll just kind of recap what we do. You know, you see fire trucks running on the road and you assume, well, it's an ambulance or it's a fire truck, you want to put something out or there's an alarm ringing or something along those lines. And that is some of what we do. We do a lot more than that. We have quite a bit more depth to what we do. We do a fair amount of what's called special operations. So if somebody is in the river and needs to be rescued, if there's a boat on fire in the river, if we have a partial collapse of a building, somebody calls a trench or a culvert or a well if you will with the cement tiles and whatnot, that falls into our purview. So we go out and we do all of those things as well. We'll go out and check smoke alarm for people. We'll go out and look at outdoor burns to make sure that they're safe to be worked on. We do planning with our with our sister agencies is. Like at the airport where the international guard will work with the airport for planning, and we also get involved in some private industry stuff as well with helping them through and I think the coding for it, which is another big thing that we do on the fire side. I don't want to leave them out and that might be, can I, can I put this here or does this cooking setup I have in the restaurant that I want to open meat coat and those types of things. So that's, that's a lot of the work that we do and. that's really a summary of it because i could break each piece of those down into from the conversation i don't think we have time for all that tonight so i'll just go ahead and leave that there if you look at the department highlights that's where i'll go ahead and start certainly talk about fire suppression these are all kinds of things that i already talked about inspections we do enforce life safety code. And that is the code that requires things like proper egress or proper exits from the building, number of exits, do you have emergency lighting to get out, fire extinguishers, those types of things. So those are the core functions like we already just talked about there. Some of the accomplishments that we have, our current staffing is 86 out of 95 positions filled. You a year and a half we've never been at that number. I don't know that we've been fully staffed for the last five or more years. So to be able to bring those people and get those positions filled is really kind of, I don't want to say a feather in the cap, but it makes us feel good because there's a shift that's occurred somewhere. I don't know exactly where that is, whether it's in the people that want to come into the buyer service or it's just our department in general has a different perception publicly that makes people want to come here. So I'm very excited about that. We're we're starting to fill up those ranks. That really is important to being able to provide consistent and reliable service to the city in general. Onboarding and training 13 new employees again may not sound like a big deal, but when you think that if I bring Carolyn in today with no experience in the fire service at all, I have to put her through an eight-week training program, and that's expanded out from the two that we used to do because it's not sensible for us to bring somebody in and have them wait a year before we send them to full training when we have the ability to do it in-house and we have the need to do it in-house. So I can get those people on the road right away and get them working. So to do that, was two times that we did that in a year. There's a lot of leg work that goes into that. Captain Darrell Cresick is the person that runs that training group, and he does a phenomenal job for us, him and his team, with getting people up and ready to go to work and making sure that they are what we need in the department. So kudos to them, and again, really happy with that. I just talked about the expansion to an eight week of a the firefighter to training program. I will tell you that's a department of labor requirement that we have to provide that level of training, you're going to be in a career fire department in the state of Maine, you're supposed to be firefighter too. And it's an essential certification to be able to promote it through the fire department or get certain opportunities for training, so we adopted the lift assist ordinance as an accomplishment over the last year. I'll just put this out there now because I expect there'll be some questions about it, we are not getting the response that we had hoped for from some of the facilities. We have received some revenue, only a few thousand dollars, and Jeremy can probably give you the exact number on that 's something you want, that is not a program that's going to die or go away, it is an ordinance and as such it needs to be enforced, and it's creating a negative impact on the on the community, on the budget, so we plan on chasing that down. But with anything like this you need to meet a certain threshold, so we're still communicating and talking and hoping that we can get compliance, but if we can't then we will discuss options with city legal counsel to make sure that we're we're getting what we should out of it and they're complying with the rules just like everybody else. So service, I'm sure you've heard from Jen about the community paramedic program, that is a unique collaborative effort between us and public health. As far as I know, we're the only public health agency, I'm gonna I'm gonna to gen 4 in a little bit, we're the only public health agency in the state of Maine that runs a community paramedic. That is such a unique program that there is a research group that's gathered down in Boston and they are looking at community paramedic programs in the region, not just Maine but across New England, and they are really interested in the land that we established here in the city. So that's a potential feather in our cap, I think. We've added nitrous oxide to the formulary for our paramedics, and we did that to reduce the reliance on opiates. Prior to this, ketamine and fentanyl were our two primary medications for pain control, and nitrous oxide really is a well conditioned, it's easy to use, it gets really fast relief, the effects of it go away very quickly when it's stopped and it's just it's all around a better drug for us to get we need to for pain control. We can't give it all the time and there are times when people need a little bit more than the nitrous but predominantly it's a go-to for certain things that we encounter. We introduced something called Antevi, which is a new pediatric patient care program. When we deal with pediatrics or kids, when we get into medication dosing and we get into equipment types and we get into the amount of electricity that we use to counteract certain heart conditions that they may encounter, it's a whole different realm than it is for dealing with adults. And it becomes high risk because we deal with those patients so infrequently and the medicines that we give and the treatments that we give really can be very detrimental to them if we do it wrong. So adding an engineering control really improves system delivery overall when we deal with it. So that really is a big boom for us. We responded to 11,000 calls we'll talk a little bit more about that here when we get into some of the other numbers and we implemented the EMS only ambulance which is intended to drive or intended to address rather the rising call line we have seen immediate results from that and the positive feedback from the staff. We have seen immediate results in the ability to get our people trained for the specialty high risk skills that they have to be trained for annually. We've seen better attendance at those with crews not being interrupted because that ambulance has been able to take on some of those calls. And they have run probably 24 calls or so over the last two weeks when you combine those numbers together between the two weeks time. What is not known right now is what the breakout will be between that ambulance and all the other ambulances for the total call volume. I can tell you that the total call volume is rising, I just don't know what that specific unit is going to run yet. It's too early to know that. I can tell you that at least once that I'm aware of, all of the ambulances have been busy in the city of Bangor again, and we've had to rely on mutuality. And I think I expressed that when we stood this program up, that there will be times we'll still need other ambulances to come in, but that will be those occurrences should be fewer with the fourth truck. But some of our goals and priorities we want to continue to develop and implement recruitment and retention strategies. One of the things that I'm getting ready to do that I haven't really made public yet, but I'll make public here this evening, is that I'm going to be standing up a social media group. And part of that is to get our awareness out there, it's to share messages, it's also a good tool for recruitment and retention. Really, we are behind the times a little bit in that we have Facebook, but I can tell you that a lot of the younger folks that I deal with aren't really on Facebook anymore. There's a lot of other platforms out there and even at almost 56 years old, I'm familiar with things like Tick Tock and some of the others that are that are perused more than others out there. And I will embarrass myself by giving them some of the other platforms I know about that are appropriate. So anyway, that's one of the recruitment and retention strategies. The other one is the fourth ambulance in of itself is a recruitment strategy with the greater distribution of calls. There's an awareness out there that the crews aren't running quite as hard as they were. So those are really things that we're looking at. Our focus on mental health has also been a recruitment strategy, and Council Leonard, I know you asked me about that last year. I'll touch on that here just a little bit for you. But taking positive steps to that mental health and public safety in general, not just the fire service concerned, and the positive steps we're taking I think are getting out. People know we take it seriously, we care about our employees, and that of course is something that people will want to come to. Our training, we're continuing to work on enhanced training for the development of firefighters and fire officers. We have training in place right now. I would argue that our training could be better Than it is, and it's not because our people aren't good at what they do, but very good at what they do. It's about resource allocation and administration programs, and some of that is going to come up here in just a little bit about what, yeah, for that's coming again. And then I really am looking for ways to diversify our talent, fire department, fire service in general is a predominantly male force. It's predominantly white male force. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that if that is the general demographic. But if we have an opportunity to diversify and bring other experiences in and other cultural experiences in, as well as those lived experiences, I think that just makes us a better force in general to be able to share things and to be able to connect with our community and that type of stuff. Time. So we certainly have females on staff. I think we probably have more females on staff now than we have in a while. But if we can, if we can get other demographics in and whatnot, I would welcome that's something that we are, we're certainly looking at as we go forward. And actually, I jumped back to that bullet. I'm sorry, I missed that last time when we were talking. Last thing that I have here on goals and priorities would be to continue to make improvements to central station. Central fire station is not going to go anywhere. I think that we could drop a nuclear bomb in front of the thing and it's just so well built with concrete, I don't even know what else, that we're not going to knock it down. The problem is that it's a really great shell, but the inside supporting networks and structures and things like plumbing and all those things are grossly outdated and they need to start having some attention now as part of a, an ongoing plan. We're looking at, you know, we have a group that's come in and looked at the building, they're going to bring back on one of the first things that they said was to upgrade the electrical system in the building all at one time would cost about a half a million dollars, just the electrical system. So obviously that's not something we're going to do all in one swipe, and I don't even know if that's the priority in the building. Right now, so once that report comes back, I think you'll see us put together a plan and come back at an outlying year to say, hey, look, this is what we really need to do if you want to continue to use this building and it does, it needs upgrades. I would encourage, I would encourage you counselors, if you want to come over and see exactly what we're talking about, more than, more than happy to have you come in the station. I certainly don't want you to violate any open meeting laws, so you know, space yourselves out appropriately, but yeah, feel free to come over if you want to tour and look around. I'd be more than happy to have you come around, or I might just dodge you all together and hand you off to Eric or one of the other guys. Continued work at the training site, I don't know if you know this, but the FAA has more control what we do with building stuff around the airport than I ever imagined they would, and the reason we don't have our training buildings up and ready to go yet is because we've been wrangling with do we own the property, do we not, can we build there, can we not, do we have to lease, do we buy, all those things. So the FAA has created quite a problem for us with getting that up and going. It's not lost, we're continuing to move forward with it. Actually the gentleman in the back there with the, with the black pullover, that's Assistant Chief Bean, is the new assistant chief, and he has been spearheading this project and has a lot, done a tremendous amount of work along with a DC poet here and a few other people to get this up and going. So again, once this is up, I would certainly encourage whoever wants to come out to look at that, because it's really going to be a pretty interesting project with what we can do out there and the training we like, not just for us, but for the police department and other agencies that want to come in. And then lastly, we are looking for opportunities to lessen delivery time of fire trucks. I have never in my life seen anything like the delivery time for trucks that we're experiencing right now i can't fathom why it is the way it is i know there are some municipalities that are signing on to lawsuits to sue some of the bigger vendors my suspicion is when they all consolidated into one management conglomerate that has bogged things down they've taken competition out of the mix and those types of things so that's what we're dealing with there are options out there for weaver and other stuff i don't know if that's the right way to go for us, but those are things that we're starting to look at to determine what we can do and lessen some of the one expense into the delivery time for those trucks. That was a lot of talking. I don't know if you have any questions on any of that before we go ahead. [46:06] Carolyn Fish: Your calls have increased about 10 over last year. I believe they were just under 10,000 last year. And is there a particular category, or is that 10 percent diversified? I think I would [46:22] Fire Chief (unidentified): defer to yes. What calls specifically generated zero? Right, Jerry, can you come up to the [46:31] Susan Hawes: table just so the public will view? We'll be able to hear unless you come up. Sorry to pull you up last [46:50] Speaker J (unidentified): year for medical calls, the number one complaint we responded to was just a general sick person, so it's a general illness. And then the number two and number one for a sick person was about 23, 24. And then number two is for false, so whether that's in a private residence or at a facility, that accounts for about 16 percent for calls last year on the EMS side. And so from that [47:16] Carolyn Fish: 10 rise from last year to this year, did you see in that 10 it being more of one category than another, or is it similar to this? It's very similar so far. Those are our top two. Okay, thank you very much. My second question was with the training facility that we funded last year, did we not kind of suspect these, or if we didn't have those kind of ducks in a row before? [47:46] Fire Chief (unidentified): So I would say we didn't suspect. We had our ducks in a row, we were ready to build, and then I don't remember how everything evolved, but it evolved that everything got stopped immediately because of, because of the FAA issues that I don't think we counted on. You see that being resolved, or it's, yeah, it's just now it's a matter of time in the federal [48:11] Speaker K (unidentified): process. Thank you. Yeah, about [48:16] Susan Hawes: the lift assessed ordinance, are you able to state why there is non-compliance with that? I [48:28] Fire Chief (unidentified): will summarize it with the word ego. I think is probably what's driving it. There's no, there's no misunderstanding. We were very clear about the ordinance, we were very clear about the expectation, we were very clear that they had asked us to assume a risk without negotiating with us. And there are some, I won't say all ego, there are some facilities that feel that they don't fall into the category that we would build, but they have yet to come forward and offer any right, anything in writing to explain that can be reviewed and vetted either by us or by council or anybody like that. So that's where we're at. [49:15] Susan Hawes: So you have a lot of calls that have been spilled out because you went, you did your part, you helped them move the patient, and then they just don't pay because they don't agree with the ordinance. [49:29] Speaker K (unidentified): So this is [49:36] Speaker J (unidentified): most updated to the end of march waiting for billing company april so far we have essentially built out again end up at the end of march 29 000 and we've received 7100 that's total of 53 claims so not very good percentage you received 1771 oh 771 29 that's total of 53 claims and [50:09] Susan Hawes: yet you still are answering the calls and going and helping them, okay. I mean inevitably it will result in likely some sort of legal claim, so we have the [50:24] Fire Chief (unidentified): to answer the call because it comes through 9-1-1. So statutorily, we're required to do that. [50:30] Susan Hawes: I understand that. It's just that all of these facilities, part of the training of their people is lifting patients, moving patients. It's their responsibility for their residents. Okay, thank you. Sure. Council [50:49] Fire Chief (unidentified): Leonard, I'll address your question from last year when it comes to mental health. be asked what we're doing, I kind of pushed you off. What we have done internally is we have contracted with a third party provider to provide mental health services. So what that looks like is annually every member of the fire department will have a non-opportunity, will be required to sit down with a provider and just spend a few minutes and they may talk or they may not. If you're the provider, I might sit down with you and talk about fishing and never talk about my feelings, but I want to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to sit and talk, because sometimes when you can get in front of somebody, then the mood or the mindset might change, and I want to make sure that we capture those. In addition to that, vendor is working with our peer support team to provide additional mental health services within the organization. And we are still working towards building out a total comprehensive plan for when somebody comes into the department, we begin talking to them about mental health, mental health needs, warning signs, those types of things, talking to family about things that they should be watching for. And then on the other end, when people get to separate, or are ready to separate, that really is a life change. And it's a piece of your identity that's lost, so there should be some work done there to get people ready to make that transition. So that's where we're going, but those core emergency response focused pieces are where we started, because that's the most, that was the imminent need, if you will, and then we'll work on [52:29] Joseph Leonard: those other pieces as we go. I really appreciate that update, and I'm gonna try to be as professional as possible, because I did say last year I was very concerned about the morale and the state of personnel, just because the state of morale with all individual firefighters effects not just those that are in the her, but also their fellow brothers and sisters that are on the ladder with them, and it's the, since I've been on council, the department has been hurting. I and I don't think that is something that most people in the city are ignorant of, and I just want to thank you and commend you and your leadership engine and just the entire department in general for really taking on what, how serious of an issue this was, and I and I am sure you'll agree that there's still more work that needs to be done, but this is a really good first step, and in coordination with the social media group that you're putting forward, I think that's also really going to help bring in much needed continued positivity to the firefighting community, not just in the Bangor area, but just in Oscot and greater as well. It's, I mean, just use PD as an example, they have a very successful social media page, and there is no reason for us to not have as equally robust of a presence with our fire department, and to tie in actually a little bit with morale, and it's okay if you don't know the numbers right off the bat, we, you were saying that you have a call volume of 11,000. In comparison to Portland, what is their call rate off the top of your head, if you know? I do know. [54:36] Fire Chief (unidentified): actually you might have it in your book there the memo that i sent out associated with us always right up here yeah so and i'm i 'm not texting or playing games here i'm actually [54:49] Speaker J (unidentified): looking at that would be impressive thank you 15 and a half yeah so the city of portland right [54:56] Fire Chief (unidentified): now is running and these are just ems calls they're not they're not fire calls because our fire call would drive the ambulance one tire portland's running 15 and a half for ems bangor is running nine point 9100 or so portland runs six ambulances we run three so when i when i break that out in comparison our trucks are running 18 more calls per truck than the city of portland is because of the added resources even though there's there's added volume there that's what the three ambulance is not the fourth because i'm able to capture that [55:33] Joseph Leonard: and the reason why i bring that up is that 's another critical morale related issue, because when our firefighters know that they're doing 18% more work or however you want to calculate that, then some of their other fellow firefighters throughout the state, same thing with Bangor Police Department, they also on average do more work compared to other municipalities just because of the lower staffing rate and similar call volumes. And I don't know exactly what the answer is to address that because I only suspect the call rate is unfortunately going to go up more and more. So the only thing I would just ask is if there is any updated information or tactics that you know that can be implemented to help mitigate the amount of stress that comes from those increasing calls I definitely want to be aware of that as much as possible but also and I don't want to speak for everyone on council but you have my full support in terms of trying to mitigate and reduce the stress of our firefighters as much as possible I appreciate that I think we'll get into that we'll get into the actual need and I don't necessarily mean the department is the department need but it really impacts the entire city so when I say need it's not just us [56:59] Fire Chief (unidentified): I mean it's it's a city need and when you think about the services we provide there is a majority of I shouldn't say majority there's a large population of Bangor that's economically disadvantaged and we are a lot of times the primary point of contact for medical intervention for these folks whether they are the unhoused population or they are seniors or they're just they are just economically disadvantaged because that's the way they are. So there's a, it's not just 911, I fell down and hurt myself or I'm having a heart attack calls. There's a true social component to the work that we do that's driving a lot of this as well that needs to be considered. And again, I can dig a little more into that here in just a second. [57:52] Susan Hawes: I just have one quick question I forgot to ask you. The community paramedic program was supposed to be licensed the first part of May. Did they get the license? So we have applied for [58:02] Fire Chief (unidentified): the license. So this program, when we adopted it, wasn't quite what we expected. And when you buy something and then you find out, oh, I need to buy this add-on and that on whatnot, well, that's kind of what we bought into without realizing it. So DC Ogden and Jen Gunderman in our community paramedic, Amy Drinkwater, have worked really hard to develop all of the protocols and the documentation surrounding this. We thought it was built out. It was not built out. So they have really been busting themselves to get that. So the paperwork is in. It takes a little bit for the state to review it, but I would think in the next couple weeks we should have some information on that. As soon as that license comes in, I believe we'll have everything in place and be ready to go to work. So thank you. Well, no [59:08] Michael Beck: one asked the hard-hitting question, so I guess I will. You mentioned the experience of social media. The police have the duck of justice. What's the fire department [59:15] Fire Chief (unidentified): bringing to the table so i would be silly to try to do that figure that out myself i will leave that up to the team who is who i 'm sure will be younger and much more skilled at that so they can come up with something really neat i'm just kind of an old curmudgeon that this [59:32] Joseph Leonard: in the office says go do this i'll let them have that if i could piggyback on that if i could if you would welcome maybe a piece of advice maybe get the kids in the bangor school department involved to figure that out i would love that would be great [59:47] Fire Chief (unidentified): Yeah, that's a good, that's a good idea. Make a note of that, would you, Eric? Thank you. So any other questions about that stuff? All right, so this is the hard stuff. This is the stuff I didn't wish I didn't have to bring to you, but I wouldn't be doing, I didn't be doing that if I didn't. I'll start with the projects for the programs rather first. [1:00:22] Speaker K (unidentified): So you will see I'll [1:00:26] Fire Chief (unidentified): start with the hardest one, which is the firefighter paramedic one. And Carol, I don't know, did they get [1:00:32] Susan Hawes: in both requests or just one? They have both. And I don't know what's funded in the base budget is the four positions, but I think they'll carry compelling argument for more. [1:00:47] Fire Chief (unidentified): so you've seen our numbers if you haven't i would encourage you to take a look at that memo are so one of the measures that's used on a national basis is unit our utilization was there's two ways to look at that the first way to look at it is time committed to the call or call volume and unit our utilization is how many calls you run in a 24-hour period which is the a student ship for a truck or how much time you commit over a 24-hour period and when i first ran the numbers i ran them to look at number of calls in a 24-hour period. That gave me my baseline numbers that I needed to show call wise we are above what would be considered acceptable thresholds. Now acceptable thresholds are different for firebase DMS services and standalone ambulance EMS services. When we talk about fire-based EMS services, the acceptable threshold is right around three, with 3.5 being the maximum for fire-based services, meaning 35% of the time those trucks are committed to ambulance calls. It's less, that number is less than what it would be for a standalone ambulance. Ambulance, the upper end for the standalone ambulance is right around 0.5 or 50%. The reason it's less is because of our dual role purpose. Not only do we have to run the ambulance calls, but we also have to look at things like training and responding to fire calls and equipment maintenance and equipment checking and all of those other functions that go along with that. That. So the bar is set less for dual role providers. The reason we do dual role providers is because it's more economical for communities to have people that are able to perform both functions rather than having a whole staff over here and a whole staff over there. So you're actually getting more bang for your buck, if you will, by having dual role providers. Buyers. But you run into that problem of task saturation and compliance and all those other things. So that's the first thing that I looked at was the hours, was the call volume. When I went in and looked at the comparison or the companion to that, which is time on calls, I noticed that our time on calls was significantly less than I would expect it to be in comparison to the calls that we were running, which kind of raised the flag for me. So I started digging in and looking at what we were doing and some of the challenges that we were facing with the volume that we have, and that's really what it boils down to is the volume that we have in this sense of urgency that we Have to go to clear the next call, clear, so we can get to the next call and handle all these calls that are coming in. What I found is that this sense of urgency and this desire to want to meet the need, if you will, and to do the best that we can was actually hurting us in a couple different ways. So number one, it's hurting us in that the crews don't have adequate time to stop. And when I say stop, I don't mean kick back in a recliner and watch TV or whatever. I mean they don't have time to stop and take 10 or 15 minutes at times, not all the time, but at times, to decompress from an emergency call, or they don't have time to stop and eat a meal, which is absolutely essential for the work that we do, because they're grinding on call. So their lunch might not be until seven o'clock at night, those types of things. There is a lot of time where crews are running overnight and they may not do anything during the day, so they are committed to training and all the things they need to do over the day, but then over the night they are running calls on them. That's just the nature of the beast. The problem is over time that tends to grind people down, and that leads to that low morale, and it leads to missed things. And more importantly, it potentially leads to errors. And when I say errors, I don't mean, oops, I made a mistake. I mean errors that involve medication errors, that involve responding to the wrong address, having an accident because of fatigue, those types of things. So when I look at the times, I see that there is compression, that there's opportunities to provide better care, or more care I should say, than what we do at certain times, because we know that there are calls pending. And I don't want anybody to get the impression that the call, the care is not good. When I go back and look at the care delivered, there's no question the care is good. We have very intelligent, very conscientious EMS providers, both that ride the ambulances and the fire trucks. It's the system I'm going to lay it right on the system that has created the problems that I have been able to identify and dig up and whatnot. So you ask for solutions about that. I will tell you that the immediate solution that I have, I have given the staff, is to say slow down. It's just a slow down. Just stop if you are at a point where you need to take 20 minutes to get something to eat, to go to the washroom, to decompress, to do whatever it is you need to do, because you run three or four bad calls over The last six hours or whatever the case may be, take that time because you need it, because it is a risk if you don't take it. So what does that translate to? Oh, the other piece to that was take your time with your patients. Make sure that you're doing everything that they need to get and you're not shorting them things because you need to turn and burn quickly. The message for me is the patient that's in front of you is the most important patient you have, not the next one or the one two away or whatever. So the message has been take your time. What that equates to is stacking calls, low acuity calls, or what we think or low acuity calls may stack. They may wait, you may not get an ambulance right off, it may take you 20 minutes to get an ambulance because we're admitted or I have to take a truck out of service so that they can rest for a little bit. It may mean that mutual aid comes in more often, which will be a problem for us politically once we start bringing in other communities to handle calls that we should have the capacity to handle. Now surge is a different story, you know, if all of a sudden we get 10 calls right in a row, there's no possible way we can handle that. But if we're, if we're at a point where I have to take a truck out of service for concerns about hydration or nutrition or those types of things, that's gonna, that's gonna create an issue because that's a, that's a self-imposed problem that we've caused here. So that's, that's really what that is going to come down to. It's going to trickle out onto the street and we're going to run into those problems. The solution to that, there's, there's two solutions to it. One is a fatigue management plan that is going through the system right now that builds in known downtime for crews under certain parameters in certain situations so they don't have to necessarily reach a hair on fire benchmark. The other thing is, and the more important thing is, I'll be frank with you, is the staffing issue that we have. We should have had a fourth ambulance in place a few years ago and that's just the truth of the matter. We should have seen this coming, we should have known it was Coming, the data told us it was coming. It should have, it should have been here already. The time to do the trial that we were doing should have been a couple years ago, not now. And I'm, I feel bad that I came forward and said I want a trial, and then after investigation to resolve a discrepancy that I saw, I realized what was really happening and what I should have come forward at that time. I should have come forward and said this is what we need. We're beyond the threshold of what's acceptable, both for our staff and for the citizens that we're charged to charge to take care of. So that's what I'm doing here tonight. You have two numbers in front of you. I don't know what the flavor is going to be, neither one of them I'm really excited to bring to you, but it's the reality of the situation. What we need to fix it is eight. That's what I need to fix it. That truck really should be a 24 7 truck out there responding and able to share calls overnight, share calls during the day, and start pushing us back down to that lower, that lower unit hour utilization that won't stay. We're going to need to add on again at the rate we're going. It'll probably be another five years or so before we have to add. Okay, adding another truck, but at least now we have a benchmark and we can trend and we can see and we can say this is, this is where we're headed for. I will tell you, and this is the second thing that I'll tell you here in just a second, that I would really like to see, but this is, this is the ask. This is the cost of the ask. The city manager, I brought forward eight is what we need. A step up from E4 or really isn't going to fix the problem. It will, it will help a little bit. I'm not going to say it's not going to help, but it's not going to meet the needs of the city and secondly the department, and I'll put it that way. We're going to run call and we will beat ourselves into the ground just like we have over however long it has been, and I will do what I can to, protect people and to make sure they have what they need to do their job, but the resources are just overwhelming. That's where we're at and that's, that's the hard fast truth. The other thing that I would ask for, and this isn't a budget and I haven't mentioned this to the city manager because it just kind of came to me and I don't think I'll be out of line and mentioning it, but it would be helpful, we'll see. I'm old and salty, so it is what it is at this point. I guess it would be helpful, I think, for everybody when we look at Larger projects or programs while council initiatives come out where we encourage significant development like in housing and other areas, if we could bring stakeholders together like public safety and wastewater and public works and have a task force conversation to say, this is what the impact is going to be on the budget or on our resources or those types of things. Developing a task force like that would be huge for one, us planning to know what we're going to need in the outlying units and two for you all to have some more insight as to what it's going to cost you to do those things because there's absolutely a cost to it. National data tells us for that each housing unit you bring in is a call a year for us. Now that doesn't mean it's a call for every housing unit but statistically we can show that this housing unit over here may not have any calls but this one over here has four or five a year, those types of things. So as it averages out it's about a call a year for each housing unit you bring in. So if I'm increasing calls by a thousand calls a year just doing what we're doing right now and we bring in 800 housing units that's a significant impact on response not only for us but for fire and for other elements of critical infrastructure. So I would encourage the council to make that an initiative of theirs to say this is something we should be doing to help planning globally, that would be me and then saying that would benefit us downrange. It's not gonna help us at all now but it would definitely be [1:13:56] Speaker K (unidentified): That's the EMF request the [1:14:03] Fire Chief (unidentified): other particular, oh yeah absolutely. The other big thing program that I'm asking for relates to training and it does tie in a little bit to the EMS request but really it ties in more to our overtime commitment and to our need to have consistency in the training program, consistency in administration of the program, management, and those types of things. I will tell you right now, the number, first off, the number that you see there, $137,000, would be the salary and the benefits, what we predict on the high end for what this person would cost us. I don't know that it'll cost that much, but that's that's the two combined things on the high end right now as we sit. I pay one of our highest paid employees in the fire department 71 000 a year for 20 hours a week to help manage the training or to run the training program 20 hours a week, and that doesn't that doesn't meet our need by any stretch. That is him going in and making sure that we've got at least some type of outline and some of the critical things that we need to have for compliance with the State of Maine. We have limited capacity to track people down who have missed training. We have limited capacity to keep things up to date with some of the training records. We have limited capacity to roll out new ideas or new practices both on the EMS and fire side of the house. I spend $40,000 a year in probationary payroll. So when I talked about Captain McCracken earlier and the training team he has, that costs $40,000 a year in overtime to run that program. Having a training officer in place would significantly reduce that. Again, it's not going to reduce at all, but having somebody there to be able to administer the program, to be able to set up prompts and make phone calls and do some of the training as part of their core function would reduce that significantly. Training is essential for us especially with all the specialty skills that we do, and we do a lot more than most of the fire departments do around us, and we do it at a level that most of those fire departments aren't able to do. It is a risk for the city and for us when I say the city I mean the city administration for me for Carolyn for others to not have that position in place. It was previously funded, it was removed from the budget for whatever reason, and it really it really should get serious consideration about being funded to support both the fire and AMS type of age to make sure that we that anything that I could want I [1:17:12] Carolyn Fish: remember last year asking for the training officer and I think it was around a hundred thousand dollars for that position and it was removed from the budget. This year that same position I think it's the same description and for the same purpose is about 37 000 more thereabouts and was last year's suggested budget for that not counting the benefits as well. I mean 37 000 I'm just curious the difference so last year's [1:17:49] Fire Chief (unidentified): budget included benefits to somewhat but i believe that was the city manager's discretion to put it in fact thank you so this i'm sorry this would be a union position we're not looking at having an administration i don't i don't need something at that level it would be a lower paid position it wouldn't be at the same salary as an assistant chief so it would be a position [1:18:15] Joseph Leonard: I'm sorry, no,, please, I did, you finish what you wanted to say. I did, yes. Yeah, it's not really a question I have for you, Chief, it's just more so my own analysis on both of the proposals for fire-fired paragraphs you brought forward. I get that we're in a very tenacious budget season and we are looking at any ways that we can reduce the tax burden on citizens and property owners. [Speaker K (unidentified): Partners, we] have been kicking the firefighter issues down the road, kicking this can down the road for so long that it's cost us a lot of senior firefighter positions in the most recent years. And we've lost a lot of institutional knowledge in just four or five years. And we need to create a way to re-institutionalize a lot that new updated knowledge because to piggyback off of a topic you were talking earlier about increasing calls and demand, the variability of what you guys are responding to is also from a spectrum standpoint point increasing as well as the climate changes, for example, there's going to be more non-fire related things that you're going to be responding to as well on top of all the economic related issues are going to cause more health and popular related 911 calls and distractions that you guys can have to respond to. I am not ashamed to tell voters that your property tactics are increasing because you need a robust firefighter department that needs help. I'm not, I'm not ashamed to say that I think we do need the eight paramedics because I think by the time we're talking about new positions down the road, we're already going to be behind again with piece for paramex that is already in the budget right now, the proposed budget right now, I it's just a band-aid that we're putting on a gun chuck. I don't think it's going to, I want to reduce the amount of issue turnover rates that we've been having in this department for so long that I want us to get back to what is close to normal, to the point where, I'll put it this way, I don't want any firefighter in the department to at all think that this council does not support them. This is how we can showcase a way to right the wrongs from previous years. So I'm telling you right now, not only am I in support part of this, if we don't put this forward in the budget I'm not voting in favor of the budget thank [1:21:29] Daniel Carson: you that's okay I have three questions and a comment sure the first is around the current staffing of your accomplishments being at 86 out of the 95 people to share a little bit about what the remaining openings look like for you now sure yeah the remaining openings are strictly [1:21:49] Fire Chief (unidentified): fire suppression focus so they would be they're the combination firefighter EMT or paramedic whatever we can we can bring in one of the other things expand on that a little bit if you don't mind one of the challenges that we have internally is one of our actual core budget drivers is that a lot of people come in without that paramedic certification so we spend a lot of time and invest a lot of money in them getting them to that level so they come in able to fight fire and provide some basic medical care but part of their evolution if you will [1:22:24] Daniel Carson: in the organization is to reach that paramedic level thank you my second question is what would that perfect task force look like for you that you mentioned you know we're building a project we have new things coming in what who's involved in that in your vision so for me and [1:22:46] Fire Chief (unidentified): remember I just have the public safety public safety vision but it would be it would be fire police public health wastewater it would be I think parks and rec would probably be need to be a part of that public works certainly and then I'm not sure what other what other services would need to be other whether it would be code or whatnot I think I defer to the city manager on that but I think that would be the core group that you know to make up that sport thank you third [1:23:17] Daniel Carson: question is to you that first one the four you mentioned is funded in the base budget so then that would mean that eight is already funded at fifty percent that's correct right okay that's correct and then my comment is I've watched cities all across this state struggle with these conversations it wasn't long ago I actually watched Waterville struggle with this exact conversation and having the chief in there over and over justifying with a lot of data why they needed what they needed and so I'm just gonna make the comment that I hope that we're not going to have that same situation here. I can see the need for the aid. I would agree that we should work very hard to find a way to make better. [1:24:08] Michael Beck: Yeah, well, I just want to say thank you for just coming in and unabashedly asking for this. You know, I know that in budget past there's been a feel the need to kind of like lower it down because the taxpayers being. I'm hearing you loud and clear. This fixes the situation, whereas this is not it. This is where it's at. And for me, my concerns are word aging population, which that drives the calls up, a lot of poverty. And I think that for a lot of folks, you're the de facto health care, and those calls are. Going to increase, and we're talking about lives. But most importantly, I appreciate the fact that you put your people first and tell them to slow down and stop. But now it's our job to fix this, and you know, we'll get giving you this. So I appreciate you bringing this forward. You. [1:25:02] Fire Chief (unidentified): Want to discuss capital, or we all set? [1:25:04] Susan Hawes: That work well. Actually, before we go on to chapel, I do want to bring up again the emergency manager role. Chief Lowe here, I think we both, Chief Law, and I think that continuing to explore that is really important. I think council had some questions more on the technical side that were far more appropriate for Chief Low to answer than myself. But I do want to say that we have started having conversations more in depth with the county on this topic, not really ready to share details or thoughts yet. But we are sort of engaging with them on opportunities to collaborate that may be helpful to us as we try to tackle that particular the issue. Or were there any technical type questions, or you're hoping to send this? [1:26:02] Daniel Carson: Sheet though, no, I'm just going to make the comment that if anybody's looking for this. [1:26:06] Speaker K (unidentified): It's in the executive. Yes, thank you. That's. [1:26:18] Susan Hawes: Fine, if you can always bring Jeff back, we'll start discussing actual decisions on those investments. My. [1:26:30] Susan Deane: Concern was more the financial aspect of it, and now that you're starting with the canopy spectrum set is a huge benefit, because obviously it's a shared position, it's not just something for bank. More so, I think once we investigate about the. [1:26:43] Speaker J (unidentified): Avenues would be a lot easier, just yeah, not that I need the answer now, but just. [1:26:50] Michael Beck: Something like that I would like to know, because I think of like the safety net is like MEMA and FEMA. If we get into a real emergency, it what are the gaps like, what does that get us versus just relying on these existing frameworks? [1:27:04] Fire Chief (unidentified): So there has to be, there are three frameworks to use your terminology. There's the local framework, the county framework, and then the state framework, which is NEMA. The local framework is where we're weakest right now. now. There is a desperate need for planning, for updating of the municipal emergency operations plan, for working out plans like reunification and other things. And right now, that's my task to do that in addition to all the other things that I'm required to do. And it's easy. is a, number one, it's just not possible without me giving up something somewhere. I can't do it. But we can't not have those things. Those have to be in place. If we can come up with some type of collaboration or some type of support, whatever that looks like, that will take some of the burden off of the municipality so that a lot of those administrative things,, if you will, can be done at another level. We don't have a direct pipeline to MEMA. Just because we're Bangor, we can't knock on the state's door and say, hey, I need XYZ. All of that has to go through the county. So they are an integral part of the whole process. And I think that they can be a really good ally as we build this out for Bangor for what we need, especially when it comes to the operational planning piece. Just to solidify this, emergency management is not emergency response. It has nothing to do with responding to calls, or taking charge or anything like that. Emergency management is in the background during an emergency situation. They're in the background doing coordinating and getting resources allocated and moving things forward for us. So if knock on wood a tornado were to come through downtown bay or i hope that never happens but as an example that would overwhelm us very quickly very quickly we would need those additional resources from the outside so we would hit our local mutual aid initiative but we would have to put a call into promscott county to say hey i'm going to need generators and i'm going to need medical support and i'm going to need dewatering equipment because all the businesses downtown are flooding because pipes are broken or whatever the case may be. Penobscot County EMA takes all that, then they start working that for us, and they collaborate with MEMA. And if they need to bring in federal resources or resources from other states or even New Brunswick or Quebec, they're the ones that get that all sauntered. We make the request to them, they start working with the state and bring it on. But we have to have our ducks in a row own locally so that we have all that laid out, we know what we might need, or we have plans in place so that when we request resources they can integrate into our plan and they know where [1:30:24] Susan Hawes: they're going and all those things. We have training for all of our staff pull the trigger [1:30:29] Speaker J (unidentified): and say this qualifies, we need to start the plan. And those are, those are pieces that were missed. [1:30:36] Fire Chief (unidentified): Every counselor sitting here right now should have had g402, which is a, an introductory incident command and emergency management class, and that's something we need to get you. But again, it's, it's hard to do that when I'm, when I'm personally balancing all the other things that need to be balanced. So, it hasn't been forgotten, it's just another, it's a weakness this, in the system we need to address so [1:31:05] Susan Deane: historically take the ice storm of 98. Who managed that? Was that the city of Angler? Was that, it would have been all of it would have been [1:31:15] Fire Chief (unidentified): the city of Bangor would have been, the county and would have been the state. I know, so I can speak from experience, I was working the city of Auburn at the time, and I was doing, you know, call for stuff in Oxford, in each place we had an emergency operations center. So we would go in, we would get a daily briefing on what's going on, we would develop information to pass out to elected officials so you had an idea what was going on, we would work together collaboratively to figure out where we were going to send resources. As an incident commander or as a, as a, as a chief officer, I would sit in that group, I would work with people like Mark and Tracy and public works and whoever else, and we were figuring out what the priorities were going to be, and then we would say hey, we need xyz. So that's how that would all work, and then at some point the county would be involved, or we would have meetings with them, those types of things. So it really is, in a major event, it really is a collaborative effort across the entire state for something like that. [1:32:16] Susan Hawes: In the ice storm they used the military as well, they had the card, yeah. Would you initiate that? [1:32:22] Fire Chief (unidentified): Or did that come from the state? I would request that, so the request would go to the county, and then the county would send it to the state. So it really is what's needed where, and the way they parse that out is we put in our request, it goes to the county, the county gets everything from the county, they identify priority areas, then it goes to the state, and the state identifies statewide priority areas from there, because there's only so many resources and Maine is a pretty big, it's pretty big and pretty rural if you haven't noticed, so I mean there's a lot of, there's a lot of needed resources that municipalities don't necessarily have. We're very fortunate actually with what we have for resources, there's no doubt about that. This council, previous councils has done a really good job. It's just some maintenance that's [1:33:09] Joseph Leonard: needed, councilman. And then council official feedback, I actually offer for you just said right there regarding the coordination and the hierarchies of coordination, and it might actually be a city manager question more so. So, hypothetically, if we were to greenlight an emergency response manager, would we, would that manager supersede our coordination with Penobscot County? Could we directly coordinate with no, we still have to go through the county? We still have to go through the county. Okay. Okay. I think might answer some of our questions either the emergency manager response manager so the county [1:33:52] Fire Chief (unidentified): I'm sorry, the county, I want to make it clear the county doesn't usurp any of our authority, right, we still hold all the same authority and we'll make capacity anything else. It's about resource allocations really what it comes down to and planning and making sure that we are compliant with state and federal mandates is really what that position is all about [1:34:11] Joseph Leonard: Right. It still doesn't mitigate the overall hierarchy of like a communication though. So that's still an issue that I... Anyway, that was a right on my head question. One question I had, which was directly related to how if you wear two hats in this role right now, out. And so if we were in an emergency situation, my question is, how do you mitigate the risks of wearing those two hats right now? Does Deputy Chief Pelletier have to take responsibilities away from you with your position as Chief in order to cover those demands of the Emergency response manager? And I'm guessing that would put extra stresses on him. So what would we alleviate by having this position overall that we currently have right now as a stressor for you wearing both of these hats? So what's [1:35:27] Fire Chief (unidentified): happening right now is I'm doing the minimum amount necessary to try to maintain compliance. I'll use the word try because I know that we're out of compliance in some areas. And so that's what I'm doing right now. In the event of an emergency where that emergency manager would help us with coordination, I would end up stepping into that role and the deputy chief volunteer would take over the operational aspect, if you will, of the fire department. I would step into a role where I would coordinate all of the agencies that are involved and identify resource needs and assist with planning and those sorts of things. I'm capable of doing that. I don't think that's the issue. I think the issue is that I don't do it regularly enough to say that I could do it effectively. effectively and it's not just and I know we talked about this before but I think it's worth reiterating it's not just the emergency it's all the planning the preparation that goes in when we talk about mitigating risks that's part of that rule as well so if we want to do a culvert repair project and get federal money for that the emergency manager would be involved in that at in some regard, because that culvert repair project mitigates the risk of road washout and all those other things. And when we craft grant language, that's really where we should be looking if we're looking for benefits from FEMA or work development. Council Fischer. [1:37:09] Carolyn Fish: So this position would, and you answered part of that, the emergency management director or manager he would be she would be in charge of creating operational policies from procedures risk management and work within the fire department partnership and under the fire department and would this be one position or a small department? How do you see with one, director be in charge of all of this? [1:37:45] Fire Chief (unidentified): So I think we're, I think we are too early to talk about the staffing piece right now, not to be disrespectful. I don't know that we are far enough down the road to really comment on that. I would, if you'll permit me to just reframe one of your, statement that they are about policy and procedure. They wouldn't be drafting policy or procedure. They would help draft policy and procedure, but it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be a rule making or policy making position. It's, it's a support position. So if I had to, if we decided to adopt a policy on emergency management or whatever the case may be, that's something that they would help craft, but they wouldn't have that authority to do that where I might have the authority to bring forward a policy that says you can't burn in your backyard unless you're wearing rubber duck boots or something like that, if that makes sense to you. So their authority is just more limited [1:38:51] Susan Hawes: than a department directors. And if I might just further clarify, I don't, I think as we contemplate it currently, we don't plan on it being within the fire department. It would be under the city manager's office, primarily because it would have its hands in numerous departments and their operations, and so it would maybe be a bit odd if it lived within the fire. Yeah, because it could be [1:39:18] Fire Chief (unidentified): a multi-faceted. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and that's by my, I totally endorse that. 's not a territory I'm looking to even put my hands on, so I think that's where I [1:39:28] Speaker K (unidentified): should move myself. That's okay. Yes, I think [1:39:36] Daniel Carson: a comment I have is in regards to the G 402 training. We should probably try to receive that sooner than later. I can speak for myself in suggesting that I would be like fully politically unprepared as a counselor to even stick my fingers into an emergency should one arise, and I think that political unpreparedness would be a problem for you and everybody else actually. I mean, I think about this kind of a position a lot. I appreciate that there is a natural hierarchy that the county is involved and that the state is involved and that FEMA is involved. I'm aware that FEMA has long-standing issues, you know, with its operations, and I am also aware that the federal government, that there is actually work, bipartisan work actually, you know, moving forward to address some of the long-standing challenges that the federal emergency management agency had. But where I would be concerned is that when you, when I look at particularly large emergencies that happen across the country. There always seems to be a breakdown between those hierarchies in communication. And it's either that the political body at the very bottom dealing with the emergency is not prepared to adequately assess what it needs to even be able to make the appropriate requests. And then by the time it catches up to itself, every other community has made requests. And then there's breakdowns at all of the other levels, Right. I mean, Hurricane Katrina is a horrific example. But if you look at that really closely, there wasn't a level involved that didn't have some sort of terrible, terribly obnoxious breakdown from unpreparedness. And so that's what I worry about. And it's not that we're, you know, like susceptible to these constantly large scale emergencies. But to your point, a tornado goes through downtown or any other thing. I think there's a lot of pieces that we're not politically equipped to be thinking about. We're not prepared. I've never, you know, I mean, like thinking of even bringing the assessor into conversations like that. What if we have a flood that tears off a chunk of downtown? I mean, I don't think we could even right now if that question was asked know how much that would cost us permanently with the loss of geography and the buildings. And so I see a really, I mean, I see a value in this. I think it's hard to quantify that value numerically for people. I mean, I appreciate the $6 saved for every $1 put into this, but I think where people learn this lesson is after the bad thing happens that costs millions and millions of dollars, and we all learn a really terrible lesson. And so I think it'd be good for us to not have to have that happen to be prepared. [1:42:38] Susan Hawes: I think, I'm sorry, houses pointing at your capital improvement programs you want to walk through that sure so [1:42:47] Fire Chief (unidentified): This year what we're looking for is a climate control for stations five and six. There's no, I mean, we have heat in those stations but there's no central air or anything like that. And as it is right now the members bring in their own air conditioners to put in the windows up there and they have to have facilities like that don't have that capacity. Considering the age of the buildings, they aren't that old. Was really shocking to me. We have ongoing issues with the air with the with the heating System at Station Six, which is out by the airport. That station is, has a lot of problems. We're getting mixed, and this has been ongoing for a year. We've been trying to get somebody to give us an actual cost on what it will cost us. It's a proprietary system to train. We might be able to bring in another vendor who can work around the proprietary system. We don't know if those buildings are going to be in service, which they should last another 20 years anyway. I mean, they're good solid brick buildings. Or if they have a good solid component to them, I should say. I think to me that's, that's something we should invest in is air handling, air filtration, and heating. So that's, that's one of the, one of the big things we're looking at, our fleet of vehicles. They're called supervisor vehicles, but basically they're the vehicles that we use for administrative work and emergency response. So they're not just drive around town and go to meeting vehicles. These are the vehicle that are, that I run, DC Poitier, I'm sorry, that I run, Division Chief Ogden run, and we have another utility vehicle in service that is used for a backup command vehicle. It's used to transport people to classes, it does respond to certain types of calls. They're really, they're out, they're reaching the end of their, service life. They've been averaging about eight years. I think I have 10 years on mine right now, and I have about 140,000 miles on it. I'm just from general use, it is an emergency response vehicle, so I do run lights and sirens. That's, that's progressive braking, that's steering when I need to, those types of things, not as often as the other vehicles. There's no doubt about that, but they certainly are there at a point where they really should be replaced. Being the 15 Suburban that you see there is at the end of its service life. It would not surprise me for me to have to put that out of service completely lately within the next 12 months. And the 2017 Tahoe, I'm sorry, the 2011 Tahoe is yours, right? The 2011 Tahoe is the dividend sheet VMS vehicle. He runs a lot more energy calls than I do, and that vehicle is certainly coming up along the same lines as the 2015. I will tell you that it is in this, I will use this loosely, it's probably in better shape than the 2015. But that's not saying a lot for the vehicles as they are right now. They really are getting there. And then the last machine, we have the fit test machine already, right? That shouldn't [1:46:33] Speaker K (unidentified): be a problem. Yeah, [1:46:36] Fire Chief (unidentified): Come on, for that one. I think those are the only two asks if I remember it for this year. Like I say, only two, I mean, I think there's engine and [1:46:44] Susan Hawes: ladder replacements, but I'm assuming those are contributions to sort of your yearly fund [1:46:49] Speaker J (unidentified): to support those purchases. I'll let Eric talk about that. I guess you're not talking about it. [1:46:56] Joseph Leonard: So we do currently have a fit test machine, but the software and everything that goes with that is no longer being made, so the whole machine has to be replaced. So that's why that request is in there. To touch base on the ambulances and the engines, the ambulance program, what we've done over the past several years is we bought five new trucks and then we remodeled both chassis at a very big cost savings, and it's been a very beneficial way for the point now where we need to start over and purchase new. So we had, as you may recall, we did have some money left over that we're purchasing new. So an ambulance, it was supposed to be in this year's capital, is not because we had that leftover money, but next year we would want to. That's why you see the board request. So the engine, we have one coming here hopefully next one, and we ordered the other one last year, which we're expecting a two-year delivery. Again, the chief mentioned that we're trying to reduce those delivery times, so that's looking pretty good. You see the ladder, that's our reserve ladder right now. Unfortunately, when we ordered that new, it did not have the capability to have the corrosion prevention methods that we order all of our trucks now, such as galvanized frame rails, so that has a very extensive corrosion erosion problem that we're hopeful we can get through using it in the reserve capacity. But again, that it's going to need to be replaced in a few years. So that's the projection over the [1:48:36] Susan Hawes: next couple of years. So one more year on the new truck. [1:48:39] Joseph Leonard: We have one coming now. And then another year and a half a year now. Yes. [1:48:49] Susan Deane: You mentioned station six is by the airport. Where is station five? [1:48:53] Fire Chief (unidentified): Station five is up on Holman Road across from the DOT garage right there by the vent. [1:49:06] Susan Hawes: Life, well, that's a lot, so I don't know that you need anything more, but if there are no other questions, that's our scheduled agenda for the evening, and we will, we're from the school department and learning. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Are we adjourned?