North Pole: Budget Work Session - Police and Fire Department Budget

Are we on the record? All right, wonderful. Thank you for joining us for our budget workshop. This evening's presentations will be Police Department and Fire Department. Mr.

Clerk, please call the roll. Mr. McGee? Here. Miss Rolfe? Here.

Mr. Skips? Here. Miss Barnett? Here. Mr. Schuster?

Here. Mr. Claus? Here. Mayor Terch? Here,.

You have quorum. Thank you, Chief Smith. Thank you for joining us this evening. Um, I am going to ask that if you want to move that mic around, I don't mind if you stand or move around, just so that somehow your voice is recorded for those that, uh, aren't able to attend here this evening. Yeah, that shouldn't be a problem.

And if you want, we can maybe take the longer mic from the other table if you need it. It'll be fine. I'll just do this to. Your.

Yeah, I get to look at my back the whole— okay, good. Okay, so as I did last year, I'd just like to share some ongoing stats and projects we completed last year, and then what we're looking to for 2027, and then we'll get into the numbers. Couple historical pictures from back in the day. Bottom left way back in the day. So, long ways.

I know his name, but it's on a list in my office with a bunch of other fellows from back then. And our Jeep we used to patrol in up there at the top left.

So, over 2026, some things that I'm proud that we were able to complete, we added Well, we promoted Sergeant, or I should say Officer Travis Corner to the position of Corporal. That is a position that had existed, but we hadn't had anyone to promote into it, and we were able to accomplish that last year. You're all familiar with the work that's been done up to this point, the K9 program. So we got that off the ground and the dog is functional now, though he's still going through what we might call a dog field training program, because that does take some months for him to acclimate to his new environment. We did get— and I just recently heard this a few weeks ago— but we did get DHS approval for the secure area.

For those of you that are just joining council, I brought a proposal before council to actually install a fence at the back of the police department where all of our garage doors are. Some of you that have been here a while know that there's a lot of through traffic through there between cars and people and pedestrians, and it has become a significant security issue with garage doors and different things like that. So I brought that before council to seek support from, from council.

6. Got approval from the council at that point in time, so I then applied for DHS funding because it's a really great fit for Homeland Security funding. We found out the whole project was approved, so that means we got to redo quotes and all of that. But if they end up reaching out to us and providing us that funding, we'll be able to start that this spring. Weapons systems, um, Some of you may remember me talking about that last year in the budget presentation.

We were using some, some rifles and pistols that were fairly outdated and didn't have optics on them. So now the entire department has been upgraded with new rifles, 9mm pistols, and all of the optics. So weapon system upgrade. Folks that are actually actively using those on the street could give you more information about how they like them, but the feedback I'm getting is that it's a really Really good. FBI TFO.

You may not know what this means. A TFO is basically a temporary assignment, uh, that an officer can take where there's a, uh, connection that's forged between North Pole Police Department, in this case the FBI, uh, where that officer, in this case Detective Sergeant Gregory, actually liaisons with the FBI and assists in some of their investigations. And vice versa. So there's sharing between the two agencies, which is a really good thing for us.

Some admin streamlining. One of the big projects I had this year was taking the last— I don't want to— I don't know how— wage analysis we completed. You're all familiar with that because you were all involved in it. Got that done this year.

And then we were also able to establish a new range, the Diamond Spear Range, for us to use for our qualifications. Some of you may be familiar, uh, Armir's facility out on that way.

And then we've made multiple policy updates in the police policy manual over the last year, and that continues. Still waiting on the statewide policy manual to come to fruition. I was told we're 8 to 9 months out a few months ago when I talked to AP— questions on last year as far as a lot of stuff done. Next year, you're going to— about this quite a bit. Secure area construction, we'll look to hopefully start that in 2024.

Ongoing policy work needs to continue. We'd had a meeting with the DEA actually today about adding a TFO position to the DEA, similar to the FBI, which, just to clarify, this does not take an officer off the street and put them the DA's office. It's just a, uh, sporadic thing that they're involved on that level, but that gets us connection with that other federal agency, which is good. Evidence room relocation. So we have begun conversations about how we could be best served to expand our evidence room space.

Um, some of you are more or less familiar with the police department, but it's a very small room and it's limited because it's surrounded by offices. It can't actually grow any bigger So at this point, the thought is potentially once we get all of our files scanned in, actually taking the archive room and the evidence room and going like this, because by then the archives will— should fit in that smaller space, and then put the evidence room in the larger, the larger space. That would also get that archive room much closer to the front of the building for city staff. Can just go right in, take a right, and go right into the archive room rather than tromp all the way through the Um, and then Justice Student Interns. So when we get to the wage category, you'll see me talking about an increase, uh, to the wage category, which just comes from moving an employee from temp overhire into wage.

And then I put about $10,500 in that temp overhire with the intent of actually having a couple summer Justice Student Interns that we can pay a small amount. $20 An hour over those 4 months ends up being about $5,200 for the opportunity associated with— Questions on— Some historical trends. I won't belabor this, but I like to show the last, you know, 7 to 10 years or so. The city has continued to grow. Total calls, you can see the range there, 68% increase over that time span.

You know, the self-initiated, same thing. Assaults, just for some specific data, are pretty steady over time in the city of North Pole. We're at 24 so far for the year this year. Larceny, 56 in 2018 and actually only 28 this year. Part 2 crimes, those are the less serious crimes, those are at 366 for the year.

Back in 2018, we actually had 507. Granted, we're not to the end of the year yet, which by the way, that's what that little sharp thing on the graph means. It isn't complete, so I don't have data. DUIs, 26 in 2018, 52 this year. So those are increasing, but by and large, we keep the, the crime load fairly stable.

It's just the population has increased, and especially in the surrounding area. You all know this.

Questions on the statistics? Okay, this is our current chart.

Employment chart, I like to show this every year so you know where everybody is and where they live.

Right, the lieutenant, Ash, and then sergeants in the row down there, including the detective for Ant, which is the task force All, and that's all of our patrol officers currently.

Or, Kaplan in the— I did actually add a category to reserves this year in our policy where you could have an individual that is a training reserve. There's a lot of folks that are freshly retired and aren't super enthusiastic about going out and patrolling a bunch. But they're a tremendous asset for training and consulting and all that type of stuff. And so forming a, a type of reserve that is not required to put in actual patrol time, but can come in and do firearms training. Right now, a retired trooper's doing canine training.

More connections like that we can make, I, I feel like those are, those are good. Questions on that? Okay, some— I like to show and talk about some grants and revenues because the police department does bring in some grant revenue and some other miscellaneous services that we provide, all of which goes into either specific grant-funded projects or the general fund. I also want to reiterate the police department does not receive direct financial benefit from any of this. It goes into the So for this year, we have, um, the most recent numbers I have on the DHS is 2024 because that's the last time we were awarded that.

I expect next year this, this will look different because we will have been awarded your area. That'll be on there. The JAG grant has continued to be a big blessing for us, uh, the last 3 years they've covered 100% of that officer So the same thing for this year, that $183,000 is the total wage for— so pay overtime. Fingerprinting services and police reports are up and down like crazy.

They're— how many people want fingerprints?

Some other revenues, we have the China Lakes contract, which we are currently in the 3-year contract. So for 2025, we, we're at $102,000. 2026, $105,000.

Next year, it'd be funded at $109,000. All of that's already approved. After that, we'll have to revisit that 3-year contract. City impounds, year to date, about $30,000 this year through this month. Um, that is a little lower, and generally we're seeing lower impounds since the revision to city code was done.

Option. I would just let you know on a national level, that's going to end up going away at some point. The ability for a municipality to actually do that, I think, is going to be something that we're working through. Um, citations, we're at about 32,000 for the year at this point. Um, that's also a little lower than some past years, but I don't want to jump to conclusions because we got a little bit of time left.

And the garnishments received in October was actually about $60,000, came in all at once because all the folks that don't pay, their PSC gets garnished and then that all comes in. It was one big chunk. There are some other miscellaneous stuff that I didn't put on my presentation, like asset forfeiture reimbursements, SART, BVRP that pays for our vests frequently. And some APSC reimbursements that APSC tries to do every year. That covers some of the revenues that we have.

Any questions on, on those?

Trying to take a proactive role.

Streams of revenue, grant funding, that type of thing. Okay, so these are the big numbers. I like to just start off at the beginning. I'm sure you've already seen it in your form. We've got an increase of $508,031.

You got last year's and this year's budget, and we can talk through finer details and why that is. So for total wages and benefits, if you've got your form in front of you, that's, that's what it is. It's just that entire category for the last 3 years and what we have this year. There are 2 things I would draw your attention to on this category. One is that we have a wage increase because the 3% increase was approved for next year.

So obviously I budgeted for that. The other big chunk of this I mentioned already, I moved an employee from temp overhire, from temp overhire into the total wage. So it looks like it grew that much. Really, I just moved it from one, one. That's from a variety of factors.

When Ellingworth was originally hired, He was part-time, and we didn't believe we had to pay him PERS when he was— find out through the diligent efforts of our HR clerk, actually, he did that entire time meet the required hour threshold for the city to be required to pay PERS. And so we had to go back and make that right. And then at that point, he's basically a full-time employee. He was working 36 hours. He's got plenty of work to be a full-time employee.

And so I made the decision to budget and just say, just go full time. It's 4 more hours a week to be full time. That's most of what you see there in the increase to wages, which is about a $350,000 increase. We also had holiday— or excuse me, benefits went up, PERS went up, and then a couple other increases to smaller— same thing with total purchased services. Once again, I've just taken the entire thing and grouped it together.

We've got an increase of about $136,000 that is coming from insurance and then IT services, the pretty significant increase, and then most of it's coming from the dispatch contract at a $90,000 increase. Just an item— would anyone have any questions about how that works? I know a couple of you might be new to the fire and dispatch contract. If I explain it at all, I can save the fire chief some time too.

I just— what was, what was the price per call before, and what did that move to? I can't remember. It is moving to $45 an hour for police and $70, I think.

We're currently $70 at the fire department. It's moving to $100. Yes.

Smaller amount. They made a big adjustment for this year. That's why it was a pretty big hit. Um, and then it moved. I did, in a meeting though, get to see the real numbers of what it would cost to run a dispatch center.

You got any guesses? $4.3 Million on it.

The— that's approximately what their dispatch center is running. Yeah, it would be comparable.

Maybe we talking about almost doubling the size of the police department and staff, all the same shift. Well, a big ask. Any questions on purchase services?

Moving on to total operational expenses. I've got a smaller, like a $7,000 increase here. Electric went up, heating fuel went up, phone and data went up.

A is no longer covered. The internet provider is no longer covered under the Total IT contract, it's split out and it's a separate cost for my agency. It's about $900 a month for internet. We have exhaustively— the mayor and some of us other ones trying to find a better solution for cheaper internet. Part of the problem is we're perpetually attached to Fairbanks because all of our systems use the same systems.

And so it's not as easy as let's go out and get a Starlink or get something else. Like that. So we're kind of hampered by just the lack of providers in the area leading us to kind of having MTA.

I'm kind of grumpy about that too. Have you checked with Starlink and their new business program? We have. The issue is not, not the availability of the internet. It's, it's the VPNs that we have to run.

Since they're satellite-based, there's no direct connection between them and, let's say, FPD. That's the direct connection we have to maintain. Then it can't go into the sky and then come back. That's the problem. Yeah, we had a, we had a quote from a different IT company, and they actually came up with 3 or 4 different pretty creative workarounds, and pretty much all of them got shot down for that reason, or that there's just no fiber coming here.

We, we've looked at that quite a bit to try and figure out a way around that. We— that provider that he was talking about was trying to connect Starlink, GCI, ACS, and the fiber that we have in, and then use a selector depending on what website or app or internet need that we'd have, and it would choose the right portal to make that happen, but ultimately that ended up costing more than the MTA fiber that we currently have. And it was super complex.

Okay, questions on that one?

Travel training and memberships. This is actually down a little bit, and that's only because last year I asked for some extra funding for a particular class.

So it's back to— it fluctuates quite a bit over the years, just depending on how much staff we have, what we're projecting to probably send people to training to the next year.

I always try to keep some money in recruitment regardless of what's going on. It's good to just have a lot of money in there hiring people.

Vehicle equipment expenses. Okay, talk to you about a little bit. First of all, we've got an increase in the vehicle gas and oil of $15,000 and vehicle repair and maintenance of about $15,000 as well. Um, you all know why on the gas and oil. To do.

And then vehicle repair and maintenance. So a little bit of information for you. When I calculate vehicle wear, some of you are familiar with this because you sat through several hours of conversation about this this year. I, I calculate both the actual miles driven and the idle time too, because both of those give you a much more well-rounded picture of how old the car actually is. Because as you might imagine, our cars idle a lot.

We're on a DV call for 4 hours, the car's sitting out there idling when it's cold. Um, our average patrol vehicle currently has almost 90,000 miles of engine wear. Our average mileage across the entire fleet for miles driven is closer to 50,000 miles. But because of those idle hours, the average is actually closer to 90,000 miles with that engine wear. And this year so far, we've spent $15,000 on vehicle repairs.

So I tried to explain this as best I could, but as cars get older, the repairs get increasingly expensive. For an example, Unit 328, my old car, this year had 85,000 miles on the odometer and 4,311 idle hours, right? You might see that 85,000 and think that could— car could have a lot more miles put on it, but it broke. It has about 227,000 miles of total wear, and this year the whole rack and pinion went out. To the point that it couldn't even be driven.

And we were quoted $5,000 to $7,000 to repair that. On a best-case scenario, we're going to get 1 or 2 more years out of it. So I've tried to explain this really well, but we have to keep that average mileage at a point where it's the sweet spot of not incurring these gigantic repair costs that come in just 20,000, 30,000 miles later in the car's lifespan. So we don't get rid of them too early because that would be wasteful, but we also don't hang on to them so long to the point that they start incurring costs.

6 Vehicles right now are at or past the retirement, retirement mileage: 331, 335, 337, 338, 345, and 342. Our oldest Explorers each have an equivalent of over 200,000 miles of wear. So you're seeing the increase that I'm putting into the repair budget because now I'm playing catch-up. Next year, this is going to continue. It's always continuing.

I can't stop the wear and tear from happening. So you're going to see an increase there. And then you're also going to see a request for budget funding for 2027 for 2 cars. And then if I'm able to, I'm going to give you a memo requesting 3 cars for next year. 1 Purchased out of what we already have saved in our vehicle fleet fund, 2 purchased out of new funds put in for 2027.

That will— if we do that, that will get us back to where we should have been this year. Evaluate that on the basis on all the quotes, talk through that issue. But that's what I'm trying to accomplish is keeping— lose another Explorer like this one that's back in a rental car.

Next one after that, we got to figure something else out creative. So any questions on,.

Um, besides Ford and Chevrolet, are any of the other manufacturers producing, uh, police department cars? They are. They're just terrible, like Tahoes. Like, that's Chevy. Yeah,.

Not, not Chevy and Ford. Is Nissan or Dodge? No,. They're not,. Not in this country, not.

Here anymore. I think they have those in, in certain parts of the world. So you said Dodge, we, we have Dodges, we do have, we have, how many Durangos do we have? 6. Wow.

They, we are looking to switch back to Fords though. Durangos, the, the Dodges are I would say more unreliable than the Fords.

We switched because they said they were discontinuing the Fords. Ford was going to get out of the police interceptor market. And so we were like, oh, great. Well, now we have to buy Dodges. And then they've continued to make them now.

So— What's the total number of vehicles you have? Uh, that's a good question. 15. 15 In our regular patrol fleet, and then there's a couple extraneous ones like my admin car, the detective, the FANT detective's truck, and some other ones like that. Come on, how many of them are actually functional?

The cars in the shop right now?

3 In the shop now, down from 4. That was kind of our crisis point. It was 4. So, um, when it comes to mileage, what is, in your professional opinion, the don't go past this mileage mileage? I mean, if the car is still functional, we'll usually drive it as long as we can, as long as it's safe.

Right, but I mean like for the future to make sure that we can, you know, have that rotation of newer vehicles coming in so we don't have this insane amount of repair bills. Between 80 and 100. Okay, that's what I was thinking. Yeah. Is where we're looking to roll it into from active patrol into like the PSA drives it or someone drives it when their car is down.

Because then we'll keep it. Then once it's in the hot seat row, We'll keep it as long as we can, you know, right? But it's like the backup for when—. Yes, it's like that. We don't want to be driving this one extra every day because it could blow up type thing,.

Right? Yeah.

And to get that rotation back into rotation, do you think it would get the ones that are just total crap right now?

Get us back to where we— the proposal I'll bring you will get us back to the high end of where we should be. 2 Cars a year keeps us where we need to be. Just 2 cars a year, every year. That, that's— I've done all the math. That's, that's what, that's what plays out.

Um, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, or something like that over the years. But when you start doing None or one. Yeah, it gets problematic quick.

Okay, structure outlay, nothing much to report on here.

Um, $3,000. I just took building maintenance down a little bit because our project's slated for next year. Look smaller than— Total other expenses, we got a decrease of about $19,000-$20,000.

Decreased the equipment outlay. I had extra in it last year for the weapons that we purchased, so I decreased it a bit for this year. And then a couple other small changes.

I will be looking, provided things shake out the way I think they will, to be doing a transfer out of our, um, our total wage budget of $50,000. Last year I did that and I moved what was left over because Dutra retired. I moved that into our fleet fund for the next year. We're not fully staffed for all of this year, so we have a little bit extra, and so I'm going to do the same thing and request to move that $50K just roll it into the fleet.

Brings us back to our total.

It's the end.

Yeah, please, Councilman Schuster. More of a comment, not a question, but, uh, you know, half a million dollars is, is a tough pill to swallow. Some of that's— most of that's out of your control. Some of it's in your control. One thing I continuously hear from the residents is— and, and most people haven't seen this budget yet, but it'd be a lot easier when people come to me and say things about the police department and, and a half a million dollar increase if there was more patrol inside the city.

And, and we've been over that a million times, and I know your logic of, you know, obviously there's, there's assist, there's stopping crime before it gets to the city, there's There's— which I, I tend to agree with, but if the focus could be more, you know, if, if residents see cop cars in their neighborhood as much as possible, I, I think that's a lot easier message to pass along to, to people. So that's, that's my two cents on it. Oh, that's, that's very valid, and it's something that we, you know, we respond to pretty much every year, making sure that that stays where it needs to be, and then also just helping people understand It does happen a lot. It's just you don't see it frequently. I mean, back to my days in patrol, just literally, you know, 8 hours of doing that very thing, but I may only pass the house one time because I'm trying to hit every neighborhood in the entire city.

So it's a double-edged sword to be able to accomplish both. It is our goal.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll give you a little kudos because a young man that I, I know, um, was, was stopped by a police officer on his bicycle, and the officer— and it was just a courtesy stop— gave him a token and thanked him for wearing a bicycle helmet. So you are out there, the kids are seeing you, and I will agree with Mr. Schuster, the more we see you, the more we feel confident. And over the years, I've seen a lot of officers in my neighborhood, the North Star subdivision, and sometimes I hardly see them, but I can't say that I'm there all the time to see them when they're there. But I just wanted to share that, that that young man was really proud of that token.

Yeah, that's a— for those of you that may not be familiar, it's a program we started 3 years ago where we do that every summer. Now all the officers have those, and if it's, it's made thing. But if other safety— good safety habits, we give them a token. So good thing. A big thank you to Santa Claus House for helping sponsor that.

To the Santa Claus House for making that happen. Councilman Schuster, one last question. Can you just— there, there's been questions about the K-9 program. Can you— do you have those numbers in front of you? You could just tell where, you know, money out, money in, what the total donations were.

Is there a plan for recurring donations for future? Can you just go over that? Yeah, so the total donations was around $52,000 total. We have a balance currently in the 501, the North Pole Reserves Association, earmarked because those are donations, they're earmarked only for the canine. And then there was about $15,000 or so spent out of the 2026 budget, um, as well, because it's kind of a handshake thing to support the canine.

And so I— yes, it's going to be an ongoing thing where there's going to be some input from my normal budget, some input from the balance that's purely donations, and then ongoing seeking of those donations over time. So I'm kind of pulling from a bunch of different places to do that. Thank you for the question. That's pretty amazing that we were able to pull together almost $55,000 for a K-9. So thank you for spearheading that and making that happen, and our generous community for making that happen.

Please, Miss Burnett. Um, personally, I'd like to thank you guys for always, uh, showing up on Halloween in my neighborhood because it gets really crazy really fast, and you're always there with glow sticks, and my kids love seeing you. I'm always excited when you guys are there, so I appreciate you doing that presence. We'll be out there again on Saturday. I'll be out there in the side-by-side handing them out.

So. Nice. Yeah, yeah, I see you guys in the neighborhood all the time, so I, I appreciate that effort. But one last comment, um, obviously I appreciate everything you guys do. New council members, if you haven't done a police ride-along, it's, it's a pretty incredible experience, and, and I'm looking to do one again here soon in the near future, and it's You learn a lot about the department real quick, and it's, uh, it's a cool experience.

I have to share. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I've sat on this council long enough to where we went from shotguns to ARs, where we're used to— actually, they had to defend how many bullets that they would purchase for training for the officers back with, with Al Omby was the chief. And even to the point where— and I hope you're still doing it— where we decided that it was time that the police cars had armor-proof doors to protect the officers. But we have an amazing force.

For all the years I've had to deal with you, work with you— not deal with you, but work with the department, thank goodness. I did have to deal with them one time, but that was years and years ago. But I just want to thank you and appreciate you, that what you guys do for our city. Thank you, I very much appreciate that. Yes, sir.

Thanks, Mayor. And also, uh, you're being the first FBI Academy graduate that our department has had. I presume that has a little bit of something to do with the, uh, training folks that are coming in that are being spending some time with us, either from the FBI or the DEA. And I'm wondering if there's a way for unless they're incognito, if there's a way to make for them to make a short presentation at some point to the council. I could check into that for you.

Be great. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Chief. Appreciate it.

Everybody okay to move on to the next, or do we want to take a quick 3-minute break? Ready to move on. Okay, carry on.

Oh, thank you. Thank you all. Thank you, Chief. Have a good night.

I'm ready. See if I can figure out the clicker. Let's— Smith, big button. Big button.

We haven't found you yet. Give us a moment. Take your time. 54. Page 54.

Thank you. No, thank you.

I make it difficult.

Yeah, process of elimination.

Oh, on the side. Yes. Oh, those big buttons.

There you go. Okay, well, thank you all for being here. First of all, I very much appreciate your time. I know that 3 nights of budget meetings is a lot, and then going to be right back at it next week. So you're definitely very much appreciated.

I'll try to stay by the mic. I'm not used to— this is the first year we've done this, so maybe next year we'll get a clip-on. I usually wander the room, so I'm going to try to tie myself to the mic. Let me know if I leave the mic.

Um, I should be pretty brief. Um, say about the same as, uh, Chief Smith. So, um, just some of, uh, the pictures of our staff throughout the years. Um, I, as I was preparing this presentation, a lot of you guys will notice that it's pretty similar to last year. And I was going to do big changes and make it completely different, but then I realized the way I had it structured was really good to talk about how our department is structured at the basic level.

And, uh, and with having, um, you know, new seats filled with the council, I thought that was appropriate, and, uh, and it would bring Mr. McGee up to speed with some of the changes that we've made since his departure. Back here. So the first thing we'll talk about is, uh, is just kind of where our goals are for the fire department, um, the short and long term. Um, as, as most of you know, um, we just recently, um, ordered a remount ambulance and will be, um, in the next 2 months sending one of our older ambulances to Washington, um, where they will remove that ambulance box, will auction the chassis, and they'll put— they'll refurbish that box, and then it'll be placed on a brand new 2027 F-450. Um, and then we're looking at, timewise, pretty quick.

We're thinking we'll have it back here and going into service in May, which is tremendous, um, to hear from that manufacturer. So, um, we're really pleased, um, that we've got that working. And we're very hopeful that this process works for us because it was such a savings compared to ordering that new ambulance completely from the ground up build. A 33% savings when you're looking at over $300,000 purchases is quite a bit of savings. So yeah, we're very hopeful that this process will work in future years.

We can do the same. If it does pan out. So one of our big things that we've been doing since, well, even before I was the fire chief, but one of my main goals as the fire chief over the last almost 6 years now has been maintaining that stable staffing. The retention of my staff has been absolutely my number one priority. Everything we do over there focuses on that staff retention, and for good reason.

That staff retention is what's providing the services to the community in the emergencies when they need it. You know, emergency services, whether it's PD, whether it's fire department, any emergency services, you know, your emergency department rely on, you know, staff that know what they're doing. They're competent, they're trained, they're experienced. Um, so that's the end goal, is providing that high-quality service to the community. And that's main priority for the fire department, is to keep our staff.

And, and we've done a very good job. Um, we've seen our efforts working, and we'll get further into that. Um, but we're going to continue our paramedic training. Um, every— we're sending one of our current staff out every 2 years, um, to get paramedic training. Um, right now, um, we have our second one, um, halfway through, correct?

He's about halfway through, yeah, two-thirds. So, um, he's doing very well, um, very successful again this, this go-around. Um, so that program is working very well, and that ties right back into those two goals, is we're retaining these staff. I mean, if we're sending them to this extra education they want We were having staff members leave us specifically because they wanted to become paramedics, and they would quit their jobs. So now we can offer that to them to retain them, get them their goal, keep them on a staff, and once again, that higher level of, um, of medical experience is then shared with the community.

Um, one of the ones that I really haven't talked with this body much about, but I want to bring it up tonight, is, uh, our live fire training facility plans. So I don't know if many of you noticed, but there's suddenly two new condexes that showed up on our fence line in the last, um, and the fire station. Um, we are in the infancy of developing a plan to build a live fire training prop, um, at our training facility over there. So our facility we built over 20 years ago, we built it in-house. It's, it's a tremendous training facility.

We use it The police department uses it, AST uses it, other fire departments around the borough use it. The one thing it lacks is the ability to do live fire training on our grounds. That's a requirement we have for our training for our staff. It's part of our ISO grading, which, you know, the Insurance Service Organization that gives us our ISO 2 rating, we need to provide live fire training to our staff on a regular basis. Currently, the only way we can do it is we can send them to Eielson or we can send them to Fairbanks, which includes taking one of our apparatus out of service, sending it out of district, and then sending at least 4, but usually more, staff to that facility on overtime, um, to accrue cost of overtime.

If we can get a facility on our grounds where we can conduct live fire training, we can do it more often, which is a very big benefit to our staff. Right now, they're— we're currently doing it one time a year for our staff, which is— it meets the minimums, but it is barely the minimums. Um, so we're looking forward to being able to do our own live fire training. And, uh, and like I said, it's in the infancy, and the plan is, um, to take these two 40-foot connexes. Um, and, uh, I should mention those were donated by our, uh, our Firefighter Association, the 501 the firefighters have.

They have funding that they were able to purchase those. They're donating it to the cause. We're going to try to find 2 more 20-footers because it'll be a stacked building in the end, and then possibly a 10-footer go on top of those to get it a 3-story status, which even gives us more points. It's not necessary for the live fire side of it, but if we have a 3-story training tower, we get more points. So it might be worth going that third story when we do this.

So like I said, it's in the infancy. We're in the planning stage. That's the first goal is when the firefighters organization turned to us and said, hey, we've got funds, we want to start this. And we gave them the thumbs up, said get them ordered. We got a fence line to put them on and then we'll make a plan and go from there.

So that is definitely in our short-term goals over the next year or two.

I'm looking at our long-term goals. I believe all of you have, have seen or heard of our new fire station plans. Um, that has not left our mindset. We are still looking for that. Um, nothing's changed with the station.

Um, we are currently at max capacity in our fire station. If we had to increase our staffing numbers, which we won't in the next year or two, but you know, the way things are going We could need an increase before we know it. We physically could not increase our staffing numbers today. We are at capacity. We couldn't house them.

We would have to— we had to get super creative with different schedules, things like that that are unpopular and would cause retention problems if we adjusted. So we're still really pressing hard for that new fire station. If, if If you want a refresher on that project and those plans, I can absolutely email everybody, um, that I'm looking at. It was 2023 when we originally had that plan designed, and at that time it was just shy of $18 million estimate. Looking at what they said to expect each year, we're probably over $23 million in today's numbers to even look at getting that thing built.

So, um, every year we let it go by, the more it does cost us. And, uh, and just a reminder, that facility is not just a fire station facility. It is a citywide plan. It was developed, um, before even, uh, the mayor's term. It was developed, um, with Mike Welch's term, um, and it incorporated the fact that we knew that Public Works is in the same situation.

They have— they do so much tremendous work and they're cramped in their quarters, um, so building the new fire station would allow them to move into to the old fire station, more than double their floor space. Um, so it would be a tremendous boon to the entire city to get that finalized if we can get there. Um, still on our long-term plan, and that depends on a new fire station just because we have no room to house anybody, um, is to get deferred authority for fire marshal powers for our own city. City of Fairbanks has that authority for their city. They provide They have 2 deputy fire marshals that conduct inspections and permitting processes for their city.

Um, we rely on the state of Alaska, whose authority is within the city of North Pole, and even though they have added another deputy to the northern area, that's still just 2 people to cover the entire northern part of the state for fire marshal services, and they honestly just don't have time to do it to the level that we could do it locally. So we would provide a much better service to, to our businesses, would be able to get through permitting processes very efficiently if we had it in-house. The safety of our community, I believe, would increase by having that deferred authority in-house. So that is going to stay on there, but unfortunately, unless we can find office space somewhere— and usually they are housed within the fire department They don't have to be, but citywide, we don't have any more broom closets to put another office in. Sorry, Mayor.

Okay, moving on. Any questions?

Okay, so it has been extremely busy this year. And so this is the graph I throw up pretty much every year showing all the way back to 1986. Our run volumes. Um, so down at the bottom in highlight, that's what we're projected to run at the end of this year, is mid-1,700 calls is what we're trending to do right now, which is a pretty big increase over the last few years. Um, this year has been quite busy for the fire department.

Um, you know, the graph kind of shows the green is the total call volume, the orange is our EMS calls And the blue line on the bottom, we're very proud of, is the fire calls. And if you notice, since 1986, that blue line stayed fairly level even though we've had such increase in population and buildup in the city. Fires per capita decreased. That's a good thing. That's, that's definitely good for the citizens, it's good for the community, it's good for the fire department.

The EMS, you know, calls, as you can see, have been the constant rise, and we still see that, um, we running more and more calls every year. And, uh, over 85% of those are based, um, in EMS. So, um, I don't expect that trend to change. I, I really don't. It'll continue to climb over the years.

Um, but that just kind of gives you the perspective over the last several years of the growth our fire department has seen and, and why we're where we're at with our staffing, with our conditions. And as that continues to grow, we need to grow with it. We've done a very good job up till now predicting this growth and, and staying ahead of it, and, uh, and I want to continue to do so.

So, um, just as Chief Smith did, there's our org chart for the fire department. And, uh, and I love to remind everybody that we are the largest entity within the city. Um, I believe the city currently has just over 50 full-time employees. Is that correct? 55.

So amazingly, the fire department strong is 48 personnel. I mean, obviously 18 of those are full-time that add to that 55, but we have more than full-time staff at the fire department. So when you look at our entire org chart, there is 4— there are 48 positions and currently filled with people on a backlist wanting in, which is a tremendous thing to have. It really is. But I like to talk about how our org chart works.

Um, it can be confusing thinking suddenly you're going to have, you know, 48 people show up in an emergency. That is not the case. That's not how it works. We have 3 shifts. Today is C shift.

And our staff, our shifts work a 48-hour schedule. So let's, let's start easier. A shift, let's say this morning started A shift. They would come on this morning at 8 AM and they would work for 48 hours and then get off for 96 hours. And at that point, B shift would come on for their 48 hours and then, you know, right down the line to C shift.

So when you look at just one column, let's say A shift is on Um, what we have for immediate response on a normal basis is that top box. That's our full-time paid staff that we know we have ready. Um, the apprentice at the top of the next box can kind of almost be bumped up into that box once we've gotten them through the academy. And today that's where we're at, is all 3 of our apprentices are on shift, working shift. They're adding that 6th body to the shift, which is a tremendous advantage to the shift, especially when, like, exactly at this very moment we have 2 ambulances out.

And right now at the station we have a recall, so we have staffing coming back as we speak. That happens more often every year, having 2 ambulances out. So having that apprentice up and running, even though they're really green right now, by the end of that apprenticeship, It's amazing what we've seen for growth with those apprentices by the end of the apprenticeship. They're a full-time staff member, basically capable of doing what those other 2 firefighters on the bottom of that list are doing.

Been pleasantly surprised at things we didn't realize when we created the apprenticeship, what it was going to provide for the fire department, for the city. You know, each year we realize that it's more of a gain than we actually anticipated. We looked at it as just a recruiting tool, and it's, it's more than that. It is turned into a staffing tool very shortly after we get them through recruit school. Um, so that's tremendous, um, program that we want to keep going, and we look forward to keep going.

Um, but as you look down, it's like, okay, well, what about the rest, the part-time and the volunteers? Um, so the part-time staff in that column, those 15 staff members that are in the part-time between the 3 shifts The majority of those individuals work full-time for another fire department somewhere else in the borough. They prefer to, you know, they're workaholics, I guess, and prefer to do more.

And they, you know, get on board with us. And what their role is, is if somebody is gone on leave or sick or out of town training, whatever the case may be, If the lieutenant on A shift is not there that day, we use the part-timers to fill that, that hole. Because our shifts with that 5 people, that is, that's our minimum. We, we don't like to drop below that. That provides 2 ambulances in service with a supervisor.

That provides basically an engine company with a supervisor. If we drop below that, um, it, it becomes risky for us when we're doing responses. So that's the, the part-timer's role. They're, they're really not there day to day, and we assign them to a shift, but they can work any— they're assigned to work any of the shifts. Um, so that's where our work chart becomes confusing.

You see, you know, there's, um, what is it, there's 15 part-timers, and it looks like that's a lot of staff that's just there, and really they're only there when one of the others is gone. And they are paid, you know, we do pay our part-timers, hence the name. And then we have our true volunteers. And, you know, a lot of people ask because volunteers in the different parts of the country, some volunteers have stipends and stuff, but our volunteers are true volunteers. It's 100% volunteer.

We don't pay them. We do, they do, but don't misinterpret that. They're extremely expensive for the fire department. A volunteer firefighter has to have the same training, the same certification as the people at the top of the list that are paid full-time to do this job. Um, there's no difference, and it costs us greatly to train these individuals, to equip these individuals.

The gear they wear, you know, you're looking to $4,000 to $5,000 a set, um, just to outfit them in the gear to be a firefighter. So, um, volunteers are not free. They just don't get paid themselves, but it costs the entity to maintain volunteers.

Oh, and then the top 3, you know, are myself, Assistant Chief Todd Chambers back here, and our admin assistant, um, Tammy. Um, you know, the 3 of us are the 40-hour week employees that, that, you know, as a lot of people say, it should be reversed. It's like we should be at the bottom holding them up, which that's what we do. We— everything we do is to keep them in a position where they can make effective emergency responses. And we have tremendous staff for the most part.

Operationally, they don't need Todd or I. They are tremendous that way.

Any questions about our organization?

Okay, I know last night was the revenue, and that's really not part of the fire department's budget, but we like to brag. The fire department this year is predicted, and this isn't exact, Will could probably get you exact stuff, but pretty close to, you know, $1.27 million of revenue the fire department brings in. So yeah, that's not the $4 million that it's going to cost to run this fire department, but at least it helps. So that's broken down basically into those 4 categories. We have a contract with the Fairbanks North Star Borough, which we've had for many, many years.

To provide EMS service outside of our city. Um, that comes at that gain this year is what our current contract is, uh, $938,503, and that's been increasing quite a bit over the last 6 years. Um, when I became the fire chief, that was down— it was in the $400,000 range, and we've managed to negotiate and get them to really look at that. And, uh, and we're still trying to get that higher. There's no doubt it could be higher.

But as I tell everybody, it's, it's a double win for, for our community because it does bring in some income that helps pay for the infrastructure of the fire department. But more so, it gives us the run volume that makes our staff very proficient. If we only ran the calls inside of our city, we wouldn't see a lot of patient contacts like we do daily. You know, in any medic Larry Terch will tell you that the more they actually provide care and use their skills, the more proficient they are and, uh, and the, the better capable they are to save that life when needed. So, um, it is definitely a benefit for the City of North Pole citizens in the city to have those highly capable EMS staff because of the experience they get running 100 square miles outside of the city.

So So, um, very happy to continue doing that for the borough. SMT Medicaid reimbursement, um, that on the other hand is 100% what's going on inside our city. So for those of you that know, um, Medicaid reimbursement is, is just that. Medicaid, we just increased our ambulance billing to $1,300, um, and Medicaid does not pay $1,300 per call. Um, do you have any idea what Close.

Just a little lower.

Yeah, so just to get on the speaker, so maybe, maybe $400 a call, even though we billed $1,300, they might pay us $400 a call for a Medicaid patient. So there's a federal program that is funneled through the state of Alaska that we participate in. The Supplemental Emergency Medical Transport is what Yeah, it is. Yeah, is what SCMT stands for. We started participating in 2022, and, um, and it's averaged, you know, between $200,000 to $300,000 a year is what we've, we've brought in through SCMT since we've started participating.

And, and it is basically to try to recover that gap between the $1,300 we build them and the $4,000 $400 that they paid is what that's trying to do. So, um, those are based strictly just on our city calls. That has nothing to do with outside the city. Um, the Fairbanks North Star Borough also does participate with SEMT, and they actually can recover from our calls outside the city.

Um, city ambulance fees, that's just that inside the city. We do bill, um, you know, and that was just increased, and we do have Um, for next Monday night, correct, is on there to look at the final adoption to give them a bigger discount, that 25% discount. So, you know, like you said, um, it does vary, um, with how many calls we go on each year. So, you know, we can't predict 100% that we're going to have $120,000 from that, but somewhere in that ballpark. And then the last category is our fireworks permitting, um, the fireworks vendors Um, there's 4 of them currently that's been participating traditionally.

It's been long-term. We've had 4, and I predict those 4 will, will remain in business and want to have a fireworks permit. Um, so $12,000 from there, which brings us to our grand total of $1.27 million that the fire department helps. And just as Chief Smith had said, the fire department— this does not go into the fire department budget directly. This, that goes to the city's general fund.

Um, it doesn't— and then obviously our budgets are affected by the general fund availability. So, but any questions on our predicted revenue?

That, um, earlier in your presentation you talked about a live fire training center that's been on the table for many, many years. My concern is this, I want to be careful what I say.

City of Fairbanks Airport, Eielson, Wainwright, all of them have had issues. Are we in— and I'm not going to go in detail, by the smile on your face you know what I'm talking about. I think I know what you're talking about, and I'll talk about it. Um, the issues that I know of that that are caused by firefighting foam. Traditionally, some of those facilities, um, back in the day, we used firefighting foam to train with because we used it on scenes.

We were not told as fire departments back then by the manufacturers that it caused— it had PFAS, PFOA/PFOS, within it, and there was contamination issues. The City of North Pole Fire Department does not use PFAS foam. We don't use foam at all anymore. Within our grounds. So there would be no training, it would be water only.

It's the training we would do in that facility would be a Class A type fire, which is, you know, normal combustibles like wood, and it would involve only water. We don't— we eliminated all of our foam 2 years ago on our apparatus. We no longer carry any foam. Foam is still used in firefighting. Our refineries within our city there is no way to get around needing foam.

And they've come up with PFAS-free foams, um, and we have coordinated with our partners at the refineries, let them know that, yeah, that they have a specific industry need for firefighting, and they're required to provide foam if and when we needed it for a fire. So they do have foam access. It comes in, you know, the big square totes you see in the back of people's truck hauling water. Or fuel. That's what the foam totes come in.

And the way that would work is our fire truck would show up at the fire, they would bring a tote out with a fork vehicle and set it next to the truck, and we drop a tote and we can pump foam for a tank fire or something like that if we needed to. But North Pole Fire Department, we do not. Um, yeah, because we recognize that that was a problem. Um, and admittedly, we know foam was previously used on our training grounds, um, many years ago. There is, you know, still that issue with our grounds.

So, um, so yeah, we've taken that into concern, and absolutely water is the only thing we train with. Thank you. Yep. Thanks. Anything else?

With that, uh, $120,000 we're getting from the city ambulance fees, you're saying, um, adopting the 25% off for North Pole residents. Is that going to change that? It, it, well, right now currently it's 10% discount, um, right? So it's a 50, it's another 15%. It, it might adjust that some, um, then we won't.

Be bringing in as much. Yeah, and like I said, that is, that number out of all of the numbers on there is the one to vary the most. It's 100% because we can't predict how many ambulance runs we're going to have in the city next year. So it, it does ebb and flow quite a bit. So that is a very ballpark-ish.

So even with passing that next Monday, which I'm assuming it'll pass, it's not going to have a major impact to our revenue.

Just to follow up on that, the total fees are increasing, and so we're going from $10 to $25, but really what we're doing is keeping the city resident fee the same, and so it won't have an effect on total— it won't decrease revenue, it'll keep it the same for city residents, if that makes sense. Yeah, that's a very good point. Thank you.

Anything else? Okay, moving on. Okay, there's the meat and the potatoes of what we're here for tonight. So the current budget we're in is $3.9 million, and, uh, we're looking for 2027 to pushes just over the $4 million mark for an increase of $132,451.

Um, you know, and, and the majority of that, of course, as you all can predict, is going to be in the wages and benefit category.

The shock and awe out, we used to hide that till the very end, if you don't remember, but I, I didn't like that. It's like, let's get that big number out at the beginning. Um, so salaries and benefits, um, That is, is the big one. Um, it includes obviously, um, the new pay scale that was passed. Um, that is included in this.

The only other additional change I've made to this, um, and I want to talk about our apprenticeship a little bit more. Um, we've done our apprenticeship from July 1st to June 30th the last 2 years, and it has been super successful. And then we let those apprentices go on June 30th, and July 1st we pick up these newbies. They're right out of high school a lot of times, and we put them through 2 months of fire academy, Monday through Friday. They don't go on shift, and our staff are the ones that train them.

So it's a very, it's a very busy time of the year now. You know, July and August, our staff are extremely busy. And we went from having 6 on shift with these very accomplished apprentices to we let them go. And now we got 2 months kind of in this dry period trying to get the new apprentices at least through an academy. So what I've budgeted this year is to extend the current apprentices another 2 months.

Let's do a 14-month apprenticeship. We'll leave our current apprentices on through that academy, and, and it's going to be a plus for both, for the department and for those individuals, um, is we leave 6-person staffing available to respond as we have been for the previous months while we train these individuals. And we'll let these apprentices help train the new ones. Um, for most people realize that the best way to actually to learn something and really cement it into you is to teach it. So we feel that their last 2 months as apprentices, if they're heavily involved with training these new apprentices, it would be a challenge for them.

So, so I have incorporated 2 additional months in for those apprentices to stay, and that gives us, you know, year-round coverage on shift so we don't drop down to the 5 personnel. And what— and basically what we were doing last year is we were, we were hiring the part-timers more. To try to fill that back up when the apprentices left. But unfortunately, if you think about individuals that are working part-time, that's the time of year, it's summertime, they're fishing, they're playing, they're camping, they're vacationing. They don't want to work more shifts in the summertime.

So it's harder to get commitment from the part-timers to work those shifts during those months. So this— I don't even know how this thought came about. It just kind of dropped to us several months ago that, wow, if we kept them just an additional 2 months, it would be such a benefit for the department. Um, and then running the numbers, it definitely is worth it. Um, so that's the only increases is, is that for the apprentices, and then the, the ordinance that went through that adjusted our pay scale is in there.

So, um, would you like to go down it line by line for that category?

Worry is fine. Council, are you in agreement with that? Welcome to do— yeah, but you guys let me know if I would need to slow down and go line by line, but I think that one is pretty, pretty— there's not much. Like I said, the only thing I could really do is, is adjust the apprentice thing, or, you know, staffing levels, which, um, would be a big deal. Hold on a second, Chief.

Miss Rolfe,. Uh, so the new apprentices that you just started this year, did you start them with the anticipation that they'll run through They were, yeah, no, they'll be the first class of 14. They don't know. Well, if they're watching this, they just heard the news. My, I, I've told my senior staff that this is my plan because I wanted to get their buy-in as to what they thought about it, but they were sworn to secrecy.

So, so you all are the next that know this plan. They are working thinking that June 30th they're done. Um, and if this budget gets approved, that will extend them through the end of August, you know. But here is the one caveat I will say is our goal for these apprentices is not to hold them for 12 or 14 months. It's to get them into a career.

And we've had success moving our apprentices already over the last, the two first years, moving them into career positions long before the end of that. We just hired one of our new apprentices full-time. Well, he's going through the process November 30th. As long as he passes all the parameters, he goes full-time. One of our new apprentices, um, I'll let you know one of the other things that I guess a lot we don't talk about a lot is when we do this apprenticeship.

This year we had our 3 paid apprentices. We, we paid them to go through it. We had 2 volunteer individuals that went through that academy as apprentice volunteers on their own time, doing it as volunteers. So now we moved, um, Colt Gutzman is his name, Firefighter Gutzman. He's going to go from apprentice to a full-time firefighter on A shift November 30th.

That opens up one of our apprentice lines. Well, luckily we had these two volunteers that went through it voluntarily. They've already been through the academy, so we are able to offer one of them to jump up into the apprentice position, and he's accepted that. So, so as long as we have some people doing that, we're not guaranteed every year to have volunteers do it. Um, but yeah, we're not even going to be down apprentice.

But the point of that is Our goal is to get these apprentices hired into the career field. They're our farm team for when we have openings so we can hire them, but we'll support them to apply and take career jobs anywhere. We prefer them to stay local. We would love them to stay within our borough at least. But if, if we get one that wants to go to Chicago, we would support them all the way.

And that's the goal. So in the end, we might not have, you know, some year— I guarantee you we'll have a year where suddenly we have one apprentice left at the end of that 14 months. It'll just happen because, you know, they're that good. They're coming up, they're excelling, and they're applying for jobs and they're getting jobs, which— that's the goal. So anything else?

Okay.

In counseling with— on how to present—. Not at all. Quite familiar.

You're correct. You're doing great, Chief. You're doing great. We love the explanation. Get me into these subjects that I'm passionate about.

And right now, our, our apprenticeship program is what I'm passionate about. It, it is, it's just done so well. Okay, so we'll move on to purchase services. Um, you know, this is, um, things like our insurance, um, our dispatching. Chief Smith had already covered that, so I don't want to beat a dead horse, but that went up tremendously.

Um, so we're budgeting for that increase.

Um, you throw my glasses on so I can see. Um, you know, electric, heating fuel, our EMS supplies. Um, right now we're, we're finding this year we're really, really tight with our EMS supplies, and that just goes with the cost of everything going up. And then we're running more calls, so we're using more supplies. Um, there's an added line in here that we're covering now, um, that for sewer and water that the fire department's never paid in the past.

Um, you know, it's appropriate. The utility needs to account for water that's being used. So, um, so the fire department will now be budgeting $3,500 additional in that section for sewer and water. And that's just for your domestic water, not for trucks or anything else, correct? Yeah, yeah, it is just on the meter domestic the fire station uses.

Um, our fire water that fills the fire trucks with thousands and thousands of gallons is not metered.

Any questions under that category?

I'll go quicker now that we're past our staff operational expenses.

Um, it is what we use, um, to pay. Well, that's where we— that's what I was just talking about, actually.

I was confusing purchase service category earlier, and this is— so this is the one I was talking about more with, with the water bills, electric bills, um, uniforms, that type of stuff. Is that's coming out of this category. The previous category I was talking about was, um, was the insurance, the IT stuff that that Chief Smith had talked about. Legal fees gone up just a little bit. I'm proud that the fire department's legal fees stay pretty low.

Let's keep it that way. And then the dispatch contract is in that one, so that is the big one for, for that previous. The operational expenses, just like everything, we're seeing things go up.

Question is that, because I kind of covered that previously.

Travel training and membership, um, membership dues is going up a couple hundred dollars just because things are moving up. The recruitment category, I'm leaving that at $30,000, and that is the one I like to explain every year because it, it gets confusing saying, well, why are Why is it costing $30,000 to recruit when we have these apprentices? The majority of that is our annual firefighter physicals for our full-time staff. Virtually almost all of that is— we, every, every fall, we send our full-time staff for a firefighter physical that is extremely expensive, and that comes out of that category. I'm hoping those prices stay routine.

And then travel and training. This is the one that I did not increase. But to be quite honest, if I had to pick anything in my budget right now that I would ask you to increase, um, that would probably be it. Um, we— I feel that the fire department has just looked at the, the training budget year to year and just struggled through. And it's our norm to struggle through.

And this year, as I was going over that this, this week, looking at the budget, it's like, why do we do this to ourselves? It's like we You know, we're, we're, we're training. I mean, my budget for— I mean, I don't want to throw PD under the bus, but his— when I just saw his presentation, his training budget is quite high compared to mine. He doesn't have a 48-member org chart to train. So that is something we definitely would increase if there was room to increase it.

I don't have any detailed numbers for what putting together that training prop, because like I said, we're in the infancy. We're going to get the plan built so we know what we're going to need for supplies, what we're going to need for groundwork for building that training prop. But we definitely could spend more in training. We, unfortunately, that's what firefighters do. We just, you know, we struggle through and just make things work sometimes.

And that's what we've done for several years for training, and we could increase that. So the grand total for that category, $61,200, you know, only increasing at $200 from last year. Um, any questions there? Yeah, Miss Burnett,. You did— I know you don't have the numbers now, but maybe it'd be helpful to provide numbers for what you would be like, hey, this would help alleviate that intense strain risk.

Yeah, exactly. And what we could do is— I'm not asking you to make amendments or adjust this this, you know, during the next council meetings. Um, but possibly if we do put some, some numbers together and get the plan really going for some of this additional training stuff, you know, I can absolutely come to the council later in the year and, and ask for an increase at that point. I think that'd be more appropriate because I don't have that prepared at this point. Um, but, but just to put that on your radars that, you know, maybe in, in January, you know, as we're looking at summer coming, because this type of work would happen next summer.

We'd have some data and I could come to you and, and make that request. So that's an option.

Okay, moving on. Vehicle equipment, um, expenses.

So equipment repair and maintenance, we've increased that $500 just to kind of compensate for some of the increased pricing going up. Vehicle gas and oil, we've increased, um, and that, that's an obvious one. I think that's across the city, um, everything's going up. Vehicle maintenance, same thing, we're increasing that another $2,000 to $37,000 to maintain those million-dollar fire trucks that are sitting across the street. We, we're really proud of our maintenance.

We, we do it very economically. We do most of it in-house. Um, and doesn't seem to be a problem at this point.

Meaning that into the future— any questions there? You talked about the, the new ambulance that you're having retrofitted. I'm— so that's something we didn't used to do. We bought whole new vehicles. So there's— what you're saying is there's a program now where you send the old vehicle down They take the box off, retrofit the old box to the new standards, and then put it on a new truck.

Yeah. So then what happens to the other truck? The old chassis that they pull out is— we still own as a city. And on the agenda for your next meeting is a request for us to send that to an auction company in Washington, and we'll auction it. Oh, and not bring it back and auction it up here?

No, it— you know, we looked at whether that would be worth it, but I mean, it's, it's just an old diesel chassis. Um, the cab has holes in it because it was, you know, cut up for to be an ambulance. Um, it has minimal value auction-wise, and we didn't think it'd be worth the transport cost. It'd have to be shipped back, so we're going to auction it down there. There is, there is value in it.

I mean, it, it is a diesel dually chassis that will, will be sold at auction. Um, but we feel we'll, we'll get more money by just delivering it to an auction down the road from where it'll be stripped rather than shipping it home. Is this the first vehicle that you're having retrofitted? It is. So, um, this is kind of a beta test that we're doing, um, and we're, we're very hopeful that, that it works out.

It's a 33% savings, um, the box. And, and you can do it in multiple factions. You can have them completely strip everything and do everything new. We're trying to reuse a lot inside the box that's still in great shape. You know, so when it comes back, the staff, it'll be configured the same.

So the staff will know the configuration, the compartments, things like that. It'll be all stripped and painted, new decals, you know, anything damaged replaced. It's, it's not uncommon nowadays. A lot of, a lot of places have gone to this. I know Juneau years ago had some done.

I don't think— was there any issues that you know of from. No, that's. The problem we had at the time.

So, so we're very hopeful it works. I mean, um, it is new, it's different, without a doubt. Thank you. Um, Mr. Skips. So if this remount becomes a norm, um, here a few years ago when you bought that new ambulance, the van,.

Yep,. Were you looking to, when that does its time, get a regular chassis ambulance and get that in the rotation of remount? So what the plan was, if you remember, I— we didn't sit— we traditionally always kept 3 ambulances on ground, 2 in service, 1 were spare. We currently have 4 ambulances on ground, 2 in service, 2 spares. And when we bought the van-bulance, as we've nicknamed it, we knew that it was the same thing.

It was a beta test. We didn't know if that was going to work out or not. We didn't know if we would keep buying more van-bulances or we'd go back. So we kept that fourth ambulance knowing that if that didn't work out, the next option economy-wise is to do this remount option rather than buying an entirely new build, which we've done traditionally. We've bought these.

Yeah, get brand new. Well, they're now over $350,000 for a complete build. So, um, yeah, it was in my plan. Okay,. Thank you.

Thank you, Chief. Carry on.

I was getting a look— we're just— we were borderline starting to talk about the readout for next week versus—. I understand it's a maintenance budget thing, but, but. Thank you. No problem. Keep us honest.

Um, okay, infrastructure outlay. The only line item in there is building maintenance. Um, we're increasing that to $12,500 from $8,500. Our building is aging. I'm hoping to get out of it soon.

Let that be Public Works' problem, but until then, I've got to maintain it. Um, so we are increasing that. Um, we, you know, just routine stuff that comes up is getting more expensive. Having the boiler serviced every year hit us hard this year and put us over budget. We weren't expecting that.

Um, you know, having the sprinkler system tested, the alarm system maintained Um, you know, and that's something down the road for that building and this building we need to look at. These alarm systems are very old, they're getting hard to maintain on these two buildings, and we'll need to look at upgrading those. So any questions under building maintenance? Please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Um, in 2003 we were dealing with COVID and your ventilation system was under par. Has it been rebuilt since then? It has, yes. Luckily we did finally get that budgeted, and, uh, and they completely went through that HVAC system. It is working now.

Um, but yeah, COVID brought that to the screaming attention with, with our antiquated fire station where we have 7 people bunking on top of each other in the same room without— at that point, if you remember, the ventilation system wasn't even working. It had blankets stuffed up in the vents because the system didn't work, and it would draft cold air into it. Um, so we were able to budget, um, had a contractor come in, make all the repairs, and that system has been functioning fine since. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Um, others, um, our fleet fund is a big portion of that. Um, it, you know, we're asking $300,000 transfer out, so that Um, includes what we would kind of bring in through that SEMT program. It was agreed by the council that that's the appropriate place that it should probably go, is into the, into the fleet fund. So that's how we do that, is we just budget, and that far exceeds the 0.185 mils by ordinance that has to go into the fire department fleet fund. Um, so that's what we're asking is $300,000 there.

Um, the rest of it Um, is staying pretty, pretty well the same. $500 Increase for equipment outlay, and then prevention and miscellaneous expenses remain the same. So, questions there?

Okay, so that brings us to the grand total. You can see over the last few years where we've gone and where we're hitting. So we're just over the $4 million mark, and that— I can take any other questions.

Please, Miss Burnett. This is just kind of looking forward, but that building, um, that you guys want to build, the big, um, one that— yeah,. Yeah, the fire prop. Do we know how long it would take to build that?

It, it probably wouldn't take long time-wise. Once we have the plan together, materials, I would get with our public works. People are extremely talented. I would want to incorporate them into it and And they would, to be honest, it's not gonna be the fire department building this thing. It's gonna take heavy metal and welding and that type of stuff that they're really good at.

Right. So I would have to get with them. Like I said, it's such in the infancy stage.