The Public Safety Committee of the Annapolis City Council met on Wednesday, January 21, 2026, from 4:46 PM to 6:19 PM in Council Chambers. Alderwoman O'Neill was elected chair, and the committee received updates from the Fire Department, Office of Emergency Management, and Police Department, covering operational goals, staffing, funding challenges, and upcoming snowstorm preparations.
Thank you. I would like to call this public safety committee meeting to order. Oh, we can hear us all over the place. 456 p.m. on Wednesday, January 21st. To my right, Alderman Smith Brown, are you here? Present. Thank you. And to my left, Alderwoman Conti. Present. And I am here. Thank you very much. Do I have a motion to approve today's agenda? I move to approve the agenda. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes. Next up on our agenda is election of chair pursuant to city code section 2.16.120. Are there any nominations? I move to nominate Alderwoman Carmel O'Neill as our chair, public safety. All in favor say aye. Great. Thank you so much. Welcome to everybody that's come. Welcome to 2026. Thank you very much. We um have three updates this afternoon, um, starting with Annapolis Fire Department. If you would like to come forwards, um, introduce your crew, and we'll be getting rolling. Good afternoon. Doug Romaly, fire chief with me is Deputy Chief Nathan Powell. Thank you. Welcome. You can go to the next presentation. You can get started anytime you would like. Thank you. So the chair had asked us to uh answer three questions for this meeting today, so we'll give you a little brief. But basically, we'll go over our goals for the next five years, how you, as the public safety committee can assist us as we move forward, and how uh to communicate between us and yourselves and what the best manner to do that is. So, with us, this is our new mission statement for the Annapolis Fire Department. We've just updated that this year. But we exist to serve the citizens and residents of Annapolis by delivering prompt and professional emergency medical services, fire protection, and public safety services to safeguard the life property and the environment. Just so you know, we are uh ISO Class One fire department, which means that a third-party insurance organization came in and has evaluated our department. We are only one of three Class One departments in the state of Maryland and one of only 388 across the United States, and there's over 30,000 fire departments. So we are in a high percentage of class one fire departments across the nation, and the city should be proud of that. We operate with a 27 million dollar budget. Uh it's basically broken down into uh this year's budget was that we do have about two million in overtime, and that's just to get us to our daily staffing every day with uh staffing concerns. Uh we operate for just under two million dollars in a regular operating budget, and in this year's uh budget there was a 785,000 that was put in the fire department budget, which is basically facilities, it should have been with facilities maintenance, and that's going to replace boilers and two fire stations. The 766 or 776,000 comes right off the top of our budget, and that goes to fleet services to maintain the fire department fleet, and then 52,000 is just an independent contractor. This is the only contractual position we have.