On Wednesday, March 18, 2026, the Annapolis Public Safety Committee met at 4:50 PM (called to order after the scheduled 4:45 PM start) in City Council Chambers. The committee, consisting of Alderwoman O'Neill (Chair), Alderwoman Contee, and Alderman Smith-Brown, heard a detailed presentation from Fire Chief Doug Remaley, Acting Deputy Chief John Ortlieb, and Deputy Chief Matthew Lopez. The presentation covered the department's history, operations, challenges, and future plans. No public comments were made. The meeting adjourned at 5:51 PM.
The public safety committee of Wednesday, March 18th to order at 450 P.M. Roll call, please. Madam. Thank you. Thank you. Alderman Smith. Present. All right. Karma O'Neill is present. I will entertain a motion for the approval of the agenda. I'll move to approve the agenda. Is there a second? Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. I'll entertain a motion to approve minutes from February 18th, 2025. All right, I'll move to approve those minutes. Is there a second? All in favor say aye. Aye. Great. I'm very excited to say that today's public safety meeting includes ID 1626, the Annapolis Fire Department. Update and discussion on activities. So we can please have the chief and anyone else from your department that come up to the table. That would be great. If you can turn on your microphones and introduce good evening, Doug Romali, Fire Chief. To my right is acting Deputy Chief John Ortley, he's the deputy chief of operations. And to his right is acting as acting, he's Deputy Chief Matthew Lopez, who's in charge of our administration and professional standards unit. Thank you. We are going to educate you on the Annapolis Fire Department today. We know we have a new uh public safety committee and thought it would be good. The chair actually asked us to uh put a presentation together to basically let you know what we do, and this will definitely educate you on that. So if you have any questions as we move through it, feel free to ask, and we will go with the presentation. So we're just going to discuss a little bit about the history of our department, the evolution of the department, the way the department looks today. We will talk about challenges of emergency services in a colonial town. We're actually going to do some history on some of the major fires in historic district and talk about the sprinkler legislation that was put forth by the council. Just a little bit about prevention strategies and what the department's going to do to move forward. So with that, you all do know that we are a colonial town here in Maryland. And we sit right on the Severn River, which meets the Chesapeake Bay. There's several miles of shoreline that goes along with it. We're within 25 miles of Baltimore and DC. And it was founded in the 1600s. So it's one of the earliest cities in the United States, and that provides some unique challenges with all those aspects there as we move through it. And as you know, we have streets that were built for horse and buggies, and we park on both sides of the street and try to put fire apparatus up and down the street every day. So just a little more with the uniqueness of us. You know, we are the capital of the state of Maryland. We house state, county, and city government. That we have the oldest state house. It's still in continuous legislative use in the United States and was built in the 1700s.