We're gonna start in just a minute, but uh we're gonna start Mayor.

Um so we want to get an early start on the budget process and and sort of hearken back to a conversation that you all started um during council's retreat in January.

So obviously, one of council's core desired outcomes is safety and security.

I'm gonna talk a little bit about budget guiding principles, and then we're gonna jump right into some requests um from both the fire department and the police department.

Um of the things that I want to make sure we touch on is uh as as we talk about enhancing public safety in the community.

I just want everyone to rest assured we are a very safe community.

It's one of the hallmarks of the city of Chesapeake, it's one of the reasons businesses choose to move here, it's one of the reasons family choose to move here.

We have an outstanding team.

We are consistently rated in high marks and uh really all across our our our public safety.

But over time our population has increased, we've had increasing call uh volumes um for emergency services.

We've had increasing um in the in terms of the complexity of the calls, and then those those are sort of the routine things, but and then you've seen some of the critical things that have happened nationwide.

I and I'm thinking right now today of the the wildfires that they experienced in Los Angeles, and and so you never know sort of what's around the corner, and so we have the brave men and women of our public safety departments do an exceptional job every day, uh, but we just want to make sure that we they have all the tools um to to be as successful as they could be to protect the community.

I'm also really proud that um you know I I know council has seen the the annual quality of life surveys um that that old Dominion University does.

The City of Chesapeake always uh has the highest uh citizen satisfaction scores and particularly in public safety.

So we've we've been a leader in public safety satisfaction for a long time.

Um we retain that that leadership role now.

So again, as as we're talking about budget needs, I just can't say enough that we're already a very, very safe community, but we do want to make sure that council and the community are aware of some of the unfunded needs that are out there.

And then lastly, uh these are council's budget guiding principles, and won't spend a lot of time on this today, because you're gonna hear a lot about this next week when when we present um the budget um to council.

But I want you to to know that some of the recommendations that you're gonna hear today and next week certainly have been uh developed using um council's budget guiding principles.

Now I want you to think back to last week.

Um Vice Mayor Dietrich had mentioned that as we're considering enhanced public safety and what that might mean for um for the need to generate additional revenue, that we um come to you with proposals on how to make progress on enhancing public safety, even if it's not all done at one time.

And and so you'll start to see that tonight, how we can make progress on some of these public safety initiatives, um, even if we can't get it all done in one year.

The other thing I just want to highlight because I want to make sure that there's no misperception, you know, between council or or the community is um we have delivered, and you'll see this next week.

We've delivered our proposed budget at the existing tax rate.

So the core budget remains the same at the existing tax rate, and it actually does, as you'll see in a minute, fund some, a very small amount, but some of the public safety priorities.

However, there are a lot of unfunded priorities um in the public safety uh arena, and so we are going to be advertising a two cent tax rate increase in order to give council options.

Um a hundred percent of that additional revenue would be um would be used for council to consider if you wanted to buy additional public safety services, and we'll talk to you about some of those um services uh in a minute.

Council obviously doesn't have to adopt that that increase, but it does give you flexibility, and there's unique provisions of Virginia law and council is well aware of this, but if I don't advertise a tax rate increase, I'm taking that choice away from you.

You don't even have the authority to consider it because council can only lower the proposed tax rate, they can't increase it.

And so I don't feel comfortable taking these important choices away from council, and so that's the the budget that that you will see um next week.

Price and uh to uh Mr.

Mayor and Vice Mayor members of city council I appreciate the opportunity to uh present this to you tonight um before I and we do have a lot to cover so I'm gonna hit really the highlights on a on a lot of different items but I'll be happy to dive into any amount of detail that you want on any of the items.

Before I do that though today's date is uh not lost on me and um it is March 18th 2025 March 18th 1996 um we lost two firefighters at the advanced auto fire in Indian River and uh today and over the next couple days we've been uh memorializing and honoring those firefighters so um it's not lost on me that today we're here to present some needs of the fire department and our your public safety team so I'm very thankful for that and very humbled by that so thank you for the opportunity to present uh this this afternoon so um for our um proposed core budget the manager's core budget uh proposal that'll be coming before you there's really three items there uh that relate to the fire department and one is is really one that I want to give thanks to the city council and the manager's office for and that's the continuation of the public safety pay plan.

This was something that's been implemented for several years now and I'll speak uh I think I can speak for uh Chief Seleski and Sheriff Rosado is that we're very thankful for not only um moving forward with the pay plan but continuingly to support that over the last several years.

That has uh definitely been a it's been a game changer for re recruitment and retention for all three of our agencies so I want to thank council for that and then we've got uh two other items here advanced telescreenings and then uh closing the gap on our minimum staffing requirements in the fire department and we'll spend a little bit of time talking about those so advanced telescreening so uh in the fire department and in the fire service in general there's two leading causes of death and that is cancer and cardiac related incidents and finding those issues early in somebody's um career or journey through their health is important it's much better to find those issues early than it is to find later so a couple years ago we were able to get a federal grant that did early advanced cancer screening and cardiac testing for our firefighters and it had tremendous results.

It was above and beyond what our typical health screenings were we made that available to our folks and through that process we identified two firefighters that had cancer they were asymptomatic they had no idea that there was anything going on that there was any problems at all we also found 14 firefighters that had some type of cardiac issue that they were able to get uh treatment for and all 16 of those folks have had uh great outcomes and one of the folks that we had uh we got pictures on the screen of is master firefighter Chris Dowling and you can see Chris is he's a young guy um he's in his mid-30s uh he's there with his two small uh girls uh he's with his uh fire prevention team he uh in great great shape works out every day takes care of himself eats well uh no symptoms uh but he was and he almost did not do the testing he told me that you know he was and it's another whole story about he how he was not going to do the testing because he didn't think he needed it thankfully he did and he did come back with a positive diagnosis for cancer no symptoms at all and it probably would have been a couple years before any symptoms developed and definitely the outcome would have been different if that was the case.

So very thankful for that it's a it's a process that really works and provides advanced screening for our firefighters to deal with situations earlier instead of later so that's one of the things that is in the proposed core budget.

The next item is closing the gap on minimum staffing and this was a brief counsel on this at the retreat uh a couple months ago and so we'll hit the highlights just kind of as a reminder that um each shift we start 23 positions short every day which again that's we have three shifts so that's actually 69 positions that we start short in our department on each day it's 23 23 uh spots we take a uh uh a pretty proactive approach to fill as many of those spots as we can we do that by reassigning folks to uh hiring uh folks back on overtime to fill as many spots as we can on average we can fill about 11 of those which leaves 12 that are still empty every day on average so out of those 12 we gotta we've got holes we got to deal with that and and really what that means is that we've got engine companies that should be staffed at four folks four firefighters we have to reduce those down to three and on a typical day we've got two engine companies out of service uh throughout your community so those are holes that we have and that definitely impacts our ability to provide services to our community and in fact in 2024 there was not one day not one day in 2024 did we

And really what that means is that we've got engine companies that should be staffed at four folks, four firefighters.

We have to reduce those down to three, and on a typical day, we've got two engine companies out of service throughout your community.

So those are holes that we have, and that definitely impacts our ability to provide services to our community.

And in fact, in 2024, there was not one day, not one day in 2024 that we meet our minimum staffing requirements for the fire department.

And you'll hear me talk about minimum staffing requirements a couple times.

And what I want to differentiate is that there's a federal federal national standard of staffing for fire departments, which is up here, it's higher.

We've got an internal Chesapeake Fire Department minimum staffing level, which is below the federal, and what we're doing every day is below that.

So that's what this request does is it helps us get to our minimum internal Chesapeake Fire Department staffing standard.

It doesn't get us to the federal, it just helps us meet our minimum staffing that we have that we're short on every day.

So we brought this uh to the manager's office last year, kind of started talking about solutions, and there's a multi multiple parts of this solution, but uh the one I want to talk about tonight is to add 36 positions to the fire department to help with those those 12 vacancies that we're going to have every day, even after hire backs and reassigning folks.

Uh so we proposed uh phasing this in over three a three-year period.

Uh we got very aggressive on trying to get grants to help pay for some of the firefighters, and we were successful in that.

Uh we got a uh it's called a safer grant, staffing for adequate fire and emergency response grant from FEMA.

Uh we were awarded 18 firefighter positions, and their salary and benefits are covered for three years.

So that's a good start towards that 36.

That's halfway there.

So in this proposed budget uh in the core budget is to add 12 additional positions, and that gets us closer to the 36 that we need.

So that's 12 this year.

Next year we would request the six, and then in FY28, the 18 safer positions, they they're no longer covered by FEMA, and then we would have to start absorbing those costs.

And again, this this improves firefighter safety, it improves our service delivery, it allows us to meet our minimum staffing level to provide services to the community.

What it doesn't do is it does not add any additional medics, it doesn't add an engine, it doesn't add ladder capabilities.

All it does is help us meet our minimum staffing requirements that we have today.