The Crestwood Public Safety Board met on July 28, 2026 (original agenda and minutes indicate July 27, 2026; the provided timestamp uses July 28). Chair Rich Bland called the meeting to order at 7:04 p.m. The board approved the minutes from March 23, 2026, heard one public comment, received a comprehensive Fire Chief’s report, an Aldermanic update, and adjourned at 7:43 p.m.
Alright. So next item is Roll Call. Uh let's start with uh approval of the minutes from the March 23rd, 2026 meeting. I will entertain a motion. Motion to approve. Seconded. All right. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Opposition? None. Those are approved. And we will move into public comments. Anybody have any comments? Just come on up to the podium and just give your name and address. My name is Naily Kutz. I'm an 8630 and working drive. And I just wanted to say thank you for the tree training along the creek because now we can less a little bit easier when it's strong to come. So thank you. All right. Thank you. Any other comments. All right. And we will move right into uh reports and communication. And we will start. Chief. Thank you. Um, I'm gonna be a little bit different than the fire chief's report is typically. So I've just finished my first six months as the fire chief here. Um, and rather than just reviewing projects we completed, I kind of want to tell you what the direction is of the department and and things that we've noticed in the foundation that we're laying for the future. So uh we're basically based on five uh strategic priorities. It's gonna be operational excellence, people and culture, healthy community, financial stewardship, and strategic partnerships. Uh one of the biggest problems I saw whenever I came in here was just lack of consistency, lack of consistency within our inspection process, uh, within our operating procedures, within our financial uh uh procedures. So uh one of the big things that we're doing now is we've we've already started updating our policy and procedure manual, which did not exist at the point that I started. Um we've standardized EMS onboarding. Uh we've adopted FGSI, which is the fire ground ground safety initiative. It's the standard operating guidelines adopted by every other fire department in St. Louis County, so it brings us in line to where we operate in the same manner as everybody else. It smooths the transition between mutual aid and ensures that we're fulfilling our obligations to them and we're ready for them to fulfill their obligations to us. Uh we've modernized some technology. Um we have uh streamlined some staffing, payroll, and uh asset accountability inefficiencies that we had in the past. Um we're getting away from paper time cards and and stepping into the age of the computer to where it's all gonna be uh managed through that, and that'll reduce any personal errors that have occurred in the past, and then it'll also help with tracking for staffing. Uh we've also standardized our inspection processes and we're working on it. Um we were able to with the public works department hire a shared field inspector. Uh in the past, we had three different uh the uh deputy chiefs that would go out and do field inspections during the day. Uh one was the deputy chief of EMS, one was the deputy chief of training. Only one was the fire marshal. So this uh resulted in my first night the night that I was voted in. Um we had complaints from businesses and citizens that they were getting different inspections from the different inspectors.