Good afternoon.

It is uh 401 p.m.

July 14th, 2016, uh start of the Evanville Fire Merit Commission meeting.

Uh do we have a quorum?

Mr.

Vice President uh Mr.

Vice President, we have four members present.

Mr.

Dickinson is absent in its Q, so yes, we do have a quorum.

Okay, has everybody had a chance to uh look over the minutes from our last communication?

Do I have a motion to accept those minutes?

I'd like to make a motion to accept the minutes.

Second meeting.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Those opposed?

Seeing none, hearing none, minutes are approved.

Okay.

First order business today is approve our claims.

We have uh Lieutenant's interview uh Raiders, Charles uh Fidel, Michael McCutcheon, and Gregory Williams.

Mr.

Vice President, I move to approve the claims uh for the lieutenant interview raters for Fidel McCutcheon and Williams at 1,000 apiece.

Second.

So move and second it.

All those in favor?

No by aye.

Aye.

Those opposed, seeing none, hearing none is approved.

Next order business report from our chief.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Chief.

We'll start with the recruit update.

Uh all recruits continue to do well.

They're in week seven of their EMS training.

They are completing the required ambulance right-along time with our newly founded uh ambulance service uh the over the last week or two.

Um they have even began starting to take the national registry for EMT, with one of them already successfully completing that exam.

Uh the rest of them are scheduled to take their national registry exams next week, and they will do their EMT practical skills test on July 24th.

Uh with the completion of EMT, the four recruits left over from recruit academy 68-26 will move into the fire station where they will begin their probationary period, and then the nine members from recruit academy 20 or 69 26 will move into the fire training portion.

Uh it I believe we had talked about a pencil date for the graduation ceremony, and it was in October.

That has been moved up.

Uh they've actually completed their EMT training a little faster than they anticipated.

So we are now looking at September 30th as their graduation ceremony at 3 p.m.

Located at Ivy Tech Veteran uh Auditorium.

What was the date again?

September 30th.

And time?

3 p.m.

Thank you.

Probationary firefighters, those that are out of training and in the host house, they all continue to perform well or at or above standards.

We've had no issues with anyone uh thus far.

Uh promotion probationary periods that are ending.

Instructor Mike Dorn, investigator Jamie Phillips, Lieutenant Colton Blanchard, Captain Chad Beckham, and Battalion Chief Eric Jameson have all recently completed or are about to complete their one-year probationary period, and I do recommend that these probation promotions be made permanent.

And that is all that I have.

I have a question.

Okay.

Your expectations on uh the progress of the new EMT ambulance service that you now hit.

Okay, well, um so we will say that uh July first came in uh like a line.

Uh we had multiple things working against us.

We had a holiday weekend, we had extreme heat and humidity, and we had a full moon.

And those of you that have worked in EMS, sir, you know the full moon is a real thing.

And all three of those things combined, we had we saw several days where we were pushing a hundred runs in a day, which meant a lot of sleepless nights for the EMS crews.

But going into this, I predicted that we would average 67 ambulance calls in every 24 hour period.

I predicted that we would see about an eight-minute response time on average.

I predicted that we would see about 20% or less in refusals of service, and about 30 to 35 percent unit hour utilization.

What we have seen in the first two weeks is 67 calls in 24 hours on average, seven minutes and fifty-six seconds, average response time, fifteen percent refusal rate, and a 33% unit hour utilization.

So we have nailed them.

What are this week's lottery numbers, sir?

Exactly.

Excellent job, Chief.

On your um you always do outstanding research.

You're always extremely prepared.

I am personally not surprised that you almost hit all these numbers on the money.

That is that is excellent, and I'm very happy and pleased with the success so far.

And I personally have seen several runs in my area and neighborhoods, and the response has been outstanding.

People and friends that I know that have had to have called have personally called me, congratulating you and your your team on your well response, the professionalism, so and our community it's well received.

So and and what's more important is the fire crews and the EMS crews are getting along swimmingly in the station.

They're they're developing quite a camaraderie as as we expected they would.

Um it it's a it's a good relief to go in and see them all hanging out together, uh, eating dinner, eating breakfast, joking around with each other.

Um we haven't been able to gather enough data yet clinically to see how the clinical side of things are doing, but we know that we have seen uh a high number of really sick patients.

We've also had three shootings since we started.

We've had two more vehicle accidents with ejections, and we had the two people that uh were struck on the interstate.

So we've had a lot of serious injuries and serious illnesses, and and they've done well.

Excellent will.

Everything I've seen so far, Chief, you have done an excellent job.

So you and them to the fire department aren't be commended.

Thank you.

I'm gonna pick it back on KJ's thing.

I saw a post today um from Autism Everyone, everyone, and I just want to commend the fire department working with some of our most vulnerable people working with special needs students, yeah, people as myself.

Um I'd like to love to see that the firefighters are being instructed how to interact with folks in our community, and I just kind of want to give a big shout out and thumbs up for that, and I don't know how long that's been going on, but uh it's it's super important.

Yeah, she came out and gave us uh Camsi kits uh to put on all of our fire apparatus several years ago, and we've continued to build a relationship since then.

We've we helped them with their Easter egg hunt, we helped them we actually just were part of uh their their uh April was their uh awareness month, and we put signs in front of every station that were special made with our logo on them.

Uh so we've we've had a we've had a good relationship with them.

That's great.

And then just the other question I had where can someone in the community go to find out where the uh the ambulance are stationed or housed?

Is it is that information available or is it rotating, finding they are not rotating, they are they are housed permanently.

I don't know that that is documented anyway.

I don't know that's on our website yet.

Yeah, social media, I think listed unless just is added to our website.

Okay.

We drove by five to we saw one there, we just didn't know if that was its permanent phase or fives has one there permanently.

Yeah, that's it is updating the EMS portion of the city website our MSO F our great.

How many you have in in stations?

We have eight.

Eight in stations?

Yes.

Six that operate twenty-four hours a day, two that operate in 12-hour peak hour increments.

One at uh 17s works from 9 a.m.

to 9 p.m.

And then one at station one works from 11 a.m.

to 11 p.m.

And the rest of them all work from 7 a.m.

to 7 a.m.

Now are they on the same schedule as uh department?

They are okay.

Awesome.

Don't forget the red looks pretty cool too.

Pardon me.

The red looks pretty cool too.

They're pretty close.

Yeah.

They are pretty pretty good.

Even the telephone.

Hey, if you get kudos from Nav, you you're doing something.

So I love it.

Uh do we have any unfinished business?

Any new business to bring before the board?

We'll be squaring in uh over half of those EMP compared to the evening tonight, they all join.

So they'll actually get their square minutes certainly too even.

With a couple of stripers who already have vacation planned, but um they all joined.

So how many uh total union members?

What does that bring up the total of of fire uh yes 300?

I have to learn the number.

I had that 273 for a long time, so 320.

We have have grown a little.

I think you picked the hottest game uh to do the uh firefighter foundation uh modern fair.

Hopefully a lot of beverages were sold, but I like uh give people into that.

Someone else complained that it was enough to research in that uh yeah.

So do you have uh numbers on uh total donations or that you'll be able to do that?

Six games and eight days.

And then you're also taking uh are you still looking for whole sponsors and players or players, any donation you want to pay off.

Matt, they'll take it all.

All right, good deal.

All right.

Any other new business?

Okay, any announcements.

I see our next meeting is August 11th.

Any other announcements?

Well motion on the option prepared to get set off.

What was that?

I don't have to talk about motion to adjourn.

My favorite one.

Okay, since everything seems to have been completed, short night tonight.

We have a motion to adjourn.

I can make a motion to adjourn.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Seeing none, hearing no objections, motion carry.

We are adjourned.

Thank you, everyone.

Not today.