Alright, roll call um Dr.

Goodman.

Yes, ma'am.

Marty Shell.

Here.

Orpal Smith.

Here.

Matt Garner.

Here.

Chris Boyd.

Here.

And Alex Sanchez is absent.

All right.

So the only thing that we have on our agenda today is to elect a chairman.

Does anybody have any nominations?

I left our current chairman to be chairman again for the upcoming year.

Second.

I even came to the meeting.

All right.

So let's see.

Dr.

Goodman.

Yes, ma'am.

I'll pass.

Marty Shell?

Yes.

Orville Smith?

Yes.

Matt Garner?

Yes.

Chris Boyd.

Yes.

All right.

So unanimously with Dr.

Goodman passing.

He's been re-elected.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

You know these things will talk back to you.

Yeah.

Be careful.

Does anybody else have anything to discuss?

Do we have any uh applications for the vacancy?

Yeah.

Um to my knowledge, they didn't.

This last guy round, and they were going to re-advertise and try to find somebody for us to fill our vacancy.

We just we appreciate everything y'all do for us as well.

So the mic's yours if you need it or want it.

I always take the opportunity.

Um just I guess maybe as an update, but uh I'm sure you're all aware that we took some as the fire department did as well, some budget cuts this year, uh lost eight police officers position.

So I mean we're we're continuing to conduct business, but I mean that always has consequences overtime is up, and you know, especially when we have things weekends like we did this weekend, uh really puts a strain on them.

So but we're fully staffed.

I think we've got one uh vacancy out of 160.

Uh we've exhausted the existing eligibility list, so we'll be doing another hiring process here in the near future, and hopefully I've told them to target uh certified people.

I've I've always kind of maintained a gentleman's agreement with agencies that are around Fort Smith and not like recruit out of uh uh other houses, but they don't seem to have a problem doing that with us, so I think it's time to take the gloves off and just give some some certified people to fill that position.

But we're in a good place.

Uh officer morals seems to be good, not have any serious disciplinary issues.

Uh would and uh hopefully hopefully come next budget season we'll be able to get some or all those positions back.

I know the city director said that they wanted a quarterly, was a quarterly report from both the fire and the police about that situation.

I know we're done with the first quarter going in the second quarter.

Are we able to show that we need those firefighters and those policemen back?

Uh there's other things the city's spending money on, but yeah, I I've got a report in my back pocket, not literally, but uh I expect at some point to be asked if there has been any impact to the police department, and I mean we're keeping a very close eye on it right now.

Like I said, usage of overtime is probably the biggest red flag.

Uh we've had four separations since the cuts, and one of those specifically uh mentioned in their exit uh interview that it part of it was due to the the cuts to the police department.

There's some other things that I I mean we we could say that it's uh you know the the cuts are affecting uh certain areas, but uh probably the biggest one is you know the re reduced community uh involvement.

I mean we just you know the officers are busy doing police stuff, um, and so that means there's less time to actually get out there and be in the community, but yeah, I'm prepared to give give a report when asked.

I think public safety is more concerning than water parks, but that's just my two cents.

Me too.

You didn't get a vote, did you?

No.

I don't want that show.

Any questions for any more questions for me?

I appreciate you guys and what you do, Durham.

Ours is a little tougher.

We can't just bring back an engine company because we deleted an entire engine company.

We had nine engine companies in the city each day, and now we have eight.

So that and because ours is not we can't just eliminate a couple spots or bring back a couple spots.

I would have to hire nine personnel, get a million plus dollar truck because I took that truck and put it in the fleet at another station that was due for replacement.

So it's uh it'd be a couple few year process for us to undo what we did, and then I also eliminated a battalion chief spot in the office, which added to our workload in the administration, which I feel greatly myself.

It added a lot to my workload, but we have a lot going on at the same time.

Record management uh system implementation that our other assistant chief is uh on that every day, all day has been since December of last year.

And he's our computer guru, so I mean that's pretty much he's tied up with that, so he can't I can't add more to his plate, and so it uh but we're making it.

We're uh keeping all our on-scimes within where we should be most all the time.

But um 11's out of Chaffee Crossing where we eliminated the engine company once they open up 49, it would become an issue pretty rapidly with the increase in just the volume of traffic and the accidents and the housing, of course, explodes every time I go out there.

I find a new neighborhood that I did not even know existed.

So it's uh it's at least new construction firewise, but you have the medical calls and all that, so that's what I kind of told the board that we have nothing else to give up without harming the public, and this is uh three-year tops before I'm gonna have to add that company back.

So I mean we have to be looking at it, but it's not something I can turn on and off quarterly, you know.

Like I said, it's a big deal.

We I we're unaware of any previous chief that had to reduce staffing.

We've always grown slowly, but it affect your insurance rating, your ISO or we haven't been audited.

We're hoping we don't get audited just because our paperwork is a nightmare too with the RMS systems because our old one was so old and um we lost about 18 months worth of data a couple years ago when the whole system crashed, our entire rack because we stored on print.

And the IT department was at least able to recover because they told us prepared to not recover anything, which wouldn't all our records are in there.

Um we don't use a lot of different softwares like some cities will do.

We do everything in there, all our inspections, our reports, training, all the apparatus stuff, everything is in that one RMS that went down, and that's why we moved to a new one, highly improved.

It'll be what I've told all the guys as we've been training them to look to the end, because we'll be able to add to our website a link to where the citizens they don't have to wait and where we do our annual report to the board, you know, on the incidents.

They'll be able to go on there, they can look at a heat map and see where all the incidents are, what type of incidents, how fast our trucks are getting on the scene.

Um pretty much as much as we want to filter down and share on there, and it's real time, like a 60-second delay.

So a lot more advanced than our 20 some odd-year-old RMS that actually had been killed by the company, they didn't support it anymore.

So that's uh ongoing thing, but yeah.

We're still our overtime is actually greatly down, but I have also taken other steps on the vacation side of our scheduling and everything, reduce the number of people allowed to be off each day by one, some different steps like that.

So but we are not fully staffed, we have four vacancies right now, and we are looking at we have still have some eligibility eligibility list left, and we may try and do some hiring on something.

But is your list exhausted as well?

No, we still have some on the new hire list.

It's just you get into we had a pretty solid list, but the further down the list you get, um it's not the uh quality of candidate that's at the top 10, and our hiring our process once they could are offered a temporary or conditional offering one that is very rigorous, and we uh probably about 40 percent fail rate on our TAC program, but it's that way for the reason to see who wants it and won't quit on us on a big fire with the other things.

I mean well, probably about 40% fail rate on our TAC program, but it's that way for the reason to see who wants it and won't quit on us on a big fire that they're there all day.

So which company covers uh Chaffee now.

What's that?

Which company covers Chaffee Burn Road or it's uh ladder 11 that was a two-company station, it had a pumper and a ladder there.

Oh we only have four frontline ladders, and we were trying to keep those in place with the reduction because that would harm our ISO points.

So that station, the two companies there combined last year and up to when we were looking at options, they accounted for about two and a half percent of our run body combined.

Every other single company ran more than those two combined by several different multipliers, but that's gonna change, you know.

It always does.

So a city of 90,000.

We had a chemical spill, we had a homicide, and we had a major event downtown all going on.

You're you're a capacity pretty much.

I mean, yeah, we're using off-duty people just like PD will, you know, to one more incident uh break that break that straw.

To do all the special stuff, that's what we use over time.

Our weapons mass destruction guys, our bomb squad guys, you know, that are down there monitoring the air or doing sweeps, you know, for any suspicious stuff.

So this month we'll add a little to our overtime, but I mean that's why we we try and plan at least we know that one's coming.

The spill where we have to call in the hazmat team, that's an unplanned one.

But we've got a little we can plan have some cushion in there on the open time, but well I'd I'd asked any of the commissioners if they know any of the city directors.

They visit with them or whatnot, just let them know that public safety is more important than other things in the city, and we need to give our support to fire chief and police chief and those officers and firemen that work here full time all the time, but they need to have the support of the city because it can be made somewhere else.

I say I said my two cents, I said enough.

When you uh took that one coming and moved up in the first responder with or are they still covering the area that we just have one ladder company covering the district now instead of two, um so it does affect us.

The ladder truck doesn't carry as much water on a structure fire if it's in their first end district, they have a smaller tank.

Um they have less hose on board because there's not as much room for hose.

They carry what's required by an FPA.

Um whereas our pumpers, the large five-inch that we hooked up to a hydro to lay to a fire scene.

They carry 1,550 uh linear feet.

The ladder trucks have a thousand fifty.

And it's just due to the room that's left after all the because they also carry all the rescue equipment in the compartments, and there's not as much of hose beds, they also don't have as much the hand lines and stuff that we fire fire with, but they can start an initial attack, but it does hinder us, you know, if they're on a medical call and fire comes in, then you're waiting for uh the station on Burrell Road to get there, and the station out on uh Mazard cross from the Walmart there on Rogers.

So they've got a good probably seven minute plus response, you know, to get there.

I just know that for years the first responders with the fire department.

And then really the first responders because they usually make them before the ambulance makes the road call as well.

Oh yeah, because they're different, so yeah, they do save what most everywhere in town we should be on scene in three minutes, and since we have 11 stations versus I think the EMS is around four-day ambulances now, some unit, it's just the sheer numbers.

We're um gonna be there faster, and uh they did add their supervisor vehicle that helps.

I know they got there.

Our guys had a save last week.

In fact, I'm waiting for a cable to pull data off of an AED for the cardiology department deciding on the treatment of the patient after they're supposed to excavate them yesterday, but we've got to save them with the EMS for EMS the supervisor SUV that uh is also an ALS response, or just one person, they just can't transport.

But no, we manage, we are managing well, but like I said, we we can't reduce anymore, and we are it's hard to say if we would maintain our ISO one, class one.

I would hope we would because we've made there's other pieces to the pie.

The dispatch center is a piece of the pie of the water uh network is a huge piece of it, about half of our scoring that's improved over the years.

So I'm assuming we will make up ground for what we lost on these emergency company, but don't know for sure.

They're actually changing the scoring too, and that's why we're waiting to see how they're changing our ISO regional rep our contact, doesn't even know yet.

So we're waiting for them to release that.

Hopefully it helps us and um doesn't hinder us.

Okay.

Thank you both.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh any motions anybody wants to motion to it, journal.

Second.

All card.

Alright, alright.