Yeah.

Good morning.

Welcome to the Mesa City Council study session for April 9th, 2026.

I'm your host, Vice Mayor Summers.

Mayor Freeman and Councilmember Adams are participating by Zim.

All other council members are present with the exception of Councilmember Garetta, who uh we will uh excuse from this meeting.

Uh Mayor, Councilmember Adams.

Good sound.

Good sound.

Started right at 0730.

Right on the board.

I try to be prompt.

Uh follow the mayor's lead.

We will likely lose quorum at nine o'clock, so we're gonna endeavor to get through this agenda uh as quickly as possible.

We have item one A is to hear presentation discussion, provide direction on the Mesa Fire and Medical Department budget.

And I I have a little showpiece up here to remind everybody of the item.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council.

Thank you for having us today.

Vice Mayor, uh, we did understand that you have a desire for red fire trucks.

We did provide Vice Mayor with a red fire truck.

It's in the back.

But then we wanted his grandkids to see a real fire truck, so we also gave him the white fire truck.

So hopefully that will help in your desire for red fire trucks.

There you go.

I love it.

Out of order, Mayor.

Fire L shaper.

Also, I'd like to um say I think we're making history today because this is the first time in senior staff's history that the fire department has gone before PD in a budget presentation.

And PD is not here to see this moment, but we want you to know this.

You did we'll take it.

We'll take it, but thank you.

We appreciate that.

Mr.

Cost is uh moving back and forth at his chair here.

He's very uncomfortable.

Well, we were looking forward to just listening to PD's presentation as they dazzled you, and we'd be all relaxed because we would have been done with ours.

But the we'll take this, we'll take this.

But thank you.

I I want to start by thanking you of council and city management for your ongoing support.

We could not do what we do without your support.

So we're very grateful.

I'd like to start by introducing my staff, my amazing staff.

We have to my right here is Deputy Director Tara Cunha.

In the back, we have Chief Brian Darling, Chief Corey Hayes, and to my left, Chief John Lachlan, and Chief Burguette.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize Christine Mendoza, who kind of keeps all of us on task, and then our labor team, which is led by um Captain Trevan Crosser and Captain Sierra Ullik.

They continue to do a lot to print, you know, to help our members in time of need and just whatever they need.

So I'd like to recognize all of them.

Before we get started on the presentation, I just want to talk a little bit about our department.

We currently have 826 members on this department, and all of them, all of them serve to live our mission, and our mission is to serve with care.

Compassion, accountability, respect, and excellence.

And when these members come to work every day, they do just that.

I'd like to just mention each of the services that are out there that sometimes do all the work behind the scenes.

Management services handle all of our budgets, our grants, planning and research, manage all of our data.

Our resource management division handles all of our equipment and tools and everything we need to do our job.

Fleet maintenance keeps our trucks running.

Our technical services division keeps all of our computers, our GIS, our optic, everything we need to get to the call quickly.

Everything to do with community outreach, our fire prevention, public education, public information, social services, our volunteers that help in doing all they can to mitigate calls.

Our EMS training to keep our folks trained in the best practices.

Our training and special teams division to do the same.

Emergency management, our personal and wellness and peer division, which handles our hiring, our promotions, uh everything to keep our members whole, both physically and mentally and emotionally to do our job well.

Our staffing team, they keep people on the trucks, they staff the trucks appropriately, so we have the right staffing every single day they come to work.

Our dispatches are there seven days a week, 24-7, answering the call.

Our transportation division, who takes everyone to the hospital that needs to go and gets them there safely and quickly.

And our operations team, who responds on the calls, runs all the medical calls that we get to, we get dispatched to, all the fire calls.

They risk their life, they've saved lives.

And uh we get calls for anything outside of crime or that needs um police.

And uh case in point was rescuing a horse from a canal last week.

And uh they will improvise, they will do what they need to do to get the job done.

So I need to recognize each and every one of these folks because they are out there doing a great job serving our community and taking care of what needs to be done each and every day.

So thank you for that.

Um today, and in addition to budget, you're gonna hear a little bit about um Tara's gonna go over a little bit about our new stations that are coming.

Chief Hayes is gonna talk about a grant grant dollars that uh we purchase something for EMS that helps both the responder and the patient.

Keep our guests not only gonna talk about social services, but he's also gonna talk a little bit about firewise.

Chief Lachlan's gonna talk about not only some response times and call volume, but also he's gonna talk about some energy uh sources today that are challenging to firefighters and how we deal with that.

And then Chief Darling's gonna talk about some of the positive things you're seeing from your support uh with cancer mitigation uh in our in our department today.

So with that, we'll go ahead and get started.

The fire department exists to deliver timely, compassionate and all timely, compassionate, and effective, all-hazard and medical response.

And it joined with community risk reduction.

This helps to decrease the loss of life, the loss of property, and preventable harm for a safe and thriving Mesa.

And with that, when we talk about some of these um KPIs or key performance indicators, so decrease loss of life.

We want to make sure that we are highly skilled workforce and that we have fast response times.

Those are two factors that would help in saving lives.

When we talk about decreasing loss of property to make sure our equipment's trained uh well equipped, and that we're trained properly on it.

Because we talk about being on fires, we have to know how to use our tools and make sure the tools work in order to decrease loss of property and decrease preventable harm.

This is when our social services comes into play, and they follow up on referrals, and then we provide additional resources for the community uh to get them connected with the resources that they need.

Just so you're aware that um a lot of these are brand new, so we don't have KPIs or K performance indicators on some of them, on most of them, but we do have the ones we have are the ones we're gonna go over.

And we'll start with Chief Lachlan on response times.

Good morning.

Uh the first KPI we're going to discuss is our response times.

And uh just so we all know uh and remember the response time that we're reporting on here encompasses the time it takes our dispatchers to answer the 9-1 call, process the 9-1 call, um, the time it takes from our stations to be made aware of the call and get to the truck, and the time to get from the truck from the station to the to the actual call.

So um, as you can see here, we report on three different uh percentages.

We have the 90th percentile, the 70th percentile, and the 50th percentile.

Uh the 90th percentile is sort of the industry standard, so whether we're looking at the uh um NFPA or accreditation, they want to know what is our 90th percentile of total response time.

And again, it's broken down into those different components.

Um we had discussions several years ago about you know, let's let's look at this a little more than just that, because it's really what we're trying to talk about is what is the citizen, what is the citizen citizen feel?

Um so we go west 70 for 75th percentile for a most of the time component, and then the 50th percentile, although not exactly an average, essentially an average, we go with the 50th percentile.

So you can see um we were able to get the public safety sales tax was approved by the voters and some bonds in 2018.

And as you can see, as we were getting some of those new units in service, um times went up a little bit, but once we got those uh additional stations built, station 21 and 22, and we're currently working on station 24, um, and a couple extra response units in service, you can see those times sort of coming back down a little bit towards the uh 23, 24, 25, 26 time frame.

So that's very good news.

Um we've done some things in in the way we encode our stations, notify our trucks of the call to help them get out of the station a little bit quicker.

Uh one of the components that we're too that we are very excited about is uh what we call intersection preemption.

Um I believe um Vice Mayor Summers was just discussing the opticom system, which is a visual system where there's a uh like a uh a stroke emitter on the fire truck that's uh read by a um the intersections, and that's line of sight.

What we're moving towards, and I bet the R I believe the RFP is very ready to be um uh sent out is more of a GPS um triggered preemption.

So you have intersections where maybe the line of sight isn't great.

I use Dobson Road as an example because of curves, there's lots of trees, um, a lot of traffic and a center divider.

So sometimes it takes a while for the optical to be triggered by the light um on the truck.

So the GPS preemption, we're able to um do that a little bit more um by computer, so we know we need to uh we need to clear this intersection a little quicker, so it's gonna trigger that light to cycle through to get us green sooner than if we just had the current process, which is the the light emitters.

Um because if you think about it this way, if we can avoid having to come to a complete stop and then get back up to speed at one intersection, um as um any fire engineer, such as Vice Mayor Summers can tell you that that takes some time.

So we figure we can cut 15 to 30 seconds off by just not having to come to a complete stop at intersection, clear that intersection and get back up to speed.

So um we're looking for that to make a significant impact on this response time over the next couple of years as that's implemented.

And then also as we open station 24, which Tara will discuss in a bit, and um and some other facilities down the road, we think that'll improve our response times also.

So we know this is uh ultra important to the community, and we do focus on this quite a bit.

Just keep your speed up.

We do that, but that's why we need the lights.

It takes a while to get the fire trucks back up to speed.

Does that include EMS vehicles as well that would have that trigger?

Yes.

Okay.

I'm thinking not just fire trucks like ambulances, you know, yes, okay.

Thanks.

And then the second one we discussed here is uh our annual call volume.

As you can see, we've been fairly stable since 2021, right around the 70, 71,000, 72,000 mark.

Um and we we break this down into the different components types of calls, the whether it's medical calls or fire calls, um, all fairly consistent over the over the last five or six years.

So that's good news that allows us to, as we're catching up with it with the additional stations and response units to keep that call volume flat so that we can see those response times improve.

All right.

Uh good morning, Vice Mayor and Council.

Uh, thank you.

So this uh slide is incredibly unstable, kind of like um I feel bad going after John and his data looks very stable and mine does not.

Um, it's it's kind of like our personalities, but um, so I'm gonna talk through it.

I want to make sure it makes sense to you.

So this slide uh identifies the reduction in 911 calls from emergency services after uh we have encounters with high utilizers and they make a referral to our social services.

Um what we do is we recognize a high utilizer as somebody that calls 911 with um greater than three times within 90 days.

So what we do is we analyze our data pre-90 days uh intervention or pre-intervention 90 days before and then post intervention 90 days after.

Um, and then we get the overall reduction in percentage.

So um some important factors that I just want to throw out there is the the uh we have two social workers and one intern pretty much regularly throughout the year, our interns working with us.

Um but they typically get about a hundred referrals a month on average from crews.

Um so if we look at um the fifth bullet point off to the left, uh 74% reduction again based on averages, and this is not just referrals on frequent utilizers, but it's referrals in general, we get about 100, but we'll do our numbers based off of that.

If I had um a hundred referrals and um post 90 or 90 days post that intervention, we would run approximately 70 um, I'm sorry, 26 calls after that intervention if we started with 100 calls.

Um that that line across the middle doesn't represent zero, it essentially represents around 45%, which is the mean uh reduction in calls that we're seeing with our frequent utilizers post intervention.

So um there are some off uh I I really want to explain one of the um really uh the data point off to the right where it's a 12% reduction, um, that's really an outlier.

So I I looked into that with our social service team, and what we recognized is that that month we had one patient that if we took them out of that, um if we did not factor in into that 12%, and we took them out, we would have had about a 31% reduction.

But that person called 24 times after or before and like 21 times after.

So um in a month, yeah.

So um substance user um had been on the streets, um, passed out a lot.

A lot of people, he was interacting in the community a lot, and a lot of people were calling down one 911 for him.

It was hard to intervene because when we did find him, um, he did not want any help.

Um so we tried to cut connect him to community resources, um, but he didn't want help, so we just continued to go.

He was not calling one 911, it was typically family, friends, and other people in the community.

So that was an outlier of that 12%.

Um, to demonstrate why we're successful on some of the other ones, I want to just uh share with you a little of uh um a case summary.

We had a six-year-old female that was falling regularly.

Um the process began by identifying the the service gap, which our firefighters did.

It doesn't happen right away, because sometimes um, like let's take, for example, a dual company station.

Uh one of the crews could run on the uh this person one day, um, and then you have two other shifts that might run on that person.

And then a crew from another on another truck could run on that person.

Um, and it takes sometimes a while of the crews communicating that this person has been calling a lot, they recognize it, and then they'll engage us.

Um but after um she she had called um the crews recognized that there was um there was a service gap.

Um they were going out for lift assist.

Uh the established base baseline for this patient was 11 responses.

Um that's what signaled that there was a living situation in stability and that that person needed help, help.

She was living in unsafe conditions.

Um we had a multi-tiered approach.

Uh the first thing was environmental stability, which we provided a food box and food for this person.

Um and we also made a referral to our grab bars program, um, our HSC, where they went in, they assess the house, gave the lady some education, and put grab bars in for the lady.

Um that's a volunteer program that we get donations for grab bars, and then we have our volunteers go install them.

The system navigation, we recognize that uh that the traditional services that she was utilizing, she was on hospice, uh, they weren't working well, um, and she fell off of hospice.

So we had to pivot to looking into some long-term care.

So we engaged Maricopa County program, which is uh called SAIL, it's a senior adult living program, um, and started to help try and provide her assistance to them.

Um and we also uh did some advocacy advocacy by one of the times that she fell, she got transported to the hospital.

We use that as an opportunity to leverage the relationship between banner um social workers, our social workers, um, and APS to make sure that she got into some kind of long-term care.

Um Arizona long-term care is um an application process that you have to go through, and she fell off of that a few times because she didn't have a phone, she didn't really understand how to navigate the system.

So our social workers were involved with that the whole time, made sure that they had a contact number of a neighbor's phone.

Um, but when that hospital uh transportation happened and she was in the hospital, that's where they really leverage all those relationships to get her into a long-term care facility.

Um, by transitioning the patient to unmanaged home environment and supervised group home, uh, we successfully closed the loop on that high utilizer.

Um it resulted in a 73% reduction in call volume from 11 responses to three responses post-intervention.

Um that was effectively reclaiming operational capacity for Chief Lochlin and all the fire trucks to be able to go on calls be available in their area for calls.

Um the recidival recidivism reduction is really the goal of our social pro program to prevent people to from continuing to utilize 911 services for things like falls.

Um and this takes place with interagency collaborations.

We are seeing with some of these agencies that they are talking about some of their reductions in services, and we're navigating that.

Um, but everyone, a lot of these uh services that we engage in, whether it's community, county, or state services, um, their caseloads are high, and we're continuing to try and navigate that, but our social service team is doing a really good job.

So if you have any questions about the data, um we can go there or we can move on.

I have a question.

So explain to me, so how does somebody I I understand the data part of how you become a high utilizer?

It's whatever the number, but how do you initially determine they're a high utilizer just because they've called three or four times and you're like so we we identify them as a high utilizer that when our social services um makes contact, we look at their prior 90 days.

And if they've fallen into that three times within the prior 90 days, we categorize them as a frequent utilizer.

But how would you even how would you even decide to look back?

Because everyone that we go, uh everyone, every contact that our social service makes, okay, they look.

Okay.

Um because there was a reason that they that the fire crews engage social services.

So once they're engaged, they'll look back.

Um there are I'm I'm sure there are like I explained the different crews, different shifts.

There's frequent utilizers within our system that might might not be identified because different crews and and at different times on different ships are running on those people, and no one recognizes that trigger of we need to change a pattern here.

Um so it's uh it's a matter of identifying um for the crews to identify and make that referral that really that's how we categorize it.

So at any one time at any one time, how many high utilizers are there?

Do you know?

So I I will look into our data to see if I can get an average for you, but we typically get about a hundred referrals a month on an average, but it's not all high utilizers.

So I could dig into the data, the social service uh team collects and and try and get you're looking for an average of how many social or how many frequent utilizers we have on a month.

Yeah, and then is there any way to for the ultimate goal to reduce high utilizers?

That's our goal.

I mean, meaning before it even happens, I guess.

I guess that's where the community outreach happens in the education.

So our community risk reduction programs not after you make contact.

Absolutely.

So our community risk reduction programs are to do that, to recognize the risk, whether it's fire code violations, whether it's um firewise, all those things, what are the risks out there?

Our social services team is out there trying to identify that.

They're working with the different agencies.

Um and also our pub ed, we're we're working with, you know, we're risk reduction in areas of you know, car seats.

Um, we're going into, you know, we just went to a new leaf and toured their facility, and we're working with them on educating the young kids on some safety practices because they're not in completely stable homes all the time.

Um so we don't have the resources to get in all our schools all the time now, so we're trying to really target how do we target education and prevention with our younger, more at risk people.

And I've been to some of your your community events and you got you all do a great job.

Um is there a way though, are we measuring that the that the high utilizers w we're reducing high utilizers with this education?

I don't know if we we overall are are looking at that.

Is the education working, I guess is what I'm saying?

That's a good question.

And right now we do not have that number.

Also, mayor vice mayor.

Thank you, Chief Laughman.

Mayor Vice Mayor Councilmember go forth.

Uh to add to what you forget is saying as well, is when the crews go on a call where they think this person is going to need help on the APCR or computer that they used to put in the reports, there is a box they check for social services.

So social services could go and check them early on to see if this is something that's gonna be a highly utilized kind of reduce it.

But how we're approaching it now is when we see it, uh we that's our that's when our goal is to mitigate it right when our social service team gets connected.

And uh, but they the crew, even if they maybe haven't been there multiple times, but they see this as a problem, they can they can activate them much sooner.

But like a cheaper guet said, you know, they get a hundred referrals a month, so they're pretty busy.

But we're doing all we can, but he'll get the the numbers that you're requesting.

But I think social services, they're really doing their best to mitigate and reduce these repetitive calls that really don't need 911, but there's no other outlet they can use.

I know because it's it's a kind of a I hate to say, but it's a drain on the system, it's a drain on the right.

Um your time, the cost, all of that.

So you don't, yeah, mayor and council mayor, vice mayor and council member, you don't need to sugarcoat.

It's it is a huge drain on the system.

And um and but we're always gonna error on the responding to a call um when when a call for distress or or service comes in, they're they're running roll.

But if we can do anything to try to get that person um connected with the right services, they're they're going to do it.

But unfortunately, to your point to your question, I mean it's it is a reactive model, but there's really no other way to work around that.

I mean, you be until they make that call for service, we're not out you know, able to identify someone who has the potential to do that.

Um and and like so there's community risk mitigation efforts that we do at a macro level, but finding out that that one particular individual is going to be a high utilizer until they come into contact with our crews and we start to notice a pattern, it's it's really hard to really hard to mitigate it until that happens.

Well, and as you say, you're you're not we're not even counting the ones that don't turn in because of the call the referral that don't turn into the the high user.

I mean, I guess that would be interesting of the hundred a month, how many turn into a high user?

I don't know if that's I could get you that.

Yeah.

So and and again, it would be it every month's gonna be different.

It's gonna be as unstable as that because the environment that we're currently working in the world.

Well, I appreciate what you're doing to try to prevent it.

I mean that we've identified it and we're working to prevent it as much as we can.

It is difficult as you say to predict.

So thank you for what you have done already.

And to accept help too, as the chiefs alluded to.

That's the other part.

I I've there's not been a single time I've been on a ride along that we haven't that we haven't at least done one call for service where the crew knows exactly who they're going to be interacting with when when we pull up to that.

And this is not unique to Mesa.

No, not at all.

But it is, and it is a trend, right?

That we've seen over probably years, maybe a decade or more of people using 911 for medical.

As opposed to going to you know, in a quick study that I just looked at this morning, um, in 2024, um patient that has at least um one social determinant of health um in their screening in the hospital, um they they have a 42.5 percent chance of readmission within 30 days.

Again, the re I mentioned readmission.

This is a hospital study, but uh oftentimes we're the ones going on them and taking them to the hospital.

But for each determinant that they have an additional to the one social determinant uh of health, they have a 2.2 times um multiplier of chance of being re readmitting in that 30 days.

So it is a long-term problem.

We do know it's a problem, but we are trying to mitigate it by connecting the people to the appropriate services that exist in the community.

And this is all I may just to comment if I may.

I I'm fully supportive of what Chief Brigitte is presenting here because I think it's uh it's entirely appropriate that we take a hard look at these things and uh it it's a matter of efficiency.

We're talking earlier about response times if we have a crew tied up on one of these matters, and that prevents us from responding more quickly to uh another emergency.

Then I think to continue to to look at this and to fine-tune it is entirely appropriate, totally supportive of it.

And Vice Mayor, I was just gonna add I this this is the second point of the pressure release that we're looking at on the system.

The first point happens at the communication center.

Um, and we're trying to divert.

If you remember those stats from about a year ago, where we're talking 60 plus percent of calls to 911 should never be calling 911.

They're non-emergency calls that people just don't know who to call and they don't know what day their trash is getting picked up.

So what do they do?

They call 911 and ask the question.

So the first step is that we're working uh at that point of receiving the call to make sure that the calls are triaged and then treated appropriately and trying to get non-emergency calls out of the system as quickly as possible.

But then in a situation like this where it is a medical instance in a high utilizer trying to get them out of the system by getting the resources that they they need or other um means to to address that so that they're not calling 911 with the frequency that they are is the second step of that process as well.

So it's it's this along with that first effort to divert the non-emergency calls away from even entering into the system and rolling a fire truck to begin with.

Yep.

Councilmember Taylor and then thank you.

Thank you so much for that presentation.

Um you say you work with your social services team.

Can you explain that a little bit for me?

Because I'm I'm trying to connect.

Is this in the fire department?

Is this a different department with Mesa?

Is this multiple departments?

Yes, uh uh Vice Mayor Summers and uh council member Taylor.

Uh yes, there we have two social workers that work with Mesa Fire Medical Department under our uh social services program.

We also have one intern that cycles through typically from ASU.

Um, and we we try and keep an additional intern on staff for the year.

Um we never visit a patient with one person, so we rotate people through to go and make visits.

They also will case manage them, um which might mean phone calls, again, connecting them to community services, whether it's um uh advocacy centers for elderly, uh again.

I use new leaf as as uh we utilize their services.

Um depending on what that determinant of health cause is, we're trying to reference or refer them out to community-based programs.

Like the county or new leave or one of those.

Okay, so you have your own two two-person team plus an intern who rotates.

Okay.

Um do you utilize Mesa's community services?

Always in partnership with, yes.

So if there's any anything that they could utilize their services for, they're in connection with, whether it's connecting people to housing, um, the cooling stations, we're big partners with that, so they're referring, you know, if uh somebody needs an air conditioner and they should the crew refers them over, they show up, they need air conditioning.

They're absolutely uh committing them to the the city uh services that we already provide.

And then referral call, that would be like a call for distress.

I just want to make sure I understand.

When you say referral, I immediately went to sales.

So is that I'm the call is being referred to the fire department after the dispatcher is taking it?

So no, it's so so when the when the when the 911 call comes in, again, someone's on the ground.

We don't have we don't know without certainty that they're not injured or not breathing.

So we send a crew.

Uh the referral happens when the crew is on scene in our patient care reporting system that they have on their iPad, all they have to do is hit a button that says refer over to social services.

So they hit that button that will refer that case over to our social services.

I had it wrong.

So the referral call is from our fire department to social services.

That's what referring is.

Okay, got it.

Do you have an average type of referral call?

Because I'm wondering when I say that, have you categorized the the various types, the trends and the patterns over time?

Like we get a lot of calls for substance abuse users that are on the streets.

We get a lot of calls for ambulatory services, but they weren't necessarily emergencies, you know, somebody who they hurt their thumb or something.

Like, do you have those things categorized out so you have an average type?

So I don't have those in front of me, but I can look to see if we categorize those and what those numbers look like.

Okay.

If you're interested.

I'm thinking that data would be helpful to have so that when we're coming up with solutions for how to mitigate sending fire trucks and ambulatory services unnecessarily, we can drill down and kind of understand what is the general category and do we need to address it at a different route area?

I'm thinking of the substance abuse user, particularly making those 24.

There were 24 calls that came in in one month for one person.

It's very expensive.

Um and then my last question was in your opinion when the calls coming in, is it possible that we could mitigate some of these issues at the dispatcher level?

Like, are there better questions that could be asked?

Is there is there a better process that could happen when that initial call comes in to identify whether or not this absolutely needs to go to fire?

So I will answer in my knowledge, uh Chief Lachlan is uh oversee the dispatch center for a long time.

Yeah.

Uh but one of the things that I would tell you, and some of the challenges we face is we rely heavily on the 911 caller.

Right.

Is the most untrained person in the entire environment of that 911 call, and we're making decisions based on what they're telling us.

So I would say that is the first challenge that we deal with.

Okay.

Um would you like to address past that she thank you, Vice Mayor, Councilmember?

So, yes, at the dispatch level, the first call goes to um Mesa Public Safety Support.

Their call taker will take that call, and then they have to be able to determine whether that's a police call, a non-emergency call, or a fire medical call.

So the challenge we have at the dispatch and identifying calls that may or may not be emergency is that what we don't want to do is um delay an emergent call, asking too many questions to get to whether this is a call that we could um handle with a non-emergency type response.

So that's the challenge we have.

Um so the the Miss Public Safety Support has their series of questions, they identify as fire medical, and they do that quickly, and it goes to us, and then we have what we call our IQAs, is our questions that we ask.

Um and we refine those always.

We work with our crews with our dispatchers, with our medical director to to refine the questions we ask as quickly as we can.

Because we again we want to answer the phone call in 15 seconds or less, um, 95% of the time, which we always do, and we want to process those calls in about a minute and get those dispatched.

Um so they don't have a lot of time to ask a lot of questions before we want to get a crew rolling if it is a critical emergency.

Um so we try and identify which calls require an emergency response, code three console code two response.

But I think that's one of the um uh one of the challenges, and I think one of the uh one of the opportunities that um caused former assistant chief and the current deputy director for Smith to return to the city and become a deputy director of missing public safety support because he was the assistant chief over dispatch prior to me.

Um and that's one of the things we've been looking at for a long time to see how can we identify and take off a chunk of the calls, maybe not 60% right off the bat.

Um we'll get there.

But uh, if we can just identify um, you know, 10%, right?

That's a big chunk of calls right there.

So um, but again, you want to want to have then those calls go to a non-emergency call taker.

Um so it's a it's a bit of a build out in the public safety communications um infrastructure for us, um, along with Mesa PD and Mesa Public Safety support.

So really that is the challenge to your we ask that we ask the critical questions that we can't identify as much as we can.

Um, and then we we read for the trucks going, but I know that uh one of the things that uh Forrest is looking at is this can be can there be some AI assisted um call taking work, key phrases, keywords.

Right, it's very psychological, actually.

Like you have a small amount of time to ask very pointed questions that can get you the responses that you need to make an extremely important decision as to where to route that call.

Is 911 I know everyone knows 911?

Is there any three number non-ambulatory line that exists?

Like call 711 if you're not having a heart attack, but you know you need to have medical attention, like I think there isn't one in the Miracle Region.

Um we've talked about 311.

Yeah, a lot of regions have a 311 system.

There's a lot of complexity.

Uh some of that uh council member Taylor, we talked about before um you joined the council of that we're at the mercy of the region about standing up a 311 system, but we're working through our own communications department to find a way to to integrate a 3-1-1 practice into our 9-1-1 system that initially in that initial triage that the chief just spoke about that if it is um look trying to get the the schedule of your garbage pickup that that that immediately gets transferred over to someone who can um assist with that question that's not um delaying what we're doing for an emergency response uh standpoint.

So that's a work in progress right now.

That that's one of the efforts that that we've tried to undertake, and there's some great technology solutions that help um help do that as well, and we've looked at best practices um around the region and the country about the best way to to try to get these non-emergency calls to bring it up.

Mr.

Butler is uh the new public safety communications department gonna do a presentation on their budget.

Uh they don't have a budget presentation this year, but we can we can tell you about the efforts that are in place uh or that we're trying to put in place to do that.

So we're gonna be glad to bring that back for a presentation.

So that'd be a good yeah, given the interest in this, I think it'd be a good presentation.

Yeah, I'd be glad to.

Thank you for answering all my questions.

I know that I could turn this into like a massive solutions meeting, but like I'm just trying to wrap my head around what the root cause is and and how we can work with you guys to help address that as a team, you know, and and make your lives a little bit easier in that regard.

So people aren't calling 911 when they dropped a flower pot on their foot, you know, and it's like Mayor Vicemor, Councilmember Taylor.

I just want to add that um this is not, and I think Mr.

Butler alluded to this is not a Mesa problem across the country.

Fall calls is a big is a big issue.

And at three in the morning today, there's no one else to call when someone falls, and that's why we get the 911 call.

But I want you know, social services also has done programs to mitigate that by they look at the data to see where the volume of fall calls are in a neighborhood, and they have gone out there and they sign up for grab bars.

So we are doing what we can to prevent these from happening just based on the data.

So today across the country, when there's no one else to call, we'll get the call, and uh how we're gonna work things in the future will be well, we're always looking for ways to improve that, but we are trying to do what we can on these type of calls to reduce them before they even have it.

Number one, it's more important that it's for safety for the patient, but also it reduces 911 calls.

And thank you for sharing your grab bar program.

Um, just for the public, can you tell us with those donations that the public makes, would they go to the Mesa Fire Department?

Is that where the money would go and then you use it to go out and okay, absolutely.

Any donations towards the grab bar program goes back into back into the program.

Yeah, we install a lot of grab bars, so I know how important they are.

They're they're huge in helping people move through their homes.

So Vice Mayor Summers, uh, for I know you all like to look at data.

Um, we have done a heat map of where we put our grab bars and what we put in the last year, so I could send that to the council.

I can picture what that's gonna look like already.

I know where it is, yeah.

Council member, you have quite something's gonna be a minor.

Well, um I realize that we're talking about how to prevent um the re recurring that are unnecessary and such.

But I think also there's a uh you know a concern about the undercapacity of of our social services, right?

So it's kind of uh a combined reflection about what health care is available, we're gonna see huge cuts in Medicaid, we're gonna see an you know influx in 911 calls because people can't um get medical care and you know the the waiting list and such like that.

And and I so is it a combined uh teamwork be able to do that?

You can't really have a huge decrease without having the social services have capacity to do the assistance to you know go out without having to get on a list and wait months and no funding available, or if we cut our C D G B.

I'm sorry, we have nothing for AC assistance.

I you know, we'll have to try another route.

Um so it's not an isolated asiloed thing, it's really very much integrated with from federally to locally what we can provide and an assistance to people so that they get off a system and you know, we were talking like our um emergency um homeless services and stuff like that, you know, then that increases recurring calls of people and being in situations and putting more pressure on public safety.

So I think we have to look at it and a multi-pronged approach and how we can get less pressure on our public safety and um support a social um interventions, excuse me.

Um comes before 500.

Yeah.

Um good point, Jen.

There are factors well beyond bases control and to why people consistently call uh 911 for medical care.

But um I wanted to ask, and I think it's probably appropriate this time about um residents continually ask me about not continually, but I get questions about why does a why do you have to take the most expensive apparatus that the fire track to every call?

Is there a way that we can not have to or that we can go to calls and maybe set and I bring it up at this part of the presentation because maybe it's just these fall calls or met or you know uh medical calls that don't require a fire check.

And I I know there's a reason, and I'd like everybody to hear it.

Thank you.

Vice Mary Council member.

Uh yes, the reason we send the fire truck, and we do have two vehicles we call MRs that are a smaller crew cab, uh, F550 type that can that that are fire that are for for personnel just uh like an engine or a ladder.

But the reason we take the truck to everything is because we want to have what we like to call, we want to have the full toolbox available for that call.

The call that call on the medical side could become something more than the 9-1 caller told us it was, so we can't just arrive with middle-limited medical equipment, want to have all of our medical equipment.

Um when we're out after that call, returning to station or we or going on another event, um, we don't know what the next call is going to bring, whether that's a fire call or a hazmat call or technical rescue call.

So we like to have the full toolbox available when we're going to or returning from a call or out in the community doing a public education event or we're doing uh training or whatever, simply because we don't know when the next call is gonna come in or where it's gonna come in or what type it's going to be, and we don't um you know, at a at extreme level, we don't want to have to go back to the fire station in our um not full toolbox to pick up the necessary equipment and then delay intervention in whatever call that is by four or five, six minutes.

Um, because we don't we don't like to go through back to the station.

Right.

So that's why is really we have the the equipment we have on our engines and ladders is um very well defined down to what we need for what we respond to.

Um again, we do have some specialty fire, you know, engines and ladders that have additional equipment for technical rescue or hazmat.

Um and the ladders of course have some additional that and I should say you know the ladders have additional equipment because they're the ones that would do the um activities such as extrication on a car accident, so the JOS of life, as we call them, or um they're the ones you'll see on the roof using chainsaws to cut holes in the roof to get the heat and smoke out.

So the ladders have additional equipment, but it's all very consistent.

The engines have the equipment that's very consistent, and that's what we have to have for whatever call we might get called to.

So we like to keep that with us whenever we're out of the station.

Well, and as the chief alluded to, though, there is definitely a role for our medical response vehicles, and especially as we uh become as we see our density increase, um, we we have a network of stations that will continue to build out, um, and we have a long-term plan for where those stations need to be located in East Mesa that we haven't activated yet, and and some other infill stations, but as you see call volumes pick up at certain stations, medical response vehicles are um a good tool that's an additive uh to our full um bumper trucks because then we're able to um meet those medical call demands while still not jeopardizing our all hazards um and and uh system availability of those trucks.

So you're gonna see more of those medical response vehicles just as we continue to um get torch build out as a community and we're just growing more dense um you know as a community as well.

So you say we have two right now?

We do okay.

And uh city manager butler's butler's point is those those MRs, they are um they're in service from 7 a.m.

to 7 p.m.

usually um and they are they have all the medical equipment and uh and uh and the other turnouts and all their personal protective equipment and SCBAs and some you know some tools for the firefighting.

But they're in high call volume high density areas.

So if the uh if the MR at station 202 on Stapley and 80th Avenue, they will get they will be first out.

So if they're if both units are in in quarters and there's a medical call, the MR will get that call that keeps the all hazard, we call them all hazards units, you know, the engine in service for the next call.

Could be medical call, could be an all-hazards call.

But also if um if it so happens that the MR is is one and a quarters when a call comes out, because they will still respond to anything because they have all the training and everything like that.

Um but they don't replace a unit.

So an initial uh house fire report of a house fire, you'll get three engines on one ladder.

If an MR is one of the closest units, they'll still go because you don't want four-trained people not to, but they will not replace one of the engines.

Um then so again, because they're in areas like station two where they're surrounded fairly closely by other stations and the number of other engines and ladders.

Um they could they may they may get on scene first, but they do have the ability to at least you know affect certain activities while they're waiting for just a few seconds for a closer engine to show up that has the water because ultimately you need the water, like that.

So but they do they do um supplement the system.

So we don't ever run a station with an MR, for instance, like and we don't have MRs um at our maybe uh less busy or outer lying station like station 16 um because the support for engine 216 or MR 216 would be quite a ways behind them.

So they do have to always have all the components.

That makes sense if they're in tensor areas.

It also makes sense that you rely on the nine moment caller to tell you, and sometimes they don't give you all the information you need and you don't want to show up without what you need.

But I think that also goes back to training, right?

Of the dispatchers to make sure that they are well trained to ask the right questions and kind of goes hand in hand.

But anyway, thank you for that, because I have had people ask me.

And there, council mayor vice mayor, council member go for to add to what Mr.

Butler said, uh the MRs are extremely uh innovative across the country to have peak MRs that handle this, like Chief Lachlan said, and that was the support of city management and our data scientists that really started these MRs, and they do handle the medical calls, but to for per Chief Lachlan's point, we still need those spokes because you don't know what the call is gonna be, but but the MRs are very uh innovative, and it's not something you see across the country really.

Do you have a budget slide?

I have a really quick question for calling.

Uh, just for everyone watching too, and I don't think it was one of the questions that came up super short.

What would you say the cost of one of these calls is?

What is the cost?

Just expense, like you know, how much does it cost for the call to come in?

Right, the one where we we may have needed social services in that in that um high high user that's not necessarily needing all of the services.

What does that cost the taxpayer?

We actually do have all that detailed out.

I don't have it in front of me.

I apologize if we can get that to you.

Perfect.

Thank you.

I'm sorry about that.

No, that's okay.

Yes.

Good morning.

I'm gonna walk through the uh financial summary here.

I'm gonna start with the general government funds.

Um I'm just gonna walk across um left to right.

So community involvement.

Um in 2425 to 2526, there's a a slight jump.

That's we added four inspector positions there.

They were added in fiscal year 25 about mid-year, so the 26th had the full budget for those.

And our year-end estimate is a little bit low because we held a vacant position because we knew we were having cuts.

So in the proposed budget, um, and throughout the slides, the proposed budget does include our cuts, our budget adjustments, and uh merit increases, just so you know.

And departmental support, there's a huge jump this year.

That's because that's where we have all of our life cycle and our life cycle.

Um, that's a 10-year life cycle that's submitted to OMB every year, so they know it's coming.

Um, this year we had some heavy hitters.

We had a million dollars for station carryover for some of our stations, four million for the self-contained breathing apparatus packs, those are replaced every 15 years, and we had a um 360 packs and 900 bottles replaced this year.

Uh a million dollars for the CPAP ventilators, those are replaced every 10 years, and we had 37 of those replaced this year.

1.4 million for dispatch consoles.

Those are also replaced every 10 years, and we had 15.

And then we had uh half a million for the whole body MRI screenings for the cancer prevention.

We are still anticipating going a little bit over.

That's mostly due to utilities, that's where they're budgeted.

And then as you see in our proposed budget for 2627, it goes back down because we don't have as many lifecycle projects.

Um from 2425 to 2526, that big jump is the benchmarking implementation.

And our year end estimate for this year is at the 89.5 million.

That is um the overages due to our overtime in our dispatch area, which has been ongoing, and we work with OMB.

We're trying to come up with a solution for that.

And then um our 2627 um budget is at the 89.3.

That actually does include our cut of four positions that we're moving to the public safety sales tax um fund, and it'll be reduced from the overtime there.

But it doesn't look particularly like there is a cut, and that's just due to again the five percent for the SMOR members for their merit increases.

Here's our public safety sales tax fund.

So department's mental support stays pretty stable.

That's just a few um administrative positions, and then an incident response similar to the previous slide.

Um that's dispatch and operations.

So the 2526 on the revised budget, that's high because we budget in this fund particularly.

Um the all the positions are budgeted at um topped out fully loaded position costs, and the overtime is at 17%.

So it's a little higher than the general fund, which gives us capacity, and that's why we had the ability to make that cut.

Um eight hundred thousand dollars from our proposed budget for next year.

Again, that was the movement from four positions from the general fund to the public safety sales tax fund, and we were able to cut from that overtime.

Okay.

Somebody doing the math on positions.

So we leave positions vacant, but it sounds like 17% overtime.

What's the delta here where it makes sense to hire somebody versus using overtime?

Go ahead.

Anyone that knows math.

I don't know math, but I think I might be able to touch on this one a little bit.

So uh Vice Mayor Summers uh counsel.

Sure, we do.

We keep track of we have what we call rovers or leafhole personnel, um, which all departments do.

And so basically the the intent of our rover pool um is to identify how often are we gonna need these people to backfill for vacation.

We know how many vacation uh is available every day.

And so we have the number of people that should be offer vacation, we have generally speaking that number of rovers.

Um obviously some days have more vacation than others, so there's a little bit of a little bit of math involved with that.

But at the at as simplest we like to say if, and and uh we work with office of management budget, of course, with this, is if an if a rover is used 65, 70 percent of the time to cover uh a vacancy, and so we don't have to perhaps bring someone back at time and a half, that is a valuable use of our of our funding.

Um if they're being used less than say 70 percent of the time, then it is uh less expensive to use overtime to fill a vacancy.

Um so that's kind of our breakover.

It's about that 70 percent of of uh of staffing.

So that's where we try and keep the rover pool.

And we do uh about every two years working with um uh the uh they just changed the name, used to be performance excellence.

Sorry.

Innovation is excellent, Office of Innovation Excellence.

We do work with the data scientists there along with planning and research in the fire department.

About every year or two, we evaluate our leave pool to make sure that it's at the appropriate amount.

We look at how many times how many times people are gone for whether it's sick or vacation or uh uh injury or PPL or anything like that, and how often we're able to use rovers for that, and how often we're able to use um overtime for that, and how often we're use we're we're able to use the right rank and assignment, so uh pyramid firefighter, um EMT engineer, captain, and so we do look do a pretty deep dive about every year or two just to make sure that we're where we need to be.

And if and if we identify that we need a couple more rovers, then we'll work with Office of Management Budget and City Management and bring that forward to this group for that.

So we we do look at that combination of overtime and because obviously a rover cost.

So that's part of the 70 percent is the rover backfill or overtime backfill.

Yeah, I think this question applies to any of your departments um to make that balance between what makes sense do things in-house or hire somebody versus doing the overtime.

And I and you just have to go on newspaper reports in other cities to see that overtime budgets, particularly in public safety, you're have a tendency to put a lot of pressure on those cities.

So having the right staffing uh is crucial to maintaining a sound fiscal footing.

Yeah, you're you're right.

We we look at that extensibly throughout the organization.

There is some complexity, of course, in our departments that have essential staffing requirements.

Um we we have to have the men and women at Mesa Fire and Medical in those stations in those trucks in order um you know to be able to perform the service, and so that's different than maybe uh a department where um it's it's not essential that that person is in that seat that day.

They could be on vacation and and you don't have to backfill uh that individual, but it's certainly different in in public safety and solid waste and some of the other areas where um we have to deliver the service at the at the time that it's it's required.

But you're right, we're constantly looking at that.

You'll hear that theme um when the police department makes their presentation um next week about all that they've done um to to mitigate some of their overtime costs.

Fire looks at that, but there is definitely planned overtime that that we have to take into account because when we have a special event, if we have spring training and we need um fire and medical personnel there uh to attend towards those patrons, we're not denigrating our service to the rest of our residents, so we bring people in to meet those needs at say Sloan Park or at Hoke while at we're not pulling people from stations so that if there's a call for service um that those individuals are still there to respond.

And so those are some of the give and take that we have to have with our planned overtime versus kind of it's seeding, you know.

You don't want to hire somebody full-time for one month, right?

Yeah, exactly.

12 slides and 25 minutes.

Uh 35 minutes.

You can do it.

I can add you know, to the point of you know, identifying where we have the vacancies and and uh and in and peak time.

We did implement uh about the time we implemented the MRs and that that 12 hour schedule.

We implemented um a rovers that are specific to the first 12 hours.

So we have uh most of our rovers work at 24 hours, but we do have some that are working the 12 hour shift just because we identified that there's more leave taken in the first 12 hours.

So to reduce the overtime, we do have some rovers or leap pool members that do work that first twelve hours just to offset some overtime there.

Can you can you say what a rover is?

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I can just no no mystery.

If you saw what was going on in my brain, it's Tetris and it's the moon rover, and it's just like okay.

I apologize.

Um so we need a certain number of people to staff our trucks every day.

Um 142 people to staff our trucks every day.

So our actual staffing of everybody is actually um if our staffing is full, we have about 15 extra people.

Okay, right.

So it takes 142 people to staff our trucks.

We have 150 math.

Sorry, sorry about that, Vice Mayor.

Whatever that is.

Um those 15 people that are not assigned engine 201 or ladder 201, uh, they're what we call leave pool members, and so they are used to fill for vacancies before we have to start using overtime to fill vacancies.

So you keep an extra pool of employees available.

Um, also thinking too much overtime can lead to exhaustion as well.

Absolutely.

So you have to like balance that very carefully.

Yeah, one of our neighboring cities lost a lot of police officers for that reason, and I know some of them, so they were just way overworked with overtime.

And that's the number we try to be very precise on is how many leave pool personnel rovers do we need that are going to be used 70 percent plus percent of the time at least, so that they are more cost effective than overtime without having too many, yeah, and without having not enough so that you are using too much overtime, both for financial reasons, um, because we're always budget conscious in the fire department, but also just for the fatigue factor that you've mentioned.

Nice plug, thank you.

You better okay.

Our last uh major fund I'll talk about is the ETS fund, and that's our ambulances from um 2425 to 2526.

That jump is when we did full build out, so um that uh year end estimate is just a little bit above that with some adjustments for um the full build out.

And our proposed budget for next year that has um a change in a shift from a 12 hour to a 24 hour.

And on the bottom you can see the the revenues are coming in well above um the expenses that does include seven million dollars of bad debt and citywide overhead that will be adjusted out at some point, and um the remainder they try to um build up a fund balance so that they can have their capital expenses covered for replacements of the ambulances, and then sometimes our stations need build out for um living quarters for them.

Bad debt.

Yeah, just think you're you're trying to get payment for a service, and not everyone's gonna pay that service.

So we've transported someone.

We tried either through their insurance or through any federally mandated insurance that they've they may have to receive payment, but that doesn't always work out.

So just like every ambulance, public or private, you have to ride off um some of that bad debt.

Yeah, okay, thank you.

Okay, so just a summary of our uh budget reductions.

We have uh 1.35 goal over three years.

We are eliminating the vacant Marcom specialist position and then reallocating those four positions that I talked about.

Okay, and then the adjustment request summary.

This is just some true up of our ETS fund and the conversion for 12 to 24 hours, as I also mentioned.

Any questions on those last slides since that was the budget?

The budget part of the budget.

Do you I think Richard?

Well, I'm sure I was just saying I'm good on the budget, no questions.

Thank you.

Oh, thank you.

Okay, all right.

My favorite fire station.

Just a couple of second favorite.

Second favorite.

Okay, a couple of updates on our current fire stations that we're building.

This is 224, it's on 80th Street and Elliott.

Um, it's a very busy station right now.

Seems like they're pouring concrete almost weekly.

Uh we're more than 50 percent built, and it'll be ready to go in November of this year.

And 205, um, they did the demo, they've done some groundwork, uh, the underground electrical and everything like that.

So they're really getting started.

And this one is due to open in about a year from now.

Very good.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, uh, council, thank you for for having us today.

I'm gonna show a quick video on some new equipment that we're getting, and then I'll I'll give you some information on it.

Oh, there's no sound.

Well, we don't have sound.

Hopefully, Channel 11 has sound.

Sure.

I'm reading between the lines.

It's you don't really need the sound to get the test of it.

We got it.

So we're pretty excited about this.

Um this device, it's an automated C C PR machine.

Um Lucas device is the the one the purchase that we're making.

We're in the process right now.

Our purchasing division is working diligently on on getting this processed.

Um this device allows our crews.

This is gonna be on we're purchasing 35 of these.

We got a AFG grant for 725,000.

Um, there's a 10% match that our ETS, our transportation division, um ambulance operations in the fire department will be funding that that uh about 75,000 that is the city's obligation on the match.

So we are excited to get this equipment.

It will be carried on all of our frontline ambulances.

This will give us enough to have a couple in reserve and then a couple for training for our EMS division to provide training for our crews.

This is a safety tool.

It'll be carried in our ambulances because that is the most dangerous place for us to do CPR by hand.

Um our crews do exceptional CPR.

We we monitor, we evaluate our CPR, we have devices in place for our hands, hand-provided CPR that all of our crews provide that show we have an exceptional scorecard on how we provide manual CPR, but in the back of an ambulance when you're driving down the road is a very dangerous time to have our crews standing up, providing CPR and providing good quality CPR.

So we're excited about getting this equipment.

We appreciate the the mayor and and city managers, uh mayor and council and the city manager's office's support in moving this forward.

It's been a it's been a little while in getting here.

We've been working on this for probably about four years, I think, um, to get this, but we we knew that the grant was gonna be a good opportunity to save quite a bit of money to the taxpayers.

So I'll give you a firsthand testimony on this because we I used it in a city that has red fire trucks.

And we the number of lives saved went up.

The CPR is better.

And when you watch this video, you can see that that's that's a person that has to do that.

And by using this device, not only is it more consistent CPR, um, you just freed up an a person to do another task that always has to be done.

Um in addition to the safety question, I'll tell you that my mother was a paramedic in New York.

She was doing CPR.

The ambulance had to stop quickly, and she went into the front of the ambulance, and that ended her career.

So for those who didn't know it, this is a this is an excellent device.

Mayor Weissman, thank you.

We appreciate that and we appreciate your support.

We'll go ahead and play it.

Let's start with 10%.

You know, since we don't have volume, I'll just talk through this with the we're gonna talk about Firewise real quick, and that's Tyson.

Anyone uh Tyson does an amazing job, and for those of you that have seen um and councilman member go for thank you for always being at the community meetings when we discuss this.

Uh Firewise um is a community risk reduction program that builds local resilience by shifting wildfire mitigation from an individual task to community neighborhood strategy.

Um it standardizes defensible space and educate people on how to clear state space around their homes so fires uh amber fires don't start when there is a fast moving wildfire.

Um we've seen in our community um is starting in 2016, Los Sandes uh became Firewise, and in February we adopted Madrid and Mountain Bridge.

Um it's a hand hands-on involvement and it powers the residents and it brings a community together as we've seen with some of the local uh mitigation that we've seen people clearing out their neighborhoods.

Um ultimately the program provides value through reduced property risk, enhanced firefighter safety, and a pro uh proactive expert-backed defense to wildfires.

Um we also are leveraging our technology through our uh tech services, our GIS and our drone, and we're flying over these neighborhoods and identifying what risks we have with the vegetation that exists, and we share the maps with our community.

So uh we feel like we're making a lot of progress in reducing risk um in our areas that border uh Tonto National Forest.

And this is also a partnership with the FFM who's helping us with this education.

You want to say anything?

Sure.

Your neighborhood looks good.

Yeah, it's a great program.

Thank you for all the work.

And um, as we know that the wildfire risk continues to increase, it's not going down.

And um Tyson does a fantastic job getting in there, working with our communities.

As you said, we have three that are now firewise.

That's great.

We have a he's working with a few more, and and as it becomes um more known, I think that we're we're gonna have more and more communities because the words getting out there, and I think people recognize that the risk is is not going not going down.

So I you know, thank you for your work on it.

And the the technology is really cool, it's really amazing.

I mean, it's it's not somebody walking around anymore looking at at the vegetation, the the G the drone is doing it and measuring what needs to be measured to to determine where the hot spots.

So I mean, we're we're doing it in an efficient way, and uh um, and so that's I'm I've been very impressed.

I've been to all three communities and talked to the members of the community, and an added benefit, as you mentioned, Chief Bright, is that these commun these neighbors are getting to know each other through this program.

They're they're getting to know neighbors they didn't know before, and they're really enjoying themselves and enjoying each other and while they're doing this heavy heavy lifting.

And each community is kind of doing it a little bit different.

Some they have a lot of volunteers from the community, some are paint uh doing a little bit more um using their HOA funds and assessments to do it.

So it looks a little different in every community, but um people are certainly learning about the importance and what they can do individually, so with their home.

I'll add a brief that this is an economic benefit to individual homeowners as well.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to afford or obtain uh private insurance, especially in high-risk areas.

So by mitigating those risks early on, hopefully, we reduce that risk, and insurance becomes a little bit more affordable.

Yeah, that is a great point, Scott.

I mean, and and this is something you should tell your insurance carrier that you are firewise.

Um it's a musical chair over there.

It is.

So there's a quick uh quick slide here.

We uh often discuss, you know, um, energy systems and power systems and and such, and so this is just real quick, you know.

Um in addition to the traditional power grid, some of the energy systems we have out there for both residential and commercial, you know, we have solar panels that are connected to um residential battery stores in the homes.

We also have electric vehicles and generator power, um, something we don't have yet in Arizona, but they have in some other states, so we assume it'll make its way here as a hydrogen diffuser, so that can allow, as you you can see the picture there, that can be at someone's house and they can remove themselves from the grid.

So the point of this slide is just you know, these are the challenges that the firefighters face when they respond to a to a fire.

Um, not always in the daytime when you can see all these very clearly.

Um, but the uh the the traditional power grid without that that's fairly simple.

You flip the breaker and you've isolated power to the house.

And so now you know it's fairly safe.

But you add something like solar panels, um, which are much more difficult to isolate the power from those.

Um if you have a fire at night with solar panel and the solar panels around the house, and you think you've secured the power, you have to put tarps over the solar powers because they will get re-energized in the morning.

Things like that that um we learned from another fire department the hard way, but we didn't have to learn it the hard way that you have to cover the solar panels because they will re-energize if the sun comes up.

So, this is just again real quick to some of the slides to show uh the situations that the firefighters come across that they kind of have to identify how are we gonna identify uh how are we gonna secure electricity, how are we gonna secure power to the different homes in the neighborhoods.

I noticed Bess wasn't on there.

No, no, I've never heard of that.

I'm triggered.

That was intentional.

Yeah.

Um, so this real quick, another challenge we come across, and this is a short video, so uh you saw that.

And what that is, um that was a CNG vehicle powered by compressed natural gas.

Um, many of the um trust trucks in that community.

This is not Mesa, by the way.

This is not Mesa.

Uh yeah, exactly.

Um, but there are lots of vehicles in the community that are powered by CNG.

And really, what the challenge here is is you can see what the end result can be.

But every other form of uh fuel on a vehicle, whether it be traditional gas or um propane or anything else like that.

You put water on the fire with a CNG, the way those are designed and the and the relief valves, you actually can't put water on the valve itself because you don't want to cool that because then it'll stop releasing the pressure.

So what happened here is they they apparently didn't identify that, and you can see they're actually putting that out in the traditional way, and then you have the the catastrophic event that you've seen.

So that's one there, you know, the crews just have to be, and we train on this.

Um and I should say that I'm taking credit for a lot of the work that Captain R safety captain Jim Barnhart's done.

Um he's become one of the foremost experts, not only in the region but nationally.

He communicates directly with uh the fire safety research institute at UL Laboratories.

Um he gets calls from different departments all the time as they have an electric vehicle fire on a freeway in their city and things like that.

So um I'm happily taking credit for his work here.

I just want to make that clear.

So but we train with our crews.

Uh we get uh both in person and through um training videos so that they can identify what which ones are CNG, which one's ours, so they know how we're gonna put this out.

What are the what are the dangers?

So and you saw the reaction there, and and people get injured every time one of these happens.

That's that's the critical part.

If I could add to what Chip Lachlan's saying on this, uh LA about two years ago had an explosion.

They didn't know it was a fire on the freeway explosion where nine firefighters were sent to the hospital.

Um as soon as our safety captain got that information, he sent the video out to all of our crew, so they saw and then the training was done on this.

It was short time right after they got the video.

This we had an incident with the CNG truck, and they knew the hazards, they knew what not to do, where not to put the water, and the fire was extinguished, and everybody was safe.

It was only because of the quickness of getting the information out there.

As soon as we hear these things, uh sending it to our members so they remain safe and learn what they need to do on these type of fires.

And and and also I say, because of the um the work that Captain Barnhart has done in the in the in the nation, when LA City Fire did their call review of this, he was able to go attend that training and that review and bring that training back to us.

Uh we do talk, this is not battery energy stores, but this is a um e-bike or a scooter fire with a battery.

And so what you'll see here is how quickly the uh the fire gets going, and also just based on modern furnishings, how quickly the whole room becomes in fire.

So um we talk about the batteries that are engaged on these scooters or these e-bikes.

I'll say the best thing you can do is use the appropriate battery and the appropriate charger.

Um this is not one of those where you want to get the cheapest you can on Amazon.

You want to make sure it's a UL certified listed battery if you have to replace your battery, make sure your batteries aren't damaged and make sure you're using UL listed battery chargers that are appropriate for the device that you're charging.

Um so you can see how fast that went from being first noticed to fully involved, and then how fast this uh extends to the rest of that room.

So again, the takeaway we want to talk about here is use the appropriate batteries and the appropriate chargers, and you're gonna greatly reduce the the chance of this happening.

Um and then also again we talk about response time.

This is why we talk about response time so much, is because we want to keep this to the room of origin as best we can.

Yeah, and I think Mary remember when we started it in the mayor, it you told you stopped about three to four minutes before there was rollover flashover in a room.

So we can get there in a response time and start putting it out.

And you've seen in 30 seconds that room went almost fully involved.

So that time is gone.

And this is also why you know uh we talk about a lot here and through our public education area and and their community at large is um if you're going to charge uh a scooter or an e-bike, you know, don't put that in front of your exit door.

There's other places you can put that if you have to keep it inside, if you can't keep it outside, I understand.

But um, we've had a few where um, especially if you look at our mid-rise high ride build at high-rise buildings and some of the like the ASU polytechnic campus where we have dorms out there.

Um we did have a couple years ago an e-bike fire in one of the rooms out at ACU poly.

So um keep that out of the way of the exits and use the appropriate batteries and chargers, and then you can greatly reduce the the risk.

So what do what are they supposed to do?

What are people supposed to do when it does catch on fire?

Uh really at that point it's gonna it's gonna generate its own fire and heat, and so you just need to remove yourself from the room, the house, and call 911.

You wow, you're just supposed to let it go, no fire extinguisher on it.

No, sorry.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

So that doesn't do anything to us, no, not on the batteries like this.

Okay, you know.

I don't know about this battery.

So people's phones are blown up.

I mean, it's just crazy.

Yeah, it's just it's an awareness.

And again, it's it's making sure that your your uh your device isn't damaged, your battery isn't damaged, then you're you're charging it correctly.

Um if you notice all of a sudden your laptop or your phone's hot a lot, you know.

Turn it off.

Turn it off, replace it.

Yeah, things like that.

So uh with a good battery, well tested UL.

Yeah, you made it.

You're in pretty good shape.

Thank you.

And then uh another uh piece of equipment.

So this looks as simple as it is, this is simply a fire blanket.

Okay, and we use these on electric vehicle fires.

Um the region, most of the departments in the region, including us have these, and we are just waiting for the fire safety research institute to to finalize their uh they've done research for about the last year or so on the uh best practices and where to and not to use these.

Um then uh we made a decision as a region about a year ago to hold off on putting this in service until we got more research information.

Um and some of what we the research so far has has, I think played out what we were going to do with ours anyways.

One of the things that we believe is gonna come out is you know, don't use these on interior fires, so like a battery battery wall or something like that, which we were not intending to do.

Our intent is to use these on these vehicles.

It really gives us a chance to you're gonna have to use water to put the fire out initially, but these have a tendency to continue to burn and reignite uh thermal runaway basically.

Umce we have the fire knockdown, we can put these on the vehicle, and that either gives us an opportunity to then take that vehicle, tow that vehicle essentially, drag it out of a parking lot or out of a parking structure or off of a street, or um you know, keep that on there and move the other vehicles or anything else away from it.

So think about a uh um a uh parking structure, underground parking structure, where we don't really have the ability to do a lot of of traditional firefighting.

We have to be able to put this out and cover it and then remove other items and also protect the structure from from being damaged and compromised around that car fire.

So we're probably waiting about a month or so.

We should we expect to get the the latest bit of information from Fire Safety Research Institute.

And again, Captain Barnard's been in contact with the case.

Yes.

And then you'll you'll do that.

And then I'll see and I'll briefly think of the council.

So but and in fairness, Jim has been in contact with uh researchers at FSRI um as as recently as I think um Monday when I said, hey, any any more information I can have before Thursday.

Um so we are confident we'll get a little more direction and we'll be able to work with the and again we work regionally because of automatic aid and going back and forth between cities.

Um the decision was made regionally to hold off, the decision was made regionally to go back and put these back on the trucks and and best practices for where to use them and how to use them mostly safely.

So this is like a temporary, this is basically a temporary solution that helps buy you some time.

It does, it helps suppress the fire and the explosive and toxic acids until we can either remove the car um and the stuff around the car.

Do they make one for bikes?

They probably do again.

It depends on the on the quality.

Jim says they do.

And I I would like to uh I know there's there might be some more questions, but if we can get to slide 20, it's kind of the last slide.

I think it's an important one.

Good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council.

I was getting worried for the nine o'clock cutoff.

I wasn't sure if we were gonna make it.

Good news.

I think we're gonna make it.

Um I just wanted to talk to you today about our cancer prevention, and I'd like to thank all of you and the city as well, city management for the support you've given us over the years for this program.

It's very important to us and our membership.

Starting back in uh fiscal year 2019-2020, there was 210,000 budgeted out of the public safety sales tax for cancer prevention.

And along with that, we've received over two million dollars in grant funding to also assist with this program.

And as you can see on the slide, some of the things that that's helped us do are the following.

We've had the cancer screenings, which include the full body uh full body MRIs.

We've had the exhaust removal systems uh in the bays of the station.

We're able to relocate our ice machines and our turnout storage out of the bays themselves.

We have the clean cab concept implement uh help with that implement.

I can't talk this morning.

Our implement can't talk.

Implementation.

There we go.

Sorry.

Um, our gallery blood tests, our turnout cleaning.

And uh to date, there's been 13 of our members that uh we've been able to identify cancers, and I'm happy to say that they're all with us today.

A couple of them had have had to retire, but all of the members that we identified cancers in, they are still with us.

And I can say that without this program, I don't know that they would all be here today.

Some of the cancers are the cancers that we've identified are the following uh esophageal cancer, colorectal, glioma bump uh the gliom.

I can't talk again.

Glyoma brain cancer, kidney, leukemia, lymphoma, thyroid, various skin cancers, and testicular cancer.

So once again, we really appreciate the support we've received with uh helping us to mitigate these cancers.

Mayor Freeman, I know you're online, you've been working on this quite a bit.

Do you have a comment on it?

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

I think the cancer screening is very important for our personnel.

And obviously, we can't prevent all tragedy or death within our department.

But as we screen and isolate it, we can help uh our personnel be healthy.

And that's what really I enjoy about that.

I thank you for asking.

I'm gonna I have a hard stop here, but I fully support our fire department's budget, and I appreciate the questions asked by council.

One of the things uh Ms.

Gilforth asked about why we run an all-hazards truck.

And also to remember, we also sign agreements with other municipalities to provide fire and life safety services towards our neighboring communities.

And along with that, we do a regional response as needed throughout the state of Arizona.

So some of our crews go on national forest fires.

But with that said, we have a full service city, and as I said in the past, our public safety is non-negotiable.

We have to keep it as tip of the spear.

And I appreciate all the hard work our city manager does and the department directors.

So thank you.

I'll leave you with that and have a great day.

Thank you, Mayor.

And I think the mayor's gonna be stepping off sort of the city clerk once.

So Vice Mayor, I'd just like to say I think this has been an extremely successful program.

Um to give our current firefighters peace of mind, they work in a dangerous um exposure environment.

And so to be able to have these screenings on consistent basis probably puts them and their their family um minds at rest when they get a clean bill of health.

But as uh the chief indicated, when we've been able to identify some of these potentially very serious cancers early on and get um preventative treatment.

I know several of uh the individuals that were referenced had no idea anything was wrong until they had the screening.

They they felt great and had no clue uh that something was was going on, and so we were able to identify that, get the treatment that they've needed, which um is I think so important.

And uh it's uh we're just talking about this to some employee fire employees yesterday, it's the right thing to do, but it's also the smart business um to do as well, because when we're out recruiting people to come work um in our department, if they know that we're a department that takes care of our employees that wants to ensure that they have all the the resources and the medical care that that they have that they they feel better about um joining Mesa Fire and Medical, and so I think it's it's smart business along with being the right responsible thing to do uh for our employees as well.

Thank you.

And I uh you know, it's being a retired firefighter, and I'm sure the mayor would share as well.

Uh we've seen a lot of colleagues um pass away from from this because it is a dangerous work recently.

Uh Robert Oliver Jr.

from Phoenix, who I worked with uh quite a bit.

We came on pretty close to the same time, passed away from an occupational uh disease um about three weeks ago.

So this sits very close to home.

So appreciate all the effort and the support of council.

With that, are there any questions, comments, or profanities we would like to throw their way before we move on to the next item?

So, Vice Mayor, I'd be remiss though.

Um we've we've got several more months with her, but this will be the chief's final budget presentation.

And she'll be retiring uh in about 10 months.

I think we we we established so this is the last time she'll have to be in the high school.

We could have made this much much harder to do that.

I will miss this.

I will miss the council presentation.

I'm sure she won't.

She that that's the one time she's lying.

She'll be glad not to uh not to have to go through this next year.

But just wanted to recognize her.

Yeah, thank you for your service.

Well, in light of that, I I would just like to say I'm I'm fully supportive of the budget as presented and uh can't say enough good about Chief Camelli and her many years of service to the city.

Thank you so much, Mary.

And we'll we'll see you many times before you you take the final walk out the door, but thank you very much.

She is a legend, and I expect you to be in the firefighter hall of fame.

Um I think they're gonna waive the five-year rule after retirement, and you'll be there before you know it.

It's still an honor to serve alongside these wonderful men and women that do a great job in the fire service.

And we couldn't do it without the council support, city management support.

So we're very grateful for that, and thank you.

Thank you for giving us the time today.

All right.

Thank you so much.

No other questions.

Uh I know we're pressed on time, so item one B is appointments to various boards or committees.

Do I have a motion from Councilmember Duff?

A second from Councilmember Goforth.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Hearing none, motion passes unanimously.

Uh the mayor is absent on that.

Um acknowledge receipts of boards and committees.

Do I have a motion on that?

Councilmember Duff and Councilmember Taylor is a second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any any opposed?

Carries unanimously.

Uh we're pressed on time, so I'll if it's okay with council, we'll skip current events, we'll do that at the next meeting.

Except, Mr.

Butler, do you have any?

Sure do.

Um you got off easy this morning.

Only uh only an hour and a half.

And so you're not going to be as lucky next Thursday morning.

So just be prepared as we discussed.

We'll um we'll have a very long uh morning.

So don't worry, we'll bring we'll get some food for you.

But uh 7 30 uh a.m.

next Thursday morning.

That's right, great.

Uh and just to note that this Saturday is celebrate Mesa out at Pioneer Park from uh 10 to 2 p.m.

So again, please uh come out and bring your families and enjoy a great time at Pioneer Park on Saturday.

And um that's really all that we need to mention this morning in the t-shirt toss.

Okay, there we go.

All right, t shirt toss.

Yeah.

Great.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

All right.

With that, is there a motion to adjourn?

Yes.

Councilmember Taylor or Councilmember Goforth.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Carries unanimously.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.