Joined this morning by my colleagues, uh, Martin Ave, Rashida Cardwell, our President Helen Hudson, myself, and uh Council Manto.

Um also here is uh Chief Mons and his team here with us.

This morning we are going to talk about the condition of the fire department, our maintenance garage.

And here with us, the chief is going to lead us through as to what's going on and the need that need to be addressed with it.

All right, good morning.

Good morning, council.

Good morning, Councilman Juckin, Madame President.

Where we're at now, which is an unsafe floor with no inside space for our mechanics to work.

And our next steps we're hoping to move to is a solidify a short term when I say short term, a five-year plan at least to relocate into a different facility until we can assess and reconstruct three twelve state for a boulevard where the floor is unsafe.

So just a quick history, three twelve state for a boulevard was built in nineteen sixty-nine.

It kind of shows the history of the maintenance facility and the size of the fire trucks and how the fire trucks are bigger and they weigh almost two to three times more nowadays than they were back when this facility was built 56 years ago.

So basically we've kind of outgrown it capacity wise and and with the uh specs of our apparatus.

Um over at our maintenance division, they do a lot of our um, they do all of our fleet uh maintenance.

Um they acquire all of our apparatus, they do all the preventive uh maintenance for all of our vehicles.

We have over 113 vehicles in our fleet.

They also are in charge of um keeping um upkeep of all of our fire stations and all of our fire facilities.

So everything they do with our capital plan, most of the money in our capital plan um is uh ran through Chief Zach Smith, who's here with me today.

Uh he works with my office to make sure we have the funding to do all that, but it all kind of works out of that 312 State Fair Boulevard.

So a lot of things go on over there besides the mechanic work.

Ums, you know, everybody knows our our fire trucks, um, their specialized equipment.

They have fire pumps, aerial ladder hydraulics, water foam delivery systems, and they need to work flawlessly during an emergency.

So getting these things um fixed in a timely manner is important to make sure our spare apparatus along with our frontline apparatus isn't putting um our firefighters or our constituents at risk.

So right now we're at a position where we basically have a gun to our head.

Um where we're we're not able to fix our apparatus in a safe indoor facility.

Um just a history of what happened to the floor.

Um the structural concerns started about approximately in September of 20,000, 2024.

Um the city engineering department with CNS, they did a facilities assessment and they identified some small cracks in the maintenance garage floor.

Then on July 18th, a fire apparatus lift jack broke through that slab, uh, revealing severe structural damage.

So at that point, city engineering and CNS to clear the floor unsafe for vehicles, lifts, and any other heavy loads.

It also restricted um foot traffic in certain areas of that um floor.

Um underneath that floor, there's broken sanitary sewer and oil water separator lines that come from our bathroom and it comes from the floor when um the excess fluids um fall on the floor from the fire trucks.

So all that underneath, um, because the floor um became um broken in a in a failed state, um, those particular systems also are in in um bad repair, and we were told we couldn't use the bathrooms and we couldn't use that oil water separator on top of the floor being broken.

Um that particular, and um once I get done, I'm gonna give this overview and then Ian Brown and Michael Layman from Assessment, Ian Brown from Engineering can answer all these questions.

But the area at 312 State Fair Boulevard, it's already designated as a um DEC superfund location.

Um so when this um broken floor um occurred, we uh called the DEC.

There was a spill number just in case there was any contaminants that leaked into the soil.

So that's underway with the city engineering and CNS.

Um I spoke about our operational impacts.

Um right now we have a gun to our head basically because we can't operate inside of a maintenance indoor facility.

Um right now we're working outside.

Um the weather's been great for us, so we've been able to buy a little bit of time doing um the work the mechanics have been doing outside.

Um, but with the weather coming, the freezing temperatures and the snow, they no longer are gonna be able to do that.

So we're that's why I say we have a gun to our head because we're at a really um tight time crunch to actually find a building to get into.

Um right now, um Syracuse University is letting us use one of their garage bays up on Ainsley Drive.

It's a small garage bay that doesn't fit our whole apparatus, so it's a really an emergency situation type of situation.

So multiple times since this occurred in July, um, we've got down to no spare apparatus.

So the worry is we're gonna run out of fire trucks because we can't fix them.

Um due to this, we try to find multiple multiple sites.

We reach out to multiple places.

The only um place we were able to find a temporary spot was Syracuse University.

So that's when we decided to put out an RFQ because we know that 312 State Fair Boulevard is gonna need an assessment done, and it's gonna have to have a plan on how to reconstruct it, which we're thinking is gonna be a two to five year process.

And so we put out the RFQ on August 21st, last Friday.

Um we did get some response responses back.

The RFP committee met yesterday.

Uh we reviewed all those responses, and we're in an ongoing process of evaluating um the responses.

Um we'll probably know by next week um the top one or two candidates.

Um, but the goal from this process from the RFP was to find a place we could lease if it met all of our needs as a turnkey, walk right in and bring all of our stuff or to purchase so we could actually do capital improvement plans if that facility didn't meet our needs to just move in.

Um so our number one concern is um trying to get back into 312 State Fair Boulevard after engineering figures out what's the process to get through that and how much that's gonna cost with that cost analysis.

In the meantime, we need to have a place we can lease or purchase in a compliant building um just to get us um through this winter and through the process of engineering, figuring out how much it's gonna cost to rebuild our building over at 312 State Fair Boulevard.

Um we're also analyzing um if we can't find a place through this RFQ process, we at least need um a place to store our vehicles at.

While they're not getting fixed right now, they can sit outside, but when they become um in freezing temperatures, the major components of the trucks are gonna freeze, and then we have about besides the fire trucks that are on the front line, our spare apparatus is worth probably 15 to 20 million dollars.

So we want to try to protect those assets by having those in some type of secure storage.

So you know, we met yesterday for the RFP committee meeting.

I talked to um counselor Majuk, and um one of the things he was asking me is what can the council do to help.

I think uh right now we're at a point where um we're definitely in an emergency situation.

Um, and what I would ask for is funding to retrofit a temporary heated space uh for the storage of our vehicles before freezing weather sets in.

Um, like I said, we got about 15 to 20 million dollars in assets of um apparatus that isn't on the front line, and when those frontline apparatus break, these backup spares go on the front line while we fix the the frontline apparatus.

Um so I'm gonna be looking for your support for some emergency funding.

Um Ian Brown has uh figured out what it would cost to um possibly retrofit uh some spaces, but through the RFQ process, we are trying to evaluate different places we can go to maybe have storage if it wouldn't be fit enough to actually do our maintenance operations in there.

Um the second um piece of support I would ask is uh when we do identify a building, which is probably on our end the hardest part because we we need certain things that a building for us to move into, the floors have to be a certain thickness, the height needs to be a certain height, we have to have a certain amount of doors to get in and out.

So there's certain things that we have to do, and until we meet that um find a building with that criteria, um that's what we're working on now.

But when we do find a building that we all agree in the RFP D RFP committee agrees that we found a suitable place, is to ask for your support to lease or purchase that building if uh purchase is available.

Um if no viable options from the RFP process come up, um I would ask because it's an emergency situation that we'll be able to outside of the RFP process, depending how that goes, still try to secure a building, um, whatever legal process we need to go through through that.

So um there's no legislation to provide now because we don't have a concrete answer, but I know there's time limits to when we submit legislation.

So I'm just asking for your grace because of this emergency that when we do find a place if we could put something on the agenda and have your support.

Um and I'll make sure you guys are all kept in the loop of exactly what steps we're taking.

So it's a collective process on what we're doing for our next steps, and it won't be a surprise.

Um third thing I think is whenever um CNS and City Engineering figure out what we can do over at 312 State Fair Boulevard, because the goal over there, as I stated, and you can look in the handout, that facility was so old and it was um out of date.

I think what I would ask is any rebuild that we do over there turns into a modern facility that can handle our fleet over the next 50 to 65 years and um make sure that it's safe and um able to grow with our fleet.

And I just want to recognize our maintenance team because our mechanics to be able to work over the last five or six weeks um in these conditions.

I mean, they're out on the hot days.

We're putting up pop-up tents, and they're you know, they're they're going above and beyond to do um our mechanical work.

So I just want to say thank you to Zach Smith and the mechanic team because uh we've been in a pretty bad spot the last couple weeks, and it's only gonna get worse with the bad weather coming.

Um so that's kind of what I got with a summary overview.

Um, any engineering um questions, Ian Brown is here to answer those, and then Michael Layman is here.

He's kind of being the point guard on um finding a new facility, the RFQ process, and he could talk about um those types of topics.

Is there any questions that I can answer based off that summary?

So, Chief, over the years since you have been a chief, I I have watched you collaborate with other uh municipal or at least municipalities around fire and and and the and the and the vocation in itself, right?

And and I have seen you reaching out, you know, trying to be a good steward, trying to be a good team player and and trying to be a good collaborator, right?

Yes.

Uh case in point, such as when you when when the uh the tower was built, other people are coming in to use it, and you're very open, very, you know, because you see the need of other individuals or other municipalities need to want to use it for their training.

You've been very open about it, yes.

Now there's a time when Chief Mons and his team need to be throwing a little bone, just like he has been throwing.

Are there any any municipalities around here?

Yes that you can tap in and and maybe do uh municipal intermunicipal like agreement where where you know we are heading into winter.

And I don't know even if today if we were to approve a space that it would be ready in time for you to use it.

Yes.

And so based on your last point, that's why we're also possibly looking for a storage facility to at least keep our stuff inside while we figure out this longer term solution.

Um to your point about collaborating with other agencies, when we reached out to Syracuse University, we they weren't the only place we reached out to all our city partners, county partners in the state.

The problem is the facility we need, there's not that many of these facilities in the around in this area at all.

Um the commercial real estate market, uh a place that can have a certain depth and thickness in the floor, have certain heights in this in the ceilings, to be able to have uh places on the ceiling where we could retrofit our air line drops, our gas drops, and all the things that go into a maintenance garage, there aren't that many facilities that could handle a fire truck that weighs 80,000 pounds.

So that's kind of um in the places that do, they're kind of overcapacitated.

Even as we are trying to partner with DPW to some extent, um we were running a uh estimate if we were able to like maybe do some storage over there.

Um that's we're looking at $800,000 just to move in a DPW because of the way our fleet is and what they already have and the capacity limits that come with trying to um force your way uh square peg into a circle hole.

So we've we've called all as many people in the city, um as many people in the county, some private entities that have larger vehicles.

Um there's a capacity issue, there's labor issues, and there's other issues that we weren't able to come up with any secure place besides Syracuse University allowing us to use that one garage bay for um Is there a cost to Syracuse University?

Um no, he's no cost.

At this point, he's letting us use it at no cost.

I think we got an agreement for a dollar.

Okay.

So we kind of and um we're using that.

Um our largest trucks barely make it in there.

So um, we're using that um, what is that once or a couple times a day?

Okay.

Once a day?

Once a day, we're probably using it for once a day to get a truck in there compared to having our garage where we have six garage doors where we can have multiple trucks in there.

We have I believe six mechanics.

We have six mechanics that are constantly working on our 113 vehicles.

So this has slowed us down, and um, yeah, we've tried we try to reach out to from the county executive level to um the state fair, um, the building that we need with all the specs that were in our RFQ, there aren't many options, and that's the number one issue.

And if they are an option, they're already occupied.

Chief Mons, how much?

I mean, fire square footage, how much square footage you know, how much you need?

Do you have a lot of fleet?

19 or 10.

Even like a box.

I know you have a lot of yeah.

So I'll let Michael Laman has all the information on what we have and what we were looking for.

And uh, Michael, do you just um wouldn't mind coming up and speaking about that?

And um, thank you.

Sure thing, Chief.

Good morning, counselors.

Um, Councilor Caldwell, the uh requirement for square footage, we asked for a range of 15 to 25,000 in the RFQ.

The other question I have, Chief is thank you, Mike.

Thank you, Council.

The other question I have is at any any point, was this part of the CIP, which is capital improvement plan at all?

Well, um all of our buildings, um, since I've been the chief working with Chief Smith, um, we've basically broke down our capital planning to um explicitly try to remo remodel or repair or prevent a um have a prevent of maintenance plan for the critical parts of the fire stations, roofs, doors, windows, or overhead doors that work a lot.

One of the criteria, um, one of the components of the stations, and over here at our training facility, that was a um Chief Smith and his team identified these oil water separators.

These buildings, part of the problem is these buildings were built in the 70s.

They're I think the average age of our fire stations are 50 over 50 years old, and like these uh critical components have never been maintained.

I wouldn't say maintained, but they've never been serviced, right?

So there's other issues probably brewing in some of the fire stations.

We know station two and station nine have an oil water separator that we need to address that has been in the Capitol plan.

But as we were addressing this, we were going through COVID and there was a supply chain issues, and then having the labor force to actually do the work.

So a lot of our planning got stalled on that front.

But um our goal is um to continuously monitor and have these type of situations uh planned for before they happen.

I think we identified that this was an issue with the floor.

Um we never thought we would get to the point where we couldn't use it at all.

We kind of figured at some point we could have a slower process, we would be able to like work through a winter, identify um building to relocate and do the same process, not in an emergency situation.

So our team over there, um, they do a great job with our apparatus and the buildings.

So they're also the supervisors, not only are experts on fixing our apparatus, but they know all of our stations.

Um, like our engineering team knows our Zach Smith and our other chief over there, Jeff Grosso, and uh Jamie Pinkley, they they know our buildings inside and out, and so we try to plan for those um needs that are coming up, and this was one that was identified.

Um we did a facilities assessment of all the fire station facilities last year.

Most of the things that were identified were already in our capital plan, so we already had to address some things, but this is one that was identified.

Um is just larger than we had in our plan, I would say.

Other questions?

Chief, how many sites have been identified?

Um through the RFP process.

I know some of it I can't speak publicly, but we did have um about a half a dozen responses back.

Um I'll let Michael Lehman speak.

I don't know how much publicly I can speak about it, but I I was kind of told that process has to be um not public until we identify us one of the locations, or if we rule out none of them.

Completely understand.

I just want to know how many sites and uh uh out of the sites that were um identified, were they close to or up to our standards?

I don't mean just trying to understand where we are with that.

Uh thank you, counselor.

My understanding is I can only uh speak about that we are evaluating the responses right now.

I can't provide any details about any of their responses.

So is the goal to temporary chief in both you guys to move there, Chief and then move back after that fixes?

Like after you get it fixed?

Yes, that's our number one goal is to get our fire our mechanics, our fire mechanics over into a space so they can work while um Ian Brown and CNS figure out what we need to do to fix up 312 State Fair Boulevard, and when that time comes, we move back.

And uh one of the other things that Ian Brown could speak to also is over at the DPW, their maintenance garage where their mechanics work, their floor at some point soon is gonna also probably not this bad, but gonna need to be replaced.

And then we were hoping that this building that we moved to would be a swing space for when we're done that they would be able to come over and use that space while their floor gets fixed.

So Chief, but that's 312 when you talk about fixing and moving it back.

If you were to go back to 312, you would have to expand it, correct?

Um, yes, um, kind of to what I was trying to say earlier.

I don't know if I articulated it well, is that building was 56 years old and those trucks are so small.

Um that building was built for those types of trucks, and so the goal would be to expand that out.

Um, I think 120 feet by 60 feet is what we're looking at.

What is it now about probably?

So it's probably 60 by 60.

So it would be double expanded double.

Yeah, and we have the room to do it over there in our training facilities there, so it's nice to have everything together because sometimes the firefighters that are on duty can drop the truck off and do some uh maintenance on it, and then they can go do training at the same time.

But right now, um we just need a place immediately to figure out where we can go to, you know.

Um, but the goal is to eventually once we do the cost analysis of what everything's gonna cost to go back into that building and um have it so it fits our new trucks, and the trucks are only gonna get bigger and heavier in the future.

They're not gonna get lighter, I would say.

Chief.

Yes.

Has there been any accidents?

Uh people working have been any accidents where they slipped, they fell.

Um, we definitely the mechanics do get injured once in a while.

I don't think we've had anything that's directly related to the floor at this point.

Okay, so OCA hasn't been in there since notice any violations.

No, not at this time.

And right now it's restrictive.

I know you came over for a visit, and um, yeah, we try to keep the mechanics off the areas uh that are really um in a place that we told them that per the engineering that we can't walk on.

But we have so many parts to our maintenance, we have our lifts over there, all of our tools and equipment, all of our supplies, um our parts that are you know needed to fix a truck.

So um that place is like our hub for and um for our fire department.

And you know, I think our number one resource in a fire department is our people.

Uh the next thing uh I would say our our fire trucks, because without a fire truck, there's no good having the best firefighters show up without the truck with water to put out.

So I can I can say this.

When I went there and I saw the cracks in the floors, and you told me stay away from that section, they're uneven.

Uh the sewage area, horrific.

It's horrific condition.

And I and I really believe this is you you know, you go to work every day, but you have to be careful you don't slip or there's any accident.

So right now I am concerned because of the hazardous conditions that you are working with.

Yes, I I agree with that, counselor.

Thank you.

So so chief, is it my understanding that with firefighter truck being so specialized that you need a specialized mechanics to a point that there isn't any private entity locally that can fix that a cup uh a truck of that capacity?

Um so if and we and we did an analysis and I don't have those dollar amounts with me.

I think we might I might pull them up real quick.

But if we were to farm out, there are places that fix these trucks, but there's a long there's I think they're a year backed up.

If we if we depending on what it is, um if we gave that some the um waiting period is over a year long, um, and uh for the cost of what we have our mechanics on our staff for um to farm that out, it's like I can't recall, but it's it's it's extremely expensive, and the turnaround to get the truck back is um not a good place.

Now, if there's a few of them that we could put in a situation to get it fixed because we have to get it back, we will.

We have some trucks that are in the warranty that we will try to do that, but there are still long waiting times for the labor to be done and for the parts to come in also with some of them.

So that's also an issue.

Okay.

Other questions.

So what's what's the path forward uh here?

So initially, and we're we're assessing a place we can immediately go to either move our operations, and if that's gonna be prolonged, because if the RFQ doesn't produce any um good um results when we pick one place that we're gonna move into, um, then we're gonna be asking for emergency funding to um if one of these places in the RFQ submissions is viable to like maybe we can possibly still get it to move in there for storage and then retrofit it to store the vehicles or to figure out where we could store our vehicles at until we find a place that we can do our mechanic, our maintenance operations out of.

And then right now, CNS and um city engineering are already beginning what it would cost to um redesign our 312 State Fair Boulevard and uh what that plan would look like and what that cost possibly would be.

So the thing with this, there's multiple things going on.

We have 312 State Fair Boulevard where the floor is unsafe.

That at one time we want to be able to go back there.

Um we need a space right now to move into before the coal comes.

Hopefully, this space is a space we could stay into for the next several years until we get the concrete plan of what we're doing at 312 State Fair Boulevard.

And then if we can't find a place that's suitable to do our operations with our maintenance division, we're gonna be looking for a storage space to move into so at least we can keep our 15 to 20 million dollars worth of assets out of the freezing and um snow weather, snowy weather.

So I and I don't know if this is my question.

What's what's the tentative time timeline to because I I know we are in the process of our uh RFQ, right?

RFQ?

RQ.

I call it as RFP.

RFQ, right?

Right.

And so what's what's the tentative timeline in this in terms of okay, this is going on, when do we expect like a legislation in front of us to well as soon as we identify a building, I'm gonna try to submit an emergency um piece of legislation that can be waived on to the very next council agenda.

So it will it will just depend tentatively in terms of when you get this going as quickly as possible.

And I think our RFQ process, the goal is um we got another meeting scheduled for next week already.

Between now and then, hopefully we can assess the submissions and we can either pick one or rule out everything, and then we move to the next step of maybe coming to you with a waiver if we identify something that might have been outside the RFQ process or through negotiations that weren't in the RFQ process to find a building that fits our needs.

So it'll be safe to say probably a month or something.

Um we could possibly find a building within the next couple days.

It depends on, but as soon as we identify seven three RFQ process, whether we can find a building or not, and if we don't, then we have to move on to the next process after the RFQ process, which we've gave everybody the ability to offer a building the lease or the purchase, and we only got a certain amount of responses.

So I would hope we can move on from there.

Thank you.

Uh Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens.

Um it definitely won't be a couple days.

Um they have to go and do their due diligence.

You know, we had the RFP committee.

So I think your estimate of a month of at least for us identifying the right facility and getting back to you is probably accurate.

The the imminent, as the chief has talked about, is that we need to get these multi-million dollar um um um apparatus out of the cold.

We can't have the the especially the pumpers, that water freezing in those in those.

We just bought those trucks, right?

And so um we're working um diligently.

The I just want to give kudos to this team between fire and and finance and engineering, trying to get us a path forward to get these things in, and then we'll go to the next discussion about the our existing building, its capacity.

It was built in the 60s, and so equipment has gotten bigger, longer, you know, wider.

It just our facilities don't keep pace with the changing of this apparatus.

Chief, when you get a chance, um, could you send over uh when the time is come after you guys figured out everything, the uh numbers as far as retrofitting, the numbers for the storage facility if that's a possible route, and also one's engineering C CNS come together to do what they have to do to send us what the repairs and everything is gonna be to get our building up to date as well.

Yes, um, Ian Brown told me today that that's all in motion right now, so we're just waiting for those um documents and those figures to come.

And um, I believe if anything comes first, um the first piece of legislation if we find a building we can move into temporarily, um, we'll have cost analysis with that and what that would cost.

So that possibly could be the first piece of legislation you see, or if we don't identify a place we can move into because maybe the floor isn't um thick enough to hold a truck to go up on the lift, but if we can park apparatus in there, we might be coming with legislation to utilize a building um to at least store apparatus because right now we don't have any place.

No, that is a part of the retrofitting of the price, right?

Yes, okay, yes, yes, yes, sir.

Other questions?

Well, I think I think Chief, we we are with you.

And um, whatever you can find in terms of addressing this matter, I think this body will be willing to collaborate with you and figure out the right path forward.

Uh, if nothing else, uh that will conclude our meeting today.

Thank you.

I just want to say thank you because I've engaged with every counselor that is on the common council and um you've asked me questions.

I've tried to get the answers, and I just want to thank you for um understanding and um supporting us because like I said, this is a critical time for us, and I appreciate the support.

You are very welcome.

So that will conclude our meeting today.

Have a good day.

Thank you.