Good morning.

Um morning everybody, I'm Counselor Donamore, head of public safety, and we're here today to talk about the fire department budget.

I have with me Counselors Hudson, Counselor Nave, Counselor Caldwell, Councilor Monte Monto, President Pantiagua, Counselor Williams, uh Fire Chief.

And I don't know that this is first deputy chief Elton Davis.

Oh, and first deputy chief Elton Davis.

Thank you for being here.

I'll give it to you, Chief.

Okay, I'll start off by just doing an overview of our operations and then get in uh to some budget stuff, uh, overview, and then I'll allow for questions on anything you guys have.

I'll start off by saying, you know, our uh what our fire department does is physically and uh mentally demanding, it's complex and critical for the safety of our city.

Um basically simply put our constituents call us on their worst day, they trust and they call us when they need our help.

Um we have eleven strategically located fire stations that house ten engine companies, six ladder companies.

Um there's four people on each of those apparatus.

We have a rescue company that has seven members, and we have an eight-person hazardous materials team that doubles as an engine company and a trunk company, and they operate out of station five on North Geddis.

We have 75 firefighters on duty, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and every call that we're dispatched to, we answer every call.

Um 92% of our staffing, um it's I have a handout if you look at our staffing, 92% of our staffing, um they work on the front line on fire trucks that leaves eight percent of us, um you can see some of our staff that are in the back of the room here, eight percent of us our support staff across eight divisions um that make up our operation that help make our operations efficient and effective.

Um our support staff during the day, Monday through Friday, and they do also responses um to emergencies.

Um we have eight different divisions, training division, maintenance division, our communications, EMS, special operations, we have an emergency management group, health and safety office, our fire investigation unit which investigates every fire in the city, uh, per state law, um and we have an administration and um the fire chief and the first deputy chief deal with internal affairs functions, and that supports our mission um with our frontline firefighters.

Um and a lot of people think um you guys know but um people think fire suppression is all we do, but that's not it.

Uh we have a broader mission, um it's fire prevention.

Um we do a lot of fire inspections with our fire marshals.

Last year we did over eleven hundred fire inspections on scene of uh locations.

Uh we do fire education.

We had over 1,500 interactions with our constituents in the city.

Um last year we reviewed six hundred and twelve plan reviews for construction permits we work with hand in hand with the department of code enforcement.

Our EMS response, we do a ride out range of medical emergencies from difficulty breathing to somebody's heart stopping or somebody's stopping breathing.

So we do all the different high priority um EMS calls.

Um, like I stated before, we do hazmat incidents that involve dangerous and toxic materials.

Uh just the other day we had a call with um something as simple as there was um two um 50-gallon drums of formeldehyde up against the building, and our team goes and we stabilize the incident um the situation uh for our constituents, and they are the county wide hazmat team, and they're also um dispatched um to multiple counties if needed because of their tech um skill.

Um we have a technical rescue team um that's our rescue company.

They do uh confined space, rope rescues, trench rescues, water rescues, and they deal with any kind of collapse hazards, and they also respond to every vehicle accident in the city.

They stabilize the car, um extricate patients if needed, and we provide patient care with our engine companies.

One of um the second page that you have in your handout is our alarm responses.

Last year we responded to 25,863 calls.

Um the last few years we've had record-breaking amounts of calls.

Last year was another high year.

Um I would say that historically these have been high years, but I think this is just the norm now, this amount of calls.

Um so far this year, we responded to 7,786 calls.

Um we're on pace to have 26,800 calls, and that's a 23% increase from 2021.

Um typically our call volume in the city is half of the call volume that fire departments in the county answer.

So we are a very busy fire department, one of the busiest in the state.

Um the next page um has our major fires, and that's a fire where when we pull up, there's heavy smoke and fire uh showing out of windows and roofs and really bad situations for our constituents.

Last year we had 80 fires.

So far this year we have uh 28.

Um, we're having a fire every three or four days this year so far.

Um we're on pace to have 96 major structure fires.

Um over the last four years, we averaged 82 fires um a year.

Um in those fires.

Last year we made um some heroic um actions.

We rescued eight civilians out of those fires.

Um so far this year we've rescued 11 um civilians while they were trapped inside a fire.

Um, and we give our constituents another chance to live another day.

Um I think our call volume is driven by the growth of population, economic development.

I think since 2011, there's been over 13,000 units of housing and 137 different developments that have come online.

And even now we're going through permitting processes where over in the Inner Harbor, there's like a 1700 unit apartment complex that's gonna be built over there.

So as the economic development that everybody wants is happening in the city, uh, we're trying to keep pace and uh keep up with that demand.

Um out of those 26,000 calls we respond to, um, a thousand are fires that we respond to.

I think this is a point that I make that I don't think we talk about enough.

Over 900 of those fires every year remain minor because of our fast response times.

We're able to get there, put the fire out, and they don't escalate into a major fire.

Um we save property and that also makes sure that people aren't injured, our civilians, our firefighters aren't injured, which is our mission, right?

Is to protect life and property.

Um so um, like I said, we respond to every alarm that we're dispatched to.

Um also in that handout, you'll see on our structure fires.

25% of our fires that we respond to, um they um they do turn into multiple alarm fires in buildings.

Um that calls for um a significant um recall of more apparatus to come to the scene.

Um it leaves the city um with less resources, but our command staff and our incident commanders do a quick job of redeploying our our resources around the city so we can answer the next 911 call.

Um sometimes um it puts a uh taxing uh situation for us, especially last year.

We had seven or eight times where we had simultaneous, um we call them Signal 99s, which that's a large uh structure fire.

Um we had two of those going at the same time, and that pretty much drains our resources, but we try to get our companies back in service.

But my point with all of our operations is um our call volume, it's been rising.

Um it's kind of the norm now where we're going on 26 to 27,000 calls a year.

Our major fires are consistently high.

Um the severity of our incidents are more frequent, and um we're we we are requiring our firefighters to do more labor-intensive operations to extinguish these blazes.

But um with our operations and our strategy to deploy, uh, we've had some great statistics and data.

Um, last year in 2025, because of our fast response times.

Um we had 391 structure fires from our data that we contained a fire to one room and it didn't escalate or spread to another room.

Um our civilian fire fatalities from 2024 to 2025 dropped 85.7 percent.

And we went 14 months without a fire civilian fatality, which um is the longest span that I could remember in my career um to go that long without a fire fatality in that span.

So our deployment plan and our response plan is working, I believe, um, to the best it can based on the city that we have.

Um and last year with our deployment model, our response times improved by nine percent, which equaled a 16 second reduction in response time.

And I think that is important because the fire doubles in every 30 seconds, and that's the difference between a survivable fire and a fire that will turn into a fatal fire.

Um Chief, really quick question.

How many um fire stations do you have?

Uh, right now we have 11.

11.

Yep.

With 10 engine companies, six ladder companies, and our rescue companies in the 11th fire station.

Okay.

So with the more people with the economic development, more buildings, there's more density to the calls um in the areas that we're getting called.

Um, like I said, I think as a city's growing, um, my job and my goal is to make sure that we can meet that demand.

Um, ISO, I have a sheet in your um handout.

It's about our um insurance service office um classification.

Uh we have an ISO um classification of one, which is the highest um you can have.

Um there's only one percent of the 50,000 fire departments in the United States have this impressive rating, and it measures things like our staffing on duty training, our fleet preparedness, and our fire prevention inspection programs to make sure that we're meeting the mark for a city of our size.

Uh the lower the classification rating, um, the lower the insurance rates are for residential and commercial structures in our city.

So it's an important metric, and it measures our fire department of what we have.

Um, so that's kind of the overview um of our operations.

I think everything that I discussed kind of like leads to uh one thing, and that's the budget um and the money.

And so I'll just start off by saying this is my ninth budget hearing um over my eight budgets that we've put together and had adopted um at the end of each fiscal year, we've come within 1.34 of spending that budget.

We've underspent our budget by 1.34.

So I think that I believe we've been fiscally responsible and disciplined and accountable with managing the taxpayers' money.

Um, our command staff and our fiscal officers that I've had over the um eight years have done a tremendous job helping keeping me on track and our department on track, and I'm proud of our responsibility that we have to manage that money.

So the money that's given to us, we like I said, I'll reiterate it again.

I think we have priorities, we make sure we take care of the priorities, any deficiencies that we have, we make sure we address the deficiencies, and I try not to come and ask for any money that we don't need to make sure we can keep our firefighters and our constituents safe.

Um I just wanted to give that overview about our history as I'm going into fiscal year 27.

Um this year we're asking just for a 2.9% increase over our civilian and um sworn budget.

I think you know, with inflation, um the rising cost of our tools, equipment, um we have contractual negotiated um agreements in our personnel line, which um is not discretionary, we have to pay for that.

But um 90.3% of our budget is on staffing and collective bargained um dollars.

The other 9.7 of our operating budget pays for our day-to-day operations.

Um that's about 4.53 million dollars, and that does pay for our equipment supplies, our maintenance of our fire trucks, um, our service agreements, our warranties, and all the different equipment that we have, our PPE, all the tools and equipment that we use to do life uh saving measures on people.

Um but so the key takeaway is 90% of our budget is our personnel.

Um that's our people and um the wages and different things that they have, and 10% is for our daily operations.

Um so like I said, um I know we're gonna get into some numbers.

Um I believe uh what we're asking for this year, um, we could always use a little bit more extra money.

Um I just ask that if um there's any reductions in the plan um that the fire department is spared because we are bare really at our bare minimum right now, and um we're trying to do our best with the money we have, and I I don't want to overspend, but I want to make sure we're taking care of our safety of our firefighters and our constituents.

Um I just get a quick question, Chief.

Yes, um, out of your budget, how much of it is contractually obligated?

I will say um percentage if you could give me a percentage.

I will say out of the 90.3%, um, that's 41.97 million dollars.

I think around 34 million dollars is for the salaries, and then the rest of it is all contractual besides the overtime, which is another five million dollars.

Chief, I know as you talk about the budget, and there's a lot of um well, Donna is really the only new one.

Right, and she's good ahead.

So I do want to say, and I'm gonna put it out there before you get going.

Um I mentioned it before in the WASH administration, and I'm mentioning it now in the Owens administration.

I don't see it here, but as we grow and as we build, as we got new infrastructure, new housing, new buildings, all this, I would love to see um us bring back some of the fire stations, right?

I would love to see that you know, with our our um timing that it stays that way.

And as we build in a community and as the highways coming down and we bring back the population that's coming back again, right?

Then we have to be prepared.

I always say the best thing is if you stay ready, you don't have to get ready, right?

So that it saves lives.

So I'm hoping that there's something that we can continue to talk about that process because that's gonna be important as far as like I said, when the highway comes down, the traveling piece as well as the safety piece of everyone in the community.

And we right now have an amazing time, you know, as far as two minute um coming, like that's phenomenal.

That's why we're at one rank one, and we have to keep that.

So um I hope that there's something that we can look at and continue to talk about that.

I think as a city continues to grow, I know there's a lot of talk about Micron and just the um, you know, there's not a lot of housing available for for um people to move into, which means there are more people living in housing in as we develop more.

I I always have a plan and uh um uh uh a goal to be able to meet that demand.

And whenever the funding's available, I'll have a plan that I'll be able to whip out in seconds.

So uh whenever that time comes in the right time to um move forward with that, I'll be ready for that.

Chief, I wanted to give you a little more credit than you're taking for yourself.

You told me 2.9% increase combined.

I was looking only at your sworn, which I've got a 2.25.

Okay.

And um, you know, essentially you're adding one position two-year civilian, but really that two and a quarter percent year over year for your sworn, I think it's uh must have been tough choices on on your department to get there.

And I I want to compliment you on keeping your expenditures in check.

Yes, thank you.

That being said, to Councillor Caldwell's point, you know, uh there have been conversations around putting additional stations online.

What would what would the cost to be to put an additional station online?

Ballpark, you know, I know that depends on what we have there where it is, but the I think um the area of station seven is a perfect location for that.

Um, especially with the 81 project, uh the personnel would be around 1.8 million dollars.

I think a brand new fire station would be somewhere between 12 and 15 million dollars.

We would need a fire apparatus that's between 1.2 and 1.8 million dollars.

And then I think we would just need to have our tools and equipment to um put on the fire engine and everything else we would be able to um absorb in our daily operations that we have.

You you threw a bunch of numbers up there real quick.

1.2 and 1.8.

And the recurring would be the 1.2 for staffing.

First um 1.7 for staffing approximately, yes.

And Chief, that people that don't know, so station seven is the one that we just got back that didn't fall through far as the building the cell, right?

Um, yes.

Okay, so that is the station seven right on Fayette Street, um, located in between like the University area and east side, just for people that didn't know.

Yes.

Chief, I I wanted to go back.

On the last year, how many alarms that were false alarms where you went there?

False alarms.

I get information.

I have I have information.

I have all the answers.

That just takes me a couple seconds to dig it out.

So our team um puts together some great information for me.

I just have it in my binder backwards.

So it's gonna be while you're doing that, Chief.

I just want to um acknowledge and thank the fire department for um a fire that occurred in my district last week um where you guys got an 88-year-old out of her home that she didn't even know was on fire.

So thank you.

We all know that the fire department's invaluable in our community.

Um, and in that case, probably saved an 88-year-old lady's life.

So thank you.

So we have we have I don't have necessarily a false alarms, we have alarm activations, and what those are sometimes those are cooking fires, people smoking.

So they're they're actually not false alarms, they're coded as false alarms.

Um I would say Chief Davis um before he became the first deputy chief.

Um a false alarm is when um there's a malfunction in a system that's making the detector or a system trip without any smoke or fire.

Um most of our alarm activations are tripped by some type of smoking or some smoker toxic condition.

Um but those alarm activations in general are like 7,000 of those calls, and a lot of those calls sometimes they turn into major fire, sometimes they don't.

I was at the Pennfield departments meeting with tenants, and the alarms went off, and someone tells it happens all the time because some people just want to smoke.

Yes, and that kind of his there any been any hospitalization with the with the firemen, firefighters where they've been hospitalized.

Any surge conditions?

Um we definitely have a bunch of firefighters that have been injured.

I think um our injury rate from 24 to 25, we were reduced by 32 percent.

But I think we've had 45 firefighters, I believe, that were injured in the line of duty of some type of whether they twisted their ankle to um tearing their ACL to getting burned.

Um we have a ride away or a wide array of injuries that our firefighters do.

We have we have probably six to ten firefighters out on line duty injuries right now, recovering, and uh they've been out for a long time.

Um, really bad shoulder injuries.

So does that is does that affect your staff at all?

Um it does.

Um, every every person that's not that we have projected to be riding on a frontline fire truck when they're off, um, that will create overtime in some condition or capacity, yes.

And so um I know overtime was a you know a topic, um, counselor more.

Um I know you were asking for an audit, but I gave you three years.

Um, if you look through, there's three years of our overtime, how it's broken down between our frontline um backfilling on our fire trucks and all the other work we have to do um to to get all of our eight divisions work done.

So that's um pretty drilled down.

That's everything that I evaluate.

Um I gave it all to you.

Uh so there's three years, and um I have as much as you need if you want to come to the office or whatever, but that's all of our numbers.

Thank you.

Um Chief, you have here to 261 firefighters.

Is that the ideal number or are we um for um for right now that's um ideal for where we're at right now if everybody uh wasn't not hurt and everybody was working and uh based on when time is off, I think we would have enough firefighters that cover what we need to do with um less overtime.

Is there a vacancy rate built in?

Um yes, there is.

I think it's 1.4 million dollars.

Yes.

Vacancy.

Hey Chief, how are you um with vehicles?

Um our our fleet um back in 2018.

Um I've said this before, we went 14 years um where we didn't we went since 2011, we went um 14 years without buying 15 or so large apparatus um over the last eight and a half years with our maintenance team, they're really really good.

I know you um Donna, uh counselor more, you kind of came over and you met them.

Um they are subject matter experts, and uh we've been repurposing um using our old fire trucks, um, reframing them.

We've been doing everything we can to make sure our fire apparatus are um front and ready for our safety of our firefighters and to show up at people's homes.

So right now um we're at the point um there's a few years where we had to buy three or four engines in one year or two or three ladder trucks, but we're at the point now where if we just um maintain a minimum replacement schedule, um we could basically forecast the the cost of our fire apparatus over the next 50 years.

And we can also um enter into a contract to lock in pricing.

I know the market's been changing, but we've been trying to do that over the last few years where we can say we know every other year we have to buy two engines and then the other other year we're gonna buy a ladder truck, but we can lock that in um if if possible to like um make sure we have the savings.

But if we just continue to um build off of our apparatus replacement program that our our maintenance division put together, uh we will be in good shape.

Chief question on page 140 of our budget book.

On your budget book.

I'm looking at fire captain and assistant fire equipment.

There's a wide range there.

It goes from 10,000 to 106,000.

Why is that?

Oh, okay.

Okay.

We're just curious.

I was gonna say, give me five of those.

Good catch.

Give me five of those.

You give you five of those for that money, you can have five.

You can add.

You know what?

The actually the gentlemen that are over there doing that work, they do the work of five people.

Honestly, they are spectacular.

They really do a good job with our fleet.

They oversee our building and maintenance with the deputy chief over there, they do a good job.

So I think we are getting the work of five people with the regular corrected salary.

So how oh, I'm sorry, one more question.

Because I'm looking at your administrative service manager.

That's to be determined.

What is that based on?

You want to go over that?

So uh part of part of uh what the fire chief, fire chief, first deputy, and the executive deputy chief does is we do a lot of HR.

A lot of uh human resources, as with discipline with uh a variety of things.

We we were very interested in placing that using having a position that we could have someone do HR to help us with legal issues to help us with uh employment issues that we go through, FMLA, things on that line, such that our executive staff now could concentrate on the actual running of the fire department.

We we we experience a lot of disciplinary issues during during the year that we that we need to address.

And I think that takes a lot of time away from the budgeting from uh from us actually performing the work of the fire department.

So we were very interested in adding that position to assist the fire chief and with his daily duties.

And um our internal affairs department is right here.

We handle everything.

He does all the investigations and I sign off of it.

So we kind of deal with every good, bad thing that comes up HR wise, and we counsel with CDHR, but um it is it consumes us, and we're hoping to alleviate that with an HR person that uh is an expert in FMLA, ADA, all the different things that we're kind of we kind of make.

All right, now she that's what y'all doing with our some of the stuff with counsel from um corporation counseling, but like we're dealing with it all the time.

The goal is to have um a civilian kind of work on that information, and then uh we could sign off on it, but it would be a part of our internal affairs team that deals with all these situations.

With you know, like ADA laws, I'm not sure the the timing, but those change on a constant basis.

You know, ADA uh FMLA things like that, those are a lot of issues that we are battling with up every day.

And then that position it would be a support position to also help out on a lot of other things that we have going on, but the concept concentration for that position would be to take some of that HR stuff off of our plate and have us in our you know, someone who is dedicated to do that, can stay up on the current laws, the current things that are happening in that in that sphere, and we can dedicate more time to chief and yes, to fire suppression and the things of the like.

Do you have a sense of of which grade it would fall under?

So we have a sense of um there's no dollar amount in there.

I think it was gonna be like an 80 to 85,000 dollar um amount, I believe.

I I didn't notice that if there wasn't a dollar amount in there.

Now let me ask I've Helen, are you all set?

So when I was asking about the the firefighter's number, you know, how does that relate to to the recriteries that you're doing you have an annual retirement a flow?

How is that um yes?

And so um right now we have about six vacancies, which um by the end of the year, um, when we reach about 20 firefighters, we put on a class and then we um fill those vacancies up.

So we kind of how many classes you have a year, too.

Um one a year.

This particular year we have a class that's eligible to retire in July and another one that's eligible to retire in um November.

So by the end of calendar year 27, we would have 68 firefighters that are eligible to retire.

So that was my question.

Yeah, we could be we could be looking at two classes um more closer together than we thought, but they will all be those classes will be driven by the retirements uh when people separate from employment.

So we would um only hire once we have those vacancies, or we can project those vacancies coming really soon.

Okay, so no, you go ahead.

So just just to um so what happens to the ones we don't hire, do they do we keep them in any way, shape, or form?

Um, which ones are you talking about?

Wait, when you say you that you just hire what you have vacancies for.

Oh, yes, then what happens with the other?

So there's a civil service list.

Uh we hire out the civil service list, we go through and we interview, um, they do a um physical agility test, and um the people that don't get selected, they stay on the civil service list until the next time we hire, or the next time there's another list that comes out that they had to take another test.

Okay, yes.

Go ahead.

It's okay.

Can you tell me what vaulted pay is it kind of fluctuates in the budget up and down?

Yeah, so we probably we don't have that many people that have vault pay left.

Um so vault, um vault was based off the police and the fire department were had parity.

They had a um a work schedule that was called the wheel that they worked a certain amount of hours, and because um they had a certain amount of days off, the firefighters got comp pay that they called vault instead of taking days off.

And that was um that was um up to how many hours, Maria?

I can't think.

Um I think I have I think I have 200 and uh huh?

So yeah, but everybody that 480 retired.

At some point, the max you could have is 480, but everybody's retired.

There's probably only probably 15 or 20 firefighters that have vault left somewhere around that.

I'll get back to you on that information.

I I actually had okay.

All right, I will get back to you on that, but that vault payment at some point.

I mean, it might be worth just paying that out to everybody now and being done with it because we can get rid of that cost, but that's money that was given to them based off the work schedule and um their comp hours that they accrued um every year for for working extra hours in a in a 40 work week.

Chief, you know, either you might be able to feel this um not in the budget book, but kind of conceptually thinking about the potential for either financial or operational efficiencies between you all and SPD.

Are there conversations between the two public safety departments or what potential might there be?

What is possible, what is unpossible, impossible, I believe the words.

I think I think we're looking at we've been talking, um, we you know, our our staff is so lean.

Um, our support staff, um, right now we have one person and uh somebody on late duty helping with our communications that are in charge of over 400 pieces of ro mobile radios, um portable radios, um, all of our IT needs, and um they've been because of our transition over to the new public safety building, we've been working hand in hand.

So Chief Russ and Chief Trudeau, we've been discussing how we can have a public safety IT and um share some of those benefits of um not having two separate uh groups.

Um we're looking at we've been like trying to figure out how we can help um purchase parts um for vehicles.

They have a different type of fleet than we do, but we do have a light fleet and um some of those types of things buying the same types of vehicles, which will allow us to buy the same parts, which is which will also save money.

So some of our maintenance costs we're looking at sharing, and so Chief Russ and I have been having a lot of conversations on that.

It's kind of trying to figure out where reasonably we can align, and like I think we're 100% on board with trying to figure out what we can do to make it work and cut costs.

So in terms of getting to that finish line, which might be cooperation and collaboration, what do you need to get there?

No, do you need additional resources in terms of planning or thinking or um I think I think what we're looking at now and uh Chief Davis has been involved in this, we're trying to figure out, you know, right now they have a um an IT group that they work with and taking over our work, and I know our one person is definitely overworked.

He's I mean, I think for every device you're supposed to have so many land techs and so many people that are operating on these things.

So we just don't want to stress what the police have, but um maybe another land tech or some other type of support system that will help us, we need to figure that out.

And I think we've been Chief Davis has been working on that.

And we have we have a lot of common systems like radios and uh the chief said, some of some of our light fleet.

So if we can if we can kind of reorganize that work such that we can assist them on, we can assist them with radio repairs, they could assist us with working on our we have mobile mobile mobile data data terminals in our apparatus, and those are the same data terminals that police officers have.

But we we have one person working on it, they have a group.

But if we can kind of work together that we can share those type of services, similar services, and also also like maintenance things, there there is some place for cost cutting, you know, uh shared services that we could both both uh departments could reduce some costs.

And Chief Russell might not like this, but I won't I won't say it.

Well, when you talk about um cost sharing and working and collaboration, I know that at one point we were working with the county as well, correct?

Um as far as as far as when you talk about your fleet, your tires, your different things that you're um so we know we um we buy our fleet off of the county contract, which is um the money stable.

Um it's um there's no um it's pretty much a constant a constant cost when you buy off a contract.

So we we kind of are using that, but um we're not collaborating with the other fire departments.

There's 53 other fire departments, and they buy their No, I mean it's with the county on the county contracts.

Oh, yes, yes, yep.

We use county, we use county purchasing for all of our purchasing, yes.

Every purchase that we have, uh we go through the county.

Yes.

Counselor Hudson is now talking county level.

It was pointed out to me.

I think it's true, not sure that you all are the closest hazmat team to the micron site.

Um, yes, we are.

How does that impact the potential for so we've been meeting with that question?

Um I it was pointed out to me that they're the closest hazmat team to Micron.

And the concurrency correct, and how that may or may not impact what they need to do and their responsibilities.

So right now in the county, what happens is um without Micron, if there's an incident and that department responds and um it's too much for them and they need our um expertise or skilled trained hazmat techs, um, they call the 911 center, the 911 Center calls our department, and then we will respond out there to mitigate that hazard.

Um anything outside the city, um, somewhere back in 2019, um, we got legislation that we could bill whoever's responsible for the spill or the fume.

So the goal is to bill whoever we respond to um based off the FEMA reimbursement schedule.

Um a few times we got dispatched to Utica or Oneida, and um all of our personnel costs our apparatus cost, all of our command staff that went, we uh got reimbursed for all those.

So that's how it works in the county right now.

Micron, um, because um the operation they're gonna have is gonna have a lot of hazardous materials coming and going, traveling to the site and back and forth.

Um we've been in contact and conversations with the county and with Micron.

It seems as if when they're gonna have a standby hazmat team at their location, and based off their operations in Boise and their operations in Virginia, they're saying that they don't think they would have a need for us as much as we would think.

But I guess we'd have to wait and see how that plays out.

But I think right now, um, just our ability to stand by to go um respond in the county, whether it's micron or not.

Um, we've been in discussions.

I'm on um, we sit on a committee that advises the county executive, the fire advisory committee, and we were looking at getting some funding to help with our staffing and with our apparatus.

Um, we just have to like formalize those discussions and ask for some money because we are standing by and we have our staff on duty, which they respond in the city, and we have a lot of hazardous materials in the city that we have to be responsible for, but um they don't have a team in the county that could stand up and do what we do.

So um the goal would be to ask them to share some of these costs if we can figure out how that conversation can go.

So, how often do they call us right now?

I would say right now, we probably had I got the data I don't have with me, probably Steve, probably six or seven times maybe for a lot of longer.

Like one maybe once a month, we might go out there.

A lot of times we do phone consultations, you know, over some something so we don't have to respond, but yeah, I would say once a month, maybe less, you know.

But usually when they go, it's a situation where there's a really hazardous situation, and especially if it's close to the city, you know, we don't want the smoke or plume to affect our ability.

So we go in, our team is really, really good, and they go and they take care of any situation that occurs anywhere in the county.

And the same thing with our technical rescue too.

Um any high angle rescues, anybody that's in a um, you know, some type of machinery trapped, or if there's a collapse, um, we're actually right now working with the state to see if we can get state funding to be a part of a statewide team that if we have a big issue here in the city, um, state resources, they will come in automatically, but we're looking at doing some automatic uh teams between Rochester, Syracuse, um, some of the larger cities.

So we're working on collaborating, which would help offset some of our cost of tools and equipment that we have.

Um, our next meeting starts in five minutes.

Do we have anything else pressing?

I just thought they just had one, just one to Chief Sand is the uh our hazmat and our tech technical rescue that we regional hazmat and rescue, it's uh it's an insurance policy, you know, for for these outstanding for the uh for the other for the community.

You know what I mean?

It's not the number that we respond to.

We have the the expertise here with our fire, with our firefighters, and we go out to support those those communities.

So it would be would be a value to us.

It's a value for for the city, but it also services absolutely everybody out in the community.

So I wouldn't look at it as a the number that we go out to.

An insurance policy.

You know, we we we we're here just in case something happens out in the county if it comes to a hazmat or technical rescue.

Thank you.

So thank you.

Any other questions before we close?

Okay.

Thank you.