The Public Safety Committee met on March 10, 2026, to discuss two primary items: a mutual aid agreement between Tuscaloosa Fire and Rescue and Advanced Fire Protection District, and a monthly operational update from Fire Chief Dilk focusing on recruitment and retention strategies ahead of anticipated retirements.
Mutual Aid Agreement with Advanced Fire Protection District
Tuscaloosa Fire Rescue Monthly Update
All right. Mo uh minutes stand approved. And now for our new business, we have Chief Dilk. Good afternoon again, Council. This is an approval. This is a contract between Advanced Fire Protection District and Tuscaloosa Fire and Rescue. It's a it's a mutual aid agreement that basically compensates us for a response to their jurisdiction. We've been working on this since I started, probably before I started. And so what kind of compensation? It's based off the FEMA rates. The FEMA has a schedule based on engines, truck companies, apparatus, and so that's what it's based off of. It's charged hourly. So if we send and this contract also it does not, we don't break any of our policies on response. So even though we're going to wherever it might be, our guys are still going to stay safe in the response model that we have. But there's a there's a basic fee. Yes, sir. I'll uh give me two seconds. I had this right here. All right, so uh for a for a truck company it would be 245 dollars an hour. Uh engine company is $390 an hour, and so um depending on the different responses. That's less than an uh an attorney would charge you five. Right. Absolutely, absolutely. Um so these are based on on medical calls, vehicle fires, structure fires, so those will build based on the response that's needed. So we're not current, are we currently already? No, sir. We are so this is okay. Yes, and this was they've got uh they have advanced fire protection district and they have some advanced volunteer department. Um you anticipate much of a volume I don't I don't think so. I think this was almost an insurance policy for them just to make sure that they do have some backup for them for their citizens if they need something. Okay. Any more questions or comments for Chief Dilk? I'll make a motion. Second. All in favor? All right, okay. Motion passes. Thank you, Chief Dilk. I'll wait. You're up again. I'm up again. Y'all gotta see me again today. And this is the Tuscaloosa fire rescue update. Yes, this is our uh monthly update, and so let's get back to my folks right there. All right, so we were asked last uh last committee meeting that we made a presentation to come up with to kind of outline our our strategic planning for RSA. I think that's gonna be a big thing for us coming up because we do have a potential to lose a lot of firefighters. So before we get to that, I just wanted to hit on some high points from the highlights of our department over the past month. Uh last month we had 214 fire calls, uh thousand thirty-five EMS calls, and then 123 service calls. And like I've described before, those service calls are everything from uh water, sewer, gas smells, lift assist, you name it, um, those lift assists that turn into medical needs, those obviously bump up to the EMS category, but those that don't fall into the service call. Couple of different calls that we went on this past month.