Department Presenter Police Chief Kevin Faller 211 Police 2665 False Alarm Revolving Account Fire Chief John White 221 Fire Emergency Management Chief John White​ 291 Emergency Management

Transcript (~1 h 33 min @ 11:10)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 11:08 Speaker 6: Good evening, councilors. Most of you know me, I'm Chief Kevin Falvey. With me is my executive assistant office manager, Kim Upton, who does all the money and is the brains behind the organization. Thank you for having us. I know you got my memo. The Cliff Notes version of our budget for FY27 is it goes up about 5.9%, and 95.5 or so percent of that budget is salaries and wages, so our budget is pretty black and white, for lack of a better word. And most of the increases of the overall budget is due to the increase of salaries and wages per contractual obligations for our personnel, in addition to reinserting two patrol officer positions that were cut from last year's budget. So that's the main reason why the number has reached what it is. The other sort of 4% of our budget is all mostly licensing, computer software, memberships that we belong to. I'm more than happy to get into particulars on all of them, but we're talking about record management systems, a fingerprint machine, radio systems accreditation memberships that we have to belong to, and other various police memberships that we have to belong to, in essence. Those go up every year as costs go up in the industry. Pretty minimal, but that would account overall for why our budget has gone up from this current fiscal year.

▶ 12:39 Speaker 1: Terrific. Do any councilors have questions?

▶ 12:45 Speaker 1: Councilor Chen.

▶ 12:48 Jason Chen: Chief, your ammunition budget actuals are far under budgeted. You're at 2,141 for a budgeted 12,500. What does that do?

▶ 12:59 Speaker 6: For this current year? Yeah, for this year. It's very timely, Councilor. I just was with my firearms instructor, and he was ordering today to get some of that line item spent for next year's. So we have, I don't want to call it a surplus, but we do have a couple thousand dollars, I thought it was a little bit more, still left in our budget, and we're up against the clock. I think it's the 15th we have to get invoiced by.

▶ 13:25 Speaker 5: I just got two invoices- ... today- Oh, good ... to the tune of, I think, almost $3,400.

▶ 13:31 Jason Chen: So your team is keeping up with their qualifications, but you had probably ammunition left over from last year's budget from-

▶ 13:37 Speaker 6: Yeah, it's one of those, the ammunition line item is a weird one. It always seems to be we're buying in the spring for the fall shoot. So we, too, we're required to shoot twice during the year, in the fall and the spring. And that number, which I believe is, what was it, 15,000, 16,000 usually, accounts for all that. And we were fortunate enough this year, in the ammunition line item, with the new recruits that were reinserted back into the budget, mid-budget. Those recruits are also required to get ammunition for the police academy and all that stuff. So sometimes that's not accounted for on the budget, but we're able to manage that particular line item of the budget to even have a little extra that will help us next fiscal year, so we have a little bit of a surplus, so we don't have to come back next year for that. It's always kind of like you're ordering ahead for the next fall shoot.

▶ 14:26 Jason Chen: Sure. And Chief, I wanted to give you a chance to respond to any public comments from today if you wanted to.

▶ 14:31 Speaker 6: Sure, now that you ask me. And Marta, thank you. Nice to put a face to the email. Yes, the last few ones, I certainly did not respond to, and I apologize for that. I know we have had some communication, and I know within your email, I think the most recent one, you said that the officers did go out, and they did stop on Saturday morning at 1:00 in the morning. So I promise you, I'm going to speak to Al, the building commission, see what we can do, the two of us, to not only stop it, but potentially cite them. We do have the ability in the city ordinance between my office and the building commissioner's office to cite them monetarily. It's rare, quite frankly, for the police to do it, but I'm not pushing the ball around here. We can do it and we will. It's just a matter of who goes on the citation. Is it a name? Is it a company? These are things that we can work with. But I think we should probably have a meeting with the actual contractor, too, in person, to sort of send a message there.

▶ 15:30 Devin Romanul: Sure. Thank you. All right. Up next, I have Councilor Williams.

▶ 15:33 Ryan Williams: Thank you. So I'm looking through 211, and I see there's a capital outlay line item for $90,000 called police vehicle. We also have an $83,000 line item in the other capital outlay budget that you, I would not hold it against you if you didn't realize this, but we've been sort of talking about this over the course of a few meetings, that there's this new budget for capital. And my question is, what's the difference between the $83,000 for police vehicles in the outlay budget and the $90,000 for police vehicles in the police budget, 211? And if you don't know, that's okay, because you're not in control of the capital outlay budget. I would accept sort of a backup question, what is the $90,000 in 211 for?

▶ 16:27 Bradley Freeman: Point of clarification, I believe the $90,000 is in FY26.

▶ 16:37 Speaker 4: Scrolling through these budgets too fast.

▶ 16:42 Speaker 6: Do you know how much we would- It's 2026

▶ 16:44 Speaker 4: ... for the next- Oh, you're right.

▶ 16:46 Speaker 5: We don't know. Right. We don't. We wouldn't have that.

▶ 16:48 Speaker 4: Okay.

▶ 16:48 Speaker 5: Thank you.

▶ 16:48 Ryan Williams: So we've moved the police vehicle out of 211 and into the capital outlay budget is what's going on? Yeah, you're correct.

▶ 16:56 Speaker 6: Yeah. Thank you, Councilor. That has been spent or is in the process of being spent- Yeah ... this year, and then the next year as part of the capital improvement process, we had asked for a strategic plan to replace our vehicles, and we were told that we would have one budgeted for FY27. Got it. Okay.

▶ 17:17 Speaker 5: But you're right. I was under the impression that it was always going to become back into the budget. So I, too, was surprised that I didn't see it for this fiscal year. Mm-hmm. So I'm just going to let you all work that out. Okay. Thank you.

▶ 17:34 Ryan Williams: In the memo where you presented the statistics, you mentioned the number of motor vehicle citations. Are these, since you separated between parking violations and motor vehicle citations, I assume these are moving violations?

▶ 17:50 Speaker 6: Yes, sir. The 2,000 are the moving citations.

▶ 17:53 Ryan Williams: Right. And of those moving citations, how many of them were warnings as opposed to not warnings?

▶ 18:02 Speaker 6: So if it was a verbal warning, it wouldn't be a stat- Okay ... as a citation. It could be a written warning- Okay ... out of that projected 2,000 citations. I just don't have the breakdown of that. I see. Okay.

▶ 18:14 Ryan Williams: And how do you feel the department's efforts in terms of traffic safety violations have evolved over the last year?

▶ 18:24 Speaker 6: In this current fiscal year, again, I don't want to use the old adage of we don't have enough help. Mm. But there is some credence to that. With only three officers on the street and the amount of call volume that we do have, it's hard to dedicate. But I'm with you. I think most people, and I will tell you, that I think we should have more enforcement. I just had some staff meetings on that, looking at some statistics on monthly statistics, where we're at, and we need to, I think, as the chief, up it a little. Mm. But there's always that fine line of what is enforcement? Is it jamming working people with money and citations and insurance rates, or is it more education and warnings? It's always a fine line to juggle in my job, especially when I was a patrolman, a sergeant, a lieutenant. I worked my way up through the ranks, and I always had to balance that. But to answer your question, try to be as succinct as I can, I think we should have more enforcement on traffic, for sure.

▶ 19:28 Ryan Williams: Have you been following the state legislative efforts to work on automated enforcement? Do you have an opinion on that, whether it would be an option for the city of Melrose?

▶ 19:39 Speaker 6: I don't think I'm as knowledgeable to really make a comment on it. I know there's been some automated stuff in the past with the ACLU and some other- Sure ... agencies have got involved on how do you prove it to the driver? Is it fair? Is it right? Is it constitutional? So this new push, I haven't read up on it enough to really make a decision if things have changed on how those cameras could be set up and vice versa, et cetera.

▶ 20:10 Speaker 4: Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

▶ 20:12 Devin Romanul: Up next, I have Councilor Kowal.

▶ 20:15 Elizabeth Kowal: Thank you. Thanks for meeting with me yesterday. I want to talk a little bit more about your recruiting. I know that we talked a bit about this yesterday, but I'm going to make a big assumption in the line item that says $46,000. It's actually more than that, right? To bring somebody in, it's a huge process, and- It is ... all sorts of equipment. Could you talk a little bit more about how your recruiting efforts, when you bring in somebody, fit into the budget?

▶ 20:37 Speaker 6: Sure. Thank you. And thank you for meeting as well. As you saw in my memo, and some of the newer councilors may be hearing this for the first time, but I've said this in budget meetings in past. We're different than the school department. We're different than the DPW. We're a little bit similar to the fire. When an opening happens, whether it's a resignation or a retirement, that position doesn't get filled tomorrow, right off the street, and they're in a cruiser driving around. It's at least a 12 to 14-month period before they even fill an open slot to impact staffing and overtime. Having said that, six to nine months of that, they're getting paid. They're on the budget. So a lot of people lose track of that. You're budgeted for 50, so most of the public assume we're always at 50 working. Half the time, a lot of the time, those recruits, it's a three to four-month process of interviews, psychological backgrounds, physical testing, making sure they're the right person, getting all the medical testing done. Then once that's done, they have to do PT tests through the state to qualify. And only then when they get that final PT test done, then we can apply for a police academy, and they fill up fast in there. It's six months long. So by the time we get them into that, that could be another couple of months. Then it's six months in an academy, then it's about three months of field training with a veteran officer before that officer fills that open slot. What happens during those 12 to 14 months? We lose more. So we're continually chasing that teal to get to that staffing of 50 total. I haven't been there in the three and a half years. It's always in, like we talked about, we're losing one this coming fiscal year to retirement, has to retire, but we're probably losing two more soon. So it's my goal, and it's in my memo to prepare and recruit and start that process well in advance if one knows that someone's retiring or leaving, if they give me ample notice. Because it's overtime. It impacts the overtime budget with the openings. It impacts morale. When there's longer openings, sometimes officers have to get forced into sixteens. We've had officers working 24-hour shifts. That's not healthy. That's not safe. That's not safe for you all. That's certainly not safe for our personnel. So recruitment, community engagement, if we want to jump around on this budget here, that's why I think all these things that we do for the community with the kids and the elderly and the middle and everyone in the middle ground, it's all recruitment. It's all trusting us. It's all to get the kids and the younger folk to want to do this job. So when I have to go to the bullpen, as we say, when we need people, there are qualified Melrose applicants on the job, and it's getting very difficult across the commonwealth to find recruits, find applicants that want to do this job anymore.

▶ 23:32 Speaker 4: Thank you. You're welcome.

▶ 23:34 Devin Romanul: Up next, I have Councilor Park.

▶ 23:37 Christopher Park: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Chief, I just wanted to ask you a question about one of the line items, court time. Can you elaborate what specifically court time is? It's under the subsection 51, last item. I ask because it's come in for 2025 and 2026, 67% below the budget, and then 57% below what the budget was. And I think that's a good thing. But I'm not sure. Sure. So what is that? And I guess a follow-up question is, given that sort of historical trend, although it's not really a trend, there's only two data points, can we lower that potential budget down to something like 20,000?

▶ 24:25 Speaker 6: Sure. So to answer your first question, court time is when officers gets summons to court to testify, whether through the DA's office or the defense or whatever, if they have to go to court. And if they're not on shift, which generally they're not, either way it still costs me money. If we pull someone off shift to go to court, I got to backfill it. But court time, we pay the officers as a contractual thing. If they go to court to testify and they have to go to court to testify, it's a four-hour minimum. So that's a line item that sometimes can be difficult to predict on caseload, workload, DAs. Sometimes DAs will want everybody who touched that call to go to court, and sometimes I'll have to push back with my court prosecutor to say, "I don't think we need four officers there. That's going to cost a lot of money." And sometimes, it's a new DA, it's a new district attorney, they're kind of new, and then we'll play this game back and forth. Not a game. And then they'll say, "Okay, why don't you just send the arresting officer and the more important ones?" So court time is when officers have to go to court, we have to pay them contractually, four-hour minimum. And it's dictated by the district attorney's office, who and how many they want with some conversations if I don't think I want to send four officers to get paid. I see. So, the time that he's spending in court is a separate line item in the budget, not part of their overtime, that's a different budget altogether, but a separate sort of bucket. Is that correct? Correct. Yes. It's overtime, but it's a separate bucket called court time. It could say court overtime, is really essentially what that is. Okay. Do you know if you've ever gone over budget on this?

▶ 26:08 Speaker 5: No. We were kind of at budget before COVID, and then when COVID hit, the courts were pretty much shut down. And so all those cases got backlogged. So after everything started to come back, now we're doing not only seeing current court cases, but all the older ones too that were in the backlog. So it's like you said, it's hard to predict because not only are we facing what is happening today in this, but also still that backlog of COVID cases.

▶ 26:49 Speaker 6: Got it. Okay. Very good. Thank you very much.

▶ 26:53 Devin Romanul: Up next, I have Councilor Karamcheti.

▶ 26:55 Manjula Karamcheti: Oh, thank you so much. Thank you both so much for being here. First I wanted to start with a thank you. I've had a few reasons that I've had to reach out to the police department. One recently was a safety situation in Ward 1, where some violent threats were made. But it was also a mental health issue, and I just sincerely appreciated, one, being able to contact the office directly, having a conversation with you, and a detective was sent out. There were conversations, and there was some really careful, caring, I think, movement forward in terms of how to deal with that situation. So I just appreciate it. It was very meaningful to the residents who were very stressed and very concerned. So the promptness, and the way that it was handled was really wonderful. Thank you. I have a couple questions. I know we've talked before, I think, in this room during budget season about concerns with staffing, and I know one of the concerns in terms of what was taking up a lot of officer time was heading over to Melrose Wakefield Hospital. So my first question is, has that resolved itself or is that still a necessity of the department in terms of going and responding there?

▶ 28:17 Speaker 6: It's a necessity. It's our job. I can say I haven't heard a lot of complaints internally, recently about the types of calls or the call volumes. We have a really good relationship with them. When I first got hired, I requested to meet with the security staff and the head of security to kind of lay down. Well, not lay down, learn what their expectations are and what my previous expectations were, because we had a hospital where I used to work at, and there were certain calls the police just wouldn't go to because it wasn't, in my opinion, a police call where I thought hospital security should be able to handle that because we don't want to go hands-on. It's not our job. Right. If you have an out of control patient in a room, that's what they're trained to do. Now, having said that, if it's a public safety, if someone's getting assaulted in the ER or something like that, we will respond, and we do, and we have. And I think our relationship is still strong. It's good. But it takes up a considerable amount of manpower and hours to go up there. And most of the calls aren't even ours, quite frankly. It's because it's such a regional hospital, we'll get a lot of patients dropped off there from other agencies, whether it's a PC that turns into something else, and then we have to go up there. But I get it. It's our job. But it's burdensome, I should say.

▶ 29:45 Manjula Karamcheti: Yeah. If I recall correctly, there were a lot of calls in the past. Do you feel like the calls that you're going to are the right and appropriate calls for the police to respond to? Because I think there was some question about the security at the hospital- Yeah ... in the past, and what they were willing to do, what they didn't feel like they were able to, and maybe there was a mismatch. Has that like-

▶ 30:11 Speaker 6: I think it's settled down a bit. Okay. I think so, and I can't speak for how their staff has handled some of our meetings and requests, but just peripherally, I think it's gotten better because I don't hear it. I listen to the radio all day, and I don't hear the things that I used to hear. I don't hear the complaints that I used to hear. So, that's just me. Maybe I'm a little bit out of the loop. The frontline personnel may differ when they see this on TV tonight. But I think it's calmed down a little bit.

▶ 30:39 Speaker 5: Okay. That's great to hear.

▶ 30:41 Manjula Karamcheti: I'm sure that's a part of your leadership as well as your team. So appreciate that. Just to kind of want to come back to enforcement a little bit. You and I have had a lot of conversations about Franklin Street. And I think between the amount of development happening and enforcement of parking and regulations as well as speeding, do you feel like that's the biggest issue in terms of responding is staffing again, in terms of being able to respond to those kinds of things to be present? Because Franklin Street continues to be really dangerous. Speeding continues to happen. It will take a multifaceted approach, I think, to actually calm that street. But I would like to hear from your perspective, the limitations that the police department has.

▶ 31:33 Speaker 6: It's an excellent question, and quite frankly, Council, it's not just restricted to speeding enforcement and staffing. But as a chief, and most chiefs will attest to this, parking, excuse me, speeding, traffic, parking are the biggest complaints that they get. And to me, knock on wood, that's good. If you're complaining about that versus other, then we're doing a pretty good job. But staffing, and I put it in my memo, right, for an example. If we're staffed at 50, and I just remarked about we're never at 50. We're not. We're still at four in the academy. We're just never going to be there, and I'm losing three more. If we had even three, three more patrol officers, that would give me more than minimum staffing on each shift. And it would allow not only increased enforcement, but, I don't know how to word this. Certain officers can't get shifts off. They can't because we don't have the staffing to do it. So, and then, like I said, certain officers get forced. If we had that cushion, right, because it's a minimum manning of three, and that's what we're operating now. If we had four on each shift, it benefits everybody. Benefits the patrolman, it benefits the command staff, it benefits the public. One of the complaints, complaint's a strong word, but one of the suggestions or concerns I get from all my personnel, and I met with probably through 42 right now. I wanted to get through 50 starting in January. But I meet with every single one of them to go over how the year went stat-wise and otherwise. Because stats to me doesn't make a good officer. I tell them that. And I told you this yesterday. I said, I ask three things of an officer when they get hired. And I said this to all the personnel when I got hired, when I first met them. Show up to work, and they look at me like I got three heads. "What do you mean, Chief, show up to work?" Show up to work. I expect you to show up to work. That's why we're doing good on our overtime. That's why we're not in the deficit. That's why we don't have a sick problem, an injury problem. I expect you to show up to work. But I worked 20 years, nights and midnights. I get it. There's going to be those numbers, those days, your baby's crying, your wife's sick, or you're not feeling up to it. I get it. There's a certain amount of sick time I think is reasonable for a midnight guy. Then I think there's a number that's reasonable for a day guy. So number one, show up to work. Number two is give me a reasonable amount of quality and quantity of work. A reasonable amount of quality and quantity of work. You're not gunslingers. We're not going to be gunslingers in Melrose. We're not ripping people out of cars and locking everybody up. But you're not sleeping all night. And number three is the obvious. Treat people with respect. Treat your brother and sister officers with respect and the public with respect. You do those three things, you're going to be fine. So I meet with all my officers, and we go over that. It's not about stats. But what I ask them is, "What am I doing wrong? What is the command staff doing wrong? What do you need from us?" That's what I care about. And a lot of it is, "Chief, we don't have a lot of advancement here. We feel stifled." We're a young department. We look at the command staff. The command staff's a little older, so there'll be some openings for them. But the detective unit's young. A lot of the specialty units are young. So they're looking, "Hey, can we get an extra traffic special assignment, like a night traffic guy?" I'm like, "I'd love to do that. Ryan, you would love that." We have our day traffic guy, and then we'd have a night traffic guy strictly for traffic. I don't have the personnel for all that. Mm-hmm. If we had the extra personnel, which I'm not looking for in this budget, but it was clear in my memo moving down the road, that's an extra opportunity for an officer to have a special assignment, so to speak. And it benefits everybody. Maybe we have an extra detective at night. All these little things that I can control, try to control versus promotion. Promotion is a little bit different process. I get it. If you're 38 years old and you're a sergeant, you're probably not going to retire for another 20 years, right? But certain other things I think I have the ability to advocate for and control. So it's not only speeding on Franklin Street, it's every type of call. More personnel, in theory, it's a very simple mathematical formula, with good supervision should increase productivity.

▶ 35:41 Manjula Karamcheti: Yeah, I appreciate that, and I look forward to supporting that in the future as the Ward 1 area, Franklin Street continues to get more dense with more development. I think we're going to need more help and support and more visibility just to make sure that our pedestrians, that our families, that our residents are safe. So-

▶ 36:00 Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's just the call for services, too. Yeah. Outside of speeding. Yeah, totally. You increase the population around the city by X amount, the fire department, medical calls- Yeah ... domestic calls, mental health calls, overdose call, you name it, you bring more people in, our workload will go up.

▶ 36:15 Manjula Karamcheti: Yeah, absolutely. And then I have one final question, and we had a conversation about parking in Melrose at another meeting, and I get tickets all the time, so I don't know why people aren't getting tickets. Saturday morning in front of Starbucks, I always get a ticket. But just- I know, overshare, sorry. But in terms ofParking and ticketing. It did come up that perhaps we're under-ticketing. Again, not my experience, but we're perhaps under-ticketing, and I guess I wonder again, is that a staffing issue or is that a prioritization issue? Just curious if you could enlighten us on that.

▶ 37:05 Speaker 6: Yeah. Parking is going to be even more of a problem with what we just talked about with all the increased building. We have two part-time civilian employees that work for me. And just think about it, it's two part-time positions, and that's their sole job. They do a great job, but they're two part-time positions. In my memo, I did ask for stats. I know we're on pace to issue 4,000 parking tickets this year. To me, that screams like a lot. I didn't do that much of a deep dive if that really is a lot. But 4,000 to me seems like a lot, with an excess of $100,000 in fines. How many get paid? I don't know. But yeah, it's like the other traffic enforcement, moving violations. There could be more enforcement- Mm-hmm ... but we're kind of strapped.

▶ 37:54 Manjula Karamcheti: Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time to answer- ... all these questions.

▶ 37:58 Devin Romanul: Yep. Thank you. Up next, I have Councilor Jamaleddine.

▶ 38:01 Speaker 7: Thank you.

▶ 38:04 Maya Jamaleddine: The only reason why I wanted to speak is to thank you and your department about the amazing work you've been doing for our community. We had quite a year this year, most recently the incident at the school, and you guys showed up, and I've always wanted to see how you guys are doing, how you're taking care of your own self, and always feel like you're like a family that try to cope within yourself, and I respect that. Thank you. So thank you so much for all the work that you're doing. One question have came up in previous budget hearing session was about the social worker. Is that a position that you would recommend taking under your department, or do you prefer have it separate?

▶ 38:53 Speaker 6: So our social worker is still vacant right now. That's provided through a grant through Stoneham PD and us that we've shared historically over the years. And she would share responsibility. She'd be at our station a couple of days, and she'd go to Stoneham for a couple of days. She had left, and they're still trying to find her replacement. So right now, we don't have anyone. Would it be awesome to have a full-time social worker in the budget? Yes, but it'd be preferable if it was not in the budget that we'd have to pay for it. But I think if we ever did have to pay for it, it's well worth it. But I think there are grants through Elliot and all that other stuff that they could provide us the social worker.

▶ 39:39 Maya Jamaleddine: Yeah. So my question is, would you like to have within your department or for the city, but you don't need to overview that position in a way?

▶ 39:51 Speaker 6: You can- I think the- ... collaborate. Yeah. Now I know what you're asking. In the new building, specifically, we do have an office set up for social workers- ... with the anticipation, hopefully, that if we ever got one or two. In Medford, we had three full-time that were in there. But again, workload much different over there than it is here. So I would have no problem. I'd welcome a social worker full-time in my building- Mm-hmm ... working directly for me, because it would just make things a lot easier. And then we would be able to do the co-response model that we're lacking, where a lot of agencies are sending patrol officers out with social workers to certain calls- Mm-hmm ... rather than strictly follow-up reactive- Okay ... where you already have a social worker on scene to help this person that's going through some sort of crisis. Got it. That would be the ideal situation, is have a social worker full-time co-respond, have her or him trained, and have an officer assigned to that person- Mm-hmm ... when they're working to go out with them on certain calls.

▶ 40:52 Maya Jamaleddine: That makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much. Sure. I appreciate you.

▶ 40:55 Devin Romanul: Terrific. Up next, I have Councilor Williams.

▶ 40:58 Ryan Williams: Thank you. Since you mentioned overtime, I thought I would give you the opportunity to talk about what your department has done to reduce overtime, because in 2025, you had $623,000 in overtime, and in 2026 you had a 40% reduction to $457,000, which is what the 2027 overtime budget is currently. So, why don't you tell us a little bit about your thoughts about what worked for you- Okay ... what the benefits of reducing overtime were for your department, for the city, for the budget, and whether you think that the amount of overtime you have now is sufficient, because I do notice that for 2026 actual, you used even less. There was $100,000 less than the budget, dropped down to $361,000.

▶ 41:48 Speaker 6: Thank you. I'll try to hit all that in pieces here. Yeah. So the last year, the one that you referenced, I think was $600,000 something. Some of that was just not timely reimbursed for the 911 grants that get reimbursed later, so that number is higher than it actually is. And this year, couple of things we did was getting the 911, getting them all trained, the mandated training that they had to do earlier in the fiscal year so we could get that reimbursed so I'd have a better reflection of where we're truly at on the numbers. So that's why our numbers are a little bit better. But we lived within our budget this year because two things. It's culture, and it's strategic planning and forecasting, and it's what I talked about earlier. Our men and women, we're very young. We have a very young department, and they show up to work. And some of them don't have a lot of time off. So they're good workers. They don't abuse sick time. They come to work. So even though we're minimum staffedWhen they show up to work, because there's a positive culture that I think, from my seat in the corner office, and the supervisors and the patrolmen, they all get along. I think we have a really good... They want to come to work. So I'm very lucky in that respect, and that cuts down on the overtime. The other thing is strategic planning and forecasting. When we have shift bids, working with the unions, there's certain things I can and cannot do. But in management, when I have that option of what positions get posted, and where I allocate my personnel, I sit with my command staff, and we strategically look and see, "All right. Well, who's on that shift? Who's on that shift? Who's on that shift?" It's not as simple as trying to even out the shifts. That's not how you should assign people. I look at it, we look at it as, "All right. Well, these are all new guys. They don't have a lot of time off. They're probably not going to take a lot of vacation time. They're not going to bang in sick because they've got to be in my office tomorrow morning." So there's probably not going to be a lot of openings on that shift. You look at this shift, you got senior guys with a lot of vacation time. We have a bunch of military people that we know every month they're gone for a weekend, every week, every month, then they could get deployed. So we try to put the openings where we're anticipating there's not going to be a lot of openings just by who they are. So that limits overtime. Now, I will tell you this, that's not my driving factor. I'm a steward of my budget, but it's more about allocating the personnel so that when I know there's probably going to be a ton of openings on that shift, again, I don't want these guys getting forced. I don't want them to have to work when they're tired, and they can't work. So it's a combination of trying to limit openings by forecasting and strategically planning, by looking at your personnel and who takes a lot of time off. Well, that guy, maybe that's the guy who bangs in sick a lot, right? Because we do have them, it's a business. Everybody has them. So I'd rather put an extra guy on that shift because he's probably not going to be in a lot this year. Or she. And that limits the overtime in that respect, too. So I think really more it's the culture. It's the younger and the senior leadership that sets it by example that we expect you to come to work. And they come to work because they want-- I think they want to come to work. They like each other, and we've been kind of fortunate in that respect, that we didn't have to come back this year or many times to really reimburse that.

▶ 45:12 Speaker 1: Thank you.

▶ 45:13 Speaker 6: Sure.

▶ 45:13 Devin Romanul: Up next, I have Councilor Karim Chehdi.

▶ 45:16 Speaker 5: I was just going to make a motion to move the bottom line. Second.

▶ 45:19 Devin Romanul: Motion to move the bottom line made by Councilor Karim Chehdi, seconded by Councilor Finocchiaro. On discussion.

▶ 45:24 Speaker 7: Can I- Oh. Councilor ... just, I just want to make a

▶ 45:28 Maya Jamaleddine: big thank you for Officer Grant for being an amazing police officer and be there at the school.

▶ 45:39 Maya Jamaleddine: I can speak for myself. My kids are-- Like, he's their best friend. Not only officer, but also a great example for them. So truly appreciate him.

▶ 45:48 Speaker 6: I shall let him know. He's a- Yes. Thank you ... he's a good man. Thank you.

▶ 45:52 Devin Romanul: Any other councilors on discussion? Councilor Chen.

▶ 45:56 Jason Chen: A few weeks ago, I just did a benchmark of eight surrounding towns, including Melrose, and we are in the bottom third per capita for crime, and also the bottom third in spend and number of officers. So which came first, the crime or the department? But either way, it is the right way. It's not a free license to crank up spending, but at least it's not the other way around.

▶ 46:18 Speaker 1: Great. Any other councilors?

▶ 46:21 Devin Romanul: Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 46:24 Speaker 2: Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen. Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. Councilor Karim Chehdi. Yes. Councilor Kowal. Yes. Councilor Abrumsky. Yes. Councilor Park. Yes. Councilor Williams. Yes. President Freeman. Yes. Chair Romanul. Yes. All in favor.

▶ 46:42 Devin Romanul: All right. All in favor. We will move the bottom line on 211. Up next, 2665- Thank you ... the false alarm revolving account.

▶ 46:50 Speaker 6: Oh, my bad. All right. You're good. Nice try. I try to leave while I'm on top.

▶ 46:55 Speaker 5: Getting scratched on his way out.

▶ 46:57 Speaker 4: Way to wrangle him back. Off the tables.

▶ 47:00 Speaker 6: This is Kim's wanting me to. We keep- Nice

▶ 47:03 Speaker 5: ... we do retain this revolving fund. Again, it's all about the false alarms. The rules are you have two free false alarms. On the third one, then we're going to bill you $50. And then on the fourth one, you're going to get $100. Honestly, the two free, and they start to hear from me. I'll pick up the phone, I'll send them a note, and they get their alarm fixed, and usually it's all over and done with. The people that I do bill or send out love notes to are usually the businesses that haven't fixed their alarms. And so we're going to the calls time and time and time again, and they just need a reminder, "Go get your alarm fixed." It's not intentional. And it's not been a situation where the false alarm has been a criminal offense. It was a false alarm, and they need to get their alarms fixed. So yes, I'd like to keep it because it is an incentive for the businesses if they're not for continuously going to a false alarm call, and it's not necessary.

▶ 48:21 Devin Romanul: Terrific. Questions from any councilors? Councilor Finocchiaro.

▶ 48:25 Speaker 2: I'm just going to make a motion to approve.

▶ 48:25 Speaker 5: Second.

▶ 48:26 Devin Romanul: Motion to approve made by Councilor Finocchiaro, seconded by Councilor Jamaleddine, on discussion.

▶ 48:33 Devin Romanul: Councilor Karim Chehdi. I'm sorry. Karim Chehdi, my apologies. Running on autopilot, making eye contact. Any questions? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 48:43 Speaker 2: Yes. Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen. Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro. Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine. Yes. Councilor Karim Chehdi. Yes. Councilor Kowal. Yes. Councilor Abrumsky. Yes. Councilor Park. Yes. Councilor Williams. Yes. President Freeman. Yes. Chair Romanul. Yes. All in favor?

▶ 49:00 Devin Romanul: All right. We will approve 2665. Thank you, Chief and Ms. Upton. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 49:05 Speaker 5: Also, your outfits are coordinated. It's amazing.

▶ 49:11 Devin Romanul: All right. It's very appropriate for a police day. All right. Up next, the fire department. I just- 211 or 221 ... my neighbor has a

▶ 49:29 Speaker 8: All right. Good evening, folks. Evening. Are we on budget or are we on appropriations?

▶ 49:35 Speaker 9: I'm not sure where we're sitting.

▶ 49:36 Speaker 1: We're on the budget.

▶ 49:37 Speaker 9: On the budget, okay.

▶ 49:39 Speaker 5: Oh, here's the budget.

▶ 49:47 Speaker 8: Our budget on

▶ 49:58 Speaker 8: So I'm here to ask you folks to approve our budget that we submitted to the mayor's office. And just to go over, I know why I'm here. I know we're here for our overtime. But I'm happy to answer any questions, and I don't want to make a long story long. Just like the police department, our salary and wages are 93% of our budget. And so we have to conform to all the CBAs in play for vacations that all the firefighters were allotted. And to stay within these constraints that we have, but we are now, to make the story shorter, we are essentially minimum staffed. So we have basically no bench. So when we have to have people go on vacation, and are out sick or out injured, those are almost routinely covered

▶ 51:04 Speaker 9: by overtime.

▶ 51:06 Speaker 8: So we try to keep our three trucks in service, the two pumps and one ladder truck, and the fire alarm operator, which comes to 10 people, 10 firefighters on duty at all times. And so we have roughly 49 members, three are staff, and one is my finance administrator, leaving about 46

▶ 51:35 Speaker 9: to cover those positions throughout the year.

▶ 51:36 Speaker 8: And so as we go-- I had a presentation. I'm sorry. I thought it was going to be forwarded to you folks. I'm

▶ 51:51 Speaker 9: sorry, I'm just looking. Oh, I'm thinking about appropriations.

▶ 51:59 Speaker 9: Sorry, I lost my train of thought here. I was expecting to go the opposite direction with this stuff. But-

▶ 52:07 Speaker 9: Oops.

▶ 52:14 Speaker 8: As we go through our budget, we are trying to staff those folks. So currently we have two firefighters happened to leave the department in the last couple of months, so we're two short now. And so we're in the process of hiring two now. We're trying to get them on board as soon as we can. But like the police department, our onboard time is a lot shorter. It's roughly three months at the academy, and then we try to get them out on the trucks in service.

▶ 52:47 Speaker 8: And so we'll have to get those guys in, have them work for basically three months, going to the fire academy, and then we'll get them on the trucks in service.

▶ 52:59 Speaker 8: That being said, other items on the budget are very short. It's really difficult to explain what we're doing without getting too much detail, because I know the overtime isn't great, and I get it, but this is how the budgets

▶ 53:24 Speaker 8: are approved from us when we submit them. We get back with a revised budget, and it's always about the same level funded. And so I believe that's how they keep track of it. We go through our year, and we do our accounting, and we submit our projections for the rest of the year. We do that every month. And we meet with the CFO throughout the year, trying to watch this go out, and we usually end around January, February. It depends on-- Really, injury is the biggest question mark. Long-term injuries are very difficult for us to handle, and I have two long-term injuries I'm dealing with right now. And so we go, and then Kerry, our new CFO, we're watching it, we're watching forecasting it. We're knowing where it is, and we're just trying to then come for you folks to ask for free cash to pay for it. That's basically how our budget is basically handled for most of our expense. 90% of the budget comes out of that.

▶ 54:30 Speaker 8: That's the way it's been done. I don't know any other way to do it. Surely I would like more staff so we have more of a bench that we could fill in gaps with during for vacations, injury, and sickness. And I think vacation's the biggest one. Most of our department is senior. They have five weeks vacation a year, and we have to account for all of that.

▶ 54:55 Speaker 8: So we don't have people to transfer to cover those

▶ 55:00 Speaker 8: openings.Be happy to answer any questions. I know we're under the gun, this is the last meeting.

▶ 55:07 Speaker 8: Please, if you have questions, I'm happy to answer them.

▶ 55:09 Devin Romanul: Terrific. Thank you very much. And Chief, just for now, we'll cover the budgetary matters, and then just for my fellow councilors, we have a couple of free cash appropriations that are up a little bit later in the evening. So if we can bifurcate those questions, I know we've got overtime free cash, as well as a motor vehicle repair a little bit later. Sure. So if we can save those questions for later, that would be great. All right. On the budget, up first, I have Councilor Williams. You do? I do.

▶ 55:37 Speaker 4: No, I don't think so. I didn't raise my hand.

▶ 55:40 Devin Romanul: I did, but it- So this is an involuntary... All right, Councilor Finocchiaro.

▶ 55:43 Speaker 4: It's like a ventriloquist, yeah. She had her hand up.

▶ 55:49 Speaker 2: Big hamburger helper.

▶ 55:52 Cal Finocchiaro: Sorry, am I on top? Sorry. Thank you for being here. So you had mentioned having 10

▶ 56:01 Speaker 2: staff-

▶ 56:02 Cal Finocchiaro: Roughly on- To be on each apparatus.

▶ 56:05 Speaker 8: Exactly. That's the minimum that we feel is the spot we like to be, the minimum, to go out the door and respond to calls.

▶ 56:16 Cal Finocchiaro: So is that legal or just you need to have everybody kind of covering their spots?

▶ 56:21 Speaker 8: No, it's a recommendation by the NFPA. Mm-hmm. We don't have a, so to speak, minimum standard, but it's the standard that the Melrose Fire Department has sort of evolved into, at least having three, one officer and two firefighters on board- Mm-hmm ... each of our trucks. And then we need a fire alarm operator. And so that's basically the staff that we have to have every day on duty. And so to fill those openings, we don't have anybody really to transfer, so to speak- Mm-hmm ... to cover anybody on vacation. Mm-hmm. And so we have to fill with overtime. Mm-hmm. And then, like I said, vacations, a lot of our staff has the maximum amount of vacation. Then there's

▶ 57:11 Speaker 9: injury and sick time.

▶ 57:13 Speaker 8: You see

▶ 57:16 Speaker 10: stats probably this year,

▶ 57:21 Speaker 8: injury leave is bumped up quite a bit. We have one officer, long-term back surgery. He's been out for a long time, and another firefighter with a shoulder injury. Mm.

▶ 57:32 Speaker 9: There's just lots of rehab to those type of injuries.

▶ 57:36 Cal Finocchiaro: And if I'm correct, and I don't know the rankings, so if there's a captain out on, I think it's FMLA or a long-term disability- Yeah obviously we're compensating them, but then you have to have a captain level cover

▶ 57:54 Speaker 8: their duties? Almost always. There are seven captains on the department, and one of them is in fire prevention. So, we have four group captains. We have four working groups, but then each outside station, engine two and engine three, we have house captains.

▶ 58:11 Speaker 9: Mm-hmm.

▶ 58:11 Speaker 8: So at each outside station for each group, there'll be one captain and three lieutenants for the other three groups. I see. So the outside captain comes down, and backfill if the group captain is out on vacation- Mm-hmm ... or out injured or out sick. Mm-hmm. And so those people can move, and typically they'll get back filled with a

▶ 58:33 Speaker 9: lieutenant.

▶ 58:34 Cal Finocchiaro: And so the person covering, is that typically a higher pay? I'm sure that cuts into your overtime because maybe their pay is more than a-

▶ 58:42 Speaker 8: On occasion, if a lieutenant doesn't take it, we offer the overtime to a captain. Mm-hmm.

▶ 58:50 Speaker 9: And basically, that's a higher overtime rate, yeah.

▶ 58:54 Speaker 8: And we've had to go through that recently, the last few years. We had a lot of holdovers and things. We had to make some adjustments in the way we hired overtimes. Typically, it was always just rank by rank. But we had to go, since we were having trouble filling firefighter overtimes, we allowed officers to be able to accept firefighter overtimes. But they don't get paid at the firefighter rate. They get paid at whatever their rank rate is.

▶ 59:22 Speaker 9: So there is an added cost to that also.

▶ 59:28 Speaker 9: We had an issue with holdovers

▶ 59:30 Speaker 8: were brutal for the last few years, but when we had our ambulance, in order to keep that and staff, we had to

▶ 59:38 Speaker 9: do what we could to keep you from being held over.

▶ 59:40 Speaker 8: And so that's one of the little backstops we had to keep holdovers, was

▶ 59:45 Speaker 7: allowing officers to work as firefighters.

▶ 59:47 Cal Finocchiaro: Mm-hmm. And just from having conversations with some of the firefighters, some of them actually don't want the overtime because they're exhausted and they don't want to have to pick up shifts.

▶ 59:54 Speaker 8: That's true. That is true ... sort of a double-edged sword. Now that we don't run the ambulance anymore, we contract with Armstrong, the holdovers has gone down dramatically. And the overtime is still not great, admittedly, but

▶ 1:00:15 Speaker 9: there's way less holdovers, so

▶ 1:00:17 Speaker 8: that is a huge saving grace. So they're not as tied, and we're now seeing the overtimes being spread

▶ 1:00:24 Speaker 9: over more people.

▶ 1:00:25 Cal Finocchiaro: My last question, do you think that any of this would be solved somewhat if you had more staff, like two or three more staffed, or so you have that bench like you were talking about?

▶ 1:00:35 Speaker 8: Yeah. There's the bench. And so what I use as like a rule of thumb is when I look at the weekly payroll, I look at the percentage of overtime per the payroll. So if the overtime percentage is about 10%, you're probably at full staff. Mm-hmm. If you're at 25% or over, you're

▶ 1:01:01 Speaker 9: understaffed.

▶ 1:01:01 Speaker 8: Mm-hmm. So we've been in the range this past year, we've had a few spikes up into the 20s, but we've been in that teens range, like mid to upper

▶ 1:01:09 Speaker 9: teens.

▶ 1:01:11 Speaker 8: There have been a few spikes during holidays and things like that-

▶ 1:01:12 Speaker 9: Mm-hmm

▶ 1:01:14 Speaker 8: ... but it bumps up into 20s. But when we were running the ambulance, it was routinely 35 to 45%. Wow. Okay. And so we have seen that come down. It's getting back into that range. We're in that range. Naturally, I would take more firefighters any day because then we can avoid injuries, especially from overwork- Mm-hmm ... and things like that.

▶ 1:01:37 Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.

▶ 1:01:37 Speaker 8: People feel like everybody has a living to make and they have to

▶ 1:01:43 Speaker 9: take an overtime, they have to take an over-- They try to take them as often as they can

▶ 1:01:49 Speaker 9: to do what they have to do.

▶ 1:01:50 Speaker 8: Mm-hmm. But there comes a point in time when they can be overworked, and they

▶ 1:01:54 Speaker 9: can injure themselves. Mm-hmm.

▶ 1:01:58 Speaker 8: So we want to try to avoid that. So it is really finding what's the appropriate staffing on each group, so that we have some people that we can actually move to transfer to other groups if there's maybe two or three people on vacation, along with an injury or sick. Especially, we can't really predict sick or injury, so to speak, unless it's long-term injury, long-term sick. But- Mm ... vacations, we can sort of predict, and we could move people to cover that. But right now, we really don't have that ability.

▶ 1:02:28 Speaker 9: So I would definitely welcome two or three more firefighters

▶ 1:02:32 Speaker 8: on the group. But really, you would see a cut down to back to the days when I

▶ 1:02:37 Speaker 8: got hired when you were lucky if you got a few overtimes in a

▶ 1:02:39 Speaker 9: year. But that was how staffing was done back then.

▶ 1:02:43 Speaker 8: today, we are just hovering right in that spot where we're not overstaffed, and we're not quite understaffed, but

▶ 1:02:55 Speaker 9: the injuries are the ones that come out of nowhere, and you can't predict that. Mm-hmm. And then it's waiting to see how long it'll take to be healed to return to work.

▶ 1:03:05 Cal Finocchiaro: Well, thank you, and thank you for your staff, all you do. Thank you.

▶ 1:03:09 Devin Romanul: Terrific. Up next, I have Vice Chair Vandiver.

▶ 1:03:11 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you. I see in your memo that just based on the number of emergency incidents, it looks like you're averaging maybe around 10 a day, something like that?

▶ 1:03:21 Speaker 8: Yeah, that's about right. Yeah.

▶ 1:03:22 Kimberly Vandiver: So I was just curious because that seems like a lot more than I would have guessed. What does a typical day look like as far as call comes in at this time, it's this type of thing? What is a normal day for the fire department?

▶ 1:03:38 Speaker 8: Normally, they report to work at 7:00 a.m., and they're on duty for a 24-hour shift. And so, let's say, in that day, it averages roughly 10 calls per day. The problem is we don't know when they're coming in. So the first call comes in is, as long as it's not like a huge reported fire, that's typically handled by the first. If it's a medical aid, the nearest company, next nearest fire truck, let's say, and then the ambulance would respond to those ones. It's the second and third and fourth calls that come in at the

▶ 1:04:13 Speaker 8: same time that we try to be prepared for. And so the next call that comes in, we send the nearest company to that one, and if it's another medical aid, Strong Ambulance is moving their ambulances into the city when Medic One goes on their first run. So they're trying to backfill with their ability with having ambulances in the area, and we have our crews around. And so if it gets beyond, say,

▶ 1:04:40 Speaker 9: three calls,

▶ 1:04:42 Speaker 8: which happens a lot more than you think, we have to call for mutual aid from a company from Saugus, Malden, Stoneham, or Wakefield to come

▶ 1:04:49 Speaker 9: in and take that run and try to figure out what that is.

▶ 1:04:53 Speaker 8: But roughly, it does work out to 10. If we could predict they came in one every hour, that would be great,

▶ 1:05:00 Speaker 9: but we don't have that luxury.

▶ 1:05:03 Kimberly Vandiver: Mm-hmm. And how does the mutual aid work, especially financially? I saw there's a budget line for mutual aid. Do we pay our firefighters to go elsewhere to do mutual aid, or do we pay to compensate other fire departments for coming in to do mutual aid?

▶ 1:05:18 Speaker 9: That's kind of mislabeled.

▶ 1:05:20 Speaker 8: Okay. It's like using mutual aid for two other

▶ 1:05:25 Speaker 9: things. Let me just see where I have that.

▶ 1:05:30 Speaker 8: Trying to think exactly. We don't pay the other departments to respond here, and they don't pay us to respond to them. Mutual aid, I believe, is for when we host a mutual aid. We have to buy food for these folks, replace whatever equipment gets broken, repair any of their trucks that they've used at our fire that fell into disrepair. So we have that item for those things to help out as the host community. Since they help us out, they incurred whatever burden it is, we try to help them out with that.

▶ 1:06:08 Kimberly Vandiver: I see. And how often? So sometimes they help us, and sometimes we help them. On a typical day, how often do we go out to Saugus or somewhere like that?

▶ 1:06:19 Speaker 8: It depends. It's probably all around, whether it's Malden, Saugus, Stoneham, or Wakefield, or it could be we go to Lynn quite frequently. I would say it's probably a few times a week, maybe. Maybe more, maybe less.

▶ 1:06:34 Speaker 9: It's hard to say.

▶ 1:06:37 Speaker 8: And sometimes it all depends on what's going on in the

▶ 1:06:41 Speaker 9: other cities. If they are busy,

▶ 1:06:44 Speaker 8: let's say something's going on. What comes as an example, last year, there was a huge fire in Chelsea, and it was right down along the creek, and they pulled resources from everywhere. We sent a truck there. But if a fire happened further out around the orbit around Chelsea, we would have only had our truck. And if we had a fire in Melrose, we would have been depending upon, if I remember correctly, probably our nearesthelper from which they would have been from North Reading or out along that rim, Woburnish, Wilmington, we've had to wait a long time. So it depends on if they have multiple calls. Saugus uses a lot because they have one. They get a lot of multiple calls at the same time, which we go there, maybe handle the medical aid for them or whatever that call is they need extra help with. But I don't know on average how often we do go out.

▶ 1:07:40 Speaker 9: It's a good-- I probably should know that.

▶ 1:07:43 Kimberly Vandiver: Okay. Yeah, that's interesting to see that picture. And how has the transition been with the ambulance moving over to out of the department? How's that been working for everybody?

▶ 1:07:56 Speaker 8: It's been working well. Saugus Ambulance has a lot more resources. They're in the ambulance business, and they understand the number of runs. They know. They're at the hospital all the time.

▶ 1:08:14 Speaker 9: They know roughly how many runs that we have for medical aid.

▶ 1:08:16 Speaker 8: And so they can kind of stagger how they dispatch their trucks around the area. Fortunately for us, they go to Melrose Wakefield Hospital a lot, and they also take care of Stoneham and Saugus. So we frequently get mutual aid ambulances from, especially for ALS, from Stoneham or Saugus. And then they have their supervisor's car that

▶ 1:08:45 Speaker 9: also can jump in as an ALS response.

▶ 1:08:47 Speaker 8: So they've worked out really well picking up that second, third, and fourth call. They have remarked they weren't quite expecting it to have as many multiple calls as they did get, but it's just like an anomaly we have here in Melrose.

▶ 1:09:04 Speaker 9: Mm-hmm.

▶ 1:09:06 Speaker 8: It's hard to say, but it happens a lot more than people think.

▶ 1:09:10 Speaker 9: Thank you. But it's worked out well. Just they're

▶ 1:09:15 Speaker 8: in our station now. We haven't had any complaints at all. They're responsive to any to all inquiries.

▶ 1:09:22 Speaker 9: They're always happy to sit down with us and talk.

▶ 1:09:24 Kimberly Vandiver: Great. And I guess one follow-up question on that, too. I think before we used to have a challenge with getting firefighters who were also able to staff the ambulance, and it also had an impact on overtime. And so has that kind of gone away?

▶ 1:09:37 Speaker 9: Yeah, that has lessened. Yeah.

▶ 1:09:39 Speaker 8: Without having to staff the ambulance with qualified

▶ 1:09:45 Speaker 9: paramedic and EMT Basic,

▶ 1:09:49 Speaker 8: it's taken a lot of the burden off the men and women, I should say. Because they were the ones, if it was on the rescue, it had to be a

▶ 1:09:58 Speaker 9: paramedic overtime, and the paramedics in the holdover was

▶ 1:10:00 Speaker 8: really bearing a lot of that burden. So they were really being overworked. And it just got down to where I was getting concerned about they were overworked. And anyone can make this mistake at any time, but when you're overworked, you're increasing those chances. And I was becoming very concerned with

▶ 1:10:19 Speaker 7: the situation that would happen.

▶ 1:10:22 Kimberly Vandiver: I'm glad to hear that's going well. Thank you. Thanks.

▶ 1:10:24 Devin Romanul: All right, up next I have Councilor Williams.

▶ 1:10:26 Speaker 4: Yeah. This time it's real. Thank you.

▶ 1:10:30 Ryan Williams: Speaking of overtime, I wanted to, I suppose, congratulate you, although I know part of it was the ambulance, so the congratulations have already come and gone. We're looking at an overtime budget that went from $1.6 million, which was $900,000 of that was an appropriation that we did a couple of years ago. And we've settled down to a budget of around $500,000. The actual was $700,000. So, I wanted to ask what you think about the trajectory of this. Do you think, given that we have this big order in front of us, do you think that 2027 is going to be a year where we can stay within the overtime budget or close to it? Mm-hmm. And also, what kind of strategies are you employing, and have you found successful in terms of keeping overtime a little bit lower over the last three years?

▶ 1:11:30 Speaker 8: We will try our best to staff. I think we put in $500,000, $530,000, I think is what we were allocated this year for our overtime coming up. We will try our best, but as I say, without a bench, we are really at the mercy of vacations, sickness, and illnesses. If we don't have anybody, long-term injuries, those are costly on our budget. And without that, with having to backfill,

▶ 1:12:03 Speaker 8: we do what we try. We're trying to work with this current CBA to try to make some changes in the way vacations are picked-

▶ 1:12:11 Speaker 9: Mm-hmm ... so it's spread out throughout the year.

▶ 1:12:14 Speaker 8: But that's under negotiation, so I can't predict that either. But we're trying to keep our eye on the sick time as best we can, and try to watch it. But typically, it's the long-term sick. FMLA has proven quite challenging for us.

▶ 1:12:35 Speaker 8: Men and women, having children,

▶ 1:12:38 Speaker 9: there's long periods of time that they're allowed to have off.

▶ 1:12:41 Speaker 8: Mm-hmm. And I do feel it's important,

▶ 1:12:46 Speaker 9: raising kids myself.

▶ 1:12:47 Speaker 8: However, budget-wise, that comes out of, not out of the blue, so to speak, but someone comes up, they're going to go on FMLA from having the birth of the child for the next three months.

▶ 1:13:00 Speaker 8: That's a tough one to try to adjust to.

▶ 1:13:03 Speaker 9: And again, we can't predict that coming.

▶ 1:13:06 Speaker 8: So we'll try to stay within that budget. As I say,

▶ 1:13:11 Speaker 9: I-My admin is constantly scouring the overtime budget, watching it, watching our expenditures.

▶ 1:13:18 Speaker 8: We did have a big bump, I do have to admit, a lot of it my fault, as we did start a lot of live

▶ 1:13:26 Speaker 9: training.

▶ 1:13:28 Speaker 8: You'll recall back in the fall at the AB school, we were there for a month doing some training there with firefighters from around our area, trying to do some search and rescue drills that are very important, and it's very hard to get that opportunity to train with our counterparts in mutual aid in a live setting inside a building. We've also partnershiped with this group, and Boston Fire has graciously offered their academy on Saturdays

▶ 1:13:58 Speaker 9: throughout the year for us to do live fire training, and I just

▶ 1:14:01 Speaker 8: couldn't pass up these opportunities. So I did go deep into my training overtime to take advantage of this. I feel it's just too important to pass up.

▶ 1:14:12 Speaker 4: And

▶ 1:14:15 Ryan Williams: do you feel or can you tell me what do you think-- There's a level of overtime that's just required to run the operation and might even be sort of favorable to the budget. Right. Because compare for me, for instance, what $100,000 in overtime buys you versus $100,000 that you would try to, say, hire a firefighter.

▶ 1:14:43 Speaker 8: $100,000 basically is

▶ 1:14:48 Speaker 9: a little above his salary, let's say, but

▶ 1:14:49 Speaker 8: I don't truly know the benefit package. Sure. So that's the age-old question. When do you get to the point of overtime where now it isn't cost beneficial?

▶ 1:14:59 Speaker 9: Right.

▶ 1:15:00 Speaker 8: I don't know that answer. I'm not sure anybody really does. But I'd use that rule of thumb I had, that when we start, when we're up around 35, 45%, we were down eight, 10, maybe 12 people while we were going through that, and that was a huge burden for our firefighters to bear.

▶ 1:15:20 Speaker 9: And naturally, it was a burden for the budget, as we all know.

▶ 1:15:23 Speaker 8: So that's what I'm saying, without a bench, that's what we've come down

▶ 1:15:29 Speaker 9: to deal with lately in our contemporary times.

▶ 1:15:35 Speaker 8: We don't have a lot of room to move. So to deal with unexpected injuries or sicknesses, we don't have people to transfer to take up that

▶ 1:15:46 Speaker 9: slack. And so

▶ 1:15:48 Speaker 8: we can predict vacations pretty much, but that's probably 45% maybe of the overtime budget, and then sick and injury probably pick up another 35 to 40% of that, and the rest is

▶ 1:16:05 Speaker 9: training and all education and things like that.

▶ 1:16:09 Speaker 8: But that's really a minute portion of it. But those big three, vacations we have to deal with, and we can sort of predict those.

▶ 1:16:17 Speaker 9: We pick those through the year.

▶ 1:16:22 Speaker 8: But like I say, it's trying to take care of the sick time, and then in years gone by, we didn't have to deal with FMLA and things

▶ 1:16:29 Speaker 9: like that, but that's been something unexpected we have to.

▶ 1:16:32 Speaker 8: And on top of it all,

▶ 1:16:35 Speaker 9: as employee salaries rise for contract,

▶ 1:16:37 Speaker 8: naturally that pretty much level funding our overtime becomes less and less, picks up less and less of that

▶ 1:16:49 Speaker 8: piece of the pie because that stays stagnant. But the wage has gone up, so every time we backfill, it costs us more

▶ 1:16:54 Speaker 9: for each person.

▶ 1:16:57 Ryan Williams: Thank you. I wanted to ask, how is your operation fairing with the loss of the Tremont Street fire station?

▶ 1:17:07 Speaker 8: It's doing well. Okay. The transition for us, for the Engine 2 members, they are now housed at headquarters, and they're running out of there. We are doing our best to keep that end of the city in mind for calls. And it is a longer run, I admit,

▶ 1:17:31 Speaker 9: but our strategy is to

▶ 1:17:32 Speaker 8: keep those access ways under the Fellsway bridge and under Melrose Street Bridge open to give us our best chances. Very fortunate for us, for medical aids in that area, especially if it's a second or third one, Armstrong does have their ambulance in Saugus that they can come down from that end. And the truth is the other way, on the

▶ 1:17:56 Speaker 9: Saugus side, the East Side, they have that ability to come in from further out.

▶ 1:18:04 Speaker 8: But to keep our trucks going there,

▶ 1:18:07 Speaker 10: we are

▶ 1:18:10 Speaker 8: well aware that that's a longer run than we like, and

▶ 1:18:14 Speaker 9: we all know those are some big houses up there.

▶ 1:18:16 Ryan Williams: Yeah. So you don't feel like there's any major impacts to response times

▶ 1:18:21 Speaker 8: or deployment? No. We are watching our times. We're trying to stay within our six-minute response time up there, and we are hitting it. Lucky, I mean, lucky, not lucky, but it's that second and third run where if, say, our Engine 2 that normally responds there is tied up in another run, say, somewhere else in the district, another call will come in, headquarters or the ladder truck will go. If the ladder truck is busy, call comes from Engine 3, and that's when you see it's why there's that percentage that you got to have. You can't hit them 100% of the time because it's those second and third runs where it comes from out of district, most likely,

▶ 1:18:58 Speaker 9: that takes up the extra time.

▶ 1:19:02 Speaker 8: But we're trying to be mindful of that, and then when you choose build, the Engine 3 guys come downtown,

▶ 1:19:12 Speaker 9: make sure the East Side stays protected because those are even further runs,

▶ 1:19:17 Speaker 8: andA couple of our last two fires were up at that end of the town in the top on Penney Road and then Penny Hill Road, which is the furthest away-

▶ 1:19:24 Speaker 9: Mm-hmm ... which is a long, long run.

▶ 1:19:28 Speaker 8: So we are mindful of the risk we're taking by undergoing this project. We're trying to keep mindful of the budget of that

▶ 1:19:36 Speaker 9: project also.

▶ 1:19:38 Ryan Williams: Thank you. And I have one last question. As we look forward to the future of larger facilities, more bays, more pavement space for these sites, and we're thinking more about traffic calming in the city, which narrows roads and has a little bit of tension with fire operations due to the larger vehicles, I always ask every year, you and your predecessor, have you thought of smaller footprint vehicles to complement the fleet that can do, say, smaller pump trucks or equipment trucks that can navigate some of the ever-tightening spaces that we have with calmer and safer streets, in addition to the more traditional larger format fire trucks, pump trucks, ladder trucks?

▶ 1:20:25 Speaker 8: That's a good question because the pump trucks, take for instance, they have a 750-gallon water tank. And so our strategy to respond to a fire is the first engine will work off, we call the booster tank. They'll work off that 750 gallon, and our second engine responding, they will connect to the hydrant and feed from the hydrant to that engine and make the continuous water supply, so the firefighters in there do not run out of water. So that's a timing thing. So by having a larger tank, you increase the amount of time to get that continuous flow in. So in the old days, the tanks were 250 gallon, and the trucks were smaller. Mm-hmm. So to get in the amount of hose we need to make the runs between hydrants, and also if we hit a bad hydrant and we've already started laying out hose, now we've got to lay to the next one. So we keep extra hose. So it is a challenge to have what size trucks do we need, because that's

▶ 1:21:28 Speaker 9: our bread and butter operation is to work off our booster for

▶ 1:21:29 Speaker 8: the quick attack because time is of the essence, right? So if we make that quick attack line, get that deployed, if you get that deployed successfully, you're probably 90% of the

▶ 1:21:44 Speaker 9: game, you've got it out. But if you have trouble there, if you

▶ 1:21:46 Speaker 8: have trouble getting that supply line in and that attack line loses water out of the tank, that blows people inside and now are in grave danger, let alone, God

▶ 1:21:57 Speaker 9: forbid, there are also still residents inside. So that's the challenge we have is to go to

▶ 1:22:06 Speaker 8: smaller footprint trucks. But in my experience, going to Seagrave factory, we purchase our vehicles. The vehicles that come to the northeast are, by and large, the smallest vehicles they make.

▶ 1:22:20 Speaker 8: I know people point to European vehicles.

▶ 1:22:24 Speaker 9: I'm not sure how they operate, so to speak. I don't know how far apart their hydrants are, what their water supply is.

▶ 1:22:29 Speaker 8: And they are mostly nationally based,

▶ 1:22:31 Speaker 9: most foreign departments.

▶ 1:22:34 Speaker 8: So they, I think, part of the military most likely, and they can throw

▶ 1:22:40 Speaker 9: people at whatever they have to throw at.

▶ 1:22:42 Speaker 8: But here, especially in the northeast, we settled on going with the bigger water supply to give us that cushion to get in there and make that attack and to give us time for

▶ 1:22:57 Speaker 8: if it's a bad water supply or maybe we may need that third engine

▶ 1:23:00 Speaker 9: coming in, which would be a mutual aid truck.

▶ 1:23:04 Speaker 8: So that's extra time we have to account for.

▶ 1:23:06 Speaker 9: So this is a big safety issue for us, we need to have the hose we

▶ 1:23:08 Speaker 8: need to make the stretches because some buildings are far off from the street. So we have to count, the town of States has one of the buildings that's

▶ 1:23:19 Speaker 8: way back in there. That's almost a 300-foot stretch from the nearest

▶ 1:23:21 Speaker 9: pump. And we account for that in our trucks.

▶ 1:23:25 Speaker 8: So that's why going for a smaller apparatus, we really have to think about that, especially with two pumps in the city.

▶ 1:23:34 Speaker 4: Thank you.

▶ 1:23:36 Devin Romanul: All right. Up next, I have Councilor Karamcheti.

▶ 1:23:39 Manjula Karamcheti: Thank you so much. Chief, thank you so much for being here. I was reading your memo, and it said that the override prevented a reduction in staff, which obviously I'm glad to hear. But you've also been talking about minimum staffing and it being a driver of overtime, and I know you've answered a lot of questions about overtime already. It's certainly a hot topic of the night. But could you just speak a little more? You said that building the bench is one of the best strategies for reducing overtime. Could you just speak to, is there a plan for that? And if so, can you just tell us a little bit of what that would look like and what you would need from city council to move that forward? Because it seems like building that bench is a really important strategy, so I'd love to hear more about what that would look like, what the plan is for that, and then how we might support it, given obviously fire safety and having a fully functioning fire station- Sure ... with enough employees is really important. So.

▶ 1:24:50 Speaker 8: Right. Let's take money out of the equation for a minute. We would love to have four firefighters on each apparatus. Studies show that with four people on a fire truck, the operation of the whole truck is way more efficient than with

▶ 1:25:08 Speaker 9: three. Some departments have five, some have six. Ours have four seats. So we have that limitation. But we would love

▶ 1:25:17 Speaker 8: that. And so how it would work, so that fourth guy would be the bench guy, so to speak, on

▶ 1:25:26 Speaker 8: each-So we would add, that would be saying I was going to

▶ 1:25:30 Speaker 9: add three people to each group. Right?

▶ 1:25:34 Speaker 8: So each group would have three people, so each

▶ 1:25:37 Speaker 9: apparatus could go down to three people before we hired any overtime, let's say. So we'd have that cushion built in.

▶ 1:25:45 Speaker 8: Right now, with just three, once one of those people is out,

▶ 1:25:48 Speaker 9: that's in overtime, so to speak. And so that's what that would look like.

▶ 1:25:55 Speaker 8: Is there a plan for that? There really isn't. I know financial picture is not good.

▶ 1:26:04 Speaker 8: We try to wait out these storms, and thankfully the override passed. We're grateful for the citizens because I don't know, if it didn't

▶ 1:26:11 Speaker 9: pass, what the impact would've been on our department. But

▶ 1:26:15 Speaker 8: as I said, we probably would've been looking at, at a minimum,

▶ 1:26:18 Speaker 9: brown outing companies. And then you're going to have to make the

▶ 1:26:22 Speaker 8: decision which section of the town is going to have a

▶ 1:26:28 Speaker 9: longer response time. So who's going to bear that burden?

▶ 1:26:31 Speaker 8: So that's something I was very grateful we were able to avoid.

▶ 1:26:35 Speaker 9: Would I like to build up our department and not have to come back and ask for such large sums to supplement our overtime, to supplement our staffing, so to speak? I would like to do that.

▶ 1:26:47 Speaker 8: Those are conversations.

▶ 1:26:51 Speaker 9: We're trying to look at maybe doing possibly a study of our department operational need. That's sort of on the horizon at the moment. It's probably the best place to start to see where it should be. I have my opinion.

▶ 1:27:11 Speaker 8: Everybody has their opinion. But right now, the

▶ 1:27:14 Speaker 9: minimum I'm saying it is, is three firefighters on

▶ 1:27:17 Speaker 8: a three-fire truck and a

▶ 1:27:21 Speaker 9: fire alarm operator. That's the lowest that I want to go.

▶ 1:27:24 Speaker 8: But there's nothing that say we can't go lower, and we have gone lower. We've gone to one and one. And when you go from one and one,

▶ 1:27:33 Speaker 9: and we still have to provide mutual aid if we want to get mutual aid. That's the agreement. If you don't provide, you don't get.

▶ 1:27:38 Speaker 8: So what we were doing, we were sending to that period, it was about a little over a year, we were sending out one pump out of the city, leaving only

▶ 1:27:45 Speaker 9: the ladder truck in the city.

▶ 1:27:48 Speaker 8: And that is a humongous risk. But that was in

▶ 1:27:52 Speaker 9: the double naughts, whenever that fiscal time was really bad. We just had to go for budget cuts. We couldn't hire the staff. We had to take companies out of service. And that was a very dark period. We luckily, knock on wood, got through

▶ 1:28:09 Speaker 9: it. I don't believe there was any real casualties from that. But it was a huge risk we took. And

▶ 1:28:17 Speaker 8: fortunately, our mutual aid folks did not

▶ 1:28:18 Speaker 9: abandon us. But we took a huge risk sending out one pump out for mutual aid. And I don't want to do that. I don't want to jeopardize the safety of our firefighters or the citizens of this community.

▶ 1:28:32 Speaker 5: Yeah, of course. Thank you.

▶ 1:28:36 Devin Romanul: All right, up next, I have Councilor Chen. Thank you, Chair.

▶ 1:28:39 Jason Chen: Chief, remind me, how long have you been the chief? Has it been almost two years?

▶ 1:28:43 Speaker 8: Yeah. Almost two years, yeah.

▶ 1:28:45 Jason Chen: Okay. The chief and I first met on the Public Safety Buildings committee, and he took a fresh look at Engine 2 design and modified it, scaled it back with the help of architects, and that saved us about $5 million in that design, which is why we are ahead in that project right now.

▶ 1:29:02 Speaker 9: So, I'd like to- Yeah. Thank you, yeah.

▶ 1:29:06 Speaker 8: Yeah, that's been a pleasure to work on that committee. With this opportunity, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to really take care of the needs of the department and move us into the 21st century.

▶ 1:29:21 Jason Chen: I think there's also a trend that's not really captured in these budget sheets, is that you've also brought a fresh leadership perspective, and there's been a leadership transition, and there's a lot more trust up and down in the chain of command, which we know in this line of work is the key to being effective and having people show up, and all the benefits that come with it.

▶ 1:29:43 Speaker 8: Prior to becoming the chief, I was captain for over 20

▶ 1:29:48 Speaker 11: years. So I was captain of a group for 20 years, and

▶ 1:29:51 Speaker 8: I could probably count on one hand how many times my door was closed. It was always open, always open to firefighters for any

▶ 1:29:59 Speaker 9: problems they had. My biggest

▶ 1:30:04 Speaker 8: way to get camaraderie on the department, and within my group in particular, was to go out and do training, be out in the community, do some pre-planning of buildings, and be seen out there doing training, whether it's a pump test. You might see us throwing ladders against school buildings or whatever. Just doing that, getting them out and about, getting them working as the

▶ 1:30:29 Speaker 9: team, because that's the whole concept of what we do.

▶ 1:30:32 Jason Chen: And with all that goodwill that you're building, we can bring that into collective bargaining negotiations where everybody comes in good faith, and I think there's real opportunity for this trend to continue, as Councilor Williams is suggesting, right? We can take a fresh look at requirements, take a fresh look at manning, and headcount and-

▶ 1:30:58 Speaker 9: Yes

▶ 1:30:58 Speaker 12: ... rethink.

▶ 1:30:58 Speaker 8: It's not only we building, but the city is building.

▶ 1:31:02 Speaker 9: So we really have to account for that. The buildings are large.

▶ 1:31:07 Speaker 8: Certainly, fortunately, they are going to have fire protection systems in there, but

▶ 1:31:17 Speaker 8: statistic-wise, the most likely time a building will catch

▶ 1:31:18 Speaker 9: on fire is during construction, and we have a lot of construction going on now. Mm-hmm. And so there's a lot of exposed wood out thereAnd so those are on our

▶ 1:31:32 Speaker 8: agenda to be aware that Captain Gibson is out there. He's our fire prevention officer out there working with these contractors, trying to keep the site safe, keep the housekeeping down, and make sure they're doing their part

▶ 1:31:46 Speaker 9: to ensure a safe work environment.

▶ 1:31:49 Speaker 8: But these are concerns we have. Melrose is

▶ 1:31:54 Speaker 9: growing, building wise, I'm not sure population wise, but

▶ 1:31:58 Speaker 8: it's something that we have to take into consideration as we plan for

▶ 1:32:00 Speaker 9: our future.

▶ 1:32:03 Jason Chen: Okay. With that, I motion to move to the bottom line.

▶ 1:32:05 Devin Romanul: Second. Motion to move to the bottom line by Councilor Chen, seconded by Councilor Williams. On discussion, I have Vice Chair Vandiver.

▶ 1:32:13 Kimberly Vandiver: Thank you. I just wanted to follow up on one part of the discussion with Councilor Williams about smaller apparatuses and just thinking about the fact that a large number of the calls that the fire department goes out on are medical related, right? And so the practice is that Armstrong Ambulance is sending the ambulance, and we're sending a fire truck in most cases. It would seem like, especially if we have the extra bay space to host an ambulance or a small vehicle like an ambulance, it might make sense to have something really nimble to go out on that type of call and still have the ability as well to have fire apparatus. Do you have any thoughts on that?

▶ 1:33:01 Speaker 8: My thought on that is it's a good idea, and I think Chicopee or Holyoke or one of those

▶ 1:33:07 Speaker 9: departments has tried that.

▶ 1:33:10 Speaker 8: Bigger departments can kind of do that, but we have just two pumps and the ladder. So if I took one of my, say

▶ 1:33:18 Speaker 9: I buy a small SUV, and medical aid comes in

▶ 1:33:27 Speaker 8: in your two's district or say, then your two guys take the medical aid, they hop in the SUV, and they go take it. Now they're at that run, blah, blah, blah. Now the second run comes in, and we get a call for a

▶ 1:33:39 Speaker 9: fire. So now one of my pumps in. Now I have my last pump, engine

▶ 1:33:41 Speaker 8: three, go then if it's a fire. Now they're going to have to make their own hydrant because engine two, those guys aren't even in their truck. They now have to go back to the station to get their truck

▶ 1:33:54 Speaker 9: and then respond. So it really is that I know it

▶ 1:33:58 Speaker 8: costs diesel fuel and keeping up with these trucks,

▶ 1:34:00 Speaker 9: as we're going to talk about later,

▶ 1:34:06 Speaker 8: is challenging, but they have that ability to respond

▶ 1:34:09 Speaker 9: quickly with the trucks while they take them on the runs.

▶ 1:34:13 Speaker 8: Bigger departments, they could take one company, and they

▶ 1:34:17 Speaker 9: have other

▶ 1:34:20 Speaker 8: trucks. If engine two is out in their SUV,

▶ 1:34:23 Speaker 9: maybe engine four can take that run and back up that other engine. We don't have that luxury. That's why

▶ 1:34:28 Speaker 11: I really

▶ 1:34:32 Speaker 8: don't think that would play out very well.

▶ 1:34:36 Speaker 9: I don't want to be caught in the wrong vehicle when we needed it.

▶ 1:34:40 Kimberly Vandiver: Mm-hmm. Do you think having a bench would help with that if there were three additional people in the mix to be able to bring that truck around or something like that?

▶ 1:34:50 Speaker 9: That could be a possibility. If I got, say,

▶ 1:34:52 Speaker 8: four people on each apparatus, maybe I could send an SUV, take two people off one, and keep three on two of the trucks and have them take that medical aid. But that would most likely be from a headquarters company, whereas we like to have the closest company make the response. Because number one, by having two vehicles go, you increase your chances on somebody getting there. We always run the risk of responding companies getting to an accident or having a mechanical breakdown. So if you just send the ambulance, there's the risk of that happening. It's low, but it can happen. And then you have to stop, then dispatch another company. "Okay, we call back with an accident. We can't leave." You got to dispatch another company

▶ 1:35:42 Speaker 9: that's medical aid, another ambulance.

▶ 1:35:46 Speaker 8: But if our truck is going also, at least they make contact. So now we've increased our chances of making the contact

▶ 1:35:51 Speaker 9: with that person. We doubled it. That's why we like to send the

▶ 1:35:55 Speaker 8: closest company we can to the nearest medical aid. And then once they get there, they also help with the ambulance company's equipment, helping them move

▶ 1:36:08 Speaker 9: the folks up and down stairs, what have you,

▶ 1:36:10 Speaker 8: and then packing them out. So it all kind of expedites the packaging up of the patient, getting them into the ambulance, and getting to the hospital quicker. And then our truck is now back in

▶ 1:36:23 Speaker 9: service. The minute they hop back on the truck, they're ready to respond to a

▶ 1:36:26 Speaker 8: call. Instead of if they were in an SUV, they'd have to go back to the station

▶ 1:36:28 Speaker 9: and then be in service. Mm-hmm. So that's the way we operate. That's the way our procedure is after that, and that's why we do it. People ask me that question all the time, but when you work on an ambulance,

▶ 1:36:44 Speaker 8: if that's your full-time job, carrying stuff in and out, and you see most of our calls are medical aids, doing that all day, every

▶ 1:36:50 Speaker 9: day, that wears you down.

▶ 1:36:54 Speaker 11: You don't see many senior medics. If they are,

▶ 1:36:56 Speaker 9: they're in a fly cop, they have some management position,

▶ 1:37:04 Speaker 9: because typically, their backs get worn out very quickly moving people. That's why we have the extra personnel there to help

▶ 1:37:13 Speaker 8: expedite these folks. We did it when it was our ambulance. We do it now with Armstrong Ambulance. Number one, to process the patient quicker, get them the help they need faster,

▶ 1:37:24 Speaker 9: and that means getting them to the hospital quicker.

▶ 1:37:28 Speaker 8: And number two, the more bodies, the less wear and tear on

▶ 1:37:33 Speaker 9: the bodies that respond. So it spreads the work out a little bit easier for everybody on the run

▶ 1:37:37 Kimberly Vandiver: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense to have the second team there to assist and to ensure that if one team gets held up, the other team can still get there.

▶ 1:37:46 Speaker 8: And they can also, if they get there quick, they can start assessing the patient,

▶ 1:37:53 Speaker 8: start CPR if need be, gather medications, gather history, so when the medic truck arrives, they have that information. They've already started that process,

▶ 1:38:05 Speaker 8: and hand off the information to them where they resume care of the patient. And then the meds come and take over care. "You guys need anything?" "No, we're good. Do you need us to take this bag out?" "Barbar, do you need a stair chair?

▶ 1:38:18 Speaker 8: We can bring that up for you. Get your stretcher out on the street, get ready for

▶ 1:38:20 Speaker 9: when you bring them down the stairs." Just expedite these people much quicker. They're not exposed to the elements during inclement

▶ 1:38:26 Speaker 8: weather.

▶ 1:38:29 Speaker 9: And get them in the ambulance into the hospital quicker.

▶ 1:38:30 Kimberly Vandiver: Yeah. That makes sense to me. I think, as we go forward, new fire stations, possibly thinking about staffing, if there's a way to utilize some small vehicles. I know that there is that trade-off of then to get back to the truck, they have to go back to the fire station. Right.

▶ 1:38:49 Speaker 11: But, yeah.

▶ 1:38:50 Speaker 8: If we did that, I would entertain that on a pilot study. If we could get a vehicle and see if we had the staffing. If I got that

▶ 1:39:05 Speaker 9: three extra people per group, I could maybe do something like that, see how that would work out. Maybe it would work out better, and maybe I could see

▶ 1:39:09 Speaker 8: that reflected in the maintenance budget of my trucks.

▶ 1:39:12 Speaker 9: Mm-hmm. But then it's also another vehicle I also have to maintain.

▶ 1:39:19 Devin Romanul: Thank you. All right, up next I have Councilor Karim Chetty.

▶ 1:39:22 Speaker 5: Oh, no, I was raising my hand to make a motion to move the bottom line, so-

▶ 1:39:26 Devin Romanul: All right. And so we have- That already happened ... last in the queue, I have Councilor Williams.

▶ 1:39:31 Ryan Williams: Yeah, I will take the opportunity to say that when I was referring to smaller format vehicles, personally, I'm not talking about SUVs, I'm talking about NFPA Type 4, that are a little bit small. Oh, sorry. Sorry. I'm not talking about SUVs, I'm talking about full-size fire apparatus, but they're just a little bit smaller. I was looking at the NFPA Type 4s. They're called Wildcats or something, and they sit higher, but they have 800-gallon tanks. But they're not quite as long, so they don't have the longer turning radius. And it's not a point of discussion we have to carry on tonight but-

▶ 1:40:08 Speaker 8: These are the kind of things- Afterwards, I would love to look at that with you.

▶ 1:40:11 Ryan Williams: Yeah. I'll send you a link. These are the kind of things I'm thinking about, not like a- Okay. Yeah ... passenger vehicle. Right. Although, I think there's plenty of room in the conversation for innovation with crash response and things like that, but I also think that there's some vehicles out there that are sort of a sweet spot.

▶ 1:40:27 Speaker 8: Sure. Yeah. Sure. And I think there is a movement out there, but the

▶ 1:40:32 Speaker 11: manufacturing is

▶ 1:40:35 Speaker 9: really a big conglomerate right now.

▶ 1:40:37 Speaker 8: So anybody pushing innovation in that

▶ 1:40:42 Speaker 9: respect towards fire trucks is really stifled at this point in time to break into this market in the U.S.

▶ 1:40:49 Devin Romanul: Thank you. Absent any other questions, I do have one, but I'll just note, I was just at the U.S. Conference of Mayors last week, and one of the big points of discussion was fire truck procurement and how many fire chiefs and mayors feel like there are monopolistic tendencies in the industry, and it's consolidating. There's private equity in there, and so-

▶ 1:41:09 Speaker 8: Right. Yeah, it's a point of note on that. The fire chiefs in Massachusetts are going in on a

▶ 1:41:15 Speaker 9: class action suit for that very reason. Yeah. They believe it is collusion, and

▶ 1:41:23 Speaker 9: they have no intention of turning out fire apparatus any faster or making them any cheaper.

▶ 1:41:28 Devin Romanul: Right. My one question, just very quickly is, I know we've got this $400,000 overtime appropriation on the agenda for later in this evening, but I just wanted to ask, since this was printed, the munis report was printed on May 7th, do you know if that $400,000 figure was included in the FY26 projected item for overtime?

▶ 1:41:52 Speaker 9: The latest one I have-

▶ 1:41:54 Devin Romanul: Because I know it had jumped from 489,000 to 719,000 and I didn't know if that was inclusive of the 400K we're tackling tonight.

▶ 1:42:06 Speaker 8: I don't think so. Okay. Because I'm looking at my latest actual.

▶ 1:42:14 Speaker 10: I have it, we are approaching 315,

▶ 1:42:21 Speaker 8: is what we have to come up with, make it a total. We will total end up roughly 1.2 mil.

▶ 1:42:27 Devin Romanul: Got you. Helpful, and thank you very much. Any other councilors have questions? We have a motion on the floor.

▶ 1:42:35 Speaker 1: Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

▶ 1:42:37 Speaker 2: Vice Chair Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Chen? Yes. Councilor Finocchiaro? Yes. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. Councilor Karim Chetty? Yes. Councilor Kowal? Yes. Councilor Abremski? Yes. Councilor Park? Yes. Councilor Williams? Yes. President Freeman? Yes. Chair Romanul?

▶ 1:42:52 Devin Romanul: Yes. All in favor. All right. We will move the bottom line on 221. Our last, and certainly not least, FY27 budget line item is number 291, emergency management.

▶ 1:43:05 Speaker 9: Yes. Let me put on my other hat for a second.

▶ 1:43:16 Speaker 11: Emergency management

▶ 1:43:20 Speaker 8: in a nutshell, emergency management just tries to manage any

▶ 1:43:25 Speaker 8: emergencies and actually try to

▶ 1:43:29 Speaker 8: plan for any emergencies citywide and region-wide.

▶ 1:43:37 Speaker 9: So I recently took this over this past year from Alan Albert, the former director,

▶ 1:43:43 Speaker 8: retired.He did a great job at it, and he was very enthusiastic. Trying to keep plans for preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation efforts

▶ 1:43:55 Speaker 9: for any type of hazards we could foresee.