City Council - Regular Meeting

Cell number, right?

you

Thank you. Hey, Chief, I had an opportunity to speak to Anthony yesterday. That was the first time that I saw that he was at my fire station. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

We're gonna begin this committee meeting with city council. First thing on the agenda is gonna be the NIOSH report. Oh, Comcast. Hi, how you doing? No. Come on up. If you recall, Comcast has been courted by the city for a long time and we finally got them here. And they're gonna give us an update on their fiber installation.

This is awkward, why is it? I think it did, yeah. So anyway, I wanted to introduce the Comcast team.

Karen, turn that up, the podium.

Because they have approached the Department of Public Works for some permitting to begin their rollout of fiber in the city. So the order of operations was that back in November of 2024, city council approved their franchise agreement. And then they started their planning for the rollout of fiber citywide. As part of that rollout, they came to the department to request permission for an encroachment into the right of way for power supply boxes that help power the whole fiber network. I was not really comfortable in issuing any type of approval until I came to city council and at least explained going on where we are in the project. It's a pretty big rollout. I think you guys are in fourth now.

So, you know, they're... Dave, can you pick up the mic there a little bit more?

It's not staying up. It's designed for short people.

Let's talk like this. I'll do my best. I don't know what the heck happened to it. So, yeah, so they're working in the surrounding municipalities and on their way into the city. There's a lot of aerial work outside of the downtown. And I think in the downtown, there are five or six locations where these boxes need to go. We've referred them to the HTC to work out the details of that. These boxes, they kind of look like traffic boxes. They're metal enclosures. And we've been back and forth on making sure that these locations are as inconspicuous as possible. And I wanted to make sure that you guys were all prepared just in case it shows up on social media or you get a call from somebody asking what this is. And right now we are sort of negotiating certain locations. We're trying to stay away at all costs from in front of people's houses or trying to blend them into a shrub or something like that. They do need to be near an existing telephone pole or a facility like that. So yeah, so this is really just an update for you guys to make sure we're all on board. You know, the Comcast team is here to answer any questions and maybe tell you a little bit about, you know, their rollout now. And then the next step would be at the next council meeting after the engineering staff and I, you know, we sort out all the location details. We're going to do this as one encroachment agreement for 24 total locations. There are 19 outside of the historic district, and I believe there's five within the historic district. So once we get through that approval process, we'll give them an encouragement agreement, and then I'll leave it up to them to let you know what their timeline is.

Not a question for Comcast, but just an informational thing. I know that Comcast is very community-oriented in most of the cities that they are. What do you see coming forth working in our area? You're taking it out of my hands.

So I'll lean into this microphone that's very low. You can pull it up.

You can pull it up.

Can I? Yes, absolutely. I think that's about as far as it's going to go.

Oh, okay.

That's okay. I'll just shout. So Comcast, as you mentioned, is very interested in partnering with communities. My name's Janet Steiner. I am a senior manager for government and community affairs in In Comcast this is part of my world and you know, we've been meeting with a number of folks in the city of Easton To kind of get our arms around what types of partnerships, you know, we might be able to you know to embark upon We would love feedback from Council I'm available to meet any time You know to find out what your passion projects are, you know, we do a lot in the space surrounding well, you know digital exploration digital opportunity and Internet Essentials is a big thing for us. That is a low-cost internet service for income-constrained families. I won't get into the weeds on that here, but I'd be happy to go through that with any of you at any point.

I'm sure the mayor probably will reach out to you. He has some projects that he's really near and dear to, and I think that that would be a great segue to working with. Mayor? Mayor?

Yes, our Westside Community Center. I think I talked to you about that.

Yep.

So we'll be looking forward. And if Derek Jeter has anything to do about it, we'll make sure we get him on board as well.

He might be at the Knicks game tomorrow.

No. No, this isn't the same Derek Jeter. Oh, okay. He goes by Derek.

Are you talking about Brian?

Brian Jeter. Oh, okay. I said Derek. Yeah, you're right. Brian Jeter. I see him at the PML meetings, and I always bust him about the Westside Community Center.

Well, I'm sorry to tell you, Brian has retired from Comcast, so you're stuck with me. So you took his place?

Nice, sir.

But at any rate, what I just wanted to say, again, is I'm happy to answer any questions that you guys have. Easton has always been on our list of communities to build as we started to embark on this project. But we've had to put plant in other communities in order to get here. because wiring the communities would not be particularly helpful if we didn't have the actual trunk coming in to light everything up. Comcast isn't a let's build this town and then leave and then you never hear from us again. We like to stay connected to the communities that we serve. If council ever has any issues with residents, any questions, concerns, you can feel free to reach out to me. During the build, residents will have a specific contact number that we can share that with you or contact email, contact information in general that we can share with you that they'll be able to ask questions or if there's an issue that needs to be resolved. Our team's super responsive. Again, we're local. Pennsylvania is our home state. You know, we've got the towers in Philadelphia. You know, we're in Pennsylvania. We are ingrained. We're a Pennsylvania institution. So you'll be able to find one of us.

Well, welcome. So I wasn't on the board in 2024, so I have just a few questions. So what is your turnaround time for recovery due to storms? Say you're local.

Sure. I mean, we have an entire process in terms of storm recovery that initiates. And it really depends on the severity of the storm, the scope of the storm, how widespread it is. I can only give you estimated time frames, but we get out there pretty quickly to restore service. A lot of our plant is No, that thought went away. Yeah, like Randy said, it's about two hours for us to get on site. Sometimes, again, depending on the severity of the storm and how widespread it is. But we're usually up and running, usually. I want to say that's typical. When I'm watching the storm response, they're usually done within 24 hours at most, like full on, OK, we're standing down. Again, it's hard to say, you know, we don't know.

Depending on the type of storm.

Exactly.

Do you use independence for installation or do you use your own employees at people's homes? Employees for in-house, for installs. Yes, for installs. Employees do that. Okay, so employees up Comcast? Yes. Okay.

Yep.

Okay, thank you.

Ma'am, I have a couple questions. I also wasn't here in 2024. So... The boxes that will be distributed throughout the city, I believe there will be 19 boxes. Would you characterize those as, like, low-voltage boxes?

I'm going to let the team answer those questions.

They're not low-voltage.

If you could go to the microphone, we're streaming.

They're 220 volts. They're power supplies to power our entire system. So, for instance, we could have 800 potential houses that would be fed off of that one power supply.

And is that considered a medium voltage or a high voltage? What is that considered to be, 220?

It's not a medium voltage.

It's not a high voltage.

You've got the 220 coming into our device, and it's 18 volts going out of our device, maximum 18 hours.

And then did they make noise?

Very, very minimal. If you're standing right next to it on top of it, you might be able to hear it, but it's not like a loud buzzing that you're going to hear.

It's not like an electrical transformer you'll hear buzzing. It's not that. I've never heard one walking down the street. I've never heard one. And I've been around for a little while.

And then I think I talked a little bit with Mr. Hopkins, but I'm Could you just characterize the size? Is it 20 inches, something like that?

It's 36 inches high. Oh, 36. 24 inches wide, and they're 15 inches deep.

And that is the smaller of the two options.

Any special training anyone needs to know about these boxes in the event of... We have licensed electricians. Yeah, no, but I mean like if one would catch fires or like special protocol to put that out or if one gets vandalized and starts sparking, is there something, you know, special about...

There really is not. Okay. There's really... I mean, you can follow standard electrical fire protocol. There's nothing special. There's no hazard inside, no chemicals inside. And there is a battery backup. So if you want to collect the chemical inside, then there's a battery inside of it.

And it does have a shutoff along the side as well.

There's a shutoff in the incident where something would happen. There's a shutoff right outside the cutout switch.

Is there any way that those... equipment could be installed underground instead of having an above ground box.

And then your actual system, We're talking about the internet, is that what Comcast is providing?

Internet and television and telephone.

Like the whole, is it fiber optic? It is fiber optic. And so that's running along the telephone wires, is that right?

Where we're going aerial, yes, it'll be along the utility poles in the areas that we're going to go underground, obviously. We'll have it in a two-inch pipe.

Okay, yeah, pardon my ignorance about the technology. Now, has Comcast ever sold any... cellular disks, what do you call those? Satellite dishes in Easton?

No.

You've never done satellite? Don't do satellite.

Okay. This is your first time here, right? I mean, I've heard of you. I watch all the Philly sports events. So, you know, is that something that we're going to have access to here in Easton? Yes. Okay. No blackouts. No blackout channels. I don't know.

Just a question. Coming into the area, will you be training and hiring in our region?

We don't know that. We don't have that information yet. Again, we're still pretty early in the build. So more to come on that.

OK, thank you. Let me ask you a question. Of course, we have other utility companies that have different types of above ground events. If it's in somebody's yard and it's really complaining, will you pay for landscaping that facility so it's hidden?

So that's a slippery slope because you don't want to have it too close to the equipment and whatever. All I can say is that we've been really great about working with residents who have concerns. I can't make any guarantees. I can't make any promises. That's good enough. But we're not here to make people mad.

No, I would imagine not.

Thank you. I mean, you know your competition here. So your price point has to be better than theirs.

I'm just curious if you know of any documented health impacts from medium voltage boxes like these.

I've been with the company for 27 years, and I have

And then when you sell the product, Comcast, I understand you also use third-party sellers that will brand themselves as Comcast, but they're not really Comcast. Does that make sense to you?

It does make sense to me. I don't have a lot of information on that, but I can certainly look into it and get back to you. I do believe that's correct. But again, I don't. It's just

Yeah, I would appreciate it, because I lived in Califon at one point. Do you know where that is? It's in New Jersey.

It's also part of the United States.

Yes. And I signed up for Comcast Internet. The website said Comcast. The person who answered the phone said Comcast. And then there was some kind of billing issue. I don't recall what it is. And essentially, I was like, well, I'm paying Comcast. And they're like, no, we're, oh, I know what it was. They promised a certain price. And so I locked in at that price. And then when the bill came, it was significantly higher. So I called Comcast. And they were like, well, we're not the people who sold this to you. And I said, well, the website says Comcast. They say they're Comcast. And they said, well, they're third parties. And honestly, I didn't have the greatest customer service. I was upset because I got locked in and wasn't able to kind of get out of it and felt like there was kind of a bait and switch. If you could try to identify a little bit more, because I think Easton residents want the best customer service possible, especially from our neighbor in Philadelphia.

And to the best of my knowledge, specifically in our new build-out areas, I believe we're sending Comcast reps in, but it is specific Comcast sales folks. coming in and meeting with people, knocking on doors, to whatever extent we're able to do that. Because it is the introduction of the company to a new town. So I think sometimes the authorized sellers might be pulling overflow. But again, I would have to get back to you on that information.

What is the current timeline? When can we expect this estimated when we can call up Astound and say, no more?

Sometimes there's unforeseen complications in the build, so it may be a little bit fluid depending on once we actually get We won't wait until the entire city is built to light up every year. It will cycle through. As a particular area is built, we'll activate those homes. Service will become available.

So two to three years till the final, till everybody's in. Good.

And so there's a website where customers can sign up, put their address in, and we'll notify them when the service is available in their neighborhood.

Good. Just to remind me, I apologize. We spoke two Fridays ago, right? OK, with Councilwoman Rose. Yes. Can you briefly just mention the affordable piece for some individuals that can't afford the expensive internet and cable that would they get?

So that's Internet Essentials. I had mentioned it early on. Internet Essentials, as I said, is a low-cost internet solution for income-constrained families. It is $14.95 a month. There are no additional taxes. There are no additional fees. You get a modem sent to you. You can light that up in your own home. So there's no installation charges for having the modem sent to you. That program has been around for the past 15 years in Comcast service areas. Anybody who is within 200% of the federal poverty guidelines and does not currently have internet service with Comcast is eligible for that program. What's really important about that, like 200% of the federal poverty guidelines, that's a big number. That's about $66,000 a year for a family of four. So it not only includes your lower income families, it also includes your ALICE families, asset limited, income constrained employed families, cliff families. There's a lot of different names for folks who are finding that at the end of the day, despite both two employed adults in the home, they're still having difficulty making ends meet. Studies show that that $15 price point is affordable to about 95% of families in the United States. So that's FCC information. Again, we started this program About 15 years ago, we've connected more than 2 million people across the country to the internet. Comcast is really dialed in to making sure that people have access to broadband, to affordable broadband in their homes, because we recognize how important it is in this day and age to have that.

Excuse me. What's the procedure look like for a family to apply?

So it's actually really simple. We do have a website, we also have, they can apply on a mobile phone. And I believe there's a two factor, authentication or something like that. When we first started, you had to have an ID, you had to have proof of residence, all that kind of stuff. With the way it is now, you basically just sign up, it kicks back to your phone and says here's your code, that kind of thing. So it's a pretty simple process. We do have some support materials. We have an entire website called, it's our Internet Essentials Partner Portal, that any nonprofit organization, cities and municipalities can sign up. You can get free information, flyers, palm cards, that kind of thing, to distribute to the community. I have a feeling that once we start to market in the city, we're going to be talking to a lot of nonprofit partners just to get that information out and sort of get some education out there about how easy it is to sign up and use the service.

Yeah, I also think you should take it a step further and go to the school district.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and we've done that. So we're a little hit or miss with some of the school districts. Some of the school districts feel like it's advertising, so they're concerned about giving Comcast additional free advertising is what some districts have sort of viewed it as. But yeah, we love to work with school districts, PTOs, counselors' offices, all those types of things. We're you'll be seeing a lot of us. Good.

Can you, I don't think I heard it, but could you talk about what the implementation plan looks like generally, geographically in the city? Because we have four different sections of the city.

Do you guys have that? Yeah.

You could share that with me, and I'll just share it with council.

Yeah, we can get you a map and lay it out so that you know where we're actually starting and how it's going to flow through the city.

And I'm assuming that those sections will have access to Comcast first?

Yeah, as we start, it'll fire it up and build through. So naturally, where we start is going to fire it up first and then roll through the city as the build plan progresses.

Actually, if you send those to Dave, he'll circulate it internally.

It's west of us. That's why it's called west of us.

Rather than, this is being recorded, rather than speculate, just send that information and we'll just present it. And you can really just high level summarize it too, just so council has an idea as they talk to their constituents. So you're bringing the fiber optics up from Philadelphia to the Lehigh Valley.

You're not going to, I believe you answered the question before, you're not going to use a satellite.

Correct.

All fiber optics.

And the reason I asked about the satellite dishes is because the satellite companies, like the cable satellite or whatever, and also utilities like electric, in the West Ward, which is one of the neighborhoods, one of the four neighborhoods in Easton, and likely on the south side, the utility companies just kind of do whatever they'd like. So they'll put a meter right in front of your house. They'll keep satellite dishes up and then put another one up, you know, because a new tenant has come and they won't take the old one down. So, you know, we just want to keep the city clean. And we also, I guess I'd like to ask about the placement of those boxes. Are they going to be placed with, in consultation with our public works director or not?

We have to approve. We have to get it approved wherever we're placing them. They have been filed already. I don't know if they're final approved yet. But yes, they will be approved for location prior to placing them.

by the city, by Public Works?

So the mechanism we decided to use for this was an encroachment permit simply because they are installing their box in the public right-of-way. And for all intents and purposes, it's a permanent improvement. So what they did, they submitted their location list with a first option and a second option. And of the 19 of those, again, we're going to let the historic district process take that route. But the ones outside of that area, we reviewed and we sent about half back just because we thought there were better alternatives. So we went out and reviewed in the field option one and option two. And on seven of the 19, we went back to Comcast and said, you know, we'd like you to try a little harder and do a little better on this and really try and get them out of the way. You know, they were very agreeable to doing that. So I'm waiting for the second round to come in, and I think once we vet all the locations, then we'll come to council with a single encroachment agreement approving the 19 separate locations, and that's how we'll probably do it.

Thank you. That helps. Thank you. Yeah, and I do welcome that I think it's important to have that competition But yeah, we we I think we've had some unpleasant experiences with other utility type companies and so I Just want to make sure you recognize that we care about our city and we hope that you do too.

We're excited to be here.

We really are.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

OK, next we're going to hear from the NIOSH report. Oh, I'm sorry, Joel Shearer, you are a retired solicitor, so you get one benefit. Your benefit is you move up from six to number two. Thank you.

You got five minutes. Thank you. Is this working?

Yeah, it's working.

Okay. I have to say it. I'm Joel from Uptown College Hill. But otherwise, I'm here. This is a legacy assignment. I've been working with the UMore Charitable Trust for a few years. Antonia Griffo is here. She's secretary of the trust, the president, Melissa, is a way, so Tony's here just if there is any questions. This is really a very straightforward, simple matter. You Moore, who was the founder of the Dixie Cup, instead of giving us a a beat-up property in the west end of Wilsonboro with a cop gave us you more park. I mean, or helped us with the gift of what became you more park. And in the gift, where he split up four different gifts, one quarter went, and that created... really a fund. The fact that the UMore Charitable Trust existed was something in the early 70s. It was felt it was the right way to handle it. It went through court to create it. But in the last few years, I have been told numerous times that by the trustees, we don't want to do this anymore. There's the use of the funds and the running of the park, which they don't run the park, by the way. The park is run by Hopkins. Is he still here? Oh, the one person who can answer any questions is gone. So I'll make it up. I figure the president can, so I can say whatever. The UMore Park Charitable Trust simply exists to oversee the funds that have been invested. There's approximately 2.2 million in there now, and to make an annual distribution. I believe it's about $100,000. It's in the city budget, the actual distribution. And to relieve the trustees, the city administratively agreed that it was willing to accept those funds and manage it as part of the city trust. The law had changed over the years so the third class city code clearly allows for park type purposes to have your own trust. what you have in your package is the resolution I had drafted as well as the longer resolution that the trust had drafted that really explains the whole history and how we get to this point today and the request is to adopt a resolution tomorrow night so that the trust members can be relieved of their responsibility, dissolve their trust, I would then go to court and just ask the court to basically remove itself from any oversight, because there is no need for that, and then we would have it the history of the trust at the courthouse closed, and it would just become an annual budget item, but totally segregated funds. And I suggested the composition of an oversight committee that would handle that and put it in the budget each year. And that's the quick overview. In your package, I had anticipated that there would only be the nine-page resolution attached but you have the pleasure of seeing almost 200 pages of exhibits that were in the petition if you want to. Most of it is just the investment performance by the outside advisor, which has been quite good. And that's really the summary of what that resolution is all about.

Mr. Scheer, I was going to ask this question tomorrow evening, but since you're here.

Yes, because then I don't have to go tomorrow evening.

I could call you still, but anyway. My question would be, would that conflict of interest for me, being that that comes to one of my offices, it comes to Will's office?

The county has nothing to do with...

In reading that, it says that Northampton County, Will's office...

Oh, registered wills. No, no, that's just a filing there. OK, so that wouldn't have anything. No, that's the whole thing. There really is no oversight by the court system. It was just in the 70s when they created this. They got a term number, and then for decades, every time we'd have a change of trustees they would go to court until the last one I said wait there's nothing in here that says the court needs to oversee this so we stopped that process and then the last request by the or the The unanimous request by the trust members was, please, can you take these funds and be responsible for the management going forward? You know more how to do it than we do, and we're all getting older, and nobody young wants to join.

She was a wonderful woman. She really was. Thank you for that clarity. I just want to make sure.

No, there's no problem there. Does anybody have any questions about it? It really is a straightforward, just a transfer.

No, I just want to thank Antonio for your service. You did a great job with that fund, you and Melissa. So I want to thank you for your service.

Yeah, and Antonio did an incredible job in this petition. I've never seen such a thorough, complete... explanation that gives you really the whole history tied up neatly in a bow. So if there's no other questions, I was here. Yes. Could you just quickly describe the structure that I'm proposing?

Yeah, that's proposed here just so the board and also the accounting. And if you do recall, what percentage is used for park operations, et cetera?

Well, I won't know the full breakdown. The allocation has been approximately $100,000 from what I gather. Dave would know for sure. When I looked at the city budget, it showed about that much money. Now, there's an agreement between the city and the Delaware and Lehigh Heritage Corridor. And the city agreed that 25% of the money allocated to the city would be allocated to D&L for their activities within the park area. And from there, Dave knows how it's filtered into the budget. But one of the big concerns that the city has always had is the ability to leverage the trust funds for projects that require lending and borrowing, which is one of the things that made the members of the trust really uncomfortable. And I think the city's gonna have to make its own fiduciary oversight over it, but it probably will make it easier to leverage those funds when appropriate. But it has to be used for park purposes. I have it in here somewhere. exactly what the purpose of it, yeah. Purpose is, it will be to allocate income for the use of operating expenses, maintenance and development of the UMore Park, and it allows principal to be expended for, quote, development of the UMore Park. I think the goal has always been to keep it as a sustainable fund, but that isn't inconsistent with actually borrowing money when there's a plan to repay that money. Does that help? Is that part of what you asked for?

It does. The details in the resolution, too, on the oversight.

Oh, did that what you're looking for? The oversight committee would be the director of finance, the city administrator, the director of public works, the mayor, and then the city council representative, which I propose be the chairperson of public works, because that's the committee that oversees parks.

Yeah, I mean, that's it. I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew that there was some There's responsibility here that's now being taken over. In our budget, there is the acronym for the Hugh Moore Charitable Trust. What is that? HMPCT. Yeah. And you can see that in the budget itemized where the revenue is coming in. We may have to, and I think you will see now and maybe in the financials, we'll have to talk about that in the audit, et cetera, where that may pop up additionally. But the point is that that resolution does break down the oversight, how we're going to oversee the funds. The amount that comes to the city, the percentage won't change per se, but how the fund is managed will be, because it won't be from an independent board. It'll be from the city of Easton made up of those individuals. So it's just important to know.

And the money will be segregated. The paragraph four of the resolution does require the committee to create an annual budget to be presented concurrent with the city's annual budget. And city council will review and approve that. And the committee, oversight committee itself, is supposed to formally meet twice a year. That's in the resolution.

I think it's exciting, so I think that's good, and thank you for all your work. We do appreciate it, and now it's the city's turn to carry on this legacy.

That's all I have, Joel. And if I was planning to come tomorrow night, but only for this, so if there's no other questions, I'll prepare for the Knicks game instead at home because they need a little bit of chilling out and, you know, I can't believe they got excited. I also can't believe the president gave an executive order to the referees to call these intentional fouls on the Knicks. He fell asleep at the game. Excuse me? He fell asleep at the game, and I didn't even fall asleep at home. That's after they placed the bets on the Spurs. Probably through his own family agency. I should leave before I. There's a Justice Department agent waiting out there for me.

Mayor, can I have your gavel? Thank you. Thank you, Joel.

Thank you, Joel.

Thank you, Antonio.

We miss you.

Next, we're going to hear from the NIOSH reporter. NIOSH. Recommendation and codes inspection report versus fire department high-risk occupancy buildings So I noticed Dwayne's here so Chief do you have any more of those handouts you gave out last time I Do not but we can get some printed up quick.

I believe Thank you, sir

Thanks, Dwayne.

Okay, you guys are up. Chief and Dwayne.

You each get one hour and that's it.

I don't want to overstep my bounds here, but I don't think I'm going to last an hour.

I guarantee that you don't have an hour. Joel didn't have an hour, so you won't have an hour.

If you'd have let him go, he'd have kept going.

Oh, without a doubt.

I'm trying to give him a commercial break.

Okay, so last meeting, I passed out the responses immediately. Mark is going to be nice enough to make fresh copies for everybody and then pass those out. So does anybody have any questions before they come back into the room? Shall we wait until they come back in so everybody's fresh on?

Yeah, let's go on to the resolution, Mr. Pinnabone's resolution.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. Council should have received a copy of the resolution in their packet. to be voted on tomorrow. It's very just straightforward, I think, but what we all discussed, just the need and the desire to have committee meetings advertised on the Friday before the meeting. Obviously, in the resolution, there's exceptions for emergencies or something special that comes up that needs to be discussed. But this way, the public has an idea of what's on the agenda if they care to discuss it. Through my conversations with Lewis, By doing it this way, Tuesdays will be the bulk of the conversation, the debate, the public. Wednesdays, just a voting meeting. You know, everything should be worked out during the workshop where people can attend or watch online, and then Wednesdays are just votes. So everybody has, is there any questions on the resolutions?

Yes.

You?

I do. Okay. May I speak?

Yes, sure, absolutely. Okay. Well, Karen had just some comments, and I'm not sure, if it'll play out in this resolution or not, Karen, but you should talk about it because you manage the portion of pulling together the agenda items. And it gets, right now, it gets cumbersome because you're getting emails from everyone.

Multiple emails from the same item.

Yeah, and then they're changing. This is something that you have to manage through and you need time. So you want to just add some comments on operationally how this affects you.

Right. So what I noticed is that you mentioned in the resolution that there's a deadline for me to have that finished and published. What it doesn't mention is what the deadline is for that information to get to me. And my suggestion is right now the deadline is Wednesday at 4 o'clock before the following Wednesday's council meeting. And I would suggest that that be the same deadline for that.

Yeah, whatever. The resolution is just about us advertising, however you need it internally. Now, I will say, I know I've heard Wednesday and I don't know about other council members, but when I first started it was Friday. No, it was always Wednesday Okay And then we and then the mayor switched it to Thursday So if we're gonna do Wednesday, I'm fine, but I think it needs to be clear because we seem to be all over the place We well, it's been Wednesday I mean it was Thursday for a month or two, but then we brought it back and I did check with other

municipalities, and when they have their meeting on a Wednesday, the deadline is the previous Wednesday. I used to make it noon, but they said 4 o'clock. So I changed it from noon to 4 o'clock that Wednesday.

Wednesday, unless anybody else has an objection, I'm fine with Wednesday.

Thanks for bringing that up, Karen, because we also want to accommodate you, too. I mean, it's not fair for you to have to work through a weekend to get some of this stuff out to us. Yeah, I appreciate that. And most things aren't an emergency. I mean, maybe there's something that comes up at some point that is. Absolutely. Which it may be the exception to the rule, but I think everyone should be able to get it in. Otherwise, it goes to the next council meeting. We're here every two weeks, so.

So the other part of that was, like you said, at the end of that resolution, unless there's an emergency, which I think you all agree I'm pretty flexible on getting things onto the agenda. So my question is, what's your flexibility? If I can't, like this past Friday, I couldn't get those.

Well, that was a computer glitch.

It was. And the month before, though, two weeks before that, it was something else. And I was one day late. I sent it out on a Saturday at 5 o'clock or 5.30.

I think the answer is just what is the, we don't have a solicitor here, the legalities of is 24 hours before the meeting, right?

I think it might be up to you if you're willing to accept that a day late.

I mean, I'm willing to accept it Monday.

Because that last meeting that it was late, I sent an email out on Friday letting you know it was going to be late, and I actually got it in earlier than expected.

The bottom line of this whole resolution is we weren't doing committees at all. They weren't being advertised. People didn't know we weren't putting them here. We didn't know what we were getting until we got here. That just should never be. So as long as we're getting out within the legal requirement of 24 hours before, when we asked to get it early is because quite a few times there's a lot of stuff that we have to research. And this isn't our jobs. We have to work and do what we have to do. So it's kind of hard for us to prepare. Um, you know, as long as for the public, cause that's what we're talking about with, with, with advertising, as long as it's within 24 hours of the meeting as, as the rules state, I'm okay with that for us. I know sometimes things come up, the computer goes down or whatever. If I don't have enough time to acclimate myself with the information, I'll just move the table and then we won't vote on that agenda. I'm not going to vote unless I have enough time to read the information. which usually hasn't been a problem, even if you bring it on a Saturday, it's not the problem. This whole resolution is 100% about advertising so the public knows what we're discussing and when we're discussing it. That's all this is. However you have to work it to make it work, I'm okay with it. I don't think anybody else has an issue. We asked to get the agendas by Friday, Saturday when things are happening because if we don't have enough time, I've talked to other council members, if we don't have enough time to understand, we're going to ask to take it off the agenda whether it has to be voted on or not. So we just need time to make sure we understand what's going on before we vote. But this resolution is all for advertising for the public on committee. That's all it is. So whatever you need to do to make it happen, I don't think anybody's going to have a problem with it. And Monday, I would say, Monday morning would be fine to get it out to the public. That's what the resolution is, just the public.

Any other discussion on Mr. Pinnabone's resolution about agenda items?

Okay, moving on. You said Monday, but here... You said Friday.

No, I said Friday. She's saying if there's an issue and she's running late, I said as long as it's by Monday, because that's the 24th. If it's not 24 hours before the Tuesday meeting, then it can't go on the agenda. Because you're not advertising properly. But she's saying if there's an issue with computer glitch, I'm okay if she puts it out Monday. That gives you 24 hours. We're following legal protocol.

Does that have to be reworded then?

No, because I prefer to be there Friday so we can prepare for it. But if we can't, then Monday.

All right. And then Karen will update counsel as she's working through if there's an issue because she had called me and then Mazin was here. until late, so it was involved.

And I have another question. I don't know what happened to it, and maybe you guys are still doing it. When Karen took the position of city clerk, we gave Julie a stipend to assist Karen to prepare things, get it ready. Now Julie's no longer with us, but we've hired since then. Are we continuing that process with someone else to where Karen can get assistance when she needs it, if she's backed up with right-to-knows and agendas? Are we still doing the same thing that we approved last year with someone else so they can help her relieve some of the burden that she's dealing with.

That's up to council's purview. We never knew it stopped. Just so everyone is clear, the clerk position reports to the council. Understood. The clerk's position is part of the legislative branch, which is separate from administration technically.

I understand. I guess my question is, I don't know about anybody else, we approved this last year. As far as I'm concerned, it's still happening. Is it still happening or is it not?

The money's there. If you want us to move forward on it, we'll move forward on it.

It's legislative. It's up to us. We approved it last year, but without us, it stopped. Without us, it stopped. The ball was dropped somewhere because it didn't come to us. As far as we're concerned, it was still going, but apparently it wasn't. Unless council has objections, I think that should get started back up again. Let me just point out that

Karen asked for help and she got a part time in a former former city clerk. Tom Hess was hired to help her. So it's not like she didn't have anybody. And that's the line that we used to pay him.

So then he she does have somebody else. No, Tom.

Tom. Tom Hess was was brought on part time just for limited time to catch me up because I was behind. He was not hired to be my assistant city clerk. I don't have an assistant city clerk. And when I did, it was strictly for when I was on vacation or out sick. And I only took one, Julie covered for me one time in two years. Well, I don't believe that.

I could be wrong. I could be mistaken, which I don't believe I am. When we approved giving that stipend to Julie, it was to help you with whatever help you need. And the discussion was, she gets inundated with right-to-know requests, and it's so burdensome for that she can't get other things done and that's what we used it for now if we're not using her that way that's different well codes does the codes office does assist us with right to no request but to Karen's point

The stipend was limited.

It was very limited. It was limited. It wasn't to be working daily, like doing a right to know request.

I think as we look into this new budget season, we should be looking. I've said that before. We should be looking for an assistant to the office. We ran into a problem when Rita got sick, and we had to call Tom back. So I don't want to fall in that same kind of situation again. There always should be someone in the back of the person's head.

I agree on the mayor's right, and there was some limited role with Tom, but on the stipend, we can certainly look at that again, but we may have to revisit it if council decides that they want to put a part-time position also later on next year, because I don't think you will need a person with a stipend and a part-time position.

But until next year's budget, we still have the line item stipend, To give Karen assistance with preparing the agenda, the right to know, or whatever she needs, right?

Right.

So can we continue that since we already approved it?

If that's what you want to do, we'll assist Karen in finding...

I didn't know it stopped. That's why I asked. I was under the impression that we were still operating on what we approved. But I guess we stopped it or changed it or shifted gears.

We didn't look for anyone after Julie.

How does that stipend position work? Are they on call or is it for when Karen needed? So whenever we need them, they come in.

Yeah, it's like overtime.

And that person, just so you know, Frank, actually worked in City Hall. So it was easier to... And they're always available?

It's an employee.

It was Julian Coates.

Yeah, if Karen's not available, we have an immediate backup. But it's a current employee, so they have their day-to-day duties. Duties. Julie was a good fit because she was capable of really multitasking and doing a lot of different things and fairly quickly. So, but I mean, if that's what you guys want to do.

I mean, I'd like to, I personally, it's up to the majority of council. I would personally like to continue with what we approved last year, at least just to help Karen and, I don't know, whatever you think. Put agendas together, help with this, help with that, and then during the budget season, we can revisit it, and if we have to create a part-time position a couple days a week, then you eliminate the stipend and do a position. I don't know what the answer would be. We could talk about that when the mayor presents his budget.

Well, I'd love to see that, too, like how much the stipend is and how often they could... It's $1,500. That's not a lot.

No. The other thing I was going to tell you guys, we're also in the process... And this goes along with this resolution. And then, Karen, internally about the SOP, the procedures, standard operating procedures on how we're going to operate. We'll put something together for council. But we're in the process of making a recommendation to council to onboard a clerk's management software that is going to make this just a lot easier. And there's a lot of workflows, even internally. We need it. There's just there's there's a lot going on and changing everything To make things more transparent is good, but we would we're about to roll something out We're gonna make a recommendation to council. So that's gonna help us.

That's gonna help a little bit We've been looking at software since last October and Karen just to reiterate this resolution is just about My need for last two years to just advertise to the public, right? However, you got to do it is fine with me and but the way we've been doing it, as I spoke at the last meeting, we throw things on last minute or whatever. People don't know what we're talking about, we don't know what we're talking about, and the public is not participating in the discussion. That's all. So however you need to make it work, it's fine with me. What do you mean by that? Which part?

We have an agenda, every meeting we have an agenda, and the public doesn't know what we're talking about. They don't come to meetings. And if they watch it at home, we are live streaming in now. I think we're doing a lot to keep as transparent as we can. We shouldn't stop the work of City Hall.

No, I don't think we're stopping the work. And I think we are doing some things we could do substantially better. And I think this is what it is. When we come in, a lot of times, Mayor, you'll email us on a Monday or Tuesday to let us know if it's canceled or what have you. Then we come in and you do have the agenda for us. And all of that is great. But The public wants to take part in it. They don't know about it. We don't advertise it.

I sent out an email, and I didn't send it out for this meeting, because I never get a response. I said, does anyone have anything to put in the agenda? And it's like talking to the wind.

I always respond to Karen. When we have agenda items, we send it in. But if we have no agenda items, we don't. But my point is, These are, committee meetings are workshops. This is where you discuss and work on and create and do whatever. This is where you hear public discussion. Wednesday is a voting meeting. You can't have accurate public discussions or hear from the public if they don't know about it. So this is just advertising for the public.

I agree it's good to have committee whenever there's something that needs to be discussed, but that doesn't prohibit us from discussing further the next day or taking more public comment into consideration.

We had a Saturday morning meeting back in 2008 when we decided that the Tuesday meeting was nothing more than judge rehearsal for Wednesday and that just didn't work. So we said we'll have committee meetings for those that are, for example, right now we have a problem with our hauling company. You're not going to find a collector who does rear loading haulers anymore. They don't do it. They want the mechanical arm to come down and pick it up because they have too many workers' comp claims. And that's what we talk about. We talk about recycling is less now than it was in 2009 when we started it. Why? Why shouldn't recycling go down? Participation should go up. But that's what we decided back in 2008 and obviously that is changing.

Are we still talking about committee meeting?

Yeah. Committee meetings are meant for your committee, whoever you are, to bring up topics that aren't going to be voted on tomorrow night. They're not going to be voted on. They're not even going to be discussed. They're meant to talk about, for example, health care right now. Health care costs are going through the roof for employees. It went up a million dollars last year. That's a lot of money.

I think the other thing that's good that we have on the regular agenda is a part of Prior to the vote we could discuss we always have an option here to discuss absolutely, but how many times have we?

Discussed heard from the public decided we want to do something different Then you have to take it off bring it back two weeks later You you all I'm doing asking is to advertise have the discussion thing and I'm not sure what was done in the past but mayor there's been plenty of committee meetings that we discussed on a Tuesday and voted on it Wednesday and So I just want to make sure that, you know, we're being transparent. We're having the discussions. Absolutely, if there's more to discuss on Wednesday or to update in public comment, you absolutely do it. But these workshops is when the work on the bills or the resolutions should be majority done. And I don't think anybody disagrees with that part. The problem I have is the public doesn't know about it. For example, last week, Public called and said, hey, are you guys discussing the NIOSH report and the recommendations going forward? I said, no, it's not on the agenda. Then I find out at 1.30, oh, we're going to discuss it. Well, now I look like I lied to the public and said, no, it's not on because we didn't know it was on until two hours before. That's all I have, Mayor.

Okay, move on to... Local government emergency housing support program grant through DCD, NIOSH. Well, we were gonna talk about Hotel Hampton grant that we got, the $50,000 for rental assistance. Let's go to Chief Pennings.

I think we might be close to the hour. So thank you, Mark, for making those copies and passing those out. For the actionable items that the NIOSH report has pointed out to us, all the recommendations will be done in compliance with the appropriate NFPA standard that applies to the recommendation itself. So recommendation one was the mayday and ladder rescue operations. The deputy chief, Chad Groover, has been working with all the platoons. He's going over... the appropriate times to call Maydays, even though that wasn't our firefighter that initiated the Mayday. He should have initiated the Mayday a lot sooner than he did. He made a couple radio calls where he said, I'm running low on air. That was the time that he should have said Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Because once you get past a certain point, you are out of air. and it's too late for us to really get into gear to come get you. So, yes. Sorry, just a question so I don't forget. So procedure is, I'm sorry.

So I don't forget. So the procedure is when they are starting to run out of air, as the firefighter said, that's when they should call Mayday at that point? Yeah, so. I just wanted to know for my own information.

Earlier in the evolution itself, you should identify the Mayday so we can get the resources moving toward that individual. So when his quarter service alarm went off, in the heads-up display in your mask, you can see the dots to see how much air is left. He should have called the May Day much sooner than he did.

All right. If he did do that, do you guys bring a tank to him, or does he get out to get his own tank?

We have a rip pack. So it's basically a spare air cylinder that has a hose that connects to their air pack. So if they are running low on air, we can meet up with them, connect the hoses, and then bring them out if they're physically impaired or if they're just low on air. All right, so that was the first recommendation. It'll be a continual review with all of our internal department personnel, and we're going to make that a semiannual training. We're gonna do expanded joint training with our regional mutual aid partners, so Forks Township, Palmer Township, Wilson, anybody that's in the sector two area. So basically their fire station designator begins with a two, they're in sector two. The first portion of that is the purchase and the deployment of the bailout kits. We coordinated that originally between the four fire departments, Wilson, Palmer, Forks, and ourselves. In doing so, we saved almost $12,000 with the bulk purchase because we bought it through a, it's the New Jersey program, but it's kind of like, what's the, Co-Stars. So it's the Jersey version of it. It's a set price. You don't have to put it out for bid. And we're buying 127 kits plus all the ancillary training equipment to go with it. So the belay systems, the padding, all of that. When all of that comes in, we're all going to meet. We're going to distribute all of the kits. And then we're going to set up all the trainings. So Forks Township has a training facility. Palmer has a training facility. we can probably use an area at Central so we can kind of commingle everybody together and have multiple trading sessions.

Can you just real quick explain what the bailout kits are real fast and what they would accomplish if we would have had them?

Right, so in Bobby's case where he was calling for a ladder if he'd had a bailout kit, It's a hook with a tethered line. And basically, you attach that inside the window sill itself. The line pays out. You go out, and it's got a descent control. And you can lower yourself. They have different length ropes, but the ones we bought were 50 feet. So OK, I'm sorry.

Chief, can I ask a question?

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

I just want to explain it again. It attaches to the window sill, and then you descend down.

So it's a big metal hook that's attached to this line. And then you put it into the corner. And there's a technique to it, obviously. And then you pull yourself out of the window, over the window sill, and then you descend down. It's almost kind of like you're rappelling. What if you're incapacitated? Well, that's a whole other story. So we would actually have to physically go in there and get that firefighter and remove them. Gotcha. But that's why it's imperative to call the May Day early so we have time to get all the resources together to get in there and get them.

Okay. Chief, I just have a quick question.

Oh, yes. So the bailout kits will be attached to the bunker pants. And there's other, it's called a Jemtar Hornets. that is also attached to the PANTS themselves. Julie has a question.

Yes. Is this list of recommendations a prioritized list? Just so I kind of understand the context. Is recommendation one priority one?

No. So it's in general. the recommendations that came down. When NIOSH came in, they looked at all of our policies, our procedures, everything that was done on the fire ground in review, and then they just put them in order.

Got it. Thank you.

So that covers the mayday, the ladder rescue operations with the joint training. Recommendation number two is fire ground strategy. So we will continue. We do it internally, but we're now going to include our mutual aid partners. So anybody that's on these fires will do what they call is a post-incident analysis. So we can see... what needs to be improved. It's not a fault finding, but we get together and we talk through what the operation was, what we think could be effective or more effective, if there's anything we need to change strategy-wise, whether it's a technique or a different outcome. So it's basically an operational critique over the entire incident. So we would all get together in a room, discuss all of that, and then we'd go around the rooms. All right, what did you guys do when you arrived? Do you think that was effective? If not, what are your suggestions, basically? The regional reviews, like I said, so we'll be doing that through this sector two chiefs. We meet with them quarterly as it is now. But moving forward, when we have larger incidents, we would get their input and find out when everybody's available and then try to hold these a lot sooner to the actual incident itself. Recommendation. So we're going to also continue our fire ground strategy for the rapidly changing fire conditions. As you know, fire scene is dynamic depending upon building construction. There's a myriad of things that are involved in that. So we would try to stay on top of any changes that are coming down tactic strategy-wise. Recommendation number three was air management and survival procedures. This goes back to the May Day. We've reviewed all of that internally with the three different platoons, going over our particular SCBA, the air management side of things, when our guys should be calling May Days a lot sooner into the incident rather than waiting until you're almost out of the air. We do have the strong inspection and maintenance program. We are going to be looking in the future at regionalized purchasing so everybody has the same SCBA. So there's multiple manufacturers, but not every department has the same SCBA. So you may run into an instance where, let's say, our tether hose does not connect to their air pack. figure that it would be a standardized thing at this point, but it's not. Recommendation number four was the crew integrity. Again, this was not our personnel. This was the other firefighters where they had split from each other. We have a two-in, two-out policy and procedure, and we make sure we reinforce that with our guys. Again, the expanded Expanded coordinated training with the mutual aid partners so they know what to expect when they show up on our fire grounds We know what to expect when we show up on theirs during mutual aid calls chief question Yes, when you said in the fire the two split from each other.

Yes, is Is it just that different fire departments have different ways of doing things or is that a universal? ruled you don't split and they accidentally did or is that an Easton thing and other people do it different?

No. The standard is two in, two out. For whatever reason, those two split, I did not get to speak to those two individuals to understand why they split. It happened. We just have to move forward from there.

Let me ask you a question about air management, which is recommendation number three. How do you feel our tank situation is I noticed that Bethlehem Township has their own air filling. They can fill oxygen tanks right on a site.

Yes.

Do you think we need that?

Well, we're actually applying for a micro grant through the AFG this year for a new cascade system. Okay. But we have, Forks Township has one, Bethlehem Township, or excuse me, Nancy Run, which is part of Bethlehem Township. They both have mobile cascade units.

How do we do it now? We don't?

We don't. We don't. We ask for Forks Township or Nancy Run to come fill our bottles for us. One of the scenes. Yeah.

Yeah, Bethel Township. Nancy Run shows up with her unit.

Yep. And Forks Township, they have theirs in a trailer. You're looking for, you're going to apply for a micro grant for that. Well, this is to replace the one that we have at the station. But moving forward, we should look at a mobile.

What's the price tag for that? About?

Well, you're probably looking in the $400,000 range for the vehicle and the equipment that goes with it.

And how many tanks can that fill?

It depends on what you spec into it. So the size of the compressor itself, how many storage cylinders you have with the unit itself. Thank you. Yep. Recommendation number five is staffing. So obviously, we're going to continue the use of the automatic or mutual aid when staffing falls below the minimum threshold, reviewing operational impacts and limitations associated with mutual aid staffing, such as training levels, because we don't know what the firefighters' levels are trained to that are going to show up. because we rely on mutual aid from volunteer departments. And in this instance, for this particular fire, a mutual aid fire department sent three junior firefighters. So you have to be 18 years old to enter a fire. So while there are tasks on the fire ground that they can do, they can't enter a building. And if we needed them to enter a building, we couldn't use those three individuals, basically. So while the bodies are there and they could do other ancillary items or tasks, they can't be used for the actual firefighting or rescue.

Chief, real quick, can you just explain the difference between mutual aid and automatic aid?

Yes. So automatic aid is when a department agrees to be dispatched with you on dispatch. So right now, that's what we have set up at Wilson. So on certain types of calls, they're dispatched at the same moment we are. So when the tones drop, they'll dispatch all of the eastern units and Wilson's ladder truck or engine, depending upon what the call is and what resource we've required. Mutual aid is an agreement that we have with the surrounding volunteer departments that if we need help, they are willing to come in. So you're waiting on the mutual aid and the automatic aid is automatic at that point? Yes. And then vice versa, if they need help, then we are willing to respond out to help them.

And the automatic aid is the 10th man at certain points too, correct? Yes.

Chief, if Wilson is automatic aid, who's our first mutual aid?

Well, it depends on where we're at in the city. So typically, it's Palmer, Forks, and Williams Township, the three closest municipalities. And then with Wilson, because they have their own call firefighters, they can staff another engine and get them on the road as well.

Has there ever been a discussion to make Wilson part of Easton or vice versa?

We received a grant last year, I believe, to study that. We're just waiting for the RFP so we can get that out and get that study started. In the future, we should be looking at a countywide fire and EMS department. That would reduce the burden on the taxpayers because you're going to spread it over the 300,000 citizens versus... the 30,000, 35,000 citizens in Easton. There'll be some growing pains with that because some people that don't pay for it now will end up paying for it, but the others that are paying for it now will get a reduction because it'll be a wider and more comprehensive department.

So you're saying we got the money in 2025?

I believe it was 2025. Yes.

All right.

To continue on with the mutual aid, because we don't know the training levels, we don't know how many firefighters are going to actually respond or how long the delay will be, because they have to respond from wherever they're at to their station. Each department has a different operating procedure on how many people have to be on the truck before they leave. and then you have to figure the travel time to get from wherever they're at to wherever we're at. So there are just inherent delays. Moving forward, evaluating, hiring additional firefighters, try to see what the part-time firefighters and overall staffing needs would look like. Recommendation number six is the pre-incident planning for the high-risk occupancies. We currently do the pre-fire planning. It's a continual process throughout the year. It does take time to cover all the high-risk occupancies because there are so many. And sometimes, The pre-fire planning gets set off to the side because as you saw the building over here, that's going to be getting torn down. Well, they actually offered us the building so we can do some live training since we don't have a training area to train. So they allowed us to do forcible entry in the building, cut the roof deck open. So we did a lot of training over three days. And every time we are allowed to get a building, then we, you know, That's our priority, is to make sure our guys have the continual training that they need to keep their skills fresh. So we've already improved the coordination with information sharing between codes and the fire department. That started late last year, I believe. So the deputy chief meets with codes every week. Once a month. Once a month. Since all this started, Duane and I have shared our list of the pre-fire plans that we've already accomplished versus the high-risk occupancy list. And we're going to coordinate now, and we're going to target the high-risk facilities first. The other issue we were running into is because we have so many new buildings coming online, we try to get the firefighters in there while we still can while it's under construction so they can actually see what the construction process looks like, how things are laid out, and we can also get the building plans. A lot of these older buildings, we don't have building plans for.

Do we have a database of the completed and outstanding pre-plans?

Yeah, the fire department, we have a list. We have over 500 buildings that we've done.

And are the pre-plans on the same schedule as the other inspections? Do they have to be done every four years, or are they done with the fire inspection?

No. So pre-plans, we do those on a 21-day schedule with each of the three platoons. So what we do is we sit down with the union. We come up with a list of buildings that we want to get into. We schedule those. The platoons go out. They gather the information. They enter it into our, the first do is our reporting management software. So there's an online record of that. So our mutual aid companies coming in, if they're also using First Do, they can access those records as well. So at least they can be somewhat familiar because they don't get into these buildings.

And then when you arrive on scene, if the building did have a pre-plan done, you can access it from, you have?

Yep, we pull that up on our tablets, on our trucks. And while we're talking about it,

I see there's a lot of confusion, I think, in the press, the public, and probably us as well. Can you explain the difference between a fire safety inspection, a fire inspection, and a pre-plan?

All right. So a pre-plan does not prevent fires. What it does, it gives us access to the building so we know where the vital building systems are. So where the fire alarm system at, where the utility shutoffs are at in a building, where the fire alarm Access panels or codes are where the Knox boxes are in a building if there's any hazardous materials or like stored in a building That would be a pre-fire plan And like I said that all that is stored in our reporting management software the Fire safety inspection is what codes performs and there's a list of 15 and

Yeah, there's 18 points in the fire safety inspection.

CODES does the fire inspections? Yes.

Yeah, it falls under our department.

OK.

So that is different, though, from what is considered an actual fire inspection. So fire inspections.

I'm sorry, that was the safety inspection, correct? That's correct.

Yes. The actual fire inspections, which we could also do through our reporting management software, There's forms that are built out, we just plug in the information, we print that out, we take it out, we do the inspection. So there are different points that they look at than codes actually looks at. The key though is that whoever is actually doing a building fire inspection, has to be certified as a fire inspector through the NFPA. And they also have to be certified through licenses and inspection through the state of Pennsylvania. And who do we have currently to do that? We don't have anybody that is certified through LNI.

So there's nobody that can do an actual fire inspection in the city of Easton?

No. We could do fire inspections per se, but we can't enforce it because we're not certified to the IBC. or the International Code Council.

Yeah, but with that being said, a lot of that gets caught under the fire safety inspections because of how the ordinance is written out.

A lot of it does, but not the whole entire fire inspection.

No, those key points and then anything else that is seen there.

And there's overlap, basically.

Yeah, there's a ton of overlap between all three of them.

So what would be an example of what's not being done where there is no overlap?

So for codes, they don't do, like the restaurants, like Dwayne had said in the past, they don't actually go into the kitchen area. They don't check the suppression systems, the hood systems, or grease traps, or anything along those lines. Where a fire inspection, if that's what we have set in, we would do all that.

OK. So that gets me to the point of, You know, the big thing in the NIOSH report is that we didn't have any inspections done since 2017. And I know that was talked about at the last meeting. But what exactly were those inspections not being done? Was it the fire safety inspection? Was it the fire inspection? Was it the pre-plan? Was it all of the above?

That was the fire safety inspection.

Those were not being done? Yes.

So after doing a deeper dive, they stopped right around COVID. So 2020 is when they actually stopped because of manning. Everybody was furloughed. Then we came back. We got on OpenGov. It never got switched over to OpenGov. It kind of just got left by the wayside.

So the fire and safety inspections were not done, and we don't have anybody who can do actual fire inspections.

We have people in the office that can do fire safety inspections as per our ordinance. Right. But what he's saying as far as a fire building inspection, which he's saying you have to be certified through L&I. In our department, we have myself and Jimmy that have L&I certifications to do inspections under the fire safety inspection ordinance.

It seems like something that should be done.

Yeah.

I'm not disagreeing. I'm not disagreeing with you.

But I feel like it's something that should be done and we should have somebody who can do that. And it's going to be important going forward with all the development and everything else we have. I think that's important. The other question I have is the pre-plan can also be done during the fire safety inspection or the fire inspection? It can be done during either.

So when you're in there, you're identifying all those items where the shutoffs are and that can be So if you had a certified fire inspector or dedicated one when he was in there, he could document all those locations.

So they would go along with codes and do the pre-plan while they were doing the fire inspection, the safety inspection?

Yes. That's the plan going forward. Duane, if I may, and I apologize. Obviously, I'm not a firefighter or have any training in codes. But just hearing about it, it just seems so sloppy and such a mess from the outside, right? Not saying you guys don't know what you're doing, but it seems like well, we do this, but then this one over here does this, but then your guys pick up certain things when you do your inspections. Can't we make it more uniformed and a lot cleaner, right? Like the firefighters are going to do A, your guys are going to do B, and this is going to do C. And everybody knows instead of, well, we're going to pick up what they missed on our inspection. It just seems like it makes it a lot easier for things to fall through the cracks and probably harder for you guys to do, your department and chief of your department, to follow up. Can't we, and Louis, maybe I'm talking to you as the administrator, can't we just put a simple plan of who does what and you're responsible for that, you're responsible for this, you're responsible for that? It just seems like this way it's easy to slip through the cracks and drop the ball, which we might have done a few times accidentally.

Councilman, what I would argue is when you silo it in that way, then the cracks become even greater, right? So if you have overlap, it's actually kind of a safety feature, right? So if one person can't do their part of it, then the other person potentially might, right? But I do agree with you that listening to you talk, I mean, use the term sloppy and that kind of, you know, not, not to pile on or anything, but it just seems uncoordinated. And what I'm thinking of is, well, is there software? So everybody's like on the same page so that for any one building, you know, we know. And when I say we, I mean the fire, the fire department and codes. No, okay, in that building, X, Y, and Z has happened, and maybe there could be a little red flag, but this hasn't happened and needs to be scheduled. Can we use software in that way?

I think that's obviously great, one space that everybody can go to to see, but I still think if it was, okay, codes is going to do this on this schedule, fire department is doing this on this schedule, and whoever does this on this schedule, they update, so they're still going to know, but just hoping that we, Dwayne's guys or girls pick it up, you know, and somebody else missed it. I just, to me, that seems more like it'll slip.

I think the other issue here too is, and I'm skipping forward here to Dwayne's over here. It says we have 730 high risk buildings in the city of Houston. There's a lot. And the NIOSH report, they recommend the high risk buildings be on an annual inspection. It's a lot of people. I mean, it's a lot of inspections that we just do not, There's no feasible way we could do it at this point. We don't have the manpower. Absolutely not. And to go along with that, they also recommend moderate risk buildings every two years and low risk buildings every three years. And currently we're doing all buildings every four years. I just don't see the possibility of right now.

But now the one component is the sprinklers, Dwayne, that's supposed to come up next. The sprinklers and the alarms.

With NFISC.

So they'll be on top of making sure that those components in every building is done yearly. It's yearly, correct? That's correct, yeah. So that's yearly. So then we only have to worry about the other inspections.

Well, they're checking that it was done. They're not doing the actual inspections, right?

Yeah, so... No, right, right. They're...

I mean, that's the problem. That's a great thing, but the problem is getting the inspections.

Right, but I think the problem with that is the way it's been doing, correct me if I'm wrong, but the way it's currently being done, it's up to the business owners to do it. They have to submit it to us. We oversee it. I think probably due to staffing. We haven't overseen it. We haven't made sure that they were complying with that. So now with this program... There's a third party that makes sure they're complying with it. And if they don't comply, if they're a day late, Dwayne's team will get the information. They'll take them right to the magistrate.

But that's yearly. That'll cover COAT. That's not going to cover.

Well, that's going to cover all their fire protection systems throughout the building.

So the safety inspections, pretty much.

Any kind of system, fire alarm system, sprinkler system, ancillary system.

Right. But the gap that we have without having anybody to be able to do fire inspections, that's still not going to be done.

Well, that's what we're working collaboratively to come up with that plan to hit these high-risk buildings that haven't been hit.

Right.

So that we can go in and do a fire safety inspection and they can do a pre-plan so we're there together looking at the space.

Gotcha. But, Frank, my point was with that program, out of the three different things we have to do, that's one that's going to be taken care of yearly. Right. With oversight. Right. Now we have to tackle the other two. Yeah.

I have a question. How many of these high-risk buildings are institutions like schools?

I don't know the number off the top of my head of which ones. You figure you got all the college classrooms for Lafayette. I don't know the amount of, they probably have over 30-some classrooms or buildings up there. Then you have Pax Nosa, Cheston, everything that's within the city limits.

And do the schools generally get an inspection on an annual basis?

No, they would fall under the fire safety inspections.

But then the fire inspector that we don't have, right, because there are certain certifications you need in order to conduct a fire inspection. We do have them.

You said we had two. Yeah, we're qualified to do them. Right.

The fire safety inspections. Yes. Not the fire inspections.

Right.

Not the fire inspections.

Not the fire inspections. I think that distinction needs to be made.

Yeah. And so, you know, I'm just trying to find out, like, so it seems important. Like, if you're not really... If there's nobody qualified in the city to, let's say, check a boiler is kind of what I'm understanding.

Well, that would be L&I. L&I would do that. So like boilers, elevators, even the sprinkler system, fire alarm system, a third party company does the inspection. They give us a report. And that's kind of where NFISC is going to fall in line. they're going to hold accountable those property owners to submit that report annually for those. Like when we go in, I'm not...

But what about the institutions? I'm just thinking again about the schools. Same thing.

They're going to get caught within that annual letter that goes out for their equipment. They should be doing it annually anyway. And sometimes with sprinkler systems, they have to do it every six months. They're special, you know, other tests and stuff like that.

Yeah, and...

What allows us to do with the fire safety inspection or when we get in there for any kind of inspection is we check those tags. It could be for, you know, if somebody has a change of operator, we go in there to give them CO. We're checking their fire alarm system. If they have a sprinkler, we're making sure the sprinkler is up to date. You know, their Knox box keys are up to date. So there is a lot of overlap with all the inspections that we do. Even with health, health goes in the kitchens. They're doing grease traps. You know, there's eyes in multiple areas when we get into these buildings. So when we say let's group it all under one inspection, it's kind of hard to because there's so many moving parts within a building if it's a mixed-use building.

But everything's being documented so you all know what the other is doing?

Yeah, so my department has everything in OpenGov. And the fire department has access to OpenGov and can pull up records for the property folders. Plus they have access to input when they go out and check key boxes so that that's being updated so that we, you know, if they go out and they're like, all right, we were just here last month, the right key should be in here because we're the ones that locked up the Knox box. So it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

So currently with our staffing that we have right now, underneath the current ordinance, which is every four years for the fire safety inspections, can we hit those numbers? Can we get everything done?

We would have to move some stuff around. Key codes would perhaps come in and do some more UCC permits to allow Jimmy to kind of run with the fire safety inspections at this point until we can kind of find... Would that be to catch up, though, what you're talking about?

And then, like, after it's caught up... No, we would still need somebody that's dedicated. So you still don't have enough staff as what you have right now.

And we're looking at different avenues to kind of... work with that with the fire department.

So you just said about freeing Jimmy up, because you and Jimmy are the two that can do it. Now, once the whole planning situation is underway and you have more time to focus on codes, does that give us more of an ability to get that done? Now it's not just Jimmy, will you have more time or no?

It all depends on the workload. Myself, I have all these facets that I complete within my department. So it would mostly fall on Jimmy to get those inspections done with the fire department. So I would probably fill in maybe here and there if we needed to get those inspections completed, but it would mostly fall on Jimmy completing those.

So then to Frank's question, is it... To Frank's question, is it... Is it accurate or is it even close to being accurate that Jimmy can get these all done in the time that he needs to get them done?

I mean, your opinion. It's hard to say because you got to think about it, right? We have to send out a campaign of letters to let everybody know they have to re-register. And we have to send out a campaign of letters to schedule all those inspections, right? So not everybody's going to schedule right away.

But realistically, could one guy get them all done in that time frame?

In a year? Probably not.

Okay. So Jimmy by himself wouldn't do it?

Yeah.

Okay.

So to follow up with that, and this is a completely unnecessary question because I think I know the answer to it. If we were to move to the NIOSH recommendations, that would be simply impossible.

All right.

To what? For the fire department and the codes?

Yeah, right now the fire safety inspection in the ordinance states every three years. So annually you're not, I don't see without additional staffing.

Dwayne, what's state recommendation on that? Every three years or is that just us? It's up to each municipality. Do you know Allentown, Bethlehem, do you know what they do with their time?

Not off the top of my head. Dwayne, is it three years capped? Or I thought there was a year they had after if they didn't have it.

If they didn't, yeah. It's a year if they didn't. So if they didn't register, they have to have it within that year. So they technically have four years at that point.

Yeah.

OK. Let's see here. All right, I guess that covers the pre-incident planning and the high-risk occupancies. Fire and life safety enforcement, continuing the coordination between codes, finance, police department regarding the high-risk occupancies, the inspection status. Like I said, we have been working together already. It's just a matter of getting the amount of people we need to get all these done. As you see, there's a huge list. So without a dedicated full-time fire inspector, I just don't know if we would ever hit that mark.

Chief, question. I'm sorry. I think we talked about it before. Years ago, our deputy chiefs, we had two a long, long time ago. That was probably late 70s, early 80s. Early 80s. My understanding is one deputy chief handled the training throughout the week or what have you. The other one did inspections. That was his full time.

That's all he did all day long was fire inspections.

Since however long ago, we've gone to one deputy, but My understanding is a lot of the trainings our captains are doing. So does that free up Deputy Chief Groover to help do some of these as well? No.

And the reason that is is because there is department-wide training. So a lot of the training that the captains are doing are just shift-level things. So, like, getting this building, like we did last week, that was all chat. So he has to coordinate with the building owner. He has to get... all the platoons together, get them down, figure out what the training plan is going to be, and actually follow through with it. So he was down here all three days. I was down here for two of the days. It's a very intense.

How often is Deputy Chief Groover coordinating these type of trainings? I mean, obviously, when you have a building that you can cut holes into, but I'm sure there's other training. So how often does he do that?

So he meets, they have a training committee with the union and they meet monthly and they cover the topics of the things that need to be covered. So there's training that he's working on every single month, regardless of if it's a building or setting up the auto extrication out of the junkyard, whatever the case may be. Plus he also is the fire marshal. So whenever there's a fire, He has to go out and investigate the cause of the fire. So he's wearing multiple hats.

And I'm just asking. I'm not directing. I'm trying to gain an understanding. So he does the training one day a month, and then if there's a fire, he goes in to do his fire marshal duties. There seems like there might be some days within a month that he can help pick up some slack on inspections. From my side, from my point of view, that's what it seems like.

Well, there's a lot of other things that go on in the background. So he's also a certified CPR instructor, so he has to teach CPR at the station. You have to have a certain amount of instructors per X amount of people. They've taught CPR down here. He also has to maintain his certification as a fire inspector through the NFPA. So he has continuing education that he has to do.

So essentially there's not one day in a month that he could do some inspections?

I don't know. We would be hard pressed to kick him away to go do an inspection because what happens is when you do an inspection, if there has to be follow up. So let's say you find something wrong. You have to give them a certain amount of time to correct it. Then he has to go back out. So if he's doing one inspection a week. he has to go back to do the re-inspection, he may miss the next inspection on the list because he has to go back out to that property to ensure that it was corrected. So without a full-time dedicated person, I just don't see this happening.

So again, and again, I'm trying to wrap my head around it and understand. So from the extensive conversations I had with former Deputy Chief Lavelle, and I believe Chief after that, and he was only one deputy when he was here. He says that as deputy chief and as chief, he did them all. He did the inspections. If there was a fire, he would leave and go do it, but he did the inspections. Is there more responsibilities placed upon the chief and deputy chief now than there was when he was there, like throughout the month? I don't know.

We have a lot more responsibilities than we've ever had in the past. So there's certain things that we have to maintain, continuing education and Both of us have to maintain our EMT. That's in the contract for us throughout our employment. So there's X amount of continuing education we have to do there. We also have to maintain our fire investigator. Both of us are fire investigators. So when he's out of town, I can do fire investigations. If both of us are out of town for whatever reason, then the captains that have been trained can do that. There's a lot of continuing education that we both have to maintain as well besides everything else that we do managing the department and getting the training. So it's boat season. We're going to have to get the guys out on the water to get them familiar with the boats again. There's only so many hours in a day, and there's only so much space that we both have to do things. So with, like tomorrow, because I'm the emergency management coordinator, I'm going to be at the 911 center for most of the morning for my quarterly EM meetings. that leaves Chad here to manage anything that's going on in the city, he won't be able to do anything else but manage the department.

Each facility is different.

In talking with the city of Bethlehem, and I did this because I knew this was coming, they have a couple hospitals within the city. So they have a full-time, I believe there's six full-time fire inspectors in Bethlehem. If they were to do a hospital building, it would probably take two inspectors an entire week, if not two, to go through the entire building.

But to my question, since we don't have hospitals in our city, the City Hall building.

Right, City Hall, but this is only three floors, but we have the school buildings. Think of all the Lafayette buildings.

No, I get it. I'm asking City Hall specifically just so I can get kind of an understanding on timing.

If it's just one person, it could be between three and five days, depending upon what needs to be done.

It also depends on how responsible the owner is.

Well, yeah, that's the other thing, is maintaining the building to the proper standards and codes.

Certification, you don't have your fire extinguisher certification, and you don't have your ancillary hood, and that's extra work.

But if we're in the city hall, everything is good. One person, realistically, three to five days to finish an inspection in a three-story building like this. Okay.

Thank you. You're welcome. Where are we here?

Fire and life safety enforcement.

So that was the first part there, the first bullet point. Improved identification and tracking of the inspected and non-inspected multi-unit buildings. We are currently working with Duane on that. He's got the list. He's going to go over those numbers. Evaluate an expanded role for the Easton Police Department for the large scale incidents. Continue the coordination with victim assistance and resident accountability efforts. Let's see. Recommendation number eight doesn't pertain specifically to us because this is stuff that falls at the 911 center. Their recommendation was that the county 911 center always have a good working relationship with all the field units, which we do. We have a very good working relationship with them. They just put in place a new director. Todd retired back in February and it took them a while to find the person that was going to take his place. Mike Leonard has been put in place now and we're working with him and his staff to get us switched over to the 800 megahertz system, which covers some of the communication issues that we've had on scene with the low band frequencies due to building density and things along those lines. The other recommendations for, was directed toward the 911 center of having a supervisor there that can monitor, but that's all out of our purview. And then the last one is the coordination of utility stuff. in the process of trying to set up this meeting with MedEd, the other fire departments.

So I just...

I've had a couple follow-up emails with Thea. Mike Leonard responded apparently somewhere in the chain that was missed for the dates she missed them or someone at MedEd missed them. So... There were two emails that went back and forth today. They're going to try to coordinate for now July to see if there's availability for us to all get together. And that's going to be the 911 center, med ed, all of the sector two fire chiefs. So everybody's on the same page with terminology and everything that we had discussed at the other meeting. And that pretty much covers my portion. Is there any other questions?

I do have a question. And this is in your opinion. In order to get to the city to be where we should be having the proper inspections done on the proper timeline, what does that look like that we would need staffing-wise?

Well, we would probably need, I would say, at least three. full-time fire inspectors to go through. Like I said, Bethlehem has six. They have, with all their properties, they have a lot more stock than we do. But I think if we could dedicate one to downtown West Ward, one to Southside, and one to College Hill, we could probably cover a lot more ground that way. And if we run into the larger buildings, like at the college, their public safety could walk through with whoever that is on College Hill. But if we had to throw another person at it, we could move one from one area to another to cover those to get them done faster. Right.

And one other... What would you need?

What was that, Mr. Brown?

What would you need?

Hold on one second, one second, before we get on to that. So you're saying we would need three inspectors, and Bethlehem has a ... You were talking about Bethlehem as well. We spoke about this a little bit. Can you explain briefly how they fund their fire inspectors, how that works with the ...

So they have a fee schedule now that is kind of set up similar to ours, but they're going to an hourly rate. they will be charging whatever the hourly rate is for that inspector that's going to go out into the field. So you're recouping the cost of that individual. So it's similar to parking enforcement? Pretty much. Okay. So where you're switching from the fee schedule to an hourly rate, again, you're getting that money back to cover the cost.

Lewis, is that something we can look at? You know, how Bethlehem does it exactly and how that would translate over here and So we could, I mean, I think it's pretty apparent what we need at this point, and I'd like to see something done on that.

I agree, and that's something that, I agree in that, let me take that back. Yes, we can look at how Bethlehem operates. I have toured and spoken to Bethlehem with Chief Hennings, and I've gone over there.

I just think if we, can get to a point where it's almost a self-funded position. It's an absolute no-brainer to have it.

We do have in the contract, and this has to be contractual, so we do have the capability in the contract to hire part-time firefighters, and I think it would be beneficial if those firefighters, those part-timers, could also handle code inspections.

Lewis, is it feasible to think that part-timers can do both inspections to really make a dent and to get us where we need to be and do firefighter work?

Well, I, I didn't say that and we haven't, but I did, I don't know that answer.

Okay.

Um, but, um, I do know that in discussing it internally, first of all, there may have to be some contractual, um, uh, issues that have to be worked out with this idea regardless. Secondly, to your question, a barrier to bringing on a part-timer to assist with the manning issue has been, at least what has been discussed internally, the consistency of hours that could be provided to someone who's looking for part-time work. I mean, there are part-time firefighters in Pennsylvania.

For me personally, and just from talking with the guys, I just don't see a part-timer being able to do both. I'm not saying you're saying that. But what about part-time? Is it possible that we use the part-timers to do the inspections? They'll get their hours.

Well, that's what I'm getting at.

That would be a part-time inspector at that point for most of them.

So you could theoretically do that. Again, it has to be there's some potential contractual issues that have to be worked out.

Well, everything with fire is contractual. We understand that. But from an administrative standpoint, does that even look like something that could be possible to even have the discussion under contracts?

Well, I think there's two. there's two people here. I mean, number one is I'm just the administrator overlooking the org charts and the numbers, um, and, and job descriptions, right? And the CBA, the chief though has the operational knowledge like on the ground, but this idea I can tell you has never been tested.

Right.

I mean, that's the, that's, that's the reality.

Never been tested here or never been tested anywhere that hasn't been tested here. Right. Okay.

Per se. But I mean,

But does part-time and just fire inspectors, does that sound like something that could possibly look at working? Or is that something that, no, that doesn't make sense right off the bat?

If we're going to limit them to strictly doing fire inspections, you would need a list of, I don't know, six or seven, maybe eight people. And then you would give them, say, three days a week. Give each one of them three days a week. What's part-time?

30 hours.

30 hours?

Yeah. But, I mean, you can have a complement. You could have a team of part-timers, as long as it fits within your budget, like the PEOs. It's a good example that was used earlier. We have two full-time PEOs, but the balance are all part-timers. They all work different hours. It's the model. It's a combination of the two.

Which, again, goes to the point, if we were to look at how Bethlehem does it and if we could somehow replicate that it would be less of a budget burden than the part-time workers.

We could. I mean, we could. And that's something that, Chief, you can easily take a look at, because I think what was discussed here and what I'm hearing is that there's an offset. I don't know if it's 100% offset, but there's an offset on fees that are charged to the public for doing this inspection work. And that's what you're getting at. You want to know if it's 100% less or more.

When you say fees charged to the public, you mean to wherever they're doing the inspections at?

The inspection fees. So is there a pool of employees that would have the necessary certifications?

That's a good question.

That would be something that we'd have to, when we looked at that, we would have to find people that had fire inspection certifications that we had discussed before through license inspections in Pennsylvania and their NFPA certifications. There are people out there that possibly do have those. They probably work full-time for like Barry Izette. companies or something along those lines that would like to pick up a couple of part-time hours it's something that we can explore but I can't give you a firm answer to say yes it would definitely work to you it's worth looking at for certain talking about part-timers what about retiring firefighters right that are in the drop they're going to retire in a couple years uh wink wink you uh

Maybe want to come back part time. But seriously, what about using retired firefighters that because, you know, a lot of you don't retire when you're too old to do anything around the pasture. I mean, you still have a lot left in you. Do you know, do you think it's possible to find retired firefighters that. would want to just, you know, pick up the hours and who already have the knowledge, skill, and training?

Anything's a possibility, but we would have to make sure they are trained to those levels. So they would have to have the NFPA certification for fire inspector. They would have to maintain their license and inspections certifications and licensing. And that's something that we would have to cover cost-wise to make sure that they're trained. They're getting their continuing education hours. Everything that we do, there's always continuing education tied to it. And that's why you would need such a big list of part-timers because at some point you're going to have to send these people out to get that training.

I mean, to that point, too, that's similar issues with part-time firefighters themselves as well to get a part-time lists to be effectively there when you need them as well.

So the part-time firefighter thing, you run into the issue of being able to call them in when somebody calls out sick. The amount of money that it costs to equip them. So you're talking about $10,000 for a set a year. It's very expensive. very money-driven. Gotcha.

So when you call someone in for overtime, it could run the city. It could run the city. I was looking at some numbers. But let's just say generally, well, it depends on the tenure of the firefighter. And it's based on seniority. So the longer that you're here, you're going to have a higher hourly wage. You're talking a 24-hour period, time and a half. I mean, it could range anywhere from $500 to $1,200. probably at one time on overtime. So just to give you an idea. And so it's about $10,000 to fit out a firefighter with the appropriate gear. So when you asked that question, those are the numbers that we look at. So it depends.

I mean, what would you consider a part-time firefighter if they're working 24 hours? They're going to be able to work one day a week, correct?

Well, I agree. I mean, it hasn't been tested, but the argument is made that these individuals would not – you couldn't really offer a consistent part-time schedule because you can't. It's dependent on the – someone – it's dependent on someone who – is not scheduled to work for whatever reason.

And I like the idea. I just don't like the idea of paying $10,000 to fully outfit firefighters that we potentially might not be using as often as we should.

I think it depends. But I think, Chief, when the firefighters make their picks for time off and scheduled days off in November, are there times in that time period where you can see that there's going to be overtime because of staffing levels?

I would have to say no on that, because according to the contract, you can only have four firefighters off on any given day. So you would have to include the baby bonding through the FMLA, sick time, injury time. Unless you knew someone is going to be out long term on an injury, that would be the only way that you would be able to project that moving forward.

Okay, and that's, I think, and the chief is right because we always look at retrospectively data, especially the calendar, when we're looking forwardly. Right. So meaning when we negotiated with the union, we had to look at 24's number, 2024's, schedule in instances when we went down to a nine manning complement and We found out that that was 16% of the time. So if you could look at it forwardly It's tough because in November it's going to look like that. We're at full capacity Potentially I'd have to look at it. There's probably I'd probably argue with the chief that there's there's probably it's not a hundred percent, but it's not going to be high on where you can say, I'm automatically going to plug in a part-timer when there's going to be less than 10. Do I make sense?

I know what you're saying. Are the part-timers, which we don't have but is in the contract, are they under the same contract as the full-time? Yes. So the honeymooning clause is the same for the part-timers as the full-timers? They wouldn't be able to work elsewhere?

Correct.

Yes. That's a hindrance as well, I think.

Correct, it is. We do have, I was going to report on it tomorrow night, but contract negotiations do start this week with the fire department. Gotcha. And that's why the codes inspections, the opportunity came up as a result of this that potentially you could offer consistent hours to part-time code inspectors. And then because they're, potentially, I mean that's a theory, and then because they're certified, you can, when you have opportunities that exist, move and pivot someone to cover for overtime.

Sorry you're over your hour, Chief.

I apologized early because I figured this was going to happen.

I thought that you thought that it wouldn't take an hour.

Oh, I knew it was going to take more than an hour, but the mayor was being hopeful. Does anybody have any other questions before we kick it over to Duane?

You were very thorough, Chief. Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you very much, Chief.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Spent a lot of money tonight.

Well, not on me. I'm salaried, so I get paid the same.

No, I'm talking about the employees. Just everybody here wants to hire more firefighters and inspectors.

Oh, yeah.

We had nine fires last year, nine building fires last year.

I think we had more than that.

No, we had nine. I reported it in my city of the city. You gave it to me in your report.

I think we had 30. But, well, we could go back and look at those.

Big difference between nine and 30. I mean, I don't... No, you're right.

I understand what you're going to say. The point is, I think we need to talk about what the city needs going future. I don't think we obviously aren't going to have it all this year, but we need to make a long term plan so we can do these things so we're going in the right direction. I don't think it's about spending all the money tonight. I think it's about looking at what we have to do and how we get there. That's the point of the whole thing.

The stamp program showed a negative balance A gap that has to be filled over the next five years. So everything you've added tonight would be on top of that.

Well, we didn't add anything. No, you didn't add anything yet. No, we didn't add anything. But there are things that are, you know, it looks they're necessary things. We haven't had a fire inspection in the city in how long again? We haven't. There's problems. There's issues there. And it's because the staffing levels. That's what it is.

And we're putting people at risk if we're not doing our due diligence.

Absolutely.

All right. With that said, I handed out the high risk occupancy inventory and inspection summary. Chief Hennings gave me an Excel sheet of all the high risk buildings that he looked at. There were 730 of them. Of those 730, there were 700, I mean there was 374 commercial buildings, 194 mixed use buildings, 280 rental properties of those. Of those inspections, 133 fire pre-planned inspections were done of those 730 high risks. 129 rental inspections were completed of the 280 rental properties with the resulting number of 496 high-risk buildings that were identified for a priority inspection list.

Dwayne, do you know where in the city these buildings are like of the 200 and 80 rental properties.

They're all throughout the city of Easton.

Are we able to get a report?

Yeah, I can break down the Excel sheet for you.

I think that would be helpful for us.

Yes. A couple of weeks ago when we first discussed this report, I asked about updating the ordinance to require hotels to fall under the same inspection, fire inspections, as regular rentals. Is that something you can put together? Because we haven't had it yet, or do you want me to do it?

I can put it together.

Can we get it for the next committee meeting at the end of the month, if you don't mind, just to review and go from there? I think it's a great time, considering we have a hotel that's being built in the city. Thank you.

Got it. And what do you use to identify high-risk? How many stories it is?

No, it's any multi-family building, commercial, mixed-use, high-rise.

Yeah. If you rented out the second floor of your building, of your home, it would be considered a high-risk building. Gotcha. Okay.

Dwayne. hearing all that you put on your report, it sounds like to me you're going to be in the same predicament as Chief is, where you're going to need more people.

Yeah, the issue with that is, right, so AFSCME is under a contract as well. It's all contractual. The other aspect of that is getting people that are certified to do the inspections, that want to do the inspections, and that, you know, want to be out there, right? So there's one thing of just someone being a code officer and getting your property maintenance cert. That's one thing, but that's not what... Totally different animal. Yeah, it's totally different for somebody to do fire safety inspections. Just the knowledge aspect off of it alone. And sometimes when you have more certs, there's all that additional work. And right now, not a lot of people want to do a lot of work.

How many code officers do you have right now, Dwayne?

Um, right now we have four ones out and we're looking to hire three within the next month or two.

And on the four, how many can do fire safety inspections?

Um, none, none of the code officers, none, myself and James Kluge, who's the chief code administrator are the only ones I can do fire safety. So they're limited to you. Okay.

Dwayne, being that we use a code masters, key codes, pardon me, key codes. Um, Is it possible until we figure out or we're in a position to do something with staffing that we can give key codes more inspections to free you and James up to do more of the fire stuff?

Well, that was one of my options was to pull James off of residential UCC inspections to do fire safety inspections with the fire department.

Yeah.

But that's just an additional, you know, it's an additional cost that I got to watch in the budget for the inspections that go to key codes. Gotcha. So, I mean, that's one option that we're looking at.

Okay. Well, I think Lewis and the administration and the mayor are going to start, I believe you start working on your budget any minute now, right? Yeah, this week. This week. There you go. So we're at the perfect time to start looking at those numbers. All right. Thank you, Dwayne.

Local government housing support program grant. We got $50,000 towards the Hotel Hampton rental assistance program.

Mayor, if I can... Sarah and Jeff still here?

Yeah, they're still here.

Guys, you want to come on up? Sure. This goes along with our whole topic with... with NIOSH in as much as ultimately it's about people and the people that were affected in this fire that occurred. So just simply put, the Safe Harbor and the city collaborated on writing a grant that secured a little over $116,000, $50,000 of which the mayor had just mentioned was for rental assistance that was then distributed to the victims of the Hampton Fire. And then there was some other detail here, but Safe Harbor was the applicant, the city assisted doing some of the heavy lifting on the grant writing. But I'm going to turn it over to Safe Harbor, to Jeff and Sarah, who can speak about the grant. I mean, it was successful. But why don't you go into a little bit more detail on the grant, if you don't mind?

Sure. OK. So we contacted Trevor and John back in March about collaborating on a grant application for the local government Disaster Response Fund, and that's through the state DCED. The purpose of the funds, as Louis mentioned, was not only to provide rental assistance to those who were impacted by the fire itself, but also to invest in infrastructure within local nonprofits like Safe Harbor, and our partners at CUMC on Berwick Street in Southside Easton who are willing to step up and hopefully never need to, but be willing to step up and mobilize as sites for folks to receive temporary shelter as well as services. We are uniquely poised to do that with the other services that both of our organizations do already provide. And so while the grant itself came in as one lump sum, there's several different avenues through which we will be able to respond faster, better, if there were to be future disasters, as well as take care of those who have already been affected by the Hotel Hampton fire.

If I could just say thank you to the both of you. Because during that fire and when we had the church on Southside and Shiloh, it was extremely difficult for us to find an organization that knew how to do the grant stuff. and who also wanted to do the grant stuff. It was maybe a burden to them. So when we got to you guys, you took it on right away, knocked it out of the park. So I really appreciate the two of you for doing that, because that was a big component. That was a big component to us getting what we needed and to get it done. So thank you guys and whoever you have working with you over at Safe Harbor. We appreciate it.

Of course. We're happy to help.

Thank you, for sure. Thank you. So we just wanted to make that announcement. It fit here. I think it fit here nicely. So we just wanted to make that update. So thank you for your time. Of course. Thank you. Great job, guys. We appreciate you. Thank you.

We appreciate that.

Mayor, and that also takes care of number nine, because it looks like those are the two of the same thing.

So I hope that helps. So we got handicapped parking spaces.

We got vendor fees. John Kingsley's here. No.

Julie's here. Andy's here.

Mark Krasinecki's here. They all worked on the vendor's fees. So let's get to that one of our agenda items.

And then we have the harking pass. Oh, excuse me. Handicapped parking pass discussion. You try to blend them together. I'm losing it. It's gone. It's been a long one. Thank you.

So just by way of quick background, I think everyone knows that back in October of last year, we passed an ordinance that actually created a vendor fee. That flat fee was $50 across all vendors. We subsequently received a lot of input from our partners in the community, from event holders, from vendors, asking us if we kind of go through the process and think a little bit more in detail about how these vendor fees could be applied and kind of taken to a consideration, you know, some of those partnerships, the needs to provide, you know, some accommodations to our local businesses, among other things. So a committee was sort of paneled to work on this. Myself, Frank McVey, Mark Lesnicki, and our solicitor all collectively at different times worked on a draft proposal ordinance amendment. And you now have a copy of that amendment. I was actually kind of hoping you would have had it before tonight so you could have looked at it. But you have it in front of you. And what we're going to do is run you through kind of a summary of what is actually in that um our solicitor wasn't able to make the meeting tonight um so i'm going to try to do my best to give you you know his thinking behind the crafting of the ordinance which is intended to provide sort of an omnibus solution kind of taking into account all of the related codes and kind of tightening it all up so that it all works in lockstep so um Kind of to set the stage on all of this, the first thing we needed to do was sort of define some things that weren't defined elsewhere. And we needed to differentiate between events, particularly as we're kind of thinking about things like the duration of the event, the size of the event, the impact on city resources, And what we wanted to do is make sure that the fees kind of ran in accordance with that, depending on the level of impact, if you will, of the overall event on the city. And then we also wanted to differentiate between vendors. So again, we wanted to provide some benefit to city businesses versus non-city businesses because we want to encourage our locals to You know to actually be part of these events and you know, we want to we want to encourage them to do that. So All right, so on Slide three, you're gonna kinda see, let's first walk you through the definitions. We don't wanna bypass those. So in terms of kind of differentiating the events, we have two different kinds of events, the regular event and a multi-day event. The regular event would be a single or two-day event where days are in succession. A multi-day event would be events of three days or more where days are in succession or two days or more when days are not in succession. Again, multi-day events would be a little bit more of an impact on the city. We wanted to look at, again, the size of the event because we think the footprint matters. Events estimated as having 1,500 or more, we came up with that as kind of a starting point for the definition of a size event. And then we wanted to consider how it impacts our resources. So do those events actually need police, fire, TPW support if so they were identified as an impact event? We had two types of businesses, which I've already talked about, our city businesses and our non-city businesses. So the next area that we kind of wanted to focus on was sort of differentiating between the tier of the types of events in terms of tiers and the highest impact tier having both size and impact. So it would be over 1,500 in estimated attendance and also need for city resources, whether it be closing of roads or whether it's police, fire, or DPW support, that would be our Tier 1 event. Tier 2 event would be having size or impact, but not necessarily both. And then Tier 3 would be an event having neither size or impact. And again, we're running the fees in accordance with the overall impact of the event. We put together general ideas of what we think those vendor fees could be. These are just... Proposal they are not their suggestions. They're not intended to be our final version and we'd like to get impact back on Input back from you in terms of what you'd like those vendor fees to be set at But we do think that there should be a significant discount to vendor fees for city businesses As opposed to non city businesses and we're proposing a one-third discount for those businesses The other thing that we wanted to do is we wanted to kind of allow for block purchases to make, first of all, organizations give them the ability to be able to purchase permits for all of their vendors to ensure availability, but also to offer value and flexibility to our nonprofit organizations like GEDP, who holds a lot of our events in the city. We also think that being able to allow the event organizers to purchase in block will actually reduce management for the city as it relates to the permitting process. This kind of reduces the headache of having to manage what could be 100 or more applications in a single event.

And just on that front too, the organizers are typically chasing those same vendors. So if we could combine that and bundle it or have the event organizer collect that for us too, that would be probably less painful for the vendors.

Also wanted to provide some additional benefits to our charitable organizers. We're proposing that they would be able to purchase all of the vendor permits again at one time. at the city business discounted price, regardless of whether that business is located in the city or not. So this would kind of provide some additional ability to be able to offer value to vendors that are inside of programs like Bacon Fest and the like.

I think, did we cover all of this stuff? Yeah, we're on waivers now, okay.

I wanna make sure I didn't miss anything. Also key to this, there are some programs that we wanted to exempt from vendor fees. They include the Farmer's Market, the West Ward Market, the Eastern Winter Village. And we are obviously open to any others that might be suggested. But we figured there are certain that should be exempted. And I believe there were a couple that were exempted under the original ordinance. Another suggestion was that we would provide nonprofit organizations that are vending at tier three events. We might want to consider actually including all events that they would receive their vendor permit fee free of charge. So if you have like the Girl Scouts, somebody selling cookies at one of our events, there wouldn't be a vendor fee to be able to do that. Um, we also want to give city council the ability to kind of review these on a case by case basis and determine why city council, not the mayor's office who does a special events. The, um, there's an additional suggestion from our solicitor earlier today that we would include some language to that effect as well. Um, it's just not currently in the draft ordinance that we have. So, um, that's coming in a future iteration. Um, So we talked about that. Let's see what else we got here. One of the holdovers from the original ordinance has to do with overtime expense. And this was a suggestion that any actual cost to the city for overtime not covered by fees would be billed to the organizer. I'm not sure whether we want to keep something like that in the ordinance. I would suggest it's almost in some ways duplicative of what we're trying to do with the vendor fees themselves. But it is something that we didn't feel it was appropriate for us to kind of change given the original approved version of the ordinance. And obviously, we will take any feedback. And then finally, there's a number of cleanup items that were done within the draft ordinance. So we're adding definitions. We talked about some of them earlier. We're also setting pricing access for to access certain city amenities that weren't in the original ordinance including stages and sound systems There would be this would make as a requirement a special event permit which we don't currently require And it would waive special event permit requirements for the following types of events including funeral processions wedding processions any event in which the city has of Easton as an organizer and activities of government agencies. We've also talked about including some things around press events and the like. And then it sets insurance requirements and penalties for not having an event permit. At this point, we're kind of preparing another iteration for actually introduction at the next council meeting. We'd like to get feedback from council before we introduce that. So we're hoping to do that at the next meeting of council and with that take any questions you have any input you have and Make the appropriate changes John so when you say feedback from council So it'll be at the next committee meeting in two weeks to discuss further and then we can do it inside of the committee We'll put on the agenda for I have a question about that vendor who spilled the oil Yes

Do you require a certificate of insurance from the vendors? We do.