Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

I want to get just you like to call the March 11 officers that we have a good do I have a motion all in favor do I have approval of the February 11th meeting minutes motion to approve all second all in favor all right motion approved nobody signed up for public comments now we will move on to ordinances and resolution ordinance 2025 d11 a resolution approving and establishing policy for certain secondary employment for Henderson the fire department employees do I have a motion second all in favor all do you want it to discuss it or would you like to discuss it about it sure so um this is a mechanism to allow fire Personnel to work at our Parks or after hours so when they're not on duty but to be in an hftd uniform and to utilize the UTV similar to how we see police officers maybe a church service on Sunday where they're uh employed directly uh by the church to work there uh this would just carry over for the fire department so if someone comes to the city and they want to put a tournament or an event on there's a mechanism in place for the fire department to work there in an after hours capacity where that tournament director the vendor will pay them directly and the city's basically authorizing the use of uniforms the UTV

and things of that nature so Chief Bush can expand upon that but it's basically mirroring what we do for police and we're just extending it to fire as well yeah I mean just as Mr E said it's just something to uh give staff an opportunity uh there's a lot of events in the Parks uh that sometimes we won't have the Staffing or or not be able to staff the UTV because of Staffing levels I know Andy has some contracts that require that the UTV be present that for the signed agreements with the mayor and Jesse and and director Gilly uh and so those will always be provided uh regardless if that causes overtime or not but these are for other events that maybe big volley big softball tournaments may come in that we don't have the Staffing and then they say hey we'd like to pay and it gives them an Avenue to do that they pay a fee for the vehicle $75 a flight rate and then a minimum of 35 bucks an hour for the two folks that would be working on the UTV and it would be up to those staff if they signed up for that to negotiate that with a vendor that's offering for that we would not be involved in that whatsoever other than the use of the vehicle how do you decide who's guaranteed a UTV and who has to pay to have a UTV uh that's not really been discussed or touched on like I said there's some agreements that are offered in a contract I know cross country Andy correct me if I'm wrong uh is cross country one of those or no anytime we host a twaa event that becomes part of the contract um there are certain ones that we have had contracts for in the past um current ly just your regular guy comes in host a softball tournament we don't have a contract with those people they come in host hockey roller derby lacrosse rugby baseball softball flag football grass volleyball we don't have contracts with those people other than they just turn in application and we approve

it so anytime the fire Personnel are on our clock the UTV is included if it's off the clock then there's a flat fee of $75 a day okay any more questions what was the policy before this no policy yeah there wasn't there wasn't after hours for the fire department it was just uh the police did it but we didn't have it for fire department so now we have a mechanism for fire too okay I'm in favor of this I'm glad to see that we're doing this so if you don't have any more questions I um recommend that we move it to BMA with a positive recommendation second all in favor I I it moves to bman with a positive recommendation next we have resolution 2025-the retirement plan and establishing a voting surveying process to gauge the consensus anybody want to talk about it do you have any questions about it I don't feel like I know hardly anything about the bridge program at all is which is a pretty broad sweeping question you could come to meeting that's that's what this will be about well and that's so I'm all in favor of having a meeting to learn more I to motion to approve or do we have to send this to the Bulma motion to approve so send to Bulma with approval with positive with a positive recommendation second that all in favor I I motion carries with a positive recommendation okay uh the top 50 calls for 2024 we have the list and I think at the last meeting we decided we would

evaluate let y'all do some education and get back with us in six months do you have more questions well I'll explain why I asked that question for the list I just want to see some history of what it was uh and actually it came about because I was taking a CPR class at the YMCA and ran into the fire department there helping somebody and we had just had that discussion of um assisted living facilities and it just popped into my head how often do we go to gyms or physical fitness facilities so I talked to Jesse and he gave me that list and I think the list is very enlightening and has a lot of stuff and the one thing I would point out when you start looking at some of the numbers there's some places we visit if you take it on an average and spread it out every other day of the year I mean for a year every other day they have their numbers are highing enough that we're going there 150 times and more um so it's certainly something that needs to be considered to manage costs and expenses that's why I asked for that list great very helpful so we want to re-evaluate that I think we should stay on course with the six months that we're doing we have this as a benchmark of what it was last year um if it goes down that you know affects how we would handle it if it goes up it probably creates emergency in my mind so I would say stay the course say it for six more months and then one thing I wanted to ask Chief Bush if you could talk about the legislation that just went do you have a question I'm sorry what I can also do is I can also reach out some other cities and see if they if if they're in a similar situation how they how they solve that that would be helpful that okay anybody else before I move

on so I wanted to see if you could give us some information and update us the exciting news of you going to the legislator and what has happened so uh going back to Captain donak which will be later tonight there'll be a a medal of valor from the sons of the re American Revolution that will be presented tonight um at the meeting but to go past that is uh there has been a lot of leg work uh involved with getting three more types of cancer added already to 2019 barrier Brady act uh pancreatic um P prostate and breast cancer uh so all three of those are on the floor to be added we went to a subcommittee meeting two days ago uh and it was a unanimous 7 to Zer to move it forward um the professional association had me down yesterday to speak about it there were some folks there uh legislators and uh some senators and things like that that we spoke about it and uh they see the the urgency and the need for that and then it goes to another subcommittee tomorrow for a vote and uh I think out of 33 there was 30 that were on board with this so it looks like it's going to have a positive recommendation moving forward add those three cancers to the ber BR act can you just explain what that means in case there's somebody watching or people don't know what that sure so it's a presumptive bill which means obviously um as a city we have to have five years of consecutive uh I guess evaluations physicals so if you have a break in that so you want to do physicals for three years we offer them every year but if you decide for reason for one reason or another as an individual not to do the cancer screening or any other type screening you can opt out of that however with the Barry Brady act if you opt out of that then it resets the clock you have to have five consecutive years of medical exams uh that that show that you had

either an existing issue or a non-existing issue and we certainly are encouraging our folks to sign up from day one and move forward with that because if you don't and there's a gap uh and then you catch it you're still trying to play catch up uh so it's a presump Bill uh it's very important the fire service 74% of the deaths in the fire service last year were related to cancer uh and nine 9% more of a risk for firefighters than anybody else in the American population to contract cancer of any form do your cancer screenings include a scan uh we're going to appropriate some money this year for those hopefully we're trying to negotiate with Hendersonville hospital to try to keep our money here locally they were kind enough to do the heart scans for us a couple couple years ago it's not necessarily a requirement every year uh the scans may be a little bit different because they are scanning the entire body I know the local has brought in a company uh individually uh and some of the guys are paying even myself are going to pay out of our pockets to have those uh screenings those scans done because we haven't had the money appropriated yet for the upcoming budget year to do that we certainly didn't have the money appropriated for it this this current year do you know what they cost about 350 bucks that's what it's costing us per person uh so I think it's relatively uh inexpensive uh for early prevention right if we catch it fast enough not saying it would or would not have made a difference in Don's case I mean we don't know that I think there was a firefighter in Florida uh maybe uh two weeks ago that was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer un unnoticed uh and he died like 12 days after he was diagnosed with it so I think this thing is going to grow some legs unfortunately uh and we're going to try to do our best to try to catch it prevent it early on that's great any other

questions question M Mr chairman are there any occupational health issues with the police department I mean I know that you're not around the smoke inhalation fire but are there any is the Brady Bill just for fire yes sir it's not for public for First Response that's not for police officers not not yet no sir uh now there is a PTSD bill that's the Dustin samples bill that covers U law enforcement I think EMS and firefighters uh all which post-traumatic stress syndrome is a real deal too I still don't think we've know that was actually my project my efo program in uh December of 23 that was my end project was uh doing all the studies on that PTSD is a rising crisis in in emergency services as well and that's basically the end result is suicide rates uh for firefighters police officers uh EMS which I think to me would go hand inand with the bridge why we don't want folks exposed to this stuff continually for a long period of time uh because people are taking their lives due to the things that they are either suppressing not knowing how to deal with it or it's just too much for them whether that's a one-time event or it's a career-long uh uh exposure to events Chief Jones so Chief Bush mentioned the PTSD Bill and there was a a heart and lung Bill uh that Tennessee passed several years ago but each individual City had to opt into that Hendersonville did not and what IT addresses is stress related art conditions for law enforcement officers but it also covered uh lung issues for for firefighters so uh that's the only one that I'm aware of but the primary the issues that we see long term with law enforcement officers are hard issues

and stress related ill just high blood pressure hypertension and those types of things well I noticed on on social media Chief Bush put some statistics down on cancer prevalence among Fire have there been any studies on uh cardiac or hypertension or anything for the police department there may have been I'm not aware of it if they've done that I know that it again uh there was some information that was presented years ago with our bill um and but there each individual City had to opt into it across the state of Tennessee and Hendersonville did not at the time so thank you anybody else motion to adour second flavor