Town Council - Regular Meeting

Call to order a meeting to the normal town council for February 2nd, 2026. Please call the RO. Mayor Cous. Mr. Preston here. Mrs. Loren here. Mr. Buyers here. Mr. Roers here. Miss Smith here. Mr. McCarthy here.

We'll begin with the pledge of allegiance. We have uh two public commenters tonight. Um and just to go over the rules very briefly. Uh we just ask you state your name for the record when you start your comments. And you have three minutes. And the first speaker is Mickey Stson. Do we have a Mickey Stapleton? Oh, sorry. I'll get closer on that. Hi, my name is Mickey Stapleton and I'm here to address the council and the mayor. Um, Mrs. Reese, city manager. I hope I don't go over my three minutes, but I have several things that I want to bring up. One of them being the fire station again. I was here the last time speaking about it. Um, and it's something that's necessary in that neighborhood because that neighborhood has been there forever. Where you've put the other station, that's newer projects out there and they don't have the need as much as what where the current station was at at College and Blair.

And my question is, and I don't know the answer to it, but I'm sure somebody on the committee will, um, is the money that is given to to the town of Normal from Towanda and Hudson, does that go directly to the fire stations that serve that area? Anybody?

This isn't a Q&A. Just go ahead and make your comments and we'll get back to you after the meeting on that. Okay. Okay, that's fine. Um, that fire station at I have read and I don't know if any of you have read the feeds that are on the town of Normal site, the 25 news, the neighbors section um that a lot of people read in town. Everybody is commenting about the need for that fire station to help save lives and help people. It's not a want, but it's a need. Um, I've also read about um funding for sewers. I don't know how much the cost was for that new station out there, but that money could have been used for the sewer system that's under attack. Um, and then it's when I read recently, just today actually, the sewer system out in North Normal, which I thought I was in North Normal, but evidently not. It stated that it was going out to like Ironwood and the other neighborhoods out there. Those are newer neighborhoods. I don't know where you're replacing sewers out there when in fact my neighborhood which was just about half a mile from the fire station on college, we could use our sewers replaced. So I think some of this money that you're spending is being misappropriated to places. But I'm not an accountant. And I don't know um the money for the underpass also and I know that's a big big contention in the town of Normal. That money could be used to keep the fire station open on

College and Blair. that that underpass is just a I want, not an I need. But thank you for your time.

And uh our second speaker tonight is Jerry Clicker. Hi, I'm Jerry Clinkner. I live at 903 North Fell in Normal. Thank you for this opportunity to address the council on the matter of moving one of the normal fire stations. I think that instead a fourth fire station should be built as proposed by the normal firefighters IAFF local 2442 about a year ago. I was a recipient of the normal EMS services. They came to my house my wife when my wife called. I was having trouble breathing. He took me to the Carl Hospital ER where the doctors found out that I had pneumonia. Since I also have type 1 diabetes and was almost unconscious, they may have saved my life. I'm sure these firefighters have saved other people's lives. In order to build another station and hire enough firefighters to staff it, I don't propose higher taxes. I think our taxes are high enough. I propose my proposal would be to drop the idea of a tunnel under the railroad tracks downtown. That money could would no doubt build the station and hire the firefighters that we need. Thank you. [clears throat]

We'll start our business tonight with the omnibus agenda. Items considered routine and taken with a single vote. Unless a council member would like to pull an item for discussion. Item C as in Charlie. Move approval. Second.

Thank you. Items of uh onus are very brief tonight. Approval of the minutes of the work session of January 20th, 2026. Approval of the minutes of the public hearing on January 20th, 2026. and approval of the minutes of the regular council meeting of January 20th, 2026 and a report to receive and file town of normal expenditures for payment as of January 28th, 2026. Please call the Mr. Preston. I, Mrs. Loren, I, Mr. Buyers, I, Mr. Robers, I, Miss Smith, I, Mr. McCarthy I. Mayor Cuz

I Those items are approved. Item C is an ordinance reserving private equity bond volume cap. Miss Smith. Move for approval. Second.

Um I had asked questions about this uh because although it is related to mortgage, I wasn't exactly clear on how the program works. and I discovered in uh email exchange with the city manager um that the town isn't directly involved and if if I could defer to her so I don't misstate it. So exactly how are these um mortgage credit certificates um used? Well, I can go into very slight detail because we don't administer the program, but it it is um where the town of Normal and other municipalities in the state of Illinois can seed their bond volume cap. We we seed it to Illinois Assist Home Ownership Program. They manage what's called the Monarch Mortgage Program. Um, Monarch Mortgage works with all sorts of local financial institutions and they they convert that bond volume cap into some tax credits for mortgage mortgage tax credits. And they're serving generally firsttime home buyers and um income qualified home buyers. And so they use that to help with mortgage credits. So, this is a program to help ease the housing crunch in terms of assisting first-time home buyers that might not otherwise be able to get all the financing they need.

That is correct. It generally applies to down payment assistance and um closing costs and things like that. And I I'm understand it's very popular and there have been a number of mortgages that have been issued in MLAN County over the years. So, it really um targets central Illinois. Thank you for that clarification. Further on this item, please call the RO. Mrs. Loren, I. Mr. Buyers, I. Mr. Roers, I. Miss Smith, I. Mr. McCarthy, I. Mr. Preston, I mayor Cuz

I that ordinance is approved. We have one item of general orders tonight. A resolution approving a memorandum of understanding between the county of MLAN, the city of Bloomington, and the town of Normal regarding the terms and scope of an independent audit of the mental health and public safety fund. Move approval. Second discussion on this item. Hearing none, please call the RO. Mr. Buyers, I. Mr. Roers, I. Miss Smith, I. Mr. McCarthy, I. Mr. Preston, I. Mrs. Lorenz, Mayor Cuz

I That resolution is approved. Item eight is a motion under new business, a motion to initiate a zoning text amendment pertaining to various updates in the sections of the zoning code. Move approval. Second. Discussion on this item. Please call the RO. Mr. Roers. I. Miss Smith. I. Mr. McCarthy. I. Mr. Preston. I. Mrs. Loren I Mr. Buyers. Hi, Mayor Cuz I. That motion is approved. And uh number nine is a presentation of data analysis by the innovation and technology staff. Ree, I'll turn that over to you to introduce.

Yes, thank you. Um and actually, it's going to be more than just the innovation technology staff. We've got a bunch of seats at the table, only three microphones, so I think they're going to take turns. Um this is an opportunity for us to share information about um how we are using information and data and applying that to um fire operations specifically. Um and so obviously we have chief humor here, assistant city manager Jenny Kier, um administrative analyst Jacob Smith, director of innovation and technology Vasu Ganaraju, and then I'll let Vasu inter introduce her assistant. Um another person from her team who's assisting her in the presentation tonight. Um and then we'll we'll just share information. And everything that we're going to present to you tonight is information that's already been conveyed to you through various means. Um, it's on our website. It's been emailed to you, explained. I've talked to media outlets, but this is a better opportunity for us to go into more detail. Um, maybe hopefully clear up some misunderstandings or um, confusion perhaps. Um, and then we'll be free, you know, happy to answer any questions. council may have. Um, so I'm going to I think Miss Garaju is gonna start.

I'll go ahead and get started. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Ree. Uh, good evening, Mayor and Council. [clears throat] Today's presentation is about looking at um, uh, the impact uh, of relocating fire station 2 to see if there was any impact on four to six minute response zones in the areas it previously served in its um, older location. So for that we have um used tools from ESRI um um most of you probably heard of this. They're the industry leader in location analytics. We have used their tool set called service area analysis um which is a set of modeling tools that help us map information specifically addressing drive times from point A to point B either using uh time or distance. Um again um as the name suggests service area analysis modeling is a modeling tool. So to make sure that we are validating that information we have used uh CAD and image trend data. CAD is our dispatching software and image trend is the system that um fire department uses to uh gather all the incidents and related information. Um the two uh terms you'll be using you'll be hearing frequently today is um AVL and CAD. AVL is automatic vehicle locators. When we do service area analysis a lot of models assume that we are running calls from the fire stations. While that is true most of the time we also use um AVL based dispatching which is uh dispatching vehicles based on where they are. So the service analysis models alone will not be true representation of uh the reality. So we wanted to make sure that we used um our actual observed data from CAD to validate that information. With that I will turn it over to Miss Sarah Rogers uh who is our GIS coordinator to walk us through our

analysis aspects.

Thank you. So I will walk through um both models that Miss Karajio had mentioned the RJS online model as well as the network analyst model. Again, both of these come from EZRI. Um they just have different different inputs and I'll kind of walk through what that means. So, looking first at the ARJS online model. Um the way that both of these models work is you plug in the stations and we set it so that we want to see our road coverage moving away from each of the stations. Um and then with cut offs at four minutes and six minutes traveled. Um what you want to take away from the ARJS online model is that it uses historic and real-time data um to make predictions about where to go, how far we can go in four and six minutes. Um so it's using the the data that Ezri collects um to predict how far we can make in those areas. So as you can see on the map in the blue area, that is what they predict we can make in four minutes. Um and then the orange is is our distance in six minutes. Um, the thing I'll mention with the the real- time traffic data is that it's looking at all uh commercial traffic. So, it's not looking specifically at emergency vehicle speeds. Um, it's looking at at the typical traffic flow um across across the area. You can go to the next slide. Um, so because the model doesn't show uh necessarily what our specific uh fire and EMS response times are, we wanted to pull in our actual incident data. So what you can see on this map is our incidents from 2024 which were all dispatched with the aid of AVL. Um that means that that the responses could have started at the station or um the vehicles could have been dispatched in the field if they were nearby uh the scene. Um I will note that you will see there are triangles on the map. The blue triangles are any of the incidents where we responded in four minutes or below um for run time specifically and then the

orange triangles are are four to six minutes. The things we want to look for are where um there are blue triangles outside of the blue area or orange triangles outside of the orange area which means that in real life we outperformed what the model predicted we can we can do. Um, I will also note that there are quite a few outliers. There are always outliers with with real- time data. Um, for example, I'll point out uh near the south side of town where fire headquarters is, there are two orange triangles that are nearby. And you might be asking why why would it take between four and six minutes to maybe get two blocks away from where the station is. Um, that's based on scenario. Those specific scenarios were reported as false alarm calls. Um, but I'll pass it to Chief Huer to kind of talk about why um, in certain instances it might take us longer.

Sure. There there's a couple of situations where we um, our response times are longer when we're responding on emergency calls. So, for example, as everybody knows, there's a huge mental health crisis throughout the country and in the Twin Cities. And so a lot of times police officers arrive on the scene, they work with a a patient having a mental health problem or a crisis or whatever. They decide that person needs to be transported by ambulance. So they tone us out. We start to respond on that and then Metcad or Metcom will uh will tell us they want us to respond no code, no lights, no siren because they don't want to upset the patient because maybe they have them calm down or something like that. And you know, a fire truck or an ambulance coming up will maybe agitate them more or something like that. So in those cases, we're driving just with regular traffic just like you're driving your car. We're stopping at the stop lights, stopping at the stop signs and everything like that. Other times we have automatic alarms. Now on a regular automatic alarm, we send a full complement of equipment on a on a normal basis or whatever. But sometimes we go to automatic alarms to the same building or same location two or three times a day because the system is having a problem or they're working on the problem or whatever. So after the first response to that, we would upgrade that alarm and maybe not send a full compliment and we would send an engine to go check it out and they would go no code. So in a lot of these instances you would see where they were just driving with normal speed like like I say like you were driving your car uh to go there. So those are just a couple of the instances that why it could be more than six minutes on a lot of those calls. And I mean, we're talking on the mental health calls, we're talking about hundreds of calls per year, and

automatic alarms, we're probably talking thousands of calls per year.

Really quickly before you switch the slide, um, just some key takeaways. Again, we do this validation because we want to compare what the model says versus what happens in real life. Um, so we're looking at at where the blue and orange triangles are outside of their respective zones. Um, but this was just one piece of the validation that we did. If you go to the next slide. Um, we also looked at a period of time where AVL dispatch was was not happening and that was in the latter half of 2025 as Metcom was swapping the CAD system over. Um, so we wanted to look at where we knew all of those instances um were being dispatched from the station. And again, you can see while there's less um there's there's a handful of incidents where run times do still outperform the model. Um so with that we wanted to look at another model that was available and that was the network analyst model. This again is provided by Ezri. Um it works the same way where we plug in the stations and we're moving outwards um as far as we can go for what the model thinks we can hit in four minutes and six minutes. Again um we can't look at the model alone. However, before we dive into the validation again, I do want to point out that this model does not account for traffic data um or traffic patterns. So, it's just looking at um where we could get from point A to point B without that historic uh piece, but we wanted to look at it and see how it compared to our our actual instances. Um so, if we go to the next slide, the same rules apply here. Um I'm using the exact same data uh as we did a few slides before. And again, I we just really wanted to look at where um where are actual incidents and their run times compared to what the model said. Um again, you'll see that there are blue triangles outside of the blue um areas, which means that in real life, we got further and could respond faster than what the model predicted. Um and same with the six minute zones. And then same

here, uh we looked at those incidents where we didn't dispatch with AVL. Um and while there were many less um we can still see um with probably sweet spot conditions that that we can outperform this model as well. Um with that I'll pass it back to Miss Garaju for some takeaways on the drive time models. [clears throat]

So um as uh we have walked you through uh uh both the models. I think a couple of takeaways here is definitely the network analyst model aligned more closely with our reality and um and I I think um we need to reiterate this models are models they're simulations using algorithms. So we want to make sure that you know uh these models don't have our street traffic or our EMS uh speeds or AVL based dispatch uh aspects which all impact our emergency response times. Based on our validation with our observed data, we um uh uh definitely observed that our network analyst model um actually both models outperformed um um our runtimes outperformed both models, but our network analyst model uh shows a smaller gap uh from actual response times. So we do think that uh that model aligns closely with our actual response times based on the network analyst model. Another question we wanted to answer which we posed up front is is the relocation of fire station 2 um does that impact our four to six response uh four to six minute response times and um the answer is based on the network analyst model we have not observed that uh it did not impact our four to six minute um response uh time ranges. So what are the next steps after this? Uh now that station 2 has moved we will continue to uh take our observed data and continue to validate the model. With that I will pass it on to M.

Sure. So just to summarize really quickly um appreciate all of this in-depth analysis but to zoom back a little bit basically what these models are telling us is again to reiterate what Vu just shared with you the movement of station 2 is not going to jeopardize our ability to respond within the four to six minute threshold. So I wanted to make that very very clear. Um, moving forward, I'm gonna hand it over now to Jacob Smith. He's going to take you through a little bit more about that.

Absolutely. So, there's been a [clears throat] lot of questions I think about data sets and just wanting to make sure that we are being good stewards of data and so I want to take a Oh, thank you. better now. Little better. That's probably a little loud. We'll try a middle. Uh, so we want we know there's been a lot of questions about data and there's a lot of data in this process. So we wanted to talk through the couple of different data sets we've worked through uh through this process. So I'm going to be going back and forth between some definitions, the different data models we use, the different data sets we've been looking at, and some of the findings we have. So first, uh the data sets we've used for the following metrics are made up of comparative analysis from CAD computerized dis aided dispatch, excuse me, from metcom and image trend data sets. Uh we already talked a little bit about CAD, but image trend is an emergency management software for fire and EMS that we use. Gives us some additional insights, allows us to export those datas in different forms and allows us to get extra looks at what's going on in the town. And admittedly, I think if anyone's worked with technology, uh technology and data sets can be imperfect at the end of the day. So we check multiple sources, compare that uh the real run numbers, but we want to make sure, you know, a server didn't go down. We want to make sure something didn't happen. uh these are very large data sets that have millions upon millions of cells. Uh we want to make sure that we have a good picture. So we check and uh take a look at multiple sources and also to ensure uh accuracy. We're still working on comparative analysis for 2025. Uh so we're very excited to kind of do that comparative look between CAD data and image trend data. See what we're looking at and making sure there is nothing we're missing as we keep going through these conversations and next steps. Let's talk a little bit about 2024 call volume. Call volume is something that we're describing or that is described as the number of calls for fire EMS in a time. In this case, we're looking at

2024 as a full calendar year. Uh call volume was up little less than half a percent 43% from 2023 to 2024. Um and despite some slight raise in volume, fleet availability remains strong. I'm going to talk a lot about fleet availability on the next slide. So, I wanted to make sure to define fleet availability as time when the fire fleet is not fully occupied with instant response. Do we have vehicles available to still respond when something happens? And again, I will note the same thing that I think we've all all heard and we've all said. Number of calls that we see every year is up uh in 2024. And despite that, the fleet availability is quite strong. On average across all stations, we're seeing about five hours and six minutes of active daily minutes. Uh active daily minutes are described as anytime a vehicle is out doing work. That doesn't mean every vehicle from that station is occupied on that work. That could be just the EMS uh vehicle is out on response. That can mean just a truck is out on response. But anytime a vehicle goes out, that starts the clock and when they return, that stops the clock. We're seeing an average per station of about five hours. uh meaning we still see uh time uh oh and excuse me active in this case is defined as dress time response time and time at an incident until they're ultimately cleared and available for another call. So also wouldn't necessarily return that or include that return to station because we do have that ADL system working for us. Um, ultimately what this means is we have slightly less than 19 hours a day with fleet availability and we'll we'll keep monitoring that to make sure that that stays at a healthy ratio where folks are available to respond to calls but also where uh we can we can keep responding. Uh on the right I have those broken down a little bit more where you can see headquarters old station two and station three in 2024 their average number of calls per day as well as the average time they spent in response. And finally wanted to talk just a little

bit about kind of that gap in risk assessment uh when it comes to the 2024 data set. Uh, one last definition which I think V already hit, but ALS, advanced life support, uh, we want to make sure we understand risk and so we look at each individual moment when we didn't have an ALS vehicle available. If uh, advanced life support is needed, we want to make sure that we have something able to get to folks in the community. Uh, in total in the year of 2020 in 20 the year 2024, we had 14 little less than 14 and a half hours available without a vehicle. Uh 2024 was a leap year. I had to redo all of my math once uh we realized that way late in the game admittedly. I had to add a day. Just changed a couple of averages. Nothing too much there. But as it was a leap year, uh dividing that by 8,784 hours, we come out to a little less than well.165% of the year where we didn't have a vehicle. Averaging out to about 2 minutes and 22 seconds a day. Should be noted as well, this is not a daily occurrence. I believe when you look at the daily average it's slightly higher or excuse me the day average daily uh number is that two minutes if you look at the uh average time it ends up being a little bit higher suggesting that uh there are days with days without and we can confirm that by looking at the data set. Ultimately we want to bring this up because we look at gaps and consider risk to ensure that we're a good partner in mutual aid as well. If our fleet is constantly busy, we can't assist our partners the same way we want them to assist us in those average two-minute gaps where we might not be able to get to someone. And we're very happy we have those partnerships in place. And we also recognize that there's a concern that service might be available, but statistically at this time we feel that is not the case or such a minor amount of time when it is the case. So again, just to summarize quickly, um what we're seeing from these numbers is basically that they're not telling us at this time there's a need for an additional station. We have the capacity

to respond to our calls and we have the capacity to be a responsible mutual aid partner. So um again, just wanted to to cap that off and make sure that was clear.

Please. Um, so, so that's, you know, we actually could spend lots and lots of time getting into the the details of calls and data and things like that. You know, we've we've got we've been in this conversation for a number of months now. um initially being told that we had too many calls for service, that we'd grown, that we couldn't serve with new station 2, we couldn't adequately serve a certain area of normal. Our information does not prove that to be the case. As the team just showed you, we have this information on our website. Um we've actually been reporting calls and times, response times for years in our annual report. So, this is information we've been tracking for years. Um, so with that, you know, we'll be happy to answer any questions. I did want to point out clearly the the people here at the table are um subject matter experts in collecting the data, reviewing the data, but um nobody has more experience and is more of a subject matter expert than Chief Humer. His background as as council is aware um includes being the executive director of emergency services at Carl Foundation Hospital. So this is something he's very familiar with in terms of managing um ambulance services. So um you know we we all have the same goal everyone in this room in terms of providing the highest quality of exceptional service to our residents. Um, but we just wanted to take some time to explain how we get to the conclusions we get to and what's evaluated to make sure we can provide service. So, with that, I'll turn it over to mayor and counsel when everyone's available to answer questions.

We'll have questions and discussion at the table and start with you, Miss. Um so I have been responding to a lot of the letters that have been coming in and there are some uh recurring themes. Um but I I wanted to ask specifically why go back only to 2024 instead of a longer year. Is the increase that you're seeing um from 24 to 25 typical um or have have we held fairly constant in recent years in the number of calls?

I'm going to mess up this mic every time I try and move it. Apologies in advance. Uh the short answer is we went to 24 tonight just to give an example of what we're looking at. 24 being the last complete year we've completed analysis on. uh the most recent complete year we have analysis on uh for most of our data that we've been digging into. 2018 has been a really good uh stop gap as to how far we've been going back. We have run the analysis on everything back to 2018. 2018 being the year that we introduced image trend. Uh before that it was an older software. The numbers are very apples to say apples to oranges might even be a little bit far off. Uh there are some systems that are just make seeing that year-over-year math when it comes to very specific parts of run time, when it comes to dress time, when it comes to response time a little bit difficult to to have a nice comparison. So 2024 was just the selection tonight to say from our most recent complete year. happy to dive in deeper uh however is needed uh back to that 2018 or before just with maybe some asterisks of we didn't necessarily or at least I haven't uh been able to dig into that that set as much.

So um since the new station on Shepard and Hershey is just open as of last Thursday, you were using the modeling to predict coverage area um retroactively. Is that correct? That is correct. So models actually use our street networks to predict that. Uh so it's not using our actual data yet. And the the main concern you were looking at is uh emergency response times because proportionately have we had that many fire calls in a in a year, Chief Humer?

No. Um I I think uh the year before we had what we would consider actually 26 structure fires out of 8,61 calls something like that with 80% of those being EMS related.

And um I'm I'm aware from prior discussions that a number of the calls are responding to requests to lift someone who has fallen to the floor. And a number of those calls are coming from institutions that actually have staff available to do that, but they are opting not to use staff. Um, do you have any information on the percentage of calls um where you are supplementing uh the staff that is on site?

I I do not have that information in front of me, but it it is a pretty high percentage. We do go on a lot of lists at at nursing homes and assisted living and we also go to a lot of uh residential uh homes in the community and and do lift assist as well but I don't have those numbers in front and and when you're you're looking at at that are we charging for that ambulance call when there's no transport involved? I believe there was some discussion of some new legislation um that may now permit us to to charge. But have we not been charging if we're providing a service and then leaving without any transport offered?

Yes, that that is correct. We we don't charge um anybody any patient um unless we transport them to the hospital. Okay. Um and I'll I'll if I could jump in I just pulled up I think in uh 2024. So, if we're going to stick with 2024 data, the calendar year 2024, I believe we had 280 calls for lift assists, umund and and then of that, we know how many we transported, how many we just helped up. And so, we do have that information.

And there had been some concern about using actual data and violating HIPPO privacy if if we were to actually match a specific address to an ambulance call. um in this in this report. Um how is how did you maintain the the uh compliance with HIPPA regulations to not um disclose anything of a private nature?

Sure. Well, I I don't believe that a address a street address is is a HIPPO violation. Obviously, if we were talking about um the patient by name or by um you know if we could connect it to whatever their illness was or whatever like that, but we didn't look at it the data that way.

Well, we did, but we didn't publish the information. I think, you know, we've got we've got maps that show actual runs in locations that you just saw on the modeling. That was actual runs to a specific location. But on our website, we don't say the address. And Mr. day is, you know, eager to jump in. I can I can hear him say that. But but I think the difference is between who's got the data and looking at the information, which would be fire, and not putting it out publicly with the specific address,

right? And there's a number of records and it depends on uh the context of what the records are, how HIPPA will apply. And we're also not just talking about HIPPA, but for instance, addresses would be exempt under section 71B and section 71C of FOYA. Uh, so we wouldn't release it under that, not just HIPPA. Um, addresses might be part of protected information under HIPPA depending on how they're used in the report. Uh, certainly, for instance, if a fire truck goes to your house for a fire and there's no medical that wouldn't be uh but since we provide ambulance services and we bill for those ambulance services we are a covered agency under HIPPA so we have to worry about uh preserving private health information um addresses certainly can be part of that the code of federal reg code of federal regulations uh list 18 different identifiers as to how a person could be identified under HIPPA uh and things you have to pull out if you're going to disclose information. One of those is addresses at any subdivision below the state level. So you can do the state, you can do zip codes under certain circumstances, but that's not going to apply since we only have one zip code here. Um so we always have to be very wary of HIPPA. Um certainly in run reports where yes on a certain day at a certain time we sent an ambulance to this address that could be an identifier under HIPPA um and other privacy interests. Um additionally as they were talking when we're looking at outliers and we're looking at you know mental health reports or other uh responses to see what's happening behind the scenes in any given situation. Certainly that would also be included in HIPP. It wouldn't just be the address, but it

would be other information in reports that we're looking at. So, it's something that it's not going to apply in every instance, but it's applies in a whole lot of instances. So, we're very careful um making sure we don't breach our obligations under HIPPA or other laws. And um in our previous meeting when there was a discussion on the budget um one person had written to me that they their takeaway was that we had reserve vehicles um that would therefore make it possible to to continue equipping a fourth station. Um how many pieces of equipment does each station now carry? Um well each fire station front line has an engine and an ambulance. Um two of our two of our stations have a ladder truck. One is out for repair right now. truck. Um we have uh a total of five ambulances and so um two are in reserve and then u we have two engines that are in reserve and 17. So but in reserve doesn't mean sitting around waiting to to equip a future station. It means when a piece of apparatus is at public works getting maintenance, they have, you know, they have ability to use another engine or another ambulance or if it's out for service for a period of time, they've got backup.

And the reserve pieces will not stand up to the wear and tear of responding on calls every single day because the engines are 18 years old and the ambulances are six to eight years old because they've already moved from the front line to reserve. And that's that's what we do. We we keep the ambulances front line for I believe four years and then we try to keep them two to two to four years in reserve. So the data you were looking at was looking at three ambulance 24 hours a day that are equipped and staffed to respond to calls with two reserve ambulances in case any one of those or two of them up to a point would require any maintenance that could be taken care of without compromising what is available to be responded.

I'm sorry that's that's correct. And then they're also available if we have a large fire or a large EMS incident and we would call people back on on emergency overtime, we could staff those units, you know, if we if we would have a large structure fire or a really large accident scene or an active shooter or something like that. So, similar to that bus accident where every passenger that was on that bus had to have a dedicated ambulance just for them for transport. So that was pretty much an all hands-on deck response from all of the surrounding uh communities for that bus accident. Correct.

That is correct. And um besides the three ambulances, all of the normal police department now have AEDs. Is am I saying that right? That's correct. So how many cars in the police force would be serving a shift that might be able to respond? um and at least provide that first initial um emergency service to someone undergoing a heart attack. Chief Patilly just told me um from afar you're sitting here in the front 22 squad cars have AEDs in them. Okay, I think that's all I had. Mr. Buyers,

thanks. Mayor, is there any chance we could pull slide four, I believe, back up? Yeah, this one. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so as a general comment of a question, what I found really interesting about the data and I think staff referred to it as overperformance where even in zones that we have sort of categorized as either under four minutes or between four and six minutes. I mean, looking at this map, I mean, I don't see any neighborhoods that are in the four to six minute category that aren't having overperformance fairly regularly based off of the data. So, I I found that impressive. And my follow-up question to that was, can you talk about just the methodology? Like, how are we building this kind of model and formula and actually achieving these results? Like, can you just talk through the process of kind of building that out?

Abs. So one clarification before I turn it over to Miss Rogers is when we talk about outperforming the model uh analysis. Model looks at how um we can get from point A to point B on road network uh in four minutes and six minutes. And we are strictly talking about from a distance perspective. A lot of these um uh actual observed data points have outperformed um from a distance um uh and response time perspective. So I'll talk through the model itself and then the methodology for how we we overlaid our incident data. Um both EZRI models are are pretty much uh plug-andplay. So as far as manipulating how the model works isn't really um what is even possible with the models but what we can do is say um we want to look at at certain cutoff times either as um time driven or distance driven. So for these specifically we wanted to look at the four and six minute times. Um and then we can also set the origin point. Other than that um the model kind of runs itself where where it pulls in the the underlying data that EZRI maintains. Um however that's why we wanted to pull in our own incident data. So what we did was we took our 2024 incidents and looked at the first vehicle on scene. um because again we are just looking at the possibility to get from point A to point B in in real life conditions throughout the year um at various times of the day. So what you're seeing is is the art of the possible based on on real life incidents on our networks um with real-time driving conditions within the town of Normal specifically. I also would like to clarify that this data [clears throat] set that you're seeing does not have station two on on there because we wanted to validate fire HQ and station 3.

Thank you. And then I'll zoom out to 30,000 foot on two more questions. So just as a general question, how long have we been using the four to six minute kind of response time as the standard? Is that something new that we've started doing or we've been doing that for a long time? Can you just share any history that you have there? it was uh it was in effect when I came here in 2007. So that that is the number that we've been using my entire career here

and as long as I can remember and I've been bargaining union contracts since about 1997 um as chief union negotiator and so as long as I can remember four to six minutes and then of course as we had shared previously um MLAN county area EMS who sets the policy for the paramedic and the EMS program indicates that less than six minutes is the policy for for all EMS providers in MLAN County. Thanks. And Mish, out of curiosity, can you remind me what year that would go back to on your experience?

I've been here since 1991, but I've been chief union negoti I was I'm no longer for the last eight years. I haven't been chief union negotiator, but prior to that, I was for 20 years from um 1998 to 2018. Okay. So, we've been using the standard for for quite a while then. Uh that that's helpful in understanding. And my other general question would be, do we have any just cops of what are other municipalities doing in central Illinois? Are they using a similar standard? Are they using a different standard? There's talks of a a four minute or under standard across the board. I mean, can you just speak to what other municipalities are doing or other folks in the central Illinois neighborhood?

Sure. Well, you know, the the four to six minutes, you know, the four minutes, the 1710, I'm sorry, the 1710, you know, the four minutes 90% of the time. I mean, that's the NFPA gold standard. That's what everybody tries to achieve as they move forward um you know, with their departments, with their municipalities, and everything like that. But most people never obtain that. Um the city of Bloomington does not meet that. The city of Champagne does not meet that. Uh the city of Pein does not meet that. And those were the speakers from the union that were here to speak to you last week. None of their home departments meet NFPA 1710, but they are here telling us that we need to meet.

The the other thing that I and I think you chief, the other thing um one municipality that I thought might meet NFPA 1710 and might be the gold standard in the state of Illinois. Um I understood to be Neapville. Um it turns out Neapville actually promotes even on their website front page of their fire department that their goal is six minutes or less 90% of the time. Thank you.

Um I've got a couple things. Um, I I wonder just a rhetorical question, but I wonder what their six minutes 90% of the time reflects. Is that in route time or does that include alarm processing and turnout? You know, it could. So, um, respond to that. Do you know terms of Neighborville? I do not know. But we've been saying four to six minutes in terms of response time.

Okay. So, I've got um I've got some some data related questions. I think some of them have been been answered. Um but then I I have some policy. Remember this. There's a fire section in here. Uh so I'll be bringing that up in a minute. Um first of all, uh where is station three on this map? where it says community to the left straight across the

that's station and where is where is station two college or east side do you have that marked So when we're validating the model, um we were just validating based off of uh Fire HQ and station 3 because the model underlying is predicting um where our coverage would be when we move the station, but we wanted to validate with with historic data. Um so if you go back one slide, um this is is the predictive model including station two.

That's the predictive model. And in that model, um are you taking what's your assumptions about um how fast the units are going you know can you do you know street speed limit plus five plus 10 what are your assumptions there so as I mentioned before the ARJS online model um looks at historic traffic patterns that that are collected by EZRI um which is the the GIS company and the frontr runner in um the industry standards for GIS. So this model that you're looking at right here is looking at at traffic across the world um and using their model to predict based on traffic patterns that they have collected where we could cover. And then as I mentioned the ARJ or the the network analyst model does not account for traffic data but because they're two different models we used our our real life incidents to kind of compare and build some context to understand what these models mean in our community. So they're not really modeling our traffic. It's just sort of uh AI generated traffic so to speak. I wouldn't say AI generated traffic but they do purchase data from various uh places uh to uh include observed traffic. It's definitely we can't say that it is town or normal traffic. It is their observed traffic. Yes.

Okay. So we don't know whether this is 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning or 5:00 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon. We do know this because uh there are certain parameters we can set where we have set the parameter to be uh average across all um all times of the day, all days of the week. Okay. Um, so I want to move into a little bit about incidents uh and the propensity of an incident happening more in one area than than another because if I correct me if I'm wrong, this appears to be really just measuring um travel time, right?

Road coverage. Okay. So, as I've learned, there's kind of two components to response times. There's road coverage, which I think you're showing here, and then there's the propensity of incidences occurring in some places and not others. Not all, if you were to make grids on this map, not all grids are the same. So, one of the areas that I want to talk about that I think is an important um hub of incidences um is Rivian. Okay. So, um how many roughly calls do we have out to Rivian in a given week or month? I I believe in 2004 we had about 400 calls out there, but the number 2024,

I'm sorry, 2024. Um, but the numbers have steadily gone down um with changes at Rivian with them having their own nurse practitioners and being able to do X-ray and stitches and things like that. So, those numbers have continued to drop. Okay. You've been around this community a pretty long time. Do you remember um the type of volume that was required from Mitsubishi? I do not. I was not here when Mitsubishi was in full force. Okay. Okay.

Um they are they had a full um in-house emergency response mechanism both for EMS and or you know emergency medical as well as I believe they had what I'm going to call a fire brigade in the manufacturing setting so that their calls were first triaged through their own central internal um station and then if there was a confirmed fire or something they couldn't handle medically, then they called out to the municipality. Is that your understanding? That's my understanding. And and today at Rivian, there is a delay. So when the fire alarm goes off, the fire department is notified for five minutes. Okay.

To allow them to go to the area to have their security identify what the situation is, right? But they don't have any internal response other than a nurse practitioner. They don't. Okay. Just based on your knowledge, I know it may not go as far back as 2015 or 16 when they actually closed. Um, would you say that the Rivian site as we know it requires more, less, or about the same?

You know, that that I do not know. I I I know that, you know, obviously we've been looking at the Rivian situation throughout this whole time and the the problem with the Rivian situation is because it's always been under construction and there's always been contractors and things going on there. So, the calls have always fluctuated there. There hasn't been a a time and there'll probably never be a time when there's not work going on out there, but that it has slowed down to a pace where we can get a good handle on just what are the number of calls that we're going to respond to per year.

Okay, so not looking for an average, but just look at last year in your mind and then go back 10 years to one of the last years of Mitsubishi. More or less or about the same? I would imagine about the same. Really? I I I don't know. Is that you just don't know? I just don't know. Okay. Um, well, given that they are a bigger outfit, that they don't have an internal fire brigade, um, and that they are continuing to grow and do construction, and that they interact with highly, um, dangerous and flammable batteries. Um, my hunch is that it's more that be a fair assessment.

If you I I really don't want words put into my mouth, but I I I don't know.

I mean, I I I kind of can't believe we don't know whether it's more or less or about the same, but okay, I'll move on. Um I guess I want to point out that this data and your analysis today ignores incidents. It ignores what's happening more frequently in a given area than in another. It's just assuming that all aspects of this community are the same and that's not a valid assumption. Do you have anything you want to comment about incidents and how you can measure that? Could you uh could you explain your reasoning for that? For what?

That's a pretty strong accusation. You've been presented data and you're talking about punches and you're saying I think you're ignoring something. So explain what they're ignoring. They're ignoring an element of of measuring appropriate response time by not measuring and reflecting the likelihood of incidences happening happening in one area of town or another. Um, Mr. Smith.

Yeah, I was uh going to just briefly uh talk a little bit about incences on that we've we have looked at and as a reminder as well, thank you. I said I was going to do it every time. Uh, as a reminder as well, we have a entire fact sheet as well as a page committed on the normal forum where we're posting updates and posting as much information as we go over. So, if anyone is curious, we aren't going to go over it all tonight because it's pages and we're excited that we have pages, but we also want to make sure we can uh get through items and hopefully provide something new. Uh, so a lot of the incident uh discussion is is up on that forum and uh on those pieces. As far as incidents go, uh, a lot of that does, uh, hopefully shine through, maybe not in relation to specific region, but in relation to raw count through the fleet availability. We think that's a really great metric to measure incidents and how prepared we are to handle those by. Um, one other thing I wanted to point out with incidents is right now in all of the analysis we're doing, we are trying to be as gracious as possible and measure everything from as worse as possible. So we had two things we noticed when we were going through the data set and that's one there were a lot of times where the total runtime was zero. They got there in zero seconds and we said huh that probably didn't happen unless it it'd be impressive uh if they could make it from headquarters out to Rivian in 0 seconds. So all zeros were removed from the data set. We didn't want to over skew our numbers to be lower. So we said we'll wear that on the chin. will lower will actually take all the zeros out and that will end up raising our number to a certain extent. There were zeros left in where we could verify that uh maybe they were already on site for an event for example uh we like to partner for maybe something ISU or someone's doing in Uptown. If we have an ambulance there and they're able to respond like that, that would be a very fast response. But for the ones where we said this is probably technology making things hard on us, we remove those to make sure that's covered. Uh the other

thing we did is we didn't remove any of the no code style incidencies uh from the data set either. Uh it's one of those that we are looking into because we'd love to have that level of understanding but it's something we haven't tracked historically is the statistical impact of no code response time. I don't know if it's something we should track if it's something we need to. We're happy to but it's something we hadn't at this point. Uh no codes are incidents where as the uh fire staff to my understanding uh where the fire staff is told this is a unique scenario. Maybe it's a known false alarm. Maybe it is something related to mental health where there's a need for caution. But my understanding is that more uh regular traffic pattern is followed, lights are not on and that could lead to longer response times. We didn't remove any of those. So, while maybe tonight we didn't speak as much on incident clustering or exact uh the placement of incidencies, I think that's something we have a lot of info on. We could absolutely go back to and continue to have that conversation.

Yeah, that would be good to see. Um I I guess I just want to ask a couple more questions and to clarify your concern because I know I'm bumping up against 10 minutes. You're 12 minutes right now. Uh well, there's been some back and forth, but I'll just these last two. I understand. Um, so I'll come back to you if nobody else has a question or comment. We'll just continue. She does. Miss Smith.

Um, uh, circling back to the police department having the number of AED pieces on their equipment. Um I one of the commenters at an earlier meeting was crediting uh his attack happening basically on the doorstep of College Avenue Station. Um wasn't that though a situation where the police were actually the first on the scene?

That that is correct. I I talked to Chief Petrole about that. Um the the police department were the first ones on the scene. the officer got there, realized the the person was having some type of medical emergency. Um, I think he uh broke the window maybe and everything like that. And as he was doing all that, trying to get him out of the car, uh, the fire department arrived. That is my understanding. and and then um in researching all of this uh information and responding to to some a number of the emails, one of the things I've heard is that there was discussion when the headquarters was built of having two ambulances on site. Can you speak to what led to the decision to uh limit it to the one that all the other fire stations have?

Sure. Well, when headquarters when the new headquarters station was built on Main Street, um it Obviously, it because it's the fire headquarters, it's obvious obviously much bigger because it has more office space and everything, but it also sleeps a lot more firefighters than what substations would sleep. So, for example, our new substation, it it sleeps eight people, and our our headquarters sleeps uh enough for for two ambulances, a staff truck company, an engine company, a battalion chief. I mean, so it's it's much more robust. And that that was One of the selling points if if folks who were on the council um back at that time was to to build it the size that it is because we build it, you know, to last for 40 or 50 years. And so we wanted to be able to expand it to the point when we needed to that we would have a second ambulance and a staff truck company. We also built the training room which is only a one-story level, but a second floor could be added onto it if we needed even more bunk space. So that headquarters will accommodate a lot of firefighters and paramedics. So in discussions where we're addressing a concern about the delivery of service as opposed to being married to the idea of having a fourth station, if we simply analyze the feasibility or the whether or not we need to have more ambulance service, can you speak to the relative cost of adding a second ambulance to headquarters versus keeping an entire fire station open and and and staffing and equipping four stations? So, I I think that we're we're looking at hiring probably six [snorts] to nine people to do that. The extra three people would be for training, overtime, vacations, all that kind of stuff. Obviously, the the uh the

uh six people that would take uh to run that unit on a 24 48 basis would take some time off, vacations, have training, all that kind of stuff as well. So, and the the the last number um that I saw with the pensions and everything like that, um HR might be able to speak to that or finance a little better, but it was $152,000 a year per firefighter that included the per firefighter

per firefighter. That included the pension contributions and, you know, the academy and ongoing training and just all those things that we put into that. And how much additional staff would be needed to fully man a fourth station beyond those six to nine to to serve a a fourth ambulance? Probably 18 people to do that and about the same 150,000 per person.

That's correct. And and then you know as years go on they get increases. You know they got 6% this year. So the cost would continue to go the pension cost would continue to grow um you know over over time. And one of the reasons we're not um we wanted to build a new station number two is how old is the the station on College Avenue?

It's it was built in two different stages and so I think the main part is about 45 years old. Um the other part was built like in 1981 I believe something like that. But you know obviously it doesn't meet ADA. It needs a new roof. Uh, it needs a needs a lot of things. Um, you know, in talking with Mark Clinch, and this has been a while ago, he said that it needed at least $6 million to upgrade. And how much did it cost to build the new station number two? Uh, eight 8 million, not including the land, and that was $450,000, I think.

So, 6 million just to get it up to code and and serviceable versus 8 million. And what have you gained in the new station number two? What what have you been able to to put into that?

Well, obviously much more amenities. You know, the the I I'm not sure exactly where you're going with this, but but you know, like upgraded heating and air conditioning and things like that. It doesn't cost near what it costs, you know, for electricity, for gas, for you know, the creature comforts. You know, each one of the firefighters has their own um bunk room. They're not sleeping in a in a huge room with dividers that came from State Farm, you know. I mean, you guys have all been there, you know. That's what it was like.

But and and that's the that's the physical component of the capital or, you know, of the of the facility and the building. But in addition, what we haven't talked about is the service enhancement to North Northeast Normal. Um and and we we've been working on locating a station so that a greater part of that area of normal can get served within the four to six minute standard. So obviously it enhances our service time and still allows us per evidence and data to return back to college and Blair and Fort Jesse areas, Pleasant Hills, etc. within the four to six minutes response time. So we're able to cover more of an area within four to six minutes.

Then one one final question. Um my colleague over there was talking about not talking about the number of incidents and it seems to me it's kind of um confusing a model that is based on actual data and looking at whether or not we're meeting the standards with where this new location is versus forecasting based on changes we are expecting. in in neighborhoods. Um so we weren't attempting to forecast the number of calls based on any um uh characteristics of the residents of those areas. No.

No. And and I I live on Sheridan and I know in my neighborhood a lot of ranches a lot of them um are turning over as as the residents get older. So, uh, it's not necessarily a static situation that the demographics are are going to always go in a straight line in a predictive pattern. So, you you were not trying to forecast. You were simply trying to um look at data that was um providing some effort to indicate whether or not that station number two could still deliver the four to six minutes uh response time. That is our goal.

That is correct. Uh so we are there um when we are looking at this there is a little bit of a simulation which is a forecast on the underlying analysis areas not so much on the calls. Okay that's all I had. Go ahead.

All right I'll try to talk faster. I [clears throat] am going to pivot away from data. Okay. And I brought with me my um 2017. It was part of a vision 2040. Um so kind of a 25-y year view. It was started in 2015. It was issued in 2017. Mrs. Garaju, you were very instrumental in your former role at the regional planning commission. A number [clears throat] of people sitting in this room made contributions to this. This was a and still is an adopted policy as far as I'm aware. Is that correct? We have not done a a replacement plan. I should say not a policy, not an ordinance, but a plan. Okay. So, nothing has taken its [clears throat] place. So, um one of the things um that I I keep this handy. I because it's been a very good plan, a lot about housing, a lot about land use, but there is an element in here under the elements section on fire systems. And so, I looked it up and [clears throat] I found some interesting things. um under infrastructure and public safety page E4 256 and 7 and you know we've been talking a lot about 4 to6 minutes and we know the genesis of that is really focused on EMS and it's coming from the MLAN county area EM uh emergency management agency um which factors in um a more flexible standard to allow for the um many volunteer fire agencies in the county um then we are whereas we are a professional agency.

I have the policy right here. It doesn't say anything about volunteer or career it says everybody. Okay. But it is focused on EMS. Yeah. Okay.

And so um in this on page 25 it talks about um our policy well our our standard uh it says in fire response time um that uh the national accepted standard is six minutes response time. one minute each for alarm processing and turnout. So that's one and two plus four minutes of travel time, coming up with a total of six. NFD strives to accomplish this benchmark on 90% of its calls. In 2016, NFD responded in under six minutes, that bundled amount, 92.3% of the time.

Okay. So in 2016, you are measuring yourself against this standard. I think I don't think I've ever said that we haven't strived to respond quicker to every call that we respond on. I I mean that's what we do every day is try to respond quicker and more effectively. Yeah, I'm not following. It's

Yeah, I'm not following. So it could be more specific. What I'm trying to say here was a moment of that I had as I read this of um encouragement that on a printed document that we still consider to be valid, the normal fire department at least in 2016 was comparing itself to the NFPA 1710 uh 4 minute under or under four minutes of travel time 90% of the time. you expressed it a little differently here because it's also adding in those two other components of alarm processing and turnout time each of which takes about a minute. So I I I'm I'm looking for places where we are in alignment and where there is um congruence and I actually felt like for the first time in this entire discussion there was actually congruence on what the union study is espousing in terms of that being a standard to strive for a goalpost to reach and what was written here probably by you chief humor um as you are listed as a contributor to this section.

Sure. Yeah. I I you know I I don't disagree with you that we we strive every single day to get to every call as quickly as we can and we would love you know as we look back over the year to do better every single year. I mean that is what I was trying to say in that policy piece. So from your response, I guess my and I've got one more thing I want to bring out from this document. From your response, it's almost seeming like maybe we are not clear on what the goalpost is. Is it four to six minutes EMS or is it a four minute response time 90% of the time which is very paramount and fire response because of the um I'm learning these things flashover is that the right term that happens in four minutes now back in you know when we were young lads and lassis you know we had 15 minutes to get out of our homes because they weren't stuffed with all things made of plastic and petroleum and lithium batteries. But now we only have four minutes in our basement and open floor plan that help to bring fires to a flashover point faster. So our environment is such that we have to really adhere to that four minutes for fire suppression. It's a target and and we we totally agree. Faster we can get there the better. Um fire departments and chief can respond to this are primarily EMS. That's primarily what

we respond to. Those are the drivers of our calls. So I believe Miss um Smith asked for information about breakout between fire and EMS calls and chief even indicated of those non-EMS calls quite a few are um you said false not you said false alarm but different kinds of calls um

yeah our target is four to six minutes and if if council wants us to be faster we can talk about All right. Well, let me move on because I know time is ticking. Um, so the rest of this um page on 25 um talks about um goes on to describe um the capital investment plan that was underway at that point, the three-station redeployment.

And it talks about this multi-year strategy. And it said that the town in 2013 directed staff to pursue a plan to relocate its three fire stations uh to include um described the headquarters which was basically ready to to open at this point of printing and as well as the movement of station two and ultimately station 3 um hopefully finished up in according to this document by 2021. We know that didn't happen but that's okay. Um, but it goes on to say that there are two key assumptions to this 2013 NFD fire station relocation plan and they include number one, the town of Norma corporate limits will not grow much further in any direction.

Okay, I think that's probably still valid to date. Although you could argue, but I won't make this my main point, that thanks to this plan, we are doing a lot more infill and building vertically. But okay, uh we have not changed that assumption still holds. Um and then it says number two, and this is bringing back to my questions about Mitsubishi and Rivian. Number two, that Mitsubishi Motors located in the community on the west side during this planning process will continue to generate low call volume like it did until 2013. This causes me some concern on that assumption. Because we don't have Mitsubishi 2013 anymore. We have Rivian 2026. A lot more people. A lot no disrespect to their setup yet, but not yet an established internal EMS and fire brigade setup. A lot of construction and a lot of expansion. I would think that we need to know whether or not this assumption still holds, which is why I was hoping you could tell me tonight whether we are seeing more, less, or about the same. You don't know. I understand. You can't pull that off the top of your head, but I think we need to understand whether this assumption still holds or not because this is an underpinning to the entire three station redeployment plan. And if the assumptions are not any longer valid, even one of them, then we as a council should not be measuring minutes on a map, we need to be thinking about whether or not the plan to maintain three stations, wherever they're located, is still valid. That's all I have.

Mr. Buyers, thanks, Mayor. I I appreciate the discussion with staff and my colleagues. I Mr. concerns. I was going to ask you a quick question just on the the I think you had a document open if I can. I I thought I heard you say that there's 92% of respon verbally say 92% of responses under six minutes but then then I heard four minutes. I I just got confused. Did it say 92% under six minutes or

it does because it's it's doing what I'm going to call a loaded figure. loaded in terms of um alarm processing, turnout, and then as we like to call it in the Loren household, wheels up. So probably for them, wheels rolling forward, right? So those are the three components of the response time,

Mr. P. Thanks. So I actually want to pick up on this uh because I'm still not entirely clear. So for our because All right. For the four to six minute standard that we are going for, the um uh the stopwatch starts at what point? Like how we're measuring our time?

The the stopwatch Well, it's it's a two-phase component. The the stopwatch starts when we receive the call at the station. The guys and gals get dressed, get on the apparatus. That is the one minute of turnout time. Okay. And then as soon as they get on the radio and say we are responding to whatever address, then that clock starts again. And so which of those two does it include that first minute or not in the we want to meet this four to six minute standard? Is that first minute included in

the four to six minute standard is from the time the lieutenant radios that were on the way. It's four to six minutes to get there. Okay. End route time. That's that's the MLAN County area EMS policy is end route less than six minutes and we are shooting for four to six.

Got it. And so then I think to the um point that Miss Lorenz Mr. buyers followed up on uh presented in our uh vision 2040 plan if I understood what she was saying correctly and I don't have the plan in front of me but that 4 to6 minute time frame that was set out in our comprehensive plan sets that as from when the call comes in we start the stopwatch not from when they're in route we start the stopwatch does that make sense what I'm trying to differentiate because we're talking about 1 to two minutes difference and so if it's a four to six minute standard from when they're on the road and they're going, that is different from if it's a four to six minute standard from when the call comes in knowing it'll take 1 to two minutes before they're even on the road. See what I'm saying? Sure.

And so like in one case, if the four to six minute standard that we're talking about here was from when the call came in and on average you had um travel time of four minutes or less to equal that four to six because the first two were spent with the call coming in and guys getting out the door. um that I feel like would tell us a different story uh than than the other. And so it I feel like I have clarity for that now. Thank you. And um it like it makes sense what you're saying. So it's travel time is [snorts] kind of the the simplest way to put it. The 4 to6 minutes travel time. Okay.

If I could jump in though, Mr. President, add one more quick thing because I don't want to take up too much of council's time. We also have information about what happens before the in route time begins. So we also know how long it is to dress and actually from the time they get the dispatch how long it takes to get out the door. So we have that information too and we're tracking that. So, it is it's a formula and um that's why the fire department has laid out in their performance standards in the budget, their proposed budget, the response time which includes getting dressed, getting out the door, and getting to the actual destination.

Yeah, I so I appreciate that distinction. Um uh that's one I feel like throughout this taking a step back larger community conversation I have found myself and you know being on council I would like to think I'm fairly in the know as to you know what's going on. I'm obviously not living it day in and day out like um you guys are and u many of the people in the audience are, but um you know it is our role to some extent to um follow this more than your average concerned citizen obviously. And I have found myself through this public process of trying harder than I feel like I should to get a baseline set of like these are facts that everybody involved in this conversation from one or the other are all saying the same thing and everybody's in alignment with this. And so one of those being the standard, the NFPA 1710, is that the gold standard? Is that the what we should always try and reach and a lot of, you know, municipalities do? There are a lot of dynamics like that that um finding kind of the common link in narratives of what everybody generally agrees at um has been a challenge. And so I think that the information here tonight is helpful. I appreciate that. Um, I think it uh it helps um helps tell a complete story alongside other information that has um been part of the public conversation, mash it all together and come out with something, you know, uh something that everybody can everybody can agree to. Um, one piece that's missing, and I don't know if this data is available or not, but I think would be helpful, and you kind of alluded to it somewhat anecdotally uh with a couple, but we don't have any compiled data. I don't believe that shows our comparable communities um that would you know Bloomington, Champagne, Urbana, Puria, you know, Springfield, like your typical comparable communities, where do they fall? Um you know, number of calls, response times, uh how how many stations, how many guys compared to, you

know, the size of their municipality. that kind of information if it exists would at least be helpful for me to know you know to measure us up against like those that uh you know those that are around us. We use that for a lot of other things. Is that available? Sure. Yeah, we absolutely do that. We do that during the collective bargaining process. We reach out. We get all the contracts. We find out you know how many firefighters they have, how many piece people they have on each piece of apparatus and that kind of stuff. So we can pull all that together.

Okay. Well, I don't I don't want to put any, you know, other comparable communities on blast if, you know, they're the weak link of the group, but I would anticipate the normal is not. Um, and, uh, knowing kind of how that all falls together, I think would be beneficial, just as another frame of reference. Uh, larger point I'll make, um, is I think that, uh, there's probably not a person in this room that doesn't want to see the lowest response times possible. And the, you know, if we could have 100% response times within two minutes, I'm sure we would all, you know, uh, we would all love that. We'd also love if, you know, I see the chief of police if there was zero crime. You know, I like we'd love there was zero potholes. You know what I mean? But like it like we are all motivated by trying to provide the best service to the entire population as we can. um understanding that uh you know the fire department is one of many and you know we can't tax people you know their entire income uh to run the local government um but the motivations I think are are common across the board obviously so wanted to at least you know make sure that was said and then as we look at maps and there's been conversation about a fourth station Palen Blair maintaining some kind of uh activity still that has been out there. I I'm not convinced that college and Blair on its own um would solve like the entirety of any response times that you know uh that people feel like are not um what they should be. And to be [clears throat] more clear, I continue to see, you know, even on this map we're looking at here, a bunch of red triangles um that are clustered on the west side of normal. And that hasn't even really been as much part of this conversation that you know like ultimately if there's a shift in um how fire provides service overall and

you know uh do like is it if there's ever a conversation away from the three stations I don't think that foreign college and player solves all of our problems because I see a lot of red on the west side you know what I mean and so then what are you talking five stations six stations and you know like it just keeping everything into perspective Um, that said, I I appreciate this data. I think it's I think it's helpful. Um, hopefully it's helpful uh in the community conversation, too. A lot of good information um that's shared. And, you know, I uh I'm sure this issue is, [snorts] you know, this is far from the last that we've heard of it, but uh but I do appreciate the information shared tonight.

Mr. President, if I could just mention one thing, too, is that, you know, we talked about a three-station plan that we were going to move three stations. We've only moved two of them. We haven't re relocated station three yet, which will change, you know, the map that you're looking at where some of the red triangles are in some of those western response areas as well. So, I mean, there's a lot more work to do on on all this like you said. Mr. Rober, um, thank you for the presentation tonight. Um, it's been very informative. Um could you go please uh go forward to the slide that shows the number of responses in four minutes and six minutes uh by percentage.

Um Miss Loren, if you would be so kind, could you read off the statistic you provided regarding the number of responses in under six minutes? Mr. 2016. Uh, under our our policy at council, we're not going to do that kind of Q&A. 92.3. You can point that out. 92.3 in 2016. That was correct. 92. I'm just going to say where we are today based on what the slide is. What the slide says under four minutes says we're at 61. So, it looks like we've taken a step back in the last 10 years. Thank you,

Mr. McCarthy. Thanks, Mayor. Um, thank you for uh the presentation and the robust discussion. I think um uh I echo some of the comments made by my colleagues and um and staff. Uh this is one of the most important things we do. So, it's worthy of of public uh discussion. And um I appreciate um the discussion of the standard uh that we're using. Um clearly I read through the uh firefighter union report several times and um one of my first questions and comments back in my discussion with this Ree was they were seeming to be using different standards and I appreciate that that's um something that we should be having a public conversation about and um uh why how long uh under what circumstances comparable communities I that this has all been really important for all of these things to get mentioned uh in the public um and talked about transparently so uh everybody in the community understands uh with specifics. I also appreciate um the sharing of uh data and um uh the data modeling approach um that you're taking and um I just want to go back um you can go back to the slides if you want. Uh you don't have to u I'm not going to get that detailed and point to the slides uh for you but um I I think it's really important to kind of go back up 30,000 foot view. I want to make sure that I am understanding uh what you presented and um to make sure that uh some of the takeaways out to the public are what you're intending. So my understanding of what you've presented

to us tonight is that you've looked at at least two ways to model data for response times specifically. Correct. That is correct. Okay. So we weren't trying to to model anything else other than run times. That is correct. Yes. Okay. And so then we used our actual data to validate the models to say are our models accurately predicting run times and we're going to use most recent data to say yes they are or to what degree they're predicting accuracy. Yes, that is correct.

Okay. And then then we use this in assessing when we're moving fire stations around. Yes. whether or not our move is going to be helpful or to what degree it's going to be helpful in meeting this four to six stand. Okay. So, I think that's part of what I I I didn't hear specifically brought out is that we're using different methodologies and then we're testing the methods to see how accurate the methods are and then we're using those methods to predict when we're talking about placing fire stations to ensure coverage rates. Yes, absolutely.

Okay. So, so I think that's really important for the public to hear is how we're actually going about ensuring safety. It plain and simple. It that for me and to see the the colors and the triangles, I it's uh I I think pretty interesting to see that we're outperforming the model in some cases. I'd really like to know how we're doing that. Um uh and also if if we're underperforming the model in any way and I appreciate the discussion of some of what uh why there's red or orange triangles I guess not red uh inside of the blue area and and why that might uh uh happen for us. Um and then I appreciate my colleague bringing up the west side and the seemingly preponderance from the slides you're showing us and Mr. Hammer, your chief humor, your uh response is that we're not done yet. And so we're going to have this discussion again and we're going to have go through this process again. And it's great to hear that you're going to continue to model and um not stop here that at some point you'll dive into the 2025 data to tell us what's going on and and then I assume that that will include new station two actual run times.

Yes, that is at hope. Yes. Okay. And then we'll use that and see how we're actually responding when we're outside of standard, if we are outside of standard or when we're between the four and six minute standard. And that will inform how we make decisions about where to move a third one to make sure that we have the best coverage in all of the areas that we're supposed to. Yes, definitely. I think the uh observed data on uh station 2 and what the runtimes look like will absolutely help inform our um uh the best model to use as we are relocating fire station.

Okay. Anything that we didn't ask that would have been good for us to ask. Whenever I'm talking about data, I like to ask that question because I'm certainly not the most smartest data guy. You've asked all the right questions. Okay, mayor. Thank you. Thank you. questions

I have just one since we've been talking about the parameter of four to six minutes and one parameter is at the 4m minutee mark one is then four to six talking about the difference in terms of outcome uh service provided like ability to you know um preempt issues that would otherwise become larger issues on an EMS front of responding at you know If if you have a response at four minutes compared to at five minutes compared to it six minutes, how much of a difference does that make? Are we seeing in your average? I mean EMS is 80% of the calls and that's you know.

Sure. Well, and and that's where that standard comes from, you know, because brain death occurs in four to six minutes, you know, in in under normal conditions and that type of thing. And so that's where that standard is born out of. Um, you know, um and that's why it's important to have co-responder models. so the police can get there. They can defibrillate people. Um you know that um they carry Narcan on all the squad cars as well. Um so there's a lot of things they can do. They can do CPR obviously happens all the time. We work together all the time very closely. Um so I think that's where that time comes from through American Heart. Okay. All right. Thanks. Right ahead.

Um, just a couple of um closing thoughts. This is this was a great conversation. I appreciate council mayor and mayor giving us time to talk through what we have at a very high level of information. The purpose of this though is to demonstrate that um when chief and his team are looking at services response their performance in the field these are the kind of things they're looking at. So um we will continue to look at this always when we're looking at potential next uh station three where should that be based on calls for service things like that. Um but One thing that comes to mind when we reference the 2016 strategic plan, which or 2017 I think strategic plan is when we adopted it. I I love hearing that council's looking at that. I've got sticky notes all over my strategic plan and it's a wonderful document. Um some things that weren't recognized in that document though were technological advancements that also have helped us enhance our service level. So we use now at automatic vehicle locate um in addition to partnering with police and and providing services. But we will continue to explore other technology solutions that help us get to our destination even faster such as traffic signal preeemption, things like that. So all of these different factors um in use of technology and exploring those sorts of things will help us get to our caller are the person who needs their services faster and we will continue to explore that all the time and and that's where Miss Garaju is supporting the fire department and her whole team is supporting the fire department and all of the departments in our operations. So, you know, this this group here this

evening is is just helping to demonstrate to council that we've got staff whose purpose is to help us find to um filter through and find problems to solve and then find find ways to solve them. So, that's what we're in the business to do. So, thank you for letting us do this tonight. Thank you. Um, you had your two shots, but I'll go ahead and enter. Yeah. So, it's a it's a budget question really. Um, you speak of technology. You spoke of um hiring six to nine firefighters. Are either of those elements in the upcoming budget?

Well, no. Chief's comment was in response to Miss Smith's question. She asked, "How many people would it take if we added an ambulance?" and he said it takes six to nine employees to staff an ambulance. Oh, so you're not looking to hire that? I thought you made some reference to We just hired six people. They started today. We hired six people. Two of them were for um retirements that we had, right? Some current vacancies and anticipating future vacancies for people who are probably going to retire in April. So, you're remaining status quo. So, that's what's staying in the budget. That's what's in the bud.

Okay. And no new technology. in there will be technology but that's generally in the innovation technology department and I don't know if you can say a specific dollar amount that's dedicated to public safety but we basically have we budget for a miss Garaji includes um technology advancements in every department and has a line for that and then evaluates what the technology needs are. So, uh, Miss Lawrence, if your question is about if we have a budget for, um, traffic signal preeemption project, we do not. However, we are in the process of researching, uh, that at this point. Once we have more information, we will bring it to the table. Okay. Thank you.

That concludes our business tonight. Uh, we're taking a motion for German. Are there concerns and comments? Miss Smith,

I have two in way of public announcements. Um the there is a four chaplain's memorial service tomorrow from 1 to 1:30 at the Evergreen Cemetery Mausoleum in Bloomington. It's commemorating the sacrifice of four um individuals um chaplain serving on a ship that they gave up their own life jackets and went down with the ship so that four soldiers could be saved. and u their heroic sacrifice is commemorated tomorrow um at the mausoleum from 1 to 1:30 and also tomorrow evening from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. the WI League of Women's Voters is hosting a presentation on the impact of cuts to our local community of services that we've experienced and under the the recent um federal budgets. So that is at Hartland Community Center center from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. I believe if you you've put in League of Women Voters um you can find the information. There's no cost to attend but they are asking for registration so I think they can be aware of the times the the count. Thank you.

Motion for second. Please call a roll. Miss Smith. Hi, Mr. McCarthy. Hi, Mr. Preston. Hi, Mrs. Loren. Hi, Mr. Buyers. Hi, Mr. Roers. Hi, Mayor Cous. Hi, we are ajourned.